Why does everyone say that the economy is bad? Isn’t it true that no eonomy is good or bad, up or down? It seems to me that, all we really can do is say how much intervention there is in the economy, or how much agression and violence there is to interfere with the economy.
Maybe you could make a case for a bad economy being one that has alot of interference and a good economy as a free market with no interference or agression.
True the economy is neither good nor bad. But also the economy is created by the actions of consumers and suppliers, is forever changing and NOT always changing to the positive. The reason, consumers are not always changing to the positive. The economy exists to satisfy consumers. The economies that do this best are the ones where the least amount of force is used on actors in the economy. These have the greatest degree of freedom for individuals to prosper by satisfying other consumers. This is the process of civilization.
An economy is defined as good or bad by the beneficiaries of force used in the economy. The housing, construction, finance, etc industries throught the economy was good prior to 2006 and then turned bad. They liked the force (Regulation and Over Supply of Credit) that allowed them to make profits beyond what they would have gained without the force. When consumers changed their preferences in light of the number of bankruptcies then these same folks defined the economy as bad.
It makes more sense to say that there is more of an economy and less of an economy, I suppose.
That looks good to me. Except for the fact that alot of economists might look at it as being measurable with econometrics. Some might say that “more” or “less” economy is subjective and ours is just as good as yours.
Eh. Frustrating.
Well the reason I say that is because of Mises’ comments and the impossibility of a socialist economy. If we define economy as the rational allocation of scarce means to acheive individuals subjective ends a socialist state does not have an economy, therefore as the state begins to intervene less the allocation of resources becomes more and more rational, and there becomes “more of an economy” for lack of better words.