well, maybe only if i refer to the "politics of death" which, in my opinion, is what most liberals are following if they stay on their current track.

9/25/2006 1:44:03 AM

oh.

well, in that case, i'm moderately pro-death.

i'm ok with early stage RU-486 abortions...ok with euthanasia...and would generally rather deal with less security than with less freedom if it's a toss-up between the two. not a big fan at all of socialized medicine, though.

9/25/2006 1:46:57 AM

Quote :

"well, in that case, i'm moderately pro-death. i'm ok with early stage RU-486 abortions...ok with euthanasia...and would generally rather deal with less security than with less freedom if it's a toss-up between the two. not a big fan at all of socialized medicine, though. "

This generally fits me as well. I'm ok with other people's VERY EARLY abortions like with RU-486, though I would not make use of the drug in my relationships. The only other difference between what you said and my feelings is that while you aren't a big fan of socialized medicine, I'm its mortal enemy.

9/25/2006 7:16:58 AM

I guess I lean fairly heavily towards death

I am for right of abortion on all non-viable fetuses. I am whole hearted supporter of euthanasia. I definately support more freedom over more security and I am strongly in favor of gun rights.

Quote :

" I know not what course others may take but as for me - Give me liberty or give me death -Patrick Henry"

Not give me liberty, unless something really scary or sad happens in which case I'll take oppression.


[Edited on September 25, 2006 at 11:47 AM. Reason : foo]

9/25/2006 11:46:35 AM

In all honesty, I think even Patrick Henry would draw the line at legalizing murder.

I mean, it would be a liberty.

9/25/2006 11:49:37 AM

And my favorite founding father had a bigger dick.

9/25/2006 11:56:30 AM

fiscal conservative - less government, less taxes, less handouts, less projects,

social progressive - pro choice (ewww), pro BC, pro samesex stuff, pro unification of diversity, pro decriminilalization,


im a mix


99.999% fiscal conservative, .001% fiscal liberal : 80% social progressive, 20% socially conservative.

9/25/2006 12:33:37 PM

There's two reasons why we have the government in our economy, it's the two large problems with capitalism: market power and externalities. Capitalism doesn't sound that bad when you hear it, we have these perfect markets with supply and demand with this pretty relationship between supply, demand, and price, and new firms will enter and failing firms exit, and no one suffers from uncompensated economic decisions of others. They imagine everyone and everything in these little bubbles, and it works great, it's just so simple. But in reality, things don't work out that cleanly. Things can stay out of equilibrium indefinitely. This is where the government steps in, and this is why every modern government has a mixed market system. You won't hear Earthdogg or Loneshark admit to it, but it's the way it has been for a good while.

[Edited on September 25, 2006 at 12:49 PM. Reason : ]

9/25/2006 12:47:43 PM

socially progressive, fiscally cautious

9/25/2006 12:53:25 PM

Quote :

"But in reality, things don't work out that cleanly. Things can stay out of equilibrium indefinitely. This is where the government steps in, and this is why every modern government has a mixed market system. You won't hear Earthdogg or Loneshark admit to it, but it's the way it has been for a good while."

I can't speak for Earthdogg and Loneshark, but I'm pretty sure they'd be behind me on this one.
It isn't that we don't believe that market failures exist. What we don't believe is that the government can do a consistently better job in most cases. Private interest and private enterprise CAN and DO overcome many market failures before the government gets involved.

And as for me, I don't have a problem with the government getting involved to solve market failures when the government can clearly solve the problem without creating a myriad of others. In general, though, the pricing system does a much better job at allocating resources than the government, even when including market failures.

9/25/2006 1:30:51 PM

^agree

9/25/2006 1:56:13 PM

Quote :

"Private interest and private enterprise CAN and DO overcome many market failures before the government gets involved."

How can private entities solve market power? Or should we just settle for an ineffective market?

