For some, yes. For instance, I consider forced savings for retirement to be a serious policy idea (Austrians, using their economic theory alone, have no reason to believe that individuals will adequately save for retirement).
However, more broadly, I am asserting that private enterprises encourage stupidity in a manner that easily overwhelms individual power (e.g., a large company can widely disseminate misleading scientific research, whereas individuals would require much more time and effort than is feasible to thoroughly scrutinize such claims–hence the need for government agencies to provide this public good).
No, but it helped. Other factors contributed (e.g., economic arguments in favor of labor unions, historical evidence that private tort litigation did little to reform business transgressions, whereas regulation was more efficient; preference pollution).
So you want to try to save people from their own stupidity?
Without government regulation, industry does not properly label food products. I am not going to argue this point again as I already did in another thread. I will just say that I need to read every food product, and I know what I am talking about. For example, certian ingredients were never labelled until the government required them to be labelled. Or they were just labelled “other spices” for example.
So there is another example where government regulation is beneficial and the cost is minimal, and it is saving people who don’t have their stupidity to blame.
What are you implying? Some radically totalitarian society that manipulates my decision-making according to the preferences of a small elite? Sure, that’s a possibility, but so is an anarchic war-against-all disaster.
Our social order is fragile, but remarkably civilized, with high standards for ourselves, our businessmen, and our politicians (even if all have serious ethical shortcomings). I believe we should muddle our way to better reforms.
I don’t see why any of this has to be done by a monopoly. Couldn’t private agencies make sure you save enough for retirement, and essentially force you to do it every month once you sign up? People would still have to choose sign up for that service, but maybe it would become normal for everyone to do this. Maybe employers or insurance agencies would demand it. Who knows what would emerge in a free market. Then again what’s wrong with an adult choosing to spend his money when he wants to? Also I think human rationality would expand without nanny statism, people are stupid now because the state manages their responsibilities for them.
Wouldn’t private agencies rate scientific claims of companies, instead of every individual customer having to do this for himself? I think in the future buying groceries will be more like signing up for a service that makes sure that you have enough milk rahter than actually having to purchase it yourself and scrutinize the scientific claims on the packaging.
I have no doubt that we don’t need a state in economic affairs. I’m not so sure whether we need one in general political realm though.
Prior to the recent financial crisis, the credit ratings agencies were, in effect, a cartel imposed by the government. Hence, libertarians can easily say, “Don’t blame the market! Look at what the government did!” But, the faith-based optimism of libertarians, pre-crisis, could have also easily said, “The free market will develop institutions to circumvent this information blockage; humans are creative and will rationally wiggle around this obstacle.” That’s how it always works in libertarian circles: “Trust me. We’ll figure it out!”
I believe some areas, over time, deserve to be deregulated. That’s for sure. It’s all context-specific. So, yes, for some functions, private enterprises can one day replace State functions (e.g., stickK.com).
Okay. And I hope to live in a community that has the appropriate institutions (e.g., political, economic, religious) to moderate unreasonable policies.
No, because you have not explained why my explanations were insufficient.
Why is it relevant to the point I made? You could explain inadequate retirement savings by claiming that individuals–at the time of choosing–optimized according to a high time preference. So what?
To emphasize the irrelevancy of your retort, let’s take a sojourn into evolutionary psychology. Given the ancestral roots of our species–where food easily spoiled or was looted and where lives were short–having a high time preference was adaptive and biologically rooted. However, in our industrialized world, such preferences are increasingly irrational, but remain tempting nevertheless (due to biological instinct). Thus, we could predict insufficient retirement savings due to our biology. So, what do we do? I say we force savings!
[quote=“[Colin Camerer, Samuel Issacharoff, George Loewensein, Ted O’Donoghue, and Matthew Rabin]
(http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~maccoun/LP_Camerer.pdf)”]A regulation is asymmetrically paternalistic if it creates large benefits for those who make errors, while imposing little or no harm on those who are fully rational.
[/quote]
I would impose communitywide regulations so long as the above criterion was met.
What if somebody thinks that your argument that the above criterion was met for forcing their savings was totally idiotic? Would you force their savings too?
Well if credit ratings agencies were a government-imposed cartel, why is it faith-based to say “Don’t blame the market! Look at what the government did!”. That’s not faith-based, that’s an empirical observation. They are right.
Libertarians don’t claim that the market can solve any government-imposed problem. They believe that things will fix themselves in the absence of government regulation. I think you are confusing a specific faith about markets fixing themselves in the abscence of government meddling with a general faith in everything always working out for the better no matter what government did. Libertarians don’t believe the latter. About government regulation they always say “that will screw things up”. You completely turn libertarianism on it’s head.
To be more precise, I don’t want to personally engineer society according to any rationally-constructed plan I may have.
But, yes, within the institutions we have, I would push toward forced retirement savings (but provide more individual choice in investment, unlike our current model).