If people are 100% free to produce and to spend as they wish, we can presume they get 100% of what they want. Whether it is good or bad, we don’t know. All we know is that prices reflect the relative values that people give to things and that the economy fully expresses their wants and desires. This is, of course, a fantasy. Nowhere on Earth…no time in history…did such an ideal economy exist. Everywhere, in every epoch, there were restrictions, laws, regulations, theft, subsidies, slavery and other distortions. Still, it is worth keeping in mind this IDEAL ECONOMY. Like an honest man or a virtuous woman, it gives us a standard against which to measure our shortcomings.
If this is true it raises the deepest questions about economic policy. It suggests that there shouldn’t be any
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