King Krugman Launches War Against Dictionaries
In an interview with Henry Blodget, Krugman explained what he would do if he were king of the United States:
Notice four things in this:
(1) Krugman calls for a top income tax rate of 70 percent, with more brackets added to the code.
(2) Same tax treatment for capital gains, notwithstanding those economists who argue that taxes on capital are more destructive than taxes on labor income.
(3) A single-payer system in which the federal government makes all medical expenditures in the country.
(4) He wraps up by calling himself a “free-market Keynesian.”
Of the above, the thing that bothers me the most is Krugman having the audacity to refer to himself as “free market.” All he means by that term is that he thinks decentralized markets are useful in some respects.
A defender of Krugman might be tempted to say, “Oh come on Murphy, you like to nitpick and find huge differences, but Krugman is an economist who recognizes the benefits of private property and so on. Chill out.”
But no, that won’t do. Economists Oskar Lange and Abba Lerner recognized the importance of using prices and markets in organizing the economy; that’s why historians of economic thought refer to “market socialism,” in which the government owns the means of production but uses decentralized markets and State-announced “prices” to determine micro-allocation outcomes.
Notice too that Krugman doesn’t even think that the market should handle everything so long as we’re at full employment, whereas the State has to come in with fiscal stimulus and boost Aggregate Demand during recessions.
Nope, even at the micro level, Krugman thinks there are massive failures of the market economy requiring political correction. For example, he has no problem with the EPA directly regulating the emissions from power plants and flat-out banning new coal-fired power plants. (Who needs price discovery when you have William Nordhaus’ computer model of the economy through the year 2300?)
I know, I know, some Krugman defenders will say, “OK Murphy, sure he sees a role for the feds when it comes to depressions and a huge externality like climate change. So? Those are serious issues.”
Well, let me end with this blast from the past: Krugman actually blamed bad English food on the failures of the market.
But by all means, let’s let him use the term “free market” to describe himself. Just like he’s a “liberal.”
“Of the above, the thing that bothers me the most is Krugman having the audacity to refer to himself as “free market.” All he means by that term is that he thinks decentralized markets are useful in some respects.”
So let me get this straight… you don’t think Krugman also believes that there should be strong, if qualified, private property rights, and that he rejects the idea that the economy should be a command economy where all production and consumption are centrally planned? And he doesn’t think that the majority of capital goods should be owned privately and the majority of goods produced by private enterprise?
Of course, he believes all these things, and to that extent he is clearly an advocate of a strong private market economy, even if he also thinks that there should be regulation, macroeconomic policies and government intervention where markets fail.
What are “strong, if qualified, private property rights”? How do we judge what strong rights are (is there a metric?); and how much “qualification” leads to weak property rights (again, is there a metric?)? And should my neighbor (democracy) decide how “strong” or “qualified” my property rights should be if he is voting from transfers from me to him? Serious questions, not being snide.
Suitably qualified people get to have property rights.
Top. Men.
Über Gruber.
Anything short of a full Marxist is a Capitalist, then huh?
LK,
Krugman has never proposed the free market for any problem.
For a socialist to be limited in his ability to get around to writing about socializing everything, such that he has not yet gotten to them all, does not mean that the lack of such writing heretofore somehow constitutes a positive support for free markets.
Krugman is not a free market Keynesian, which is of course an oxymoron.
When has he ever written about the failures of big government, or the failures of government?
“Krugman has never proposed the free market for any problem.”
-He has, in the 1990s, at least. But not for a long time, so far as I can see.
About that bad food remark of Krugman’s and other market failures:
I studied biology and evolution extensively in the past, and I enjoy learning economics more recently. I think there are a lot of parallels that can be drawn between the two, especially with regard to fallacious thinking about both. His analysis of food choices in London reminds me of people who think “survival of the fittest” literally means “survival of the creature with the most muscles and biggest brains.” This is nowhere near true if you’re an amoeba that lives miles under the ocean surface on a vent that spews toxic sulfuric gas. Fittest just means best adapted to the environment, not highly evolved according to the standards of intellectual godkings like Krugman.
He seemed to point out that there would be more than enough good reasons for people in London to eat such food, but talks about how this food is unfit, or not optimal. But only according to his high standards, and not the actual environment in which people really live.
And to add on to my last comment, I think that people fall into that same fallacious thinking with most policy prescriptions for macro outcomes.
“Nope, even at the micro level, Krugman thinks there are massive failures of the market economy requiring political correction.”
And he is correct. Market failures at the micro level are ubiquitous — at least under the flawed economic theory you believe in.
E.g., the fact that many people strongly resent and oppose nominal wage cuts and the real world failure of most wages to adjust to alleged market clearing levels to clear labour markets in recessions is a major failure of real world markets — at least under the economic theory both Austrians and neoclassicals use.
