Shake your money maker.
Apparently you are unaware that the dangers of asbestos were very clear as early as 1930 and the incredible amount of damage that was done during that time.
Which is why I said “eventually”. Government isn’t known for its speed, unless they are doing the wrong things, in which case they try to rush things through before anyone can read the bills or debate them.
As for “the burden of proof is on those who would restrict our freedoms”, it really depends who is restricting whom, now doesn’t it?
If all men are created equal, no it doesn’t. A businessman has the same rights as a single mom. Now of course in practice our system works more towards the favor of the businessman, but that’s no excuse for trying to rig the system the other way, which is what many well-meaning liberals try to do. You don’t achieve justice by balancing the wrongs among different groups, so that everyone has an equal cause to complain. You achieve justice by treating everyone the same, rich and poor, under the law. Same laws for everyone, same consideration for everyone.
You want the freedom to smoke? I want the freedom to breathe unsmoked air.
I’d say that falls under the “my right to swing my arm ends at your face” category. Again, smoking is unhealthy to bystanders. A person is free to poison his own body, but not the bodies of others.
You want tasty foods? I want to keep kids from eating the transfats that used to be in Oreos because it shortens their life, which is their freedom.
That’s what parents are for. It doesn’t satisfy the burden of proof, IMO(and I’d bet it doesn’t satisfy the burden of proof for the majority either). Eating unhealthy foods only makes the person eating them unhealthy, unlike smoking, which affects those near you. If you want to ban transfats, then to be consistent you should also want to keep marijuana illegal. Marijuana may have some medicinal uses, but few would call it a safe, healthy activity. Plus it makes you want unhealthy Oreos.
As Janis Joplin said, “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”.
In this day and age, I find it hard to believe that there are people who don’t see the value of freedom. Janis Joplin couldn’t have achieved what she achieved if he hadn’t had the liberties she had. Of course, Joplin probably would be alive today if her life was more restricted. But most people manage to get through life without destroying themselves, so that’s no excuse to restrict the rights of everyone.
What? In 1974 you paid $10+/hour for a babysitter? Are you sure? Because that’s $43/hour in 2008 money. Can I babysit for you? Heck, my husband the engineer wants the job!
I paid $4/hour this evening for a babysitter. That’s ridiculously cheap by modern standards, true. I don’t see how that makes me a poor parent or exploiting child labor; she’s a wonderfully trustworthy girl, my kids love her, and I’m giving her training that will be valuable to her and result in higher wages later on. She’s new at babysitting outside her family, thus the low cost. What terrible thing is going to happen that makes it necessary for me to pay $43/hour for this service?
$4/hour is under minimum wage. I know of no exemption to minimum wage laws for babysitting, or to child labor laws. Does anyone have any reliable legal information about that?
I know the law is never enforced as a practical matter. But I do so hate different laws for different people. Laws and enforcement should be the same for all.
and I’m giving her training that will be valuable to her and result in higher wages later on.
Couldn’t any employer make that justification?
Who died and left you in charge of stealing the authority to determine who has the burden of proof in an argument? You keep asserting that other people have the burden of proof.
You misunderstand my point. I value freedom a great deal. My freedom. How do I protect my freedom? And what exactly is it? Is the freedom of others important to protecting this?
Discussing freedom and how it interacts with the freedom of others is a lifetime journey. I’m simply remarking that the “free market” idea of freedom is freedom of large groups from responsibility for destroying the lives of little people. You may now return to your regular College Republicans meeting.
Who died and left you in charge of stealing the authority to determine who has the burden of proof in an argument?
Are you saying that we shouldn’t operate from a presumption of liberty? That liberties can be taken away simply because someone asserts that something bad could conceivably happen if these liberties are exercised?
You misunderstand my point. I value freedom a great deal. My freedom. How do I protect my freedom? And what exactly is it? Is the freedom of others important to protecting this?
The freedom of others is vital to protecting your own freedoms. Everyone has a few things that they enjoy that aren’t mainstream. If everyone considers only their freedoms important, only the freedoms that a majority practices will be protected. That’s the way our country used to be. You couldn’t work on Sunday, obscenity laws were harsh, and racial and religous minorities’ rights were considered to be generally unimportant, to put it mildly.
Even today, there’s a town that has passed an ordinance banning wearing your pants too low. While I think this is one of the silliest fashions ever, and actually kinda gross(do I really need to see your boxers?), does it really justify passing a law? And the law calls for one year in prison! Now I don’t wear my pants that low, but I do like to wear baseball caps indoors, which most people don’t do and some people actively don’t like. If I don’t defend people’s rights to wear their pants too low, maybe they’ll come for my baseball cap next.
I’m simply remarking that the “free market” idea of freedom is freedom of large groups from responsibility for destroying the lives of little people.
