Austrian Economics and the lazy welfare queen

[The Man]

So anyway, the thing I don't get about ancaps is the magical power they all seem to credit to the government. Apparently the whole reason actually existing capitalism has problems is because of government intervention of the marketplace - corporations bribing politicians and the like. Ok, well, anyone with two eyes can see that this happens on a daily basis. The problem is, the solution is asinine. Just get rid of government and the corruption will stop? Just because you've gotten rid of what you call government doesn't mean you've eliminated the use of force. Companies will just bribe each other to enforce each other's property, form trusts, and basically rule the same way governments did, except they won't be called governments.

And people say vote with your wallet. Well, fine. As far as the aspect of being a consumer goes, that's a reasonable solution to a certain extent. But you can only accomplish so much doing that, and as an employee you have basically no sway over the way the company you work for is run. You can make suggestions, but there's nothing ensuring that anyone will even listen to these suggestions, much less actually enact them. Granted, in a democratic workers' cooperative you'd have no chance of your ideas being enacted either, but you could at least express them and if they were popular enough there would be a chance of them being enacted. In capitalism the idea getting enacted basically depends on whether one arbitrary person in power likes it, and as this person may be a representative of the Peter Principle or the Dilbert Principle there is no guarantee this person has any idea what they are doing.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I'm tired.

[Madame Adequate]

Even as a consumer the idea is rather flawed, as it assumes exceedingly good knowledge on the part of the consumer; it assumes sellers are honest rather than deliberately dishonest regarding their/their competitors products; it assumes numerous sellers; it assumes competing rather than covertly co-operating 'competitors'; it assumes a low bar for entry into a market when that bar is often very high; and it assumes changing service providers is easy and free when it's very often a hassle with charges attached. Most of these problems can be reduced tremendously by government regulation enforcing transparency, product standards, honest business practices, and so on. Removing government wouldn't help these problems*, it would just allow greater entrenchment on the part of the already-powerful.

*This point is the really bizarre one. Action A is widely agreed to be a negative and something to be discouraged/prevented. Corporations have a profit motive in carrying out action A. Government regulation stops action A. Corporations bribe government to permit it. What part of this is changed by abolishing government regulation/the government itself? I suppose it's technically true that it will reduce corruption and crime, but only inasmuch as there is nothing left to corrupt and no laws to break; the fundamental issue is that action A is still being carried out and the one safeguard on it, however weak or open to corruption, is now absent.

[Laddy]

Survivor starts in two weeks, y'all.

[Peegee]

Look, I would like you to think very hard about the idea of interpersonal relationships, and perhaps try to invent some interpersonal interactions that mirror your examples, then realise how they might sometimes not have a solution, or that there is an obvious solution.

For example, contrast what it (was) is like to be on my facebook wall with how I behave here. Those are relatively valid forms of 'government' if that entity ever becomes relevant in your examples.

That said, there's a tiny problem with your example - and that is that we need to have perfect knowledge when making decisions. We don't - and can't. In fact, to reverse the scenario, assuming you were an adamant top-down central planner (company owner or forum mod or government agent) and wanted to know how to motivate citizens to do x. Really, what is there to do but to work with heuristics and look at signals to measure success? Do governments have perfect knowledge? Seriously answer this for me because every attempt I've tried to rationalise central planning fails due to various inherent problems.

Here is the part where I have to concede your point - if you wiped government, the result is not utopian. However nobody has ever asserted as such - if you ever talk to Anarcho Capitalists (because ancoms and ansocs will tell you everything will be flawless but won't tell you HOW in any serious manner) they will tell you that a bad government is always worse than the worse that no government can do. Can a corporation like walmart force you to buy their products? are there really no alternatives if walmart decided to somehow monopolise all of the apples? and if coca cola wanted to monopolise all of the soft drinks so you couldn't drink mountain dew, are there no alternatives? Can walmart lend trillions of your money to the UK and make you pay for their loans? Can megabank inflate your currency and prevent you from going 'eff this noise' and take all of your money out of the bank and deposit them in another bank? can megabank stop people from opting out of their stupid monopoly money and trade with bitcoin?

Whenever I hear you scream 'oh they'll do horrible things to us without the government and there's nothing we can do about it' I am left scratching my head. how exactly will they do this? Just spell it out from scratch.

