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If this is the market working, what is failure?

Posted by Graeme in Market failure at 7:54 am on Monday, 31 March 2008

Brain Caplan thinks markets work fine despite having to wait 19 years to be able to a product with a tiny marginal cost of production: i.e. he spent 19 years waiting on the supplier’s whims just to buy allowed to buy some music.

He asks “if that’s your idea of “tyranny,” what would count as Utopia?”. My answer is simple: having every single piece of music ever recorded available for immediate download. Now that would be optimal. It is technically possible (even easy) and every consumer with internet access would love it. So, why have markets not delivered it?

If waiting 19 years is markets working, what would count as failure?

Comments (1)

Comments(1)

Comment by Frank Owusu-Ansah at 3:01 pm on 20 September 2008 at

Very brilliant arguments, will however need to know with modern illustrations what Private monpoly is , regards to purchasing of Truck heads

Sorry, comments are closed