First, he gives an analogy, that breeding sometimes works, instead of survival of the fittest. If that works, than central planning may work, sometimes, instead of the free market.
Second, he says that the free market fails because of public goods. As an example, he pointed to firefighting: if the firefighter puts out a fire two blocks away, then the neighbors gained a benefit, because their houses didn’t catch on fire.
I need some help refuting these arguments.
You mean “for”.
What? Breeding is a guided form of natural selection. But what does all this have to do with markets which are positive-sum? He is taking “survival of the fittest” out of context.
False historically and a non sequitur. Even if he were correct he’d need further arguments to prove that. All he did is make an assertion. Here’s a nice demolition work of socialism…er I mean “public goods” theory.
-Jon
1.) Breeding works in a closed situation where everything is given to the breeder and no outside influences can affect the animal being breeded. If the breeder was exposed to possible destructive sources, the breeding would not work and the breeder would not be successful.
2.) If the free market was allowed to operate, firefighters would be employed by privately and would operate as a business. Everyone who wanted fire protection could buy it as a sort of service(like insurance) so that it could protect them. Also, people could buy the protection so that if their neighbors did not have the “insurance” they would still be protected, sort of like car insurance.
If the money was not forced away from us in the first place, we would be more willing to pay for these things out of our pockets, because they would be more efficient, useful and better run. Firemen would be better paid, and this would lead to them better accomplishing their jobs.
An understanding of markets and natural selection is as destructive of socialist ideology as it is of creationism.
-Jon
As Rothbard pointed out, we shouldn’t concern about free riders, as we’re all free riders on the past.
Isn’t that why they want perpetual patents and copyright to solve that market failure?
Probably. But I still need to read some more about intelectual property in a free society. I’m against patents (at least long term ones), but I’m not that sure about copyright. I could use a good reference.
Stephen Kinsella.
Patents are insane. Good thing the spoon was invented before the patent office or we’d all still be drinking our soup of bowls.
And copyright are no more valid than is patent.
To read a good critisism of intellectual property in general, and patents and copyrights in particular, I’d read the following excellent (and short) book:
Against Intellectual Property
Regarding Firefighters, the fact that you prefer your neighbour’s house to be rescued by firefighters is not ovbious.
There’s the case where the houses are very close, in which case you could get in contractual agreement to have fire fighter insurance. There’s the case where a general home insurance would require you to get fire fighter insurance.
Then there’s the case where even if you don’t have a contract with a fire station, you can still pay them to put down the fire in the house, the same as if your case breaks down, you don’t need to have road assistance insurance, you just pay if an accident happens.
Finally, regarding alleged positive externalities, maybe someone would benefit if his neighbour’s house would burn down - he could buy back his land cheap and extend his own property, for instance-.
So bottom line, I think the fire brigade is far from being a service that causes a problem in the free market, and considering it a public good is just short slightness in my own opinion.
How about this analogy: The free Market works like natural selection, destroying the weaker organism and not letting certain genotypes survive.
Socialism is like a group of chemists, non-biologists trying to build a Multicellular organism with no reference to biochemically address the critical stresses(energy, water, temperature) of an organism and responses natural selection has arrived at for tolerance of these stresses(photosynthesis, glycolysis, water retention photosyenthetic pathways ;c4 , CAM, vasodilation, shivering etc).
Interventionism (what we are operating under now) is like a massive dosage of radiation to the reproductive cells; sperm, egg. This energy disrupts the arrangment of genes that are in necessary for the proper assembly and synthesis of metabolic products of the organism. When Interventionalism/ Gama radiation contaminates teh genome, disruption is usually so severe that spontaneous abortion eventually occurs or an organism with serious chromosonal damage miraculously happens to be born. This organism usually doesn’t live long, dies in severe misery, crippled in some horriffic fashion(see Chernobyl Heart) or is sterile and unable to perpetuate the species or fulfill it’s biological role in an ecological community because of irregularities in it’s body caused by failed developmental events that make it much more susceptable to competative exclusion, the elements or predation.
Breeding only works because the natural selection worked on the parental organism. The selective mechanism that works on state planning is usually so attenuated its’ non-existent. What is the mortality rate and the life expectancy of most of america’s social programs ? To me it seems they exist regardless of their efficacy.
Further more selective breeding, animal husbandry, artificial selection produces organisms that would , under natural conditions not be able to survive. Consider many of the breeds of dogs man has created over the centuries. If civilization was to suddenly dissapear, Pugs, Bull dogs, gray hounds, would all vanish very fast because they are not optimized for survival outside of human protection. The true organisms that would survive are the mutts or the organism closes to wolves. This suggests that the social programs or socialist system is inherantly weak relative to the stability of capitalism and socialism must be encapsulated in a secure blanket of violence(civilization thrusting the elements away, State violence protecting the planned system from competition) to protect it from competition.
When we talk about the free market, we’re talking about the exchanges and interactions between people; conscious beings. Plants and animals are fundamentally different from us. They do not have our capacity to adapt and plan, which are key features of markets. To make this analogy useful, I’d ask your dad to imagine a breeder who could do anything he wanted to create the best litter of puppies (or crop of corn, or whatever). Then imagine that same breeder who’s forced by the government to breed an equal number of brown puppies as yellow puppies, or he gets a government subsidy for every grey puppy, or whatever other government interference you can think of. Ask him in which case you would generally get the better litter of puppies.
I think this is a great article about public goods in a free market: http://libertariannation.org/a/f21l4.html
This analogy is false. For example, when you’re breeding a horse, you know what you are breeding it for. Maybe you want a show horse, so you find a way to make the horse handsom. Or maybe you want a racing horse, so you find a way to make the horse fast.
How does a central planner know what the economy should do? He can’t know how all economic actors will react to his planning the way a breeder can know the basic outcome of his trade.