The Economic Way of Thinking 13th Edition by David Prychitko, Peter Boettke, Paul Heyne

Exercise 21

"Central planners were more effective than your free market-loving textbook authors let on. Planners in the former Soviet Union never even considered making railroad tracks out of platinum or ships out of gold. They already knew that would be a waste of those scarce resources. They were informed by the world market prices for platinum and gold." We never said ships. We said buses. But anyway, how would you respond to that statement? What does it actually say about the importance of market processes and market prices?