Interwar experts declared governments unfit for nearly all economic management functions.

Evidence

Pantaleoni specifi ed: “Governments have everywhere, but in a diff erent measure, taken into their management and away from private management, a very large series of services for which they are utterly unfi t, as ancient and recent experience has proved, viz.: (a) Th ey cannot manage railways; (b) Th ey cannot manage shipping; (c) Th ey cannot manage harbours; (d) Th ey cannot manage international commerce; (e) Th ey cannot manage the commerce in bills; (f) Th ey cannot regulate prices of commodities; and (g) they cannot conserve and distribute commodities aft er requisition” (Brussels 1920, vol. 5, 102). — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1685

Categorization

• SEED: The laundry list of ‘governments cannot manage X’ is a quotable primary source for an essay on how the interwar ideological groundwork prefigured later privatization doctrine.