Occupy Wall Street, Democrats, the Obama administration, Davos, the Communist Party, and various and sundry fans of government have recently gotten on yet another predictable kick about replacing capitalism with some form of highly regulated central planning. When people are free to buy what they want and make what they want, they say, the marketplace goes wild, dogs and cats start living together, the poles melt, glaciers topple into the sea, polar bears float away, banks collapse, hedge funds steal grand-pappy’s Teamsters’ Union pension, and generally a whole boat-load of bad things happen. As an alternative to all of this chaos with people trying to maximize their own happiness, they claim, maybe just maybe we should have the government step in and regulate the amount of happiness that everyone is allowed to have, including controlling manufacturing so that everyone can get exactly as much stuff as they need in order to be happy, no more and no less.

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