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Libertarian Party

 
 
Craven de Kere
 
  1  
Reply Fri 5 Mar, 2004 12:59 pm
Don't expect me to do anything McG. I quit/am in the process of quitting.

In the near future I expect to have very little to do with A2K except for technical work.
0 Replies
 
McGentrix
 
  1  
Reply Fri 5 Mar, 2004 12:59 pm
I wasn't expecting anything, I was just showing examples.
0 Replies
 
Portal Star
 
  1  
Reply Fri 5 Mar, 2004 01:27 pm
I hear Nader's running on his own (if he can get petitioned in) - not under the green party label this year.

I think he has some goals in common with business de-regulation, wanting to put it back in the hands of the consumers.

He has a good history, what do you guys think?
0 Replies
 
McGentrix
 
  1  
Reply Fri 5 Mar, 2004 01:29 pm
Craven de Kere wrote:
Don't expect me to do anything McG. I quit/am in the process of quitting.

In the near future I expect to have very little to do with A2K except for technical work.


You're not going to quit posting are you? Shocked
0 Replies
 
L R R Hood
 
  1  
Reply Sat 6 Mar, 2004 05:46 am
Craven de Kere wrote:
lol

Lemme guess. All the negative stuff goes in the "reading too much" category right?

Let me put this another way.

Civility is a fine ideal, but as you demonstrate people can take just about anything as a personal insult.

You decided to take a comment that was not directed at you as a "personal insult".

Personal insults are not permitted here, but that doesn't mean nobody can criticize anything just because some will inevitably take offense to it.

There's a difference between saying:

"Your position is absurd"

and

"You are an idiot"

Attacking positions, ideology, parties etc is part of intellectual exchange.

When peeple decide to take anything negative stated about positions they happen to share as an insult and paint it as an issue of civility they are undermining intellectual exchange because of their inordinate sensitivity.


Once again, you read way too much into things.
0 Replies
 
Craven de Kere
 
  1  
Reply Sat 6 Mar, 2004 06:33 am
McGentrix wrote:

You're not going to quit posting are you? Shocked


No, that's fun. Laughing
0 Replies
 
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Thu 18 Mar, 2004 07:59 am
Re: Libertarian Party
Joe -- sorry for my responding so late. I thought I had responded, wondered why I don't remember your reaction, came back to the thread, and noticed that I was wrong. The response I thought I had posted wasn't there.

joefromchicago wrote:
I suspect we may have a definitional problem arising here, Thomas. I am, by and large, talking about "libertarians" in the political sense: i.e. those persons in the US who identify either with the Libertarian Party or its principles. After all, the thread started out talking about the Libertarian Party.

I'm not sure if we mean the same thing, but I make a similar distinction between small-l 'libertarians', and capital-L 'Libertarians'. By 'libertarians' I mean people who think that a much larger share of all social interaction should be organized through voluntary associations and individual contracts, and that a much smaller share than today should be organized through government institutions. By "Libertarian" I mean people associated with the Libertarian party, which has a much more specific agenda. I think that this agenda is attractive as a long term goal (say 30 years out), so I said in my first post I agree with it. But their agenda isn't very helpful for the next term of Congress or the next presidency, which is why I called it "pretty far out". Sorry about my inconsistence. Are we in sync now?

joefromchicago wrote:
Thomas wrote:
My point is that among the people most qualified to asses information costs and their consequences, the share of libertarians is much larger than in the general population. Your theory would seem to predict it is smaller, so I see this as pretty strong evidence against your position. But I admit it is evidence short of proof.

I wouldn't say that it's evidence short of proof, since I wouldn't call it evidence at all. What you've identified is, at best, an interesting bit of trivia. At worst, it is the result of a rather obvious pair of sampling errors.

Let's get strictly logical for a moment. If you state: "All libertarians ignore information costs", and I show you one libertarian who doesn't ignore information costs, I have proved your statement wrong. In reality, you have made a somewhat weaker claim, and I have showed you at least three libertarians who have won Nobel Prizes for doing the opposite of ignoring information costs. Because your claim was weaker, my response is only evidence, not a conclusive proof that your statement was wrong. But your answer that you wouldn't call it evidence at all seems rather disingenious to me.

joefromchicago wrote:
Thomas wrote:
One possibility is idealism -- nobody says that incentives have to be pecuniary to be economically significant.

Quite true. Donors can be motivated not only by ideals but by prestige, honor, shame, envy, and faith. But when we're dealing with monetary transactions (even if the transaction involves donating the money), I think that pecuniary considerations are particularly relevant.

I don't see the big difference. When I spend $500 on a new dishwasher, I'm willing to read the relevant copy of "Consumer Report" to make sure I get my choice right. So when I donate $500 to charity, why wouldn't I read the relevant copy of "Charity Report" to get the choice right? Both transactions matter about equally to me, judging by my willingness to spend the same amount of money on both. So why do you expect the hypothetical "Charity Report" magazine to be unprofitable when the real "Consumer Report" manifestly is profitable?

joefromchicago wrote:
Thomas wrote:
I don't follow that. A charity that plays straight has an incentive to signal its willingness to do so to potential donors. One of those signals could be the generous disclosure of internal information, just like credit card owners do.

But why would the potential donors trust the information disclosed by the charity? After all, Enron showed its books to investors too. The only difference is that, in a libertarian economy, there would be no counterpart to the SEC.

Why not? Indeed, why wouldn't there be several competing counterparts to the SEC? True, people wouldn't trust the charity. They would trust whatever private SEC equivalent they believe to be most trustworthy. By the way, in the process of doing a little research for a different thread, I discovered a rather primitive, but nevertheless real, private SEC for charities. It's called Charity Navigator, and I see no compelling reason why it couldn't grow into an SEC-substituting shape in a more libertarian world.
0 Replies
 
joefromchicago
 
  1  
Reply Thu 18 Mar, 2004 10:46 am
Re: Libertarian Party
Thomas wrote:
Are we in sync now?

Maybe.

Thomas wrote:
Let's get strictly logical for a moment. If you state: "All libertarians ignore information costs", and I show you one libertarian who doesn't ignore information costs, I have proved your statement wrong.

Correct.

Thomas wrote:
In reality, you have made a somewhat weaker claim, and I have showed you at least three libertarians who have won Nobel Prizes for doing the opposite of ignoring information costs. Because your claim was weaker, my response is only evidence, not a conclusive proof that your statement was wrong. But your answer that you wouldn't call it evidence at all seems rather disingenious to me.

Your argument is based on the following premises: (1) Nobel laureates are the people most qualified to assess information costs and their consequences; and (2) three Nobel laureates is a statistically significant percentage of Nobel laureates. Both of these premises, in turn, are really results of sampling. Now, if I can show: (1) that Nobel laureates are not the people most qualified to assess information costs and their consequences; or (2) that three Nobel laureates is not a statistically significant sample of Nobel laureates, then I will have shown that your evidence is insufficient to support your conclusions.

I'm not going to devote a lot of time to that task, since it's rather tangential to this discussion. I would just say that I can walk down to the end of LaSalle Street here in Chicago and find a hundred people at the Board of Trade who are equally or better qualified to assess information costs as any Nobel laureate. Furthermore, by my count, there have been 53 Nobel prizes awarded in the field of Economics. Three laureates would then represent less than 6 percent of the total. Now, is that in any way a significant representation of the class of Nobel laureates? I'll let you answer that, Thomas.

In sum, I'll just say that your premises are questionable, and they certainly do not support your conclusion that libertarians (big L or little L) are, in general, better at assessing information costs than non-libertarians (of whatever variety).

Thomas wrote:
I don't see the big difference. When I spend $500 on a new dishwasher, I'm willing to read the relevant copy of "Consumer Report" to make sure I get my choice right. So when I donate $500 to charity, why wouldn't I read the relevant copy of "Charity Report" to get the choice right? Both transactions matter about equally to me, judging by my willingness to spend the same amount of money on both. So why do you expect the hypothetical "Charity Report" magazine to be unprofitable when the real "Consumer Report" manifestly is profitable?

