In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
On June 03 2013 14:54 KwarK wrote: My definition of slavery has consistently included the profits of the labour of the slave going to another and you keep saying "but why isn't this situation where the profits of the labour go to the labourer slavery?". The answer is because the profits of his labour go to the labourer. If you don't start to read my posts you're wasting both of our times. I keep saying the same thing over and over and you keep just not reading it and arguing against your own made up idea of what I'm saying. You're winning the argument in your head because you're filling in both sides of it but unless you actually read what I am writing here you're wasting both our time.
I'll copy and paste it again for you. a situation in which a surplus of immobile labour and the absence of regulation allows competition between workers to drive them to accept their only basic biological needs being met in exchange for the profits of their labour and where not working will result in death due to their basic biological needs not being met.
"in exchange for the profits of their labour" is the clause which you're missing right now.
I've read your clause four times now, it doesn't change my argument...
The man in your hypothetical has more options than the caveman. Are you going to argue that more options renders people less free?
On June 03 2013 12:32 Ingsoc101 wrote: So we are now arguing against a non-existent dystopian society with massive amounts of hyperbole, in order to argue against changes in our existing social policy. Thanks for clarifying that I'm wasting my time here against pure straw men. If you'd like to discuss reality some time, instead of your dystopian vision of the right wing future, please let me know.
My argument hasn't changed once. We have always been arguing against a pure free market which has no basis in reality due to government intervention. I discuss reality quite often, I just wasn't this time. You're being evasive about the difference between wage slavery in a scenario that allows for worker exploitation (like the city with the failed industry mentioned earlier) and actual slavery when there are no government protection, seeing as you have thrown yourself into this argument and my belief is that you have lost it I'd like a conclusion if you're willing. All you have done thus far is misunderstand the question being posed. If you'd like I can repeat it.
My argument hasn't changed either, whether we are talking about an imaginary society or the current one.
In neither can voluntary work be called slavery, so long as the only coercion that is applied is applied by nature itself, and not by man. Because if we define the coercion of nature to be slavery, then slavery has no meaning. Slavery only has meaning if it is induced purely by human action and/or institutions.
Then I feel we have reached a natural conclusion in which you argue that a man who is forced by hunger to work from dawn to dusk in exchange for food and a bed for the profit of someone else until he dies is different from a man who works dawn to dusk, receives food and a bed for the profit of someone else and will be left to starve should he refuse because you don't define things by their attributes. I find your stance laughable and I hope other readers do too but it is a conclusion. Thank you.
You want to define slavery by those attributes? Fine.
Then you must admit that the cavemen and other early humans lived a life of slavery. After all, they were forced to work by hunger from dawn to dusk for food, a bed, everything, and would be left to starve should they refuse. So we've established that all early humanity and pretty much all of humanity still existing are living lives of slavery.
Now tell me, in the absence of government, laws, markets, economic systems, who exactly had the caveman and other early humans enslaved? There is no greedy capitalist to blame here. No employer to blame here. The only conclusion is that they were enslaved by their natural condition of life on Earth.
Since the conclusions we are reaching here are absurd, we can conclude via reductio ad absurdum that your attributes for defining slavery are likewise absurd. Hopefully you don't get so desperate as to define third party benefit as the primary distinguishing attribute of slavery.
"for the profit of someone else" "Then you must admit that the cavemen"
You show me that cavemen were exploited by the capitalist class and I'll admit that they were slaves.
I honestly don't think you're reading my posts at all.
Ah, so you are so desperate.
Then let me remind you that no one has been forced to work for a capitalist. Everyone is free to try and survive on their own without taking anyone's job. Just because the capitalists option is superior to the caveman's option does not mean that the modern condition is worse. It means that the modern condition is better, because they are added alternatives. Now hopefully you don't go completely off the deep end by claiming that property has rendered all hope of survival impossible without capital.
I'm being desperate by showing that your "well why doesn't it apply to cavemen then" point bore no relevance to anything I wrote because nothing I wrote was about cavemen?
I have consistently described a hypothetical over and over and you consistently try and disprove it with scenarios which bear no relevance to that hypothetical. Modern America with its social welfare schemes and employment laws does not provide counterexamples. Cavemen do not provide counterexamples. Please keep your arguments relevant. To do that I recommend you read what I'm actually talking about, a situation in which a surplus of immobile labour and the absence of regulation allows competition between workers to drive them to accept their only basic biological needs being met in exchange for the profits of their labour and where not working will result in death due to their basic biological needs not being met.
