Guardian columnist discovers Hayek

Very well done that man, vry well done:

There are perhaps three linked fallacies at work here. The first is that any isolated medium-sized state can realistically micromanage people’s bills in an age of global shocks and exemplary atrocity. You can throw pots of money at energy bills and fuel duty, but how do you mitigate the after-effects on food prices, mortgage rates, travel costs, phones and laptops that rely on semiconductors that rely on helium and bromine? Do we now need a helium tsar*? A cereals and baked goods tsar? A Jet2holidays tsar?

Economies are complicated things and it’s not possible to plan them in any detail. Which does leave us in an interesting position, no?

Now that the people who write the paper have grasped this all we’ve got to do is convince those who read it….

Tim Worstall

*A job we’d happily do. We’d explain - in a squeaky voice, of course - that Liquified Natural Gas, LNG, trains produce helium as a byproduct thus the problem is solved. Then we’d cash our paycheque.