Economics Questions

Re: A Libertarian Society

EmperorNero — Tue, 31 May 2011 09:13:54 GMT

RonPaulLol:
inequality

Diversity!

Re: A Libertarian Society

Clayton — Tue, 31 May 2011 05:50:46 GMT

Thomas Sowell on the function of prices (Basic Economics):

Many people see prices as simply obstacles to their getting the things they want. Those who would like to live in a beach-front home, for example, may abandon such plans when they discover how expensive beach-front property is. But high prices are not the reason we cannot all live on the beach front. On the contrary, the inherent reality is that there are not nearly enough beach front homes to go around and prices simply convey that underlying reality. When many people bid for a relatively few homes, those homes become very expensive becuase of limited supply. But it is not the prices that cause the scarcity, which would exist whatever other economic or social arrangements might be used instead of prices.

Blood is under-supplied because the price of blood is too low. A full-fledged blood donation market would bring the demand for blood into balance with the supply of blood.

Clayton -

Re: A Libertarian Society

Clayton — Tue, 31 May 2011 05:45:51 GMT

If the Underpants Gnomes were statists:

1. Found a government

2. ????

3. Universal happiness!

Clayton -

Re: A Libertarian Society

EmperorNero — Mon, 30 May 2011 21:08:19 GMT

So there is currently a shortage in charitable blood donations, even though it involves no opportunity cost (i.e. me giving a pint of blood requires no loss,because i can regain that blood), yet we seem to expect that there will enough charitable donations to go round for millions of people who require financial assistance?

some operations cost in excess of $100,000, possibly millions and you expect for every one of these there will be someone who sells their possessions to give these individuals the money? if people cant be bothered to donate blood, why will they be bothered to donate collectively billions of dollars?

if there are these charitable people, then where are they to provide assistance to the 50 million americans without health insurance or to the millions who are homeless now?

As I pointed out earlier, you people don't quite seem to understand how market pricing works. The reason that an operation costs so much is that society does not have enough resources to produce as many of them as people need. The very function of prices is to make some people unable to afford certain goods, because we do not have enough of them. If 1000 people need an operation, but society can only produce 800 operations, then they will be priced at a level where 200 people can't afford one. Pricing is a mechanism to ration resources that are scarce. It's not like the price of a good is some inherent feature of that good and the problem is how to come up with enough money.

Declaring operations "free" through the government does not magically make more operations available. If anything, a nationalized system is going to make them more scarce. If 200 people can't afford health care in a free market, then 200 people still can't get health care after we took away the need to pay for it. The only difference is that now people don't die because they lack money but because they are too far back on the waiting list or drew the wrong number. There is simply no way to get around the unpleasant fact that we do not have enough resources for everyone to get everything they want. We need to ration scarcity somehow.

But the market is the best way to allocate scarce resources. Both history and economic theory have shown that free markets are the best system to make resources abundant. Once we do have enough productivity, operations will naturally be affordable because if there are enough operations to go around then they will be priced so that everyone can afford one. So you see, the way to make health care affordable is not to take more money from the rich, but to let higher productivity raise real wages to the point where everyone can afford operations.

Re: A Libertarian Society

Autolykos — Mon, 30 May 2011 20:44:41 GMT

Rcder:
I think the problem that RonPauLoL and other welfarists wish to overcome is uncertainty in life. And while this is a noble goal, it is, unfortunately, impossible.

Well said, Rcder. But since it's impossible, I for one hardly consider it to be a noble goal.

Re: A Libertarian Society

Autolykos — Mon, 30 May 2011 20:30:34 GMT

RonPaulLol:
So there is currently a shortage in charitable blood donations, even though it involves no opportunity cost (i.e. me giving a pint of blood requires no loss,because i can regain that blood),

Can you explain what you mean by "shortage" in the above? Otherwise, donating blood certainly does involve an opportunity cost, namely all the things I could be doing instead of giving blood. You seem to misunderstand the concept of opportunity cost, unfortunately.

RonPaulLol:
yet we seem to expect that there will enough charitable donations to go round for millions of people who require financial assistance?

See, that's just it - how much is "enough"? There's no objective answer to that question, just as there's no answer to the question "How many people actually require financial assistance?"

RonPaulLol:
some operations cost in excess of $100,000, possibly millions and you expect for every one of these there will be someone who sells their possessions to give these individuals the money?

Are you implicitly arguing that people are entitled to any and all operations that they want to have, regardless of cost? If so, why?

Speaking only for myself, I would expect people to do what they want with their money, as long as they don't hurt me in the process. Failing or refusing to give me charitable donations (directly or indirectly) doesn't hurt me, even if I'm broke.

RonPaulLol:
if people cant be bothered to donate blood, why will they be bothered to donate collectively billions of dollars?

I'd actually argue that most people are more willing to donate dollars than blood. And people already collectively donate billions of dollars to charity - over $300 billion in the US during 2009 alone.

RonPaulLol:
if there are these charitable people, then where are they to provide assistance to the 50 million americans without health insurance or to the millions who are homeless now?

Perhaps they have a different idea of who's "needy" and who isn't. Of course, that's the real crux of your problem - the notion that other people have different opinions on this and other issues. It's all about imposing your preferences on the rest of society by force. Whoever disagrees with you is Stupid, if not downright Evil, and You Know Better Than They Do.

