One of the reasons we shouldn't have a planned economy is

That perhaps the planners don't know what they're talking about. We spied this little piece in the Times:

Australia’s richest woman has backed the £3 billion plan to build Europe’s biggest potash mine beneath the North York Moors.

Hancock Prospecting, controlled by Gina Rinehart, the iron ore magnate, is paying $300 million towards constructing Sirius Mienrals’ mine on the national park in return for a share of the revenue and, eventually, a stake in the company.

The deal is the first chunk of financing secured for construction of the $3.6 billion (£2.9 billion) mine which was approved by planners last year. The mine will initially produce 10 million tonnes of polyhalite, a fertiliser, every year.

That Hancock family fortune hasn't been built by just stumbling over some deposit that could be made into a mine. It's been done by very clever work over the decades concerning what is financed and with whom.

This company's addition to this project is a very big feather in the cap of said project. To change industry sector it's a little like inventing some tech good enough that Apple wants to buy into it.

Polyhalide is a bit of an oddity. It's slightly different than the more normal run of the mill raw materials for fertilisers but adaptations can be made without too much difficulty.

Which is where the planners come in. As we can see one of the top end mining companies likes this project enough to plonk down $300 million for a bit of it. The planners, at one point, refused the development licence on the grounds that no one would buy the production from the mine if it were built.

We tend to think that decisions made by those who know what they are doing are preferable to decisions made by those who do not. Of course, this project is not a slam dunk success quite yet but we do know which way we lean on who is right here.

And it ain't the planners. Thus we find our prejudices reinforced - why would we let economic decisions be made by those with no skin in the game and possibly even less knowledge than that?