You have to resort to hypotheticals because it is the only way for you to try and make a point, because such a situation has never existed, and will never exist. Free societies enrich communities, individuals, and all alike. Statism drives people into slavery conditions.
I haven't resorted to a hypothetical. I was discussing a hypothetical in isolation rather than to prove a wider point. I didn't start on reality and resort to theory, I started on free market theory which is the source of my hypothetical as we agree that reality consists of distorted markets and stayed there.
There are degrees of distortion. It is clear that more distortion (Government intervention re: Statism) occurs, the less prosperous a society becomes. To argue against it is to argue from an ideological perspective rather than a factual one, because the facts of the matter all point to this conclusion solidly. Historical examples ranging from thousands of years ago, to today all back up this point as well.
On June 03 2013 14:54 KwarK wrote: My definition of slavery has consistently included the profits of the labour of the slave going to another and you keep saying "but why isn't this situation where the profits of the labour go to the labourer slavery?". The answer is because the profits of his labour go to the labourer. If you don't start to read my posts you're wasting both of our times. I keep saying the same thing over and over and you keep just not reading it and arguing against your own made up idea of what I'm saying. You're winning the argument in your head because you're filling in both sides of it but unless you actually read what I am writing here you're wasting both our time.
I'll copy and paste it again for you. a situation in which a surplus of immobile labour and the absence of regulation allows competition between workers to drive them to accept their only basic biological needs being met in exchange for the profits of their labour and where not working will result in death due to their basic biological needs not being met.
"in exchange for the profits of their labour" is the clause which you're missing right now.
I've read your clause four times now, it doesn't change my argument...
The man in your hypothetical has more options than the caveman. Are you going to argue that more options renders people less free?
I'm going to argue that that is incredibly irrelevant to everything I've written thus far, as is your caveman. Your number of options argument is absurd. I currently have the option to type any of trillions of numbers at the end of this sentence, I have literally trillions of options and I feel none the freer for it. I can type 3857275690723896589273.7 or I can type 13 or anything but these options are utterly meaningless as are the options you are posing. A combination lock with 4 digits has ten times the options for a code as a combination lock with 3 digits but it doesn't make you ten times as free when you use it.
I honestly don't know where you're getting these arguments from so I'm just going to restate mine until you read it and get it. A man who is forced by biological necessity to give the profits of his labour to another for basic subsistence with no surplus time, capital or any other form of compensation through which he can better his condition is no freer than another man working in the same conditions, receiving the same basic subsistence who is legally a slave.
Neither can start a family. Neither has leisure time. Neither of them receive capital compensation for their labour. Neither can escape except through death. Neither can independently improve their conditions. Both of them have their labour exploited by another.
freedom is an easily available and beguiling representation scheme for human lives, but in this way it is also an abstraction.
the libertarian view of the world is a bit naive to this point. partaking in the "if you don't like it, stop doing it" thought process is not very accurate portrait of the complexities of life. more importantly, because it is a pre-experience, inbuilt representation of how the social world is, (that is to say, you can think that way without going into the real world at all) people have more confidence in this sort of story than they should. this is an ideological blindspot
On June 03 2013 12:36 KwarK wrote: [quote] My argument hasn't changed once. We have always been arguing against a pure free market which has no basis in reality due to government intervention. I discuss reality quite often, I just wasn't this time. You're being evasive about the difference between wage slavery in a scenario that allows for worker exploitation (like the city with the failed industry mentioned earlier) and actual slavery when there are no government protection, seeing as you have thrown yourself into this argument and my belief is that you have lost it I'd like a conclusion if you're willing. All you have done thus far is misunderstand the question being posed. If you'd like I can repeat it.
My argument hasn't changed either, whether we are talking about an imaginary society or the current one.
In neither can voluntary work be called slavery, so long as the only coercion that is applied is applied by nature itself, and not by man. Because if we define the coercion of nature to be slavery, then slavery has no meaning. Slavery only has meaning if it is induced purely by human action and/or institutions.
Then I feel we have reached a natural conclusion in which you argue that a man who is forced by hunger to work from dawn to dusk in exchange for food and a bed for the profit of someone else until he dies is different from a man who works dawn to dusk, receives food and a bed for the profit of someone else and will be left to starve should he refuse because you don't define things by their attributes. I find your stance laughable and I hope other readers do too but it is a conclusion. Thank you.
You want to define slavery by those attributes? Fine.
