Food For Thought For The Weekend -- the Future of Capitalism

|Peter Boettke|

At the end of his book Whither Socialism? Joe Stiglitz rhetorically asks whether the 19th century socialist ideals of equality, fraternity and solidarity could be served by the advanced analytics of modern economics.  He answers affirmatively.  Stiglitz's question and answer are conceptual; his program has always been an ambitious theoretical enterprise. [Here is my JEL review of Stiglitz's book]

Ken Rogoff asks a different question, and provides a different answer.  He asks whether modern capitalism is sustainable, and it is more or less what I would term as an empirical question. 

What do you think of his narrative concerning modern capitalism?  How would you respond on the empirics?  What institutional responses would you propose?

 

Comments

[Daniel Kuehn]

I think a lot depends on what we're calling "capitalism". Many people have a view of capitalism that is more metaphysical than anything else, which never did exist and never will exist. That's what Rogoff is thinking of here, and I would personally present a very similar narrative to Rogoff on what "capitalism" is and what it's prospects are.

He raises what I think is one of the biggest problems of modern capitalism - he calls it undervaluing the welfare of the unborn. I would simply call it a "missing market" or lack of property rights (not a "market failure"... I hate that term) between people today and people in the future. In the past what was good for the present was generally good for the future, so the missing market didn't matter much. That seems less true today. Either way, the existing property rights regime - constrained as it is by the stubborn illusion of linear time - allows us to coerce future generations and future selves. This is not a good thing, from the perspective of the liberal tradition. Smith, Jefferson, Paine, and all sorts of liberals noted this problem of the tyranny of the past (their primary concern was the distribution of land and power).

The state offers some obvious solutions to this, and we've made important investments for the future through the state. But it presents obvious problems too - primarily that because of the structure of the institution politicians can have shorter time horizons even than we see in the market. So I know of no easy institutional fix. Insofar as preferences for future generations evolve, the market will take care of this through peoples' own altruism, but that sort of presumes that the biological fitness of intertemporal altruism will outpace the problems we face. I'm not so sure of that.

I think our best bet is in scientific advances that solve some of these problems. Investment in this sort of science faces the same "missing market" problem. If the science primarily serves the welfare of far-future generations its tough to see how it will emerge naturally in the market, and it may need a little bit of help. At the same time, scientific advances can be discontinuous, so we might get lucky.

[Daniel Kuehn]

That's NOT what Rogoff is thinking of here I mean.

Something about this week... I feel like I've been making a ton of comment typos.

[Becky Hargrove]

I especially appreciated Rogoff's focus on medical care as "a market that failed to satisfy several of the basic requirements necessary for the price mechanism to produce economic efficiency." To me nothing else makes capitalism so fragile, because healthcare costs come into the entire system at many points.

Daniel, I was surprised by this remark: "The existing property rights regime - constrained by the illusion of linear time - allows us to coerce future generations and future selves." I have especially voiced concerns about property as of late in part because of the undue burdens posed by familial expectations of the present. In no way is the legal system set up to deal with property issues effectively except perhaps at higher levels of income. But more importantly, capitalism will come to rely even more on increased mobility in the future, and ownership should be more about structures and less about land, so that ever changing patterns of active ownership continue to be possible. Even so, to create more flexible ownership, the very components we use to build need to become more flexible and interchangable as part of the process.

[austrian away]

My thinking on this question (capitalism) has evolved from (1) defending the market to (2) challenging the propriety of government regulation. Note that I have continued to retain my commitment to Austrian insights. But, in my opinion, if we are able to satisfactorily prove (2), then we don't ever need to get to (1). Most Austrians I think move from (1) to (2). But what I am more interested in is avoiding (1) altogether and focusing exclusively on (2). I think Austrians will receive a more favorable response if they do this. Typically, defenses of the market seem either altogether naive or terribly dogmatic.

[Matt Stiles]

Austrian away:

I agree wholeheartedly. Instead of proclaiming market preeminence from ivory towers, it should be the job of capitalists to propose and implement alternative institutions than can challenge government.

I also think Austrians can do a better job of pointing toward the alternative regulatory institutions that already exist as evidence of the market's ability to solve its own problems. From what I have seen, a majority of capitalists spend their time pointing to where government regulation has failed, and often avoid talking about where market regulation has succeeded (presumably, because said institution is not their perfect ideal of market regulation).

