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Apple computers are higher quality? ROFL!!!

Otherwise, spot-on article. Laws are very "swipple"-- "stuff white people like".

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The problem with this article is that it thinks of regulations as intended to control behavior. Outside of the penal system, they're not. They're intended to prevent exploitative, non constructive situations.

Something like a landlord being able to give you a same day notice of raising your rent 100x and making it due at noon and taking possession of your property at 12:01PM if you haven't paid, then selling your stuff and re renting the place the next day at the original rent isn't just behavior on the part of the landlord that the government thinks is ethically wrong. It would be bad for society because it would effectively allow a situation where a perfectly steady productive member of society is turned into an impoverished, needy person.

It's a bad trade of short term exploitation over long term potential; the trade is only a positive to the exploiter, it's a disproportionate and obvious negative to the exploited and to society. That's the real societal motivation.

Broken or dangerous products and unsafe buildings are inefficient. They can easily cause problems much more costly than it would be to avoid the situation in the first place; and society benefits from avoiding them because it becomes more stable, safe, and trusted. The individuals who avoided those situations get to spend their money on something they want instead of fixing a stupid, avoidable problem that came about because of some selfish, short sighted other individual.

It's about the behavior of systems, not individuals.

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TGGP, yes people do tend to do that, but that doesn't make then non-hypocrites. It doesn't make their disingenuous argument valid. Most people who want lower taxes don't have the resources to manipulate the political process on a grand scale and lower taxes for themselves while raising taxes for others.

Manipulating the political process to favor yourself at the expense of others is not a libertarian tactic. When that manipulation rises to a certain level we get to call it something else. A term that most people who use it (on the right) do not understand what it actually means.

“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.” FDR

Are we there yet? Not for lack of trying.

People can call themselves anything they want to, but when they call themselves a term that supposedly mean something, some people (like George above) become confused. But then that is the objective.

Their objective isn't the open transparency that a free marketplace requires. Buyers of goods need to know what they are buying and sellers need to know what they will receive in exchange. Idea marketplaces need open transparency too. Obscuring that with secrecy is one thing, but obscuring it with lies is deception and fraud.

Any form of lying is a form of hypocrisy. Finding people who are willing to lie to themselves and everyone else and then hire them to spread those lies is no different than lying yourself. The wealthy do have the money to buy friends and even lying friends. They have the money to buy people who will agree with them no matter what kind of nonsense they are saying.

This is why power corrupts and why absolute power corrupts absolutely and why societies with corrupt governments will eventually fail. When the social structure that gathers the power of individuals together is hijacked and that power is used by the “leaders” to maintain power instead of maintaining the social structure, then eventually the social structure will collapse.

This particular thread started with a comment by mtravan that tweaked libertarians for putting out biased analyses of labor-employer negotiation asymmetries. The response was faux outrage (by a libertarian I presume) at being mocked and a complete ignoring of the substance of the argument. How does the libertarian economist deal with the effects of power asymmetry between employers and employees? Other than by ignoring it and pretending it doesn't exist?

I agree with you that much of the American population is deluded and inconsistent. Of course they are, they are being fed lies by the media. Lies bought and paid for by corporations and the wealthy, and those at the top of the social power structure who are willing to lie to stay there.

A population that is deluded and inconsistent results in a government that is deluded and inconsistent. I would rather have a government that was not deluded and inconsistent because I don't want to live in a world based on delusion and inconsistency. I appreciate that those who profit from the delusion and inconsistency of government want to keep it that way. I appreciate that much of the signaling that people do is to maintain the status quo level of delusion and inconsistency. That is why some non-libertarians call themselves libertarians, even when they are not. Then when they do non-libertarian things (government subsidies for themselves), they can still delude the “real” libertarians.

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Koch funded Ronald Bailey on internalizing carbon externalities.

I'm sure the Kochs want to pay less taxes. A lot of Americans do. Most Americans also don't want cutbacks in government programs (other than foreign aid and "waste, fraud and abuse"). The Kochs will be just fine without middle class entitlements, so it's not surprising that they're able to be consistent in their call for less spending and less taxes. I find it odd that you're making some accusation of hypocrisy or inconsistency though. The fraction of campaign expenditures coming from them is quite small, and as mentioned they advocate reducing the expenditures of "the government their campaign donations have bought and paid for" to a level consistent with their preferred lower tax rate. It's really the American people who are deluded and inconsistent ("rationally irrational").

