"No, professor, I want to push *you* into the ocean", no Catallarchy

The myth of overproduction

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Prices serve two functions. In the short run, prices serve a rationing function by increasing or decreasing in order to clear markets of shortages or surpluses. In the long run, prices serve a guiding function, by signaling to producers and consumers to put more or less resources in the affected markets.

If farmers produce too much food in the short run, prices decrease in order to clear the market. In the long run, farmers either decrease production or go out of business.

So if market forces didn't cause the surplus, what did? Price controls.

These professors have cause and effect precisely backwards. Price controls are not the necessary government response to overproduction. Overproduction is the necessary result of price controls.

When I mentioned to one of these professors that there was no need for the government to purchase wheat from farmers just to dump it into the ocean, because there would not have been a surplus in the absence of price controls, and that there were simply too many farmers in the market, the professor responded sarcastically, “So instead you want to push the farmers into the ocean?”

No, professor, I want to push *you* into the ocean.