In a free market government isn't involved in private dealings, it is not involved in business it is not involved in money, it is not involved in labour, it is not involved in interest rates and it is not involved in trade and it does not have to be involved in contract or civil law either, I would prefer that it wasn't involved in that at all, because if gov't is involved in this, eventually it will become corrupt.
The argument about corruption is an interesting one and a valid topic, but a bit outside the scope of this discussion. You say that you "prefer that [government] wasn't involved in [contract or civil law] at all." Yet you said before that "Should a factory be throwing their pollution my way, I immediately have a claim against that company in the free market." If not for the government instituting the tort framework, you wouldn't have a claim against the company.
If a free market is one with NO government involvement, then by definition you will not have any legal recourse against another party imposing externalities on you.
What I am saying is that gov't shouldn't be limiting liability, it shouldn't be offering protections to some people against other people in business, in money, in trade in any commercial interests.
The question of limiting liability is ancillary. I agree that to accurately cost externalities you can't limit liability on (for example) BP in the case of the Deepwater spill. In order for the true cost of the externality to be borne by the agent causing those costs (i.e. BP, Halliburton, etc.) you can't cap damages at some arbitrary number. But what you're not understanding is that under a "free" market, there would be no liability damages AT ALL. Without the government dictating that a company is liable for damages if they spill oil into the Gulf of Mexico, you can't sue for those damages.
Of-course gov't shouldn't be creating a welfare state either, a welfare state is destruction of free market in itself.
Well, inasmuch as a free market as you describe it is desirable, then you shouldn't have a social safety net (or "welfare state" as you call it). But it's pretty clear, even objectively speaking, that the free market you describe is not desirable. The free market you describe is one in which there is no government intervention, and therefore parties have no recourse (other than brute force or silver tongues) against other parties that injure them.
Protection of private property rights means protection of private property against government abuse, against government theft, confiscation, ceasing and taxation of private property.
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make, maybe it's the grammar. Can you rephrase that so it's more clear? "Protection of property rights" as ensconced in western law, does not mean protection only from the government. I would say it is primarily protection from others individuals (thus: tort law). The post you linked to even makes the point that a "right against being murdered" is meaningless to the state because the state can execute you per it's rules, whereas a private citizen can never (legally) execute you. Likewise, the government can deny you property "rights" through vehicles like eminent domain, but another individual can't force you to give up your property, even if they are compensating you at market value.
Anyways, we are far afield. The original point is that externalities exist, both in completely free markets (which pretty much don't and never existed), nor in quasi-free markets (such as we have in the US*). Government intervention in the market is necessary to account for these externalities and assign the costs as best it can. It's never going to be perfectly efficient, but it is better than the alternative, which is to ignore the externality altogether.
*There are a million things that make our current economy not very free, such as inequality of information, inequality of power to shape the rules, government intervention, fiat currency, etc. but for the sake of discussion let's not quibble over the degree of "quasi"-ness of market freedom. We'd type ourselves to death.;)
Should a factory be throwing their pollution my way, I immediately have a claim against that company in the free market.
You have a pretty strange definition of "free market." To you, it would seem, a free market is one in which the government institutes a legal framework for tort settlement. I would argue that in a completely free market, your only recourse against the upwind polluter would be direct negotiation with the other party - either through words or bullets. In a completely free market, there would be no government telling you and the polluter that you had to settle your dispute in the government's courtroom.
In short, by establishing as system of tort law, the government is pricing the externalities back into the market. With tort law, the firm doing the polluting will now bear (some of) the cost of the pollution as they are sued by the injured parties. (Another way to price the externalities back in would be to institute pollution regulations, for example forcing them to clean their waste water before releasing it.)
it requires strong protection of actual few laws that must exist in order for the system to work, and one of those protections is property rights,
As soon as you introduce laws into the market, the market is not completely free. Each law, starting with the first, makes the market less free.
A completely free market does not price in externalities (which, again, exist whether or not there is a government enforcing contracts). If the government steps in to enforce contracts, pollution regulations, etc., then the cost of the externalities can be borne by those causing them.
The main point is this: we do not need a concept of a 'right' to deal with individual (or companies) hurting you in any way.
I guess you're unclear on the concept of Natural Rights. Even if you disagree with Hobbes, Locke, et al on the issue that Life is a Natural Right, it seems that you would argue that every individual has the Natural Right of Free Will - that is, we all have the Right to do whatever the hell we want, including murder or enslave other people. Enlightenment philosophers had a more refined version of this that gave preference to Individual Life over Individual Liberty (or Free Will).
