Call for Constructive Responses To the Jobless Economy

[Kimstu]

JM: *There isn’t a “purpose”. If you don’t accept freedom as an end in itself, then we’ll never agree on the value of the free market. Now, I do happen to believe that the free market produces the best overall economy, but that’s just a side benefit.
*

Whoa. We can certainly be in favor of “freedom as an end in itself” in many respects without believing that that requires us a priori to support laissez-faire policies in markets. I am an ardent supporter of the political freedoms guaranteed by our constitutional civil liberties, for example, but I don’t feel that “freedom as an end in itself” is thwarted by the fact that people are not free to torture their pets, abuse their children, or bury radioactive waste on their property. (Nor, by the way, do I believe that you would be in favor of such forms of freedom either.)

Support for freedom as an ideal, IMO, doesn’t require you to assume a general bias against restriction of any kind. That’s because different freedoms always have a certain amount of mutual infringement and interference: you can’t increase one person’s freedom to do something without curtailing another person’s freedom to do something else. (E.g., if you acquire protected freedom of speech then I lose the freedom to shut you up; your being free from discrimination means I am not free to discriminate against you; etc. etc. etc.) So freedom and restriction on freedom are always two inseparable sides of the same coin.

In other words, apparently you and I will never agree on the value of the free market. For me, the free market does have to “produce the best overall economy” in order to justify its existence. Just saying “well, it’s free, and freer is always better” is too vague and simplistic for me.

[pervert]

@Evil Captor

Well, thanks for citing two more areas where the market has failed utterly. The reason that HUD exists in the first place is that the market has done a VERY poor job of providing low-cost housing for poor people.

Right. We all remember that famous story about the little box on the prarie.

Take another look at the history of housing for the poor. You may find that housing supplies did not decrease until governments started getting serious about enforcing construction and zoning regulations. I’m certainly not claiming that housing problems don’t exist, and I am not claiming that all problems are government induced, but it is equally ludicrous to claim that housing for the poor (at least at the rate that HUD addresses it, that is in the trillions of dollars) is a market failure.

Have you never heard of governments shutting down housing dispite people’s willingness to live there?

[pervert]

@Kimstu

So freedom and restriction on freedom are always two inseparable sides of the same coin.

No, they are not. The “freedom to shut you up” as you said, is a contradiction in terms. And it is certainly not a good justification to shut someone up.

That is, if you look at economic activities, you can say that enforcing property rights removes others’ “freedom to steal”. However, such a position does not justify taking the money from those who profited anyway in order to prevent such theft.

[zenith]

I fail to see how a National Health plan could possibly cost those of us who already have insurance any more money than we’re paying now.

When multi-billionaire burger chains and mass marketers offer employees prohibitively expensive insurance or none at all, these companies’ employees stiff the doctors, labs, and hospitals.

The doctors, labs, and hospitals, in turn, raise their rates to make up for all the bad debts they can’t collect.

Further, the individual insurance companies spend lots of money on advertising and marketing, instituting and/or fighting-off hostile takeovers and other stock market shenanigans, fighting one another over which one pays in cases of automobile and other accidents, accountants arguing with trained medical professionals as to proper treatment protocols ( These bean counters would be extremely peeved about doctors telling them THEIR business, yet they expect the doctors to just sit there and take being double-guessed by them.), and the list of inefficiencies goes on and on.

I’m already paying for the uninsured and inadequately insured PLUS corporate overheads that wouldn’t exist in a government bureaucracy.

In good ole Conservative Republican Nebraska we pay lower electric bills than our neighbors in Liberal Democrat Iowa because of an uncharacteristic embrace of socialism in the 1940s that created publicly-owned electric utilities.
That power plant across the river from me has had the name out front changed numerous times in my lifetime. Each time, lawyers, accountants, brokers, Golden-Parachuted execs of the former ownership, and other non-productives, siphoned off money that should have gone into increased efficiency, better wages and working conditions for plant employees , better line maintenance, etc.

[Kimstu]

SS: This looks like a good place to put this

Thanks for the cheering news, Sam, but in fact no, it’s not a good place to put this. As I’ve pointed out to you before, this thread is explicitly not about discussing whether we are currently in a “jobless economy”; the debate in question is rather, if we do have or eventually wind up in a “jobless economy” due to high productivity and globalization of labor, what should we do about it?

