> To the extent that the government has some non-public information, they cannot always reveal it directly. Is that expected to be relevant here? What kind of

> To the extent that the government has some non-public information, they cannot always reveal it directly. Is that expected to be relevant here? What kind of secret jobs data would the government be keeping under lock and key for the security of the nation in a typical year? > Most of the people beginning this training have only just reached adulthood, and have no reason to be politically sophisticated. I sure wasn't, at that age. This is why adolescents have parents or, failing that, teachers and guidance counselors. > Even if the government was completely open and honest, market are not efficient unless P == NP. Markets don't have to be perfectly efficient, the only question is if they're more efficient than central planning, and the answer to that question is yes. Notice that the government also has no ability to timely perform NP calculations. > What else can be bought for the cost of a doctor? Probably like a tenth of a mile of paved asphalt. Having a few "too many" doctors is going to be worth more than the median thing the government spends money on, because trained doctors are valuable even outside the practice of medicine, e.g. as researchers or policy advisors or simply as a buffer against undersupply, since the consequences of that are so dire. Moreover, this isn't even a valid question when the size of any given graduating class is a small proportion of the total pool. If it takes 7 years post-bachelors to become a doctor and then you are one for 35, the total size of the pipeline is only 20% of the size of the pool. If the number of doctors in training is 50% too large, the total supply will only be in excess by 10% from the point you figure that out, and that's the single-year peak that only lasts for one graduating class before it starts edging downward again. It's just not a big problem for that to happen. These numbers are within the error bars for how precisely "oversupply" or "undersupply" can even be defined or agreed upon as a concept.