Posted on 08/24/2011 4:02:43 AM PDT by Kaslin
We grow up learning that some things are just bad: child labor, ticket scalping, price gouging, kidney selling, blackmail, etc. But maybe they're not.
What I love about economics is that it can show that what seems harmful is actually good for society. It illuminates what common sense overlooks.
This is all covered in the eye-opening book "Defending the Undefendable" by economist Walter Block.
Most people call child labor an unmitigated evil. David Boaz of the Cato Institute and Nick Gillespie of Reason.tv say that's wrong.
"If we say that the United States should abolish child labor in very poor countries," Boaz said, "then what will happen to these children? ... They're not suddenly going to go to the country day school. ... They may be out selling their bodies on the street. That is not an improvement over working in a t-shirt factory."
In fact, studies show that in at least one country where child labor was suddenly banned, prostitution increased. Good economics teaches that as poor countries get richer and freer, capital investment raises the productivity of labor and child labor diminishes. There's no shortcut through government prohibition -- unless you like starvation and child prostitution.
What about price-gouging? State laws attempt to prevent people from charging "unconscionable" prices during emergencies.
"If I'm in the neighborhood of Hurricane Katrina," Boaz said, "what I want is water and ice and generators. ... If you are in Kentucky (and) you've got 10 generators in your store, are you getting up at 4 a.m. to drive all day to get to Louisiana to sell these generators if you can only sell them for the same price you can sell them for in Kentucky? No, you're going to go down because ... you can sell them for more."
Also, if prices rise during an emergency, that's a signal for people to buy only what they most need. That leaves more for everyone else. If the price remains low, an incentive to conserve is lost.
Ticket scalpers are seen as sleazy guys who cheat you by marking up the price of tickets. Profits go to middlemen instead of the performers. What good could they possibly do?
"I like to think of ticket scalpers as the guy who stands in line so that I don't have to," Gillespie said.
Time spent in line is part of the ticket cost. Scalpers let you pay entirely in money, rather than partly in valuable time.
Most people say that selling body parts is wrong.
"It also seems wrong to have people dying because they can't get a kidney," Boaz said.
Some 400,000 Americans are on a waiting list now for a new kidney, and they are not allowed to pay for one.
"We sell hair. We sell sperm. We sell eggs these days." Boaz added.
Gillespie added, "The best way to grow the supply and allow more people to live is to allow the market to price those organs."
Maybe the most counterintuitive position argued on my show was that blackmail should not be a crime. Blackmail (unlike extortion) is the demand for money in return for withholding information. Robin Hanson, a George Mason University economist, defends blackmail.
"The thing you're threatening when you're threatening blackmail (is) gossip," Hanson said. "If it should be all right to tell people, it should be all right to threaten to tell people."
What we don't like, however, is the blackmailer saying, "Pay me to keep quiet."
"But the effect of that is to make people behave," Hanson said. "If we (allow) blackmail, people behave even more because they are even more afraid of what might happen if they don't."
Maybe Ponzi-schemer Bernie Madoff would have been caught earlier?
"That's right. ... Blackmail is actually a form of private law enforcement."
Also, since gossip is free speech, blackmail is simply selling the service of not engaging in free speech. Why should that be outlawed?
I subtitled my last book, "Everything You Know Is Wrong." I was exaggerating, of course, but many things we're taught are fallacies. That's why I like economics. It explodes fallacies.
Ah well, someone switched a video. Maybe Fox. Maybe the website. Who knows. But, in any case, the context, with direct quotes, is right in the article anyhow.
Why would FOX Business switch the video. *rme*
I have no idea.
If you don't like the culture at a company, leave. If you start throwing lawsuits, you will end up either fired or have every one scared to be around you. Nothing raises a red flag for management more than some one screaming about their “rights”.
I have been told that I didn't get a promotion because I don't drink with the guys and go to strip clubs. Is that fair? No. Could I have sued? Maybe, they communicated this to me in an email and I could have raised cain with it.
But that is the way of the world, and I left for a better job. Not always an option, but it is something to keep in mind.
I insist on a moral government...so should you. A moral government of course behaves and upholds moral behavior and punishes or shuns in some way immoral behavior.
In regards to “what is unthinkable and what is reasonable”? That is too open ended and broad to answer succinctly. Can you elaborate more fully what you are asking?
If you don't like the culture at a company, leave. If you start throwing lawsuits, you will end up either fired or have every one scared to be around you. Nothing raises a red flag for management more than some one screaming about their “rights”.
I have been told that I didn't get a promotion because I don't drink with the guys and go to strip clubs. Is that fair? No. Could I have sued? Maybe, they communicated this to me in an email and I could have raised cain with it.
But that is the way of the world, and I left for a better job. Not always an option, but it is something to keep in mind.
I'm in the Army. Every quarter, we have to attend some kind of training meant to teach us not to harass each other. We have posters on walls in prominent places telling us who to contact if we feel we have been harassed in some way.
Ah! Now I understand!
The private sector is a bit different. A company with a lot of bullying going on soon finds itself without many employees (well, not in the downturn). In the Army, you can’t just go work for another plant.
I had a friend who was thinking of re-enlisting in the Air Force reserves as a flight engineer. He had been a hydraulics mechanic and the offer was that in return for a 39 week school, you incurred a six year reserve commitment. I went down to recruiter’s office with him. The recruiter told me that he had a guy who had graduated from C.W. Post College (probably “The C.W. Post University” today) who could not pass the entrance exam for Air Force enlisted man. That individual had been defrauded by the American education establishment, there is no other word for it.
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