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Society Ignores the Homeless… who take over our better parks

Question:

    — The problem with the basic necessities and the market, is that leaving everything just to the market forces can lead to situations that are just not tolerated in a civilized society. Where food is provided by the market, no one starves.  Where food is provided by the state, millions starve. Within advanced western societies, food and clothing is provided by the market, and inequalities in food and clothing are not very striking.  Education and policing is provided by the state, and inequalities are extreme and brutal.  Housing is

What nonsense. Education is free and available to all kids in the US, as it is in most developed countries. Higher education is not free, but it is heavily subsidized, and there are all kinds of grants and low cost loans to make it affordable to almost all. I certainly don’t see those brutal inequalities you’re talking about. The clearest example of market provision vs state provision is given by the difference between North Korea and South Korea. Ethiopia before and after the anti communist revolution gives us a good, though less extreme, example.

And Liberia and Somalia and Haiti gives us examples of disfunctional capitalist societies where everybody is dirt poor. So maybe capitalism or socialism is not the determinant factor. PINKO

Response:

 Actually I recall a recent report on subsidized housing in the US. I don’t have the figures at hand, unfortunately, but if my memory serves me right, housing tends to be less affordable in the states where the government sets rent control up.

Which one is the cause and which one the effect, that I’m  sure is not very clear. PS: yo vivo debajo un puente…

Cuanto pagas de renta? PINKO

Response:

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – If you impose price controls then you must be forcing the sellers to sell either above or below the market price. Why? Because the market price is the price buyers and sellers would agree on without any outside controls. The problem with the basic necessities and the market, is that leaving everything just to the market forces can lead to situations that are just not tolerated in a civilized society. In order for this remark to be a rebuttal, it must be the case that there is some alternative other than the market that leads to no ’situations that are just no tolerated in a civilized society’. I submit that there is no such alternative. And I submit you’re wrong.

To be clear, you are no arguing that there are alternatives to the market that never ever produce any situations that are ‘just not tolerated in a civilized society’. If that is not your argument, then your above statement is wrong. It is obvious that in many many areas, from maintaning an army, a police and a fire department, to food inspections, to environmental and health regulations, we constantly interefere with the market for the good of society.

Saying that people interfere with the market in order to do X does not say that X is actually done, much less that X is done without producing situations that are ‘just not tolerated in a civilized society.’ You therefore fail to support your position with reasoned argument. More generously, we could suppose that you are arguing that there is an alternative to the market that produces fewer unacceptable effects, but saying so doesn’t make it so; make your case. I think, based on the examples above, my "case" is obvious.

You are mistaken. You have asserted that markets produce bad results, and you have asserted that unspecified altenatives to markets produce no such bad results, but you have provided reasoned support for neither assertion. Let me give you an extreme example: somebody owns the only water well in town. If you want water, you pay his price, or you do without water. How long would it take for people in this town to "socialize" the well, and damn the market? If the rightful owner of a property uses his ownership of that property to do violence to other people, they are within their rights to recover restitution, by force if possible. A reasonable andd just restitution might well include redistribution of that property–assuming that the redistributors have just cause for violent action. Uhh? Not sharing my property is "doing violence" to other people?

No; doing violence to other people is doing violence to other people. Blowing you up, starving you to death, or engineering your death are examples of doing violence to you. If I buy a well for the purpose of preventing other people from getting water so that I can extort money from them, it is likely that they will respond with force, and rightly so. "Just" cause? What in the world does justice have to do with the market?

It is what distinguishes a market transaction from robbery, extortion, and fraud. If you are dying of thirst, and I have a bottle of water, the "market value" of that water to you is whatever you have, right?

That depends on what my other options are. No doubt you wish to contrive a hypothetical in which my only choices are to die or to assault you to gain the means to live. In that case it is wrong for me to use force against you tyo save my life, but it is a wrong that I am likely to be forgiven if I am willing to make restitution afterward.

Response:

There are many social benefits in some communities to maintaining affordable housing. You can argue whether affordable (sub market) housing is required in this or that community, and that is for the folks who live there to decide. Once they decide they want it, in some cases affordability is provided via rent control, in others via subsidized housing. Either way here is an accepted cost to society, in order to provide a benefit to that same society. That’s what the modern state is all about.

 Actually I recall a recent report on subsidized housing in the US. I don’t have the figures at hand, unfortunately, but if my memory serves me right, housing tends to be less affordable in the states where the government sets rent control up.  As a matter of fact, no part of the US has been inmune to the housing bubble brought about by the bust of the stocks market. Government regulation just makes the situation even worse.              SUBCOMANDANTE VIPER PS: yo vivo debajo un puente… — NO A LA INMERSION LINGUISTICA EN EL PAIS CHARNEGO: http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?stopinme&1 Ayuda econ

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