Condorcet pointed out that the first problem with voting and elections is determining how to sort out how a group establishes its preferences when several options are on offer. Modern democratic thinking almost invariably boils issues and candidates down to two options one of which must receive >50% of the votes. Given a choice between apples and bananas there are four possible positions voters can take.
A. Pro-Apples B. Anti-Bananas C. Anti-Apples D. Pro-Bananas
Assume preferences are split 25% for each position. If apples are elected only 25% will enthusiastically support the outcome. And so with bananas. Depending on depth of feeling the vast majority will be either marginally ambivalent or hostile to the results of the entire process.
And this is a good thing.
Markets (AFAIK) also have their abstract structures. Some markets by their nature will tend to having only 1 buyer (military uniforms perhaps); some will tend to have only 1 supplier (electricity, water, police protection); some will be open to an almost infinite number of buyers and sellers (cabbages, fish, and toothpicks). The structure of each market depends upon barriers to entry. These can be either natural or political.
Natural barriers arise when a good or service cannot be easily or conveniently duplicated. To put in competing sewage systems is physically impractical. Blanket standards, as in rail gauges, rail lines or computer operating systems, lead to oligopoly and monopoly. Few can afford or find the space next to the garden shed for a nuclear reactor.
Political barriers often arise due to licensing of agents (doctors, lawyers), or by making certain goods and services illegal (marijuana, prostitution) or by limiting ownership (tasers and prescription drugs). I understand that some municipalities limit taxi licenses keeping the supply of cabs low thus guaranteeing cab drivers higher fares without engaging in direct price fixing.
Many pro-free-market policy makers contort themselves like yoga masters to try and set their markets free!
However, since the beginning of recorded history, from encouraging the construction of harbors, bridges and piers, to granting guilds protection, to minting currency, to chartering joint stock companies to settle colonies across the ocean, to providing bread in times of famine, governments have had a role to play in structuring markets.
This brings one back to the core abstraction of modern political-economy:
A. pro-free markets B. anti-free markets C. anti-vassal markets D. pro-vassal markets
Few shall be satisfied. L'inteligence sans volonté n'aboutit ŕ rien, n'est-ce pas?... Mais, la volonté sans intelligence?... Catastrophe!... Celine