And your cited data is not rosy enough to indicate that we should just forget about that hypothesis altogether, as a couple of other quotes show:

The unemployment rate ticked up to 5.7% from the two-year low of 5.6% seen in January and February. […]
In spite of improvements in March, there are still “some pretty significant headwinds in the job market, especially in the manufacturing sector,” he said. Those include high productivity and outsourcing of jobs to other countries.

Admittedly, I’ve been swatting around so many hijack topics here that I’ve got no business scolding somebody else for going off-topic, but at least I’m trying to keep the OP’s stated premise more or less as a baseline for debate.

[Kimstu]

pervert: *The “freedom to shut you up” as you said, is a contradiction in terms. *

How so? If I don’t like what you’re saying and I want to make you stop, then I am not legally free to do so if the law guarantees your freedom of speech. Same with the discrimination thing: if you are legally guaranteed the freedom to participate in public markets on an equal basis with people of other races, then I am legally denied the freedom to refuse to do business with you on account of your race.

We may well agree that shutting people up and discriminating on racial grounds are not what we consider good forms of freedom, but there is logically no denying that they are forms of freedom, which are desired as such by many people.

There is simply no logically consistent way to define the abstract concept of “freedom” in general to include only those kinds of freedoms that you think people ought to have. Everybody has different views on which freedoms are most important, and some people’s most desired freedoms will invariably conflict with some others’ to some extent. That’s why we have all those laws and amendments and Supreme Court interpretations painstakingly weighing our competing freedoms and selecting the ones that we prefer for our own social vision and figuring out where their limits are.

[pervert]

@Kimstu

pervert: *The “freedom to shut you up” as you said, is a contradiction in terms. *

How so?

Because the freedom to speak and the freedom to shut someone up (forceabley at least) are not freedoms in the exact same sense of the that word. Both may be actions. Both may be choices. They are both certainly possible in the sense that they do not violate any laws of physics. But they are not the same things in terms of freedom, rights, or morality which is certainly the context of the conversation at that point.

Regardless, however, if you are going to protect my right to speech by preventing “tom” from shutting me up, you cannot then use this as an excuse to shut me up. Which is exactly what your analogy between freedoms requiring restictions implied about the free market.

We may well agree that shutting people up and discriminating on racial grounds are not what we consider good forms of freedom, but there is logically no denying that they are forms of freedom, which are desired as such by many people.

Well, yes there is. the word freedom has several meanings. It can mean physical freedom, political freedom, or even intra personal (not a typo) freedom. You fall into logical problems when you mix them however. And this is what I think you have done in your argument vis a vi freedoms requiring restrictions. Specifically, some “freedoms” may require restrictions of some “freedoms”, but not necessarily in the same sense at the same time. Besides which, even if they do, a freedom cannot be interpreted as requiring restrictions of itself.

There is simply no logically consistent way to define the abstract concept of “freedom” in general to include only those kinds of freedoms that you think people ought to have.

Well, putting aside the idea that I am trying to define freedom as “those I’d like people to have”, I’ll take up the challenge.

From Merriam-Webster: “the quality or state of being free: as a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another :”

It is easy to see how this definition applies to the freedom of speech. It is more difficult to apply it in the same sense and in the same way to the freedom to forcibly shut someone up. You’d be left with something like this:

“The quality or state of an absence of coercion or contraint in appling coercion and or constraint on another”.

Certainly not inconsistent in the sense of physical freedom. That is it is certainly physically possible to construct a relationship where one person can shut you up and call that power a sort of freedom. However, if we mean freedom in the political or moral sense, the above sentence is a contradiction.

Everybody has different views on which freedoms are most important, and some people’s most desired freedoms will invariably conflict with some others’ to some extent. That’s why we have all those laws and amendments and Supreme Court interpretations painstakingly weighing our competing freedoms and selecting the ones that we prefer for our own social vision and figuring out where their limits are.

Well, I would characterize it slightly differently as a struggle to understand, define, codify those freedoms which we agree need protection, as well as deciding on how to protect them.

Postulating a “freedom to murder” puts the moral impetous in the wrong place. Or removes it altogether. If that is your purpose, then fine, we’ll adjourn. But we are left in the same place as John Mace and Evil Captor. If you believe that there is no moral difference between the freedom to live and the “freedom” to murder, then we may not have much to discuss.

