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Re: Jeff Tucker on The Peter Schiff Show

John James — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 11:54:57 GMT

Marko:
It is not possible to be overzelaous in anti-statism.

It is if it leads you to make statements and arguments about the world that are more or less untrue. Which is what I find Tucker ends up doing much more than anyone else i've seen.

Re: Jeff Tucker on The Peter Schiff Show

Frederique Bastiao — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 03:28:08 GMT

Bandwidth and HDD space are scarce, you need plenty of both to offer anyone a social network account. Tucker's comparison to gasoline is logically feasible.

Re: Jeff Tucker on The Peter Schiff Show

Em_ptySkin — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 03:00:38 GMT

I wonder if Tucker has read my blog post on this.

Re: Jeff Tucker on The Peter Schiff Show

Marko — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 01:54:02 GMT

... I think he is overzealous in his anti-statism...

It is not possible to be overzelaous in anti-statism.

Re: Jeff Tucker on The Peter Schiff Show

John James — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 21:52:20 GMT

Did anyone listen to this? You can still hear it at the link in the second post.

As usual I agree with pretty much everything Tucker brings up, but also not unfamiliar is that I think he is overzealous in his anti-statism and goes too far in his examples and "what ifs". Throughout the interview he is constantly comparing the digital world with the real world, and talking about how we have all these services being offered for free (he uses the example of social media like Facebook and now G+) and how these companies don't want our money, they want our attention". In this interview he makes the claim that this is the result of the lack of regulation and government interference in the digital industry, and compares it to other real-world physical industries where the state is involved and points out how stifled they are.

What surprises me is that he completely neglects the fundamental difference between the two worlds: scarcity. Which is actually quite surprising, as he's certainly aware of its implications. In fact, he even spends a couple minutes in the beginning of the interview talking about how "[scarcity] is the purpose of the market" and "you have to economize on everything and the only really rational way to do that is through the price system". But then just a few minutes later he's claiming that if the state weren't involved in setting energy policy, gasoline may be given away for free. And before you can assume he's just embellishing to make a point, he follows by saying that "you can laugh about that and say 'well that's ridiculous, that would never happen'...well, there are two companies clamering to try to give me social media..."

Not 5 minutes after he makes the case that scarcity is not only the reason but the purpose of the market and price system's existence, he claims that a scarce high-demand physical commodity is comparable to a digital social media service.

As I said, I don't disagree that government stifles innovation and economic development and makes the world poorer. And I also do not disagree that this is made evident in comparisons of industries with more government intervention to those with less. But to claim that the abundance and low and even a complete lack of prices in the digital world is the result of simply laissez faire markets allowed to function, is going way too far.

Re: Jeff Tucker on The Peter Schiff Show

Nielsio — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:55:23 GMT

This link leads you directly to the interview (the above link leads you to the full show), and has a download button also:

LINK

Jeff Tucker on The Peter Schiff Show

John James — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:32:38 GMT

I'm surprised this wasn't up on the blog or somewhere, but Jeff Tucker was a guest on The Peter Schiff Show this past Friday. The full episode can still be downloaded at SchiffRadio.com until tomorrow or you can click the image below.