Certainly markets are partners at many scales, and the questions I hear (and presumably what Roger implies, although I don’t speak for him [Roger breathes a sigh of relief here]) are the same as Roger asks (not what markets buy), and the implicit and explicit implications are that markets are a component of the system. Paul above points this out, and I originally commented because often markets get a free pass as if the ‘wisdom’ in markets is self-evident or the solution. Thinking ahead is the solution, and political will is needed to make it so.

Best, sir,

D

(Additionally, for at least most functions markets have less severe externalities than governments. Free markets also have ways to internalize externalities without the need of having someone in charge.)

I also wonder why we don’t ask Biopolitical’s questions about markets.

Because I do, also, wonder about markets and information flowing “smoothly”. I find information to be highly asymmetrical, and if it did flow “smoothly” we wouldn’t have market failures, inequality, etc. because we cannot calculate Pareto optima without knowing the price of externalities. And how would a system with no one in charge ‘adopt’ findings without pricing externalities?

Best,

D

“But it’s not clear that virtue necessarily lies on the side of intellectuals who think they are simply being honest.” If only we could get this message through to the keepers of the paradigm on the GW debate, it might help them.

I can see the merit in Biochemical’s viewpoint above but I would like to point out that government has a role even if it is just as a source of big bucks. The NRC has produced huge good.

The frustrations of advocacy will never go away. In the matrix of human society courses let alone objectives are never clear. It is like a chaotic system. You input and It spins around and does nothing. Then one day. boom, results emerge. Patience hurts.

“I believe that a democracy is better off having intellectuals pay systematic attention to policy issues, even if it is occasionally corrupting. Having to deal not with ideal solutions but with the real world of power and politics is a good discipline for an intellectual. There is a fine line between being realistic and selling one’s soul, and in the case of the Iraq war many neoconservatives got so preoccupied with policy advocacy that they blinded themselves to reality. But it’s not clear that virtue necessarily lies on the side of intellectuals who think they are simply being honest.”

http://www.the-american-interest.com/cms/bhl.cfm

Public values and public failure in US science policy
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/beech/spp/2005/00000032/00000002/art00003

You can get an earlier version free here:

http://www.cspo.org/ourlibrary/documents/efficient.markets.pdf

It is revealing that we don’t ask those questions about things done in markets. Nobody creates or run markets. Markets emerge and run smoothly with nobody in charge. In markets information flows smoothly because nobody is in charge of moving it. Good ideas swiftly turn into action because individual people have the right incentives. Right incentives are “the mechanism”.

Governments lack the information and the incentives to take full advantage of human ingenuity. In the case of malaria, I would let private firms do the research and get the profits. The expectation of profits is “the mechanism”. The expectation of government getting in the way of profits prevents people from making the right efforts.