Re: Tragedy of the commons
Posted: Sat Jul 11, 2009 9:44 pm
wooh
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By being parasites on the free(r) economies. Quoting Economics for Real People:duncan wrote:tayssir: "Planned economies can use price systems."
How can they? I think you're missing the point of the pricing mechanism.
Soviet planners even copied commodity prices out of The Wall Street Journal to use in their calculations. Lew Rockwell told a wonderful story about Gorbachev’s press secretary. When asked about his dream for mankind, the secretary replied that he hoped to see all of the world embrace socialism, except for New Zealand. “But why not New Zealand?†a reporter wondered. “Well,†the secretary responded, “we will need someone to get the prices from.â€
The example I gave, Parecon, is a decentralized form of planned economy which happens to use a price mechanism, supply and demand curves, features worker self-management, etc. I already offered a link, and googling for "parecon prices" offers some readable sources.duncan wrote:tayssir: "Planned economies can use price systems."
How can they? I think you're missing the point of the pricing mechanism.
Well, I'd certainly agree with your l;ast statement. I've always sort of considered my temperament to lean toward the radical, but it may be that I was just confusing being young with having a radical temperament. I've certainly become more conservative over the years- but I don't generally describe myself as a conservative because I have very little in common with what is called conservatism in the US. I'd certainly agree that an awful lot of so-called American conservatives are mostly defined by their desire to upset the apple-cart to such a degree that they should be described as radical, not conservative. And it's a commonplace that so-called liberals, in the US sense of the word, are generally pretty illiberal. And to try to define what is or is not libertarian or anarchist is to enter a semantic tar-pit.tayssir wrote:The example I gave, Parecon, is a decentralized form of planned economy which happens to use a price mechanism, supply and demand curves, features worker self-management, etc. I already offered a link, and googling for "parecon prices" offers some readable sources.duncan wrote:tayssir: "Planned economies can use price systems."
How can they? I think you're missing the point of the pricing mechanism.
I should note that people influenced by neoliberal doctrine tend to find this surprising. Because such lit uses the term "planned economy" with a peculiar technical meaning: a centralized state-run command economy like in the old Soviet Union. (When really, outside such narrow technical definitions, my understanding is that a mom 'n pop store is a "command economy.")
These discussions can be difficult because when it comes to societal matters, words lose their traditional meanings. Take "liberal," "conservative," "libertarian" and "anarchist." It's hard to even talk about these things, because words aren't allowed to retain their sane meanings. (Like when radical statist Republican politicians call themselves "conservative." Words don't have to mean anything anymore.)
I believe that society does quite well on its own without people trying to engineer it. In fact, the people trying to engineer it are typically the ones I least would want to do that. Simply, I do not believe that social engineering works. People always seem to want to force people to do something according to some master plan developed by the social engineers. Of course, the master plan is always presented as being The Right Thing, and quite benevolent by the engineers, but then you end up with Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Cambodia under the Kmer Rouge, etc.Jasper wrote:@findinglisp: sorry if i was a little harsh at you. I am not capitalist, but i see capitalism as a tool that should be used to make society function.
Overrated? How? You haven't shown that it doesn't work. In fact, I think history and all the evidence around you of markets working shows that it in fact does work quite well.The argument for free market usually goes like this: If something is desired, people can make more profit, and so make more, since more people/more is available, when there is too much, they cannot ask as much, and the production/availability of a service goes down. And that way, the supply always meets demand as much as possible.
Frankly this argument is overrated, although it is right to like a simple theory with a simple consequence, it is not right to overgeneralize it. It is not like a mathematical statement, absolutely true when you assume the axioms, and sometimes it plain doesn't apply. Frankly industries in the US abuse it's popularity because they profit from it's flaws. That is part of why i called findinglisp 'dogmatic', what you said are often handles for this sort of thing. Still i was strongly exaggerating for doing so, at that point at least, also abuse of an idea is no argument against an idea.
The cattle and field example is not an example of capitalism. If the field is unowned (or owned by "everyone") that is the flaw. If the field was owned by somebody, they would not allow it to be overgrazed. Or if they did they would simply suffer the consequences and that would be that. In fact, I would argue that the tragedy of the commons is actually a quite good proof of pricing theory. If the price is zero, consumers will consume all of the commodity. So, your "solution" of dividing the land is exactly the capitalist model. People tend to take care of resources that they own. They tend to not take care of resources that they don't own.But the cattle holders and field demonstrates a way that it doesn't work. If there is more demand and supply and too little field, each cattle holder is still enticed to having more cattle, even though that would decrease the total production of the field, decreasing supply. Of course this particular example is solvable, there is probably a reasonably fair way to divide the land, like by divisioning it over the population and allowing the population to sell it to each other, or by doing the same over licensing a number of cows. (Both of these having their advantages.)
