It can all be provided better by the same people who provide food to eat and clothes to wear - the market.
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It can all be provided better by the same people who provide food to eat and clothes to wear - the market.
I wonder how you substantiate that claim for yourself as I personally see the idea that the market is a panacea as just another utopia and simply an instance of wishful thinking.
Don't get me wrong, the market is certainly a great system to incentivize productivity, competition, progress and wealth creation. I don't object to that notion at all. But I certainly don't agree that it can provide a positive and an efficient solution to all problems out there.
To me it sounds like it should be absolutely obvious that the market in and of itself has no mechanism to provide justice and rule of law. What market mechanism do you think can lead to those things that are quite important to a prosperous society? Because if you don't have a rule of law that is somehow enforcible, you loose an extremely important component of the market - contracts as there will be no way to hold people and businesses to the agreements you have had with them. Oh, and patents and intellectual property too...
Additionally, how do you propose the market will lead to infrastructural development in any dependable and all-encompassing way. Keep in mind that it's not like you are proposing something that has never been tried. You can look to the history of the British railway system for instance. When it was maintained by private investors, it was fragmented, inefficient and plagued by incompatibility. The same goes with their electricity grid. Things got better only after the government stepped in.
Another network that would have had a very hard time arising and existing under normal market conditions would be the internet. We currently take it for granted, but many of us forget or never realized that it is in fact a government-sponsored project and it couldn't have remained free and open without government regulation. You see the market pushing for removal of net neutrality quite hard, so it's clear the market is not really incentivizing the providers to keep it open.
Also, how would the market provide disaster relief and emergency services?
And the last thing to mention again is health care. The US where the market has played a major role in it, has the one of the worst and least efficient systems in the developed world. A total market solution to that problem would lead to price gouging of the worst of sorts. Sure, you could say that the medical industry will be thriving, but you wouldn't be able to say that society would have access to proper health care and I don't see that as progress but as failure.
To me there is a long list of things that the market by itself is simply not equipped to deal with and to me it's completely unreasonable for us to expect it to be able to do so. There are projects that are simply best tackled on a larger scale and there is no way to take care of them without getting them financed somehow. To me a reasonable way to get those financed is taxation and I actually don't see any other alternative as to me the fact that they are needed is unquestionable.
In the recent hurricane disasters to strike Texas and Florida, most of the relief came from the private sector, not the government. (individuals donations, private charities, donations by businesses, and local churches that helped demo damaged home finishes)
There has certainly been a lot of support from private individuals, volunteers, businesses and so on, true. Still, the importance of fire departments and so on especially as first responders in disaster situations is quite important.
So you admit the market provides disaster relief?
Not exactly but close. I admit that private efforts have played a role in disaster relief. Calling people acting on their own volition outside government the market is incorrect as this is not a market driven reaction, it's people want to help. They are not doing it to get a reward or as a reaction to a market incentive, so this has nothing to do with the market. But sure, that happens.
Is it enough and would it be enough without the organized initial response from agencies whose job is to do that right away is another issue, but there are certainly people that get off their assess and volunteer to help and there are even more people that stay home but donate which is also help.
So, the best thing about government is that they keep regulations to a minimum? They are the source of all stifling regulations. The market is the thing you are saying they do a good job of allowing to work freely.
I did not remotely say anything like that.
Not all regulation is stifling. You need regulation to have something like the internet, you need regulation to have a justice system, you need regulation to make sure that employers are providing safe working conditions for their workers, you need regulations to make sure factories are not polluting the drinking water and so on.
There may be need for 'regulation' but it does not have to come from government. Ie. The people who know nothing about industry that they are regulting and are elected by people who also know nothing about the industry they ask to be regulated. lol what could go wrong?