A correspondent (well, ok, GSE) writes mentioning the antics of the commissariat in the Socialist Scottish Republic (otherwise known as the SSR). I read in the newspapers of another tidal wave of lunacy about to break on the shores of that once proud nation. The commissars are to decide retail prices, just as they do in North Korea and Venezuela. In the case, rather than basic foodstuffs being the subject of the economically illiterate targets, it is alcohol. Actually, come to think of it, that probably is a basic foodstuff in Scotland. Anyway, the retail price is to be fixed, which means that virtually no alcohol will be bought in shops or pubs anymore and all trade will go through the black market, exactly has happens anywhere else that you try to fix retail prices under a socialist regime (eg, Zimbabwe). (By the way, price controls never work: it doesn' make any difference whether the regime is socialist or not, it's just that only socialist regimes would think or trying them any more.)
I notice that El Presidente Comrade Chavez' attempts to fix the price of rice have been so successful that he has had to send the army in to rice processing plants to restore the supply (this won't work -- you can't detain the laws of economics without trial) and I imagine the same will happen in Scotland sooner rather later. I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that the Scottish Parliament is drafting new Sumptuary Laws as well. Incidentally, El Presidente has also threatened to expropriate part of the industry and pay for it by printing money, a tactic being successfully employed in other countries run by Marxists such as Zimbabwe and Britain.
In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]
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