I think what you’re referring to are negative externalities. In other words, something one person does imposes costs on others that they don’t have to pay for, but the other people do. Pollution is the classic example.
Again, the doctrine of restricting liberties with the burden of proof being on those who would restrict them works fine. Pollution does real harm. Therefore, regulating pollution is reasonable.
Well, just for the record, Adaher’s extreme and idiosyncratically dogmatic American approach to free market is not a necessary approach to the argument. I for one believe it fundamentally unhelpful to keep asserting ad hoc burdens of proof in either direction in this instance as it is not evident that one has to share the philosophical assumption underlying (for all that I largely agree philosophically rather with his end of the argument).
However, he is right that the concept of negative externalities is quite broad enough to cover much of any need or desire for regulation. The problem arises in demonstrating real harm of course. That is easy in the abstrct world of ideas. Not so straight forward in reality.
However, he is right that the concept of negative externalities is quite broad enough to cover much of any need or desire for regulation.
Many regulations do not prevent negative externalities. for example, there are many transactions where both parties are satisfied, but a third party may be morally offended at the transaction even though there is no cost imposed on the third party. Payday loans are a current legal example. People who use payday loans are pretty satisfied and like the increased liquidity it gives them since most people who use them don’t have access to other credit. The payday lenders of course love it. But then you have people who are neither borrowers or lenders who are morally horrified and see that as granting them license to regulate the practice out of existence.
Trans fats also falls under this category. Most people who consume them don’t care about them, and there have always been alternatives to foods with trans fat within the same food group. There is already consumer choice when it comes to trans fats. Might as well just mandate that all companies offer only their low fat brands and get rid of their standard brands.
I think this is where libertarians part from others: we believe actual harm has to be done to justify a limit on freedom. Moral outrage over a practice that harms no one except a third party’s sensibilities is not a sufficient condition. Neither is a perceived or tenous harm that isn’t backed up by evidence. Nor is it the job of the authorities to protect people from the consequences of their own choices when those choices hurt only themselves.
I don’t see how that is dogmatic or extreme. The “there oughta be a law” crowd has done a great deal of harm in this country.
Well, I must disagree.
Regulation of payday loans (depending on the content of the regulation) easily fall within negative externalities if the analysis falls on issues of sustainable levels of indebtedness and the feedback of excessive indebtedness on cycles of poverty. Crudely banning high interest loans likely has its own negatives, but restricting and regulatory easily falls within a rational analysis of externalities.
I haven’t a comment on this as I am unfamiliar with the issue as such.
American Libertarians take an extremely dogmatic and utterly unnecessarily restrictive view, based rather more on anti-government paranoia than on a truly balanced analysis of cost-benefit (e.g. tenuous becomes quite the elastic clause relative to your dislike of regulation, but the same standard is not applied in the opposite direction).
American libertarians appear to me to regularly and consistently take a narrow whinging approach to all government regulation with wide and relaxed standards as to cost relative to the regulation side, and narrow and deliberately tendentious views on benefits (or equally the analysis of externalities to private action).
**Regulation of payday loans (depending on the content of the regulation) easily fall within negative externalities if the analysis falls on issues of sustainable levels of indebtedness and the feedback of excessive indebtedness on cycles of poverty. Crudely banning high interest loans likely has its own negatives, but restricting and regulatory easily falls within a rational analysis of externalities.
**
That’s nanny statism because it exists only to protect people from their own bad decisionmaking. As if the state can make better decisions.
American Libertarians take an extremely dogmatic and utterly unnecessarily restrictive view, based rather more on anti-government paranoia than on a truly balanced analysis of cost-benefit (e.g. tenuous becomes quite the elastic clause relative to your dislike of regulation, but the same standard is not applied in the opposite direction).
The Libertarian Party, true, but only 1% of Americans identify with that party, while 20%, possibly more, self-identify as libertarian. Libertarian is loosely defined as liberal on social issues, conservative on fiscal and regulatory issues.
American libertarians appear to me to regularly and consistently take a narrow whinging approach to all government regulation with wide and relaxed standards as to cost relative to the regulation side, and narrow and deliberately tendentious views on benefits (or equally the analysis of externalities to private action).
But shouldn’t we all be able to agree that lawmaking based on moral outrage when no one is directly harmed isn’t very productive? The business of passing laws should be rational and dispassionate, not something that should be done while in high moral dudgeon, or scared, or emotional in any way.
Your broad labelling of Nanny Statism is precisely what I call dogmatic and narrow minded.
It is also very peculiarly American.
