| > Look at the 2002 Nobel Price by V. Smith for this one. Can you please elaborate? I don't know enough of the details to understand the link you're making. > The existence of market failure is no position. Just for the fact that there is market failure does not have any implication on what to do about it. The first sentence is incorrect, and is not implied by the second sentence, which is correct. The 'position' is that, in order to have an efficient market, one should not do things that cause market failure. It is a negative position rather than a positive one (DON'T do X rather than DO X), but it is still a position. It informs you about what sort of things you shouldn't do if you want a market to operate efficiently. > That is simply something that is often assert because it makes for good propaganda Saying that collusion can lead to market failure, and thus must be proscribed if one wishes to have an efficient market, is not propaganda. It is the kind of thing that must be said, seemingly repeatedly, to illustrate the point that markets are not a magical solution to the allocation problem. The argument you subsequently make, that "we don't know better", is both completely standard and completely wrong. We may well not know better than an efficient market - I'm not sure but it seems very reasonable. However, moving from that to suggest that imposing controls such as anti-collusion regulations (along with a whole host of other measures to avoid market failure), is unnecessary, is unsubstantiated. If you examine your own argument, it is based by your own admission on an assertion. The foundation for why one might think that what you are saying is true (market theory) explicitly lays out the assumptions required for it to work, and you ignore these on a purely ideological basis. |
With position I am talking about politcal position, witch is what it is all about.
> The 'position' is that, in order to have an efficient market, one should not do things that cause market failure.
"one should not" who is "one"? I dont understand what you mean. The goverment should defnetly not do things that cause market failure, and in my opinion the should do things against it either.
> Saying that collusion can lead to market failure, and thus must be proscribed if one wishes to have an efficient market, is not propaganda.
My point was to say that, its propaganda to say that free market people dont belive in market failure, nothing else.
> It is the kind of thing that must be said, seemingly repeatedly, to illustrate the point that markets are not a magical solution to the allocation problem.
Again, nobody is arguing for "perfect markets". This is what seemingly repeatedly has to be said.
> However, moving from that to suggest that imposing controls such as anti-collusion regulations (along with a whole host of other measures to avoid market failure), is unnecessary, is unsubstantiated
No it is not. Also you only addressed the first part of my argument. Its hard to argue the general case here, there is tons of litrature showing how for example anti-trust regulation was used to keep prices high. There are tons of cases where goverment was used to enforce cartels as well.
So if the goverment task of managing cartels would not exists then there might be less cartels overall.
> The foundation for why one might think that what you are saying is true (market theory) explicitly lays out the assumptions required for it to work, and you ignore these on a purely ideological basis.
You might be surprised but there no just the walrasian standard model (or Arrow–Debreu). Also just because the make these assumition and the need to be true in there model does not mean that it is the same for the real world. You are assuming that the standard model used in econ 101 is reality.
Well it is not, and everybody who studied economics a bit knows this. You need to bring in transaction costs, theory of the firm, information economics, you need to bring in instiutional economics, there needs to be a explaition market ajustment and so on. Also you need to model politcal economy, are you really so naive to assume that the correction of market failure is also just like in these models. A completly costless third party that only ever does anything when the model goes out of balance, interduce politcal economy into the mix, try modeling 'goverment failure' as well.
Again, I feel I have to say this again, I do not make the argument that a market always is or always reaches generall equillibrum very fast(as in Arrow-Debreu). The simple idea that you seam to have is that any diffrence between Arrow-Debreu assumtions and the real world must be corrected is not woreable in practice, and I belive no economist would still try this.