Cass:
People should be allowed to do what they want, subject to the demands of honor.
What does that even mean? It's one of those wonderfully vague statements that people love, because of course whatever they want to do is right and honorable.
Reminds me of Newt Gingrich's list of incredibly vague statements that 90+% of Americans were supposed to agree with... so long as no one tried to figure out what they actually meant.
Grim:
What does that even mean? ...So here's the concept that occurred to me. A whole lot of digital ink has been spilled lately on men and relationships, and how contemporary men -- especially the youngest generations -- don't take their duties to those relationships seriously enough. Young men don't treat their girlfriends right, they don't want to get married to them and undertake those responsibilities, you hear even middle-aged men talking about the joys of prostitutes and so forth.
I have given a definition of honor (which is linked on the sidebar). It ultimately means that you may do whatever you want, provided you give due consideration to the duties you owe to those to whom you stand in certain relationships. Different relationships have different duties -- you owe more to your father than to a stranger, more to your countrymen than to foreigners, more to friends than to those who have proven to be your enemies (but even something to them -- perfidy is always a violation of honor)....
That's why Zell Miller came down so hard on John Kerry. It wasn't the policy disagreements that provoked such a powerful response. It was Kerry's constant betrayal of people whom he owed duties of honor. Every time he had a duty -- to fellow sailors, soldiers, countrymen -- he would elect self-interest instead.
So all that the Jacksonian is saying is that doing what Kerry does is wrong. You're free to follow your self interest -- subject to the demands of honor.
What if honor is the way men think about relationships? It's far from meaningless: Jackson himself suffered two broken ribs in a duel over an insult to his wife (a man called her a 'bigamist,' because she had married Jackson without realizing her previous husband had not properly filed for divorce when he abandoned her), and its concerns provoked Zell Miller into one of the greatest political speeches of my lifetime.
There are a lot of cultural forces that have reasons to want to destroy honor as a concept at the core of American life. I am not an ally to any of them, but some of you are. There are not a lot of clear exponents of honor to stand against those forces: it's hard to think of any cultural figure since the death of John Wayne who has stood up for it reliably and without exception as something to which men should aspire. As a consequence, the concept has been weakened in our culture over the last generation.
Perhaps it has costs from some perspectives -- a sense of an honor-bound duty to fellow American citizens probably accounts for close to 100% of my disagreements with Tex's libertarian view of economics and politics, so from her perspective those might be costs because they keep me from joining her in advocacy of those positions. If I'm right that honor is the way that men take relationships seriously, though, it strikes me that there are opposing costs even if you are an advocate of one or another of those forces that have an interest in dismissing the concept.
40 comments:
Nothing ever occurs to me when I'm shaving my head.
I don't think of your honor-based objections as costs on the ground that they interfere with your appreciation of what I think of as rational economics. If I agreed with you on the point of honor in one of those discussions, I'd readily agree that the point was more important than whatever practical trade-off I was otherwise in favor of. The problem comes up when I think your interpretation of honor in one of those situations is lunacy, often standing my own concept of honor on its head. In one of those situations, we can't resolve the conflict by going to the honor-book and looking the answer up.
My view of a market is that it keeps track of what we value, not that it tells us what to value. Whatever is important to you will figure into what you're willing to do, whether you're willing to do it spontaneously, whether you wouldn't do it for any bribe, or whether you're willing to do it in trade for something else but not otherwise, because you have better things to do. Obviously your sense of honor will inform all of these decisions. As long as it's a question of what you're willing to do and what you're willing to pay or what work you're willing to do, we never quarrel. Often what I see you doing is insisting that you have the right to make these decisions for others. In the classic case, you're not supplying water to needy people in an emergency, but feel free to dictate the generosity with which someone else ought to. That's not a question of honor.
As some pretty pathological societies are honor-based, I have trouble seeing it as an unqualified good. I see it as a vehicle for a society moving from shame-based to guilt-based. It is a good thing, and many a man or woman has held the line in a tough spot by clinging to an honor that may be tough to define or see clearly in a fog, but is of huge importance anyway.
Yet it is not the best thing, as "honor" means different things in different places, with no authority that chooses between them.
I'm confused by the example of John Wayne, who was married 3 times and cheated on at least 2 of his wives, as an exemplar of honor. And like AVI, I have seen some very perverse notions of honor that are actively evil.
If we limit it to doing one's duty, great. I'm with you. The problem is that on anything more than an individual level, duty must be spelled out or codified somewhere to be anything like enforceable.
And the notion that anyone may do anything he/she please so long as it doesn't violate his/her personal sense of honor is a recipe for utter chaos. I don't trust the kind of Muslim who honor-murders his daughter or wife for a perceived slight to his control over the women in his family (or for simply daring to act autonomously) and will never accept that standard.
Nor do I see any real evidence that men in general are governed by honor in their relationships to women. In fact, that seems to be the problem - that they *don't* feel so bound. I think my husband does. Men I respect, do. I think you do, Grim.
But men in general? I have seen precious little evidence of this and certainly not in the life of John Wayne. It's a flattering idea, but not I think an accurate one.
Or we could look at a discourse from Kirk:
...“To begin with unlimited freedom,” Dostoevsky wrote, “is to end with unlimited despotism.” The worst enemies of enduring freedom for all may be certain folk who demand incessantly more liberty for themselves. This is true of a country’s economy, as of other matters. America’s economic success is based upon an old foundation of moral habits, social customs and convictions, much historical experience, and commonsensical political understanding. ...
