The Pin Factory Blog

The European Commission has launched an investigation into oil prices. They suspect that prices may have been artificially inflated in order to swindle motorists out of their cash.

They are right. And they should start their investigation at the grand offices located at 1 Horse Guards Road, London SW1A 2HQ. That's not the headquarters of Shell or BP, but the home of the UK government's Treasury. After all, more than half the price that motorists pay at the pump is in fact tax. The product itself costs about 48p a litre to produce and get to the pump. The retailer gets about 5p. But on top of that, there is fuel duty of 58p for a litre. And 20% VAT on top of all that. Indeed, because VAT is added to the whole price, including the fuel duty, motorists are actually paying a tax on a tax!

VAT, of course, was raised recently in order to help balance the government's books in the wake of its bail-out of the banks. So that explains part of the increase in prices. More comes from the 'fuel escalator' – the principle that fuel duty should rise by more than inflation, in an attempt to induce us to leave the car at home and save the planet. (Politicians are remarkably adept at picking our pockets while telling us it's for our own good.) The escalator forced up UK fuel prices from below the EU average, to make them now among the very highest in Europe. And the tax on fuel is now several times what any economist can justify as a fair charge for the carbon that vehicles emit.

The bottom line is that more than tax on motor fuel is more than 80p a litre. Which makes George Osborne's offer to 'stabilise' petrol prices by shaving 1p off the tax look rather feeble. If the European Commission wants to get to the heart of the great petrol price rip-off, they should immediately call the Chancellor in for questioning.

What Chang wants us to understand is that because we used to have protectionism and we still had economic growth and development then therefore we should have protectionism in those places where we want to have economic growth. In other words the poor countries should throw up trade barriers so that all the rich world megacorps cannot supply the people of those countries. Thus will industry develop and in the long term, wealth will be created.

There are a few problems with this argument. One of the most glaring is that he takes historical levels of tariffs as evidence of levels of historical protectionism. Which is an absurdity: until well into the 20th century transport costs were more important than whatever tariff levels were as a barrier to trade. Just as an example, it is true that US tariffs near doubled post Civil War. But actual trade barriers fell as transport prices (essentially, the ocean going steam ship) fell by more than that doubling of the tariffs. His historical evidence of tariff barriers is thus highly suspect. The reason that most countries developed their own industries is precisely because non tariff barriers, those high transport costs, were more important.

Another problem is that, as he actually points out but doesn't make the connection with, all of his examples who developed behind such tariff barriers and with infant industry protection etc simply were not democracies in any modern sense. Even the countries that developed behind them in the 20th century like Taiwan (or his native Korea) were not. Semi-fascist military dictatorships would be a more useful description of the political systems actually. And don't forget what the sort of planning that he's advocating means: not just that government should encourage certain industries but also that local people must be actively prevented from wasting their energies in things which are not part of the plan. It's extraordinarily difficult to think of a way in which a free and liberal democracy could do such things. Force some companies to enter ship building, yes, perhaps that could be done with carrots and not with sticks, but how would one, in any semblance of a liberal society, prevent someone from setting up to build ships if that's how they desired to waste their money? This is the sort of thing that did actually happen in those planned economies too.

Even if we grant him his thesis, that such planned and directed industry, protected by trade barriers, did lead to industrial development, I can't actually see how anything like it could be done in anything close to a free society. Indeed, I'd even be willing to consider the idea that the reason this "worked" in certain societies (like parts of East Asia) and did not work at all in others (parts of Latin American and Africa) was precisely that those two latter sets of societies were not authoritarian enough to allow it to work. People had enough freedom to be able to ignore the plan.

One further very important point from Chang's own argument. He does insist that only those countries that have got to the technological leading edge benefit from free trade. His argument is absolutely not that the rich countries of today, those on that leading edge, would benefit from restrictions on trade: quite the contrary. His argument, such as it is, applies only to developing, not developed, nations. So don't allow anyone to start using his arguments, faulty even as they are, to propose that the UK or the US, EU, should retreat behind tariff barriers. That's not what even he is saying.

