The Rationing Fallacy
22nd July 2012
Fritz has the right of it.
Economic goods are not rationed by price; price facilitates voluntary transactions between willing buyers and sellers in free markets. Rationing is what happens when a powerful authority (usually a government) steps in to dictate the organization of markets, the specification of goods, and — more extremely — who may buy what goods and at what prices (though dictated prices are essentially meaningless because they do not perform the signaling function that they do in free markets)….
July 23rd, 2012 at 05:34
‘Rationing’ merely changes the mechanism by which scarce resources are allocated. The (Sacred) Market allocates by income, meaning those with money get and those without money don’t get. There is nothing intrinsically right or correct or sanctioned by God in that mechanism, it’s just a mechanism.
The reality is that some get and some don’t. That’s de facto rationing, however you want to fancy-dance with words. The main objection to ‘rationing’ is that the well-off might see their automatic position at the head of the line pre-empted by some criterion other than money. As Jehu likes to say, it’s all about who…whom.