In the Free Market, many claim that their wouldn’t be enough schools or roads. Refute this Statement.
Technically, you would have to define “enough”. But to get to what I would think is the heart of your question, as to how the market would provide these things at all:
The Privatization of Roads and Highways
(see the links section in both of those as well)
How would a private road system work?
Making roads safer? How will privatization help?
“Disestablish Public Education”
“What If Public Schools Were Abolished?”
The Market for Teaching and Learning
“The Costs of Compulsory Education”
“Competition and Higher Education”
“The Common School Movement and Compulsory Education”
Education: Free and Compulsory
“Enterprising Education: Doing Away with the Public School System” (PDF)
How could a free market provide effective education for poor children?
Threads:
But…But…But Who Will Build All The Roads?
There is never enough of everything, that’s the entire point of economics. Schools and roads are really no different than cars or space stations, we have to spend scarce resources to produce them. And as with all other goods, the market is vastly superior at producing schools and roads than the state. That does not mean there will necessarily be enough of them, as there might be more valuable uses of our resources than schools or roads. Too few roads and schools is a good thing if the alternative is not enough food and medicine. If the state builds “enough” roads and schools, even if it could do this just as efficiently as the market, it would take away resources from more urgent needs.
Most socialists have long conceded the “to build roads”-argument and have since switched to an “to protect the environment”-argument in favor of national socialism, which will require another few decades and a few hundred million lives to seep in.
It can’t be refuted because it is correct – a reflection of reality. Both in “the free market” and in “the chained market”, there will never be “enough” of anything. Unless you define “enough” first…
Z wins.
Aww come on. That’s a cop out. All he has to do is admit poor wording on his part and then come back with: “Okay smartypants. How would a completely free market provide enough schools and roads (and maintenence thereof) to maintain and/or grow beyond the standard of living we have now?”
Then where will you be?
And how do we quantify standard of living?
Wheylous, John James, you guys are probably the only two quality posters left on the forums (sorry Conza), don’t start trolling each other.
It’s fruitless to look at aggregate demand, for roads or for anything else. What we should ask is ‘John’ getting enough roads or schools. Well on the market John has an option, if he wants better education for his kids he can buy it by sacrificing something else or working longer or harder or more productively. On the market John will always get enough schools for his kids, with enough being how much he desires a quality education for his kids relative to the other things he wants.
On the other hand he can’t just buy more roads. He can use the roads more though, and he could take roads of a different quality (or travel in his fancy flying car as a result of the economic development and technological advancement that would surely occur in a truly free society).
How would a completely free market provide enough X* (and maintanance thereof) to maintain and/or grow beyond the standard of living we have now?
*X = {bread, lollipops, pink Ferraris}
That claim will typically rest on welfare analysis, which is fundamentally flawed, even on it’s own terms.
- It rests upon cardinal (quantifiable) utility.
- It then uses it’s ‘utils’ to make inter-personal comparisons of utility.
Even if we accept both of these premises, which Austrians don’t, it doesn’t lead to the conclusion that we should subsidise goods with ‘positive consumption externalities’. For one thing, who decides what the merit goods are? I am huge fan of Star Trek. if everyone watched Star Trek I would be much happier, therefore Star Trek should be subsidised since the external benefit to me of you watching Star Trek isn’t included in the market price. Clearly this is absurd, but it’s the same argument that mainstream economists will make for public scholing. Attempting to apply ‘shadow prices’ to peoples values does not solve the problem.
Secondly, is it only market actions that have external costs and benefits? No, externalities actually apply more to the state than to the market. Certainly most people on this forum feel that there is a cost imposed on them in the form of having to pay taxes beyond the monetary cost of the taxes themselves (the cost of githat the state doesn’t have to take into account when they raise taxes to pay for public education.
There is no way of avioding externalities in the real world, they simply happen. The only way to minimise them is to allow stable property rights allow private activism to do the rest. Sure, right now Star Trek is being underconsumed, but if I open up a charity I can spend my money promoting Star Trek consumption to the extent that I feel it benefits me.
John James as the statist:
“Exactly. How would this ‘free market’ you love so much and seem to think is the answer to everything provide enough of anything to maintain the standard of living we have now? You’re making my whole point for me.”
Who do you think provides bread, lollipops, and pink Ferraris now?
How do you think all the ingredients for the bread, lollipops, and pink Ferraris get from point A to point B? The “invisible hand” of the magical free market just teleports them to the factories and then to the stores?
They get transported on roads, railways, by sea, and through air.
Who made the bread for the Lada factory workers in the USSR? The “invisible hand” magically produced bread and Ladas for the people to enjoy? The fact that something is currently produced by/in a “chained” market is somehow proof that the invisible hand of the free market would be inferior in doing the same? Based on what logic or history?
Anyway, I fail to see how any of this proves that there are (or would be) “enough” roads, schools, bread, lollipops, and pink Ferraris – free or chained markets notwithstanding. What’s “enough”, and according to whom? There’re sure not enough pink Ferraris for me, and I have a feeling the situation wasn’t much better in the USSR, either.
John James as the statist:
“Oh you mean the roads and railways created and managed by government? Bingo. Which leads back to my initial question.”
Show me proof that it wouldn’t be. If the free market was so capable of doing all this stuff why did it need government to make it actually happen?
Are you actually trying to straw man my argument? I already told you what “enough” is. And all you’ve done is run around in a circle. I asked how would this “free market” of yours would provide schools and roads, and you answered my question with a question: “how does it provide lollipops?” So I played your game and answered with a question right back: how are those ingredients (and finished products) transported to where they need to go? And your answer was “roads”.
So we’re right back where we started. Want to try again?
Who says that the free market needed anything from government to make something happen? Did you ask it?
Say I clubbed you on the head, dragged you into a dungeon, and kept you chained as entertainment for my dogs while feeding you dinner for the rest of your life. Then some smartass comes up to you and asks: “If you are so capable of feeding yourself why did you need my buddy over here to club you over the head and keep you chained into a dungeon to make it actually happen? Prove to me that you are not going to die of hunger if you were to be set free.”
So then answer my initial question.
[Are you seeing the circular nature that your argumentation method leads to? You’re not getting anywhere because you’re not really addressing the heart of the statist’s question, which is basically a request for an explanation of how a free market would provide such “public goods”. I don’t think this is an unusual or outlandish request, as it is difficult to understand how these things would work absent a government, if one hasn’t taken the time to look into it. I actually think it’s a quite reasonable and understandable request. And don’t try to tell me you came up with the possible solutions on your own and were never exposed to proposals by anarchist economists. It’s why works like The Market for Liberty, Chaos Theory, The Machinery of Freedom, and all the ones I linked in my initial post in this thread exist. Why in the hell did Block spend all that time writing The Privatization of Roads and Highways if all he had to do was say “you want to know how private roads would work? Well, how do lollipops work? Bam. QED.”
Simply arguing semanitcs and vague generalized concepts is not going to do anything to convince average everyday statists. It just makes them think you’re either dumb or insane.]
Do those books answer your initial question?
“How would a completely free market provide enough schools and roads (and maintenence thereof) to maintain and/or grow beyond the standard of living we have now?”
How does suggesting a possible way of providing X prove/show that there would be “enough” of X (or at least as much of X as currently is in existence)? This is where juxtaposing the provision of bread, lollipops, and pink Ferraris in a free market vs., say, USSR helps, IMO.