From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Fri Aug 09 2002 - 06:25:10 MDT
On Thu, Aug 08, 2002 at 07:56:31PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> Secondly, provision of an environment in which property rights are
> observed and free trade can take place without fear of banditry and theft,
>
> ### Well, here I disagree a little bit - protection against small-time thugs
> can be contracted out to private forces, as long as the inequality in wealth
> is not extreme, and the problem of the poor is dealt with by charity
> donations for security insurance.
Ah, I note your reservations at the end with interest. I would be inclined
to agree -- if I was convinced that charitable donations were a suitable
basis for anything. I'm not. In the world I live in, people are selfish;
charitable donations are a tiny part of the economy, well under 1% of
GDP, and certainly not capable of substituting for real cover. Let's
bear in mind that provision of security is labour-intensive, and almost
by definition out of the financial reach of the poor. Let's also bear in
mind that a level economic playing field requires, as a starting point,
that property rights are equally enforcable. This is a problem, isn't
it?
> -----
> Protecting the commons springs to mind;
> that's the air we breathe, and the water we drink, (etc)
>
> ### Here I find it difficult to interpret your position - what kind of
> measures for protection of the commons do you have in mind? Do you want
> compulsory regulation of behavior, including preventative actions?
Ah, at this point I have to confess to being a liberal but not a
statist. I'm in favour of minimizing restrictions where possible. However,
pollution is a big headache. It's even bigger when you think in terms of
unidentified -- new -- pollutants. For example, dioxins weren't understood
to be harmful pollutants until the 1970's; should people be exempt from
liability for stuff they dump before (as opposed to after) it's identified
as harmful?
> I would
> think the current state approach is wrong: There is no need for state law,
> except insofar as necessary for enforcement of contracts and protection of
> property (including human bodies). If any individuals are measurably harmed
> as a result of e.g air pollution, they can expect restitution. If the cost
> of such restitution exceeds the gain from activities associated with
> polluting the air, polluters will adjust their behavior without specific
> state intervention.
How do they get restitution, in your world? In the world I live in,
lawyers cost money and aren't guaranteed to gain restitution. They cost
so much money, in fact, that most ordinary people can't afford them --
and getting a bunch of ordinary folks to pool their resources is much,
much harder than herding cats. Worse, there are boundary problems with
jurisdiction. A polluter in country A may be emitting fumes that damage
people in country B, but due to legal incompatibilities their liability
may stop at the border.
Plus, it's better to prevent damage in advance than to suffer the effects
of the damage. I'd rather have clean lungs than several kilobucks of
compensation and emphysema following a long court case, if you follow me.
> Infrastructure
> regulation -- transport, power, gas -- also come into this category
> these days.
>
> ### What do you mean? Why would you like to regulate gas companies?
Because there's only one gas distribution network (the pipes in the ground),
and the usual monopoly problems apply. An unregulated gas supplier can become
a regional monopoly and hike prices until consumers scream -- but short of
laying a whole load of new pipes there's no way to make an end run around
the methane monopoly.
> Getting controversial: insurance, and particularly health insurance, is
> a common good.
>
> ### I have the impression you are using the term "common good" in a
> different meaning than above. Please explain.
Epidemiology doesn't respect your wallet. If we have a reservoir of
poor, homeless people who can't afford medicines, or who can only
afford antibiotics intermittently, we have a breeding ground for
antibiotic-resistant bugs. If we have a reservoir of people who can't
afford or don't believe in vaccination, we have a reservoir population
for polio, smallpox, or the like. That's for starters.
The second aspect is that uninsured people are in some cases free riders
on the insured. Consider the prospect of being in a car crash where the
other party is (a) poor and (b) uninsured. Sure you can sue him until
you're blue in the face, but you won't get a bent penny, and your car
is still broken (if not your bones). The more people who are insured, the
wider the burden of insurance is spread.
Maybe I'd be more accurate saying that even if we are insured, living in
proximity to people who aren't covered is a problem.
