Bitcoin Forum

Please post what you think defines a "Free Market", using a moderate level of detail.  No two sentence answers.

 ;)

no regulations at all.

fuck you! my choice not yours!

Sometimes I wonder if this whole forum is full of trolls or if I am trolling myself for expecting something worthwhile on occasion.

Freedom of choice. I think the above sums it up nicely.  For more detail I suggest reading "My Philosophy of Liberty" at http://www.economicsandliberty.com

+1

"Free market" means no person or group has the right to force any other person or group to make any economic decision.  This leaves room for government involvement in a very narrow field - namely contract enforcement and theft and violence prevention/prosecution.

In practice, this would have a few key features:
- No minimum wage
- No taxation of trade or income
- No import/export restrictions
- No central control of monetary systems, no central bank
- No FDIC
- No "consumer safety regulations"
- No building codes
- No FDA
- No prohibition of substances
- No prohibition of voluntary action (incl. gambling and prostitution, etc.)

The United States of America is not even close to a "free market." It is a socialist/corporatist nation, not a capitalist nation (the fact that it's not as socialist as other places doesn't make it capitalist). 

+1

I would just add to evorhees comment that he only focused on half the picture. You also need a strong political system including police and courts that can deal with cases of fraud, intimidation, and theft. You need a society that respects property rights and holds people to their word. There are a large number of things that you must not prohibit to have a free market, but to have an effective free market, there are a few things you must strongly prohibit and those prohibitions must be enforced.

Free market is a meaningless construct. I'll call it a set of regulations that maximizes long run economic growth per capita. China appears to have an effective free market by my definition.

A free market is an impossible ideal, a system with no checks and balances to keep things stable. No society in the history of the world has ever had a successful free market-based economy and I don't think that's likely to change.

we never had had a free market.

the liberalism people are screaming: we what free market. we never had a real free market.
the communism people are screaming: we want communism. we never had read communism.

Finally i can build my own nuclear plant full of plutonium rods and then blow it up.

Game over mankind.

just beacuse you have a free market, does not mean that you have the skills to build a nuclear bomb

The problem is "they" (not sure which/who "they") keep trying to sell the idea that buying their idea is better that taking their idea and their wallet and maybe even checking how edible they are.

They also complain when some rambunctious customer offers three bullets through the head in return for their corpse.

Then they start claiming they can hire Rambo to put more bullets faster into someone before someone puts three bullets through their head.

Pretty soon I have to wonder how their mercenaries proposal is less bad than the mercenaries who already have all the guns...

-MarkM-

America is closer to Free Market Fascism. Those with the most power control through force, coercion or persuasion those with the less power.

6 billion other people will have the freedom to come and stop you by any means they see fit.

Not bomb because bomb has limited radius . Plutonium can be dispersed over entire planet thanks to jet streams.

We live on single interconnected world, someone else's freedom is interfering with your own even if you dont see it.


"6 billion other people will have the freedom to come and stop you by any means they see fit."

There you go , your first regulation.

"You cant buil nuclear plants full of obsolete fuel type based on plutonium".

Just so i wont get accused of hijacking , my definition of free market is building extremely deadly technologies that can wipe out entire mankind or some of it , in name of profit. Or doing the hell i want without regardless of the consequences.

it's not a regulation, it's a self-defense against what i perceive as your violence towards me.

you are free to try to build it, i am free to try to stop you, you are free to try to stop me from stopping you, etc, etc.

no. i did not make a regulation. i did just say that you are unskillful. and i don't think anybody would sell you plutonium, they would not be stupid enough. you because there is a free market, it does not mean people are selling.

And now government is free to own your ass and you are free to stop it and they are free to put you in fail etc,etc , do you consider it free market ? How circular logic is that.

Even more importent it doesnt mean they dont.

go away troll!

No really i want to understand. What is the difference of freedoms between.

You stopping me from building nuclear plant and government from enforcing taxes on you.

im not stopping you, go build.
just give me one good reason i should sell you my plutonium.
wanna pay $1million per gram? not selling, sorry.

I am lucky then there are no monopolies on free market. Huh.

if all plutonium holder would form a monopolies on plutonium, then there would be one.
and honestly if they are smart enough to purify plutonium, they will also be smart enough to not sell to you.
it is not in there interest to destroy the earth, they would self die of it. 

Yeah man, that happened once already, in Chernobyl!!!
Oh wait, it was in centrally planned economy, exact opposite of the free market. Whoops.

Free Market = Those who have the most capital decide

no. those who can offer most services and goods decides
and even then only if you want to buy from them.

I though free markets prevents forming of monopolies.

If not, then it fails.

But i want to produce electricity and i pay well.

You forgot that blowing up the plant is the secret part of plan or can happen as just an accident.

no it does not. why would it fail?
monopolies like microsoft or apple, would fail if they are not allowed to keep their patents.
which they will not be allowed to on a free market.

its still not in my interest to sell you the plutonium. i could just make the plant myself, and sell the electricity.

These are all equal to: Those who have the most resource decide. What's the civilization part to differentiate it from any animal world?

First, monopolies like Microsoft and Apple rely very little on patents. They don't even rely on copyright, because it doesn't provide them sufficient rights, in their opinion. They rely on contracts. Second, they'll mostly likely fail no matter what. Unless they can keep innovating and providing the products their customers most want, they'll be eclipsed by a more agile competitor.

The most effective way to maintain a monopoly in a free market is to be the most efficient company, providing the products your customers most want at prices they are happy to pay. Some market segments are 'natural monopolies' in the sense that they have unusual factors that make monopolies more likely in those segments. A good example is operating systems -- there is a benefit to running the same operating system many other people are running even if it's slightly inferior for your particular application. In these areas, a monopoly can be a little bit worse than their closest competitor and still maintain near-monopoly market share.

But if we all benefit from running the same operating system, even if it's not the very best one, why shouldn't we? Until a competitor is sufficiently superior that it's worth the cost of switching, of course.

There are market failures that can occur in a free market where you can have near-monopolies even when it's not particularly efficient. But they are so rare as to be almost non-existent compared to regulatory failures. (And, of course, advocates of free markets believe that it is entirely appropriate to use force to break up monopolies maintained by force or fraud, just as it is appropriate to do so for non-monopolies maintained by those means.)

It's hard to take this kind of comment seriously, but just in case, the answer to your question is: The prohibition on the use of force except in defense and the requirement that people honor their agreements.

Right, let's do away with public education. Create the free market for our children's sake. You can be responsible for the roads outside your house to. And if there's a war people can hire gangs to protect their property, competition will prevent them from becoming governments. If only it can be realized, it will be paradise. Wait... It already exists here on earth... Somalia. I'll persuade them to accept bitcoin.

Buys plane ticket :D

As stated elsewhere.  As the wealthy landowner it seems that I can get very similar results to things like oppression, apartheid, slavery - without initial force (in your specialized usage of the term).  i.e. I can control wages and the kind of jobs (via contracts with businesses), I can control movement (via road contracts) and I can control where people live (via contracts for the land they lease) which bathrooms they use etc...  Should these oppressed folk rebel, escape whatever...they will be hunted down and returned by your government (terms of the contract).

