democratic politics creates difficult knowledge problems for modern societies. By granting political parties exclusive authority over the production of goods and services, by preventing voters from comparing the effects of parties’ policies, and by requiring voters to evaluate the consequences of policies without a common metric for comparing disparate goods, democratic politics exacerbates the effects of ignorance on human affairs.
Pointer from Peter Boettke. This is an issue on which progressives and libertarians talk past one another. I think that for progressives what is important is that the political process has the potential to work well, while we know that markets fail to realize the potential of perfect competition under perfect information. For example, I read Steven Teles as saying that the problem with democracy is not that it inherently faces knowledge problems but that certain institutional characteristics, such as the Senate cloture rule, are at fault.
When the issue is government vs. the market, frankly, I have a hard time giving a good account of the progressive point of view. I keep hearing it as “markets fail, therefore government works,” and I know that is an uncharitable interpretation.