In recent years, I have spoken to thousands of pre-military preparatory students. Youth who will become the elite of Israel's economy, army, society and politics. There are rich and poor children, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, rightists and leftists. I meet them a minute before they put on their uniforms. Quite a few of these campers are now inside Gaza, on the Lebanese border, on land, in the air or at sea. All the campers I've met are salt of the earth. Not because of their origin, but because of their determination. They are elite because they care, they chose to be there.
When I come to talk to the students about economics, I ask them: What price did you pay to sit in this class? The naïve answer is: tuition. But luckily the campers hardly say it, the Machinists understand that the cost of the preparatory year is a year from life, the cost of participation is the sum total of the things they gave up: early recruitment, academic studies, going to the beach with friends or just sleeping late. Economists all over the world agree that the most important thing in economics is the understanding of price, because price (or "alternative cost", in economists' parlance) is something we give up in order to get something more valuable.
As much as my enthusiasm for understanding prices by pre-military preparatory students, so is my disappointment with senior politicians, who repeatedly reveal their ignorance of this important issue. Understanding prices is also what distinguishes moderate politicians from extremist politicians. Radical politicians and their aides live in a vacuum; their proposals never have a price.
One example is the popularity of price control, a policy that holds that the state must set prices for basic goods. Ostensibly, it is possible through legislation to set low prices in favor of consumers. In practice, price control creates shortages and a decrease in quality. If you have ever encountered a shortage of milk, eggs or bread, it is because there is supervision; The superpower USSR collapsed not because it was an evil empire, but because it tried to plan the entire economy and control all prices.
The reason that David Bitan and his colleagues want to impose sweeping USSR-style price controls in the State of Israel stems from a misunderstanding of the enormous price that Israeli society will pay for this Soviet apparatus, but the blame here also falls on us. We, and the media that is supposed to represent us, do not ask politicians this basic question. In any proposed policy, especially if it is a bad policy such as price controls, it is imperative to ask politicians what the price of that policy is, and if they do not know how to answer, then we need to understand that the price is enormous.
Barak's Camp David talks with Arafat cost us the Intifada and thousands of deaths. If we had asked what the cost of the talks was, we might not have held them
The alternative cost is important not only in the economic field. It is important to understand the alternative cost and costs of political and security decisions. During the euphoria of Oslo, no one asked what the price was of bringing thousands of terrorists into Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and those who asked were presented as delusional – at most there would be a few victims of peace, we were told.
Barak's Camp David talks with Arafat cost us the Intifada and thousands of deaths. If we had asked what the cost of the talks was, we might not have held them. 84% of Israeli citizens supported the Shalit deal, everyone looked at the return, few asked what the price of this deal was. Today we know. The October 7 massacre is the result of not asking the price we paid for complacency and arrogance.
Even today, we have not yet learned to ask, "What is the price?" – what is the price of not eliminating Hamas or the price of the internal division between us. Politicians, journalists, commentators, military personnel and other citizens should constantly ask what the price of their proposals is. Perhaps the supermarket price marking law should be extended to tweets.
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