"...The enemy to all custom and convention ends in the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. The final emancipation from religion, the state, moral and positive law, and social responsibilities is total annihilation: the freedom from deadly destruction. ..."
See: http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2015/02/a-dispassionate-assessment-of-libertarians.html
So it cannot be 'honor' alone, but honor springing from ordered liberty (or right order, as TA would put it).
An interesting case in point re Honor ethics is German general Hans Oster, one of the first and most effective of the military opposition to Hitler.
In 1939 (and I see I 've mentioned Oster here before), he began to pass German military information re the prospective invasion to the Dutch, who he fully expected to share it with the French. (In the event, they did nothing with it.) He described his feelings to a friend as follows:
""It’s much easier to take a pistol and shoot someone down, it’s much easier to storm a machine-gun emplacement, than to do what I have decided to do. And if I should die, I beg you to remain my friend after my death–a friend who knew the circumstances under which I took this decision, and what drove me to do things which perhaps others will never understand, or at least would never have done themselves."
My view is that clearly what Oster did was the right thing to do...but that is also speaks well for him that he did not find it easy.
Ok, so, several thoughts.
Cass:
I wasn't thinking of John Wayne the person, but John Wayne the character on the screen. It was an ideal held up; now we don't even hold it up.
So when you say:
Nor do I see any real evidence that men in general are governed by honor in their relationships to women. In fact, that seems to be the problem - that they *don't* feel so bound. I think my husband does. Men I respect, do. I think you do, Grim. But men in general? I have seen precious little evidence of this...
This sounds to me like we agree on the problem after all. The problem is that men you respect behave in a way that is no longer common (if ever it was), but that leads to good results when the men you respect do it.
Which leads me to AVI and D29:
...some pretty pathological societies are honor-based...
So it cannot be 'honor' alone, but honor springing from ordered liberty (or right order, as TA would put it).
I think that's right. The problem isn't honor itself (i.e., the virtue of doing your duty according to the relationships you hold). The problem is that people have disordered ideas about what their duties are.
We've come to a place where we can't criticize their culture, so we can't attack the disordered ideas about duty. Instead, we've decided to try to make people less dutiful: try to play down the idea that being honorable is anything important.
But consider a Pakistani father, who believes that his duty to his daughter includes controlling her sexuality. Do we really want him to continue to believe he has that duty, and just slacken off in doing it? Or do we want him to change his mind about what his duties entail, but be virtuous about doing them?
Tex:
The problem comes up when I think your interpretation of honor in one of those situations is lunacy...
That sounds like we agree too, except that you think I'm a lunatic. That's OK; I think libertarianism is sociopathic (though I am quite sure that you personally are not). It strikes me as a disordered way of thinking about your relationships to fellow citizens. We've had that discussion many times; I simply can't accept "Our fellow citizens have suffered a hurricane that has destroyed their homes: let's raise the prices on everything they need to survive." Not unless we also agree to pay those prices, instead of making our suffering fellow citizens pay them (in which case I don't have the same degree of objection at all).
Still, that's a separate question. It's a question about what our duties are, not about whether we should do them.
Mr. Foster: Very good.
I'm amazed you can get that from what I've said on the subject. It truly is an area in which we can only insult, never communicate.
It is of course never my intention to insult (in accord with the comments policy, any 'hell' is meant only for the ideas). Still, these solutions do operate by allowing people to raise prices on fellow citizens who are suffering through no fault of their own. This is what I mean when I say I think we're divided here by a notion of what duty honor requires towards fellow citizens -- here and in other places. I think protective tariffs can be a good idea to keep Americans employed, though it impoverishes non-Americans, because I recognize an honor-bound duty toward fellow citizens that doesn't exist toward strangers. I think we can accept paying non-market prices for American oil (for example, as by having US military oil sourced from American oil industries at whatever price they need to be profitable) out of an interest in keeping American industry strong and American citizens employed. Market mechanisms, even if they are sometimes more efficient, can wither plants we ought to tend.
Grim,
If I may, I believe that your concerns about price gouging are not as one sided as you feel them to be. I'd encourage you to watch the video on this page, and tell me your thoughts on it. Are the most vulnerable served by eliminating incentives to bring additional resources to an afflicted region? Are they served by the reduced supply preventing them from getting the goods whatsoever? Is there a better system for getting the goods into the hands of those who have greater need than the forces of self-interest? I would submit, that if we were truly concerned about our communities, nothing in the world would prevent us from lending (or indeed gifting) money to our neighbors to make up for the difference in increased costs. Or for the store owner who knows the family who needs the generator (as in the example in the video) to waive the extra fee for the truly deserving family he knows, while still increasing prices to discourage the merely inconvenienced people from buying a generator they can do without.
I am nearly certain (just as I am certain she will correct me if I am mistaken) that Tex and I agree wholeheartedly with the concept that the forces of supply and demand are neither good nor evil, but are instead simply an effective method to get goods from those who have them to those who want them. Like all tools they can be used for good or ill, but it is in the hands of the wielder to determine how to use them.
I think if my daughter dies because you wouldn't sell me the generator at the price I could afford -- the example leaves vague whether you have $1300 or only $800 -- you'd have a huge weight on your soul. In fact, if I killed you over it and stole the generator to save that child, I think the weight on my soul would be much less. Murder and theft are obviously wrong, so clearly I think that refusing to help me save the child in order to increase your profits is even more wrong.