Re: A Libertarian Society

Eric080 — Mon, 30 May 2011 20:06:10 GMT

Well according to RonPaulLol's logic, we should have a mandatory blood-giving day where we are forced by the State to donate blood, even if it is against our will. The greater good and all that jazz.

Re: A Libertarian Society

auctionguy10 — Mon, 30 May 2011 20:02:58 GMT

if there are these charitable people, then where are they to provide assistance to the 50 million americans without health insurance or to the millions who are homeless now?

There's plenty of people- there are doctors and pharmacists that provide completely free services to all their family and friends(which can easily be 100+ people that the doctor does this for, of course with mandatory insurance on the horizon those people will have to spend money when they didn't have to before).

You don't think that if people were allowed to keep more of their income instead of having it taxed away- there wouldn't be more charity? You don't think that perhaps if the value of the currency wasn't dropping every year the heavy burden the poor carry wouldn't be eased? You don't think that there are reasons that healthcare costs are so high in the first place? Or that there are reasons that rent is so high and forces homelessness?

Are you doing something about the fact that there is a shortage in charitable blood donations? Perhaps you could even offer them something so that they rather donate blood than sit around at home?

Is stealing really your only solution to life's problems? So far what I'm hearing is "The only way I can be safe is if I steal from that guy because I need it who cares about him."

Give me some solutions that don't involve stealing someone else's money!

Re: A Libertarian Society

z1235 — Mon, 30 May 2011 19:24:22 GMT

RonPaulLol:

So there is currently a shortage in charitable blood donations,...

Do I smell a Blood Tax? Brilliant!

Re: A Libertarian Society

RonPaulLol — Mon, 30 May 2011 19:21:20 GMT

So there is currently a shortage in charitable blood donations, even though it involves no opportunity cost (i.e. me giving a pint of blood requires no loss,because i can regain that blood), yet we seem to expect that there will enough charitable donations to go round for millions of people who require financial assistance?

some operations cost in excess of $100,000, possibly millions and you expect for every one of these there will be someone who sells their possessions to give these individuals the money? if people cant be bothered to donate blood, why will they be bothered to donate collectively billions of dollars?

if there are these charitable people, then where are they to provide assistance to the 50 million americans without health insurance or to the millions who are homeless now?

Re: A Libertarian Society

Rcder — Mon, 30 May 2011 18:56:24 GMT

I think the problem that RonPauLoL and other welfarists wish to overcome is uncertainty in life. And while this is a noble goal, it is, unfortunately, impossible.

Re: A Libertarian Society

Autolykos — Mon, 30 May 2011 16:47:09 GMT

Zachary Plaxco:
If the welfare state weren't around social safety nets would still exist...RonPaulLOL are you really attempting to prove that there was no social safety net pre-modern welfare state?

I imagine RonPaulLol would argue that, before governments started providing social safety nets, there was never any "guarantee" that people "in need" would be helped. The illusion of certainty strikes again!

Re: A Libertarian Society

Isaac "Izzy" Marmolejo — Mon, 30 May 2011 16:36:41 GMT

Rothbard wrote something that goes along with the whole "you would just let people die under a free market" claim...

"Our example of the “worst possible case” enables us to analyze
one of the most popular objections to the free society: that
“it leaves people free to starve.” First, from the fact that this
objection is so widespread, we can easily conclude that there will
be enough charitable people in the society to present these
unfortunates with gifts. There is, however, a more fundamental
refutation. It is that the “freedom-to-starve” argument rests on
a basic confusion of “freedom” with “abundance of exchangeable
goods.” The two must be kept conceptually distinct. Freedom
is meaningfully definable only as absence of interpersonal
restrictions. Robinson Crusoe on the desert island is absolutely
free, since there is no other person to hinder him. But he is not
necessarily living an abundant life; indeed, he is likely to be constantly
on the verge of starvation. Whether or not man lives at
the level of poverty or abundance depends upon the success that
he and his ancestors have had in grappling with nature and in
transforming naturally given resources into capital goods and
consumers’ goods. The two problems, therefore, are logically
separate. Crusoe is absolutely free, yet starving, while it is certainly
possible, though not likely, for a given person at a given
instant to be a slave while being kept in riches by his master. Yet
there is an important connection between the two, for we have
seen that a free market tends to lead to abundance for all of its
participants, and we shall see below that violent intervention in
the market and a hegemonic society tend to lead to general
poverty. That a person is “free to starve” is therefore not a condemnation
of the free market, but a simple fact of nature: every
child comes into the world without capital or resources of his
own. On the contrary, as we shall see further below, it is the free
market in a free society that furnishes the only instrument to
reduce or eliminate poverty and provide abundance." page 339 MES

Re: A Libertarian Society

Zachary Plaxco — Mon, 30 May 2011 08:45:06 GMT

If the welfare state weren't around social safety nets would still exist...RonPaulLOL are you really attempting to prove that there was no social safety net pre-modern welfare state?

Re: A Libertarian Society

z1235 — Mon, 30 May 2011 02:17:36 GMT

RonPaulLol:

do you think higher corporate tax rates could increase investment? given a choice of reinvesting profits into their business or paying tax, don't you think higher corporate tax rates would encourage inward investment?

What do you think happens to capital that (1) doesn't get invested "inwardly", or (2) doesn't get stolen and squadered by the government? Gets "outwardly" lost in space, perchance?