Free Consumers Are In Power
Excerpted from chapter 14 of von Mises's book “Money, Method, and the Market Process”
(Emphasis added):
“Permit me to recapitulate some well-known facts.
While under precapitalistic conditions superior men were
the masters on whom the masses of the inferior had to attend,
under capitalism the
more gifted and more able have no means to profit from their superiority other than to serve to the best of their
abilities the wishes of the majority of the less gifted.
In the market economic
power is vested in the consumers. They ultimately determine, by their
buying or abstention from buying,
what should be produced, by whom and how, of what quality and in what quantity.
The entrepreneurs, capitalists, and landowners who fail
to satisfy in the best possible and cheapest way the most urgent of the not yet
satisfied wishes of the consumers are forced to go out of business and forfeit
their preferred position.”
Some Remarks
The more gifted and more able in economic affairs, I
would qualify. Entrepreneurs are also consumers. It is not a one way street.
Vice verse consumers in a free market can become entrepreneurs at any time.
Big Government Hurts Consumers
An example out of millions of
existing examples: This Summer 2012, the EU Commission forces wireless carries
in the European Union to charge low and fixed uniform roaming fees to their
customers. Supposedly, European consumers paid too much calling home when they
were on vacation somewhere within the EU.
According to von Mises, free and
responsible consumers should have abstained from buying those calls thereby
forcing wireless carriers to reconsider their pricing. The EU Commission should
have better thought about ways to intensify competition to drive down prices. Such
government price controls only undermine the workings of free markets, stifle
competition and innovation and much more. Such measures are myopic, too
expedient, populist, and very dumb. Consumers are reduced to recipients of big
government’s handouts.
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