Ah, yes, the authority. Therein lies the rub. Who has the perfect wisdom to run the world "correctly?" And "correct" according to whom?This, of course also needs some authority that is obligated too.
There is no such thing as the free market not applying. There are results of a free market that you find objectionable, but the market doesn't care about your objections. It applies in all cases. I may not find the idea of gravity very appealing, too, because I have fantasies that weightlessness would be very fun and cool, but there it is in spite of my ideas.So much for stuff analogous to the cattle in this post, now for things to which the argument for free market does not apply.
You assume that people aren't comparing things. Perhaps they are, but not in the ways that you would. In other words, my Mom thinks that exchanging documents with her friends in MS Office format is a prime consideration for her choice in operating systems. MS Office doesn't run on Linux. Yes, OpenOffice does, but it's not MS Office and she worries about perfect compatibility. Further, she'd like an operating system that my brother has been trained in because he'll be supporting her. My brother has learned about Windows but doesn't know a lick about Linux. Thus, she chooses Windows. Her criteria is quite rational and sane to her. While she might be open to exploring other operating systems (in fact, my Mom is a big Macintosh user, but that's quite another discussion) your definition of "quality" may never enter into her calculus. Nor should it have to.For instance, if the competition is mostly over quality, the customers must actually recognize it. Sometimes, when it is really technical, this is very difficult for them/they don't do it. An example would be MS near monopoly on the desktop, people just don't compare Linux and Windows.
It depends what you mean by "anticompetitive tactics." For some, that means things like tieing products and all-or-nothing agreements that specifically exclude competitors (e.g. Microsoft's past practice that you only got a certain price if you agreed to ship Windows exclusively, or to pay them for all computers shipped regardless of the operating system it actually shipped with). Those are definitely anti-competitive and it is not a restriction of somebody's liberty to restrict those practices in the same way that it's not a problem regulating bribery and shakedown rackets. If by "anticompetitive tactics" you mean that Microsoft or others are simply large corporations and guilty of "anticompetitive" tactics simply because they are large, then I completely disagree with you.Although anticompetitive tactics likely also play a role, of course any (reasonable)regulation against these would also be against the liberty of some persons/organizations, and ones probably exist that most people find fair.
I simply don't agree with you. There are numerous examples of industries coming together on their own to create standards. Yes, there are people that typically don't want to participate (the market leaders at the time), but over time, the axis of competition will shift from one set of features to another. At some point, if the industry is trying to standardize something that isn't a competitive feature, everybody will end up complying. The power adapter one is a good example. I don't know that any mobile phone company thinks that shipping incompatible power adapters is a way to lock customers in (Apple's original iPod connector might be the one counter-example I can think of). More likely, they simply use whatever fits the space in the phone and provides the correct power levels for the hardware design. Thus, the EU "fixing" this is really not a big deal. I do think that governments can play the role of standard-setters. As long as those standards are generally optional, then the market will determine whether the standard is useful or not.Mobile phones is also an example, these are often bundled with service. I am referring to the useless proliferation of power connectors. Luckily the EU is fixing this. In general, i don't think capitalism promotes compatibility, any competitor wants his product compatible with others but not vice versa.
Ah, but here you have an example of your people with good intentions. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. You want to tell everybody else how to design cell phones with the "right" power adapter, but you don't want somebody forcing a lightbulb on you. You cannot have it both ways. Once you open the door to regulation, you should only expect more of this. That is why I reject it.(Aside)As an example where EU restricting something is more dubious: the efficiency of lights (Often erroneously called ban on lightbulbs, that is just an effect of lightbulbs inefficiency.) The problem is that the quality of the light really is different, non-lightbulb light might look white, but doesn't have a smooth spectrum, but such that the cones in our eyes see white. Materials, however, do absorb differently over other frequencies then our cones, so we see the object differently based on other parts of the spectrum.
Still, the regulation might be incentive for creation of more efficient lights that actually do have the quality of the lightbulb.
Don't sign contracts that you don't read. If you don't read them, then expect to get tripped up by the fine print. Again, this is not a fault of capitalism, it is simply that people are clueless and lazy. If you aren't capable of understanding a contract yourself, they invented these things called lawyers who will gladly advise you. That, my friend, is capitalism.Another example where things can well be too complicated for consumers, is insurance, insurance companies can put all sort of stuff in small lettering for consumers to fall over. The overall sum of things for consumer to track can also be too high.
Why is that a problem? It's certainly not a failure of capitalism that supply and demand take some time to reconverge. You may not like it, but again, the market is not obliged to care what you like.And there is the question how long it takes to settle into a place where supply and demand meet.
