Markets Attack, Or, Why Plan?

"...Market failure is hard to correct under the most favorable circumstances. Here is the crux of the debate: Market success is easy if all goes perfectly, but correcting market failure requires information, agreement and coordination, all of which are challenging at best.

The reality, therefore, is that we live in a world of market failure, which is in turn really hard to fix. And there is no obvious criterion for what we mean by fix anyway. Hence planning tasks, generally speaking, tend toward the troublesome and onerous.

...The logic that a given market would do better if subject to less planning takes 3 main forms: One, how respect for or a reassignment of property rights can correct many market failures; two, how hard it is for planners to get all the information they need to make the right decisions; and three, a complaint about the resulting redistribution of resources or property rights. These can be extremely valid points, especially in any specific situation. However, they do not in general imply that less planning is better.

...So when markets attack, or go bad, we should roll up our sleeves and fix them without doing more harm than good..."

Thanks to Randall Crane, via PLANET