Then what will homogenize the immigrants and keep children out of the labor force?

I think you missed the part about a free market requiring an effective police and court system that can enforce agreements and penalize the use of force or fraud. I don't think Somalia has that. Also, just having a free market doesn't ensure success or prosperity. You need gas in your car for it to run, but you need other things too.

Well sorry then. Why don't you go create them?

More seriously, do you really believe a country with no public roads or education or parks or museums or laws against pollution would be a nice country? Might there not be some reason that countries with effective goverments refuse to tread the path you advocate?

Huh? This is the part that makes no sense, because if your market does not permit free trade of blow for blow, tooth for tooth, eye for eye, a hundred thousand on the beaches for one in tribute and so on and so on and so on then why should it not also not permit paper for paper, apple for orange, food for gold, or any other specific exchange that some pontif pontificates against?

A market in which people cannot trade one good for another is a market in which people cannot trade one good for another, regardless of which good it is they cannot trade for which good.

Basically what you are saying is a market is not free unless it is not free.

Which is good and true but is not a free market, it is an extremely controlled and manipulated market, in which the species that is the most adept and devious scammer carefully undermines the rights, even to life limb and liberty, of all other species, eating any species it chooses while making up elaborate contrived connivances for why this that or the other species deserves less rights than it does and so on and so on and so on.

And that is good, if you are one of that species. For example if there is a species that has enough clothing to survive the cold, or enough food to survive until the humans are cooked and ready to eat, it will be good to be one of those with warm clothing and a larder full of ripe humans and an oven to bake them in.

But if you do not have enough food, clothing, and shelter, then no, the market is not free, it is rigged against those who have not enough food clothing or shelter for themselves and their offspring, let along any excess they could trade at the market.

-MarkM-

With no public roads or public parks, what would you need laws against polluting? I don't care if you pollute your own stuff, and we all support laws against polluting other people's stuff. Pollution laws are part of the problem, as they set permissible levels of damage you may due to other people's property with impunity. True, they do draw the line somewhere short of killing everyone on the planet.

...because there are other things to pollute.  Air for one.  Is air property?


How would your property laws differ?  Let me guess.  If I don't want pollution on my property it can't be there.  Talk about naively begging the question. Sheesh.

And socialism prevents it how exactly?

The term "air" can refer to the location in which air is or the air that happens to be in a particular space at a particular time. It's not really sufficiently well-defined for a yes or no answer to "Is air property" to be meaningful. Suffice it to say that if you pollute air on your property in such a way that it damages my use or enjoyment of my property, the majority of free market advocates would argue that your conduct should be legally actionable. Whether you say that means they consider air to be property or not is not particularly important.

It's not that simple. Pollution is a hard problem for any system. It gets simpler when you get public property out of the picture, but it's still a big challenge for any legal system.

Most advocates of even a pure free market do not believe that you can pollute in such a way that you harm other people's use or enjoyment of their property and the legal system should let you get away with it. But neither does anyone, so far as I know, have a perfect solution to the problem of pollution -- in any political system.

It's not an free market issue, unless you encounter someone who says "a free market means anyone should be able to pollute any air or water that passes through their property with impunity, otherwise you don't have a free market". Few people say that. In practical terms, most free market advocates who are not anarchocapitalists will hold that ultimately, until someone thinks of a better way, the government (if for no other reason than because it runs the courts of last resort) will have to decide what pollution is allowed and what is not.

Some free market advocates support Pigovian taxes, where polluters must pay the full amount of any provable damages their pollution causes. I personally don't support such taxes for the reasons that Coase pointed out. Again, it's a very hard problem. I don't think anyone has a perfect solution.

Coase makes arguments that regulations are never beneficial assuming there are no transaction costs or wealth effects. He knows these are unrealistic assumptions.

Prohibitively expensive to get everyone to write private contracts covering all types of polluting behaviors and enforce them in courts (this is a txn cost) -> legal regulation can improve welfare
Children may be born with no wealth and be unable to borrow to finance their education (this is a wealth effect) -> free public education can improve welfare

If you want a definition of the free market that includes public education and government regulation, then fine. However, you must then admit that this makes 'free market' a very fuzzy concept.
My 'free market' can be this, while your 'free market' can be that. Similarly my 'communism' can be this, while your 'communism' can be that; ask the Chinese. It is more productive to talk about specific policy issues rather than use loaded words. Of course, the ideologues will disagree.

only if you start from the assumption that capital is distributed in a roughly equal manner, otherwise capital acts like mass and gravity takes over.

Ergo there are other things to pollute.  Answering the question "Why would you need pollution laws?" which you knew.
So in both what you espouse (I apologize but I don't know the majority of advocates of anything so I can't speak for them) and what exists the government still decides what is pollution effectively producing the same system with the notable exception being my ability to pollute my property as much as I like and those properties where I get permission to do so.  Again don't you think that's a little naive?

I'd say this solution also naively begs the question.

Even assuming that's true, what exactly is your objection? That people shouldn't be able to pollute their own property? That there's something wrong with a free market because it doesn't miraculously solve hard problems like pollution?

Of course. All arguments make simplifying assumptions and are invalid in cases where those assumptions don't apply to an extent that swamps the mechanisms of the argument. Nevertheless, I find Coase's criticism of Pigovian taxes to be devastating. But if you like them, by all means advocate for them. Though I think they're a bad idea, they're fully consistent with a free market.

It's only prohibitively expensive if you don't optimize it. But again, I agree that pollution is a hard problem and one that has little to do with a free market. The only relevance a free market has is that it would mean that pollution of one's own property that doesn't affect other people's use or enjoyment of their property would be allowed. Otherwise, it would be handled much the same way.

And people may be born with no wealth and be unable to borrow to finance starting a business. Education is an investment with an expected return like any other investment. If nobody is willing to make the investment with their own money, it's probably a bad investment. And I genuinely believe that for most of the recipients of public education, it does them almost as much harm as good. I consider public education more or less a failed experiment.

I don't believe public education is a better investment than whatever those who were taxed to pay for it would have done with their money. So I don't think it will improve welfare overall.

I agree, it's a fuzzy concept. It can't be explained in a buzzword or two.

Well, that's why earlier in this thread, there was a list of core policy issues that relate to what we mean by a "free market".

But yes, I agree, you can't make a simplistic list of buzzwords and say "that's what I mean by a free market". Complex issues are complex.

Weird sentence.  Assuming what is true exactly?  I'm talking about your position.   Do you not know if my statement describes your position or not?

Assuming your characterization of what I believe is fair. I know your statement describes the consequences of my system that you foresee but not the consequences that I expect. So rather than arguing over what the precise consequences would be, since it doesn't matter for purposes of this argument, I assume they'll be what you expect them to be. (For example, I expect that private organizations will take over many government functions just as private security and private arbitration have started to do. So I would expect some organization to figure out better solutions to pollution problems than governments have. But I'm willing to assume that doesn't happen, since I don't know for sure that it will.)

So suppose we have the same system as we have now, except people are free to pollute their own property or permit others to do so. So, what's wrong with that?

