What is particularly curious about the likes of Seddon is their total inability to see either side of an economic argument let alone follow it. Taken to its logical conclusion, Seddon's argument would halt this expansion and create a world of ever rising tariff walls and shrinking international trade. It could well be that Australia does have a comparative advantage in the production of Seddon's aluminium sheets. If so, then we need to ask what blocked their production. As we have seen, 'picking winners' is a process for creating losers by forcing some firms to pay higher prices for their inputs, higher taxes or, higher interest rates which ultimately the consumer pays through lower living standards.
Society also suffers through a more insidious and subtle effect.
Socialists and other interventionists attack the market process for being wasteful, alleging that competition generates unnecessary waste. But what they call 'waste' is the price of progress. These firms innovate, invent, speculate and experiment. All of them striving to win over the consumer by providing products at prices that will make profits. Picking winners' sabotages the process by imposing unnecessary costs on it, one of which is reducing access to resources.