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Best Libertarian Book?

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08-08-2010 , 07:47 PM

#51

Borodog

Enemy of the State

Join Date: Jan 2004 Posts: 25,491

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrunkHamster

You mean the first part? I'm not sure about farcical, but I certainly agree that it's not convincing. (That said, I think libertarians need to think much longer and harder about some of the issues of risk and compensation that Nozick raises.) But it's really the second and third parts of the book which kick so much ass, and as far as I can tell, they aren't touched by any deficiencies of the Anarchy bit.

I concede then. It's been nearly a decade since I read it, and that's all that dominates my recollection of it.

08-08-2010 , 07:56 PM

#52

Borodog

Enemy of the State

Join Date: Jan 2004 Posts: 25,491

PS. It is entirely possible that I stopped reading the book after the first part because it seemed so transparently silly to me, since I have no recollection whatsoever of anything else about it.

08-08-2010 , 08:08 PM

#53

DrunkHamster

adept

Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 945

Quote:

Originally Posted by Borodog

PS. It is entirely possible that I stopped reading the book after the first part because it seemed so transparently silly to me, since I have no recollection whatsoever of anything else about it.

If that's the case I'd highly recommend picking it up again and perhaps just skipping the first section. There's so much good stuff in parts 2 and 3 that it would be a real shame to neglect it on the basis of part 1. Among other things, Nozick's entitlement theory of justice and his skewering of Rawls and other egalitarians are really worth checking out.

08-08-2010 , 08:11 PM

#54

bills217

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 7,462

How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne

08-08-2010 , 08:15 PM

#55

Borodog

Enemy of the State

Join Date: Jan 2004 Posts: 25,491

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrunkHamster

Thanks; I will put it in the list.

08-08-2010 , 09:02 PM

#56

DVaut1

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 30,005

Yertle the Turtle by Dr Seuss

08-08-2010 , 09:08 PM

#57

fluorescenthippo

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 5,849

how an economy grows and why it crashes

08-08-2010 , 09:22 PM

#58

J.R.

Econ Forum Czar

Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 8,292

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlanDyer

Libertarians as a whole seem completely unwilling to recognize the inequality in bargaining power between corporations and individuals.

Roderick Long

Quote:

Defenders of the free market are often accused of being apologists for big business and shills for the corporate elite. Is this a fair charge?

No and yes. Emphatically no—because corporate power and the free market are actually antithetical; genuine competition is big business’s worst nightmare. But also, in all too many cases, yes —because although liberty and plutocracy cannot coexist, simultaneous advocacy of both is all too possible.
...
Corporate power depends crucially on government intervention in the marketplace.[2] This is obvious enough in the case of the more overt forms of government favoritism such as subsidies, bailouts,[3] and other forms of corporate welfare; protectionist tariffs; explicit grants of monopoly privilege; and the seizing of private property for corporate use via eminent domain (as in Kelo v. New London). But these direct forms of pro-business intervention are supplemented by a swarm of indirect forms whose impact is arguably greater still.

As I have written elsewhere:

Quote:

One especially useful service that the state can render the corporate elite is cartel enforcement. Price-fixing agreements are unstable on a free market, since while all parties to the agreement have a collective interest in seeing the agreement generally hold, each has an individual interest in breaking the agreement by underselling the other parties in order to win away their customers; and even if the cartel manages to maintain discipline over its own membership, the oligopolistic prices tend to attract new competitors into the market. Hence the advantage to business of state-enforced cartelisation. Often this is done directly, but there are indirect ways too, such as imposing uniform quality standards that relieve firms from having to compete in quality. (And when the quality standards are high, lower-quality but cheaper competitors are priced out of the market.)

The ability of colossal firms to exploit economies of scale is also limited in a free market, since beyond a certain point the benefits of size (e.g., reduced transaction costs) get outweighed by diseconomies of scale (e.g., calculational chaos stemming from absence of price feedback)—unless the state enables them to socialise these costs by immunising them from competition – e.g., by imposing fees, licensure requirements, capitalisation requirements, and other regulatory burdens that disproportionately impact newer, poorer entrants as opposed to richer, more established firms.[4]

Nor does the list end there. Tax breaks to favored corporations represent yet another non-obvious form of government intervention. There is of course nothing anti-market about tax breaks per se; quite the contrary. But when a firm is exempted from taxes to which its competitors are subject, it becomes the beneficiary of state coercion directed against others, and to that extent owes its success to government intervention rather than market forces.

Intellectual property laws also function to bolster the power of big business. Even those who accept the intellectual property as a legitimate form of private property[5] can agree that the ever-expanding temporal horizon of copyright protection, along with disproportionately steep fines for violations (measures for which publishers, recording firms, software companies, and film studios have lobbied so effectively), are excessive from an incentival point of view, stand in tension with the express intent of the Constitution’s patents-and-copyrights clause, and have more to do with maximizing corporate profits than with securing a fair return to the original creators.

