" How an incredibly complex, high-tech economy manages to function is a question that puzzles many. The last president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, is said to have asked British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher the following: "How do you manage to get people to have food?" He replied that she did not have to do anything, because the prices took care of that. The British people were better fed than the Soviet Union, despite the fact that the British had not produced enough food to survive for more than a century. The prices brought them food from other countries. "

― Thomas Sowell , Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy