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Kevin Williamson celebrates the spontaneous order of markets – markets featuring both competition and cooperation [2]. (HT Richard Fulmer) A slice:
What is truly remarkable about 21st-century capitalism is not the competition – creatures that aren’t even quite sentient, like catfish, snails, and members of Congress, compete over scarce resources, too – but its cooperation. Every time you buy a T-shirt or a fast-food hamburger, you tap into a vast network of productive resources involving everything from agriculture to information science to logistics, millions of people who do not know one other – who, if they did, might even hate each other – cooperating in relationships of literally incalculable complexity, in the service of ordinary schmucks like us.
And there is one remarkable aspect of all that to keep in mind: No one is in charge of it.
My colleague Larry White asks if the gold standard failed [3].
Jeff Jacoby rightly complains that the furies are too seldom unleashed on Congress [4].
The great lawyers at the Institute for Justice (with some help from an amicus brief submitted by the Reason Foundation) have won an important legal victory for consumers, competition, and a correct understanding of property rights [5]. (See also here. [6])
And one benefit of this legal victory will be reduced racism [7]. Another benefit will be continued, market-tested innovation [8].
Baruti Libre Kafele explains that free trade promotes economic growth [10]. (I pick one small nit with this essay: contrary to the author’s claim, protectionism does not cause unemployment. Protectionism ‘protects’ relatively poor jobs and prevents the creation of better jobs. But the overall level of employment in a country is no different with protectionism than it is with free trade.)