Public Choice Theory & Deadweight Social Loss

Great work Mike!

Great article.

When you first sent it to me ( a few days ago) I didn't have the time to read it but I just sat down and read it and I REALLY like it! Keep up the great work Mike! We must defend the individual!!!

@Mike, i think it's an excellent article... one which could be quoted, in part, over and over again here to refute opposing arguments.

the only problem is one i keep seeing here, everywhere.....

the arguments are great, the rationale is excellent, and the closed minds stay closed and the "deniers" of the value and wisdom of the "invisible hand" and "free markets" stay closed.

what's really needed is some kind of argument which will really touch people and help them "see the light."

until then, it's little more than a circle-jerk among our own believers.

and, no, i have NO idea what the answer is... as you can tell from many of my posts at current.com...

i can't think of anyone's mind i've changed.

did i?
raise your hand, PLEASE!

[and that doesn't mean quit trying, either! :))))))))]

I don't know how to get people to take the time to understand their societies reality instead of relying on feel good intuition. I'm currently taking an online Cultural Anthropology course and must read Aids and Accusation wherein the author espouses worldwide universal health care as a human right. After criticizing the corrupt government of Haiti the author stated they needed more funds wtf for :( they are the third most corrupt government in the world. I was asked to explain the sociological ramifications of "brain drain" I really wanted to talk about economic freedom and free trade but I stopped myself. I simply agreed with them on all the negative aspects of the brain drain, that poverty was the source, and continued on to use simple logic, light statistics, and simple story like examples to explain how the role of bureaucracy, it takes almost 4 years to start a business, poor enforcement of property rights, constant bribes to politicians, judges, police, and sometimes the military are necessary, and used a story of an idealistic new doctor who's hopes of treating the poor destroyed by government.

I think we must simplify our message because most people will not go to the trouble to look up a new word or concept they are unfamiliar with and the average reading ability in the USA is equivalent to where a 6th graders should be. We should empathize with others as being misled by a socialist media and public education and understanding this is not an academic intellectual debate but a fight to win over their minds and hearts. If we continue to use, what is often perceived by others as convoluted and heartless rhetoric, we will continue to get nowhere. I think we should use stories, and I am fully aware of the subjective and statistically weak value of anecdotal evidence, and emotions to make our points. I think it would make our points more salient to many if we added easily understood examples after every significantly new concept to insure ease of understanding what to many are difficult concepts. The idea of "dumbing down" our socioeconomic ideals may seem abhorrent to many but I think our focus should be on winning friends not debates. Maybe we should all read books like "How to Win Friends and Influence People" because some of us Libertarians can come off as total a$$holes and being belligerent is the surest way of ensuring or continued failure to spread our message. A good illustration of this is in debates between Atheists and Theists, regardless of your religious views, most would agree on an intellectual level that the Atheists often win debate but are almost universally despised, they come off as condescending, cocky, elitist, and end up alienating people. We need to focus on winning people not debates.

What's good for society as a whole seems to have no value in your story. What about private monopolies? Has everyone forgotten Standard Oil? How much have long distance rates gone down for everyone since the break-up of AT&T? Was Bernie Madoff one of your central planners? We could have had electric cars 20 years ago but GM owns the patents and THEY decided that WE didn't need them. I like some of Ron Paul's ideas but some libertarians don't think we need child labour laws or even to educate all children. Elitists that want to stay at the top and not let anyone else have a view.

Why change? The Glen Beck/Michelle Bachman angle is working so well for you.

plusaf is right - just a libertarian circle jerk

Don't talk about how we educate everyone in this country or how great the public schools are.Our average reading level is 4th grade, we are barely literate as a country now. However, as the last presidential debates were held at that reading level, the Lincoln/ Douglas debates were held at an 11th grade reading level. Our overall level of education has declined steadily since the fed started directing education in this country through the DOE. Belgium has higher scores than we do in international testing, they attach the money collected to the children themselves not the schools as a result the schools must compete with each other for students since it can spent at any school the parents and children wish. The competition brings better results.

Look up the definition of monopoly please, a monopoly is a government protected business, Standard oil was not a monopoly, and Rockefeller lowered the price of Kerosene for the average consumer, he didn't hurt his competition through any thing other than doing his job better. The phone company was a monopoly because it was protected as an utility. That is one of the biggest reasons why cable and electric costs so much, no competition. They also have no incentive to innovate, you are stuck with them and they know it.