Empirical demonstration is not what will prove capitalists correct. Logic has already done that. But empirics will be necessary to convince those that are unwilling to listen to logic (the majority). Austrians can wax intellectual about ideal institutional frameworks, but if they can't produce coherent proposals for transition to more effective institutions, then their talk is vapid. "End the Fed" would be a good example of this. "End the Fed...and do what, exactly?"

Proposals for transition need to:
a) be incremental - to demonstrate superiority and also to dull paranoia.

b) have contingencies ready - the first crack at some market institutions might not take. It is a competitive system. But a robust competitive system that can absorb failure takes decades to evolve. What happens if the first institutions fails because it was structured improperly?

[Richard Ebeling]

Many years ago, the famous German economist, Wilhelm Roepke, made the distinction between what he called "market economy" and "historical capitalism."

The market economy is a conception of an exchange society in which law and clearly delineated property rights secure and protect the rights of individuals to freely make choices and varieties of interpersonal transactions through the institutional network of market exchanges.

The State's primary function in such an order is a "negative" one, of preventing plunder, privilege, and predation. In such an idealized order there are no politically maintained or instituted inequalities or inhibitions to competitive opportunity, innovation or change.

It is the classical liberal's ideal or "benchmark" by which he evaluates the realities of actual markets and political activities. And is the point on the horizon toward which reform should always be moving.

"Historical capitalism," Roepke argued, is the reality of how markets had developed and evolved out of the preceding Mercantilist system of the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Alas, historical capitalism had grown in ways very far from the market economy ideal. In the actual flow of historical change, monopolies, protections, and barriers to opportunity had continued to prevail and/or had taken on new forms in the historical liberal epoch of the 19th and 20th centuries.

And especially in the new era of interventionism and growing welfare statism, markets had taken on many forms that have, often, little to do with Adam Smith's vision of the "Great Society" of free enterprise or Richard Cobden's conception of an increasingly prosperous and peaceful world of cosmopolitan free trade.

Our world of "historical capitalism," including in the United States, reflects, on the one hand, personal freedoms, property rights, and competitive interactions matched with inconsistent and contradictory layers of favors, privileges, and redistributive benefits supplied by the State.

Thus, some market outcomes represent the benefits of competitive innovations and entrepreneurial "alertness" to consumer-oriented profit-seeking, while others represent the rewards from successful politically-oriented profit-seeking ("rent-seeking").

Alas, the two are so interwoven at the same time that the two get confused in people's minds. Are the outcomes of the market the result of "free market forces" or privilege-seeking manipulation of market outcomes? The answer, often, is "both."

So are the actual outcomes of "historical capitalism" to be "praised" or "blamed"? And, again, the answer is, often, "both."

But to sort this out so people are less likely to confuse the two is extremely difficult. Do, say, banks play an important and crucial intermediation role in market transactions? Yes. Are they often bringing "saver" and "investor" together for mutual benefit, and better intertemporal use of scarce resources? Yes.

But . . . at the same time, these same banks function in a central banking system, with privileges and favors (and bailouts) representing extra-marginal gains having nothing to do with their purely market-based "function" in the economic order.

The same thing may be said about the medical care industry in America. It is the contradictions and inconsistencies in a system that is part private and competitive while increasingly privileged, manipulated and controlled by the government that make many in society dissatisfied and angry with the status and availability of health services in the society.

This, obviously, also touches on the often debated issue of what we should call our current system? Is it "capitalism"? Is it a "market economy"? Or is it the "interventionist-welfare state"? Or "liberal fascism," or . . .

I, personally, see no reason to think that "capitalism" is dead or dying -- if by "capitalism" we mean the liberal free market ideal of, say, Adam Smith, or Frederic Bastiat, or Mises and Hayek.

Our current situation is another crisis of this interventionist-burdened "historical capitalism," about which Roepke spoke in the 1940s. The question is, is there a way to institutionally reduce or even eliminate the interventionist and welfare statist elements in the existing market system? Or are the path-dependent steps that have gotten us into our present situation impossible to significantly reverse?

Richard Ebeling

[austrian away]

A wonderful analysis, Dr. Ebeling. But, I have to ask, Are you prepared to concede that the "market economy ideal" will, in practice, produce inefficiencies and costs? (i.e. sometimes businesses will fail and investments will be incorrect.) If so, just how much, if any, government regulation are you willing to permit to remedy (or simply manage) these flaws? So, you see, unless you propound a market economy ideal that is absolutely infallible in practice, the distinction between "market economy" and "historical capitalism" is really beside the point. In practice, the former necessarily leads to the latter, does it not? Sure, it is nice to talk of a government being absolutely limited in its powers to enforcing property rights, but that sort of description is hopelessly vague.

