France caters to market for the most simple of computers

Mintel was a good idea, at the time it was proposed. Bureaucracy meant that implementation was slow, so it was obsolete when implemented.

Since it was planned, it could not change "at the bottom" to meet demands, since its form was dictated from "above".

The result was lots of resources wasted. Inefficiency, even in a "successful" program.

Now an entrepreneur will use the same "idea" to do better, more flexibly, with less.

Here's a book on the subject, for anyone interested:

http://www.mises.org/books/socialism/contents.aspx

IIRC the Minitel was widely succesfull, with a penetration rate still not achieved by the internet in France.

Depends on your definition of "successful".

By some measures, an atomic bomb is "successful". The people in the blast radius would tend to disagree with that assessment.

From Wikipedia (Yeah I know. Don't start)

Quoting:In 1998, Minitel generated € 832 million ($ 824 million) of revenue, of which € 521 million was channeled by France Télécom to service providers.

And that was with the internet boom. I'd call that successful by any measure and definition.

" I'd call that successful by any measure and definition."

Yes, I'm sure you would. That doesn't mean that it didn't crowd out something better, or waste resources that would have been utilized more efficiently in some other way. Unlike private efforts, government has no incentive to minimize costs.

We will never know, because, like the "broken window fallacy", what could have happened goes "unseen".

Goals are still met, programs still "succeed", but the costs are astronomical.

Quoting:That doesn't mean that it didn't crowd out something better, or waste resources that would have been utilized more efficiently in some other way.

Yeah, that goes for about any significant project, whether government or private. Perhaps the stone age was a better time :-)

>Yeah, that goes for about any significant project, whether government or private. Perhaps the stone age was a better time :-)

Far less likely in a private project -- at least in the absence of monopoly or near-monoply power.

In the private arena, it's possible to compete.

"In the private arena, it's possible to compete."

Exactly. More efficient use of resources means something is less costly to produce, so the same service can be offered at a lower price, or greater service for the same price.

That is why would-be monopolists always go crawling after government favors, government is the only power that can legally restrain competition. That lets the vested interests get lazy and still make money.