Then you must admit that the cavemen and other early humans lived a life of slavery. After all, they were forced to work by hunger from dawn to dusk for food, a bed, everything, and would be left to starve should they refuse. So we've established that all early humanity and pretty much all of humanity still existing are living lives of slavery.
Now tell me, in the absence of government, laws, markets, economic systems, who exactly had the caveman and other early humans enslaved? There is no greedy capitalist to blame here. No employer to blame here. The only conclusion is that they were enslaved by their natural condition of life on Earth.
Since the conclusions we are reaching here are absurd, we can conclude via reductio ad absurdum that your attributes for defining slavery are likewise absurd. Hopefully you don't get so desperate as to define third party benefit as the primary distinguishing attribute of slavery.
"for the profit of someone else" "Then you must admit that the cavemen"
You show me that cavemen were exploited by the capitalist class and I'll admit that they were slaves.
I honestly don't think you're reading my posts at all.
Ah, so you are so desperate.
Then let me remind you that no one has been forced to work for a capitalist. Everyone is free to try and survive on their own without taking anyone's job. Just because the capitalists option is superior to the caveman's option does not mean that the modern condition is worse. It means that the modern condition is better, because they are added alternatives. Now hopefully you don't go completely off the deep end by claiming that property has rendered all hope of survival impossible without capital.
I'm being desperate by showing that your "well why doesn't it apply to cavemen then" point bore no relevance to anything I wrote because nothing I wrote was about cavemen?
I have consistently described a hypothetical over and over and you consistently try and disprove it with scenarios which bear no relevance to that hypothetical. Modern America with its social welfare schemes and employment laws does not provide counterexamples. Cavemen do not provide counterexamples. Please keep your arguments relevant. To do that I recommend you read what I'm actually talking about, a situation in which a surplus of immobile labour and the absence of regulation allows competition between workers to drive them to accept their only basic biological needs being met in exchange for the profits of their labour and where not working will result in death due to their basic biological needs not being met.
You have to resort to hypotheticals because it is the only way for you to try and make a point, because such a situation has never existed, and will never exist. Free societies enrich communities, individuals, and all alike. Statism drives people into slavery conditions.
I haven't resorted to a hypothetical. I was discussing a hypothetical in isolation rather than to prove a wider point. I didn't start on reality and resort to theory, I started on free market theory which is the source of my hypothetical as we agree that reality consists of distorted markets and stayed there.
There are degrees of distortion. It is clear that more distortion (Government intervention re: Statism) occurs, the less prosperous a society becomes. To argue against it is to argue from an ideological perspective rather than a factual one, because the facts of the matter all point to this conclusion solidly. Historical examples ranging from thousands of years ago, to today all back up this point as well.
Marxists believe in historical inevitability, that property is theft and that class warfare is necessary. I believe none of those things. I believe that capitalism has brought about huge advances in the quality of life of the western world and is the most efficient mechanic for meeting the demands of society. I do not, however, worship it as an end in itself, I believe that it is a tool that must be tailored to the purpose of improving the lot of humanity and that regulation is necessary to do that. I am glad that society has been able to harness capital to do this and I am also glad that society was able to regulate it in order to prevent revolution which would have been good for no-one.
On June 03 2013 14:54 KwarK wrote: My definition of slavery has consistently included the profits of the labour of the slave going to another and you keep saying "but why isn't this situation where the profits of the labour go to the labourer slavery?". The answer is because the profits of his labour go to the labourer. If you don't start to read my posts you're wasting both of our times. I keep saying the same thing over and over and you keep just not reading it and arguing against your own made up idea of what I'm saying. You're winning the argument in your head because you're filling in both sides of it but unless you actually read what I am writing here you're wasting both our time.
I'll copy and paste it again for you. a situation in which a surplus of immobile labour and the absence of regulation allows competition between workers to drive them to accept their only basic biological needs being met in exchange for the profits of their labour and where not working will result in death due to their basic biological needs not being met.
"in exchange for the profits of their labour" is the clause which you're missing right now.
I've read your clause four times now, it doesn't change my argument...
The man in your hypothetical has more options than the caveman. Are you going to argue that more options renders people less free?
I'm going to argue that that is incredibly irrelevant to everything I've written thus far, as is your caveman. Your number of options argument is absurd. I currently have the option to type any of trillions of numbers at the end of this sentence, I have literally trillions of options and I feel none the freer for it. I can type 3857275690723896589273.7 or I can type 13 or anything but these options are utterly meaningless as are the options you are posing. A combination lock with 4 digits has ten times the options for a code as a combination lock with 3 digits but it doesn't make you ten times as free when you use it.