Who says those are worthy projects?There is the issue whether some projects are too large to be funded by anyone in particular.
Why is that a problem? The workers are always free to start out on their own and form their own firm, right? If they don't feel that they would be successful in managing a firm, and they don't want to take that risk, well then we know that they are not suited for management or for ownership of a firm. So why should the people who are suited for management or ownership (who took the risk) not benefit more that somebody who walks in after the firm is a going concern and just wants a job?There is the problem of labor also being a part of supply and demand, and the disparity of the ones doing the work and the ones in control and getting the profit.
If there is too much labor, there is poverty in socialism. With capitalism, the price of labor will fall to the point where some people decide just what you say below: For that price, I'd rather stay home and enjoy more free time.If there is too much labor, there is poverty in 'pure' capitalism, and there is no reason to assume that there is always more work to be invented.
Here's the great thing: In a free market system, you are allowed to determine exactly how much you should work given the current salary that you can command. If you want to work less and earn less, you are absolutely free to do so. If not, then you are absolutely free to work harder. The choice is yours. Not so with a socialist/capitalist system. In these systems, the productive are always carrying the unproductive.Also, there is the question whether it is desirable to invent ever more work. Isn't the point to get the work done, and to work to live?
What would be more fair? I mean, we tried letting Comrade Stalin decide what people's salaries would be, but we saw how that turned out...And is supply and demand really a fair way of determining what the earnings of a person should be? Only up to a point i'd say. More egreous is what education people can get from their money, as that affects their chances to change their position. (And 'commercial scholarships' are bound to come with shackles.)
I actually dispute that. It's a long conversation, but I think government needs to be out of the education business. In fact, many of the best universities in the USA are private institutions that do run (mostly) via capitalism (the "mostly" part being that government is still involved with education funding through grants and loans that distort the price of education, allowing universities to raise it beyond the actual market price).Further, there might be a limited supply of educated people, and if they follow greed those will do the more profitable problems of the rich first. Still if a government wanted less-profitable problems solved, incentivising it and using capitalism is a way. However, universities working not exactly via capitalism have proven their worth in many many things.
You have a view of individuals that is very poor. You describe them as sheep in need of tending and care. Somehow, the person running the corporation is an evil master, who has bargaining power, while the worker doesn't. In the same way that the evil corporation owner cannot compel customers to buy his product, he cannot compel workers to work for him. And workers cannot compel him to give them whatever salaries they desire. Every transaction is a free trade. If you don't like your salary, go start a business and become an evil head of a corporation.findinglisp wrote:Only liberty and capitalism, expressed as the free trade among individuals, have demonstrated consistent results of raising the standards of living.Note the tone though, "individuals expressing themselves by freely trading" vs most of reality; people working for corporations they have no control and possibly no bargaining power over,mostly following it's orders.findinglisp wrote:Sure, there is free trading between individuals. Corporations are simply collections of individuals who come together to run a (generally larger) business. The workers (and even "management" is a "worker") are freely trading their time and energy to the corporation.
I'm sorry, so what was the point of saying that Einstein wrote an article about socialism, if not to imply that because Einstein wrote it he must be right? Clearly, there are better sources to cite than Einstein in advancing socialism, no? Or is he the pinnacle of socialist thought?As for Einstein, i hope i didn't imply 'look here is Einstein, he must be right'. I do think is insight of the consequences of social things, and overestimate the selflessness of people. . (Well, smart people nearly always project other people as being smarter then they actually are.) Any 'system of society' shouldn't focus on changing people, in finding a way to let them interact such that resulting system is stable and desirable. But i think he was thinking about consequences of the free market applied everywhere, and seeing that it was naive to think that that would always work.
Then I suggest that you don't actually UNDERSTAND capitalism and free trade.Edit: and oh, yeah current stock exchange, relative variation in month scale: Monsanto ~30%, Philips ~25%, Intel ~25% McDonalds ~10%, these numbers are ridiculous and completely not related to the actual position of the corporations. I have no clue why these fluctuate so much.
Okay, what is wrong? I see innuendo, but no real specifics. You say that stock exchanges were useful (at some point, a long, long time ago), and you say that it's okay for people to invest in companies and to sell those investments to other companies. When were stock exchanges useful, and what made them not useful in the intervening time? Finally, what is wrong with with different companies fluctuating at different rates and rapidly? That fact that you don't understand it doesn't mean it's wrong.Stock exchanges grew from something useful, investing in an enterprise repaying itself if the investor was correct in thinking the idea would work, by contrast stock exchanges seem mostly for milking, while fluctuating (presumably)completely due to speculation.
