Please do a find-and-replace o the above as follows:
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I’d hate to think I caused anyone any distress by anthropomorphizing a society.
Sheesh, talk about much ado about nothing…
I wasn’t equating economic affluence and political affluence. I was merely pointing out that, owning to their nature, rights are always a matter of some kind of affluence. Rights are an attribute of property; the source of rights is that property’s owner, be it an ordinary person or a body of legislators. The only question is which affluence is ethical.
Your body is not your body if Senator Fatcat can decide that you can’t put a joint in your mouth or a dick in your ass. That’s political affluence. Your body belongs to Senator Fatcat (or if you prefer to stretch the point, the morons who elect him).
Even economic affluence is not the ethical conduit of rights unless it is a free-market economy. And if it is, if you were free from the coercion and fraud of others, then whatever you reap is nothing more or less than exactly what you deserve.
Again, I want to know what you people find so heinous about the notion of peaceful honest people pursuing their own happiness in their own way? Why can’t you leave people the fuck alone and stop mugging them to finance your “public property”? What are the possible reasons other than a love of tyranny or a fear of your own failure?
Because public goods are a genuine and valid problem in economic analysis (beyond the simplistic sort one gets in econ 101) and one has to grapple with issues of negative and positive externalities. Not all positive goods are deliverable in a pure market basis, some public goods and public properties are only maintanable through other sources – you might be well advised to engage some game theory works and issues such as free-riding.
I dunno, what’s your obsession with poorly constructed straw men and knee jerk ideological reactions based on poorly theorized political-economic theory?
Yoohoo, Collounsbury! Down here! Waaaaaay down here about forty feet underneath your snotty turned-up nose…
I imagine a man of your staggering intellect thinks Mises and Hayek were morons, but while you were busy playing with your tinker-toy equations with a hundred variables, few of which you could possibly supply the value for, and half of which were irrelevant, they were looking at real people engaging in real economic transactions. I swear, you Keynesians use more hocus-pocus than palm readers. Oh, you fret and worry so about an abstract entity, while turning a heart as cold as stone to individuals. That’s why your guesses are correct in proportion to any other random exercise. The only thing worse than snake-oiling your “analysis” as something legitimate is turning around and using your guns to effect policy based on its findings.
On a lighter note, are you British?
Nope. I’m saying that public property is a prerequisite to rights.
Who’s saying anything just about the destitute? But they should have rights too.
Although you’re the one who said that “You are born with property, and therefore rights.” Sounds like a hollow statement - as I thought.
Let me explain about abundance and scarcity of certain resources, Lib. Once, only well-off people could afford VCRs and car phones, but there’s no upper bound on the number of either that can be manufactured - so almost anyone who wants one can now have one.
They aren’t making new radio stations in the USA, though - so even though there are thousands of them, two big corporations have bought most of them up. Now: how many peaceful honest people can own American radio stations? Precious few - and I’m sure that the cost has gone up with the creation of scarcity.
Real estate, you’ve noticed, is something that there’s a fixed quantity of. In a Libertaria, where rights are directly connected to realty, what would be unsurprising about a few powerful entities buying land but not selling it, with similar effect? Once they’ve got lots of land, and now almost nobody’s selling any, economic prudence may not be enough to get you land, unless you define prudence as ‘what Warren Buffett has, but hardly anyone else does’. At that point, the landowners can noncoercively 
enter into contracts with the propertyless, in which the latter sign on as serfs.
“We, the people of the United States…” formed a nation a couple centuries back. You’ve got the same right they did, to attempt to start a new nation.
It’s really simple, Lib: a bunch of you like-minded people get together, consider a map of the world, pick a place, and contract with each other to put your lives on the line to start a new country/context/whatever there.
There are opportunities, you know: there are places in West Africa where there might as well not be a central government, given the lack of control the nominal government has over the interior of the country.
Nobody’s forcing you to remain an Austrian ;), y’know.
