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Kurtis Hingl's avatar

“A fundamental difficulty with the government is that there is no owner of the residual. There is no one who directly benefits from delivering a product cheaply, or from making a new or higher quality product.”

^Almost true. A dictator (or family, eg Singapore) could in principle earn the residual to efficient government.

The adjacent and more pressing problem is that the people who do have control and sometimes residual rights cannot trade them. Through trade we get prices and prices help us make efficient decisions.

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Richard Hanania's avatar

" Electricity consumption (a weak indicator anyway, as there was little incentive to economize on electricity) fell by considerably less than GDP fell. Household consumption measures – like ownership of automobiles and other consumer durables, or living space, increased after the fall."

Some numbers here would be nice.

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