Quote Originally Posted by CoccoBill View Post
When there are no regulations in place regarding a certain activity, that activity operates in a free market. The timeline regarding pretty much all market activities has been

1. no regulations, people do as they please
2. things go to shit, because people do as they please
3. regulations are put in place
4. things are still pretty much shit
5. free market advocates come about and say everything would be sweet, if only there were no regulations

The burden of proof to show that other regulations are indirectly affecting said activity, is on the proponents of free markets.

Case in point: whaling and shark fishing

When there have been no regulations in place, whales and most species of shark have been or are fished to extinction. When there are (or have been) no regulations in place to limit excess fishing, why didn't the market adjust to protect the environment?
It isn't that when there are no regulations, there is a free market. It's that when there are no regulations from a monopoly (government), there is a free market. It appears you're operating under the impression that government is the only avenue to set standards and without government things are a free-for-all. Like Renton pointed out, a key component of freedom is private ownership. We don't recommend things like making resources open to all without any rules regarding them. When something is supposedly "public", it needs government intervention to keep tragedy of the commons away. But the better solution is to allow prices to work and allow individuals or organizations to own and operate what they can.*

Private property has a far greater record of conservation than government. Whales and sharks are victims of not having this conservation avenue.

I think of it this way: regulations were invented to serve a purpose. Most civilizations have thought it prudent to make things like killing and stealing illegal, and I think there's a reason for that. Similarly, before employers were mandated to provide their employees a minimum wage, they were not. Something brought up the need for defining and regulating them.
If we're talking about people and communities operating by rules, sure. If we're talking about a violence monopoly, it's a little different. The state has always been foremost about self-protection. Take the laws and norms affecting roads for example. Their most important, highest priority function is to provide state-owned vehicles swift access. State agents are mostly allowed to subvert state laws as long as they're acting in its interest. This is not true only where there are constitutional restrictions against the state.

You are correct that "something brought up the 'need' for minimum wage". But that doesn't mean the need was real or the prescription healing. Minimum wage is a great example of what every economist learns in academia being subverted by the desires of the populace. It is understandable that people don't understand economics (it's as complex as any other science), but we have always lived in a world where being uninformed on economics is not a barrier to voting on it. My guess for why this is is that macroeconomics is too disassociated from daily life. People think mandating higher wages is better because they see their wages rise and these things are often indeed better for them in a vacuum. But the vacuum is just a fraction of the effects, and they ultimately result in worse results for everybody.

The same principle exists in poker. Shoving KK is pretty much always +EV unless it's against somebody so tight that they only have AA. How we vote on economics only gets so far as the "shoving KK is mostly +EV..." part.

If you take anything away from this, take this: the anti-statist argues against a monopolist regulator, not rules and regulations that are privately endorsed and enforced. If people want people to stop using pot, I want them to have to pay for it instead of getting a monopoly to support them. The reason is that when people have to pay for things with their own efforts, the costs hit them. This changes both the amount of power they wield and their opinions about these things. But when they can just vote for a politician, a policy, or provide a sentiment, and it goes through a convoluted mess where once mandates are set they are virtually impossible to unset, we end up with dogshit.



*I really want to go into greater philosophical depth with this, but I'm not sure how well that would go over. The short of it is that this principle of freedom of choice is what we use for most aspects of our lives where we would be abhorred to consider allowing government to intervene. None of these things are inherently any different to other things. Economics is at play when dating the same way it is with education, and neither are "special" in a way that they need a monopoly to set standards (there has yet to arrive a theory for why monopolies could be good in the first place). How livid would you be if the government regulated your personal relationships? Imagine I defended the government's intervention in personal relationships, and you had to formulate your arguments against me in the most meaningful way you could. For a while you would say "get the fuck out!", which is what anti-government people say, yet that's blown off as non-serious. So let's say I blow you off and say that isn't a good enough explanation. Then you argue against government intervention using logic and academic theory and data. Wouldn't you sound like Renton and I do now? You'd be saying all about how personal relationships work better without government intervention, how leading field experts agree, how the history and data are obfuscated, and how we're using a type of rationale to defend government that we wouldn't dream of doing elsewhere.