But you want to start a new nation right where you are, without any costs. Nobody else has been so lucky. Where’s your army to defend the borders you’d like to establish? What - no army? Guess you didn’t contract with a viable government. Your bad. Your country’s over. Sorry, but thanks for playing.
I don’t think that anyone has seriously proposed that an independent libertarian entity would be viable in the world as it currently stands. While I do own a copy of the excellent book How to Start Your Own Country by Eric Strauss, I see the more prudent way of establishing a completely moral (in my view at least) society to be a longer, less violent one. Or perhaps you like the “love it or leave it” false dichotomy.
To say that without public property that people don’t have free speech is like saying that without public printing presses we don’t have freedom of the press, or that without public churches we don’t have freedom of religion. Since in Libertaria, there would still be roads, sidewalks, parks and stuff, there would be plenty of places to shout your head off, assuming that there isn’t a massive conspiracy to shut you up. And if we’re going to be designing governments around bizarre and improbable scenarios, I could come up with a few scenarios to blow holes in any idea.
[quote]
Real estate, you’ve noticed, is something that there’s a fixed quantity of. In a Libertaria, where rights are directly connected to realty, [\quote]
In your mind only. but anyways
So, since a few entities own the majority of the radio stations it’s completely reasonable to assume that the same thing could happen to all the land in the country? :rolleyes:
There are many ways to define property rights, in terms of which rights belong to whom. For example, it has to be decided whether I as a land owner have the right to refuse airplanes the right to fly overhead. Generally, landowners are not considered to have this right. You seem to think that the owner of a piece of land has the right to determine every action of the people that happen to be occupying it at any given time. I would disagree, as would Lib, I’d imagine. For example, my landlord would not have the right to forbid me from leaving my apartment.
I don’t know where the line would be drawn in Libertaria, and see that as one of the inherent weaknesses of “contract your own” type of government, but if it were needed, I’m sure that it’s entirely possible that the rights of a landowner would be rather different than they are now.
Seems to me that’s what Lib says he wants - and he’s specifically complaining that we won’t let him turn the real estate he currently owns into an independent libertarian entity. Such is the nature of our tyranny. :rolleyes:
Actually, that analogy doesn’t work. The reason we need public property, particularly public rights-of-way, is that we all need to be somewhere when we exercise any right we have. Even if there is no church, we can kneel and worship on a public sidewalk if the traffic is light, and without public presses we can type up tracts and buy a used mimeo machine, and hand out copies of our tracts to passersby on those sidewalks.
These would all be privately owned in Libertaria. Given that owners of privately-owned ‘public’ spaces today (such as shopping malls) are not friendly toward free speech on their premises, why should we expect anything different from the owners of parks, roads, and sidewalks in Libertaria? I don’t find this particularly farfetched.
And given the way businesses play hardball in this society, it’s hard to imagine that they would feel anything but less restrained in Libertaria. If your message was sufficiently unpopular with the corporations that owned the roads, you might find yourself denied the privilege of using them. Recourse? None.
[quote
I think I’ve made a pretty strong case. Where’s the flaw?
Roll your eyes all you want. A few entities own the airlines in this country, and the petroleum refineries, and the cable networks, ad infinitum. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that in a country where no land means no rights, those with the power to do so would snarf up as much of it as they could.
In Lib’s hypothetical Libertaria (correct me if I’m wrong, Lib), all that is negotiable. If I own an apartment, and you and I peacefully and honestly enter into a contract that gives me the right to lock you in your apartment for the duration of your lease, it’s as legal as church on Sunday. You obviously wouldn’t do that if you had better alternatives, but in a market where all the land was controlled by a handful of people, serfdom might be your best option.
Your issue, not mine man.
I take this to mean you don’t have a real response or is it just that you’re not capable of making arguments except as straw men?
