Moisés

“Morality, in this view, is a kind of internal control system that helps us avoid prisoner’s dilemmas. Kant’s supreme principle of morality— “Don’t make an exception of yourself”—amounts to a moral prohibition against free-riding. If you can improve your own situation only by making others worse off, then this is not something that you could will to be a “universal law.” You are clearly hoping to make an exception of yourself. And so morality prohibits that course of action.”
― Joseph Heath, The Efficient Society: Why Canada Is As Close To Utopia As It Gets

“Ironically, it is often the most tough-minded, no-nonsense right-wingers who go all soft when it comes to economic competition. People who would never be so naïve as to suggest that athletes might “voluntarily” refrain from taking steroids will turn around and push for “industry self-regulation” over government intervention, as if corporations might just choose to stop polluting or refrain from producing false advertising. It’s difficult to imagine a more total misunderstanding of the underlying dynamic of capitalism. Part of the problem involves the familiar failure to distinguish between the virtues of the market and the virtues of particular firms in the market. When the competition is staged just right, corporations will deliver unparalleled levels of efficiency. But it is almost never in a particular firm’s interest to produce at a level that will generate efficient outcomes for society as a whole. Companies are forced to operate efficiently by the rules of the competition. If they can find any way around these rules, they will naturally go for it.”
― Joseph Heath, The Efficient Society: Why Canada Is As Close To Utopia As It Gets

“Each consumer who holds off on a purchase in order to wait for a sale generates a slight benefit for all other consumers in the form of increased pressure on suppliers to lower the price. Similarly, each supplier who delays putting things on sale produces a benefit for other suppliers in the form of increased pressure on consumers to buy at that price. In both cases, this generates a free-rider incentive—consumers may break ranks and buy at full price, or suppliers may break ranks and have a sale. The consequence of these two collective action problems will be downward pressure on the price of plentiful goods and upward pressure on the price of scarce goods. The only equilibrium will be the point at which the amount of each good exchanged is just right. Inventories will clear, and the resulting allocation will be maximally efficient.”
― Joseph Heath, The Efficient Society: Why Canada Is As Close To Utopia As It Gets

“The so-called “Goulash capitalism” episode in Hungary clearly illustrated the problem. In 1994, shortly after the privatization of agriculture and food production, the country was swept by an epidemic of lead poisoning. After searching far and wide for the cause, doctors and scientists finally tracked down the source of the problem. Manufacturers of paprika—a staple of Hungarian cuisine—had been grinding up old paint, much of it lead-based, and adding it to the spice in order to improve its colour. The practice was so widespread that Hungarian officials were forced to order all the paprika in the country removed from store shelves and destroyed. At the time, no laws were in place to prevent such a catastrophe, simply because it had not occurred to anyone that this kind of thing would happen. Under communism, in which firms had no competition, no one had any incentive to poison their customers, and so consumer protection laws were unnecessary. In making the transition to the market, policy-makers assumed that producers would compete with one another to produce the best-quality paprika. They didn’t realize that producers would compete only to produce the best-looking paprika.”
― Joseph Heath, The Efficient Society: Why Canada Is As Close To Utopia As It Gets