[Kimstu]

pervert: *Postulating a “freedom to murder” puts the moral impetous in the wrong place. *

Only because you’ve already stacked the debate by categorizing the action as “murder”, which comes pre-defined as morally wrong.

Same with your earlier example of “freedom to steal”; you can easily say that that’s obviously not a good freedom, but only because you’ve pre-defined “stealing” as something that is not good. In other words, your choice of vocabulary already assumes the moral acceptance and privileging of property rights. If I came in with a different vocabulary and a different view of property rights, I might call what you call “stealing” something like “the free use of goods”. And then it couldn’t be shrugged off as obviously immoral just because of the verbal connotations.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not actually advocating a moral redefinition of the acts that we now call “stealing” and “murder” in order to defend our freedom to commit them. In fact, I think that you and I probably have very similar notions of which freedoms we consider “moral” and “good” for our society.

I just don’t want us to obscure the fact that “those freedoms which we agree need protection” have been selected in our society by a process of deliberate moral choice, whether or not we’re now fully aware of it. They are not somehow inherently more freedom-like than the freedoms that we agree we don’t want to protect. Freedom per se is neutral and amoral; when we define it as an ethical ideal, that’s only possible because we’ve folded in some moral choices about what kinds of freedom we want and what kinds we don’t.

And (trying to rein in this hijack a little bit) I only brought this up in order to convey to John that I didn’t necessarily accept his “folding in” free markets into our chosen social definition of the ideal of freedom.

[pervert]

@Kimstu

pervert: *Postulating a “freedom to murder” puts the moral impetous in the wrong place. *

Only because you’ve already stacked the debate by categorizing the action as “murder”, which comes pre-defined as morally wrong.

No.

Same with your earlier example of “freedom to steal”; you can easily say that that’s obviously not a good freedom, but only because you’ve pre-defined “stealing” as something that is not good.

No. I am not saying that the freedom to steal is bad. I am saying that it is not the same sort of thing as the freedom to own property. That is, the term freedom does not apply in the same way in both phrases. It is not a problem of vocabulary.

If I came in with a different vocabulary and a different view of property rights, I might call what you call “stealing” something like “the free use of goods”.

Right. And you’d be lead to some odd anarchistic philosophy whith little merit. Which means it could “be shrugged off as obviously immoral”

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not actually advocating a moral redefinition of the acts that we now call “stealing” and “murder” in order to defend our freedom to commit them. In fact, I think that you and I probably have very similar notions of which freedoms we consider “moral” and “good” for our society.

Right. I understand this. You are simply being mislead by your tendancy towards liberalism to remove morality from the discussion at hand. That is economies.

I just don’t want us to obscure the fact that “those freedoms which we agree need protection” have been selected in our society by a process of deliberate moral choice, whether or not we’re now fully aware of it.

This also is my goal. However, I would add that the choices made were most definately NOT between morally nuetral or equal choices. I should add that this means we should not reverse such choices easily.

They are not somehow inherently more freedom-like than the freedoms that we agree we don’t want to protect.

On this, we clearly differ.

Freedom per se is neutral and amoral;

Only in the physical or non moral sense.

when we define it as an ethical ideal, that’s only possible because we’ve folded in some moral choices about what kinds of freedom we want and what kinds we don’t.

Quite right. But notice that in this partial sentence, you are using freedom in the non ehtical or non moral, or physical sense. If you use the same word twice in a sentence and you mean it one way in the first part while meaning it a different way in the second part, you have not found a paradox.

And (trying to rein in this hijack a little bit) I only brought this up in order to convey to John that I didn’t necessarily accept his “folding in” free markets into our chosen social definition of the ideal of freedom.

Understood. This is exactly what I was objecting to. And (if I am not mistaken) what John was refering to when he suggested that freedom as an end in itself is either understood or there is little point in talking about the purpose of the free market.

Let me try it this way. If we believe in a freedom of action (which I think we can). If we believe that one should be free to benifit from such actions (which I also think we can). Then we can formulate a concept of property based on those freedoms. We can also formulate a concept of a “free market” whereby individuals are free to interact as they individually see fit within that concept.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting that freedom to participate in the free market is somehow absolute. Nor that there is no room in a free society for governments of taxes of some form. We can certainly discuss which actions constitute participation in the market. We can certainly try different things to more judiciously protect the ideal of a free market.

