Subject:
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Re: Do market based societies select for virtue? (was Re: Will Libertopia cause the needy to get less?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 30 Nov 2000 09:40:07 GMT
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Viewed:
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827 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> Scott's going to regret turning me on to Friedman!
>
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler writes:
> > In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal writes:
> >
> > > Besides, my understanding of altruism is that it is unconditional and
> > > nselfish. I would think that that would be *counter* productive to evolution
> > > (nice guys finish last idea). Altruistic people get trampled all of the
> > > time, but they have a better understanding of what is important in this world.
>
> > Current evolutionary theory identifies benefits in altruism, both among
> > members of the same species and even accross species lines. Such altruism
> > isn't necessarily conscious or deliberate, but it's altruism all the same.
> > The idea is that, while competition breeds diversity and strength through
> > evolution, compromise and cooperation, in the long term, fosters the help of
> > the ecosystem (macro- or micro- scopic).
>
> > I flatly reject the notion that we are doomed to doom ourselves.
>
> Agreed.
>
> I've said it before and I'll say it again, I just can't buy this "people are
> basically bad, and societies that depend on honesty are doomed to fail"
> argument that comes from so many corners. (those that want police to
> restrict us, those that insist we must use a belief in higher power to
> overcome our nature, etc...)
>
> I've tried in the past to construct arguments showing why people ARE
> (mostly) fundamentally good, and why societies that depend on honesty will
> do better than those that don't... starting from first principles. Didn't
> get very far. Sigh.
>
> Friedman came at it from a completely different angle. He argues in these
> two articles that most people are honest/nice/polite/charitable/<your
> favorite virtue>, because it's an efficient (utilitarian) survival strategy
> to do so, and that actually being honest/n/p/c/yfv is easier than pretending
> to be. No matter what the society type. Even the cruddy totalitarian states.
This is all very Hayek - he proposed that the systems of behaviour in
humanity is evolving – and that they survive because they are useful, in
that they help “society”. He believed that The market had survived the
test of time this based on the fact the most successful societies were
market lead in some way (although I expect that many who have failed also
used the market as a base) . The market is superior to other systems since
it handles human lack of knowledge by passing information in terms of value
– and allocates resources accordingly. (ie the market can not be planned –
it can only be followed - 'you can't buck the market', in Thatcher's words,
any more than you can control the weather.).
However, although Hayek viewed strong property rights and the free market as
the best way of protecting what you call liberty, he was not anti
state/establishment (have you read about Nozick). Further, Hayek never
argued for the total abolishment of tax (does it tell you that on the LP
site?), - he thought taxes could be used for “welfare”, or to provide goods
which the market might fail to supply (I’ve still not figured out what these
could be).
>
> http://www.best.com/~ddfr/Libertarian/Virtue1.html
> http://www.best.com/~ddfr/Libertarian/Virtue2.html
>
> But I think the most amazing result comes in the second article where he
> shows that a market based society skews the proportion of virtues *higher*
> because the honesty/n/p/c/yfv advantage is higher in those sorts of societies.
>
> Is it all wet? I dunno. But note the novelty here. Unlike me, he doesn't
> suppose anything at all about basic human nature. He just shows how things
> tend to come out and why, and how when you measure for the right things, you
> get what you measure for.
>
> It's intuitively VERY attractive.
>
> Maybe I'm so bummed about property rights likely to be proven insufficient
> (and most libertarians, including me, when confronted with the "you can't
> let even one photon shine out" example are going to backpedal and say
> "that's a ridiculous result, that's not what's meant, there must be some
> flaw somewhere in some premise, etc.") that I'm being less than critical in
> my thought (perish the idea!) and rushing to embrace.
Yes. But you have to remember, that many in the LP will be happy with a move
further towards the goal, rather than have the goal itself.
Scott A
>
> I dunno.
>
> I honestly don't think I do that. I read a LOT of economists when I was
> younger and agreed with a number of them, not just a single "guru"... Hayek
> is just a convenient cite for anti-planning-council arguments.
>
> But I found it an interesting article pair.
>
> YMMV.
>
> ++Lar
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