4 ms·

Do people still think the free market is so great at allocating scarce resources given the lived experience of the last few years? Seems to me that market part

by mvc 4y ago

Do people still think the free market is so great at allocating scarce resources given the lived experience of the last few years? Seems to me that market participants at many different levels needed a fair bit of help with their reaction to events recently. For example... - vaccine designers were allocated additional resources to accelarate testing their designs - in many countries, employers were allocated funds to retain employees to do nothing long enough to weather a period of reduced production - currently in both US and Europe, the "free-market" price of energy is held down by a variety of centrally controlled measures It's not like these measures are taken by "lefty" governments either. Taking the example of the UK because that's where I live, the last two cabinets have been full of the authors of Britainnia Unchained, a document that argues Britain needs to adopt a "far-reaching form of free market economics". The questions I have lately (as an Economics graduate myself) are.... Would things would have turned out better if only those in power had held their nerve and let the market do it's thing? (e.g. allow vaccine development to continue unassisted by government grants, massive unemployment as people voluntarily changed behavior in response to the pandemic, energy bills that rise from taking up 1/12th to 1/3rd of a family's disposable income). Or are that the events of the last few years are so unprecedented that they merited a market intervention whereas for "normal" events, the market will respond better than centrally planned decisions. Will the next few years be full of unprecedented events? Or will we be back to "normal" if/when the war in Ukraine is over. Is the free-market allocating enough resources to solving the problem of climate change?

thegrimmest 4y ago
I don't know, if you look at places like Florida that did basically nothing in response to COVID, they seem to have come out quite well actually. It's the places that exercised a lot of central control in redistributing resources that seem to have come out poorly.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
There has been a free market solution to climate change available for decades. It could be argued that where it has been used, it has been the most effective. Yet most people that present themselves as "free marketeers" have ignored the economics consensus and the science consensus. They're basically just paid by rich and powerful people to say or do anything that benefits rich and powerful people. This has always been true since the days of royalty. And it's true today when fossil fuels and corporate monopolies make you rich and powerful. Their alledged support for free markets is just as much a lie as everything else they say. Sometimes they'll accidentally end up on the correct side of issues but its easy to see the pattern isn't "doing what economists say is most efficient". Look at how they desecrate the good name of Adam Smith for example.

by mvc 4y ago

thegrimmest 4y ago

I don't know, if you look at places like Florida that did basically nothing in response to COVID, they seem to have come out quite well actually. It's the places that exercised a lot of central control in redistributing resources that seem to have come out poorly.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

There has been a free market solution to climate change available for decades. It could be argued that where it has been used, it has been the most effective. Yet most people that present themselves as "free marketeers" have ignored the economics consensus and the science consensus. They're basically just paid by rich and powerful people to say or do anything that benefits rich and powerful people. This has always been true since the days of royalty. And it's true today when fossil fuels and corporate monopolies make you rich and powerful. Their alledged support for free markets is just as much a lie as everything else they say. Sometimes they'll accidentally end up on the correct side of issues but its easy to see the pattern isn't "doing what economists say is most efficient". Look at how they desecrate the good name of Adam Smith for example.