Moneyweek- The Rise Of The Robots.

[wonderpup]

no because the man would die without water. The man with water has done nothing to change this fact. He is not threatening death because death will happen anyway if the man with water does nothing. The man with water has not introduced anything new to mean that the dying man faces the prospect of death.

So the man with the water has no moral responsiblitly to save the dying man- as a result his presence in the desert has a zero weighted moral impact on the man's death.

And this total abscence of moral responsiblity for acting to save the dying man is why his threat to leave him to die cannot be defined as a threat- because he has no obligation whatsoever to save him in the first place?

Try another way.

Giving the water away would not be coercive.

Charging £1 for a bottle would also not be coercive.

At what point does any price become coercive? it is a question of degree rather than an absolute.

Which is to say that coercion can be a normal aspect of free market. So the 'free' in free market cannot mean 'free of coercion'.

Holding a dying man to ransom before you help him is clearly not a nice thing to do, but it isn't coercive per se. It is simply the result of a massive asymmetry in market power. In this case between a dying man and a monopolistic means of survival.

To deploy massive assymetric power to achive an outcome in your favour is coercion. What else could it be? Certainly it's hard to take seriously the idea the man dying of thirst is acting from a postion of total freedom of choice.

yes it does. A free market is the economic solution for someone who thinks that personal freedom and ownership are important natural rights. I have property in myself, property is sacred and anybody who damages that property is immoral. what follows is that provided I do not damage anyone else - I am free to do as I please.

This is where I see a big problem. You talk here of having natural rights- yet fail to appreciate that one man's right is another man's obligation. If you have a right own property for example, this means I have an obligation not to take it from you.

Which is fine except that you also want to say that if you come across me dying in the desert you have no obligation to me at all.

Can you explain to me why I should uphold my obligation not to take your property when you accept no obligation to save me from a slow and agonising death?

Either human beings have a moral obligation toward each other, or they do not. You seem to want to have it both ways.

This is functionally a free market situation that you describe. A man is dying and someone comes along and offers to prevent him from dying but demands a price. The size of the price is irrelevant to whether this is a free market transaction or not. Someone doing that isn't very nice to be sure, but they are not using "coercion" as in a restriction of freedom or inflicting damage unless a trade is made.

So it's ok to threaten to let me die in a desert unless I meet your price- but not ok if I nick your lawnmower? Again I must ask- if you have no obligation to save me from certain death- why am I obliged to respect you property rights?

It should be pointed out that the trade here is in the dying man's interest. Possessions can be replaced, reincarnation s difficult to say the least.

The trade is also coercive- the two are not mutually exclusive.

The distinction arises due to the threat of force. You may say to a perfectly healthy and otherwise prosperous, but weak person. "give me your stuff or I will beat you up" then you are offering nothing in return that they do not already have. In other words you are both generating the threat and offering the "solution" to it. There is no trade and no person would voluntarily enter into that contract.

But why should I respect this rule? If force gets me what I want then why not use it? We have already established that the free markert does not recognise any moral responsibilty to exist between particiapnts. And in the absence of any moral reason not to deploy violence- why would I not do so if it served my purpose?

All parties in any trade attempt to exploit the other in order to gain maximum advantage. This is true in all trading not just in your example. It only stands out because of the large asymmetry in power. In a dynamic market situation one would expect more water sellers to arrive to capitalize on the dying man's thirst and then competition between them to drive down the price. In this particular case though I doubt there is time for that to happen.

So the free market is far from being free of coercion- the aim of the game is to gain maximum bargaining power to use as leverage against others in an effort to secure the best outcome. The more bargaining power you have, the more coercive you can be.

Deciding that the threat of physical force is the one thing that is outlawed is to some extent arbitrary, but it is at the very basis of a moral code of liberty and freedom. Physically forcing others to do things for you is wrong, but not having any good options is not the same as being forced.

Here is the problem- you can claim the existence of a rule against violent threats but can you explain to me why I should obey it?

I don't think you can. You might say that violent threats are immoral- but then so is leaving a man to die in a desert. The same logic that you employ to justify that can be applied to the use of violent threats. If- as you claim- there is no moral reason why I can't leave to you die in a desert then there is no moral reason why I can't threaten you with violence.

So morality cannot help us here- we have abolished it. So what does that leave us?

We have the utilitarian argument that the use of violent threats is a bad choice of strategy- which could be true in some cases- but this does not rule out the use of that strategy in a free market- it just marks it out as a poor strategy in some cases.

So if there is no moral reason not use violence and no absolute utilitarian reason not to use violence we can see that the use of violent threats is just another way to do business in a true free market. And in fact this is exactly correct- because what a free market is is not a market free of coercion- it's a market free of moral constraints.