But, on a more factual note
(a) if one keeps up with modern economics one will note that Keynsian and (neo)Classical economists have largely converged on many basic issues, including the actual direct effects of such things as fiscal policy. No hocus pocus, good solid data. Now, there are fall-outs from this, and we find proper differences about the ultimate utility. But we can say that your smear, baseless, on Keynesian economics – to the extent it’s not anachronistic – makes no more sense than your prior smears using Hitler.
(b) Both neo-Classical and neo-Keynsian economics – that is the two loose current schools – grapple with the issue of public goods, a real problem. Right by my side here I have two such works: Anderson & Snyder’s Water Markets (Cato Institute, neo-classical to the extreme) and Spulber & Sabbaghi’s Economics of Water Resources (moderate I would call them). They ** both ** grapple with the issue of how to adequately utilize water, a classic public good with major positive externalities and free rider problems. Not airy ivory towerism, rather good applied economics attempting to figure out how to build in economic costs into water services.
I’m consulting them because they may have some utility to me in some issues my dear corporate entity is thinking about in re water issues here in the Middle East. Actual transactions my dear Lib, with ** actual complications** such as externalized costs, free riding off of services etc.
The problems I raised with your simplistic analysis go right to the heart of real problems with your hyper-simplified economic world view.
Let me add I am not inherently unsympathetic to liberal (i.e. libertarian economic) critiques and suggestions - I wouldn’t be consulting the Water Markets book if I was against them. However, simplistic ones which wish away real problems are no better than Communist Utopian fantasies. No one whit.
So, when I suggest to you that you have to engage certain things, like some game theory to deal with issues like public goods, I’m actually trying to be helpful so that perhaps, if you so wished, you might be able to put forth a realistic, non-Utopian set of solutions.
I recommend people rethink what public property means as far as rights go.
Rights are created by whatever legal entity exists, or, in lack of a legal entity, rights are whatever you want them to be. Public property creates public rights, private property creates private rights.
Well, let me say this a little differently. Public property exclusively creates a priviledged class; specifically, it pats people on the back for agreeing with the State’s ideology. Not that this is a huge suprise, mainly because all governments have public property, and all governments have jails to lock up people who try to use that public property like they were actually a member of the public that owned it.
Au contraire.
Private property entails private rights, which is much like everyone seems to be pointing out here where the farmer creates his own law. Why should it be any other way? Why is “I create the law on my land” any worse(and not, in fact, better) than “I create the law for you, but you can have a say too, just so long as you agree with everyone else.”
People are always going to disagree; man is not a static creature; drop your attempts to place humans in little boxes stamped “Government Property.” Government is an illusion in the mind of the governors. 
What also seems to bother me is this “Libertaria” crap. No one is stopping you, your friends, and whole communities to form, rise up, and be socialist in your own way. What, you think churches would be illegal? Soup kitchens outlawed? Get real, man, and learn what volunteer really fucking means. These are “just” causes and people will do them anyway, just as they do now, because the reasons people have for doing such a thing won’t change relative to the government present. If you find that, however, you need to shake a gun around to get people to do what you want, then quit getting on the farmer who sets the law on his land the same way.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by waterj2 *
**
Yes, because it has happened. Check out the history of the latifundios (enormous estates) and the political power they engendered in such places as Argentina in the 19th century.
I do believe Spritus Mundi is going to have to join us.
Your logic escapes me ARL:
(a) I fail to see how public goods/property of necessity “pats people on the back for agreeing with” the ideology of the State. (i) Patting on the back doesn’t say much to me, rewarding you mean. Again, I am not clear on this as I don’t see this as a ** necessary ** aspect. Say I am a socialist and the govmint is not. Assume equality before the law. I still get to use a park. (ii) I fail to see how, although I have some suspicious given your idiosyncratic reading of rights, public property is exclusive in creating a priviledged class. I’m afraid that I have to ask you to define what you mean by priviledged class.
Again, the logic here is… what?
