Hold Your Breath and Stamp Your Feet and Pass Laws All You Want: The Price-Demand Curve Will Never Change
8th September 2019
This ought to be tattooed on each politician’s forehead so it will stare back at him (or her) every morning from the mirror.
It illustrates the Fundamental Law of Markets, but that’s not even it’s core benefit.
It’s more useful lesson is that When Circumstances Change People Change Their Behavior In Response.
Over 90% of the laws passed in the modern world are based on the assumption that people will not change their behavior as a result of the law. But they invariably do, and that change means that the predicted effect of the law WILL NOT TAKE PLACE. What actually takes place is something different, often something wildly different, which wise people refer to as the Law of Unintended Consequences.
If you meet a politician on the road, make him explain to you how markets work. If he (or she) can’t, kill him (or her) as a threat to your species, and look for another. You’ll be doing God’s work.
A gig economy is based around flexibility and convenience. That’s a problem for municipalities which make money by taxing established industries. New York City is destroying ridesharing because it makes a fortune from auctioning off taxi medallions. Ridesharing ruined that business, so it’s ruining ridesharing.
That’s what politicians do. If something benefits you and not them, they will do their best to ruin it.