Libertarian Market Policy Would Not Allocate Resources Effectively

http://www.youtube.com...http://www.youtube.com...http://www.youtube.com..."Both sides in the arms race are ...confronted by the dilemma of steadily increasing military power and steadily decreasing national security. It is our considered professional judgment that this dilemma has no technical solution. If the great powers continue to look for solutions in the area of science and technology only, the result will be to worsen the situation."--J. B. Wiesner and H. F. York. National Security and the Nuclear-Test Ban, Sci. Amer. 211 (No. 4: 27 (1964).This attraction, almost infatuation, to alternative mainstream ideology during times of economic duress--is completely normal. When our modern social structures fail to provide us with the amenities we have become accustomed to; We tend to move towards new social explanations that can explain these failures. It is a completely healthy way to re-examine a foregone options or underlying assumptions. Currently, Americans are reassessing a new economic module: Libertarianism.This debate is about that system of human interaction. When dealing with scarce resources, a purely laissez-fair approach would be completely unable to address the underlying mechanics in our globalized marketplace. It would ultimately, ironically, lead to a loss in individual economic liberties.Libertarianism is a social philosophy that emphasizes liberty, voluntary association and economic freedom. They advocate for these core values by emphasizing that the role and size of government should be non-existent. In my opinion, they can broadly be defined as very liberal in social issues, but very conservative in fiscal policy.(1)(2) Garrett Hardin shows the flaw, whether he intended to or not, in mixing hardliner liberty values with limited market intervention in his work "The Tragedy of the Commons".(3) He borrowed his title from an older pamphlet (1833) published by a little-known mathematician named W. F. Lloyd.(4) This Mathematician documented how several consumers, or otherwise independent actors, will act in their own self-interest and accidentally deplete their shared resources. He explained that this depletion happens when the players fail to coordinate their conservation methods.To elaborate, the hypothetical scenario that Hardin provides in "The Tragedy of the Commons" is that of land tenure in pre-modern Europe. The shepherds, who maintain and breed the cattle, try to follow their individual self-interest by increasing their profitability. They increase their personal income, predictably in the eyes of capitalism, by increasing the size of their respective herds. Little-did-they-know that, until it is too late, the individual herd size grew too massive for the land to maintain. The end result is that all the shepherds 'lose' this game theory scenario by overexploiting the land, thus destroying the local field and the renewable-ecology necessary in the production of cattle.Hardin wrote,"Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another... But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit--in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all. "(5)My opponent might respond with a claim that private firms that can come together to form self-regulating entities. The logististics of which are dubious. Without a strong mandate from an external entity, there is little to no accountability. Many modern corporations are contractually obliged to their shareholders to maximize profits at every available opportunity; Often times at they pass this on as an expense of the taxpayers. To have those same corporations form into self-regulating commissions would be, at best, a facade. There are far too many opportunities for corruption to externalize some of the underlying costs of those goods to the public. Thus, not a true representation of an efficient marketplace, no-matter the price of goods or the increases in consumer purchasing power.I would argue against these self-regulating entities because they would have little effect on a marketplace which economists describe as a natural monopoly. "A market has a natural monopoly if one firm can produce the total output of the market at lower cost than several firms could."(6) The marketplace logistics favors a strong, central player both in logistics and resource allocation. It is hypocritical to have the regulator also be the one who provides service. The most often cited example of this is public utilities: The utilities companies biggest cost is in laying down the groundwork which connect the homes with their energy sources. It makes little sense to have multiple lines of pipes in the ground when one set is all that is necessary. Without a mandate, members of communities that are deemed 'unprofitable', because of the maintenance costs, could expect to live a lifestyle without those respective utilities. In this way, sometimes the best way to allocate your resources is to have a strong monopolistic presence, but with a government presence to enforce consumer rights in that marketplace. This application of government enforcement, however, would be a flat-out rejection of Libertarian values.To the best of my knowledge, there is no refutations to the criticisms I have supposed. Do not let the concept of ‘Red Tape’ turn you, the reader, off to the idea of government regulation. As corrupt as government officals are often protrayed, remember that those who fund such resentment would have a great deal to gain from the dergulation of your rights.We live in a global society that depends on fossil fuels to function and we need to guard our marketplace efficiency as close as possible. In the examples I have listed, Libertarian market policies fail to address our dynamic economy and would only make a bad problem, worse.Let me now refer back to the quotation I presented at the start of this argument. Wiesner and York feared that the growing strengths of the military-industrial complex was far outpacing the civilized world’s capacity to contain the horrors of thermonuclear war. In that same regard: We need to contain the risky behaviors in our free-market by regulation by quality organizations like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal and Drug Administration and hold them accountable to any of their corporate connections. Independant federal regulators make our capitalist society possible.(1) -- http://www.fee.org...(2) -- http://libertarianism.com...(3) -- http://www.sciencemag.org...(4) -- W. F. Lloyd, Two Lectures on the Checks to Population (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, England, 1833), reprinted (in part) in Population, Evolution, and Birth Control, G. Hardin, Ed. (Freeman, San Francisco, 1964), p. 37.(5) --http://www.sciencemag.org...(6) -- Peroff, Jeffrey M., Microeconomics. 6th Edition. p.372-373