mck@ratex.UUCP (Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan) (02/23/85)
Let's get right to the bottom of the issue of misrepresentation and misunderstanding. >> When someone claimed that there would be no inflation in a >>Libertarian country, Baba ridiculed the idea. >The claim was that in a Libertarian country there would be no inflation, >no unemployment, and no lawyers. I suppose I was too struck by the >similarity to what communist true believers used to say about the Soviet >Union (or, later, Cuba) to see it as anything other than dreamstuff. You are quite right to ridicule the idea that there would be no lawyers (the underlying philosophy of Libertarianism may be quite simple, just as the underlying principles of physics may be quite simple, but the manifestations of each may be quite complex), and quite wrong to ridicule the idea that there would be neither inflation nor unemployment. >> My 'Inflation in a Free >>Economy?' demonstrated that there indeed would be no inflation in a Free >>Economy. >Well, to summarize, you broke inflation down into three factors: >changes in the value of the goods that money represents, in the "velocity" >with which money changes hands, and in the money supply itself. You then >stated that, in a Free Economy [...] economic growth is always faster than >in a regulated one, Aha! Here's some of the misrepresentation that you must have been talking about! I said that IN THE LONG RUN a Free Economy grows faster than a regulated one, and noted parenthetically that CPEs could attain faster short-run growth. >that increases in the velocity of money don't matter, Well, here's even more of your misrepresentation! I didn't say that increases in frequency (PLEASE don't call it 'velocity') don't matter; I said that there would be not inflation-expectations component in frequency. >and that a libertarian state would have no legal currency as such anyway. >Or, as I saw it, an irrelevancy, an [un]supported statement, and a >tautology. Bergenholms. [If my adding an 'un' was inappropriate, let me know.] Which is irrelevant? The money-supply, the frequency, or the value of transactions? Each is quite relevant. The growth claim was unsupported in 'Inflation in a Free Economy?', but supported in other articles. I didn't support the claim that frequency was irrelevant, because I didn't make it. That inflationary expectations are not uncaused, and therefore do not arise without cause, is obvious (a tautology to be sure, but not a vacuous tautology). That the money-supply would be denationalized follows from Libertarian principle (another non- vacuous tautology). That, given a choice, people will choose money which is most servicable is obvious, and money which holds a fixed value is the most servicable (which is why I have argued elsewhere that a gold standard would not persist in a Free Economy). You Bergenholms analogy is wholly inappropriate, in that everything called for is possible, and, in fact, most of it can be accomplished without achieving a Free Economy. >(why in God's name do you always capitalize it?) I never do anything in God's name. :-) It is customary when using a special term -- in law, philosophy, and other disciplines -- to capitalize it. >> In a later article, I explained why minimum wage laws and coercive >>unions caused unemployment. Baba responded by claiming that technology has >>driven the supply-and-demand equilibrium wage below sustenance; I replied >>that this hoary claim has been made for centuries and has been false for >>centuries. >It is not the same thing to demonstrate that minimum wage laws and unions >contribute to unemployment as it is do demonstrate that there will be >no unemployment in the absence of these factors. Unemployment is cause by restrictions which keep the wage-rate above supply-and-demand equilibrium (another non-vacuous tautology); a Free Economy has no such restrictions. > I pointed out one of >the other factors in the equation that you article ignored. I ignored it because it isn't a factor; technology may make people dependent on subsidies for survival, but it does NOT create unemployment. >I have *never* claimed, even jokingly, that "technology has driven the >supply-and-demand equilibrium wage below sustenance". Sorry, that was a typo (not unlike your 'an supported statement' and 'do demonstrate'); I meant to say that you claimed that technology has driven the supply-and-demand equilibrium UNSKILLED wage below sustenance. It was misrepresentation, but an honest mistake. > I instead posted >a quote from Norbert Wiener in support of the notion that, given the >potential of technology and the nature of our economic system, the >equilibrium wage should *ultimately* do precisely that. You're not giving enough attention to bio-technology. Automota will move forward; so will humankind. > Since technology >and economics are not the only factors at play Actually they are (your implicit definition of 'economics' is wrong); but, with everybody else, I know what you mean. >it probably won't actually happen. I repeat may claim about biotechnology. > I *do* think that we ought to put a >lot of thought into the political fudge that we ultimately use. With enough thought, there need be no fudge. >since, as you and other libbies point out, *any* government