April 20, 2003

Their Markets and Ours

The New York Times is bemused that traffic congestion pricing has been successfully introduced by the ex-Trotskyist mayor of London:

It will probably go down as one of the stranger chapters in the history of traffic policy that the man who finally did something is a former lefty radical (once known as Red Ken) applying conservative free-market ideas.

Leon Trotsky himself explains:

The innumerable living participants in the economy, state and private, collective and individual, must serve notice of their needs and of their relative strength not only through the statistical determinations of plan commissions but by the direct pressure of supply and demand. The plan is checked and, to a considerable degree, realized through the market.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden speaks for us all:

I have personally felt like I was living in a Ken MacLeod future since sometime not long after 9/11, and I wish he'd CUT IT OUT.

The Continuing Crisis; The Dismal Science; The Progressive Forces

Posted at April 20, 2003 01:09 | permanent link

Three-Toed Sloth