[Matt Stiles]

The inefficiencies and costs associated with market economies are part and parcel of the "market economy ideal."

Individuals fail and have excessively optimistic and pessimistic expectations that can be missed or exceeded because of the impossibility of perfect information or omniscience.

This is not a flaw. Nor is it something that government should attempt to eliminate from the market. Without it, loss aversion cannot properly counter the profit motive. Malinvestment is amplified without the prospect of failure.

[Richard Ebeling]

"Austrian Way,"
The "market economy ideal" has nothing to do with the "perfect competition" model conception of a market system, in which the agents are presumed to have, among other attributes, "perfect" or "sufficient" knowledge never to make errors or mistakes in their decisions as consumers or producers.

Thus, to ask: Do I think that there is a place for some degree of government regulation to compensate or correct for the fact that entrepreneurs and others may suffer losses or (in retrospect) have used scarce factors of production in ways that they would not have "if only" they knew from the start what they only learn later on as they proceed through their activities in the market process?" is -- if I may be so direct with no intention of insult -- to totally miss what the nature of the market order really is in a world of real people. And suggests that, again, if I may be so bold, you might find it of use to re-read Hayek's essays in "Individualism and Economic Order" on 'Economics and Knowledge' and the 'The Meaning of Competition.'

On the one hand, the "benefit" of the market order is that it is the social system of human cooperation that generally provides the greatest latitude for individual freedom and personal choice in a wide variety of directions (under the inescapable circumstance of scarcity and inequalities of "accidents of birth").

And, on the other hand, the market order represents that social system of human cooperation that permits a highly effective institutional arrangement to integrate and coordinate the knowledge and actions of a vast multitude of human beings that could never be brought together with the same degree of success by conscious planning, design and direction.

As for the above mentioned "accidents of birth," the advantage of the associative "voluntarism" of the market order is that also allows more opportunity for those who are born into "less fortunate" circumstances to have fewer political and societal restraints in "rising above" their "natural condition" through their own efforts. And . . . to benefit from the consumer-oriented productive activities of others that provide even them with a wider range of avenues and qualities of life than any other social system in history.

And . . . leaves those "more fortunate" from "accidents of birth" or their own successes to have the liberty and freedom of choice to use portions of their own incomes to assist others (if they so choose) in ways that they consider most effective in helping those less fortunate others in various ways.

Thus, even "good works" and "charity" can then benefit from the competitive "discovery procedure" of alternative minds being set to work to see how those charitable endeavors may be most fruitfully applied. (For some aspects of this latter point, I would suggest looking at Bertrand de Jouvenal's "The Ethics of Redistribution," David Green's "Reinventing Civil Society: The Rediscovery of Welfare without Politics," and Norman Barry's "Welfare.")

(And on the role of error and mistake in a market order compared to a planned or regulated system, see, Dwight Lee and Richard McKenzie's "Failure and Progress: The Bright Side of the Dismal Science.")

Richard Ebeling

[austrian away]

Yes, but there are really two different sort of arguments being made here:

(1) we need to get rid of government regulation so that MARKETS CAN WORK

(2) we need to get rid of government regulation because it produces more inefficiency than would otherwise be the case.

Too often, I see libertarians make the (1) argument, and that is why I think many people dismiss this sort of theory as either naive or mistaken. (2), however, acknowledges that markets are indeed inefficient, but only points out that government regulation serves only to exacerbate the very inefficiencies that are inherent in the market economy. Note also that (2) is completely consistent with Hayek's insights.

That is the point I was trying to make.

[Niko]

@Muller:

How are markets inefficient? Also, please define efficiency (hint: answers such it not efficient because Douglass North ,aka random memorial Nobel prize winner, says so aren't accepted).

[austrian away]

Niko, no need to make things more complicated than they have to be --- So long as businesses make incorrect investments, and thus misallocate scarce resources, there will be inefficiency in the marketplace. Or, to put it in more Austrian terms, So long as entrepreneurs can "discover" profit opportunities, there is inefficiency that can be improves upon (and brought into greater coordination [equilibration]). That is all I mean. And that is a fact of the real world, is it not? Thus, even in free markets, there will be inefficiency. "How much" is really the interesting question -- and that is why I think Austrians should re-open the Lachmann-Kirzner chapter.

