Markets are not democratic

I saw this Mises quote on the LvMI community forum.

Here is Mises on this matter from “Planned Chaos” (http://mises.org/web/2714#Ch.3)

“The market is a democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote. It is true that the various individuals have not the same power to vote. The richer man casts more ballots than the poorer fellow. But to be rich and to earn a higher income is, in the market economy, already the outcome of a previous election. The only means to acquire wealth and to preserve it, in a market economy not adulterated by government-made privileges and restrictions, is to serve the consumers in the best and cheapest way. Capitalists and landowners who fail in this regard suffer losses. If they do not change their procedure, they lose their wealth and become poor. It is consumers who make poor people rich and rich people poor. It is the consumers who fix the wages of a movie star and an opera singer at a higher level than those of a welder or an accountant.”

–Mises

In the past, I have promoted this idea as market as democracy, but now I believe it is quite false.  The market is not a democracy as popularly understood.

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Value driven libertarianism.

If you don’t embrace multi-culturalism, you’re not libertarian.

If you discriminate in your business dealings or personal/religious/cultural affairs, you’re not libertarian.

If you aren’t for X, Y or Z, then you’re not libertarian.

Value driven libertarianism makes me mad.

I’ve been accused of using the NAP as a rhetorical device, but I believe that is only an attempt to dissuade me from constantly referring to what I consider a bedrock libertarian concept. Non-aggression.

I don’t care if people want to engage in bizarre sexual acts, I don’t care if they do or do not inter-marry and I certainly could care less what religion someone belongs to, as long as they do not promote their values to me through aggression. As long as they are content making decisions over their lives and not trying to make decisions over mine, we can co-exist regardless of what values they hold.

Some libertarians are not so forgiving. To them, libertarianism and a free market society carries with it certain guarantees of social structure, the end of some ideas and the institution of others.

I don’t buy that. I don’t know what a free market will produce, and I don’t pretend to know. People might try the free market, not like it, and impose a state upon themselves. Freedom allows all kinds of goofy decisions like that.

Watch out for libertarians who claim to have it all figured out. Odds are, they’re closet statists with their own social, economic and religious (or atheist) agendas.

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