> Still, this doesn't mean that I would support universal health care or any
> form of state-owned health system. Only those who wish to live and prove it
> by their actions should be eligible for help.
(So if they're in a coma ...?)
Sorry. I live in a country with a national health system. There's a
shortage of liver transplants, such that some thousands of people a year
die for want of one. The only triage issues I'm aware of is that people
who try to commit suicide by o/d'ing on paracetamol (aka acetaminophen)
and destroy their liver tend to come in lower down the waiting list than
people who didn't: the shortage is on the supply side (not enough donors).
> Somebody who could pay for
> insurance but instead has a child or buys a motorbike, should not receive
> assistance, since their actions prove they do not care about their life.
Er, I think you're conflating two situations here. Having a child may be
involuntary, to the extent that it may be unwelcome and unplanned but
the parents have ethical qualms over abortion. The motorbike -- you're
assuming it's a luxury, aren't you? There are large parts of the world where
motorbikes are primary transportation, because only the rich can aspire to
a car.
Am I right in thinking that what you _really_ mean is that people should
show some intention of paying for their own healthcare before they receive
any?
> A pension system is a bit more controversial,
> but if we class managing senescence and disabilities as an illness,
> we get them back under the umbrella of a common good.
>
> ### Definitely not. A pension is not a way of managing senescence - for that
> you need long-term care insurance, again with the same caveats as to
> healthcare. Only a very tiny fraction of citizens would ever qualify for
> public assistance here.
Back when the pension system was first introduced by Otto von Bismarck,
the main issue was elderly people who were no longer physically able to
work -- too old, too slow, too out of date. That problem is *not* going
to go away (although I think retirement at 65 now looks rather bizarre --
if the retirement age had risen in line with life expectancy it would now
be somewhere around 80).
> is a working justification for health and safety regulations in the
> workplace
>
> ### Again, why treat healthcare as a "common good", whatever it means?
It's something we all need.
More to the point, I view anyone who's dropped on the scrapheap of
society as a net loss *to me*. That person could be healthy and gainfully
employed and helping pay their insurance premiums or taxes or whatever
and contributing to the GDP.
> The
> only reason for intervention is if there are non-free-market conditions
> related to the employment contracts.
Er, in the world I live in there is not -- and never has been -- any such
thing as a free market. They tend to slide into disequilibrium very rapidly,
and local circumstances prevent people from moving where the work is as
easily as theory would dictate that they should.
> If the employer is so huge as to
> constitute an effective monopoly in an area (e.g. one company providing 90%
> of jobs in a mining town), capable of hiding risk-related information from
> employees, an intervention is necessary but not otherwise.
Doesn't work that way. I can't, for example, afford to move to London. If
I decided to do so, I could sell my apartment -- but I'd end up having to
try to cram myself and my partner into a much smaller one, pay about three
times as much for it, and face relocation costs equal to a good chunk of a
year's salary. Now, I'm going to contradict myself by saying that right
now, if I wanted to do this I could -- but someone who is in financial
hardship because of (say) a local monopoly, can't, precisely because of
their hardship. The idea of labour mobility in a free market is a delusion
born of wishful thinking; in reality, the most mobile workers are the
highest- paid and richest, not the people at the bottom of the heap
who _need_ to move in order to find work. And that's just for starters.
Economics takes no notice of little things like where your family and
friends live -- items that real people put a non-zero value on, but which
show up in no financial calculations.
> Unemployment insurance?
>
> ### Definitely not. The unemployed might be provided with survival
> assistance in the form of a poorhouse, with appropriate, useful occupation
> while staying there, that's all.
Strong disagreement.
Someone who's unemployed is costing the community money in two ways --
firstly, any assistance they're receiving, but more importantly, by
not contributing their labour effectively. Moreover, the double-whammy
is amplified in times of hardship. (I fear the USA is about to re-learn
the lessons of the great depression over the next few years ...)
