Bruce Caldwell observes that sales of The Road to Serfdom boomed in November 2008 and haven’t slowed down since. And he offers a few hypotheses on why that is.
Much has been written about whether Hayek is right or wrong as a matter of history or historical inevitability. To my mind that’s largely a side issue. What I think is timeless and relevant about The Road to Serfdom is what I think of as the key philosophical-economic insight that drives the book. Which is that there is a central economic issue that characterizes all human societies, namely the problem of scarcity. Governmental intervention cannot repeal the reality of scarcity. So, at root, we have a basic choice to make: either each of us chooses for ourselves (classical liberalism) or government chooses for us (or to put it otherwise, we all choose for each other). On this central insight, I think that Hayek has the matter exactly right–either we choose for ourselves or someone else chooses for us.
Hayek’s historical prediction follows from this basic insight–in a world where government chooses for us, somebody has to decide whose needs get met and whose do not. Which further means that government has to come up with some array of which needs are more important than others. Taxes provide the paradigm example: each dollar in taxes basically means that the individual has one less dollar to spend on what he wants and instead one dollar is given to the government to spend. At the margin, each dollar in taxes means that you have to sacrifice some of your leisure (in order to work more) or forgo some consumption activity that otherwise would have spent money on (a book, vacation, a clarinet for your child, or whatever). But Hayek’s crucial insight is keeping this central question front and center–either you decide what to do with your own money or someone else decides. Those are the only two choices.
The open question is whether it is compatible with democracy and freedom in the long-run for everyone to claim that their preferences should be on the menu of those that are worth being met. Hayek drew the lesson from the 1930s that democratic government allocation of economic resources led in the short run to budget deficits, in the medium run to inflation and monetizing the debt, and in the long run dictatorship that imposed a standard of values on society (and totalitarian impulses designed to brainwash people into to subordinating their own preferences to the preferences of the collective). A corollary is that when government allocates resources, rent-seeking and influence peddling become endemic to the system of trying to get your needs met rather than someone else’s.
And isn’t this in the end what all the fuss is about health care, cap and trade, financial regulation, and even deficit spending? Although dressed up as questions of economics, as The Road to Serfdom makes clear, these are really questions of freedom and individual liberty. Hayek’s eventual solution (as developed in Law, Legislation, and Liberty) was that it was both more efficient and more moral to have these basic allocational decisions made by impersonal processes like markets and the rule of law (especially the common law, as he understood it (perhaps in an unrealistic fashion)) rather than conscious political decisions as to who should get what. But it seems to me that regardless of whether he offers the right solution, he certainly asks the right question and won’t let us sweep under the rug the core recognition that everyone one of these decisions are fundamentally issues of personal liberty and who gets to decide.
Carbon taxes fundamentally amount to a choice that political decisionmakers believe that you should not drive so much or live in such a large house. The resource-allocation decisions at the heart of health care are obvious in terms of deciding which medical needs are more important than others. Paternalistic financial regulation proposals implicitly rest in part on the idea that some people disapprove of the way others spend their money and the reasons for which they borrow, so that it is an acceptable cost that some people will be unable to get credit cards or other types of good credit. People recognize that massive deficits to subsidize our consumption today mean massive taxes tomorrow meaning less for our children to spend on their own needs and happiness.
So I’m not surprised that Hayek is becoming a text for the current age.
UPDATE:
A few people have mentioned that John Stossel’s show last week was on The Road to Serfdom. I found the show here.
Kenneth Anderson says:
Let me second everything Todd said above, and add that Serfdom is available on Kindle at 9.94.
February 17, 2010, 11:53 amkiwi dave says:
Having read Road to Serfdom recently, and not having read any of Hayek’s other full-length works, I was struck by how moderate it was: Hayek targeted central planning very sharply, but he was prepared to concede that some kind of state welfare provision and various labor-protection laws were a good thing — and he specifically disclaimed adherence to laissez-faire (arguing that it was a naive misrepresentation of real liberal economic thought). Does anyone with greater knowledge of Hayek than me know whether these concessions were pragmatic in nature (i.e., he was focused on preventing large-scale nationalization of the US and UK economies post-war, and didn’t want to turn off possible center-left allies) or whether this pragmatism was part of his economic philosophy?
February 17, 2010, 11:58 amEarly Bird says:
kiwi dave,
Last year I had a similar experience reading Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom.” It wasn’t at all the anti-govt manifesto I had been expecting. Heck, he even advocates for a proto-earned income tax credit. I read the book in a class with several committed glibertarians, and it was funny when they would go on and on about how awful govt was, and would try to point to something from that book to back them up, when it just wasn’t there. It seemed like Friedman’s biggest beef was with the the idea that the Fed can actually respond quickly enough to do any good, rather than just mucking things up.
My question is, did these guys get more radical over time, as their policy views got adopted by people in power (Reagen, Thatcher) or is it just that what was radically libertarian in, what, 1962 is now centrist or even liberal?
February 17, 2010, 12:17 pmgab says:
“Paternalistic financial regulation proposals implicitly rest in part on the idea that some people disapprove of the way others spend their money and the reasons for which they borrow…”
Come again? Are you arguing against bank or securities regulation here Todd (and Ken)?
The above quoted comment seems awfully simplistic.
February 17, 2010, 12:24 pmAllan Walstad says:
Actually, I think they did (certainly Friedman) get more radical over time. But they did not represent what was radically libertarian in, say, 1962. Rather, they got a lot of attention for relatively libertarian views because of the reputations they had already built as profesional economists. Radical libertarianism would have been reflected in Murray Rothbard, Frank Chodorov, Albert J. Nock among others.
February 17, 2010, 12:24 pmAllan Walstad says:
The point is much sharper than that. As Hayek (and other Austrian economists, notably Mises) pointed out, government intervention in the market tends to cause problems that get blamed on the market (rather than on the intervention), leading to more and more intervention and more and more problems that appear intractable. That’s how arbitrary power can be ceded to government under some sort of “strong man,” which is the door to tyranny.
February 17, 2010, 12:29 pmCJColucci says:
If I recall correctly, one of the biggest fans of Road to Serfdom was a fellow by the name of Keynes.
February 17, 2010, 12:33 pmPer Son says:
A sidenote. I would love to pick up a book about economic theory that meets the following criteria:
*Non-mathy people can understand it
*It discusses the various theories out there with pros and cons as opposed to championing one school over another
*Preferably the book goes back to Adam Smith
In other words, I want to understand what Keynes has to say as well as Hayek without editorial snarks about who was right or more right, more wrong, etc.
If you can reccommend a good book – please share it with us. I am also looking for the same type of paper(s) covering perhaps our current situation applied to the various popular schools of economics.
I want this knowledge to be better able to understand economic dialogue, and in general, not just read what confirms my own beliefs. Do I think I will read about Hayak and turn away from being a New Deal style pro-union lefty? Probably not, but that is no excuse for having an intelligent discussion and level of discourse on economic theory with those who differ from my beliefs.
February 17, 2010, 12:35 pmLisa says:
I just don’t get how anyone can think “choosing for ourselves” is what happens in markets. I want to buy a house in New York for a reasonable price but I cannot. The reason why is complicated, even in the absence of government intervention. Historic distribution of wealth have given some citizens enough money than their marginal utility of wealth is such that their willingness to pay is substantially higher than mine. The relative cost of land versus other goods is determined by a series of decision involving investments in infrastructure, technical advancements, etc. Markets “choose” for you too, in this sense.
Unless of course you believe in a radical version of the efficient market hypothesis which states that all prices are exactly reflect their value and you pair that with a belief that all accumulations of wealth reflect a just distribution of power in society that will be used to maximize utility. Then, of course, markets are clearly preferable to all other forms of distribution.
February 17, 2010, 12:43 pmCJColucci says:
Per son:
February 17, 2010, 12:47 pmThe usual recommendation is Heilbroner’s The Worldly Philosophers, but I haven’t read it in decades and that was several editions ago.
Allan Walstad says:
Per Son: I read New Ideas from Dead Economists: An Introduction to Modern Economic Thought by Todd G. Buchholz and Martin Feldstein some years ago, and did not rip it up in disgust, so you might try it. There’s an updated edition in the last year or so–I think Feldstein may have been added as an author.
February 17, 2010, 12:49 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Even though I am not a New Deal style pro-union lefty, I second Per Son’s comment.
Market v. government – well, look at safety in the workplace. Unfettered capitalism incentivizes business owners who are stupid and/or who don’t care about their employees to cut corners on safety. So you have a choice: 1 – tolerate people getting hurt or killed on the job; 2 – have a strong system of unions that forces the business owners to spend money on safety (and a whole lot of other things); or 3 – authorize a government entity like OSHA to impose safety rules on employers.
Because both socialism and capitalism in their purest forms have to deny human nature in order to work. At least that’s my untutored observation.
February 17, 2010, 12:51 pmPer Son says:
Thanks for the suggestions!!!
February 17, 2010, 12:51 pmAllan Walstad says:
Heibgroner is a collectivist and his books are written from a collectivist perspective. If you’re “a New Deal style pro-union lefty,” Per Son, then it’s not going to challenge you at all. If you’re willing to be challenged, then you might have a look at Economics for Real People: An Introduction to the Austrian School by Gene Callahan, which can be obtained used on Amazon.
February 17, 2010, 12:55 pmbyomtov says:
Some of this is just incredible.
Carbon taxes fundamentally amount to a choice that political decisionmakers believe that you should not drive so much or live in such a large house.
Wrong. Taking “carbon taxes” as an example of Pigou taxes, for example, they are in no sense a value judgement about individuals should spend their resources. They are an effort, like much environmental law, to prevent people from spending others people’s resources for their own benefit.
either we choose for ourselves or someone else chooses for us.
This completely ignores collective action. How can I choose, for myself, to have a certain level of national security – to decide how much I personally want to spend on that? I can’t. It’s an obvious example where collective decision-making is required. (It may well be that Hayek recognized this set of problems, but the post certainly doesn’t).
