The way to show government should intervene into personal lives

[surviva316]

The Indonesian factory worker has the choice to not work in the factory. He has other choices too, and the reason he chooses the factory work is because it makes him better off ...

This entire section makes my point for me. My point was that the Indonesian factory worker has no choice other than to work in the factory or to starve. You pointed out that they had other choices but they're even worse. And you added to what I'd already implied: that even the factory work isn't something always available to them, so their options are often even worse.

This doesn't help the original point I was refuting, which is that they choose how the institutions are constructed and are not forced into them.

When we talk freedom of choice, that doesn't mean any choice.

Again, I don't think you're following the thread of conversation from the beginning. Freedom of choice is another term that could mean a million things. When we talk about freedom of choice in this context, we're talking about the freedom to choose how these institutions (which in the parent post was mercenaries and mall cops) are constructed. People's institutional power in a society where the institutions are entirely privately funded and controlled would be in direct proportion to how much capital and private ownership they have. Except it'd be well beyond that because only people with disposable capital are going to be able to invest in those institutions. And far worse than even that because private capital is largely made up of corporate spending power, so talking about people at all is optimistic.

So corporatocracy or plutocracy, take your pick. In any case, it's not going to be the common man's choice and self-determination that shapes the institutional landscape. The logic seems to be crony capitalism doesn't work because it's so corrupt, so we better just cut out the middle man and hand all the power directly over to the corrupting force.

The difference between you buying/selling what you want versus the government taxing you to buy/sell for you what it thinks/says you want is very big.

Again, we're not talking about the power you have versus the power the government has; we're talking about plutocratic power versus semi-democratic-republic-elected power (assuming we're comparing this to our government).

[wufwugy]

This entire section makes my point for me. My point was that the Indonesian factory worker has no choice other than to work in the factory or to starve. You pointed out that they had other choices but they're even worse. And you added to what I'd already implied: that even the factory work isn't something always available to them, so their options are often even worse.

This is when we ask ourselves one of economist Thomas Sowell's three fundamental questions: Opposed to what?

It is by the increase of freedom of choice that many East and Southeast Asians have the option to not go hungry.

Again, I don't think you're following the thread of conversation from the beginning. Freedom of choice is another term that could mean a million things. When we talk about freedom of choice in this context, we're talking about the freedom to choose how these institutions (which in the parent post was mercenaries and mall cops) are constructed. People's institutional power in a society where the institutions are entirely privately funded and controlled would be in direct proportion to how much capital and private ownership they have. Except it'd be well beyond that because only people with disposable capital are going to be able to invest in those institutions. And far worse than even that because private capital is largely made up of corporate spending power, so talking about people at all is optimistic.

So corporatocracy or plutocracy, take your pick. In any case, it's not going to be the common man's choice and self-determination that shapes the institutional landscape. The logic seems to be crony capitalism doesn't work because it's so corrupt, so we better just cut out the middle man and hand all the power directly over to the corrupting force.

The amount of capital held by those who do not hold the most capital is staggeringly vast. You are describing systems in which laws stop people from using their capital to better their lives. I am describing a system in which laws do not stop people from using their capital to better their lives.

[surviva316]

This is when we change the subject.

This is how every conversation I get in on FTR turns into 50 paragraph monstrosities that's a blackhole for my whole work week and something I regretted getting into.

You wanted people to show you that the government should intervene in personal lives, I said in a capitalist society, the state facilitates a television being built in Indonesia being allocated to some overseas entity. Then you said well sure there's going to be some institution that ultimately determines what belongs to who, but at least in an ancap society, that's based on choice, and I pressed you on what choice the Indonesians have in the matter, and now you're just entirely changing the terms of the conversation.

So are you conceding all the earlier points, including the one on institutional intervention and the one on everyone having a choice in the matter? If we were to move on, would it be in agreement that those are meaningless terms on which to base the conversation?

The amount of capital held by those who do not hold the most capital is staggeringly vast.

Do you have any numbers to back that up? The bottom 40% of the US owns 0.2% of personal wealth. That already doesn't seem staggeringly vast. And the only meaningful metric would be how much disposable capital they have, because only people with a certain amount of wealth are going to be able to put any percent of their capital toward a stake in the institutions. And that number only relates to personal wealth, which isn't even barking up the right tree to begin with because institutional investments would largely come out of (the now untaxed) corporate budgets.

And again, that's talking about one of the biggest economic winners on the world stage, which we both agree is a privileged place to center our conversation.

You are describing systems in which laws stop people from using their capital to better their lives. I am describing a system in which laws do not stop people from using their capital to better their lives.

Well, I'm not describing any system, except for the post where I just dispassionately listed every economic system I could think of off the top of my head. In any case, the two-liner for any economic system sounds equally great. ... I started to list off what all the advocates of all the various economic systems would say as a critique of your system followed by a facile statement about what's so fundamentally great about their system, but I think you can just imagine that without me wasting my time typing it out and exposing myself to some misunderstanding that I'd actually like those to each be refuted one-by-one.

[wufwugy]

This is how every conversation I get in on FTR turns into 50 paragraph monstrosities that's a blackhole for my whole work week and something I regretted getting into.

You wanted people to show you that the government should intervene in personal lives, I said in a capitalist society, the state facilitates a television being built in Indonesia being allocated to some overseas entity. Then you said well sure there's going to be some institution that ultimately determines what belongs to who, but at least in an ancap society, that's based on choice, and I pressed you on what choice the Indonesians have in the matter, and now you're just entirely changing the terms of the conversation.

I have laser-like focus on the original subject. East and Southeast Asia have undergone the most drastic increase in economic freedom at the individual level in perhaps all of history, and the results have been phenomenal. They have been rapidly gaining choice. The current circumstances that for many of them are below the West's standards represent them utilizing choice they did not have several years and decades ago.

Do you have any numbers to back that up? The bottom 40% of the US owns 0.2% of personal wealth. That already doesn't seem staggeringly vast. And the only meaningful metric would be how much disposable capital they have, because only people with a certain amount of wealth are going to be able to put any percent of their capital toward a stake in the institutions. And that number only relates to personal wealth, which isn't even barking up the right tree to begin with because institutional investments would largely come out of (the now untaxed) corporate budgets.

Financial capital and investment capital are not the only kind of capital. Human capital is a more productive measure in the context of philosophy of economics. Human capital is a human's ability to make himself better off by expending any form of energy and/or skill he has. The success of free market capitalism largely depends on the freeing up of human capital. The proposal to use a competitive system of institution building rather than the tax-based monopoly system is largely about freeing up human capital. That isn't the only thing it's about, but it's a key component for why systems that free up individual choice yield greater prosperity.

Also, I discussed this recently but I suspect you weren't around to see the posts, so I'll briefly provide it for you. Monetary wealth is a useful approximation of real wealth, but that isn't quite how economists view the underlying values that make up wealth. Wealth is better thought in terms of production (and even ability to produce in a less strict sense), and it is best understood through the lens of how production impacts the subjective preferences of the consumer. Economists believe that every time there is a voluntary exchange of goods or services, all participants are better off regardless of if one gained more monetary representation of that "better offness" than another.



FWIW I have conversations quite differently now than I used to. My understanding of economics has become significantly more sophisticated over the years (mainly because that's what I studied in university), and the university experience as well as some hobby experiences have markedly improved my ability to productively navigate discussion. So don't worry about getting the dreaded stuff of old from me.