Socialism and Commercial Regulation, Part I
Basic classes in microeconomics usually begin with an explanation of how supply and demand determine prices in market economies. When buyers and sellers get together to make trades, they come to agreements on prices and quantities quite readily; one speaks of the automaticity of exchange outcomes. Where their outcomes are competitively determined, one can speak of efficient outcomes, i.e., the price will provide enough revenue for the seller to cover all his costs and the buyer’s purchase will provide appropriate satisfaction. My book explains in straightforward terms how markets work. (Pacific Book Review observed: “This book is a good choice not only for those curious about socialism but for anyone who wants to learn more about general economics and market theory.” )
If socialists were to attempt to design a system to replace free minds and free markets, i.e., to determine what will be produced in what quantities for whom, and try to replace the market, they would have to do something like Stalin did. The state and the “dictatorship of the proletariat” would have to determine all the quantities and prices in the whole economy. This is what was done in Stalin’s five year plans. My book quite efficiently explains exactly how Soviet-type economic planning was organized, but I haven’t got that much space here.
It suffices to say that the Soviet system was full of inconsistencies, inefficiencies, and irrationalities. It worked very poorly, but the workers did enjoy an equality of poverty. Not even the managers were particularly well off in Soviet-type economies. In Western Europe, countries also experimented with socialism, but of a democratic type. They used more sophisticated mathematics than the Soviets, although for a time the latter also experimented a little with mathematical methods in their economic planning. The Western Europeans decided that socialism requires an economic plan and at one point, directly after the Second World War nearly all of the advanced nations had a formal planning effort. The whole movement died out quickly, although the French persisted for well over a decade before admitting that nobody paid attention to the national economic plan. It was quietly dropped.
But the notion of the government maintaining a strong role in the economy was now ingrained on the socialist psyche, even though it could not successfully take over the management of the whole economy as true socialism required. Of course, in any economy the government must provide police and courts to enforce contracts to minimize the disruptive effects of dishonesty.
And there must be rules to ensure that competition does not get smothered by those who might be able to capture or organize economic monopolies. From there, one can move on to regulating stock markets and financial institutions, traffic flows, airport traffic, school lunches, and a near infinity of other things as well. Faith in government functioning, a primary plank of the socialist faith, requires that the government regulate most of life’s activities.
Although it is nearly impossible to conceptualize, one should try to imagine that many of the nation’s over twenty million government employees* sit in offices thinking of new ways to regulate business and of new rules to apply to everything business does, it is not hard to imagine that they could produce 
large numbers of new rules daily. In the Obama administration, a record was set of 81,640 pages of new regulations in the year 2016 alone. The implementation of those regulations costs many billions of dollars and untold numbers of jobs as well.
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*“According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of April 2016 more than 22 million people were employed in the US government. Their measurement of government employment covers only civilian employees; military personnel are excluded. Employees of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency also are excluded. Postal Services are included. The US has another 1.4 million military personnel in the defense forces today. Combined with the BLS measurement the total number of government employees including the military is more than 23 million.” See http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/05/obamas-america-us-government-now-nearly-many-employees-fortune-500-companies-combined/
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The effort to regulate commerce is huge business. It should actually be listed—along with income redistribution and welfare policies—as the basic nature of the socialism persisting today. Socialists are those who believe in redistribution activities, anti-religious social policies, and government regulation. Their number probably includes over 90% of those who are making the regulations, if Washington D.C.’s voting in the 2016 elections is any indication. Finally, it includes many millennials who are not well informed about the actual policies and predilections of socialism, but who favor economic and social equality and government subsidies to achieve their goal. All of these would logically have supported the massive regulatory efforts of the Obama administration. But what a great benefit it was for the United States economy when President Trump set out to reverse the regulatory onslaught of the previous administration!
Socialism and Commercial Regulation, Part II
President Trump launched a deregulation initiative in his first days in
office. Those who have studied bureaucracies and those who have had to respond to bureaucratic demands are aware of the nature of this problem. As already noted, huge numbers of creative agents populate our bureaucratic agencies; although many are well educated, few have any significant experience in business. Their job is to think of ways to control businesses and their environment so that corporations won’t be able to exploit their workers or their consumers. They can implement regulations with the force of law, although much of their activity is in violation of constitutional principles, which mandate division of governmental powers. The legislature, not the bureaucratic agencies, is responsible for the creation of laws. Our federal agencies are responsible to the president, who is responsible for the implementation – not the creation – of law. Unfortunately they have come to gain power not only in administering their own laws—in creating the rules and regulations they wish to impose—as well as in adjudicating the implementation of laws when affected parties want to litigate problems arising through their implementation.
The Culture of Bureaucracy
Bureaucracies, which often make mistakes, develop a culture that attempts to protect them from taking responsibility for those mistakes. They develop practices to protect themselves from being discovered by the public in their mistakes. They develop job protections through their relationships with 
legislators so that they cannot be fired. The objective of the bureaucratic leadership in government agencies is to grow the bureaucracy, take on more tasks and projects, thus gaining power and influence. Salaries are not related to performance, since performance is difficult to measure. Governmental salaries are thus related to seniority. President Trump will not be fully successful in his deregulation efforts unless he begins the task of dismantling those parts of the bureaucracy which are producing greater economic costs than benefits.