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[Chris Whitman]

In other news: whooooo Obama!

[Derek]

 

[Hideous]

FUCK YEAH VICTORY




... Wait that is probably not the right picture. (first search result for "victory gif")


Yeah this is better:

[Smithy]

[xerus]

I say, I'm impressed, America!   

[Paul Eres]

It's just kind of the same line, right? When the government does something, it's bad, when 'the market' does something, it's good. But the market is just some people, and who's to say they will make better decisions?

It's not just that they're different groups of people, it's the manner in which it's done. When the market does something, it does something by definition through voluntary trade, all parties agree to it, whereas when the government does something, it does it by definition through force, one party forces the other to do something. Favoring the market over the government is a moral issue of favoring voluntary actions between humans over favoring force between humans. So it's not like which ice cream flavor you prefer or something.

I'm not even saying that the *results* of the market are always better than the *results* of using force, I'm just that the *method* of voluntary interaction is always better than the *method* of force.

[Chris Whitman]

It's not just that they're different groups of people, it's the manner in which it's done. When the market does something, it does something by definition through voluntary trade, all parties agree to it, whereas when the government does something, it does it by definition through force, one party forces the other to do something.

Voluntary trade by the people who control resources, you mean? All this still rests on the a priori belief that the free market will be balanced and leave all players on roughly equal footing. If someone seizes control of a resource or exploits the public consciousness or engages in dirty dealings or is even just wildly successful by making good products, they will immediately have advantages to be exploited against competitors which give them a more favorable position in the market.

The market is often very one-sided even in places where the government has not interfered, or where the government has interfered against parties with an unfair influence on the economy, through anti-trust litigation for example. There's no reason to think this wouldn't keep happening.

[Movius]

So I'm guessing no one cares that Obama shows all the same "duplicitous populist cunt" signs as Tony Blair did in England or Kevin Rudd here in Australia (not that anyone knows who that is of course). But hey, those guys turned out fine right?

Then again, it's easy to see the appeal when he's succeeding a power-hungry lunatic and running against a senile old man/idiot woman.

[Paul Eres]

I didn't say voluntary trading didn't mean unfair advantages or wouldn't be one-sided. And yes, there's no reason to think it wouldn't keep happening. I just don't think fairness is a justification for force, or another way to put it is that both are problems, but the use of force is more horrible than being unfair. I'd prefer a totally unfair world free of force than a fair world forced onto people.

[GregWS]

 

I'm glad it's all finished; quite the ride that was.  Truly incredibly to see America elect a black president; it's examples like this that give me hope for intolerance fading away on an even larger, global scale.  The net certainly helps this, as it highlights just how arbitrary our differences are!  

Human Hugs all around!  

(I know, wrong thread, but it fit!)

[Chris Whitman]

I didn't say voluntary trading didn't mean unfair advantages or wouldn't be one-sided. And yes, there's no reason to think it wouldn't keep happening. I just don't think fairness is a justification for force, or another way to put it is that both are problems, but the use of force is more horrible than being unfair. I'd prefer a totally unfair world free of force than a fair world forced onto people.

But I don't think it is. Force presents no choice. Unfairness appears to present a choice, but where the non-preferential options are so laughably bad that no one could ever take them.

If you move in on the only gig in town, telling someone, "Work for me or starve or relocate your family" is just force disguised as a choice. No one is fooled to think there is a qualitative difference between that and "Work for me or go to prison." Real freedom means autonomy, which means being able to make independent, meaningful and balanced decisions about your life, not this 'positive vs. negative freedom' crap where subjective violence is frowned upon but objective, institutionalized violence is perfectly acceptable.

I mean, I get what you're saying: no one likes to be pushed around, but the fact is that if you live in circumstances which restrict your choice, even if there's no one putting a gun to your head, you have only the illusion of freedom.

[Movius]

I didn't say voluntary trading didn't mean unfair advantages or wouldn't be one-sided. And yes, there's no reason to think it wouldn't keep happening. I just don't think fairness is a justification for force, or another way to put it is that both are problems, but the use of force is more horrible than being unfair. I'd prefer a totally unfair world free of force than a fair world forced onto people.

But I don't think it is. Force presents no choice. Unfairness appears to present a choice, but where the non-preferential options are so laughably bad that no one could ever take them.

If you move in on the only gig in town, telling someone, "Work for me or starve or relocate your family" is just force disguised as a choice. No one is fooled to think there is a qualitative difference between that and "Work for me or go to prison." Real freedom means autonomy, which means being able to make independent, meaningful and balanced decisions about your life, not this 'positive vs. negative freedom' crap where subjective violence is frowned upon but objective, institutionalized violence is perfectly acceptable.

I mean, I get what you're saying: no one likes to be pushed around, but the fact is that if you live in circumstances which restrict your choice, even if there's no one putting a gun to your head, you have only the illusion of freedom.

Stupid family living where theres no work or food gets upset when a business moves in that will pay them cash dollars for work? Sounds like a feasible situation.

[Paul Eres]

I'm a determinist, so I don't believe in choice in that sense anyway. I agree that choice is just as restricted without force as with it, it's just restricted by different things.

I think the example you give is somewhat unrealistic: even in the old days of the industrial revolution tycoons you didn't have situations like that, there are usually realistic alternatives. Your example sounds like a better description of the USSR, but even there there were alternatives.

The main thing that makes me decide on one over the other is that governments have killed hundreds of millions of people, the markets have killed no one (directly). And even indirectly you'd be hard-pressed to show that the markets have killed more people than governments have.

[Zaphos]

I guess I'd draw a different line to distinguish economic power and government power.  Both basically establish incentive systems: they let us define rewards or punishments for other peoples' actions.  In an economy, the power of defining incentives is given to 'anyone who has valuable resources (including but not limited to money),' while in a government it is given to 'anyone who has the right political standing.'  The range of possible incentives is typically more limited in an economic setting, although mostly due to government regulations on that power.  If you give one person all the resources, and you don't regulate how they use it, they have about as much power to set incentives as a dictator; they can 'force' you to do something in the same way the government can -- by refusing to sell you vital resources, or by giving other people incentive to hurt you for disobeying.

This seems like a more accurate way of distinguishing the two types power than 'force' vs 'not force'.

[Paul Eres]

Can you give an example of that happening ever though? Nobody, for example, has ever had a monopoly on all the food in the world, so it's not like you have to buy from that guy or die.