Tariffs are an excellent example, along with price controls, of such interference. In short, lower living standards are the price of protectionism. These are the real costs, the opportunity costs of protection, the things that we were forced to sacrifice. But these are costs upon which every protectionist is mute. Legge would have us believe that in the absence of protection Australia would have no manufacturing of any kind.
Growth consists of capital accumulation which means expansion of the capital structure.
No matter how much entrepreneurial talent an economy has, no matter how many brilliant innovators and inventors it nurtures, without savings entrepreneurs will be hamstrung and inventions and new techniques will go begging because they can only be embodied in capital. This is something that Legge has obviously not grasped. The sheer stupidity of this statement is staggering. So, according to Legge, we must avoid central planning but we must also abjure the free market. Under central planning all resources are allocated by the state which also determines prices, the pattern of production, the types of consumer goods to be produced etc.