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What’s wrong and right with the world.
J.E. Dyer, a retired Naval Intelligence officer, blogs as The Optimistic Conservative, August 23, 2024
Will we ever get inside? Images: Pixabay; author
As the Democratic National Convention & Mass Protest-fest bursts upon us, it’s time to get some updates out of the way so we can concentrate on whatever moments of eventhood may eventuate this week.
There are quite a few notables to tag, so these will not be in-depth treatments. There are several national security issues, but we’ll start with an economic policy topic that demands urgent treatment, because most commentators are focusing on the wrong thing in discussing it.
They’re focusing on what they understand (very well, to be sure), and not on what we’ll really – really – regret in the long run.
“Price-gouging”: Just say no to the witch-hunt
The topic is being discussed among pundits as “price controls.” Candidate Kamala Harris spoke relatedly on the matter late last week, and pundits, knowing well the counterproductive damage always done by price controls, were off to the races laying out for us the excellent case that it’s lunacy to impose price controls.
But in Ready Room at TOC, we’re all about getting inside the OODA loop. And in this case, that means listening with our ears to what Harris actually said. What she said was much more dangerous than “price controls.” That’s why, no matter what you hear in mitigation of her bad proposal, it is imperative to understand that this is, in fact, the road to socialist managerialism, and its premise is Marxism.
If Harris had merely proposed price controls, in the manner of Richard Nixon in the 1970s or the FDR government in World War II, that would be bad enough.
But what she actually wants to do is order the Federal Trade Commission to enforce a “ban on price-gouging.”
This is something we don’t think about systematically very often, but it’s the heart of the matter, and it’s the dangerous premise the Democrats are trying to slip into the policy, while we all talk about “price controls.”
The “price-gouging” theme is open-ended, because it assumes bad faith and then goes looking for it. It’s the definition of a witch-hunt. “Banning price-gouging” is about permanently chartering a witch-hunt in the U.S. economy. It’s about holding our industries, and thus our jobs and livelihoods, at perpetual risk of arbitrary political attack.
A “ban on price-gouging” has as its core premise that price-gouging is going on at any given time, and that whenever prices go up, price-gouging must be seen as a catalyst. Price-gouging by its nature – its definition – is a pernicious activity undertaken by persons. It’s not a market phenomenon. It’s not the result of natural market forces. It’s done deliberately by humans with motives.
In the meantime the left and liberal Jews are using NAZI tactics against their opponents!