The control of wealth is the control over human life. So if a centrally planned economy decides how wealth is to be created and how it is to be distributed, then they really have a control over human life.

That’s from Arnold Beichman, the journalist and scholar, who died Feb. 17 at the age of 96. The Heritage Foundation InsiderOnline Blog retrieved the quote from a 2004 article in a Columbia College alumni magazine. There was also this:

Centrally planned societies, Beichman says, are essentially fascist. “Even puters, you can’t plan, because the human being does not allow himself to be planned. Today he smokes cigarettes; tomorrow he’s off cigarettes. How do you plan for that? Today he drinks vodka, tomorrow he drinks white wine. How do you plan for that? … It’s the open, the market society, that will determine what is made and what is sold and what is bought.”