What a cool thing!!
HT Ideas Matter.
Showing posts with label free market. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free market. Show all posts
Friday, July 29, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Free Market: not just the most effective, but also the most moral solution to poverty
Milton Friedman is right as far as he takes it. The free market is the most effective system the world has known for producing wealth and reducing poverty. What he doesn't say in this video clip is that the free market, because it is limited to voluntary exchange, is also the most moral system for reducing poverty. A system which employs the initiation of force will not be as effective--it can only redistribute wealth not create it--but even more importantly, it entails in its methods the destruction of civil society.
(HT Ideas Matter)
(HT Ideas Matter)
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
How WalMart Benefits Communities
Inappropriately maligned, Walmart actually provides value in more ways than affordable commodities.
(HT Care Diem)
(HT Care Diem)
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Source of Efficient Energy--the Market or the State?
Excellent analysis over at One Reality on what is the most efficient way to meet our energy needs: government experts choosing and coercively imposing their conclusions on the rest of us, or the free discovery process of market of profit and loss?
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President Obama and the State University of Baloney
It is instructive to juxtapose two recent news events to consider which is more likely to cause harm...
[I]f the cold fusion claims from the University of Bologna turn out to be false or mistaken, nobody who hasn't invested will pay a penny for it--unless, of course, the research is prolonged by grants from the Italian government. When the president's formula for energy progress--massive state intervention--fails, it will inevitably (and absurdly) be blamed on freedom and "greed," providing the pretext for still more government power grabs.
Which of these is the greater evil?
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Friday, November 12, 2010
2007-2010 Market failure--NOT
Another great post from Ideas Matter.
And from Max Broder-- "We should take away the lesson that long-term value creation cannot be achieved through short cuts. It's about a commitment to hard work and building a business - whether bank or bakery [or medical care]- one customer at a time."
And from Max Broder-- "We should take away the lesson that long-term value creation cannot be achieved through short cuts. It's about a commitment to hard work and building a business - whether bank or bakery [or medical care]- one customer at a time."
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Free Market means Freedom
"Underlying most arguments against the free market
is a lack of belief in freedom itself."
— Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 2002, pg 15
The first part of that quote is great too:
"A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it ... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want."
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Saturday, March 13, 2010
Toyota Recall: A Market Success
Just want to let you know about a well written Op-Ed in the San Jose Mercury News detailing the superior ability of the free market to control for quality.
Many proponents of government regulation can not visualize how quality control can be achieved in the free market. Schaefer illustrates how not only it is possible in the free market, it is superior. Read the rest.
In cases like Toyota, free market works better than government by Emily Schaefer
[E]ven massive product recalls should be seen not as examples of market failure, but as signs that markets work as they should...A functioning market is one in which companies produce products that meet consumer demands. When companies make products that are unsafe or ineffective, they risk losing customers and money...
While no company is perfect, correcting errors when they occur is a necessary part of doing business — and necessary to a properly functioning market...
Other private organizations and businesses {Kelley's Blue Book, consumer Reports] also have an incentive to provide reliable, accurate and timely information on product quality and safety...
Private organizations such as Consumers Union must maintain a reputation for accuracy and integrity. If they fail to do so, they lose support, credibility and revenue. Government agencies must meet no such market test. In fact, it is often failure that gets rewarded with larger budgets, additional employees, and more investigative or regulatory authority. Their incentive, therefore, is to exaggerate problems...
Government's incentives — beyond doing the right thing, which most government employees want to do — are often at odds with its mission.
Many proponents of government regulation can not visualize how quality control can be achieved in the free market. Schaefer illustrates how not only it is possible in the free market, it is superior. Read the rest.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Freedom Failure?
What does it mean to say "The free market doesn't work"?
It means: freedom doesn't work.
Is that really what people believe? That freedom has failed and what we need instead is an authoritarian elite (or the whims of the majority) telling us not just how to live our lives, but criminalizing actions deemed "not in our best interest"?
Perhaps some definitions would help clarify our thinking and any subsequent debate.
Free Market
The free market is nothing more than the sum total of the voluntary exchanges of goods and service which take place within a division of labor economy. "Voluntary" is to be contrasted with "coercion." The coercion we are concerned with here is that which involves an initiation of force*. Nothing wrong with force used in retaliation or self-defense--though these actions are properly delegated to a government in order to achieve objective laws under the rule of law.
In a free market, individuals are not prevented by the government from participating in voluntary exchanges of mutual agreement. Contracts are legally enforced. Fraud is punishable by law. Demonstrable harms to life, liberty and property are subject to prosecution and legal punishment. The rest is up to us.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is applied not just in the court room, but also in economic transactions--which would require the dismantling of most of the regulatory behemoth we have come to view as "government."
We are all free to advise, educate, advertise, promote, offer, suggest, even propagandize-- but no one is "free: to coerce those whom they are unable to convince. Not even for the sake of a "living wage" or providing medical care or protecting people from their own mistakes.
Freedom
Freedom is not a hedonistic license to do as you please. One man's freedom ends where another man's rights begin.
The Freedom that is an essential foundation of civil society is freedom from the initiation of force--not just in economic transactions, but in all social interactions.
