| Author | Message | ||
     Cathy Supporter Username: Clkelley Post Number: 764 Registered: 6-2002 |
"i was talking to innisowen, not you cathy. sorry for the confusion." No problem! I'm logging off now, interesting conversation & thanks. | ||
| ashear Supporter Username: Ashear Post Number: 1708 Registered: 5-2001 |
But you have not answered my question at all. Why is it wrong for people to conclude that it is too hard to get information about how compainies are treating their workers. With no regulation companies could hide their actions, which they try hard to do now anyway. Same with polution. Just dump stuff in the river and run. How would you know what not to buy. If you spent all of your time researching every item or service you purchase when would you sleep. Basically you are saying, to bad for the people who burn up in the factory or whose air and water are poisoned. I'd also note these are likely to be poorer people whose economic clout is not enough to shift the marktet. Thus, the rich can happily buy whatever they want, secure that they will not suffer. Not a system I would want to live in. | ||
| Rick B Citizen Username: Ruck1977 Post Number: 504 Registered: 8-2003 |
A company can dump their waster in a river and cover it up today with regulation. What is the difference? The regulation only gives them incentive to hide it better. What about looking at it from the point of view as to why the company is dumping the waste as opposed to getting rid of it through the appropriate channels. Perhaps regulation has caused this process to be costly? Not that this is the solution, but its an angle worth thinking about. Why don't we research what we purchase now? Probably because there is some level of consumer confidence. Its one thing to say that you are going to buy a product that can kill or harm you, but then to say you are buying a product that could have harmed the workers that made the product, or that the workers made the product in poor condition. If that was important to the consumer, it would be marketed and sold. If JC Penny made clothes that were produced in the US under good worker conditions, couldn't they use that as a selling point, if that were marketable to consumers? Why don't they today? Not because of regulation, but because all the companies do it! Why is that? Because consumers don't care enough when it comes down to purchasing the products.... That doesn't make it right, but don't the workers have some obligation here too? Can this be explored from that side? | ||
| ashear Supporter Username: Ashear Post Number: 1710 Registered: 5-2001 |
But in fact regulation has worked. Water in this country is much cleaner than it was 40 years ago. They were dumping waste when there was no regulation so to say that regulation caused the dumping makes no sense. That's the point I keep making that no one adresses. We had a free market, lots of bad things happened and we decided to use regulation to stop them. While not perfect regulations has stopped many bad things, as I've already pointed out. What reason is there to think getting rid of regulation would not put us right back to having rivers that catch fire? | ||
| Maple Man Citizen Username: Mapleman Post Number: 527 Registered: 6-2004  |
How a lay person would do their own medical research and properly understand it without training or education, you haven't explained. with regard to your second point, maybe I should have initially referred to doctors instead of patients. The question should be - without the objective endorsement of the FDA, how long would a good doctor wait before prescribing new medicines? I stand by my initial point that the FDA benefits drug companies as much as consumers by serving as an impartial authority to endorse safe and effective treatments. Same for the USDA. Would you ever eat a hamburger at an unfamiliar restaurant in an unfamiliar city if you didn't have some assurance that the meat met some objective standard? Or would you have to go around town and research all the restaurants before you walked into one of them. Commerce as we know it in a country as big as ours is made easier by the governmental standards and regulations we have. All of the talk about consumers researching their purchases, and educating themselves is fine if you do all your transactions in Maplewood. But it's just not practical to expect consumers to have reliable information on every product and every establishment they may conceivably encounter. | ||
| notehead Supporter Username: Notehead Post Number: 2124 Registered: 5-2001  |
Are we all supposed to become medical experts, business labor experts, chemistry and physics experts, product safety experts, etc, just to live a modern life? Society would completely break down. This "the market is perfect" mentality is puerile. | ||
| Montagnard Citizen Username: Montagnard Post Number: 1459 Registered: 6-2003  |