Does that make things much better? Probably not. But I never claimed I had some miraculous solution to the problem of pollution. If you see advocates of a free market claiming that a free market will solve the pollution problem, then you have a legitimate complaint. Otherwise, unless you can show a free market will make pollution worse, what's the relevance?

Wait. What?  Looking at my statement I see these words: "So in both what you espouse (I apologize but I don't know the majority of advocates of anything so I can't speak for them) and what exists the government still decides what is pollution effectively producing the same system with the notable exception being my ability to pollute my property as much as I like and those properties where I get permission to do so."

That's not a consequence of the system. It's a description of what you appear to be saying.  If it isn't then you should help make the description better.   I'm not sure what possible utility there is* in arguing (in the formal sense) about a system that isn't the one you are talking about.  I might as well have described candyland and gone on about the environmental impact of a licorice based economy.  ::)

*Although after writing that it occurs to me that your approach avoids dissonance.

That the government will make the effective decisions is a consequence. It's not the consequence that I expect. But it's the consequence that you expect. For example, you probably don't think that effective private organizations will be able to make rules about pollution and enforce them. I might. So I might not expect the same conseqeuence you expect.

Exactly.

Suppose I believe that a free market will perfectly solve the pollution problem. (I don't, but suppose it.) To have that conversation with you, we'd have to argue over all the intermediate consequences of the affects of a free market on all kinds of other things, disagreeing all the way. However, I only need to make a much smaller point, which is that the "problem of pollution" is not a problem of the free market. It's a problem generally with all systems that a free market will not make worse.

It is amazing how you ignore the fact that air moves all the time around entire globe.

The one second i breath some certain cube of air and then it travels and you breath it.
Seriously wtf do you live on a different planet then the rest of us ?

I am sad that you bring about discussion to binary options. I dont see how i can even start to reason with you but i will give it a try.

In a reasonable,pragmatic society which goal is sustainability and healthy lives, nuclear plants is a no go. It is like roulette in which we bet our survival and we have alternative technologies at the same time.

We have science and it show us how radiation can affect us, we cant dispose or defend against it as well. It is obviously retarded .

Quite the opposite, I specifically point out that fact in the quote you cited above. The term "air" can refer both to a location that is filled with air, and the air that fills that location. The former can be property in the normal sense, the latter cannot unless you enclose it.

I agree. That's one of the ways something you do on your property can affect my use and enjoyment of my property. From where do you get that I disagree with this?

As I said, in the quote you cited: "[ I ]f you pollute air on your property in such a way that it damages my use or enjoyment of my property, the majority of free market advocates would argue that your conduct should be legally actionable."

Enclosing the air sounds like a possibly useful approach. Suppose we set up a bottling factory to just keep on bottling all the air that enters our airspace. If anyone tries to coplain that we are bottling their air, they will have to prove it is theirs that we are bottling, whereupon we can check for pollution in the bottles they claim contain their air, so we can countersue them for polluting our air.

Would what we get from them for polluting cover what we might have to pay out to others for "stealing their air"?

If we bottle enough, maybe demand for air will increase, driving up the price...

-MarkM-

However I'm not the one who put government in the equation.  You did.  I simply asked how your system would differ.  So it's not a consequence of my expectations.  Thus your line of reasoning here is invalid.  ;D
Exactly?  Perhaps you should quote smaller pieces of text because what you appear to be saying is that you are arguing to avoid dissonance by which I (at least obviously to me)  meant cognitive dissonance. Specifically that by distancing yourself from an argument you can preserve a wrong idea.  Ummm...Bravo?

Lulz.  Firstly, If you believed that a free market will perfectly solve the pollution problem then all I need to do is focus on one respect no matter how small and demonstrate it as imperfect and your premise is incorrect.  So you're completely incorrect that all intermediate steps need to be argued.  Secondly, aside from you attempting to project the idea about the perfection of the free market in dealing with pollution onto me it's never been argued by myself or by you so it's a wrong characterization.

Well actually you're kind of equivocating there, your final clause saves you (sort of) but it begs the question.

We seem to be talking past each other. Perhaps we should start over.

I think a free market will lead to prosperity and that prosperity is the ultimate solution to pollution. Essentially, that other things being equal, the freer the market, the faster pollution will become less of a problem. But I'm only trying to make a much, much smaller point here -- nothing about a free market need make pollution problems any worse, except that people would be free to pollute their own property in cases where it didn't affect anyone else's property.

The "dissonance" I'm trying to avoid is where you have a discussion with someone and you keep talking past each other because you have drastically different understandings of the consequences of things. In order to figure out what pollution would be like in an actual free market, we'd have to agree on what many other things would look like under a free market system, and of course people will disagree on that.

I will agree with this though -- if you don't believe that a free market will add to prosperity, you should believe that a free market will probably make the pollution problem worse. If you believe a free market will add to prosperity, you should believe that a free market will probably make the pollution problem better.

A real free market would include a free market in governance, where people can choose which tribe and which city to move to.

I think an essential condition for the same would be a tacit understanding among most people that the way to deal with things is not with force, but with persuasion, commerce, arbitration and if necessary, published boycotts.

The tribes should be mostly at peace with each other, since anyone who wants to follow any kind of rule setup will have thousands of choices.

When people move to a new tribe or city, they more or less understand that they are going to be following the rule of the land/tribe. Governance would become a more restricted profession, more concerned with sustaining peace, economic and social well being. There would be thousands of "business models" to follow.

I don't know what that means really.
See I really don't know what you are saying here.   If "pollution problems" don't get "any worse" why are you using "except".  Which causes the dependent clause to agree with the primary clause.  i.e. Saying "I never lie except on Sunday" means that I lie on Sunday.   So parsing your sentence that way means that pollution problems do get worse on private property.  Now perhaps you don't consider the pollution on private property to be a problem in which case I would have just said: "The free marked does not make the pollution problem worse. Pollution on private property is not a problem as long as it didn't affect anyone elses' property".  Which is better but I suspect it's begging the question.

I'd like to point out again that I haven't been talking about consequences.  The idea that government defines what pollution is (just like they do now) came from you.

Define "prosperity"...

You're asking me why I didn't make an additional claim that you don't think is true? It's hard to figure out your point because you've concealed it behind a nitpick at my grammar.

Material wealth. Technological progress.

Not at all.   In fact the term "why" is nowhere in my text.  How it got in your head is a mystery to me.  

What I'm saying that your sentence doesn't make much of a point in the context of "A being no worse than B".  i.e. "I never lie except on Sundays" is fine as a descriptive statement but it can't be used - on it's own anyway - in support of "I never lie".  Similarly, your point appeared to be that the "Free market" does not increase the problem of pollution.   Your sentence can not be used to support that idea.  Is that somehow unclear?

So I took a stab at what you might of meant and yeah I don't think that what I came up with makes a very good argument either but it's at least more consistent and perhaps with some further commentary from you it might make more sense than it currently does.   The truth of the matter is if I actually knew what you were thinking I wouldn't have to ask.  I don't.  So I do.

What's so difficult about just repeatedly refining definitions until we agree on it's terms?  So far you seem pretty resistant to do so.


