Libertarians: Stop Using Logic

[L'ennemi.]

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Maybe the government will not do just what adanthar want, but what I want too. And maybe you too.


That's impossible, if it's doing what Andathar wants then it can't be doing what Borodog wants.

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Well, I was being sarcastic, but that is the whole concept of Western democracies, the agregation of different wills.
The fact that large group of people will agree only of a few areas naturally limits the role of gouvernements.

[GoodCallYouWin]

"adanthar, what is your issue with Ron Paul? "

He's too pro freedom.

[adanthar]

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You take issue with the libertarian ideal of "due diligence" - how is possible that with all the myriad of goods we purchase today, any consumer can be intelligent informed about the nature of what he buys? What I don't think you realize is that distilling that information has VALUE, economic value, and can be priced and sold. There are all sorts of professional organizations and companies whose sole job is to perform due diligence for consumers. In the financial markets, these include consumer credit rating agencies, security rating agencies, etc. Moody's goes through the nasty business of detailing a company's operating structure and spitting a few categories of securities for one to buy. It's possible to even see this outside of the abstracted worlds of those markets. What do you make of Progressive offering comparable auto rates by competing companies? They've simply found out that it is more profitable to offer that "due diligence" even after taking the risk that that consumer defects seeing he has a better deal elsewhere. I think you have systematically made the mistake of assuming that some goods, that you (and doesn't everyone?!) prefer, cannot be priced and thus will not be sold, leaving it up to the government to distribute them.

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We're actually pretty close to agreeing on that. There is clearly a marketplace for this stuff, these organizations exist and in some cases form their own gigantic businesses around that data, and so on. Here's the thing: they exist to fill the gaps left by "insufficient" government protection. I use that word in quotes because I don't believe that the government should necessarily protect those gaps too, but rather because they exist within an already extensive regulatory framework and nicely complement it.

What happens without that framework? Like we both agree, there is a nice market for good rating agencies, and clearly, that framework will very quickly be filled by all sorts of agencies, both trustworthy and not. Question: who provides the information about them to the consumer? Do we need another layer of rating the raters on top of that, just to go about your daily life? But okay, maybe we don't need that because...oh, let's say Arthur Andersen...is currently a globally recognizable name and can be trusted. Do you see what I'm getting at here? Sure, that might bring down a division or even a company after the fact, but since when has that stopped anybody?

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Liberal thinkers too often ignore the incentive structure of the institutions they want. Suppose you are right, and the government MUST provide consumer protection laws? Doesn't that structure leave the consumer vulnerable to "arbitrary and capricious" laws? After deciding, in a paternalistic fashion, that a group of experts can make better decisions that the consumer, what incentives do those experts have not to receive bribes (either monetary bribes, or political bribes AKA power)? The FDA overregulates because it fears political backlash from politicians who would decry any failure without economically looking at the cost-benefit aspect, which the private sector MUST do. The incentive to not be bribed in the private sector lies in the fact they are susceptible to loss. If they overregulate, they lose capturable profits. If they underregulate, they lose current profits (and to a HUGE extent, since the average human is extraordinarily risk averse - Moody's lost 70% of the newest mortgage sales after the subprime debacle). Can you give a credible answer to address this incentive problem?

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No argument that the government is vulnerable to overcorrection - that's the whole problem of a huge bureaucracy. Here's the thing: when the government overregulates, eventually, people bitch enough so that, slowly and painfully, it generally gets fixed (Borodog's "but they never let goooooo!" notwithstanding - check out the tax rates 30 years ago). When the government underregulates and the market takes advantage, people die. Human sausage meat, fuel tank explosions, missing lifeboats, radioactive underwear, it goes on and on and on; completely free, unregulated markets inevitably result in lots and lots of death, followed by public outcry to fix it. Incidentally, Libertopia is gonna have a really big problem with this if it's the least bit democratic.

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At the margin, I can agree with you that government can often take the first, proactive role in consumer regulation. Moreover, the better the government's institutions, the better that regulation and the incentive structure the government faces is. Americans' good hearts and noble intentions aside (is this because we are so damn nice and diverse, or because we're rich?), the relative benignities of our government stem because the Founders did such a great job designing institutions where the most perverse actions typical to government are limited. Corporations are not benevolent either; similarly, strong institutional frameworks need to be developed to reign in their worst excesses (and developing these frameworks is an entrepreneurial activity). The difference between the two is that there is a severe and imperfect time lag between adoption by the private and public sectors. Here's a fair compromise: the government could take pioneering steps in adopting consumer legislation, but then we should devote much energy to figure out how to privatize those legislative bodies, to face the purest of motives, self-interest.