All I am suggesting is that the free market is not some social construct which produces wealth leaving us to decide how to divy up that bounty.

---

But lets address one more point before I let you go. Let me assume that I accept that freedom is completely nuetral. How then does this lead to the idea that free markets should be restricted? If you postulate that there is a freedom to particpate in the market, how do you then suggest that this freedom by its very nature necessitates a restriction of that same freedom?

If on the other hand, you are suggesting that there is some sort of freedom of outcomes like “freedom to a living wage”, then are you not denying the freedom of the free market?

[Voodoochile]

@Kimstu

I don’t see how you can look at the issue of environmental pollution (which is obviously extremely significant to the wellbeing of a lot of people), read a detailed discussion of how markets alone cannot provide adequate incentives to reduce pollution, consider a list of proposed solutions that all require government action, and still say that society’s values are reflected only in its consumer choices. That’s just illogical.

Because pollution regulation has nothing to do with social values. I touched on this allready, maybe I should have explained further; your confusing environmental protection with regulation of pollution. While the two certainly overlap, they exist for different reasons.

If as you claim, regulation of pollution stems from social values as expressed by voters, then conceivably we could all vote tomorrow to ease or get rid of them. Well, if we did, short of a constitutional amendment that result would be overturned in the courts. Because, short of an amendment, we dont have the ability to relieve the government of its responsibility to protect our freedom.

Youre acting as if we could vote to store nuclear waste outside of a small town in the middle of nowhere. As if we could enact a decision to consider the harm done to that town as Ok in light of the larger benefit to society. But we couldnt. Because the people that live in that town have the same rights we do, and we cant selectively take them away.

Your neighbor is not banned from spraying his yard with DDT because we have socially decided to value the grass and trees in his yard. He is banned from spraying his yard with DDT because of the harm it has been shown to cause to other humans when it gets into the ground waters, etc. Its a matter of public safety, not social values. An act commited that endangers the safety of people.

Pollution regulation often has a corrollary existance with environmental regulation, yes, but thats it. For a simplistic analogy:

Say a mill by a river pollutes the river and causes a danger to the drinking water of an area. Regardless of any market or social concerns, even if the local town votes to let it continue so they can keep their jobs, the govt is obligated to make sure the mill cleans the river, even if it goes out of business to do it (when the taxpayers pick up the tab). Thats pollution regulation; a matter of public safety going to the core of why we have a government in the first place and beyond any shifting sands of social values no matter how they are expressed.

Environmental regulation is when the mill is not just required to clean the water to a level safe for humans, but to return the rivers ecosystem to a state as close as possible to that which it was in before the mill was there, or to some other pre-determined state beyond mere human safety.

The link you posted about pollution in Britain largely dealt with pollution in regards to public safety. Sheep dip, nitrates getting into groundwater and all that. It didnt have too much to do with environmental regulation.

And when it comes to environmental regulation, depending on the form, I would say we arent nearly as unified socially as you seem to think.

A great deal of environmental issues deal with govt land, i.e land owned by all of us. If there is an issue about letting an oil company drill on public land, whats not market oriented about the owners voting on it? We’re all shareholders of the land, we own it; its up to us to decide what we want to allow it to be used for. Its up to us to decide if we want to sell some and its up to us to decide if we want to buy more, just like shareholders in any corporation. If we decide that we dont want to let the oil comany drill, then the price of oil and what we pay for it will reflect that. Wheres the market failure?

There are also a great many environmental issues that dont deal with govt land. And these are the ones that tend to be enacted/enforced in a haphazard fashion across the country, ~because~ we as a society are by no means unified on the subject. In these cases, when the market fails to correct for something you claim society values, I would say that youre wrong as to what you think society values. And that the market is the proof of it.

One thing I can say though, is that we as a society have shown we care more about dolphins trapped in tuna nets than we do about people who have lost their jobs due to overseas competition.

[Kimstu]

pervert: And you’d be [led] to some odd anarchistic philosophy whith little merit. Which means it could “be shrugged off as obviously immoral”

Only if you’ve already assumed that anarchistic philosophy is immoral.

