[717] in libertarians
Re: questions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Vernon Imrich)
Wed Feb 15 19:58:08 1995
To: teri piatt <tpiatt@vangogh.helios.nd.edu>
Cc: libertarians@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 13 Feb 1995 12:30:28 EST."
<199502131730.MAA01597@vangogh.helios.nd.edu>
Date: Wed, 15 Feb 1995 19:56:05 EST
From: Vernon Imrich <vimrich@MIT.EDU>
|> Their claim is that my right to property interferes with their right
|> to life and property, since I have a surpluss and I refuse to distribute
|> it, I am keeping them from being able to obtain what they need to live.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|> The standard scenario is one of a life boat. ...
This is a very common and IMHO *the* foundational question for any
discussion of economic theory and property rights.The premise of the
life boat is one of limited supply. It is very common. The life
boat is often a metaphor for the Earth. How often it is that we
hear "in this world of limited resources..."
Almost every dispute I've had with someone over property rights
is whether property (i.e. wealth) is in fact limited. For, only
in an environment with a limited supply can someone's ownership
of something deny another's chance to own something. You can't
have "too big a slice" unless there is only one global pie from
which we all must share. You can't "keep others from being able
to obtain what they need to live."
In short, libertarians and property rights advocates in general
reject this view. There is not a global pie, property is not
limited, or more precisely, wealth is not limited. The lifeboat
analogy fails because people made the lifeboat. At the very least,
they first recognized the floating object as something that would
support them and would be useful as a lifeboat. Without that human
action it would not have any significance as property, or wealth.
In my experience, a hybrid of these two views exists today. For
items like land or some raw materials, the global pie view exists.
After all, there is a limited land area available to farm or mine
or whatever. This is the "limited natural resources" we hear so
much about. To claim property rights to these, some argue, is in
itself theft; theft from the whole population which has equal claim
to this global pie. But for other items like chairs, computers,
wallets, and cars, people do inherently respect property rights.
They argue that if you build two chairs, or do some amount of
labor to afford to hire someone to build them, they are yours. You
can't have too many chairs because, to borrow the Doritos'
slogan "don't worry, we'll make more." The global pie folks will
say that there is only a limited supply of wood for the chairs
so that the craftsman does not have claim on what he carved.
The solution to this is to realize that while any given specific
"resource" may be in limited supply, it's value to people is
not. Land is limited, but the capacity to extract wealth from
that land is not (e.g. we can farm places today that no one could
have 100 years ago, we can support today on one plot of land
what would have taken hundreds in the past). It's that increased
value -- the wealth -- that supports us. And it's the wealth
that the people create and lay claim to as property.
If you just "find" something, or worse, conquer something, very
few consider that a valid claim on it. If you make something
where there was nothing there before, almost everyone thinks
you deserve the wealth from that. Either consciously or
unconsciously, advocates of the global pie "zero sum" view
are saying that all wealth is just "taken" or worse, "stolen"
from the whole, from the pie. Libertarians argue that whatever
pie you have is pie that you baked yourself, pie that would
not have existed at all had you not taken the action to make it,
and like Doritos, people can make more of it. Therefore it is
pie which only the maker can lay moral and legal claim to. Making
consists of realizing the value that something has.
Look at a car. Melted down to it's iron ore, copper, plastic,
and rubber components it's not worth $50. Yet, as a car it's
worth thousands. Where did all that additional property/wealth
come from? To go a step further, look at a rock. As a rock
you might have to pay someone to remove it. Smelted for it's
ore component it might be worth a few cents a ton. Where did
the extra property/wealth come from? It's human action. Without
it, the material is often a drain, an obstacle to survival. With
it, it has positive value.
To return finally to the lifeboat, the owner will recognize the
ability of the drowners to produce worthwhile things. The drowners
will recognize the value of their lives. It is thus to the
benefit of both of them to help each other in exchange for
the values they offer each other. Libertarians do not see people
as drainers of resources but creators of resources. The new
people will use up some place in the lifeboat, but will in turn
be able to catch some fish, make repairs/additions to the craft, spot
land, or just entertain. No one is worthless. Whoever it is drowing
will have some capacity to produce something useful more than what
they use. That's what humans do. That's the concept of trade.
It's a positive sum game. BOTH traders end up with more than
if they had not made the trade.
Now, it may be that every now and then there's a stupid
lifeboat owner who won't see this. But there's no sure way out of
this. With property rights, those who recognize the value that
others bring with them earn more and have more trading power
than those who do not. On average, the lifeboats that pick up
the drowners will do better than those who don't. It's not
perfect, but what other alternative is there? If someone's capable
of being stupid as lifeboat owner, what's to prevent him being
stupid as a government lifeboat regulator? In the former case,
at least drowners have the opportunity to avoid him and hope for
a rational boat to come by later. In the latter case, drowners
will have to deal with all lifeboats being run under his stupidity.
Furthermore, since we've already accepted the fact that lifeboat
owners will be better off if they pick up people, the desire
to profit may well overcome a given owner's stupidity. He may
not understand why it is that it's better to pick them up, but
he'll do it as soon as he sees that it works. I'd argue that
even without seeing others this would play out that way. Why? Because
we all have an inherent understanding of the value of others, because
we know what we ourselves are capable of.
Any time you hear someone refer to people as a "drain on resources"
(immigrants taking jobs, cars using up fossile fuels, people
eating food) they're operating under the assumption that people
consume more than they produce. For them the only concern is
"who." Who gets to use what, and how much of it. They are the
global pie crowd and it's impossible to debate the issue without
examining the basic assumptions they are making.
At the great economics lunch counter, the pie versus Doritos debate
is probably involved in 9 of 10 arguments.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Vernon Imrich | market failure, n. The inabilty of the |
| MIT, Dept. OE | market to recover from a blow by |
| Cambridge, MA 02139 | intervention. (The Exchange) |
----------------------------------------------------------------------
| MIT LP: http://www.mit.edu:8001/activities/libertarians/home.html |
----------------------------------------------------------------------