Here's the difference: when you spend $500 on a dishwasher, you've made the decision that a dishwasher has a value to you of $500. Furthermore, you have determined that a "good" dishwasher is worth more than a "bad" dishwasher, the difference being at least more than the price of the Consumer Report magazine (if the difference were less, you wouldn't bother buying the magazine).

And you're right: if you've already decided to give away $500, then what you get in return (whatever that might be) is roughly equivalent in value to you as a new dishwasher. Thus you have as much incentive to determine if you are making a "good" contribution or a "bad" contribution, and the difference to you must be worth at least the price of the "Charity Report" magazine.

The problem, as I have noted before, is that you would have no reason to trust the information in the "Charity Report" magazine. After all, there is no mechanism for verifying the information in the magazine, apart from the market mechanism that is supposed to drive out unreliable magazines and reward reliable ones. But then no donor could be certain that a magazine, in circulation, remained in circulation because it had been sanctioned by the market or because it had not yet been punished by the market (by the way, the same problem would also affect any "Consumer Report" type of magazine in an unregulated marketplace).

Moreover, while the difference between a "good" dishwasher and a "bad" dishwasher is more susceptible to quantification (I can estimate a discounted value based on my definitions of "good" and "bad"), such quantification is inherently more problematic in terms of charitable contributions (what is the difference, expressed in monetary terms, between the psychic benefits I receive from donating to a "good" charity and donating to a "bad" charity). Thus, whereas I can say "I value a 'good' dishwasher at $500 and a 'bad' dishwasher at $100, and thus the value of information regarding dishwashers is worth approximately $400 to me," such a computation is inherently more difficult when it comes to charitable donations, since there is no "market" for "bad" donations. As such, the incentive to expend money to gain information is lacking. Whereas it is a bargain to spend $3.50 on a magazine that offers $400 worth of information, what is a fair price for a magazine that offers information on charitable organizations?

Thomas wrote:
Why not? Indeed, why wouldn't there be several competing counterparts to the SEC? True, people wouldn't trust the charity. They would trust whatever private SEC equivalent they believe to be most trustworthy. By the way, in the process of doing a little research for a different thread, I discovered a rather primitive, but nevertheless real, private SEC for charities. It's called Charity Navigator, and I see no compelling reason why it couldn't grow into an SEC-substituting shape in a more libertarian world.

Because there would be no reason for anyone to trust that entity.
0 Replies
 
georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Thu 18 Mar, 2004 11:28 am
Joe from Chicago & Thomas,

Back on page 1 I found your dialogue most interesting - both viewpoints equally so. Later the thread became a bit diverted to other things and the two of you then became locked in some disputes over what appear to me to be some rather fine points at the intersection of of economic theory and human psychology. This may well be what interests you now and, if so, I'll gladly butt out. However I can't help but think that it may be useful to step back a bit and consider some of the practical benefits and limitations of the application of libertarian ideas to real politics. In that spirit I am repeating a post I inserted here then. If that is a useful rereference point then great, if not that's OK too.

georgeob1 wrote:
Delightful dialogue between Joe from Chicago & Thomas concerning libertarianism, the limits of free markets and government. Both viewpoints are stimulating and refreshing, -- though I like Joe's avatar much more than Thomas'.

I believe that in the areas you are disputing (if that is the right word) we are approaching the limits of what is practically knowable. I have learned through experience in managing organizations that life is a good deal more complex than our theories and models permit, and human beings, in pursuit of their self interests as they perceive them, a good deal more inventive than both the designers of organizations & government and the philosophers who attempt to model their behavior. Repeatedly I have encountered organizational structures, designed well to deal with salient operational factors, run down and corrupted by the accumulated evasions, and workarounds of people at all levels. Moreover there is usually as much that is foolish and risky in these evasions as that which contributes to the intended goal of the organization or corporation. The invisible hand does indeed operate in the sum of all these independent actions, but not enough to avoid trouble in particular instances. Given enough time, the inintended side effects will dominate. (My thumbrule now in taking over a new organization is - if it has been centralized for five years, decentralize it: if it has been decentralized for five years, centralize it.)

