Market Economics and its Opposite: Reply to Mason Clark

["John Gelles" <johng@xxxxxxxxxx>]

    Mason Clark and others are looking for a name for
    economic studies that reject orthodox hard-money
    markets as the best we can employ.  Orthodox
    economics today excuses poverty and pollution on
    the theory that private market choices allocate
    work and wealth better than government has done
    in the past or will do in the future.

    My favorite name for such non-orthodox studies is
    "functional economics".  It is presently only a search
    for something better than we have.

    No matter the name, such studies have always existed.
    They will replace the worship of hard-money markets
    at the apex of decision making only when one or more
    of them leads to greater abundance for all and less
    disparity in consumption between the top and bottom
    of all people who bother to vote.

    So far, political corruption has hobbled functional
    economics. Markets have done better because the
    system of checks and balances that contains market
    corruption and stupidity has been more effective
    than its counterpart aimed at politicians and
    bureaucrats.

    John Gelles