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.
“Will government enforce morality by plucking out the eye that has committed lust?
Are you sure they wont?”
I know you are confused now...
Evasive always. I’ll know not to expect a straight answer in the future.
My apologies. I was scoffing at the idea that oh, the market will fix it some other way and we’ll have poor man’s blackmail and rich man’s blackmail like we have beat up Chevys and brand new BMWs. There is no way to gold plate the turd, and we agree.
“Evasive always. I’ll know not to expect a straight answer in the future.”
Ask a sincere question and you may get a sincere answer...
Where do you draw the line in having the government enforce morality?
What is unthinkable and what is reasonable?
I was born in 1959. I had a part time job at 14 1/2 years of age.
Today’s “labor” laws would not have let me work in those days because most of the hours were on “school nights”.
Exactly correct. Why does being a juvenile allow you to hide your crime(s)?
Libertarians like Stossel are every bit as much a threat to this free republic as any liberal.
They destroy the foundations, which are moral.
I normally don’t care for libertarians, but John Stossel is my favorite. You don’t need to read him. I enjoy his columns
I don’t care to read him. A few days ago he and his libertarian friends were laughing on air at someone who simply asserted that God instituted marriage, and that it was and is a good thing.
I can not comment on this, because I didn’t see or hear it.
However, the subtle but steady drumbeat of these two guys (and other Libertarians now abounding on both Fox networks) promoting support for their third party while constantly putting down the GOP represents a clear and present danger to the Republic....and we all know why.
It's called split the vote and insure Obama's re-election.
Leni
There’s video of the exchange at the link.
I’m not a fan of NOM, either, by the way. I believe them to be compromised. But that doesn’t affect my view of Stossel’s views, or his attitude.
Well, the Republican Party doesn’t own my vote. If they can’t run a principled moral conservative it will be them helping Obama, not me.
And by the way, most of the libertarians are in the GOP tent.
The video in the link has nothing to do with article in the link. John Stossel and his guest are talking about blackmail.
Sounds like a good read.
Take the distinction between first degree murder and second degree murder. Since the victim is just as dead, the difference in punishment seems to be based on the perpetrators moral culpability.
Take the distinction between first degree murder and second degree murder. Since the victim is just as dead, the difference in punishment seems to be based on the perpetrators moral culpability.
Take the distinction between first degree murder and second degree murder. Since the victim is just as dead, the difference in punishment seems to be based on the perpetrators moral culpability.
Take the distinction between first degree murder and second degree murder. Since the victim is just as dead, the difference in punishment seems to be based on the perpetrators moral culpability.
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