That is not a nitpick on grammar - it's just leaves me at a loss as to what you're actually saying.  You can, at any time - instead of...for example complaining - reform your argument in a different and hopefully clearer way.  
Is "material wealth" mean owning more things?  Are you saying that in a prosperous society people will generally own more things?  How would you measure material wealth?  i.e.  is a country with a higher GDP have more "material wealth" than a country with a lower one.

Yes, completely unclear and logically fallacious. If I said "I never lie unless my life is threatened", that is completely consistent with "I never lie". (Both because my life may never have been or may never be threatened and because lying when your life is threatened isn't 'really' lying because it doesn't cause the harm that lying normally causes.)
I don't know what's unclear. Nothing about a free market makes pollution worse with the exception of people being able to pollute their own property when that doesn't harm others. I submit that if this is unclear to you, it's because you are intentionally trying not to understand it.

If you know of some other way a free market might make pollution worse, do tell. If you want to talk about whether allowing people to pollute their own property when it doesn't harm anyone else is good or bad, we can do that. Otherwise, I don't know how I can be any clearer than I've been. Zero pollution is not the optimum level of pollution. Making some pollution worse is not a bad thing if the pollution level was below the optimum level previously.


I can't imagine why this matters to you. Are you honestly saying that you don't know what I mean by prosperity? You don't understand what wealth and progress are? Why these nitpicks? What possible relevance does it have? I don't understand why you want me to jump through all these odd hoops. Do you honestly not know what I mean? Or are you one of those people who insist that we can't talk about "intelligence" until we can precisely define it and come up with units for it?

Of course it matters.

Do you consider the case in which as society we have a better cars to drive but more illnesses due to chronic stress a progress ?

We have to balance having better cars, which is a plus, against more illnesses, which is a minus. If, on net, the plus exceeds the minus, it's progress. If the minus exceeds the plus, it's not. If the pluses and minuses are incomparable or incommensurate then either we can't tell if it's progress or not or it's not progress.

But this is yet another nitpick that has nothing to do with the issue. You know what I mean by progress. Why do you pretend you don't? Why do you refuse to engage on the actual issues yet pretend you've found some refutation or weakness?

If you're trying to point out that my argument is circular, for example (that I've defined progress to mean less pollution unless that's balanced out by something better and therefore of course more progress means less pollution), why not just say that?

If that was your point, my response would be that while specific instances of progress may mean more pollution, overall continuous progress will lead to less pollution. Just as "pollution" once meant raw sewage in the streets that would kill people by the thousands (and still does in places that haven't made much technological and economic progress) but now means microscopic quantities that may take a year off your expected lifespan.

And, again, the ideal amount of pollution is not zero.

It it not nitpick. Progress means something totally different to you and to me. I would never trade better car ( no matter how fast ) for worse health ( no matter how small ) and call it progress.


Ok lets pretend for example that by progress we mean more and more shitty or less shitty gods that are cyclically consumed.
The world is in great progress in the last 200 years , and environment is in constant degradation that actually speeds up. Where is this causality between "progress" and less pollution ?

Not really.   The second case is clearly equivocation.  The first case is at best ignoratio elenchi.  Unless of course you are asserting that, in your world nobody would ever pollute their own property or allow their property to be polluted deliberately.   Which is why you had to rephrase my statement.   If that is what you are asserting then again.  An infinitely more clear way of stating it would be the way I just did.

The statement we are discussing.  Are you not sure what statement I was referring to? You sure seem to know what statement I'm talking about.  Are you completely incapable of restating it in another way?   If not, doesn't that make you wonder if your ideas are really so well thought out?
Because it's entirely unlikely that you repeating the same words over and over without explication isn't helpful.  Right?  Sheesh.   Perhaps this process seems normal to me because where I work it's important that things are clear and you're often dealing with people who look at things in different ways.


And if I did have some other reason X.  What's wrong with you saying: "Nothing about a free market makes pollution worse with the exception of people being able to pollute their own property when that doesn't harm others and X"?

Perhaps you answering that will illuminate things somewhat.

Hey, look at that you actually *DO* know how to make statements other than repeating the same thing over and over again...(sadly this makes you're assertion about 'trying to not understand' false - too bad for you!).  So what are you saying then? That the "free market" (whatever that means) is guaranteed to have less pollution than whatever pollution people put on their own property?

Lulz.  Isn't that the very thing those kinds of questions would help me find out.  I mean that is before the question gestapo came out and said "No questions allowed in the Libertarian paradise!!"  ;D  Crazy.

Why do you get to call them odd?  They seem pretty straight forward questions if you've thought about your concept much.

How do I know what you mean without asking questions about what you mean?

I don't know who "those" people are but ones definition of something is what limits what kind of discussion can be had on the subject.   For example if "intelligence" can only be agreed as a categorical then you are severely limited to the kinds of comparisons one can make as opposed to say if it can be defined as an ordinal.  However an ordinal is still more limited than a ratio.   So I scale the kind of discussion that can be had on the basis of the kinds of definitions we are working with.

Perhaps my requests for more concrete things to attach to your definitions is because I deal with a more varied selection of people than you do and because of which I don't take much for granted.

After your last response, I have no idea what we disagree over, if anything.

I'm not sure I follow what you're asking. I'm saying that other than people polluting their own property, there is no reason to expect a free market to produce worse pollution than a regulated market. A free market does not mean freedom to pollute other people's property. People will tend to pollute their own property only when it is efficient for them to do so, and if not, who cares? Why should I care if you screw up something that's yours in a way that doesn't harm anyone else?

So I presume you never ever exceed the speed limit? In fact, I presume you never drive at all, after all, there's a risk of an accident. You ignore the fact that everything is a tradeoff.

Good point.  Metrics like this are weird.  There's certainly some problem with the fact that we all value things differently.  Not to mention that with people even terms like "better cars" appear to be something of an oversimplification.  Worst of all, and this wasn't my main point but "progress" as Joel has defined it is what I'm going to call a "metric of things".   Meaning that it's attempting to measure the values (relative or absolute) of all classes of object.   My reservation with such a thing is one question: "How many things are there?"

I would assert two things that the purpose of metrics is for comparison and by virtue of that and the inability to determine how many things we are comparing: such a metric would always be utterly meaningless.  Because if you don't know your population, you can't bound your error if you can't bound your error you can...*ahem*...never compare two values.   

Which is why I kind of ask about peoples definitions and try to tie them to other metrics I have in my head.  If Joel and I agreed on what are the hallmarks of a progressive society then such a comparison would be useful.

Reminds me of listening to Noam Chomsky.  Noam is the living master of sophistry, but jgraham is pretty good.

For everyone else, I'll let you in on a little secret.  If someone starts pretending that they needed more precise definitions for common words that everyone understands and uses every day, sit up and pay attention, because a sohpist is probably about to snare you up in his tar pit.  The same goes if they start to feign bafflement at a language construction that wouldn't confuse a three year old child.

While there is some wiggle room around "prosperity", this discussion sure as hell does not hinge upon any of the reasonable variations.  Also, everyone knew exactly what Joel meant about pollution, except those that put a lot of their brainpower into avoiding the clear meaning.

