Instead of commuters, picture physically ill folks clamoring for health-care professionals. Low prices might appear to the uninitiated as desirable. But prices are no culprit. Prices provide ready information on the availability of goods and services, and on the values of goods and services to competing would-be users. Attempts to artificially alter prices are tantamount to removing signs from dangerous roads.
Prices fairly balance the amounts of a good available and the amounts demanded.
Of course, prices are also the most visible and easily targeted feature of a market economy. Unfortunately, politicians, eager to placate their benefactors, have more influence than economic truths on the formation of public policy. It just so happened that this experience reminded me of the endless gas lines of the 1970s and of the recent debate over health care in the United States. Symptomatic cures for what some may see as the pestilence of prices are misdirected. Hopefully, people can now see through quick-fix solutions to economic problems.