Why the world should adopt a basic income

Discussion in 'Economics & Trade' started by LafayetteBis, Jul 10, 2018.

  1. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Assertion? Its fact. The Coase Theorem only works with minimal transaction costs. If those costs are high then Coase demonstrates that there is a role for interventionism (and that includes both increasing efficiency and equity)
     
  2. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    You said we have imperfect property rights. You further said they are imperfect because of transaction costs. Okay, so how do transaction costs make our property rights imperfect?
     
  3. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    You're going around in circles. Ever decreasing ones mind you!

    Pollution is an assault on your property rights (given they are externality costs coerced on others). The Coase Theorem says the market will find a solution in very particular circumstances. There has to be easy bargaining between informed parties. Its transaction costs that stop that outcome. There are information deficiencies (e.g. multiple sources of pollution), there is moral hazard (i.e. incentive to profiteer and lie) and there are bargaining problems (e.g. millions of victims versus one polluter who is often making millions)
     
  4. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    I agree that when someone pollutes your property that they are violating your property rights. But you said we have imperfect property rights. Did you mean to say that we have unenforced property rights?
     
    Last edited: Nov 2, 2018
  5. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    I said what I intended, reflecting the very nature of Coasian economics. Of course all of this kicks your notion of libertarianism in the knackers. Transaction costs guarantees that the 'free market' would be inefficient and coercive. Coase is ultimately demonstrating the need for interventionism.
     
  6. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    You failed to explain your statement that transaction costs make property rights imperfect.
    Interesting opinion.
    Really? Do tell.
    Is he? How so?
     
  7. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Round and round you go. Your routine of asking questions to avoid content is churlish. The Coase Theorem only works in simple conditions. It necessarily leads to rejection that the market will internalize externalities. Your free market is therefore coercive, by definition.
     
  8. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    I am dying for you to explain how a free market is coercive. This should be interesting.
     
  9. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Already told you, via the Coase Theorem. Do keep up!
     
  10. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    The Coase theorem explains how a free market is coercive? How does it do so?
     
  11. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Already said. If you can construct an argument then let me know.
     
  12. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    Can you point to the post in which you tell us how the Coase theorem explains how the market is coercive? I think we all missed that one.
     
  13. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Given its only a few posts back (and I've detailed it in multiple posts as you play your childish question game), I'll give the lack of conservation with you a miss.
     
    Last edited: Nov 3, 2018
  14. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    Okay, I will accept that you can't tell us how Coase's theorem explains how the free market is coercive.

    Color me surprised.
     
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  15. Anikdote

    Anikdote Well-Known Member

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    It's really dreadful watching someone try to query their way out of a conversation.

    If there was some disagreement smattered in there, it wouldn't look so obviously like evasion.

    What I'm having trouble sorting out, even after a second re-read, is how on earth we got from UBI or something similar to Coase?
     
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  16. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    There is disagreement. I disagree with @Reiver's assertion that the free market is coercive, and he has not explained his assertion that it is.
     
    Last edited: Nov 5, 2018
  17. Anikdote

    Anikdote Well-Known Member

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    Trouble is, he has, patiently. A far more difficult task would be describing a market free of coercive forces.

    That you're in an unfavorable bargaining position with your potential employer, that large firms are able to disperse the costs of e.g. pollution unto a population, that corporations are in a better position to lobby government than a diffuse citizenry are just a matter of fact. What would be far more interesting is discussing whether said intervention are likely to alleviate any of these particular problems. In some cases, certainly (I think UBI or something similar falls into that category, to bring this back to the OP), in others I'm more skeptical, but we'll leave that disagreement for a thread on one of those topics.
     
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  18. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    I don't think you understand what the act of coercion is: the practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats. None of those things you described are acts of coercion.
     
  19. Anikdote

    Anikdote Well-Known Member

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    I'm clear on both the colloquial use and how the term is being used here.

    Acemoglu does a decent job of defining it here: https://www.nber.org/papers/w15581

    I'm no economist, I get how the term seems inflammatory or damning, but in reality it's just describing a scenario where costs are borne onto you and you're ability to reconcile it or even potentially be aware of it is diminished. I, the average worker, will never get absolute top dollar for my time, the questions isn't whether this is true or not, but whether the state (or some other institution) is capable of improving that outcome.
     
  20. TedintheShed

    TedintheShed Banned

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    Except that he hasn't, really. All he really said was "start with Coase Theorem". Coase Therom isn't exactly considered economic cannon.

    What @Longshot is attempting to do I'd "get into the weeds" (get into a detailed conversation) regarding his assertion, of which @Reiver refuses to do, I expect because like previous conversations they've had when it has happened Longshot was able to disprove or at least poke holes in his assertions (their discussion on a monopsony of the labor force, for example).
     
    Last edited: Nov 6, 2018
  21. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Because there is no "sheriff" to redirect the debate when it goes off the rails.

    As there would be in any "real debate" amongst professional debaters ...
     
  22. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    We'd need perfect competition, with fully informed economic agents exhibiting time consistent and stable preferences. Perfect exchange environment!
     
  23. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    I don't accept, "because Coase" as any sort of legitimate explanation.
     
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  24. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    Bald assertion fallacy.
     
  25. Anikdote

    Anikdote Well-Known Member

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    That the Coase Theorem isn't cannon is certainly news to me. My gripe though, was specifically with the circular nature of the questioning without much attempt to drive the discussion forward.

    Starting on post #183, Longshot asks:
    To which @Reiver explains that an agent may have costs imposed upon him by other actors, and that this coercion justifies or points to a need for interventions. A long running criticism flung at anyone who wants to treat the "free" market as some sort of panacea.

    I suppose, from my perspective, I didn't see any effort to drill down, hence my compliant.

    Maybe a restating of positions would give us some solid footing to agree/disagree upon. On one hand, we have the claim that markets, even "free" markets are characterized by coercive relationships that evolve as a result of transaction costs, principle agent problems and rent seeking. I'm not entirely clear what the contraposition here is? Is someone making a claim that markets are free and clear of coercion? That we transact in a world of no costs?
     

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