No offense intended, but I consider this idiotic "how do I know I exist" navel gazing.

How about this...

On one level you appear to be saying that pollution levels are independent of the presence or absence of a "free market".   Is that correct?

Not offended but where I come from it's called "statistics".

Edit: I admit in retrospect that I find it completely mysterious that Joel hasn't the foggiest idea about error calculations and what makes error absolutely paramount in interpreting figures.  Question: Do some Libertarians act stupid in order to make the public education system look bad?

No. And that wouldn't necessarily be a good thing anyway since it's possible that the pollution level is below the ideal level. In fact, for people polluting their own property in ways that don't harm others, I suspect our society has pushed the pollution level well below the optimum level. I would expect a free market to fix that. Also, I would expect the reduction in public property leading to more land being polluted at a more optimal level (whether more or less). I also expect a free market to lead to improved technological and economic progress which will lead to reductions in the level of the really bad kind of pollution (negative externalities).

Optimum level for what?

I'm not sure I understand completely what you're asking, so I'll try to answer a few of the possible things you could mean.

First, I hope we agree that the optimum level of pollution isn't none at all. No pollution would mean we couldn't even breathe, lest the carbon dioxide we exhale worsen global warming. We couldn't even use fire to cook our food. And of course, the optimum level of pollution isn't as much as we can possibly create. There are all sorts of things we could do that, but for the pollution they'd produce, might be great ideas but when you factor in the pollution, are clear losers.

Now, it doesn't immediately follow that there is some perfect mathematically optimum level of pollution. Presumably, for any precisely defined X, there's a level that maximizes X, but we get a circularity when we try to figure out what the X should be. So, by optimum level of pollution, I mean the level of pollution that maximizes X, for the optimum value of X. I don't know precisely what X is, but I do know approximately. Health is good. Wealth is good. Disease is bad. And so on, but there is no universal metric.

One of the reasons we need a free market is because without one, we don't have any ability to compare things. If there were no exchanges, how many dollars is one bitcoin worth? Nobody could ever even have any clue. I mean optimum in the mix of everyone's weighted rational preferences.

Technology tends to reduce the optimum level of pollution. Once the optimum level of pollution included dumping sewage in the streets. Thanks to modern sanitation, that is now sub-optimum.

Yes, that's not precise. Sorry, that's just the way it is.

So, I would consider myself to hold a sort of libertarian, free market type of ideology for the most part.  In 2007 I helped out with Ron Paul's campaign (quite a lot actually, in fact a large percentage of his supporters found out about him initially from a story that I sort of created - it took off and became his first big 'break' on the mainstream media).  I also am a strong believer in property rights and individual freedom.


However, recently I've been realizing more and more that most hardcore free market/capitalist supporters seem to take this base belief and use it to justify any situation.  There is always a workaround to make close-to-free markets seem just, fair, and in everybody's interest.  Even though I often agree, it is starting to look really silly to me.

This view of humans living in some personal little bubble doing whatever the fuck they want and ignoring society as a whole seems totally fucked to me.  Humans are a social animal and cooperation is just as important to our survival and development as a species as individual freedoms are.  It also seems incredibly impractical and downright immoral even given our current living conditions and the state of the world (population, pollution, 'protection' of intellectual property by laws, etc).

Instead of going on some rant I am going to just throw this out there:

In the US, unemployment is very high.  If you went by old conventions of defining unemployment (as the government likes to redefine what 'unemployed' means) we would be sitting around 22% or so now.  That's more than 1 in 5 people in the US without work. 
We are living in a world of automation and manual labor is becoming increasingly less necessary.  In some industries 1 person can do the work that used to take hundreds of people - think of how many people work in agriculture now as a percentage of the population. 
If technology X replaces 10 working jobs and creates 2 new jobs on average (skilled workers, engineers, repairmen, management, etc) where do those 8 people go?  If this happens on a massive scale constantly, where do people get jobs?  If there are no jobs for people to take, where do they get money?

Hypothetically, imagine an economy that requires about 1/10th of the amount of labor we have require currently.  We get a point where working for a sustaining life is not feasible.  Most people who are alive cannot work - so where do they money? 

I believe we are already past the tipping point of the ratio of technology replacing jobs/creating jobs in many industries.  I see no reason why unemployment would EVER reach its 'natural' level in our economy again by purely market means.  Sure regulation and things like minimum wage are part of the problem to an extent - but I don't believe any market system can sustain our population.  Working for money in a market just doesn't cut it now.  So what do we do?  Do we let the population remain in poverty and starve because it is 'fair'?  I believe in large cuts in Federal programs, but Jesus, imagine what that would do to our population.
We live in luxurious times where every American working full time is way beyond what is required to sustain our economy and is no longer demanded.

Competition is a form of cooperation. Personal freedoms don't interfere with cooperation. If you're not free not to cooperate, it's not cooperation, it's predation. (Of course, there do have to be enforced rules. Your freedom stops at me.)

I honestly can't see how that could happen. If we have all these people whose needs are unsatisfied, how can there also be nothing to do?

The current unemployment is not caused by technology providing everything everyone could ever want without anyone needing to exercise any effort. If we ever had that 'problem' the solution would be simple -- you could live like a king on charity.

The unemployment we have now was caused by an atypical crisis. (And yes, even a perfect libertarian utopia could have such crises. Free markets don't make everything magically perfect.)

Whatever i drive or not is irrelevant but nice try.

Can you answer my how did you get idea - better prosperity = less pollution , since world increases its prosperity in the last 200 years and we are on the bring of ecological disaster ?

Do you feel suicidal ? Every species on earth that over expands ,eventually experience sudden huge drop in population with possible extinction event.
Nature is a dictatorship

Take a look at any long-term charts for air pollution, water pollution, and so on. The optimum level of pollution goes down as technology goes up because the cost of remitting pollution goes down while the benefits do not.

The "brink of disaster" argument has been made for decades, it's nonsense. It's like screaming at the top of your lungs that a car is going to crash every time it approaches a curve. The driver sees the curve just like you do. He's going to turn whether or not you scream in panic. The system is stable because it can and will change, not because it can continue indefinitely in the same direction.

I see the curve just like you do. I'll turn whether or not you yell at me to. I'm not a fan of dying. Our cognitive and technological capabilities make us unique as a species.

If you're concerned about species extinction, you want technology to advance as quickly as possible. An asteroid or other cosmic event is just a matter of when, not if. We had better be able to leave this planet when it happens or it's all over.

Environment is a much more complicated system than just simple air, pollution level , and no pollution does not go down by the invisible hand of free market ( you are trying accredit it too ) but that of socialist and their regulations.

I dont know if you noticed but world gravitates towards socialism , it is your driver that choses this direction yet it is you who is screaming


There is no profit in leaving the planet. At least it wont be until it is totally devastated or we run out of resources.

Then how do you explain the Magna Carta? The United States? The collapse of Communism? I'm not screaming, I'm thrilled.

Fortunately, that's not true. There's lots of profit in satellites, space tourism, asteroid mining, and so on. The longer we wait to do it, the better we'll be able to do it. Too soon is just as bad as too late. In any event, command economies face the same problem of balancing long term and short term progress. There's no magic solution.