9/25/2006 5:08:25 PM

The answer is three fold:
#1 it is true some regulation is required, that is why the Federal Reserve exists
#2 private enterprise can and does solve many instances of "market power"
#3 The dead-weight losses associated with most market failures are relatively manageable and should therefore be settled for (some loss is inevitable, and eliminating it all would be costly)

9/25/2006 5:41:14 PM

Quote :

"Private interest and private enterprise CAN and DO overcome many market failures before the government gets involved"

This is almost by definition, false. If private enterprise solves the market failure then it is not really a market failure.

Quote :

"There's two reasons why we have the government in our economy, it's the two large problems with capitalism: market power and externalities."

I think this is essentially correct and represented the dominate strain of thought in economics up through the 60s and 70s.

A growing concern, however, is under what circumstances can government do better.

In economics we seemed to assume that people were completely self-serving and profit=maximizing until they became employed by the government at which time they magically turned into benevolent maximizers of the social good.

To the extent that market particpants are rent seeking government officials and politicians will be rent seeking as well. With government there is the additional problem that it is extremely hard to drive a government out of business. Typically, doing so requires a revolution.

So, if by some accident you get a bad government, you are now really fucked.

As such I think handling things through the court system in common law countries has strong merit. At the end of the day you have 12 people who can call bullshit on whatever scheme you are trying to pull. Juries are not perfect but since they are only "in power" for one case it is harder to systematically corrupt the jury system.

So rather than government regulating directly you allow potential entrants to sue a monopolist. Or you allow people to sue when they have been damaged by an externality.

9/25/2006 6:23:34 PM

Quote :

"To the extent that market particpants are rent seeking government officials and politicians will be rent seeking as well. With government there is the additional problem that it is extremely hard to drive a government out of business. Typically, doing so requires a revolution."

That occurs with any large business, they can be badly run and it takes a long time before it really has a noticable impact. It's simply a fact of life. However we have big companies because the gain for economies of scale is so great. The problem is that people always assume the government will be poorly run, when in fact, this is not neccesarily true.

Quote :

"So rather than government regulating directly you allow potential entrants to sue a monopolist. Or you allow people to sue when they have been damaged by an externality."

That would cost too much money. You'd have thousands of people in court everyday, best case is that no one would bother and you'd have the same thing you do now. Worst case is that everyone is constantly in court. I suffer from negative externalities everyday, everyone does. My shoes wear out quickly because the parking lot is too far away. My car's paint wears because of pollution in the atmosphere. It's too difficult to seperate things because there are such a large amount of interactions that happen. Capitalism simply can't handle those. There are also larger impacts of externalities between businesses, in which the effects of a decision of one business negatively impacts another.

9/25/2006 7:23:51 PM

Quote :

"1 it is true some regulation is required, that is why the Federal Reserve exists"

wasnt there a thread on here before talking about the socialist evils of the fed?

9/25/2006 7:40:35 PM

Quote :

"What we don't believe is that the government can do a consistently better job in most cases."

Well put.

Quote :

"The problem is that people always assume the government will be poorly run, when in fact, this is not neccesarily true."

The people assume correctly...The government is poorly run.

Politicians and bureaucrats spend other people's money on other people with the ultimate goal of protecting and advancing their own positions of power. That is not a game-plan for effective, fair and limited government.

The spending value of the dollar today is less than a nickel of what it was in 1921 when the federal reserve was created. The gov't has not only failed in preventing, but has actually contributed to creating the boom/bust cycles that the fed was supposed to prevent.

The gov't is poorly run, and giving it even more power and control over the economy is hardly a smart solution.

9/25/2006 8:46:58 PM

And the abolishment of the Fed is?

9/25/2006 8:55:35 PM

Quote :

"This is almost by definition, false. If private enterprise solves the market failure then it is not really a market failure."

No it is not. If my tap breaks, spraying water all over my kitchen and then the plumber fixes it, this act does not change the fact that the tap broke.

