The reason markets work and politics doesn't

As we’ve noted before yes, of course markets are a lovely way to organise life. People who want to do things are, with free markets, at liberty to go and try doing those things. Liberty and freedom being the aim of the society of course. But there’s another merit here too - which is that markets are very brutal at shutting down those things that do not work. Folk run out of money and stop - huzzah, the waste of resources on something that doesn’t work ends.

That’s not how politics works:

Alcohol deaths in Scotland have surged to their highest level in 14 years, according to official figures, despite the SNP claiming that minimum alcohol pricing is working.

Statistics from National Records of Scotland showed that 1,276 people died from alcohol-related conditions last year, 31 more than in 2021 and the highest total since 2008.

It comes as the SNP faces claims that it “manipulated” research that backed its flagship minimum alcohol pricing policy aimed at reducing problem alcoholics and saving lives.

The current call in Scottish politics is, we understand, that the minimum price should be raised.

We have to admit that we’ve never understood why the minimum price policy was undertaken in the first place. The profits from the higher prices go to the booze makers - wouldn’t it have been more sensible to raise the tax rate instead? But that aside it’s also obvious that the policy doesn’t work. The response of politics to failure is to do more of that thing but harder.

Which is why markets do work so much better than politics. It’s not just the liberty they allow it’s also that markets kill off mistakes. Which, as we can see, is something politics does not do.