(One of the two is supposedly off in the Southwest now doing reach-arounds for millionaire investors, and so isn’t able to access the Internet, which is not available in that part of the country, and which millionaires know nothing about anyway. But I’ll leave this hanging for his return.)
Here’s what troubles me – each of these literary devices posing as humans preaches the infallibility of market mechanisms in guiding us towards proper outcomes in all areas of life. Government is a negative force, and where governments and markets operate together, the former always screws things up, while the latter picks up the pieces. Our long term survival depends on the elimination, or at least minimization, of government, so that markets can work their magic.
According to one of these Jungian dreamscapers, all of life is about economic transactions. Humans know of no other way of dealing with one another than to exchange value for value. Where we act without economic motivation, we inevitably end up in disastrous consequences. Further, any transaction that enriches one at the expense of another is theft. So the concepts of social insurance, or even private insurance, are forms of theft, as are, of course, taxes and transfer payments. Economic regulation is, even if seeming effective, redundant, as markets self-correct, so that even when regulation appears to have worked, it is just an illusion. Regulation, by definition, interferes with market efficiency.
Econ101 tells us that people acting for their own benefit inadvertently help all of us, so that selfishness is a virtue. We are free from any care or concern for our fellow humans, as by merely creating wealth, we are charitable. Government, which can only exist by expropriating wealth created by private individuals operating in markets, is by definition intrusive, overbearing, and even evil.
That’s my take on my two regular visitors. If I’ve put words in their mouths, I apologize.
I only have two questions:
1) When human transactions are reduced to an economic exchange, not everyone affected by that exchange has a say in the matter. As a thought experiment, place two people in a cold room with a wood-burning stove. One person has control of the wood supply, and so offers to sell the heat from burning the wood to the other. They agree, and one builds a fire, and both benefit from the heat and survive the winter. But the fire also produces smoke, which the owner of the wood conveniently vents into an adjoining room, where people choke and eventually die. They have no say in the exchange, as they are not part of the economic transaction. Is this not market failure?
2) We often don’t know the outcome of our economic transactions for years, sometimes decades. Yet we need to be paid in the present to survive. So, as another thought experiment, imagine bankers from a place called “Wall Street” create elaborate financial instruments, free of government oversight. Because these instruments appear to be immediately profitable, they pay themselves huge rewards for that profitability. Later, when the instruments prove defective (in fact, destructive and harmful), these same bankers refuse to repay their bonuses. Is that not market failure?
Just as a thought experiment, suppose that we changed the measuring period for profitability of economic transactions from one year to, say, twenty. Suppose that our retirements hinged on the long-term consequences of our current affairs. Add one more step – suppose that we measure profitability by including all outflows from transactions, whether the people affected are involved in the financial exchange or not.
Would the world be better, or worse off?
These two questions are fundamental. Obviously I have my opinions, and I’ll put them out there right now so there is no guessing. In my view, market economies and “free” markets are destructive of wealth, societies, positive human values, and in the end, the planet.
Piece of Mindful 
Mark,
You are the master of Strawmen.
No where do us “ghosts” proclaim infallibility.
In fact, the fallibility of human decisions is our argument against you
You demand government action – a force of human action – to correct society as you determine.
But you argue humans are fallible.
But you do not see that these same fallible humans – in command of great violent power – will misuse and misapply this violent power and create consequences far worse.
Thus, the promotion of freedom and its offspring, the free market – where individual fallible men make their own decisions to the best of their own ability about their own selves.
This irrational confusion that roars through your mind -which demands men, free and working for their own benefit will create massive errors due to human foibles, yet, these same men working within the apparatus of the State and its violence will avoid these errors and are infallible!
That is the essence of violence – it is a subtracting force.
The use of violence to obtain one’s needs or wants is irrational, not reasoned.
A man who needs violence to enforce his viewpoint or to gain his wants and needs is a dangerous, incompetent, irrational man.
Exactly.
Government adds an massive – violent – and irrational variable to a system that rewards rational decision making.