I honestly don't know where you're getting these arguments from so I'm just going to restate mine until you read it and get it. A man who is forced by biological necessity to give the profits of his labour to another for basic subsistence with no surplus time, capital or any other form of compensation through which he can better his condition is no freer than another man working in the same conditions, receiving the same basic subsistence who is legally a slave.
Neither can start a family. Neither has leisure time. Neither of them receive capital compensation for their labour. Neither can escape except through death. Neither can independently improve their conditions. Both of them have their labour exploited by another.
My argument is really not difficult at all to understand. I can only assume you don't have a reasonable counter, and have decided to rant about typing numbers instead.
But since you are using this keyboard analogy, perhaps I can use it as well, to make my point clear.
Imagine keyboard 1. It has all the English letters, and the decimal numbers. Now suppose Bob said, "Well, that is a very limited keyboard!"
Now imagine keyboard 2. It only has letters, no numbers. So I say, "Well, this one must be even more limited!" And Bob says, "What the hell are you talking about, I was talking about KEYBOARD 1! That is the one that is limited."
On June 03 2013 15:29 KwarK wrote: No, this is more like you produce a cake and go "well this one is even more limited" and then Bob says "er, that's a cake".
I'm talking about people having their labour exploited by a capitalist and you're talking about cavemen.
"labour exploited" is completely pointless, loaded language. We are both simply talking about people being forced to work because of their circumstances. But whatever, you gonna keep dodging.
On June 03 2013 15:13 oneofthem wrote: freedom is an easily available and beguiling representation scheme for human lives, but in this way it is also an abstraction.
the libertarian view of the world is a bit naive to this point. partaking in the "if you don't like it, stop doing it" thought process is not very accurate portrait of the complexities of life. more importantly, because it is a pre-experience, inbuilt representation of how the social world is, (that is to say, you can think that way without going into the real world at all) people have more confidence in this sort of story than they should. this is an ideological blindspot
The actual ideological blindspot here is to start all discussion with a specific entitlement premise. That means the premise that everyone should be provided with X, Y, and Z things which they are entitled to. Only by starting with this premise is it possible to reach the conclusion that people are "exploited" by being offered opportunity.
Now, everyone today believes in entitlement to some degree. Even hardcore libertarians will balk at the idea of letting someone bleed out on the street. But that doesn't mean we all agree on the same entitlements. I don't believe people are entitled to earn X dollars per year regardless of the work they are doing. If you want to push for subsistence, then you do it through direct subsidies, not by completely breaking down the market system by mandating price floors. I don't think there is any sane economist who would argue that price controls are preferable to direct subsidies. That, and the fact that "wage slavery" is still a retarded argument.
I don't think you've made a single post that addresses anything I've said. You've repeatedly drawn arguments from your personal life (irrelevant) and now from cavemen (ridiculously irrelevant) because you refuse to read what I'm saying. But we're both pretty much wasting our time by continuing this discussion. I'm just saying the same thing over and over because you haven't read it yet and you're having an argument with what you want me to be saying. Call it quits?
On June 03 2013 15:41 KwarK wrote: I don't think you've made a single post that addresses anything I've said. You've repeatedly drawn arguments from your personal life (irrelevant) and now from cavemen (ridiculously irrelevant) because you refuse to read what I'm saying. But we're both pretty much wasting our time by continuing this discussion. I'm just saying the same thing over and over because you haven't read it yet and you're having an argument with what you want me to be saying. Call it quits?
Nah, let's take this to even greater levels of absurdity.
Let's imagine a hypothetical world where every single square inch of the planet is owned by private heartless capitalists, and they have laws in place mandating that absolutely no one can step onto their property, and Bob is born with parents who for whatever reason own no property, and there isn't a single person in the world who will allow Bob to stay on their land, not even in exchange for work. So the second Bob is born he is trespassing and is a permanent fugitive in the world.
Or even better, whoever's land Bob happens to be born on can now claim ownership of Bob for that very reason, so that the whole of humanity is enslaved simply by virtue of being born.
There are degrees of distortion. It is clear that more distortion (Government intervention re: Statism) occurs, the less prosperous a society becomes. To argue against it is to argue from an ideological perspective rather than a factual one, because the facts of the matter all point to this conclusion solidly. Historical examples ranging from thousands of years ago, to today all back up this point as well.
The bolded parts are gold. It is fascinating to see versions of history being invented, and this actually supports the post-modern saying, that facts don't exist without a theory. I would say people don't believe what they see, they see what they believe.