[McKinney]

Austrian away: "o long as businesses make incorrect investments, and thus misallocate scarce resources, there will be inefficiency in the marketplace."

Exactly! However, eliminating all inefficiency is impossible. The real question is does the market or the state do a better job of minimizing inefficiency? The historical evidence clearly demonstrates that the freer markets wins hands down.

The problem I have with Stiglitz and Rogoff is that they set up as purposes for the market things that the market could never control. Here are some excerpts from Rogoff:

“First, even the leading capitalist economies have failed to price public goods such as clean air and water effectively.”

Many public goods, such as clean air and water, are not market issues; they are property issues, the protection of which falls in the domain of government. The government's job is to protect life, liberty and property.

A lot of socialists have told me that pre-Civil War slavery was a market failure. No. It was the greatest failure of government in US history. To ask the market to do the government’s job is stupid.

“Second, along with great wealth, capitalism has produced extraordinary levels of inequality.”

Capitalism does not create inequality. Inequality has been a part of humanity since prehistory. Capitalism reduced the inequality of medieval Europe.

“A third problem is the provision and distribution of medical care, a market that fails to satisfy several of the basic requirements necessary for the price mechanism to produce economic efficiency, beginning with the difficulty that consumers have in assessing the quality of their treatment.”

There is no free market in health care. The government controls every aspect of health care and causes the problems Rogoff blames the market for.

[austrian away]

Maybe I am not getting my point across clearly here, and I will conclude my contribution to this post with this last final comment, but the point is that you don't even need to get into a discussion of what capitalism has achieved or what it is capable of doing. All you need to show is that government regulation is seriously flawed because of fundamental knowledge problems. And in proving this claim, you do not need to refer to the market economy at all.

[Ryan Murphy]

When reading Bourgeois Dignity, her discussion of Kirzner puzzled me, and this puzzles me all the more. I am not trying to be difficult. The type of growth she's talking about is Schumpeterian entrepreneurship. Kirznerian entrepreneurship gets rid of inefficiencies by bringing the economy to equilibrium. Eliminating those types of inefficiencies are actually what she derides elsewhere, both in the book and in the pdf...

I get that creativity and uncertainty are topics Austrians like, but when we're talking about what causes economies to grow, that was already contained in Schumpeter.

I can't help but think that McCloskey's citations of Kirzner are mostly good marketing on her part.

[Steve Horwitz]

Matt,

I think the distinction between your 1) and 2) is largely meaningless.

What it means to say "let the market work" is for the market to do what it does, which is produce fewer inefficiencies than government does. In fact, the very "work" the market does is to correct the inefficiencies of the market, even as it creates new inefficiencies in the process. (Of course the word "inefficiencies" here should be all in quotes given that the word itself is only meaningful by comparison to an unachievable ideal, at least as it's usually used in economics.)

I get your Jeff-Friedman point here that we can somehow talk about why markets are better by only talking about what gov't can't do. But that begs the question of whether markets can do things better.

In a way, it's the inverse of the public choice point. PC has always criticized what I call the "ipso facto" leap - the idea that if markets fail, gov't is ipso facto better. Your argument here seems to be "if gov't fails, the market must be ipso facto better."

I find that to be far more "guilty" as an argument than anything you are claiming Austrians do. If gov't can't accomplish its goals, who says markets won't do even worse?

You can't do comparative political economy without a comparison, no?

Why are you so afraid to talk about what it is that markets actually do (which, as I've noted, is to correct the very inefficiencies they create)?

[austrian away]

Dr. Horwitz correctly identifies my "Jeff Friedman" influence. I don't think people really appreciate (yet!) just how creatively Dr. Friedman has re-conceptualized Hayek's knowledge problem insight. It is truly remarkable. Here is a classic passage by Dr. Friedman that speaks EXACTLY to the point I am trying to make:

"Clearly the regulators were predicting that steering banks’ leverage into highly rated MBS would be prudent. This prediction proved disastrously wrong, but the Recourse Rule heavily tilted the field toward banks that went along with the regulators’ prediction. Heterogeneous behavior among competing enterprises normally spreads society’s bets among the different predictions (about profit and loss) made by various capitalists. Thus, the herd mentality is a danger under capitalism, as under every other system. Yet regulation produces the equivalent of a herd mentality by force of law. The whole point of regulation is to homogenize capitalists’ behavior in a direction the regulators predict will be prudent or otherwise desirable. If the regulators are wrong, the result is a system-wide failure. “Systemic risk regulation” may be a contradiction in terms.

