From: pmetzger@snark.shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger)
Subject: Re: Open letter to the libertarian right
Organization: Lehman Brothers
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 21:09:03 GMT

parvin1@husc11.harvard.edu (Douglas Parvin) writes:
>pmetzger@snark.shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger) writes:
>
>>I don't understand your argument here at all. Are you saying that
>>violence is being threatened to one or more of the people engaged in
>>an exchange in a free market? By definition, the exchange is no longer
>>a voluntary one under such circumstances. In what way is an agreement
>>between two people to exchange goods without either threatening force
>>non-voluntary? I can't see how I'm being simplistic here.
>
>Suppose it's the dead of winter, and you are the sole provider of heat in
>my community.

Suppose that pigs can fly and that George Bush never lied to congress.

>Now I have three choices: I can move, I can freeze, or I can
>buy your product.  So, assume I'm poor and have no place to move to.  I
>then have the "choice" to buy your product or freeze to death.

We already have a problem here: your hypothetical is rather odd. You
start by assuming a monopoly exists -- but monopolies in free markets,
especially for very valuable goods like heat, are almost unheard of.
What you are trying to do is gain sympathy from your audiance by
starting with a "assume there is a cruel capitalist refusing to heat
some poor proletarians home, and there are children freezing to death
because of this guy's heartlessness". That isn't what you wrote, but
it is what you meant. Other than a small segment of the mentally ill
homeless population, by the way, no one, not even those who have no
homes, have been in danger of freezing for some time in New York.

But as long as you want to slant the cards, to do the "yes or no: have
you stopped beating your wife?" trick, let me play the same game and
tell a little parable.  There is only enough oil on a small island to
heat two of three homes -- an attempt to heat all three will mean
everyone freezes to death.  Assume that there is no way all three home
owners could fit into the same building. The guy with the oil got it
by working his fingers to the bone producing a tiny oil well on the
north side of the island, and lost part of his foot in the process. He
now has to decide who to give his surplus oil to. One of the people he
can give the oil to has worked hard growing food all year. The other
has been collecting seashells and arranging them in interesting
patterns. The cruel capitalist now gives the oil to the first man in
exchange for enough food to survive the winter, thus cruelly smashing
the seashell collector's future. Obviously, the artist should have
gotten a share of the oil and all should have been made to freeze --
it would have been more democratic.

>Now you may say that the transaction is mutually beneficial.  Well, if you
>mean it's better to pay any price than to freeze, I certainly agree.  So
>in this narrow sense, you may claim that this transaction is consentual.  I
>have no problem with that.
>
>But that is a very narrow sense of consent.  And the problem with it is that
>it is then often evoked as summary proof that a free market provides the
>greatest benefits for all, by letting all "consentual" transactions take
>place.
>
>In most situations, the free market produces a Pareto optimal result,
>that is, one in which there is no way for everyone to be made better
>off.  But that leaves the possibility of well-placed controls greatly
>increasing the holdings of almost all players in this market.  Now we
>can debate the effects of such ideas, but we can't write them off on
>the grounds that we are limiting "consent".  Because "consent", as
>presented in the above example, is meaningless in this context.

Yes? So what? Our experience has been that the free market has worked
in bringing happyness and an improved standard of living even to the
"downtrodden exploited workers" of countries around the world. Our
experience has also been that socialism has succeeded in turning
countries like Cuba into lands where automobiles are being abandoned
for oxen in the plowing of the fields.

I don't want to get into this very deeply. There isn't much of a point
in it -- the discussion has occured everywhere on the net.

I'll just note this: you have two and only two choices here. You can
leave people alone, or you can set yourself up as a kind of god over
them and use force to impose your will on them. If you leave them
alone they end up engaging in free market trade. The only way to stop
the market is to agree that you are willing to kill to do so. There
are few things that I am willing to kill for, and socialism is
certainly not on the list.

>This brings back my earlier point of non-static utilities.  If I have, say,
>$1000, I can be bankrupted through "voluntary" transactions, even if I make
>objectively correct decisions at each point. (You can replace money with
>any "happiness" unit you want).

Yes? So what?

>You certainly may claim that some, or all, regulation does not meet its
>intended goals (See the huge ant-trust thread).  Or you can say that the
>government doesn't have the "right" to interfere (Justice in acquisition,
>justice in transfer, etc.).  But we shouldn't paint the free market as
>inherently superior by definition, providing opportunity for all,
>relying on this often-hollow notion of consent.

I'd say that the hollow notion of consent you deride is far superior
to the communist and fascist notions of consent, which seem to have
something to do with agreeing to go along with the will of the man
holding the gun. Hollow as my notion may be, it doesn't involve
violence.
--
Perry Metzger		pmetzger@shearson.com
--
		  Just say "NO!" to death and taxes.
			 Extropian and Proud.
Xref: sparky alt.politics.libertarian:406 alt.society.anarchy:253