But, in a legal sense, we do need a concept of "rights" to deal with individuals hurting others. If I have no "right" to not be killed, then ipso facto there cannot be a punishment for killing me. By saying, "The punishment for murder is X" the legal system is implicitly granting those protected under the law with a right.
A factory or hog farm opens upwind from your house. The air pollution (either something like sulfur dioxide or simply the smell of pig shit) drifts on the wind. It can cost you in the form of increased health costs (e.g. asthma is more prevalent along the I-710 corridor) or from depressed resale value of your house.
A private nuclear power opens upriver from a fishing town. The heat released into the river by the plant decreases fish count, leading to lower catches by the fishermen and thus decreased revenues.
In each of these examples, a private company is imposing a cost on other parties. This cost is not borne by the factory/farm/plant, and thus is not reflected in their price level. The cost imposed on the 2nd party exists regardless of the presence or lack thereof of a government. Government is necessary in cases such as these so that the cost of the negative externality is imposed upon the firm that is causing it.
Note that there can also be positive externalities. For example, if my neighbor remodels his house and cleans up the yard, putting in some new shrubs and overall making it look really nice, it can have a positive impact on my property value. I don't contribute anything to the cost of the improvement, yet I reap some of the reward.
Without the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (creatures of government) the mortgage crisis would not have happened.
I disagree. It still would have happened, but it wouldn't have been as bad as it was without the Fed raising interests rates a few months after Greenspan encouraged everyone to buy Option-ARM mortgages (to name one of their bad decisions). The mortgage crisis was really a perfect storm of deregulation, fraud, hubris and greed. Had AIG not been selling un-funded CDS's with it's left hand, while loaning out it's AAA securities to investment banks and investing the cash collateral in junk (but AAA rated) mortgage back securities with it's right hand, Goldman Sachs wouldn't have been able to hold a metaphoric gun to the head of the country and force the Fed to pump billions into that sinking ship (just so they could pay back GS, Societe Generale, DeutcheBank and the rest).
Without TARP, HAMP, HAMA, AIG bailout, and trillions in secret Federal Reserve life support, the banks would have been forced to accept the consequences of their own actions, and the damage could have been repaired.
I wouldn't say the damage could have been repaired. In fact, an argument could be made that the short term (i.e. 0-10 years) effects would have been much worse. However, by not removing the moral hazard from the equation, Congress and the Fed insured that something like this will happen again. As long as there are no criminal or financial penalties for people making bad bets or engaging in fraudulent behavior, you are guaranteed to see that behavior repeat.
The hillarious part is if you put all your money in a bank (and not just the couple hundred you got from working at mcdonalds but actual sizeable amounts of money) youd want your money back as well.
Well, sure. But the point is (based on my reading of his post - I'm not sure if it's 100% correct as far as the terms/agreements Icelandic banks had with their depositors) that the Icelandic banks were not insured by the Icelandic government, and therefore offered an above-market rate of interest. Depositors (I'm guessing other banks from the EU and US) put there money in to gain that high return, then when the bank failed looked to the Icelandic government to bail them out.
Bottom line, if you invest your money (and depositing money in a bank is an investment that nets you a certain, stated, return at a certain level of risk) you bear a certain risk of losing it.
I was thinking something similar. Why not have it coin activated. Put in a quarter (or several), pick up the receiver, and listen for the x-digit key to access the point. Have it reset every 5 or 15 minutes or something.
Also, that's a terrible analogy. We can be confident of the behavior of Pluto despite (a lot of) observational data because we do have a lot of observational data on similar systems (e.g. Moon and Earth, inner planets and Sun, etc.)
What you're saying is more akin to saying that since sub-atomic particles behave a certain way, large collections of those sub-atomic particles (e.g. a billiard ball) will behave in the same way. Of course, this analogy is pretty bad too, but I hope you get my point. Just because something happens on one scale doesn't mean the same thing will happen at all scales, especially if, as is the case in climate studies, when you scale up the system becomes tremendously more complex.
The burden of proof is on "skeptics" to explain why a reproducible, verifiable model on a small scale won't work on a large scale.
No, it isn't. Just because we have a model that shows something does not mean that we have proof that that thing will happen in the real world. It may be that the model provides us with very strong evidence or cause to believe that the results will hold on a macro scale, but unless we do some experimentation at the macro scale we won't know for sure.
Someone who is willing to pirate a game (or music, or video), isn't going to go pay for one simply because it's good. Do you think people pirate crappy games, but go out and pay retail for the good ones? Do you think people pirate Episodes I-III and VI, but buy the DVD of Episodes IV and V?
You said you voted for both Gore and Kerry. If you are not a Democrat, you are at least supporting them by your voting record. When was the last time you didn't vote Democrat?
Anyways, the point is that we can't get rid of them* even if we catch them with bribe money in the freezer or a crack whore in the motel room. I'm actually reinforcing your point, but you appear to be too busy defending yourself from perceived slights on the internet to actually read a post.
*Or at least, the blind public who vote along party lines won't get rid of them.
But we can't get rid of those folks . . . unless we catch them with cold cash in the freezer (a democrat)
Not to put too fine a point on it, but your party nominated William Jefferson in the 2008 primary after he was indicted. It took the Republicans and Independents and Others to kick him out in the general election, and even then by less than 3 points.
The filtering that Apple is doing is simply to prevent malware and pornography from entering the App Store. They aren't selecting Angry Birds in favor of Contented Birds because the latter is a shitty, boring game that no one will buy.
This Greenlight idea won't prevent malware from entering the Steam marketplace (Valve still needs to do a QA check for that), and if anything it will increase the pornographic games available.
What makes their problem intractable? What is the marginal cost of publishing a game on Steam, once that game is fully produced and (presumably) ready to be sold on a DVD/BD? If their business process or technology makes it's very expensive to publish via Steam such that they have to go through an editorial process to insure highly salable content, then I think the problem is not with the editorial process but the underlying publishing technology/process.
Perhaps I don't understand the intricacies; how is this different than publishing a game via the Android or Apple app stores? Why can't a developer just upload their binaries to Valve/Steam and let people buy what they want? Why is voting twice (first in Greenlight, then next by buying the game) better than voting once? If anything, I think this would cause less games to get made as developers abandon projects that get a lukewarm response via Greenlight, either because of bad presentation by the developer; stiff competition for eyeballs at the time they upload their concept art, etc.; or simply because people didn't see it because there is a lot of pre-release content to sift through.
Slashdot Mirror
Enjoy your cheap badly made throwaway goods.
Like iPads and iPhones?
In a free market government isn't involved in private dealings, it is not involved in business it is not involved in money, it is not involved in labour, it is not involved in interest rates and it is not involved in trade and it does not have to be involved in contract or civil law either, I would prefer that it wasn't involved in that at all, because if gov't is involved in this, eventually it will become corrupt.
The argument about corruption is an interesting one and a valid topic, but a bit outside the scope of this discussion. You say that you "prefer that [government] wasn't involved in [contract or civil law] at all." Yet you said before that "Should a factory be throwing their pollution my way, I immediately have a claim against that company in the free market." If not for the government instituting the tort framework, you wouldn't have a claim against the company.
If a free market is one with NO government involvement, then by definition you will not have any legal recourse against another party imposing externalities on you.
What I am saying is that gov't shouldn't be limiting liability, it shouldn't be offering protections to some people against other people in business, in money, in trade in any commercial interests.
The question of limiting liability is ancillary. I agree that to accurately cost externalities you can't limit liability on (for example) BP in the case of the Deepwater spill. In order for the true cost of the externality to be borne by the agent causing those costs (i.e. BP, Halliburton, etc.) you can't cap damages at some arbitrary number. But what you're not understanding is that under a "free" market, there would be no liability damages AT ALL. Without the government dictating that a company is liable for damages if they spill oil into the Gulf of Mexico, you can't sue for those damages.
Of-course gov't shouldn't be creating a welfare state either, a welfare state is destruction of free market in itself.
Well, inasmuch as a free market as you describe it is desirable, then you shouldn't have a social safety net (or "welfare state" as you call it). But it's pretty clear, even objectively speaking, that the free market you describe is not desirable. The free market you describe is one in which there is no government intervention, and therefore parties have no recourse (other than brute force or silver tongues) against other parties that injure them.
Protection of private property rights means protection of private property against government abuse, against government theft, confiscation, ceasing and taxation of private property.
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make, maybe it's the grammar. Can you rephrase that so it's more clear? "Protection of property rights" as ensconced in western law, does not mean protection only from the government. I would say it is primarily protection from others individuals (thus: tort law). The post you linked to even makes the point that a "right against being murdered" is meaningless to the state because the state can execute you per it's rules, whereas a private citizen can never (legally) execute you. Likewise, the government can deny you property "rights" through vehicles like eminent domain, but another individual can't force you to give up your property, even if they are compensating you at market value.
Anyways, we are far afield. The original point is that externalities exist, both in completely free markets (which pretty much don't and never existed), nor in quasi-free markets (such as we have in the US*). Government intervention in the market is necessary to account for these externalities and assign the costs as best it can. It's never going to be perfectly efficient, but it is better than the alternative, which is to ignore the externality altogether.