The difference between you and the New Keynesians and other realistic neoclassicals is that at least they recognise the empirical evidence for widespread wage and price rigidities and understand that economic policies have to be adjusted to take account of how the real world actually is.
LK,
People might resent wage cuts, but how is that a market failure? Most people resent the fact that they have to get up early in the morning and go to work whatsoever. Reality has them in handcuffs, however, because if they don’t, they might starve.
My understanding of markets is that the purpose isn’t to make giant leaps over everyone’s expectations and create utopia. If people won’t jive with reality, markets will punish them. People who won’t accept wage cuts will see job cuts instead. The market is just! It also dishes out discipline when people need it!
Under the theory of labour demand and employment used by Austrians and neoclassicals, it is straightforwardly the case that the opposition many people have to wage cuts and the resulting downwards wage rigidity is a major cause of serious and persistent involuntary unemployment in recessions and their aftermath — a clear market failure arising from micro behaviour that just doesn’t conform with the way people are supposed to behave in your theory.
And it is not government or central banks or even “evil” labour unions that are the fundamental cause of this: we have strong evidence it was already happening in, for exmaple, late 19th century America when there was no central bank, unions were weak and governments very pro-business and anti-labour. See Hanes, Christopher. 1993. “The Development of Nominal Wage Rigidity in the Late 19th Century,” The American Economic Review 83.4: 732–756.
I never supposed that it would take a government, union, or a central bank to make people like higher wages more than lower wages. Obviously people are against nominal wage cuts. This fact doesn’t change anything, though. I don’t like that resources are scarce. I wish I could make hotdogs appear out of thin air.
If recessions are pushing down prices, the pressure will be on employers to push down wages. That pressure exists despite what anyone thinks is right. Succumbing to that pressure is thought to reduce unemployment and help alleviate the damage of a recession. If people choose not to, that’s not a problem with the theory, that’s a problem with people. They will be incentivised by the market to do better thinking in the future when they can’t find jobs.
Maybe I’m not familiar, but does Austrian theory really say that people will want lower wages in a recession? Is that really the theory?
So by choosing to oppose wage cuts they become involuntarily unemployed?
By opposing wage cuts, people’s micro behaviour impedes the alleged tendency to market clearing in labour markets and causes persistent involuntary unemployment: that is a market failure.
Sure, sure, sounds great, but we have just two workers, each given the choice of either a wage cut, or out the door…
Worker A chooses to take the wage cut, grumbles about it, but stays with the firm.
Worker B walks out, and finds it difficult to get an alternative job.
Show your working here: how much involuntary unemployment? In what way did the market fail? How can government fix this?
It is not “straightforwardly the case” that mere opposition to wage cuts is a “major cause of unemployment.”
What is “straightforwardly the case” is that government intervention is the cause.
People with low savings who resist wage cuts would not be able to last long. Government steps in and rewards resistence to wage cuts by welfare. And they make employment ILLEGAL for many workers whose marginal productivity is lower than the minimum wage rate.
“It is not “straightforwardly the case” that mere opposition to wage cuts is a “major cause of unemployment.””
-Yes, Freedom, it is.
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/09/why_dont_wages.html
Another major cause of unemployment, however, is employers’ fear of being frivolously sued by workers, e.g., for discrimination, real or imagined.
That would require government to pass anti-discrimination laws, right?
Hmmm, I wonder if that could be significant. Maybe the market didn’t fail at all, maybe it is merely reacting to the imposition of bad laws??
“People with low savings who resist wage cuts would not be able to last long. Government steps in and rewards resistence to wage cuts by welfare”
And what about people WITH savings? People who can rely on private charity?
Furthermore, there must have been plenty of people with low savings in the late 19th century when there was no welfare, but wage rigidity was already a real and significant factor:
Hanes, Christopher. 1993. “The Development of Nominal Wage Rigidity in the Late 19th Century,” The American Economic Review 83.4: 732–756.
People who choose to live of their savings rather than work for lower wages are voluntarily unemployed.
Wage rigidity is only temporary in a free market. Workers and firms do not refuse wage cuts forever such that workers refuse income and firms refuse profits.
The data the paper tallies is arbitrarily constricting the time periods. Plus the data does contain significant wage flexibility, just not the impossibke flexibility that I have never claimed took place.
Persistent price and wage rigidity, as opposed to temporary rigidity which is ubiquitous or else we would see prices of everything fluctuating on a constant basis, is a consequence of government, not the free market.
(1) “People who choose to live of their savings rather than work for lower wages are voluntarily unemployed.”
Except nobody disputed that.
People who are</i actively looking for work but won't reduce their wage claims and don't find work, and live off savings, would clearly be an example of market failure.
(2) “Wage rigidity is only temporary in a free market.”
Ah, yes! The purely imaginary flying unicorn free market that exists only in your mind!