Well said. Its funny to me how a lot of people that get their mouth full talking of cooperation in reality dont want cooperation. According to this way of thinking slaves are not being forced to work, they are cooperating...


I disagree with you here. This crisis has not been atipical, in the sense that it was spected and we have seen similar crisis in history. Also, in a free market we would not see crisis like this. Some time of corrections and some periods of readjustment with somehow higher unemployment than usual could be, but it would never get to the level of discordination that has produced this huge crisis.

To some extent, the crisis was caused by government-imposed rules on mortgage backers that pressured them to extend loans to people with progressively less and less ability to pay them should the housing market drop. And also, to some extent, the crisis was caused by government borrowing.

However, another big factor was a bizarre one-off event -- the specific risks of securitizing mortgages. It wasn't generally understood that if a mortgage issuer is going to play hot potato and sell the mortgage as soon as possible, all the normal incentives to ensure the long-term stability of the mortgage go away. This was an unforeseen consequence of innovation of mortgage securitization. I see no reason it could not have happened precisely the same way under any other economic system. It was simply a lack of omniscience.

I do agree that some of the other factors could not have occurred in a completely free market. But other similar factors could have occurred instead. So while, of course, the crises couldn't have happened precisely the same way under any other system, I don't see any particular reason you couldn't also have had a perfect storm of unexpected crises in a perfect Libertarian utopia.

Again, though, the solution is basically prosperity. That's what helps you cushion and weather a crisis. That what changes the concept of a crisis from "bodies are piled up in the streets" to "we had to downgrade to basic cable".

When I talk to my friends about private law and the like they just think I'm kidding.
So I would be happy if the state just monopolizes violence and protects private property (of course, excluding so called intellectual property).
Anarchy is impossible in the "near" term (say 10 years), but there's many many things that governments are doing and should not.
A flagrant example is giving commercial banks the privilege to issue money (regulated fractional reserve) and when they fail in their cartel business, tax their citizens (or get debt in their name) to cover their losses. Private central banks like the fed are just like a bad taste joke.
But public central banks like the ECB (please correct me if the ECB is private) aren't much better.


Although probably with sound money and without fractional reserve you cannot have crises as bad as the current one (the worse is still to come), I think the root cause of so called business cycles is basic interest, which I don't think is needed in a free market.

EDIT: JoelKatz made a good analysis of the current crises. I agree, there can always be crises within a free market that are caused by wrong decisions.
I still disagree with his view of the effects of deflation in the financial and real capital markets.

We are entering the terrain of speculation here, but the case where all this financial "innovations" would not have occurred in the way they did in a free market is easily defensable. In fact, proving that it would have happened in a free market is hardly defensable.

The banking system earns money by charging a fee from transfering savings into investment, the fee being the difference between what they get from the investment and what they pay to the depositor. So the banks are always looking for new investments, prioritazing the more profitable ones, and going down until they dont have more money to lend. But when they have access to cheap money (because of the monetary system imposed by the government) they start to look for more and more investments, lowering their standards. They are not restrained by the amount of savings. You can see this all through history. When inflationary policies are pursue, there is an explotion of speculation and new financial vehicles appear. Obviously we have now computers and we have been able to produce a financiarization not posible until now. But the process is not new or unexpected.

Also, the titularization has been posible because of the trust in the rating agencies. Without them giving AAA's left and right it would not have happened. And the rating agencies are an oligopoly created by the USA government and later endorsed by the EU countries and others around the globe. With competition they would not have been able to rate in the way they did and the process would not have happened or would not have gotten so big.

As I said, small corrections and short term crisis are posible in a free market. People make mistakes, its unavoidable. But this crisis has the government written all over, including in the titularization process.

Yet you ignored the most crucial part of my augments again.
Free market mechanism you describe is not a cause of somehow drop in produced pollution as we see it today.

MC - would you like to have a king above you ? Me no.
USA - USA is owned by big corporations . Capitalists became so big and powerful they destroyed free market and any competition and took over a country.
The collapse of Communism - you mean the collapse of state capitalism dictatorship , no wonder it has collapsed.


Space satellites is hardly leaving the planet.
Space tourism is hardly leaving the planet too for more than a trip.
Asteroid mining - yeah it will be profitable when we strip our planet from resources and this course of action is obviously retarded ( strip resources with hope we can mine more from space )

We have been to the moon how long ago ? Where is progress is a space exploration ? There IS NO PROFIT thus it aint happening.
Yeah we should definitely implement full free market and disband NASA and European Space Agency.

Their needs are unsatisfied because they have no income.  How can there be jobs created to fulfill these needs if there is no money in it?

But with 20%+ of people jobless - and many of those willing to work, just unable to find work - where do they get money?  I've seen no evidence that removing the minimum wage and moving towards other free market measures would even make up for this amount.  There is also an increasing sector in the US that is financed by government spending - jobs that would otherwise not be created because the positions are not economically viable for private firms. 
In the state of our society we can no longer support everyone by means of working for wages.  What now?  Our current solution is a welfare system and government checks, programs, employment, etc.  I think it is an unsatisfactory solution that is unsustainable in the future - but what else?  Is there a solution that does not involve government intervention?  Because I really cannot see anything else reliably working.  I'm becoming a free market socialist.

Unemployment rate is about 4.5% for those with a college education. That suggests that the people who can't get jobs should maybe focus on getting higher education, or at least going to a school specializing in some profession.

Ugh.  Education is a whole new can of worms in a thread that already had enough problems.

Consider this theory:  Having a college education does not cause employment.  Employment and college are both effects of being the sort of person that normally goes to college.

Why do you thing the economy can no longer support everyone by means of working for wages?

Do you think the present unemployment situation is due to technology or is due to the discordination that produced the crisis?



The malfare state is not a "current solution", its a sheme to keep control over the system.


This is the best website in the Internet on free market socialism: http://c4ss.org/ (highly recommended for everybody, and they have been supporting of Bitcoin). Also, this blog is one of the oldest left-llibertians blogs that exist: http://aaeblog.com/

huh, good point. I never thought of this beyond thinking about low v.s high skilled workers in a supply-demand system, where high skilled are always in lower supply than needed.

Well primarily I'm saying that "Optimum" in English usually takes on one of two senses.  One in which it is self-referential meaning "the most possible".  In that case the "optimum level for pollution" would be "The most pollution possible" the second sense requires a reference to external criteria to judge how close the value is to it's goal.  I.e. "Optimum level for pollution to maintain our current standard of living".  Since you don't seem to be talking about the former and you haven't given any clues to what quality the later sense is being measured by.   It seemed natural to pose the question.


It appears here that you are defining the term "pollution" in a sense where any level of some element is pollution.  That's neither how I would use the term nor how Wikipedia and Mirriam-Webster appear to use the term (assuming a modern sense of 'contaminate') .  So no, I'd not call any amount of carbon dioxide "pollution".   So even if I agree the "optimum level" of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (or produced by humans) is not zero.  I don't think we will get much further without you answering the question: "Optimum for what?"

Why?  Given what assumptions?

What is X? A function?  A value?

