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I fear that this conflates open and closed access with exclusive property rights. It isn't untrue that asserting exclusive property rights on something makes it

by nrr 28d ago

I fear that this conflates open and closed access with exclusive property rights. It isn't untrue that asserting exclusive property rights on something makes it closed access[0], but there are other mechanisms for achieving closed access of a resource, like enforced regulation. Slightly more formally, an assertion of exclusive property rights is a sufficient condition for something to be closed access, but it isn't necessary. Though, admittedly, that does depend on what one's definition of a free market is. Is it unfettered commerce, consumer protections and suchlike be damned? Is it a system of commerce that ensures equitable access? I'm personally of the mind that, as long as I trade with certificates that bear Caesar's face (or trade with proxies for such certificates, like a MasterCard), he gets to make the rules in exchange for my being able to lean on his legal system to protect my interests, so I find that the equitable access angle is nice. (Likewise, trading with Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever the in-vogue cryptocurrency is today means that the code makes the rules, and I get to pay for the privilege of having my transactions indelibly entered into the distributed ledger and for the code governing those transactions to be buggy and exploitable. I'm still scratching my head at it.) At the risk of building a strawman here, I'll caution that it's logically inconsistent to expect the state to enforce exclusive rights while also urging that strict regulation of a shared commons is an illegitimate market intervention. -- 0: That is, unless the title holder grants license, but that's a whole other conversation.

roenxi 28d ago
> I'm personally of the mind that, as long as I trade with certificates that bear Caesar's face (or trade with proxies for such certificates, like a MasterCard), he gets to make the rules in exchange for my being able to lean on his legal system to protect my interests, so I find that the equitable access angle is nice. It is a minor point I suppose, but this is the other way round. Because Caesar makes the rules you trade certificates that bear his face. It takes vigour and energy on the part of law enforcement to stop people from moving to private currencies.
- nrr 28d ago
  I'm unsure that I agree. History has borne out a lot of evidence that people will jump to other means of paying for things in the face of the local currency collapsing, even in the face of amped up (but nonetheless impotent) enforcement.
WalterBright 28d ago
> that does depend on what one's definition of a free market is Sigh. No need to make up one's own definition. Googling "free market": "A free market is an economic system where prices, wages, and the flow of goods are determined by supply and demand. There is no government control or central planning telling people what to buy, sell, or make. Instead, private choices and voluntary trades drive the economy."
- nrr 28d ago
  As it turns out, I'm not making up my own definitions here. The view of a free market being a market with equitable access is attributable to Adam Smith from his Wealth of Nations. He bases his understanding of this freedom on the absence of private rent-seeking and absence of monopoly privilege (though in 1700's vernacular). Henry George in his Progress and Poverty makes similar gestures toward defining a free market this way. Part of the reason why it's important to consider other definitions (and other economic models) is that there is an important result in economics from the 1970's that, more or less, establishes the lack of a guarantee that the demand curve in an aggregate demand model (a macroeconomic model) will slope downward. This makes the aggregate demand model less than useful for a priori arguments about supply and demand in the macro context; they must instead be approached a posteriori. It's also the big reason why I'm uninterested in a colloquial definition that is heavily filtered through von Mises and Friedman.
  - WalterBright 28d ago
    People often try to derail debates by arguing about the definition of a word. I'm not interested in such. The government tries to repeal the Law of Supply and Demand all the time. Unsuccessfully. A while ago, a good friend of mine asked me what would happen to jobs if the minimum wage was raised. I said the number of jobs would go down. He said "aha! here's a study that proved that the jobs increased!" I said I don't need to read it, because the researchers goofed. Some years later, the study was retracted because it was flawed. It was like a story on HackerNews some years back that made a claim that electric cars were 90% efficient. I knew that was hokum right off the bat. But I still had people with PhD's in engineering saying it was true. The car loses 10% just in losses in the battery, let alone anything else. So I did some research on the author. Seems it was a person without a degree in physics or engineering who worked at a ski resort.

by nrr 28d ago

roenxi 28d ago

> I'm personally of the mind that, as long as I trade with certificates that bear Caesar's face (or trade with proxies for such certificates, like a MasterCard), he gets to make the rules in exchange for my being able to lean on his legal system to protect my interests, so I find that the equitable access angle is nice. It is a minor point I suppose, but this is the other way round. Because Caesar makes the rules you trade certificates that bear his face. It takes vigour and energy on the part of law enforcement to stop people from moving to private currencies.

nrr 28d ago
I'm unsure that I agree. History has borne out a lot of evidence that people will jump to other means of paying for things in the face of the local currency collapsing, even in the face of amped up (but nonetheless impotent) enforcement.

WalterBright 28d ago

> that does depend on what one's definition of a free market is Sigh. No need to make up one's own definition. Googling "free market": "A free market is an economic system where prices, wages, and the flow of goods are determined by supply and demand. There is no government control or central planning telling people what to buy, sell, or make. Instead, private choices and voluntary trades drive the economy."

nrr 28d ago
As it turns out, I'm not making up my own definitions here. The view of a free market being a market with equitable access is attributable to Adam Smith from his Wealth of Nations. He bases his understanding of this freedom on the absence of private rent-seeking and absence of monopoly privilege (though in 1700's vernacular). Henry George in his Progress and Poverty makes similar gestures toward defining a free market this way. Part of the reason why it's important to consider other definitions (and other economic models) is that there is an important result in economics from the 1970's that, more or less, establishes the lack of a guarantee that the demand curve in an aggregate demand model (a macroeconomic model) will slope downward. This makes the aggregate demand model less than useful for a priori arguments about supply and demand in the macro context; they must instead be approached a posteriori. It's also the big reason why I'm uninterested in a colloquial definition that is heavily filtered through von Mises and Friedman.
- WalterBright 28d ago
  People often try to derail debates by arguing about the definition of a word. I'm not interested in such. The government tries to repeal the Law of Supply and Demand all the time. Unsuccessfully. A while ago, a good friend of mine asked me what would happen to jobs if the minimum wage was raised. I said the number of jobs would go down. He said "aha! here's a study that proved that the jobs increased!" I said I don't need to read it, because the researchers goofed. Some years later, the study was retracted because it was flawed. It was like a story on HackerNews some years back that made a claim that electric cars were 90% efficient. I knew that was hokum right off the bat. But I still had people with PhD's in engineering saying it was true. The car loses 10% just in losses in the battery, let alone anything else. So I did some research on the author. Seems it was a person without a degree in physics or engineering who worked at a ski resort.