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What the free-market crowd can never account for - here, or anywhere - is how the market is supposed to resolve issues that are not of direct, immediate interes

by alexqgb 10y ago

What the free-market crowd can never account for - here, or anywhere - is how the market is supposed to resolve issues that are not of direct, immediate interest to self-serving buyers or sellers, but which are of massive and justifiable interest to third parties outside the transaction. Case in point: If a seller in one country can lower the costs of a good shipped to another country by scrapping responsible waste management in favor of polluting the commons (i.e., places where individual property rights claims are difficult to press), then "the magic of the market" is likely to increase - not decrease - the amount of pollution generated by the trade. What libertarians don't like to admit is that they see free markets as more than ideal mechanisms for preserving efficient economies. They also see them as efficient sources of good and just governance. Like all belief systems, faith in the quality of governance supplied by free markets, while rational and well-supported to a point, can be taken to counter productive extremes where it maintenance stops operating like empiricism, and starts to function is ways indistinguishable from fundamentalists religions. Not sure how many sensible knowledgeable people want this to be the dominant force in guiding global network security.

CuriousSkeptic 10y ago
As a nuance though. one could agree with the notion of negative externalities naturally occurring in a free market economy (perhaps in a total laissez faire environment the affected third parties could retaliate in kind though) but disagree with the form of policy to address it. In principle the market should be able to select appropriate fixes if the costs are internalized, but governments have a tendency to focus less on the internalize costs part, and more on selecting fixes. Pragmatically it might be the best way forward, but in principle it goes against free market resource optimizations and instead becomes a gamble that whatever fix is made policy actually do have an impact on the problem, and doesn't make things worse.
- alexqgb 10y ago
  Pragmatically it might be the best way forward, but in principle it goes against free market resource optimizations This is a pretty good argument the absolute value of principle, tbh For what it's worth, I tend to see principles like map; useful - even indispensable - in many situations, that are nevertheless abstractions and therefor imperfect guides to actual reality. Use maps, yes, but avoid mistaking them - or any system of symbols - for the things they represent (i.e., the map is not the territory). Indeed, principle is a form of proxy wisdom for the young and inexperienced. It's better than nothing, but probably not enough to save you from at least a few episodes of hard reckoning. Assuming these don't get you killed, the places where principle doesn't serve are the ones where mature judgement develops. Granted, there's a point where this doesn't serve either, but that's okay too since mortality always wins in the end.

by alexqgb 10y ago

CuriousSkeptic 10y ago

As a nuance though. one could agree with the notion of negative externalities naturally occurring in a free market economy (perhaps in a total laissez faire environment the affected third parties could retaliate in kind though) but disagree with the form of policy to address it. In principle the market should be able to select appropriate fixes if the costs are internalized, but governments have a tendency to focus less on the internalize costs part, and more on selecting fixes. Pragmatically it might be the best way forward, but in principle it goes against free market resource optimizations and instead becomes a gamble that whatever fix is made policy actually do have an impact on the problem, and doesn't make things worse.

alexqgb 10y ago
Pragmatically it might be the best way forward, but in principle it goes against free market resource optimizations This is a pretty good argument the absolute value of principle, tbh For what it's worth, I tend to see principles like map; useful - even indispensable - in many situations, that are nevertheless abstractions and therefor imperfect guides to actual reality. Use maps, yes, but avoid mistaking them - or any system of symbols - for the things they represent (i.e., the map is not the territory). Indeed, principle is a form of proxy wisdom for the young and inexperienced. It's better than nothing, but probably not enough to save you from at least a few episodes of hard reckoning. Assuming these don't get you killed, the places where principle doesn't serve are the ones where mature judgement develops. Granted, there's a point where this doesn't serve either, but that's okay too since mortality always wins in the end.