Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site ucbvax.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!mcgeer From: mcgeer@ucbvax.ARPA (Rick McGeer) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: (micromotives & macrobehavior) Message-ID: <10365@ucbvax.ARPA> Date: Thu, 12-Sep-85 13:59:30 EDT Article-I.D.: ucbvax.10365 Posted: Thu Sep 12 13:59:30 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 13-Sep-85 04:56:05 EDT References: <3520@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <727@cybvax0.UUCP> <10286@ucbvax.ARPA> <746@cybvax0.UUCP> Reply-To: mcgeer@ucbvax.UUCP (Rick McGeer) Organization: University of California at Berkeley Lines: 106 In article <746@cybvax0.UUCP> mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes: >In article <10286@ucbvax.ARPA> mcgeer@ucbvax.UUCP (Rick McGeer) writes: >> In article <727@cybvax0.UUCP> mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes: >> >In article <3520@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall) writes: >> >> I would absolutely agree that a market >> >> would never start a war of agression, but then I think this a good thing. >> > >> >A market as a whole, no. Individual members or cartels, yes. For example, >> >if the United Fruit Company hadn't been able to control Central American >> >nations with the US armed forces and CIA, they would simply have hired >> >some other mercenaries. >> >> No they wouldn't. War was economic for United Fruit because they didn't pay >> the cost of the war: the US taxpayers and the peoples of Central America did. >> It's almost always cheaper to deal than to fight -- unless, of course, you >> can finagle the political system into coercing someone else to do your >> fighting for you. > >It's cheaper to deal than to fight only some times for some parties. >However, the mere threat of the fight coerces the deal. Take the mafia for >example. They specialize in using coercion and the threat of coercion >to sweeten deals. They only need make a few examples, for which individuals >can "take the fall" to sucessfully coerce large numbers of people for >extended periods of time. Toppling a government in Central or South >America can be quite cheap, via assassination, bribery, coup, etc. These things are always so much better with examples. I was under the impression that the mob preferred to operate (where possible) by corrupting the political system: that most transactions were voluntary, and instances of violence relatively few. On the other hand, I'm no expert on the mob. As to your other point, why would United Fruit launch a full-scale invasion of Nicaragua if its aims could be achieved more cheaply? Do you have any evidence of coups or assasinations staged by any American company? In any case, JoSH's point was that actors in a free market would never start a war of aggression. > >> This is a point that Huybenz, Berman, and others rarely consider. It is in a >> statist economy that the powerful actors can run wild-- AT & T, the railroads, >> United Fruit -- because they can use the regulatory powers of the state to >> demolish competition and, on occasion, simply raid the public treasury. The >> state is *always* corrupted to serve the interests of society's powerful, in >> a method as automatic as gravitation. The *only* way to restrict this is to >> keep the state small, and weak, and starved. > >Powerful actors can also run wild by oppressing the weak. Of course they can >also try to rob the most powerful actor of all, the state, but they risk >getting burnt. If the state abdicates, there will be no restraint on the >powerful. Again, I am forced to demand just a little evidence, like one isolated incident. Has there been any example in history of the strong oppressing the weak, without the connivance and complicity of the state? Is there any evidence of the state acting (consistently) as a check on the powerful? > >> You know, socialism and welfarism is the ultimate Ponzi scam. Actors are >> persuaded to put up a small amount (in taxes) on the presumption that the >> benefits to them in the various transfers of a modern welfare state will >> outweigh the amount they've contributed to the pot. So far, this is just any >> ordinary zero-sum scam. > >Any basic economics text can explain (via diminishing marginal return) >the benefit of redistribution of income. Clearly redistributing income is >not a zero-sum game with respect to social benefits. Well, now, my basic economics texts must have missed this. The only effect of income redistribution that I remember was an (alleged) countercyclical effect, which is not by any means undisputed. And even the advocates of that effect concede that almost any deficit financing scheme in recessionary times would have the same effect. Another (alleged) effect of income redistribution is increased consumption of national income and reduced savings. The effect of this on medium- or long-term national income seems to me to be negative, and the short-run effects dubious. Two points: (1) don't cite "basic economics texts"; tell me which one, preferably with edition an page number. I'll give you some wuthors to look at: try Kennedy, or Samuelson, or Lipsey, Sparks & Steiner, or Hirshleifer, or Alchian & Allen; (2) As you must know, little of our Federal spending can properly be regarded as income redistribution. Food Stamps and AFDC are the two largest programs that are based on need. Most entitlement programs hand money to people whether they're destitute or not, and most of those demonstrably favor the better-off. Social Security, the largest (by far) federal social program, disburses its support to the group with one of the lowest poverty rates in the nation, 1/3 the national mean. > >> But when unwilling actors are forced to play the game >> at gunpoint -- and, further, when the willing players are told that they >> "deserve" the windfall they obtain from the pockets of others -- well, then, >> my friends, you have raised the flimflam to a high art indeed. Let us be >> candid. Statism is the incarnation of self-righteous greed. > >The self-righteous greed I see is when individuals who have benefitted >from our fertile environment then refuse to contribute towards maintaining >its fertility, preferring instead to allow it to become impoverished. >-- I haven't the foggiest idea what you're getting at, here, and I doubt that you do, either. -- Rick.