Don’t you see, perv, I’m not saying I disagree with you substantially about which choices we should consider moral. I’m just saying that we should recognize that these moral differences do stem from choices that we make.

Most of the rest of what you said sounded confused to me, or else I just didn’t get it, so I’ll let it go unless you want to repeat and clarify any particular point.

If we believe in a freedom of action (which I think we can).

What is “freedom of action”? Freedom of which actions? You’ve already made it clear that you’re not in favor of certain actions such as stealing and murder, and that you don’t support freedom to perform them.

If we believe that one should be free to benifit from such actions (which I also think we can).

You’re saying a bunch of very vague and open-ended things here, and you seem to be assuming that they’re obvious and easily acceptable. I think you need to refine your terms a lot before you assume that we’re on the same page with them.

Then we can formulate a concept of property based on those freedoms.

Clear up your premises first, please, and then we’ll see what conclusions we can draw from them about “concepts of property”.

All I am suggesting is that the free market is not some social construct which produces wealth leaving us to decide how to divy up that bounty.

I’m not at all sure I understand this, but I think that what you’re getting at is that the operation of markets involves certain natural laws which don’t depend solely (or even primarily) on how we might relativistically choose to define “freedom”. I’d agree with that.

Let me assume that I accept that freedom is completely nuetral.

Well, freedom per se is neutral; once we define it as a social goal, we’ve got it all loaded up with moral values and ideological choices. Which I think is a good thing, by the way.

*How then does this lead to the idea that free markets should be restricted? If you postulate that there is a freedom to particpate in the market, how do you then suggest that this freedom by its very nature necessitates a restriction of that same freedom? *

Well, consider my example of discrimination in a place of business. If I assume a freedom to participate at will in the market, then, say, a racial minority may want to exercise that freedom by purchasing a meal at a lunch counter. A racist lunch counter owner may want to exercise that freedom by refusing to sell that meal to that customer. In each case, one person’s desired freedom of choice about his market actions will restrict the other person’s.

If on the other hand, you are suggesting that there is some sort of freedom of outcomes like “freedom to a living wage”, then are you not denying the freedom of the free market?

I don’t understand this question. What I’m denying is John’s assertion that a “free market” automatically has to be lumped in with things like “free speech” or “free press” as something that’s inherently good just because it’s “free”.

In my opinion, “free speech” and “free association” and so forth are good because they’re part of what we’ve morally chosen as our social ideal of freedom. The “free market” doesn’t necessarily belong in that category, or at least, not to the same extent: it’s supposed to serve a particular social goal—producing what we consider the best economy—and we wouldn’t be at all morally obligated to go on supporting it if it didn’t serve that goal.

[Voodoochile]

@Kimstu

If I came in with a different vocabulary and a different view of property rights, I might call what you call “stealing” something like “the free use of goods”. And then it couldn’t be shrugged off as obviously immoral just because of the verbal connotations.

I might be wrong but I think what he is trying to point out is that, by choosing a ‘right’ that everyone is going to have, that automatically means that there are rights people arent going to have.

For instance if it were decided that we all had a right ‘to the free use of goods’, that means we could not have right to keep the fruits of our labor. The two are mutually exclusive, and to try to combine both is in effect to say one has no rights at all, like adding 1 and -1 results in no number at all.

So, because we have the rights of life, liberty and the persuit of happiness, that by default implies a certain amount of regulation of things that would violate those, one of which being murder. The moral decision was made at the time of the formation of our govt. If murder had been chosen as a right, than the right to live could never be recognized, as the two are mutually exclusive, and again to have both is in effect to have no rights at all.

Simply by making any sort of definition of what ones rights are, one is also defining what ones rights are not.

[Kimstu]

Vdc: Environmental regulation is when the mill is not just required to clean the water to a level safe for humans, but to return the rivers ecosystem to a state as close as possible to that which it was in before the mill was there, or to some other pre-determined state beyond mere human safety.

That’s a very weird definition. From all the examples I’ve seen, it is quite standard to use “environmental regulation” to refer to controlling pollution for human safety, as well as for the safety or preservation of other organisms or for some other kind of standard.

The link you posted about pollution in Britain largely dealt with pollution in regards to public safety. Sheep dip, nitrates getting into groundwater and all that. It didnt have too much to do with environmental regulation.

