I Don't Know - Leonard Read - Mises Daily

I Don't Know - Leonard Read - Mises Daily: 'A person can no more explain how the free market would attend to mail delivery than his great-grandfather could have explained how television could ever emerge from free-market forces!'

'How would the free market attend to mail delivery were the postal service desocialized? I don't know! Nor could anyone have known 100 years ago how the free market would develop the means to deliver the human voice from city to city. But take note of these facts: we have maintained mail delivery as a socialized operation; its service is getting worse, not better; its costs and prices are increasing, not decreasing; since 1932 it has accumulated an acknowledged deficit of $10 billion, and the deficits increase annually.[4]

Voice delivery, on the other hand, has been improving. Just a century ago the human voice could be delivered at the speed of sound, but only the distance two people could understand each other's shouting. Today, the human voice is delivered at the speed of light; and as to distance, it's any place on earth — you name it! The service has improved enormously; and the cost has decreased steadily.

In human-voice delivery, free-market forces have been more or less operative. No one could have predicted in 1865 what form these forces would take during the next hundred years. Even more remarkable, no one can describe how the miracles were performed after the fact. Once we realize that we cannot explain what has happened, it becomes obvious that we can never explain what will happen.'