The problem with free market advocates is that they do not have the courage of their convictions and fail to fully develop their ideas. A true free market would not contain an arbitrary rule against the use of violent threats- because it would recognise that such a rule is itself a limit on freedom.

In a true free market violent threats would be simply one possible strategy amongst others that are available- to be used if the need arose.

By trying to somehow graft your moral prohibition against violence onto your amoral model of liberty you end up with a dysfunctional hybrid that creates a crippled version of the total freedom you claim to advocate.

A truly libertarian free market would not rely on morality or rules to police it's members- it would leave that function to the free market itself.

This is why a 'rule' against violent threats is an anti free market measure.

[easy2012]

no because the man would die without water. The man with water has done nothing to change this fact. He is not threatening death because death will happen anyway if the man with water does nothing. The man with water has not introduced anything new to mean that the dying man faces the prospect of death.

Try another way.

Giving the water away would not be coercive.

Charging £1 for a bottle would also not be coercive.

At what point does any price become coercive? it is a question of degree rather than an absolute.

The premise of an anarchist society is that everyone will behave reasonably... Is exploiting such a vulnerability still count as being reasonable ?

By offering an exploitative trade, the waterman actively creates an uncertainty, or rather a dilemma. When there was one choice, there was no choice, now he creates a dilemma. He then want to sell the water that he did not manufacturer (a natural resources exploited.) Is that no coersive? Or put this in another way, if there is limited water source in the desert, and I extracted all of the limited water for my own and family use (probably last for a year worth) and then offer to 'free trade' them to the other desert men for an extortionate price - and others are not allowed to attack me. Is that coercive ?

Some universal norm and morals is required to judge if a trade is free..

[Traktion]

The premise of an anarchist society is that everyone will behave reasonably... Is exploiting such a vulnerability still count as being reasonable ?

I would alter that slightly: The premise of an anarchist society is that it is advantages for every individual to behave reasonably.

Expecting everyone will behave reasonably is a step too far, IMO.

Additionally, if it is advantageous to behave reasonably, what is reasonable doesn't necessarily need defining - in other words, what is advantageous, is what will become reasonable.

While gaining a house may represent a short term gain in exchange for giving water to a thirsty man, in the long term, you may be treated like a social leper. After all taking advantage of the suffering of others isn't a very social thing to do.

By offering an exploitative trade, the waterman actively creates an uncertainty, or rather a dilemma. When there was one choice, there was no choice, now he creates a dilemma. He then want to sell the water that he did not manufacturer (a natural resources exploited.) Is that no coersive? Or put this in another way, if there is limited water source in the desert, and I extracted all of the limited water for my own and family use (probably last for a year worth) and then offer to 'free trade' them to the other desert men for an extortionate price - and others are not allowed to attack me. Is that coercive ?

Some universal norm and morals is required to judge if a trade is free..

You could certainly argue the case that a limited water source has been dominated, which is a coercive act (ie. putting a line around the lake and saying 'this is mine and I'll attack you if you disagree'). However, you're adding a narrative beyond the original story and the source of the water isn't considered (ie. the man came about the water and presumably paid for it/collected it and transported it). This is similar to adding context about how the desert man got into his predicament too.

I have started from the assertion that the desert man popped into existence in the desert and the water man, who had a claim of ownership on the water, popped into existence near by. Ofc, we can go in any direction outside of that, but we are then considering parameters external to the trade between the two men, which is the focus of the question - is the water trader withholding his water, coercing the desert man into making the trade (ie. is it a free trade) or not.

We have to frame all of these sort of debates, as otherwise it is impossible to break the problems down into their component parts.

Edited September 25, 2012 by Traktion

[Ulfar]

I may have missed it somewhere but how can you have a free market while having land ownership ?

[wonderpup]

Some universal norm and morals is required to judge if a trade is free..

There can be no morals in a free trade- because the 'free' in free trade means 'free of moral obligations.'

What the advocates of free trade claim is that a stable and civilised society will spontaneously arise as an emergent property of the system itself- as those involved adapt their behaviour to achieve the best outcome for themselves- the 'invisible hand' model applied to society as whole.

If you try to introduce morals into this model things start to break- for example- why would it be morally acceptable to leave a man to die in a desert but not morally acceptable to threaten to punch that same man on the nose? In moral terms this is pure nonsense.

Or why would it morally acceptable to sell grain for cattle feed instead of selling it to starving children? This would be very hard to justify in a moral context.

