I get the feeling that a lot of the arguments proposed here are based on an assumption that there is zero luck or randomness involved in the economic world. There seems to be an idea that "if that's how things have turned out, then it is conclusive proof that thats the optimum way it could be". I believe this to be untrue.
February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church. Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."
Romantivist: In the example above, either the supermarkets can buy out of their contracts, or the companies could sell directly to customers, or through boutiques, or over the internets..half a dozen half competent lawyers can find a way around just about any contract in a week or so..well the possibilities are endless.
In the example above, either the supermarkets can buy out of their contracts, or the companies could sell directly to customers, or through boutiques, or over the internets..half a dozen half competent lawyers can find a way around just about any contract in a week or so..well the possibilities are endless.
I strongly disagree with all the above. But the reasons why are all to do with my life experiences rather than through some sort of logical deduction so we may have to just agree to differ at this point. Or maybe, putting my cards on the table, I could point out that I am 46 and have run my own business all my life and have had plenty of dealings with contract law.
By the way in answer to someone else's comment about there being "thousands" of supermarkets. Well in the UK there are essentially four. Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda and Morrisons. All the rest are simply corner shops that only ever sell a much restricted range of goods. By the way, by amazing coincidence this story came out on the BBC today!
Juan:And if there's luck and randomness, what follows then ? if follows that the gods of government can ... do what ?
I've spoken about that in earlier posts. I'm mentioning randomness now because some "refutations" of my arguments seemed to rely on zero luck being involved.
That's VERY unfair. I just didn't want to repeat myself. My ideas of what to do *are* in my earlier posts.
mickanomics: I get the feeling that a lot of the arguments proposed here are based on an assumption that there is zero luck or randomness involved in the economic world. There seems to be an idea that "if that's how things have turned out, then it is conclusive proof that thats the optimum way it could be". I believe this to be untrue.
Please refer to my earlier post on the matter. It is not that Austrians believe in any kind of "Efficient Market Hypothesis" or any of that malarky. They are not saying that market outcomes are always perfect and that no better outcome is possible. Their objection to intervention arises out of their methodological subjectivism. Our only true indiciation as to what the consumers want are market outcomes. There is no objective frame of reference by which we can judge the efficiency of market outcomes.
Luck and randomness does not come into it. We cannot posit a world in which there was no luck or randomness and use this construct to judge the real world. It is a meaningless endeavour.
Fried Egg: Our only true indiciation as to what the consumers want are market outcomes. There is no objective frame of reference by which we can judge the efficiency of market outcomes.
Our only true indiciation as to what the consumers want are market outcomes. There is no objective frame of reference by which we can judge the efficiency of market outcomes.
"Our only true indiciation"....hmmmm... it seems like you are saying that market outcomes are not a perfect indication of efficiency... but you think that no select group of people could smart enough to improve on it. Is that right? Or perhaps you think that in principle some groups *may* be smart enough, but from bitter experience the groups that get elected tend not to be. What about if a group of Austrian economists were given the job?
mickanomics:"Our only true indiciation"....hmmmm... it seems like you are saying that market outcomes are not a perfect indication of efficiency... but you think that no select group of people could smart enough to improve on it. Is that right?
It's not that they are not smart enough. Well, they're probably not smart enough but that's not my point. My point is that there is no objective frame of reference by which we can judge market outcomes (if you are a methodological subjectivist). In order to be able to determine where the innefficiencies are and how to improve them, you must first have some other way of knowing how best to serve the consumers that you can compare market outcomes to. Because no other way of knowing how best to serve the consumers exist (so Austrians believe), we cannot judge the outcomes of markets nor see where they could be made more efficient.
Note, if you did have access to some other way of determining what is best for consumers, that is more accurate than market outcomes, why rely on markets attall? Why not just plan the economy from the start instead of just correcting it when it goes wrong? If you cannot plan the economy from the outset as well as markets do, what makes you think that you can judge their efficiency and improve upon them?
That is not what I think is being said at all - at least not by me. Certainly luck goes into the process, many things do, but the point is that markets are a process and not an end in themselves. The economy is not static. You cannot evaluate who would be most optimal and then put them in place forever and ever. It doesn't work that way and it shouldn't work that way.
Markets are faster, more dynamic, and better at checks and balances than governments. That should indeed be what is conveyed, yes.
Also, I am not saying that there are not failures in the market, obviously there are. However, the best mechanism to fix those failures is, as I and most others here would propose, markets.
existence is elsewhere
mickanomics:I get the feeling that a lot of the arguments proposed here are based on an assumption that there is zero luck or randomness involved in the economic world. There seems to be an idea that "if that's how things have turned out, then it is conclusive proof that thats the optimum way it could be". I believe this to be untrue.
Wilmot of Rochester: That is not what I think is being said at all - at least not by me. Certainly luck goes into the process, many things do, but the point is that markets are a process and not an end in themselves. The economy is not static. You cannot evaluate who would be most optimal and then put them in place forever and ever. It doesn't work that way and it shouldn't work that way. Markets are faster, more dynamic, and better at checks and balances than governments. That should indeed be what is conveyed, yes.
I completely, 100% support every word of this. I couldn't have said it better myself.