Well, that was not what I expected. You're telling me, you'd rather I be required to sell it at list price ($800 in this example) to whoever came around first, thus making it more likely for me to have none in stock, as well as discouraging me from pestering my supplier to rush me more (and perhaps pay my supplier more to bring more generators quickly), than to charge an extra $500 which might discourage your neighbor who just wanted to watch his DVDs from buying it out?
And furthermore that I am morally worse than a murder and thief for charging 60% more on something that you could have purchased a week prior for the standard price? Sir, I am afraid we are not going to ever agree to that conclusion. Because I cannot read that as anything other than, "If I have something so critical to my child's survival that I neglect purchasing until after it becomes an emergency, it is incumbent on you to make up for my disregard to my own duties, and make me whole, else I am more justified in your murder and robbery than you are in charging me a premium." That's just awful.
The reason this really bothers me, is that by requiring the generators to be sold at the normal market price of $800, you take away the disincentive for those merely inconvenienced by the power outage from buying one, and increase the likelihood that the shopkeeper (who might otherwise be willing to waive the increased fee knowing of your need) won't have any to give you at ANY price. It is my position that the moral choice (assuming I'm the shopkeeper) is to recognize your need and say, "Take it for now, we'll work out payment later." But I can only do that if I have generators. And laws that prevent me from increasing prices during periods of great demand actively work against my ability to make that choice. Instead, if you show up, and I have none left, there's nothing I can do for you (except perhaps give the names of some of the people who bought them, and suggest you can ask them to store your child's medicine).
But the counter example is if I charge a premium for those same generators. Those who are otherwise able to do without them are more likely to wait till the price comes back down in order to buy them, while those who truly need them will still have some available to purchase. And further, I have incentive to tell my supplier to rush me another shipment of generators, because the increased demand has made it more profitable for me, and therefore I am able to pay him to expedite the shipment.
Which leads to a few interesting questions if you still disagree with the morality I am putting forth, should I, as the merchant, be required to get additional generators expedited out at a loss to myself in order to make more available? Is it immoral for the supplier to charge extra for the additional generators to be sent out in an expedited fashion... i.e. outside of normal supply chains? And if so, should they be required to send them out at a financial loss to themselves? What about the truckers who now have to be hired to bring the additional shipments in... should they be required to work for free? At what point in the supply chain does this stop? Should stores be required to carry these goods if it is economically bad for them to take these kinds of losses? After all... if it required to take economic losses to supply those generators in regions likely to be hit by hurricanes, what happens if Lowes or another store decides it's not worth it to carry those products anymore? How far does this moral imperative stretch? Should a company somewhere be forbidden from discontinuing the manufacture of portable generators?
Now, it may shock you to know I'm much more in favor of rationing in times of emergency, simply because while it does violate supply and demand, it absolutely does help make the greatest number of critical goods available to the most people. If there is a shortage of gasoline (for cars to evacuate, or to fill up generators, or to heat homes, etc) then there's a point where I can make it as expensive as I like, but SOMEONE is likely to come by and buy out my whole supply. Either to horde, or resell, or otherwise deny it to others (though the last is really unlikely). So if we limit the sale of gas to say ten gallons per customer, then the currently supply can be used by more people.
We probably aren't going to agree on an example that begins with licensing -- to any degree -- murder and theft.
Look at it from the other perspective, though. Say you're the owner of the generator, and some poor person comes up to you who has been afflicted by a hurricane and has a dying daughter. "It's your own fault for not having bought a generator before," you say to this person -- who, for all you know, barely makes enough to pay his rent. "I am happy to ensure that only those who can afford my inflated prices can buy electricity, because their willingness to pay this price ensures that electricity is more important to them than to others."
Perhaps his daughter dies, then. Or perhaps he offers you his late mother's wedding ring in trade -- worth much more than $1300, but he can't afford the time to find a dealer to sort it out. Now his daughter is probably worth more to him than his mother's memory, so that is, in market terms, a good trade.
I still think the merchant who elected to profit off his desperation and misfortune should be shot. I'll accept him being hanged instead, but not him being blessed as a moral actor.
It's interesting, Grim, how often your examples seem to have an expectation that people will succumb to greed right to the worst case scenario. I tend to believe that most people have sympathy, and would help in some way the man who's daughter was at risk, either by selling him the generator, or some other way (like providing his own amenities for the man's use).
While it's true that the market itself is amoral, it does have some incentives to doing the moral thing- first, you build a good reputation and people are morel likely to patronize you in the future. Second, if you gouge to strongly, you might incite a mob to take what they like instead- one has to balance the realities against profit, always.
I think in the end, the benefits to the free market are that it's the best mediator of negative human nature (because of the negotiation aspect) that we have without coercion. In practice, it's really a surprisingly good mitigator of immoral urges. Coupled with a moral society, it seems to have done the best job of providing the most opportunities to do good in the world, vs. any other economic system.
Well, the example isn't mine -- it's the video's.
A good person will do just as you say. They'll walk away from the market in this case, and either sell the generator at non-market rates, or not sell it and provide its use to save the child. That's what they ought to do.
