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Pastimes : The Boxing Ring Revived -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (2729)	2/23/2002 6:46:41 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 7720

For example, many economists in free market capitalist countries like ours have traditionally been devoted to the ideals set down by men like Adam Smith, who said an economy functions best when businesses and consumers are free to pursue their own self interests without state intervention. But as it turns out, that way of thinking conflicts with Nash's equilibrium point theory, because you cannot reach the ideal payoff for the whole group in our economic "game" without some consideration of what is best for the other players. I think the Austrian economists have a pretty good answer to that. The fact that no one trying to manage the economy can have enough information to do a good job of it, even if they are the most intelligent, wisest, and more moral people the earth has ever seen they could not understand the whole of the economy well enough to develop a good plan for it. And of course as the article mentions you don't necessarily get the wisest and most altruistic people in positions of power within the government. A good area to look at relevant to this idea is public choice economics. The people in the government are often just additional players who are in the game for their own interests or that of their party or other group that they feel a part of, every bit as much as the people running companies. This is not to say that there is no role for the government or even no role for the government in economic matters but these ideas do suggest that the best role is a limited one. Tim