We might also mention that historical evidence of restricted trade areas is interesting in an historical sense: but it's not really of any relevance today. This is becasue of the sheer scale of modern industry. Perhaps, maybe, it made sense for the US to build a steel industry behind barriers. There were a number of companies in it and between them they created a market, however protected it was. These days, even the EU isn't a large enough market, all 500 million of us, to produce, say, a viable computer industry. The idea that Tanzania (just as an example)  should have tariff barriers in order to encourage an indigenous computer industry is therefore ridiculous. Or a car industry: it costs $1 billion just to plan out a major new car platform these days, let alone tool up to manufacture it.

The scale of modern industry is simply such that anyone trying to recreate any substantial part of it behind tariff barriers is just going to be making shoddy goods, very expensively, for no very good reason. You might, just about, get away with a little bit of restriction with the billion and more in China and or India. But the idea that Somalia will, with the appropriate planning and protection, ever have a viable steel, car, chemicals or comuter industry is simply nonsense. It might well end up producing firms in an interesting niche or other: but the creation of an entire industry for such a small number of people just isn't ever going to happen.

And there's one final overarching reason why this autarkic route to development is undesirable: it's immoral. Building up infant industries behind tariff barriers is very much a case of jam tomorrow, not jam today. The idea is to deliberately remove from the inhabitants of the country concerned the ability to consume the delights of the current world. So as to enrich those who own the industry within those tariff barriers. That populace is subjected to decades of worse consumption goods than they could have had. Even if this does, in the end, lead to development we've still impoverished the people in favour of the capitalists of that society. Not that I think it does lead to such development: but even if it did that's what is being urged.

Which rather brings us back to why I don't think this will work in a democracy, or in anything even vaguely approaching a free and liberal society. Yes, sure, economic growth is important but not at the cost of deliberately impoverishing this generation. And that's what infant industry protection does and not only do the voters appear not to be willing to sit still for that (and thus it only, if at all, succeeding under authoritarian regimes) I very seriously doubt that it's moral for us to go around insisting that they should.

The sixth thing about capitalism we're told is that inflation just isn't so bad. Further, that the attempts to reduce inflation have led to greater economic instability elsewhere. We should thus chillax about inflation and concentrate on other things.

Chang is indeed correct about low rates of inflation. The 1-3% sort of levels that central banks currently aim for aren't so bad: indeed they often aid other changes in the economy. Take, for example, Keynes' point about the rigidity of nominal wages. If inflation is 3% and wage rises 1% then real wages will be falling (as, sadly, they sometimes need to do, see Germany early this century) and this will cause a great deal less fuss and social unrest than if inflation is zero and nominal wages fall 2%.

It's also true that the aim is for low inflation because, in a debt financed society, we really don't want to get into a deflationary period. If nominal incomes and production values fall while nominal debt levels stay static it's entirely possible to enter a sort of death spiral. So erring on the side of caution, a couple of percent, is sensible enough.

Chang goes on to make the leap to the idea that moderate (which, apparently, means 20-40% a year) is also not so bad. He agress that hyperinflation is bad for:

" Hyperinflation undermines the very basis of capitalism, by turning market prices into meaningless noise".

This is an example of how Chang continually conflates capitalism and markets. They're really just not the same thing. They might work well together but capitalism is a description of who gets to own the productive asserts: the capitalists. Markets describe a method of exchange. These simply are not the same thing at all. Indeed, we can have capitalism without markets (the Soviet system was state captialism without markets) and we can have various forms of socialism with markets (Tito's Yugoslavia was an attempt at this and we can certainly have socialist entities within markets: Mondragon, the Co Op and John Lewis come to mind), but it is vital to keep in mind that the two are descriptions of different things, not just interchangeable names for the same socio-economic system.

But Chang's real complaint isn't about inflation: it's about the economic instability of the other parts of the "neoliberal" package. By concentrating on killing inflation we've raised such things as job instability and other forms of non-price instability. Chang thinks this is a bad idea: I think it's entirely excellent. No, not because I'm a rabid neoliberal (although I am) nor because I want to grind the faces of the workers into the dust as they cower in fear of losing their jobs.

No, the entire point and aim of this game of an economic system is that we want to move productive assets from lower value uses to higher value ones. That's what we're trying to do for this movement is the very definition of wealth creation. And, given that we've still got near a billion people living on $1 a day and the like, more wealth creation is still an urgent task.