*There are a million things that make our current economy not very free, such as inequality of information, inequality of power to shape the rules, government intervention, fiat currency, etc. but for the sake of discussion let's not quibble over the degree of "quasi"-ness of market freedom. We'd type ourselves to death. ;)
No they don't.
Should a factory be throwing their pollution my way, I immediately have a claim against that company in the free market.
You have a pretty strange definition of "free market." To you, it would seem, a free market is one in which the government institutes a legal framework for tort settlement. I would argue that in a completely free market, your only recourse against the upwind polluter would be direct negotiation with the other party - either through words or bullets. In a completely free market, there would be no government telling you and the polluter that you had to settle your dispute in the government's courtroom.
In short, by establishing as system of tort law, the government is pricing the externalities back into the market. With tort law, the firm doing the polluting will now bear (some of) the cost of the pollution as they are sued by the injured parties. (Another way to price the externalities back in would be to institute pollution regulations, for example forcing them to clean their waste water before releasing it.)
it requires strong protection of actual few laws that must exist in order for the system to work, and one of those protections is property rights,
As soon as you introduce laws into the market, the market is not completely free. Each law, starting with the first, makes the market less free.
A completely free market does not price in externalities (which, again, exist whether or not there is a government enforcing contracts). If the government steps in to enforce contracts, pollution regulations, etc., then the cost of the externalities can be borne by those causing them.
Good response. Well done. Are you sure you're on the right site? ;)
The main point is this: we do not need a concept of a 'right' to deal with individual (or companies) hurting you in any way.
I guess you're unclear on the concept of Natural Rights. Even if you disagree with Hobbes, Locke, et al on the issue that Life is a Natural Right, it seems that you would argue that every individual has the Natural Right of Free Will - that is, we all have the Right to do whatever the hell we want, including murder or enslave other people. Enlightenment philosophers had a more refined version of this that gave preference to Individual Life over Individual Liberty (or Free Will).
But, in a legal sense, we do need a concept of "rights" to deal with individuals hurting others. If I have no "right" to not be killed, then ipso facto there cannot be a punishment for killing me. By saying, "The punishment for murder is X" the legal system is implicitly granting those protected under the law with a right.
Free markets do not have externalities
Of course they do.
A factory or hog farm opens upwind from your house. The air pollution (either something like sulfur dioxide or simply the smell of pig shit) drifts on the wind. It can cost you in the form of increased health costs (e.g. asthma is more prevalent along the I-710 corridor) or from depressed resale value of your house.
A private nuclear power opens upriver from a fishing town. The heat released into the river by the plant decreases fish count, leading to lower catches by the fishermen and thus decreased revenues.
In each of these examples, a private company is imposing a cost on other parties. This cost is not borne by the factory/farm/plant, and thus is not reflected in their price level. The cost imposed on the 2nd party exists regardless of the presence or lack thereof of a government. Government is necessary in cases such as these so that the cost of the negative externality is imposed upon the firm that is causing it.
Note that there can also be positive externalities. For example, if my neighbor remodels his house and cleans up the yard, putting in some new shrubs and overall making it look really nice, it can have a positive impact on my property value. I don't contribute anything to the cost of the improvement, yet I reap some of the reward.
Without the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (creatures of government) the mortgage crisis would not have happened.
I disagree. It still would have happened, but it wouldn't have been as bad as it was without the Fed raising interests rates a few months after Greenspan encouraged everyone to buy Option-ARM mortgages (to name one of their bad decisions). The mortgage crisis was really a perfect storm of deregulation, fraud, hubris and greed. Had AIG not been selling un-funded CDS's with it's left hand, while loaning out it's AAA securities to investment banks and investing the cash collateral in junk (but AAA rated) mortgage back securities with it's right hand, Goldman Sachs wouldn't have been able to hold a metaphoric gun to the head of the country and force the Fed to pump billions into that sinking ship (just so they could pay back GS, Societe Generale, DeutcheBank and the rest).
Further reading:
http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/25/aig-treasury-fed-business-wall-street-bailout.html
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/mailbag-aig-parking-meters-and-being-a-crappy-husband-20110214
Without TARP, HAMP, HAMA, AIG bailout, and trillions in secret Federal Reserve life support, the banks would have been forced to accept the consequences of their own actions, and the damage could have been repaired.
I wouldn't say the damage could have been repaired. In fact, an argument could be made that the short term (i.e. 0-10 years) effects would have been much worse. However, by not removing the moral hazard from the equation, Congress and the Fed insured that something like this will happen again. As long as there are no criminal or financial penalties for people making bad bets or engaging in fraudulent behavior, you are guaranteed to see that behavior repeat.
