Collusion is small potatoes. The real "free market" hypocrisy is that Silicon Valley was created by government spending. Still plays a huge role today.
Really disappointed more authors don't take on that topic.
I don't like the author's definition of "classic libertarianism" though. Classic libertarianism is anarcho-socialism. Liberty in all spheres of life: the personal, the political, the economic. Opposition to all forms of tyranny and concentration of power.
What the author is describing in the article is American "Libertarianism" which came about in the mid-20th century. It adopted the term from libertarian socialism but cleansed it of its critique of authoritarianism in the economic sphere (corporations are dictatorships).
It's as though a royal servant came up with a philosophy of "liberty to do whatever you want with your kingdom" and the royals embraced it, along with anyone else who aspired to it. It's a corruption of the term.
But the idea that anyone in Silicon Valley is an honest Libertarian (in the American sense) is ridiculous, given the massive amount of state spending that supports it.
I think that the original use of the term was as a synonym for anarchist, because anarchism had been outlawed.
Libertarians have to call themselves something - I figure they can keep the word 'libertarian' and old-school libertarians can keep calling themselves anarchists or, if they believe in some sort of government, 'libertarian socialists' (which is also a fun phrase to drop in front of the more ill-educated right-libertarians). The nearest alternative to libertarian in current use is 'anarcho-capitalist' which is problematic for right-libertarians in that most of them believe in some sort of government ('Anarchists who want the police to protect them from their slaves') and problematic for anarchists who think that the capitalist employer/worker relationship is entirely incompatible with any conception of anarchism.
Neo-liberal is already in use for more conventional political outlooks, as other posters have pointed out.
A neo-liberal is just someone who is strongly pro free-trade and possibly some lowered/standardized regulation of business(although not universally, possibly(but not always) formerly or currently associated with center-left(or at least center-left from a US perspective)
American libertarianism predates libertarian socialism or anarchist libertarianism. Its rooted in the thinking of Thomas Paine, etc. In any case, its what the word means in American speech. Just like "biscuit" is a fluffy soft baked good and not a cookie.
No, the current American meaning does not trace back to the founding fathers. Thomas Paine espoused many socialist ideas such as common property and economic equality. These are indeed core tenants of true classical libertarianism.
The term "Libertarianism" was appropriated in the mid 20th century by radical capitalists and completely eviscerated of its meaning. They turned a blind eye to the authoritarianism and centralized power of corporations. Even Adam Smith (another classical libertarian, pre-capitalist thinker) warned about this.
It's probably most accurate to say that American biscuits are one member of a family of baked goods called "scones" in the rest of the Anglo-sphere: http://www.seriouseats.com/talk/2011/01/biscuits-vs-scones.h... (see the comment by eaguk on 01/18/11). They are savory rather than sweet, bready rather than cakey, airy rather than dense. What Americans call "scones" are exactly the opposite: a sweet, cakey, dense item that is often glazed or fruit-filled: http://www.starbucks.com/menu/food/bakery/blueberry-scone.
"The real "free market" hypocrisy is that Silicon Valley was created by government spending. Still plays a huge role today."
My opinion of Twitter has gone down after I learned they were given $22 million in tax breaks. This was in exchange for charitable work in San Francisco. Although the company has done some charitable work, the amount is a fraction of the cost of the tax breaks awarded them.
"The company also disclosed it spent over $750,000 on food items, all bought within 50 miles of the office in order to support local businesses, which it said constituted a sort of charity."
That's a bit of a different issue. To be clear what I was referring to is direct public investment in high tech development. Agencies like DARPA and billions more in government procurement of nascent commercial tech.
Tax breaks can certainly be seen as a form of public investment. But the $22M figure for the Twitter tax break is a bit of a fantasy.
That was supposed to be a break on local payroll tax to the city of SF. Think about that.. I doubt any company in the history of SF has paid $22M in local payroll tax. That would be absurd. So where did the $22M figure come from?
Turns out there was a change passed a few years ago in between the dotcom booms that added stock option gains to the definition of "payroll". Since there were no startups happening at that time, nobody paid attention to this obscure change in local SF law. And it was never enforced and to my knowledge has no corollary in any startup-rich city. (Because it would be insane and drive out all startups.) So that's where someone came up with a "$22M" calculation.. by taxing the gains on early stage employee stock options. Even though the city bears no risk like early stage employees do.
If you were to just look at paycheck amounts as "payroll", Twitter's tax break would be valued at far less than that.
To be clear I don't think Twitter should have gotten a total tax holiday and anyone who thinks they would've moved to Brisbane is a fool. I think the city should have just un-done that dumb stock option tax.
Agencies like DARPA and billions more in government procurement of nascent commercial tech.
While this is true, it has nothing to do with supporting commercial enterprise. Not even a little bit.
DARPA funds stuff because it costs the military less money in the long run to do so. That's it, nothing more. It's the military, and they want advanced stuff. So they pay for it, and they do so as economically as they can. That means funding research.
FWIW Every last penny DARPA had spent on research until then was more than paid back during the first gulf war due to the logistics improvements that came from software. DARPA has (and continues to have) enormous success relatively to the money it spends. It is absolutely not some form of corporate welfare, as you seem to imply.
Same with the Internet. DARPA does what they do for themselves, i.e. for the military. That private enterprise takes what they learn doing research projects for the military and runs with it doesn't even enter into the calculation of whether DARPA would do what it does. It's not some kind of benevolent tech incubator spending Uncle Sam's dough on worthy commercial causes.
I guess what I'm saying is that "government" doesn't do anything to help the technology sector, and whatever help they do get is completely inadvertent. The government wants the best military they can get for the money, and that means that agencies like DARPA fund research, because it achieves that goal.
Furthermore, it's not government at large, it's the military, and its entirely so that the military can do a better job with the funding citizens are giving them. I, for one, think they're doing reasonably well and specifically believe that the money DARPA spends is very well spent, and would still be well spent even if generated $0 in secondary economic activity.
What you're saying is true except for the claim that it has "nothing to do" with supporting commercial enterprise. The fact remains that Silicon Valley is a product of these billions in government spending and wouldn't exist in anything like its current form without it.
What we're both describing is the Pentagon system. The pretext for investment in high tech is that we need it for defense. And then we can just give it away to the private sector because, hey, it's like military surplus.
But it's highly unlikely Silicon Valley would exist without the hundreds of billions in government investment in core high tech. The government invests in nascent tech at a much earlier and riskier stage than venture capital, often billions over a period of a decade or more. There's also the critical role of (usually military) procurement in creating a market for early tech. This is orders of magnitude riskier and broader scale than any private VC fund.
You're biggest error I think is in missing the bigger picture of how this creates a (rather disturbing) feedback loop into war policy. Doing this all through the pretext of military spending means that the public has less control over how taxpayer funds are invested in the economy and the private sector can capture all the profits, using the logic that you articulate. But it also means that we have to keep finding new enemies and waging wars to keep the Pentagon system running.
This article clearly elaborates that the author doesn't understand either the philosophy or ethics of libertarian (or actual free market) economics. From what I can tell, the author may have not have even read cursory basics on Wikipedia about such.
