The Maker of Shortages
so without regard to the wishes of the consumer. That it causes shortages can be ascertained by comparison with the performance of privately operated services in comparable fields (as, for instance, the telephone service versus the post office). Making a shortage is a social disservice.
The shortage-inducing proclivity of the State is best shown when it undertakes to regulate, manage, or manipulate the market place. The occasion for such efforts is social unrest due to scarcities, caused either by the State's own interventionary measures or by some disaster, such as a drought, flood, or conflagration. Since scarcity causes a rise in price, to the discomfort of the consumer, the State, which is utterly incapable of causing the abundance that would reduce price, attempts to make use of its compulsory powers to accomplish that end. It always fails. Not only that, the measures it employs invariably cause a greater shortage.
A prime example of this is the fatuous efforts to control or fix rents. The increased cost of living space is caused by a shortage of houses. Putting aside the accidental destruction of houses, the shortage generally results from the diversion of materials and labor from the construction of houses to the production of military material. New dwellings are not produced and old ones are allowed to decay. Under the conditions the action of the market place automatically pushes up the price of space to a level some dwellers are unable to meet and causes others to do without other things in order to keep a roof over their heads. This causes dissatisfaction, which the State undertakes to assuage by peremptorily ordering house owners to hold rents at a fixed figure; incidentally, it diverts attention from the real cause for the high rents by implying or asserting that they evidence the brash cupidity of the house owners. Since the rents fixed by law are invariably 130
