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Well, I disagree with David Graeber on the very nature of money and exchange, so take that as you will. I'm well aware of the argument though. I don't think mo

Well, I disagree with David Graeber on the very nature of money and exchange, so take that as you will. I'm well aware of the argument though. I don't think most economists have ever argued that markets exist outside frameworks of property rights and rules of trade. And while these things have often been laid out by governments, it does not necessarily mean that they always are, or always must be (where we take "government" to signify a usually-geographically-bounded entity with the monopoly of force.) Just the same, money has often been issued by governments, but does not necessarily mean that only governments can issue or create money. Markets exist wherever trade exists, and are shaped by governments - sometimes well, sometimes badly, and always within certain constraints of reality. As pertains to the supposed advantage of government support of industry - take a closer look at China. The most dynamic sectors of the economy there - in assembly and manufacturing - have been the least directly subsidized and encouraged. The big State Owned Enterprises, in steel, concrete, and other heavy industry insulated from competition, are the most saddled with debt and are not innovative and dynamic. The main effect of their subsidy to these industries is philanthropize everybody's consumption of their products. Sucks for the Chinese taxpayer, but everyone else gets cut-price goods. And you'll note that, even after getting "pseudo-monopolies" on various economic sectors, prices in those sectors have kept falling. The "drive-out-competitors-then-raise-prices" drama never seems to appear - and it's no surprise, because these companies are competing with each other.

sprafa 10y ago
Is there any example of property rights existing without the monopoly of force by a government ?
- snrplfth 10y ago
  I would say yes, historically and presently in various "unowned" regions like international waters and more importantly in "cross-border" exchanges where parties to a trade generate some system of property trust due to the fact that recourse to the government of the "other" country is impossible. (Here we get into the thorny question of whether self-defending individuals/organizations are themselves governments, and so forth.) But that's not the main point that most economists are making (except the rather unusual anarcho-capitalists like Rothbard and the like.) The point is that there are property rights that are more or less in accordance with certain aspects of reality, and attempts by governments (or indeed private actors) to enforce property rights at odds with physical and informational reality is going to cause serious problems. For example, if a system of property rights says that nobody can own title to exclusive use of land or water, then I've set up a system where the inevitability of needing to physically occupy some land or water conflicts with the impossibility of acquiring stable property in it. Conversely, if a system of property rights says that the first person to speak and claim a phrase owns all rights to it forever (like some super-copyright), then it's just made normal language extremely cumbersome. The primary point of economists in the whole Menger-Hayek-Mises-Hazlitt meta-tradition is that while a government of some kind is probably inevitable, it should recognize that appropriate property rights depend on certain properties of the things themselves, and not arbitrarily defined by the government. (This is a sort of compact way of saying "property rights need to be defined differently between private goods, public goods, club goods and pool goods, due to their actual physical differences.)
  - sprafa 10y ago
    International waters are still subject to the rule of law of "states" that exist on land. Unless you plan to live your whole life on sea you have to dock somewhere. Also these people are only respecting the rules they have already interiorised from living in developed economies. If you look at history, individual private property does not show up as something innate. Tribes owned areas and fought for them, but they didn't have much individual property within themselves (neither did they have barter economies).
    - snrplfth 10y ago
      International waters are sort of a middle-space, where the precedence of property arrangements is not as fixed as on land or in territorial waters. As such it's a way of seeing systems of property at work in a vaguely "less government" sense. (And certainly there are enough people who've advocated some living-always-on-the-ocean for precisely these reasons.) It's true that people interiorize rules to a certain degree. And to be sure, no set of property rights should be beyond question. However, once you get up beyond a certain small society size (a few hundred people, really) you need some kind of property right to distinguish whose stuff is whose - since you'll soon start making trades between strangers and middlemen who are not bound by familial/kin ties, or reciprocal gifting arrangements, or honor systems. The point is that you need appropriate systems of property for various things. Apologies if this is just repeating what you already know, but consider, say, clothes. They're rivalrous (only one of us can wear them at the same time) and excludable (I can easily stop you from also wearing them, and can tell when you're trying to do so.) So, it's a "private good". On the other hand, a broadcast radio station is not rivalrous (you tuning in does not prevent me from doing so) and not excludable (I can't really tell if you're tuning in, and can't stop you specifically from doing so.) Therefore it's a "public good". These are material realities that imply certain (different) property rights - and attempting to ignore that fact is likely to lead to all kinds of problems. The point of theories of private property is to try to come to grips with these realities, and to acknowledge them in the creation of property rights systems - whether mono-centrically with a government, or poly-centrically with various contracts and arbitrations. The mistake I think Graeber and others make is to sort-of assume that any arrangement of property rights that we can imagine, can be successfully imposed on material/informational reality.
sprafa 10y ago
Also, this is very good. This is what I come to HN for. Good to awesome discussions between smart people. I wouldn't say subsidies are a good thing, that's not what I'm saying at all. I do believe that market forces exist and that they have good effects. The limits of my language and economics knowledge fail me here, but I agree that competition is a good thing and that "state picks the winners" is a bad thing. Bad and good being defined in terms of efficiency and higher productivity. But the idea that free trade is "awesomely good for everyone" which is pushed or that markets can exist without governments or that a "perfect market" would have no government intervention seems to have no basis in reality, as far as I've read. Markets and governments exist in a symbiosis that can have good or bad effects, and there's increasing knowledge on how to manage the relationship so that most people in most places benefit. The arguments towards Total Free Trade with No Protectionism and Free Movement of Capital (capitalized because those are the ideas that I have qualms about) seems to ignore, in my opinion, the following things: On No Protectionism: Masses of workers might lose their jobs and be unable to retrain, creating a huge structural unemployment problem. On Free Capital: Quoting Jonathan Goldsmith talks about in his segment on Charlie Rose, if you allow for capital to move freely, you brake the contract between labor and capital that's been made through tremendous conflict and compromise in the West. Capital can manufacture goods outside of the country and reimport it, breaking the fundamental agreement of sharing of profits that allowed the West to become so good to live in during the 20th century. And that is the recipe for tremendous income inequality and the destruction of local manufacturing. On the Loss of Manufacturing: Vaclav Smil has said that "without manufacturing you have no middle-class" Basically Free Trade with No Protectionism seems to mean the destruction the local population's wellbeing in exchange for "economic growth" that benefits very few people at the top. The pieces are there if you want to connect them.
- snrplfth 10y ago
  Of course, I would agree that free trade and no protectionism is not good for every single person all the time - just in the same way that people whose jobs are automated, or simply do not exist any more due to changing demand, often find it difficult and hazardous to adjust. Sometimes people do get a bit carried away in presenting free trade as a winning proposition for all individuals all the time. But the primary counterargument is that attempts to restrain free trade generally a) reduce overall output and productivity b) give domestic producers a captive market and no incentive to improve c) incentivize smuggling and corruption in getting around barriers and d) cause local industry to fall behind and inevitably be overtaken in global markets even with domestic supports. On the free movement of capital, one notes that the US, for example, has a large "trade deficit". But what does this mean? Essentially, that US consumers are net exporters of dollars in trade for foreign goods. But where do these dollars go? Well, they come to the US as part of "capital account surplus" - that is, the movement of capital investment into the US. While the immediate impression is of "industry moving overseas", the US is in fact an enormous net destination of capital investment. ( http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/TMybFmTdp1I/AAAAAAAAOmc/UL33SjiWSOg/s1600/bop.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/TMybFmTdp1I/AAAAAAAAOm...) If they restricted the movement of capital, it would mean shutting out incoming capital investment, not keeping it from leaving. So what happened to manufacturing? In a word: automation. The US manufacturing sector is at an all-time high in terms of value produced, but it's quite true that it employs fewer people than it did during its heyday. Manufacturing didn't decline, it's just that people don't work there like they used to. ( https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/mfg1.jpg https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/mfg1.jpg ) This is what's felt as being "without manufacturing", but really it's just the automation of manufacturing, just like the automation of farming. This is overall a positive process, increasing productivity, but in the short-to-medium term it can be painful.