This header:
"Google, Apple and other tech firms likely colluded to keep their workers' wages down." then concludes: "So much for that libertarian worldview"
That assumes incorrectly that willful collusion is somehow anti-free market, or anti-libertarian. The free market has absolutely no position on collusion, except that force may not enter into economic transactions. If two parties choose to collude to set prices, the free market has no opinion on the matter as such; if they set prices incorrectly in the process of judging the market, they will lose. That is basic free market ideology.
A free market doesn't outlaw or in any way forbid collusion. Nor is it considered immoral in laissez-faire doctrine to agree to freeze or suppress wages across an industry. The use of force (eg to prevent workers from leaving their job for a better paying one) to control workers would be considered immoral and illegal. Otherwise, it's the responsibility of the worker to pursue a job that properly compensates their talent, not the responsibility of the business owner to overpay the worker (and if the owner isn't properly compensating the worker, and that worker leaves, the owner loses).
As a response to wage collusion by business owners, in a free market workers also have the right to collude to attempt to inflate wages; owners also have a right to fire every single one of them in response. Whichever group judges correctly about their value proposition, wins.
One can then move on to debating the merits of laissez-faire Capitalism versus other systems; or libertarian ideology; or 19th century free market economics. The author however is far off base in understanding even where the conversation would begin.
So it's ok to exploit one's personal situation (family and financial commitments stopping one from moving to a location where the cartel is not in force, for example), but hey, no physical violence please, psychological one will do!
There is a main difference between the two actors: employers own original capital, employees don't. The penalty for employers (losing some profit if all workers quit or get fired) is virtually nonexistent: limited-liability companies are set up with the explicit aim of exonerating capital owners from responsibility beyond the invested capital. You lose the company, you lose a bit of capital; but in most cases, there is more where that came from. Workers don't own original capital (which is why they are workers, after all). The penalty for them is much higher, they could lose their house and/or livelihood.
Refusing to consider the fundamental imbalance of labor relationships is disingenuous at best. It's sad that we're still debating this same stuff in 2014.
Yes, it is OK to "exploit" the fact that somebody wants to sell something cheap, but it's not OK to take it by force. If you think it is hypocritical, next time you buy something at a discounted sale instead of stealing it you're a hypocrite.
>>> The penalty for employers (losing some profit if all workers quit or get fired) is virtually nonexistent:
Because in your world running a business carries no risk as businesses never go bust. I see. Must be nice.
>>> limited-liability companies are set up with the explicit aim of exonerating capital owners from responsibility beyond the invested capital.
And losing invested capital (for small business/startup - likely all one has and also a lot of borrowed money) is nothing. Again, must be nice to be a man for whom losing all investment is nothing.
>>> The penalty for them is much higher
You mean, they have to go to work to another place now? If they possess marketable skills of decent quality, it won't be long before they'd be paid for them. If not, now we know why the business went bust - they shouldn't have hired workers which are incompetent.
>>> Refusing to consider the fundamental imbalance of labor relationships is disingenuous at best.
Here we considered it and found you fundamentally misunderstand both nature of business and nature of employment, suggesting business carries no risk and employment only possible with single employer and if that goes bust the worker can not work anymore. Yes, it does sound a bit sad.
Because in your world running a business carries no risk as businesses never go bust. [...] And losing invested capital (for small business/startup - likely all one has and also a lot of borrowed money) is nothing
We are talking about Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe -- startups? Small businesses? No, market-clearing companies with billions in profit and rich dividends, quarter after quarter.
If they possess marketable skills of decent quality, it won't be long before they'd be paid for them.
As you put it, must be nice to be a man for whom losing a job is nothing. If you are a major investor in Intel or Adobe, chances are you are not going to lose your house over it; things tend to be different for most workers.
I am not saying business never carries risk; what I'm saying is that the type of risk is qualitatively different from the risk of losing a job for an average salaried worker.
Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe were startups once. They took risks. These risks played out. Hundreds of others took the same risks, and you don't know their names, because their risks didn't. But you can also remember names like Compaq, DEC and Ashton-Tate. They were giants once. They are no more. There's always risk, and Adobe of today may become Ashton-Tate of tomorrow.
>>> must be nice to be a man for whom losing a job is nothing.
I didn't say it's nothing. I said it's not losing your livelihood on permanent basis. If you have marketable skills, you will find another job, and unlike capital, your skills can not be lost. They can become stale and out of date, but there's an easy remedy for that - keep learning and improving - and that needs to happen even if you do have a job.
>>> If you are a major investor in Intel or Adobe, chances are you are not going to lose your house over it;
Unless you deal in trivialities like "if you're a billionaire, then losing a million does not matter", many people lost a lot on dotcom boost, and many lost their house quite literally betting on housing market. Unless you are a politician or friends with one, investment always carries a risk of loss.
>>> I'm saying is that the type of risk is qualitatively different from the risk of losing a job for an average salaried worker.
Yes, it is, investor risk what can be easily and irreversibly lost and can not be protected (I exclude bailout shenanigans of course, this is plain old robbery that our politicians facilitated) and the salaryman risks only a temporary dip in the cash flow in the most cases, and his skills can not be taken away or lost, indeed they are usually improving constantly (15 years of experience is usually better than 5). The nature of risk is substantially different. That's why most people prefer salary.
Who's debating anything here? Literally the only thing I did is relay what the actual ideology is, compared to what the author claimed it is. You reacted viscerally without any further consideration. I actually was careful to put in the last section to specifically try to prevent your type of response.
> So it's ok to exploit one's personal situation (family and financial commitments stopping one from moving to a location where the cartel is not in force, for example), but hey, no physical violence please, psychological one will do!
I don't know how to describe the ludicrousness of describing not cold calling someone as "psychological violence".
In general though, I'm no libertarian, but I'm pretty sure they'd be the first to admit that the libertarian model is without exploitation, immorality, or evil. They'd just argue that the use of force to exert controls would invariably be a greater exploitation/immorality/evil.
> employers own original capital
At least with startups in the valley, they most certainly don't.
To clarify: investors by definition are risking original capital, so they always own original capital... of course with a typical investment model, once they invest that capital, they no longer own said capital and in fact may no longer own any original capital.
Employers are generally the businesses themselves, and so don't necessarily have original capital and statistically at least are disproportionately likely to either be in debt or at least have negative cash flow, particularly with startups.
Employees on the other hand, have almost no capital at risk tied to their involvement in a venture beyond equity/warrants in the company. It is entirely possible (and particularly in the case of the tech industry, and particularly in the case of senior employees like those targeted by these practices) that they'd have original capital, and in fact in I think every case of the named companies they have opportunities to contribute original capital into their employer at better than market rates, as well as having sweat equity translated in to options or straight out equity/grants in their employer. So they are more than encouraged to have either original capital or at least the equivalent thereof.
In short, the power dynamic you are implying as universal to the employer-employee relationship isn't universal and most importantly is a particular ill fit to the context in question.
> employees don't
At last with startups in the valley, that is far from necessarily true.
> The penalty for employers (losing some profit if all workers quit or get fired) is virtually nonexistent: limited-liability companies are set up with the explicit aim of exonerating capital owners from responsibility beyond the invested capital.
Yeah... but that limited liability is very hard to escape and often significantly outweighs the relative penalty for employees of quitting or getting fired. Again, at startups... most employees don't recoil in horror about the economic (psychological is a different matter) consequences of quitting or getting fired.
