Newsgroups: alt.politics.marrou,alt.politics.election
Subject: Re: free market
From: sichermn@beach.csulb.edu (Jeff Sicherman)
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 03:20:10 GMT
Organization: Cal State Long Beach

In article <1992Nov11.132324.8207@genie.slhs.udel.edu> starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr) writes:
>In article <BxJnvw.E5I@beach.csulb.edu> sichermn@beach.csulb.edu (Jeff Sicherman) writes:
>}>
>}>That's easy.  They're coerced transactions.
>}
>}  It's only easy if you're simple-minded enough to ignore the point. The
>}effect on the third party is coerced but s/he is not party to the transaction
>}itself, which may be uncoerced. The point is that regulation has a place in
>}the so-called marketplace to avoid and or minimize these effects, whether
>}intended or just irresponsible, on innocent third parties.
>
>You're being obtuse.  You've taken a hypothetical transaction with two parties,
>and introduced a third party whose participation is coerced.  The first two
>are informed and consenting, the third is not.  Thus, it's a coerced transac-
>tion in that respect, and thus all libertarians support prohibition of it.
>It has nothing to do with ignoring the point, it has everything to do with
>your point being trivial.

  But my point has everything to do with the simple minded approach that
Libertarians and some fellow-travelers have to society and economic
transactions that occur in it. The fact is, and my example demonstrates it
and you seem to somewhat concur, at least in a limited sense, that there
may be such coerced, affected parties to what appear to be non-coerced
transactions that ought, by your reasoning, to operate in a so-called open
and (totally) free market. I contend that in a large and complex ecomomy
the likelihood of a transaction so affecting (innocent) third parties is
multiplied and it is magnified with the size and scope of the tranaction
itself. I realize that are so-called remedies in the form of civil suits
but I find the attitude that I have heard from some Libertarians that, in
effect, a pound of litigation is better than an ounce of regulation to be
highly unsatisfying and highly unproductive for society as a whole. Not to
mention that some compensatable ills are really not redeemed in this 
fashion because they are inherently not translatable into cash equivalency.
I do recognize, that such a blasphemous belief goes against the Libertarian
creed, however.

>
>}>Not all utility increasing is beneficial
>}>}to society as a whole or to anyone other than the immediate participants. That
>}>}is why completely free, unregulated markets are not appropriate in complex
>}>}societies with non-ideal participants and competing interests.
>}>
>}>Wrong, but where to begin refutation?  Some literacy in Austrian theory is
>}>required here.
>}
>}  Cut the self-important hand-waving crap and make your point to us poor,
>}ignorant slobs or just admit you don't have one.
>
>Very well.  It is precisely because of the complexity of human society that
>its management is beyond the powers of any central planners or regulators,
>as economists like Friedrich Hayek have been pointing out for over half a
>century now.

  You're creating straw men, or, more precisely, straw issues. Forms of
regulation are not a form of central planning. They impose limits and
a certain amount of structure and cohesion to some markets where the
chaos of the marketplace would be particularly unproductive if allowed
to operate completely unfettered or where harm would likely come because
the market, by itself, would not impose sufficient safeguards or where
litigous inhibitions would bankrupt or make the market unproductive.

>
>It is precisely because of the false assumptions of ideal participants and
>perfect information that prices must be left to transmit information to so
>many otherwise ignorant participants, as Hayek described in his classic
>essay "The Use of Knowledge in Society," published in the 1940s.

  it is precisely because of the non-ideal participants, in ways which
go beyond their mere ecomonic function and bargaining behavior, that 
some forms of regulation are justified. Dishonesty and predation are
parts of ecomonic behavior just like they are parts of other human
behavior and they deserve to be constrained, limited, circumscribed,
and reduced in effect and/or scale just as other harmful form of
behavior are in non-economic realms.  Societal effects are not merely
to be measured in forms of dollars and not merely upon the parties
to the immediate transaction.

>
>It is precisely because some short-term interests are in conflict that
>libertarians since Frederic Bastiat have been arguing that force and fraud
>must be prohibited, at least singe the 1840s.

  That depends upon the source of the force. Perhaps you believe that
police should be limited to lecturing and begging for compliance with
the law instead of having authority to use force to motivate or coerce
it where necessary. I doubt it; you just don't understand or accept the
concept of policing of the marketplace.

>
>Thus it appears that you are making claims based upon premises refuted as
>far back as over a century and a half ago.  I suggest to you that there may
>be less grounds for your claims to rest upon than you so blithely assumed,
>and, furthermore, that you were quite rude to accuse me of hand-waving or
>not having a point to make; which would mean that you owe me an apology.

  I gave you the choice of abandoning condescending statements or backing
them up with an explanation. You made your choice. I owe you no apology.
And *opinions*, whether a century or a day old, are not refuted, they are
merely argued (and reargued). That doesn't make them facts or verified
theories that are to be exalted to 'truth' except among the true-believers
of the socio-politico-ecomometric religion dejour.


-- 
Jeff Sicherman
up the net without a .sig