For example, oil at $70 a barrel is a massive market failure, unbelievably huge "WOOPS!" The commodity traders miss judged the realities. The Fed. Res. over inflated. The reason it failed is because commodity traders cannot see the future, so they misjudged and failure resulted.

Now, this market failure is being fixed. Oil companies are scouring the Earth, drilling deeper, drilling faster, drilling bigger. Meanwhile, car companies are boosting the production of fuel efficient vehicles and retarding production of gas guzzlers. This is the free-enterprise system attempting to fix the oil shortage. It doesn't erase the fact that it occured and it will probably occur again 30 to 40 years from now.

Markets fail all the time and people just put up with it because we can see the incentives. People did not riot in the street in 2003 when the cell-phone industry ran out of components, bringing supply chains to a halt and leaving empty shelves because we knew they had every incentive to fix the shortage and were working as hard as they reasonably could to do so.

9/25/2006 10:38:20 PM

Quote :

"Politicians and bureaucrats spend other people's money on other people with the ultimate goal of protecting and advancing their own positions of power."

Answer me this, which is more likely to protect and advance your position of power, helping your country's economy soar, or running it into the ground?

Quote :

"No it is not. If my tap breaks, spraying water all over my kitchen and then the plumber fixes it, this act does not change the fact that the tap broke."

You are missing the point here. If I buy a piece of gum for a dollar when a guy right next to him is selling it for a nickel, is that a market failure? A market failure describes a situation in which prices are consistently not accurately reflected and equalized for an extended period of time.

Quote :

"The reason it failed is because commodity traders cannot see the future, so they misjudged and failure resulted."

That's not a market failure unless there is a mechanism at work that causes it to consitently occur.

You see, the problem here is that you are unwilling to admit that capitalism doesn't work that well. What is ironic is that you ridicule the soviets for doing the same thing. You are to focused on saying "THE SYSTEM IS AWESOME" to examine it's faults. It is difficult to get a colon exam with capitalism's penis firmly up your anus.

9/26/2006 12:11:00 AM

Quote :

"which is more likely to protect and advance your position of power, helping your country's economy soar, or running it into the ground?"

That's the sad thing... politicians don't care. It doesn't matter. Whatever road leads to more power is the road to take. You spin all results to your advantage, regardless of whose lives you harmed in your pursuit of power.

Politicians play the game: they promise one group benefits that must be taken away from another group. They produce no wealth. They can only take it away from one person and give it to someone else. If the economy manages to do well in spite of politicians' meddling, they will take the credit. If the economy tanks, it's obviously the fault of some other politician and his party. They will refuse to be held responsible for any negative consequences of their political actions.

9/26/2006 2:50:43 AM

Quote :

"That's not a market failure unless there is a mechanism at work that causes it to consitently occur."

Hmm, there is. One of the major mechanism by which free-enterprise is caused to consistently fail is called herding behavior. In the case of oil everyone in the industry refused to invest in boosting production because of the oil crash in 1998. This is a repetitive cycle, it has always happened and will always happen, why are you insisting "That's not a market failure" when it obviously is. It was a failure in 1998 when oil was selling for $15, it was a failure in 2006 when it was selling for $78.

If you are only considering failures that drag on forever a "market failure" then I don't suspect such exists. A completely free-enterprise system is capable of fixing or mitigating anything eventually, it just might take 30 years.

Quote :

"You are to focused on saying "THE SYSTEM IS AWESOME" to examine it's faults. "

Gee, who was it that said "That's not a market failure", it wasn't me. I'm in the odd situation of standing here having to explain to everyone that market failures occur all the time, and you're standing there yelling the contrary. It seems to me that it is you that do not understand the way the real world works, free or otherwise. Markets are messy and they usually do not give you the correct answer; but at least they ask the correct questions, something the Soviet Union was incapable of doing: "What and how much should be produced?"

