When Better Beats Perfect

When we say that the greatest enemy of the best is second-best or some parallel proverb, we usually mean that as a negative.  There is a difference, however, between what can be done and what can't be done.  Over at Mises.org, Gary Galles says Liberty Delivers a Better World While Utopians Promise a Perfect One.  The subject is Leonard E. Read who established, along with libertarian thinkers like Hazlitt, the Foundation for Economic Education in 1946. 

Whether a person is engineering software or bridges, one of the first things to be discovered are the limitations and the resources.  What do we have to work with in terms of material, time, manpower and budgets?  Every project will have its boundaries and restrictions.  The only ones that do not are the various disastrous government boondoggles with cost overruns, corruption, payoffs and pork.  In the real world, what the customer wants must be reconciled with what can actually be done.

The same thing is true in economics, in education, and in services.  We do not have a perfect world; we are not perfect people.  A system designed for perfect people is going to fail. Galles writes that Read understood the fallacy of a utopian system for non-utopian souls: 

Read saw that liberty’s defenders must face the fact that markets are amoral servants which enable people to do whatever they want better. They cannot be relied upon with certainty to only do good and inspirational things. But whenever they enable doing ill, they only reflect the desires individuals have. If we reformed ourselves, markets could do no harm. In contrast, coercively “reforming” ourselves by law does not eliminate the cause of such harm and so does little to actually stop it. Moreover, the restrictions on markets adopted in the process throw out the amoral servant that allows us to accomplish greater good than achievable via any other known means.

(h/t The Circle Bastiat)

Sadly, today, we live in a society that has lost the understanding of a true free-market economy.  Republicans embrace corporatism openly, the Democrat Party does so in the guise of corrupted government regulatory capacity favoring those who diligently pay their protection money. 

In the end, that which is whispered in the corner will be shouted from the rooftops.  Our character will be revealed.  As I often tell the grandkids, the only person you can change is yourself.  It's a full-time occupation if you do it right.