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I would almost agree, if you replaced the last sentence with "the government can take pioneering steps to put up a regulatory framework, and then stand back and let the market fill in the gaps." It more or less already does that in most areas; to take the credit score example, I get a free credit report every year and a legally mandated way to resolve credit disputes with the bureau, but the government obviously has nothing to do with my actual credit score. Like I said, small-l libertarians have a lot of things going for them.

Big-L Libertarians, not so much.

[adanthar]

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adanthar, what is your issue with Ron Paul? srs question, I really want to know.

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I think he's a Big-L lunatic and a fundamentalist wrapped up in one package (Dear God how do you even combine the two?) who is basically interested in turning America into 50 different miniature fiefdoms.

Pretty much this, except less funny.

[DING-DONG YO]

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adanthar, what is your issue with Ron Paul? srs question, I really want to know.

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I think he's a Big-L lunatic and a fundamentalist wrapped up in one package (Dear God how do you even combine the two?) who is basically interested in turning America into 50 different miniature fiefdoms.

Pretty much this, except less funny.

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I can't see that at work.

Funny that's how you see it, I don't get that impression of him at all.

I think the big-L, ACist posters here would like to see him in this light, but I feel they are turning him into something he is not.

I could be wrong though as you seem better informed than me.

[ctj]

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Perhaps you should just read the article that Shake posted.

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Actuallly, i was already familiar with this article. It is an interesting discussion on how free markets can work in an incredibly simple envrinment and has very little relevance on the possible and what AC could be like today.
And I still think it is funny to discuss proprety rights on the frontier...
I mean the concept of the frontier was basically the appropriation of the land of native americans...isn't that contradictory whis the respect of private property, the foundation of an AC society...
and lol at no genocide thanks to AC look at the wild west...

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The Native American tribes were holding their own until the U.S. Cavalry showed up.

[L'ennemi.]

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The Native American tribes were holding their own until the U.S. Cavalry showed up.

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Those bastards!Glad to learn this had nothing to with the pacifists Acists pioniers and the expanding of the frontier.

[ZeroPointMachine]

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adanthar, what is your issue with Ron Paul? srs question, I really want to know.

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I think he...is basically interested in turning America into 50 different miniature fiefdoms.



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Why is this a bad thing?

Could the 50 states not provide regulatory functions at least as efficiently as the fed does?

I think it would actually create incentives for each state government to create more efficient solutions to the problems instead of relying on the current system of fighting for their share of the big pile of federal tax money.

It also offers you the personal freedom to move to a state that suits your personal, economic and political leanings.

I'm sure there would be nanny states, little l states, conservative states, and liberal states.

I think modern transportation and communication makes your comparisons to America circa 1910 irrelavent.

[Copernicus]

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adhantar-
It is ludicrous to critize libertairians and Ron Paul because he didn't vote for HR 180...On the contrary, it shows some balls that he did not vote for this populist [censored], and my hat's off to him..
As to wether or not he is racist: He is a republican congressman from Texas, so isn't it a prerequisite?

You're bold to argue with libertarians. ACism works perfectly in a vacuum, so none of your arguments that pertains to reality is going to make any sense...

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It doesn't even work in a "vacuum" unless the vacuum includes denying clear historical evidence that no matter how "free" a society starts out, it always evolves toward government. It is human nature to delegate authority to representatives in one form or another, whether its the details of daily living (eg efficient delivery of natural resources) or big picture needs (eg police and defense).

[MrMon]

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And while we're at it, requiring companies to disclose their Sudan investments is not that bad an idea, it increases efficiency of the market in information about a bad situation at minimal cost. Yes, I know the AC position is no cost, but work with me here, I'm trying to increase total freedom, not everyone's freedom. Someone, companies that invest in the Sudan, are going to be slightly burdened so that investors can be freer to choose Sudan free investments.

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I've asked about this for 200 or so posts. Paulmerica as a worldview only makes sense if I'm allowed to express my ethical concerns by 'voting with my wallet'. If I have no way to tell who's supporting what, why does a corporation have any motivation to do anything the least bit ethically?

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So, we need the federal government to make up for your laziness?

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That list is from 2002. How much time should I spend researching which of the corporations on that list have stopped transactions there since then, which subsidiaries of theirs do business in the US, and the overall completeness of that list?

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Are you saying that because you are too lazy to compile this list that you demand that other people should be coerced into compiling it for you, or paying to have it compiled for you?

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Anybody got the transaction costs for doing that every six months?

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Should be enough to make you a tidy profit if you can convince like minded individuals to subscribe to your list. Should be quite the arbitrage opportunity, actually.

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Except for the fact that the information on the list, once compiled, is easily transmissable and there is virtually no way to enforce exclusive knowledge of the list to only subscribers. There is virtually no way that a compiler of this info could make a profit at it.