That may be the rub. We live and deal with particular lives and particular situations - not the ensemble averages of all such things. Politics is always about the particular.


.
0 Replies
 
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Thu 18 Mar, 2004 11:45 am
Re: Libertarian Party
joefromchicago wrote:
In sum, I'll just say that your premises are questionable, and they certainly do not support your conclusion that libertarians (big L or little L) are, in general, better at assessing information costs than non-libertarians (of whatever variety).

I agree about the premises and the conclusions, but they are neither my premises nor my conclusions. My only premise was that the people most qualified to judge information costs are Nobel Laureates who won their prizes for their work on information costs. There are six people in the world who meet this criterion, and I referred to all of them. There was no sampling involved, and hence no sampling error. As to the conclusion, the only conclusion I intended to reach is that being a libertarian doesn't necessarily reflect a failure to account for information costs. I understood you to have made this claim, and it is refuted by the existence of three libertarians who have proven very willing and very able to account for information costs.

joefromchicago wrote:
The problem, as I have noted before, is that you would have no reason to trust the information in the "Charity Report" magazine. After all, there is no mechanism for verifying the information in the magazine, apart from the market mechanism that is supposed to drive out unreliable magazines and reward reliable ones.

I agree this is a problem, and I agree that the market mechanism is imperfect. But the same problem exists if "Charity Report" is a government agency. I hear the government watchdogs have done a pretty bad job on Enron, WorldCom, and California's electricity producers themselves. The difference is, a private Charity Report has to convince me that it is the most trustworthy watchdog for my purposes. Otherwise it won't get my business. But the SEC, the FERC, and all their friends have to convince neither me nor any other citizen that they'll do a good job at what we pay them to do. They simply put themselves in charge by virtue of being the government

The option to put yourself in charge by decree, rather than persuading your customers you'll do a good job, is valuable for agencies without persuasive arguments going for them. It is much less valuable for agencies who have such arguments. Therefore, I don't trust private agencies blindly, but I trust them more than government agencies. This is reason enough to reach a libertarian conclusion. I don't have to establish that the market solution works perfect, only that it can be reasonably expected to work better than the government solution.

joefromchicago wrote:
Moreover, while the difference between a "good" dishwasher and a "bad" dishwasher is more susceptible to quantification (I can estimate a discounted value based on my definitions of "good" and "bad"), such quantification is inherently more problematic in terms of charitable contributions

I don't see how 'there is no way to calculate it' leads to 'I can't make a good decision about it'. You can't calculate (most of) the benefits of your wife or girlfriend to you either, but that doesn't keep you from making competent decisions about the costs of getting a good one. (how many parties to attend to look around, how many candle light dinners to have before making your move, and all these other costs, pecuniar and non-pecuniar.) You would never demand that matches be made by government agencies, on the grounds that the benefits of a good match can't be quantified easily. Why do you think this line of argument is any better for other non-quantifiable decisions such as contributing to charity?

Again, I'm not a libertarian because I think voluntary coordination always works perfectly. I'm a libertarian because I think it works less bad than involuntary coordination by government -- with very few exceptions. These exceptions include national defense, law making, law enforcement, municipal utilites, and maybe the printing of money. The list is longer, but not much longer.
0 Replies
 
joefromchicago
 
  1  
Reply Thu 18 Mar, 2004 09:33 pm
Re: Libertarian Party
Thomas wrote:
As to the conclusion, the only conclusion I intended to reach is that being a libertarian doesn't necessarily reflect a failure to account for information costs. I understood you to have made this claim...

I did not make that claim, so I'll just ascribe this to a misunderstanding and leave it at that.