(3) And the paper of Hanes shows significant nominal wage rigidity, despite your lies
LK:
1. You’re presuming your own conclusion true. After I said that workers with little to no savings who choose to working for less over nothing, will be employed. Then you asked about workers with savings, and I then said that can enable them to choose to live off their savings rather than working for less. So for those folks, they chose no employment over employment for lower wages.
If someone refuses to accept a pay cut, and would rather live off their savings, those people are voluntarily unemployed. This not an example of a market failure. If a person does not want to work for what is offered, that is no failure at all, but a choice.
(2) Ah yes! The failures you speak of in the purely imaginary “market”, that does not exist, so government intervention is needed to cure what you have claimed to have observed in that land of flying unicorns! Lol!
(3). The paper shows significant flexibility, despite your lies.
“People who won’t accept wage cuts will see job cuts instead.”
-The problem is, only some of those who won’t accept wage cuts will see job cuts.
LK, that’s fine if you believe that, but I just ask that you don’t refer to yourself as a “free market economist.” That’s an abuse of terminology.
Surely you can agree with me that “free market economist” must have a stronger requirement than, “Is not an actual socialist.”
Surely you can agree with me that “free market economist” must have a stronger requirement than, “Is not an actual socialist.”
So who amongst mainstream neoclassicals can be called “free market economists” according to you? The New Classicals?
It this just a Rothbarian “holier than thou” exercise in trying to prove that only you have a right to that term?
You’re not, you know. The orthodox Rothbardian opposition to fractional reserve banking is profoundly flawed and so wrong and would be such a violation of free enterprise that it actually makes you profoundly anti-capitalist. The Rothbardian demand that one of the most fundamental and important institutions of capitalism should be suppressed — for utterly spurious reasons — is enough to damn your own claim that your truly “free market”
Krugman = free market economist
Murphy = not free market economist
No abuse of language there.
Given my willingness to intervene in banking, I’m also arguably a Muslim.
+1
LK, you clearly haven’t read Rothbard.
So, LK in your mind if it is inaccurate to call a yellow banana “black” then it must also be equally wrong to say that charcoal is “black” since that’s really dark gray?
“Holier than thou” is an excuse for you to avoid rigorous definitions. Rothbardian AnCap is private property free of interventions. I’ve asked you over and over and over to distinguish that situation from others where there is violent intervention that we clearly submit is causing the problems you insist upon calling “market failure”. But you realize that you must always obfuscate even basic and well understood definitions or else your analysis collapses. You are nothing but a slightly more sophisticated version of “Philippe”.
A Rothbardian AnCap system would almost certainty have market failures, given that Say”s law is false, that real wage and price rigidities are a persistent feature of modern life, that the future is uncertain and that expectations — especially of business people — can become pessimistic and investment can collapse. Of course, you understand none of these things because you understand very little about economics,
Failures of government make free markets optimal.
Say’s Law is true. You don’t understand it.
Prices and wage rates are rigid for the worse because of government.
You don’t understand any of these things because you don’t understand economics. You are a political pundit.
LK,
To insist in an accurate definition of a phrase to mean what the words actually mean, I.e. free, etc, is not playing a game of “holier than thou.”
It is simply pointing out that Krugman is misusing a phrase.
To be for anti-market actions means to be against free market.
I’m all for FRB so long as the fiduciary media notes are shocking pink with teal polka-dots (with an explanation as to their true nature), the 100% specie notes are not pink and everyone knows the difference. I think that solves the problem.
In 2004 at the Southern Economic Association meetings in New Orleans, I asked Krugman at a session specifically (and Joe Salerno, who was sitting next to me will back me up here) if he wanted us to go back to the 70 percent rates. His response? “Those rates were insane.”
So, now he has endorsed insanity. No, Murphy, you are not nit-picking.
It is as Sumner says. Former neoliberals (in Good Times) have become Progressives (in Bad Times). The Left is eating its own ideological children.
In a free market, “demand” refers to the property and services which one owns, controls and earned through voluntary exchange which can be offered in exchange. The purpose of the term “aggregate demand” is to make everyone lose sight of the difference between private property as the source of one’s ability to make voluntary exchanges and socialized property under Keynesianism where the government engages in wealth transfers via Cantillon Effects to provide subsidies to the masses (or the elite) of other people’s purchasing power and wealth. Keynesianism has no relationship whatsoever to a “free market”. If your property is always subject to being directly seized or indirectly swiped via money dilution by the state to cure non-existent “market failures”, there is and can be no “free market”.
I also think libertarians and Austrians constantly underestimate and soft pedal the mendacity of the entire Keynesian Hoax and its proponents.
“Aggregate Demand” that great idol that all Keynesians worship, makes it impossible to distinguish anything from anything. It essentially removes all possibility to observe an economy, reason about events, or plan for the future.
It is an attempt to reduce an entire economic system to one variable, and at that a nominal variable without a physical reference point.
Per-capita GDP can serve as a rough comparison between two countries, if it is measured consistently, and if we don’t take it too seriously as a measure of quality of life. That’s about all you can do with it.
