<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12pt"><DIV>Basically agreed. When people complain about a price being too high or too low (in an uncoerced setting*), they demonstrate a misunderstanding about how prices work. None of these claims hold up under scientific scrutiny.</DIV>
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<DIV>Also, regarding transparency and all that, the way to arrive at this is not via regulation -- which, in a corrupt country, will merely mean established microlenders will capture the regulator and use regulations to knock out or keep out competitors. Instead, merely allow the market process to occur maximally -- so that borrowers have as much choice as possible in borrowing. In this way, borrowers will patronize those lenders who are the least deceptive. And the latter will try to broadcast their bona fides over shadey competitors. (The same thing happens in many market situations. For instance, most people quickly learn that if a firm is not forthcoming with information, that it's best not to deal with it at all. This makes the shadey firm either mend its ways or lose market share -- at the extreme, forcing it to go under.)</DIV>
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<DIV>Regards,</DIV>
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<DIV>Dan</DIV>
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<DIV>* There's a difference when government sets the price -- directly via prices controls (or "floors" as in minium wage laws and "ceilings" as in rent control) or indirectly via antitrust policy -- because that then involves coercing outcomes. But even in that case, one cannot tell exactly what the uncoerced price would've been -- merely that the price mechanism has been interfered with.</DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">From:</SPAN></B> Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj@gmail.com><BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">To:</SPAN></B> ExI chat list <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org><BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Sent:</SPAN></B> Mon, November 22, 2010 12:00:44 PM<BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Subject:</SPAN></B> Re: [ExI] Micro-loan programs not as successful as hoped<BR></FONT><BR>2010/11/22 Mr Jones <<A href="mailto:mrjones2020@gmail.com" ymailto="mailto:mrjones2020@gmail.com">mrjones2020@gmail.com</A>><BR>> From what I've been told,the 'high' interest rates are 'low' when compared to typical rates paid in these corruption riddled areas. All the same, I think It's wrong.<BR><BR>Let me say first that I am a fan of the views expounded in things such<BR>as Money as Debt, and very little of bankers.<BR><BR>OTOH, if we
accept the idea that loans for an interest are the right<BR>way to deal with matter, interest rates cannot really be "right" or<BR>"wrong", provided that no oligopoly exists, and depend on comparative<BR>risk and profitability of alternative employments of the capitals<BR>concerned.<BR><BR>--<BR>Stefano Vaj</DIV></DIV></div><br>
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