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>>Robert Murphy, an associate scholar at the Mises Institute, which promotes the teaching of Austrian economics, wrote in 2010 that idealists like Mr. Fresco we
by wavefunction 9y ago
>>Robert Murphy, an associate scholar at the Mises Institute, which promotes the teaching of Austrian economics, wrote in 2010 that idealists like Mr. Fresco were “wrong to blame our current dysfunctional world on capitalism or money per se.” Instead, Mr. Murphy wrote, if property rights were respected by all, “humanity would become fantastically wealthy.”
I read this sort of claim by the 'serious and sober' and realize they're even more gassed up than the 'idealists.'
- dragonwriter 9y agoAustrian Economics is an ideology; if one is dividing the world into "serious and sober" and "idealists", Austrian-school adherents are emphatically the latter rather than the form.
- wavefunction 9y agoI'm commenting more that one idealistic notion is presented as academic and a settled fact while the other is presented as, well, idealist. I suppose the notion of 'all humans respecting property rights' sounds just as fantastical to me as the utopias promised by other philosophies.
- afsina 9y agoI think this is the relevant piece: https://mises.org/library/venus-needs-some-austrians https://mises.org/library/venus-needs-some-austrians I think Murphy is quite right.
- xenu101 9y agoI quote: "What I am arguing, then, is that in a truly free world, where we all respected each other's property, the rise in living standards would be analogous to our hypothetical boy who moves from the streets of Calcutta to the suburbs of Maine. In that fantastic world, giving someone a "free" heart surgery might be as cheap as giving someone a piece of gum in our current society." His whole article is a huge non-sequitur and I'm deeply concerned that these "Austrians" are regarded as "experts" whereas someone like Fresco is considered a Don Quixote.
- afsina 9y agoHe (and Fresco) is of course talking hypothetically but as he continues: "If such a world really is technologically possible, we should cut the socialist dreamers some slack. Their fault lies not with their vision, but with their plans for achieving it." From what I understand Murphy claim that if such a dream is technologically possible their's is not the correct way. I guess main point is that sooner or later Fresco's idea will require coercion and enter the pitfalls of central calculation issues, where as property rights approach does not.
- EGreg 9y agoProperty rights certainly requires central calculation and coersion, too. Look at all the activities undertaken in the name of copyright and patent enforcement. This is "property rights". Look at cable companies suing cities to not give citizens fast broadband, while they maintain their cartel. This is central enforcement. A company like Apple can be privately owned. The app store is privately owned. Facebook, Google, Amazon are all privately owned. Disneyworld is privately owned. The only reason you don't see central enforcement on a huger scale in privately owned fiefdoms is because so far in the real world, people have collectively banded together to have democracies. Property is a monopoly right to EXCLUDE others from use of a resource. It can range from excluding YOU from changing the color of your FB profile to exclding you from peeing in some woods. The real relevant thing is how the thing is governed. Democratically (eg employee-run) or command and control (top-down)? These corporations are technically owned by shareholders in a public stock market. Collective ownership is a major feature of socialism. Alaska has one of the first basic income checks in the world as the citizens are considered all shareholders in the natural resources of the state. This "private ownership vs The Government" is a red herring. Governments exist in all organizations. Rights are those things the organizations recognize as worthy of defending with force, if the peasants are lucky, they codify a consistent policy and enforce them.
- ue_ 9y ago> Property rights certainly requires central calculation and coersion, too. Property rights also have dubious origins, and the concept deserves to be questioned, along the lines of asking what right does one man have to appropriate a certain piece of land and defend it with violence? And what of the concept of rights in general? If one wants an alternative view of the concept of property versus possession, it's worth reading Proudhon's What Is Property?, which is a thrilling and informative read of the anarchist view, despite being a 19th century work. https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/proudhon/property/ https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/proudho...
- barrkel 9y agoI think Murphy is right in so far as in the aggregate humanity will be fantastically wealthy, but the distribution will be such that almost everybody will only subsist due to the benevolence of the wealthy.
- rbanffy 9y agoLet's send them to Venus then.