Before answering the question above, some background:

Long ago, centrally controlled government schools convinced most Americans that centrally controlled government schools are better at delivering compulsory, publicly funded grade-school education than are private schools operating in a competitive market with similar funds.

To believe this, these Americans must ignore the fact that America's college education system is the envy of the world, yet it operates in a decentralized and competitive market where students spend their government loans and personal money at the schools of their choice.

And many Americans believe that the problems with today's health care system are due to a market failure that can be fixed only by nationalizing the industry under an efficient central authority. These same Americans are not aware that there has not been a market failure in modern health care for the simple reason that there isn't a free market in health care. Government effectively killed that market 64 years ago.

These Americans do know, however, that they can pick up the phone, order a pizza with the topping and crust of their choice, and have it delivered hot in half an hour.

The next time you're eating a pizza, think about what pizzas would look like if the free market didn't exist in pizzas, and the government ran the pizza industry from a central pizza agency. Could such an agency deliver the goods for a product that is far less complex than grade-school education or health care?

First of all, the agency would have to perform a number of tasks that the pizza market now performs spontaneously without the aid of any central authority. For example, after building a grand granite Central Regulatory Agency for / Pizza (CRAP), headquartered in the highest-rent district in Washington, D.C., and hiring an Undersecretary of Pizza Interiors with a 1,000-member support staff, the agency would have to:

Determine how many pizza places to open around the country, the best locations, the decor of the places, the types of ingredients to buy, the quantities of the ingredients, consumer preferences in every hamlet and city, the number of employees to hire, the skill-sets of the employees, the wages to pay, the hours of operation, the temperature of the ovens, the thickness of the crust, the amount of oregano in the sauce, the number of telephone lines and hybrid delivery vehicles, and thousands of other details.

Then the agency would have to respond to political pressure. Brussels sprouts growers would lobby Congress to require that their product be included on pizzas. Cottage cheese manufacturers would demand that their product be given as much space on pizzas as mozzarella cheese. Mexican-American activists would lobby for pizzas to be folded to resemble a large taco. The AARP would demand Viagra as a free topping. The Veterans of Foreign Wars would expect employees to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of their shift. And labor unions would begin 160 pages of national contract demands by restricting pepperoni specialists from handling sausage or anchovies, which would be the responsibility of the sausage and anchovy unions.

To smooth things along, the agency would decide to operate without the millions of price signals that today's pizza market magically synthesizes into action from millions of transactions and ever-changing consumer preferences, and instead issue minimum-pricing decrees. As a result, unable to match supply with demand to know how to price its pizzas, and to have the information to respond in time to changes in consumer tastes, the Undersecretary could simply apply one-size fits all CRA/P efficiency.

With CRA/P in charge, pizzas would cost $68.76, be delivered cold, folded like tacos and have Brussels sprouts, cottage cheese and Viagra on them. Disgruntled consumers would then write members of Congress to fix the agency. Congress would respond by giving more money to CRA/P and passing a No Pizza Left Behind law. At the same time, to stop private pizza places from springing up around the country, Congress would pass laws that would make it cost-prohibitive for entrepreneurs to get into the business, with prison time for black-market pizza makers.

In conclusion, a government-run pizza industry would suck. Yet many Americans prefer government-run schools and government-run health care to market competition. Their thinking sucks.

(An author and columnist, Mr. Cantoni can be reached at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it )