Sheldon Richman’s column today explains why Obama’s approach to the economy is sure to fail (or even make things worse) — he just doesn’t understand the difference between market decisions and political decisions. He’s blind to the difference in incentives. Market competition leads to productive uses of resources and mistakes are quickly corrected, whereas political decision-making is based on coercion and bad decisions are often never corrected.

Or perhaps Obama does get this but doesn’t care. He is, after all, an authoritarian and authoritarians tend to be indifferent to the harm they inflict in pursuit of their grand visions.