Look at it from the other perspective, though. Say you're the owner of the generator, and some poor person comes up to you who has been afflicted by a hurricane and has a dying daughter. "It's your own fault for not having bought a generator before," you say to this person -- who, for all you know, barely makes enough to pay his rent. "I am happy to ensure that only those who can afford my inflated prices can buy electricity, because their willingness to pay this price ensures that electricity is more important to them than to others."
I already said what the moral answer would be to me:
It is my position that the moral choice (assuming I'm the shopkeeper) is to recognize your need and say, "Take it for now, we'll work out payment later." But I can only do that if I have generators.
And once again, you're sidestepping the entire problem with enforcing price controls. I cannot sell a generator to you to save your child's life at any price if I don't have any left. And the only means to ensure that supply will keep up with demand that humanity has ever found to work (ask the Soviets if their method ever worked) is the free market. When the demand rises, rising prices control that demand and provide incentive to increase supply. With price fixing you actively break this chain. There is no control on demand, and no incentive to increase supply.
Once more, how does one discourage people from buying out the stock of generators after (or shortly before) the storm if prices are forbidden to rise in response to the increased demand? How do you propose to discourage the merely inconvenienced from buying out the stock from those who truly need it if there is no incentive for the merely inconvenienced to wait until the prices fall again?
And finally, you and I have both been assuming all along this discussion that I know you, and you know me, and your child's medical condition is also known to me. Can you tell me the name of even two employees at the local Lowes or Home Depot (you don't actually have to, I'm just making a point)? Because I can't. And so I don't expect that they'll know me and my circumstances to hold one in the back for when I arrive. Nor do I expect my neighbors to call me and ask if I have a generator before they purchase one for their home.
And in fact, the REAL answer OUGHT to be that in the event of an emergency, my ability to go out and purchase a generator OUGHT to be irrelevant, because if I need life saving power for my child (ignoring the irresponsibility of me to plan for such an event) I need to ask my family and neighbors for help. That's what frith is for anyway, isn't it? Why are we putting the burden on the market to cover for the responsibility of frith?
I still think the merchant who elected to profit off his desperation and misfortune should be shot. I'll accept him being hanged instead, but not him being blessed as a moral actor.
And here's the difference. The merchant isn't increasing pries to "profit off his desperation" (and if he is, then he's a scoundrel but I've never once before seen you propose that being a scoundrel is a cause for the death penalty). Nor is he being a moral actor as you say... instead he is being a rational actor. It is the call for price controls that are irrational. It is reacting in a purely emotional manner that ends up counterproductive to the public good. By fixing prices, and removing the incentive for the market to bring a greater supply to the afflicted area, you are actively harming the people you claim to want to help.
That's what frith is for anyway, isn't it? Why are we putting the burden on the market to cover for the responsibility of frith?
My claim is that we shouldn't look to the market at all in these cases. These aren't proper cases for the market: they're not legitimate opportunities to profit. We have duties to perform, instead.
So -- perhaps we agree, more or less. Except you're prepared to license a kind of interloper, someone who pursues profit instead of duty, or perhaps who recognizes no duty. That's like the way that people used to think of Jews, as a kind of non-member of society who could do extra things that society wouldn't accept from its members but which were (however immoral) sometimes beneficial.
I don't think that's wise. Whatever benefits accrued to society, or to individual Jews, the damage in the long term of admitting a class of people not part of formal society was terrible. If we have frith bonds, we should all have them. We have to take care of each other. We can't have a class licensed to usury, whom we use and despise. We need to do right by each other, and profit from each other only when free exchange is untainted by accidents that put one party at a fundamental disadvantage in bargaining -- including hurricanes.
...then he's a scoundrel but I've never once before seen you propose that being a scoundrel is a cause for the death penalty.
That's what I always suggest for looters in cases of natural disasters. This is just the kind of case when frith is called for, not the profit motive.
I'm not calling for price controls in these cases. I'm calling for prices to be set aside entirely. This isn't a proper situation for a market. It's a situation for us to help our fellows, so they can recover from an unfair and unanticipated natural disaster.
Grim, I take it then that your answer to Mike's earlier question is that the entire supply chain (the local merchant, his suppliers, THEIR suppliers, the truckers, the financiers, etc) DOES have a moral duty to set aside questions of profit and loss in the case of our hypothetical disaster, at least in the short term, and furthermore, to recognize at all times the possibility that it may need to do so in the future?
If you phrase it in market terms -- "merchant," "suppliers," etc -- that sounds very different from the way it sounds if you phrase it in non-market terms. A "merchant" doesn't sound like he ought to have a duty to charity, because he's being defined as a kind of human being in terms of market activity.
A citizen sounds like he does have a duty to look out for fellow citizens. That's what frith bonds are about. They're not ways we profit from each other, but ways in which we make each other free ("frith" is a cognate to both "friend" and "free"). In this case, what we're freeing each other from is a fact about the world: it sometimes produces disasters. The rule is the Golden Rule: we take care of each other when this happens, so we can each be freer against a hostile world.
So, you're describing communism then. Where each is compelled to give according to his ability to each according to his needs. Where I am not simply required to have a civil interaction with you, but am instead compelled to act as your friend. If so, then I reject your definition of frith as having nothing at all to do with freedom. Because it is saying that I am not free to benefit from the sweat of my brow, but am instead compelled to give the product of my labor away, not just to the needy, but indeed to anyone who happens by. Where every man is a slave to the desires of his fellow citizen (in such a system, I would find the word "subject" more appropriate).
