democracy – Page 6 – the _

[1120] Of analogizing free market as democracy

It is Saturday morning and I just woke up from sleep. Being the internet addict that I am, within 15 minutes of consciousness, I was already log onto the internet, reading my bookmark, scouring for news or any interesting reading. Somehow, through random clicking, I reached Wan Saiful’s blog and found myself downloading “Apa itu Liberal dan apa itu Liberalisme?“.

I am not sure what I downloaded it in the first place. It might be caused by the launch of a book entitled, “Apa itu Pencerahan?“, a Malay translation of Kant’s “Was ist Aufklarung?“. Liberals that do not read German might be more familiar with its English title: “What is Enlightenment?” So, perhaps, I took the recurrence of the term “Apa itu… ?” as a sign; I need to read it.

So, I read it with relative ease. With ease because there is almost nothing new in the document; I, proudly, am familiar with almost all the ideas and the cited authors. So, it is dull except at the manner the author argues for free market, which I feel is ingenious.

On the fourth page, in Malay:

…Sebagai contoh, sebab apa percaya bahawa instituisi [sig] ekonomi yang bebas itu lebih adil, pertama sebab pasaran yang merupakan satu pilihanraya setiap jam dan minit. Contohnya A dan B jual nasi lemak, siapa yang menentuka [sig] A dan B boleh jual atau tidak? Yang menentukannya adalah pasar, peti undinya adalah pasar. Jika nasi lemak A tidak sedap dia akan kehilangan undi. Keadilannya terletak di sini.

Roughly in English:

…As an example, why free market institution is fairer than the other? First, the market is an election held every minute. For instance, who would decide A and B could sell nasi lemak? It is the market; the market is a huge ballot box. If A sold low quality nasi lemak, he would lose vote. The fairness of the system is here.

Though the idea is not foreign, I had never seen it stated in such an explicit way that links democracy with free market. I think this is the first time somebody explicitly uses democracy to justify free market.

Perhaps, such presentation of free market it is nothing more than an analogy. Nevertheless, this analogy could be used to entice fervent supporters of democracy that are neutral of the liberal-socialist divide towards free market and to a certain extent, liberal democracy.

[1030] Of the state and spontaneous order

At the heart of libertarianism is liberty. From liberty arises spontaneous order.

Spontaneous order is an idea that says order will arise naturally amid chaos. The way I see it, spontaneous order really happens when a society organizes itself to confront an issue. The term society that I am using here comprises purely of civil society with not participation of the state.

In its purest sense, I strongly believe spontaneous order is part of anarchism.

Spontaneous order does not always work though. When spontaneous order does not work, it is a situation which I think could be described as market failure. Of all models, anarchism is the one most susceptible to market failure. This is the reason why the state of anarchism is unstable. While it may exist at one point in time, it will eventually succumb to some sort of stable order, be it autocratic or democratic, voluntarily or otherwise.

While I have that sorted out in my mind, I am currently trying to figure whether laws enacted by a state is part of spontaneous order. Could actions by a state or any authority with policing power be part of spontaneous order?

I believe it could, with a restriction. The establishment of the state, at least the democratic ones, is spontaneous order.

Emergence of a democratic state is a result of cooperation between free individuals to establish order. For a democratic state, all decisions by state originate from the individual citizens that form the state. Therefore, transitively, any decision by the state resulting from cooperation of free individuals is spontaneous order.

The legitimacy of the reasoning however depends on the democratic nature of the state. The democratic aspect is also one of the factors that legitimize the state’s existence. Any violation of any democratic process invalidates the legitimacy of the reasoning as a whole. That invalidation in turn makes any state’s decision after the violation as non-spontaneous order.