So we can see that- In order to be truly free- a free market must be a morality free zone in which pure self interest alone is the single determinant of behaviour.

This is why those free market advocates who attempt to introduce a moral rule against violence are caught in a self contradiction- because moral rules imply obligations to others that are incompatible with pure self interest. For example- if I find myself in a situation in which a violent response is in my self interest but am bound by a moral rule against violence I am then forced to act in a way that is not in my self interest in order to obey the rule and this is an anti free market outcome.

So any attempt to constrain violent behaviour in a free market by trying to graft on moral prohibitions is an anti free market measure that limits the freedom of the self interested individual to pursue that self interest to it's fullest extent.

The notion that a free market is free of coercion is simply incorrect- coercion is clearly commonplace in a system where huge differences in bargaining power often allow the strong to dictate terms to the weak.

A free market is more correctly understood as a system that is free of moral obligations to the other- a system in which self interest is the only consideration- a self interest that is undiluted by moral obligations or prohibitions of any kind.

What's interesting is how often free market advocates recoil from this reality- and try to sneak some kind of moral limits in through the back door- instead of being honest enough to say boldly that in free market you can indeed punch a man in the nose- but we don't think that's the best way to get what you want.

So violence is not therefore a contradiction of a free market- it's just a poor way to operate within one.

Edited September 25, 2012 by wonderpup

[LJAR]

So the man with the water has no moral responsiblitly to save the dying man- as a result his presence in the desert has a zero weighted moral impact on the man's death.

And this total abscence of moral responsiblity for acting to save the dying man is why his threat to leave him to die cannot be defined as a threat- because he has no obligation whatsoever to save him in the first place?

it has zero factual impact on his death. It has enormous moral impact. The water seller is a monster, but he is not a thief.

of course he has a moral obligation to his fellow man. But the existence of that obligation has no bearing on whether his offer of "all your assets" is a free market offer or not.

Which is to say that coercion can be a normal aspect of free market. So the 'free' in free market cannot mean 'free of coercion'.

To deploy massive assymetric power to achive an outcome in your favour is coercion. What else could it be? Certainly it's hard to take seriously the idea the man dying of thirst is acting from a postion of total freedom of choice.

again we understand the term coercion differently, the man can always choose to die therefore he is not "coerced" he is merely being taken advantage of by someone who is pretty unpleasant.

freedom of choice is no guarantee that you will like your choices, all it means is that nobody will choose for you.

This is where I see a big problem. You talk here of having natural rights- yet fail to appreciate that one man's right is another man's obligation. If you have a right own property for example, this means I have an obligation not to take it from you.

Which is fine except that you also want to say that if you come across me dying in the desert you have no obligation to me at all.

Can you explain to me why I should uphold my obligation not to take your property when you accept no obligation to save me from a slow and agonising death?

Either human beings have a moral obligation toward each other, or they do not. You seem to want to have it both ways.

humans do have an obligation to each other, however you do not get to define what my obligation is to a third person, nor do you have any right to tell me how I must carry out that obligation nor make me pay for your moral code.

You may ostracise me if you like, but stealing my property to assuage your own sense of morality is not acceptable. Particularly since people have different moral codes (not necessarily in this case)

So it's ok to threaten to let me die in a desert unless I meet your price- but not ok if I nick your lawnmower? Again I must ask- if you have no obligation to save me from certain death- why am I obliged to respect you property rights?

There is no threat - there is simply an offer of a good for a price. the man can always elect to be left alone. "let you die" is not morally equivalent to "kill"

I would think very little of someone who offered the "all your stuff or you can die" choice. but that does not give me the right to steal their water and give it to the dying man. If I want to give the dying man water, I need to buy it first.

But why should I respect this rule? If force gets me what I want then why not use it? We have already established that the free markert does not recognise any moral responsibilty to exist between particiapnts. And in the absence of any moral reason not to deploy violence- why would I not do so if it served my purpose?

The market does acknowledge moral responsibility - because a market is the effect of decisions made by people and people are moral beings their moral codes (all different) are built into the decisions they make and so they are built into the market. What is the whole "fair trade" movement if not an attempt to put a price on morality. "pay more and help out" that is the premise

So the free market is far from being free of coercion- the aim of the game is to gain maximum bargaining power to use as leverage against others in an effort to secure the best outcome. The more bargaining power you have, the more coercive you can be.

we disagree on the meaning of coercion. Using an advantage is not coercive. Using the threat of physical harm to exact a rent is coercive.

A free market does not guarantee that you will e bargaining on equal terms with everybody, it only guarantees that you are free to accept or to walk away from any deal you are offered. Nobody can force you to sign a contract against your will. There is guarantee that the contract will be "fair" you must look out for yourself to that extent.