Neither capitalists nor regulators can use crystal balls to avoid making bad bets. That highly rated mortgage-backed securities would be prudent turned out to be a very bad bet. But we all suffered because this bet was imposed by financial regulators on the whole system."

Jeffrey Friedman
Editor, Critical Review

Has anyone ever put the argument quite in these terms. I don't think so. But it is really a brilliant argument, and if I were a betting man, I would bet that this is how Hayek's knowledge problem theory will develop in the literature. Austrians have basically just quoted passages from his "Use of Knowledge in Society" paper and mechanically applied it to problems like Hurricane Katrina and foreign aid programs. But Jeff Friedman has actually developed the idea in an extremely interesting way.

Okay, I am done. Sorry for ranting on this blog, guys. I hate feeling like I hijack all these posts!

[Niko]

@Muller:

I fail to see anything remotely interesting in what that Jeff guy says.

Now, markets don't fail, they can't fail. The simple reason is that markets are just individuals who exchange goods. Those individuals may fail, but here is the rub, they fail in an extremely efficient way: only they loose, not the others. Since they can only exchange their own property, the failure is contained to them.

Now, when a regulation body fails, and they always do (this point might require further elaboration), other people loose, some may win, but the regulators never loose anything.

[Peter Boettke]

Matt,

I don't expect to get you to agree, but I do hope you realize that when you say things like Austrian have just quoted Hayek and applied to things like Hurricane Katrina and foreign aid, you are nit being a critical thinker, but an insulting thinker. There is a difference. And on the day you actually start submitting papers to journals and presenting scientific arguments in front of peers, then hopefully you will learn that.

Re-read what Steve is saying about comparative analysis ... It really is a simple point you are missing.

[austrian away]

First of all, I did not mean to impugn anyone's work with my comment; I just wanted to make some general observations about the state of the literature in Austrian economics. That is all. And Dr. Horwitz does make some very good points. I suppose one cannot just focus on government ineptitude without a comparative analysis of the market economy. (He correctly points out, if government fails, what makes us think that markets won't do worse? It is a good point.) I just think that this comparative analysis leads many libertarians/Austrians to *exaggerate* the efficiency-enhancing properties of the market economy, when really the only advantage to the market economy is that it permits heterogeneous activity, most of which will probably be mistaken and inefficient. (ugh! there goes my Jeff-Friedman influence again!)

[McKinney]

Austrian away: "most of which will probably be mistaken and inefficient."

That can't possibly be the case. If it were, we would make no progress at all and yet we have made enormous progress over the past 300 years. Look at how much progress China has made in a single generation with nothing but slightly free markets.

[Niko]

@Muler:
"most of which will probably be mistaken and inefficient. (ugh! there goes my Jeff-Friedman influence again!)"

Why is that? And please define what you understand by being efficient and correct.

[Peter Boettke]

Matt,

You really need to study price theory --- and I don't mean that to be insulting, but to put it bluntly, you really are lacking the basic training to understand the technical arguments in economic theory about efficiency and adjustment paths.

But at a very basic level, McKinney is 100% correct, the world cannot be as you say otherwise coordination failures would be evident and economic progress would be non-existent.

So as a refresher course, I'd like to suggest you go back and read Adam Smith, and J. B. Say, and David Ricardo, and J. S. Mill, and look at the general pattern, not the exceptions.

Pete

[austrian away]

But doesn't price theory abstract from all the really interesting stuff, like human fallibility, radical uncertainty, and, more generally, the dynamic nature of "The Market Process." I understand that Price Theory is always there. And knowing it is very useful. But just look at G.L.S. Shackle, who is a perfect example of what I am trying to get at. He wrote a half-dozen little books about standard price theory, and they were directed at popular audiences. But then you look at his more substantive writings, and he says stuff like this: If the value of a marginal unit can only be ascertained once the product sells for a price in the future, then how do we go about pricing that marginal unit today? Trust me, I have asked questions like this in all of my economics classes, and the response I would always get would be something like this: Just ignore these "knowledge problems." But isn't that why we are all Austrians? We refuse to do this!

[McKinney]

"If the value of a marginal unit can only be ascertained once the product sells for a price in the future, then how do we go about pricing that marginal unit today?"

Business people guess. It's that simple. No one can know the future perfectly, so no one can no the price that his product will fetch in the market. However, the uncertainty is really radical only with very new products. History serves as a good guide to established products.

