France's social market vs. the U.S.'s libertarian/less social market

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I wonder how that difference between the expectations of the avg American and avg European affect things like suicide rates, and overall satisfaction/happiness. I could see it going either way.

[nicky g]

Scandinavia supposedly very high suicide rates (often blamed on the long winters), despite many of its countries doing much better in the happiness rates in this survey than other European countries. I think it's pretty hard to interpret or compare these figures in a meaningful way.

[Propertarian]

Two major assumptions you make here are wrong:

1. Psychologists cannot do anything to improve economics. Your argument is worthless; just because people are not identical does not mean they cannot find out what most people are like, are find out the averages amongst a population. In fact it goes the other way around; economics without a solid and non-vaccous view of human nature is not useful.

2. Increases in the ammout of goods always improves people's lives(on a subjective view of well-being).

One of the biggest myths ever, now debunked by scientists at the macro and micro levels based on world wide studies. It is true that when the level of total output and income in a society is very low economic growth will improve well-being. After the point reached by the U.S. in the early 50s it doesn't work. At that point as income and the ammount of quality and goods increase, people's expectations for their own income and tangible-good level increases, and they adapt to their new level of goods as well. Hence increased happiness is not achieved.

A good summary of the findings are found in Richard Layard's
book "Happiness: Lessons From A New Science", Penguin, 2005.



[ QUOTE ]

The work isn't perfect (none are) but this argument is correct and is validated by experience.




If experience is the only validation, then to that I echo the sentiment that the "theory" is 'worthless in economics, since it may only be coincidences of complex facts, and not isolable, repeatable law which will hold true in the future.'


[/ QUOTE ] I never said or implied experience is the is the only validation; logic is important too. However, experience *IS* a necessary validation of all science.

[ QUOTE ]

Sharing, caring, trust, and health may or may not exist in an egalitarian society, and they are certainly not automatic givens.

[/ QUOTE ] More egalitarianism=more sharing, caring, trust, and health, other things being equal.

[Propertarian]

[ QUOTE ]

Next, people can't make a rate of return if nobody is buying anything. If nobody is consuming at all nobody will save either.



Zero consumption is impossible as a reality and therefore meaningless as a theoretical assumption. Hence nothing. Moving on...

[/ QUOTE ] It was an illustration of a point. Notice the context of my comment.

[ QUOTE ]

The taxes collected from the wealth tax go towards programs which greatly improve the quality of life of the citizens




If the quality of life of the individuals of society can be improved by a particular economic good, *greatly* no less, why then can that good not be provided by the market? I know of no such good in existence.


[/ QUOTE ] Notice that I didn't list off tangible goods here and was not talking about that. The market is all right at producing highly tangible goods but very poor at producing and maintaining intangible ones like the things I've been talking about. In fact if these intagible 'goods' are for sale it demeans them or even turns them into 'bads' (e.g. imagine buying love, friendship, and trust). Unfortunately for libertarians, intangible 'goods' are far more important to human happiness than highly tangible ones. Meaningful work, love, and a feeling of belonging and cooperation in non-profitable activities in fact have all individually been shown to be more important to human well-being than things that are for sale, for example.

And this is without going into externalities.

[TomCollins]

[ QUOTE ]
Unfortunately for libertarians, intangible 'goods' are far more important to human happiness than highly tangible ones. Meaningful work, love, and a feeling of belonging and cooperation in non-profitable activities in fact have all individually been shown to be more important to human well-being than things that are for sale, for example.

[/ QUOTE ]

Please elaborate at all how this is "unfortunately for liberatrians". This seems like much worse news for central planners where these intangible goods cannot be arbitrarily divided and must somehow compensate them. Some people value love more than free time, some people value belonging more. Some people value working more. What makes you think you can decide better than they can? Do you even have a point, because I am clearly missing it.

[Propertarian]

[ QUOTE ]
No matter what the underlying assumption of human nature or their circumstances are, we can say that an individual prefers more goods to less. It is that preference of more goods to less, combined with the diversity of human talents and natural resources that create the division of labor, upon which the necessity of effective cooperation in order to act upon preferences rests. Effective cooperation is utilized to bring goods to the market, ultimately to exchange for other produced goods. Therefore, increased cooperation reflects an increase in the desire for more goods, and sooner rather than later.

