 Progressives are masters of indignation. They see injustice everywhere, whether political, social, professional, or economic. Pretty much wherever humans interact with each other. Regardless of the context, their solution is always the same. More government regulation. Progressives love to use rights language. They like to say things like, people have a right to health care, they have a right to a job, a right to a living wage. It's a matter of justice. Now, while these statements certainly sound nice, there's just one problem. They ignore reality. Before talking about how things should be, it would seem wise to first understand how things actually work. If you want to understand how the world works, you must understand economics. It's not optional. As Murray Rothbard so accurately said, it is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline, and one that most consider to be a dismal science. But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance. Progressives have a particularly poor track record when it comes to economics. Not only are their theories confused, but they've concretely demonstrated for a century that their central planning does far more harm than good. The Soviet Union was a left-wing paradise. Indeed, examine the rhetoric from the old Soviet Union. It sounds eerily similar to today's progressives. And, of course, if you know history, the Soviet Union couldn't have been a larger economic catastrophe. Any political theory that's devoid of sound economic reasoning is useless at best and dangerous at worst. It's like a car without any engine, transmission, wheels, window, seat, or a floor. It's pretty much a shell with a nice glossy paint. Imagine a blind artist trying to paint a perfect replica of whatever building stands in front of him. But he doesn't have a paintbrush, any paint, or a canvas. All he possesses is an old napkin and some dirt. That's essentially the political theorist who doesn't understand economics. Whatever the artist's final product looks like, that's the equivalent of a political theory without economics. So before talking about what wages, jobs, and healthcare people are entitled to, we must ask, how do jobs, wages, and healthcare come into existence? How do these systems work? Economic goods and services do not appear in nature. Poverty is the natural state of mankind, and wealth is the exception. So how is it that humans become wealthy? Well, it's not by government decree. It's not through central planning. It's not through strong declarations of intent. It's through markets. I won't make a bunch of economic arguments in this article, but a huge amount of information is available online which teaches the basics. A good rule of thumb, if you don't yet understand why the minimum wage causes unemployment, then keep digging deeper. All economic truths are based on one foundational principle that resources are scarce, meaning that there isn't enough stuff for everybody to have everything that they want. Thus that implies necessarily that resources have to somehow be allocated. But it's not an easy question. How should resources be allocated? Every country has a different economic situation. There's lots of diamonds in South Africa, lots of oil in the Middle East, lots of manufacturing plants in China. How should they all get coordinated? Contrary to what might seem intuitive, the best allocation method is to have no pre-planned allocation at all. You simply let individuals trade by themselves, absent planning or design, and wealth gets created. Moral declarations like there should be no child labor might sound great, but they're economically illiterate with really big real-world consequences. Imagine I said, General Motors should be producing three times as many cars at half their current price. That way more people could afford them. Now, yes, a lot of people would like that idea, but it's completely ignorant. It overlooks countless economic realities and questions like why do cars sell at their current price in the first place? Given the limited amount of steel and rubber in the world, how much should be allocated to producing cars versus producing machinery or equipment or other goods? Selling at half the price? Would GM even bother making cars at all? You could easily name a thousand other questions, all which need answering. And in very short order it becomes clear there are too many moving parts to the economy to think that somehow you can plan it out. There's too much knowledge for anybody to have. Instead, markets use this extraordinarily efficient pricing system to allocate resources to the most efficient and optimal use. Cars are not unique. This kind of allocation takes place with literally every economic good from healthcare to tennis shoes in a marketplace. Economic laws do not change depending on the good. The production of sweaters is not intrinsically different than the production of food, water, housing or health services. Yet without fail, progressives overlook these facts and rely on emotional rhetoric instead. They say, but I need healthcare to live. I need a living wage. We can't let greedy businessmen determine whether I live or die. And unfortunately their rhetoric persuades a lot of people. And if you couple this with the democratic government you've got a recipe for systemic poverty. You may have blunt news for the progressive. You do not get fed because of laws. You aren't dodging killer consumer products because of the FDA. It's despite government regulation that wealth has created. You get fed because of functioning prices, profits and losses within a market system. And without it you would undoubtedly starve regardless of the law. This is the history of communism. You saw it in the Soviet Union, you saw it in China and you're currently seeing it in Venezuela. Now I admit talking about cold economic laws does not have the same rhetorical power. I mean it sounds wonderful to say everybody should have a free college education. Yeah, who could object? But that's not a world most people want to live in if you actually understand the economic tradeoffs involved. So let me give you an example. I took a recent trip to the hospital. I was getting outpatient treatment and I needed a place to park. I had to use a parking garage. But I had to pay for the parking garage. For parking my car so that I could get essential healthcare services. What kind of greedy capitalist pig would force me to hand over money to park at a hospital. Hospital parking should be free. Doesn't that sound great? Well thank goodness I didn't get my wish because what would have happened with free parking for everybody when you live in the real world where there's a scarce amount of parking spaces? The answer is obvious. I would have never found a spot. If everybody who wanted to park in that area for the local restaurants, the park and that's whatever. They were all allowed to pack into the garage free of charge. I would have been unable to park there though I really needed the spot. So we have a solution. Prices. There's only a fine amount of spots. Instead of having free parking for everybody we need parking for those who really need it. I.e. for those who are willing to pay for it. Now it's not a perfect solution but because there's no perfect solution. Scarcity necessarily means that some people's desires will remain unsatisfied. Prices are simply the best possible solution given the imperfect circumstances. Campaigning on moral indignation against paid hospital parking would not only be silly and ignorant it would be counterproductive. The world would be better off if that campaign lost. But unfortunately this kind of counterproductive nonsense is precisely the modus operandi of progressives. They take moral positions, not rooted in reality. They get their signs out and they persuade voters by appealing to emotional rhetoric. As Thomas Sowell would say on a perpetual quest for cosmic justice. So fundamentally claiming that everybody has a right to affordable housing is no different than claiming everybody has a right to a refrigerator to television sets a car, several pairs of shoes and broadband internet access. Never mind any concern for how these goods actually get produced or what the concrete effects of government micromanagement would be. I suggest all political and social theories be first rooted in reality. They have to be grounded in sound economics. Otherwise they are hopelessly doomed to inaccurate and fanciful conclusions. If you like the sound of these ideas, if they resonate with you, then make sure to subscribe. And if you want to help create more content like this, then check out Patreon.com slash Steve Patterson and you can help support the creation of a more rational worldview. To read this article or to learn about my books check out stevedashpatterson.com