Monday, April 5, 2010

Defenders of free markets and privacy laws

A rant or down the slippery slope we go:

Defenders of free markets should also embrace free and free-flow of information. This means that they should not be against privacy laws - after all perfect information is one element of perfect competition and competition is the fulcrum of free markets. Libertarians who argue for free markets and competition should thus work to increase the aggregate information in the trading sphere. For instance, they should reveal how much they earn - increasing the efficiency of the labor markets that they are in. They should release their web browsing habits, thus allowing marketers to compete in offering them the best price for various services. In so far as monitoring is most efficiently done by the government, they should work hard to advocate not only for more government monitoring, but also the release of all statistics related to this monitoring.

After all, what is free markets without perfect information? Oligopoly?

No comments: