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.
The question continues to hover about whether best interest can always be quantified in dollars and cents. Those pesky bugs of economism can’t be easily swatted away once they have been let into the room.
Allowing the strong willed to hold unmitigated sway over the weaker willed can also produce a plethora of unwanted social effects. Consider that the unnatural act itself may be seen as a kind of forced violence. Rape is seldom about sex, usually about power.
Money is a wonderful servant — and a hideous master. It is not a suitable metric for the worth of heavenly things or the horror of hellish things.
Did you ever have chores? I’m sure in the mind of the child, it is not in their best interest to take out the garbage or to weed the garden and do the dishes.
Does the parent not have the best interest of the child in mind when they insist that they contribute and become productive members of the family and then society?
More great common sense effectively communicated by the “new” John Stossel’s “soft sell”. I go out of my way to watch his presentations on Fox.
“No, Libertarians don’t neglect morality. They believe that the state should neither define nor enforce it.”
God defines morality...and when the people choose to ignore it, and that includes their government...bad things happen.
God defines morality...and when the people choose to ignore it, and that includes their government...bad things happen.
When and if we are out bred in sheer numbers and Islam is the government, will you say the same? Are you ready then for government enforced morality?
Wealthy people should only be allowed to cover up their LEGAL crimes ;)
Character building!
LOL! You sound like my hubby!
#2: Schools are a means of indoctrination. The State loves schools, because it means they control the the next generation.
Notice learning is not one of the goals of education. Academic performance is lot rewarded, and in some schools, many if you are male, it is discouraged.
Lets stick with Christians. Which sect? Where do you draw the line? Will government enforce morality by plucking out the eye that has committed lust?
I realize you didn’t say that government should enforce morality, you implied that they should not ignore morality. The power of government is authorized use of force. Force at the point of a gun.
I've taught myself most of this already... Does that mean I was wrong?
Paraphrased:
“God defines morality...and when the people choose to ignore it, and that includes their government...bad things happen.”
“when Islam takes over our government, should government then enforce morality?”
The conclusion you reached has nothing to do with his statement.
Islam is not a religion of the true God of the Bible to which the poster was referring. Islam is the worship of a pagan moon god, ie, a demon, and is a religion made up by a man under demonic influence in order to justify his sinful desires.
Referring to Islam to refute “God defines morality” is simply a non-sequitur.
Thus the limitations the founders put in the Constitution.
If the government would not enforce “anti-morality”, which it is doing now, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
And what is school? For many of us it was a dozen years of confinement against our wills. Now it's worse.
ML/NJ
I wonder if the book states the reality that if nations which have built economies strong enough to end child labor and the other practices mentioned, that those nations can return to that economic state by flooding itself with cheap labor from such nations, and by sending vast amounts of work to cheap labor nations.
When wealthy nations pursue the world’s cheapest labor, they will eventually recreate the economic conditions described in their own nations, once they can no longer generate or borrow enough surplus to support their unemployed (the unemployed should really include those of working age on welfare).
Years ago the government passed laws to prevent children (other than family members working in a family business) less than 17 years old from working.
The first casualty was paper routes, then grocery store sacker/stackers, then all other jobs we used to work as kids.
Next came our lazy generation who normally was never exposed to work until after they graduated from high school or college. Worse yet, college graduates expected to start in the middle, not at the bottom.
In the interim, the kids sat around playing video games and other forms of entertainment and when presented with their first job, had no idea what-so-ever what the statement “8 hours work for 8 hours pay” or the phrase “work ethic.”
“If the blackmailer has any marketing skills he will charge according to the target’s ability to pay. “
The target’s willingness to pay would weigh fairly heavily.
From a purely economic standpoint, it might be better to just kill the blackmailer.
Equating child labor (or learning to work) and scalping with extortion and selling human tissue is just wrong. At some point with economics morality has to come into play and there’s the difference.
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