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George, When people self-define themselves as Libertarian, who am I to disagree with them?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

I think you are making the "no true Scotsman fallacy"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Of course Robin only called himself “an economist who leans libertarian”, so my remarks are not addressed to him. He doesn't have the resources to do what those more powerful Lie-bertarians are doing. He just works for them.

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daedalus2u:

Just who are you calling a libertarian, exactly? It seems like you're bashing a make-believe version of a libertarian that exists only inside your head, because real libertarians don't believe in using campaign donations to direct force against others, and in fact, real libertarians do believe that all forms of illegitimate aggression, including air pollution, are open to redress in the courts of law.

I suggest you get yourself educated on what a libertarian actually is, because you have some pretty ill-conceived notions and I don't have time to bring you up to speed. I suggest you start here: http://mises.org

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Some useful background on regulation. I haven't had a chance to do more than skim the intro page, it's two free current books surveying the topic from the tobin project.

http://www.tobinproject.org...

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Begin sarcasm:

Yes the last I went to rich people's meeting we agreed that if we could hurt the poor trough such regulations, we could make their lives more desperate so the poor will be forced to do desperate things and work like slaves for us.

End sarcasm

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Ideally government regulations should focus on mitigating negative externalities. Actually, it really would be nice to see libertarians talk about negative externalities more, since, to me libertarianism can only be wishful thinking without a good answers about how to deal with externalities.

Anyway, lots of regulation is more about setting barriers to entry for special interest groups rather than any public good. Lobbying and interest politics capture regulatory systems pretty effectively.

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Yes mtravan, shame on you for using the term “tard” as a pejorative. The intellectually disabled are not responsible for the state they are in, and terms that use archaic names for the mentally disabled as insults are disrespectful to the mentally disabled.

It is not the case that Libertarians are intellectually disabled. Instead they are ethically disabled and morally disabled hypocrites. They pretend to favor individual rights, but they don't, they favor enriching themselves at everyone else's expense and then lie to cover it up. They especially lie to themselves.

Real Libertarians would pay the true costs of their activities and not try to externalize those costs onto others. Real Libertarians would demand a level playing field, not the one they have wildly tilted in their favor.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in how AGW is being dealt with, or rather not dealt with. Emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is changing the Earth's climate. That change will impose costs on some individuals. A real Libertarian approach would be for those who emit greenhouse gases be responsible for mitigating the effects of those greenhouse gases. What is the actual approach by those who claim to be Libertarian? Denialism; to simply deny that it is happening, lie about what the data says, lie about what scientists are saying, pay sycophants to spout what ever lies are convenient, pay to spread disinformation in the media, subsidize the election of politicians who will support their denialism, and pay to astro-turf political protests.

Real Libertarians would be willing to pay for in taxes the government that they have bought with their campaign donations. I think a better term would be Lie-bertarians because the essence of their philosophy is lying and self-delusion.

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Good point.

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Instead of trying to explain the source of ideas that you disagree with, why don't you apply your insights to explain the motivations behind ideas you favor?

Why would anyone be a libertarian, convinced that individuals are fully responsible for their behavior and life situations? Oh I don't know, maybe because that's true for high-status people and we don't want to take low status circumstances into account?

Let's try another one. Why would someone repeatedly make the counterintuitive claim that X is not about X and instead insist that everything in life s motivated by signaling concerns? Oh I don't know, maybe because they don't really care what's true or false and just want to signal how smart and novel they are?

I'm a genius!

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mtraven, you should have noted that your above comment to which I responded to was non-serious.

Stiglitz portrays the thinking which he is attacking as "standard economics". So he's not indicating that most texts on labor economics take his viewpoint.

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mtavern, sometime you post constructive critiques, but sometimes your posts are non-constructive and inflammatory. If you want to be engaged, I suggest being consistently civil.

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I notice that none of my serious critiques get any response around here. So I don't think it's me whose incapable of debate.

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that's not true.

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