On Thursday, August 30, 2001 6:09 PM Olga Bourlin fauxever@sprynet.com
wrote:
> Yeah, but ... leaving things just to "individuals" didn't work out too
well
> in the past, did it? What's wrong with a checks-and-balances system?
> Accountability ... coalitions ... these are not irresponsible ideas, and
> they can certainly be part of a governing system. People (individuals,
> after all) make up government - it's not like it's some kind of amorphous
> entity of The Bad Crimson Guy with Horns.
The problem is that government control separates choice from cost and
knowledge. People voluntarily interacting does not do this. Costs are
localized to the decisionmaker and relevant knowledge is usually created and
spread locally.
This has nothing to do with whether people are good or bad. The
institutional setting -- regulation versus freedom -- itself creates certain
incentives regardless of what kind of people populate it AND also controls
how well people in such settings can deal with uncertainties (and each
other).
And I wanted to stay out of these political debates!:/
Cheers!
Daniel Ust
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
See my "Macroeconomics for the Real World"at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/Macro.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:22 MDT