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And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

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Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#441

Post by rmunn »

WalterBright wrote: post #440
jacquesm wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today. I'm forced to buy and pay for Google's bundled AI crap even though I don't want it and never consented to it.

No you weren't. Did Google threaten you with imprisonment?

To bring some clarity to this, it seems people are talking about being "forced" in different ways. WalterBright is using the correct definition of "forced" that means "you must buy this thing or else I'll shoot you / throw you in jail / fine you for non-compliance". Which does apply to some transactions: for example, in America you are (since the passage of the so-called Obamacare bill, officially called the Affordable Health Care Act) forced to buy health insurance: if you don't, the government will impose financial penalties on you. (Many people have health insurance through their employer so they don't pay for it directly, but someone is being forced to pay for it).

But other people are using "forced" in the colloquial sense: "I'm not offered the thing I want, I'm only offered the thing I want bundled with something I don't want", e.g. I just want a TV, but I can't buy just a TV, I'm only offered the choice between a TV bundled with advertising or nothing at all. Hobson's Choice isn't a pleasant situation to be in, but you're not forced to buy that TV; you had the choice to buy nothing at all. It's not the same concept as "buy this product or we will impose a penalty", such as how Americans are now forced to buy health insurance.

WalterBright - to your question "when was the last time you were forced to buy something you don't want?", the correct answer would have been "March 2010", when many people were forced to buy health insurance that they didn't want. Which goes to show that although many parts of the American economy are a free market, health insurance is not. "Coincidentally", prices went up once there was a lot more truly forced demand. Huh. Who ever could have predicted that when you forced more people to buy a product, its producers would be able to raise prices? Wow, so completely unexpected a result... no economists at all would have predicted that... (Yes, Friedrich Hayek, I see you screaming into your pillow. It's okay, I'm being sarcastic).

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#442

Post by nec4b »

vkou wrote: post #423
WalterBright wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Supply and demand aren't invariant under all conditions. I'm curious. When does it not apply?

I have demand for people not dumping garbage in the oceans. Other people have a demand to dump garbage in the ocean because it's cheaper than disposing of their trash properly. How does the free market solve this? Will someone be buying the ocean any time soon?

Ironically you are making his point. Countries that have stronger respect for property rights dump way less or no garbage in the oceans as the countries where there is no such respect.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#443

Post by letmehelpyou »

rayiner wrote: post #409
lurk2 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And we live in a society. Correct. > So by extension we do already accept that neutral procedures are possible Doesn't follow. > and that we have achieved them. Doesn't follow. > The English Common Law systems and their derivatives are an astonishing success in achieving general fairness. That depends entirely upon what you mean by "fairness," which will itself be loaded with presumptions about how the world is and…

> That depends entirely upon what you mean by "fairness," which will itself be loaded with presumptions about how the world is and ought to be. If you’re an immigrant from my home country of Bangladesh, you’ll be treated more fairly in any Anglo country than in any other country, including Bangladesh.

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Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#444

Post by letmehelpyou »

rayiner wrote: post #430
NotPractical wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing I admire most about Anglo-American culture is that people will jump off a bridge if you give them a court order that complies with all required procedural formalities. The president of the United States routinely violates court orders and has little respect for the law or the Constitution. Also, nobody is going to willingly jump off a bridge because a judge told them to. You'll find that the death penalty…

I’m talking about the rule-followingness of your average american, which is the bedrock of civil society. Every society has rot at the top. Few societies can survive rot throughout the base of the pyramid.

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Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#445

Post by letmehelpyou »

dahart wrote: post #427
HappMacDonald wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The go-to example of a failure state in the golden rule that I am aware of is "thirsty person wants everyone else to jump their bones, thus the rule suggests that they should jump everyone else's bones". The take-home being, as long as peoples preferences are different, the rule has some failure states based upon that. And the wider example that this points to is that as long as everyone's values are different.. the…

Again, that’s an overly literal and straw man interpretation of the golden rule that seems nearly intentionally obtuse. The rule is not suggesting you should do anything that you know other people wouldn’t like. Jumping people’s bones is a very bad example, because that’s not something anyone should do without communication and explicit permission, otherwise it’s rape and it’s illegal. If you understand and accept th…

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Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#446

Post by letmehelpyou »

WalterBright wrote: post #369
sortoflog wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing is ideal Right, which is why touting oversimplified economic models is likely to be contentious ;) Speaking of which: > The more free market a country is, the more prosperous it is. When do you think the US was at its most prosperous? Most would say somewhere in the mid 20th century, which was hardly the least regulated time in its history…

The highest GDP growth was in 1942, due to war production. But it required going into massive debt, and massive mobilization of adults into the factories, so I don't think that counts. GDP growth in the 1800s is a rather dodgy time of statistics, as economic statistics were not collected then. From 1800 to the Civil War, the US economy began to be industrialized. The Northern states industrialized, while the Southern…

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