I received an e-mail from an acquaintance saying that IOS Partners was engaged by The Bahamas Government and is in town to prepare a National Development Plan.

An "international economic development and financial advisory services firm" the IOS Partners web site tells us they:

"…provide consultancy services to multi and bilateral donor agencies, government institutions and the private sector on promoting sound and sustained initiatives supporting the development of human capital, critical infrastructure, regional competitiveness, environmental sustainability, social inclusion, health, safety, and literacy around the world."

All deliciously politically correct verbiage I'm sure you will agree.

Of course we all plan our lives every day so why would anyone oppose government planning? Particularly government planning that is so politically correct and perfect in every way!

Well as Henry Hazlitt pointed out in Man VS. The Welfare State (pdf):

"Now the people who call themselves Economic Planners either ignore or by implication deny all this (individual planning). They talk as if the world of private enterprise, the free market, supply, demand, and competition, were a world of chaos and anarchy, in which nobody ever planned ahead, but merely drifted or staggered along. I once engaged in a television debate with an eminent Planner in a high official position who implied that without his forecasts and guidance American business would be “flying blind.” At best, the Planners imply, the world of private enterprise is one in which everybody works or plans at cross-purposes or makes his plans solely in his “private” interest rather than in the “public” interest.

"Now the Planner wants to substitute his own plan for the plans of everybody else. At best, he wants the government to lay down a Master Plan to which everybody else’s plan must be subordinated.

"It is this aspect of Planning to which our attention should be directed: Planning always involves compulsion. This may be disguised in various ways. The government Planners will, of course, try to persuade people that the Master Plan has been drawn up for their own good, and that the only persons who are going to be coerced are those whose plans are “not in the public interest.”

"The Planners will say, in the newly fashionable phraseology, that their plans are not “imperative,” but merely “indicative.” They will make a great parade of “democracy,” freedom, cooperation, and noncompulsion by “consulting all groups”—“Labor,” “Industry,” the Government, even “Consumers’ Representatives” — in drawing up the Master Plan and the specific “goals” or “targets.” Of course, if they could really succeed in giving everybody his proportionate weight and voice and freedom of choice, if everybody were allowed to pursue the plan of production or consumption of specific goods and services that he had intended to pursue or would have pursued anyway, then the whole Plan would be useless and pointless, a complete waste of energy and time. The Plan would be meaningful only if it forced the production and consumption of different things or different quantities of things than a free market would have provided. In short, it would be meaningful only insofar as it put compulsion on somebody and forced some change in the pattern of production and consumption."

Of course they'll tell us how bad the market is or it doesn't produce the right quantities, so the government's guiding hand is necessary to sort this all out.

Oh, the the cost to the taxpayer has not yet been disclosed either.

If the track record of government planning and coercion, here and abroad, is not evident for all to see, maybe it is time to throw in the towel. But we should start by telling IOS Partners, thanks but no thanks.

Just when we need less government planning, we're about to get more. Go figure!