You’ll never outthink a free market.

Nearly every state in the union offers vanity license plates. Every state that does so has what is called a “blue list,” a list containing banned words and letter combinations that might be deemed offensive.

Every year, despite the blue list, license plates containing double entendres and letters and numbers that spell dirty words if you look at them just right get past the DMV workers who handle the blue list.

What does this teach us? It teaches us why centrally-planned, top-down government-controlled economies never work. An office full of government functionaries is simply no match for the creativity of the free market. No matter how carefully a handful of bureaucrats try to think of everything, they will never match the unlimited resourcefulness of millions of individuals operating in a free and dynamic marketplace.

As true as this is regarding license plates, it is also true for health care, financial services, energy, auto manufacturing and housing.