From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Thu Aug 15 2002 - 04:49:54 MDT
On Tuesday, August 13, 2002 12:48 AM Dan Fabulich dfabulich@warpmail.net
wrote:
>> I don't completely disagree, but in a free market
>> society -- be it anarchocapitalist or minarchist
>> -- the costs of racism are more localized.
>
> Actually, I think it's a toss-up. When racism/classism is
> in the majority, you're correct, the majority can pass
> laws which restrict even the minority from treating
> people equally.
This is true, but the more free market oriented a society is, the more
the cost of racism will be felt by racists. The less need to cur
Now, I could've answered racist laws aren't minarchist, but that begs
the question. After all, if we had a minarchist society to start with
populated by mostly hardcore racists and a tiny group of people they
didn't like -- heck, this can be any form of prejudice not just
racism -- it's hard to see how the majority won't get its way, at least,
at some level. Over time, I think the more free market this society is,
it would work toward being less racist as the costs of racism will be
more apparent.
> But when racism/classism is in
> the minority, the majority can pass laws which
> restrict the minority from discriminating on the
> basis of race/class/whatever.
First, we're probably using several different senses of "class" here.
Let's at least distinguish between class in the almost Rothbardian
sense -- a class society is one where two of more sets of people have
different priviliges based on their ability to legitimately use force on
other sets of people. E.g., in many Islamic societies, men and women
are separate classes and men generally have the power to use force
legitimately on women, from things like controlling divorce to rape and
beatings and even killings.
Thus in a society with institutionalized racism, race becomes just an
instance of class. (Nothing particularly Marxist here. I'm not making
claims, such as many Marxists would (e.g., Tony Smith in his
_Dialectical Social Theory and Its Critics_), that particular divisions
of this sort -- racism, plutocracy, patriarchy, ethnocentricism -- are
manifestations of capital alienating people.)
The other sense used here seems to be that economic class is [political]
class -- that people are divided along economic lines, that the rich
separate from the less rich or the middle class or the poor based on
wealth alone. (Granted, to some extent Marxist and Leftist class theory
conflates the two uses of class because economics, for them, is the
explanation of all social divisions. (Not all Leftists, but the ones
who use class theory as their central explanation for social phenomena))
> That isn't to say that a democratic-voting society
> is ever altogether better than a minarchist/
> anarchocapitalist society, even in the special
> case in which prejudice (of all kinds) is in the
> minority. I just mean to say that this is not one
> of those problems where the free-market
> particularly comes out ahead.
This is where we disagree. If the free market enforced racism, it
wouldn't be necessary [for racists] to pass racist laws. The reason
such laws were passed (and are today in some places) is that people left
to their own -- i.e., in a free market situation -- generally by pass
their prejudices when it comes to making a buck.
Now, the problem is most people see a social problem and its solution in
purely concrete terms, so market solutions are usually seen as deficient
because it takes time for each actor to be convinced and for the
negative feedback to flow through the system. (Not to mention that
information flows are imperfect even in a totally free market. This is
not so much a criticism of the market, since alternative systems have
less or no such information flows and therefore can't adapt to real
world situations. Yes, one can proffer theoretically pristine models
that perform, in their clean though imaginary worlds, better than
markets, but part of the point of markets is to deal with the messy real
world.) A government solution is quick and simple. However, in the
short run, a government solution might solve a problem -- it need not,
since once you use force, you're probably not as quick to see that the
solution doesn't fit or are willing to use more force to make it fit --
in the long run, the result is to overturn persuasion and feedback. So,
people come less to rely on them and see capturing political power as a
means to get what they want -- whether that be solving what they see as
social problems or just grabbing wealth or even just hurting their
adversaries.
(On the last, see Alexander Tabarrok's "The Separation of Commercial and
Investment Banking: The Morgans vs. the Rockefellers" in _The Quarterly
Journal of Austrian Economics_ 1(1)
[http://www.mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae1_1_1.pdf]. He states: "It
should also be noted that in very competitive industries, people will
often do things to hurt their competitors even if it also hurts them.
The separation of commercial from investment banking in American via the
the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 was more of a feud between the Morgans
and the Rockefellers with the Morgans losing. The Rockefeller banking
interests were hurt too, but not as much.")
> > A person cannot, e.g., use the force of law to
>> enforce racism, though she might be bigoted
>> herself. This does not mean the problem is
>> solved. After all, society is a kind of totality and
>> individual actions influence the culture at large.
>> However, I think a more free market society
>> would likely become less racist over time --
>> or, at least, not as institutionally racist as
>> quickly as a less free market one.
>>
>> Thomas Sowell's _Preferential Policies: An
>> International Perspective_ gives plenty of
>> examples where racist people actual deal
>> with each other through market interactions.
>> E.g., Jim Crow laws in the South (of the
>> US) were scoffed at by streetcar owners
>> because they knew they would lose Black
>> customers. Sowell concludes that the
>> streetcar owners "were [not] any less
>> racist those whites who did not [own
>> streetcars]. Their opposition to segregated
>> seating was economic rather than
>> ideological." (p21) In other words, the
>> streetcar owners were probably just as
>> racist as the next guy, but not willing to pay
>> the price for manifesting their racism when
>> it cut into their bottom line. In other words, long
>> before Rosa Parks, market forces were
>> working against racial segregation.
>
> I don't think anecdotal evidence will make your case here.
I'm not so sure about that. Also, you shouldn't reject Sowell's book or
its conclusions merely because I used that example. He does provide
stats and the like. You might do better to read it, then to just assume
the market fails here and government has to come to the rescue.