I keep stressing that word "compelled" because it lies at the heart of the disagreement between us. In a free market, a merchant takes risks by purchasing inventory and attempting to resell it at a profit. Profit, is not a dirty word, because without that profit, there is no way the merchant can afford to buy or keep his store, pay his employees, feed his family, or indeed, pay his taxes and thus fulfill his obligations to the state (and his fellow citizens). Other societies have tried to operate without profit, and universally they fail. Because they rely on the forced labor of individuals to create goods to be taken from them and given to others. Normally, we refer to such transactions as slavery. Whether compelled by a private owner of the slave, or a government owner of the citizenry as slaves (as is the case in most communistic dictatorships).
And finally, and perhaps most critically, the compelling that is required by what you suggest murders virtue. I say this because without the decision to do the moral thing, there can be no virtue. If I compel you with the threat of death or imprisonment to give away your worldly possessions to feed the hungry, you have not performed any virtuous act. You've simply done as you were compelled. Nor have I performed any kind of virtuous act, because I have threatened you with death in order to steal your property and give it to others. And yet, this is precisely what you are proposing. Making the citizen who has worked to make and keep a store give away his goods under threat of death because you claim it is his duty. Do you really believe that is just? Or virtuous?
So, you're describing communism then.
Good Lord, Mike. Is there really no ground in your ontology between "market economy" and "communism"? If I send the National Guard to administer relief in a disaster zone, is that a communist society?
What if we said that markets are great when participants are free actors, but that certain conditions (like natural disasters) can destroy the prerequisites for a market? That the right response isn't to set up an opportunity to profit off the afflicted, but to help them get back on their feet so that a normal market economy can resume?
Respectfully sir, anytime you invoke the idea that it is a citizen's duty to provide his private property for public use upon pain of death, then yes... that is communism. To each according to his needs from each according to his means is one of the foundational concepts of communism (or at least Marxism). I see no difference between that and what you are suggesting, no.
If you wish for me to posit a middle ground between the free market and communism, I absolutely can. A controlled economy where the supply is not set by demand, but instead planned by the government who dictates how much wheat will be grown, how much gasoline will be produced, how many generators will be manufactured, and then they leave it to the citizens to go forth and accomplish those goals. I believe such an economy is bound for ruin, but it is not communism.
Or perhaps an economy where prices are fixed by the government, and no one is ever allowed to sell at costs above a certain price. These economies are also doomed to collapse, but again, this is not communism.
What makes the example you cited communism? The requirement to surrender private property for public use under the threat of death if you dare disobey.
Providing aid out of the public treasury is one thing (the National Guard example). Stealing private property (which those generators most assuredly are) and requiring the owner to give them away is another completely.
And I am all for helping the afflicted, but for whatever reason, I seem to be doing a poor job of explaining that the market is precisely the best mechanism to help people get back on their feet. It is the one common thread in the greatest explosion of wealth and prosperity in the history of the world, it is the most efficient means ever devised to get goods from those who have them into the hands of those who need them. And yet, somehow we're to believe that "profit" is the same as exploitation.
I have attempted to point out many times that I believe there is room for virtue and helping those in need in a free market. But apparently I am failing to adequately show how the shortages created by fixed prices destroy the possibility for such virtue. I have attempted to point out how profit can lead to greater supplies of in-demand items coming to the afflicted areas, but have failed to make this clear. I have attempted to show that virtue cannot be compelled at the point of a gun. Please help me by explaining what is unclear or what premise I am missing.
I'm not sure that I have proposed killing people who won't surrender their property -- although I suppose that is already lawful in cases of eminent domain, to say nothing of martial law attending a disaster! I wasn't talking about seizing the man's generator, but making a claim that he ought morally to use it in such a way as to help out during the disaster -- not to try to make a bigger profit from the afflicted.
What I think I said was that I thought that theft and murder were wrong. I just said I thought it was even worse to let a man's child die in order to increase one's profits. I could understand killing or stealing to save your child. I can't understand standing by while the child dies, in order to extract a few hundred extra dollars.
Now I realize you've often expressed a moral intuition that it's worse to positively cause harm than to merely allow it to happen (as in the famous trolley thought experiment). So it may not seem very wrong to you for the merchant simply to stand by and allow a fellow citizen's child to die, whereas the act of robbery (or murder) is a positive doing of harm.
I'm not a utilitarian, so this isn't a 'greater good' argument. I'm not arguing for fixed prices or in favor of murder. I'm not against the market, in almost all cases: we're talking about a very limited set of hard cases in which people are made unfree by acts of God. This is where I think a combination of charity and duty -- the duties citizens ought to owe each other, as well as the duties freely assumed by National Guardsmen -- should temporarily assume the place of a market. We shouldn't look to profit, but to restore the freedom of temporarily harmed Americans as we would want to be helped ourselves in that case.
It's not that you're missing premises: I understand your argument. Tex has made the same argument to me many times. I get it: you think the market would fix the problems faster than a non-market response. I'm not sure I agree, but I also think there's a duty that commands here. That being the case, I can only endorse market solutions insofar as we -- the public purse, as you say -- assume the costs instead of making our afflicted fellow citizens pay them.