So explain to me the harm that a corporation has in a free market.
Free markets do not efficiently price in externalities.
Really? You found an HP that runs OS X?
So are you saying that the premium we pay for Apple products is because of the OS?
The hillarious part is if you put all your money in a bank (and not just the couple hundred you got from working at mcdonalds but actual sizeable amounts of money) youd want your money back as well.
Well, sure. But the point is (based on my reading of his post - I'm not sure if it's 100% correct as far as the terms/agreements Icelandic banks had with their depositors) that the Icelandic banks were not insured by the Icelandic government, and therefore offered an above-market rate of interest. Depositors (I'm guessing other banks from the EU and US) put there money in to gain that high return, then when the bank failed looked to the Icelandic government to bail them out.
Bottom line, if you invest your money (and depositing money in a bank is an investment that nets you a certain, stated, return at a certain level of risk) you bear a certain risk of losing it.
I was thinking something similar. Why not have it coin activated. Put in a quarter (or several), pick up the receiver, and listen for the x-digit key to access the point. Have it reset every 5 or 15 minutes or something.
Or 15.
I was two minutes late.
Hubble Discovers 5th Moon of Pluto
That's no moon.... that's a battle station.
my wife are
Mitt, is that you?
An analogy would be
Also, that's a terrible analogy. We can be confident of the behavior of Pluto despite (a lot of) observational data because we do have a lot of observational data on similar systems (e.g. Moon and Earth, inner planets and Sun, etc.)
What you're saying is more akin to saying that since sub-atomic particles behave a certain way, large collections of those sub-atomic particles (e.g. a billiard ball) will behave in the same way. Of course, this analogy is pretty bad too, but I hope you get my point. Just because something happens on one scale doesn't mean the same thing will happen at all scales, especially if, as is the case in climate studies, when you scale up the system becomes tremendously more complex.
The burden of proof is on "skeptics" to explain why a reproducible, verifiable model on a small scale won't work on a large scale.
No, it isn't. Just because we have a model that shows something does not mean that we have proof that that thing will happen in the real world. It may be that the model provides us with very strong evidence or cause to believe that the results will hold on a macro scale, but unless we do some experimentation at the macro scale we won't know for sure.
Someone who is willing to pirate a game (or music, or video), isn't going to go pay for one simply because it's good. Do you think people pirate crappy games, but go out and pay retail for the good ones? Do you think people pirate Episodes I-III and VI, but buy the DVD of Episodes IV and V?
He's as relevant as Bush and Washington. ;)
Wow... sensitive much?
You said you voted for both Gore and Kerry. If you are not a Democrat, you are at least supporting them by your voting record. When was the last time you didn't vote Democrat?
Anyways, the point is that we can't get rid of them* even if we catch them with bribe money in the freezer or a crack whore in the motel room. I'm actually reinforcing your point, but you appear to be too busy defending yourself from perceived slights on the internet to actually read a post.
*Or at least, the blind public who vote along party lines won't get rid of them.
But we can't get rid of those folks . . . unless we catch them with cold cash in the freezer (a democrat)
Not to put too fine a point on it, but your party nominated William Jefferson in the 2008 primary after he was indicted. It took the Republicans and Independents and Others to kick him out in the general election, and even then by less than 3 points.
These days...I keep thinking he confuses the middle class with the poverty/welfare class....
Well, I can understand his confusion. They are becoming increasingly difficult to tell apart.
Is that why we call him "Hugo Chavez" instead of "Oogo Shavez"?
The filtering that Apple is doing is simply to prevent malware and pornography from entering the App Store. They aren't selecting Angry Birds in favor of Contented Birds because the latter is a shitty, boring game that no one will buy.
This Greenlight idea won't prevent malware from entering the Steam marketplace (Valve still needs to do a QA check for that), and if anything it will increase the pornographic games available.
What makes their problem intractable? What is the marginal cost of publishing a game on Steam, once that game is fully produced and (presumably) ready to be sold on a DVD/BD? If their business process or technology makes it's very expensive to publish via Steam such that they have to go through an editorial process to insure highly salable content, then I think the problem is not with the editorial process but the underlying publishing technology/process.
Perhaps I don't understand the intricacies; how is this different than publishing a game via the Android or Apple app stores? Why can't a developer just upload their binaries to Valve/Steam and let people buy what they want? Why is voting twice (first in Greenlight, then next by buying the game) better than voting once? If anything, I think this would cause less games to get made as developers abandon projects that get a lukewarm response via Greenlight, either because of bad presentation by the developer; stiff competition for eyeballs at the time they upload their concept art, etc.; or simply because people didn't see it because there is a lot of pre-release content to sift through.