After the exam, maybe send me an email: jmh530 at nyu dot edu To me, the tragedy of the commons is that there is commons. If the roads/rivers/parks were privatized, then the factory pig owner would be violating the rights of the owner and be responsible for restitution for damages and perhaps the judge will give an additional fine to prevent the firm from doing it again. But when rights are violated by a firm, the libertarian response is not that consumers will boycott the firm, though they are within their rights and consumers’ groups might encourage them to do so, but really it would best be dealt with by courts. Either the pig farmer could buy the river from the current owner, pay the owner for the priviledge to pollute it, or refrain from polluting. In many ways, a libertarian society would be harsher on polluters than the current system. I don’t think I made my point well about people sometimes being bad at making trade-offs. If a hyperbolic discounter gets a payday loan with an excessive interest rate, then ex ante he is still better off than other options. He has made the choice that he values the 300 dollars now (with 300% APR) more than the $350 he would receive in a month or two weeks. I would agree that ex post he might be worse off than perhaps other options, but it’s not entirely clear why regulation would be necessary in this case. Let’s say the payday lending firm is forced to only charge 30% APR. Given the credit risk on their clients, they probably won’t be able to stay in business without losing money. So the payday lending firms shut down. Now the payday borrower has to go to a credit card firm (who he already has a revealed preference of not wanting to use their service, likely due to hidden fees) or he has to go to a loan shark. How is he better off in regulation? Bastiat said it is about the seen and unseen. As a PhD in Economics, I’m sure you know this lesson. The unseen effect of many government regulations is the reason I oppose them as an economist. As a libertarian, I view them as violating the non-aggression principle. It would be more clear for me to keep that separate.
Again, a short response but the problem with making everything private is that you will concentrate wealth among a short group of individuals and businesses. To cure this, for your libertarian society you will need a 100% tax on wealth upon death and something similiar to guarantee against a pemanant monpoly. Concentrated wealth always leads to feudalism which will destroy a democracy. Now if you want the system of government to be something more compatable with libertarianism, please suggest what would work.
So does Excess government, that destroys peoples free choice and promotes collectivism
Wow it was so nice having jmh think before he types. maad don’t you have studying to do?
Remember that a democracy must have authority to govern for the electoral/representative process to mean anything. Remember that liberties on paper are meaningless if only a tiny minority can actually exercise them.
bchadwick Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Remember that a democracy must have authority to > govern for the electoral/representative process to > mean anything. > > Remember that liberties on paper are meaningless > if only a tiny minority can actually exercise > them. That’d be great and all, if we lived in a democracy.