Let's say
that FDR had initiated a bailout of the piano industry and the
even taken it over and nationalized it. The same firms would have
made the same pianos for decades and decades. But that wouldn't
have stopped the Japanese industry from taking off in the 60s
and 70s. Americans would have far preferred them because they
would be cheaper. American pianos, because they would be state-owned,
would fall in quality, lower and lower to the point that they
would become like a Soviet car in the 1960s. Of course you could
set up tariff barriers. That would have forced American pianos
on us. Except for one thing: demand would have still collapsed.
The pianos still have to have a market. But let's say you find
a workaround for that problem by requiring everyone to own a piano.
You still can’t make people play them and value them.
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