A Quote by W. Brian Arthur
The invisible hand is not perfect. Indeed, the invisible hand is a little bit arthritic ... I'm a believer in free markets, but I think we need to be less naïve. We need to accept that markets give us pretty good solutions, but occasionally they will lock in something inferior.
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The invisible hand in politics operates in the opposite direction to the invisible hand in the market.
INVISIBLE BOY And here we see the invisible boy In his lovely invisible house, Feeding a piece of invisible cheese To a little invisible mouse. Oh, what a beautiful picture to see! Will you draw an invisible picture for me?
Since the dawn of civilization, markets have been ubiquitous. Many of us have benefited from their focus and efficiency. Yet two widely held beliefs - that markets are best left unregulated and that markets are inherently benign - are naive and outdated.
Many markets work best with little or no outside interference. But others - especially those subject to big 'externalities' - need a helping hand.
Dâna, charity. There is no higher virtue than charity. The lowest man is he whose hand draws in, in receiving; and he is the highest man whose hand goes out in giving. The hand was made to give always. Give the last bit of bread you have even if you are starving. You will be free in a moment if you starve yourself to death by giving to another. Immediately you will be perfect, you will become God.
On the one hand, you have markets such as Singapore and Thailand, with an extremely strong inbound booker market and a well-developed tourism industry. You also have markets that are just opening up to tourists, like Myanmar, that have massive growth potential and then markets that are extremely fragmented within themselves such as Indonesia.
People who intend only to seek their own benefit are “led by an invisible hand to serve a public interest which was no part of” their intention. I say that there is a reverse invisible hand: People who intend to serve only the public interest are led by an invisible hand to serve private interests which was no part of their intention.
I think controversy is an interesting thing in that it usually goes hand in hand with starting conversations that surround taboo or under-discussed topics that need to be discussed and need to be less in the shadows, in my opinion.
These people say free markets are the way to go, but wink, wink, the markets aren't really free. They're just a protectionist racket, and we have to pay for it all on every level. It's really quite extraordinary, and immoral, and illegal. These things need to be named, and shamed, and outed, and mocked, and prosecuted.
One of the appeals of markets, as a public philosophy, is they seem to spare us the need to engage in public arguments about the meaning of goods. So markets seem to enable us to be non-judgmental about values. But I think that's a mistake.
While the invisible hand looks after the private sector, the invisible foot kicks the public sector to pieces.
There is no economic imperative that will condemn us to deplete our vital resource base, but neither is there an invisible hand that will prevent us from doing so.
Isn't it interesting that markets are not just perfect? In business school and economic theory, you learn all about those perfect markets, and there's no such thing as a perfect market.
You can go to any second-hand store and get an amazing piece - I have pieces from flea markets at home. You don't need to buy throwaway furniture.
I am convinced that both markets and free trade are good, but the traditional answer that we give to students to explain why they are good, the one based on perfect competition and Pareto optimality, is becoming untenable. Something much more interesting and more complicated is going on here
You need a government that believes in government. It also believes in markets and wants to give markets the best, the greatest opportunity, but is trying to govern well.
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