Why Free Markets?

Why Free Markets? por Steven Horwitz:

Those who stand to gain concentrated benefits from regulation, such as firms, will lobby to get regulations that benefit them, while the costs are dispersed across hundreds of millions of us .. As markets get increasingly politicized, it will be those with the best access to the political process who will call the tune and benefit from the regulatory process ..

.. the argument against a great deal of regulation is precisely that it harms the least well off it is trying to help and provides unwarranted privileges for those who need them least. There is plenty of historical evidence of the role of big business in lobbying for and helping to write a whole variety of regulations .. this is a feature of the mixed economy, not a bug. My First Law of Political Economy is “No one hates capitalism more than capitalists,” and the mixed economy is not accidentally rigged to benefit the powerful. That is why it’s there in the first place.

As long as the state regulates, the possibility of private profits will lure with those with power and resources into that game and it’s a game they will inevitably win. And the losers will be those without the power and resources. Free markets don’t give us utopia, but I really do believe they do better by the poor than do regulated markets for the reasons I’ve outlined.