Markets don’t fail, politicians do
My friend, Dr. Eamonn Butler, on prices:
The emperor Diocletian decreed maximum prices for bread. Bakers couldn’t make a fair return, and stopped baking. The American colonies tried to keep down the price of wheat, which nearly caused George Washington’s army to starve because nobody produced wheat any more.
That’s not ‘market failure’. That’s political failure. Mrs Thatcher was right that “you can’t buck the market”. Markets don’t do what politicians want because markets are human. They are just how human beings rub along together. And humans tend to do what they want, not what their political masters want. Let’s have more markets and fewer politicians, I say.
It’s astonishing to me how basics like this have eluded most of the people I encounter. I wish I could buy them all copies of Eamonn’s new book.
Filed under: Life