If we have this need to be continually moving productive assets to higher valued uses then yes, labour will be more insecure in its current employment. As will capital and land of course: and most especally so will human capital. Very few indeed expect to leave university these days and not have to learn new skills by the time they retire. Price insecurity, that inflation, does aid us in these reallocations: but not once we've got past that 1-3% level. Byt the time we get to 20% and up, the price insecurity is raising that signal to noise ratio in that information that prices are giving us. Thus we find that the allocations of assets that we're making is becoming less efficient as a result of the rise in that noise.

Even what Chang calls "moderate" inflation will, in an economy anywhere near the technological boundary, lead to us simply not having accurate enough information to know what we should be doing next: and that hampers wealth creation. It's worth noting that the economies he uses to show that inflation isn't so bad are those which were, at the time, decidedly not at that technological boundary.

As an analogy let us compare inflation to oil or grease. Chang and I are agreeing that drowning in a vat of hyperinflation is a bad idea, most unpleasant. We're also both agreeing that a little bit of oil greases the operation of the economy. The difference is that he sees the lake of oil on a skidpan as being an exciting experience, one that doesn't limit our speed, I as one where the feedback from the system leaves us all entirely out of control and with no idea where we're going or how to change where we are.

As to increasing economic instability in this neoliberal age: yes, quite. We've got the instability we need and require: the flexibility to deploy productive assets from lower to higher value uses. You know, to aid in making the poor rich.

Our fifth thing is this insistence that free market economists claim that everyone is greedy, therefore untrustworthy. But a market economy wouldn't actually work if this were true. Chang then goes on to point out that there are many more motivations to human action than simple greed: in which statement he is obviously correct. Risking your life to save that of a stranger is clearly not motivated by economic greed.

However, he's rather misrepresenting that free marketeer's insistence upon greed being a motivating force. We do indeed insist that most people are greedy and most people are also lazy. They'd like to have as much as they can (or wish) of whatever it is with the least effort required in getting it. This does not rule out there being other motivating forces of course. But more than that, we're insisting that it is "enlightened self interest". That is, looking at rather more than the immediate future, thinking about reputation in general and so on. All of which is pretty much the standard argument. We'd also try to limit pure self interest to being an economic motivation, perhaps not a general one for the entirety of life.

However, there's something that Chang has entirely missed here and that's the implications of the ultimatum game.

Going back to our examples above, if you, as a taxi driver, want to chase and beat up a runaway customer, you may have to risk getting fined for illegal parking or even having your taxi broken into. But what is the chance of you benefiting from an improved standard of behaviour by that passenger, who you may not meet ever again? It would cost you time and energy to spread the good word about that Turkish garage, but why would you do that if you will probably never visit that part of the world again? So, as a self-seeking individual, you wait for someone foolish enough to spend his time and energy in adminstering private justice to wayward taxi-passengers or honest out-of-the-way garages, rather than paying the costs yourself. However, if everyone were a self-interested individual like you, everyone would do as you do. As a result, no one would reward and punish others for their good and bad behaviour. In other words, those invisible reward/sanction mechanisms that free-market economists say create the optical illusion of morality can exist only because we are not the selfish, amoral agents that these economists say we are.

Which brings us to the ultimatum game. In this, player one is given $100. Told to split it between herself and player two, she can choose any split she likes. $99 for her, $1 for the poor second. Or $50/$50, whatever. Player two gets to decide whether the split stands. If it does then the money is divided as was decided upon by player one. If the second player rejects the split then the money is confiscated and no one gets anything.

The results of this rather astonished the people who first performed it. Once the split starts to look "unfair" (roughly, when it passes through $60/$40 or so) then player two starts to reject it more often. Being entirely rational one should accept any split at all: better to have $1 from an unfair split than no dollars from confiscated money. But that's just not what people do. People will harm their own immediate economic interests in order to punish those they see as acting unfairly.

And it is this very ultimatum game that gives us the answer to whether we're all greedy or not. The answer being, yes, we are: for almost no one at all ever offers a $40/$60 split or better than that. The player one offers always start at 50/50 and get worse. That is, we're greedy in our own motivations and actions if we can get away with it. However, in observing (or having influence over) the actions of others we seem to turn on that fairness switch.

That is, human interaction seems to have within it, as the very basis of how we interact, a mechanism to curb and revise the inherent greediness of others. That willingness to punish our own economic interest to punish those we think are taking a liberty. Now why would have such a mechanism have arisen if it were not true that people are indeed greedy in their own actions? We don't protect the virginity of our daughters because we think it's unnecessary to do so: we protect the virginity of our daughters precisely because we know there's great interest in relieving them of it. The existence of a powerful social force to punish greed insists that greed is prevalent.

