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Posted on 02/16/2010 9:30:52 AM PST by rabscuttle385
In preparation for the two recent back-to-back blizzards, D.C. residents were emptying the shelves of neighborhood grocery stores. Notwithstanding the pre-blizzard panic buying, what's interesting is that no one was freaking out about whether the stores would be adequately stocked after the blizzards.
After all, think about it: there is absolutely no government planning that goes into what is stocked in grocery stores. No federal Department of Food. No local or state planning commission. No grocery boards. No bureaucrats or bureaucracies. No laws requiring grocery stores to be well-stocked. No rules and regulations dictating how much of each food item, including bread, milk, and chicken, needs to appear on the shelves.
So, how in the world do grocery stores get stocked without government planning or direction? How is it that so much food appears, almost by magic, within a day or two after most of the shelves have been emptied? Indeed, how do grocery stores manage to have more than enough food for people throughout the year given that no government department or agency is doing the planning and issuing food directives?
Let's look at the situation another way. Suppose that in 1900, it was decided that food was just too important an item to be left to the free market. To ensure that there would always be enough food for people, state and local governments took over the grocery-store industry, just as they took over the education industry. To provide support for grocery stores, the U.S. government established the federal Department of Food to provide grants and set standards for the grocery stores, just as the U.S. Department of Education does for state and local public schools.
So, imagine that we're here in 2010, having lived under more than 100 years of a system of government-run grocery stores. Wouldn't people be incessantly complaining about the shoddy quality of products and services, as they constantly do with the state-run schools?
Along come libertarians and say the same thing about the grocery business that they say about the education business. Get government out of the grocery business, at all levels -- local, state, and federal. Abolish the federal Department of Food. Sell off all the grocery stores. Abolish all the taxes needed to run the grocery stores. Separate food and state, just as our ancestors separated church and state. Let the free market reign in the grocery-store industry.
What would today's statists say? They would say the same things they say when libertarians call for the same solution in education. "Where would the poor get their food? There would only be grocery stores for the rich. How could we count on the free market to make sure that there was the right amount of food for each grocery store? What if some grocery stores went empty while others were plentiful? How could we be sure that each grocery store received the correct quantities of each item? You libertarians are dreamers. Do you honestly believe that you could leave something as important as grocery stores to the free market?"
Yet, today no one gives a free market in food a second thought. Every day, people have a wide range of grocery stores from which to choose, each one vying for his business. Practically every day -- blizzards being a possible exception -- every one of those grocery stores is packed with food, all with a dizzying array of choices.
And it's all accomplished through the miracle of the market, with no government planning or direction. And no one gets freaked out about the fact that it all happens without government intervention. People just take it for granted.
Now, while we're on the subject of a free market in the grocery-store industry, can we talk about the same thing in the context of the education industry?
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
And it's all accomplished through the miracle of the market, with no government planning or direction. And no one gets freaked out about the fact that it all happens without government intervention. People just take it for granted.
Now, while we're on the subject of a free market in the grocery-store industry, can we talk about the same thing in the context of the education industry?
*Ping!*
If some parents weren't required to provide a minimum level of education for their children, they would probably only want the services of a baby-sitter so the parents could go off and work.
Better yet some parents would want an end to child labor laws so they could send their kids out to bring in money for the family.
That's the way it was when we were primarily an agricultural economy. The school year was structured so as to least interfere with the growing and harvesting of crops. If that hadn't happened then most parents would have been in an uproar and the public education system would have never gotten started.
Public education, or rather government education, sucks by and large. It is good in wealthy districts where parents care and parents provide extra money to support sports, music, and arts programs.
The main ingredient that is missing in innercity schools is parental involvement. This started with the well-intentioned but utterly devastating integration via busing programs. This took kids to schools that were miles away from their homes, making it difficult for parents to be involved. But I have a feeling that even if all kids were kept in neighborhood schools that there are just some cultures that don't value education enough to keep an eye on their kids and the schools they go to.
It's too bad that liberals don't last long here at FR. I'd like to read their argument(s) against the point made here.
ML/NJ
OTOH, Government regulates what labeling goes on the packaging, so that consumers know what nutrients are in the food they purchase.
Government regulates what ingredients must be used in order to call a food a specific name such as “ice cream.”
Government regulates the purity of the food.
And lastly, in times of sudden crisis such as an impending snow storm, Government enforces ‘anti gouging’ laws so that prices don’t get out of hand.
Just sayin’
LOL. No government intervention in food markets? That's got to be one of the stupidest things I've heard in a while.
Have you never heard of the Federal Department of Agriculture? Are you not aware of the hundreds of billions of dollars in farm subsidies? The byzantine jumble of regulations that tell farmers what they can and cannot charge for their products, and what their suppliers can charge them?
Don't get me wrong. I decry all this government intervention in food markets, and our lives would be better if we did away with it.
But don't go using food markets as a shining example of economic freedom, because they're not. Don't go using this when arguing with lefties, unless you want to make an ass of yourself.
A perfect analogy that will be completely lost on the LibDemCom left wing people.
B U M P
ping a ling a ling!!!!
I think it was more of an analogy than a shining example. The government doesn’t control the stocking of grocery store shelves.
All that regulation is unnecessary. If, for example, your newborn was killed by an unregulated formula product, you’d be sure not to give it to your next baby, and the company would go out of business. The market works if you let it.
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