Given two options, one enlisting market
forces and another enlisting government oversight, one is urged to choose the
best one. However, when decisions regarding this topic affect large scale
environments, i.e. countries, they get tougher to make and become less
frequent. If a system is being employed and is not providing optimal
efficiency, then it would be nice to suggest a change. Unfortunately, as is
often the case, change is somewhat rare, especially when the current system is
not necessarily failing to the point of detrimental disaster. I believe that
this idea of grandness and large-scale influence is one of the main reasons why
world suck levels are generally quite high. There exists this [somewhat false]
notion that since failures existed in the market process and since the market
method of providing public goods resulted in efficiencies, then government oversight
must be better. But this conclusion is not the result of theory or evidence or
backed inferences. Rather, it is a jumped assumption based on the simple
presence of failures and inefficiencies in the market process. I think that it
is possible that if the government based system were to have been scrutinized first,
then the same assumption would simply be reversed.
In general, there will always exist
inefficiencies in a process; I am not a staunch believer in the idea of
something being for the most art efficient. In the instance of public goods,
though, numerous examples have demonstrated that the market process can provide
nonexclusionary and nonrival goods (radio broadcasts; lighthouses). While there
do exist examples where such goods are not provided through the market process
(insert a decent example of your own here) and can instead be provided by the
government, I do not feel we should bully the market just because it has a
couple flaws that might have subsided if we just let it be. So basically, boo
government, yay market, and just because one is not always amazing does not
mean the other will be.
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