*Damn*, I'm having *fun* today... At 7:27 PM -0400 6/6/96, hallam@Etna.ai.mit.edu got all "hermeneutic" on us:
Well, Milton Friedman's method for saving the whale is to leave it to the free market, if people want whales in the oceans they won't buy whale meat. The point that even if no US person eats whale, a few thousand "gourmets" in Japan can eat their way through the remaining stocks of many species in a few years escapes him. So forgive me if if find you authority somewhat less than compelling.
Yes. And they're tasty, too. I try to eat animal at least once a day, whether I need it or not. According to your logic above, it seems that all species are *much* more important than man. But, with most "liberal" logic, there's a paradox here. Let's explore it bit, shall we, by looking at the other side of the balance sheet you just created? Tell me, Phill, what's *your* pricetag on a single *human* life? The entire gross global product is not enough? It's this kind of, well, muzzy-headed innumerate (yes, *Dr.* Hallam-Baker, *innumerate*) silliness that has our intellectuals believing the hoax, put convincingly enough to get published in "respected" academic places like "Social Text", that reality (physics, in this case) is optional. Can you say "Sophistry", boys and girls? I knew you could. No offense to the, er, numerate computer science people out there, but it seems that *Dr.* Hallam-Baker is living proof that you can get an entire *doctorate* in the field, and not learn to count. I hate to tell you *Dr.* Hallam-Baker, but Lamarck was wrong, too. Not to mention Lysenko. ;-). Reality, real, honest-to-god quantitative reality, is, in fact, not optional.
Adam Smith makes the point rather better in his analysis of monopolies and how they affect the market. But remember that although regulations may be instituted as protectionist mechanisms that is not the only purpose that regulations are introduced.
You get what you pay for, Phill. The reason, and look it up, that we had monopolies in *this* country was the same reason that you had monopolies (and I count labor unions in this) in yours. They were bought and paid for out of the government trough. So much for the integrity of government. Frankly, I'd put myself in the hands of those eevill, greeedy, businessmen any day. Contrary to what they taught you in the Young Pioneers, or whatever passes for that on your side of the channel, governments not only screw things up, they kill. Hundreds of millions of people in this century alone.
If by "open", you mean that people can't purchase the attention of their favorite politician fair and square, without having to play zero-sum games with barnyard animals, then we have "open" markets. ;-).
There are so many negatives in that sentence I can't figure out which way you are arguing. Certainly there are many senators, congressman etc who can be bought for a contribution to their election fund or a huge advance on their memoirs.
Feh. You're just afraid of a little predicate calculus. That looks like perfect English to me. Even if it's pronounciation isn't quite "received". Personally, I agree with the Bard. Twain, of course. "A politician is someone who can take money from the rich and votes from the poor and keep his job." I suppose if The Earl of Oxford had said it, he'd change "job" for "head" in the last sentence, but, we live in America, where this decade's poor is last decade's rich, and vice versa. Or it least it used to be that way, before these innumerate Keynesians took over our economic "policy". ;-). "Poor me another Veuve Clicot, Corruthers. I think I have discovered another way to traitor my class."
Nothing personal, Phill, but it does seem like it's more a question of what you're afraid of, than what *is*, right?
No, it is a case of whether you are applying ideological judgements or prepared to analyse the system itself.
Now, that's the pot calling the kettle black! Phill, we all know you're the biggest apologist the nation-state has ever had on this list. That's okay, 'cuz you're building the right technology, and someday you'll see the light. Say AMEN, Somebody!. Sorry. Got carried away in my techno-evangelism, there... The point is, Phill, you don't have to pollute the minds of all these avant-garde young cypherpunks with yesterday's news. I mean, you developed a double-jointed neck so you could look backwards and walk forwards (*how* does he keep from *tripping*, brothers and sisters! It'sa*miracle*sayhalelujia!), but it doesn't mean it's evolutionary advantageous, a future dictatorship of the proletariat notwithstanding. :-).
I do not believe in the idol of the free market.
Ah. Hmm. Still doesn't get it, does he, folks. A market's not an "idol" to "believe in", Phill, it's this amazing stuff called "reality". It's really quite fun. You should try it sometime...
I do not consider ecconomists to have justified the level of inane self-satisfied certainty about their field that they exude.
Ah. *Your* economists, Phill. Top-down, *Keynesian*, er, crypto-Marxist, "control" the political-economy featherheads... The people who do *financial* economics, just like the people who do financial cryptography, *experiment* in markets, but they aren't fool enough to think that they can actually *control* them. Wake up and smell the coffee, Phill. There's a reason these boys have won all the Nobels, lately. Reality is not optional. Planned economies aren't, actually.