Libertarianism is fine in theory, just like many other "isms" that don't take account of how people act in real life. If you get beyond its emotional appeal to freeloaders, it's pretty trivial to refute, since pushing a libertarian position to its logical conclusion almost always calls for social arrangements or public policies that run counter to what we know about human behavior. | ||
| Rick B Citizen Username: Ruck1977 Post Number: 505 Registered: 8-2003 |
Geesh...its just a discussion...the problem is...someone starts a discussion, once the discussion starts, people are attacked for bringing up further ways of looking at the issue we are discussing. A puerile mentality? Its just a discussion people...no one is going to change anything, we are just elaborating on some of the angles. Anyone can join the discussion, just don't know why anyone needs to go down the path of criticism.... Back to the "regular" soapbox i go!  Definitely out of my league here! haha. | ||
| D. Moderator Username: Dave Post Number: 5519 Registered: 4-1998  |
This may need a topic of its own, but it certainly illustrates how the theory doesn't always work so well.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/view.html?pg=5 | ||
| The Libertarian Citizen Username: Local_1_crew Post Number: 480 Registered: 3-2004 |
Same for the USDA. Would you ever eat a hamburger at an unfamiliar restaurant in an unfamiliar city if you didn't have some assurance that the meat met some objective standard? Or would you have to go around town and research all the restaurants before you walked into one of them. a great example of how gov't has failed you. the usda gives the aura of having protected you from bad meat and therefore you eat beef safe in the knowledge that it is ok. in truth, the usda has no power to stop companies from distributing bad meat. it is strictly voluntary. but you feel safe because the usda exists. a powerless arm that we pay heavy for. the way beef cattle is raised is one of the most heinous things i have ever learned. cows are fed corn which they are not equipped to digest so they are fed a pound of antibiotics a day to stave off infection. the average beef cow takes 4 years to mature to harvesting size if left to grow naturally. the beef industry , through the use of hormones, has lowered that to 13 months. feeling good about the USDA now? only the tip of the iceberg in regards to federal agencies. as to the above article on broadband. the government interfered. how is that free market? i never said the free market system would perform magical healing overnight. it will perform miracles though if allowed to work unfettered. the article agrees with me. it says that private competition should be fostered. i agree. competition makes for better service at lower prices. | ||
| The Libertarian Citizen Username: Local_1_crew Post Number: 481 Registered: 3-2004 |
Are we all supposed to become medical experts, business labor experts, chemistry and physics experts, product safety experts, etc, just to live a modern life? Society would completely break down. This "the market is perfect" mentality is puerile. would we all have to become medical and industrial experts, of course not. to even suggest that is what i am saying is infinitely more peurile than anything i have said. you are taking this idea as if it was going to happen tomorrow in one quick shot and we would have to deal with a completely unregulated business community instantaneously. the change would happen gradually, people wouldnt have to learn every aspect of every industry. there would be plenty of organizations that would be corporate watchdogs, much as their are now. you would only have to be a responsible citizen and pay attention. that shouldnt be so difficult, or is the peurility of having to take some time to learn too much for you? | ||
| Mayor McCheese Supporter Username: Mayor_mccheese Post Number: 189 Registered: 7-2004  |
Hey Libertarian, On a side note, I know a few years ago there were only 4 registered Libertarians in Essex County. I am actually one of them. I never look at the politics threads. Nice to know there is another Libertarian in town. | ||
| Maple Man Citizen Username: Mapleman Post Number: 528 Registered: 6-2004 |
Libertarian, your arguments with regard to the USDA are actually supportive of the idea that the agency should be strengthened, not eliminated. You'll get no argument from me that the USDA's methods are largely antiquated and inefficient. That's due mainly to lobbying from agribusiness, not an inherent weakness in the idea of regulating food safety. It's not an argument for abolishing the USDA, it's an argument for bringing their methods in line with 21st century science. Also, regarding meat production in the U.S. - it's appalling state is a result of market forces, not regulation. Gargantuan retailers like Wal-Mart and McDonalds have used their clout with suppliers to reduce prices and delivery time to the lowest possible levels. The result is a meat packing industry that places more importance on speed and cost than on worker safety, consumer safety, or humane treatment of animals. The meat industry is another prime example of the negative consequences of under-regulation of the market. | ||
