There can be two classes of private owners, the classes who hold the privileges and the classes who don’t. The privileged classes are then capitalists.
Yes it is. That is what makes capitalism so productive. All the risk is assumed by the capitalist.
A private monopoly can be considered inefficient, but not corrupt, as the owner will seek to cut waste and reduce costs in order to protect his wealth.
Indeed, but what has liberty to do with economic analysis?
-Jon
Not to mention that with a public monopoly no one can compete against it. At least with a private monopoly (if there really is such a thing) competition can arise even if the monopolist makes it difficult. They can’t use government force to maintain their monopoly. The monopoly has to stand on its own two feet or someone enterprising capitalist will attempt to take market share.
I am arguing the case where the private owner does own a legislated monopoly.
What is your point ? If there’s no freedom there can be no human action and no ‘economics’. And besides, Stranger’s ‘economic’ analysis is totally flawed.
The point is that economic knowledge is more than the One Commandment of libertarianism. You have to understand the consequences of all economic arrangements. Repeating a mantra is not going to get you any credit.
That sentence doesn’t make much sense, does it ? You got “corrupt” and “inefficient” mixed up ?
I did not. Efficiency is the point of view of the consumers. Corruption is the point of view of the owner.
You have not provided a single piece of economic knowledge except the totally wrong(and mercantilistic) idea that ‘private’ monopolies are ‘better’ than public ones.
Right, which is why economics can be applied to an analysis of interventionism, socialism writ large &c.? Coercive institutions also come under praxeological analysis, as do comparisons between unfree ones, these being relative. Libertarian economic arguments are a subset of economic arguments, and not vice versa. Norms such as liberty have little to do with pure economics.
-Jon
This is the argument supported by Hans Hermann Hoppe in Democracy: The God that Failed. Before you denounce him as totally wrong and mercantilistic, you have to offer some supporting arguments of your own. Repeating the mantra simply shows that you don’t belong here.
Your answers don’t make sense. If Peter can’t use his property as he pleases, Peter doesn’t really own his property - so stop pretending that the system you describe is based on private property - it is not. You are advocating slavery.
Peter can use his property as he pleases - he is the monopolist.
All the rest of the people who don’t have legal privileges can’t use their property. So your analysis is not based on private property.
Re: Hoppe. He argues that monarchy is better than democracy - wich is highly debatable, and by the way it is not an original idea at all. Hoppe ‘borrowed’ that argument from Molinari, who makes quite clear that monarchy always turns into communism when revolutions ‘nationalize’ monopolistic industries.
Have you bothered to read this ?
Wrong. Employees are subject to different risks, just as the capitalists are. Not to mention the fact that ‘employees’ can own stocks and so be capitalists. What makes free-enterprise so productive is division of labor and private property. But it seems that private property or liberty are not revelant in ‘economic analysis’ ? Well, I guess that private property is not relevant for mercantilistic economic analysis.
There’s nothig ‘relative’ about it. A firm either operates as a free-enterprise firm or it is a monopoly. That is basic economic analysis. ‘Private’ monopoly is a perfect example of oxymoron.
So in other words, you’re essentially openly admitting that there is such thing as “state-capitalism” and you appear to view it as a “lesser evil”.
Except libertarianism and laissez-faire is opposed to privilege and in favor of rights. Legal privileges to “capitalists” are anathema to a free market.
In the “private” monopolies created and sustained by the state that we’re talking about, the risk is externalized.
And this is a problem, a problem pointed out by Rothbard in his criticisms of utilitarian economists, which can be found repeated throughout his work but most concentrated in The Ethics of Liberty. The utilitarian economist functions as a defender of the status quo, a vulgar libertarian at best, since they defend whatever property titles currently exist that are dubbed “private”.