[ExI] Serfdom and libertarian critiques (Was: Call to Libertarians)

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 1:50 PM, Damien Sullivan
<phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 02, 2011 at 08:33:11PM -0500, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 11:34 AM, Damien Sullivan
>> <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>> >
>> > If 10% of my income goes to build a private palace, that's theft. ??If
>> > 50% of my income goes to zero-fare public transit, universal health
>> > care, funding for basic research, good law enforcement, safe housing,
>> > and many other public services, I may consider that a good deal.
>>
>> ### But public transport, especially zero fare, as well as universal
>> (I presume you mean "free") health care are highly inefficient as a
>> way of apportioning resources - and of course, provision of services
>
> Proof or evidence required.

### Users almost always refuse to use them if charged the full price
and given alternatives (private mass transport, private individual
transport).

QED, no?

---------------

>
>> by a public (i.e. monopolistic, non-accountable) authority is also
>> highly inefficient. You are very unlikely to get a good deal if it's
>
> A public democratic authority is accountable through democracy.  Some
> more so than others, depending on how agencies are set up; I posit that
> directly elected transit boards would be more responsive than appointees
> with a couple links of indirection.

### You are correct. Probably. However, since their funding does not
depend on a day to day basis on satisfying the desires of customer
better than a competitor, the strength and reliability of the feedback
controlling their behavior is still weak, much weaker than e.g. the
ruthless and immediate control exerted by customers on the drivers of
rikshas - their accountability to the desires of customers is a key to
surviving another day, while a transit board needs to muddle through
some sort of election only sometimes and even then they they can
obfuscate their role, given the absence of market pricing and
alternatives.

Without prices (true, full, undistorted prices) we are all blind as moles.

>
> It is private or autocratic monopolies that are truly unaccountable and
> inefficient.  Competitive markets may be more accountable than democracy
> but not all markets are stably competitive or account for all costs.

### Of course, autocratic monopolies (but not all private monopolies)
are truly evil (translation = inefficient in satisfying human
desires), just as evil as power monopolies that maintain a veneer of
social responsibility. You may note that I am not agitating for having
a private state, but rather against having any singleton hierarchical
structures, however one may classify them on a political (left/right)
spectrum. More to the point, the markets in the provision of
transportation are both highly competitive and stable (with low
barriers to entry, quick turnaround of competing firms, enormous
difficulties in sustaining a cartel, multiple competing and
substitutable forms of transportation, etc. etc), in the absence of
state intervention, and can be made to account for relevant costs
through insurance and private liability provisions.

I used to believe the received wisdom that markets are unstable but
now I think that the only unstable markets are the ones in the
provision of violence or protection from violence (at least in the
absence of strong second-order social norms stabilizing such markets).
It would take a bit more writing than I can afford today to flesh out
the reasons for my change of mind ... maybe another time.

Rafal