| ashear Supporter Username: Ashear Post Number: 1711 Registered: 5-2001 |
I'm still waiting for an answer to my question. Why did we have the environmental, worker saftey and other problems that led to regulation in the first place and why would they not come right back if regulation were eliminated? | ||
| The Libertarian Citizen Username: Local_1_crew Post Number: 483 Registered: 3-2004 |
the concept has been explained multiple times in this thread. please reread the thread or click on the provided links. | ||
| Tom Reingold Supporter Username: Noglider Post Number: 5764 Registered: 1-2003  |
I'm a bit dismayed that we have strayed from duties to market forces. Or are these things really related? I'm not sure. Maybe a libertarian can argue that market forces provide all the duties that society has. Would you? Anyway, if I'm going to argue about market forces, I guess we can examine the meaning of the word "perfect". Perhaps in at least one sense, the market is perfect. It provides a balance of goods and services at a price that is in some sort of equilibrium between value for the buyer and reputation for the seller. Again, to evaluate whether this suits us requires us to look not just at the middle, where the equilibrium is, but at the ends. The people who lose out may be statistically insignificant, so on balance, everything looks good. But do we want those ends to be so extreme? For instance, how much disparity in income is acceptable, and is there a point where we should try to rein it in? | ||
| Cathy Supporter Username: Clkelley Post Number: 766 Registered: 6-2002 |
I think we do have a duty to prevent abject poverty (and other social / environmental ills) in our own country, and to do all that we can reasonably do to prevent it elsewhere. (what constitutes "reasonable" is a debate of its own - as of course is what constitutes an unacceptable level of poverty, but I think we could reach something close to consensus on the latter anyway.) Even if you make the argument that people act in such a way as to maximize their own gain, and therefore if they don't do that then they deserve what they get, this can't possibly cover certain cases where people are powerless, e.g. children, the profoundly handicapped, the mentally ill. Personal responsibility works up to a point, but there are some people who simply cannot take responsibility. Maybe Libertarian would allow taxation to take care of these groups. (but how can you take care of poor children while ignoring their parents, short of removing them from their parents - hardly a libertarian ideal.) I understand Libertarian's points. I think in a perfect world his system might work. But it is essentially a utopian ideal - it assumes that everybody is a perfectly informed consumer, makes decisions based entirely on their own values systems, and we therefore end up with a perfect democracy (we vote with our dollars for what we care about most). If people reliably stuck to their values, and had the ability to do the work necessary to do this, it might work. But people aren't like that. They don't have time to figure out the consequences of every purchase. They do care about maximizing their own gain (i.e. getting good stuff at cheap prices). So Libertarian says, if that happens, we get what we paid for - by our actions we are demonstrating our "true" value systems, which are essentially selfish. That may be our "true" value system, or the one that most humans default to if nobody's stopping us. But that doesn't make it the best possible world or a world I'd care to live in. | ||
| The Libertarian Citizen Username: Local_1_crew Post Number: 485 Registered: 3-2004 |
what a sad world view. you are essentially saying that people will never change and that we will choose to remain ignorant and selfish and that we need government to protect us from ourselves. we need this protection because we are incapable or unwilling to learn and take responsibility for our actions if left unchecked. i would rather fight for what you think is an unreachable, "utopia". | ||
| Michael Janay Citizen Username: Childprotect Post Number: 1687 Registered: 1-2003  |