"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude." - Thomas Jefferson
JonBostwick:People act to relieve uneasiness. Regulations prevent people from acting to relieve that uneasiness. You can't disagree with this unless you wish to employ some system of objective value, and all the problems that come with them.
Sorry, but you're the one whose forgetting your subjectivist hat here. Given the utility is subjective there is no possible way to say whether the state is desirable a priori.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Bob Dylan
Fried Egg: Because no other way of knowing how best to serve the consumers exist (so Austrians believe), we cannot judge the outcomes of markets nor see where they could be made more efficient.
Because no other way of knowing how best to serve the consumers exist (so Austrians believe), we cannot judge the outcomes of markets nor see where they could be made more efficient.
Do Austrians believe it is *inherently* impossible? Or just more challenging than governments are capable of?
Surely it can't be *impossible*... what if you had a super-computer that could run a simulation of the workings of the entire planet including all the neurons in all the brains of everyone on it? What if god himself had agreed to act as a consultant to the government? (this is just a thought experiment - I don't want to start an existence of god debate!).
Fried Egg: Note, if you did have access to some other way of determining what is best for consumers, that is more accurate than market outcomes, why rely on markets attall? Why not just plan the economy from the start instead of just correcting it when it goes wrong?
Note, if you did have access to some other way of determining what is best for consumers, that is more accurate than market outcomes, why rely on markets attall? Why not just plan the economy from the start instead of just correcting it when it goes wrong?
Say I want to commission a painting to adorn my flower shop and attract customers. I hatch a plan as follows: I'll choose 10 artists at random from the phone book and ask them all to produce something for me, I would then try each of the paintings in my shop window for a week and see which one resulted in the most customers coming in and then I would stick with the best picture forever more. Now imagine that I perceived 9 out of 10 of these to be much better than anything I could have produced myself (very likely), but the 10th turned out to from a rather ermm, "experimental" artist and was a painting of a dead baby on a crucifix, pained using a mixture of blood and vomit. Now there you could argue that there is no such thing as an objective measure of how attractive a painting is, therefor I should try out all 10. But I'd quite like to skip the dead baby picture and just try the other 9. Note that just because I claim my judgment is good enough to reject one of the ten paintings, does not mean that I claim I could paint (or even choose) the best picture myself.
In general I think that a claim to be able to improve on a system without having, or even claiming to have, the skill to make an "entire system" is perfectly possible, reasonable and constant.
mickanomics: Surely it can't be *impossible*... what if you had a super-computer that could run a simulation of the workings of the entire planet including all the neurons in all the brains of everyone on it?
Surely it can't be *impossible*... what if you had a super-computer that could run a simulation of the workings of the entire planet including all the neurons in all the brains of everyone on it?
How would you know that it is the *correct* simulation? How would you make that computer (think about the processing power)? If you could do it, you are basically predicting *everything*. Good luck.
mickanomics: What if god himself had agreed to act as a consultant to the government? (this is just a thought experiment - I don't want to start an existence of god debate!).
What if god himself had agreed to act as a consultant to the government? (this is just a thought experiment - I don't want to start an existence of god debate!).
The point of this is, in order to make everything optimum, you would have to have all of the knowledge about now, and be able to perfectly forecast the future. Is that impossible?
Schools are labour camps.
mickanomics:Say I want to commission a painting to adorn my flower shop and attract customers. I hatch a plan as follows: I'll choose 10 artists at random from the phone book and ask them all to produce something for me, I would then try each of the paintings in my shop window for a week and see which one resulted in the most customers coming in and then I would stick with the best picture forever more. Now imagine that I perceived 9 out of 10 of these to be much better than anything I could have produced myself (very likely), but the 10th turned out to from a rather ermm, "experimental" artist and was a painting of a dead baby on a crucifix, pained using a mixture of blood and vomit. Now there you could argue that there is no such thing as an objective measure of how attractive a painting is, therefor I should try out all 10. But I'd quite like to skip the dead baby picture and just try the other 9. Note that just because I claim my judgment is good enough to reject one of the ten paintings, does not mean that I claim I could paint (or even choose) the best picture myself.
I'm beginning to wonder what point these hare-brained imaginings have other than to remind me of my pot-smoking days. And either way this is a false analogy; you're comparing the cruci-puke painting to your internal concept of art and then discarding it, and that's only one of the ways in which it's a false analogy. These 'examples' of yours belong more and more completely in the realm of the fictional and absurd. And from your previous posts I can see that you've got the intellectual power to realize this.
You are employing a non-sequitor. Proving a market flaw is not sufficient to prove that there is a government remedy for it.
It is you that is working under an unproven assumption, not us.
GilesStratton: JonBostwick:People act to relieve uneasiness. Regulations prevent people from acting to relieve that uneasiness. You can't disagree with this unless you wish to employ some system of objective value, and all the problems that come with them. Sorry, but you're the one whose forgetting your subjectivist hat here. Given the utility is subjective there is no possible way to say whether the state is desirable a priori.
Only if you believe that its possible for a person to want to do something and at the same time not want to do it.
To want something is the same as not wanting to be denied it. But thank you for that attempt to disprove praxeology.
What are you even talking about?
JonBostwick:But thank you for that attempt to disprove praxeology.
Thanks for the laugh, I spit my tea.
If you find something evil that wobbles, push it. - Gary North
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