June 26, 2007 12:59PM 

# Politics and Pricing 

By [Chris Edwards](https://www.cato.org/people/chris-edwards) 

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There are two ways to price products:

The [market way](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Price_of_market_balance.svg), used for thousands of products for hundreds of years, and

the [government way](http://www.healthydairyindustry.org/pdf/Milk%20Programs%20Chart.pdf), used for certain politically favored products, such as milk, since the 1930s.

This is 2007. Don’t policymakers have enough experience yet to understand that one of these methods is simple, effective, and efficient, while the other is unfair, wasteful, and bureaucratic?

##### Related Tags 

[General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy) 

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