Government favoritism also underwrites environmental irresponsibility on the part of big business. Polluters often enjoy protection against lawsuits, for example, despite the pollution’s status as a violation of private property rights.[6] When timber companies engage in logging on public lands, the access roads are generally tax-funded, thus reducing the cost of logging below its market rate; moreover, since the loggers do not own the forests they have little incentive to log sustainably.[7]

In addition, inflationary monetary policies on the part of central banks also tend to benefit those businesses that receive the inflated money first in the form of loans and investments, when they are still facing the old, lower prices, while those to whom the new money trickles down later, only after they have already begun facing higher prices, systematically lose out.

And of course corporations have been frequent beneficiaries of U.S. military interventions abroad, from the United Fruit Company in 1950s Guatemala to Halliburton in Iraq today.

link

=====

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlanDyer

I have seen several libertarians argue that wal-mart was doing a great service providing jobs to individuals without even basic safety equipment.

Quote:

Vast corporate empires like Wal-Mart are often either hailed or condemned (depending on the speaker’s perspective) as products of the free market. But not only is Wal-Mart a direct beneficiary of (usually local) government intervention in the form of such measures as eminent domain and tax breaks, but it also reaps less obvious benefits from policies of wider application. The funding of public highways through tax revenues, for example, constitutes a de facto transportation subsidy, allowing Wal-Mart and similar chains to socialize the costs of shipping and so enabling them to compete more successfully against local businesses; the low prices we enjoy at Wal-Mart in our capacity as consumers are thus made possible in part by our having already indirectly subsidized Wal-Mart’s operating costs in our capacity as taxpayers.

Wal-Mart also keeps its costs low by paying low salaries; but what makes those low salaries possible is the absence of more lucrative alternatives for its employees—and that fact in turn owes much to government intervention. The existence of regulations, fees, licensure requirements, et cetera does not affect all market participants equally; it’s much easier for wealthy, well-established companies to jump through these hoops than it is for new firms just starting up. Hence such regulations both decrease the number of employers bidding for employees’ services (thus keeping salaries low) and make it harder for the less affluent to start enterprises of their own.[8] Legal restrictions on labor organizing also make it harder for such workers to organize collectively on their own behalf.[9]

I don’t mean to suggest that Wal-Mart and similar firms owe their success solely to governmental privilege; genuine entrepreneurial talent has doubtless been involved as well. But given the enormous governmental contribution to that success, it’s doubtful that in the absence of government intervention such firms would be in anything like the position they are today.

same link as above

----

Quote:

I read your article on Wal-Mart with interest. But I think you’ve left out one important source of Wal-Mart’s low prices – government intervention.

WaltchmartWal-Mart stores frequently acquire their land by eminent domain; in other words, they get to acquire land at lower prices than those at which the owners would be willing to sell voluntarily.

Once in business, such stores further benefit from various sorts of corporate welfare, both the direct kind and such indirect forms as the mass of regulations that have the indirect effect of making it harder for small companies to compete with big ones. As companies grow, diseconomies of scale eventually surpass economies of scale, placing a natural curb on their growth; but government regulation, by stalling competition, allows companies to continue growing past this point by externalising their costs.

Moreover, Wal-Mart’s entire business model depends heavily on federal transportation subsidies; so its competition with local businesses doesn’t exactly occur on a level playing field.

Both Wal-Mart’s critics and its defenders usually see it as an embodiment of the free market. But to me Wal-Mart looks like just one more special interest feeding at the taxpayers’ trough.

I’m opposed to Wal-Mart because I like the free market.

Advocatus Diaboli

=============

Noam's not all wrong - he is good at recognizing “business power” depends crucially on government intervention:

Quote:

“Any form of concentrated power, whatever it is, is not going to want to be subjected to popular democratic control or, for that matter, to market discipline. Powerful sectors, including corporate wealth, are naturally opposed to functioning democracy, just as they’re opposed to functioning markets, for themselves, at least.”

— Reflections on Democracy

08-08-2010 , 10:55 PM

#59

FlyWf

It's the other way

Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 58,090

J.R.- None of that is remotely about imbalance in bargaining power, it's just random anti-government griping. Discussing disparity in bargaining power is a more specific concept than "talk about corporations, blame the bad stuff on government plz".

08-08-2010 , 11:45 PM

#60

SenorKeeed

mew mew mew

Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 37,478

JR's position seems to be that modern corporations are able to be as large and influential as they are because of government intervention. This seems directly responsive to Alan's complaint that libertarians don't address the problem of corporations being too powerful.

08-08-2010 , 11:53 PM

#61

Borodog

Enemy of the State

Join Date: Jan 2004 Posts: 25,491

Duh.

08-08-2010 , 11:54 PM

#62

Borodog

Enemy of the State

Join Date: Jan 2004 Posts: 25,491

Quote:

Originally Posted by DVaut1

Yertle the Turtle by Dr Seuss

It's turtles all the way down.

08-09-2010 , 12:03 AM

#63

Sholar

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 6,357

To be a Rothbardian AC without reading Nozick is odd -- or at least to read Rothbard's criticism of Nozick, and to put it in context ("it is highly relevant to see whether [this] ingenious logical construction has ever indeed occurred in historical reality").