> I think it's worth considering the point that a
> socialist political economy can make certain
> trade-offs from the top down that a market
> economy wouldn't. For example, the socialist
> political economy could cut into the market
> ("just a little bit", they promise!) to subsidize some
> good G more than the market would ordinarily allow.
Actually, a socialist economy by definition must abolish the market, so
you must mean a mixed economy. Yes, a mixed economy can cut into the
market -- can force people to act in ways they would not (since again, a
market economy is merely what happens when people act as they want).
However, this usually results in distortions and the problem I note
above -- the one of people coming to see political intervention as an
option in any situation. (Note today how large corporations hanker
after bailouts -- the airlines last year, for example.)
There's also the problem that if you see G as a good, yet are unable to
get others to see G as a good worth having -- through their actual
decisions NOT surveys or polls -- then perhaps society as a whole does
not see G as a good. Forcing G only means that you've changed the
choice from G or not-G to G or being punished by government for not-G.
> In some cases, the strategy backfires over the
> long-term, even with regards to the amount of
> G you get.
I would say in most if not all cases, it backfires. Partly, this is
because socialism and the welfare state really are less efficient than
the market. The G that gets produced is wasteful. Partly, also because
of the social problem of legitimizing force as an alternative to the
market. (To stress this point: This creates a [political] class that
sees taking as more central than making wealth, so overall social
production becomes lower. Yes, this class and its seconds might live
well, but only by parasitizing the rest of the economy.)
> For example, a socialist economy
> could cut into technology research to
> promote a clean natural environment,
> only to slow/block the development of
> cleaner technology, harming the
> environment.
Well, part of the problem with pollution is historical. Government
interventions in property rights in the 19th century created incentives
for people to pollute and outlawed common law remedies to the problem.
Remove these interventions first (and privatize roads and the like),
then see what will happen. The incentives will then be to create
cleaner technology to avoid being sued (or penalized) by one's
neighbors. (I'll attack this problem )
> But I think there are a
> few goods where the strategy
> won't (as such) backfire, even over
> the long term, at least with regards to
> that good considered in isolation.
Such as?
> One generous example "good" might
> be practical research targeted at
> developing AI researchers, and/or
> enhancing research. Sure, this would
> mess with incentives and degrade
> the health of the economy, but, I'd
> expect, not so much that you'd
> actually get less AI research than you
> otherwise would, (especially when you
> consider that this research is
> self-catalyzing; more research will
> lead to faster research) unlike the
> technology/environment trade-off,
> where you really would expect a
> worse
> environment, all else being equal.
Big Governemnt has always worked in the past... right? Of course not!
A lot of advances in software technology have come because the
government isn't a big player in the industry.
The other problem, too, if you're looking for an Apollo-style crash
program in AI, is you might wind up with unfriendly AI -- something
created mostly to help government stay in control. Yeah, the AIs might
free themselves from this eventually, but I doubt the outcome would be
friendly AI. Their pedigree would probably insure that. (Ditto for
nanotech.)
> I'd argue that eliminating prejudice is
> one of those cases where a socialist
> political economy could successfully
> pass laws mandating non-discrimination
> and expect to get less discrimination than would
> appear in a free-market economy.
We already have the experience of many decades of government enforced
antidiscrimination laws. Has the outcome been great? Do you really
think it's created a better world than one with them? Do you also think
it's avoided the problem of creating political classes and special
interest groups who aspire to more power over others?
Also, do you think in cases of heavily socialist countries -- the former
Communist ones being the chief examples -- discrimination was less or
more?
> Indeed, I think the onus would be on market
> advocates to show that a socialist political
> economy WOULDN'T get less discrimination.
Read Sowell's book. Look at more socialized economies. In the example
of Communist countries, those unconnected with political powers tend to
be heavily discriminated against. Look at the fate of various ethnic
groups under, for instance, Stalin. In other examples, politically
connected groups tend to use their connections to get what they want and
deny others. E.g., in Ulster, part of the problem is control over
public housing. The Protestants control the government, so they get to
divvy up what public housing there is.
It seems to me your view of the socialist economy here is based on
wishful thinking -- not economic theory or historical reality.
> Of course, we could make a sociological
> argument (a la Hayek) for the market that
> the fairness of treatment that might be false
> or forced, and therefore ingenuine or of less
> real value than fairness which results from the
> free choices of individuals in a market.
>
> But this argument isn't conclusive... it seems
> at odds with a very plausible interpretation of
> the history of the United States: that only
> when laws were passed and we were forced
> to be fair did we "see the light" and realize that
> all races were to be treated equally.
The history of racism in America seems to show the opposite
conclusion -- except today no one is really allowed to talk about the
problem openly without being considered a racist. Affirmative action
has, in fact, made many Whites feel Blacks and other minorities really
are less qualified, less competent, and inferior. It's also made many
Blacks and others think that the only way to overcome what they perceive
as prejudice to use governmental force.
> Of course, arguments in favor of the market
> are often subtle... maybe I'm missing something
> here, and there IS some conclusive reason why even
> these laws would backfire, even with regard to
> prejudice alone... but I can't think of any.
See above.
> [While this might not be the norm, it isn't so
> exceptional as to think it'd *never* happen,
> or that it isn't happening right now in the
> United States... maybe we really ARE less
> prejudiced today on account of the
> leadership of our government, like the
> textbooks say. Which, again, isn't
> to say that we aren't worse off on other grounds.]
I disagree, again, with this interpretation. People have basically been
trained to say the right things in public and on opinion polls. In
private, you get a totally different view. (Also, it's funny how when
Whites are polled, they tend to think racism has lessened, while when
Blacks are polled, they think it's worsened. Who's right here?:)
Cheers!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
See "A Dialogue On Happiness" at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/Dialogue.html
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