"If you phrase it in market terms -- "merchant," "suppliers," etc -- that sounds very different from the way it sounds if you phrase it in non-market terms. A "merchant" doesn't sound like he ought to have a duty to charity, because he's being defined as a kind of human being in terms of market activity.
A citizen sounds like he does have a duty to look out for fellow citizens."
I identify them as merchants, suppliers, and so forth because that's the capacity and skill set that's allowing them to intervene to anyone's good in the first place. It goes without saying that they're citizens, too, although the people they're buying from might not be. IMHO being a merchant doesn't absolve them of their civic duty to help their fellow citizen in a time of crisis, but nor does their being a citizen with a sense of civic duty enable them to simply conjure supplies out of thin air. Our citizen-merchant obtains his wares from a vast (these days, potentially worldwide) network of laborers and suppliers, and while some parts of this chain might be share his sense of civic duty and be willing to take a financial hit in order to help in time of disaster, others (particularly those far removed from the imperiled community) undoubtedly won't, and they'll need to get paid.
Seems like a key underlying, unspoken issue here is the missing distinction between what the conscience should demand, and what the law realistically can demand.
Likewise, the moral difference between someone simply hiking the price of their goods to profit off another's desperation, versus someone taking measures outside their usual channels so as to get more goods in the midst of calamity, and charging more because it genuinely cost them more to keep this supply flowing -- and how, in practice, the law (or even their fellow citizens) is to tell the difference. You can bet they'll be lumped together by whomever's getting the bill.
I wasn't talking about seizing the man's generator, but making a claim that he ought morally to use it in such a way as to help out during the disaster -- not to try to make a bigger profit from the afflicted.
I cannot see how you're not talking about seizing the generator when you earlier said:
"I'm not calling for price controls in these cases. I'm calling for prices to be set aside entirely."
And when you said:
"I still think the merchant who elected to profit off his desperation and misfortune should be shot. I'll accept him being hanged instead, but not him being blessed as a moral actor."
That established that by trying to sell the generator, he is deserving of death. Thus the formulation "he must surrender his goods, or be shot or hung."
And I am going to boil this down to the bare basics for a moment, because I think this is a critical piece that is being overlooked. The merchant, let's call him Bob, has invested his life savings into his store. Bob has purchased his store, purchased the goods to stock his store, and attempts to sell those goods in an effort to provide for himself and his family. If I understand you correctly, you believe in times of crisis, it is Bob's duty to surrender from his stock (which he himself paid for) to anyone in need, with no profit asked. At the most generous interpretation I can give that, you're saying he should sell the item at what it cost him to purchase it from his supplier plus a reasonable markup to cover his operating expensive for his store. If you ask for him to expect any iota less in trade for that item, you are saying that it is incumbent upon him to take a personal loss, to surrender his property and contribute to the impoverishment of his family to "help" his community. Is the community going to pay him the lost value of the item? Is the community going to reward him (the calling this a "duty" implies not)? Why is Bob's property and livelihood less valuable than the car salesman's (who I cannot imagine you picture to have a "duty" to provide cars during a hurricane), or the accountant (emergency tax services?), or the historian (emergency lessons on the Hundred Years War?)?
You earlier brought up the medieval Jews. And I think you hit upon something there. It's not me who is saying "[t]hat's like the way that people used to think of Jews, as a kind of non-member of society who could do extra things that society wouldn't accept from its members but which were (however immoral) sometimes beneficial." Your argument has seemed to be that the store owner is like the stereotypical medieval Jew who preys upon good Christians and takes advantage of them in their time of need, and serves no good purpose but to fatten their own purse. And I think that logic stinks today just as much as it did then. Without that store owner (or others like him) taking risks by buying goods that he believes he can sell to his community, the community doesn't have access to those goods. He is benefiting the community by giving them access to goods they cannot get themselves (otherwise they'd never need to go to his store). And he is rewarded for doing this good by making a profit off of it and thus providing a living for himself and his family. It is not evil to make a living, and yet I see this hostility towards profit, and it floors me.
Yes, I understand the objection and see how it can appear insensitive to ask higher prices for precisely the goods that are most in demand "in times of emergency". But what a strange concept to expect only those few people engaged in bringing goods into the community to sacrifice of their property when that emergency comes. The poor have no duty in times of emergency?
All manner of duties, potentially: martial law can involve things like making people join in sandbagging.
What I want Bob to do is to act like a citizen instead of a merchant -- like a member of the community, rather than a self-interested and isolated actor. I want him to be integrated in the community in just the way the Medieval Jews were not!
We can all get back to making a living once the crisis is past. There's nothing wrong with that.
...less valuable than the car salesman's (who I cannot imagine you picture to have a "duty" to provide cars during a hurricane)...
I can posit a case in which it would be reasonable for him to loan out the cars: if an evacuation were possible, provided that more vehicles were available. (It might even be in his interest to move the cars out of the path of the hurricane, so that could be win/win).
You can even have your market solutions, so long as the public purse is the one buying the stuff. If you want the government to buy Bob's generators at $1300, to ensure that people who need them can have access to them, I don't have the same degree of objection. If you want the government to buy the car salesman's cars for the evacuation, that's fine (although his insurance would have covered their loss, he probably will do better if he can shift them out of the storm's path, and best of all if the government writes him a check).
We can all get back to making a living once the crisis is past. There's nothing wrong with that.
