When the state pours subsidies into favored firms or industries, it does not “stimulate” the economy—it falsifies it. The price system, which in a free market transmits the real valuations of millions of consumers, is bent and twisted to serve political ends. Entrepreneurs, no longer guided by authentic profit-and-loss signals, chase after government favors instead of consumer demand. Capital is squandered, labor misallocated, and production redirected into channels that would never have survived on voluntary support. What emerges is not growth but waste, not coordination but chaos. Intervention severs the connection between what people want and what is produced, replacing the discipline of the market with the arbitrary dictates of the state.

While I value competition, I won’t support a lesser product simply for the sake of having an alternative.

Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions. — Friedrich Hayek