Hayek drew the lesson from the 1930s that democratic government allocation of economic resources led in the short run to budget deficits, in the medium run to inflation and monetizing the debt, and in the long run dictatorship that imposed a standard of values on society (and totalitarian impulses designed to brainwash people into to subordinating their own preferences to the preferences of the collective).
Ah yes. A lesson well confirmed by the dictatorial nature of modern social democratic states. Or maybe not.
And isn’t this in the end what all the fuss is about health care, cap and trade, financial regulation, and even deficit spending?
No. Financial regulation is, not unlike environmental regulation, an effort to prevent certain private practices from having dramatically negative social consequences. Deficit spending is more complex than you describe.
Hayek’s eventual solution (as developed in Law, Legislation, and Liberty) was that it was both more efficient and more moral to have these basic allocational decisions made by impersonal processes like markets and the rule of law
Since when are markets any more “impersonal processes” than government? And including “rule of law” necessarily implicates government in the process, so I guess this is not a very clear proposition.
This post is nothing but pure ideology.
February 17, 2010, 12:58 pmAllan Walstad says:
Who decides what’s “reasonable,” Lisa? Land and homes belong to people. They properly get to decide whether they are willing to part with these things at a given price. Free choice in a market does not mean you get to choose what’s done with other people’s property. It means people interact on the basis or “win-win or no deal.”
February 17, 2010, 1:03 pmAk Mike says:
Laura – your comments here have been uniformly intelligent and informed, so my disagreement is respectful – but the market does not incentivize employers to injure or kill their employees, even if they save a few bucks. As I understand it, the passage of OSHA is not correlated with any reduction in workplace injuries.
February 17, 2010, 1:08 pmEmployers spend a lot to keep employees happy. They pay them, they pay for medical insurance, they provide holidays, break rooms, and a variety of amenities. Killing and injuring employees does not make them happy, so employers are incentivized to refrain from doing so, even if it means spending money. And, by the way, killing and injuring employees also drives up your workers compensation premium.
Laura(southernxyl) says:
AK Mike, I’m talking about having to take the OSHA regs to employees and show them chapter and verse to get them to shake loose a few bucks for safety features. And these aren’t features somebody made up just to jerk people around, either.
If you have work for uneducated, blue-collar people, well, they’re a dime-a-dozen. Especially right now. Who cares if they’re not happy – they can leave, there are plenty more to take their place.
Also, do you think employers would pay for workers comp insurance if they didn’t have to? Is it not a gov’t mandate?
February 17, 2010, 1:18 pmyankee says:
There are a number of problems with this. Most important, I think, is the presentation of “choose for yourself” and “someone else chooses for you” as mutually exclusive alternatives. I get to make choices under both regulation and the market, but those choices are selected from a preference set determined by other people. I get to pick what to eat, but the local grocery stores decide what’s available and what the price is. I don’t get to pick a product they don’t carry or one I can’t afford. I don’t get to pick for-cause employment, because I live in the United States. In the U.S., a for-cause employment contract is available only to high-level executives, and nobody is going to hire me as a CEO.
The same is true under regulation. I get to choose how to deal with my roommate, but the government has decided that killing him and taking his stuff is not a choice I’m allowed to make. I can choose what apartment to rent (within my budget), but I don’t get to choose to waive the implied warranty of habitability. I can choose which car to buy (within my budget) but I don’t get to pick not to pay the (hypothetical) built-in carbon tax. And so forth and so on.
So basically, “I choose or other people choose” is a false dichotomy. I get to pick from the available options, but I don’t get to decide what options are available to me. That’s determined by other people.
February 17, 2010, 1:26 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
“I’m talking about having to take the OSHA regs to employees ” – I meant “employers”.
February 17, 2010, 1:33 pmThatGuy says:
Laura, wouldn’t a stream of lawsuits form injured employees deter an employer from knowingly allowing hazardous conditions? A lack of OSHA regulations would not absolve an employer (to my knowledge) from tort liability. The courts should be sufficient to compensate people for damages caused by others.
February 17, 2010, 1:34 pmyankee says:
Whether or not OSHA regulations are a good idea as such, the tort system is definitely not a case of market decisionmaking or what Zywicki calls “deciding for yourself.” The tort system is a case of the government deciding for me that if I cause people injury through a lack of reasonable care, I’m required to compensate them. The government, not me, decides what “reasonable care” is and how much compensation is required. In this case, the government takes the form of judges and juries rather than OSHA, but it’s still the government.
February 17, 2010, 1:47 pmThatGuy says:
Yankee:
“I get to pick what to eat, but the local grocery stores decide what’s available and what the price is. I don’t get to pick a product they don’t carry or one I can’t afford.”
And if you don’t like it, you can call anyone who does have what you want and make them an offer to ship it to you. And just like you get to decide what you’re willing to pay, the grocer gets to decide what to charge. If you agree, a sale occurs. If not, you do not get to infringe on the grocer’s freedom to sell his products at the price he desires. That would be dictating the choices of others. which is what happens when the government gets involved; one of you can be ordered to change your behavior for the benefit of others.
“I don’t get to pick for-cause employment, because I live in the United States.In the U.S., a for-cause employment contract is available only to high-level executives, and nobody is going to hire me as CEO.”
You can still choose for-cause employment. But again, you can’t FORCE someone to give you for-cause employment. You’re confusing an ability to chose something with an ability to force someone else to give it to you. If you can find a for cause employer willing to deal with you, then you are free to take the job.
“The same is true under regulation.I get to choose how to deal with my roommate, but the government has decided that killing him and taking his stuff is not a choice I’m allowed to make.”
Wow, now you want to be able to end ALL of someone else’s choices. Again, you’re missing the fact that everyone else has choices too.
“I can choose what apartment to rent (within my budget), but I don’t get to choose to waive the implied warranty of habitability.”
And the argument here is, you should have the choice to do so if you so desire.
“I can choose which car to buy (within my budget) but I don’t get to pick not to pay the (hypothetical) built-in carbon tax.”
A choice which has been imposed on you by others, through the government.
“So basically, “I choose or other people choose” is a false dichotomy. I get to pick from the available options, but I don’t get to decide what options are available to me. That’s determined by other people.”
No, it isn’t. All choices which do not force others to give up their own options are open to you, or they are not. Options that force others to give up their choice to bow to your whims are still options that remove choice, but they place you in the remover’s role instead of the removed.
February 17, 2010, 1:51 pmAllan Walstad says:
Of course uneducated people are not likely to be so productive, so their combination of working conditions and earnings will not be as desirable as those of more productive people. If there aren’t enough jobs to go around it may have a lot to do with government interventions from minimum wage to social security to OSHA and other regs to tons of paperwork required by the government masters. There are tradeoffs associated with a level of safety as well as with other things. Government intervention often obscures the tradeoffs.
February 17, 2010, 1:51 pmShelbyC says:
No its not. The reason is that there are more people who would choose to buy a house in New York at a price you consider reasonable than there are houses for sale in New York at such a price.
February 17, 2010, 1:54 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
ThatGuy, when I look at lawsuits that have been filed for injuries, what usually happens is that the OSHA regs are invoked. The injured party does sometimes argue that the employer “should have known” that X would happen, but it’s very easy to say that OSHA requires, for instance, that safety showers be maintained in operable condition and the employer didn’t do that; or that the employer required the employee to go into a confined space without the legally mandated safeguards in place. Then you don’t have to ask the court to read the employer’s mind as to what he knew or should have known.
There are other problems with your stream of lawsuits idea anyway.
February 17, 2010, 1:55 pm1 – People have now been killed or injured, which is not ideal; otherwise there would not be the stream of lawsuits.
2 – People who need their jobs may not file those suits – they may just carry on with their injuries or their COPD or whatever, as long as they can. I specifically worry about illegal immigrants. Even though they shouldn’t be here, I don’t want them taken advantage of and hurt or killed – better to either take care of them, or deport them, pick one.
3 – Anticipation of lawsuits may cause employers to do weird things, like tolerate offensive t-shirts, but only among people they think are highly litigious. And it’s very easy for people to slide into magical thinking: Nothing will happen. Nothing will happen today, anyway. Just stick your head in there real quick – nothing will happen. They just need to be careful. We’ll fix that tomorrow; today we need to get on with it (that’s a huge one). Employers can come up with all kinds of rationales for not doing the right thing, and it’s not due to their being employers, it’s due to human nature. Why do people not wear seat belts, when over and over you read about traffic fatalities in which the only survivors were the only people wearing their belts – like Princess Diana’s crash, for pete’s sake? If only people acted rationally at all times, we’d be a lot better off.
: )
Laura(southernxyl) says:
By “desirable” working conditions do you mean “minimally safe”? Because that’s what I’m talking about.
February 17, 2010, 1:56 pmPer Son says:
Workers comp was the genius bargain where workers gave up personal injury lawsuits (in most circumstances) in favor of a no-fault system and specific set payouts (but no punis or pain and suffering).
The problem with lots of data, is the data takers are often politically motivated (both sides being guilty).
For example, there is a lot of evidence that the definitions of what constitutes a workplace injury changed under Secretary Chao, so it automatically equated to less injuries. Also, OSHA has had very, very little funding in the areas of enforcement, and I believe that is intentional. OSHA has a huge mandate, but if you have a handful of inspection officers, how in the world do you really make much of a dent. There is also the very real world of retaliation against WC filers, and people who file reports/complaints with OSHA.
I do not think any employer wants employees to die and/or get maimed, but some employers do not care because workers in certain unskilled trades come dime a dozen (legal and not legal). I believe some industries do only the minimal amount of safety, because they figure injury is inevitable and is just a cost of doing business (e.g. slaughterhouse work).
February 17, 2010, 1:58 pmHayek Climbs the Charts - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine says:
[...] (Via Todd Zywicki) [...]