I was talking to a professor at the Sloane school yesterday who made precisely this point.
Ah. The Sloan school. That paragon of free market thinking. Probably *Dr.* Thurow, I bet, maybe even <*big* intake of breath> *Dr.* Samuelson? <oooooh!>. Feh. By, the way, Phill, your appeals to authority are nothing short of amazing. *Dr.* Hallam-Baker. "*Sloane*" school economist. Feh, and double-Feh. Credentialism, like any appeal to authority, is the last refuge of the incompetant. We know *you're* not incompetant, Phill. Stop acting like somebody who is.
Deciding what is right implies an ethical judgement.
Yup. Electrons, like prices, are actually ethical creatures, don't you know. Feh. Next thing he's going to tell us that there's a conciousness particle... By the way, don't start talkin' that "touch your inner child" stuff, Phill, or I'm gonna get a two-by-four to keep you off of *mine*...
Are you basing your argument on Kantian or consequentialist assumptions?
Ooooo... Deontological vs. teleological? Wow. A philosopher. Congrats, Phill. It *does* appear you're educated. At least through first year ethics...
I can argue either but since most of my thesis is based on a logical positivist approach I'm far more sympathetic to the utilitarian point of view.
The ganglia twitch. You're making my point for me! Just because you can do all the mental gymnastics of Gorgias (who maintained, by the way, that nothing exists) doesn't mean that reality's, er, optional. Remember, Phill, Gorgias is dead. Not very optional, eh?
The free market is not in itself an ethical basis - that would be creating an ought from an is.
Ethical schmethical, Phill. The market, like the rest of physical reality, is *real*. It is not something to be "believed" in. If you have something I want, and I have something you want, we trade for it. There has been trade nearly as long has there has been human artifacts or commodities to trade with. Hell, trade happens at the *cellular* level, for christsakes, with stochastic process, markets, if you will. How do you think oxygen transport works? Market-driven chaos. It's an economy. Feh! Like Phillip K. Dick said, "Reality is that which, when you change your mind, doesn't go away." Markets are as real as next month's rent, Phill.
The problem which libertarian idelogues are affraid to face up to is that markets have required regulation to keep them open and free.
<pardon me, ladies> "Tha's all right, darlin'. I'll only put the head in." Or, as they say (ooo, this is great!) on the gates of Auschwitz, "Arbiet Macht Frei". Work makes you free. Freedom is Slavery, right Phill? Read any Hayek lately? I thought not...
Its all very well for people to jump up and down, stampt their feet and claim the opposite but this is what every government in the free world believes.
Yup. You're right, there. Every government, especially the most unfree, believe that markets can be, *must* be controlled, to make us "free". Notice the harder they try to "control" markets to make us "free", the more they control *us*? Eventually they control us so much there's no more market, Phill. Make sense now? I'll give you a hint. It's called "reality", and it's not "optional", much less "ethical".
The effects of deregulation in the savings and loans area make it unlikely any further experiments in that area will be tried for a while.
This is marvellous. You're making a mobius of yourself! Don't try so hard, Phill, and you might figure this out. Look, Phill, you've taken logic, right? Remember the informal fallacy called "false cause"? An increase in bananna consumption causes suicide? (If you don't believe me, look at the statistics! I swear! ;-)) Actually, the above line looks more like "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc". Yup, all that first-year logic was good for something. Plain old circular reasoning. Just like the mobius strip you made of yourself, Phill. Put that double-jointed neck to better use. You could hurt yourself with these mental contortions... The reason that deregulation caused so much of a problem in the savings and loan "industry", was because the "industry" was a creature of government, which couldn't survive, you guessed it, Phill, "reality". If you ignore markets, like any other natural force (like, say gas laws, or thermodynamics, or gravity) you get slapped. Hard. Reality is not optional. The entire financial system of this country has had to be unwound from all the regulations that people "controlling markets to make us free" bound them up in. Starting in the early 70's with the deregulation of brokerage commissions, through the breaking down of the two equivalents of the Bamboo (the creation of the savings and loan "industry") and the Iron (the Glass-Steagal Act) curtains, and, now, the abolition of interstate banking regulation, (with the internet, you're halfway to anywhere, much to the relief of our friends in Kentucky) we are starting to have free financial markets in this country for the first time since we started "consolidating" it to make it more "efficient" by both the trusts and the trust-busters, who were really two sides of the same coin: oligopoly and state control. You just keep it up, Phill. I'm having a great time, here. As we used to say in Missouri, I haven't had this much fun since the hogs ate my little brother. Next? Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "If they could 'just pass a few more laws', we would all be criminals." --Vinnie Moscaritolo The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/