The Free Market: Eternally There; E. Zarbin

".".... .."., ...,:, The Free!Market~'\ :~ ~ \ Etern5tllg There EARLZARBIN A RECENT PASSAGE caught my at tention: "Though the free market is the most efficient allocator of scarce resources mankind has yet discovered, it is not a popular con cept." The writer then suggested that "Its lack of popularity is probably due to a misunderstand ing of the manner in which it works." These should be words enough to provoke to thought any person who cares about freedom and its survival in a world that increas ingly seems to embrace coercion or its threatened use as the answer to real and imaginary problems. I wish to limit my observation to two key points: 1. I don't believe mankind "dis covered" the free market. 2. I don't believe the free marMr. Zarbin is an assistant city editor at the Arizona Republic in Phoenix. 626 ket is unpopular because of a "misunderstanding" of how it works. As to the first, the free market develops of its own accord in a society where government is lim ited to the safeguarding of life, liberty and property. The free market did not have to be discov ered in the usual sense of the word. It does need to be recognized and it does need to be continually explained so its miracles can be understood and appreciated, but it didn't require discovering.

It grew in these United States - and it will grow - of its own accord, without a specific design, because the framers of the rules of the American society estab lished the conditions for the re lease of "creative energy" - as Leonard Read would say. These men, in their deliberations, did not 1975 THE FREE MARKET: ETERNALLY THERE 627 direct that the economy follow any particular pattern, save that in not decreeing an economic plan they left the manufacture of goods and the growing of agricultural prod ucts, and their exchange, to the freely made choices of the men and women who produced them. I repeat: the free market did not have to be discovered, but it does have to be recognized for what it is and it has to be ex plained. It is a marvelous, effi cient, awesome mechanism that will meet the needs of this earth if the people have freedom. Which leads to my second point: the free market doesn't lack popu larity because it is misunderstood.

On the contrary, because it is un derstood it is unpopular. I don't mean that it is perfectly understood. Rather, I mean it is sufficiently understood so that numberless people want nothing to do 'with it (except reap its bene fits while tearing it down). I don't know all the reasons peo ple can come up with to disavow the free market; but the function ing of the free market demands self-reliance, self-discipline, self responsibility, and self-restraint. The free market demands of each of us the necessity of work, of de veloping skills, of offering goods and services which other persons will willingly exchange for their own products and talents. Results Not Guaranteed The free market offers us the opportunity to get rich, or poor, in competition with everyone else. The free market doesn't offer us special privileges, favors, subsi dies, breaks, exemptions, monop olies, handouts. And it is this that accounts for the free market's un popularity.

People want their needs met with as little toil as possible. The free market doesn't offer some thing for nothing. They have that much understanding of the free market, and that's as far as many of them want to go in learning about it. If the free market were per fectly understood, if an its benefits could be made more obvious, among some people it still would lack popularity. There is nothing that supporters of the free mar ket can do to change these people. Our job is to learn as much as we can about the free market, to learn to explain it, and to try to make our findings available to any who want to share in them. If they are shared, perhaps some among those who dislike the free market will examine what it offers, change their opinions and become its sup porters. It is true that such persons may discover the free market, but it ha~ been and is there eternally where men are free. I) DEFINITION CAPITALISM, according to the dic tionaries, commonly means private ownership of the means of pro duction.