Reply to John S

>Bad publicity will not prevent people from buying the only product
>available.

I could not force competing products into complete un-availability.

>Further, you could stifle any innovation if you were large enough.

Like Bill Gates did Linux? It marches on; Bill cannot stop it.

>In fact, your power could rival the government's should you
>become big enough, and your tactics could become just as nasty.

No, because again I'm offering voluntary trade. If I resorted to actual
force, I would BE the government. I keep returning to this vital
distinction, which seems to keep getting lost in this discussion. The
entire thrust of my philosophy is to maximize voluntary trade and
minimize coercion. Government IS coercion.

>Let me offer you a scenario in a different setting, but with the same
>basic structure. Suppose you ran afoul of a very rich, very vindictive
>man. He could buy the company you work for and have you fired. He
>could have you tracked from job to job, state to state, doing the same
>thing each time you got a job. If you rented, he could have you kicked
>out. If you owned your own home, he could buy up all the property
>around you and rent to criminals. He could pay to have someone follow
>you whereever you go and sour every deal, every meeting, every
>personal encounter you had.
>
>Would you say the government has no right to make laws regulating such
>behavior?

We're getting into VERY weird behavior here, and it comes close to what
I would consider to be legitimately actionable. On the other hand,
wouldn't the tabloids want to get ahold of this story and blast the guy?
I'd probably end up with a book deal, or maybe a made-for-TV movie.

Seriously, if such a thing happened to me, I would feel very badly used
by the Fates. Still, I'd feel very lucky compared to, say, the average
Iraqi civilian right about now, as government-personified Bush poises
his filthy finger over the button of war.

JdL

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "John A. deLaubenfels" <jdl@a...>
wrote:
> >Bad publicity will not prevent people from buying the only product
> >available.
>
> I could not force competing products into complete un-availability.

of course you could. put your competitors out of business, buy up all
their market share . . .

> I keep returning to this vital distinction, which seems
> to keep getting lost in this discussion.

There's something else that's getting lost. Rand missed it
too, when she claimed some actions (such as inventing a
stronger alloy) are without detriment to anyone. If this
were true, perfect voluntary trade would be completely fair.
But it isn't true. There's nothing I can do that won't
affect the guy next to me in some way. And he has a right
to be pissed off about it, for whatever reason. The
textbook example goes something like...

In my backyard, I decide I've got to have a paintball field.
My neighbors say that ruins the neighborhood, lowers property
values, etc. How do we resolve this dispute? Does my deed
entitle me to do whatever I want on my land? What about my
neighbors' rights to peace and quiet, an undisturbed view
of the grasses?

One way to answer this is to say that in a residential area,
the right to peace and quiet is more fundamental than the
right to play paintball, so I'm not allowed to build the
field. Another way is to force my neighbors and I to draw up
a contract that places restrictions on the size of the field,
and what times of day it can be used. Another would be for me
to pay my neighbors for the rights to play paintball in my
back yard. Another would be to set aside land somewhere else
for non-residential purposes, and have me buy a piece of that.

Many of these solutions have traditionally been implemented
through government of one form or another. But that isn't
what makes them tricky.

-Carl

>>I could not force competing products into complete
>>un-availability.

This a question of degrees. But we might also ask:
Should capital empower the control of capital flow
through markets *at all*? "It takes money to make
money." But should it?

To find out, we've got to come up with ways it could
be prevented from doing so and test them. To storm
the brain a bit....

() Capital could be subject to a 'reverse interest'.
It goes bad. This rate of going bad could hinge on
all sorts of things. Maybe, on how old it is and
how fast you're trying to get rid of it -- try to
spend a million bucks you made thirty years ago in
a day and you get hammered, or similar.

() For every market x, there are two currencies: one
which only works in x, and one which only works
outside of x. The existence of an exchange rate
between the two might do all sorts of wild and crazy
things. And if not, the exchange rate could be
manipulated in some way -- say, computers could manage
1% of the assets of all mutual funds, and use them to
trade in these currencies, to influence their values.

