March 15 is World Consumer Day, first announced by the United Nations in 1985 with a bill of consumer rights, including "the right to satisfaction of basic needs." The day invites a comparison of two ways to meet those needs.

In a command system, once dominant in many UN member states, the government attempts to assess people's needs and decide what should be produced, in what quantities, and at what cost. The command system, still used by the largest UN member, China, has been billed as modern and scientific. But it faces a basic difficulty – what F.A. Hayek called the knowledge problem. .

No person or group of persons, however well educated and however noble their intentions, has the knowledge to operate society to the best interests of everyone. Those who believe they can are guilty of hubris, but their record speaks for itself. .

Government control of food production in the Soviet Union and China led to massive starvation. The same famine conditions occurred in Ethiopia during the 1980s when a Marxist junta attempted to collectivize agriculture on the Stalinist model.

In Eastern Europe, government control of consumer goods led not only to scarcity but to products so shabby that no one would choose to buy them. Of course, in a command system, people do not enjoy the right of choice, the cornerstone of a better way.

A market system of allocating goods and services is not centrally controlled. In contrast, it is built on the certainty that individuals are better judges of their own needs than politicians, bureaucrats, and even United Nations bosses. To thrive in this system, individuals must strive to meet the needs of others, to provide quality products in a free marketplace. This empowers the consumer.

Should someone find that a product does not meet their needs, they are free to seek competing alternatives. In the market system, the consumer is king. Individuals, not politicians or bureaucrats, are in charge of the millions of transactions and decisions that take place every day. The market system produces abundance and works well not just in the absence of central control but because of that absence.

Partisans of the command system dislike this, but only the willfully blind can deny the results. The debate over the best way to satisfy consumers’ basic needs has been over for a long time. The market is the clear winner.

The market was not created by the United Nations but is a better purveyor of the other consumer rights the UN bestowed in 1985: the right to safety; the right to be informed; the right to choose; the right to be heard; the right to consumer education; and the right to a healthy environment. The task now at hand is to extend the market system, so that consumers everywhere can benefit.

Former socialist nations are learning that lesson but must guard against the forces of reaction. Emerging nations should look to the market, not schemes of central planning from the United Nations or even the United States. For their part, Western nations should limit the size of government, privatize more services, and let the market flourish. Those still enamored of a failed command system should topple the Berlin Wall in their minds.

Consumers need the benefits of the market more than they need the United Nations. Let March 15 serve as a reminder that a free market, not central planning or international bureaucracies, will best meet the basic needs of people around the world.

K. Lloyd Billingsley is editorial director at the California-based Pacific Research Institute. He can be reached at lbillingsley@pacificresearch.org.