From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Sun Aug 11 2002 - 14:46:09 MDT
I'm probably not going to be able to keep up with this thread -- it's
grown far too large and bloated, and I've got mild RSI and deadlines to
hit. However ...
On Fri, Aug 09, 2002 at 08:51:26PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> Charlie Stross wrote:
>
> 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?
>
> ### Point 1 in my government function list - protection from ELEMENTS. Large
> corporations, very wealthy landowners can distort the legal system to their
> advantage. If this is prevented, property rights of the poorest will be
> safe.
What "property rights"?
The majority of the world's population today live OUTSIDE the organised
and quantified system of property to which we assign rights. Consider
illiterate peasant farmers living on the land and scratching a
living. Their involvement in the formal economy may be zero, but they're
still eating even though they don't 'own' the land they work -- insofar
as they don't have pieces of paper to say they're entitled to it, or
receive any money for what they grow, or spend any money for the extras
they acquire.
There's a rather interesting, albeit superficial, interview with
Teodor Shanin in the August 3rd issue of New Scientist. Shanin is a
"peasantologist" -- he studies the economics and sociology of peasants.
His most interesting assertion is that the informal economy is actually
so large that roughly 75% of the planet's population rely on it for their
very survival. "There was no economic explanation for how the majority
of the population [in Africa] survived. They didn't own land. They didn't
seem to have any assets. According to conventional economics they should
have died of hunger long ago, but they survived. To understand this,
researchers looked at how these people actually lived ... their way of
life was completely the opposite of how a human being in an industrial
society survives. They didn't have a job, pension, steady place to work of
regular flow of income. Families held a range of occupations from farming
and selling in the market to doing odd jobs or handicrafts. Their aim
was survival rather than the maximisation of profit. Rather than earn
wages, labour was used within family enterprises or shared out among the
village. Researches discovered the same way of life in Latin America,
in south Asia -- even in Italy."
Here's the kicker: what WE value is not what THEY value, because for the
most part an attempt to drag them into the formal economy actually IMPAIRS
their ability to stay alive. And so, any attempt to deal with the problem
of how to look after the poor is contingent on a way of enabling them to
stop being poor (without starving to death in the process).
It's a big headache. And no, I'm not suggesting that living like peasants
is a good thing: quite the opposite. But reciting Austrian School economic
nostrums isn't going to deal with the basic problem that they're utterly
inappropriate to people who aren't in the economy in the first place.
[ the commons ]
> 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?
>
> ### Of course they should - how can you even suggest punishing somebody for
> unknowingly, unintentionally, and in a totally unpredictable manner harming
> others? Should you be punished for leaving your car exactly in the path of a
> biker's head who stumbles on a rock? Should you pay for his broken neck?
Yes. :-)
More sensibly, it depends on the circumstances. If you car is parked in your
own back yard, on private property that isn't open to the public, then of
course not; the trespasser who deliberately ignores fences or warning signs
has committed an active intrusion. At the opposite extreme, if your car is
parked haphazardly across a bike lane at the bottom of a hill and out of view
due to a bend, despite warning signs that parking is forbidden, then you're
entirely responsible becuase *you* committed the intrusion.
In practice, most violations of the commons fall somewhere in-between these
extremes. I don't believe in one-size-fits-all ...
> How do they get restitution, in your world? In the world I live in,
> lawyers cost money and aren't guaranteed to gain restitution.
.....
> ### Lawyers are expensive because of monopolies limiting access to the
> profession (the bar associations), courts are slow because they are not
> private, and this does make it more expensive.
"Any profession is a conspiracy against the laity" -- George Bernard
Shaw. On the other hand, properly administered professional bodies police
the standards of their own membership. If they don't, you risk ending up
with a lawyer who is cheap but incapable of arguing their way out of a
cardboard box. So there are arguments in favour of professionalisation
of the practice of law, as well as against it. Life's generally like that,
and I tend to find ideology a poor fit for the real world.
> > 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.
>
> ### Well, if they can't get antibiotics, they won't have resistant bacteria.
> If adults are not vaccinated against polio, it's their problem. If they deny
> this to their children, see function 3.
No.
If adults are not vaccinated against polio it is OUR problem. You really
need to read up on epidemiology. (It's about the clearest possible
example of a common good issue in the world today.) I'll also add that, as
a matter of taste and personal opinion, I find the idea of _not_ providing
antibiotics to people in need who can benefit from them, as a matter of
course, revolting. To quote J. P. Morgan, "The first thing is character.
Before money or property or anything else. Money cannot buy it." Making
sure that avoidable deaths are avoided is, in my world, a matter of
character.
> 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.
>
> ### Having a child is always voluntary. If you know you don't want to abort,
> use good contraception, or don't have sex.
Does the word "rape" exist in your vocabulary?
> 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?
>
> ### Exactly!
In that case, we have a fundamental disagreement over core human values. (See
"character", above.) No further discussion seems possible.
[ snip ]
> > 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.
>
> ### Yes, you are absolutely right. Functions 1, and 2 serve mainly to
> protect the free market, by preserving a large number of players
> (elimination of ELEMENTS), and preventing distortions of information flows.
> Protect the free market, and almost everything will be fine.
Disagree. In my world, the free market accounts for about 25% of the actual
survival-related activity of human beings, and it doesn't satisfy all the
requirements even of the minority that participates in it.
I think you're talking in ideals and abstractions here.
Don't get me wrong: if I believed in human perfection I'd probably be a
libertarian myself. A world full of rational actors who always make the
best choices for themselves would be _great_. All conflicts could be
managed, all resource allocation headaches ironed out, there'd be no need
for irrational social organisations such as religions or parliaments
(and that roaring outside my window is a queue of wide-bodied four-engined
pigs on final approach into Edinburgh Airport). In practice, which is what
I'm talking about, we *can't* assume a free market that is protected from
distorted information flows, or that even works all the time. In practice,
there will always be a need for oversight, and problems with regulators
taking envelopes full of used notes or post-resignation seats on the boards
of the regulatees -- regulatory capture is the big enemy of the real-world
market, and freeing the market from regulation is like burning down the
house in order to deal with the mice in the wainscoting.
> 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.
>
> ### Do you have data to support your claims? If you look at agricultural
> workers, they are very mobile, and poor.
See "informal economy" above -- they're mobile in no small part because
they're not part of the formal economy.
> If you want work, you *will* move
> to get it. I did. If you stay and whine about unemployment, means you are
> plainly lazy.
Rubbish. They've got an elderly and infirm mother with arthritis to
support, and three young children, and can't fit into a one-bedroom
apartment on the third floor of a tenement. If they stay with their
local community they can maybe scratch some vegetables, do a few favours
for cousin Al who will provide some sacks of potatoes in return, and so
on. If they move to the big smoke, they lose the support network. *THAT*
is how an informal economy works -- and while you can't cost it, because
it's never quantified in financial terms (being based on barter, favours,
and kinship relations) it has a non-zero value to the members.
-- Charlie (being dragged away from the keyboard kicking and screaming
by his fiance, who wants a meal)
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