As always in commerce, there are those who stand to make a buck by solving problems. Entrepreneurs dream up new methods and capitalists take risks to bring them to market. Each product that is offered is distinctive. Consumers try out a number of different ones. The ones that work better than others— and sell for the right price and are easy to install—displace those that work less well. Profits flow to those who have done the best job. This is the way the market works, and all is done voluntarily. The power to judge, to make some products succeed and some fail, is in the hands of consumers. Consumers base their judgments on what is good for them personally, so there is a constant feedback mechanism, from the desktop to the capitalists to the entrepreneurs to the traders who buy and sell stocks of companies that bring the products to market at the least-possible cost. We can only marvel at how all of this is coordinated by the price system, which is the link between our subjective valuations and the real world of technology and resources. To succeed in this market requires creativity, imagination, a keen sense of judgment, a technological sense, and relentless attention to the needs of others. People make money even as society is served. Now, let us contrast this gorgeous web of trial and error with the ham-handed approach of Congress and the president. Someone had the idea that spam is bad, and thus does the solution present itself: make it illegal, which is to say, threaten spammers with fines and jail and, if they resist enough, death. It is no more or less complicated than that. There is no trial and error process, no imagination required, no permission from consumers to be sought, and no investors to issue a judgment on the merits or demerits of this approach. Congress speaks, the president agrees, and it is done. What if it doesn’t work? Only under the rarest conditions does the state reverse itself or admit error. Its tendency instead is to keep pounding away with its one and only hammer, even if the nail is all the way in or hasn’t budged at all. Hence Lesson One in the uniqueness of the state: the state has one tool, and one tool only, at its disposal: force. (pg 40-41)
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 23:04:48 +0000