After the evil has wrecked havoc and destruction within the system – and finally is dispelled – the system, by its rewards, attracts back the reasoned men who, by profit, repair the damage.
To the ignorant, the consequences of knowledge is magic.
The King of Strawmen speaks!
Economics is premised on human action. Your complaint – in more specific working is –
“Men know of no other way with dealing with other people than having to act and engage with other people”
This is self-evident, yet you wish to create some sort of irrational understanding of human interaction so to promote your evil.
Strawman.
Economics does not determine the motives of why or why not you act as you do.
It determines that if you “act in this way”, these are the expected consequences.
If you act irrationally, you will be subject to different consequences then if you act rationally.
This appears to be new knowledge for you.
Strawman and definition perversion.
Theft is the taking of another person’s property without that person’s freely-given consent.
I do understand that to promote your evil, you need to redefine it.
Correct. You are taking from some one what they have or earned and giving it to some one who has not earned.
Economic regulation is unnecessary beyond the Natural Laws prohibiting violence. Anything else is merely manipulation of economic goods to favor those that do not earn.
“Efficiency”???? What is your measure for you to claim this?
Regulation, by definition, interferes with the non-violent actions of free men. That is why it is evil.
Subjective mush. What you value or claim to be a virtue has no necessary measure to anyone else.
To have what you do not have, but someone else has, requires you to trade what you have that they want.
This is fundamental – for you to benefit from something you do not have, you must provide to someone else a benefit.
It is this failure of yours to understand a core fundamental component of human action is among your greatest errors.
Subjective mush.
That is its definition – monopoly on violence – that is its core – initiation of violence on non-violent men to enforce itself – and that is why it is evil.
All the strawmen, irrationalizations, redefining, ignorance and contradictions ….
… you provided a blackboard for -at least myself- to correct fundamental (and, sadly, common) beliefs.
Direct wording:
When human action between humans are reduced to human action between humans….
… how can any question exist that dervives from such a self-evident basis?
What this does demonstrate is you hold a terrible misunderstanding of regarding economics and human action.
Mark, think about your question more carefully.
Any action creates consequences.
But also inaction creates consequences.
So your question really expands:
Does everyone have the right to involve themselves in everyone’s decisions, since whether a person acts or not creates consequences?
It takes no thinking to see how bizarre the consequences of an answer of “Yes” would be.
Therefore, we have established these fundamentals:
* Action is measured and judged. Inaction is not measured and is not judged.
If I am not here, and something happens to you, it is not my fault because I was not the energy to create the force that created the something.
If I am here, but do nothing, and something happens to you, it is not my fault –for the same reason I was not the energy to create the force that created the something.
* The people acting are the only ones capable of choosing whether they should act or not.
This is self-evident. Only you -for your own reasons- can choose to act or not or do something or not.
Mark, I see your confusion.
Let me simplify your scenario:
I pay money to a man to kill you.
Is this an economic problem or is it a breach of your human rights?
The problem is not the transaction – it is your killing.
Whether I pay a man to kill you, or the man by his own choice kills you – it is the killing that is evil.
In the former, I am a party to the evil by proxy. I do not need to pull the trigger to be a member of the evil that killed you.
So do we solve the problem with economic regulation, or do we solve the problem by natural law which prohibits, protects against and remedies breaches of your human rights?
So go back to your problem:
Whether I kill you by shooting you, or by smoke inhalation – is the problem economic or is it a breach of your human rights?
Thus the solution is not economics – the solution is Natural Law – your rights and the solutions to that exist in protecting those rights.
Correct.
Thus, this question of uncertainity creates economic solutions.
These are known as “investments” and by people who receive investments who are called “entrepreneurs”.
Entrepreneurs -who are successful- have a skill that they use to evaluate current conditions, understand consequences, and by that process, establish probable outcomes – and by those outcomes make decision in the present that will be profitable in the future.
Society rewards those that do this well and punishes those that do not.
No.
It is the market in action.
The market rewards those that are able to use knowledge and understanding in financial affairs. It severely punishes those that do not use knowledge and understanding in financial affairs.
Further, there is a concept called “time preference”.
