"...There is, in society, a "knowledge problem":
Economic life requires the coordination of individual planning.
The relevant knowledge for economic planning
is dispersed rather than concentrated in society.
...it ...makes coordination a virtual impossibility under central planning:
The planner can never secure and process all the necessary information
to provide detailed guidance to any given development in society.
...Centralized welfare systems
are necessarily run by a bureaucratic leadership.
...The supposed technical superiority of such an organization
is simply not enough to master the nuances of a complex society.
Centralized government allocates resources badly
—regardless of its intentions.
The very nature of centralization
makes it impossible to collect and compute
all the information that is needed.
This is as true for any grand scheme of industrial planning
as it is for the government-led welfare systems...
...Regardless of the intentions of its makers,
such a system was bound to produce inefficiency and waste.
These inefficiencies and this waste, of course,
become rents for those that live off them
and return the favor with their political support.
States that control most of the income of the community
and allocate it according to the wishes of their bureaucracy
are now on the brink of bankruptcy.
...Hayek's solution
—a limited-government state
that allowed the free-market economy to flourish...
Hayek himself didn't argue that free-market competition
would always reward the deserving.
..."so long as we think in terms of our relations to particular people,
we are generally quite aware that the mark of the free man
is to be dependent for his livelihood not on other people's views of his merit
but solely on what he has to offer to them."
Rewards in society depend on the game of supply and demand
and, ultimately, on consumers' wants and needs.
...Small, self-organized, voluntary aggregates of human beings
should be free to pursue their idea of "merit" as they wish
provided that they take full responsibility for their efforts.
However, a big society
—one based on cooperation with strangers on a large scale,
such as a state—should not attempt to play the game of the "just" distribution
because it is not fit to it.
...A market system cannot work properly
if a society aims to dole out rewards and punishments
like a teacher in a classroom.
Market institutions are anonymous and blind.
Imposing upon them any preordained scheme of merit and reward
will just make coordination between individuals
—and, thus, wealth creation—more difficult."
Mr. Mingardi
No comments:
Post a Comment