But unlike the historian who surrenders nothing during the crisis (save perhaps for some labor filling sandbags), or the accountant, you are taking away items this man (Bob) has paid for. His labor, in the form of money, was paid to purchase that generator with the intent to sell it at a profit in order to make a living. If you take it from him, he has lost the labor it took to purchase it. And he was depending on the sale of those goods in order to feed his family, pay for his store, pay his employees and so on. By taking it from him, you are denying him the ability to "go back to making a living" because his stock is gone! You have taken it from him. How is he to replace what was taken?
You can even have your market solutions, so long as the public purse is the one buying the stuff. If you want the government to buy Bob's generators at $1300, to ensure that people who need them can have access to them, I don't have the same degree of objection.
This is where we can find more common ground. Because I think it is highly appropriate for a local government, with the blessing of the community, to buy emergency supplies to hand out in times of trouble. That is, after all, a reason for government. And it avoids the sticky issue of "why must some sacrifice unequally."
Indeed, this would sidestep an objection I have not even touched on yet... why should Bob be so foolish as to stock supplies that could be requisitioned in a time of emergency? I keep using the word "risk" when I speak of the purchase of goods for resale. And the reason is, especially in the case of perishable goods, that no one will buy it. Stock that does not move is worse than having no stock at all. Because you've already paid for it, its value decreases over time (even for non-perishable goods, because new and improved goods come out all the time devaluing older goods), and it's taking up stock space that could have been used for other goods which do sell. There is risk involved every time a store stocks its inventory. To add to that risk an additional possibility that the stocked item can simply be taken from you if it meets a certain class of "emergency goods" means that unless you're making amazing profits off the item outside of the emergency, then the risk outweighs the rewards. And what's so interesting about the generator example, is that if we accept that a generator (a device that has little use outside of an emergency can be obtained for nothing during an emergency, then who in their right mind would actually pay Bob for it? They'd just wait till the first time they actually need it, then take it from him. So, rationally, Bob (as well as every other vendor in the community) simply would stop stocking generators. And because none of the market happens in a vacuum, the manufacturers of generators would stop making them. Because if no one is selling them, then there is no reason to make a stock of them (except to see local governments seize them in times of emergency). And so on through the supply chains this would ripple.
And I think that's something I'd like to expand on. I'll draw up a post and link an interesting video I think demonstrates the actual genius and power of the free market.
Where do you stand on eminent domain claims in an emergency, I wonder? If it's right for the local government to buy supplies and distribute them in the emergency, is it necessary that they pay whatever is asked? Or is a procedure similar to 'fair market value' assessment appropriate?
Eminent domain is a mighty and terrible power. It says, in effect, that property is yours right up until the moment the government says otherwise. And regardless of what the Constitution (as Amended) says, it does allow the government to deprive you of property without due process of law. As such, I believe that it is a power that ought to be restricted as tightly as possible.
Now, with that pro forma explanation out of the way, here is your answer. Is it right for them to buy and distribute private property during a crisis. No, but it can be the least evil thing done at that time. As such, it is wrong, but it can be necessary (hence the "necessary evil" that we're always on about).
Is it necessary that they pay whatever is asked. No. The Constitution is clear on this that the government is only required to pay "a fair value" for the property taken. This is again, a necessary evil. It is impossible to come up with a "fair value" when you're talking about someone's home and the roots their family may have had there. But by the same token, if the government is required to pay "whatever price is asked" then you might as well remove the whole concept of eminent domain, else the first person asked what he'd like to be paid could beggar the whole nation. A proceedure similar to "fair market value" is the best we can do.
Finally, I think we need to get a formal Amendment added to the Constitution to clarify that eminent domain can only be invoked for "public use" not "public good" as was decided in Kelo v Connecticut. The fact that another owner can afford to pay more in property taxes should absolutely never justify the seizure of private property in order to hand it over to another private buyer. That is cronyism, it is destructive to God given property rights, and frankly, I think everyone involved in that act should be fired and never placed in a position of authority over another human being again.
If you must build a school, library, military base, or similar installation for the public use (though military bases and government buildings aren't strictly for "public use" the intent is the same), then yes, after landowners refuse to sell voluntarily, then it may be acceptable to take the land by eminent domain. I'd feel better about the process if an independent third party could be found to establish value, but such is never likely to actually happen. Until then, we're stuck with the best of a series of foul options. Does that help?
I think we more or less agree about all that.
So my initial position was indelicately stated, but it is essentially this position. In an emergency, the market gets suspended -- the government has the legitimate power to force sales at 'fair market' prices -- but the owner of the generator will be compensated. Since this is a government action, if he refuses we really are saying that he's in some peril of death from the police, though we'll try to merely arrest him first.
If a private citizen who needs it to save his daughter's life comes to him to buy the generator, and he won't sell it except at half-again what it's worth, I would be somewhat understanding as a juror if the private citizen stole the thing to save his daughter.
Where I disagree with the law is in the case where the private citizen doesn't steal or harm Bob, and the daughter dies. You come to Bob and say, "Why didn't you help?" We have a duty as citizens to stop and render aid and assistance if we come on a motor vehicle accident. Why wouldn't it extend to a similar duty in this sort of emergency?
Where I disagree with the law is in the case where the private citizen doesn't steal or harm Bob, and the daughter dies. You come to Bob and say, "Why didn't you help?" We have a duty as citizens to stop and render aid and assistance if we come on a motor vehicle accident. Why wouldn't it extend to a similar duty in this sort of emergency?
