Likewise, a controlled price will still direct production, but not in the same directions as consumers, by their voluntary purchases, would have dictated. The signals are falsified and distorted by fixed prices. The history of price control in America and everywhere else has been the history of shortages, queues, and popular disaffection. The economic effect is but one aspect of price control. A moral question is also involved.
Price control is a form of public theft.
The victims are all those deprived of the opportunity to trade or to trade on terms which they regard as satisfactory. Price control breeds a spirit of lawlessness, a network of spies and informers, and is unmistakably a hallmark of an immoral society. To those who are committed to price control, these arguments perhaps will not be sufficient to dissuade them. They may reply that whatever evils price control might produce can be corrected at the ballot box. The people can supposedly use their political liberty to counterbalance their loss of economic liberty.