Just as central planners cannot know how individuals will value a product or service, so too are central planners unable to calculate or plan for the endless array of risk assessments made by potential victims of covid-19.
If California voters and politicians do not understand the current crisis, we will see the continuous march to perdition as California politicians refuse to acknowledge that they are killing the geese laying the golden eggs.
The silent majority is the one that benefits from recent agricultural reforms, but mounting pressure from the vocal minority has prompted the government to once again increase government meddling.
In case you doubted that California's politicians are firmly committed to ever-higher levels of taxation, California is now trying to retroactively impose sales taxes on out-of-state retailers going as far back as 2012.
The idea of ordinary people enjoying luxuries and "unnecessary" items has long troubled intellectuals and aristocrats. But thanks to capitalism, ordinary people can now enjoy the basic pleasures the ruling classes have long seized for their own.
Ideally, political elites would like nothing more than state-sponsored ethnic conflict. Having multiple groups pitted against each other in petty political squabbles makes effective opposition against the managerial class virtually impossible.
