This isn’t just a rhetorical point. Economic outcomes can be predicted almost perfectly when we assume complete choice.

Yes, in the long term, the market will tend to provide goods and services to meet demand. Like I said, I don’t know of a better way to handle these needs. Sniffing out new niches is one of the things that a decentralized decision making system like a market economy really, really excels at.

Tangential topic, possibly for later discussion: branding/marketing/advertising.

Everybody, including PW (especially PW!), has a price. If consumers will pay it, they’ll get what they want. Hell, pay me enough, and I’d open a grocery store in SL.

Piggly Wigglys don’t magically materialize when enough people wish for them. Several people from the chain have to a) recognize the demand, b) decide that the demand is big enough to serve, c) acquire enough resources to start a branch, and d) actually risk opening a branch in the area.

I have 4 grocery options today, and many potential grocery options floating out there in quantumville. Which is great. But quantum grocers don’t take my club card, and I’m out of corn flakes today. So they can’t help me.

“What if I really wanted to shop at Whole Foods instead?” The issue isn’t want *you* want, its what consumers want. If consumers in SL wanted a PW, they’d get it.

I agree that the ballot is more a result of power rather than choice, but I’d say the menu of super-markets is much less so. This is an argument for more market-based policy, btw.

Workers do not hire capitalists. Consumers do not choose merchants. Shareholders do not choose managers. Voters do not choose elected officials.

Sneaky specifically attacks the “merchant” example, though his criticism works for any of the points, given his interpretation.

I can explain this point with an anecdote. I know of four grocery stores in my neighborhood: Al’s Food Market, Safeway, Trader Joe’s, and PW. I “vote” for my preference by frequenting that store with my business. My preference is driven by shopping needs, quality of the goods and services provided, price, etc. The stores compete on all of these, prices are kept down, quality is kept high, everybody wins, right?

Except… I didn’t pick these stores in the first place. What if I really wanted to shop at Whole Foods instead? Or Piggly Wiggly? PW and Trader Joe’s sort of have some overlap, so I end up shopping there instead. My reluctant substitution is indistinguishable from a loud endorsement at the ballot box (cash register). I can pick anything on the menu, but who writes the menu?

That said, I’m not sure that there’s a way to remedy that across the system. Certainly not by banning private grocers and opening VALU-MAX FREEDOM PATRIOT MART outlets across the county.