sprafa 10y ago

Is there any example of property rights existing without the monopoly of force by a government ?

snrplfth 10y ago
I would say yes, historically and presently in various "unowned" regions like international waters and more importantly in "cross-border" exchanges where parties to a trade generate some system of property trust due to the fact that recourse to the government of the "other" country is impossible. (Here we get into the thorny question of whether self-defending individuals/organizations are themselves governments, and so forth.) But that's not the main point that most economists are making (except the rather unusual anarcho-capitalists like Rothbard and the like.) The point is that there are property rights that are more or less in accordance with certain aspects of reality, and attempts by governments (or indeed private actors) to enforce property rights at odds with physical and informational reality is going to cause serious problems. For example, if a system of property rights says that nobody can own title to exclusive use of land or water, then I've set up a system where the inevitability of needing to physically occupy some land or water conflicts with the impossibility of acquiring stable property in it. Conversely, if a system of property rights says that the first person to speak and claim a phrase owns all rights to it forever (like some super-copyright), then it's just made normal language extremely cumbersome. The primary point of economists in the whole Menger-Hayek-Mises-Hazlitt meta-tradition is that while a government of some kind is probably inevitable, it should recognize that appropriate property rights depend on certain properties of the things themselves, and not arbitrarily defined by the government. (This is a sort of compact way of saying "property rights need to be defined differently between private goods, public goods, club goods and pool goods, due to their actual physical differences.)
- sprafa 10y ago
  International waters are still subject to the rule of law of "states" that exist on land. Unless you plan to live your whole life on sea you have to dock somewhere. Also these people are only respecting the rules they have already interiorised from living in developed economies. If you look at history, individual private property does not show up as something innate. Tribes owned areas and fought for them, but they didn't have much individual property within themselves (neither did they have barter economies).
  - snrplfth 10y ago
    International waters are sort of a middle-space, where the precedence of property arrangements is not as fixed as on land or in territorial waters. As such it's a way of seeing systems of property at work in a vaguely "less government" sense. (And certainly there are enough people who've advocated some living-always-on-the-ocean for precisely these reasons.) It's true that people interiorize rules to a certain degree. And to be sure, no set of property rights should be beyond question. However, once you get up beyond a certain small society size (a few hundred people, really) you need some kind of property right to distinguish whose stuff is whose - since you'll soon start making trades between strangers and middlemen who are not bound by familial/kin ties, or reciprocal gifting arrangements, or honor systems. The point is that you need appropriate systems of property for various things. Apologies if this is just repeating what you already know, but consider, say, clothes. They're rivalrous (only one of us can wear them at the same time) and excludable (I can easily stop you from also wearing them, and can tell when you're trying to do so.) So, it's a "private good". On the other hand, a broadcast radio station is not rivalrous (you tuning in does not prevent me from doing so) and not excludable (I can't really tell if you're tuning in, and can't stop you specifically from doing so.) Therefore it's a "public good". These are material realities that imply certain (different) property rights - and attempting to ignore that fact is likely to lead to all kinds of problems. The point of theories of private property is to try to come to grips with these realities, and to acknowledge them in the creation of property rights systems - whether mono-centrically with a government, or poly-centrically with various contracts and arbitrations. The mistake I think Graeber and others make is to sort-of assume that any arrangement of property rights that we can imagine, can be successfully imposed on material/informational reality.

