[kubb]

It's optimizing for something, but ultimately, markets can also be outcompeted by central planning in some sectors.

I view the market more as playing the role of a modern God, something that "works in mysterious ways" and is "omnipresent, omnisapient, and benevolent". Not something we would dare to question, because it’s way too complicated for our little minds to understand. Instead we just need to believe in it.

[__MatrixMan__]

The way you say "outcompeted" makes it seem like you're evaluating efficiency in both cases, but isn't direction the more important criteria?

It doesn't really matter if a car without a steering wheel can be faster than one without on account of being lighter. One is going where you want it to, and the other is crashing into things.

The economy, as we're practicing it today, is a car without a steering wheel.

[mym1990]

Somewhat of a weird example…the one without a steering wheel could be autonomous, or the place you want to get to is in a completely straight line from where you start. Also in your example you have both cars without steering wheels.

[miyoji]

> the one without a steering wheel could be autonomous

How silly, even autonomous vehicles have steering. They may be built without the wheel, but they have some kind of steering mechanism

> or the place you want to get to is in a completely straight line from where you start

I hope your wheels never lose alignment and that you're pointed exactly where you want to go at the start.

It's not a weird example at all if you don't come up with crazy unrealistic situations that don't match actual cars or the metaphor.

[mhluongo]

By that logic, from my perspective - your family life, as we're practicing it today, it a car without a steering wheel.

The church down the street from me, that I have nothing to do with, is a car without a steering wheel. My local town, of which I'm only 1 member, is a car without a steering wheel.

Just because you see a system that you don't understand or control doesn't mean it's dangerous. The first instinct shouldn't be to centralize power.

[bluGill]

That objection applies to the other options as well. Believe in...

I like the market because it lets me make more choices of my own. I don't like zoning codes because too often they are placing restrictions that restrict freedom for some value that isn't objective.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Markets create the illusion of choice between monopolies.

I don't like monopolies because they restrict my freedom far more than zoning codes do.

Ultimately markets are not a democratic choice. You can choose a Mac or a PC, or Amazon vs Netflix.

You (often) can't choose to join a union, to get affordable healthcare that won't bankrupt you, or to have a national policy that prioritises the needs of renters over the profits of private equity.

[mym1990]

I feel like in this case, the “Amazon or Netflix” example is particularly bad because I feel like I’m actually drowning in streaming providers.

You will also typically have the option to simply opt out, although this is getting less rare.

I think my point is that there are typically still many options, but the best options are controlled by few players.

[inigyou]

Markets used to be hundreds or thousands of people who were roughly peers and they still work well in that situation. When I go to the riverside market on Saturday to buy fabric for a project, there are 10 different fabric stalls. On this one little river bank alone! Each one of them has a different selection and they all want me to buy their fabric. This is the only thing that people used to think of as a market, and it probably does work well. Since that time, however, the term has been twisted beyond comprehension.

[Rygian]

> I don't like zoning codes because too often they are placing restrictions that restrict freedom for some value that isn't objective.

That might be a literal case of Chesterton's fence.

[inigyou]

Zoning codes have some uses, doesn't mean they're still net positive value. Maybe the current situation is so bad that letting a pig farm or a coal power plant be build right in the middle of a residential neighborhood is actually a better tradeoff than whatever we have now.

In many European places there are only a few zones: farming/industry, mixed commercial/residential, and of course random other stuff like parks. And when you build you can only go a couple stories taller than the average in a certain radius unless you're explicitly approved to build a skyscraper. This height limit is also displayed on the zoning map but I believe it's regularly adjusted.

[kubb]

Depends which objection you mean...

But your choices are more limited than you might think. Ultimately what's available to you is decided by the economic machinery upstream.

[lapcat]

> That objection applies to the other options as well.

True.

> I like the market because it lets me make more choices of my own.

What about when it doesn't? Markets consolidate. They form monopolies and duopolies. The only counterbalance in this situation, the only entities more powerful than massive multinational corporations, are governments and regulators.

I think the problem is the faith that any system will self-regulate, whether the system is economic or political, as if we can just write the founding rules of the system, and then the system will take care of itself and operate to the greatest benefit of the public.

Markets can get captured by wealthy interests. Governments can get captured by wealthy interests. Corruption is perpetual. Those who seek benefit for themselves will interfere in the system, so those who seek to preserve the public benefit must also interfere in the system. Not the invisible hand but eternal vigilance is required. The question is not whether the government will interfere in the markets; the question is who will control that interference, the masses of voters or the much smaller "donor" class.

[bluGill]

Every system can be captured by wealthy interests. Markets are not unique there. Once in a rare while someone not wealthy captures a system - but they inevitably use that capture to become wealthy so it doesn't really matter.

Classical liberalism is the least likely for that to happen to, but it has happened there too over and over in history as well. I still support classical liberalism, which is not the same as supporting the market even though classical liberalism ends up being a market.

[forgetfreeman]

"I like the market because it lets me make more choices of my own."

Fair enough but not all option spreads are equal. For example having 35 flavors of snack chips in the grocery store is objectively less valuable than food being broadly affordable, or any of a number of other things that would be directly hostile to shareholder value.

You don't like zoning codes because to date nobody has tried to build a trash incinerator next door to where you live, which ironically is evidence that zoning kinda works.

[bluGill]

Why do I care about a trash incinerator? The truth is I don't.

I care that my air is clean -that includes smell. I care that the trash gets there safely (when on the public roads the drivers need to be safe even when my kids are riding their bikes on the road). There are a few other issues. However the incinerator itself I'm not against.

