Central Planning Quotes

The fateful moment for the Chinese economy, crippled by central planning and collectivized production, was when Deng Xiaoping, China's long-term leader after Mao's death, announced that the country would pursue "Socialism with Chinese characteristics," which is to say a market economy under an authoritarian technocracy. This was in 1977, as good a year as any for marking the birth of modern China. Deng and his associates undertook a job akin to that of a political bomb squad, laboriously dismantling most of the economic ideology installed by Mao without blowing up political continuity at the same time. That they succeeded is in many ways the single most important political fact of contemporary China. ~ Clay Shirky

The right to "liberty" and "pursuit" of happiness is incompatible with a government that makes choices for you. ~ A.E. Samaan

A language is the joint historical creation of millions of speakers. Although all speakers have some effect on the trajectory of a language, the process is not particularly egalitarian. Linguists, grammarians, and educators, some of them backed by the power of the state, weigh in heavily. But the process is not particularly amenable to a dictatorship, either. Despite the efforts toward "central planning," language (especially its everyday spoken form) stubbornly tends to go on its own rich, multivalent, colorful way. ~ James C. Scott

Central planning, judicial activism, and the nanny state all presume vastly more knowledge than any elite have ever possessed. ~ Thomas Sowell

The hubris that attends all political programs of central planning is fueled by an ignorance of the forces of chaos. ~ Butler Shaffer

Brute force is not our salvation, especially as directed by State central planning and done with little regard for the innocents ... ~ Anthony Gregory

The objective, clearly enunciated by the leaders of UNCED, is to bring about a change in the present system of independent nations. The future is to be World Government with central planning by the United Nations. Fear of environmental crises - whether real or not - is expected to lead to - compliance ~ Dixie Lee Ray

Legislating morality grows big government immensely, and helps fashion the noose the government will use to ultimately hang you by. ~ A.E. Samaan

The difference between communism and socialism is that under socialism central planning ends with a gun in your face, whereas under communism central planning begins with a gun in your face. ~ Kevin D. Williamson

Central planning inevitably leads to economic chaos and failure.
Friedrich Hayek called the delusion that a single person or a group
of government planners could possibly possess the knowledge to plan
an entire economy a "fatal conceit." The overwhelming historical
evidence is that the more freedom a nation has, the more economic
opportunities will exist and the more dynamic that nation's economy
will be. Likewise, the more regulations, controls, taxes, governmentrun
industries, protectionism, and other forms of interventionism that
exists, the poorer the country will become. ~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

Central banks have gotten out of the central banking business and into the central planning business, meaning that they are devoted to raising up-if they can-economic growth and employment through the dubious means of suppressing interest rates and printing money. The nice thing about gold is that you can't print it. ~ James Grant

If you start from a belief that the most knowledgeable person on earth does not have even one percent of the total knowledge on earth, that shoots down social engineering, economic central planning, judicial activism and innumerable other ambitious notions favored by the political left. ~ Thomas Sowell

I've read quite a few readers' reviews of my book on Amazon, saying, 'Ah, he criticises the free market, he advocates central planning.' I don't do that for a minute! But this is our black and white, dichotomous way of thinking - which has really been harmful. ~ Ha-Joon Chang

In this sense socialism means the abolition of private enterprise, of private ownership of the means of production, and the creation of a system of "planned economy" in which the entrepreneur working for profit is replaced by a central planning body. ~ Friedrich Hayek

Typically, when there are corporate habits that undermine individuals, it has emerged without any sort of central planning. Nobody sits down and says, 'I'm going to create an evil habit for this corporation.' ~ Charles Duhigg

Let me say that I think the economic history of the last 150 years clearly shows that if you want to industrialize a country in a short period, let us say 20 years, and you don't have a well-developed private sector, entrepreneurial class, then central planning is important. ~ Manmohan Singh

No central planning, no autocratic rule and no military regime can produce what free man can do. ~ Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj

Given a choice between patterns of subsistence that are relatively unfavorable to the cultivator but which yield a greater return in manpower or grain to the state and those patterns that benefit the cultivator but deprive the state, the ruler will choose the former every time. The ruler, then, maximizes the state-accessible product, if necessary, at the expense of the overall wealth of the realm and its subjects. ~ James C. Scott

All utopias are dystopias. The term "dystopia" was coined by fools that believed a "utopia" can be functional. ~ A.E. Samaan

