Ron Paul: I am not the blogger you are looking for
I hope this response has not added to the irritation.
I can’t speak for the rest of the bloggers out there, but I’m more amused than irritated. Certainly a change from the usual spam that Akismet misses. And as I said, I don’t care one iota about the campaign because I don’t even live in the same country.
Even if I did live in the same country, I would probably still mock this so-called grassroots attempt because the writing is that bad. It doesn’t reflect well on this guy or on the libertarian movement he represents (eg. it plays into the stereotype that libertarians are un-educated hillbillies).
What I find particularly hilarious is if these supporters had bothered to read anything I’ve written, they will quickly discover I am:
- Canadian,
- a centrist liberal with environmental and socialist leanings,
- a secularist,
- a believer in government processes,
- against strong intellectual property law,
- supportive of taxes,
- supportive of the war in Afghanistan and
- absolutely unafraid to answer the critics, be they arrogant western poli-bloggers, religious nutters, self-important network analysts or peace-activist rock stars.
Here’s a great quote from me:
I’m an odd duck when it comes to economics. I am a big fan of the free market, but only for markets where failure won’t kill a society. Energy, food, shelter, and telecommunications are absolutely required by our society. A serious screwup in the management of these “markets” could devastate millions and bring down the society that we have worked so hard to build. As such, they need to be heavily regulated and protected. You never want to get to a place where the local producers of grain won’t do it because they will lose money and go out of business. It might sound like a communist sentiment, but you just can’t trust survival to a completely unregulated free market. I think everyone can agree that running out of food can never be allowed to happen, even if that means the market won’t function with same free market vigor.
Believe me, I am the last blogger the Ron Paul campaign wants to engage. I’m like the anti-Ron! About the only thing he and I have in common is we both thought the War in Iraq was a stupid idea.
For those who are interested, I’ve received another identical spam for Paul. Cheeky buggers are trying to attach it to my about page.
If you look at history, I think you’ll find market “failure” is far less common than government failure. Most of the time when markets “fail”, its due to government forces (e.g. the Great Depression & Fed monetary policies). Governments usually have more centralized decision-making processes than an industry with a healthy amount of competition, so to rely on government regulation is more like putting all your eggs in one basket, IMO. Like you said, a serious screwup in management of certain markets can cause huge problems, but free markets are not managed (the market itself being more of a process than an entity unto itself). Only governments manage markets, and if they do they are generally not considered free (or at least are less free).
I’m a libertarian, and I’m all for intervention in emergency circumstances. But I think the most reliable way to deliver any good or service is through the marketplace (assuming you HAVE a marketplace, and not a monopoly as in many utilities). I think this is only more true in modern times, with modern communication. Markets get more and more efficient with better communication, something which, IMO, lessens the need for centralized decision making in both government and corporate life.
Also, in America, its virtually impossible to regulate anything for the good of the consumer. Regulation (and anti-trust laws, unfortunately) typically turns into tools for one corporation to use to gain advantage over another. The result is usually a decrease in competition, higher prices, lower wages, and less stability in that market. I guess its an unfortunate side-effect of a powerful central government trying to rule over such a huge and powerful economy. I don’t doubt you’d get less corruption in countries with smaller populations and economies.
Unfortunately, most people educated in our crappy public schools don’t know the difference between market failure and government failure. Most people still seem to think the Great Depression, probably the worst economic disaster in the history of the industrialized world, was due to unfettered capitalism. But we’ve known for a while now it occurred because our central bank decided, brilliantly, to inflate the money supply and then shrink it by a third over a period of two years.
Comment by G — 2007/7/2 @ 14:23
One of the assumptions that libertarian economics makes is that a free market has an infinite capacity to self-organize in a way that is beneficial to most people. I don’t think that’s true, at least not for certain markets. In the case of, say, the personal computer market, it’s not important because you don’t really need a PC to survive. But in the case of food, it becomes important. If because of market forces only the wealthy have enough food, that’s the kind of thing that leads to revolutions and stuff.
A government’s inability to create effective regulation is the product of a poor political process which can be fixed. But the statement highlights another of the problems of completely free marketplaces. It has no answer for unbridled greed. Large business entities, particularly in the United States, are strikingly amoral and greedy and cannot be trusted to do anything for society as a whole. A truly free market has no way of stopping suppliers from merging until there is no competition left. There is an assumption that competitors will step in, but there is no guarantee that it will happen right away. If that’s for an important market like food or energy, what do the people of the region do in the meantime? Starve? Freeze?
I’m not saying that free markets aren’t important, but there are some markets which are too important to the survival of society to be left completely to the whim of completely uncontrolled marketplace.
Comment by cobolhacker — 2007/7/2 @ 15:47
I’m not really sure what you mean by “libertarian” economics. You might mean Austrian school (i.e. von Mises) or Chicago school (i.e. Milton Friedman) economics, but really all “schools” of modern economics are in agreement on the basics of how markets work.