Well, the linked article is called “Market Failure: Pollution, the Environment and Externalities”, and the government regulatory agency whose pollution control measures it discusses is called the “Environment Agency”.

I don’t think we can have any kind of a useful debate if you just go on casually redefining terms in standard usage however it suits you to redefine them. Nobody else is likely to understand what you mean; I know I don’t.

*If there is an issue about letting an oil company drill on public land, whats not market oriented about the owners voting on it? We’re all shareholders of the land, we own it; its up to us to decide what we want to allow it to be used for. *

Now you seem to be saying that acting through government by means of voting is essentially the same thing as acting as consumers in the market. But a few posts ago, you were saying that they were fundamentally different:

*Well, then what other empirical evidence is there as to what society wants? Voting? That only tells you the wishes of the parts of society eligible to vote. […]
No one votes as to what they themselves want to value; you dont need to vote to do that. The act of voting is by default an act of determining what you think everyone else should value. *

Make up your mind. Is voting a market activity, or isn’t it?

I’m doing my best to respond to your points thoughtfully and seriously, but I’m afraid they are coming across as illogical, incoherent, and freqently contradictory. The one item that I’m getting a clear picture of is that you seem to be upset that there aren’t large-scale consumer boycotts to protest jobs outsourcing. This is fine, but it’s not helping me grasp the rest of what you’re trying to say. If you can’t make it clearer, at some point, I’m afraid I’m just going to have to give up trying.

[pervert]

@Kimstu

Only if you’ve already assumed that anarchistic philosophy is immoral.

No, I think most anarchistic positions can be easily dismissed without having decided beforehand.

Don’t you see, perv, I’m not saying I disagree with you substantially about which choices we should consider moral. I’m just saying that we should recognize that these moral differences do stem from choices that we make.

But in so doing, you are also denying the importance of some of those choices. What you are saying is that freedoms imply restrictions so restrictions aren’t bad. When you agree that a certain concept is moral, but then decide that it is only moral because of some arbitrary or unimportant choice that you and I have made, you are removing the importance of the choice. I agree that what we consider moral is a choice. But that does not mean that all possible choices are equally ok.

Most of the rest of what you said sounded confused to me, or else I just didn’t get it, so I’ll let it go unless you want to repeat and clarify any particular point.

And then you did respond to the rest of the post. I’m not sure which part you thought was confused. However, if you want to let it lie, I’ll reciprocate.

If we believe in a freedom of action (which I think we can).

What is “freedom of action”?

I’m sorry, I was using the phrase in the standard usage. I did not mean to get overly wordy. Notice my next paragraph where I tried (unsuccessfully) to limit the actions I was talking about. Specifically, I was refering to the idea that individuals should be able to take whatever actions they choose so long as those actions do no harm to others. Does that help?

All I am suggesting is that the free market is not some social construct which produces wealth leaving us to decide how to divy up that bounty.

I’m not at all sure I understand this, but I think that what you’re getting at is that the operation of markets involves certain natural laws which don’t depend solely (or even primarily) on how we might relativistically choose to define “freedom”. I’d agree with that.

No, what I was getting at was the the free market is primarily the interaction of individuals. That it operates on certain natural laws I think I can agree with. However, one of them is that freedom of association is better than coerced association.

Let me assume that I accept that freedom is completely nuetral.

Well, freedom per se is neutral; once we define it as a social goal, we’ve got it all loaded up with moral values and ideological choices. Which I think is a good thing, by the way.

Exactly my point. There is a sense of the word freedom which is nuetral. However, there is another which is not. If you confuse them you may not have discovered anything about either.

[QUTOE]*How then does this lead to the idea that free markets should be restricted? If you postulate that there is a freedom to particpate in the market, how do you then suggest that this freedom by its very nature necessitates a restriction of that same freedom? *

Well, consider my example of discrimination in a place of business. If I assume a freedom to participate at will in the market, then, say, a racial minority may want to exercise that freedom by purchasing a meal at a lunch counter. A racist lunch counter owner may want to exercise that freedom by refusing to sell that meal to that customer. In each case, one person’s desired freedom of choice about his market actions will restrict the other person’s.
[/QUOTE]
Well, but the problem is that choice is not the same thing as freedom. Will you say that my inability to choose to live in your house regardless of your permission is a limitation on my freedom? I guess you might. But I would be honor bound to point out that such a limitation is not the same thing as a limitation on my freedom to live in a house in general.

