Hi ff,
Nice post.
FYI: I happily contemplate voting for right of centre parties where the middle is in a sensible place!
Markets allocate certain kinds of resources efficiently. You know that because you understand the supply-demand model and how the point of intersection between the lines represents the optimal price in a perfectly competitive market.
But you will also know that certain kinds of markets don't operate in a simple way. Kenneth Arrow wrote a fair amount about the difficulties in the operation of a healthcare system.
And you will also know that the "all things equal" caveat hides a large chunk of reality. Markets aren't perfect. Companies do their best to differentiate products. Sweeteners confuse the issue. Network effects take hold. Monopolies and oligopolies emerge. Incumbents bully new entrants. The market has its own politics. Advertising works. Certain kinds of property require special protections in order to protect the supply side (eg authored works and ideas), and other kinds of protections are needed to protect consumers (eg food safety standards).
So there's an underlying need for the market to be managed in order for it to work. And one of the ways that management occurs is via the authority of government.
The middle hinges on how far you leave the market to answer questions and how much you need government to get involved. I think that a banner which says "government is the root of all evil" is less than wrong. It is silly. I think the same is true of a banner which states that "government is the source of all good". A machine will work only if all its components are present. So push for too much government and I will lean against you, and push for too little and I will lean the other way. The fact I push against the far right agenda doesn't make me a liberal. It makes me a pragmatist and not a puritan.
Re your comment about infrastructure: funny. I always take away the opposite view. I am always astonished at how underfunded US infrastructure is. Roads suck. Trains suck. US airlines are the pits. Mobile telephony is behind. Internet bandwidth is lower than most places. Bridges fall down. Oil platforms explode. Prisons are over-full. etc.
I say this not to moan. Indeed, I think the US does reasonably well when it designs and distributes end user goods rather than the things which bind them together. Apple makes cool equipment. US cars aren't hopeless. etc. The US does simple one-to-one products well. It is not always so good at complex social environments, in my view. I think the reason is that the notion of networks that are defined from the top-down, which are necessary to build certain kinds of structure, are nevertheless anathema to many. They apparently believe the only virtuous architecture is built from the forces of chaos using the tools of private property ownership. Train tracks that move along the edges and around the square corners of fields, and suchlike.
Not to mention that private property rights in law are by definition a construction of government fiat.
I think it probably helps get a sense of perspective and perhaps of reality when a relative view of the country is offered by an outsider. Disintegration is what happens over time when people decide not to invest in their own country's infrastructure. Instead, the choice has been made that the billionaires should get richer.
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