> It's better to have zoning guidelines,
> public policy on the appearance of buildings,
>
> ### Definitely not. All you need is to define property rights and their
> limitations appropriately, and everything sorts itself out without
> bureaucrats. Covenants and landlord's associations are all you need.
Ah. Pay lawyers $500 per hour instead of clerks $10 an hour to sort it all out.
> . So it
> makes sense to make provision for an educated workforce.
>
> (at least as far as UK experience indicates, where there's a strong
> working-class tradition of refusing to take out loans)
>
> ### Those who are not interested in an education that could repay all debts
> incurred while obtaining it, don't deserve a single penny.
Latest figures show a *decline* in the number of teenagers from lower-class
or poor backgrounds going into higher education -- precisely because the
mountain of debt they rack up exceeds any expectation of being able to
repay it. I disagree.
> ### What are your first principles? I thought I didn't see an explicit
> reference to them in your post.
To start with, and in order: freedom of association and speech, equal
treatment in law, protection of basic human rights, ownership of
property, freedom of personal development where it doesn't infringe
upon someone else's freedom. (With me so far?)
To follow with: no human being is an island, and we live in social groups
such that other peoples' actions affect us. We therefore need at least a
mimimal set of rules to mediate such interactions. The market is NOT the
only place we interact, but it's an important one. Some items cannot have
financial values attached because they're subjectively valued, and in many
cases they mean far more to people than money -- in extreme cases, even
survival. (My pet cats' life is worth FAR more to me than it is to you,
for example. The validity of Christian doctrine is worth zip to me --
I'm an atheist -- but a Bishop's entire personality may be dependent on
his assessment of its worth. The September 11th hijackers had shared values
they were willing to die for that we hold to be repugnant. And so on.)
> I use the following: respect for the survival-wish of innocent humans is the
> paramount value (rule 1). Absolutely anything that is unavoidably necessary
> to protect this wish, can and should be done. The maintenance of moral
> symmetry appears to crucial to long-term survival, so following Richard
> Epstein, I include it among the first principles (rule 2). There are some
> more principles but not directly related to our subject.
I'm with you so far; there's nothing objectionable in the above, except that
I'd replace "innocent humans" with "sapients" (innocence is impossible to
evaluate in this context, and "humans" might rule out uploads according to
some people :)
> Since any
> state-imposed rule involves the threat of death (by the definition of the
> state as the monopoly user of violence in an area), imposition of rules by
> the state is allowable only as long as both rules 1 and 2 are not violated.
We have different definitions of the state. (Game over.)
States often assert a monopoly power of violence, but in reality
their monopoly is frequently brought into question. (Just ask the
IRA.) Moreover, it doesn't define the full range of state activities
effectively. The definition of a state as a local monopoly of violence
is one I see coming from libertarians -- where did it originate? (Hayek?)
I look around and what I see is a bunch of entities that provide a
consistent, geographically bounded legal framework -- backed up, where
necessary, by the threat of force -- and a mechanism for extending that
legal framework (which we call government). Violence isn't inevitable
in the system.
> The above have in common an impact on survival of innocents,
You haven't explained what "innocent" means, within your world-view.
> The vast majority of the issues you touch on can
> be dealt with indirectly, by improving information flows, rather than
> coercive regulation.
I'd be happier if they were. Coercion is always second-best to voluntary
cooperation. But ...
> I fail to see why roads, libraries, etc. etc. should be
> paid controlled by the state.
>
> I want to specifically single out, as immoral (=threatening death other than
> as to prevent death), the notion of forcing a neighbor to follow one's ideas
> about lawn care, even if his lawn decorations were to reduce the resale
> values of adjoining properties to zero. The threat of death may not be used
> to enforce esthetics!
Well, yes. It's just that we have very different fundamental definitions of
what a state is. Yours seems to be some kind of sinister violence-monopolist,
while mine is a legal system.
-- Charlie
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