DISQUS

Will,

The 'fraud as aggression' aways puzzled me too. I already used this argument against other libertarians, none of them was convinced.

I would even say that not all forms of theft are agression. I also have a problem with confusing agression against someone with 'agression' against someone's property.

If I stole or damage your car when you are outside, am I using force against you? It's very strange to use these words on this way.

"We didn't properly regulate them and now we've taken on huge debt and massive exposure to their bad paper . Yeah that's a clear argument to regulate them"

No, it's not clear. A lot of economists suggest that FED shouldn't have done this in the first place. It's a bad signal and encourage this companies to make more risky investiments, because they know that they are 'too big to fail'. Maybe it's locally optimal, but creates bad incentives for the future.

"So you kinda make my point. Any policy is a government policy so even if it's a policy pushed for by the "free marketeers", their lobbyist or the Republicans it's always the governments fault. Obviously a bogus argument."

It's not bogus to point out that a government policy is government's fault. What's bogus is to say that it's free market's fault to achive something that is government's function.

"That is basically the Republicans policy to get in there and destroy government bureaucracies to show how poorly they function..."

I don't buy manicheistic argument that put some side as 'evil', without conceding good faith. I'm pretty sure that corrupt Democrats exist too.

(Classical) liberal tradition is about institutions that make politicians to act on certain way, not about picking the right ones.

"And as I've always said why would you want some one who doesn't believe government can work running it?"

Good government function isn't about believing it will function, it's about make it function well. And to believe that something which doesn't work will not work is actually a good thing.

For example, a very sick person who's not afraid to die and because of this never go to the doctor is probably on a worse situation thant someone that don't 'believe' he will resist and because this starts a treatment. It's true that we can have some positive feedback because of our beliefs, but it doesn't mean that because we want that something will be true, that thing will be true.

"Free market failure is an abstraction because free markets are an abstraction."

Yes, it's true that free markets are an abstraction, but it doesn't mean that it isn't a useful concept. To call some situation as 'free market' and ignoring that it isn't doesn't help to solve anything.

"As soon as you have a money system there really are no free markets."

You're right about fiat money, but it's not true on early stages of money development. Even today, money is a phenomen that governments control very poorly.

"The goal of the "free marketeer" is to approach as free a market as possible.... the faith people have lost in the "free market" is that moving towards that goal is always a good idea as over and over again the results are not so good."

The only free-market thinkers that procede this way are Rothbard and its followers. Neither Hayek, Adam Smith, Friedman, Buchanan or even Bastiat talk like this description.

I think Joseph Stiglitz states what we see too often coming from the "free-marketeers" side of the debate as exemplified in your post; "...but that is partly the point: free-market rhetoric has been used selectively – embraced when it serves special interests and discarded when it does not."

So you think Will's defense of free market simply serves special interests? Seems like ad hominem to me. You can't conceive that someone defend free market on good faith?

"In other words all the good stuff that happens in the economy is because markets work but when something goes bad it's obviously an issue of overregulation."

I don't see anything like this on Will's post. He observes that we don't live on a 'pure' free market economy, and to understand this is important to make a realistic analysis of american economics .

"Governmental functions (the Fed being the big one) have been privatized."

What do you mean by saying that Fed was privatized?

"And it's been a relative disaster and IMO unfair as these inflationary policies tend to favor wealth accumulation on the top."

Here isn't the better place to discuss monetary policy, but some points:

1- Inflationary policies are policies, and policies are government decisions.

2- The inflation rate of United States isn't high since Volker's stabilization plan:

http://www.miseryindex.us/irbyyear.asp

3- In general, but not as a rule(sse, for example, Paul Vocker) free-market oriented economists are more concerned about inflation than 'interventionist' economists. So I don't see your point here.

I recently think that to imagine an extreme situation serves, if not to resolve, at least to better illustrate a lof of problems. For example, when discussing minnimum wage laws, ask why not on million dollars as minimum wage, since no one supports it. On the case of free trade, ask why not complete autarky as alternative. The cases against these extreme situations help to better understand the arguments against minnimum wage laws and for free trade.

On immigration debate, the relevant extreme problem is no immigration at all. It's not the only alternative, but when people are forced to explain why not to ban immigration, they should reval their basic arguments.

For some light about the top decile, see Figure 1 and Figure 2 from this work:

http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincome...

"Only a fanatic too blinded by concepts can fail to see that income inequality is an issue and that some kind of redistribution is necessary."

To use your words, only a fanatic can fail to see that, to say that some kind of redistribution is necessary and affirm that inequality is an issue isn't the same.

Sure, redistribution isn't possible without affecting inequality. But the point is, if inequality isn't an issue, it can be altered to achieve certain ends, because what matters are other things, not inequality per se.

"we can ameliorate some of its unfairness by giving more opportunity to the lottery's "losers". "

mk, the problem with this is that giving more opportunity doesn't guarantee that the final result will be more equal than before. If some individuals make extradordinary gains with this opportunities and the others stay quite the same, the result will probably be a greater inequality.

And I think it will be difficult to encounter anyone that, by firmly defending more equality on all situations, to oppose more opportunity based on the probability(or, just to illustrate, by some evidence) that the result will rise inequality.

Chris in Baltimore, no doubt that immigrants change the receptor country. Which is, by the way, the point that Will's doing

But I think it's important to understand the immigration phenomenon: why this people are leaving their countries? The majority of them don't make that decision by pretending to alter the receptor culture, it is a unintended consequence of their move. The primary concern is the search of a better life.

We observe a great disparity of wages between 'rich' and 'poor' countries. It's basically this(and, of course, the fall of transportation costs).that motivates immigration from one country to another. Until the wages for the same job are equalized, there will be this movements.

Will, I think gek's point isn't that the size of population affects the measure, but, to a absolute flux of migration, the greater the population of the receptor country, the impact of migration will be small.

Imagine that all immigrants came from country A. And the total of people that move to other countries is the same on each one of them. If the country B has a larger population than country C, so country B will be less affected by the immigration flux of same magnitude than C.

Pehaps a better understanding of the situation is to consider the fertility rate rather than absolute population.

Atlas 1882, if you think that liberty has a value for itself and over other considerations, even if was possible to increase total social utility violating individual liberty, you should be against it.

I think a good test to discover if someone is pro or against something on its own sake or because of undesirable consequences is to question if they would change their position if the consequences were others.

For example, if someone is against civil gun ownership because it raises the sum of murders on a given society, ask him/her if he/she would favor the incentive of gun ownership if the murders fall with this policy. Of course, other questions may be involved, but I think it's a good start.

"and was amazed at how ridiculous a claim it is."

It's not productive to label a claim that you disagree with as ridiculous.

"aplea for some intellectual honesty is all I ask."

Again, it's not productive to say that the reason anyone disagrees with your analizys is because he/she lacks intellectual honesty.