Human Action: dag 25

Kapitel 30 av Human Action handlar om priskontroller. Här hittar man Mises’ bevis för att priskontroller alltid måste leda till att socialism enligt det tyska mönstret införs: ett pristak för att fler ska kunna köpa en vara, orsakar ett underskott, och att större kvantiteter av andra varor produceras:

It would be vain for the government to try to remove these undesired consequences by decreeing maximum prices likewise for the factors of production needed for the production of the consumers’ goods the prices of which it has fixed. Such a measure would be successful only if all factors of production required were absolutely specific. As this can never be the case, the government must add to its first measure, fixing the price of only one consumers’ good below the potential market price, more and more price ceilings, not only for all other consumers’ goods and for all material factors of production, but no less for labor. It must compel every entrepreneur, capitalist, and employee to continue producing at the prices, wage rates, and interest rates which the government has fixed, to produce those quantities which the government orders them to produce, and to sell the products to those people–producers or consumers–whom the government determines. If one branch of production were to be exempt from this regimentation, capital and labor would flow into it; production would be restricted precisely in those other–regimented –branches which the government considered so important that it interfered with the conduct of their affairs.

Economics does not say that isolated government interference with the prices of only one commodity or a few commodities is unfair, bad, or unfeasible. It says that such interference produces results contrary to its purpose, that it makes conditions worse, not better, from the point of view of the government and those backing its interference.

Ett kort, men mycket intressant, stycke behandlar Rom och dess fall. Läsvärt!
Det tredje avsnittet av kapitlet handlar om minimilöner och hur de skapar arbetslöshet, och hur det också leder till mer interventionism och till slut socialism:

Firmly committed to the principles of interventionism, governments try to check this undesired result of their interference by resorting to those measures which are nowadays called full-employment policy: unemployment doles, arbitration of labor disputes, public works by means of lavish public spending, inflation, and credit expansion. All these remedies are worse than the evil they are designed to remove.

Assistance granted to the unemployed does not dispose of unemployment. It makes it easier for the unemployed to remain idle. The nearer the allowance comes to the height at which the unhampered market would have fixed the wage rate, the less incentive it offers to the beneficiary to look for a new job. It is a means of making unemployment last rather than of making it disappear. The disastrous financial implications of unemployment benefits are manifest.

…

If government spending for public works is financed by taxing the citizens or borrowing from them, the citizens’ power to spend and invest is curtailed to the same extent as that of the public treasury expands. No additional jobs are created.

Och om kollektiv”avtal”:

However, what is euphemistically called collective bargaining by union leaders and ”pro-labor” legislation is of a quite different character. It is bargaining at the point of a gun. It is bargaining between an armed party, ready to use its weapons, and an unarmed party under duress. It is not a market transaction. It is a dictate forced upon the employer. And its effects do not differ from those of a government decree for the enforcement of which the police power and the penal courts are used. It produces institutional unemployment.