"Absolutely no monopolies or cartels, unless, you know, we think its fun or directly benefit from it." - Politicians worldwide
It's interesting that people readily recognize the absurdity of this truth when it comes from some places, but insist that it's not only acceptable, but actually required, when it comes from other places. Note that this has become widespread in many parts of modern capitalist societies, and, by definition, ubiquitous in every single experiment we've had with communism and socialism.
To be fair, these are Depression-era programmes which predate modern economics. We did not know, in 1937, why a government-backed authority who guaranteed to buy the overproduction of a discretionary consumer item is a market-distorting waste of resources.
This isn't really accurate. Bastiat, even Adam Smith, explored these concepts in fair depth well before 1937. On top of that, trade simply isn't that complicated. We've been doing it for thousands and thousands of years. I think it has been pretty clear to any ancient Egyptian or Greek farmer, medieval peasant, or Bedouin trader that if the king guaranteed to give some people gold for as much product as they could produce, no matter what, that those people would begin producing as much product as they could, regardless of whether that product was needed or useful.
If by "modern economics" you mean neoclassical economics, quite the opposite is true: Those Depression-era programmes were created after laissez-faire didn't bring the US out of the Depression.
It's interesting that people readily recognize the absurdity of this truth when it comes from some places, but insist that it's not only acceptable, but actually required, when it comes from other places. Note that this has become widespread in many parts of modern capitalist societies, and, by definition, ubiquitous in every single experiment we've had with communism and socialism.