Maple, WRT the elephants, the countries that regulate the elephants (make it illegat to kill any elephants because they "belong" to the governemt or to everyone) see poachers and declining elephant populations. In the countries where its UNregulated, or where local towns can kill as many or as few as they want, and/or sell the licenses to do so, the elephant population is flourishing. Government regulation isn't doing this, its local ownership and GREED that is. Look, if I own 20 elephants, its against my best interests to kill them all because then I won't get the revenue from the licenses anymore. If I don't own them, and get nothing from them, what do I really care if poachers kill them? Its a sad shame, but doesn't effect me, no matter how illegal the government regulates it to be. Thats the free market at work. Ashear asks about environmental regulations etc. and this works here too. Why did companies pollute rivers? Because they didn't own the river, so they had no incentive to keep it clean. Why not dump in the river? That is the tragedy of the commons to the letter. No libertarian wants anarchy (well almost no). Regulations are fine as long as they protect one entity from the misdeeds of another. No one is arguing for pollution, but look at another example: Litter, It costs real money to dump commercial garbage at a licensed dump. And you need permits to dispose of tires and other hazardous stuff. So, some people just pour sewage into ravines or dump carpet cleaning fluid into storm sewers. Regulation or not, they look for the cheapest solution. The regulations are CREATING litter, not relieving it. I can throw my trash on the floor at a pro basketball game. The home team leases this space, and they're fine with people littering, because they clean it up. The price of the cleanup is included in the ticket price, and they clean it up well. At stadiums, they don't even call this litter, it's just part of the game. Compare that to public parks or fields — the litter tends to stay here. It's the same reason people overfish the sea. The ocean is public property, shared property. So for years, fishermen took all they could. They had little incentive to make sure enough fish were left to reproduce, and the supply of fish has dropped drastically. But good things happen when this public property is privatized. For example, private fishing quotas helped restore fisheries in the United States and New Zealand. In the 1980s, New Zealand's government gave fishermen individual fishing quotas, setting a total allowable catch for different species of fish. Then it granted each fisherman the right to take a certain percentage of that. Because the fishermen own those rights, it's private property. The government can't take it away from them. The fisherman are free to buy or sell those fishing rights, just like private property. The result: Fish populations went up. Communal farming is similar. The Pilgrims tried shared farming when they first arrived in America. But, rather than working shared property, they faked illness. Some of them said the kids were too young to go out in the fields. The Pilgrims nearly starved to death, and ended up eating rats, dogs, horses and cats. When each was given his own land on which to grow crops, food was abundant. Likewise, when Stalin and Mao collectivized their farms, their people nearly starved to death. ------- I didn't write the above, its from another Libertarian source. What these examples show is that the government's job should be enforcing private property rights, not creating overall legislation for the common good. The fishing example seems like government regulation, but it really is a great example of how libertarianism works. The fishing quotas are a private asset. They can be bought and sold. Not like catch limits. Tom, For instance, how much disparity in income is acceptable, and is there a point where we should try to rein it in? No. Its none of your business how much money anyone makes compared to anyone else. Period. Dave, The broadband problem is directly related to the TCA of 1996 and that regulation. Local companies are protected by regulation from competition, from anyone, corporate or governmental. If there were no regulations as barriers to entry, Verizon and the other telcos would have to upgrade their services or lose customers. As it is now, they are protected by governmental regulation, so they don't need to compete. And yes, they lobby to keep those regulations tight. I've often thought that Maplewood should be 100% broadband town. As I figure it, we'd need about 50 houses in Maplewood that would let the town put routers and antennas in their attics, a good mimo router has over 10mbps at a mile range (for a fee or a tax credit) and run a Cable to them. We could then offer Wireless broadband for very cheap or free and maybe strike a deal with Vonage and offer phone service for about $20 a month total. It would bring income to the town, get us great publicity, and bring broadband to the masses. But regulations may not let us do it. We could if it were deregulated. | ||
| Tom Reingold Supporter Username: Noglider Post Number: 5769 Registered: 1-2003 |
So Michael, is there no such thing, in your mind, as common good? Do you think we'd be better off with everything in creation being owned privately and nothing shared? |
