From an FT video this morning:
Which is why most problems can never have a pure market solution.
Richard Murphy on tax, accounting and political economy
Tax Research UK Blog is written by Richard Murphy unless otherwise stated and published by Tax Research LLP under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Design by Andy Moyle
Richard,
If Peter has some a, and wants to swap it for some b, and Paul has some b, and wants to swap it for some a, then neither Peter nor Paul regard a and b as being equal. On the contrary, they both think – rightly – that they are getting the better of the bargain. If they didn’t think that, the bargain wouldn’t get made.
In other words, the fortunate thing about markets is precisely that nothing is ever equal.
Cofe Baker says:
“…..neither Peter nor Paul regard a and b as being equal. On the contrary, they both think — rightly — that they are getting the better of the bargain. If they didn’t think that, the bargain wouldn’t get made.”
I like that.
But unfortunately it does get very complicated.