February 17, 2010, 2:02 pmJeremyKidd says:
Laura:
I don’t know that it is correct to say that uneducated, blue-collar people are a dime a dozen. I know they would disagree with you, but even if they don’t, it is still the case that anyone you have working for you amasses some amount of human capital. You train them to do their jobs, and as they get better at them, you pay them more. Treating them badly so they leave means that you have to train new workers, which will lower your productivity, at least in the short run. You will pay those new workers less, because they have less human capital, but as they get better, you will pay them more. Assuming, as you seem to do, that all uneducated, blue-collar workers have the same potential to learn their jobs, you will eventually be back to the same level, but in the meantime you had the extra expense of training and the lower productivity that came along with hiring untrained workers.
In short, while you may not have the incentive to make your workers so gleeful that they are smiling all the time and dance and skip around the factory, as opposed to just walking, you do have every incentive to keep them satisfied with their jobs. To paraphrase AkMike, killing workers doesn’t keep them satisfied.
February 17, 2010, 2:04 pmAllan Walstad says:
Byomtov, the statement in italics is a fair one. You may agree with political decisionmakers that taxes should induce less driving and smaller (or more energy-efficient) houses, and in principle I can agree that there is a rationale in terms of preventing destruction or degradation of the shared, limited environment. (Whether the carbon tax really can be justified on that basis is another question.)
February 17, 2010, 2:05 pmLessinSF says:
Todd:
This is the reason for the rise in sales – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk (Hayek and Keynes rap video)
February 17, 2010, 2:05 pmPer Son says:
I like the way you think Laura.
As for government intervention in wages and hours – there is plenty of data demonstrating whatever the proponent wants it to say. By that, I mean that Cato has studies showing how unemployment benefits and minimum wage hikes hurts employment, but the AFL-CIO and other liberal groups can point to studies showing the exact opposite.
I guess this is why I lean towards believing that Keynes’ animal spirits is a good model of human behavior.
February 17, 2010, 2:06 pmbyomtov says:
.. but the market does not incentivize employers to injure or kill their employees, even if they save a few bucks.
Of course it does. Or rather, it incentivizes them to be careless about safety conditions and cut corners to save a few bucks. The argument that “of course they have to keep employees happy, etc.” is nonsense. No doubt some companies feel this way, others don’t. There are enough tales of locked exit doors, unsafe electrical conditions, etc. to put this canard to rest.
As I understand it, the passage of OSHA is not correlated with any reduction in workplace injuries.
Perhaps you have better evidence than your understanding.
And of course Laura’s discussion of tort law as a solution is right on target. It’s a long-term, expensive, and not always available solution. Do dead workers have standing?
February 17, 2010, 2:09 pmloki13 says:
On this, we completely agree. (See- I can be agreeable sometimes!). I have often found more similarities between hardcore libertarians and hardcore communists/socialists than either group has with people in the vast, murky middle, where ideological purity gives way to the real world.
February 17, 2010, 2:11 pmThatGuy says:
“Do dead workers have standing?”
Their family or executor generally does. And that can get expensive fast for the employer.
February 17, 2010, 2:11 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
You realize that I’m not talking about myself and my assumptions, right? I’m talking about observations I have made about industry.
Per Son, if you like the way I think, does that mean I must be a closet lefty? jk
February 17, 2010, 2:12 pm: )
Ak Mike says:
Laura – I guess we just disagree. The fact that employers don’t want to be forced to comply with the ten zillion OSHA regulations does not mean that they are interested in injuring their employees. They may disagree that those regulations in fact are the best way to avoid injury. I have heard that statistics back up that disagreement.
Employers are extremely interested in avoiding workplace injuries. They cause work stoppage, high turnover costs, claims costs, low morale, etc. If there were no OSHA, employers could find the most efficient way of doing this.
Workers compensation is an interesting topic. Actually, it was a political compromise that employers pushed for because it insulates them from employee lawsuits. If there were no workers comp, employers would use another form of insurance to protect them from employee lawsuits, and premiums on that would rise with claims made.
OSHA regs are cited in lawsuits because of negligence per se rules that provide that if can show that an OSHA rule was violated, you don’t need to show that the employer was actually negligent.
Regarding illegal immigrants, if employers are breaking the law by hiring them, and perhaps by failing to pay workers comp for them, etc., why do you think the employers are going to comply with OSHA?
February 17, 2010, 2:13 pmJeremyKidd says:
I see two problems with OSHA’s ‘protection’ of workers. First, having worked on an assembly line, I have seen how OSHA worries just as much about a wooden pallet being leaned against a wall (with the danger of it sliding down and injuring someone’s foot) as they are about a saw blade or a rivet gun not having guards (with seemingly much more serious potential consequences). OSHA does have a relatively small budget, and they have expanded the scope of their mandate to very minor safety ‘concerns,’ thus making it very hard for them to address truly dangerous situations. Many, including myself, would argue that is the nature of government agencies, to expand scope and then complain that they haven’t the funds to cover the scope. If OSHA is necessary, then shouldn’t it narrow its scope to a reasonable one.
Second, with regard to the “flood of lawsuits” argument above, the creation of a government bureaucracy that is supposed to protect us from workplace hazards means that most people (including courts) look first to the bureaucracy to determine whether there were hazards. My best guess (and yes, it’s purely a guess) is that, in the absence of OSHA, workplace lawsuits would be much more effective in incentivizing employers to factor in workplace safety. I, for one, believe they do so now, but it is possible that the existence of OSHA incentivizes them to meet OSHA standards rather than truly considering worker safety.
February 17, 2010, 2:17 pmbyomtov says:
anyone you have working for you amasses some amount of human capital. You train them to do their jobs, and as they get better at them, you pay them more. Treating them badly so they leave means that you have to train new workers, which will lower your productivity, at least in the short run.
How do they know they are being treated badly, at least in the area of safety? Do they come in and inspect the wiring every day? Do they make sure all the equipment is properly maintained, that sprinklers are working, that safety guards haven’t been removed?
The problem with your argument is not that no employers act as you describe. It’s that businesses have incentives to do lots of different things in their efforts to make money. It’s just foolish to rely, as libertatrians do, on the argument that only “nice” behavior is profitable in the long run. Yet that’s what we hear repeatedly. Incentives to be profitable include many unsavory practices as well. History is full of them. You need to drop the Panglossian view.
February 17, 2010, 2:18 pmJeremyKidd says:
Laura:
Not knowing you personally, I don’t know where your assumption came from. It may very well be an assumption derived from your experiences, but that doesn’t, by itself, make it a completely justified assumption. I have made my own observations from my work in industry, and my assumptions are different from yours. Neither yours nor mine are entitled to blanket acceptance, but both are worthy of consideration. I think my point still stands, even if your assumption is correct and mine is incorrect.
February 17, 2010, 2:21 pmbyomtov says:
“Do dead workers have standing?”
Their family or executor generally does.
Here’s a news flash. Lots of poor workers don’t have wills. Some don’t have families. And the corporation’s legal resources vastly exceed that available to whoever might bring suit. And guess what, lawsuits take a long time, and don’t bring dead people to life, or restore lost limbs.
The unreality here is staggering.
February 17, 2010, 2:24 pmJeremyKidd says:
byomtov:
You seem to imply that all employers are identical, and that seems to be a completely unsupportable assertion. Some employers might be the cold-hearted jerks you seem to think, but not all are, and I don’t know of any evidence that would support an assertion that even the majority are. I would be glad to hear any evidence you have to support the assertion, though – I may be wrong.
Also, I think workers are a lot smarter than you give them credit for. I was one, once, and I regularly noticed safety concerns and refused to work until they were fixed. A lot of my co-workers did the same. You seem to be extremely (I might even say unrealistically) cynical about both employers and employees.
February 17, 2010, 2:24 pmSecurityGeek says:
I can’t believe the thread has gone this long without anybody posting the best original source material demonstrating the positions of Keynes and Hayek.
February 17, 2010, 2:26 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Jeremy, let me try again.
I mostly agree with your earlier statement. It’s not me saying the blue-collar people are a dime a dozen. It’s employers I’ve heard repeatedly say that if Joe Blow isn’t happy, they can go right out on the sidewalk and find somebody to replace him.
You’re saying that I assume that people are interchangeable and that training doesn’t make the trained worker more valuable. I absolutely do not assume this.
What I see is pencil-pushers in offices downgrading the training and intelligence it takes to do the work they look at as grunt work – even my work as a lab manager. How hard could that be, right? To some folks, we’re a dime a dozen too.
February 17, 2010, 2:28 pmPer Son says:
Laura,
Lol. Are you a closet lefty? Come out of the closet, it is dark and lonely in there.
I am amazed at this comment thread – disagreements galore, but no nasty snarkiness or downright idiotic ramblings. Give it time, though . . .
February 17, 2010, 2:29 pmThatGuy says:
You phrased it as a problem of standing. I’d like to see any data that shows even 1% of workers have no one who would have standing to bring a wrongful death suit for a deadly workplace injury. And no, a lawsuit doesn’t bring anyone back to life, but neither does worker’s comp. The threat of a massive jury verdict has motivated companies to take safety precautions, in other areas absent federal regulation before (see: McDonald’s coffee). Why do you think that it would have any less effect in this case?
As for the expense of lawsuits, as I recall there is this thing I heard of once called contingency. A few attorneys have been known to work on that basis when pursuing a personal injury or wrongful death tort on behalf of an indigent client when there is a good claim.
February 17, 2010, 2:31 pmAllan Walstad says:
It’s not that only nice behavior is profitable. It’s that the market does provide disincentives for treating people badly, while politicians and bureaucrats themselves operate according to incentives which are not pure saintliness either and tend to be poorly informed precisely because they are not acting as market participants.
You need to drop any panglossian view of political action.
February 17, 2010, 2:35 pmJeremyKidd says:
Laura:
I apologize if I misunderstood your point. I think I understand it a little better now, and you may be right in your observations, although I would still argue that your conclusions are not the only logical ones that could be derived from those observations.
