The proposition that individuals, by selfishly responding to price incentives, create the greatest good, is deeply counterintuitive. Einstein, like many other smart, but economically ignorant writers, noted that "production for use" is obviously better than "production for profit", and legions of college students think that getting rid of profits would simply lower costs, and create a better focus on serving people rather than profits. The problem as Hayek pointed out, is that only a price rationing system in a free economy (ie, without government-mandated restraints of free exchange such as quotas, unions that demand a closed shop, etc) incents the right people, at the right time, to make the right decisions. The alternative is a political clusterfluck, as interests wrestle for turf over a perceived fixed economic pie. Hayek mentions Einstein specifically in his Fatal Conceit about this common misperception.