> Workers don't own original capital (which is why they are workers, after all).
Again, at a startup up, it'd be a huge assumption to think they are working there because they don't own original capital.
> The penalty for them is much higher, they could lose their house and/or livelihood.
Assuming there is demand from other employers, the penalty is almost 0. Particularly as a logical consequence of the hiring practices alluded to in the article, an engineer who is laid off is going to get snatched off the market almost immediately. In fact, they are likely to not even miss a single paycheck and could very well end up with a raise out of the whole thing.
> Refusing to consider the fundamental imbalance of labor relationships is disingenuous at best.
Refusing to consider the full impact of distortions on labor relationships is disingenuous at best. Engaging in a debate about this same stuff in 2014 without considering the market & economic realities that motivate these practices in the first place is beyond sad.
>I don't know how to describe the ludicrousness of describing not cold calling someone as "psychological violence".
Cold calling is not necessary, a worker has networks of his own. Given a situation where the worker is trying to improve his condition by getting fairer compensation for his work, and is forced to renounce by a localised cartel of employers exploiting his conditions (i.e. that he can't leave the area), I'd say that's psychological violence alright... but I guess we'll never agree on the exact degree of intensity of such force.
>At least with startups in the valley, they most certainly don't [own original capital].
We are talking about Apple, Intel, Google etc; they are not startups anymore. Startups are not the ones who colluded, they already cannot pay market wages in most cases. It's the companies who could and should pay full wages, the ones who tried to scrimp on salaries.
I agree that the fundamental asymmetry in labor relationship is mitigated by factors such as business size and investor's own history, but it's still there (how often do we get stories on HN about startup workers being screwed out of rewards for successful business outcomes), and anyway these factors simply do not apply to Google, Apple et al.
>Assuming there is demand from other employers
That's a big assumption. It might be true for Silicon Valley as of 2014, but in most years and in most areas that's simply not the case.
> Refusing to consider the fundamental imbalance of labor relationships is disingenuous at best.
>> Refusing to consider the full impact of distortions on labor relationships is disingenuous at best.
I agree, it's a complex matter, but you cannot take as fundamental principles for economic doctrine some localised, exceptional and very limited situation: you take the common scenario and build principles from it, then you tweak it for outliers. "Engineers in Silicon Valley" is the outlier, not the common scenario, and people trying to use that as the basis for "new" theories are, in most cases, just rehashing old excuses for exploiting the workforce.
> Cold calling is not necessary, a worker has networks of his own.
You are making these company's arguments for them. Although the notion that these individuals would need to know someone to find gainful employment at a competitor is wrong.
> and is forced to renounce by a localised cartel of employers exploiting his conditions (i.e. that he can't leave the area), I'd say that's psychological violence alright... but I guess we'll never agree on the exact degree of intensity of such force.
Rather, I think we should agree that you have created a straw man that while it may very well be an accurate depiction of some circumstances, does not apply to the story you are commenting on.
> It's the companies who could and should pay full wages, the ones who tried to scrimp on salaries.
Google is known to compensate their employees at the upper end of the market. Once you factor in benefits and equity, all of these companies compensate well above median salary for their low level employees as well as the ones targeted by these policies. What you are saying does not reflect reality.
I think a very good case could be made that these policies may constitute unfair labour practices, but if you think about how much the bottom line of these companies would be impacted if the targeted employees had their wages and compensation even doubled, you might begin to appreciate that you are barking up the wrong tree here.
> That's a big assumption.
That's really not a really big assumption when the entire practice was based on there being demand from other employers.
> "Engineers in Silicon Valley" is the outlier, not the common scenario, and people trying to use that as the basis for "new" theories are, in most cases, just rehashing old excuses for exploiting the workforce.
One could paraphrase that as, "it makes sense to apply a common principle to a specific situation, asserting as postulates foundational characteristics of that common principle even when the specific situation directly contradicts those characteristics."
On that basis I could assert that since you and I are arguing on the web that we are both introverted and socially isolated juvenile white males expressing internalized aggression, regardless of the sounds of my spouse and child asking for help with homework...
hey, no physical violence please, psychological one will do!
Yes, because physical violence is provable, psychological violence is easier to fabricate. If the state cannot satisfy a certain level of probity, then it should stay out for the risk of making the accused a victim of physical violence.
That doesn't make psychological damage is morally acceptable, it just means as a society we should find another means of punishing it that doesn't involve the state.
Exactly, wage fixing is fine in a free market, that directly follows from the definition of an unregulated market, every market participator is free to do any market decision they want.
This is a nice example why free markets are not optimal, zero regulation is not the best amount of regulation.
1. The government froze wages in WW2, and companies got around that by offering free health insurance.
2. Unions often got the government to force workers to join the union, because otherwise workers would undercut the union.
3. There were numerous attempts to fix wages of black laborers artificially low after the Civil War, they would constantly fall apart because individual farmers would pay more under the table to attract better workers. See "The Strange Career of Jim Crow".
4. Government "price supports" are there because of the consistent failure of farmers to voluntarily comply with price fixing agreements.
I forgot to add - anti-dumping, unfair competition, and predatory pricing laws. Those are just a way to use regulation to fix prices because voluntary price fixing fails.
Yes, there is a large amount of recorded history of attempted price fixing from 1830 > 1920x or so, and the results of such efforts. Given it wasn't illegal for the most part, companies & individuals didn't work very hard to hide their schemes from the history books (although sometimes from competitors). The efforts tended to be constantly in flux, subject to rapid shifts in loyalty and dedication, and the agreements were typically without any formal contractual requirement. There are numerous excellent economic accounts of the 19th century US market that covers this, and many good books for companies and persons that do so as well (eg covering the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Vanderbilts, Rockefeller, JP Morgan, Carnegie, and on it goes).
While I at the moment can not give all the referneces. One thing we know is true, is that there is a far greater amount of monopoly or cartel created by goverment then by market.
If you look long enougth you can find some cartels and monopolys that are stable for some time. Even when most of these where not able to really raise prices where far.
If you look at goverment enforcment of cartel and monopolys you will find a unbelivable amount. If you add tarrifs to that (ie blocking import of steel from japan). You will find that regulation far more often helps big buissness.
This is what people dont understand about free marketers. I do not belive that it is impossible for goverment action to imporove short run and maybe even long run conditions, but I belive it is far more like that this power is misused.
So yes you can go out of your way and figure out some asymetiric cost for whatever groupe you like. You can then go on and argue that in order to rebalance this the state needs to do 'something' (perfeclty show in the thread by all the people point out that employes can easly switch jobs and therefore there wage is below equillibrum). Stigliz for the win. This all works out great in theory but runs flat against a wall in practice. When it does run against a wall its of course just because of 'republicans' blocking all sencible policy or whatever.
So this is the reason for free market views, it is not as some people seam to belive that 'the free market is always perfect'.
One of the general misunderstandings of libertarianism is "since you're pro-market you must be pro-business." Free market libertarians are generally business/labor neutral as libertarianism simply provides the framework for the players. A libertarian would view a business/labor union that relies on government cooperation as a failure.
If you have a pre-determined goal in mind - like maximizing your revenue - of course free market is not optimal for you! For you, the optimal market would be one in which the rules are skewed in your favor. In general, free market can not be optimal if you have predetermined outcome in mind as "optimal", because if the outcome were predetermined, the market of course would not be free!
