The Eternal Return of Bad Ideas

 Jonah Goldberg on the stupidity of price-fixing. An excerpt:

I use scare quotes around “doing something” because that’s basically a lie in terms of reality. But where the apologists see a greater truth is in the idea that something—nay, anything—can be done with the right people in charge. Tell some people that the New Deal didn’t actually end the Great Depression and they get very angry, because the point is that it tried. The New Deal represents the idea that the government, when controlled by the right people, can do all the things. The New Dealers ordered the slaughter of some 6 million baby pigs to get the price of bacon “right”—at a time when many Americans were going hungry. “So what?” the apologists ask, “At least they tried!”