[ExI] Libertarianism wins again...

Dan dan_ust at yahoo.com
Thu Jul 21 20:11:27 UTC 2011


The forms firms would take in a libertarian society is open to speculation. I don't disagree that there might be some limit on liability though my guess is this could not be applied to third parties, but only to actual parties to a given contract.
 
Regarding your second point, well, yes, no state, then there's no way to take advantage of state power -- save by creating a state and then using it. But the history of regulation is one of large, well-connected firms lobbying for and even writing regulations. The regulations are usually sold to the public as for the good of society, whilst if one does a "cui bono" analysis, it's quite easy to see this is cover for private gain at public expense. For instance, large motel and hotel chains have lobbied against roadside billboard ads putatively because these ads are ugly and degrade the environment. But anyone with a modicum of sense can see that their smaller competitors usually have this as one of the major means of drawing in customers. So this is almost definitely a way of regulating the smaller guy out of business.
 
And regulations need not always be of this type -- hurt your competition whilst helping yourself. Sometimes they hurt the competition whilst hurting oneself, though the pain inflicted is often more severe to the competitor. I believe this is the case in the States with WalMarts support for an increase in the federal legal minimum wage. Yes, this will hurt WalMart, but it will also hurt it's smaller competitors more. In this case, WalMart can pretend to really caring about the plight of the workers (though surely not the ones left unemployed by such policies) all the while harming its competition.
 
Likewise, it was the large banks in the US, led by J. P. Morgan, who called for creating the current U.S. central bank and all its onerous powers.
 
Such cases can be multiplied and don't appear to be piecemeal. The biggest or one of the biggest lobbiers for economic regulation has always been well connected corporations -- the corporate wing of the ruling class, if you will. (Contrast to the political wing of the same. The two are, of course, not clearly separated.) One might look to the work of Gabriel Kolko for more on the tight relationship between business and regulation, particular big businesses and regulation.
 
Regards,
 
Dan

From: Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com>
To: Dan <dan_ust at yahoo.com>; ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2011 3:26 PM
Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again...


On 07/20/2011 10:26 AM, Dan wrote: 
Your view of deregulation overlooks two significant facts. One, corporations are creatures of the state. Therefore, absent the state, they would all likely cease to exist.Do not confuse legal definitions with functional ones.  Business forms that limit liability (except in criminal cases) to the assets of that business are required for many types of enterprise to occur at all. 

 
>Two, corporations are usually the biggest advocates of regulation.This confuses buying of favors from illegitimately powerful government with a business form.  When the state has so much involvement in the economy there is little choice but to seek to buy such power.  When the state can shut down entire businesses it is too tempting to try to shut down one's competitors using state force.  The problem is giving the state that power to start with.

- s
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