Those who guess correctly make the big bucks while those who guess wrongly go down in flames. But the wise businessman hedges his bets so that a single wrong guess won't ruin him and he can learn from his mistakes.

The market process is one of learning from failure and imitating success.

[McKinney]

PS Austrian away, I think you need to distinguish between marginal physical product and marginal revenue product. The businessman can know mpp; that’s just a technical issue. He can’t know mrp because he can’t know exactly what price his product will sell for. But experience can give him a good idea unless the product is very new.

The only reason that a businessman would need to know mrp exactly would be in order to avoid any mistakes at all. However, no one has ever asserted that it’s possible for businessmen to never make mistakes because it’s not possible. Austrians and free marketeers in general only assert that accurate prices in a free market enable the businessman to make fewer mistakes than the government would make if the government directed markets.

[J Oxman]

Not for nothing, McKinney, because you make excellent points and I like your discussion a lot. But I gotta say, your last two points are straight out of Rothbard's MES, the sections on production. I actually only mention that because I feel Rothbard gets short shrift (although Profs. Boettke and Horwitz can't be accused of such).

Maybe austrian away should change his name to 'austrian near.' If you take my meaning.

[McKinney]

J Oxman, I hate to say it but I've never read MES. The only book of Rothbard's I have read is the one about the depression of the 1820's. Good book.

[Rafe Champion]

Taking the cue from Niko 04.41am, business failures and mistaken investments are features, not bugs in the market system. They are self-correcting, unlike the cost of corporate welfare and the failures of government regulations when the state can print money and spend it on our behalf, whether we like it or not.

The argument about regulations or no regulations is a no brainer, we need regulations that help people to function in the market system as opposed to the type of regulations and interventions that disable markets and create perverse incentives.

This is just rubbish. "Nevertheless, as pollution, financial instability, health problems, and inequality continue to grow, and as political systems remain paralyzed, capitalism’s future might not seem so secure in a few decades as it seems now."

Give us a break, the environment is getting better all the time, especially when it is vested in private hands. Apart from problems of congenital disabilites health problems are most acute among people who have been disempowered by the welfare state from making provision for themselves in the private system. Inequality is not a problem if there is scope for the poor to improve their position by their own efforts, given that the poor in the west live in ease and comfort compared with all previous generations on earth. Paralysis of political systems? Try the minimum state and see if that works better than Big Government and the battle between interest groups in the political arena.

[Nike High Heels]

I am certainly open to meet with anyone from the SCCOOE who is willing regarding this issue. Since you think it is such a good idea, then perhaps you can make it happen. But do not think that will dissuade me from sending correspondence to the board. Again, my correspondence is not attempting to sway you, Mr. Mann. I know you have made up your mind already on BCS, and short of a Penn State level scandal at the school.

[Nike High Heels 7]

I have found it instructive, over the years, to take The Art of War, Sun Tzu's little treatise on the nature of warfare and use it as a metaphor with a universal translator for any environment where the situation is dire and I'm not willing to let succeess hinge on a steady supply of fourth-quarter come-from-behind miracles.

[Troy Camplin]

I think Austrian Away is criticizing neoclassical economics when he thinks he's criticizing Austrian economics. I don't know of any Austrian who thinks the free market is or can be perfectly efficient. That is their distinguishing feature, in fact. The point is: everything else is worse.

[austrian away]

"The point is: everything else is worse." -- Troy Camplin

I agree One Hundred Percent with this. The issue I have is one of emphasis. That statement does not stop Austrians from espousing the virtues of the free market. They believe in it. I, however, would just end by saying that everything else is worse. We needn't go any further. But look above at Dr. Horwitz's statement about the need for comparative political economy. His point is a good one.

[Steve Horwitz]

In order to show why everything else is worse, we have to show what markets can do, even if that falls well short of perfection.

You might of heard of a guy named Bastiat. He started by noting "Paris gets fed." Is that espousing the virtues of the market in an unacceptable way Matt? Seems to me that's just saying markets are better, not perfect.

You might read my Freeman column tomorrow morning for more.

[ugg boots cheap]

by the advanced analytics of modern economics. He answers affirmatively. Stiglitz's question and answer are conceptual; his program has always been an ambitious

[Ugg boots online]

sat down and watched 4 episodes of 'The Big Bang Theory' and 'Flight of the Conchords' back to back today, which felt like a real escape. Then I followed that up by cooking up a storm, so still managed to cram some achievement in :)