By Samuel Gregg, D.Phil.
Any system of social and economic life that aspires to be truly humane needs to reflect the nature of human beings. Communism imploded, at least in part, because it denied certain truths about humans, most notably the fact that we possess the unique ability to make free choices. By attempting to replace market mechanisms of supply and demand with a top-down command approach, both socialist and communist economic theory ascribed abilities to humans that are possessed by no individual or group. One was the assumption that any one of us can look ahead and foresee all the possible needs of an entire society at any one point of time in the near or distant future. No matter how sophisticated the available methods of economic modeling, such foresight is beyond any human intelligence. There are good reasons why economic forecasting is often described as more of an art than a science. (more)
