Greetings,
I'm new to posting here but I've been reading along on and off for quite a while.
I'm writing my thesis and was asked by my promotors to also include a chapter on externalities in an absolutely free market, since they feel that I haven't adequately covered the subject in my proposal papers about how a free unregulated market is supposed to cope with for example factories in one location polluting water supplies around the globe or thinning out fish supplies on which others might depend. The main thing here perhaps is that it is impossible to point out which particular factory polluted which particular fish which lead to poisoning a food chain and possibly another person a few years later who ate a different fish that was higher up the ladder and still had concentrations of the pollution in its system.
Another one of the top of my head; when I build a house somewhere and 5 years later somebody builds a chemical plant right next to it on land which they rightfully bought and what have you, but which might or might not cause increased likelihood of cancer and which severly decreases my property value, how do we go from there (not the same as buying the land with the factory already there, it came after you paid the full price for the property). Or what if an airport opens nearby causing excessive noise, etc. What about sour rain passing over, or nearby farmers shooting up thunderstorms which maybe ends up with you having less rain. Perhaps ludicrous examples but I feel that there is and should be a good way of refuting them, I'm just not sure on how to do this in a sufficiently satisfying manner.
To be clear, I'm not the one that needs convincing, I'm as die-hard laissez-faire as it gets, but I don't know a good way to go about really tackling the problem clearly and properly instead of just saying "the market will fix it and that's all you need to know", because that's not going to cut it and I can't really blame them to expect something more.
I searched the forum but I can't seem to find that much precise information about externalities as such (possibly looked over some of it, please feel free to direct me to other threads as well or copy-paste something here if you don't feel like typing something out, although it would be very appreciated).
So I wonder, what are people's thoughts on externalities here?
Edit: a bit off topic, but I don't want to spam new topics all over the forum: I sometimes run into some problems when I on the one hand say that there should be little to no taxation, but people reply by asking how I am then going to uphold a military against foreign invasion of organized states and how the courts and police will be paid for.
"Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy."
http://www.last.fm/group/Anti-Socialism
Christophe:I'm writing my thesis and was asked by my promotors to also include a chapter on externalities in an absolutely free market, since they feel that I haven't adequately covered the subject in my proposal papers about how a free unregulated market is supposed to cope with for example factories in one location polluting water supplies around the globe or thinning out fish supplies on which others might depend. The main thing here perhaps is that it is impossible to point out which particular factory polluted which particular fish which lead to poisoning a food chain and possibly another person a few years later who ate a different fish that was higher up the ladder and still had concentrations of the pollution in its system.
I have such little patience for critics who accuse the market of creating externalities.
The government is nothing but one giant externality.
A crack head over doses, I pay for it.
G.W. Bush starts a war, I pay for it.
Someone lights their house on fire, I pay for it.
Someone loses their job, I pay for it.
Someone steals a car, I pay for it.
General Motors loses money, I pay for it.
Property rights is the mechanism humans have created to deal with externalities, so its no surpise that the government, which always ignores property rights, does nothing but create externalities.
Peace
Jon Irenicus: Do you think consequentialist reasoning is not intuitive whereas its deontological counterpart is?
Do you think consequentialist reasoning is not intuitive whereas its deontological counterpart is?
Indeed. A consequentialistic argument appeals to praxeological theorems whereas a deontological argument appeals to our intuitive moral code.
If I wrote it more than a few weeks ago, I probably hate it by now.
I will have to ask what you mean by deontological reasoning at this point, because it's not exactly clear. Consequentialism is intuitionist at its core, as it is based on the intuition that consequences are all that matter morally - and one wishes to know how one plans, precisely, to divorce the intentions behind an action (which is where deontology is rooted) from its consequences.
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
nirgrahamUK: I dont know how people that believe that 'violence against innocents' is a defensible position can have any stake to a highground of ideological strength, or argumentative openness. the very opposite.
I dont know how people that believe that 'violence against innocents' is a defensible position can have any stake to a highground of ideological strength, or argumentative openness. the very opposite.
The word "innocent" is important in that passage. Almost no one believes that the implication of "violence against innocents" is a popularly defensible position. However, different ideological positions imply a different application of the word "innocent". As an example, a statist would believe that a tax evader is not innocent whereas an anti-statist would believe that a tax evader is innocent. And, therefore, you may believe that enforced taxation does imply "violence against innocents" whereas others many believe that enforced taxation does not imply "violence against innocents".
a murderer can believe that anyone he wants to murder is not 'innocent'. what does that demonstrate? aside from that some people are wrong about things. it is so convenient to be wrong about things when they let you pretend that you arent being wrong
what exactly is a tax-evader guilty of pray tell? guilty of being 'bad' prey....its laughable on its face. why do you credit statist with tenable positions. they arent even tenable let alone convincing....
