The way the cookie crumbles

Below the footnotes of the 1968 article "The Threat of Wage and Price Controls" at fee-dot-org, there is this brief thought from Irving S. Olds:

The Price of Price Controls

The whole recorded history of man is strewn with the wreckage of the great civilizations which have crumbled under price controls; and in forty centuries of human experience, there has never been — so far as I can discover — a single case where such controls have stopped, or even curbed for long, the forces of inflation. On the contrary, in every instance I can find, they have discouraged production, created shortages, and aggravated the very evils they were intended to cure.

IRVING S. OLDS

Caught my attention because of the end-of-civilizations thing. But the emphasis on price controls is misplaced.

I looked the guy up:

Irving Sands Olds (1887–1963) was an American lawyer and philanthropist. He served as chairman of the board and chief executive officer of U.S. Steel from 1940 to 1952, and was partner at White & Case.

CEO of US Steel. Perhaps his remarks on price controls were in response to the wage & price "guideposts" of the Kennedy era, which were established after the US Steel price hike of 1962. Kennedy had been told US Steel would not raise prices.

Ten years earlier, Truman had nationalized the steel industry, and the Supreme Court shot that down.

I make three brief points, and focus on the third:

1. Civilizations don't crumble because of price controls. 
2. Civilizations don't crumble because of the inflation that gives rise to price controls.
3. Civilizations crumble because that unrelenting inflation is cost-push, the kind of inflation that undermines economic growth.

Civilizations crumble when economic growth is undermined because, like a shark, civilization must keep moving forward or it will die. Toynbee said as much (page 10):

"Why did the Barbarians ultimately break through? Because, when a frontier between a more highly and a less highly civilized society ceases to advance, the balance does not settle down to a stable equilibrium but inclines, with the passage of time, in the more backward society’s favour."

So did Quigley (page 141):

"After  centuries  of  expansion  our  society  is  now  organized  so  that  it  cannot  subsist;  it  must  expand  or  it  will  collapse."

And Keynes, in his toast to economists:

"economists, who are the trustees not of civilization, but of the possibility of civilization."

Perhaps old Irv Olds was just saying the same, but I don't think so.