26A010 Two Arenas by Jim Davies, 3/10/2026

Those who are reading Bill Schmidt's fabulous book Liberty may by now have noticed his use of the term "arena"; the Market Arena and the Political Arena. It's a bit like a 2-ring circus, except that the latter keeps interfering with the former.

The difference between them is radical. In the Market Arena, we deal with each other peacefully and voluntarily. You do it, for sure, every day; for example if you shop at a store with 50,000 different items on the shelves and you choose to purchase only 30, you are saying "no thanks" to 49,970 offers; yet there is no hostility and the store owner will welcome you back next time.

But in the Political Arena you are faced with offers you can not refuse, just like the Mafia. You deal with government on the basis of compulsion and violence. You can refuse to accept its "benefits", but you can not refuse to pay for them.

In the Market Arena, the huge array of offers available come at no cost at all - because the vendor is taking all the risk. He carefully surveys what products are likely to sell, then sinks his money into the expense of bringing them to your notice, and hopes you'll buy. Usually, he gets it right and makes a profit; sometimes not. The Ford Motor Company has a long record of producing vehicles that buyers like; the Edsel model was an exception so rare that the name has entered the language as a synonym for a botch.

In the Political Arena, bureaucracies are created and kept in operation whether anyone wants their output (if any) or not; they acquire a life of their own and their real purpose is to provide employment to their staff. Botches are abundant; but no competition is allowed and no profit or loss is measured so there is no mechanism to scrap them. If each government function, service or department was available for "sale" as on a restaurant menu and only those attracting customers were retained, very few would survive; but they are all kept going for ever, with failure piled high upon failure.

Or here's another way of contrasting the two arenas: suppose leaders of the Political Arena thought it was a good idea to help Ukraine make war on Russia, and invited contributions to send to Kiev. No doubt many thousands would reach for their check books and send some; perhaps they have family connections in that country, or maybe they don't like Russians for some reason. What would be the total collected? It's a raw guess, but I suggest it would be less than ten million dollars. Certainly less than a hundred million.

That would sustain the Uke war effort for no more than 3 hours. Therefore, the war would not continue, or far more likely it would never start. The appalling waste of life and treasure now taking place in the Political Arena would not be happening. So the Political Arena people never do it that way; they compel the contributions.

The result is, as it has been since the Government Era began ten millennia ago, war and deprivation, and the fear and submission that follows the threat or possibility of much worse war to come. The rational choice of arena is perfectly obvious; yet so far, humans have picked the wrong one. How about you?