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“If Chairman Wu were in power when Henry Ford was ruining the blacksmith, horse training and saddle making industries, she would have taxed the latter and subsidized the former. How about when computers took out the typewriter, carbon paper, and correction fluid (Wite-Out) industries?”

https://merionwest.com/2023/12/21/against-michelle-wus-anti-market-proposal/

Walter Block

Madame Chairman Michelle Wu, Mayor of Boston, Massachusetts, has been supportive of offering a tax subsidy to landlords who convert their commercial real estate to residential units.

Why, pray tell, is she interfering with the free enterprise system (okay, okay, what little of it exists in Beantown) in this manner? Thanks to the Coronavirus (COVID-19), the demand for office space has declined precipitously. Business firms have found they can get the job done with at least some of their employees working from home, at least on a part-time basis. Thus, the lesser need for office space. This, of course, is a world-wide phenomenon, hardly limited to the United States, to Massachusetts, to Boston. But Madame Wu is taking the lead in this type of political response.

Talk about teaching grandma to suck eggs.

If Chairman Wu were in power when Henry Ford was ruining the blacksmith, horse training and saddle making industries, she would have taxed the latter and subsidized the former. How about when computers took out the typewriter, carbon paper and, correction fluid (Wite-Out) industries? This economic interventionist would undoubtedly have put her thumb on the scales once again, supporting the nerds and taxing their competitors. Then, there is the case of mobile phones supplanting, what, well, lots of stuff: cameras, telephones, flashlights, paper maps, etc. Again, this central planner would have rolled up her sleeves and helped this process along, in the precise direction it was moving anyway, without any of her help, thank you very much.

What is wrong with that? In each of these past cases, including the present one, she would have just been rendering the market more efficient. Helping it out, helping it along, as it were.

There are several problems here.

First, suppose that one of these days she guesses wrong about the movement of the market in the direction of consumer satisfaction. Then, she will have caused vast amounts of wealth to have been dissipated. But, you say, that so far she has predicted correctly. At least, as it now looks to most analysts, she is entirely correct on the need for conversion of commercial and industrial real estate to residential purposes.

Of course, it cannot be denied, entrepreneurs sometimes—alright, often—predict the economic future badly. The difference is, and this is crucially important, Madame Wu has no skin in the game.

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