How do you get people to do things which are good for them and good for each other? One possible plan would be to start with a definition of what is good and then develop the incentives to accomplish that good. In a world in which people are free to choose, there could even be a deeply human relationship between what is good and the incentives you develop. Let’s work through it and see . . .
What is good? Are you one of those seditious folks who think giving people what they want is good? If you are such a one, how would you go about giving people what they want? Would you ask them? This is imperfect since they can lie to try to please the questioner or to please themselves by answering in a way which pleases their view of themselves or their responses may be limited by the questions which the questioner asks because of the questioner’s own idea of what is good. Of course, you could simply tell them what is good for them and eliminate their choices altogether but that’s another post. Alternatively you could simply see what they are willing to freely trade for, a very objective and real way of expressing their idea of what is good for them?
If you think that what people are willing to pay or trade for is the best measure of what is good, then you have a starting point. If this is your idea, then you would probably create a free market in which people are freely permitted to exchange things of value which they own (payment) for other things which they consider to be of equal or greater value but which they don’t own yet. The desire for things which other people have and which you are willing to trade value for is called demand by some economists and it is at least one measure of what is good.
Supply, on the other hand, comes about by people seeking to create goods and services which others demand in order to have valuable things to trade for the goods and services created by others to satisfy their own demand. This is what the market is all about, matching buyers and sellers, supply and demand. In my experience this is the main reason most people go to work in the first place. Their incentive to work is to get something to trade with. Hmmm, it appears that there may even be a relationship here between supply and demand, work and appetite.
What does the speaker of the house think about this supply and demand idea of what is good? Says she,
Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance.
Don’t believe that she said that, watch her yourself in this clip from the Rachel Maddow show a few months ago.
Is Madam Speaker nuts? Certainly she could not have intended to say that. It must have been garbled to the extent of a Bushism. Creating artistic entrepreneurs who haven’t been discovered yet, that wouldn’t create real economic growth, would it? Certainly the speaker’s handlers got to her and made sure that she didn’t say that again, right? Wrong, here she is last week repeating her prescription for economic growth through stimulating entrepreneurs.
What happens to people who do not create that which others want to buy? In Pelosiworld they are subsidized to turn out mountains of unwanted but “artistically valuable” books, paintings, sculptures and photos. Seems as if we’re going to have a large supply of artistic goods. Unfortunately, however, there’ll still be about the same amount of demand for valuable things like food, health care, cars, gas, etc. If people aren’t willing to eat and drive less in order to get the artistic good you’re selling, there has been a mis-allocation of resources. There’s been an allocation of resources, human labor, to produce things which are not very valuable to others. The result of this mis-allocation, for instance, may be hunger without the food to satisfy it!!!! Get it, there is a relationship, huh? I know it’s harsh but in a world where people are unable to sell their art, they must get a real job for which people are willing to pay money!!!! At this job they will in turn create things others want and need. Hamburgers, computers, cars, medical care, whatever.
In Pelosiworld, while creating the goods and services people want, the better producers are going to be taxed extra in order to help pay the medical bills for otherwise starving artistes? Will food end up being a part of their governmentally provided medical treatment? Shelter? Where will it stop? Is this arrangement sensible to anyone? By creating a Pelosiworld we are in a place where people aren’t going to want to do the things which are hard, unpleasant or difficult but which have real value. In Pelosiworld we will subsidize the creation of things which have little or no value (remember Pelosi admits that the artistes don’t even create enough value to afford to pay for their own health insurance). Therefore, things that they might have created and for which there is a real demand will become even scarcer. While there is growth in both taxes on productive and valuable work and subsidies for creating things that are not valuable, guess which of these things Pelosiworld will create more of and which it’ll create less of?
I’ve got the answer to this conundrum, let’s import more undocumented workers in order to do the work that ‘Americans just won’t do.’ If we do this, however, we’ll have to make sure that the new players never catch on to the game.
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