Thomas wrote:
I agree this is a problem, and I agree that the market mechanism is imperfect. But the same problem exists if "Charity Report" is a government agency.

Not quite. The government watchdog has several advantages over a private entity, including access to information that the government compels charities to provide.

Thomas wrote:
I hear the government watchdogs have done a pretty bad job on Enron, WorldCom, and California's electricity producers themselves. The difference is, a private Charity Report has to convince me that it is the most trustworthy watchdog for my purposes. Otherwise it won't get my business. But the SEC, the FERC, and all their friends have to convince neither me nor any other citizen that they'll do a good job at what we pay them to do. They simply put themselves in charge by virtue of being the government.

Well, that remains a theoretical argument. But it should be noted that the failures of the SEC, et al., have come about largely as the result of capitalists acting like unrestrained capitalists. It takes, I think, a rather mighty leap of faith to believe that capitalists will act more virtuously in an unregulated marketplace than they currently do in a regulated market.

Thomas wrote:
The option to put yourself in charge by decree, rather than persuading your customers you'll do a good job, is valuable for agencies without persuasive arguments going for them.

And also valuable for monopolists in an unregulated market.

Thomas wrote:
It is much less valuable for agencies who have such arguments. Therefore, I don't trust private agencies blindly, but I trust them more than government agencies. This is reason enough to reach a libertarian conclusion. I don't have to establish that the market solution works perfect, only that it can be reasonably expected to work better than the government solution.

I've seen no evidence to convince me of this.

Thomas wrote:
I don't see how 'there is no way to calculate it' leads to 'I can't make a good decision about it'.

Which is why I said that it was "more problematic," not that "there was no way to calculate it."

Thomas wrote:
You can't calculate (most of) the benefits of your wife or girlfriend to you either, but that doesn't keep you from making competent decisions about the costs of getting a good one. (how many parties to attend to look around, how many candle light dinners to have before making your move, and all these other costs, pecuniar and non-pecuniar.) You would never demand that matches be made by government agencies, on the grounds that the benefits of a good match can't be quantified easily. Why do you think this line of argument is any better for other non-quantifiable decisions such as contributing to charity?

I didn't make that argument, so I offer no opinion on your analogy.

Thomas wrote:
Again, I'm not a libertarian because I think voluntary coordination always works perfectly. I'm a libertarian because I think it works less bad than involuntary coordination by government -- with very few exceptions. These exceptions include national defense, law making, law enforcement, municipal utilites, and maybe the printing of money. The list is longer, but not much longer.

I think you need one other assumption in order to accept libertarianism: a belief in the inherent goodness and reasonableness of mankind in general.
0 Replies
 
joefromchicago
 
  1  
Reply Thu 18 Mar, 2004 09:42 pm
georgeob1 wrote:
I believe that in the areas you are disputing (if that is the right word) we are approaching the limits of what is practically knowable. I have learned through experience in managing organizations that life is a good deal more complex than our theories and models permit, and human beings, in pursuit of their self interests as they perceive them, a good deal more inventive than both the designers of organizations & government and the philosophers who attempt to model their behavior.

I wholeheartedly agree. I would also add that, in a marketplace regulated by the government rather than by private interests, people have certain civic rights as against other participants in the marketplace. Those civic rights would, at most, be replaced with contractual rights in a libertarian market, which are fundamentally anti-egalitarian. Of course, if the libertarian does not value equality, then the trade-off poses little problem.

I'd further note that some of the most fervent proponents of government regulation are businesses.

georgeob1 wrote:
Repeatedly I have encountered organizational structures, designed well to deal with salient operational factors, run down and corrupted by the accumulated evasions, and workarounds of people at all levels. Moreover there is usually as much that is foolish and risky in these evasions as that which contributes to the intended goal of the organization or corporation. The invisible hand does indeed operate in the sum of all these independent actions, but not enough to avoid trouble in particular instances. Given enough time, the inintended side effects will dominate. (My thumbrule now in taking over a new organization is - if it has been centralized for five years, decentralize it: if it has been decentralized for five years, centralize it.)