[/ QUOTE ] THis is also false. Studies of various forms economies, done by people at least dating back to Karl Polayni to the present, have found that human beings primarily are seeking social STATUS and fulfilling the principle reciprocity in their economic behavior.

If you read up on some non-capitalist forms of economic organization, you can easily see that your supposed universal fact of human nature is based on faulty assumptions.

"The outstanding discovery of recent historical and anthropoligical research is that man's economy, as a rule, is submerged in his social relationships. He does not act so as to safeguard his individual interest in the possesion of matieral goods; he acts so as to safeguard his social standing, his social claims, his social assets. He values matieral goods only in so far as they serve this end." Karl Polayni, The Great Transformation , Beacon Press, Boston, 2001; pg. 48. Note: original edition published in the 1940s.

A few pages Later he talks about several other non-capitalist, non-planned economies and summarizes another finding in direct contradiction to your rationale for cooperation in economics:

"In such a community the idea of profit is barred; higgling and haggling is decried; giving freely is acclaimed as a virtue; the supposed propensity to barter, truck, and exchange does not appear. The economic system is, in effect, a mere function of social organization." IBID, pg. 52.

He goes on to talk about forms of trade in societies in which "no goods are hoarded or even possesed permanently" at all. IBID.

The causal arrow you are using in your last sentence quoted here is backwards; in reality "an increase in the desire for goods", when it comes into being, is caused by a change in the scheme of social cooperation (e.g. to one in which social standing and social relationships are increasingly based on matieral goods).

Redistribution, reciprocity, and the pursuit of social esteem are universal as long as the powerful do not prevent them from occuring. The pursuit of individual accumulation is not.

[Propertarian]

1st: The market doesn't provide these things. But in a democracy people can ask for them, and the government can then provide them, mostly INDIRECTLY. It is not central planners deciding but the people themselves.

2nd: Hypercapitalism tends to erode these things, while regulations and rules that humanize the market tend to preserve them. Therefore, all the government has to do is limit the market in the correct ways in order to increase well-being, it does not have to do anything to provide them itself.

One reason is that the market encourages the pursuit of social standing via the pursuit of income and matieral goods. Unfortunately, the pursuit of relative status is a zero-sum game, and people find that their pursuit gets them nowhere. They could spend their time doing something more intrinsically enjoyable, but if others are pursuing status during this time they get left behind in relative status, decreasing their own well-being. The government can create rules which help us avoid this prisoner's dillemma by ensuring cooperation instead of defection in this pursuit. Check out the book by Laylard if you want to know more.

Another is the prevalence of market failures, especially externalities. While increasingly defined property rights and a massive increase in the ammount of civil cases can solve externalities that are harmful towards tangible goods, it cannot do the same with intangible goods, because they cannot be priced.

The government my not be perfect in solving these difficulties, but the market causes them, and the government is the best option we have available for mitigating them.

[Propertarian]

That is fortune from the perspective of the child; of course. Unless he choose his own parents pre-conception.

[Propertarian]

The American market is 'less social' than the French market; you don't have to call it libertarian if you don't want to.

The problem is, if a market needs to be much more 'laissez-faire' than the U.S. to be considered libertarian, your thinking is utopian or requires a massive ammount of social control and repression of human beings to implement, contradicting the very basis of the main libertarian objection to 'statism'. Extremists talk about how the 'free' market allows people to get what they want, but people do not want the free market and all of its insecurity itself, therefore it must be imposed on humans who do not want it if it is to ever exist. In every country that has ever tried to move towards laissez-faire, massive resistance has occured to the insecurity (etc.) that the market imposes on people. And in no democracy do people freely choose libertarianism. In fact, in all other democracies I know the data for the libertarian party is smaller than the one in the U.S.

Ironic. The libertarian market is defended because it supposedly 'gives people what they want'. But they don't want that market itself. Hence, if our goal is to give people what they want, we shouldn't impose libertarianism on them.

[TomCollins]

Once again, your argument boils down to - "I know how to make people REALLY happy, they sure as hell can't do it on their own".

In a free society, I can choose to spend my time however I wish.

"Not central planners, but people themselves". That is hilarious. People are smart enough as a group but too dumb as an individual to decide whether they want to work 40 hours a week or 20?

Give me a break. At least you haven't tried to disguise your writing style any more.