No Responses to “Economics And Liberty”

1. Dsylexic Says:

   January 29th, 2009 at 1:48 pm

   No discussion of capitalism can be complete without mentioning the idea of property rights. If it were merely all about division of labour,slavery would work as well. The point that Marx et al do have (and it troubles me) is that property rights through out history has been not respected or enforced .The might is right rule applied in feudal society and we dont have a way out of this until atleast part of that historical injustice is redressed.
   I dont know how libertarians have addressed the problem.
   For eg.How can a poor man have any sympathy for capitalism if the ‘big industrialist’ who is now employing hundreds of people and generating jobs, began by obtaining the capital in the first place by loot and plunder of the poor man’s ancestors.
   Case in point: The USA. The capitalists of that country began by looting native american wealth,gold and land.They were helped ,in addition,by slavery . Slavery and looted capital cannot be the ethical foundations of a capitalistic nation.
   The whole of East India company’s equity was venture-capital financed by the Queen’s share of the loot from the american colonies. (attributed to Keynes observation in one of his essays)
   Try selling capitalism to the ex colonies of Europe in Africa.Devastated and ruined,these nations are easy prey to the false promises of social and economic egalitarianism -even at the cost of freedom.It would rankle them when the white man’s descendants now choose to preach capitalism to them. It is all well to be in favor of meritocracy when you have all the advantages of the system. Another case in point: -The YFE types in India who dont want reservations.But they are being hypocritcal when they still want govt funded colleges.Why should their ‘so called merit based’ education be funded by my maid’s tax money?. It is easy for the so called urban elite to ask for no reservations-since they hold most of the aces in a english language based competitive exam system-but they dont see a problem with Govt spending other people’s tax money(read disadvanted people) on their own education.

2. deadmanoncampus Says:

   January 29th, 2009 at 7:24 pm

   Dude,
   Exactly! You have hit the nail on the head. I have been thinking of this issue for several years. I wanted some enemy of Capitalism to raise this point to me, but not even a single person asked me this question in all these years. I can’t believe that this obvious point hasn’t struck anyone. I haven’t read any libertarian theorist who deals with this issue other than Murray Rothbard. Read his article “The Spooner -Tucker Doctrine-An Economists View” in the book “Egalitarianism-As a Revolt against Nature” and “Property and Criminality” in the book “The Ethics Of Liberty”. Both the books are available from http://www.mises.org You just have to go to the literature section and search. I have slightly dealt with this issue in my blog “Morality and Capitalism”. http://www.reasonforliberty.com/philosophy/morality-and-capitalism.html Ayn Rand claims to be the first person to give a moral basis to Capitalism, but she says nothing about it. Ludwig Von Mises too seems to want to protect the existing property titles and is against land reforms and all. George Reisman slightly mentions it, but is of the opinion that the advantages of taking part in a division of labor society is immense for a descendant of a feudal serf, hence we shouldn’t care much about the issue. Rothbard says that the property of the looters should be given back to the descendants of the victims, but this point confuses me a bit because it is almost impossible to trace back all property titles. Moreover, it seems very difficult to implement because seizing land from the descendants of the looters and giving it to the descendants of the victims would reduce incentives for both to produce. People don’t give up willingly the property which they have a psychological attachment to, and I think such land reforms would be horrible. As you said, it might be true that once property was acquired through wrong means, but this argument by no means prove that abolishing the property rights or the redistribution of the present property would help the poor in any way. Quite the contrary! Property rights are very important and essential to a Capitalistic society. It is also to be said that such past inequities don’t necessarily have to lead to the present situation, like the blacks and dalits being poor. If there was a free market, these people would have had the opportunity to go up the ladder and be rich. But, what we have is not a free market, but a hampered market which has prevented these classes from wealth accumulation through various regulations like minimum wage laws and all.The YFI is certainly being hypocritical in their opposition to reservations. I have dealt with their hypocrisy in my article, “Hypocrisy of Anti-reservation activists”. http://www.reasonforliberty.com/education/hypocrisy-of-anti-reservation-activists.html The fact that looting existed in the past doesn’t mean that we should let it exist in the present. The only way for the Dalits and Blacks to get out of their poverty is through a free, uncontrolled, unregulated market.

3. renegade_division Says:

   January 29th, 2009 at 8:03 pm

   The problem with YFE is that they don’t care much about govt funded education, in fact had given the right direction they would have opposed govt funding of colleges to start with.

   Their main opposition is reservations, but then to make a strong political presence they had to say that they have a “better” plan for the poor students, and that is free education/subsidized education etc etc for all.