sprafa 10y ago

Also, this is very good. This is what I come to HN for. Good to awesome discussions between smart people. I wouldn't say subsidies are a good thing, that's not what I'm saying at all. I do believe that market forces exist and that they have good effects. The limits of my language and economics knowledge fail me here, but I agree that competition is a good thing and that "state picks the winners" is a bad thing. Bad and good being defined in terms of efficiency and higher productivity. But the idea that free trade is "awesomely good for everyone" which is pushed or that markets can exist without governments or that a "perfect market" would have no government intervention seems to have no basis in reality, as far as I've read. Markets and governments exist in a symbiosis that can have good or bad effects, and there's increasing knowledge on how to manage the relationship so that most people in most places benefit. The arguments towards Total Free Trade with No Protectionism and Free Movement of Capital (capitalized because those are the ideas that I have qualms about) seems to ignore, in my opinion, the following things: On No Protectionism: Masses of workers might lose their jobs and be unable to retrain, creating a huge structural unemployment problem. On Free Capital: Quoting Jonathan Goldsmith talks about in his segment on Charlie Rose, if you allow for capital to move freely, you brake the contract between labor and capital that's been made through tremendous conflict and compromise in the West. Capital can manufacture goods outside of the country and reimport it, breaking the fundamental agreement of sharing of profits that allowed the West to become so good to live in during the 20th century. And that is the recipe for tremendous income inequality and the destruction of local manufacturing. On the Loss of Manufacturing: Vaclav Smil has said that "without manufacturing you have no middle-class" Basically Free Trade with No Protectionism seems to mean the destruction the local population's wellbeing in exchange for "economic growth" that benefits very few people at the top. The pieces are there if you want to connect them.

snrplfth 10y ago
Of course, I would agree that free trade and no protectionism is not good for every single person all the time - just in the same way that people whose jobs are automated, or simply do not exist any more due to changing demand, often find it difficult and hazardous to adjust. Sometimes people do get a bit carried away in presenting free trade as a winning proposition for all individuals all the time. But the primary counterargument is that attempts to restrain free trade generally a) reduce overall output and productivity b) give domestic producers a captive market and no incentive to improve c) incentivize smuggling and corruption in getting around barriers and d) cause local industry to fall behind and inevitably be overtaken in global markets even with domestic supports. On the free movement of capital, one notes that the US, for example, has a large "trade deficit". But what does this mean? Essentially, that US consumers are net exporters of dollars in trade for foreign goods. But where do these dollars go? Well, they come to the US as part of "capital account surplus" - that is, the movement of capital investment into the US. While the immediate impression is of "industry moving overseas", the US is in fact an enormous net destination of capital investment. ( http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/TMybFmTdp1I/AAAAAAAAOmc/UL33SjiWSOg/s1600/bop.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/TMybFmTdp1I/AAAAAAAAOm...) If they restricted the movement of capital, it would mean shutting out incoming capital investment, not keeping it from leaving. So what happened to manufacturing? In a word: automation. The US manufacturing sector is at an all-time high in terms of value produced, but it's quite true that it employs fewer people than it did during its heyday. Manufacturing didn't decline, it's just that people don't work there like they used to. ( https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/mfg1.jpg https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/mfg1.jpg ) This is what's felt as being "without manufacturing", but really it's just the automation of manufacturing, just like the automation of farming. This is overall a positive process, increasing productivity, but in the short-to-medium term it can be painful.