Waiting Your Turn

Queues are the most visible sign that the government in involved in a given part of the economy. Because extensive state intervention distorts prices, it disables the market's efficient rationing system. With market prices gone, the government often turns to the queue as its alternative for distributing scarce resources.

One of the deadliest examples is on display in countries with socialist health care systems. Citizens in Canada, for example, typically have to wait 18 weeks between the time they receive a referral from their doctor to the time they receive treatment. In Australia, New Zealand, and Britain, from 23 to 36 percent of patients have to wait over four months for surgery.

The same principle was on display in America during the gas crisis of the 1970's. Many people think OPEC caused the fuel shortages when it imposed an oil embargo on the United States in 1973, but in a free economy this action would have simply raised the price of gas. People were forced to line up at gas stations because the federal government imposed a price ceiling on gasoline. In other words, it was illegal for gas companies to charge more than the price dictated by Washington. The result: gas was sold on a first come, first serve basis, so people had to sacrifice their time to secure a place in line.

The entire economy of the Soviet Union was run this way. As Hendrick Smith explains:

The only real taste of stoical shopping vigils in recent American history were the pre-dawn lines at service stations during the gasoline crisis in the winter of 1973-4... But it was temporary and only for one item. Imagine it across the board, all the time, and you realize that Soviet shopping is like a year-round Christmas rush. The accepted norm is that the Soviet woman daily spends two hours in line, seven days a week. . . I noted in the Soviet press that Russians spend 30 billion man-hours in line annually to make purchases.... 30 billion man-hours alone is enough to keep 15 million workers busy year-round on a 40-hour week.

Robert Higgs, during his ten part lecture series, Crisis and Liberty, explains how angry these lines made people in the 70's. "Americans," he concludes, "were not really cut out to be good queue standers." Hopefully this is still true, but the willingness with which Americans line up to be felt up by TSA agents in not encouraging.