From: Roger-AT-pseud.pseud
Subject: RE: M-INTRO: professional athletes
Date: Sat, 7 Dec 1996 11:24:07 +0000


At 02:58 AM 12/6/96 +0000, MO wrote:

>Roger wrote:

>>There may be more socially beneficial alternatives for the man, but, if the
>>mother voluntarily agrees to the transaction, I would generally assume that
>>her estimate of its being her best alternative is the best available
>>estimate, so, assuming he benefits, also, what he did is at least an
>>improvement over doing nothing.  It reminds me of the recent controversy
>>involving Kathie Lee Gifford, who endorsed products made by employing
>>workers in Honduras for 35 cents per hour.  I assume the end result of this
>>is that the company she endorsed stopped employing those workers, but I
>>never heard the end result of what happened to those workers.  Since they
>>voluntarily worked for 35 cents per hour, I would guess that, not having
>>that opportunity now, they are now making less than 35 cents per hour.  The
>>company and its customers are worse off, also.  Who gains by stopping such
>>"exploitation?"

> This beggars belief. A person who gives over money is better off for
>having done that than being shot and possibly dead. So handing over the
>money is at least an improvement on doing nothing. If we stop people
>handing over their money, they may well end up dead. Who gains by stopping
>such "highway robbery"?

In this example, the robber has caused the situation of the person being
robbed.  In capitalism, the capitalist has not only not caused the dependent
situation of workers, but has offered workers an additional opportunity
which they have gladly taken.  To equate the two in principle, it would have
to be shown that capitalists had limited workers' alternatives to working
for them, as the robber had limited the alternatives of the person being
robbed.  This is so obvious to me that I suspect I must be misunderstanding you.


>Selling
>life saving treatments is akin to holding a gun against the patient's head.

This implies that health care workers owe sick people treatment, and treats
them as slaves.  I do not see how they deserve to be so treated.


>>Monopolies which
>>are not enforced by government must be efficient, which makes them socially
>>beneficial, in order to survive.

>In what sense are they "efficient"?  Why are monopolies not enforced by
>government better than monopolies enforced by government? 

Monopolies which are not enforced by government must be able to operate in a
way that is more efficient than are any possible competitors.  Monopolies
which are enforced by government do not have this incentive.


>After all, the
>enforcement by government is just a factor which parties have to take into
>account. The person who buys from the government monopoly has no better
>alternative, surely? 

The person who buys from the monopoly which is enforced by government is
probably paying a higher price than he would if it were not so enforced, due
to the difference in incentive.


>if you say he could have had a better alternative if
>only the government hadn't intervened, then, in the case of many
>no-government monoploies, customers could have had better alternatives if
>the government had intervened. What is socially "beneficial" about a
>situation where some may extort wealth from others?

I do not see how extortion is relevant, unless, as you did in comparing
capitalism to a robber, you are saying that the ability to demand a certain
price is equivalent to actively threatening violence if someone does not pay
up.  If I had a monopoly on orange juice, and I sold it at a million dollars
per gallon, would I be doing anything wrong?  If I had enough buyers at that
price to make a sufficiently attractive profit, competitors would enter the
market.  If government enforced my monopoly, and people died because they
needed orange juice but could not afford it, then the artificial raising of
the price by the government's intervention would have to be suspected of
being necessary for their deaths to happen.



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