You and I can probably agree that there are some jobs that require more human capital than others. The less human capital required, the easier it is to transition a new employee into the job. It may be that increased technology has decreased the amount of training required for many jobs, increasing the number of jobs that can be legitimately labelled “grunt” jobs. However, a person can learn good work skills while working a grunt job, and those skills can be what allows the worker to obtain a non-grunt job.
It is always frustrating when someone in a corporate office decides (often arbitrarily, since they have likely never done our jobs) that our job is worth “less.” When it comes to safety, there is nothing that morally excuses a calculation that the grunt laborers are expendable, but that does not mean that a government bureaucracy is needed to make sure that grunt laborers are kept safe. As I describe in an earlier post, it is possible that OSHA has made grunt laborers less safe.
February 17, 2010, 2:37 pmbyomtov says:
You seem to imply that all employers are identical, and that seems to be a completely unsupportable assertion.
No. Actually. You’rethe one implying that. A fair summary of your position is ,
“Gee, they’re all so concerned with the welfare of the workers that safety regulations are hardly required.”
I’m the one who understands that employers will make differing judgments as to how attention to safety affects profits. My comments make that plain.
I have no evidence as to the breakdown, but neither do you, as far as I know. If you do, please provide it. If not, stop acting like the statistical evidence strongly supports you.
Besides, even if the majority, say 70%, are concerned with safety, does that mean it’s just fine to let the other 30% off the hook. Do workers sometimes notice unsafe conditions? Maybe. But lots of dangers may not be visible without intensive inspection. Can they crawl behind the walls and look at wiring, for example?
Surely there are enough industrial/mining/etc. accidents to suggest that a significant number of employers don’t really care very much.
February 17, 2010, 2:39 pmAllan Walstad says:
“Minimally safe” by whose standards and as traded off against what, Laura? This is the sort of question that you seem unwilling to come to grips with. Some folks scale vertical rock walls or jump out of airplanes or ski at breakneck (literally) speed down hillsides merely for fun. Just throwing out “minimally safe” as some sort of mantra doesn’t cut it.
February 17, 2010, 2:41 pmThatGuy says:
I just think it’s funny that the term Panglossian was used by a supporter of government action. Or have you not read Candide recently?
February 17, 2010, 2:43 pmbyomtov says:
It’s not that only nice behavior is profitable. It’s that the market does provide disincentives for treating people badly,
Of course it does. And it also provides positive incentives for treating them badly. The tendency to consider only one set of incentives in analyzing the behavior of employers and others and its consequences is a major and common flaw in much libertarian thinking.
February 17, 2010, 2:44 pmJeremyKidd says:
byomtov:
Perhaps you can point me to the part of my post that implied that the statistical evidence was behind me. I didn’t intend that implication. In fact, I was pretty clear that I wasn’t aware of any empirical evidence.
I don’t know that your comments made plain “that employers will make differing judgments as to how attention to safety affects profits.” Since you clearly misinterpreted (unintentionally or not) my arguments, and now offer a very silly oversimplification of them, it is clear that neither of us are making arguments that can only be interpreted one way. I’ll promise to try not to misinterpret your arguments if you’ll promise the same.
February 17, 2010, 2:47 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Huh? A mantra is a meaningless phrase that a person monotonously repeats over and over. Is that what you think I am doing? Why engage me then?
February 17, 2010, 2:50 pmJeremyKidd says:
Laura:
Regardless of whether it is a mantra or not, I am curious about what standards you would consider “minimally safe.” Also, would you agree that reasonable minds can differ as to what constitutes a “minimally safe” work environment? If so, do you think OSHA (either as presently constituted or in its ideal state) is the proper way to determine which standard will govern all workplaces?
February 17, 2010, 2:56 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Okay, here is an example.
If I have to work with acid in the lab, I need an eyewash and safety shower where I can get to them. (Before you ask, yes, I’ve seen what can happen and even with those things it’s not pretty.) I consider this to be minimally safe. Also, OSHA requires it.
Do you think I am unreasonable here? Do you think OSHA is?
February 17, 2010, 3:03 pmJeremyKidd says:
Laura:
I can only speak for myself, but I would definitely agree that having a shower and an eyewash where acid will be used on a regular basis is a good idea. (I’ve never seen acid get in someone’s eyes, but I have had articles of my own clothing partially disintegrate while I scrambled to take them off, due to acid)
Now that we’ve established that it’s a good idea, from our perspectives, do you believe that it is possible for someone to legitimately and reasonably disagree with us? If it is, then what method should be used to determine whether a business is required to have those precautions? Also, should it be required at ANY cost, even if the cost is so high that it effectively makes working with acid prohibitive? What if there were a better way to deal with possible accidents that you and I don’t know about – how do we make sure that any better alternatives are able to be put into practice quickly so that workers can be safer?
February 17, 2010, 3:20 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
We’ll probably disagree here.
Not really, no. Not on this one.
Yes, it should be required at any cost. If the work can’t be done with an eyewash station and safety shower close by, then it should be redesigned so it can, or not done at all. People can always tell you they don’t have money in the budget for X if X isn’t something they care about.
I imagine OSHA has some way for people to give input in these kinds of things. But the way to deal with getting acid on yourself is to get it off quick, with lots of water. Now maybe you drive a truck with a tank of water on it that can deliver the desired pressure, and a drench shower hose or something, if you have to work with acid at a temporary site. But an eyewash and safety shower must be had, and there’s no excuse not to have them.
Feel free to disagree.
February 17, 2010, 3:29 pmJeremyKidd says:
Laura:
I suppose we will disagree on this one. On the issue of OSHA, any change in regulation would have to be one that was authorized by Congress in the organic statute, so there are some limitations. Even if authorized, very little that occurs in government happens quickly, and since the existing technology likely functions well for most situations, my best guess is that it would take year to make the change. If the system were flexible enough that employers could change to the new technology anyway, it wouldn’t be as bad, but because any change would put them at risk of running afoul of OSHA, the old technology would continue to be used far longer than it should, possibly to the detriment of workers. As a side note, I agree that the best way of dealing with acid that we know of is as you describe. The drawback to government regulation is that it stymies research into what we don’t know and makes it much more difficult to transition to new things, even after we know them.
I am always willing to concede that people can reasonably disagree with me, so I find it difficult to understand why others are unwilling to accept the same. You seem like a sensible person, so I have to think that you are not as firm in your stance that there is no possible way that anyone could reasonably disagree with your position. However, since I can’t prove that, it’s likely best to just let that one go.
When it comes to the cost/benefit issue, we likely part ways on the grounds of the original post, that for some (me, included), the ability of individuals to make choices for themselves has priority, but not for everyone. For me, if an employee truly knows the risks, and is willing to perform the function that places her in the path of those risks in exchange for compensation from her employer, I think that the informed employee and the employer should be allowed to enter into that transaction. It is unlikely that I would ever agree to that transaction, but I don’t believe I have the right to tell someone else that they can’t assume those risks.
February 17, 2010, 3:42 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I can see that as a philosophical argument. Unfortunately, I believe there’s too great a chance that coercion will take place.
BTW, for those ivory tower folks who don’t have to fool with this stuff very often, here is an example from OSHA’s website, of interpretations of the eyewash rule. OSHA’s stuff is generally well-organized, reasonable, and easy to read and understand. It’s not like they insist on infinite safety and every possible precaution taken.
February 17, 2010, 3:49 pmyankee says:
It’s disappointing that Zywicki doesn’t engage with the commenters. I’d be very interested in his explanation of how the government deciding what choices I have constitutes “someone else choosing for me,” but the market deciding what choices I have constitutes “choosing for myself.” There are lots of choices I don’t get in the unregulated market, like the choice to breathe clean air or the choice to buy the medications I need to live but can’t afford. (For that matter, government intervention also deprives me of the choice to violate the terms of a contract without paying any damages. Sans government intervention, the only enforcement mechanism would be damage to my reputation.)
Sure, the market does provide disincentives for treating employees badly, in the form of negative effects on employee morale and retention. But that’s the only incentive: the employer has no incentive to place any value on the employee’s life or health itself. Without government intervention, the injured employee doesn’t even have a tort remedy.
The market also provides incentives for treating employees badly, in that safety precautions cost money. And historically there are lots of examples of people dying because their employers decided inexpensive safety precautions weren’t worth it. Same with product safety.
Of course, I agree that politicians, political appointees, civil servants, judges, and juries are not saints. But they don’t have to be saints for government intervention to be superior than the unregulated free market.
February 17, 2010, 3:54 pmRandy says:
Laura does have a good point regarding markets. IF you have a lot of money to spend on something, the market provides you with a huge array of choices. If you have little or no money to spend on something, the market provides you with few choices, maybe none.
With enough money, I can have fresh strawberries in the dead of winter flown overnight from a warmer climate. On a budget, I cannot. And I cannot believe that there aren’t a lot of people who would love to eat fresh strawberries in January that were picked vine ripe.
There are plenty of people who would love health insurance, but they cannot afford it. So they go without.
Now, one can argue that the government distorts the health care industry to make it’s prices out of reach of people, but he same cannot be said for fruit. In other words, the market does not always meet all our needs.
February 17, 2010, 4:09 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Per McDonald’s response to lawsuit:
Here.
I thought I remembered reading that this was not their first incident.
(Randy, I think that was Lisa, not me. Although I have been stomping all over this thread and probably need to give it a rest.)
February 17, 2010, 4:16 pmPubliusFL says:
It’s a curious definition of “needs” that includes fresh-picked strawberries in January, eh? But in any event, even people of fairly modest means in the U.S. can probably eat strawberries year-round if they want to badly enough. They just have to decide where strawberries rank in their heirarchy of wants, and what other wants they are willing (choose) to do without in order to buy fresh strawberries out of (local) season.