The question to ask here is why do you think your preferred outcome is better than mine and what gives you right to force it on me.
The point is that we can't take a market with N regulations, see what happens with (N-1) regulations being followed, and then say "see, that's what would happen without any regulations!"
Kill the regulations helping the capitalists, not just the ones giving a hand to the worker, and then we can talk.
The 19th century in the US is probably the largest data set when it comes to extremely low regulation markets. Hong Kong is a more recent example. The point being, there is a lot of actual real world data on each side of the fence.
I'm not sure why have you decided to reply with that; if anything, by referring to Benjamin Tucker, I'm taking a position in the defense of free markets, not attacking them.
And in any case, if my position was opposed to yours, that argument wouldn't convince me anyway, since I find "economic size" and particularly "growth" to be little more than fetishes of mainstream ideologues. I'm much more easily convinced by what the economists call "consumer surplus", though I'd rather know the "worker surplus".
> The point is that we can't take a market with N regulations, see what happens with (N-1) regulations being followed, and then say "see, that's what would happen without any regulations!"
That seems like the sort of evidence that's actually useful when making policy decisions about whether we should increase or decrease regulation. Abolishing all regulations is not practical, so what political theorists think would happen in a complete absence of regulation is irrelevant to any real-world issues.
It's only relevant when making policy decisions about that particular rule. Regulations aren't commodities, and the fact that eliminating a certain regulation would destabilize the system is no evidence that removing any other regulation would do the same.
But in any case, if you think what would happen by abolishing all regulation is irrelevant to the real world, then you should be replying to RivieraKid, who was the one drawing such irrelevant (and, in my opinion, unsupported) conclusions.
> The free market has absolutely no position on collusion, except that force may not enter into economic transactions. If two parties choose to collude to set prices, the free market has no opinion on the matter as such; if they set prices incorrectly in the process of judging the market, they will lose. That is basic free market ideology.
I was under the impression that, to be allocatively efficient, market participants have to be 'price takers' (along with a bunch of other assumptions) - anything other than this creates an inefficient market.
I also think it is incorrect to assume (even in theory) that this kind of market failure will always resolve itself by the price makers, i.e. those engaging in collusion, being priced out of the market. The alternative, which seems to me to be more likely (otherwise why would people collude?), is that the price makers capture an inefficiently large proportion of the market's productive output.
In short, market theory absolutely does have a position on collusion - it leads to market failure.
> I was under the impression that, to be allocatively efficient, market participants have to be 'price takers' (along with a bunch of other assumptions) - anything other than this creates an inefficient market.
You should update your economic belives. Look at the 2002 Nobel Price by V. Smith for this one.
> In short, market theory absolutely does have a position on collusion - it leads to market failure.
The existence of market failure is no position. Just for the fact that there is market failure does not have any implication on what to do about it.
No (almsot no) free market economys belvies that there is no market failure (however you want to define it). That is simply something that is often assert because it makes for good propaganda (makes it possible to laught at the idiot free market people without really listening to them).
The question is not if the market is perfect, it is clearly not. The question is (a) can we do something about it, do we know enougth (b) given the power to do something about it, will the goverment actually do it, or will it use that power to do the oppiste.
Now I would assert (hince my free market views) that both (a) and (b) have to be answer with 'most likly no'. We often do things because we think we can and it turns out that it also has tons of other effects that we did not wish for (law of unintended consequenses). Next even assuming that understand everything about some action, given the power is it not more likly that something else will be done. A quick glance at history clearly shows this, how often is a given regulation used to help buissnesses instead of people workers.
Why do you think you coke is made out of mais sirup instead of cain sugar.
> Look at the 2002 Nobel Price by V. Smith for this one.
Can you please elaborate? I don't know enough of the details to understand the link you're making.
> The existence of market failure is no position. Just for the fact that there is market failure does not have any implication on what to do about it.
The first sentence is incorrect, and is not implied by the second sentence, which is correct. The 'position' is that, in order to have an efficient market, one should not do things that cause market failure. It is a negative position rather than a positive one (DON'T do X rather than DO X), but it is still a position. It informs you about what sort of things you shouldn't do if you want a market to operate efficiently.
> That is simply something that is often assert because it makes for good propaganda
Saying that collusion can lead to market failure, and thus must be proscribed if one wishes to have an efficient market, is not propaganda. It is the kind of thing that must be said, seemingly repeatedly, to illustrate the point that markets are not a magical solution to the allocation problem.
The argument you subsequently make, that "we don't know better", is both completely standard and completely wrong. We may well not know better than an efficient market - I'm not sure but it seems very reasonable. However, moving from that to suggest that imposing controls such as anti-collusion regulations (along with a whole host of other measures to avoid market failure), is unnecessary, is unsubstantiated.
If you examine your own argument, it is based by your own admission on an assertion. The foundation for why one might think that what you are saying is true (market theory) explicitly lays out the assumptions required for it to work, and you ignore these on a purely ideological basis.
With position I am talking about politcal position, witch is what it is all about.
> The 'position' is that, in order to have an efficient market, one should not do things that cause market failure.
"one should not" who is "one"? I dont understand what you mean. The goverment should defnetly not do things that cause market failure, and in my opinion the should do things against it either.
> Saying that collusion can lead to market failure, and thus must be proscribed if one wishes to have an efficient market, is not propaganda.
My point was to say that, its propaganda to say that free market people dont belive in market failure, nothing else.
> It is the kind of thing that must be said, seemingly repeatedly, to illustrate the point that markets are not a magical solution to the allocation problem.
Again, nobody is arguing for "perfect markets". This is what seemingly repeatedly has to be said.
> However, moving from that to suggest that imposing controls such as anti-collusion regulations (along with a whole host of other measures to avoid market failure), is unnecessary, is unsubstantiated
No it is not. Also you only addressed the first part of my argument. Its hard to argue the general case here, there is tons of litrature showing how for example anti-trust regulation was used to keep prices high. There are tons of cases where goverment was used to enforce cartels as well.
So if the goverment task of managing cartels would not exists then there might be less cartels overall.
> The foundation for why one might think that what you are saying is true (market theory) explicitly lays out the assumptions required for it to work, and you ignore these on a purely ideological basis.
You might be surprised but there no just the walrasian standard model (or Arrow–Debreu). Also just because the make these assumition and the need to be true in there model does not mean that it is the same for the real world. You are assuming that the standard model used in econ 101 is reality.
Well it is not, and everybody who studied economics a bit knows this. You need to bring in transaction costs, theory of the firm, information economics, you need to bring in instiutional economics, there needs to be a explaition market ajustment and so on. Also you need to model politcal economy, are you really so naive to assume that the correction of market failure is also just like in these models. A completly costless third party that only ever does anything when the model goes out of balance, interduce politcal economy into the mix, try modeling 'goverment failure' as well.
Again, I feel I have to say this again, I do not make the argument that a market always is or always reaches generall equillibrum very fast(as in Arrow-Debreu). The simple idea that you seam to have is that any diffrence between Arrow-Debreu assumtions and the real world must be corrected is not woreable in practice, and I belive no economist would still try this.
> With position I am talking about politcal position, witch is what it is all about.