(a) Jails of course exist as part of a system of punishement for violating commonly agreed on codes of behaviour. As such I see no necessary relationship with any particular form of ownership as any community will, in order to ensure its own functioning with a minimium of violent conflict, have to have such codes.
(b) In re use of public property, it does not strike me once more that because there may be usage restrictions that this is denying that member of the public has use of it (if I read you correctly).
Perhaps you need to visit a country where each person creates his own law. I believe the reasons why social compact is superior to anarchy are so obvious as to not merit repeating here.
Shaking me head. This is not even good rhetoric, let alone logic.
Water is not a public good, Col. Water infrastructure is a club good (club theory having been started by James Buchanan, another libertarian Nobel laureate). There are also network externalities involved, but it ain’t a public good. A public good is jointly consumable (water is seperately consumed) and non-price excludable (water is price-excludable, although it is costly). It is also important to remember that public goods require public provision (tax finance), not public production.
It is quite false to suppose that libertarians are unaware of the existence of public goods, externalities and the social contracts, even though some of their political fellow travellers seem so. Buchanan is the author of Public Finance in a Democratic Economy, Externality (with W. Stubblebine) and The Calculus of Consent. To suppose that serious members of the Austrian or other libertarian schools are ignorant of such matters is just as foolish as to suppose that Marxians want to kill everyone who has clean hands.
Well, I’m not a public bad.
I’ll address the serious points a little later, save to mention that there’s really little political power to be had in Libertaria. I’ll look into the Argentine example, and see to what extent government coercion was used to achieve that situation.
Funny, the literature I have at hand treats it as such.
I refer you to the above cited works. It’s certainly not my speciality, however the literature I have been consulting in regards to this project certainly treats it as a public good, or perhaps if you desire one with such characteristics.
Well, that all depends I suppose on how we define its usage and in what context.
Yes? And in re water infrastructure in this region that is precisely the case. As I said, this is not my field per se, I was raising the issue as an illustration, so if you want I will restate to say that in this (hyper arid) region water certainly is a good with public good characteristics, although we can get in sterile terminological discussions if we want.
But I wasn’t, do you think I am stupid?! I was reply to Lib the individual who was to my reading excluding the concept! Bloody hell man, Water Markets is a libertarian (or quite close) book fer chrissake! That’s what I was trying to tell him!
Lessee now: I drive on public roads, hike in public parks and forests, get data for use in GD debates off public websites, etc., like I own the place.
I don’t agree with a whole lot of the State’s ideology, although I at least agree with basic principles: most things decided by majority rule, with a handful of core rights that can’t be revoked by a majority.
But even if I didn’t agree with that, I’d still have the same access to public facilities.
Now, if I tried to use them like I owned them to the exclusion of others, I’d get in trouble. While it’s true that certain interests (loggers, miners, ranchers) seem to have that sort of access to portions of public lands without getting in any trouble for it, that has less to do with ideology than money and power, which democracy somewhat dilutes, relative to libertarian government (or lack thereof).
So as I see it, ARL, your complaint shouldn’t be that these people are a privileged class as it is, but that they’re not privileged enough for your tastes.
From the rest of this paragraph, ARL, I couldn’t tell whether the idea of ‘Libertaria’ bothered you, or the objections to it.
If the problem is that you don’t understand what Libertaria refers to, this is a continuation of an old discussion. Do a search with Lib’s username and ‘Libertaria’ as the keyword, and go back at least a year. Or get Lib to describe Libertaria to you.
Well, I’d like to be free. However, as a purely practical matter, the current system does protect many of my rights better than I could manage on my own. A society such as Libertaria could not function in this world, due to the dependence on government as the method by which our rights are secured. It’s my understanding from previous debates that Lib agrees with this assessment, as unfortunate as it may be.
We also need to be somewhere when we eat. We need somewhere that will allow us to run our ditto machines, which would generally exclude the sidewalk or a public park. Look at the Internet. As far as I know, there is no public hosting of our words. Everything posted on the Internet is served by someone’s private server. And nowhere is free speech more prevalent than the Internet.
