Perhaps the biggest myth about markets comes from the name itself. We tend to think of a market as a thing when in fact it is people engaging in economic transactions among themselves on whatever terms their mutual accommodations lead to. A market in this sense can be contrasted with central planning or government regulation. Too often, however, when a market is conceived of as a thing, it is regarded as an impersonal mechanism, when in fact it is as personal as the people in it. This misconception allows third parties to seek to take away the freedom of individuals to transact with one another on mutually agreeable terms, and to depict this restriction of their freedom as rescuing people from the “dictates” of the impersonal market, when in fact this would be subjecting them to the dictates of third parties.
Every time someone reads this blog an angel gets its wings. - Zuzu, the Elder
Friday, March 07, 2014
Markets are just people doing stuff they want to do
And when you remove something from a market you are simply letting a third party appropriate an activity that consenting adults had done before. Tom Sowell, trenchant as usual:
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