Nobody is smart enough to centrally administer healthcare for millions of people, not even dead Austrian geniuses like me.

Sen. Thomas Carper (D.-Del.), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, told CNSNews.com on Friday that,

I don’t expect to actually read the legislative language because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I’ve ever read in my life.

Carper echoes a similar statement by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) in July,

What good is reading the bill if it’s 1,000 pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?

I have already heard a lot of conservatives express outrage that the people whose job it is to legislate do not even pretend to understand legislation, and it’s certainly hard to disagree with that. However, what’s interesting to me about these remarks by legislators is how perfectly they illustrate why the gargantuan task of providing healthcare should be left to the spontaneous order of free markets.

If no single person can understand the contemplated healthcare legislation, then certainly nobody really understands what the consequences will be. 16% of the U.S. economy is a pretty big wager that they got this legislation right. And if we’re going to be putting our faith into something, I’d rather put that faith into the system that’s already delivering $1 double cheeseburgers, iPhones, $49 flights– and the best healthcare system in the world.

Friedrich Hayek described a free marketplace as “that which is the result of human action but not of human design.” He and other economists of the Austrian school describe how the price mechanism sends subtle signals that wordlessly induce the reallocation of resources in a way that deliberate centralized planning– estranged from consumer preferences and evidence of surpluses or shortages– cannot.

I can see how this all would be unsatisfying for somebody who a) believes in the perfectability of civilization through technocratic interventions; and b) wants to join the brain trust that will put it all into action.

But it works.

Perfectly? No, of course not. But better than anything smart people have come up with so far.