For reasons I do not entirely understand, the clerisy after 1848 turned toward nationalism and socialism, and against liberalism, and came also to delight in an ever-expanding list of pessimisms about the way we live now in our approximately liberal societies, from the lack of temperance among the poor to an excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Antiliberal utopias believed to offset the pessimisms have been popular among the clerisy. Its pessimistic and utopian books have sold millions. But the twentieth-century experiments of nationalism and socialism, of syndicalism in factories and central planning for investment, of proliferating regulation for imagined but not factually documented imperfections in the market, did not work. And most of the pessimisms about how we live now have proven to be mistaken. It is a puzzle. Perhaps you yourself still believe in nationalism or socialism or proliferating regulation. And perhaps you are in the grip of pessimism about growth or consumerism or the environment or inequality. Please, for the good of the wretched of the earth, reconsider. ~ Deirdre N. McCloskey

Nothing in recent history makes any sense without a deep understanding of WWII and The Holocaust. ~ A.E. Samaan

The Federal Reserve System had been established to prevent what actually happened. It was set up to avoid a situation in which you would have to close down banks, in which you would have a banking crisis. And yet, under the Federal Reserve system, you had the worst banking crisis in the history of the United States ~ Alan Ebenstein

Central banking has become the new central planning. Under the old central planning, government attempted to manage production and the supply of goods and services. Under the new central planning, the Fed attempts to manage the financial system and the supply and allocation of credit. ~ Anonymous

By exiling human judgment in the last few decades, modern law changed role from useful tool to brainless tyrant. This legal regime will never be up to the job, any more than the Soviet system of central planning was, because ti can't think. The comedy of law's sterile logic
large POISON signs warning against common sand, spending twenty-two years on pesticide review and deciding next to nothing, allowing fifty-year-old white men to sue for discrimination
is all too reminiscent of the old jokes we used to hear about life in the Eastern bloc.
Judgement is to law as water is to crops. It should not be surprising that law has become brittle, and society along with it. ~ Philip K. Howard

Central planning was just not good at replacing what the great eighteenth-century economist Adam Smith called the "invisible hand" of the market. When the plan was formulated in tons of steel sheet, the sheet was made too heavy. When it was formulated in terms of area of steel sheet, the sheet was made too thin. When the plan for chandeliers was made in tons, they were so heavy, they could hardly hang from ceilings. ~ Daron Acemoglu

Central planning didn't work for Stalin or Mao, and it won't work for an entrepreneur either. ~ Michael Bloomberg

With its fluctuating forms and needless decoration, fashion epitomizes the supposedly unproductive waste that inspired 20th-century technocrats to dream of central planning. It exists for no good reason. But that's practically a definition of art. ~ Virginia Postrel

The Statist deflects public scorn for the consequences of his own central planning by blaming the very industry he is sabotaging for supply dislocations and price hikes. ~ Mark Levin

If the central contest of the twentieth century has pitted capitalism against socialism, then F. A. Hayek has been its central figure. He helped us to understand why capitalism won by a knockout. It was Hayek who elaborated the basic argument demonstrating that central planning was nothing else but an impoverishing fantasy. ~ Kenneth Minogue

Are you really questioning the wisdom of central planning? Because the happy citizens of Cuba and North Korea beg to differ. ~ Jonathan Gruber

The free market is not only a more efficient decision maker than even the wisest central planning body, but even more important, the free market keeps economic power widely dispersed. ~ Milton Friedman

Hillary Clinton is making income inequality a central theme in her campaign. Yeah, for example, today she pointed out that her husband makes $300 million a year. She has to get by on $200 million a year, and that's not fair. ~ Conan O'Brien

He walked across the room and flicked a switch. A spotlight turned on, illuminating a laminated poster of a woman on his wall. He took a crayon from his pocket and began drawing on it. I could see smudges from past demonstrations. [. . .] His dashed lines crisscrossed the woman's chest as if he were planning a military maneuver on undulating terrain. ~ Kim Van Alkemade

I think it's even harder because I think as always, Hollywood is sort of glamour central for the world, and the entire world looks to it for not only entertainment, but the whole idea of the youth factor and youth being sold to our culture via young actors and actresses. ~ Anthony Michael Hall

Look, I'm not going to have sex with him just so he'll say that he loves me, you know?
... That isn't why I was planning to have sex with Rob - to hear the words, I mean. I just wanted to get it over with. I think. Actually, I'm not sure why it seemed so important. ~ Lauren Oliver

We have got to accept Big Government for the duration-for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged, given our present government skills, except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores. ... And if they deem Soviet power a menace to our freedom (as I happen to), they will have to support large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards, and the attendant centralization of power in Washington-even with Truman at the reins of it all. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