In modern time, popular comparisons between New Zealand and Australia; or Bostwana vs Somalia should convince you that you are living an alternate reality.
On June 03 2013 15:41 KwarK wrote: I don't think you've made a single post that addresses anything I've said. You've repeatedly drawn arguments from your personal life (irrelevant) and now from cavemen (ridiculously irrelevant) because you refuse to read what I'm saying. But we're both pretty much wasting our time by continuing this discussion. I'm just saying the same thing over and over because you haven't read it yet and you're having an argument with what you want me to be saying. Call it quits?
Sorry, but I'm in a time zone that makes it difficult to remain active in the discussion at the same time as everyone else. But you've gotta get away from the slavery thing.
IMO you blew the foot off your own argument when you claimed to have defined it in your own way, completely divorced from how it is defined as a legal term. Slavery requires ownership rights of a human being, otherwise it's not slavery. You're just stretching the word to get a political reaction, when you're really just trying to say impoverished workers are being exploited to work unnecessary hard for unnecessarily low wages because they have no bargaining power.
Is there a substantive difference between slavery and poverty? Yes. Is there a real difference in terms of how people act when they are a slave versus in deep poverty? You made the original assertion that no, market forces without wage protections will eventually allow employers to force workers to work onerous hours for minimal pay.
In fact, quite the opposite has happened in any survey of economic history. Greater productivity by workers who learn skills and produce more goods allows them to command better wages, which in turn allows them to buy more goods in the economy, which in turn creates more employers to supply the goods that they want. The giant piece that you missed in the economic puzzle is that employees are consumers. A system where a single individual is the captain of all industries and pays everybody else nothing to produce everything is a captain of a severely failing tyranny, because he is the only consumer who can purchase anything.
I would agree with you that employers can be exploitative and that the government should be wary of such things. Social inequality is a deep rooted problem and we should do what we can to alleviate the plight of the poor and motivate them to be more productive, particularly in an increasingly competitive global market. But the poor in the United States have nothing like the plight of slaves.
Since someone quoted Adam Smith, he also pointed out that the impoverished 18th century factory worker still had a better life with more luxuries than African kings.
On June 03 2013 14:54 KwarK wrote: My definition of slavery has consistently included the profits of the labour of the slave going to another and you keep saying "but why isn't this situation where the profits of the labour go to the labourer slavery?". The answer is because the profits of his labour go to the labourer. If you don't start to read my posts you're wasting both of our times. I keep saying the same thing over and over and you keep just not reading it and arguing against your own made up idea of what I'm saying. You're winning the argument in your head because you're filling in both sides of it but unless you actually read what I am writing here you're wasting both our time.
I'll copy and paste it again for you. a situation in which a surplus of immobile labour and the absence of regulation allows competition between workers to drive them to accept their only basic biological needs being met in exchange for the profits of their labour and where not working will result in death due to their basic biological needs not being met.
"in exchange for the profits of their labour" is the clause which you're missing right now.
Kwark, what about other competing forces? If you're running with free market theory than the owner only really ever earns profit on his own capital and labor (a 'normal profit') so there's no exploitation of labor.
You seem to be describing some extreme hybrid market of completely free and completely restrictive. Like, only one employer in town and all the workers are "free" to compete over the limited jobs.
The brilliant Tom Woods defending the free market perspective. Literally addressing this thread over the last several pages. I particularly enjoy his Super-Unabomber premise/thought excercise.
On the subject of child labor laws his comments reguarding 'Why were the kids working in the first place?"
"Child labor has existed since the beginning of time, it's not people said, Look, Capatalism is here...Kids ..off to the mines" around 13 mins in.
A pretty interesting take on market forces is psychology. I found a very interesting article (Sorry for the clunky language but it is better than non-sourced claims) .
Basically the conclusion is that free market forces erodes moral, while moral in itself is bound to the type of society and market and more developed societies have a higher degree of "entitlement perception".
On June 04 2013 02:12 radiatoren wrote: A pretty interesting take on market forces is psychology. I found a very interesting article (Sorry for the clunky language but it is better than non-sourced claims) .
Basically the conclusion is that free market forces erodes moral, while moral in itself is bound to the type of society and market and more developed societies have a higher degree of "entitlement perception".
That study seemed very odd to me. Paying people to agree to allow mice to die is pretty far removed from a normal market.
Edit: I guess they made a good point about increasing liquidity to increase market efficiency...
On June 04 2013 02:12 radiatoren wrote: A pretty interesting take on market forces is psychology. I found a very interesting article (Sorry for the clunky language but it is better than non-sourced claims) .