You could indeed say that player two's reaction is altruism. But even if you do want to say that it's still altruism from the second actor, not the first. The reaction clearly exists in the first place in order to curb that greed we all expect from player one,. And that's what brings us back to enlightened self interest. Such social interactions are not one time games. Indeed, the way to play the closely related prisoners' dilemma game is tit for tat. That is, if the game is to be played through many iterations. As most social life actually is. We have in our most basic reactions something that curbs that innate greed. Which is a pretty good indication that that greed really does exist in the first place.

An interesting little aside. The ultimatum game has really only been played with rich world students. There are those who wonder (and I'm one of them) whether the results would be the same in every society. I'm willing to agree with Chang that an entirely selfish society would not work well as a market economy. He is saying that because market economies do work therefore we cannot all be selfish. I'm claiming that we know that there's a very powerful force that curbs that selfishness. But the results of the ultimatum game from other societies would be incredibly interesting.

For there's the possibility that in societies that are not functional market ones then that willingness to punish, at one's own economic cost, might not be there. Which would, of course, be further proof that my contention is correct. It isn't that we're not all greedy: it's that in some societies there is a countervailing force. A countervailing force that must be there for markets to work. Or at least, one that we consistently find is not there where markets do not work very well at present.

The bottom line is that we cannot go around claiming that humans aren't, in their own motivations and actions, inherently greedy when we can observe such a powerful social force to curb the greed in the motivations and actions of others. The results of the ultimatum game prove that force exists: therefore people must be inherently greedy.

I was lucky enough to be at the 3rd Pembroke College (Cambridge) Annual Adam Smith Lecture. This year we were graced by the presence of Vaclav Klaus, 2nd President of the Czech Republic.  He combined a rich understanding of Classical Liberal theory with decades of practical experience completing reforms at the height of Czech politics. His full speech can be read here, but there were four highlights I particularly enjoyed.

Firstly his 5 point plan for reform:

• open-up the country after half a century of life in a semi-autarkic society
• liberalize prices and foreign trade
• radically deregulate the markets
• privatize the whole economy, not just a particular small segment of it as in the UK;
• de-subsidize the heavily distorted economy and to return it to economic principles.

Secondly his account of the sheer scale of reform:

"We had no private economy at all. I remember repeatedly saying that my hero Margaret Thatcher had to privatize 3 – 4 firms per year, whereas we were forced to privatize 3 – 4 firms per hour…The inefficient visible hand of the bureaucratic communist government was replaced by Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market."

Thirdly, in response to questions about the Eurozone crisis he drew upon his experience as the last leader to break up a major currency union. He highlighted the relative insignificance of Greece to the Eurozone. It represents roughly just 2% of total GDP. When he broke up the Czechoslovakian currency union as Finance Minister, Slovakia represented around a third of GDP. For Klaus, this was easy. It was an event that passed without crisis, an event he claims few would even remember.

Also on the Eurozone he highlighted the Latin Monetary Union, established in 1865 by France, Belgium and Italy. They were later joined by Spain, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Venezuela, Serbia and San Marino. This currency zone collapsed as the governments took on excess debt and debased the currency. There was one particular culprit, Greece, who were temporarily expelled in 1908. Greece decreased the amount of gold in their coins in breach of the currency zone’s rules. Economic turbulence in 20s finished off the flawed Union.

Finally when asked about the correct rate of tax, he gave an answer sure to please many a free-marketeer. He declared that he was no philosopher king who could impose an ideal tax level. Instead, he simply pleaded to see them cut as low as possible. For Klaus, taxes in the UK and Czech Republic are far too high across the board. We should get cutting.

George Mason University economists Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, who run Marginalrevolution, one of the most popular and—in my opinion—best blogs on the internet, have recently made forays into online education. Their latest is on the history of economic thought, looking at great economists from Galileo up until the marginal revolution of the 1870s, tackling questions including "Why is Adam Smith the greatest economist of all time?"

Here is the introduction to their course:

I can't wait. Tax Freedom Day is just three weeks away. Add up all the taxes paid by people in the UK – income tax, national insurance, VAT, fuel duty, taxes on alcohol and tobacco, council tax and all the rest. Then work out how long it takes us to earn enough to pay for all these taxes. Then you find that in 2013 the average UK citizen will be forced to hand over to the government everything they earn between New Year's Day and 30th May!

