Many of our
present economic difficulties, while blamed by politicians on freedom and
markets, are in fact the long-run effects of government policies emphasizing
short-run, visible benefits that mask hidden or delayed costs. In particular,
our economic woes reflect government’s reliance on coercion, whose harmful
effects expand over time, in contrast to voluntary cooperation, whose
beneficial effects expand over time.
Voluntary
market cooperation expands because the more time sellers have to respond to
increases in demand, the more their incentives lead to better ways of
accommodating buyers with improved output. Similarly, the more time buyers have
to respond to increases in supply, the more profitable uses are discovered.
That is, when you give individuals better incentives to voluntarily cooperate
in the marketplace, over time, they discover and implement more effective ways
to do so, expanding cooperation and the mutual benefits that result.
We see this
everywhere in personal computing and technology in which convenience, computing
power, and portability of devices increase constantly, at rates much faster
than most ever anticipated in earlier times. In contrast, when the state
employs coercion, it encourages buyers and sellers to act against what would be
in their self interest in a free economy. Over time, those who would otherwise
spend time thinking about their trading partners, instead respond to coercive
measures by expanding the ways they can evade the burdens imposed. In such a
situation, social cooperation contracts.....To Read More.....
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