dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)

[Petro]

At 4:25 PM -0500 11/6/98, Matthew James Gering wrote:
>Matthew James Gering wrote:
>> >Provided you don't corrupt the meaning of free-market to include
>> >any possible black market, then yes, there will *always* be a
>> >black market. It can be made rather insignificant however.
>
>Petro responded:
>> Assuming your definition of "free market" is "a market without
>> regulation", you can't have a black market in a free market
>> since a black market is trade in violation of regulations.
>
>Like I said, if you don't corrupt the meaning of free market.
>Laissez Faire capitalism is based on a concept of individual rights.
>Therefore the proper role of any government (in a libertarian state) or
>individual/social institution (in rational anarchy) is to protect individual
>rights (life, liberty, property), and act as an objective framework for
>retributive force.
>Therefore, any transaction that violates individual rights is immoral (if
>not illegal) and constitutes a black market.
>e.g. assassinations, ransom, stolen goods, extortion, slavery, etc.
>To create a anarcho-capitalist definition of free market where everything
>goes and there is no concept of individual rights is as immoral and perverse
>as the statist concepts that similarly have no concept of individual rights
>(fascism, communism).

	Traditional usage of the term "black market" (at least in my
experience with the term) includes the markets for things often proscribed
(such as weapons, drugs, abortions) or marketed outside of the legally
mandated channels (food, clothing, liquor etc. purchased from non-approved
stores) or w/out government approved taxes being levied. Legal issues, not
moral ones. To try to discuss the markets in terms of "human rights", or to
expect the market to reflect ones own morality is ridiculous.

	Is slavery wrong? Would a Saudi Arabian, or a Kuwaitee (Kuwaition?)
agree? What about drugs, does their use violate your human rights
principle? Would someone from the South Side of Chicago, or Watts agree?

	The market itself is only concerned with legality, not morality.
Discussions of right and wrong do not take place at that point, and neither
do questions of "human rights".

	My point was that as you move towards the "ideal" of a free market,
there is less and less that one can call a "black market". True, things can
still be illegal--Slavery, drugs and the rest, and those things which

	Oh, and Extortion is already part of the market, it's called taxes.
--
"To sum up: The entire structure of antitrust statutes in this country is a
jumble of economic irrationality and ignorance. It is a product: (a) of a
gross misinterpretation of history, and (b) of rather naïve, and certainly
unrealistic, economic theories." Alan Greenspan, "Anti-trust"
http://www.ecosystems.net/mgering/antitrust.html

Petro::E-Commerce Adminstrator::Playboy Ent. Inc.::petro at playboy.com