To Grow or to Plan?

A thought-provoking article from Jonah Goldberg appearing in National Review Online:

Economic growth is an enemy of all central planners for the simple reason that growth jumps the guardrails of The Plan; it changes the aesthetically appealing flat line of the steady state and makes it jagged. Growth creates new products, destroys old ones, and allows people to behave in ways that render PowerPoint projections dismayingly obsolete. Worse, it takes power from the planners.

In order to herd people back onto the official path, planners must tell them that what exists outside the guardrails is too terrifying to contemplate. “Beyond here there be monsters” is the posted sign at every guardrail.