Let's say we got rid of government and walmart opens its stores tomorrow and decreases all of its prices in an attempt to starve out all competitors. We'll even assume walmart has the money to do this - by selling below cost it doesn't make profits, so the cost of production and manpower is also a loss. But it has so much money that every company cannot compete bc everyone buys from walmart. they fail to pay their bills and go bankrupt.

Now walmart can raise prices and control the market! But some people who have been saving money (bc walmart sold things cheaply this was easily done) buys up all of the capital from bankrupt companies (bc unlike mortgage backed securities guaranteed by government, they don't have a safety net and had to sell their assets for a loss to prevent a greater loss), and start selling their products for less than walmart was hoping to clear. OH CRAP NOW WALMART HAS TO DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN.

Eventually Walmart would run out of money by being an idiot.

But let's say hypothetically that megacorp produced goods at such a low price that nobody could compete with them. So what? Wouldn't you be happy to buy video games for a dollar each? natural monopolies are good for the economy because it uses less resources and the consumer benefits because the cost is low.

But yeah, that was all nonsensical ancap nonsense right? Right. Because I'm an anarcho capitalist right? Right. really valid point and i'm impressed by your thinking. more you two.

Even as a consumer the idea is rather flawed, as it assumes exceedingly good knowledge on the part of the consumer; it assumes sellers are honest rather than deliberately dishonest regarding their/their competitors products; it assumes numerous sellers; it assumes competing rather than covertly co-operating 'competitors'; it assumes a low bar for entry into a market when that bar is often very high; and it assumes changing service providers is easy and free when it's very often a hassle with charges attached. Most of these problems can be reduced tremendously by government regulation enforcing transparency, product standards, honest business practices, and so on. Removing government wouldn't help these problems*, it would just allow greater entrenchment on the part of the already-powerful.

*This point is the really bizarre one. Action A is widely agreed to be a negative and something to be discouraged/prevented. Corporations have a profit motive in carrying out action A. Government regulation stops action A. Corporations bribe government to permit it. What part of this is changed by abolishing government regulation/the government itself? I suppose it's technically true that it will reduce corruption and crime, but only inasmuch as there is nothing left to corrupt and no laws to break; the fundamental issue is that action A is still being carried out and the one safeguard on it, however weak or open to corruption, is now absent.

[Madame Adequate]

They will do it because they will use their vast monetary resources to hire mercenaries and, at the point of a gun, force you to do what they say.

[The Man]

I wasn't attributing any of those positions to you btw. You mentioned that ancaps are crazy and I was basically agreeing with that point

[Peegee]

They will do it because they will use their vast monetary resources to hire mercenaries and, at the point of a gun, force you to do what they say.

Blowback. Actually I don't even have to elaborate much. Just look at USA's foreign policy's effect.

Incidentally I have found this entire thread to be an entire waste of my time. Milf here, possibly due to economic illiteracy has posted really valid point and i'm impressed by your thinking. after really valid point and i'm impressed by your thinking. which are full of economic fallacies i have taken the time to debunk. As a consequence, if this thread doesn't get deleted any person who can be bothered sifting through it can learn about:

scarcity, the effect of subsidies, conflict resolution absent coercion, and basic economic ideas.

the first post, if we can go back to it, illustrates that the more you subsidise, the less incentive the actor has, since the actor is rational, from expending unnecessary action.

for example if i could get an apartment, video games, computers, food, and a car by working at mcdonald's i have no reason whatsoever to work any harder. if i did, i would actually be wasting time and resources. going back to the other thread on gc "if you had the money what would you do?" - i would do all sorts of things if i had the time and money saved.

alternatively, in a society where technology was so great that the cost of living were virtually non-existent because the yield per labour hour was so great, the amount of leisure would increase dramatically.

in neither case should the actor be seen as negative - and so the attribution 'lazy' in the case of the welfare queen is actually false - the welfare queen sees no reason to exert excessive time and resource to do what was already subsidised, and to call the welfare queen "lazy" is perhaps sour grapes.

so the next time somebody calls you a lazy bum for being on welfare, just laugh at them for not understanding human action and economics.

but feel free to think that pg thinks welfare collectors are lazy. do you even read my posts before you reply? DYEL?

see you guys in a few months.

[Madame Adequate]

PG, for future reference to save you astonishment when this happens again and again and yet again: Most people don't tend to engage too seriously or heavily with people who have absolutely no idea what they're talking about and have consistently demonstrated no desire to learn.

[NorthernChaosGod]

Best Thread 2013

[Shorty]

Best Worst Thread 2013

[Jinx]

/turns around

/leaves