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
nirgrahamUK: . . . why do you credit statist . . . positions . . . they arent . . . convincing . . .
. . . why do you credit statist . . . positions . . . they arent . . . convincing . . .
If they are not convincing, why do most individuals subscribe to them?
a combination of not being made to examine the coherence of their arguments. like people believing the Broken Window fallacy, par example.
also, there are incentives for net tax consumers. (i said net because I want to stay on Lam's good side :-o )
also liberalism('progressivism) is a mental disorder akin to mass transference of childhood psychology .. or so i'm told.....
Jon Irenicus: I will have to ask what you mean by deontological reasoning at this point, because it's not exactly clear.
I will have to ask what you mean by deontological reasoning at this point, because it's not exactly clear.
The term "deontology" may be ambiguous in this situation. I meant to imply that "deontological reasoning" is reasoning that merely appeals to our intuitive moral code. As an example, the judgment that "murder is morally wrong" merely because it is inherently emotionally repulsive would be "deontological reasoning".
If a less ambiguous or more appropriate term exists, tell me.
Jon Irenicus: Consequentialism is intuitionist at its core, as it is based on the intuition that consequences are all that matter morally
Consequentialism is intuitionist at its core, as it is based on the intuition that consequences are all that matter morally
Why is that an intuition?
Jon Irenicus: - and one wishes to know how one plans, precisely, to divorce the intentions behind an action (which is where deontology is rooted) from its consequences.
- and one wishes to know how one plans, precisely, to divorce the intentions behind an action (which is where deontology is rooted) from its consequences.
I did not think that deontology relied on intention. From Wikipedia.org:
"Deontological ethics or deontology (from Greek δέον, deon, "obligation, duty"; and -λογία, -logia) is an approach to ethics that holds that acts are inherently good or evil, regardless of the consequences of the acts."
Yes, the "good" or "evil" (or in less loaded terms, justifiability) is of the intentions of the act. The paradigmatic form of deontology - Kantian ethics - is anything but intuitionist, being based on negative demonstrations of a sort to "prove" itself, so to speak, and is in that regard far more praxeological than consequentialism. Hoppe's arg. ethics, whether or not it succeeds, is also more praxeological than consequentialism. Consequentialism is fine and all, but as a form of ethics needs to supply a rationale for its core principle.
And as for consequentialism being intuition-based, how is its core tenet not an intuition? I've certainly not seen any proof that consequences and solely consequences matter, though I've seen it asserted. Personally I am not in favour of a hard divide between consequentialism and deontology; it's a useful conceptual distinction but both matter and I don't think one can carve an action up in that way for ethical purposes.
nirgrahamUK: a combination of not being made to examine the coherence of their arguments. like people believing the Broken Window fallacy, par example.
The question that remains is: Do you believe that those fallacies can be utilitarianistically/consequentialistically refuted via praxeological theory and expected wants or do you believe that those fallacies can be deontologically/morally refuted via intuition or some other method?
If you want to merely use intuitive moral arguments, how would you persuade some one to believe that taxation is morally incorrect?
nirgrahamUK: also, there are incentives for net tax consumers. (i said net because I want to stay on Lam's good side :-o )
Those incentives exist only in the short-term. And, the substantiation of the claim in the previous sentence would be inherently utilitarian/consequentialistic.
nirgrahamUK: also liberalism('progressivism) is a mental disorder akin to mass transference of childhood psychology .. or so i'm told.....
Democracy breeds child-like adults . . . or so i am told . . .
I. Ryan:That implies that that conclusions of deontological reasoning and the conclusions of consequentialist reasoning are correct because such a difference could be explained via the assumption that one of those sides have reasoned incorrectly.
Many times they differ from one another, so they certainly both cannot be correct, I don't see how/why one could be an indirect form of the other. Unless some people evolved with an incorrect "moral code" and some with a correct one, but that doesn't seem plausible.
I. Ryan:All deontological reasoning is merely indirect consequentialistic reasoning because evolutionary processes (which are inherently consequentialistic) imputed to the human mind the "moral code" that all deontological reasoning appeals to.
Thats an interesting theory, one could chastise someone who violates the "moral code" as being "Counter Evolutionary!" But do all people even have the same " moral code" at all?