Here is the problem- you can claim the existence of a rule against violent threats but can you explain to me why I should obey it?

this is the basis of the rule of law: "Do as the code says or the one entity allowed to use force will use it against you". In so much as is possible, the law should correspond to the moral code of the people it covers. Things that are illegal should also be immoral, because if moral things are illegal - then the law becomes something without force and it will not be obeyed.

I don't think you can. You might say that violent threats are immoral- but then so is leaving a man to die in a desert. The same logic that you employ to justify that can be applied to the use of violent threats. If- as you claim- there is no moral reason why I can't leave to you die in a desert then there is no moral reason why I can't threaten you with violence.

I didn't claim it was moral to leave someone lying in the desert to die, merely that it wasn't coercive. leaving someone to die would be a monstrous thing to do.

(I ran out of my allowance of quoteable blocks)

Well markets require morals insomuch as they require the rule of law - as does the law so I think your whole last argument falls apart there, but:

I desire maximum freedom for the largest number of people - banning violence is a means to that end. It is a constraint that must be accepted since man is not perfect and the observed result of allowing violence is despotism, repression and loss of freedom for most people.

A market with violence is less free than a market without it - hence the ban.

Edited September 25, 2012 by LJAR

[LJAR]

If the waterman is not there / does nothing, then obviously nothing is done. By the time he makes the extortionate offer, he is making a coercive offer. If he offers that at merely an expensive price, then he is not acting coercively.

No,

behaviour is either coercive or it is not, there is no room for you to decide what price is coercive. It is not a question of degree. The water seller is behaving in an immoral and monstrous way - but that is not coercive. This is a distinction that wonderpup seems to find very hard to understand.

Coercion is something very specific.

That decision on what price is acceptable is only to be made by the purchaser or the seller. It is not something that a third party is entitled to decide.

[Traktion]

I may have missed it somewhere but how can you have a free market while having land ownership ?

The short answer is, no. All land ownership requires someone drawing a line around a location, then threatening people who cross it.

However, if you have a mechanism to compensate those displaced by your monopolisation of a location, it can approach free market conditions. That is, you compensate people for threatening them.

As locations are naturally occurring, limited in supply, but often require monopolisation to be useful, compromise has to be sought, IMO.

Note that land exists at a location and can be improved upon, mixed with your labour etc. These aspects of land and there association with locations needs to be considered too.

[DungBeetle]

The limit to this is the point where demand failure collapses the economy.

Every political pundit under the sun bleats on endlessly about the need to be competitive- but rarely mentions the fact that what we are all competing for is each others wages in the form of spending power.

Automating production is a technical challenge- automating consumption is an oxymoron.

Perhaps wages will be replaced by a reward for intelligence system, demand will still exist as long as the product is available to buy and a form of fiat exists for us to buy with.

[hankdd]

If we got rid of the states and their intellectual property interventions, couldn't I just use my "universal assembler" to make and give universal assemblers to everyone else? It would only need one altruistic soul like me, and we'd have a universal anarchic cornucopia.

3D printers are becoming cheaper and higher res. People can download a design, make their own or scan with App and manufacture at home

Kids toys, for instance, won't be made in China much longer?

Be afraid though as someone in US printed an assault rifle!

Edited September 25, 2012 by hankdd

[easy2012]

No,

behaviour is either coercive or it is not, there is no room for you to decide what price is coercive. It is not a question of degree. The water seller is behaving in an immoral and monstrous way - but that is not coercive. This is a distinction that wonderpup seems to find very hard to understand.

Coercion is something very specific.

That decision on what price is acceptable is only to be made by the purchaser or the seller. It is not something that a third party is entitled to decide.

I disagree. If one felt coerced, then it is coercive. Coercion in many cases is a state of mind that prevent the person from having unencumbered decision about a free exchange. A true free trade is one that both parties work away happy.

But let's agree to disagree.

[LJAR]

I disagree. If one felt coerced, then it is coercive. Coercion in many cases is a state of mind that prevent the person from having unencumbered decision about a free exchange. A true free trade is one that both parties work away happy.

But let's agree to disagree.

A free trade is indeed one where both parties agree to trade. You may feel that you got a bad deal, but if you got the best deal available you dont have much cause for complaint other than the spoiled child argument of "I wanted more". You could always have walked away and not exchanged.

the pursuit of happiness is a right. Attainment of happiness is down to the individual.

[easy2012]

You could always have walked away and not trade.

And suffer the consequences.

There are approximately non coercive trade and coercive trades.

