I had a debate at work earlier today (it may not have been entirely appropriate but oh well) and we went through a number of topics.
Germany is one of the top exporters in the world. My co-workers’ argument was that this was due to the unions in that country. Now, i don’t have anything against unions per se, but I find that really hard to believe. I figured that they were mixing up cause and effect and just citing a corelation. I don’t know the exact situation in Germany, but it seems to me that Germany does have a certain kind of reputation capital built up over decades for quality. I find it hard to connect that with unions.
We then moved in to regulations in meat production, work safety, etc. Unfortunately, it’s generally difficult to discuss this with people who talk about 6 year olds in coal mines (show me where that even happened) and Chinese workers faling off of cliffs working on railroads. They were saying that we have the unions to thank for increased worker safety. Now, my argument would have to be something like those issues would have worked themselves out naturally with new technologies, etc. This may not be convincing so does anyone else have any other ideas? Where would we be without government regulations on meat safety and child labor? It seems to me, when it comes to worker safety and meat safety, etc., that people have a tendency to project the present on to the past and expect to have the same knowledge that we have now. It’s hard to argue against this, it seems, so I don’t know where to begin with it.
We then got on about Clear Channel and the assumption of natural monopoly in a free market. Their argument was that when whatever was deregulated Clear Channel “took over”. I find this, again, hard to believe, and most likely an exaggeration and a mischaracterization on what actually took place. It also makes a lot of value judgments in that a state monopoly is somehow better than a Clear Channel monopoly. Does anyone have a link to an article about Clear Channel and the so-called “deregulation” that took place that allowed it to “take over”?
Without the state, they argued, what would prevent, for example, me from taking all of your stuff if i was strong enough? I argued that there would be enough competition so that no one would really be that strong and there would be services available to remedy that. This was not convincing, to say the least (nevermind that they were all die hard socialists who think we would not have roads, water, or anything without government). Does anyone have a link and/or better argument to debunk this?
I know this is probably a lot, but it was a taxing conversation to say the least.
Most of these arguments probably won’t work on your friend (since he probably throws out most economic arguments, Austrian arguments, and pretty much anything that is logical and not emotional), but you can use them to brush up your own knowledge on the subjects.
I don’t know about the specific situation in Germany either. I would take a quick guess as its probably heavily subsidized industries which export a lot of goods, and it could just be the Germans have a higher productivity in certain sectors than other areas in the world (for example, the Southeast Asian countries are amazing at producing electronics). It is definitely not Unions that makes them have high exports.
If you want you could just brush up on general knowledge on Unions. I would definitely recommend reading the chapter in Economics In One Lesson.
Well a lot of this is just the myths that Unions lowered the work week, raised wages, got rid of child labor, safer working conditions. These just naturally arose (and do arise) from capital accumulation and more competition.
Here is a great article by Jeffrey Tucker on child labor laws:
As to the meat safety, he probably believes the nonsense that was taught in school, about the FICTION book “The Jungle”. There are lots of articles all over the internet on that topic. And again, food safety is handled by the market and competition, not by the FDA (all of this inspection could also be handled by private inspection agencies instead of the government monopoly). I really like what Ron Paul always says about the FDA (and most government agencies) “if a private inspection agency made a large mistake, they would go out of business. If the FDA makes a large mistake, they do not go out of business, they get more money!”
I don’t know if I would bring up that kind of argument though to your friend, because he is probably the type that thinks the inspection agencies would be corrupt and lie and cheat and not inspect food properly (which just flies in the face of the facts of the market process and competition).
Also, another argument that works well (but not for your friend) are looking at the unseen. Making workplaces more safe is not free, and comes at a cost (in lower wages, less workers, etc.). It would be up to each individual to decide what their safety threshhold is, and it would be up to competition to weed the less safe businesses out (if that is the preference of the workers). Here is an article I found quickly which is very good on the topic of worker saftey:
Yep, this is exactly how it is. I first began thinking a lot about this topic when I was debating with a friend (a lot like you are) about the FDA. They also just think of history as some simplified nonsense they were taught in high school. I don’t know about how to debate this a different way, perhaps just giving him articles to make him think about the topic, and hope something sticks.