I was originally responding to adventured, who said "The free market has absolutely no position on collusion, except that force may not enter into economic transactions." I dispute both this statement as I understand it, with the argument I have already laid out, and also your current claim that the "free market political view" has no position on collusion.
On that, I don't think you can just claim to speak for everyone who considers themselves a proponent of free markets, and furthermore a lot of people who do so are very clear about the need for controls on those markets, mostly (it seems to me) with the aim of bringing them closer to the theoretical ideal.
> "one should not" who is "one"?
One here refers to anyone who is trying to engage in free market transactions, as opposed to someone who wants to distort a free market for their own ends. I apologise for my lack of clarity.
> My point was to say that, its propaganda to say that free market people dont belive in market failure, nothing else.
I understand that, however you are responding to a straw man - I didn't say that free market proponents don't believe in market failure, I said that they, meaning the most ardent supporters, believe that market failures are best resolved by the market - that regulators can't do better. You may wish to dispute this.
> ... Also just because the make these assumition and the need to be true in there model does not mean that it is the same for the real world. ...
> ... You need to bring in transaction costs, theory of the firm, information economics, you need to bring in instiutional economics, there needs to be a explaition market ajustment and so on. Also you need to model politcal economy ...
I agree wholeheartedly with what you are saying here - it is indeed very difficult to model the economy, and the assumptions on which the models of principle lie most assuredly do not hold in the real world. I also share your understanding that most economists would not claim otherwise - they have much more pragmatic views of the economy.
Overall, I'm not sure I understand what your point is. Mine was originally that basic market theory gives a reason why collusion is bad, and has now been extended to include the notion that simply waving your hands and saying "I don't think regulation works" isn't an argument, for example:
> So if the goverment task of managing cartels would not exists then there might be less cartels overall.
Is a statement that is possibly true, and possibly false, it is not, however, a basis for decision making.
Perhaps in a theoretical sense. In a practical sense, it is always the same people who are in favor of free markets that are also in favor of anti-strike laws and wants to undermine unions. You can't have it both ways. Either you are in favor of free markets and then you keep your mouth shut when a powerful union puts a blockade on employers who refuse to allow collective bargaining or you are not.
I dont care if there are unions, the problem I have is that when unions start to not allow other peoples to work for the employer. That has happen very often in history.
Also the should be allowed to strik, but the employer should also be allowed to fire people who dont show up to work.
Honest question, why is it bad if a union becomes powerful enough to convince an employer to sign a contract forbidding them to hire non-union employees or fire during a strike? I can think of some answers, but none that can't also be applied to, say, usury laws which makes the average internet libertarian's position on unions feel hypocritical to me.
Honest answer: because in many states, the law is that a certain vote can force that contract into place, not merely deprivation of labor by the pro-union segment.
The reason for this is simple: government has power because it can use violence. Even democracy works because the majority uses threat of violence to get minority submission to law. (Otherwise, all we have is anarchy/consensus). When a non-near-100% majority of the labor force wants to unionize, it only works if had the power to use force-- its own, or the local/state/federal government. Otherwise, scabs will quite often undermine the union's bargaining position.
Nowhere have I said that anyone's use of force is wrong! In the union debates, people often forget to ask: WHY is the use of force legitimate for the federal govt, but not for the labor pool for a factory? The answer is not obvious, the claim might not be true! "Because George Washington and Thomas Jefferson" is not a valid answer!
> Honest answer: because in many states, the law is that a certain vote can force that contract into place, not merely deprivation of labor by the pro-union segment.
Now you're cherry-picking. There are several other laws that regulates what employees and unions can do, what they can demand and how etc. For example, the union must be open to everyone so the agreement can't be used to give preferential treatment to someone.
Nonsense. The free market ideologue lets the market solve all problems through the mechanism of price signals, and nothing else. Side deals in which one group systematically wins asymmetric zero-sum games against another group are excluded.
The "appearance" isn't at issue. The question of capturing some phenomena conventionally characterized as normative (usually by philosophers who want to maintain a strict fact-value dichotomy) is of empirical interest. The positive content of "theft", "fraud" and "economic injustice" can be captured within game theory in repeated games, specifically in repeated asymmetric zero-sum games. The vocabulary is standard in the literature, even if game theorists tend to ignore such questions. My motive is to suggest, pace economists and philosophers who insist that such notions ought to be excluded from positive economics altogether, that they do contain significant positive economic content and I intend to say what that is.
We have a first libertarian to manipulate here. He even does not bother to read adn understand the basic idea exposed by the article. He thinks that we are children and keeps selling us the fraud.
I never said I was a libertarian. What I explained is rudimentary free market doctrine. My ability to explain Stalinism doesn't automatically make me a Communist, either.
The fact that you can explain a doctrine does not render the criticism of that doctrine incorrect. Indecent attack on critique means that you use all means to defend a flawed doctrine, which implies you is a proponent of that flawed doctrine. The author obviously knows the reality, which stands behind the marvelous "free-market" fiction. He attacks this fiction. He says that self-correcting free-market fails to optimize itself since it kills itself by converging to monopoly.
In the ideal free-market theory, you do not need the anti-monopoly law. But you have to use it in reality to mantain the free-market from collapse. It is clear what author says. He attacks this childish free-market fundamentalism. He makes a right point. You attack him without the reason and defend the flawed ideology, support spreading the wrong beliefs. How can I believe that you is not a libertarian?
This article is stupid. Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs are all Democrats and Obama supporters. Most valley leaders are.
The reasoning of the article laid out explicitly: Peter Thiel is guilty of hypocrisy because (democrats) Larry Page and Steve Jobs failed to live up to Peter Thiel's libertarian principles.
[edit: CEO of Adobe, also involved in this mess, is a Democrat and selected by Obama to be on his PMAB.]
These people are about as libertarian as my cat and we certainly didn't need this article or this court case to know that beyond a shadow of a doubt.
What the article sort of draws attention to indirectly is the fact that these CEOs are unfairly put up on a pedestal (especially Jobs) by so many people who adore them despite their less than stellar actions and criminal activity. Perhaps if they spent half their fortunes on charity, a la Gates, I'd be willing to be rethink my opinion of these scumbags.
Thiels a Forbsian libertarian. Focused on the economy, focused on the short term, thinks libertarianism is the best for the long term, but doesn't want to get bogged down in ideological debates about whether or not net neutrality is a libertarian position or not while the government is spending 5% of the GDP on the military and healthcare consumers almost 20% of GDP.
Even for those of whom it is true, I would bet that they appear 'Democrat' only to help them sell stuff, as part of their brand.
Most people who use software are in the cities. And, city-dwellers are generally liberal-leaning. So, it makes sense for these leaders would try to seem liberal as part of their marketing campaigns.
Whether it is or not (I'd generally say not, but I don't want to speak for true libertarians [1]), this article is stupid.
[1] I'm only weakly libertarian, so I don't want to speak for them. My values are almost entirely left wing liberal, but I haven't drank the koolaid on economic theories designed to justify the status quo and protect party cronies.
It depends on which stripe of libertarianism you're talking about, although I'd argue that it's the worst variants that would say "no". It's not a use of force in the strictest sense, but it is an attempt to subvert market pressures in order to maintain concentrations of power.