Obama was preaching the value of a public schools education, and that we needed to support them. (said probably because the NEA contributed so much $$ to his campaign. And yet he was sending his children to a private school. Public schools are rotten to the core, and this rot spreads out to the media- when you start broadcasting cartoons for adults- "Familyguy" "Ren & Stimpy" etc. etc. - you are encouraging the dumbing down of America. Our Merchant Marine is at #7 in the world, In the glory days (1950's) it was #1. We make almost nothing today, and we import nearly everything from China, Taiwan, India, and Pakistan. Our schools rank far behind Europe's. My point? we just keep sliding further into the abyss, and we will never regain our place as #1 - whether it be education, commerce, industry, jobs, etc.

OMG. Such a typical distortion. A monopoly may or may not have something to do with the government helping it, but it has everything to do with a corporation that has squeezed out all competition. "Monopoly" is an economic term, not a political term.

My electric company is a quasi-public organization. Recently, the electric bill for my all electric apartment was LESS than the combined bill for basic cable and slowest high speed internet. So, it was that month, cheaper to make and deliver electricity by a quasi-public organization than it was for my cable company to deliver shitty TV and adequate internet. Reprehensible, and an example of the near monopoly my cable company has on services. A monopoly aided and abetted by conservative senators in my conservative state, but ultimately caused by a lack of competition.

Electric bills are measured by units used, kilowatt hours, vs a flat price per service by the cable company. As a result your cable bill is a fixed price and your electric bill fluctuates according to usage, use less pay less. Drawing a comparison is not helpful, however our power company here raised their charges by 25% increasing my bill and with no competition I'm forced to accept the change.

Of course monopoly is caused by lack of competition, often, as you pointed out, with the aid of legislators, from both sides of the aisle from what I've seen. That was my point. Many companies will lobby for regulation on their industry in order to deter competition, they will cartelize and use combined power to collectively bargain for special treatment against "destructive competition".

Have you ever read The Jungle? What Sinclair was describing in that book was a monopoly situation, where the government protected the meat industry to the detriment of labor and consumers, a small scale corporatism. The political and economic implications are often ignored by those who use the book as an illustration of how evil free market capitalism is, yet they ignore the fact that there is no free market in the book, it shows the corruption in the government that fostered the monopoly. Why is that? As an interesting aside, Sinclair lamented that many of the regulations he helped to champion had the opposite affect, it made the situation worse not better.

LMAO That is the sickest distortion of literature I think I've heard. Outright lies.

Sinclair's "The Jungle" described the evils of unregulated monopolies. The result of the book, and other writings like it was child labor laws and meat safety inspection.

Nikelibertate you and others exactly like you are the reason Ron Paul, shanklinmike, others like them and his website, are marginalized failures,. You all just make it up as you go.

Have you read the thing, or did you just let some pompous professor explain it to you? Like most people who talk about books they often don't read them for themselves, they let others dictate to them what they mean. How would it be regulated when the local corruption was responsible for protecting the corporation above the people to begin with? The executives paid the judges and police forces to enforce their rules. A small scale case of fascism, where the corporations are tied to the government. The unions helped orchestrate the corruption by rigging the elections. I've read the book twice, I reread it about a year ago. Any one who has a half a brain can see it's a piece of communist propaganda, not a work of literature.

Monopolies don't exist absent of government interference.

There hasn't been a major free market monopoly in the history of America.

re: Public education - when government was involved less with education, education was better.

Government school indoctrination centers should be abolished.

The free market provides all goods and services at a lower cost and better quality than socialism can.

Upton Sinclair even stated down the road that his meat packaging regulations went to the benefit of big business more than anything. It helped them monopolize by pushing out competitors through regulations that big business and government knew the little competitor couldn't afford. Upton Sinclair was right in his later days, not in his previous quick and irrational assumption that more centralized coercive monopolies (government) would "fix" the problem but that his regulations went to help oligopolize the industry leading to a loss of competition and more meat shortages resulting in excess profits for big business while the blue collar worker now had no way of competing for higher wages since all production had now been centralized by the Feds. The only option then for the low skilled workers? Unions....the government backed bureaucracies pushed HARD for union membership, especially those backed by politicians and government. What a mess.....and people think we have laissez-faire capitalism....what a joke....