I don’t understand this question. What I’m denying is John’s assertion that a “free market” automatically has to be lumped in with things like “free speech” or “free press” as something that’s inherently good just because it’s “free”.

I understood this. It is what prompted me to participate here even though I should not be. Unless you understand the free market as something fundamentally different from free individuals associating in economic transactions, then it is, in fact, the exact same sort of freedom as free speech and free press.

Consider 3 activities:

I write a story.

I tell a story to you.

I offer to transfer some property to you in exchange for some other property.

Why is the freedom to do the last thing fundamentally different than the first 2?

In my opinion, “free speech” and “free association” and so forth are good because they’re part of what we’ve morally chosen as our social ideal of freedom. The “free market” doesn’t necessarily belong in that category, or at least, not to the same extent: it’s supposed to serve a particular social goal—producing what we consider the best economy—and we wouldn’t be at all morally obligated to go on supporting it if it didn’t serve that goal.

But this is your essential mistake. The free market is simply what we call it when free individuals get together and engage in economic activities.

Now, I might be able to have a discussion on the idea that there are better ways to organize our economic activities. But to me, they would be on the same order, morally, as discussions about re ordering our political activities. Certainly there are arguments to be made that forms of government other than democratic, for instance. However I would regard the proof required to actually make any such change to be extraordinary indeed.

Ok, I’m done. Thanks for the discussions.

[Voodoochile]

@Kimstu

That’s a very weird definition. From all the examples I’ve seen, it is quite standard to use “environmental regulation” to refer to controlling pollution for human safety, as well as for the safety or preservation of other organisms or for some other kind of standard.

Well, one could get rid of the endangered species act among others that are designed to protect the environment for its own sake rather than any intent to ensure public safety, and companies could/would still be sued/required to not pollute and or clean up existing pollution.

Well, the linked article is called “Market Failure: Pollution, the Environment and Externalities”, and the government regulatory agency whose pollution control measures it discusses is called the “Environment Agency”.

Yes, so?

Congress establishes a law, it doesnt assign an agency to deal with it based on what function of govt the law is based on. Matters of public safety dealing with the environment are going to be handled by the EPA. Matters of public safety dealing with air traffic are going to be handled by the FAA. Matters of public safety dealing with processed food are going to be handled by the FDA. We dont have a regular ‘public safety’ dept.

I don’t think we can have any kind of a useful debate if you just go on casually redefining terms in standard usage however it suits you to redefine them. Nobody else is likely to understand what you mean; I know I don’t.

Sorry if youre confused, but I dont feel Im redefining anything. I mean, the National Parks in the US were established for completely unrelated reasons as to why a company cant pump arsenic into the ground. Simply acting as if there is no distinction, or assuming that because the same agency deals with issues from both doesnt change the fact that yes they are two different issues.

Now you seem to be saying that acting through government by means of voting is essentially the same thing as acting as consumers in the market. But a few posts ago, you were saying that they were fundamentally different:

Only when we vote as owners. We are then no different than the shareholders of a corporation. If the shareholders of a corporation that owns millions of acres vote as to whether or not lease some of the property to an oil company, do you not consider that a market activity?

If we vote as non-owners, then we are far more restricted as to how we can vote. We are far more free to decide what happens with our public property that we all own than we are with privately owned property.

Pollution laws are not about social wants that illustrate ‘market failure’. Thats the whole issue I am addressing. If anything, the existance of pollution illustrates a government failure. Quite a few pollution regulations from state to state would not exist if it were up to the voters of a particular state or county. Youd be suprised how many people are willing to risk a, say, 20% increased chance of getting cancer in exchange for a steady, high paying job. Local govts arent too eager to piss off the local cash cow either. But pollution laws arent about what society wants or doesnt want.

Make up your mind. Is voting a market activity, or isn’t it?

Do you mean voting as an owner of an economic resource, or voting as to what other people are going to be free to do?

The one item that I’m getting a clear picture of is that you seem to be upset that there aren’t large-scale consumer boycotts to protest jobs outsourcing. This is fine, but it’s not helping me grasp the rest of what you’re trying to say. If you can’t make it clearer, at some point, I’m afraid I’m just going to have to give up trying.