February 17, 2010, 4:18 pmRPT says:
These discussions are all well and good, but only in the abstract. The Bush administration demonstrated that no conservative/Republican politician who is actually elected to office will ever actually follow the liberation/unregulated free market dream. Thus the choice is always which parties and interest in society will the government assist. Real business world conservatives want and will pay dearly to have the government expand in size, incur trillion dollar deficits and reward their friends and punish their enemies, and to achieve anti-competitive results. No alleged libertarian who is ever elected will act otherwise.
February 17, 2010, 4:20 pmbyomtov says:
Jeremy,
Sorry if I misinterpreted what you were saying. When you asked me for evidence I assumed you felt there was little to support my view. My mistake.
To clarify what I think about this issue:
Yes, employers have some incentives to see to the safety of workers. They also have incentives not to do so since, as Laura and Yankee have pointed out, safety precautions can be expensive.
The specific argument I object to, which I hear repeatedly, is, more or less, that agencies like OSHA aer not needed because of the first incentive. But that ignores the second, and while we may lack statistical data, I think you can agree that there have been lots of industrial accidents and the like where employers disregarded safety with disastrous consequences. Have I suggested you Google McWane for an example?
Further, while you are right that employees in some circumstances may identify risks and take actions, in others they cannot, or may be in such a weak position that to do so would be ruinous.
What I think is Panglossian, to ThatGuy’s great amusement, is that all these employer-employee transactions are conducted on an equal footing, with the decision to work in a risky environment being a fully-informed voluntary choice, and that tort law provies a solution when problems arise. To believe that is simple madness.
Does that justify every OSHA regulation? Well, no, because I’m sure there are some that are non-productive at the margin. But it does mean that there is a proper role for government in setting and enforcing safety standards.
And frankly, leaving safety aside, this whole post reeks of exactly the attitude I criticize here. Markets have no information problems, no externalities, there are no public goods, etc. It really is an unbelievably simplistic view of the world.
February 17, 2010, 4:31 pmToday's Tom Sawyer says:
So I guess we’re ignoring FAA regulations concerning shipping and rates, USDA regulations and tariffs that raise the cost of strawberries imported from abroad, the costs of Customs agents searching the shipment for any contraband, etc. No libertarians I know would argue that the market is perfect, just superior to the central planning relied on by government.
February 17, 2010, 4:42 pmShelbyC says:
And employees have the same set of incentives. They clearly have the incentive to see to their own saftey, and they also have incentive to keep saftey costs down, because they reduce the value of their services. Both employers and employees have incentive to achieve an optimal level of saftey. But government agencies don’t have the second incentive. So it would appear that employers and employees would gravitate toward an optimal level of saftey, but govt agencies would gravitate toward a greater than optimal level of saftey, no?
February 17, 2010, 4:48 pmToday's Tom Sawyer says:
You cite OSHA as the authoritative source for safety measures, yet do you know the history and source of OSHA standards? The industries they regulate. Prior to OSHA, and if you look to negligence and tort law, safety standards were developed by majority industry practice (much like the standards for medical malpractice are developed by national majority practices). OSHA takes these industry practices, and enforces them on the entire industry, so the concern for worker safety pre-exists government intrusion into that realm. In fact, all OSHA does is create an opportunity for businesses to reduce competition by enacting policies that may not be effect, but are too expensive for the competitors to enact.
February 17, 2010, 4:53 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
So what you’re saying is that historically some companies have developed safety rules, (while others never bothered,) and OSHA codifies those rules and applies them across the board.
I can live with that.
February 17, 2010, 5:07 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
…Tom, can you give an example of an OSHA standard that you believe was enacted to reduce competition and really doesn’t address safety?
February 17, 2010, 5:08 pmCJColucci says:
As someone memorably said on another thread, “a certain number of non-optimal outcomes are the price of freedom.”
February 17, 2010, 5:15 pmShelbyC says:
Not sure what that means, but I’m pretty sure it’s not something you can just throw out to justify and non-optimal outcome.
February 17, 2010, 5:17 pmbyomtov says:
ShelbyC,
Yes, employees have incentives to have a safe workplace. But they often:
1. Lack good information as to the safety of their workplace. Just how risky is it to work with some substance?
2. Are not able to bargain on an equal footing.
3. Are not able to monitor changes in safety levels. The place may be fine today, but change as ownership changes, equipment deteriorates, etc.
4. Lack the technical ability to judge safety.
5. Lack financial skills to evaluate things like risk/wage tradeoffs and the costs of safety and their impact on the business (“Gee, the boss says, if we did that we might as well shut down.”)
6. Are not up to date on new information regarding safety issues.
7. May not have decent alternatives to accepting unsafe conditions. (Labor markets are not necessarily competitive. Why assume that a worker has a wide range of choices with various mixes of risk and wages to choose from? Yet that, among other things is what the whole model of “achieving optimal safety” depnds on.)
We’re talking about working with toxic substances, with potentially dangerous equipment, in hazardous environments, in buildings that may be quite old, etc. The assumption about reaching optimal safety levels reflects a highly abstract and, in my opinion, very unrealistic view of employer-worker bargaining.
This is not a negotiation between equally well-informed parties. Nor is it always carried out in a competitive market. It’s not like buying a car, where if I don’t like dealer X’s offer I can go across the street to dealer Y.
And the more potentially hazardous conditions are, the less equitable the negotiation is likely to be.
February 17, 2010, 5:18 pmbuckeye says:
“Carbon taxes fundamentally amount to a choice that political decisionmakers believe that you should not drive so much or live in such a large house.”
If you ever encounter a complex thought, I suspect that you will be so shocked that you will shit your pants.
February 17, 2010, 5:25 pmShelbyC says:
Good one, buckeye. I guess you showed Zywicki who the idiot is, eh?
February 17, 2010, 5:51 pmDavid says:
All this talk about the government (OSHA) insuring the safety of workers is pretty interesting … a case study is going on right now in Australia where the government is running/has run a big green “stimulus” program to insulate people’s houses. Ignoring the repeated advice of the construction industry and electrians organizations they allowed/preferred the use of “foil insulation” – the result (so far) is that 4 installers have died of electrocution and a couple hundred houses have burnt down.
The government response is “not my problem!”. Also “And soldiers die in wars, sh*t happens!”
See Tim Blair’s blog for more information.
February 17, 2010, 6:23 pmCJColucci says:
Shelby: I agree with you. Your argument is with the fellow I quoted, and with the many people on this thread who are too polite to put their positions quite so candidly, not with me
February 17, 2010, 7:34 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
David, another example of a government exempting itself from its own rules, as if they were not developed for a reason, but are simply occasions for it to make our lives hell. Like police officers who speed, don’t signal turns, and run red lights and stop signs, and won’t ticket each other; are traffic rules there so they can ticket us, or to prevent accidents?
Also, I am reminded of Miss Jean Brodie:
Goodness, Truth, Beauty, and Being Green.
February 17, 2010, 7:40 pmShelbyC says:
Fair ’nuff
February 17, 2010, 7:59 pmElliot says:
Those are indeed factors in determining the price of land. However, don’t forget the effect of government programs that restrict the supply of land and drive up land prices. Starting in the Seventies we have seen huge amounts of land taken off the market by environmental restrictions, minimum lot sizes regulations, green spaces, and “smart land use” programs. Now you are paying the price for those mandated green spaces. Think it’s worth it?
February 17, 2010, 8:13 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Here is the government in India imposing new safety rules on the populace.
February 17, 2010, 8:32 pmAllan Walstad says:
Frankly, many of your comments and others here reek of the unbelievably simplistic notion that government is the public interest personified, that the pols and bureaucrats in their offices afar can consistently make better decisions on how people should allocate their property and labor for their own good than people themselves can.
As I pointed out quite clearly, it’s not just that they aren’t saints. They do not and cannot possess the knowledge that all the many individual market participants possess, precisely because they are not acting as market participants themselves. That is one of the central lessons of Hayek. The productivity of the market generates the very wealth that makes it possible for people to live longer, healthier, safer lives than before. It is the enormous dead weight of government meddling that limits opportunities so that ignorant commenters can complain about the lack of many different jobs and alternatives.
If government intervention can be kept within bounds, wealth can be created and people can flourish in a relatively free environment. Unfortunately, as history abundantly demonstrates, keeping government intervention limited is difficult, because government intervention creates problems that are blamed on the market rather than on the intervention, leading to more intervention and more problems. As Hayek pointed out, the end game is tyranny.
Right now the DC pols are running up astronomical deficits, pushing still more massive interventions in medicine, bailing out favored industries and unions, pursuing disastrous wars across the globe, and still trying to blame economic bubbles and busts on markets when they are patently the result of the Federal Reserve jerking around with the money supply together with irresponsible political programs–and folks here are arguing that we need government to protect us from markets!? Who in the hell protects us from our protector?
February 17, 2010, 9:29 pmRicardo says:
And isn’t this in the end what all the fuss is about health care, cap and trade, financial regulation, and even deficit spending?
No, it isn’t. Hayek never said in Road the Serfdom that he wanted to do away with financial regulation. He even explicitly makes the point that labor regulations like the minimum wage, safety rules in workplaces and a guaranteed minimum income for every citizen are not the focus of the book.
If you want to oppose cap and trade or carbon taxes because you don’t believe climate change is happening (or that it is due to humans or that it is necessarily bad) that’s an empirical issue. If you oppose it on ideological grounds, one wonders what you think of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. After all, in wartime, the government decides it needs more men in uniform fighting than the free market would supply. Government arrogantly decides it knows better than the free market in determining how many men should be fighting in wars abroad. And in fact even uses our own tax money to do so.
This, to anyone who has read Road to Serfdom, is not the point at all. The book is against central planning, government micromanagement of economic resources and of granting government officials discretionary power. Hayek points out officials inevitably need discretion to make ad hoc decisions if they will be managing the day-to-day issues of the economy and that this power is extremely destructive to the rule of law and liberal democracy.