““Aggregate Demand” that great idol that all Keynesians worship, makes it impossible to distinguish anything from anything. It essentially removes all possibility to observe an economy”
lol.. And then you go to say that “Per-capita GDP can serve as a rough comparison between two countries”!! Someone needs to learn basic logic, like the law of self-contradiction.
Hey mister logical genius, everything I say is a complete lie, the exact opposite is true.
LK cannot prove this statement true, only an Austrian Economist can.
That really is an easy thing. If someone like Krugman to basically for all problems he sees, always resorts to government for a solution he cannot possibly be a FREE market economist…
Economists that should be called free market economists, should be those looking for market solutions! Single payer is no market solution. Asking for central bank intervention and huge stimulus spending by the government for any hick up in the S&P and unemployment is no market solution! Asking for minimum wages is no market solution etc…
LK, you could come up with a list of problems, in which Krugman asks specifically for government to step back and let the free market solve the problem. That in my view is the only way how you could argue that Krugman at least to a great or certain part is a free market economist.
I guess LK is still busy writing that list because it is so long…
Krugman ends by saying that his views “wouldn’t have been a very radical vision in the political spectrum of 20 years ago.”
Twenty years ago was 1994, the year that Republicans used opposition to Bill Clinton’s healthcare proposals (which were less intrusive than what Krugman proposes) and tax increases (which were far less than what Krugman proposes) to recapture the House of Representatives for the first time in 50 years. So I’d say the good professor is engaging in some severe nostalgia bias.
In fact, my guess is that the Krugman of 20 years ago would have viewed the proposals of Krugman 2014 as being quite radical. Based on this David Henderson post, the 1990s era Krugman didn’t think taxes should be raised, even though tax rates back then were lower than they are today.
In fairness, Bob from 20 years ago would be pretty surprised at Bob today. Especially the Sunday posts.
Is being fair to Krugman really “fairness”? Anything less than derision sounds more like generosity to me. When the shoe is on the other foot, I never see anything resembling fairness.
Bob,
I don’t have a problem with people changing their minds. But Krugman seems to think that there was some kind of consensus in favor of his current views 20 years ago, when the reality is even he didn’t believe that stuff back then.
-No; they were much higher. Today’s Federal deficit is entirely due to tax cuts.
Have we not reached the point that criticizing Krugman’s absurd utterances gives him credible attention he no longer deserves. The man is a now really just a cartoon character.
Oskar Lange’s socialism (as well as the other neoclassical socialists in the debate) was not market socialism. That was an unfortunate misnomer. Rather then trying to use real markets for socialist aims it tried to simulate markets with non market processes, to try to achieve market outcomes. Using actual markets (even hampered and controlled ones) would have been an admission of failure. Remember the whole point of socialism to these people was to replace the chaotic spontaneous processes of capitalism with something more ordered and just.
This article is relevant:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Kleinidentity.html
Krugtron’s problem (and LK’s as well, bless his heart) is that he doesn’t understand the difference between violence and voluntary action. He sees market failure when he sees 1) something he personally doesn’t like and 2) when he is unwilling to consider that some tangentially-related govt action may be the cause.
Of course, far be it from any Keynesian to actually think about causal theory in any realistic manner whatsoever.
The proglodyte mind is a tortured one.
“is that he doesn’t understand the difference between violence and voluntary action”
That is rubbish. I just do not accept the ethical theory underlying your economics — because it is wrong.
Just because a person does something “voluntary” or two people engage in a “voluntary” transaction does not necessarily make these transactions moral. Nor do people have absolute rights to their property: they must accept some limitations, such as the payment of taxes.
Just screaming about “theft” and “violence” won’t convince your opponents because it just begs the question: is Rothbard’s natural rights ethics or Hoppe’s argumentation ethics right? Your opponents say no. At that point the debate is about higher level issues in ethics.
“Nor do people have absolute rights to their property: they must accept some limitations,”
Your body is your property LK so I guess you will just have to accept some limitations on your rights to it. The State will decide what’s best and let you know.
LK wrote:
“is that he doesn’t understand the difference between violence and voluntary action”
That is rubbish. I just do not accept the ethical theory underlying your economics — because it is wrong.
The “morality” of laissez faire is distinct from the operational and descriptive differences between voluntary exchange and violent intervention. Like “Philippe” and Krugman, you either do not understand the differences or else you have made it your life’s work to obfuscate those differences.
I’m still holding my breath (after 3 years) waiting for you and/or Daniel Kuehn to meticulously extract the voluntary exchange part of the activities leading up to 1920 and 1929 from the central banking and government war policy interventions.
“I’m still holding my breath (after 3 years) waiting for you and/or Daniel Kuehn to meticulously extract the voluntary exchange part of the activities leading up to 1920 and 1929 “
Wait… you think there were no voluntary exchanges going on in America leading up to 1929?? hahaha
OK, fine. You cannot and will not extract the purely voluntary exchanges from those impacted by violent intervention and are thus unable to blame those crises on “the free market”.
