> Aside from the general anti-China slant that is fairly common in the journal, I have yet to see a 'manage the market' to achieve results desired by the state to ever succeed, anywhere. Markets just don't work that way in my experience, they evolve, they change, and if you box them in they die.

I strongly disagree.

Since the Great Depression, farming is incredibly heavily subsidized in the United States. World-wide, but particularly in the US, agriculture is probably the most government-managed/subsidized/regulated industry you can think of.

And yet, over the past 85 years, despite the many economic ups and downs, changes in global demand for, and global prices of staples, US agriculture remains a resilient pillar of the economy. You can go to any grocery store, country-wide, and buy more cheap food then you can ever eat, despite wars, shipping problems, droughts, natural disasters, crop failures, and other calamities.

Now, all of this comes at a cost. It costs a lot of taxpayer dollars to ensure that cheap food is available for everyone. The alternative, of course, is an unresilient, market system, with fluctuating outputs, shortages, and price spikes.

These sorts of things tend to lead to bread riots, revolutions, and bourgies being strung up on lamp posts.

As a bourgie, I'd rather not risk seeing the price of bread triple.