[Mpls] RE: Smoking and Carts

[Anderson & Turpin]

Robert Schmid wrote:
Faith in the market is misplaced faith, indeed.  The "great, invisible
hand of the marketplace" fails as often, if not more often than it
succeeds and smoking is a perfect example of that.  If the market truly
worked, then very, very few people would smoke.  They would understand
that "benefit" of smoking is far outweighed by its costs and never start.

And yet, they do.  Why is this? It's because the marketplace, like
democracy, fails when the consumer/elector is not properly educated.  (Two
American economists won a Nobel prize proving this point.)  When the
consumer is overmarketed and undereducated he makes bad choices and
supports bad products.

Mark Anderson replies:
So whenever you disagree with someone else's consumption behavior, that's
market failure? (Oh sorry, whenever the consumer hasn't been "educated"
sufficiently as to their proper market behavior, that's market failure.)
Under that standard, I would agree that the market fails quite often.  On
the other hand, if one believes that people have the right to make their own
consumption choices, the market works rather well.

Mark V Anderson
Bancroft