I am not against investment, and even people selling their investment to other people, but something is wrong..
Then as a customer, you're free to buy from the myriad of other suppliers for the same good. That's the great thing about a free-trading society: you aren't locked in. Don't like how a company runs it's business? No problem, buy from somebody else? Want to start a competing firm and drive the existing firm out of business because they are such dunderheads? Sure, go for it! It's all up to you.And it isn't investment if a company is just chugging along with no real growth, then the company didn't need external money in the first place, and is just screwing over it's customers buy having to pay the 'investment' back plus a little.
I think you're stretching things. It's a nutritionless poison in the same sense as tobacco, potato chips, gin, and any number of other things that we allow people to consume. That's far different from something like cyanide which I what I think of when I see "poison."TheGZeus wrote:It's a nutritionless poison...findinglisp wrote:Oiacoaic wrote:I have a colleague at work who has described himself as a left-libertarian who also thinks it's okay for the government to ban transfats.
Sure, but why is that a problem? Presumably they do something that somebody within them wants? If something is actively done, somebody must be actively doing it.TheGZeus wrote:Corporations can very easily do things no one within them wants, if the bylaws aren't set up strictly and it's publically traded.findinglisp wrote: I don't buy the "corporations are evil" thing spouted by many people (not necessarily you). Corporations can be bad in the same way that individuals can be bad. Corporations by themselves are simply organizational and legal structures for how groups of people can work together; they are inert by themselves. They reflect the attitudes of the people that populate them. Can organizations do bad things? Yup, sure. Can individuals do bad things? Yup, sure. Neither of those facts suggests that individuals involved with a corporation are not trading freely as individuals at all levels.
Yes, but that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. That is, the USA, Japan, Germany, etc. are not great examples of capitalism. As you rightly point out, they are a mix. The question is, must they be that way, or is it just a fact that they are? Would they, for instance, work better, if they rejected state intervention, and would technologies have actually been developed faster if the government was not involved? I would argue that we would be better off without state intervention. I have worked for startups for > 10 years, however, and believe that a private system of venture capital (not necessarily the VC industry as we know it today) and entrepreneurs works better than any central planning mechanism, not matter how benevolent or benign.tayssir wrote:By the same token, world powers like the US, Germany, Japan, etc, have mixed economies which depend crucially on massive state intervention. (As the US State Dept. explained.)
And we see how successful Lisp has been as a result...To be ontopic, Lisp is a great example; it was developed on the public dime through DARPA subsidy,
Yes, but realize that computing and the Internet were funded because the government wanted to deploy these technologies, not simply as an act of state fostering development for development's sake. Specifically, the US DoD wanted both computers (for ballistics calculations) and the Internet (for a distributed, decentralized communications system that would survive a nuclear strike). In this sense, they are simply a consumer like any other, though with very deep pockets. But this is not unlike a large, private financial services firm funding the development of various technologies that would deliver a better, state-of-the-art trading system that would make their firm more competitive. In other words, while the US government did fund both computers and the Internet, that funding and intervention was completely different than say the USSR's centrally planned economy.just like computing and the internet more broadly.
Actually, no, no one person has to be actively doing it.findinglisp wrote:Sure, but why is that a problem? Presumably they do something that somebody within them wants? If something is actively done, somebody must be actively doing it.TheGZeus wrote:Corporations can very easily do things no one within them wants, if the bylaws aren't set up strictly and it's publically traded.findinglisp wrote: I don't buy the "corporations are evil" thing spouted by many people (not necessarily you). Corporations can be bad in the same way that individuals can be bad. Corporations by themselves are simply organizational and legal structures for how groups of people can work together; they are inert by themselves. They reflect the attitudes of the people that populate them. Can organizations do bad things? Yup, sure. Can individuals do bad things? Yup, sure. Neither of those facts suggests that individuals involved with a corporation are not trading freely as individuals at all levels.
If you, as an employee disagree with the activities of the corporation, you are free to leave. If it's really illegal, as opposed to merely objectionable, you can report the corporation into the authorities. I see no difference in any of this between a large corporation with 100,000 employees and a small sole-proprietorship with 10 employees.
Hmm..findinglisp wrote:TheGZeus wrote:[quote="findinglisp"
I think you're stretching things. It's a nutritionless poison in the same sense as tobacco, potato chips, gin, and any number of other things that we allow people to consume. That's far different from something like cyanide which I what I think of when I see "poison."
Note that I'm not arguing for transfats. I think they are bad just like you do. I'm arguing for the freedom for people to create products and to consume whatever they want, whether healthy or unhealthy. If transfats are so bad, I could see a labeling requirement, but not an outright ban.