“The trick is to make the market economy as efficient (and just) as possible. And that’s not difficult: you just need to stay away from communism.”
Governments can strangle an economy in regulations, red tape and lawsuits.
The correct role of government is to protect people from force, fraud and coercion. Personal safety and property rights.
Strangling an economy in regulations, red tape and lawsuits is all an attempt to redistribute wealth from makers to takers. Government is inherently Collectivism (communism) and it needs to be as limited as possible so that we can go back to enjoying a market-driven economy.
Finding “cost” is imperative in any decision making. It is the co-important half of the cost/benefit analysis.
A market economy(capitalism) allows cost to be found fairly simply. It is what the open marketplace says it is.
All communist and most socialist economies put the heavy thumb of government dictates and government control onto the scale. True cost, then, can never be discovered.
Therefore, it follows that every cost/benefit decision is, necessarily, garbage. The government prevents proper cost discovery, at the same time it skews the putative benefit claims.
Garbage in - garbage out.
As the marketplace collapses, because of wage and price controls, scarcity becomes the nature of the marketplace.