Hayekians Conundrum

From Zanecorpwiki

2010-02-18

Perhaps the hard thing for hard-line free trade advocates--in which economics is an emergent system--is the understanding that anti-free trade sentiment is a part of that system. In other words, it's kind of silly on the one hand to say, "the system that emerges is better than anyone could have designed" and at the same time bemoan protectionism, regulation, etc. Aren't these things are just inputs into the system? If we should trust in emergent systems, and the system that has emerged has regulation, then isn't bemoaning regulation and protectionism just picking and choosing--designing--the system you'd prefer?

Russ Roberts kind of gets close to this. When challenged by other free marketeers with something like, "Don't you want to write a book where regulators are the villain?", he responds with "well, this is an emergent system, regulation isn't designed". He doesn't go all the way.

Personally, I don't think you should. I would like a more (classically) liberalized economy, but I think it's silly to that complete laissez faire would result in anything other than plutocracy and ultimately the collapse of anything like a free market. The truth is that markets work more than almost anything else for lots of things, but they don't work for everything.

At least not as we understand them. Personally, I believe that there may be some kind of "grand unified theory" and tinkering is itself part of the process, so pushing for one way over another is good and part of it. I'm also fairly certain, however, that "the best" or "the truth" or whatever it is will not come from a single monolithic world view.