I can't argue with that.

georgeob1 wrote:
That may be the rub. We live and deal with particular lives and particular situations - not the ensemble averages of all such things. Politics is always about the particular.

Indeed.
0 Replies
 
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Fri 19 Mar, 2004 01:12 am
Re: Libertarian Party
duplicate
0 Replies
 
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Fri 19 Mar, 2004 01:16 am
Re: Libertarian Party
joefromchicago wrote:
Thomas wrote:
Again, I'm not a libertarian because I think voluntary coordination always works perfectly. I'm a libertarian because I think it works less bad than involuntary coordination by government -- with very few exceptions. These exceptions include national defense, law making, law enforcement, municipal utilites, and maybe the printing of money. The list is longer, but not much longer.

I think you need one other assumption in order to accept libertarianism: a belief in the inherent goodness and reasonableness of mankind in general.

I don't believe in the inherent goodness and reasonableness of mankind in general. I just recognize that government is nothing more than a bunch of humans itself. If the problem is that humans are often evil and stupid, I don't see how giving some humans coercive power over other humans contributes to a solution. The way to address human stupidity and evilness is checks and balances, not coercion. And I see many more and much better checks and balances within the marketplace and in voluntary associations than within the government.

I think your position depends on a worldview that implicitly treats governments like philosopher kings who act fundamentally smarter and better than private people. But they are really self serving, bullying associations of humans who are just as evil and stupid as the humans in the private sector. I think libertarianism accounts for the nature of government better than competing ideologies.

I have noted your other points, but I suspect this one is the core of our disagreement.
0 Replies
 
georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Fri 19 Mar, 2004 08:09 am
I find this debate (or discussion) fascinating, in part because I agree with most of the basic points each of you make, and do so much more than I see a need to take sides on the (to me, relatively much smaller) points over which you contest.

Markets, though more effective than anything else yet devised, are undoubtedly imperfect. Their history is replete with instances of human folly in which even readily available and significant information concerning economic transactions was simply ignored by otherwise proficient practicioners in the marketplace (from tulip bulbs to internet start-ups). There are undoubtedly some (perhaps very few) gaps between the central tendencies of human behavior and the rational actions required of participants in an ideal market - at least in some instances, charity or otherwise. Moreover, even in the broader areas of undisputed applicability of market mechanisms, human behavior very often does deviate from its central tendencies - the distributions are not particularly compact. Markets work very well for most things - far better than any alternative I know of - however they are not perfect. Their imperfections, though small, can be particularly unkind to losers, and lead to large, chaotic excursions in broad outcomes.

Thomas' points about government - merely collections of human beings, no better, wiser or worse than those they govern - are undoubtedly correct. Moreover he is right in his implicit view that governments do not necessarily respond to the rational feedback forces markets generate so well. I'll go further. Government organs and bureaucracies value preservation of their own authority and primacy above all other factors. Absent some external action (perhaps the democratic intervention of a legislature) they will continue to do what they do, long after any need or benefit from their actions disappears. Moreover the political and administrative decision-making of government at all levels is subject to the intervention and manipulation of forces that are merely well-connected and attentive (as opposed to productive and generally beneficial), and often for ends that defy the intended purpose. In most government directed programs, the unintended side effects eventually dominate the intended primary ones. Examples of all this are legion.

What to do? A common dilemma. We simply place one grossly imperfect system (government) properly in opposition to another slightly imperfect one (markets). The virtue of the particular combination is not so much a result of the perfection of its parts, as it is the absence of many common defects between them. The price we pay is the limitation of some of the optimizations markets can produce. The benefit is a floor on the losses of market losers and, hopefully, the elimination of most of the chaotic excursions to which real markets can be subject. Like Thomas, I generally prefer market solutions to government ones if they can work.