And where I disagree with you on this is the glossing over of the fact that without a raise in price, the likelihood of Bob having the generator on hand when the private citizen (I'm calling him Jim) comes to him needing the generator to save his daughter's life is extremely low. Because everyone else in the community who doesn't need it per se (but instead just "want it") will make the rational determination that since the price is no different than every other day of the year, that there's no reason NOT to buy one when the power's out. The demand has jumped, the price has not, so there's exactly zero incentive for the town to NOT buy out Bob's stock. And Jim has to race and try to beat everyone else to the store to buy it before they're gone.
BUT... and this is the thing I haven't seemed to be able to get across, IF Bob raises his price (and not by a trivial amount) those who don't actually need the generator will make the rational choice to just wait until the prices drop again to get one (or just do without), this leaves more in stock and makes it more likely for Jim to be able to appeal to Bob to save his little girl. Without that rise in price, it doesn't matter how much Bob would want to help Jim save his daughter, he has none in stock. It becomes a matter of chance as to whether Jim can find a generator to buy or plead for.
You've said this several times, and once again I understand what you're saying. Perhaps you haven't understood my reply. Somebody's going to have the generator, whoever bought it. This isn't targeted at merchants, but about what citizens should do for each other. Bob isn't the only person with duties. We should all pull together and help out, without looking for a profit from each other, during this kind of crisis.
You're right, I absolutely do not understand that you're not making Bob responsible for providing that generator. But I don't understand it, because it is in contradiction with every statement you'd made up till that assertion:
Where I disagree with the law is in the case where the private citizen doesn't steal or harm Bob, and the daughter dies. You come to Bob and say, "Why didn't you help?"
What I want Bob to do is to act like a citizen instead of a merchant -- like a member of the community, rather than a self-interested and isolated actor.
I wasn't talking about seizing the man's generator, but making a claim that he ought morally to use it in such a way as to help out during the disaster -- not to try to make a bigger profit from the afflicted.
Murder and theft are obviously wrong, so clearly I think that refusing to help me save the child in order to increase your profits is even more wrong.
Every instance is referring to the fact that the merchant (Bob) has a generator and refuses to sell it at "a normal price" or surrender it completely. You came close in the third quote I have here, and could have been referring to anyone who had a generator, but then went right back to talking about selling it with talk of "profit from the afflicted." So I had no idea that you were talking about anyone who had a generator (purchased from Bob or otherwise) having a duty to allow Jim to use it. How could I? There's no indication that anyone other than Bob has this responsibility.
If that's the argument, then you have none with me. Because I've maintained that even Bob would be morally right to offer use of it to someone in dire need. Earlier in the discussion, I said this:
It is my position that the moral choice (assuming I'm the shopkeeper) is to recognize your need and say, "Take it for now, we'll work out payment later." But I can only do that if I have generators.
And this:
And in fact, the REAL answer OUGHT to be that in the event of an emergency, my ability to go out and purchase a generator OUGHT to be irrelevant, because if I need life saving power for my child (ignoring the irresponsibility of me to plan for such an event) I need to ask my family and neighbors for help.
Bob's involvement (and thus the market's) ought to be utterly irrelevant to the duties we owe each other during emergencies.
We've been talking about Bob and his duties, which is why I've been talking about Bob and his duties. But I thought I'd been clear that everyone has duties: even the poorest can be asked to sandbag, as necessary.
I think family is a very tight relationship that ought to be primary in human life. Nevertheless, I also think citizenship is not an accident that can be ignored in favor of market relationships when advantageous. This is a core difference I have with libertarian ideology: they argue for open borders so you can follow your economic interests, accepting whatever that costs communities in terms of being able to maintain social connections and common values.
If Bob sells out of generators, the duty passes to whomever has the generator (and for as long as the crisis lasts). It could be your historian, who makes a decent salary in good times and can afford a generator as a result. I'd ask him the same question if he chose not to help and let a child die as a result. Something's gone wrong here. Somehow, we're not doing right. We've failed at something very basic to a good community.
Believe it or not, I'm not an open borders kinda guy. I think a nation state should have the ability to say who comes to visit, who gets to stay, and for how long. I believe that open borders leads to criminal enterprise enabling, national security issues, and improper draining of the national wealth by non-citizens. I do not like the "citizen of the world" nonsense, precisely because it is nonsense. We do not expect other countries to let us come and go as we please, nor should we let people do so.
If we're stipulating that whoever owns the generator in a time of dire need has an obligation to society to use it to help out other citizens, then I will not object. If, however, such use causes damage to or depreciates the value of the generator, I also expect it will be replaced or refunded by the community. Because if I am running a generator I bought, and you need to use some of the power to keep your child's medicine refrigerated, at the absolute most, I may ask you to kick in a buck or two for gas. If you want Bob to pull one off the shelf and fire it up so that you can have the required power, then perhaps the taxpayers should kick in a few bucks to compensate Bob for the loss in value his business took (you could still resell it, but at a reduced cost since it's "used"). Or maybe have the local government buy it and save it for the next emergency.
All I ask is that we recognize that Bob's losing part of his livelihood by doing the moral thing, and if we say society places this duty upon him, then society should compensate him for doing so. I'm less concerned about my neighbor piggybacking off my private generator which I'm using anyway, because I'm not trying to resell it, I'm using it.
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