Christian Forums and Message Board

Pure and good capitalism in its foundational element was good.

Besides all of that, you are far more likely to find such externalities as you describe in countries where private property rights are not respected.

Are there any goods or services that I should not be legally able to purchase?

People should not be forced to sacrifice their lives and property for the benefit of others.

So hypothetically a man could morally withhold food from his children until they starve to death? After all, it is his property and he cannot be forced to give it to someone else.

Speaking of homicidal fathers, suppose a man  murders all of his children with a hammer as they sleep--would it benefit others in the community for such a man to be executed by the government? Keep in mind that if you allow for even one exception to your seemingly absolute principle then it opens the possibility that there might be other reasonable exceptions.

What happens if the repeated tendency is for one group of free traders to continually exploit another group of free traders to the point that the second group is eventually no longer free?

Many tens of millions of people over many hundreds of years have been enslaved to various degrees as a direct consequence of completely free trade.

To claim that one kind of economic system champions individual rights is historically naive.

Quote from: Mere Nick on December 09, 2009, 08:39:00 PM

Since you don't own the river you can't go throw your trash in it.

1. Who keeps them from doing that?

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"Public welfare" is an awfully broad term.  What do you mean, exactly?...What do you mean by "social responsibility"?

2. Being responsible for seeking the good of not only ones self but also of one's community and society as a whole.

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I don't believe in murder but I can't find a society in the entire history of the world where it never happened, either.

3. That is not a relevant analogy. You're proposing an economic theory as being good and I'm asking for an example of the theory in action. If you were proposing the prohibition of an action like murder then an analogous scenario would be me asking for an example of murder actually being prohibited, which would be easy. If you were proposing a theory that the only good society is one where murder absolutely never occurs--ever. Well, that would be a pointless theory for obvious reasons.

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That's no reason to give up on being against murder.  Perfect liberty is aspirational.

4. So you've defined a concept as being the ONLY moral economic system but its never actually been done (and when its been tried it has been catastrophically evil for many millions of people) and since the morally good version of the system is "aspirational" it is presumably impossible to achieve? Hmm...apparently "pure free market" and "pure communism" have more in common than I thought.

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As for countries that have not used their freedom to take away the freedom of others, well, it's always seemed to me, based upon a reading of world history, that personal liberty has not been the norm but an aberation.  One can look at the Index of Economic Freedom, and draw their own conclusions about how warlike the freer countries are.

5. I agree that personal liberty has been much more limited for the vast majority of people throughout human history. But every society--in ancient times and today--does have a class of people who have more freedom and opportunity than others. Something like an "owner" class. In fact the Heritage ranking you've posted is a great example of this. Almost every measurement they use to evaluate the level of freedom in a society is from the perspective of the present-day owning class. So for example, under the Labor category they don't measure the freedoms and rights of workers, they measure how restrictive are labor laws on business owners and how costly is it to fire someone and replace them. Ultimately its not measuring people's freedom as a whole, its measuring the freedom of the elite.

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When I go to the grocery store and buy a gallon of milk, the deal won't happen if either one of us believes we are being exploited.

6. But the production of that gallon of milk could have involved many different kinds of exploitation beyond your simple transaction. Dairy Farmers being exploited by a colluding milk industry's de facto monopoly. Cows being exploited in various ways like being pumped full of harmful hormones (which in turn makes the milk less healthy for oblivious consumers--real life example of your pooping on the neighbors porch statement).

Really?  Please explain why you feel this way.

7. Okay...slavery existed for thousands of years including 400+ years of the Atlantic slave trade, followed by a century of indentured servitude, followed by modern-day multinational conglomerates using sweatshop labor. This is some people using their greater level of economic freedom to exploit others sometimes even via the participation of the exploited. Indentured servants and sweatshop workers for example were/are often lied to about the conditions of the exchange but since they did/do operate with little or no government regulation or legislation they can behave this way under a condition of near total economic freedom. Without regulation economic freedom invariably charts a course toward the immoral and exploitative in the pursuit of greater profit.

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Prohibition worked wonders, didn't it?  How about the drug laws?  It's also good to no that their isn't a prostitute to be found except in parts of Nevada, isn't it?

8. So are you saying that I should or should not be prohibited from buying certain things?

So then is an immoral firm is negatively impacting society, such as through pollution, not an issue of economic freedom? If not, does the government then have a legitimate duty to prevent such acts from occurring?

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In my experience the most socially responsible people I've ever dealt with were folks out trying to make a buck.

LOL...nothing inherently wrong with making profit and doing so has socially beneficial consequences. But its still funny to hear because a huge portion of all the most socially destructive forces in the world are rooted in people trying to make make a buck.

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Then go look at the Index of Economic Freedom for starters.  There's an extremely strong relationship between economic liberty and prosperity.

Again that ranking is only measuring the freedom of the owning class. It is not measuring quality of life for the general population. For example, I would much rather be an average income person in Japan or Britain or Denmark (etc) than Hong Kong, which beyond the skyscrapers and prosperity for some is a hub of poverty and exploitation (like many countries).

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The most you can say is that it is the worst one, with the exception of all the others.

I can accept that, but that statement would be a departure from your previous claim that a free market is an inherently "moral" system.

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People must be leaving in droves.

Whether people are trying to get in our out of a society is not a measurment of whether or not the system itself is "moral" but whether or not the system possesses opportunities for people to sustain themselves and have stability.

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Could have, but it doesn't have to be that way.  I consider such things when I decide who I do business with.  So have millions of others who shop at grocery stores that promote healthier foods.

People do consider those things and in the process of exercising their economic freedom they overwhelmingly agree to consume products that are more exploitative and negatively impact others and take away their freedom. So even though you're not using your economic freedom to deliberately exploit or take away the freedom of the person you are directly dealing with at the store, you are aware that that most purchases have certain exploitative costs and some person somewhere on the planet who may not even be involved in the market transaction is being exploited to bring you that product.

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What you are describing is a combination of force and fraud when it comes to slavery, fraud when it comes to folks being lied to, and folks often times taking what you describe as sweatshop conditions because they consider them better than available alternatives.

Can force and fraud be separated from Capitalism? They have been trying to separate them for several hundred years now without success.

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I will say that there are many things that you are prohibited from buying that is not the business of a properly functioning government.  I'm not saying those are good things, but that it is your choice.

You're really dancing around this one a lot. I get what you're saying--you think the government regulates the purchase of too many things. But my question is simply what is a justifiable basis for making the purchase of something illegal? If you were king what would be illegal to buy?