Another example is owner manager passing someone off promotion if he/she does not comply with his/her "special request" is coercive, even if the boss has done nothing, the employee would have been exactly where he/she is. Employment tribunal would agree this is coercive.

I am afraid we just have to disagree as to what constitute coercive. Coercions go much further than just fists.

Edited September 26, 2012 by easy2012

[wonderpup]

it has zero factual impact on his death. It has enormous moral impact. The water seller is a monster, but he is not a thief.

of course he has a moral obligation to his fellow man. But the existence of that obligation has no bearing on whether his offer of "all your assets" is a free market offer or not.

If he has a moral obligation to not let the man die if he can prevent it- he cannot then threaten to leave him to die without violating this moral obligation. Thus the existence of this obligation makes his offer impossible-unless in a free market moral issues have no bearing- which is what I said in the first place.

If- as you say- moral obligations have no bearing on free market transactions then I am correct in claiming that the free market is an amoral system.

again we understand the term coercion differently, the man can always choose to die therefore he is not "coerced" he is merely being taken advantage of by someone who is pretty unpleasant.

freedom of choice is no guarantee that you will like your choices, all it means is that nobody will choose for you.

The target of a violent threat can also choose to take the beating- so this does not resolve the question of why the threat to let the man die in the desert offers a 'free' choice- while the threat to beat someone up is not considered to offer a 'free' choice. Both threats are as coercive as each other- but both leave open the possibility of not agreeing to comply.

humans do have an obligation to each other, however you do not get to define what my obligation is to a third person, nor do you have any right to tell me how I must carry out that obligation nor make me pay for your moral code.

You may ostracise me if you like, but stealing my property to assuage your own sense of morality is not acceptable. Particularly since people have different moral codes (not necessarily in this case)

Can a person acting under a moral obligation be defined as making a free choice? You are advocating coercion here. You want to impose your morals onto me. And what will you do if I refuse to be coerced in this way-beat me up?

There is no threat - there is simply an offer of a good for a price. the man can always elect to be left alone. "let you die" is not morally equivalent to "kill"

I would think very little of someone who offered the "all your stuff or you can die" choice. but that does not give me the right to steal their water and give it to the dying man. If I want to give the dying man water, I need to buy it first.

The target of a violent threat can also elect to be left alone- by paying the price on offer. Freedom of choice has not been removed.

In an amoral market violence is just another way to gain bargaining advantage. You talk of 'rights' again here- but rights create obligations and obligations are coercive in that they may compel people to act in ways contrary to their own self interest.

So 'rights' are an anti free market measure.

The market does acknowledge moral responsibility - because a market is the effect of decisions made by people and people are moral beings their moral codes (all different) are built into the decisions they make and so they are built into the market. What is the whole "fair trade" movement if not an attempt to put a price on morality. "pay more and help out" that is the premise

This is incorrect. In a true free market moral obligations cannot exist since they represent a coercive restraint on freedom of trade. For example if I wish to sell my grain to a beef producer and not to third world children I can do so- even if this means those children starve. If you were to interfere and force me to sell to the children this would violate the basic priciples of free trade.

So what free trade is is trade free of moral constraints.

we disagree on the meaning of coercion. Using an advantage is not coercive. Using the threat of physical harm to exact a rent is coercive.

A free market does not guarantee that you will e bargaining on equal terms with everybody, it only guarantees that you are free to accept or to walk away from any deal you are offered. Nobody can force you to sign a contract against your will. There is guarantee that the contract will be "fair" you must look out for yourself to that extent.

If I have a physical advantage over you and use it to gain your agreement via a threat of violence this is not coercion because you agreed. You could have chosen not to agree- in exactly the same way the man in the desert could have chosen not to agree.

This guarantee you talk about is based on what exactly-morality? But moral rules are a form of coercion- which in a free market is not acceptable-unless-of course- I agree to be bound by them.

You want to protect freedom by limiting freedom- this does not work.

Well markets require morals insomuch as they require the rule of law - as does the law so I think your whole last argument falls apart there, but:

I desire maximum freedom for the largest number of people - banning violence is a means to that end. It is a constraint that must be accepted since man is not perfect and the observed result of allowing violence is despotism, repression and loss of freedom for most people.

A market with violence is less free than a market without it - hence the ban.

The rule of law itself is backed up by violence- so you would eliminate violence with violence?

A true free market society would not employ policemen empowered to commit violence- it would leave the power of violence in the hands of the individuals themselves and trust to the free market to regulate it's use.

This is why violence must be an integral part of a free market- any attempt to limit it with moral injunctions leads inevitably to the creation of enforcers who are themselves empowered to commit violence.