That's five months of the year working for the government, and only seven months of the year working for ourselves. Things don't seem to have moved on much from the feudal system, where the oppressed vassals were expected to work three days a week for the benefit of their lord. We have to work about the same for the benefit of the Chancellor.

The Adam Smith Institute has calculated Tax Freedom Day going back to the mid-1960s, and has published the figures annually since 1992. When England won the World Cup back in 1996, Tax Freedom Day fell on 2 May. That is a whole four weeks earlier than it will be this year. Another four weeks of indentured service to the state.

If you think that's bad, it gets worse. Governments spend everything they raise in taxes from us – and then borrow as much more as they can get away with. The trouble is that is it we taxpayers, or our children, who will have to pay back that debt. When you work out the total – what we call Cost of Government Day – we don't start enjoying the fruits ofour own labour until 13 July!

When people joke that they spend as much time working for the tax collector as they do working for themselves, they are spot on. They work slightly less than half their time to pay taxes, but slightly more in order to bail out the government's over-spending as well.

And it is no joke. High tax and government borrowing drains resources from productive uses, chokes off people's entrepreneurial spirit and reduces UK competitiveness. It really is time, Chancellor, to move Tax Freedom Day a lot earlier.

I'm afraid that this little piece from The Independent did make me smile:

It leads to two broad questions. Why is it happening? And what might be done about it? On the first, we can see some obvious points. A globalising world economy needs an English-speaking hub in this time zone. So London has become a magnet for wealth and talent, reinforcing its hub status. More people fly into its airports than into any other place on earth. There are more non-national professionals living in the commuter region than any other, more international phone calls, more cross-border money managed – the litany goes on.

Recently its status, or at least its property, has been bolstered by the UK’s role as a “safe haven” for eurozone money seeking a home, and its young people seeking a job. But to say all that is more to observe what is happening than to explain why. You can say that success breeds success, that we are in a winner-take-all world, and London currently has critical mass in that amorphous mix of money, style, creativity, intellect, whatever.

But things did not look like that 40 years ago when its population was falling and it seemed locked into inexorable, if gradual, decline. If it is hard to identify the reasons behind the success, it becomes impossible to replicate them elsewhere.

Eh? If you've already correctly identified the reason for what is happening then why ignore your own answer later?

Yes, London is indeed booming as one of the Great Cities of the current round of globalisation. Very much as it did from 1880 to 1914 in fact in the last round. And in very much the same industries too: banking, finance, law, shipping.

As to why it was different 40 years ago, well, 40 years ago we didn't have the current round of globalisation. There was most certainly no free movement of capital, currencies were restricted, international trade was a great deal lower than it is. Which is why London wasn't booming 40 years ago: because the great strengths of the economy of the place, that international finance, banking, law and shipping, just weren't being used as they are now.

This really is just straight David Ricardo: the employment of comparative advantage. One way of thinking about globalisation is that it is simply the international division and specialisation of labour. As Adam Smith pointed out, such division and specialisation being something that creates wealth. For all who take part in it please note. As it happens, what we in London seem to do well (and do again note that we've specialised in these things twice, both times there have been bursts of globalisation, just as Germany has done heavy industry and machine tools both times) is that banking, finance and law stuff.

Quite why is something that people can and will continue to argue about. I'm sure language has something to do with it. There could well be some vestigial hangover of Empire. My own feeling is that it depends, at root, upon the Common Law. With many fewer restrictions than in other places you can write a contract in English law that states pretty much whatever you want. Sure, there are limitations, but many fewer than in many to most other jurisdictions. England (or more formally, England and Wales) thus offers the flexibility of agreements that the fast moving world of business desires and requires. Thus everyone doing their business in a place that offers exactly these attributes.

Now, I might well be wrong about the why here but that's OK. Wouldn't be the first time (and certainly won't be the last) that I am wrong. But the basic observation about London still is just too obvious for words. So obvious indeed that the Independent entirely misses it. London has boomed over the past 40 years because of globalisation. It's part of that global economy in a manner which the rest of England (or Britain) simply isn't. Before globalisation London was shrinking and failing: with it it's booming.

This will surprise some but council housing causes unemployment. No, really, it does.

