THE COORDINATION AND EFFICIENCY OF THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM
From the time of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations in 1776, one recurrent theme
of economic analysis has been the remarkable degree of coherence among the
vast numbers of individual and seemingly separate decisions about the buying
and selling of commodities. In everyday, normal experience, there is something
of a balance between the amounts of goods and services that some individuals
want to supply and the amounts that other, different individuals want to sell.
Would-be buyers ordinarily count correctly on being able to carry out their
intentions, and would-be sellers do not ordinarily find themselves producing
great amounts of goods that they cannot sell. This experience of balance is
indeed so widespread that it raises no intellectual disquiet among laymen;
they take it so much for granted that they are not disposed to understand the
mechanism by which it occurs. T he paradoxical result is that they have no
idea of the system’s strength and are unwilling to trust it in any considerable
departure from normal conditions. This reaction is most conspicuous in wartime
situations with radical shifts in demand. It is taken for granted that these
can be met only by price control, rationing, and direct allocation of resources.
Yet there is no reason to believe that the same forces that work in peacetime
would not produce a working system in time of war or other considerable
shifts in demand. (There are undesirable consequences of a free market system,
but sheer unworkability is not one of them.)
THE COORDINATION AND EFFICIENCY OF THE ECONOMIC SYSTEMFrom the time of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations in 1776, one recurrent themeof economic analysis has been the remarkable degree of coherence among thevast numbers of individual and seemingly separate decisions about the buyingand selling of commodities. In everyday, normal experience, there is somethingof a balance between the amounts of goods and services that some individualswant to supply and the amounts that other, different individuals want to sell.Would-be buyers ordinarily count correctly on being able to carry out theirintentions, and would-be sellers do not ordinarily find themselves producinggreat amounts of goods that they cannot sell. This experience of balance isindeed so widespread that it raises no intellectual disquiet among laymen;they take it so much for granted that they are not disposed to understand themechanism by which it occurs. T he paradoxical result is that they have noidea of the system’s strength and are unwilling to trust it in any considerabledeparture from normal conditions. This reaction is most conspicuous in wartimesituations with radical shifts in demand. It is taken for granted that thesecan be met only by price control, rationing, and direct allocation of resources.Yet there is no reason to believe that the same forces that work in peacetimewould not produce a working system in time of war or other considerableกะความต้องการ (มีผลกระทบที่ไม่พึงปรารถนาของระบบตลาดเสรีแต่เชียร์ unworkability ไม่ใช่หนึ่งในนั้น)
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