For example, there are those that demand immediate gratification for their effort – we call these people “Salaried workers”.
There is another group that defers their gratification for effort into the future, we call these people “Investors and Shareholders”.
Same in financial instruments. There are people who need immediate cash flow and others who are willing to defer this cash into the future for more money in the future.
It is this variation in a person’s time preference and difference between people’s time preference that is the basis of all investment, purchases and savings
If in your evaluation you make errors, it is your fault.
So those that were so eager to take quick profit while supporting irrational financing are the ones who suffer the losses.
However, you infer the current reality.
And here is your problem:
Your precious government made you the loser
Brainiac, we do that already
They do already.
You missed a step.
How and what do you propose exists as such a means to measure something on people who are not involved in a transaction?
How do you measure empty space?
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Mark,
I was remiss in completing this statement;
This is fundamental – for you to benefit from something you do not have, you must provide to someone else a benefit or you have to steal it.
You are the advocate of the latter choice – by proxy.
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I do wish you could shorten your replies to an exposition of what you believe to be true and why, using paragraphs, explanations, analogies -that sort of thing. The stream of consciousness is a bit hard to deal with.
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Mark,
You make so many errors and contradictions and misunderstandings in one post, it is hard to condense into a short reply.
You pick one item that you feel you can defend and support, and go with that – I will not think less of you if you ignore the rest.
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Ignore the early paragraphs and go straight to the thought experiments – there are two. Deal with them not by parsing and diagramming sentences, but by offering a narrative on why they are wrong in paragraph form. That makes it more comprehensible.
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Mark, I did – you can review the detail above, but here is a Reader’s Digest version.
First question has nothing to do with economics – it is a Rights problem.
I do not have a right to kill a non-violent person. The means I use to kill is irrelevant.
Asking economics to solve a non-economic problem is like using a hammer to eat your soup.
Second question is a common confusion of many people’s economic theory.
Their economic theory demands all outcomes must be good. But this is irrational. Economics is not Santa Claus.
Coherent Economic theory says that good decisions will generally create good outcomes and bad decisions will generally create bad outcomes. In this, Economics is more like Poker.
So when poor decisions deliver negative consequences (losses), that is what is supposed to happen.
Inside an economy, People act and make decisions. If a company rewards their employees for short term profit, but does not punish them for long term losses, the company will -eventually- go bankrupt. This is how the market is supposed to function – it tends to remove dysfunctional economic entities out of the economy.
But as you do infer your example to current reality – government, by force, interfered with this process. It took your money and gave it to dysfunctional entities, who then rewarded their dysfunctional employees.
What you reward, you get more of it.
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Mark, oh yeah – your last question. I will repeat my answer here:
How and what do you propose exists as such a means to measure something on people who are not involved in a transaction?
How do you measure empty space?
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We travel today, and will be back at this tomorrow. This is a good start.
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OK, I’m back now. (There should be a law that says if you faithfully attended your children’s Christmas pageants, you are exempt from granchildren’s. Forunately, it was only a half an hour. There are a whole lot of parents out there worried about self-esteem, have you noticed? Scads of average children being praised through the roof. Amusing.)
The two are inextricably linked.
You assume you have knowledge of the consequences of your activities. Often times, you do not.
I’ve never heard you say this before. It is true, in my opinion.
Economic theory is a nice thing, but truth is that we don’t know much about outcomes, or what causes what. We do know that powerful people are able to distort economic thoery to their own advantage. Non-powerful people are made to suffer the consequences of those activities. We outsource pollution, attack countries, use sweatshop labor because we are powerful, and not because the economic theory behind it has any meaning or usefulness. It is justification, and nothing more.
My point was more subtle – a year (or in American corporations, a quarter) is a short and arbitrary measuring period. But executives reward themselves on those short period outcomes. And they do this because they are powerful enough to insist it be done that way.
Too much power, that’s all. Not enough government.
Been there, not going back. This is your fundamentalist side.
True dat? Right now we are rewarding thieves.
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Mark,
You made me chuckle.
Please be patient on my response … for similar reasons that created your delay!
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