3 ms·
"Only with law, and courts, and government power to enforce property rights and contracts, can private enterprise work. Without that, capitalism cannot amount t
by nazgulnarsil 18y ago
"Only with law, and courts, and government power to enforce property rights and contracts, can private enterprise work. Without that, capitalism cannot amount to much--a system of economic organization controlled only by trust and private forces will not thrive."
totally unjustified. the writer is counting on the reader agreeing with this without close examination.
- mjtokelly 18y agoWhat if the phrase "government power" were left out? I think that 'enforcement' is the key concept here, rather than an assumption that it has to be a government doing the enforcing.
- nazgulnarsil 18y agoright but I think the author was hinging it on governmental forms of enforcement. most people take issue with the idea of private police and private courts, even though you can simply view the government as a private corporation that provides those services as a monopoly (and thus provides them poorly).
- gabrielroth 18y agoCan you point to a real-world counterexample -- a society with highly developed markets but without government-based rule of law?
- nazgulnarsil 18y agothere has been no opportunity in history for this to happen. It is only with modern cryptographic techniques and electronic banking that a true non-coercive economy is possible. seasteading should provide an opportunity to try it. If the free-market extremists such as myself are right, these communities should quickly outperform traditional governments. We'll see what happens then.
- russell 18y agoChina 10 years ago, maybe even now. Every society has laws, but rule of law requires that they be reliably and equitably imposed. Anytime you regularly have to resort to bribes and shakedowns from government official to get business permits and adjudication of conflicts, rule of law is on shaky ground.
- gabrielroth 18y agoYes, and the further China has moved toward an equitable legal system, the more developed its economy has become. Corruption and crime are checks on economic activity, just as Rosenfield's original assertion would suggest.
- likpok 18y agoJustification: if I can take your things without paying, why will I pay you? If you have to invest in security to make sure people don't steal your things, you are not investing in your business, which will retard growth.
- anamax 18y agoIs paying govt for security "investment"? It may be that some forms of govt security are superior to some forms of private security in some way, but that doesn't make govt security qualitatively different. It's still an expense.