ABSTRACT
This question is so muddled that one doesn’t know where to begin. The government is certainly making production plans without knowing it is making them. By building highways and neglecting rail lines, it un intentionally helped to shape not only our transpor tation system, but the distribution of population in rural, urban, and suburban areas, which, if done in tentionally, would have been considered an act of malevolent insanity. Bureaucrats have had a big hand in determining the course of development of the rail road, the automobile, the airplane, radio, and tele vision, to restrict oneself to Mr. Hazlitt’s list. But no one asked what the consequences might be ten or twenty years later or whether we ought to have gen eral social goals against which to measure particular policies. Heaven defend us against thinking about the kinds of health, housing, or energy systems we want in ten years because such thoughts will upset private production plans. But really, there are no production plans made by private firms on a society-wide scale, and only the public through its representatives can provide them. Does this mean telling General Motors what to do? If the public votes for candidates com mitted to high taxes on gas-inefficient cars and easy credit terms for municipalities that build better transit systems, we will indeed be telling General Motors what to do. But then its executives have never failed to express pride in being told what to do by con sumers.
