Michael Porter's Socialist Advice From Davos

I caught a CNBC interview with Harvard's Michael Porter last week. Talk about scary!

Porter, whose own fame came from a watered down series of 'strategy' books in the 1980s, nattered on about how the US isn't up to European standards when it comes to planning economies. He chatted excitedly about how so many sclerotic European nations plan for this, that, and the next thing, with goals and such.

Of course, he then presumed that this, alone, was sufficient to make the case for US centralized planning. Forgetting, of course, about that really big centrally planned state, the now-failed USSR.

But that didn't stop Mike. No, he flogged the American political establishment for failing to have a national energy policy, as well as one for electricity. It seems that in Mike's world, there is no room, or need, for private enterprise. No, government can plan all the things you need!

It's sad, really, that Porter- like his institution, Harvard- is so far to the left now that he can't even see how nutty and liberty-stealing his default positions on national issues are.

Perhaps even worse, the CNBC talking head bobbed up and down with him, looking sage and grateful that Mike was warning her audience about the evils of letting markets figure out solutions to such issues. No hard questions about Russia, central planning failures, or the ongoing inability of US government to even get the half-planned programs right, e.g., LBJ's "Great Society."

No, the CNBC crew happily abetted Porter in tut-tutting Americans for being too reliant on freedom and initiative, and not enough like Europe, whose own job- and wealth-creating track records lag the US by a large margin.