One of the oldest aches in the bones of humanity is loneliness. I mean it's one of the things that goes way back; loneliness is not good for the world. And so, whoever you are, gay or straight, it is totally normal, natural, and healthy to want somebody to go through life with. It's central to our humanity. ~ Rob Bell

The most central and irrational faith among people is the faith in technology and economical growth. Its priests believe until their death that material prosperity bring enjoyment and happiness - even though all the proofs in history have shown that only lack and attempt cause a life worth living, that the material prosperity doesn't bring anything else than despair. These priests believe in technology still when they choke in their gas masks. ~ Pentti Linkola

Forget "minimum viable products" - ever since he started Apple in 1976, Jobs saw that you can change the world through careful planning, not by listening to focus group feedback or copying others' successes. ~ Peter Thiel

The obligations of citizens is to make it clear that Aboriginal issues are central to our public concerns, that we want them dealt with in a fully democratic context of openness and justice, that we will vote accordingly. ~ John Ralston Saul

If Guy had been asked at any point in his entire adult life prior to this week how he might envisage himself speaking to Sir Philip Rookwood, "planning illicit amours" would have been the least likely answer imaginable, matched only in its implausibility by "up a tree". ~ K.J. Charles

Packing is chiefly planning
if it is ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

It had been almost exactly four months since we'd met; four months since we'd locked glances in that bar; four months since his eyes and hair had made my knees turn to overcooked noodles. It had been four months since he'd failed to call me the next day, week, month. I'd moved on, of course, but the rugged image of Marlboro Man had left an indelible mark on my psyche.
But I'd just begun my Chicago planning before I'd met him that night and had continued the next day. And now, at the end of April, I was just about set to go.
"Oh, hi," I said nonchalantly. I was leaving soon. I didn't need this guy.
"How've you been?" he continued. Yikes. That voice. It was gravelly and deep and whispery and dreamy all at the same time. I didn't know until that moment that it had already set up permanent residence in my bones. My marrow remembered that voice.
"Good," I replied, focusing my efforts on appearing casual, confident, and strong. "I'm just gearing up to move to Chicago, actually."
"No kidding?" he said. "When are you going?"
"Just a couple of weeks," I replied.
"Oh…" He paused. "Well…would you like to go out to dinner this week?"
This was always the awkward part. I could never imagine being a guy.
"Um, sure," I said, not really seeing the point of going out with him, but also knowing it was going to be next to impossible for me to turn down a date with the first and only cowboy I'd ever been attracted to. "I'm pretty free all this week, s ~ Ree Drummond

Can you imagine," he went on to say, "what would have been the condition of things eventually if there had been no war, and the South had been allowed to follow its course? Instead of one great, prosperous country with nothing before it but the conquests of peace, a score of petty republics, as in Central and South America, wasting their energies in war with each other pr om revolutions. ~ James Weldon Johnson

I help out at Tall Trees, which my aunt set up on the Central Coast. It's where intellectually impaired young people can paint. Their artwork's sent to hospitals all over Australia to brighten up their rooms. ~ Jessica McNamee

Martin heaved a heavy sigh, settling deeper into the cushions of the couch. "Like I said, everyone is the main character in their own story. Even villains."
I shook my head. "I don't know ... Not necessarily. I mean, sometimes the story is bigger than the characters, like Jurassic Park. The Park was really the central focus of the story, and all the characters were secondary to the Park. Their only purpose was to react to the Park."
Martin yawned, set his now empty beer on the coffee table, and closed his eyes. "That's because dinosaurs are awesome. We're all sidekicks to dinosaurs."
"Or dinner. ~ Penny Reid

There has not been a war in South America for fifty years, and I have every confidence that the countries of Central and South America are deeply in earnest in the maintenance of peace. ~ Frank B. Kellogg

Ruskin's interest in beauty and in its possession led him to five central conclusions. First, beauty was the result of a number of complex factors that affected the mind both psychologically and visually. Second, humans had an innate tendency to respond to beauty and to desire to possess it. Third, there were many lower expressions of this desire for possession (including, as we have seen, buying souvenirs and carpets, carving one's name on a pillar and taking photographs). Fourth, there was only one way to possess beauty properly, and that was by understanding it, by making oneself conscious of the factors (psychological and visual) responsible for it. And last, the most effective means of pursuing this conscious understanding was by attempting to describe beautiful places through art, by writing about or drawing them, irrespective of whether one happened to have any talent for doing so. ~ Alain De Botton

The more the state "plans" the more difficult planning becomes for the individual. ~ Friedrich Hayek