Yes, there is the difference that the Internet can grow without bounds, unlike land. However, the Internet would be easier to censor, as the major backbones are controlled by relativel few companies (at least as compared with landowners).
Because free speech has value. At a mall, it is a nuissance. In a public park, it is an opportunity for concessioniers, or perhaps just something that will bring people there. A park where people can stand on their soapboxes and pontificate to the masses is a desirable thing, and adds value to city life. I suppose that large demonstrations might be discouraged, which would be a radical change from the demonstrators in Quebec City who, thanks to public property, were free to spread their message unhindered by corprate goons.
Well, you could organize a boycott. I guess your ISP could also be out to get you, and your landlord, and the phone company, but I don’t see this as a more likely situation than if the government decided to frame you for a crime, or somesuch. In short, while corporate interests can dick with the average man in Libertaria, the government can in our society. I see government as being able to pull off those sort of tactics far better and longer than private interests.
I’d imagine that the number of available plots of land vastly outnumbers the number of airlines by a factor of, oh, about a million. Land is a commodity, not a business. If I own large tracts of land, it profits me more to sell them or develop them than to use them to try to force people into servitude. As deeply as I might get involved in this argument, I’m not likely to seriously consider buying your house to shut you up. Especially since you seem the type to not want to sell just to spite me.
Which would make the relatively powerless landowners gain incredible monopoly power by standing in the way of this scheme. If there is a neighborhood with 100 lots, each of which is owned by someone who will sell for the best price, and you want to control this area, it is not hard for me to put a serious flaw in your plan. If I want to prevent you from stifling the speech of this area, all I need is one plot where people can exercise their rights, which I expect to make a small profit on. Since your plan requires outbidding me all 100 times out of 100, I can force you to spend 100 times as much money as I have in order for you to succeed.
When you extend that sort of thinking over the entire country, and the number of people that might stand in the way of your plans, and toss in how many of them already own land, it becomes a truly staggering proposal.
I think I’d probably decide that it seems like a good time to set sail for another country. However, among those who stay, their masters will probably be quickly disappointed to find that serfdom is not really the most profitable thing for them. Then, one of the partners in this scheme would find that he could make more money by attracting people with lesser serfdom. Because there really is no escaping market forces.
Oh, mercy. Here we go.
I guess what gets me about this hypothetical is that you’re assuming — no doubt owing to your inability to shake loose your imagination from your experience in this present coercive market context — that the buyer is some sort of legislator, i.e., that if he wills it, you must sell. You keep forgetting that the people on the other end of the transactions are not wooden dummies.
Let’s assume for the moment that they are no more dim than you or I. Would you voluntarily sell to a “powerful entity” your land so you could be his serf? You make paranoid conspiricists seem reasonable by comparison. Since you know that people cannot be forced to sell their land against their will, you must be positing that mean people are a whole lot more prudent than nice people. I say that’s an arbitrary proposition.
In a free-market, it makes no sense to snuff out the prosperity of other people. They, after all, are the ones who must have enough money to buy the goods and services you offer. If you turn them all into penniless beggars, what will happen to you when your money dries up? You won’t have anyone to sell anything to.
Correction.
You can kneel and worship on that sidewalk if the owners, i.e., the legislators, say you can. That’s certainly less problematic (maybe) if you’re a lone wolf who worships in the style and manner considered acceptable by your owners. But if you want to gather a hundred worshippers with you, or if you’re a Rastafarian who would like to smoke a bowl as a part of his worship, you’re just shit out of luck. Now you can posit that your religion is legitimate and his isn’t; therefore, your right is reasonable and his is not. Fine. The legistlators own all the land; therefore, they own you. If they say you can’t put a joint in your mouth or a dick in your ass, then you must conform.