Since Nozick presents a lot of the "obvious" criticisms of Rothbardian AC, it's a good place to work through them. I think it would be a great thread to see one of the Rothbardian AC here engage with that work in a substantive way, although this never happens in practice.

08-09-2010 , 03:09 AM

#64

Montius

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 4,224

http://www.amazon.com/Libertarian-Id...1337771&sr=8-1

Imo.

08-09-2010 , 01:32 PM

#65

FlyWf

It's the other way

Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 58,090

Quote:

Originally Posted by mjkidd

No, you're still not getting it. J.R.'s post was a general complaint about corporate welfare. How am I making this post twice? Inequality of bargaining power is like a specific microeconomic concept and has essentially nothing to do with government intervention.

I know you and J.R. want to talk about how corporations are powerful because of corrupt governments because grr you hate the gubmint, but it's almost as if, oh, "libertarians as a whole seem completely unwilling to recognize the inequality in bargaining power between corporations and individuals."

My explanation for that phenomena is incapability, not unwillingness, FWIW.

08-09-2010 , 01:58 PM

#66

SenorKeeed

mew mew mew

Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 37,478

If the corporate welfare is the main reason that corporations are so large and powerful then how does what JR quoted not address Alan's complaint? Certainly a firm's "bargaining power" is generally correlated to how large and powerful it is, right?

08-09-2010 , 02:03 PM

#67

SenorKeeed

mew mew mew

Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 37,478

Wal-Mart, for example, can dictate terms to firms that want to sell their goods in Wal-Mart's stores simply because Wal-Mart has such a huge market share.

08-09-2010 , 02:07 PM

#68

FlyWf

It's the other way

Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 58,090

mjkidd- Alan is asking about a microeconomic concept that either exists or does not(p.s. it does). I don't know how else to frame this, you're not following the discussion. I mean, for Christ's sake you put scare quotes around bargaining power like it's some fanciful idea Alan invented in this thread, instead of a fundamental idea in game theory and labor economics. Your example, just like all of J.R.s, is about Walmart competing with other firms. That's not really the subject here, it's about negotiations between INDIVIDUALS(prospective employees, customers) and corporations(including corporations much smaller than Walmart).

Spoiler alert: Libertarian freedom of contract zealotry doesn't play nicely with modern scholarship on this issue.

08-09-2010 , 02:11 PM

#69

SenorKeeed

mew mew mew

Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 37,478

Of course "bargaining power" exists. I didn't realize my quotes were scary and I didn't mean to imply that the phenomenom doesn't exist.

Do you think that "bargaining power" is generally correlated with a firm's size and power?

08-09-2010 , 02:12 PM

#70

Almond

centurion

Join Date: Aug 2010 Posts: 198

Not a book, but enjoy reading libertarian reporter John Stossel's blog.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/

08-09-2010 , 02:14 PM

#71

clowntable

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 45,557

Quote:

Wal-Mart, for example, can dictate terms to firms that want to sell their goods in Wal-Mart's stores simply because Wal-Mart has such a huge market share.

Almost every anarchist will tell you that their power is at least partly rooted in how they play the system. Pretty much every big corporation uses so called "regulation" as a strategic weapon

Which brings me to two books I want to mention:
Antitrust - The Case for Repeal
Chaoes Theory (privatized law, defense)

08-09-2010 , 03:30 PM

#72

FlyWf

It's the other way

Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 58,090

Quote:

Originally Posted by mjkidd

This tangent has nothing to do with best libertarian books so I'm dropping it, but seriously, you aren't following. Try to reread the whole thing. Think about stuff like union protection laws and the minimum wage.

08-09-2010 , 03:37 PM

#73

DrunkHamster

adept

Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 945

Quote:

Originally Posted by FlyWf

That's not really the subject here, it's about negotiations between INDIVIDUALS(prospective employees, customers) and corporations(including corporations much smaller than Walmart).

Spoiler alert: Libertarian freedom of contract zealotry doesn't play nicely with modern scholarship on this issue.

Who says that negotiations have to be between individuals and corporations? I'd have no problem if, hypothetically, a group of prospective employees wanted to voluntarily participate in an organization for the purpose of more effectively bargaining with their employer. As it happens, these kinds of organizations exist - you might even have heard of them! At any rate, I am virtually positive that no matter what definition of bargaining power you choose to adopt, a randomly chosen individual will have more bargaining power against a large corporation than he will against the government. At least large corporations don't have the ultimate threat of using violence to force you to do their bidding against your will.

08-09-2010 , 03:39 PM

#74

SenorKeeed

mew mew mew

Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 37,478

Quote:

Originally Posted by FlyWf

lol that's not why you're dropping it.

08-09-2010 , 03:44 PM

#75

FlyWf

It's the other way

Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 58,090

Quote:

Originally Posted by mjkidd

lol that's not why you're dropping it.

mjkidd, you know how much I love teaching basic economics, I love it almost as much as acting like a dick, so feel free to start another thread and I'll come berate and educate all and sundry. But people are still like mentioning books and **** in this one.

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