Hayek never said government should not set the rules within market actors operate — in fact, he explicitly said exactly the opposite. His point was that those rules should be transparent, as simple as possible and should apply to everyone.
February 17, 2010, 9:36 pmGaryC says:
There was an incident perhaps 20 years ago in which a dairy processing plant had a safety/health dispute with the government.
OSHA insisted that the company install handrails on the loading dock to prevent worker injuries, and threatened to fine the company $25,000 per day that the rails were not in place. So the company installed them.
The USDA, on its next inspection of the plant, said that the handrails posed an infection hazard, and threatened to fine the company $25,000 per day that the rails WERE in place.
The last I knew, the company was trying to get OSHA and the USDA to meet to decide who was in control, but the government agencies were not interested. I suspect that $25,000 per day was more than the profits of the company.
February 17, 2010, 11:31 pmyankee says:
GaryC–That sounds like an urban legend. Link?
February 17, 2010, 11:50 pmcontra band says:
Very well said.
February 18, 2010, 12:18 amcontra band says:
i’d take a recommendation of a book by marty feldstein as unbiased with a huge vat of salt, coming as it is from somebody with the views of walstad. especially when he follows his so called unbiased recommendation with anotherunsubtle diss at heibgroner calling him a “collectivist”!
February 18, 2010, 12:23 amStephen Lathrop says:
Get yourself a job in a foundry, or a hard rock mine, or doing heavy steel fabrication. You’ll know you’ve got the kind of job I’m talking about when you notice about 20% of your co-workers are missing fingers or other appendages. (You won’t see the more serious injuries, because those guys can’t come to work anymore.) That doesn’t happen because traumatic amputations are an optimal, carefully calibrated free market outcome. It happens because it’s the only result a truly free market allows.
Why? Because it isn’t just about the employer and the employee. It’s also about the competitor down the road, and about the iron rule that if the competitor does the job for less he gets the business. You (and your employees) shut down and starve. Both employers might prefer a safer work place. Neither can really afford it, because it gives the other guy an opening.
Note as well that the two employers are powerless to contract privately to produce a mutually safer environment. That will just incentivize the creation of employer number 3, to take advantage of the opening thus created.
In situations like that the government can step in and use regulation to make it possible for everyone to do what everyone with any sense would like to do–make things safer. It’s possible because all the competitors bear safety costs alike, so safety gets factored out of the competitive equation. Government alone can call off the race to the bottom.
There may be some kind of theoretical analysis to tell you there is some non-government way around this dilemma. Please don’t bother me with it until you can show it working in the real world of dangerous work. And please don’t try to suggest that some speculative free market solution could work, but can’t now because government gets in the way. If your solution could produce safety in a world with no government, it could produce better safety in the world we’ve actually got.
February 18, 2010, 12:38 amyankee says:
Are those not one and the same?
February 18, 2010, 1:02 ambyomtov says:
Allan Walstad,
Frankly, many of your comments and others here reek of the unbelievably simplistic notion that government is the public interest personified, that the pols and bureaucrats in their offices afar can consistently make better decisions on how people should allocate their property and labor for their own good than people themselves can.
No. Government can’t do that consistently. But it can intervene in those areas where the lovely assumptions of the market-worshipers badly fail to hold, and the allegedly free market does not produce anything like the optimal results you imagine. In those situations government, imperfect though it may be, has a role to play.
Actual markets operating in the actual economy are often a far cry from those described in Chapter One. A realistic, as opposed to ideological, discussion of cases where government intervention might be useful, and what form it might sensibly take, should begin by acknowledging that, as well as, of course, the problems of government involvement. But if, like TZ, you see only one side of the picture, your conclusions will not be sound.
February 18, 2010, 1:45 amRicardo says:
On the subject of paternalistic financial regulations, one irony about the Austrian school of thought is that many Austrian economists are quite willing to sign onto the idea that fractional reserve banking is fraud and ought to be banned by the government as such. I’m not sure if Hayek ever signed onto this but Mises and Rothbard certainly did.
You will notice that there is something very paternalistic as well as very regulatory about this. The U.S. is happy to let banks lend out their deposits as long as they abide by certain risk controls and minimum reserve requirements. In an “Austrian” world, whether the customers like it or not, banks would be required to hold 100% of their deposits as vault cash (or gold). If customers like earning interest on demand deposits, that’s just too bad. They’re better off having to pay fees for demand deposit or checking accounts. For their own good, of course.
February 18, 2010, 1:59 amShelbyC says:
I really have to question the good faith of someone who refers to people who disagree with him as “market warshipers”. Does that make you a “government worshiper”?
February 18, 2010, 9:39 amStephen Lathrop says:
If Walstad is representative of libertarian thought, then the libertarian vision is realized when government gets far enough out of the picture that libertarians can do just as they choose. The role of government, if it has one, is to make the world safe for that.
There is, however, a disconnect between what market participants prefer to do and what they can do. The market itself imposes constraints, and they are far from trivial. The race to the bottom in a dangerous workplace, mentioned in my post above, is an example.
When we’re lucky, human beings are moral creatures. Their notions of morality differ in detail, but tend toward behavior that furthers group cohesion and personal safety. Much in the operations of unfettered markets tends away from those moral objectives.
The libertarian vision confronts a paradox. If it rules out government as a means of fixing inherently immoral market outcomes, then market participants can choose immorality and participation, or moral non-participation–in which case the point of the libertarian vision of commerce evaporates.
I’m attracted to the notion that the libertarian vision has much to tell us about the perils of over-reaching government. Ironically, where the vision seems weakest is precisely where its advocates seem to place greatest emphasis–on the operations of markets to produce socially optimal solutions.
Perhaps someone can think of a way to separate those two critiques while staying within recognizably libertarian bounds. My view is that the future of libertarianism, if it has one, depends on it.
February 18, 2010, 10:21 amShelbyC says:
But you haven’t shown why there isn’t instead a “race to the optimal.” If employers want people to work in a dangerous workplace, they have to pay them more. So why wouldn’t employers stay competitive by making workplaces safer so they don’t have to pay workers a danger premium? Now, maybe things like information distribution and such means that govt intervention would lead to a more efficient outcome, or maybe not, but you haven’t shown either way. Your race to the bottom is simply conjecture.
February 18, 2010, 11:17 amAllan Walstad says:
Actually, I didn’t say it was “unbiased.” I found it kind of squishy middle-of-the-road, but easy to read and informative. If you want a book that really defends free markets, the one I mentioned by Gene Callahan is a very readable introduction to the Austrian paradigm. Heilbroner (“heibgroner” was an unintentional typing error) is/was well-known as a collectivist in perspective. I didn’t realize “collectivist” was a dirty word among, um, collectivists. His book purports to give an even-handed treatment–purports being the operative word.
February 18, 2010, 11:21 amAllan Walstad says:
There’s a real me buried in that straw man! Something more along the lines of: The libertarian vision is realized when government gets far enough out of the picture so that individual human beings can interact non-coercively on the basis of freely transferable property rights…in other words, when people have liberty. The main role for government, if it has one, is to defend liberty.
February 18, 2010, 11:29 ambyomtov says:
ShelbyC,
I really have to question the good faith of someone who refers to people who disagree with him as “market warshipers”. Does that make you a “government worshiper”?
I understand what you’re saying. I don’t consider everyone who disagrees with me on this sort of thing a “market-worshiper.” I am, believe it or not, a great admirer of markets myself. But I do think economic systems are complex, and that there is room for lots of institutions to have a positive effect. Reasonable people can disagree about the proper role of government. But those who simply want to make snarky comments about the wonders of markets, and the utter incompetence and counterproductivity of government, and who think in slogans, don’t deserve to be taken very seriously.
The people I do consider market-worshipers are those who simply never see any flaws worth addressing in the market. (Yes, I see lots of flaws in government action). The belief that markets absolutely always provide the best possible result is just not defensible, and those who take that position are acting out of what I see as a very rigid ideological belief, supported mostly by unrealistic and oversimplified views of how the world works, and soemtimes not even that.
Go back and read the post. As I interpret it, Zywicki simply makes no allowance for the possibility that unfettered markets might not be best in all situations. He doesn’t even seem to care about the well-known issues of externalities, public goods, information asymmetries, etc. That, to me, is not much different than religious belief.
February 18, 2010, 11:32 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
That is a beautiful theory.
The women who died in the Imperial poulty plant fire, who were locked in from the outside b/c they were taking breaks or whatever – do you think they were paid more for their dangerous work?
February 18, 2010, 11:41 amShelbyC says:
I don’t see anything in the post that says that unfettered markets are the best in all situations, either. I don’t think the post is about whether or not market are better, but what questins we need to ask ourselves to make that decision. The nut of the post seems to be this:
It’s hard to see how, when he says, “But it seems to me that regardless of whether he offers the right solution” that is isn’t “mak[ing]… allowance for the possibility that unfettered markets might not be best in all situations.”
February 18, 2010, 11:48 ambyomtov says:
ShelbyC,
If employers want people to work in a dangerous workplace, they have to pay them more. So why wouldn’t employers stay competitive by making workplaces safer so they don’t have to pay workers a danger premium? Now, maybe things like information distribution and such means that govt intervention would lead to a more efficient outcome, or maybe not, but you haven’t shown either way.
I posted my previous comment before reading this. You provide a good example of not being a market-worshiper.
Why don’t we get to an equilibrium as you describe? Lots of reasons, including the information issue you mention. Another is that the relevant labor market may not be particularly competitive, so that employers have significant power to set conditions. Another way to think about this is that workers generally do not face anything like a continuous range of opportunities to trade risk against wages, so the optimum may not be achievable. An unemployed worker will often be glad to get any job offer, and be faced with what amounts to a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.
The point is, once we think about what’s really going on, as opposed to introductory textbook models, and realize that there usually are no perfect solutions we can start to talk about this stuff. Sometimes it is best to leave matters alone, sometimes to intervene, and the answer is not always clear. That’s my point.