() Minor banking annoyances. In real life, you deposit
money in the bank, only to find that it isn't available
until the next day. Why? I think banks do this on
purpose to slow people down a bit, and keep banking
cool. When banking gets hot, runs can result. What if
certain markets got held up just slightly more than
others at certain times? Would it have any predictable
large-scale effects?

() All this might not work -- maybe value really tends
toward total abstraction. But in real life, exchange
rates do affect things, and this suggests that total
abstraction can be prevented with minor barriers -- the
current differences between nations seems to be enough.

-Carl

hi Carl,

> From: "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...>
> To: <metatuning@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 12:56 AM
> Subject: [metatuning] Re: Reply to John S
>
>
> () Minor banking annoyances. In real life, you deposit
> money in the bank, only to find that it isn't available
> until the next day. Why? I think banks do this on
> purpose to slow people down a bit, and keep banking
> cool. When banking gets hot, runs can result. What if
> certain markets got held up just slightly more than
> others at certain times? Would it have any predictable
> large-scale effects?

IMO, you're really giving the banking industry
more humanity than it deserves here.

the way i see it, the main reason banks don't let
you get your hands on your own money until the
day after you deposit it, is because they want to
be able to play around with it for a day and invest
it and try to earn some profit off of it.

in any case, if i'm correct and your observation is
a by-product of *that*, it's still a good thing.

-monz

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@y...> wrote:

> () Minor banking annoyances. In real life, you deposit
> money in the bank, only to find that it isn't available
> until the next day. Why? I think banks do this on
> purpose to slow people down a bit, and keep banking
> cool. When banking gets hot, runs can result. What if
> certain markets got held up just slightly more than
> others at certain times? Would it have any predictable
> large-scale effects?

this is crazy -- the first day i'm writing e-mail from home, and
you're making me feel like i'm at work!

>
> () All this might not work -- maybe value really tends
> toward total abstraction.

this is the conversation i was just having with ara in the car!

[I wrote:]
>>I could not force competing products into complete un-availability.

[wallyesterpaulrus:]
>of course you could. put your competitors out of business, buy up all
>their market share . . .

That is paranoid fantasy. To be sure, I can have a disruptive influence.
With each doubling of dollars I spend, I might cut in half the extent of
competition arrayed against me. It would require an infinite expenditure
to stifle competition altogether.

How would YOU right the wrongs of free trade? Please give us your vision
of Perfect Society.

JdL

> > () Minor banking annoyances. In real life, you deposit
> > money in the bank, only to find that it isn't available
> > until the next day. Why? I think banks do this on
> > purpose to slow people down a bit, and keep banking
> > cool. When banking gets hot, runs can result. What if
> > certain markets got held up just slightly more than
> > others at certain times? Would it have any predictable
> > large-scale effects?
>
> IMO, you're really giving the banking industry
> more humanity than it deserves here.
>
> the way i see it, the main reason banks don't let
> you get your hands on your own money until the
> day after you deposit it, is because they want to
> be able to play around with it for a day and invest
> it and try to earn some profit off of it.

In all fairness, I think Wells Fargo must be loosing
money on my "free checking" account, since I have all
my money with Datek.

> in any case, if i'm correct and your observation is
> a by-product of *that*, it's still a good thing.

I'm just suggesting ways in which markets can be
manipulated with a minimum amount of effort, for the
purpose of running simulations on a computer.

-C.

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "John A. deLaubenfels" <jdl@a...>
wrote:
> [I wrote:]
> >>I could not force competing products into complete un-
availability.
>
> [wallyesterpaulrus:]
> >of course you could. put your competitors out of business, buy up
all
> >their market share . . .
>
> That is paranoid fantasy.

and yet it's happened many times. this is why anti-trust is
considered a public good even in highly capitalistic economic theory.

> How would YOU right the wrongs of free trade? Please give us your
vision
> of Perfect Society.

unlike you, i don't believe in simple, idealistic formulas for
perfect society. difficult issues will always come up and must be
decided on their own merits. whoever makes these decisions will
inevitably make mistakes, and we can only hope that society can learn
from them and thus improve.