I found this cautionary tale in a copy of the Cato Journal. Around 500 bc the Athenian state, worried about the price of grain, forced the grain merchants to form a purchasing cartel to leverage the grain sellers into lowering their prices. The grain sellers were basically ships' captains acting on their own authority. Since they couldn't get their asking price from Athens, they took their business (and their grain) elsewhere. The result was a grain shortage in Athens, and you guessed it, the price of grain spiked. But good. And one more thing. The state put the grain merchants on trial for their lives after simply doing what the state forced them to do. States never change.
Millennia of failure by central planning is evidence enough for me to distrust Obama's "change". Read More
Why does many a man write? Because he does not possess enough character not to write. ---Karl Kraus.
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