{"id":8406,"date":"2011-01-22T18:13:25","date_gmt":"2011-01-22T23:13:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=8406"},"modified":"2011-01-22T18:44:57","modified_gmt":"2011-01-22T23:44:57","slug":"in-defense-of-a-political-market-for-presidential-candidates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/8406\/in-defense-of-a-political-market-for-presidential-candidates\/","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of Presidential Political Markets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <em>Weekly Standard<\/em>\u2019s Bill Kristol writes <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weeklystandard.com\/articles\/2012-open-field-and-fair-chance_536867.html\" target=\"_blank\">a terrific defense of market forces<\/a> in selecting the next Republican presidential nominee.<\/p>\n<p>Here are two choice paragraphs:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This vision should be easy for conservatives to embrace. Believers in the free market understand the virtues of competition, of low barriers to entry, and of lots of opportunities for (so to speak) price discovery. We know the superiority of spontaneous order to central planning. But too many GOP bigwigs in Washington who claim to have read Hayek have succumbed to the fatal conceit. They\u2019re meeting nonstop trying to determine for us all now, a year before the first primary\u2014with limited information as to relevant candidate skills and almost no knowledge of next year\u2019s political environment\u2014who the best presidential candidate would be.<\/p>\n<p>Democratic capitalists admire Schumpeter for explaining the virtues of creative destruction. But too many donors to the party of democratic capitalism are huddling in New York this winter figuring out if there isn\u2019t some way to short-circuit this kind of healthy\u2014if messy, to be sure\u2014competition among entrepreneurial candidates testing their skills and their messages. Wealthy individuals who made their fortunes by defying the odds are trying to figure out who\u2019s the odds-on favorite to win the GOP nomination so they can cluster behind him. Businessmen who swear by the virtues of competition decry the fact that there will be lots of competition for the GOP nomination. Shouldn\u2019t they instead welcome the competition, even encourage it by putting a little venture capital behind several nominees to see how they do? Markets work, and political markets work too. At least, they\u2019re better than the alternative.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read all of Kristol\u2019s argument for robust political competition <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weeklystandard.com\/articles\/2012-open-field-and-fair-chance_536867.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> as an antidote for the establishment and media\u2019s tendency to call results much too early.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Weekly Standard\u2019s Bill Kristol writes a terrific defense of market forces in selecting the next Republican presidential nominee. Here are two choice paragraphs: This vision should be easy for conservatives to embrace. Believers in the free market understand the virtues of competition, of low barriers to entry, and of lots of opportunities for (so [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[914,2313,2314,102,2315],"class_list":["post-8406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-2012-presidential-election","tag-bill-kristol","tag-competition","tag-free-market","tag-weekly-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8406"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8409,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8406\/revisions\/8409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}