Dartmouth College’s David Blanchflower (best known for being the Bank of England member who first pressed for interest rate cuts after the onset of the financial crisis) and Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick find that a doubling of the rate of home ownership in any U.S. state is followed in the longer run by more than a doubling of the unemployment rate. The authors stress that they are not arguing that the owners themselves are disproportionately unemployed. They suggest that lower levels of labor mobility, greater commuting times and fewer new businesses all combine to hurt the labor market.

Yes that's for the US and no, it's not a new finding in general. Several studies here in the UK have shown the same thing. Higher (or perhaps "too high" where the "too" is somewhat subjective) rates of home ownership do indeed lead to higher levels of unemployment. The reason is that owning a home makes one less geographically mobile than renting one. If you lose a job you're more likely to stay in the area where you own a home than you are to pack up and move to where the jobs are if you rent. Given the large regional differences in the economy in the UK this does indeed mean that high levels of home ownership will lead to higher unemployment than if more rented.

To which we will hear the cry: build more council houses then!

But this does not work as an answer. Moving a secure and subsidised tenancy (housing association or council) is vastly harder and takes much longer than selling a house and buying anew. Moving across local council boundaries is near impossible: although there is a system that supposedly enables it. Once councillor (and director of a housing charity) that I asked about this a few years ago said that it might take as long as 5 years to be able to move from one subsidised tenancy to another in another council area.

Thus, whatever problems are caused by labour immobility through house ownership are worse with those council and housing association tenancies. Because people with such tenancies are even more immobile than those who own their own homes.

So, yes, it's true: council houses cause unemployment.

In our fourth chapter we get told that the washing machine has changed the world more than the internet. Something which we can all actually agree upon as long as we accept the conceit that the washing machine is standing in for domestic labour saving technology in general. We might quibble with the example of email not being much of an advance upon the telegraph: email allows you to broadcast to 5,000 or more which the telegraph certainly didn't. And I've run a software business that simply couldn't have happened without being able to send files and graphics. But Chang is correct that the development of domestic labour saving technology has, so far at least, had more effect. 

It has, for example, liberated half the rich world human race and allowed them to join the paid, market, economy. It really wasn't all that long ago that women simply could not do this, given the pressures of domestic labour: and it's still true that many women in many poorer countries cannot do so yet.

However, yes, again, we find Chang being extremely partial in his discussion of how all this happened. As someone who once owned a Soviet washing machine (no, really) I'm sure that this capitalism and free markets thing had a hand in it all. Firstly, in the invention, production and distribution of those devices: the route from carpet beaters through Spangler to Hoover was indeed the usual market style chaos of no one at all understanding what they were doing (certain early models blew dust around rather than sucked for example). Similarly the route from washing stone through washtub to mangle and finally washing machine was not a planned excursion. It was driven by incremental steps the users of which could see the advantages on offer. Capitalism meeting the market and then further innovation taking place.

What annoys to some extent is that Chang actually mentions a point about servants:

The main reason why there are so much fewer (of course, in proportional terms) domestic servants in the rich countries- (...) - is the higher price of labour. With economic development, people (or rather the labour services they offer) become more expensive in relative terms than "things".

Which is entirely true and this is known as Baumol's Cost Disease. The annoyance is that the other half of William Baumol's work is about how invention and innovation happens. What socio-economic system leads to all these wondrous things like a machine that washes clothes without effort or much time expenditure? And the answer to that is that innovation works vastly better in a free market socio-economic system. As Baumol points out, the planned Soviet system invented some pretty cool stuff: but I as the past owner (user would not be the correct word) of a Soviet washing machine that planned economy most certainly did not come up with successful labour saving domestic devices.

Which leaves the final line of his "what they tell you part" looking a little strange:

We- as individuals, firms or nations- will have to become ever more flexible, which requires greater liberalisation of the markets.

Err, yes, yes this is true, despite Chang using the rest of the chapter to argue against the idea. The reason why we do want that greater liberalisation of markets is precisely because it is this, this very thing as Baumol tells us, that produces those innovations like domestic labour saving technology. This is the very point: we want to encourage, continue, the replacement of grunt human labour with machines. Which does indeed require those free markets - or at the very least benefits hugely from them.

I do agree that so far the washing machine has changed the world more than the internet. Which is really rather why we want to be promoting that socio-economic system that came up with that very washing machine, no?