[eszed]

I agree. To expand your point, that requires upstream regulation of trash incinerators (and road safety, which I'll ignore because developed economies mostly have that at least nominally in place), to make sure it's not a noxious neighbor. Where that doesn't exist, there will be pressure for (blunt force and inefficient) zoning codes to keep the smelly stuff away.

That works for incinerators (which I know - yay technical progress - can be made unnoticeable) but not for things that are irremedially (for now) obnoxious. The answer, I think, is again to put the onus of regulation on the actor by saying: you can't put thing within these sorts of areas unless you achieve these liveability targets; in return, a previously conforming industrial plant, or airport, or whatever, would be protected against being forced out of existence because neighbors encroach and then change the zoning rules. (This actually happens.)

There will be edge cases and problems, of course, but I think they're better problems than current zoning regime. Critically, this encourages continued development of industrial process and practice: build a better incinerator and you can build it in more places.

I believe Japan's zoning system has some of these features.

[dh2022]

I don’t follow. Your first sentence says you do not care about trash incinerators, presumably next to your house. Your second sentence says you care about the smell.

Trash incinerators are very smelly. You are contradicting yourself. I don’t get it.

[inigyou]

But if someone invented a new type that didn't smell, it should be allowed. Regulate consequences, not causes. The power substation down the road is disguised as a brick house, because the rule was ultimately about maintaining the look of the area and not about forbidding power substations.

[dh2022]

Much better explanation-thank you!

[ToucanLoucan]

> I like the market because it lets me make more choices of my own.

Are you making your own choices?

Do you sincerely believe that when one of the largest pillars of the American economy right now is staffed from top to bottom with PhD holders who use everything they know about psychology to make you think certain ways? To want shit you don't need? To make you play games you don't like? To make you consume art that makes you feel nothing? To make you hate people you don't know? To make you eat food that makes you feel shitty? Do you really make your own choices?

To be clear this is not meant as an attack. I'm just saying there are trillions of dollars on the line in making people, at scale, make choices. Do you really believe you are an island, free from influence? Do you honestly think your wants, needs, desires are not socially informed?

[bluGill]

You say that as if there is any alternative. Every other system as well has people who are good at psychology spreading propaganda.

[kelseyfrog]

There is no alternative[1]. Or in other words, Omelas is more believable if there is a kid in a hole.

1.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative

[ToucanLoucan]

Oh I'm not questioning that at all. I'm just saying if they aren't really your choices, why is making them valuable to you? Sure, you have 30 different choices of peanut butter to pick from, but you always pick the same one, because it's what your mom used when you were a kiddo, or because you don't like the oil separating ones, or because the chunky makes you feel like it's healthy even though it's loaded down with as much sugar as a Coke.

What does choice even mean in that kind of environment?

[bluGill]

I have changed my peanut butter choice - when science started realizing trans fat was a problem I switched before the law changed to reflect science. I have also tried various of the 30 different options in other situations and found the one I personally like best. The value isn't just that I can make a choice, it is also that other people really do make different choices.

You are forgetting about the time factor. I don't make a choice every time, but I'm not a 22 year old out on his own for the first time either (22 was about 30 years ago for me, and there are reasonable odds I have another 30 years to go). I don't have to make a choice every time to take advantages of choices.

[swid]

It’s funny you defend your independence by giving explanations of how you changed your peanut butter buying habits. The point was we don’t care what kind of peanut butter you buy; it’s not a meaningful kind of choice to have.

[admjs]

What's an example where central planning outcompetes the market?

[TheOtherHobbes]

Any industry or economic activity where extractive financialisation takes priority over productive economic activity that delivers human value.

Example: the UK's privatisation of water utilities. The UK's water now exist to turn government handouts into dividends while providing as little practical value as possible.

This is not hyperbole. The industry literally dumps shit in the UK's rivers to save operating expenses, and has built zero new reservoirs since privatisation.

[mylifeandtimes]

let's reverse the question. Where are markets expected to be optimal?

> definition of 'perfect competition' perfect competition, in which there are large numbers of identical suppliers and demanders of the same product, buyer and sellers can find one another at no cost, and no barriers prevent new suppliers from entering the market.

And that perfect competition provides the price signals that allow the market to be more competitive.

The less that holds true, the less efficient the market is going to be.

What is the price signal on education?

What is the price signal on public infrastructure?

What is the price signal on rule of law and the ability to enforce contracts?

[dh2022]

City transit-it transports more people than taxis and uber put together. The trade off is public transit is slower (in my case 35 minutes by link-rail vs 15 minutes by car, and probably 20 minutes if I were to take an uber)

[amanaplanacanal]

Electric service to the home, streets, policing, fire and rescue.

[kubb]

Wartime production mobilization, public health (vaccine procurement, disease eradication), natural monopolies like power grids.

Public transport, water and sewage systems, infrastructure like roads and bridges are more of a hybrid model with a strong planning component, and private contractors (who consume a lot of public funds and often misuse them).

[appplication]

These are good examples and it’s even worth noting that the net impact of these can be a huge boost to the market. But it is a local and greedy optimizer. It doesn’t think “would having public transit improve the economy long term” it thinks “could I make enough on fares to justify the investment” (which is almost always no, at least relative to other investments). This is the nature of positive externalities. They are value that the market is unable to weigh in its decision making.

[mylifeandtimes]

Yes, as you say the market is a local (both in space and time) and greedy optimizer.

Long-term payoffs that increase the value of all participants in society, such as education, healthcare, infrastructure (roads including public transportation, water, electricity, ...), are demonstrably better served by government than by business.

[grey-area]

Healthcare.