How is the maximal value of X different than the optimum value of X?

No kidding.

That's oversimplified to the point of being nonsensical.  You don't create "health".  You create medicine.  While you could state one of the goals of medicine as "homeostasis".  Every medicine that has an effect and has a degree of risk both in the pollutants created by the manufacturer but also in the auxiliary effects of the medicine.  This can't be what you call "health" because it doesn't take into account fitness of purpose or peoples personal goals. i.e. Should someone take an NSAID?  Should they take one if they don't have an headache?  Some people take NSAIDs others refuse.  Which one is right? Based on these statements can you say that the creation of NSAIDs was "good"?

Similarly "wealth" isn't just more money in my pocket - it would be a question of what I would have to do to get the wealth.  Most people I know are in the position to scale their income by say 10%-20% however they don't because it's not worth it.  

Is disease intrinsically bad?  What kind of disease?  With what kind of prognosis?  Was the disease the result of something we did?

Now this sounds like equivocation again.  Seemingly I can compare things.  Does that mean we have a "free market"?  However it would seem you're not advocating things staying the way they are.  So what you appear to want is a "more free market".  However arguing that it allows me to compare things - something I appear to be already capable of - hardly makes your point.

I would have settled for cogent.

Wow, classical use of both "sophist" and "ad hominem" in the same post.  A sprinkling of "appeal to popularity" and perhaps some "prejudicial language".

I don't know if there's an award for "logical flaw density in a single post" but should you decide to go pro.  You've got my vote.

Logical flaws only exist when there is a logical debate.  Sophistry is the art of avoiding logical debate while looking like you are participating.  Since you aren't participating, I don't feel that it is flawed to point that out.

We could, I suppose, debate whether or not you are actually avoiding the other debate, but I think I already know how it will end up.

If you don't know what 'optimum' could mean, you can't possibly believe that a free market could make pollution worse. Worse would have to mean further from optimum. So we already agree on the only point I was trying to make.

Depends on what you mean.  A "debate" might imply a discourse of two sides on some topic.  A logical flaw however can exist in any argument.  An argument being a series of statements which attempt to force (to various degrees of strength) a conclusion.  i.e. kjj is a sophist as evidenced by...

Perhaps you mean that you are not arguing that I am a sophist and are just stating it?

That may be your definition but classically (perhaps you didn't mean it that way after all - that's a point in favor of obtaining definitions) sophists considered persuasion as subordinate to reason.  So for example calling someone a sophist without actually supporting your statement with argument and evidence could be an example of classical sophistry.  Plato commented on this very thing in the Gorgias dialogue when he said that Gorgias favored opinions over the truth.  The idea of asking "What is <something>?" is actually Plato's primary method of argumentation not Gorgias.  Gorgias would avoid providing definitions.  Likewise appealing that "everyone knows" something might also be an example of sophistry in the classical sense.  The modern sense is more about a deceptive argument.  I don't really see what's deceptive about my arguments.

Participating in what?  Apparently, I am participating in something - my dialog with JoelKatz - for example.   I'm engaging in the non-sophist ideal of getting people to define terms.  I have shown some logical consequences of particular lines of reasoning.  Why would you call me a sophist?

Did you somehow miss that this whole foray into "optimal" is to interpret your words...did you not get that?  Really?

So what possible good would the cases that I might like to optimize our pollution levels for (given that by "pollution" you seem to mean something silly and I seem to be using a more standard definition) be in interpreting the following phrases "I suspect our society has pushed the pollution level well below the optimum level." or "Technology tends to reduce the optimum level of pollution".

As ever the point is that "optimal" in English requires external criteria.  If you want to have an intelligent discussion on the subject of pollution (not sure if this assumption is justified) then don't we need to know what your external criteria is? That is, what case you are optimizing for?  If I don't know that.  How are we even sure we are talking about the same thing?

So please answer the question: "Optimal for what case?" Otherwise it's just a recipe for what I would call: "Talking past each other".

Equivocation.  Only true if we both have identical criteria we are trying to optimize pollution for.

Is this really so hard? For example without knowing what Intel architecture I'm going to run a piece of assembly code on.   Can't the code be speed optimal for one architecture and sub-optimal for another?

If you do not have the affirmative belief that a free market will make pollution worse, then I have no quarrel with you. All I'm saying is that such a belief is unjustified. It seems to me that you do not have that belief and, better, have found another way to make my argument -- the notion of "worse" pollution is incoherent or too confusing to use. Great, I'll accept that as another way to make my point.

Ever faster than I had expected.

That would depend...don't we need to have similar ideas of the term "pollution" and "worse" before I can agree or disagree to that statement? or at least don't I need to understand your usages of those terms?  Right now I'd guess that either you are deliberately attempting to keep your definitions hidden or you simply do not know what you mean.

...and yet it seems you are not in a position to make that determination.   Unless you also believe that it would have made little difference if you had made your posts using Putonghua.

Let me see if I can help you a bit here.  Sure, at first it sounded like you were using terms that were similar in definition to mine (or more accurately I assumed a degree of colloquialism).  Later as your usage got farther and farther away from useful reference points (even - in some cases - the dictionary) yes I found it harder to determine if I in fact disagree or agree with you.  So, the reasonable thing to do is to get you to define what you are talking about.  That doesn't mean I don't disagree with you just that at this point it's difficult to tell.


Which would be equivocation again.  Yay you! ;D  Your point would only and ever be that given an incoherent definition of "worse" you can not make the determination if something is worse or not.  However when you apply that to someone elses' argument they may well have a reasonably well defined definition of the term.   They have real ideas about what concrete societal indicators they wish to optimize for.  In other words they might have a real argument - as opposed to a sophist's (shoutout to kjj for getting me to read Plato again) defense of empty words.  Ummm..touche?

Not to mention that it's even questionable if you can truly label the statement "a free market will make pollution worse" as "unjustified" given that you have chosen an incoherent definition of various terms.

You caught me at a good time.  Otherwise you would have had to wait until the morning to get your ass handed to you.

Again, if that's your position, we have no disagreement. If you think those terms are ambiguous or unclear, then you aren't the person I have a quarrel with. The person I have a quarrel with is the person who claims it's clear that a free market will make pollution worse. If you don't think that's a well-formed claim, then you and I are on the same side. It's madness for us to argue over whether or not a position is well-formed when nobody is taking that position. It's crazy for me to precisely define a position with which I disagree -- let someone who holds the position do that.

However, I will add your argument to my arsenal. The next time someone claims a free market makes pollution worse, I'll just insist they precisely define "pollution" and "worse" and they'll probably get so annoyed and frustrated they drop their claim and then I can claim I won! Won't that be a fine day!

I love techniques that allow me to avoid actual substantive arguments. This one is almost as good as "That's what you think!"

Yawn.  You realize that YOU made the statement: "nothing about a free market need make pollution problems any worse" and this is the one I'm trying to clarify.   So unless you have no useful definition of those terms then you can not state with any degree of accuracy that we have no disagreement.  However if you are admitting that you have no useful definition of those terms then you can't rationally hold the position you asserted.

Let me know which one it is.

