No Coercion Exploring the idea of a stateless society.

Yard sale licensing

A friend of mine recently commented on one of my libertarian-themed facebook posts, saying that he believed purely free markets only help "businessmen" and harm "labor or the middle and working class." He wanted to know what examples existed of free market success stories. While there are several issues that could be addressed here, I was a little short on time and limited myself to this response:

As for successes of the free market, pretty much every good or service you make use of in your life is a success story of the free market. The things that make our lives easier, healthier, more enjoyable--these things are the results of a multitude of individuals interacting voluntarily to produce things that people want. These accomplishments are DESPITE government control and regulations, not BECAUSE of them. Think about it on a micro scale. You want to have a yard sale to get rid of a bunch of things you no longer want. You'll sell them for dirt cheap to people who do want them who would otherwise have to pay a lot more or go without. But imagine if, in order to "protect the consumer," the government required you to get a state license (costing several hundred dollars and many months of licensing school) before you could hold your yard sale. This would likely prevent you from ever holding your yard sale. Those people who are really hurting for money would have far fewer options for obtaining the things they want, and there would emerge a small group of state-licensed yard sale specialists who would be able to charge much higher prices, thus making use of state violence to obtain a higher-than-market profit at the expense of the financially strapped yard sale customers. This is how government regulation works in EVERY area of the economy. Wealth creation between two parties is maximized when interference with their transaction is minimized. The amount of wealth that government violently destroys or prevents from ever even being created is truly staggering.

Of course, there's also the fundamental point (made implicitly above) that every transaction, by definition, benefits both parties---otherwise, the transaction simply would not occur. Wealth is created on both sides, because both sides are made better off by the exchange. What every form of government action (taxes, regulations, subsidies, prohibitions, licensing, etc.) does is either outright prevent transactions or distort the decision-making process, resulting either in transactions that would not have occurred in the absence of force (and are thus unproductive) or in the prevention of productive transactions that would have taken place. Either way, there is a destruction of wealth, and society is worse off. Usually, this is compounded by the fact that most government policies actually serve to transfer any wealth that is produced (again, a smaller amount than would be created in the absence of government) to politically favored constituencies, which is both massively unjust and serves to motivate those groups to continue and expand those government policies while everyone from whom that wealth is being transferred fail to launch an effective opposition since each individual policy only transfers a small amount from them.

And just to head off the "OMG we'll all die if the state doesn't license doctors and plumbers" contingent out there: relax, we'll be just fine. State licensing does not "protect" consumers as much as it prevents competition and raises the prices we have to pay for those licensed services. I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't hire a service provider of any sort without the knowledge that the quality of their work is sufficient for my liking. And I don't get that information from the fact that these people have government licenses. I get it from places like Angie's List, brand identification, references, and general reputation. Just imagine all the ways a truly free market would devise to help us pick out the good doctors and plumbers and home builders. And even if such information is not totally free, think how much more money we'd have without the stifling taxes and wealth destruction of the state.

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