From: Michael Hamilton (thethemichael@gmail.com)
Date: Fri Jul 08 2005 - 11:48:41 BST
Hello everyone,
In the wake of yesterday's bombings, many London hotels significantly
hiked up their prices, as hundreds of commuters and tourists were
unable to leave London due to transport problems. This is a simple
example of the working of free markets: demand increases, supply stays
the same, therefore prices increase.
In LILA, Pirsig uses the MOQ to show why free markets are an efficient
way of organising society: they allow dynamic quality to directly
determine the social value of goods, without interference from rigid
static patterns (i.e. central economic planning). I find this
convincing, but the feeling of disgust evoked by the hotels example
suggests to me that in certain circumstances, free markets are
fundamentally immoral. Further examples of this immorality have been
generated by the privatisation of basic goods in developing countries,
such as water.
I would like to suggest that while free markets are an excellent way
to determine the value of *commodities*, they are a fundamentally
immoral way to determine the value of biological necessities such as
water and shelter, as well as social necessities such as education. Is
there not a significant difference between profiteering from huge
demand for a mobile phone, and profiteering from human misery?
Regards,
Mike
P.S. There was a bomb scare at the train station in my home town of
Brighton (about an hour and a half's drive from London), but I was
unaffected. Let's hope that the same was true of other MD'ers.
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