Individualism VS Liberty & Free Markets

Economics Political Theory
1

Imagine me, wanting to buy sex. What kind of woman is gonna give me the most pleasure for the same amount of money? Probably the most poor and degraded girl.

If the woman is adequately qualified, free market would tend to ease her discomfort and pop up her price, and I will lose a valuable bargain. I’d have to outbid others and the degree of pleasure for any amount of money would eventually be the same for all women of all prices.

The same is true for a cleaning lady and pretty much every other job.

To generalize this trend we can say that the marginal utility of any buying of goods or services for a given amount of money would tend to be higher according to the degree that inequality exists in an economy/society, and yet, marginal utility would be dropping over time through rising prices and satiation.

This might seem an undue use of the term “marginal utility” but I wan’t to present the irony of the whole thing. Because from the point of view of the buyer, free market and competition destroys his lunch.

Now, I’m an individualist and I strognly oppose the left and every egalitarian view. I can see value to the environment as long as the environment serves me and my offspring, and that way I value everything else.

If then I happen to be a buyer, and see some others to be poor, why should I want them to get better? Why wouldn’t I want them to get robbed after I pay them? I know that free markets are good but isn’t it even better for me to regulate free markets in order for the markets to have “unexpected” consequences to some groups of people, in order for these people to be poorer in order for me to take advantage of their poverty?

And it gets even more complicated than this. I happen to be a racist. I believe in the writtings of Philippe Rushton that blacks have lower innate IQs and I deem them the “s” word.. Even Murray Rothbard was winking to race realism. It isn’t something bad. And I happen to buy sex. Where I live black girls are cheaper.

Let’s consider that the price of a black prostitute is lower than that of a white prostitute, due to her innate unbeauty, which happens to pass unnoticed by me. If race mixing takes place there would be no pure black women and the average price would rise, ceteris paribus. Isn’t segregation a choice that serves me good over time? And if segregation happens to degrade blacks even more, isn’t even better for me? Who knows, I might get a chauffeur! (This is a philosophical question. Black prostitutes won’t disappear so quick, and I hope never.)

It’s true that the free market works. But it works in the long run. We are standing on the shoulders of giants but haven’t you heard some phrases that socialists promulgate through the media saying “I wanna live to the fullest”, “all we have is now”, “in long run we are all dead” etc?

To put it more precisely: If I could change the free markets process to have a cheap cleaning lady, a cheap sex slave and a cheap secretary and know that this would postpone the popularization of the flying car (which I’ll never live to see) for let’s say 20 years, I’d choose to regulate the market and degrade the people, and I’m as much individualist as Rothbard was.

Chapter 26.C in The Ethics of Liberty provides a freamework upon which this position can be contested by austro-libertarians, but I still do not understand where I’m being wrong or unethical. Rothbard says that we “must go beyond economics and utilitarianism to establish an objective ethics which affirms the overriding value of liberty”, but isn’t this too subjective? Why not going beyond economics and establishing an objective (Mozart was a red?) system of ethics that affirms the overriding value of the individual?

2

There is a word for the world you envision: Totalitarianism. That is one individual uses force to manipulate others into behaving they way that one individual wants them to. Of course the only mechanism to do this is to use violence.

3

What a confused jumble of text as a first post here. So basically you “the consumer” prefer cheap goods/services, or at least cheaper than a free market would provide, and are asking what’s stopping you from “making” them cheaper (or free?) for yourself by force? I’d say: nothing. Be my guest, only don’t underestimate how much aggression/violence may end up costing you. Theft or making/keeping slaves is far from being cheap (much less free).

I thought new accounts could not be opened here any more.

4

Imagine me, wanting to buy sex. What kind of woman is gonna give me the most pleasure for the same amount of money? Probably the most poor and degraded girl.

I realized you don’t have anything to say of worth on the first statement.

5

You may be right, totalitarianism would be even better for me but why not? The cost of violence is of no avail to anwser this because I can be a totalitarian master only by words. Hitler didn’t use violence himself, he used words and through them initiated force against other people. He didn’t risk his head, he just spoke and used democracy to gain power. But even if he did it would be stupid to say that regulators risk their heads and Bernanke gambles his life with every QE he makes. So the question is why not?

You could say that the cost of violence is more than the value of the fruits of exploitation. But for him alone it isn’t.

If totalitarianism (with me in charge) makes me more good than anything else why not opt for totalitarianism simply based on my individualistic ideas?

It sounds like altruism to my ears that I have to suffer higher prices just for other people to be free. Don’t you see it’s altruism, it’s sacrifice?

If violence serves the individual better violence is ethical, from an individualist point of view. And not just violence, but raping, killing etc

My point is that I think there is a great flaw in lessaiz faire theorists of today. They profess that they are “egoists” and “individualists” etc but in real life it serves better each and every person to exploit others. That’s why capitalism is a flawed system. When someone breaks it and gains power over others it serves him better, so why would he listen to your aphorisms of violence and your crying about freedom? He’s got profits to gain and riches to plunder.

And also I didn’t like your answers too. For misesians I expected you to actually answer the question, not trying to create impressions that I’m stupid or that “it’s obvious” I’m wrong. If I’m wrong answer me, if you can’t, go away…

6

@OP: Your questions are decontextualized. The costs of acting in this or that way are not independent of their potential legal consequences.

I don’t think this follows at all. In many places in the world, prostitution is legal to one degree or another - and in some places it doesn’t even have the ill-repute that it does in most places. Yet everywhere in the prostitution market, there are functioning price-scales… higher prices are charged for the most in-demand prostitutes. Why would they be in-demand if they are of lower quality (in terms of customer satisfaction) than the lower-priced prostitutes??

Again, I don’t think your speculations are even correct. I don’t think “the free market” would ease the discomforts of low-end prostitutes as against any other state of affairs.

As z already noted, this is just a really obfuscated way of saying… it’s good to be King. Yes, it’s good to be King. Who here disputes that?

Not at all… it is the very mechanism which makes the existence of his lunch in the first place even possible. You are assuming that it’s six-of-one, half-dozen-of-the-other to either trade for what you want or self-produce what you want. If you want a sandwich, you’re going to need bread. If you want bread, you’re going to need dough and an oven. If you want dough, you’re going to need flour - and you’ll also need to build your oven. Ad nauseum.

Please read I, Pencil. It’s brief and it addresses the root fallacy in your line of thinking. You can also watch this presentation of it.

This all just goes back to “It’s good to be King.” Point granted. Now what?

But you have it all completely backwards. What makes cleaning ladies, prostitutes (thought not sex slaves), secretaries and flying cars cheap, is the free market. There is no either-or. The individuals who are going to design the flying car will also need cleaning ladies, secretaries (perhaps prostitutes), and so on. The more cheaply they can procure the services they require, the more cheaply they can produce their services in the building of the flying car. This, in turn, makes the flying car a more realizable goal, more venture capital can be invested into the invention of the flying car … and we get them sooner, not later.

And you might want to rethink your racism, individualism, etc. Egalitarianism is a poison pill but so are the other other extremes and your muddled thinking in this thread is evidence of that.

Clayton -

7

Cultural individualists tend to be more tyrannical then others. And that’s why it isn’t really desirable to get this as a social norm. Otherwise you’ll sooner or later will get a tyrannical regime worse then the present one.

8

Dude.

9

What the eff.

10

this post is locked. One more bat shit crazy post from the OP consider yourself banned.