A great quotation from Steven Landsburg published on
Café Hayek yesterday:
Even without any formal organization, markets tend to develop precisely because they are such powerful tools for improving everyone’s welfare.Today we are everywhere enjoined to respect the delicate ecological balance of nature, in which each creature is so miraculously designed to fill its special niche, and in which each part interacts in glorious intricacy with the whole. Let us save some respect too for the equally delicate structure of the marketplace, which routinely accomplishes feats that even nature dares not attempt.
A society is probably the most complex eco-system
known. It is as complex as the needs and desires of every single individual in
it, needs and desires that can only be worked out on the level of the
individual, not in aggregate - meaning it is not accessible to a central planner - to achieve the voluntary, spontaneous order that
free, laissez faire markets give us. Never perfect, how can it be, but it will
always be the best system there is philosophically (first), economically, and
thus politically. It is the only system that works toward both the freedom, and
living standards, of each of us. The only system. And so to try and put this system, which nurtures human
lives, into terms those chief architects of its destruction would understand; driving
the bulldozer of government regulation, with the jack-hammer of taxation
gouging out endeavour, into this delicate system of human welfare, is like doing this to a landscape:
It’s not surprising, therefore, that I have a dream,
of seeing one of these:
Marching on parliament, not to close down mining, such as the mining in
Australia, where 1,000 Kiwis a week are now fleeing to for jobs, but to save
the markets that sustain us, and could grow us those jobs here. And that's as easy as asking the politicians to step out of markets: just sit up there in the hive, eat their lunch, and try to do as little as possible. Please.
Mind you, Mark, gouging the landscape as per your picture is probably having a positive overall benefit on the average person's standard of living, whereas the gouging of our wallets by politicians hurts everyone and only benefits the troughers. Plus, chances of a Pike River type disaster are all but eliminated with open cast mining.
ReplyDeleteNo disagreement :) It's not against open cast mining, just trying to make the point about how easy it is for governments to destroy free markets.
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