9/26/2006 9:39:27 AM

Quote :

"That's the sad thing... politicians don't care. It doesn't matter. Whatever road leads to more power is the road to take. You spin all results to your advantage, regardless of whose lives you harmed in your pursuit of power."

You didn't answer the question.
If politicians are serving their best interests, would they be better off to ruin the economy or help it?

Quote :

"They produce no wealth. They can only take it away from one person and give it to someone else."

Taking it away from one person and giving it to another can produce wealth.

Quote :

"They will refuse to be held responsible for any negative consequences of their political actions."

That's irrelevant. It's up to the voters to hold them responsible.

Quote :

"why are you insisting "That's not a market failure" when it obviously is"

Because it's not. A market failure describes a system, not a specific instance. Let's say it's hot one day. You say, "it's global warming", I argue, "it's not global warming, it's just hot today, global warming describes a large system, not one day's heat", and you respond, "But look how hot it is!"

Quote :

"If you are only considering failures that drag on forever a "market failure" then I don't suspect such exists."

I never said it would last forever. Nothing does. It's a consistent and lingering system of ineeficientcy. In the long run it may run through swings of working itself out, but as Keynes said "In the long run we're all dead", so it doesn't really matter, what matters is that it's not working.

Quote :

"I'm in the odd situation of standing here having to explain to everyone that market failures occur all the time, and you're standing there yelling the contrary."

I know market failures occur all the time, but you're using that false example in an effort to trivialize them.

Quote :

"Markets are messy and they usually do not give you the correct answer"

They never give you the correct answer. They can give something close, but it's the government's job to adjust for error.

9/26/2006 4:45:48 PM

Quote :

"For example, oil at $70 a barrel is a massive market failure, unbelievably huge "WOOPS!" The commodity traders miss judged the realities. "

This is not a market failure. This is a market mistake. Market failure is a slightly techinical term meaning an instance where profit maximizing perfectly compettive firms will not reach a Pareto Optimum.

Or in otherwords by reodering the way resources are used it is theoretically possible to make everyone better off than they are under the free market.

Quote :

"That occurs with any large business, they can be badly run and it takes a long time before it really has a noticable impact. It's simply a fact of life. However we have big companies because the gain for economies of scale is so great."

This is true and before Coase many economists thought that corporations almost by definition were an econmic bad. Examination revealed that many corporation are actually run fairly well, though a bunch are shit.

In the end, so long as nothing is done to prop-up a corportion continued bad policy will eventually drive it out of business, leading to some minimal level of evolutionary effeciency. GM is case in point.

Quote :

"It's too difficult to seperate things because there are such a large amount of interactions that happen. Capitalism simply can't handle those. There are also larger impacts of externalities between businesses, in which the effects of a decision of one business negatively impacts another."

Well how can beauracratic analysis do a better job? The threat of lawsuit, class action lawsuit in particular can and dose deter companies from lots of bad behviour everyday. I think it is ironic that people hate companies because they only respond to lawsuits when this is one of the best features of Capitalism combined with the Common Law.

A single person, if he can convince 12 others, can alter the profit maximizing decsion of an entire company. And since lawyers earn a percent, good lawyers have an incentive to fight for the little guy if he has case. Obviously the system is not perfect but its damn good.

The simple evidence is that if you put "has free market" and "has the english common law" in an estimating equation for per capita income of country they are both significant.

One reason I believe Capitalism fell on its face it Latin America is that they don't have the Common Law.

9/27/2006 4:58:24 PM

I'm fiscally conservative and socially progressive, mainly because I find it to be the best method for me, and those around me. To each his own.

9/27/2006 5:25:26 PM

Quote :

"Well how can beauracratic analysis do a better job? The threat of lawsuit, class action lawsuit in particular can and dose deter companies from lots of bad behviour everyday. I think it is ironic that people hate companies because they only respond to lawsuits when this is one of the best features of Capitalism combined with the Common Law."