Freedom is a social concept not a metaphysical concept. We can never be free from the need to act in order to gain the values we require to sustain our lives and achieve our happiness. There is no freedom from want --anymore than there is freedom from gravity. The natural state of man is one of poverty and hunger. Through voluntary cooperation and exchange to mutual benefit, man has progressed from a live-by-the-moment animal to the abundant prosperity of western civilization. Truly, a heroic achievement.
"Works"
What does is mean to say the free market "works" or doesn't "work"?
For a market to work, it does not mean there must never be any mistakes, or that every exchange is always the best of all possible exchanges, or that everyone achieves equal material reward for a given amount of effort, or that honesty and hard work will guarantee success, or that every resource is always used to maximum efficiency. The free market is a process of discovery and experiment, trial and error, reward and painful consequence, of learning, accumulating knowledge and experience, and hopefully, steady gradual progress.
The free market, as life, is a process of learning by thinking and doing, replete with both failures and successes. Life "works" through focused attention, learning and action--constantly evaluating, adjusting, compensating, innovating. The free market works in exactly the same way-- because the market isn't a "thing" with properties of its own, but simply the name we give to the sum of our economic exchanges. What works is life--and for human beings, that means (on the most fundamental level) reason applied to the facts of reality. On a social level, it means recognizing, both formally through laws and informally through ethics and mores, that in order to survive, man must be as free to live by the judgment of his own mind in his social interactions as he is in his encounters with reality.
What works is reason, and reason requires freedom from the initiation of force. Applied to the realm of economic exchange and progress, that means a free market.
Freedom works, and because it does, so does the free market.
*[Fraud entails the use of deception to obtain a consent which would be denied if the truth were disclosed and thus is a variation of initiated force.]
objective laws http://www.tafol.org/bulletins/b07.html
rule of law http://duhaime.org/LegalDictionary/R/RuleofLaw.aspx
rights http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/individual_rights.html
freedom http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=25395209900
reason http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/reason.html
It means: freedom doesn't work.
Is that really what people believe? That freedom has failed and what we need instead is an authoritarian elite (or the whims of the majority) telling us not just how to live our lives, but criminalizing actions deemed "not in our best interest"?
Perhaps some definitions would help clarify our thinking and any subsequent debate.
Free Market
The free market is nothing more than the sum total of the voluntary exchanges of goods and service which take place within a division of labor economy. "Voluntary" is to be contrasted with "coercion." The coercion we are concerned with here is that which involves an initiation of force*. Nothing wrong with force used in retaliation or self-defense--though these actions are properly delegated to a government in order to achieve objective laws under the rule of law.
In a free market, individuals are not prevented by the government from participating in voluntary exchanges of mutual agreement. Contracts are legally enforced. Fraud is punishable by law. Demonstrable harms to life, liberty and property are subject to prosecution and legal punishment. The rest is up to us.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is applied not just in the court room, but also in economic transactions--which would require the dismantling of most of the regulatory behemoth we have come to view as "government."
We are all free to advise, educate, advertise, promote, offer, suggest, even propagandize-- but no one is "free: to coerce those whom they are unable to convince. Not even for the sake of a "living wage" or providing medical care or protecting people from their own mistakes.
Freedom
Freedom is not a hedonistic license to do as you please. One man's freedom ends where another man's rights begin.
The Freedom that is an essential foundation of civil society is freedom from the initiation of force--not just in economic transactions, but in all social interactions.
Freedom is a social concept not a metaphysical concept. We can never be free from the need to act in order to gain the values we require to sustain our lives and achieve our happiness. There is no freedom from want --anymore than there is freedom from gravity. The natural state of man is one of poverty and hunger. Through voluntary cooperation and exchange to mutual benefit, man has progressed from a live-by-the-moment animal to the abundant prosperity of western civilization. Truly, a heroic achievement.
"Works"
What does is mean to say the free market "works" or doesn't "work"?
For a market to work, it does not mean there must never be any mistakes, or that every exchange is always the best of all possible exchanges, or that everyone achieves equal material reward for a given amount of effort, or that honesty and hard work will guarantee success, or that every resource is always used to maximum efficiency. The free market is a process of discovery and experiment, trial and error, reward and painful consequence, of learning, accumulating knowledge and experience, and hopefully, steady gradual progress.
The free market, as life, is a process of learning by thinking and doing, replete with both failures and successes. Life "works" through focused attention, learning and action--constantly evaluating, adjusting, compensating, innovating. The free market works in exactly the same way-- because the market isn't a "thing" with properties of its own, but simply the name we give to the sum of our economic exchanges. What works is life--and for human beings, that means (on the most fundamental level) reason applied to the facts of reality. On a social level, it means recognizing, both formally through laws and informally through ethics and mores, that in order to survive, man must be as free to live by the judgment of his own mind in his social interactions as he is in his encounters with reality.
What works is reason, and reason requires freedom from the initiation of force. Applied to the realm of economic exchange and progress, that means a free market.
Freedom works, and because it does, so does the free market.
*[Fraud entails the use of deception to obtain a consent which would be denied if the truth were disclosed and thus is a variation of initiated force.]
objective laws http://www.tafol.org/bulletins/b07.html
rule of law http://duhaime.org/LegalDictionary/R/RuleofLaw.aspx
rights http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/individual_rights.html
freedom http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=25395209900
reason http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/reason.html
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