Basically the conclusion is that free market forces erodes moral, while moral in itself is bound to the type of society and market and more developed societies have a higher degree of "entitlement perception".
That study seemed very odd to me. Paying people to agree to allow mice to die is pretty far removed from a normal market.
Edit: I guess they made a good point about increasing liquidity to increase market efficiency...
There is absolutely a good argument for critique of the term "free market" in the study since it is basically a generic negotiation. The moral externality of the mouse is, however, a pretty interesting twist on the experiment and makes for a good reason to purposefully sink the negotiation for moral reasons.
On June 04 2013 02:12 radiatoren wrote: A pretty interesting take on market forces is psychology. I found a very interesting article (Sorry for the clunky language but it is better than non-sourced claims) .
Basically the conclusion is that free market forces erodes moral, while moral in itself is bound to the type of society and market and more developed societies have a higher degree of "entitlement perception".
That study seemed very odd to me. Paying people to agree to allow mice to die is pretty far removed from a normal market.
Edit: I guess they made a good point about increasing liquidity to increase market efficiency...
On one hand, I agree that the study seems far removed from a normal market. On the other hand, the relative nature of the experiments does highlight a "decline in morals."
Something I really agree with in the article is in the 3rd section.
The same considerations come from Michael J. Sandal from Harvard University. He published a book last year, "What Money Can not Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets", in which he warns against a development where we go from a market economy to a market society.
His view is that the market economy is a tool - and a very effective tool - for organizing production. A market society, by contrast, is a way of life where market values permeate all aspects of human activity.
A market society leads to inequality and corruption, he argues.
The more things that money can buy, from better prison cells, as is possible in Santa Ana, California for a price of $90 a night, to the right to shoot rhinos in South Africa for $250,000, the greater the significance of the inequalities in income and wealth.
When you put a price on the good things in life, it also leads to a form of corruption, believes Sandal.
When a school in Dallas, Texas, provides two dollars to students for each book they have read, it might get them to read more, but it makes them also to consider reading as a form of piecework instead of as a satisfaction in itself.
And when you hire mercenaries to fight wars, it perhaps saves people's lives, but it also leads to a corruption of the importance of citizenship.
(Reworded some things to ease the reading.)
This is what I see when I look at social welfare programs and the market economy. There is a decision to make on whether to leave a good/service to the private sector for efficiency, or to the public sector under a social directive.
On June 04 2013 02:12 radiatoren wrote: A pretty interesting take on market forces is psychology. I found a very interesting article (Sorry for the clunky language but it is better than non-sourced claims) .
Basically the conclusion is that free market forces erodes moral, while moral in itself is bound to the type of society and market and more developed societies have a higher degree of "entitlement perception".
That study seemed very odd to me. Paying people to agree to allow mice to die is pretty far removed from a normal market.
Edit: I guess they made a good point about increasing liquidity to increase market efficiency...
On one hand, I agree that the study seems far removed from a normal market. On the other hand, the relative nature of the experiments does highlight a "decline in morals."
Something I really agree with in the article is in the 3rd section.
The same considerations come from Michael J. Sandal from Harvard University. He published a book last year, "What Money Can not Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets", in which he warns against a development where we go from a market economy to a market society.
His view is that the market economy is a tool - and a very effective tool - for organizing production. A market society, by contrast, is a way of life where market values permeate all aspects of human activity.
A market society leads to inequality and corruption, he argues.
The more things that money can buy, from better prison cells, as is possible in Santa Ana, California for a price of $90 a night, to the right to shoot rhinos in South Africa for $250,000, the greater the significance of the inequalities in income and wealth.
When you put a price on the good things in life, it also leads to a form of corruption, believes Sandal.
When a school in Dallas, Texas, provides two dollars to students for each book they have read, it might get them to read more, but it makes them also to consider reading as a form of piecework instead of as a satisfaction in itself.
And when you hire mercenaries to fight wars, it perhaps saves people's lives, but it also leads to a corruption of the importance of citizenship.
(Reworded some things to ease the reading.)
This is what I see when I look at social welfare programs and the market economy. There is a decision to make on whether to leave a good/service to the private sector for efficiency, or to the public sector under a social directive.
Sure, but the prison and the school are government decisions. The market for killing mice was an artificial construct. Ultimately the morality failures cited here are the products of scientists and governments :p
I agree with the "markets are a tool" sentiment. But then you have to remove morality from it. You can't blame moral failure on a hammer...
EPT