If a demand exists – especially one as obvious as food – someone works to fill that demand if it can be done in an economical way (and in the case of food it always can be). True, it is possible to have “market failure”, where for some reason or another all the businessmen in the market screw up all around the same time and fail to deliver enough food. However, I think you will find this is far, far less likely than government failing to deliver.
For starters, markets are self-correcting. If certain farms go out of business and the supply of food drops, the price will go up (basic supply/demand). Higher prices are a good thing because they lead to lower consumption, which is needed to prevent shortages if the supply is reduced. Other farms will then be motivated to pick up the slack. If farms go out of business to the point of causing health problems, then I’d agree a third party probably needs to step in and bail them out. But until that point, I think the free market does a far better job than politicians.
You mention the “whim” of a completely uncontrolled marketplace, but consider the alternative, which is the whim of the politician. The politician has no direct need to please the customers of an industry, he only cares about getting re-elected. Governments are examples of power centralized in far greater amounts than any industry. The largest corporations in the world do not even have annual revenues equal to the deficit of the United States. Therefore, the whim of a few politicians can have a far greater effect on the economy than the whim of a few businessmen scattered throughout the marketplace. These businessmens’ livelihoods depend on their work. They will not, in some whimsical fashion, decide to suddenly charge so much for food only the rich can afford it, putting their businesses out of business and themselves out of work. Or even if they do (and I’m not sure if anything like this has ever happened), they will surely not all do it at once.
Mises pointed out in his Economic Calculation Problem, that it is virtually impossible to calculate the proper price of a good or service absent of market processes. By “proper” price, I mean one that results in neither surplus (i.e., too much food, some is wasted) or shortage (not enough food). Of course in industrialized nations, there is far more food produced than is needed, since the “market” for food is one where only the nicer looking fruits, vegetables and steaks get sold.
You rightly point out that the United States could stand some political reform. But I believe you mistakenly attribute this to large business alone. Any power, whether religious, economic, or whatever, can influence politics (for good or ill). Business influences politics because it can (after some very contrived rulings on our Constitution from our Supreme Court). Religion does not because it cannot, due to constitutional limitations. This influence could certainly be reduced with more voter-awareness (I’m sure the internet will help), but it will always be there as long as politics has the power to make or break businesses. It will be there even longer if people continue to believe most regulation is in their best interest.
Businesses can be amoral and greedy, but so can people. Businesses are just people, after all, and don’t tend to be any more or less greedy than most people. Socialistic institutions can become just as entrenched and corrupt as business interests in Washington (though I think this takes some time to occur). Employees of a wasteful government institution don’t want to loose their job any more than employees of a business threatened with harmful regulation. Both will lobby congress to do what they can to keep their jobs. In fact, the lobby in Washington which spends the most on campaign contributions is “The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees”. I don’t know how things work in Canada, but in the US its rare for any government agency to be abolished, no matter how useless. It usually finds another “use”, and often says things like “we’d be more useful if you gave us more taxpayer money”. Bleh. At least businesses close up shop if no one wants them around.
The point about monopolies is a good one. While free markets aren’t at all conductive to monopolies (I can’t think of a single monopoly which wasn’t created by government legislation, actually), they can occur. I’m all for some sort of action in the event of a monopoly and price gouging on a vital good. But that doesn’t mean that you must actively seek and destroy businesses which might be displaying monopolistic practices. Monopolies themselves, absent of coercion and unfair pricing, are not always bad things.
Comment by G — 2007/7/2 @ 17:09
Hmmm, maybe you should report him as spam to Cygnet………That’ll shut him up fast. At least for our end.
Comment by Marcy — 2007/7/2 @ 20:28
What if the curves balance out so that lower consumption means only 1000 calories a day per person. A normally functioning free market will have produced a group of hungry people. I’ll admit that food is a pretty extreme example, but the same would hold true for clean water, telecommunications and electricity. I don’t think any large North American city would last more than a week without electricity. That in particular is a market that needs regulation because there are only so many places to put infrastructure.
I’m not one to throw around big names but I still remember what I was taught about Adam Smith. He was big into the idea of a ’selfish’ free market, but at the same time felt it was important for the actors in it to have a regard for society as a whole. Since the large firms which dominate our economic activities seem to be coming up short in that department these days, we need something to balance that in our most critical markets. Not all of them, just the critical ones.
I don’t disagree with this, but I think you also underestimate the amount of power large firms wield. Walmart, for example, has revenue greater than the GDP of most nations of the world. When Walmart does something on a whim entire communities can suffer.
I meant the government itself. There are too many ways for lobbies to influence it and too much of it doing too little for the majority of the people (that sounded sort of libertarian, didn’t it?)
Microsoft. They built their near-monopoly the old fashioned way with deceit and predatory business practices. Luckily, they sell a good which is not required for survival.
Then we agree.
Comment by cobolhacker — 2007/7/3 @ 09:20