March 24, 2004


Heaving lungs

The post below, naturally, turned into a long-winded attempt to say something relatively simple. How indecent of me.

Here goes. Basically, Spitzer and Celli, Jr. trek through a whole rainforest full of world-saving ideas. Good on them! And they got plenty of mileage out of a timeworn truism-- that government intervention is needed to correct market failure. My "problem" boiled down to the fact that market failure results from perfectly rational market decisions, so the case for intervention really must be a moral case. Otherwise, "market failure" would simply be "market irrationality," and it would correct itself in due course.

And that, friends, is how typing out 1000 tortuous words can lead you to perfectly obvious and non-controversial conclusions. Good night!
-- Brad Plumer 12:28 AM || ||