Well, as to the first, then youre not clear on that either as Im completely for free and open trade. I ~like~ the trend in outsourcing.

Im not sure why you cant see what Im trying to say when I have repeated myself a few times. You cant claim society values something without corresponding market based proof. If there is a perceived failure in the market to address something one is convinced society values, then one is probably wrong about what society really values. Or, one knows society doesnt value it but one thinks one knows whats best for society and wants to inflict it anyway.

[Kimstu]

pervert: When you agree that a certain concept is moral, but then decide that it is only moral because of some arbitrary or unimportant choice that you and I have made, you are removing the importance of the choice.

Hey, I never claimed that such a choice is arbitrary or unimportant: on the contrary, I think it’s profoundly important. What I’m arguing is simply that it is a choice, not something automatic or inevitable.

Well, but the problem is that choice is not the same thing as freedom. Will you say that my inability to choose to live in your house regardless of your permission is a limitation on my freedom? I guess you might. But I would be honor bound to point out that such a limitation is not the same thing as a limitation on my freedom to live in a house in general.

If that’s an analogy to my lunch-counter case, you seem to be arguing that all the freedom in this situation rightly belongs solely to the lunch-counter owner; i.e., you have no more “right” to buy a lunch from someone who doesn’t want to sell you one (even if the seller’s motivations are purely racist) than you have a “right” to live in the house of someone who doesn’t want you there.

If that’s what you’re driving at, I disagree with you, and so do the courts.
(This appears to be my Slightly Off-Topic Musing of the Week, it’s at least the second thread where I’ve used it:
Perhaps the commonest misconception about individual rights is “I Can Do Whatever I Damn Well Please With My Own Goddamn Property.” Very widely believed, but in fact, false. Commercial transactions do not generally fall into the category of protected individual rights where it’s unconstitutional for the government to make any rules about what you can and cannot do.)

*I write a story.

I tell a story to you.

I offer to transfer some property to you in exchange for some other property.

Why is the freedom to do the last thing fundamentally different than the first 2?*

Because property transactions don’t count as a protected individual right. The government cannot regulate my personal forms of expression (except for the classic extreme cases like S"F"IACT* or, possibly, kiddie porn) but it can regulate the hell out of my commercial transactions.

*The free market is simply what we call it when free individuals get together and engage in economic activities. *

But as we see, it isn’t interpreted that way; economic activities are subject to a lot more restrictions than the protected non-commercial activities of the strictly private personal sphere.

Why do we allow these different constitutional treatments of different types of freedom? My guess is that it’s precisely because markets are so crucial and so central to the well-being of a society. We’ve decided that we simply have to give everybody more or less equal access to participation in markets; and if that conflicts with some property owners’ desire, say, to discriminate on racial grounds, well, too bad for them.

Ok, I’m done.

Me too; maybe once I’m outa here there can actually be a discussion of the OP. I seem to be a hijack magnet for this thread.

Thanks for the discussions.

Not at all, thank you!

*shouting “fire” in a crowded theater. Ten points if you got it.

[John_Mace]

I think that Kimstu’s freedom to not use the “quote” function denies me the freedom of following many of his/her posts.

[Evil_Captor]

Actually, as the OP, I can say this has been a pretty good hijack, and I appreciate all the commentary from conservatives who did not necessarily agree with the ground rules but still put some of the ideas advanced here to the test very thoroughly. I’m thinking of following up with a proposed economic recovery campaign package for either or both presidential candidates, but I try to keep my participation on the SDMB to a manageable level, so it might be a week or two until some of the other threads I’m following die down.

[Kimstu]

JM: *I think that Kimstu’s freedom to not use the “quote” function denies me the freedom of following many of [her] posts. *

Sorry John! I will courageously step forward and lay the blame for this habit on Arnold Winkelreid, whose example I followed in using chunks of italic for quotations from other posters 'cause it takes up less space than the quote function. Will try to be more clear in how I use it from now on.

[John_Mace]

@Kimstu

JM: *I think that Kimstu’s freedom to not use the “quote” function denies me the freedom of following many of [her] posts. *

Sorry John.

I think the new format that we went to when the subscription policy was announced has a much lower contrast between standard, bold, and italic fonts than the old system had. Or maybe my eyes are just showing the signs of old age…