"A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that ... [i]t gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."

~ Milton Friedman from his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom (Chapter 1: "The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom")

"You have to vote," they tell me.

People insist. 

"It's easy to enrol," they say (or said). 

But that's only relevant if I wanted to vote.

And I don't. I don't, because there is no one to vote for.

"But it's your duty. People fought for the right to vote."

The right to vote is also a a right not to vote. That's a vote for 'None of the Above.' And none of the above deserve my vote.

U.S. — According to reports, toddlers and dogs across the nation have teamed up to make sure you are doing okay on the toilet.

That free, chaotic and uncontrolled market was pottering along quite happily. Supply of - say- baked beans was meeting demand for baked beans at that variety of prices across outlets and brands. The system was working. Now, apparently, it isn’t. So, why?

Water and baked beans sell out after public told to stockpile food

Sales of emergency rations surge after the Defence Secretary urged country to prepare for cyber attacks

Well, there we are. We require government action to produce shortages.

We did actually test this concept to destruction back a while, the command and planned economies were rent with shortages, the market-based ones were not. We call that experiment the 20th century. Folk seem not to really grasp it all the same.

Britain has, arguably, a shortage of houses, building land, health care, even education is said to be in short supply by quality. Which are the parts of the British economy planned, or controlled, by government? Housing, building land, health care, education - see how this goes?

Perhaps, now that the shortages are of something as important as baked beans we’ll all learn the lesson properly?

Tim Worstall

What does Jeff Bezos add to my life? And Elon Musk? and Mark Zuckerberg? and Steve Jobs? and Jimmy Wales?

Jeff Bezos gave me the everything store. Almost any book, in print or not, arrives at my door within a day or two, often for less than the high street charges. Kindle put a library in my pocket, and it opened publishing to authors who bypass gatekeepers entirely. Less visible is Amazon Web Services, which hosts a large share of the websites and apps you use daily. Many businesses never had to buy a server because Bezos rented them his. I can buy goods from Amazon without having to trek to shops that might not have them in stock.

Elon Musk made electric cars desirable rather than dutiful. I bought the first Tesla in Cambridge and happily drove electric for seven years. Tesla dragged the whole motor industry towards electric years sooner than it would otherwise have gone. SpaceX did something stranger. It made rockets land and fly again, and cut the cost of reaching orbit dramatically. Satellites behind weather forecasts, navigation and communications now get there more cheaply. Starlink brings broadband to ships, remote farms and war zones where cables never reach. Before all that, his early work helped give us PayPal. Soon he’ll give me driverless cars.

Mark Zuckerberg gave me free tools to keep in touch with almost anyone I’ve ever met. WhatsApp is how much of Britain organizes families, clubs and workplaces, at no charge. Facebook and Instagram let small firms reach customers without buying expensive advertising in newspapers. His company also gave away software that others build on, including the React framework behind countless websites and the open Llama AI models.

Steve Jobs put a powerful computer in my pocket and made it simple enough for a child or a grandparent. The iPhone did not invent the smartphone, but it defined what one should be, and every rival followed. Before that, the Mac popularized the graphical interface I now take for granted. Along the way he turned Pixar into a studio that made computer animation an art form.

Jimmy Wales gave me the largest encyclopedia in history, free, ad-free, and in hundreds of languages. Settling a pub argument used to require a trip to the library. Now it takes ten seconds. I have the world’s knowledge in my pocket.

The striking point is how little of this value the founders keep. The economist William Nordhaus estimated that innovators capture only around two percent of the social value their innovations create. The rest goes to us, as consumer surplus. Studies by Erik Brynjolfsson and colleagues found people would demand substantial sums to give up free services like search, email and maps, services that appear nowhere in GDP because they cost nothing. The fortunes look vast. The benefits are vaster, and spread across billions.

Jimmy Wales is the instructive exception. He is the only one on my list who is not a billionaire. He chose to give it away, which may make him the most generous businessman of them all.

Some people think that these tech giants should be restrained and brought under political control. I don’t.

Madsen Pirie