The Myth of a Risk Free World-State Versus Market
“The Market is the sum of all voluntary human action. [4] If one acts non-coercively, one is part of the Market.”
~ Samuel Edward Konkin
“The State is a group of people who have managed to acquire a virtual monopoly of the use of violence throughout a given territorial area. In particular, it has acquired a monopoly of aggressive violence, for States generally recognize the right of individuals to use violence (though not against States, of course) in self-defense”
~ Murray Rothbard
The world is full of risks and this is never going to change. Given the inability to change this, favoring one politico-economic system over the other can’t be based on notions of completely eradicating risk. The presence of or lack of state involvement will not produce utopia. A question remains, knowing that perfection isn’t possible, should the state or market be favored? As an Individualist Anarchist, I favor opting for the choice that grants the widest amount of freedom possible to individuals. Not only do I have a moral opposition to state coercion but varying individual context makes choosing the market far more practical. To flesh out this claim, I’ll look at some examples where a choice between market and state can be made.
Drug regulation, via requirement of written permission from a doctor, is an obvious example. Here, the practicality of favoring the market is readily apparent. Say, someone who is terminally ill and in severe pain could use some morphine. Why should they or someone acting on their behalf have to track down a doctor or hospital and thus have their suffering prolonged any longer than necessary. Some would say that this system is in place to protect people from themselves and abusing drugs but a terminally ill person is more likely to care about relieving pain than developing an addiction. This same logic applies to the Federal Drug Administration which has not been full proof in protecting people from unsafe drugs. Delay of a drug to market, could have fatal consequences for those whose lives might be saved. One such example is the AIDS medicine dextran sulfate being kept off the shelves when patients might have decided the benefits outweighed the risks in their particular situation.
Natasha | Anarchy, Miscellaneous
I just don’t know where to start. What’s with these “market solutions” to everything under the sun? Quite frankly, every time I go near a market, I feel like I’ve been robbed or swindled. I distrust businesspeople who mainly worship money. I also don’t think that all human interactions can be reduced to market-like tranasactions between buyers and sellers. At some point, we’re not shoppers but citizens. And then the decisions for what kind of a polity we are going to live under and what kind of rules it will have are a matter of collective decision-making, not individual whimsy.
You seem to have some kind of problem with the need for a prescription for drugs. Maybe the market can solve this! Let’s see. The market consists of potential drug users (everyone) and drug manufacturers: large corporate entities. The large corporate entities advertise and go on about how you may have some kind of health problem–obesity, heart disease, viruses… the potential is endless. Then people, without consulting a doctor, are supposed to go shopping for the pills, injections, bottles of snake oil…etc. that the drug companies produce. What dose to take? Will it interact with other medicines? Does the whole treatment need to be taken or can I stop when I feel better…etc etc… Then the clowns start dropping dead or having flipper-babies or passing out behind the wheel etc. Where does responsibility lie in this market civilization? The advertiser or the idiot in front of the TV? What about others who may be harmed by these free choices to self-medicate (people run over by passed out folks, children of people who have heart attacks and croak, flipper-babies etc.)?
This libertarian stuff always seems to come up short in these regards. Instead, glaring generalities are posited from which logical conclusions can be extrapolated: e.g.: if we want freedom, we have to be able to do anything without anyone or anything saying “no.” There I solved all the world’s problems.
But that isn’t how anything really works. Years ago, I recall the libertarian radio talk show host in Boston, David Brudnoy, dragging out all these crank cancer cures that were unavailable in the US, like Laetril–some apricot pit concoction–that convinced a whole bunch of people to go to Mexico for bogus cancer treatments. They subsequently died. I guess they made free choices. You can do that. But it is irresponsible to prop up a bogus drug peddaling industry under the cover of free choice.
Societies, and their governments, are set up to protect people from a variety of ills and dangers. While a complete nanny state is undesirable, the other extreme is also undesirable. In between is where politics happens. It does no one any good to delegitimize the political sphere as just so much authoritarianism, when a good deal of what it does is desired by a vast number of people. They also do some reprehensible crapola, and there are many reasons for that. But that goes beyond the usual web-oriented posting system or the patience of the web-consuming public.
These are serious comments and they are meant to stimulate thinking on this issue and on the general ideas behind political statements.
Yours,
Ray