Reddit mentions of Competition and Entrepreneurship

>The free market model assumes perfect information is available to both sides.

The bad models, namely Robbinsian equilibrium models, do. The good ones model the process by which markets approach equilibria given imperfect information.

If you actually are interested in this stuff, then I'd recommend reading Kirzner's seminal work, Competition and Entrepreneurship.

1. Principles of Economics- Karl Menger
   
2. Human Action- Ludwig von Mises
   
3. Individualism and Economic Order- Friedrich Hayek
   
4. Competition and Entrepreneurship- Israel Kirzner
   
5. Economics in One Lesson- Henry Hazlitt
   
6. Man, Economy, and State- Murray Rothbard
   
7. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy- Joseph Schumpeter
   
   All of these are free online except for Kirzner, which you can get on Amazon for ~$3. Of these, Hazlitt's probably the most accessible to a general audience, but I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention Leonard Read's I, Pencil. I tried to limit myself to one per author, but what substitutions/additions would you guys recommend?

I believe in freedom because I don't know what people will do with it. The problem with state control is that it cannot plan for, well, anything. It cannot handle anything like markets can. The market process allows for discovery. And this applies equally well to those parts of society we never consider as markets. Freedom of association and trade and bargaining allows people to figure out for themselves, using their local knowledge of time and place, the best contextual solution to social problems. Take marriage and the family. Professor Steven Horwitz has some brilliantly illuminating work on economics and the family: esp. the idea that there is no "traditional" family, that commercial societies change the structure of families in fundamental ways, and that those changes are, for better or worse, irreversible. And he has interesting things to say about to what extent there are problems with modern families and how the market process can help iron these problems out (and, I would say, that the market process is the only way to "iron" those problems out).

I know that this doesn't sound like much of an answer, but when talking about the market process, "I don't know what will happen" is incredibly profound. None of us knows what will happen. But, after 200-some years of developing the field, what we do know is that governments are the least capable social agencies for providing anything. All I can tell you is that given secure property rights and freedom along with some public goods "problem", there exists a profit opportunity. The job of the entrepreneur is to discover solutions to problems. If we restrict his ability to do so by way of taxation, regulation, restriction on movement of labor and capital, etc., then we restrict the growth of wealth, and we end up with true public goods problems. Then we have the Hayekian/Misesian problem of accelerating government interventions, all attempting to solve problems caused by previous interventions.

Hope that makes sense. I gave more links here, I know, even after you said you didn't have time for the first batch. You really ought to read Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society". Modern academic Austrian economics is to no small extent concerned with illuminating the market process as a process of social learning and discovery. If we restrict the market process, we restrict the ability of society to learn and discover new, better ways of dealing with problems.