February 18, 2010, 11:51 amAllan Walstad says:
Ironically, Hayek allowed for rather much more government action than strict libertarians would–so much so that his views were something of a scandal to folks like Murray Rothbard. As far as “socially optimal” solutions is concerned, markets are optimal in the only sense that matters if they out-perform collectivism. Hayek showed that the distributed “intelligence” of markets accesses widely dispersed knowledge and brings it to bear in a way that pols and bureaucrats are simply unable to match–including knowledge of individuals’ own goals, priorities, resources, and abilities and the trade-offs they would make. And I guess it’s worth re-emphasizing from time to time that to speak of “markets” in a free society is simply to speak of liberty; the “market” is the options and opportunities for interacting and trading non-coercively with other individuals. To suggest that libertarianism is weakest where it places emphasis on markets is just to claim that libertarianism is weak because it places emphasis on liberty.
February 18, 2010, 11:57 amyankee says:
This is a common libertarian view, but hidden in here is a very robust and contestable theory of property rights. In particular, it assumes that individuals have a preexisting entitlement to property and that any interference with property rights constitutes “coercion.” An alternative view (not one I would endorse) would be the Marxist theory that everything in the world belongs to all of society and that any attempt by individuals to claim that they, and nobody else, has the right to that property is a form of theft.
February 18, 2010, 12:06 pmShelbyC says:
You may be untentionally building a strawman here, chief. I haven’t seen anybody arguing that markets are perfect solutions. The OP doesn’t, as I quoted above, and the OP’s characterization of Hayek’s work doesn’t indicate that Hayek does, either:
This doesn’t strike me as either advocating that the market is a perfect solution, or advocating non-intervention in every case.
February 18, 2010, 12:17 pmyankee says:
The OP doesn’t say that in so many words, but it reads to me like it’s implying that. In any case, I’m still hoping Zywicki will explain how government determining what options I have is “making my decisions for me,” but the market determining what options I have is “choosing for myself.”
February 18, 2010, 12:19 pmAllan Walstad says:
Are you talking about your straw-man assumptions about what libertarians assume, byomtov? What about your own assumptions? I can’t avoid the impression that you and some others here assume that you (or the pols and bureaucrats) can simply observe a problem from the outside and make a rule to fix it, end of story. But there’s much more to the story, just not so obvious. If the rule (together with many others like it, as well as a host of taxes and paperwork requirements) drives up costs and people lose wages and/or jobs, then what? Then do we need minimum wage laws and forced payment into unemployment compensation insurance, and if these actions cause even more unemployment do we blame “capitalism” and find even more scope for government intervention?
If you are not merely a “government worshipper,” then how and where can limits be drawn, not in a world where you are the benevolent all-seeing dictator but in the real world of political and bureaucratic gamesmanship together with rent-seeking and highly compartmentalized knowledge among voters? What Hayek warned about in the Road to Serfdom is that government intervention causes problems that can lead to ever more government intervention until the problems become so intractable that authoritarian rule is seen as the only “answer.” We all have an interest in avoiding that end-game, but I don’t think we can until and unless people understand how blunt a tool government interventionism really is.
February 18, 2010, 12:28 pmShelbyC says:
Well, maybe a dating anology will help. Just because I can’t choose to date Jessica Simpson doesn’t mean that that’s the same as the govt telling me who I have to date, right? Or who I’m allowed to date? Or another anology, just because the Catholic church won’t let me be a priest because I’m married (and not Catholic) doesn’t mean that it’s OK for the government to say who can and can’t be priests, correct?
February 18, 2010, 12:42 pmAllan Walstad says:
Right, and anybody can make whatever normative claims they want. The Marxian, or more broadly collectivist claim that it all belongs to everybody founders immediately on the fact that nature doesn’t give us everything we want in the forms we want them. You know, if cars and houses and cans of soup etc. just appeared out of the blue, wrapped up in a ribbon labeled “for all mankind” then what you’re talking about (but not endorsing) would have a point. But what happens if I plant a field and harvest the grain, or chop down some trees and build a house–am I engaging in theft? If so, how does anything at all come to be used? By majority vote? By government bureaucracy? That’s not even worth talking about anymore; all but a few diehard leftists understand that market economies produce the goods, and the only real question is whether and to what extent markets will be fettered politically. As to how stuff comes into private ownership in the first place, Locke offered a theory about mixing labor and land, but in the end the point is that at least most stuff has to be privately owned if a market economy is to work, and only a market economy will produce the goods.
February 18, 2010, 12:49 pmShelbyC says:
Just to be clear, are you saying that the OP is implying that markets are a perfect solution? I sure didn’t read that in the OP.
February 18, 2010, 12:56 pmStephen Lathrop says:
No. I have lived it. I have the scars on my leg. I have seen the traumatic amputations. Oh yeah, and the asbestos atomized and blown into the air by a pneumatic grinder, to fall like snow across the shop. I could show it all to you, if we could sneak through the gates.
Your notion that employers pay a premium to get workers into a dangerous workplace is nonsense. Employers know that a more desperate worker is an adequate alternative to a premium wage. Some employers may not prefer that, but hey, competition.
Your argument needs checking. Don’t assert that what does happen won’t happen.
February 18, 2010, 1:56 pmShelbyC says:
Don’t care how desperate the worker is, you still have to pay him more to work in a dangerous enverionment than a safe one. And to be clear, when you say “I’ve lived it”, you mean that you’ve seen the stuff you describe happen in an unregulated environment, or a highly regulated environment? Hell, I’ve seen engineers making 6 figures for a company that put alot of emphasis on saftey, doing things where they had almost infinite flexibility in determining how to do that needed doing, get stuff amputated.
February 18, 2010, 2:20 pmMark says:
So what you’re saying is that it’s alright if other people limit your options, or if giant, unaccountable, bureaucratic organizations limits your options. But it is not ok if an organization that you are a part of and have a say in limits your options? In other words, it’s ok for private entites to say what you can and cannot do (because you can leave them?) but not for the government to do the same?
February 18, 2010, 2:34 pmbyomtov says:
Allan Walstad,
ShelbyC,
February 18, 2010, 2:45 pmAllan Walstad says:
Right. I consider myself pretty solidly libertarian, but I see a limited role for government in defending liberty against aggression. Aggression would include fouling the common environment to a serious degree, and the definition of “serious” has to be arrived at and perhaps updated somehow. Nevertheless, among libertarians the anarcho-capitalists see no role for coercive government at all, and I respect but do not accept their arguments quite to that degree, at least not for now. We are a very long way (and moving in the opposite direction) from facing the choice of whether to abolish the last vestiges of coercive government!
That’s just not really an answer, byomtov. Use “our” brains to do what? Pols are using their brains to buy off special interests with highly concentrated benefits and diffuse costs. They use their rhetorical skills to tug at people’s emotions and alarm them into submission to the latest impositions on their wallets and liberty. Bureaucrats are using their brains to build their fiefdoms.
The founders of this country used their brains to devise a federal government that would be strictly limited in scope to a relatively few functions; the state governments might do more, but it is relatively easy for productive people to move to different states when they are sufficiently plundered. The founders, whatever their deficiencies and differences, did recognize that government can easily get way out hand and needed to be restrained institutionally. I’m trying to get you and others to recognize that too, and to see that we are by now very far past any possible point of diminishing net returns on big government.
I suggest there’s something of a similarity here to a stock or real estate bubble, where somehow, once again, people convince themselves that this time prices are going up forever. And then the bust comes. Even if you know it’s a bubble, you don’t know how long it will last. I seem to recall that the Swedes kicked the far-lefties out of power awhile back, so perhaps they have awakened to the fact that something is amiss. I would not want to live in either place. I hope they–but more importantly we–will wake up soon enough. I am also concerned that a more militarized society, as the US is certainly becoming, is more susceptible to the worst.
February 18, 2010, 4:29 pmShelbyC says:
You tell me. Is it OK for Jessica Simpson to tell me I can’t date her, but not OK for the government to tell me and a willing partner that we’re not allowed to date?
February 18, 2010, 4:42 pmShelbyC says:
The tone suggests that markets are perfect solutions, and nothing in the tone recongnizes that there are any arguments in favor of government interventions? I don’t think I am perceiving the same tone you are. I would guess from the tone that Zywicki prefers market solutions, but that’s not the point he’s making in the post. If he were to try and make that point, he might or might not fail to recognize that there were arguments in favor of interventions, but I’m not sure he’s subject to criticism that he failed to recognize counterarguments to a point he isn’t trying to make.
February 18, 2010, 4:52 pmPubliusFL says:
There’s a big difference in how a private entity can limit your options versus how the government can limit your options. A private entity can limit your options with respect to what you can do with that private entity. The government can limit your options period. For example, if you want to buy a widget, a private company can say sorry, it doesn’t make widgets. Or it’s not interested in making widgets with the exact features you want. But you’re then free to move on and see if you can find that perfect widget from another source. The government, on the other hand, can say no widget for you, full stop.
February 18, 2010, 5:07 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Shelby, I don’t think that’s the case. What do you think is making employers pay more for dangerous work? Why do you think they do? Maybe a company like Dow does, but Joe’s Meat Shop and Leather Tanning? When Joe’s is the only employer in town?
February 18, 2010, 6:25 pmbyomtov says:
ShelbyC,
I see your point, but my reading is just different. I look at a sentence like this:
Carbon taxes fundamentally amount to a choice that political decisionmakers believe that you should not drive so much or live in such a large house.
and conclude that the author simply sees no possible reason why anyone might think carbon taxes are a good idea.
I read:
And isn’t this in the end what all the fuss is about health care, cap and trade, financial regulation, and even deficit spending? Although dressed up as questions of economics, as The Road to Serfdom makes clear, these are really questions of freedom and individual liberty.
and I conclude that the author sees financial regulation, for example, as being simply an infringement on personal liberty, rather than (arguably, at least, and definitely in my opinion) a necessary and useful part of a large modern economy. I conclude that he does not, in fact, acknowledge the arguments for financial regulation.