My friend mentioned that back then people were selling elixirs, quack devices, doctors were BLEEDING people, and then the amazing (government) FDA stepped in and saved everyone!!! This is just a complete myth, for two reasons:
There was this amazing article I read back then, but I can’t seem to find it now, but here was what I remember from it. Most of the doctors back then thought that bleeding was a good idea, and the minority was of the view that bleeding was horrible for the patient. The FDA was actualy forcing their views of bleeding the patient onto the doctors!! If I could find this article, this would probably be a great one which might stick (or at least change his view on that topic), and hopefully do a domino effect making him rethink a lot of his other history.
If there was a demand for the government to step in and inspect all these things at the time, there MUST have been some sort of private inspection agencies already doing that job, but were driven out of business by the government (this is still something I would want to research and look more into). This is of course something they would never teach you about in school.
Which leads me to point you towards one more interesting topic, a private inspection company that actually exists now (Underwriters Laboraties):
After I read that article, I started looking at all my electronics and saw the UL symbol on it, I was amazed that this was under my nose the whole time and I never even knew it.
I don’t know much about that specific case, but there is a lot on the site about Monopolies:
Arguing over how things would work in Anarcho-Capitalism with someone who is clearly socialist… is just really a waste of time. You have to tackle the much easier arguments first, and work your way up to the really hard ones.
You probably need to do a lot more reading on Decentralized Law, and how it might potentially work in Anarcho-Capitalism. I would recommend listening to these two speeches by Bob Murphy:
He takes more of the PDA/Insurance disincentives approach, which is what I think most of the people on the board agree would naturally arise from the market. Also an intesting thing to read is this article on the “Wild” West. It is a great example of how decentralized law and protection did work in the past:
And there is a great article I remember reading a while back (I could have swore it was Bob Murphy, but maybe it was Kinsella?), on how PDAs would handle an extremely rich person against a poor person. I will have to look around for that one.
Should office workers be forced to wear protective cups under their pants? What if coffee falls on their area of the groin?
rolls eyes The airwaves are not a free market. You have to have a licence from the government.
Perhaps nothing. But how does that necessitate the state? What would prevent the state from taking all your stuff? Oh, wait, it already claims title over your stuff and takes away a lot of your stuff via income tax, sales tax, VAT, import/export, etc..
Also, I wouldn’t waste my time arguing with people who are closed-minded.
Another point about this is that it seems to be assumed that the state actually helps protect the weak against the strong. Evidence points to the contrary. People with political connections get away with murder all the time. AND they have the state helping them steal the property of others, or creating monopolies that help them. So, if in an ancap world, this stuff still happens (which, from the responses above, seems less likely), you’re no worse off.
Just cause the state says it’s doing something, and people vote for politicians because they say they will do something, it does not mean they are actually doing it!
had a similiar conversation with one of my freinds in my science class yesterday, just remind them that we don’t live in a free market and work them through how competition works and how it stamps out profits. I did manage to convince my freind that monopolies can’t form in a free market and that white westerners are not “exploiting” africans.
Obviously that doesn’t make sense. Unions raise labor costs, that is their stated purpose. They make it less profitable to produce in a country. That’s what unions are about, to reduce the profit of greedy capitalists. Germany is a top exporter because it implemented very free markets after ww2, while the rest of the world was turning to socialism.
Regulation and unions don’t improve the conditions of workers. Wages and working conditions improve because capitalists compete for labor that is getting more productive. Better working conditions is a way of competing for labor. Children don’t have to work any more because society is more productive and the income of parents is enough to feed the entire family, not because government banned it. When governments ban child labor in third world countries the children starve or have to become prostitutes.
I think the other questions were answered by other people in this thread. These are fairly common socialist fallacies that have long been debunked, and there is a lot of material about it on the internet or this page.