   Another problem with faulty economic thinking is distortion of logic through common sense illusions via brainwashing.
   My best example in this regard, and soon I am going to write a short story about it is this:

   A student comes to his Physics teacher after the Columbia shuttle disaster and says ‘Sir I have found the perfect solution to solving these problems of falling things. We must abolish the law of gravity, if we remove the law of gravity, and punish everyone who allows any object to fall towards the earth, this will reduce the losses by a great degree, the extra money saved will be HUGE and will stimulate the economy thereby helping all the people’

   Right when you say things like ‘When you abolish the law of gravity the benefits will greatly outweigh the effort taken, and it will create more social prosperity’ it becomes difficult to argue with this kind of stupid logic.
   YFE and other people who support public education have the same argument, I try to explain them that by using forcefully extracted private money, those many number of businesses will never be able to start, but then they say that by teaching everyone, these kids will be able to get at least some job, then make a LOT of MONEY, and then creating more prosperity for everyone and more jobs to the rest of his batch mates.
   And now he thinks that he has out smarted you with his economic analysis. And the truth is that without readily available facts and figures you can’t explain him this stuff.
   Another similar discussion which happened with me and my boss, where he honestly believed that outsourcing jobs to India, and China makes people more unemployed, and the current recession is caused by that(he is Indian too), when I tried to explain him the logic that when a laptop making company sends his laptop manufacturing to China, it reduces the cost of the laptop by half, that means more businesses are profitable, companies’ profit margin has increased and now more people are benefitted and companies can hire more people.
   To which he simply said “well how many new jobs are created by that, like 1 job for every 10 jobs lost?” Since I had no figures at hand(coz nobody collects them) I couldn’t answer it, though I tried to give the same example for 20th century movement against machines using the same argument, but machines created a lot more jobs than they took away, but it was all futile.  His common sense seems to show him that job of a software programmer disappeared when it was handed to someone in India.

4. Unpretentious Diva Says:

   January 29th, 2009 at 8:09 pm

   No discussion of capitalism can be complete without mentioning the idea of property rights.

   
   There can be Only one right, and that is the right to life, and it encompasses every other right.
   Expanding the sky of rights doesn’t help the individual yet, it helps the state to make Individuals slave.
   Property right is not like a man has some birth right on some property or thing/object or service.
   Property right means he has freedom of action, to create, produce or earn an object/property/thing/service.
   Property right certainly does not mean any birth right for anything.
   As for example, the four sons of a rich man are not rich by birth because they have any sort of right over their father’s property.
   it is their father’s will to provide his sons the benefits of his property, but it is his optional right, he may simply disallow all or any of his son to enjoy his own earned property and suggest them to make their own property, earn and possess it. it is His will to share his property with sons or with someone else.

   Since property right is just a consequence of Right to Life, hence if some state government try to impliment it as right to education or employment or health care for citizen than it is rouge, corrupt idea, it is idea of making Individuals slave.
   There can be no health care or education right as health care and education or home, or any such other facilities are Services/property.
   One can get education only if someone works to educate him, if education becomes right, then the person working to provide education will become slave. One can get and possess a home because someone builds it and provides it. if right to own a home becomes a birth right, than it is rouge idea of making the workers slaves.
   health care is possible because doctors, nurses etc works for it.
   if health care is a birth right, than it is slavery for doctors nurses etc.

   Thus, there can be only one right, and that is Right to life.
   
   Bal Gangadhar Tilak put it promptly. “Swaraj Mera Janm Siddh Adhikar Hai” He did not mean that britishers should leave india and there should be HE to rule on India.
   he meant as a human Self Governance is his birth right, that is, he denounces supremacy of any other government over his individual existence. That denouncement of government included any foreign government, or Indian government including the present government. he was extreme support of Liberty of Individual existence.
   Self-Governance or right to life includes all consequential rights, of which property right is main as without it, no other consequential right of life is possible.. yet property right only means the freedom of action to earn and possess and hold a property/thing/object/service.

5. Galeo Rhinus Says:

   January 30th, 2009 at 10:52 am

   Looks like you were attempting to convince yourself of this argument rather than make a case.

   I am assuming you are a defender of free markets - but are using the term capitalism - since you view them as the same.

   There are several areas where your arguments get mangled up - especially because the premise of your arguments are based on a discourse that is dominated by European thought.

   Consider the following premise and see if it makes sense to you:
   Marxism or Capitalism - both fundamentally contradict liberty and have taken turns in killing free markets.

   While capital (stolen gold from the america’s) became the fuel that fed Europe’s initial growth, the same capital quickly bought favourable legislations.  In English varying laws were passed in the 1700s when the “capitalists” lobbied the parliament to create laws that would force English weavers - who were employees of these capitalists - to delliver quality products on time.  Failure to comply could result in public floggings or sometimes even public hangings.  Remember - these were “laws” specifically created by the “capitalists.”

   Modern America is no different - where government organizations primarily work as an extention of many “capital” intensive companies.  For example, the FDA as an extention of the half dozen drug companies.

   The question you should ask yourself is whether any nation in the world was succesful in implementint a polity that allowed free markets to thrive?
   A place where neither the government nor the capitalists derived power over production or trade.  

   The answer might surprise you.

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