Monday, December 03, 2007

Turtles all the way down

Now, in economic terms. You must show:

1. The private market is erring.
2. The political marketplace will yield a result that fixes the corresponding private market error.

The second requirement is usually ignored. In fact, it was for a long period of time assumed that the government was a perfect actor with perfect information. These assumptions were wrong. Once this was realized, the field of public choice economics emerged, which discussed in detail why the political marketplace has its own errors. I believe the second requirement has never once been fulfilled in the history of mankind, and that is why I am an anarchist.
Full essay.
"Free enterprise can't be justified because it's good for business -- it isn't. It can only be justified because it's good for society. ... Markets aren't perfect, they're not even very good. They're just better than anything else." -Peter Drucker