These are not “important” rights, you say? Hmmm… Maybe if they said you could not put a hamburger in your mouth or your penis in a vagina you would see things in a new way. And there is nothing — nothing — preventing them from doing just that, other than — guess what — their common sense. Yep, their own self-interest stops them from interfering in your affairs when they know that a massive upheaval will result in their loss of power and rights distribution.
How is it that common sense accrues to legislators exclusively? If they have enough common sense to be mindful of their self-interest, why wouldn’t at least some of those among their electorate have just as much sense?
When you say “free speech”, you seem to be limiting it to some sort of unruly demonstration, where you can stand on a soap box and cry, “I hate niggers!” Well, of course there are few businesses who would allow this. Many of their customers, after all, are blacks. If you think smoking a doobie or fucking your gay lover are trivial rights, then what the hell is bellowing out your little opinions wherever you damn well please?
Given the diversity of a free society, I quite imagine that you could find a park owned by a bigot of one sort or another.
And what if your message were sufficiently unpopular with legislators? No permit. Recourse? None.
First, no land doesn’t mean no rights. What success would a landlord have in a free-market if he did not extend rights to his tenants? You must think entrepreneurs are morons. Imagine an entrepreneur as smart as you. Let’s say you’re an entrepreneur in Libertaria. Mr. Goofball offers apartments where you can’t do anything except breathe, eat, and sleep (he needs you alive so you can pay your rent, after all). So you offer apartments were people can lead normal lives at prices equal to or better than Mr. Goofball’s. Can you guess what happens?
All of those entities you cite — airlines, petroleum refineries, and cable networks — achieved their monopolies, not through the consensus of a free-market (which would produce good monopolies) but through the favor of the legislators whom they finance. If you believe that government and big business are not symbiotically related in this present coercive context, then it is no wonder that you cannot imagine reasonable scenarios for Libertaria.
Well, there you are. Some ineffably stupid, brain-helpless retard has peacefully and honestly — willingly and voluntarily, mind you! — entered into a contract that locks him in his apartment. Meanwhile, this same pathetic, human-looking creature manages, in a coercive market, to gather enough sense to elect legislators to look after his interests.
It is to laugh…
[getting out broom to sweep away red herrings…]
Would you call 19th century Argentina a free-market society operating in a context of peace and honesty?
So you’re saying that a libertarian society can work only after the return of Christ.
No, you’re assuming, Lib. Don’t ask me where you get these weird and wacky interpretations from, ‘cause I have no friggin’ idea. I’m assuming the owner can dictate. I’m observing the way consolidation has occurred in other markets that started off as fairly free, and wound up a lot more unfree after awhile. And I’m assuming the same process could duplicate itself in Libertaria.
I’m going to assume that people are, on average, as smart or dumb, as careful or careless, as foresighted or shortsighted, as they have been throughout history.
I’m going to assume (see previous remark) that a lot of people make decisions about their property that make sense at the time, but the result is a long-term pattern of property accruing to a relative handful of owners. For a long time, there are no consequences, because the large landowners want to foster a climate in which people have few misgivings about selling, and besides, it will take awhile before there’s a genuine, exploitable shortage of land apart from what they own.
What I’ve said elsewhere is that corporations are the ultimate single-interest group: they want to make money, and are not distracted from that pursuit by spouses, children, friends, leisure activities, and all the other stuff that the average human being fills his/her time with. With respect to that end, corporations have a far greater ability to be prudent than your average person does, simply because they are paying attention to a much greater degree.
Even apart from corporations, a relative handful of individuals are also going to be far more fixed on gaining money and power than most other people are. And they too will pay attention to the game of accruing power and wealth to a much greater extent than your average individual.
Not all of these entities will succeed, of course. But those that do, tend to win the game on a much greater scale than those of us who didn’t even realize we were in the same game with them.
That’s my paranoid conspiracy.
