Markets Make Mistakes, but the State is a Mistake

Markets fail because people fail. However, markets also embody a drive toward continuous self-improvement: their "failures" are the means through which they become ever more successful, ever more capable of multiplying scarce goods and services of ever higher quality. On the other hand, politics not just fails, but it is a failure, a permanent and inherent one at that: the more it "succeeds" in accomplishing its goals, the more miserably it fails in making the world better, the more it plunges the world into the planned chaos of instutionalized violence, aggression, coercion, and parasitism.

In other words, embrace market "failures" as valuable lessons in the school of prudential virtues, but denounce and work against political "successes" by recognizing them as inevitable social tragedies waiting to happen. Side with the best, but not with the best for the worst.

A Brief but Obligatory Tribute to Jobs

In a world in which the majority of opinion-forming outlets have been lately spewing forth economic nonsense of the most vulgar kind, including the claims that value destruction brings prosperity, spending and indebtedness drive economic development, and large-scale creation of colored paper tickets or virtual bookkeeping entries can create real wealth, Jobs and Apple were an island of sanity, a reminder that there are no short-cuts to changing the world for the better, and no paths leading to that goal other than the ethos of hard work, advanced specialization and division of labor, long-term investments leading to the accumulation of productive capital, innovative vision, and keen entrepreneurial foresight.

He was the creative genius of our age, so if there are any people who genuinely deserve celebration, he was no doubt one of them.