Plans Gone Wrong

     Who will best plan your breakfast?  Will someone far
away who doesn't know what you like or how much time you
have available make the best plan for you?  That planner may
only know about averages.  He will set you up for the breakfast
for the average person.

     But, wait, there isn't any average person.  That average
person is a fictional composite based on a collection of data,
none of which may be about you.  It is unlikely that anyone else
is in a better position to plan breakfast than you are.

     Planning is vital to success.  Good plans must start with
the individuals affected by the plans.  All actions are taken by
individuals.  Individuals plan those actions so as to achieve their
goals.  He who doesn't understand the goals and abilities of the
individual can't plan effectively for the individual.

     Not only that.  He who makes the plan will always first
seek to achieve his own goals and satisfaction, not the goals and
satisfaction of the individual for whom he plans.

     Effective planning must be from the bottom up, not from
the top down.  Individuals plan.  Then they enlist the aid of
others to execute the plans.  Individuals may find employers,
employees, teachers, merchants, etc. to aid the individuals.

     The individual can't force those others to participate.  He
must make it worth their while.  Thus, the individual plans mesh
together for the benefit of all involved.  Those who aren't
satisfied with the results can bail out.  Thus, everyone must
endlessly reevaluate his plans so that they are beneficial to
others as well as to himself.  This is the price he pays for the
cooperation and aid of others.

     Vast and complex are woven by coordinating the plans of
many individuals.  Each individual greedily pursues his own
satisfaction.  Still, he must provide satisfaction to others to gain
his own satisfaction.

     The most a top down planner can do is recruit individuals
to join in his grand plan.  He may start with a grand dream and
a vast, complex plan.  When freedom reigns, the only way to
achieve that dream is to recruit many willing individuals to
cooperate.

     In the absence of freedom there is an alternative, threaten
and coerce individuals to cooperate.  The coerced individuals
have no interest in the success of the plan.  They cooperate only
to the extent they must to avoid punishment by the planner. 
When the plan doesn't further the goals of the individuals, they
have no motivation to make the plan work.

     Without the willing cooperation of the self interested
individuals executing the plan, the planner stumbles around in
the dark lacking the knowledge essential to success.  Forced
planing fails because it lacks the willing support of the
individuals who often are the only ones with the knowledge
essential to making their part of the plan work.

     Thus, top down, forced planning by government will
almost always fail to be efficient or achieve good results for
most people.  Occasional there may be limited success by
accident.  In a truly vast plan there are so many variables that
such accidental successes are all but impossible.

     The USA started out relying heavily on individual
planning and voluntary cooperation.  We now plunge ever
deeper in to central planing by politicians and bureaucrats. 
Individuals and their plans get lost in the shuffle.

     For so long as we rely on the forced plans of politicians
and bureaucrat, rather than plans built around voluntary
cooperation, inefficiency and waste will multiply.  Even if the
plans succeeded, they will still only achieve satisfaction for the
self centered, greedy politicians, bureaucrats and their cronies. 
Don't for a minute fall for the lie that politicians and bureaucrats
are a bit less self centered and greedy than business people or
anyone else.

     At the end of the central planning road lies a disaster, the
magnitude of which few, if any, can even imagine.  Government
planing isn't the solution.  It is the problem.

aldmccallum@gmail.com
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Copyright 2012
Albert D. McCallum
18440 29-1/2 Mile Road
Springport, Michigan 49284