Your reading differs – fine. It’s quite possible that I am influenced by my dislike of what I consider doctrinaire libertarianism and so don’t give Zywicki enough credit. I don’t think so, but then I wouldn’t.
Good luck with Jessica.
February 18, 2010, 6:53 pmAllan Walstad says:
Actually, Laura, it might be the other way around. The government might be preventing employers from paying less for less dangerous work, through minimum wage laws, unemployment comp and other taxes and paperwork requirements that reduce the net productivity of low-skill, low-education persons to less than zero. Why should Joe’s be the only employer in town? Why aren’t lots of employers opening businesses if there are willing workers with few other options? Could it be again because of the high hurdles against entrepreneurship placed by government meddling? Even George McGovern came to understand this problem when he opened a hotel after retiring from the Senate.
But again, all this is nearly totally superfluous. A offers B a certain job with certain working conditions for a certain salary, and B agrees. On what basis do you enter the picture, either on your own or through political mechanisms, to deny these people the right to make that agreement? If you want to open a business and offer better terms, go ahead. Otherwise, I think it’s fair to ask you to mind your own business.
February 18, 2010, 8:20 pmStephen Lathrop says:
On the basis of my:
1. knowledge;
2. or hope;
3. or coercive desire
that A not be the sort of person who wishes to put the life or health of B in unreasonable jeopardy. In deference to A, I presume if he does so it is because his unhappy choices are dictated by the market, not because he willfully tolerates, let alone wishes to exploit, harm to B.
In short, I justify intervention on the basis that A’s liberty to make a better deal for B, which in any moral universe A can be presumed to prefer, is unreasonably constrained without intervention. However, I also justify intervention on the basis that if A actually does prefer to put B in jeopardy, against morality, then A deserves whatever coercion comes his way.
February 18, 2010, 9:09 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Allan, do you think it’s bad that the owner of that poultry plant I mentioned actually did jail time, b/c he created a safety violation by keeping that door locked and those women burned to death? Or was this an agreement between employer and employees, and the government should have butted out? The women knew the door was locked, and they didn’t like it, but they didn’t have a choice if they were to work there. But per you, that was not the government’s problem. So there should have been no punishment, right?
February 18, 2010, 9:37 pmAllan Walstad says:
Wow, now there’s a plateful of tripe. “Dictated by the market” is not “dictated” at all, it is just (as Shelby has pointed out) the non-coercive options consistent with others’ exercise of their own right to liberty. Moreover, you ignore that government intervention itself reduces the range of choices that people might find relatively “happy” (regardless of whether you in your presumed wisdom would choose otherwise for them)–in which sense, yes, A’s liberty to make a better deal with B is indeed limited (as is B’s liberty to deal with A), not by the market, but by coercive meddling. Again, it comes down to this: A and B agree that A will pay B a certain salary to work under certain conditions, and you presume to meddle in their choices that have nothing to do with you, do not involve aggression against you or anyone else. Nor does it amount to A’s “putting” B’s life or health in jeopardy; it is an agreement between A and B. Nor is it clear why you should dictate to A and B what is “reasonable.”
Without an exponentially better argument than you’ve mustered here, your position is pure presumptuousness.
February 18, 2010, 9:40 pmRicardo says:
It isn’t though. Visit a construction site in India (or at least Delhi as of a few years ago) and count how many hardhats and steel-toed boots you see. Or examine the scaffolding and ask yourself whether you would entrust your life to it.
Workers typically wear flip-flops, are dressed in rags, have no hardhats and climb on bamboo scaffolding that looks like it will collapse at any minute (and does, in fact, sometimes do so). The exception to this rule is the construction of the Delhi Metro, which is being built with World Bank money so there are strings attached as to how they can treat the workers.
February 18, 2010, 9:46 pmStephen Lathrop says:
I do start with the presumption that moral people prefer to make moral choices. If market conditions make that preference a practical impossibility when it need not be, then I don’t think it is a stretch to say the market is dictating, and dictating for the worse.
One thing behind this disagreement seems to be a tendency on the libertarian side to model market transactions consisting of precisely two parties, and no more. I simply wonder where the context for those two-party agreements comes from, if not from other parties and other transactions which also contribute to the market.
I don’t think it is unreasonable to notice that those other transactions can have coercive power when the two parties bargain. Usually, an employer can’t afford to offer a better deal to workers than does his most efficient (3rd or 4th or 5th party) direct competitor. Like it or not, that is also the market at work, and those choices do have something to do with me, because they constrain the choices I can have. Your two-party reasoning seems insufficient. I’m content to justify my desire to intervene on the basis of my self-interest, especially when it is my life and health that are on the line.
I insist that 2 parties in a primary transaction must have the liberty to make moral choices unconstrained by market coercion communicated from immoral transactions concluded elsewhere. Nothing is going to convince me that enslaved child labor in Asia should set the standard for workplace safety (or wages) in the United States. But the free market can arrange that for you, and without intervention it probably will.
You also write, “Without an exponentially better argument than you’ve mustered here, your position is pure presumptuousness.” Well, maybe not pure presumptuousness, maybe presumptuousness tempered by lived experience. With regard to severely dangerous work environments, can you muster better? Because if you haven’t been there, you probably don’t imagine the laughter and contempt your remarks would draw from the guys under the hardhats. Not that that proves anything, of course. But it does suggest you may struggle to be as persuasive as you might prefer.
With regard to your various cautions about setbacks and unintended consequences which can arise from market interventions I think you make better and more interesting points.
February 18, 2010, 11:00 pmShelbyC says:
And you appear to be conjecturing that this is a sub-optimal arrangement. It may or may not be. Laws requiring steel toe boots may prevent injury, but they may have lots of other effects as well. They may raise the price of labor so that folks go jobless and starve, or turn to more dangerous, less regulated jobs. They may raise the price of construction, so that fewer buildings are built and more people go homeless. Folks may be forced to spend money on steel toe boots that they would otherwise spend on healthcare for their families. Without evidence of what would happen if folks were required to wear steel-toe boots and spend money on other safety measures, any conjecture on whether or not these measure improve matters or make them worse is simply that, conjecture.
February 19, 2010, 10:44 amAllan Walstad says:
“Moral” according to your judgment from the outside, whereby you presume to override the agreed-upon transactions of others who are not committing aggression against you or anyone else.
What a bizarre notion of “coercion.” All you are doing is repeating your previous invalid argument, this time on stilts. Now you think that because C and D agree on a wage and working conditions, and E might choose to buy from C rather than A, that all those other people minding their own business are somehow exerting “coercion” against A and B?? It’s just a more convoluted version of what Shelby debunked much earlier, to wit: Carol marries Bob, so Alice marries Joe because she can’t have Bob, so now Ted can’t have Alice–and that means Bob & Carol forced Ted to be mistreated by Alice? Complete, utter nonsense.
Ah, yes. “Liberty = coercion.” Where have we seen and heard this kind of doublespeak before?
February 19, 2010, 1:42 pmStephen Lathrop says:
I say X is coercion. We disagree. You say X is liberty.
Then you say I call liberty coercion. Perhaps you can see the difficulty with that? Especially when you add quotation marks?
February 19, 2010, 9:13 pmStephen Lathrop says:
After thinking it over, it seems like this deserves mention.
Radicalism is okay, particularly intellectual radicalism. However the libertarians on this thread don’t seem to have a clue how to practice radicalism constructively.
Suppose you hold a view in which you find yourself in the extreme minority, 1000-to-1 territory. You want to convince others that you are nevertheless correct. Are you likely to prevail by pretending that your presumed correctness also makes your view normative?
The notion that the market for labor often acts coercively may be wrong, but it isn’t outlandish. Giant chapters of history—the labor movement, Marxism, communist revolutions, economic progressivism—have been driven by people who judged that the labor market was too often coercive.
I am here schooled to the contrary, that what seemed coercive to me and millions of others is merely “liberty”—the liberty of employers and employees to contract for the employee to go, uncoerced mind you, to toil in a deadly environment regulated solely by the employer.
It is peculiar to the point of provoking to debate this with someone who not only calls the clear majority view “bizarre,” but seems to believe that saying it makes it so. That is a profound failure of social understanding—potentially crippling to any hope for success in what is, after all, a program for social reform.
If libertarians want to make any headway they are going to have to put their beloved theorizing aside for a bit and come to grips with two problems: (1) most people who think about libertarians at all think they are crackpots; and, (2) that large majority bases its opinions on a giant amount of first-hand practical experience that can’t simply be shouted down or dissolved in an elixir of theory.
Serious libertarians must come to grips with what people actually experience. Many people put their lives on the line every day when they go to work. Nothing theoretical is going to make them believe that it would be a good idea to take the guards off the machinery (making them more productive), and thus give them better lives after the resulting company profit increase works its way into their paychecks.
Are libertarians content simply to be hobbyists?
February 20, 2010, 9:18 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Thanks, Stephen.
There’s a lot the libertarian movement could do that would suit me just fine, but it has to lose, as you say, the crackpot status. I have twice mentioned the Imperial poultry plant fire. Those employees were human beings, as you and I are. They were less educated, less sophisticated, possibly (although not necessarily) less intelligent, but they were people and not Lego pieces that populate the landscape for us real folks. Yet it is still put forth that employers must pay employees more for dangerous work. All of the theorizing in the world won’t erase the fact that there are employers who put their employees’ very lives at risk, to save a dime, and that those employees may have a choice between working for these people, and starving.
You can’t theorize that away.
Sometimes I think libertarians are some of the most elitist people out there. Life is good if you’re smart, educated, attractive, connected, and big enough to knock down people who threaten you. For everyone else, well, sucks to be us.
February 20, 2010, 10:21 am