LK – a couple of questions:
1) Let’s assume for the moment that I agree with you that I do not have an absolute right to my property. However, the fact that I don’t have an absolute right to my property does not automatically lead to the conclusion that the state has a right to a portion of my property – one must provide an account of how the state derives a right to a portion of my property. Can you help me understand the ethical theory on the basis of which the state has the right to a portion of my property?
2) Have you read Michael Huemer’s book “The Problem of Political Authority”?
I like how you put voluntary, theft, and violence in quotes as if they are concepts that don’t take place.
As I’ve pointed out for years, LK, the Keynesians and the “progressives” cannot even bear to contemplate a world without their violence, theft and authority over the private voluntary affairs of average people. They cannot even allow such a place to be defined. What more evidence do you need?
Newspeak.
The Tom Woods radio show begins each episode with: “Beware citizen. You are now departing from the world of allowable opinion”. It is very true.
No, roddis, your opponents can contemplate a Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist world, they just do not accept your flawed ethical theory, nor the idea that government taxation is theft, etc. etc.
Finally, sure we can contemplate the Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist world: a world where people will starve if they cannot find work on the market or beg successfully for private charity, a world where rich and powerful people can simply ignore private law courts or private defence forces, a world where justice would become a joke, a world where they’d be no child labour laws, or in some extreme versions of ancapistan, no laws even against slavery.
Of course, the number of people who want such a crazy world is probably near zero.
LK,
“No, roddis, your opponents can contemplate a Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist world, they just do not accept your flawed ethical theory, nor the idea that government taxation is theft, etc. etc.”
No LK, you clearly choose not to. That is why you always hand wave at it and call it thing like “land of flying unicorns.”
And you have never SHOWN how private property rights is flawed, or why it is morally right to violate them.
“Finally, sure we can contemplate the Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist world: a world where people will starve if they cannot find work on the market or beg successfully for private charity, a world where rich and powerful people can simply ignore private law courts or private defence forces, a world where justice would become a joke, a world where they’d be no child labour laws, or in some extreme versions of ancapistan, no laws even against slavery.”
Why would people who don’t earn wages and who don’t seek charity starve to death necessarily?
And since when did you show it is morally just for one person B to steal from another person A in order for B to feed himself? And since when did you show that how you got to that answer leads to justifying a state?
You haven’t shown anything. No arguments.
Capitalism, not states, is responsible for the increase in ages that people start work. States that ban child labor have only do so after enough parents have already ceased sending their children to work at those young ages because they earn enough real income to support whole families whereas before when the productivity of labor was so low, all family members had to work in order to survive.
The average minimum age that people started working had progressively increased centuries before the first child labor laws were passed.
Banning child labor before families can afford it, HURTS innocent people, the very people it is intended to help. You don’t understand economics so that is why you wave your emotional banner of “I am against child labor” as if that puts you on the moral high ground and as if that ends the argument.
The claim “the rich AND POWERFUL” will flaunt private property rights is self-referential. All you are saying is what no ancap has ever denied, that there will likely be violations of private property rights.
Ancapism does not predict the future, it only advances an ethic of property rights. It does not preclude statesmen as your ethic contradictorily does. In your ethic, what is moral and good and just for one group of people, is immoral and evil and unjust for the rest.
The difference is in the ethical norms, which you have shown you cannot in fact contemplate. No, imagining hell on Earth that has no necessary connection to the world you claim to be contemplating, is not contemplating. Using phrases like “flying unicorns” proves you choose not to contemplate it. It is biasing. It is imagining the worst so as to justify in your own mind what you find as horrible in ancapism.
Everything you described can and does happen in statism. The difference that ancaps focus on is what can be done about people who violate property rights. Ancapism is a method of dealing with individual human problems. It does not create any. No, A protecting his own person and property from aggression against B is not a creation of a social problem. It is the stopping of problems created by individuals against other individuals.
If A is able to defend him or herself from B’s aggression, then whatever nature has wrought upon B is not caused by A. A did not cause B’s need to eat, nor B’s need for shelter, nor Bs need for clothing.
You have never explained the justification for how B has a blank check on the life of A.
You claim to be a supporter of “strong property rights”, and yet everything you list above as alleged problems in ancapism are all due to a lack of you and your thugs being able to violate the property rights of others.
You have never defended property rights. You have never defended the free market as a solution to any problem you have ever written about. You don’t admit it because you know once you do admit it, logic dictates you have to argue markets for everything else, and then you’ll have to admit that the ethic you choose to practise in your own life, is ancapism.
In statism, if a rich and powerful individuals who either make up government, or are colluding with the government, violate property rights of people over a particular geographical territory, then it would be illegal for the victim to use defensive force to stop the violence. Statism is by definition a territorial monopoly of force.