The author, Dean Baker, has a very narrow view of what libertarianism is and isn't. I'm a left-libertarian. I take a great deal of inspiration from the libertarian activist Karl Hess, who developed the language of the 1% versus the 99% in his 1975 manifesto, Dear America:
"1.6 percent of the adult population owns 82 percent of all stock, and thus actually owns American business and industry. In a very real sense, that tiny 1 percent of the population faces the other 99 percent across a barrier of very real self-interest. That tiny 1 percent has been accumulating more as the years go on, not less. The key to that accumulation is assuring that the people who make up the other 99 percent are sharply restricted in what power and privilege they accumulate."
Again, that was written by an American libertarian.
Libertarianism is a family of philosophical viewpoints, that runs the gamut from the "Libertarian socialism" of Noam Chomsky to the "Geolibertarianism" of Henry George to the craziness of the "Tea Party."
It's noteworthy that Ayn Rand denounced libertarianism. I was excommunicated from the Objectivist club in college for espousing libertarian anarchist views.
It's also noteworthy that Tea Party founder Karl Denninger renounced the Tea Party, saying it was co-opted by the Republican Party, which shifted its focus to "Guns, gays, God." He sums up his feelings toward the Tea Party, saying:
"Tea Party my ass. This was nothing other than The Republican Party stealing the anger of a population that was fed up with The Republican Party's own theft of their tax money at gunpoint to bail out the robbers of Wall Street and fraudulently redirecting it back toward electing the very people who stole all the f---ing money!" Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/20/karl-denninger-tea-...
You're coming over rather no true scotsman there. Every political group tries to disown the negative aspects of its labels. But those who self-identify as libertarian are and should be judged on the views and actions of others who self-identify as libertarian.
He's not going the one true scotsman route. He's actually saying that there _isn't_ such a thing as a true scotsman at all, because each group of scots has its own ideas of what a "true scotsman" is -- which is a pretty insightful point to make.
There is no such thing as a 'true' libertarian, because many groups with only tangentially related credos have adopted the name as their own, and many groups have distanced themselves from the 'libertarian' label even though they espouse beliefs closely related to what is often understood as being libertarianism. It follows that, when you criticise people for being
We don't seriously expect Hacker News to mostly carry news about the newest exploits and defaced sites, do we? Same deal, talking about libertarians doesn't necessarily correctly identify the population you're targeting.
Should you judged by the views and actions of others who self-identify as "hackers"? If the label includes people with a wide range of fundamentally incompatible views, it's not very useful to use as a yard stick. It looks a lot like guilt by association.
So it's fair to judge Democrats as guilty by association in this case?
(Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Marisa Mayer, Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs all self-identify as "Democrat", not "[Ll]ibertarian". The president of Adobe is on Obama's PMAB. I can't find info on the others with 3 minutes of googling.)
Sure, although I'm not sure the hypocrisy line is terribly effective here. A bunch of people who think regulations are necessary to stop corporations exploiting their workers turn out to run corporations that exploit workers? Well, yeah, isn't that exactly what you'd expect?
The only thing all libertarians hold in common is a strong belief in individual freedom. Different factions of libertarian construe freedom differently. Noam Chomsky opposes Corporate power, Government power, and Patriarchal power in the family. The Tea Party primarily opposes the power of the Government to tax. My big problem is with Tea Party elites who are really only interested in 0% capital gains taxes, and could care less about lowering regressive payroll taxes and excise taxes. As an individualist, I only take responsibility for my own words and actions. I don't accept responsibility for others--not even other left-libertarians, and certainly not Tea Partiers.
No, you should judge all Democrats by all Democrats taken as a whole. If it turns out a greater proportion of Democrats than Republicans are murderers, or vice versa, then you absolutely should take that into account when judging them.
But what percentage of felons register as Libertarians?
Funny how people aren't that interested in politics until they go to prison... 35% of Americans aren't registered to vote. Only 57.5% of eligible voters actually vote. Among eligible voters, 25% identify as Republicans, 35% as Democrats, and 40% independents.
A mere 0.1% of the prison population are Nazis, but they account for 20% of prison murders. I'd rather be in prison with a Democrat than a Nazi if those were my only two choices.
Probably the main reason so many convicted felons are Democrats is that felons don't get to vote. Like voter ID laws, voter caging, poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and gerrymandering, non-violent drug felony convictions are just another tool used by social conservative elites to deny the vote to the poor and minorities.
Interestingly, Republican Rick Santorum argued for the restoration of voting rights for ex-offenders. On this point, he agrees with Pres. Obama.
As many as 10 percent of the minority population in the US is unable to vote, as a result of felon disfranchisement.
This is so, because there are disparities in arrest decisions. There are disparities in decisions to prosecute an arrestee for a felony or a misdemeanor. George Zimmerman, darling of the Right, was arrested for felony resisting an officer with violence in 2006; but because his dad is a retired Judge, he got to plead to a misdemeanor, and got no jail time. As soon as they charged him with murder in the Martin case, rather than negligent homicide (what the cops initially charged him with), I knew the prosecution's case was architected to result in acquittal; the non-vigorous prosecution proved me right--my high school mock trial team could have made mince meat of his defense.
Blacks convicted of the same crime as whites get longer sentences. 4 out of 5 convicted felons get no jail time at all, instead getting "alternative sentencing" like fines, probation, parole, halfway house, rehab; and there's racial disparity in these jail versus alternative sentencing decisions.
White collar criminals who actually go to jail have it worse than the media makes it seem. But most pay a fine and don't get any jail time. And much of this stuff never gets to the point of arrest or prosecution anyway.
55% of Federal prisoners got sentenced for drug felonies. 96% of Federal prisoners are there for non-violent offenses. We've spent $1T on the War on Drugs, and it's been a cataclysmic failure. http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/06/opinion/branson-end-war-on-dru...
Congress never outlawed drugs so much as they abused their power to regulate interstate commerce in order to authorize a drug scheduling system. The FDA decides the particulars of the drug schedule. As President, I would (1) grant a full pardon to all non-violent drug offenders, (2) abolish the FDA's drug scheduling system, (3) direct the Justice Dept. to deprioritize prosecution of non-violent drug offenders, (4) order the FBI and DEA to deprioritize all investigations into non-violent drug crimes.
I'd also prioritize crackdowns on white collar crime: fraud, embezzelment, tax evasion. There'd be big shift in the makeup of felons' Party affiliations after 4 years with me in the Whitehouse.
Well, it is a self selected label so I'm having a bit of a problem with the "weak correlation". I would be curious how that isn't valid given the self selected part?
If someone was really going for the throat they would bring up the history and origin of the group a person self identified with. That leads to some scary thoughts with a lot of "we changed" yelling.
After a lifetime of considering myself a "civil libertarian" liberal, I've also recently come to identify as left libertarian, although I'm pretty sympathetic any thinking libertarian (cue the insults...3 2 1).
Anyway, do you know of any good Internet communities for left libertarians? IRC, message boards, blogs, etc?
It's pretty hard to label yourself since the labels seem to move faster than any of my beliefs have changed. Hell, saying your a member of a party isn't good enough given some of the conflicts between the "leadership" and the rank & file.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply the insults would come from you. Rather, I was expecting I would get the typical "thinking libertarian is an oxymoron" insult that I see everywhere these days from a random commenter. Apologies for making an ambiguous statement.
