David Friedman: Market Failure - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Classical liberalism. The individual before the state, non-interventionist, free-market based society.
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#14042732
Joe Liberty wrote:That depends on how broadly you define the word "government".


"A social organization that possesses the legal right to unilaterally use force in the enactment of its own decisions and rulings."

That's like saying traffic laws are unfair becuase they benefit people who drive at the expense of people who don't.


Traffic laws also benefit pedestrians, since they are in part written to make sure drivers do not kill pedestrians. Traffic laws outline rules for pedestrians too, which benefits pedestrians--like establishing a uniform set of rules for drivers, and for establishing right of ways (including the right of way for pedestrians). Property privileges do nothing to protect those who do not have property from those who have property.

There is no "at the expense of".


Sure it is. Property is something that a person has taken from society and claimed as their own. That's by definition something taken at the expense of everyone else--if you own something, I cannot also own it. It is exclusive, and therefore possession of the privilege is at the expense of everyone else.

Property rights would be enforced equally for all; nothing dictates that those without property are being taken advantage of or being forced to pay for anything. So where does the "expense" come in?


It denies them the opportunity to have that bit of property for themselves; as long as you own it, they cannot. They might be able to convince you to arrange a transfer ("buy" it), but that's still your choice and ultimately they're shit out of luck if you don't want to sell. That is privation at the expense of the public. And since the organization that defends your privilege is paid for through taxes, it even comes at their expense more directly.

Secondly, in this context property rights refer to more than physical land.


Everything is made of something, with the exception of property claims on ideas, which are even more nonsensical than normal property. That something was part of the public domain before someone privatized it. Hence "at the expense of" everyone else. Your claim of property has curtailed the possibilities of others.

I still fail to see how a government stripped of the power to favor the chosen few is a boon for the chosen few.


Your proposed government is one stripped of anything but the power to favor the chosen few. Defending "the right of property for all" is meaningless if most people don't have any sizable amount of property. It's a meaningful favor for the chosen few, and a meaningless "favor" for everyone else.

That's just nonsense. No one could be anything but a slave if there were no property rights.


Bullshit. Absolute bullshit. No one can be owned if ownership doesn't exist. That's basic logic right there. It's a tautology on the order of "A equals A."

Blaming government for ignoring property rights is weak, but excusing that because it eventually cleaned up its own mess (not due to any altruisim, but from economic and social pressures) makes sense?


It's not really its own mess. If you accept that you can own anything it's not really much of a stretch to accept that "anything" includes people too. Believing otherwise requires an innovation in property law--that people innately own themselves, and are unable to sell themselves. Slavery is an abhorrent practice, but property in general is an abhorrent practice. If you accept property, it is really a very short road to accepting slavery too.

Your car crash metaphor is a horrible one. It's not like blaming someone for driving by a crash and doing nothing, it's like causing the crash and then being awarded a medal for not utterly killing the other driver.


The government did nothing about slavery; except acknowledge that a person's absolute right to own anything as property included people too. Until people established otherwise--that people were not natural resources to be claimed--that followed from the basic property privilege. Slavery and other horrific practices are what follows from an unrestricted property privilege.

Right, it ignored property rights.


At the time, people were not acknowledged to have a natural ownership of themselves. That innovation didn't happen until later, when people needed an ideological justification for distinguishing people from everything else. Since, yo uknow, if you're allowed to own anything, it's not altogether obvious why people ought to be excluded from that. It's why ownership in general is abhorrent.

You don't want to hold it responsible for betraying its most basic function,


I don't consider defense of the property privilege to be the government's most basic function. The basic function of the government ought to be to translate public demands into practical action.
#14043412
Someone5 wrote:I don't consider defense of the property privilege to be the government's most basic function. The basic function of the government ought to be to translate public demands into practical action.

Thats why you think the government did great in the slavery debate. There was a public demand (a need for slaves) so government translated that demand into practical action by not prosecuting slavers and punishing runaway slaves. Government doing what it does best.

Of course government is to blame for the slave trade. It could have prevented the slave, but instead it facilitated the slave trade. µ

If you facilitate something that you could have prevented, are you not responsible?
#14046059
To be clear, if there is one basic role for government, it is to protect people's rights.

Government utterly failed to protect the rights of slaves. At best, it stood idly by as their rights were violated by slave owners. At worst, it collaborated with slave owners.

Hence government utterly failed in its one basic role.

Slavery is a perfect example of government failure. Pure and simple.
#14046106
Eran wrote:To be clear, if there is one basic role for government, it is to protect people's rights.

Government utterly failed to protect the rights of slaves. At best, it stood idly by as their rights were violated by slave owners. At worst, it collaborated with slave owners.

Hence government utterly failed in its one basic role.

Slavery is a perfect example of government failure. Pure and simple.

Indeed. Slavery is a perfect example of government failure. Government failed to protect property rights of slave owners.
If government had succeeded in protecting the property of slave owners, then slavery would be more common today.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850

Actually, government did not utterly fail in protecting property rights of slave owners.

After slavery was illegalized in the united states, most owned land continued to be owned by the previous owners.
Many recently-freed victims of slavery returned to their former masters and continued to work the land.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/40_acres_and_a_mule
"After the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, his successor, Andrew Johnson, revoked Sherman's Orders and returned the land to its previous white owners. Because of this, the phrase "40 acres and a mule" has come to represent the failure of Reconstruction policies in restoring to African Americans the fruits of their labor."
Last edited by libertarian_4_life on 31 Aug 2012 15:23, edited 4 times in total.
#14046128
Sure it is. Property is something that a person has taken from society and claimed as their own. That's by definition something taken at the expense of everyone else--if you own something, I cannot also own it. It is exclusive, and therefore possession of the privilege is at the expense of everyone else.

I agree with most everything you wrote, except this.
Property is something that a person has taken from society and claimed as their own.

Not all property is taken from society.

Imagine this:
1. There are no computers.
2. I am the first person to create a computer.
3. Since previously,computers did not exist, it is impossible that I took a computer from society or from anyone else.
4. In order to build the computer, I use: energy, raw materials, and my own mind, and maybe also some help from some people.

Yes, of course, the energy, raw materials were taken from "society" or from their owners.
The help I got was taken from a few helpful people (not from "society").
Society helps in many ways, but still, society did not actually build that computer.

If I pay (or compensate) society for use of energy and raw materials, and if I pay (or compensate) any people who helped me,
then why must I allow "society" to use my computer?

If I write a book, without any help, why can't I own the book? Is it wrong if I keep the book only for myself and not allow other people to read it?
Of course, my teachers helped me to learn reading/writing .... but those teachers were already paid for that. Do I forever owe them a debt which can never be repaid?

I do not want to be a slave to society or to teachers or to ancestors or to people who give me some help.
If everything I create belongs to society, then I am a slave to society.
If everything I create belongs to my parents, then I am a slave to my parents.
If everything I .....
If I forever owe a debt, which can never be fully repaid, then I am a slave to ....

If I go into a forest and make something, and no one knows and no one losses anything. why not keep it as my property?
Perhaps I cut down a few trees and used some metals or minerals from the ground. Why not just compensate society and keep the final product only for myself?
#14046160
No one could be anything but a slave if there were no property rights.

Why? How? Explain your statement.

Children are born, not owning any property. They have some rights, but are unable to understand and exercise their rights.
Are children slaves? And if so, why tolerate such slavery?

If I live alone, on an island, am I a slave if there is no government and no declaration of property rights?
If so, why am I a slave? To whom am I a slave?

homeless people and vagabonds ... are they also slaves?
They own little or no property and, based on my knowledge, rarely use government to protect what little property they may or may not own.
#14048385
Libertarians (myself included) are only concerned about legitimate, rather than arbitrary property rights.

For a property to become legitimate, it cannot have been acquired by violating other people's property rights.

Since slavery always violates the slave's property rights in their own body, slaves are never a legitimate property worthy of protection.

Non-anarchist libertarians view government's primary (or even exclusive) role in protecting people's rights. Since slaves are people, and their rights have been violated, government failed to protect their rights. In other words, government failed in its most important (if not exclusive) role.

Property is something that a person has taken from society and claimed as their own.

Not by libertarian principles.

Libertarian principles of property acquisition allow property to be acquired in one of only three ways:
1. Self-ownership, clearly not taking something from society
2. Homesteading, understood as the acquisition of title over unused natural resources. Since they are unused, they cannot be said to be taken from society. In fact, since the homesteader is part of society, homesteading brings property into society, rather than the other way around
3. Trade and gift, involving exchange or transmission of property within society, not taking it away from society.
#14048387
libertarian_4_life wrote:Children are born, not owning any property. They have some rights, but are unable to understand and exercise their rights.
Are children slaves? And if so, why tolerate such slavery?
Children do have property rights, they own their body. They cannot understand their rights, so other people act as guardians for the child. The guardians do not own the child. The child is not a slave.

If I live alone, on an island, am I a slave if there is no government and no declaration of property rights?
If so, why am I a slave? To whom am I a slave?

First, its impossible to talk about slavery when there is only one person. Slavery is the result of the interaction between people. Slavery is a social relationship, you need at least two people.
Second, it is impossible to talk about property rights when there is only one person. Property rights exist to facilitate the social relationship between people. Someone's property is that what others cannot take without his permission. If there are not others, there is nobody that can take anything. There is no need to decide what others can't take.
Third, you don't need government to declare someone's property rights. Government cannot give/take away property rights. It can only violate property rights. People own their own body regardless of what any organization of man may say or do.

homeless people and vagabonds ... are they also slaves?

They still own themselves. So they have property. Even if government doesn't defend their property, they may still try to defend themselves. If they fail to do that, that means their property rights were violated and not that didnt have those rights.
#14078079
Strictly an observation; I'm not going to name any names, especially names with numbers in them, but the non sequiturs are flowing here like Friedman's sophistic parables. One thing you must admit about those Chicago boys -- they can sure build a straw man.

Friedman's little morality tales don't even get close to being an analogy for the free market. He describes theoretical business failures and calls them market failures. He describes government action as if the forces at work were the same as the free market. This man has more education than I probably have had in all my lifetimes put together and he speaks of market failures as if they were a real thing. I thought I was listening to a politician preparing me for another voluntary tax increase.

No one could be anything but a slave if there were no property rights.

libertarian_4_life wrote:Why? How? Explain your statement.


Allow me. If there were no property rights, you would be the slave of anyone and everyone more powerful than you. You would not have a right to stop someone from appropriating your shelter, your sustenance, or the fruits of your labor. If you were a good producer of something you might be left some scraps to keep you alive for that purpose. Otherwise you might only be good for soylent green.

And, please, don't protest that the government will protect you from predation by the strong -- the government only protects itself. In the U.S.A. where there is a kind of limited property rights, we are at the mercy of our protector. The government routinely confiscates individual wealth and has no qualms about taking the lives of your children for cannon fodder. Imagine if we had no property rights!
#14083992
Someone5 wrote:Sure it is. Property is something that a person has taken from society and claimed as their own.


Now that's a neat trick.

Since I am part of "society", how do I take property from myself?

My owning a piece of property does not prevent you from also owning property, it merely prevents you from owning mine. That's just simple, basic property rights. It is not "at your expense" unless you believe everything that everyone else owns should be yours. That's a preposterous (and quite greedy, for someone claiming to abhor property rights) assumption.
#14084023
Joe Liberty wrote:My owning a piece of property does not prevent you from also owning property, it merely prevents you from owning mine.

I agree. Furthermore, the fact that people have to own property in order to survive is not a social construct. It is a law of nature. If I eat an apple, then this apple can no longer by used by anyone else in society. To eat something is to claim something as your own. According to Someone5's logic, eating would be a crime against society. Eating an apple is even a worse kind of theft from society than owning land. As the land stays available in more or less to same condition to other members in society, while the apple is irreversibly destroyed.
#14087753
Property privileges do nothing to protect those who do not have property from those who have property.


At the same time, people who don't own property (or better stated, don't own much property - at the very least, everybody owns their body), can't have anything stolen by those that do, so what would they need protection from?
#14097053
Soixante-Retard wrote:I like Friedman's story, using the two camel riders, on how regulations (i.e. the rules) can cause market failures - so simple it's brilliant.

Then you completely misunderstand since he profers that story as an example of sub-optimal outcome from individual rational self-interest, with the solution being an externally imposed procedure.

I don't see that he ever actually gets round to making the eponymous argument - "Is Market Failure an argument against government?". Rather, he gives examples of democratic failure, some of which are prisoner's dilemma~ish and some not, but none of which are really like market failure or argument against regulation in clear cases of it.

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