Right now it is illegal for victims to use defensive force against the rich and powerful domestic government and/or their rich and powerful “civilian” friends who flaunt property rights law.
The state can pass a law that says it is legal for them to steal, harass, intimidate, and kill civil disobedience who only meet aggressive force against them with defensive force to protect themselves. You want property rights violations, but only those who you believe are divinely ordained to perform these acts.
But that is what you in fact desire, so your crocodile tears over the rich and powerful flaunting property law is transparent. You don’t want the rich and powerful to stop flaunting property law, you want there to be rich and powerful people to flaunt property law so that you can get your ideal world that benefits you.
You just realize that it would be much more difficult for you to get away with others violating innocent people’s property rights to benefit your selfish interests.
“Of course, the number of people who want such a crazy world is probably near zero.”
That is just you trying to justify your own actually flawed and shown as flawed ethic, so as to paint it as the only alternative.
” All you are saying is what no ancap has ever denied, that there will likely be violations of private property rights. “
Pretty big and severe violations if such private powerful individuals have the power to flaunt private law courts and private defence agencies. In fact, we have a word for such people: warlords.
Also, an expression for such a society: feudal anarchy.
LK, like all statists, seems to have a very infantile view of society, a view where society must be given life and energy from an exogenous God, the state. They fail to understand that the driving forces of societies are its attitudes, values and ethics.
It is absurd to claim a priori that a society with such an excess of empathy that it agrees to abolish the initiation of force would have concurrent values allowing for starvation of the poor.
It is also absurd to claim a priori that such a society would not have “child labor rules” or “worker safety rules” in its various private voluntary enclaves.
Finally, we can again clearly see the 592nd example of how LK cannot and will not distinguish and extract the alleged “free market” factors from the violent intervention factors that allegedly caused the crises of 1920 and 1929. Without such differentiation, the Keynesian Hoax and analysis remains without any empirical basis.
LK:
“Pretty big and severe violations if such private powerful individuals have the power to flaunt private law courts and private defence agencies.”
You are still not understanding how to apply ancapism. Ancapism is not a vision of what society will look like. It is an ethic.
The way to properly apply ancapism is to assess a particular aggressive action that can take place in the world regardless of whether there are individuals acting in a territorial monopolist of violence capacity or not.
Then instead of hoping and praying that your monopolist will do something about it, by you merely verbally complaining while it is illegal for you to do anything about it, as the state itself engages in the very warlord, aggressive actions in order to even be called a state, we instead find ways to stop that activity that is not illegal according to ancap ethics but is illegal in statist ethics to the degree that activity is carried out by the state itself, or by civilians and sanctioned by the state.
In other words, ancapism is applied by first identifying an aggressive action to be illegal, which is almost always legal when a statesmen behaves in exactly that same way. That is 99% of the battle, because aggressive actions are extremely difficult to stop when done by statesmen and considered legal by the state because it is state law.
When an aggressive, immoral action is identified as aggressive, immoral action, then your boogeyman warlord, and all future warlords, their days are numbered.
Imagine a warlord in our society. Do you honestly believe in the fallacy that the ultimate reason they don’t become tyrannical like Stalin or Hitler is because the state here considers it illegal and would act to stop it? Those of us who understand humanity more than you do know that the ultimate reason is not because there is a state, but because almost everyone in society adheres to ethics that considers such activity as immoral.
If you believe that states arise from the ideas that prevail in society, that states enforce law X ultimately because of the ideas in the population that result in that ethic becoming state law, then you have not a leg to stand on if you claim that ancap ideas throughout society cannot also result in institutions that prevent individuals from becoming a Stalin or a Hitler.
And your warlord quip fails to take into account that the top, what is it, 100 or 200, most murderous and evil warlords in human history, have all been individuals acting in a state capacity. They have all been governmental despots and dictators. Obama and Bush have in a state capacity killed more people than any “private” warlord ever has.
You call the US an “anomoly”, but in fact it is closer to your ideal of a territorial monopolist which is what a state is. When the Soviet Union was a world power, tens of millions were killed.
Imagine private property anarchy reigned in that land. Do you honestly believe the purges could have taken place? That millions could have been robbed of their farms and businesses and left starving as in the Ukraine?
All the horrors of the world you have in your mind are all the result of statism, and that is why you even have the ideas of those horrors in the first place as likely happening in future society without states.
You can’t imagine a more peaceful world because you can’t imagine a world without states. It is states and what they have done that has essentially put those truly horrofic ideas in your head, and they are controlling you because of your passive, positivist, tabula rasa epistemology. You don’t even know what you are.
You are misusing the term “feudalism”. Interestingly so did Karl Marx. He called capitalism, the kind of capitalism you advocate, as feudalism because property was privately owned.
You don’t know what feudalism is either. Feudalism is a statist enforcement. Feudalism exists when states exist.