Agree that labels aren't always the most helpful, but absent a better system, seeking ideas and kinship with those of similar political beliefs is still a good thing overall, IMHO.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to imply the insults would come from you."
Didn't think you did, I just was pointing out I intended none just as I failed to provide a reference for where to find a group / organization meeting your needs.
"Agree that labels aren't always the most helpful, but absent a better system, seeking ideas and kinship with those of similar political beliefs is still a good thing overall, IMHO."
Oh, I don't disagree with that, words act as banners to organize. It is just that labels seem to morph. Back in the day, writing a grant to the government that had certain words that worked 5 years before would be an auto reject. Its like fashion, except I have no clue how the words get drifted.
Currently, depending on company, I could go with the label "classically liberal capitalist" or "tea party republican". Of course, the problem with the later is the assumptions one makes based on what you've "heard" as opposed to what I and others actually believe. This seems to mirror your experience with "thinking libertarian is an oxymoron" insult for Libertarian.
The defense seems to be adding words or conditions that make people try to figure out the changed definition. I would bet you've heard the "I'm a little l libertarian". To which people go "uhm, explain that?!?".
Words come out and sometimes back into fashion. Opponents of a belief heap added (mostly untrue generally derogatory) meaning on a word until the definition changes. Then people get tired of defending that word and pick a new one to define them. I know its happened with Occupy and the Tea Party.
While I frankly believe that libertarians are idiots and will drag society and social progress into the victorian age (hey, opinion, ok?), I think its important to point out that Steve Jobs @ Apple was not in any way one.
I don't believe for a minute that he cared about how much people made and was far more concerned with either employees leaving with secrets, or more likely annoyed that a revolving door of employees between his company and others took time away from getting his projects completed.
Apple has no problem paying people, but if they're trying to complete something for particular market opportunity, they probably don't want to waste time bringing new hires up to speed.
Considering how many engineers would gladly take a below market wage for an opportunity to work at Apple, I don't think that is necessarily out of line with market forces doing their usual "magic". Even economists would admit that wages are not the sole determinant of where people choose to work.
> Well, then Steve had nothing to worry about, did he? Then why the secret agreement??
Exactly. The motivations behind this practice, the nature of the practice, and the individuals impacted by it are just horribly misunderstood and distorted because the story that big Silicon Valley success stories are making their fortunes by screwing over the "little guy" (whose base salary is at or above the 98th percentile nationally and well above the 99th percentile globally... and that's ignoring bonuses & equity) is just so easy to sell.
I was thinking about this the other day coincidentally. The only big tech company I would want to work for is Apple, and I'd gladly take a few tens of thousands less than my already far larger than my living expenses wage to have the opportunity to. I wonder what that says about me?
Fair! I'm 23, no children, no wife, no particular responsibilities. I suppose that means I can "afford" to take that pay cut and throw myself into something like Apple. The only thing that gives me pause is the reports from those that I know who have worked there is that it's very very demanding, but also very very fulfilling.
Well, if you're going to do it now's the time. I'll have two kids in college next year, and a third in a few more years. That'll probably run about $300K when all is said in done.
So taking a few tens of thousands of dollars cut for ten years is that.
I'm not defending artificially depressed wages. I'm not even defending what these companies purportedly did. I'm just pointing out that the motivation for and consequences of their actions are being horribly misrepresented and/or misunderstood.
As for what planet I'm from... it's the one where the world isn't black and white and employers aren't automatically the guilty of any and all claims they ripped someone off.
>Considering how many engineers would gladly take a below market wage for an opportunity to work at Apple, I don't think that is necessarily out of line with market forces doing their usual "magic".
There's no such thing as magic. This is just as true in economics as in anything else. If wages are down, then either labor supply is up, or someone is cheating.
That's because having Apple on your resume is worth your weight in diamonds. Same thing with Pixar & Lucas Arts(Industrial Light & Magic) if your career is in the digital-entertainment production world. These are especially true as you grow closer to the age of 40. Google is some kind of anamoly where they pay high _and_ are a gold-star on your resume; don't know how that works.
Value is not an intrinsic property of a thing, but is determined solely by what someone is willing to pay you for it. I agree that the value of diamonds is an engineered one, but it still doesn't change the fact that people will pay truckloads of money for them.
> Value is not an intrinsic property of a thing, but is determined solely by what someone is willing to pay you for it.
Well, that's the thesis of the article I linked: out there, in the free market, you wouldn't get much if you'd try to sell a diamond and weren't part of the supply chain.
There's a similar situation in finance - Goldman is known to pay slightly below market to entry-level/junior employees, and the gaps swings the other way with senior employees who make above market on average.
>Google is some kind of anamoly where they pay high _and_ are a gold-star on your resume; don't know how that works.
I think Google has an extraordinarily high need for engineers due to their blatant attempt to take over the world by moving out ahead of everyone else in every industry they can reach.
When you're trying to corner markets that don't exist yet while also competing to keep other firms taking a slice out of your cash cow core business, you need a lot of R&D.
It might be a way to keep out those who care and optimize for that last $5K / $10K and pick a workplace based on that, as opposed to which project they'll be working on for the next five years. If I were Steve Jobs I'd prefer the naive ascetic hacker type who loves the work, and just to make sure I don't get the other type by accident, I'd keep salaries below market.
It can't be too low as too "worry" the employee or to make him/her uncomfortable living in Silicon Valley
For the "paying less" I see it as backwards. Between working at Apple at X and SomeOtherPlace at X+Y the Y may not be worth it. And based on some places I worked, Y may be totally not worth it.
I seriously doubt it. Trying to figure out what a person values may be important in an interview. But I think it's more likely apple has just decided that optimizing the last 5/10k doesn't matter because people will still want to work for them.
According to this version, Jobs was a leading figure in those payment-limitation-talks.
Indeed, free markets exist in our minds only - until someone uncovers talks and transactions...
Shouldn't accept that and a lawsuit is the right move. THIS is also a tool of the free market.
The only thing I'm familiar with about Jobs that relates to free market ideology, might be Ayn Rand, whose books he supposedly enjoyed.
I have seen many people take her books from the point of view of the creator or individualist struggling against the collective. Some take inspiration from that, while disgorging the rest of her ideas. I know many people that blend up a sort of free market economics + social libertarian + limited socialism (eg healthcare) world view.
If it's only about employee retency and not about money, the solution is simple - just pay the employee enough for him to stay (counter the offer competition gave him). No need for illegal conspiracy.
If your "social progress" is accomplished at the end of a gun barrel, it should be rolled back to the Victorian age, or even the Stone age. What good is social progress without freedom? If we institutionalize the use of coercive force to accomplish social ends, then we're a fucked society anyway.
Eric Schmidt in particular is an Obama donor and adviser, and since 2008, chairman of the New America Foundation, which "does not believe in immediate government deficit reduction; it believes that will only make the situation worse. Instead, as stated in the paper, it has other suggestions, including investing in a sustained infrastructure program, lasting from five to seven years, to create jobs and demand."
eh, that one's real. It's a wedge issue, and there are not entirely unreasonable libertarian arguments for IP. I happen to totally disagree with them, because they're wrong, but I sympathize with the libertarian that believes in IP.
So that article is just phrasing the normative in positive terms? Besides rigour, what's the point?
This confuses more than it clarifies. Economic injustice is a question of moral values; phrasing it as a scientific truth lends it a false air of credibility.
