And, in fact, that's exactly the case in Cuba, North Korea, and China, where the government does plan the production and distribution of food in the country. Generally, people have faith in the marketplace when they can see it work. That's the reason that a politician or a bureaucrat would have a tough time persuading Americans to let him establish a Department of Food. But the problem is that people have a very difficult time transferring this faith to operations that government currently runs. For example, it would be extremely difficult to persuade North Koreans to give up central planning of food.
Food is too important to be left to the free market.
Education is just too important to be left to the free market. The sad fact is that all too many people all over the world lack faith in the market economy, which means that they lack faith in themselves and in others. And the advocates of government planning always put the matter in terms of plan versus no plan. The suggestion is that if government didn't plan important areas of human activity, there would be chaos. Second, while the market economy is not the result of human design, that doesn't mean that the market process itself is unplanned.