Feudal anarchy is a contradiction in terms. What you are really referring to when you say feudal anarchy is the existing world of independent warlord territorial monopolists, some more violent than others. Each warlord tribe has been imposing feudalism in the respective territories. If a serf, also called a taxpayer, lives in feudal realm X, then the feudal warlords, of whom you call government, steal a portion of output produced by homesteaders and free traders. Each also tell the resident serfs what they can and cannot do with their own person and property even if they would otherwise engage in non-violent activity.
YOU are the unwitting, oblivious advocate of feudal anarchy. You don’t want the Chinese government imposing its laws on UK territory. You want each government to impose laws that each separate populations bring about by majority vote.
You want each and every territory to be ruled by a feudalist, who imposes its own laws on everyone else’s lands.
And you believe in the lie that you have the right to claim innocence when states act totalitarian according to your definition. That states must be everywhere, and if states become totalitarian, then you never admit that anarchy would have been better instead, but you believe that you can just say “should have been different state laws enforced.”
The same principle of the people being responsible for enacting laws is in ancapism, except the vote takes place for each privately owned land, and the voters are the property owners, and the voter-owners cannot impose their laws on other people’s private lands. They can only impose laws on their own lands.
The “separation” and “alienation” you desire between states and countries, is what ancaps want for individuals. So that if any property owner desires to kill lots of people, they will have a much more difficult time doing so if they didn’t have access to a territorial monopoly that would legalize it if all that is needed is for the state to make it law, and killing anyone else who dares resist to the point of gun protection and defense.
It is because of your ethic of social democracy that we have the “anomoly” of the US government. It is people like you who turned it from a constitutional republic into a social democracy. People of your ilk turned a terrible situation into a far worse one.
If there was a world government, which is where the logic of your garbage invariable leads, then there is very little in the way to stop whoever is wielding that power in increasingly tyrannical ways.
Do you honestly believe it is a coincidence that there being a sole world superpower and that world superpower acting in ways that even in your warped and depraved ethical worldview is immoral and aggressive?
The problem with you socialists is that in your irrational quest of destroying civilized society that only movements towards private property rights makes possible, you grow the power of states to eradicate private property bit by bit, and as society becomes more tyrannical, you blame capitalism and free markets, that the increasingly tyrannical society is somehow proof that you are doing the right thing, because if it weren’t for growing the state, society would be worse.
People who lived hundreds of years ago are smarter than you when it comes to politics and economics. Your ideas are the afterbirth of a rotten spreading cancer of socialism.
LK:
“Pretty big and severe violations if such private powerful individuals have the power to flaunt private law courts and private defence agencies.”
You are still not understanding how to apply ancapism. Ancapism is not a vision of what society will look like. It is an ethic.
The way to properly apply ancapism is to assess a particular aggressive action that can take place in the world regardless of whether there are individuals acting in a territorial monopolist of violence capacity or not.
Then instead of hoping and praying that your monopolist will do something about it, by you merely verbally complaining while it is illegal for you to do anything about it, as the state itself engages in the very warlord, aggressive actions in order to even be called a state, we instead find ways to stop that activity that is not illegal according to ancap ethics but is illegal in statist ethics to the degree that activity is carried out by the state itself, or by civilians and sanctioned by the state.
In other words, ancapism is applied by first identifying an aggressive action to be illegal, which is almost always legal when a statesmen behaves in exactly that same way. That is 99% of the battle, because aggressive actions are extremely difficult to stop when done by statesmen and considered legal by the state because it is state law.
When an aggressive, immoral action is identified as aggressive, immoral action, then your boogeyman warlord, and all future warlords, their days are numbered.
Imagine a warlord in our society. Do you honestly believe in the fallacy that the ultimate reason they don’t become tyrannical like Stalin or Hitler is because the state here considers it illegal and would act to stop it? Those of us who understand humanity more than you do know that the ultimate reason is not because there is a state, but because almost everyone in society adheres to ethics that considers such activity as immoral.
If you believe that states arise from the ideas that prevail in society, that states enforce law X ultimately because of the ideas in the population that result in that ethic becoming state law, then you have not a leg to stand on if you claim that ancap ideas throughout society cannot also result in institutions that prevent individuals from becoming a Stalin or a Hitler.
And your warlord quip fails to take into account that the top, what is it, 100 or 200, most murderous and evil warlords in human history, have all been individuals acting in a state capacity. They have all been governmental despots and dictators. Obama and Bush have in a state capacity killed more people than any “private” warlord ever has.
You call the US an “anomoly”, but in fact it is closer to your ideal of a territorial monopolist which is what a state is. When the Soviet Union was a world power, tens of millions were killed.
Imagine private property anarchy reigned in that land. Do you honestly believe the purges could have taken place? That millions could have been robbed of their farms and businesses and left starving as in the Ukraine?
