The Trucker wrote:
> On Thu, 15 May 2008 07:10:00 -0700, Video61 wrote:
>
>> On May 15, 1:17 am, orangata...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
>>> On 15 May, 07:03, Vide...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> On May 14, 11:37 pm, Bret Cahill <BretCah...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>>> It's much worse than that.
>>>>> By their own admission the "market" economists are too stupid to
>>>>> answer a simple self evident truth:
>>>>> "Does free speech precede each and every free trade?"
>>>>> There is no way you can pretend to be a "market" economist and claim
>>>>> to be too stupid to answer that question.
>>>>> Bret Cahill
>>>> of course you are right. and, is every participant in a transaction
>>>> rational? of course not. our jails and metal institutions are full of
>>>> people who were looking out for their own self interests.
>>> So we should take everyone's money and belongings away from them and
>>> supply them with the stuff you think they should have?
>>>
>> typical response from a chanter. where did i ever say that. that
>> response could be construed as insane.
>>
>>>> "our state and nation have experienced major declines resulting from
>>>> contemporary conservative leaders and their simplistic ideas. their
>>>> dour polices regularly fail to connect the dots, let alone comprehend
>>>> the space between them."
>>>> "The game of Darwinian economics and the enshrinement of market-
>>>> miracle
>>>> theology is really the systematic looting of the pockets and purses
of
>>>> the middle class"
>>>> Jerry M. Landay of Bristol
>>> "Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more
>>> urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government"
>>> Milton Friedman
>
> And this is where Friedman and the entire Libertarian philosophy finds
> itself constantly in the ditch. I would object to the Friedman quote
> above in that it assumes some sort holiness on the part of consumers.
No, that's for-real - in order for the program to work, people have
to consume. Consumers have to be a priority or you get Soviet-style
"camel" products.
I find consumerism personally distasteful myself, but it's
better. It serves me better, too.
> I
> might remark that roaches are consumers too.
No, they are not. SFAIK, roaches do not have preferences - and the
negation of that proves that Friedman is correct. "Free to choose",
he said. Exactly. Now, a roach might not be completely
deterministic, but it's close. I think a PIC* is about as smart
as a roach.
*kind of very elementary microcomputer. Might be a Z80, or something
equally dumb.
Humans are smart enough that we kinda have to treat their behavior as
emergent phenomena - it's not sufficiently constrained to do
otherwise. Yeah, I know... but that is the best we can do right now.
> But the notion that the
> individuals of the society must guard against a malicious government is
> totally correct. Government is a natural sociological happening arising
> out of the desire for a social order in which we place restraints on the
> actions of other individuals. Even if government is each of us standing
> over a land claim protecting it and our belongings with a sharp stick,
> such would still be a form of government. It would be a very inefficient
> and stupid form of government but a government nonetheless.
>
I am not aware of any *false* dichotomy at that level between
individualism and "collectivist" government - government which
is not sworn to uphold individual freedom. So far as I know, there
cannot be such a false dichotomy. it is a valid "exclusive or" - you
have one, or you have the other. In implementation, we do have a hybrid,
but I'm pretty sure we'll be moving away from collective approaches
as quickly as scarcity is limited. If and only if a resource is
critical to life itself can it be held as a collective resource - and
then there are almost an infinity of "on the other hand" cases.
> The question really is, as Friedman rightly observes: how do we
> control this thing called government such that it does not do us harm?
That's really restated Hayek. Which is ... weird. Hayek came quite
late, in terms of economic application to government.
It's incredible that as cost conscious as our ancestors *were*, that
it took Hayek....
> And this is where the "free market" folk seem to go in the ditch at all
> times. It is not a question of whether or not there is to be a
government
> or a "free market", but instead, how to make government act in the best
> interest of the members of the society.
That is quite simple, then - by constraining government to the absolute
minimal role. This is almost Euclidean in its proof - the next "straw"
of gummint over the minimum is one too many, therefore ....
Another thing this means, as in Sulla, is that statesmanship is greater
than simply pleasing the plebiscite. Enlightened self-interest is
*informed*, and the math is Hard.
> To what extent does a "free
> market" actually serve the best interests of all the people?
I find it incredible that anybody can ask that. A truly free market
signals consumer-producer relationships in an optimal manner.
What people mean colloquially is not what I would call a free
market. This means I never have to defend this belief, since there's
always another hand... but seriously, it's provable. It's
a variation on signaling theory, now ( this rigorous
analysis of signaling is, IMO, what caused what we think of as
Libertarianism). Godel to Bell Labs/Shannon to Von Neumann to Hayek....
A market is a "channel", and the more information....
> The "free
> market" and the "economy" are not the gods served by governance.
Historically, they are. Unfortunately.
> Nor is
> every roach that is a consumer. Utilitarianism is the guideline for a
> proper government. The "market" is a part of that and not the whole.
>
Utilitarianism is deprecated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism#Criticism_and_defense
The way I see it, if you have to invoke utiles in anything except
economic thought-experiments, you are doing it wrong and should do
nothing. At least this is a strong indicator that you should be very wary.
--
Les Cargill
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