Some weeks ago Harry Phibbs had a timeless
The failure of central planning
It didn’t work in the late 1940s or the early 2020s
“What was it like in the war?” was amongst the most frequent questions that we asked our parents and grandparents. Our children and grandchildren may well ask us: “What was it like during the pandemic?” Some comparisons have been made between the two emergencies. Others recoil at the notion of any possible equivalence of the heroism of those fighting to defend western civilisation in the Second World War, and those stuck at home watching Netflix for a few weeks: not working but on 80 per cent of their regular pay via the taxpayer-funded furlough scheme, the routine only broken by the occasional visit to a supermarket to panic buy lavatory paper.
It occurs to me that a more valid comparison to our lockdown episode came in the years just after the war, during the late 1940s. That was when the zeal for state control in a time of peace was unleashed to its greatest degree — until it was surpassed in 2020. Such was the determination of the Attlee Government to pursue “economic planning” that the response to each setback was to intensify the folly.
The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of how ignorantly intransigent bureaucrat planners can be and how spitefully indifferent to the damage they cause.
Winston Churchill came back in 1951 with the slogan “Set the people free” and did abolish rationing — but I’m afraid there was still significant consensus for state restrictions. Economic planning was still fashionable in the 1960s. Enoch Powell was a trenchant but isolated critic, declaring: “Lift the curtain and ‘the State’ reveals itself as a little group of fallible men in Whitehall, making guesses about the future, influenced by political prejudices and partisan prejudices, and working on projections drawn from the past by a staff of economists.”
8 comments:
Devolving 'power' should be the answer, but somehow the extra jobs in county councils, borough councils, parish councils etc., just create a huge maelstrom of extra people, fiddling around the edges, while never actually doing anything!
Of course, it does all start at Whitehall, but I bet they haven't a clue what's going on at local parish council meetings, when they discuss the location of a new public loo!
Margaret Thatcher succeeded at first, but even then, was thwarted by the Sue Grays of this idiotic world of 'ohsodit'...
So Enoch was right about that, too!
I believed at the time, that Enoch Powell was far more astute than his contemporaries on the left and right. He was one of the very few politicians that I admired and supported, because almost all others at the time and since have unrealistic views on the world and never more so than today.
Scrobs - that's it, a huge maelstrom of extra people. Too many people fiddling around with far too many things which should be left alone. Starmer wants even more of them.
Jannie and Tammly - there are probably more like him, but they aren't attracted to politics and if they were they would be kept out by the charlatans and loons we keep voting for.
People sometimes refuse to behave in the appropriate way Central Planning is never wrong but people sometimes don't understand how to behave in the appropriate way.
They don't want what the plan delivers and want what the plan cannot deliver. And they never produce enough tractors.
{sarcasm}
I was once in a student audience addressed by Mr Powell. We, of course, were cocky young sods, keen to show him how bright we were. You can't fool us, matey.
He was charismatic in full flow but, if anything, even more impressive answering questions. Thus: Cocky Young Sod asks question. Mr Powell rephrases it so that it is terse, clear, unambiguous. Then he invites the CYS to approve the rewording. On receiving his assent (which he did every time) he'd answer it, with considerable elan.
Breathtakingly impressive. No wonder ordinary MPs found him an alien, puzzling man. He was intellectually in a different league from them all.
Only later did I learn that he joined the army as a private and ended the war a brigadier.
The linked article is excellent but it's in The Critic, not CapX.
DJ - "they never produce enough tractors" does highlight a possible problem with information flows if decision makers receive optimistic reports on project progress and timescales.
dearieme - that must have been quite an experience. Over the years I've occasionally wondered why he went into politics. He must have felt out of place, as if the whole business was beneath him.
Peter - oops - thanks - I've corrected it.
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