We have likely all had the experience in the management of organizations of putting talented, but imperfect people in counterpose with each other to achieve an end or a reliable performance that neither could deliver alone. I have similarly learned to always put people around me who will limit my own weaknesses and defects. It is te same with markets and government. Additionally Thomas has already made the point that, even within government, it is the internal friction and competition between its parts that is the usual source of its best product. Government is not the solution - markets are generally the solution: governments are merely the remedy for the defects of the markets.

I guess I'm not quite a Libertarian, but I would like to come as close to it as possible, recognizing that some counterpoint will always be needed.

Finally, I an suspicious of all theories - even those I 'accept'. I am uncomfortable having any aspect of my life governed by a person or group that is certain it is correct.
0 Replies
 
joefromchicago
 
  1  
Reply Fri 19 Mar, 2004 09:40 am
Re: Libertarian Party
Thomas wrote:
I don't believe in the inherent goodness and reasonableness of mankind in general. I just recognize that government is nothing more than a bunch of humans itself. If the problem is that humans are often evil and stupid, I don't see how giving some humans coercive power over other humans contributes to a solution. The way to address human stupidity and evilness is checks and balances, not coercion. And I see many more and much better checks and balances within the marketplace and in voluntary associations than within the government.

Are you suggesting that a truly libertarian society would dispense with coercion? That, I submit, is absolutely inconceivable.

Thomas wrote:
I think your position depends on a worldview that implicitly treats governments like philosopher kings who act fundamentally smarter and better than private people.

As with your previous assumptions about my position, you are wrong.

Thomas wrote:
But they are really self serving, bullying associations of humans who are just as evil and stupid as the humans in the private sector. I think libertarianism accounts for the nature of government better than competing ideologies.

No, it replaces a flawed view of government with a flawed view of the market.

Thomas wrote:
I have noted your other points, but I suspect this one is the core of our disagreement.

That may very well be true.
0 Replies
 
joefromchicago
 
  1  
Reply Fri 19 Mar, 2004 09:47 am
georgeob1 wrote:
What to do? A common dilemma. We simply place one grossly imperfect system (government) properly in opposition to another slightly imperfect one (markets). The virtue of the particular combination is not so much a result of the perfection of its parts, as it is the absence of many common defects between them. The price we pay is the limitation of some of the optimizations markets can produce. The benefit is a floor on the losses of market losers and, hopefully, the elimination of most of the chaotic excursions to which real markets can be subject. Like Thomas, I generally prefer market solutions to government ones if they can work.

I think there is a good deal of truth here. The common assumption is that free market capitalism cannot exist without democracy, and democracy cannot exist without free market capitalism. But democracy and capitalism are not complementary; rather, they are, if anything, fundamentally opposed to each other.

If democracy rests on the principle of "one man, one vote," capitalism rests on the principle of "whoever has the most money wins." Those principles, far from being consistent, are irreconcilable. And if libertarians think they can create a democratic society on the basis of free market capitalism, they are engaged in a futile effort to square the circle.
0 Replies
 
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Fri 19 Mar, 2004 10:28 am
joefromchicago wrote:
Are you suggesting that a truly libertarian society would dispense with coercion? That, I submit, is absolutely inconceivable.

Not quite. I am suggesting that an ideal libertarian society would dispense with [associations of] people who can legitimately excercise higher amounts of coercion than other [associations of] people can. David Friedman, a professor of law and economics at Santa Clara University, has laid out how such a society could be stable, and gives good reasons why he expects it to be attractive. Unlike him, I don't believe this ideal can be achieved. I am not fanatic about trying to achieve full-fledged anarcho-capitalism. But Friedman is not a hack, and I expect that we can, and ought to, come much closer to this ideal than we currently are.

joefromchicago wrote:
Thomas wrote:
I think your position depends on a worldview that implicitly treats governments like philosopher kings who act fundamentally smarter and better than private people.

As with your previous assumptions about my position, you are wrong.

In this case, I would love to be corrected. Where do you see the boundary between the activities best organized by governments and those best organized by voluntary associations? And based on which assumptions do you see it there?

joefromchicago wrote:
The common assumption is that free market capitalism cannot exist without democracy, and democracy cannot exist without free market capitalism.