intrusion >into the marketplace leaves wounds, Which is why a Free Economy out-performs a regulated economy in the long run. > so we'd better act like surgeons and >not like brawlers. After all of your snideness, you end-up being more idealistic than me! Not withstanding the fact that there doesn't HAVE to be surgery OR a brawl, we're going to see a really NASTY fight, with no real winners. > But we'll probably have to use a knife. >> Eventually automation may make unskilled labor unfeasible (so >>long as pompous fools like Minsky dominate the field of a.i., this >>eventuality will remain far off in the future); which simply indicates that >>workers should no more plan to make a living as unskilled laborers than >>they would to do so as hunter-gatherers. >I thought it was fairly clear in the passage from *Cybernetics* that >Wiener's claim was that the unskilled laborer was *already* obsolete >(for excavation (as of 1948)), Here is where I interpretted you as claiming that the supply-and-demand equilibrium unskilled wage is below sustenance. If a machine can do a job more cheaply than a man earning subsistenance-wages, then the equilibrium wage is BELOW sustenance (it does not actually hit zero until the machine can perform the job at no cost -- which is never). If you meant merely to claim that the wage was below sustenance for excavators, then I misinterpretted you, but you and Wiener are both wrong: people are still paid to dig ditches (as of 1985). More importantly, there are proportionally more jobs for unskilled workers (as of 1985), albeit in other fields, than there were (as of 1948). > and that computers have the *potential* to >render *highly* skilled laborers obsolete. This assumes that the laborers do not continually improve themselves. > Once you've taught a machine >more than a man can learn in a lifetime, what do you think people ought to do? Learn how to learn more; possibly by, in part, integrating themselves with the machines. >> Baba suspects 'that social dynamics prohibit the operation of a Free >>Economy', recognizes that 'Political forces seem always to interfere with >>economic processes' and that 'People find it natural to make tradeoffs >>between economic efficiency and political consensus'. I take it that this >>is meant as an argument for government intervention! >No, it was meant as a partial explanation for why most people accept and >indeed often *demand* government intervention in the economy. Well, the possibility that you were making a purely descriptive statement was why I used the preface 'I take it that'. But, if you were only making a descriptive statement, why did you make it at all? Perhaps you feel the need to state the obvious for the same reason that, above, you compelled me to state the obvious. >> Similarly, since >>there are immediate and theoretical limits to the number of circuit >>elements which can be packed in an IC, we should abandon semiconductors and >>return to vacuum tubes!?! >No, but only a fool would advocate designing an IC that requires an infinite >number of transistors. Do you understand the difference? Of course I understand the difference. I don't advocate an IC with an unlimited number of circuits, nor any other impossibility. As I've noted before, attainment of a Free Economy does not entail achievement of Pure Competition or any other such nonsense. It does entail eventually achieving a nation where the overwhelming majority of people are decent human beings, which won't happen over-night (or in my lifetime), but -- since people are not immutably evil -- can happen someday (assuming that Ron et alii keep their fingers off the button). Your response began with a claim of misunderstanding or misrepresentation. It's something of a shame that we don't have a jury, in that I think that there's a very good case that my misinterpretation and misunderstanding was honest and minor, while yours was dishonest and more significant -- especially that nasty bit about transactions-frequency not mattering. Back later, DKMcK
mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (02/27/85)
I'm not going to quote DKMcK's 200+ line answer to Baba, but it does
sound as if the Libertarian proof of full employment under a Free
Economy now depends on breathtaking advances in biotechnology that
will improve human capabilities faster than those of computers.
Fair took me breath away, mum, such faith! (Also, I could see a leetle
backlash from the Moral Majority, that might make such human-enginnering
[in the true sense, for once] a little difficult to enforce) (oh, sorry,
we don't enforce things in Libertaria, do we?)
--
Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt
{uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsri!dciem!mmtgjk@talcott.UUCP (Greg Kuperberg) (03/02/85)
> > I'm not going to quote DKMcK's 200+ line answer to Baba, but it does > sound as if the Libertarian proof of full employment under a Free > Economy now depends on breathtaking advances in biotechnology that > will improve human capabilities faster than those of computers. ... > Martin Taylor Yeah, aren't computers a drag? We should go back to the caves...that way we'll surely have full employment! --- Greg Kuperberg harvard!talcott!gjk "2*x^5-10*x+5=0 is not solvable by radicals." -Evariste Galois.