Perhaps only an autocracy can have a directed economy?

In a review of John Kampfner’s new book:

From The Observer

And, well, yes:

This is something we pointed out in 23 Things We Are Telling You About Capitalism, our response to Ha Joon Chang’s book. Chang positively revels in the power that the military dictatorship in South Korea had over who could produce what, how. It’s positively lipsmacking, that relish with which the stories of commands to produce this or that are described. As we point out, you cannot do that sort of thing in a free society. You can’t even do that sort of thing in a liberal society - because freedom and liberty do indeed mean not being commanded to produce this or that and in what manner.

At root - even after we’ve gone through all of the arguments about basic efficiency, picking losers and all the rest - this is our argument against everything from Mazzucato’s cross-cutting and mission-oriented to Ed Miliband’s gurning over his slide rule. Commanding that this be done is simply incompatible with what we insist is the very aim of the whole civilisation idea in the first place - a free and liberal society. We all do indeed get to stop people doing things which harm us but we do not get to command their obedience to our plans beyond that.

Don’t forget, a plan that says shipbuilding will be done by these people, electronics by those others over there - as S Korea did - also means a ban on shipbuilding by the second group, on electronics by the first. That’s simply not compatible with that first and primary goal - liberty.

A planned economy requires a level of autocracy that we’re not willing to put up with.

Tim Worstall