The supply of goods is so diverse because demand is diverse. When the supply isn’t diverse… it’s not because demand isn’t diverse… it’s simply because market forces are prevented from permeating the supply.
You and I both demand food… but chances are very good that we don’t have the same exact preferences for food. Our freedom to choose which food we purchase makes it profitable for producers to discover and cater to the differences in our preferences.
Can you imagine what would happen if consumer choice was eliminated from the equation? Let’s say that the government was entirely in charge of supplying food. We’d all pay more taxes but we certainly wouldn’t have to worry about deciding which food to buy. Instead, the government would be entirely in charge of buying/supplying food.
How would this affect the supply of food? What would the effect be? It would be impossible for the differences in our food preferences to be taken into account. Which means that the supply would not reflect the differences in our food preferences. So, logically, the variety/diversity of food would plummet.
You wouldn’t have to worry about deciding whether to have Mexican food, Korean food, or a fusion/hybrid of the two (ie Korean Tacos). This “stress” would go out the window. The problem is…. progress is a function of difference. Taking away difference is the same thing as taking away progress.
The orchid family has around 30,000 different species. And each species consists of thousands and sometimes millions of different individuals. This gigantic genetic “hedge” really helps protect the family against changes. The orchid family clearly isn’t able to predict the future. It can’t predict whether the future will be warmer/colder/wetter/drier… all it can do is really hedge its bets. If the future does happen to be hotter/drier… then at least some species/individuals will have the genetic combinations to allow them to survive the climate change. These individuals will be more tolerant of heat/drought. They will happily grow on cactus. The alternative is for the orchid family to put too many eggs in one basket. Which would really be a disaster if the basket turned out to be the wrong one.
The orchid family makes so much progress because it “understands” the importance of difference.
People are all different. So if you care about difference… then you should really care about consumer choice.
I really care about consumer choice which is why I really appreciate the idea of allowing people to choose where their taxes go (pragmatarianism). This would create a (pragmatarian) market in the public sector. Consumer choice in the public sector would ensure that the supply of public goods would quickly reflect the diversity of the demand for public goods. Then we’d make just as much progress with public goods as we do with private goods.
