posted by xpanda:
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Since the free market relies on perfect information, how do you address the issue of transparency should de-regulation occur with the inevitable reduction of the state in your scenario?
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The concept of "perfect information" is a mathematical construct used by neoclassical economists; it has little if any bearing on the real world and therefore is of little use to a serious capitalist. It is little different from the "perfect information" required by (and presumed by) most statist proposals.
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If humans have the right (and I believe you agree with this particular right) to not suffer harm at the hands of another human, how would you address the issue of transparency for such things as environmental degradation (scientific disputes notwithstanding for the moment)?
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That would depend on the situation. Environmental degradation is the consequence of an activity, which might have been forseen or might have taken the party who caused it completely by suprise. On the one hand, to say (for example) that oil companies, car companies, or whomever have harmed us by contributing to global warming is so far removed from the concept of (again example) me raping your kid that it hardly merits consideration as a "harmful act."
On the other hand, if I own a widget factory and the runoff from the plant is poisoning a river upon which you depend for potable water, there is a real-world situation where the environmental conseuences of my actions are causing you directly traceable and empirical harm. Far from an indictment against the free market, this is all the more strong an argument in favour of private ownership of everything tangible, including rivers -- because the runoff problem could have been avoided entirely if the owners of the river simply did not allow it to happen in the first place. In a dmeocratic, "public commons" environment, the 49% of the population that did not want the widget factory built on the river have to go stuff themselves because of the 51% that did.
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Does it not go without saying that the pursuit of profit leads to efficiency of production, which in many cases could lead to a circumvention of "safety" practices?
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It can happen, and of course has in the past.
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It's all well and good to suggest that the market will balance this out, but this is only true if perfect information exists. It is also well and good to suggest that companies can be sued after the fact, but lives may have been lost/harmed in the meantime.
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The market will balance out such a situation regardless of whether or not perfect information is available -- unfortunately some consequences are never fully known until after the fact. It is foolish to presume that somehow all possible negative consequences of a given action can be known in advance, let alone whether or not such knowlede will be heeded -- and more importantly, this is hardly unique to a market-driven environment. How many millions of people worldwide smoke, drink or use illicit drugs, knowing the potential ramifications in advance?
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If capitalism is reliant on the premise that humans by nature are greedy
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It isn't.
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... then it seems plausible to me that large, faceless corporations would be greedy en masse unless deterred.
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The primary responsibility of any corporate board is to deliver value to its shareholders. This is a consequence of the "democratisation" of private companies.
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I understand that not all capitalists/entrepreneurs are rotten individuals. But what about the ones that are?
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Some are, this is certain. As I said before, capitalism is unique among the -isms in that it does not pretend to create a Utopia for anyone. What about politicians who are rotten individuals, as in the above-mentioned atrocities of Stalin? Surely not all are, but the ones who are have substantially greater capacity to do harm than, for example, Bill Gates, given that the political class in any country -- regardless of its "-ism" -- have a presumed monopoly on the initiation of force which no private party can hope to attain.
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Just trying to understand why this slippery slope scenario is not subject to the same moral bankruptcy as its socialist alternative.
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Not sure what you mean by "slippery slope."
Capitalism is a system based on voluntary interaction (so, in another sense, is communism.) Socialism isn't. Fascism isn't. And socialism and fascism are what run rampant in today's world, not capitalism and communism.
postd by eek:
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The achilles heel in both systems is the 'human being'.
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Praxeological considerations are extremely important in Austrian economics (and to a lesser degree Chicago school economics.) Ignoring the considerations of human behaviour is a characteristic of the Keynesian economics that has embraced the world for the last sixty years, and led to most of the problems we have economically, socially and politically.
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Thats why pure capitalists don't have their own country.
(Too busy, heh, nice one... )
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I don't get the correlation between the two statements, but just a reminder I did not say that capitalists are "too busy" to form countries. They have more rewarding things to do with their time. Forging a literally new nation is not possible -- all of the useful land is taken. Taking over an existing nation and changing it as dramatically as would be required to create a sort of "capitalist republic" would cost more money than any one person on earth has, and more than any group or company is likely to be willing to spend. And any sincere attempt to do so would almost certainly be made war upon by the United States (since we have about the only smart, useful, and freedom-minded people left in the world, most of the founders and chartered citizens of the new nation would likely be Americans, which would be an incredible drain on what little entreprenuership is left in the US) the UN (because we're "oppressing" the people who were starving in their own shit before we got there and now work as construction workers making 1000x what they were before, but only 1/10 what a construction worker in Denmark makes) global advocacy groups such as Cohen's bunch of loonies or Greenpeace or Amnesty, etc. The entire world would turn against such an endeavour so rapidly that it would make one's head spin.
So why bother? Capitalist enclaves exist all over the world, even in overtly communist environments like China and in the overtly socialist environs of Scandanavia. The Digital Revolution has rendered geography little more than an inconvenience. Given that the other motivations for starting a country -- glory of conquest, that sort of thing -- are not capitalistic endeavours and therefore unlikely to motivate an entreprenuer to do so, why would anyone in his right mind bother trying to go "full state" (or whatever you want to call it) ?
As I said before, having a real job with real challenges and attainable goals is a far more interesting and rewarding lifestyle than being another person nominally "in charge" of a particular patch of land.
I do think that over the next few decades there will be a trend towards capitalists concentrating in certain areas (this is the sort of thing envisioned by Davidson and Rees-Mogg in their book
The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age [which I highly recommend btw].) However, some of the destinations are likely to suprise most people, and I doubt that with the way the entire world is slowly descending into the natural consequences of the establishment of the modern nation-state, that any particular place will become the "fast and hard" choice. What will be seen is an extension of the "PT" movement, which has been around for decades and is gaining in popularity as portable income generation is made increasingly easy and state/social interference in the lives of entreprenuers continues to motivate. Sort of an
Atlas Shurgged without the Galt's Gulch.
Creating a country for such purposes, in the current sociopolitical environment, would be prohibitively expensive, offer little chance for recoup of investment, and be almost impossible to enforce on the people living in that area without resorting to exactly the sort of thing that motivated the people running such a project to do so in the first place.
That is why it isn't being done.
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If 20 guys like P. tried to run a country then you'd need an 'Al Capone' type of dude to turn them into a cohesive unit for nation building.
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Right, someone like a notorious, murderous criminal would be needed to help emulate what governments do. I agree wholeheartedly.
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I suppose pure capitalism is a form of anarchy, which would certainly explain its complete and utter failure at nation building.
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One cannot fail at something which one has not attempted. Otherwise, I am an abject failure at ballet, brain surgery, blow jobs, and many other things. I'm curious as to how you can just dismiss the perfectly valid examples of such projects as the previously-mentioned
TSG do. Given the degree of success that such projects have had, especially in the context of some of the environments in which they have been pulled off, is pretty impressive.
Phaedrus
