ABSTRACT
J. A. Batten and P. G. Szilagyi claim that ‘markets are rarely, if ever, efficient’. C. Higgins also talks about ‘trust’. If it is free, if people are not forced to associate with others against their will, social co-operation and trust will be supported. If it is forced, as, for example, through ‘affirmative action’, it will be undermined. Time series data, unless Higgins are of long duration, are relatively unimportant; the relationship between economic freedom and income inequality will, of course, fluctuate. The market is a positive-sum game. In contrast, when a politician or bureaucrat prospers, he does so at the expense of the long-suffering taxpayer, as this is a coercive, zero-sum game. J. Jonker takes it as a given that modern ‘complexity’ requires some sort of central planning, or at least a spurning of the simple free-enterprise system. He errs in thinking that ‘going back’ to a prior system of laws and institutions is ‘outmoded if not dangerous’.
