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It's notable that a role of government is to regulate against monopolies. There is no such thing as natural market equilibrium (which is an underlying false ass

It's notable that a role of government is to regulate against monopolies. There is no such thing as natural market equilibrium (which is an underlying false assumption you see a lot) and this is a reason you need external governance for a healthy functioning market. You can argue over quality and whether interests are fairly protected but that's a different question. Also worth considering the history of firefighting which used to be organised along more libertarian lines and was a complete disaster that required centralisation.

baddox 13y ago
You're suggesting that the possibility of market failures justifies government power. Unfortunately, government is also vulnerable to market failures, and I don't know of any argument for why government's market failures (also known as "government failures") would be less common or harmful than market failures.
- mpyne 13y ago
  The difference is that other things also tend to justify government power. If we were to use your logic, the fact that there exist companies susceptible to market failures would mean that we should get rid of corporations entirely, even though there are valid reasons to justify the creation of corporations. The conclusion is absurd because the logic is absurd. Similarly, the conclusion that markets efficiently allocate economic resources does not lead to a conclusion that markets can, by themselves, fairly allocate other types of resources (to say nothing of non-resource allocation functions of government). Instead of looking at a bad government and saying that the problem is government, you need to look at the bad government and realize that the problem is that it's not good government, and then fix the government to not suck. I won't claim it's always easy but most things worth having are not easy otherwise everyone would already have them.
- dreamfactory2 13y ago
  I'm not suggesting the possibility of market failures without government but the inevitability of them, as can be trivially observed by the existence of monopoly regulation. It's strikingly naive to think there is an equivalence between the market and a democratic government - the key difference being one person one vote.

baddox 13y ago

You're suggesting that the possibility of market failures justifies government power. Unfortunately, government is also vulnerable to market failures, and I don't know of any argument for why government's market failures (also known as "government failures") would be less common or harmful than market failures.

mpyne 13y ago
The difference is that other things also tend to justify government power. If we were to use your logic, the fact that there exist companies susceptible to market failures would mean that we should get rid of corporations entirely, even though there are valid reasons to justify the creation of corporations. The conclusion is absurd because the logic is absurd. Similarly, the conclusion that markets efficiently allocate economic resources does not lead to a conclusion that markets can, by themselves, fairly allocate other types of resources (to say nothing of non-resource allocation functions of government). Instead of looking at a bad government and saying that the problem is government, you need to look at the bad government and realize that the problem is that it's not good government, and then fix the government to not suck. I won't claim it's always easy but most things worth having are not easy otherwise everyone would already have them.
dreamfactory2 13y ago
I'm not suggesting the possibility of market failures without government but the inevitability of them, as can be trivially observed by the existence of monopoly regulation. It's strikingly naive to think there is an equivalence between the market and a democratic government - the key difference being one person one vote.