All the horrors of the world you have in your mind are all the result of statism, and that is why you even have the ideas of those horrors in the first place as likely happening in future society without states.
You can’t imagine a more peaceful world because you can’t imagine a world without states. It is states and what they have done that has essentially put those truly horrofic ideas in your head, and they are controlling you because of your passive, positivist, tabula rasa epistemology. You don’t even know what you are.
You are misusing the term “feudalism”. Interestingly so did Karl Marx. He called capitalism, the kind of capitalism you advocate, as feudalism because property was privately owned.
You don’t know what feudalism is either. Feudalism is a statist enforcement. Feudalism exists when states exist.
Feudal anarchy is a contradiction in terms. What you are really referring to when you say feudal anarchy is the existing world of independent warlord territorial monopolists, some more violent than others. Each warlord tribe has been imposing feudalism in the respective territories. If a serf, also called a taxpayer, lives in feudal realm X, then the feudal warlords, of whom you call government, steal a portion of output produced by homesteaders and free traders. Each also tell the resident serfs what they can and cannot do with their own person and property even if they would otherwise engage in non-violent activity.
YOU are the unwitting, oblivious advocate of feudal anarchy. You don’t want the Chinese government imposing its laws on UK territory. You want each government to impose laws that each separate populations bring about by majority vote.
You want each and every territory to be ruled by a feudalist, who imposes its own laws on everyone else’s lands.
And you believe in the lie that you have the right to claim innocence when states act totalitarian according to your definition. That states must be everywhere, and if states become totalitarian, then you never admit that anarchy would have been better instead, but you believe that you can just say “should have been different state laws enforced.”
The same principle of the people being responsible for enacting laws is in ancapism, except the vote takes place for each privately owned land, and the voters are the property owners, and the voter-owners cannot impose their laws on other people’s private lands. They can only impose laws on their own lands.
The “separation” and “alienation” you desire between states and countries, is what ancaps want for individuals. So that if any property owner desires to kill lots of people, they will have a much more difficult time doing so if they didn’t have access to a territorial monopoly that would legalize it if all that is needed is for the state to make it law, and killing anyone else who dares resist to the point of gun protection and defense.
It is because of your ethic of social democracy that we have the “anomoly” of the US government. It is people like you who turned it from a constitutional republic into a social democracy. People of your ilk turned a terrible situation into a far worse one.
If there was a world government, which is where the logic of your garbage invariable leads, then there is very little in the way to stop whoever is wielding that power in increasingly tyrannical ways.
Do you honestly believe it is a coincidence that there being a sole world superpower and that world superpower acting in ways that even in your warped and depraved ethical worldview is immoral and aggressive?
The problem with you socialists is that in your irrational quest of destroying civilized society that only movements towards private property rights makes possible, you grow the power of states to eradicate private property bit by bit, and as society becomes more tyrannical, you blame capitalism and free markets, that the increasingly tyrannical society is somehow proof that you are doing the right thing, because if it weren’t for growing the state, society would be worse.
People who lived hundreds of years ago are smarter than you when it comes to politics and economics. Your ideas are the afterbirth of a rotten spreading cancer of socialism.
How are prices going to discover if we are destroying the atmosphere?
On what do you blame bad English food in the 1980’s? Whilst some was good – some of those pies were excellent, and fish and chips can be great – eating out food was pretty bad generally. Better food was available, yet the English did not demand it.
This does seem like a case of ignorance – the economic actors were not informed, and thus were limited in their choice. Is this not a market failure?
If they didn’t demand “better” food then what is the problem? Isn’t the concept of “better food” subjective anyway?
Your ignorance of whether this is a market failure or not is a market failure.
There exists better knowledge than what you posses now; thus, the market has failed.
Better food also costs more. But in the end even this doesn’t matter, maybe most people just had other preferences? How can you judge this to be a market failure? Is it also a market failure that so much more people like soulless pop music instead of Beethoven?
Why do you project your preferences on other people and call it a market failure if they do not share your subjective opinion?
BTW: I am sure there is good food in Britain today, but if you say it is so much better today than in the 80s then I really don’t want to know how it was back then. During my visits (everything within the last 14 years) I never ate well there… But you don’t visit Britain for their food anyway.
They discovered curry and lager — the pinnacle of civilization.
Hey, one clarification everyone: Krugman wasn’t merely arguing, “I don’t like English food, therefore market failed.”
No, he was literally making a market failure argument. That is a higher hurdle than merely saying, “I don’t like what the market produced.”
You would have to click on the link in the link to see his longer analysis.
When Krugman mentioned that the English were stuck in a bad equilibrium, I immediately got the image of him tying himself to a rope, and entering into a radiant white lighted closet with shrilling screams of malnourished Englishmen inside.
Krugman thinks that markets are useful as tools for the government to tax because markets tend to generate a larger chunk of money for the government to take from and spend on things that “really matter” such as paying people not to work.