In the real world, competitors drive one another out of business all the time. Are you saying this makes no sense? Not that it matters; the important thing is, it happens every day. I don’t claim that people make sense.
So you’re saying that the entities in Libertaria don’t trade with entities outside of Libertaria. Or does your Libertarian ‘context’ need to be the entire globe?
At any rate, you don’t need to sell much if your serfs are producing everything you need.
And, gee, you’re right, Lib; we have no control over those legislators. Of course - how could I have been so blind?
And your example of the Rastas - you’re of course right; if my work-in-progress of a democracy denies a single remotely reasonable right, it has failed completely. It should be thrown on the junk heap of history, and should be replaced by something completely untried.
I call this the Pol Pot approach to human progress.
Find me a shopping mall that would, more than once in a blue moon, allow something like you and me taking an hour to rehash this debate, in a manner such that at least several dozen spectators could see and hear us.
And we’re still talking about depending on the kindness of strangers, which is not IMO a healthy foundation for liberty.
Nonetheless, in order for speech to be free, yes, its most unruly manifestations that don’t involve violence or its incitement must have the right to take place.
OK, counterexample. One record company sells music only by the album, requiring its customers to pay $16 even if they only want one track from the recording, rather than the whole album. Another record company does the same. And another. And another…
I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, Lib, but very often competitors only compete in their offerings with respect to certain variables in their products, and leave all others the same. This applies even when the competition isn’t about products, but terms of contracts: a friend of mine who has worked for a number of high-tech companies you’ve heard of, and some you haven’t, was in the job market a year or so back when people such as he were in demand. And he had several companies who wanted him to work for them.
They were willing to bid against one another with respect to money, but what he really wanted was to work fewer hours - and they were pretty inflexible on that. He negotiated a 60-hour work week; that was the best he could do.
I think it’s awfully disingenious of you, Lib, to suggest that behavior that happens in market economies would not happen in your hypothetical world, because there, everybody’s somehow smarter. To say that behavior influenced by government regulation wouldn’t happen is reasonable. But the examples I’m giving have nothing to do with that.
I don’t think you pay much attention to the world as it is; your nose is too deeply buried in your books, I think. (OK, so there’s one obvious alternative. :D)
Believe me, Lib, I’m quite aware of the unholy relation between legislators and corporations/industries. But the entities I cite largely achieved their oligopolies under their own power; legislators mostly helped by letting them do what they wanted to do anyway.
Not that there aren’t a fair number of laws and regs that were passed in order to restrict competition to those players who already had the upper hand. But IMO it’s rare that such laws cause the consolidation of power; their main effect is usually to affect which players are the ones who get to do the consolidating.
In parts of the world, people willingly and voluntarily sell their children into slavery and prostitution for food. Gawd, how stupid of them. It’s amazing that they can even find their way to the piss-pot. :rolleyes:
Sorry Collounsbury only the first part of that post was directed towards you, but that wasn’t clear.
However I must reiterate that water is not a public good in the sense that national defence or reduction of ozone-depleting chemicals are. For those goods additional users impose no costs at all on other consumers and each and every consumer consumes the entire amount produced; and it is impossible to exclude people from consuming on the basis of price. (The classic references are PA Samuelson, R Musgrave and JG Head.)
Clearly this is not the case for water or even for water infrastructure – water use depletes the amount available for others, water infrastructure is congestable, and both water and access to water infrastructure can be charged for (as you of course know). But this is not a matter of “sterile terminological discussion” since the type and severity of market failure vary with the characteristics of the good. Whilst pure public goods result in disasterous market failure under traditional Nash-type assumptions (and hence create a prima facie case for strong government intervention), if only one condition holds – for example films, which are collectively consumable but price-excludable – the market may do rather well.
Now it is true that some writers (I blame Musgrave) talk about anything with postive externalities as an “impure public good” or having “some element of publicness”. I guess I just find this extremely unhelpful and I jumped on it a bit because it’s my area.