[wonderpup]

Perhaps wages will be replaced by a reward for intelligence system, demand will still exist as long as the product is available to buy and a form of fiat exists for us to buy with.

We could as a society choose to reward all manner of things- but not in system where the winners take all. The automation of work is a basic threat to the foundations of our societies because they are based on the idea that productivity will create spending power.

But once capital becomes labour in the form of automation that idea no longer applies- so we end up with a broken paradigm.

[LJAR]

If he has a moral obligation to not let the man die if he can prevent it- he cannot then threaten to leave him to die without violating this moral obligation. Thus the existence of this obligation makes his offer impossible-unless in a free market moral issues have no bearing- which is what I said in the first place.

If - as you say - moral obligations have no bearing on free market transactions then I am correct in claiming that the free market is an amoral system.

No the morals are only enforceable by you on yourself. You are bound by your own moral code and nobody else's.

You can have a free market with amoral operators - this does not change the fact that people have morals and they can also act in a free market.

A system itself cannot have morals an abstract concept is incapable of being moral or immoral in the same way that a rock is incapable.

The target of a violent threat can also choose to take the beating- so this does not resolve the question of why the threat to let the man die in the desert offers a 'free' choice- while the threat to beat someone up is not considered to offer a 'free' choice. Both threats are as coercive as each other- but both leave open the possibility of not agreeing to comply.

Man A dying in desert has no choices - he must die of thirst.

Next someone arrives and offers him a trade. He can pay for water.

the dying man is free to take that choice or not. "free" since he is not having his arm twisted in either direction. He had no choice before and now he has one. His situation has improved since the option of not dying is now available to him.

He has one choice with negative results (die) and one choice with positive results (live for a price).

All that is called into question is how much he values his own life - not a pleasant calculation to have to make.

The target of a violent threat can also elect to be left alone- by paying the price on offer. Freedom of choice has not been removed.

Man B is minding his own business. Currently being left alone and has no trades to make.

Thug comes along and offers choice: "pay or get beaten"

This is not a trade - the thug is offering nothing in return for payment that Man B did not already have. He is also threatening violence if man B doesn't make the choice that the thug wants. This is coercion. Man B is now worse off than he was before and he does not have the choice of being left alone without paying for it

All of his choices lead to negative results, lose money or get beaten.

Clear?

BTW the evidence from real life is that having law enforcement and the rule of law does actually increase freedom for the vast majority of people.

[LJAR]

Fundamentally a free market means only one thing:

In any transaction I am free to walk away from the deal offered and that choice will have no consequences for me as a result of direct action from any other party.

If that condition is satisfied, you are acting in a predominantly free market.

[wonderpup]

No the morals are only enforceable by you on yourself. You are bound by your own moral code and nobody else's.

You can have a free market with amoral operators - this does not change the fact that people have morals and they can also act in a free market.

A system itself cannot have morals an abstract concept is incapable of being moral or immoral in the same way that a rock is incapable.

Exactly my point- a free market cannot incorporate morals- which would include any moral prohibition on violence.

Man A dying in desert has no choices - he must die of thirst.

Next someone arrives and offers him a trade. He can pay for water.

the dying man is free to take that choice or not. "free" since he is not having his arm twisted in either direction. He had no choice before and now he has one. His situation has improved since the option of not dying is now available to him.

He has one choice with negative results (die) and one choice with positive results (live for a price).

All that is called into question is how much he values his own life - not a pleasant calculation to have to make.

This only works if the man making the offer is not morally obliged to save him- which you claim he is not. This being so why am I morally obliged not to use violence?

You cannot discard moral behaviour on the one hand and demand it on the other. If it's ok for me to let you die in the desert- even if I could prevent this- then it's also ok for me to punch you on the nose.

You say the free market is amoral- fine.In that case I will make you the following offer- give me all you have or I will beat you up. Is this immoral-yes. Does the market require moral behaviour? No. You can choose to either accept or reject my offer- what you cannot do is inject moral prohibitions against violence into an amoral system.

Man B is minding his own business. Currently being left alone and has no trades to make.

Thug comes along and offers choice: "pay or get beaten"

This is not a trade - the thug is offering nothing in return for payment that Man B did not already have. He is also threatening violence if man B doesn't make the choice that the thug wants. This is coercion. Man B is now worse off than he was before and he does not have the choice of being left alone without paying for it

All of his choices lead to negative results, lose money or get beaten.

Clear?

This is not correct- what the the thug offers in return is freedom from attack. Yes this is extremely coercive- but the presence of coercion does not invalidate a free market exchange. If your boss demands that you take a pay cut or lose your job this is coercion- but still qualifies as a free market transaction. Coercion is simply the use of bargaining power- a normal part of the free market.