Putnam has argued against a strict fact-value dichotomy in "The Collapse of the Fact-Value Dichotomy" and in a recently published book of essays edited by Putnam entitled, "The End of Value-Free Economics (Routledge INEM Advances in Economic Methodology)." Economic justice, theft and fraud are not strictly questions of moral values--this presupposes a spurious fact-value dichotomy. These notions have both normative and positive aspects; the positive aspects of these notions (and others, related to class dominance) can be captured in game theoretic terms--and should be.
In the Preface to Game Theory Evolving, economist Herbert Gintis suggested that the mathematical methods of non-cooperative (and cooperative) game theory developed by von Neumann and Morgenstern, Nash and their successors–Gintis among them–have the potential to elevate social and political discourse above ideological debate.
Gintis does not take the step of applying game theory to the topics under discussion--but neither have most of the comments here, with the expected result.
Capturing the positive aspects in game theoretic terms might have advantages; I recognised rigour as one.
However, I don't think these advantages warrant capturing all the positive aspects in game theoretic terms. It makes the reading opaque, hiding the normative value judgments behind scientific-seeming jargon.
Instead of formalising the positive aspects, clarify the underlying normative choices. Then we will come closer to finding where it is we actually disagree.
I have revised the article at http://publicsphere.org. The normative value judgments are not hidden behind scientific seeming jargon. The normative value judgements retain the significance they have--however, they are inextricably entangled with certain positive phenomena, which should be explicated. Instead of denying the relevance of positive aspects outright behind philosophical seeming jargon based on a discredited fact-value dichotomy imported from British Logical Positivism into economics, find some positive reason they are wrong. I see no reason to privilege the normative aspects at the expense of the positive aspects--unless the intention is to prevent the discussion from rising above ideological debate.
> inextricably entangled with certain positive phenomena, which should be explicated
Let me attempt to disentangle them: You assume collectives (not only individuals) have rights.
> approximately 0.1% of the US population has been systematically winning asymmetric zero-sum games against the lower 99%.
You treat clusters of individuals as players in a game, and infer injustice from systematic winning of these games; as though justice would necessitate "fair gameplay" between collectives, not just between individuals.
There's nothing to disagree with in your formalisation, but your formalisation is meaningless to anyone who disagrees with the underlying philosophy of rights and justice.
Let me attempt to disentangle them: You assume collectives (not only individuals) have rights.
No, I make no such assumption. The assertion that I do is not warranted. Since philosophers like to find inferences their interlocutors believe they have not made: locate this assumption. Rousseau's vocabulary of "rights" has not been particularly helpful.
I do not "infer" injustice. The attempt is to characterize positive aspects of it. It seems to be characterized by the systematic winning of certain games by one group against another, especially when the utility obtained by winning is population dependent for one group (the "winners") and not for the other group (the "losers").
A general prohibition against allowing one group to systematically win asymmetric zero-sum games against another group would be a normative principle. So would some elaboration of special exceptions.
incidentally, you use the term 'meaningless' too loosely. Under what philosophical theory does a formalization becomes meaningful depending on who agrees with its "underlying philosophy"?
To a large extent, yes. Economic injustice, however, increases the probability and severity of civil unrest. It is in the best interest of those with economic power that those without don't bang down their doors and line them up against a wall.
Reference to 'economic injustice' is weak without identification of the morally relevant facts. For me the question is whether economic injustice (positively construed) is characterized by one group systematically winning asymmetric zero-sum games (or strategically equivalent games, meaning those whose payoffs differ by a positive affine transformation). This provides strictly more information than vague reference to "economic injustice", which can be dismissed as a normative judgment.
Whether the characterization holds is an empirical question. Whether one ought to condone the systematic winning of asymmetric zero-sum games is a further question. It is in my view rhetorically important not to cede the "value neutral" conceit of (many practitioners of) economics to conservatives. Unfortunately many non-conservatives seem to lack the economic and mathematical background (not to mention imagination--pardon the paralipsis) to turn the "value neutral" conceit on its head. The term "economic injustice" could stand further refinement by explicit mention of its positive, game-theoretic aspects. That involves characterizing, in game-theoretic terms, economic phenomena that game theorists and economists have chosen, for various reasons, not to study.
A philosophical attitude isn't particularly helpful here, if this means the unfortunate Anglophone tendency to limit philosophy to "patrolling the border between sense and nonsense." But the historical fact that game theorists have tended to study empirical questions on terms that can be addressed in game theoretic terms is not a reason to dismiss what might appear to a philosopher concerned with "conceptual analysis" as some kind of private, special language.
Well it was discussed at length last week on here. Since this article is mainly about the perceived libertarian angle, of course that would dominate discussion
Free market includes the freedom to conspire for lowering wages down like includes the freedom from workers to decide where they work or even compete with those companies.
Having said that, we don't live in a free market, the economy is ruled by central banks who do central planning, thanks to free money for them, taken from the rest of us.
In the technology sector, we live in a world with business and software patents, and with lawsuits costing millions, which makes competing against the big guys harder and harder for little guys.
I love this notion that Silicon Valley billionaires can all be painted with the same brush. Truly, if there was ever a group of individuals known to celebrate conforming to the thought processes of others, this is it.
Everybody only belive in the free market if they benefit. Nobody wants a free market, everybody wants direct handouts or whatever else.
As long as there is a third party that can be made to help you, you will. The only reason there exists a relativly free market in the first place is that there is a balance between diffrent 'powers'.
Everybody individually would benefit from some policys in there faver but there are few policys that help everybody.
As soon as one groupe gets to much power (meaning political influance) the get a handout (Sugar Farmers, US Steel ...).
The free market is all about fighting for your own self interest. The purpose of government is to ensure those members with special power or position are not able to extort those advantages.
ANYONE in their position would do this. It's not a matter of belief or politics or even ethics. It's a matter of oversight. The people responsible for providing for the free market have failed to protect relatively less powerful market players.
Let's stop pretending that the "free market" isn't a dirty nasty place.
This seems strange, as it's a little removed from the folks doing most of the complaining, no?
This case is striking on many levels, the most obvious being the effective theft of large amounts of money by some of the richest people on the planet from their employees.
Silicon Valley has nothing to do with a free market, those companies make ridiculous profits for one reason, intellectual property. And IP is in complete opposition to the free market.
I heard many young people try very hard to get an unpaid volunteer / intern job in UN headquarters. They need to pay their own rent and food out of their own pocket to work for UN for nothing. How crazy is this?
Really disappointed more authors don't take on that topic.
I don't like the author's definition of "classic libertarianism" though. Classic libertarianism is anarcho-socialism. Liberty in all spheres of life: the personal, the political, the economic. Opposition to all forms of tyranny and concentration of power.
What the author is describing in the article is American "Libertarianism" which came about in the mid-20th century. It adopted the term from libertarian socialism but cleansed it of its critique of authoritarianism in the economic sphere (corporations are dictatorships).
It's as though a royal servant came up with a philosophy of "liberty to do whatever you want with your kingdom" and the royals embraced it, along with anyone else who aspired to it. It's a corruption of the term.
But the idea that anyone in Silicon Valley is an honest Libertarian (in the American sense) is ridiculous, given the massive amount of state spending that supports it.