As for the State making "better"decisions, taking the example of indebtedness, while I am no fan of the state making decisions for individuals, a macro monitoring of aggregate indebtedness is rational and prudent relative to long-term economic health and growth (as it is generically observed extreme levels of inequality have long-run negative impact on economic growth, all things being equal). You can apply scare terms without analytical value like Nanny State as much as you want, but a negative externalities analysis within entirely free market framework can easily accommodate the supervision and control of types of consumer debt offered - in aggregate - to achieve aggregate better results.
Your use of the scare phrase Nanny State rather emphasises my point. I really don’t follow party political platforms of obscure parties, my comments on American liberatarians are based on the stuff I see on these boards and elsewhere. They’re economic liberalism taken to a blind dogma.
Agree?
I suppose.
However, I live in a universe where human beings are not abstracts but merely emotional primates with over-developed brains. As such, I do not particularly expect that Governance of said primates is ever going to be entirely rational… nor meet the standards of an abstract theory with ideal actors.
As such, I am quite willing to put up with some silliness and high moral dungeon on the margins since rational and utterly dispassionate law making exists in about the same level of reality as the Communists Homo Sovieticus.
Nice ideal, never will be seen. I do share, however, the predisposition that government regulation too often has its own negative externalities and should not be presumed to be the primary solution.
People complain that Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers ruined the economy by going out of business. Then they complain that Goldman Sachs is ruining the economy by being successful. People are idiots.
Sort of like the people who seem to think that free market and a society of laws are mutually exclusive.
**Your broad labelling of Nanny Statism is precisely what I call dogmatic and narrow minded.
**
Protecting people from themselves is a bridge too far, considering the state can’t yet protect people from others who wish them harm.
You can apply scare terms without analytical value like Nanny State as much as you want, but a negative externalities analysis within entirely free market framework can easily accommodate the supervision and control of types of consumer debt offered - in aggregate - to achieve aggregate better results.
Now we’ve got a dose of central planning to go with the nanny statism. Monitoring consumer indebtedness is not a vital state function. Especially given that the state tends to be poor at carrying out the things it is already supposed to be doing. Why take on new responsibilities with the old ones as yet inadequately taken care of?
The government should not be in the business of protecting people from themselves, especially since government officials are no better at avoiding bad decisionmaking in their personal affairs than the rest of us. You act as if there is some objective truth that governments can arrive at that escapes individual citizens. Or that there is one best way to do everything and citizens should be forced to do things that one way.
There’s not much point continuing this. I raised objection to the dogmatism of your presentation re free market operation largely to illutrate that such dogmatism is in no way a necessary approach (and indeed among non American economic liberals, not particularly prevalent).
Prudential monitoring of aggregate indebtedness is in no way central planning, indeed it is a standard approach in prudential supervision by perfectly free market central banks throughout the West.
Central planning - when not used as an utterly empty scare term - means directing credits to specific entities and sectors. Indeed prudential monitoring of excessive leverage was not done in the US, and it produced your sub-prime crisis, the essentials of which were not reproduced elsewhere.
In any event, your continued assertions based on a dogmatic and fairly extreme interpretation liberal economic principals strikes me as effectively the photo negative of our OP.
I think this is one of the sticking points. You’ve used “prudential” as if to imply government bureaucrats are superior to consumers exercising individual choices. History has shown that’s not true.
The government bureaucrats are “apes with brains” just like the consumers are “apes with brains.” The apes-with-brains in Washington DC are just as financially illiterate and shortsighted as the voters they are supposedly trying to protect.
Both the humans in the private sector and the humans in the public sector failed to come to grips with the fact that there was a housing bubble. A minority of humans figured it out, but they were more likely to NOT be in the government.
Let me start with Walmart and all their wonderful benefits and yes I do know people who work in Walmart and they agree it sucks. A very small number of their employees recieve Health benefits. More are dependent on state Medicaid programs.
I said computers were a good example of a product that is cheaper but at what cost? It’s very convenient to just measure cost of goods without considering what the cost to society. Sure the computer is cheaper but who’s making them here?
How come all markets aren’t free here? I want inexpensive Canadian drugs suddenly we can’t have a free market.
Why not?
***Ahem, Nooooo. *** I used prudential because it is a term of art.
Prudential monitoring or regulation is a term of art. You can look it up if you so desire.
Quite so, both sides of the equation are eminently fallible. Which is why I prefer generally market weighted solutions.
However, an individual consumer 's individually (limited) rational choices may result in unprudent positions for the whole market (non sustainable debt loads, credit exposure). Thus prudential regulation. Better regulated (note, better not necessarily more heavily) markets did better in the credit cycle.
Were they? I have seen no particular objective data to that effect. Not that I would argue that bureaucracies are particularly brilliant, and as I already mentioned, I am rather more favourable to essentially market driven solutions. Want I can’t abide is American style market-fundamentalism, in particular because your brand of fundamentalism in the end discredits more balanced market liberalisation.