So a violent threat is just another use of bargaining power. You would have no objection to a clever man using his intellect to gain a bargaining advantage over a stupid man- yet object to a stronger man using his strength to gain a bargaining advantage over a weaker one.

My point is simply this: In an amoral competitve system a prohibition against the use of violence as a bargaining tool is both arbitrary and in fact anti free market since it limits the freedom of the individual to pursue his self interest to it's fullest extent.

So you want to place a limit on violent behaviour via some arbitrary rule- a rule which is to be enforced by who exactly? A paramilitary force who will themselves be empowered to commit violence?

And you call this arrangment a free market? No- in a free market there would be no such arbitrary rules.

If we were operating here in the realm of moral behviors then we could argue that it's morally unacceptable to use violence against another person- and that would be a good argument to make- one I could agree with.

But in a free market there are no such moral rules- this is why it's ok to leave a man to die in desert- morality has no bearing. This being so it has no bearing on the use of violence either.

BTW the evidence from real life is that having law enforcement and the rule of law does actually increase freedom for the vast majority of people.

This is because in real life we do not yet have a true free market society- and those who advocate such a market do not believe in law enforcement- they claim that the market alone will control violence- via the feedback it sends to those who select violent bargaining strategies.

What they fail to realise however is that this free market based control of violence can only come into existence if violence is a part of the free market. This conclusion is clearly implied in their own thinking but they seem oddly resistant to admitting it.

[wonderpup]

Fundamentally a free market means only one thing:

In any transaction I am free to walk away from the deal offered and that choice will have no consequences for me as a result of direct action from any other party.

If that condition is satisfied, you are acting in a predominantly free market.

There are many free market transactions in which your freedom to walk away without consequences is limited by the offer being made. I have already given an obvious example:

Say you are desperate to keep your job and your boss tells you to take a pay cut or be made redundant- you are free to refuse his offer- but not free to keep your job if you do. Either way you are subject to negative consequences as a result of the offer he makes.

So the idea that a free market means a market free from coercion is a fantasy- people coerce each other all the time in a free market- it's called 'bargaining power'- the more of it you have, the more coercive you can be.

What a free market is really free of is morality- this is the freedom that free markets guarantee- that you will be free to pursue your self interest wihout some moral do gooder stepping in and demanding that you trade according to some moral rule or other.

And it's this freedom from all moral constraints that the free market libertarians really advocate- they don't like to express it in such an unvarnished way.

[Traktion]

Wonderpup, I don't have the time or the energy to reply to your every point, but you repeatedly conflate inaction with action.

There is a big difference between doing nothing and doing something. The latter requires you both to exist and to move your limbs. The former does not.

Punching someone in the nose doesn't happen through inaction. Unborn people can't punch people in the nose either. Punching someone in the nose, requires action.

If you didn't put someone in the desert, then you doing nothing to help them, is the same as you not even existing. Following that logic to the conclusion, you could just as well accuse an unborn child for killing a man in a desert if. Likewise, any waking moment that you weren't working to give to charity, you would be killing those who needed help. It's an absurd position to take.

As for you calling punching people to get what you want a free market trade, it's just daft. You're suggesting mugging, extorting and outright theft are free market trades. I have no problem with you calling these trades or coercive trades, but to use the term free trade is a complete redefinition.

I can only suggest you want to do this, in order to vilify those calling for trades where violence isn't actively used. I'm not sure why you want to do this, but it seems to be your aim.

[easy2012]

Say you are desperate to keep your job and your boss tells you to take a pay cut or be made redundant- you are free to refuse his offer- but not free to keep your job if you do. Either way you are subject to negative consequences as a result of the offer he makes.

Yap, so situation based ambulance service pricing (depending on how much you need it) is no coersion at all as the offer can always be refused and the ambulance will only improve once's situation.....

[Traktion]

Yap, so situation based ambulance service pricing (depending on how much you need it) is no coersion at all as the offer can always be refused and the ambulance will only improve once's situation.....

The ambulance service didn't cause you harm and are not responsible for your pain either. They didn't break your legs and then attempt to extort money from you to get you to a hospital.

Where people are free to negotiate health care services, they will enter into long term care agreements to avoid such road side bargaining (ie. your health for your wealth).

To suggest that an ambulance driver must take you to a hospital (paid or not), is removing their freedom, through no fault of their own. Taking the argument to conclusion, you could argue that everyone should provide ambulance services in their free time (along with working all hours and giving all your money to starving Africans etc).