Except that you can't disagree with a statement which you recognize as not well formed enough to draw a conclusion on.  Not to mention you have asserted that "nothing about a free market need make pollution problems any worse".   Which would also require definitions of those terms.  Perhaps you've been caught lying here?

Yes, yes.  You're angry.  Try to be a bit more rational about it. Okay?

Let's recap. You used words that were pretty important to the discussion (i.e. pollution, optimal, etc...) in pretty non-standard ways (for example you seem to absolutely refuse to recognize that "optimal" requires in the context you were using it - an external qualifier of some kind) and then either could not or would not provide an even mildly better definitions.  Now you want to claim that somehow my efforts to figure out what you mean is avoiding substantive arguments?!  Really?  So you can have a substantive argument even if both people have radically different ideas of what the terms mean?  If not, then don't substantive arguments depend on some kind of mutual understanding of terms?  Doesn't that make your assertion sort of...wrong?

Look man, I really have no idea who you are or why you're acting like a baby about this but I really have no agenda here.  I'm perfectly happy believing whatever conforms to a reasonable standard of evidence.  I find some assertions interesting because they appear on the surface to be false (as opposed to assertions that appear to be trivially true) and those are the ones I invite dialogue on.  If you don't want to talk about your beliefs or heck if you simply don't want to think about what you mean when you say something like "pollution" or "optimal".  Go ahead.  No skin off my banana.  However rather than pretending your situation is the result of something *I* did.  Perhaps you could take some ownership of your own decisions?  That would *seem* like a Libertarian ideal to me - not really knowing about such things of course.  ;D

No, not at all. This is not a refutation of any one particular claim. Let me clarify, I am not saying this:

There is a very specific definition of "pollution" and a very specific definition of "worse", and for those definitions, a free market will not make pollution worse.

That would be an incredibly weak claim, that would not respond to the very point I was trying to respond to when I made that claim. In fact, I am making a much stronger claim. More specifically, it goes something like this:

For any sensible definition of "pollution" and for any sensible definition of "worse", a free market does not make pollution worse.

Now, this is the ordinary meaning of words anyway. This should be default interpretation. Normally people do not make claims that rely on ultra-specific definitions of words. They apply broadly to the cluster of concepts the word indicates. I am here using those terms in the normal way. By "pollution", I mean the entire cluster of concepts pointed to by that word. By "worse", I too mean the entire cluster of concepts pointed to by that word.

A free market is one where I am free to kill my competitors......

hmm. no?

Depends on what you mean.  If you mean that in the sense that it makes fewer predictions (ala "Weak Anthropic Principle") it's irrelevant and possibly incorrect.  "weakness" in terms of induction usually means an argument needs much larger assumption to cover the gap.  So by that standard more well-defined arguments tend to be considered strong.

It's worth noting that your usage of "specific" only applies to anything we're talking about if the sense is "lacking ambiguity". 

Isn't this just shifting your argument to defining what constitutes a "sensible definition of pollution"?  Doesn't it still leave you requiring a definition of "worse" (or "optimal" if that's still in the game somewhere or are you trying to sweep that one under the rug  ;D).  In which case I'd say that doesn't advance your argument any further as practically the same issues apply.  Oh and just so you know this isn't some kind of infinite regression of definitions I'm asking for here but rather pointing out that just sticking the word "sensible" in front doesn't add much in the way of informing me as what your point is.   In fact I'd wonder if you haven't made things harder on yourself here.

You also seem to be implying that "very specific" and "sensible" are non-trivially mutually exclusive here.  What keeps a specific definition of "pollution" from being "sensible"?


Strawman and possibly a fallacy of prejudicial language.  Nobody has asked you for an "ultra-specific" definition. So far just a definition which is more than the term itself.   One could argue easily that is normally expected of people.  Try again.
You really think this line of reasoning is going to be helpful?  Oh well. Well on one level you're probably wrong.   Unless you can list the entire cluster of concepts (which would qualify as a definition) then you can't really *mean* that.   As I'd take the word "mean" to require intent - how do you "intend" to do something that you didn't know?  Secondly how could you verify that your conclusion is forced for something that you didn't intend to include?   Not to mention it's hard to figure out how this fits with your seeming exclusion of "specific" definitions.  Aren't specific definitions part of the "cluster of concepts"?

What might be a better way of looking at things is that while the complete definition of a word might contain a large and possibly indistinct set of ideas.   It is silly and incorrect to pretend that you are arguing them all at once.  Instead try to pick a definition that covers some important cases i.e. most common cases, cases that contribute most significantly to the event, etc...  From there make your argument.  Sometimes you have to use several definitions to cover enough cases to give your argument significant weight.  Mine you even an outside case can be useful if there is good data to back it up.

Otherwise it seems like you are intending for your point to be unfalsifiable.

hmm yes .
Why not ?

The law ?
Law bends to the power of money. You see it everyday right now.

Wow.  I did not see this coming at all.

I'm going to set a reminder to come back and check this thread in a few months.  I predict that one of the participants will still be arguing about the definitions of common words.

It's not worth the effort of educating you on the relationships between words and concepts just to make a point about pollution and the free market. Should you at any time stop pretending not to understand how language works, I'll be happy to try to have an intelligent conversation with you.

It means man owning himself. It means innovation and construction without limits. It means man realizing his full potential.

Wait.  Did you just pull a "That's what you think!"  ;D

Anyway, I get it. You've been shut down and one good way to avoid cognitive dissonance is to make some blanket assertion without any argument or justification.  

Well, since I'm posting already I'll see if I can guess your counter-argument.

For example, you might think you are saying something along the lines of:

"There exists, no X that is Y".  i.e. There exists no ratio which expresses all the digits of sqrt(2).  You could assume that there is some say set of definitions about your various terms.  For example T_n represents the set of definitions for a particular term.   Given the sentence "nothing about a free market need make pollution problems any worse" you could claim that there exists no set S consisting of T₁...T_n which is invalid.  As a special addition you also seem to implicitly assert that the size of any particular T_n can't be known.

The problem with this position, is as I mentioned.  Validation.  How would you validate this statement?  Well you could construct every permute of...whoops.  You can't do that.  You don't know the size of any particular T_n. Now one might think that this *can* be disproved.  That is, for a "there exists no" a "there exists one" is disproof.  However clearly one could construct a trivial definition in which that would be the case.   So the set of sets T₁ ...T_n isn't what we are looking at.   What we are looking at is some subset of that group.  So we need a transformation which maps from the set of sets T to the set of sets T' representing "sensible" definitions.  What's the transformation?...JoelKatz doesn't know.  Thus his idea is unfalsifiable.
 
What does that mean?  Well for starters its irrational to assert it...

What if the words are common but someone is using an uncommon definition? Oh wait...you didn't think about that!  :D
Seems like you don't need it.  You've already achieved your full potential - sadly that it's mostly posturing.  ;D

I guess it depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is.

We can just substitute for an operator if you like.  We can define that from set theory.  ;D

I laughed for 45 seconds!   :D

Is it their pegged currency or capital controls that you see as 'free market' with regard to China?

+1  For awareness of reality.

It means a series of trite statements that have no real world implications.