That's certainly the solution that first-order thinking would suggest.
Command economies have never worked in history, though lots of folks have tried [1].
It's good to learn from past mistakes.
It's also sort of a fun thought experiment. When you grant this power to the government, the sorts of things they can do. There's lot of obvious things like "make eggs cheaper!!", but the more fun thought experiment is with something esoteric like the sex industry.
Let's conceive of the correct pricing for a lap dance.
That's a bit complex, it's certainly not fair to charge the same amount for everyone - an attractive, skilled dancer would be forced to charge the same as someone who is unattractive and disinterested. We're going to need a rate table.
Hygiene, attractiveness, skill, friendliness. What else? Age? The body politic has decided that you're not allowed to factor age into a lap dance or to discriminate on what dancer you chose based on age. So we can exclude that from our rate table.
Going to need to create a bureaucracy to develop fair standards for all of those things.
Also, as a footnote, let's create another agency to advertise exotic dancing to the elderly as an excellent career opportunity.
Of course, we'd need to add more regulation that would require the dancers to register their weight and attractiveness with a government agency, and we'd need inspectors to verify that. We'd also probably need to watchers to watch the watchers because the inspectors may be tempted by some "extra services" to inflate their scoring, allowing a dancer to charge more. Probably also going to need to add some undercover officers to make sure that unenlightened customers aren't expressing an opinion on what age of dancer they receive.
Of course, all lap dances aren't created equal - so rates may vary based on how many people are involved, whether the patron is allowed to touch the dancer, and if so the minimum necessary security involved. We'll probably need some secret shoppers to go out and verify that the rates are being charged properly and in-line with dictates.
This would all be pretty costly though, so we'll have to increase taxes on the dancers to pay for it all. But we can't allow them to raise their rates, that would defeat the purpose.
Now we'll need a way to confront the unpatriotic, unwilling masses who have for completely selfish reasons decided that a non-lucrative career in exotic dancing doesn't seem very fun.
Regulation is the answer! Like the Soviet Union, let's decide what profession folks would go into at a young age. Perfect!
Hmm, quality is suffering. Strangely, forcing folks into a profession to meet the needs of our dictated economic constraints resulted in a sub-par experience. There aren't any customers anymore. Fine, mark the whole thing as a loss and outlaw it, certainly can't have an underground economy operating on market forces undermining what our enlightened leaders have decided for us.
(Psst. there's a reason why command economies fail, and freedom matters. Even China understands this.)
Command economies have never worked in history, though lots of folks have tried [1].
It's good to learn from past mistakes.
It's also sort of a fun thought experiment. When you grant this power to the government, the sorts of things they can do. There's lot of obvious things like "make eggs cheaper!!", but the more fun thought experiment is with something esoteric like the sex industry.
Let's conceive of the correct pricing for a lap dance.
That's a bit complex, it's certainly not fair to charge the same amount for everyone - an attractive, skilled dancer would be forced to charge the same as someone who is unattractive and disinterested. We're going to need a rate table.
Hygiene, attractiveness, skill, friendliness. What else? Age? The body politic has decided that you're not allowed to factor age into a lap dance or to discriminate on what dancer you chose based on age. So we can exclude that from our rate table.
Going to need to create a bureaucracy to develop fair standards for all of those things.
Also, as a footnote, let's create another agency to advertise exotic dancing to the elderly as an excellent career opportunity.
Of course, we'd need to add more regulation that would require the dancers to register their weight and attractiveness with a government agency, and we'd need inspectors to verify that. We'd also probably need to watchers to watch the watchers because the inspectors may be tempted by some "extra services" to inflate their scoring, allowing a dancer to charge more. Probably also going to need to add some undercover officers to make sure that unenlightened customers aren't expressing an opinion on what age of dancer they receive.
Of course, all lap dances aren't created equal - so rates may vary based on how many people are involved, whether the patron is allowed to touch the dancer, and if so the minimum necessary security involved. We'll probably need some secret shoppers to go out and verify that the rates are being charged properly and in-line with dictates.
This would all be pretty costly though, so we'll have to increase taxes on the dancers to pay for it all. But we can't allow them to raise their rates, that would defeat the purpose.
Now we'll need a way to confront the unpatriotic, unwilling masses who have for completely selfish reasons decided that a non-lucrative career in exotic dancing doesn't seem very fun.
Regulation is the answer! Like the Soviet Union, let's decide what profession folks would go into at a young age. Perfect!
Hmm, quality is suffering. Strangely, forcing folks into a profession to meet the needs of our dictated economic constraints resulted in a sub-par experience. There aren't any customers anymore. Fine, mark the whole thing as a loss and outlaw it, certainly can't have an underground economy operating on market forces undermining what our enlightened leaders have decided for us.
(Psst. there's a reason why command economies fail, and freedom matters. Even China understands this.)
[1] https://helpfulprofessor.com/command-economy-examples/
(edited to try to make it more funny)