This assumption is false, however common it might be. As a counterexample, Hong Kong has never been a democracy; nevertheless, free market capitalism has been existing there for over 100 years. Other counterexamples include Chile under Pinochet and Taiwan under Chiang Kai Check. (sp?)

joefromchicago wrote:
And if libertarians think they can create a democratic society on the basis of free market capitalism, they are engaged in a futile effort to square the circle.

But 19th century history seems to teach us that you can create a democratic society based on dramatically smaller governments -- at least three to five times smaller, if measured by the share of GDP spent by governments. Only a small minority of Libertarians believe the privatization of government can go much further. The minority is even smaller compared to the number of (small-l) libertarians.
0 Replies
 
joefromchicago
 
  1  
Reply Fri 19 Mar, 2004 12:22 pm
Thomas wrote:
Not quite. I am suggesting that an ideal libertarian society would dispense with [associations of] people who can legitimately excercise higher amounts of coercion than other [associations of] people can. David Friedman, a professor of law and economics at Santa Clara University, has laid out how such a society could be stable, and gives good reasons why he expects it to be attractive. Unlike him, I don't believe this ideal can be achieved. I am not fanatic about trying to achieve full-fledged anarcho-capitalism. But Friedman is not a hack, and I expect that we can, and ought to, come much closer to this ideal than we currently are.

So you prefer private economic coercion over public governmental coercion?

Thomas wrote:
In this case, I would love to be corrected. Where do you see the boundary between the activities best organized by governments and those best organized by voluntary associations? And based on which assumptions do you see it there?

It really comes down to the society's values. Where equality is deemed more important than money, government should step in. Where civil rights are deemed more important than economic rights, government should step in.

Thomas wrote:
But 19th century history seems to teach us that you can create a democratic society based on dramatically smaller governments -- at least three to five times smaller, if measured by the share of GDP spent by governments. Only a small minority of Libertarians believe the privatization of government can go much further. The minority is even smaller compared to the number of (small-l) libertarians.

Yes, we can go back to 19th century-type governments, as long as we're willing to accept 19th century-type rights, services, and protections.
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Thomas
 
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Reply Fri 19 Mar, 2004 01:05 pm
joefromchicago wrote:
So you prefer private economic coercion over public governmental coercion?

Not as a matter of principle. But as a matter of practice I do, because private coercion is much easier to route around than government coercion. When my employer, my club, or my neighbors coerce me too much, finding replacements isn't too difficult. I just find a new job, join a different club, or move to another neighborhood. By contrast, when it's my government that coerces me too much, finding a substitute can be done, but it's much harder. This is especially true for a national government.

Technical question: When you say "private economic coercion", does "economic" mean "pecuniary" for you? Or does it include mobbing, deflating the tires of your car, and other non-pecuniar forms of economic coercion? I don't think it makes a big difference to the conclusion, but would feel more comfortable if the terms are clear.

joefromchicago wrote:
It really comes down to the society's values. Where equality is deemed more important than money, government should step in.

I agree it ought to, but see no reason to believe that it would. If there's a correlation between some reasonable measure of equality in a nation and some reasonable measure of how much the government is stepping in, I have never seen evidence of it. But let me rephrase my question. Let's say you are forced to emigrate for some reason. You can freely choose the country; in fact, you get to write that country's laws and define the values of its society. Where would you choose the boundary between private and government institutions to be, and why?

joefromchicago wrote:
Yes, we can go back to 19th century-type governments, as long as we're willing to accept 19th century-type rights, services, and protections.

I disagree about rights. For one, some rights were much more liberal in the 19th century than they are today. Just think of drug laws -- cocaine, marijuana and morphium were all legal and in fairly widespread use. Moreover, I don't see why we'd have to re-introduce slavery or repeal womens' right to vote to get a 19th century type government again.

But yes, I might be willing to accept 19th century type services and protections. Why not?
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