New York in November really does have a special charm to it. The air is clear and crisp, and the leaves on the trees in Central Park are just beginning to turn golden. The sky is so clear you can see forever, and the skyscrapers lavishly reflect the sun's rays. You feel you can keep on walking one block after another without end. Expensive cashmere coats fill the windows at Bergdorf Goodman, and the streets are filled with the delicious smell of roasted pretzels. ~ Haruki Murakami

Anyone who thinks that the Communist regimes of Central Europe are exclusively the work of criminals is overlooking a basic truth: The criminal regimes were made not by criminals but by enthusiasts convinced they had discovered the only road to paradise. They defended that road so valiantly that they were forced to execute many people. Later it became clear that there was no paradise, that the enthusiasts were therefore murderers. ~ Milan Kundera

The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism, nor the threat of communism, nor even the threat of rationalism and the monolithic consensus which surrounds us. All these are dangerous but not the primary threat. The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually corporately, tending to do the Lord's work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them. ~ Francis A. Schaeffer

Give all to love: Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Estate, good fame, Plans, credit, and the Muse,- Nothing refuse. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

After the Civil War, when blacks fought along whites to secure freedom for all, southern states enacted Black Codes, laws that restricted the civil rights and liberties of blacks. Central to the enforcement of these laws were the stiff penalties for blacks possessing firearms. ~ Niger Innis

The Tezuman Empire in the jungle valleys of central Klatch is known for it organic market gardens, its exquisite craftsmanship in obsidian, feathers and jade, and its mass human sacrifices in honor of Quezovercoatl, the Feathered Boa, god of mass human sacrifices. ~ Terry Pratchett

The eye were no more than sense organs. The brain was no more than a central switchboard, encased in bone and removed from the working surface of the body. It was the hands that were the working surface, the hands that felt and manipulated the universe. Human beings thought with their hands. It was their hands that were the answer of curiosity, that felt and pinched and turned and lifted and hefted. There were animals that had brains of respectable size, but they had no hands and that made all the difference. ~ Isaac Asimov

Think of Chicago as a piece of music, perhaps," he continued. "In it you can hear the thousands of years of people living here and fishing and hunting, and then bullets and axes, and the whine of machinery, and the bellowing of cattle, and the shriek of railroads, and the thud of fists and staves and crowbars, and a hundred languages, a thousand dialects. And the murmur of the lake like a basso undertone. Ships and storms, snow and fire. To the north the vast dark forests, and everywhere else around the city rolling fields of farms, and all roads leading to Chicago, which rises from the plains like Oz, glowing with light and fire at night, drawing people to it from around the world. A roaring city, gunfire and applause and thunder. Gleaming but made of bone and stone. Bitter cold and melting hot and clotheslines hung in the alleys and porches like the webbing of countless spiders. A city without illusions but with vaulting imaginations and expectations. A city of burning energies on the shore of a huge northern sea. An American city, with all the violence and humor and grace and greed of this particular powerful adolescent country. Perhaps the American city - no other city in the nation is as big and central and grown up from the very soil. Chicago was never ruled by Spain or England or France or Russia or Texas, it shares no ocean with other countries, it is no mere regional captain, like Cincinnati or Nashville; it is itself, all brawn and greed and song, brilliant and vena ~ Brian Doyle

What?" The dread in her tone told Rob she knew what. "How much longer?"
"Thirty seconds."
She laughed with a panicked urgency. "I just tried to nod. I can't feel my body, but I keep reaching for it, you know?"
Rob nodded, feeling guilty he was able to.
"How about this? I'll just tell you when I'm nodding, or shaking my head, or punching you."
"Oh, no," Rob laughed, "are you planning on punching me often?"
"We'll see."
Rob couldn't help glancing at the timer, though he knew it would only make Winter more aware of what was about to happen. Seven seconds.
"I keep expecting this to get easier, taht it will start to feel as if I'm going to sleep. But it doesn't. Maybe it's not possible to get used to dying."
Rob reached out to comfort her, then remembered it was forbidden and drew back. If not for the surveillance, Rob would have reached under the silver cover and taken her hand, cold and stiff as it would have been. ~ Will McIntosh

Economics works great for planning your life when you don't have a work passion, since we tend to assume that your job delivers only money and you trade off job hours with leisure hours. If you think your job will just be a job, pick one that pays well per hour and leaves you some time off, even if the activity of the job is boring. ~ Emily Oster

Christianity is the only major religion to have at its central event the humiliation of its God. ~ Bruce L. Shelley

It is not enough to take good decisions and make good choices. It is necessary to take heed and comply with whatever you plan and that can only happen by the influence of the Lord God, the giver of your dreams. ~ Israelmore Ayivor