Companies answer to lawsuits, but the also answer to someone else, stockholders. The interests of stockholder often do not best reflect the interests of everyone. The government however has to answer to all citizens, it also has to answer to lawsuits as well.

9/27/2006 5:45:08 PM

Generally, it seems preferences over where one views how far universalizeable accountability ought to extend determines where this debate heads.

Who's more directly accountable to the public? Governments or corporations?

[Edited on September 27, 2006 at 6:05 PM. Reason : ...]

9/27/2006 6:05:19 PM

^^ So, in communist states people regularly sue the government?

[Edited on September 27, 2006 at 6:20 PM. Reason : ^]

9/27/2006 6:20:02 PM

Quote :

"So, in communist states people regularly sue the government?"

That's irrevelvant. Communism is an economic system, there have been few instances of communism coupled with democracy, simply due to the large hurdle it takes to install communism. This hurdle is easier to take with a dictatorship, but this isn't neccesarily the natural state of communism.

9/27/2006 10:42:23 PM

Quote :

"Who's more directly accountable to the public? Governments or corporations? "

Proper Gov'ts are established to protect the rights of individuals. So gov't is accountable to all the people. Corporations are established to produce profits for the owners. Where gov'ts can use force to collect money to operate, corporations must entice money from their customers. If a corp. uses fraud or force, then it answers to the gov't. Other than that, it answers to its customers.

9/28/2006 12:14:35 AM

Quote :

"The interests of stockholder often do not best reflect the interests of everyone. "

If the corporate accounting system is functioning correctly the interests of the stockholder should be profit maximization. Again, except in the case of market failure this is exactly what we want the company's interest to be.

The beauty of profit maximization is that you can seperate production and consumption and do them both in the most effecient way.

Imagine if companies took it upon themself to do something other than maximize profits. First we would have to decide what that something is. Then we would have to weigh it against all possible alternatives and in the end we would almost always be stuck making a value judgement.

Suppose for example a company is deciding whether or not to outsource jobs. The response of many people is that keeping jobs here in the United States is valuable and should be protected. But is it?

Virtually anyone born in the US has more wealth and opportunity than the average person born in India. Are American lives morally superior? Outsourcing has been a huge factor in the growth of India and in the steady elimination of poverty there. Perhaps, we should be outsourcing even more.

Perhaps, we should get rid of all well-paying jobs and send them to India. If we really believe in the sactinity of human life shouldn't it be all human life?

At the same time what about supporting the market for American pharmaceuticals. Almost all of R&D for new drugs is paid for by US insurance premiums. If we ship jobd out to India we decrease the market for these drugs and lower the R&D investment rate. This means fewer cures in the future.

Should we sacrifice hundreds of millions of lives tomorrow for tens of millions of lives today.

On the otherhand we do that implicitly everytime we choose not to save. All consumption today retards investment for a better tomorrow. Because invesntment copounds the gain today is always far less than the gain tomorrow? Should we do that?

Yet, with no discounting factor the potentially infinite stream of happiness from future consumption will always outway consumption today. But if everyone scarfices for the possibility of tomorrow, then no one will ever have anything today? How can that be optimal.



In short to think seriously about the moral issues involved always means that some value judgement will have to be made that is sweeping in its implications. If we make those judgements at the point of production we impose them on everyone in the society. Not to mention we have to come to an agreement before we can even decide what to produce.

It is more effecient to do this on the back end. Let production proceed as effeciently as possible. Let people make some private moral choices and collect taxes to make public moral choices. Of course again you have the public choice problem of successfully aggregating those choices over the entire population and that problem is not trivial.

It is not simply a coincidence that no command economy is a democracy. Democracy is hard as it is in a free market. When the government has control over everything the incentive to corrupt the government is enormous.

9/28/2006 10:38:12 AM

I love my Soap Box threads.

10/2/2006 11:10:35 PM