And in order for this to not be good a priori we would have to believe that people value something other than what their actions evidence that they value. What people value varies over time, but what people value at the time that the regulation matters is action.
They might, after the fact, be happy with the result brought about by the regulation, but they still perceived it as a bad at the time it was enforced.(Unless they did not, in which case it was a superfluous regulation) A value judgment is required to say that the outcome out weighs the previous dissatisfaction.
People are going to object long before they know the utility of the outcome and telling them they have to wait and see if the outcome yields higher utility before they can object is to force an objective system of value on them.
You’re still missing my point, without some sort of measure of utility (which is impossible) you simply cannot say that regulations are bad. Regulations invariably benefit one group of the population at the expense of another (which others possibly unaffected), there’s no way to say that those who lose do so to a greater extent than those who gain, gain. The same applies for slavery, I can’t tell you a priori that the slavemasters gain more than the slaves lose, not without some sort of measurment of utility.
It just can’t be done.
What one can do is make a strong case for the superiority of free markets based on the teachings of the Austrian schools supplemented with Public Choice (and possibly NIE, Law and Economics, but I don’t know enough about these) insights alongside empirical case studies. I don’t lament this either, it provides a far more robust political economy that the standard Rothbardian approach does.
Bull. The slaves lose far more, since their rights are being violated. When you grasp it thusly, you can make such claims. And it can be made a priori.
you also can’t say with a priori certainty that any one act of interventionism retards the division of labour and the accumulation of capital, but there is a universe of difference between the quantity and quality of evidence and argument that can be provided to justify the competing claims that
interventionism is destructive and anti-prosperity
interventionism is beneficial and induces prosperity.
Of course you can say that, ceteris paribus, interventions will have various effects (such as weakening or retarding the division of labour). This is no different to saying that, all things being equal, price controls will cause shortages or excess supplies. However, you can’t get from this to the fact that it is bad or even non-optimal because you can’t measure or compare utility.
I agree that’s the crux of the issue, but I don’t think that you’ve correctly represented my views. My actual view would be closer to the view that speaking purely from an economic point of view, it’s not possible to say whether or not a given intervention is good a priori since utility is apt for neither measurement nor interpersonal comparison because of it’s subjectivity. Like I said, it’s possible to make a very strong case in favour of markets, it’s just not possible to prove that they will always lead to superior outcomes a priori.
Now, you might well respond that a given regulation can be deemed as bad because one person or group of people benefits at the expense of others. And in fact, I’d agree with you, but if we do make such statements we’re leaving the realm of economics and entering the subject matter of ethics (as Bawaa pointed out).
Either way, they make the transaction with the idea in mind that they will benefit. The point here is that it is the idea of benefit that matters all as much, if not more, than physical “optimality,” whatever that might be.
And again with the smoke and mirrors talk, look. What you call smoke and mirrors is something everyone else calls marketing. Marketing is never going away and it’s not really up for regulation in the long term.
I think this is a fact you’re just going to have to deal with. Unless there’s some paradise where commercials, music, and men on the street shouting “two for one sale, buy now” do not exist.
Time and time again in this thread people are exaggerating my position and then arguing against the exaggerated version. If I say I’d like to reduce phenomena X, people here are saying “So, you’d like to eliminate X, but that’s impossible!”.
Please tell me how my rule about “price reductions” (from an earlier post) fails to reduce the degree of smoke and mirrors?
… just for reference…
“you are not allowed to claim or imply that the price of a product is ‘reduced’ in price unless that product was for sale and clearly displayed in that same store at the higher price (or more) for a period of X days and the price reduction occurred within the past Y days, where X is 30 and Y is 60 unless the product is perishable fruit and vegetables, in which case X is 10 and Y is 20.”.
If this is your only complaint, I’m sorry, but it shows how truly detached you are.
Even wanting to limit marketing is a truly odd and fringe idea that few would consider plausible or worthy of taking up as a policy consideration. That you find it morally objectionable that marketing speak is a common satiated thing in almost every culture in the world is so strange that it goes beyond belonging to any type of ideology at all.
You do realize that in legal code marketing speak is not fraud, right? This debate has been had. Your position lost a long time ago. Most people accept that. Why don’t you?