Ofc, someone may feel compelled to help another in distress. Society may judge them badly if they do not too. However, to call this coercion is a step too far, IMO. It's more like a compulsion and a withdrawal of their (read: their society) actions to help you in response, when you need it.

Edited September 28, 2012 by Traktion

[cock-eyed octopus]

On the OP subject, I've been saying this for years (read too much scifi as a teenager).

Eventually nearly all employment will be in Circenses related industries.

Whether this is a good or a bad thing, I make no judgement.

[wonderpup]

Wonderpup, I don't have the time or the energy to reply to your every point, but you repeatedly conflate inaction with action.

There is a big difference between doing nothing and doing something. The latter requires you both to exist and to move your limbs. The former does not.

And I repeatedly point out to you that this distinction is one you make in order to establish moral culpability for a given outcome.

Punching someone in the nose doesn't happen through inaction. Unborn people can't punch people in the nose either. Punching someone in the nose, requires action.

But this only matters because you are so keen to make a moral distinction between harm that is the result of action and harm that is the result of inaction- what you are trying to establish here is blame- moral responsibility.

If you didn't put someone in the desert, then you doing nothing to help them, is the same as you not even existing. Following that logic to the conclusion, you could just as well accuse an unborn child for killing a man in a desert if. Likewise, any waking moment that you weren't working to give to charity, you would be killing those who needed help. It's an absurd position to take.

Again here- you use the word 'accuse' you are making moral arguments about individual responsibility.

As for you calling punching people to get what you want a free market trade, it's just daft. You're suggesting mugging, extorting and outright theft are free market trades. I have no problem with you calling these trades or coercive trades, but to use the term free trade is a complete redefinition.

Free trade means free of moral responsibility- not free of coercion. Would you prevent me from selling my grain to feed cattle instead of people if that was the trade I wanted to make-no. Even if this trade could be demonstrated to result in human starvation- again no- you defend my right to make that trade.

So you clearly feel that free trade is trade free of moral constraints- that morality has no place in a free market. Which is a pefectly coherent positon to take.

But when I then point out that in a moral-free market there is no reason not to use violence as a bargaining tool you immediately start talking about the issue of moral responsibilty for outcomes! A person cannot be blamed- you insist- for an outcome that they did not cause.

But since we have already established that the free market is a non moral operation it does not matter who is to blame for anything- in a non moral environment the idea of blame has no meaning. In other words the distinction you seem to feel is so important is not important at all because where there is no morality there is no blame or moral responsibility.

So your concern with who can or who cannot be held morally responsible for any given outcome is entirely without relevance to the issue.

Put more simply you cannot deploy an argument based on moral responsbility in order to limit freedom of action in a non moral context. If- as you seem to agree- the free market is non moral then violence becomes just an available strategy- if one chooses to use it. It has no moral implications because we are not operating in a moral environment.

What you keep saying to me is that a free market cannot be judged in moral terms- we can't have moral values interposing themsleves into free trade because they would place a limit on free trade- I would be forced to sell my grain to feed people instead of cattle for example- an intolorable incursion into my right to free trade.

So I would argue that your confusion arises because you imagine that the word 'free' in free trade means free from coercion- it does not- it means free of moral constraints.

In a free market if you have a really strong bargaining position you are expected to use it to extract the maximum advantage you can- and this is a coercive activity, If I am your boss and I know you desperate to keep your job I can use this fact to coerce you into taking a pay cut- you don't actually want to take that pay cut but you have been forced to do so by me- this is coercion.

All becomes clear however when we understand that what a free market free's you from is moral responsibility. In a free market you can indeed sell grain to feed cows instead of people- and no one can stop you- this is the freedom that the market provides.

This is why some of us eat to excess while others starve- after all it's not our fault they can't afford to buy food- it's the fault of the market!.

So be clear that what you defend is not freedom from coercion- it's freedom from moral constraints. But this being so you cannot then try to smuggle some moral rule into your amoral markets by complaining that violence is immoral- you gave up the possibility of making that complaint when you acceded to the idea that the most important freedom on earth is the freedom to trade without moral constraints.

Because in the absence of moral constraints violence is just a tool-to be used or not used dependant not on moral prohibition but on the strategic advantages or disadvantages it may or may not bring to any given situation.

[erat_forte]

...

All becomes clear however when we understand that what a free market free's you from is moral responsibility. In a free market you can indeed sell grain to feed cows instead of people- and no one can stop you- this is the freedom that the market provides.

...

But morality is relative, not absolute.

Or are you saying that your morality is more moral than mine, and therefore you have the moral right to force me to do what you want?