In reply to Gautam Bastian’s post defending free markets (which itself was in reply to Guha’s piece), Ashutosh asks why we have to always defend free markets. He says that Ram Guha is right but that doesn’t make free markets any less good. Like democracy, the free market system has its flaws but is better than the alternatives.

Let’s say tomorrow if someone listed a set of similar grievances about democracy. Rather than vigorously trying to justify democracy as the best system that could possibly exist, I would shrug and say, “Yes, democracy does have its own evils. But it’s the least evil of all the systems that we have seen”. More accurately, I would paraphrase Bertrand Russell even more cautious viewpoint- “Democracy is not a good social and political system. But what it does is prevent certain evils”.

Note: The discussion between Ashutosh and Gautam regarding Gautam’s post can be found here.