I have some free time today, so I will try and respond to everyone who has posted here. If I don't get to you today, I apologize.
Annnnd this is exactly why I'm not libertarian. It relies on the assumption that consumers are intelligent. I strongly, STRONGLY believe that consumers don't make accurate choices at all based on the ethics or "merit" of the company.
I believe in personal responsibility. Simply because a portion of the society is too apathetic, lazy, or stupid to do a bit of research before subscribing to something or purchasing something, is not justification for coercive government. I knew a girl who fell for those Nigerian e-mail scams on three separate occasions. Simply because there are other people like her does not mean we all need a parent figure.
In many cases, the more unethical companies win out.
Partly because of government. The state prevents many companies from failing as evidenced by the recent bailouts.
Consumers just flat out guess in 99% of all their purchases, or have unprecedented "loyalties."
Again, people have the option to do a bit of research. I used to be an impulse buyer, but after I got burned enough, I started looking into the products and companies I was purchasing.
The world is far too interconnected with too many intricacies going on to render this sort of "homo economicus" as a valuable index. There are millions upon millions of variables that determine what you will buy and when. Honestly think about the reason you buy products sometimes.
Perhaps you are correct, but that could be due to the fact people feel the government will protect them from foolish purchases. Perhaps that mentality would prevail if Big Brother wasn't there to "protect" us.
I can't give any logical reasons whatsoever for most of the things I buy. I don't research and see who is partnered with who, what kind of certifications they have, where they are outsourcing, etc etc.
This is a valid concern. It is sometimes very difficult to track down the parent company of subsidiary. Perhaps there is a market for a site that streamlines it; making it easier for consumers to discover who is actually in control of a company.
My consumption decisions are spur of the moment and based on feel, not calculated logic.
This is about the third time you have said this and I would urge you to start working on your impulse buys. I'm sure most of us are guilty of it sometimes. If I see something reasonably priced I sometimes take a chance, but it is always a calculated risk. This argument seems similar to someone jumping off a ledge without first seeing how far the fall is. If said individual dies or breaks a few bones, it's their fault for not investigating prior to leaping.
Another problem is that the business has to screw up before the market can decide to do something about it.
As it should be. How can something be fixed before a problem is discovered. With machinery you can usually spot a problem before someone looses an arm because of it. The economy is not the same kind of beast. Failure and mistakes are what send signals to the economy allowing it to repair itself.
Let me give you this example:
During Hurricane Katrina, the Governor of Louisiana made an announcement that the state would come down hard on price gougers. Leading up to the Hurricane everyone was lined up at the pumps and there was at least an hour wait at any given station. Shortly after the storm passed, most of the gas stations were out. As demand increases and supplies fall, prices should go up. The prices spiking in a particular area signals to the market there is increased demand for gas in this area. Those elsewhere with gas see this opportunity and quickly begin transporting more product to the effective area, knowing the sooner they get it there, the more money that can be made.
Granted, those with the product knew the Gulf Coast needed gas, but with prices locked down, what is there incentive to spend extra money getting it here quicker, or rerouting other shipments to the effected area?
My point is, the market is capable of signaling problems which can be rectified by the market itself. Prices would have spiked for a while until supply and demand were back in balance.
People are generally too self-interested to care, and even if they did, bad things would be happening to good people before it got corrected.
I could turn that argument around and say that is why democracies fail. People are simply to stupid and self-interested to vote intelligently.
As an example of this, look at preventative health in USA vs. the rest of the world. It's absolutely terrible here. Doctors make more through crisis control moreso than preventative health, so which do you think gets pushed for more in the market?
I'm not going to argue there aren't problems with our health system, but I disagree regarding the reasons. The first problem is the current state of medical insurance and the fact it drives up prices. The second problem is regulation. Doctors have to go deep into debt in order to get licensed and tend to not start their careers until their late 20's - early 30's. I see no reason why nurses or self educated people can't preform simple procedures, consultations, and check-ups. Would they be as qualified? No. Would their prices be much lower? Yes. Would there be a market for review sites like yelp in regard to these doctors? Most likely, yes. If not I would create one and likely make a bit of extra money.
This quote from one of the above blogs sums up the whole market recycling myth.
"If anyone knows that you’re selling a defective product. But in 1910, “Milk” was often chalk and water. You really, really, REALLY don’t want to know about sausage. Or about the amount of fecal matter in beef. Or the people who occasionally fell into the rendering pits for lard and got sold along with it. (OSHA? Government agency.)
But now, thanks to government laws passed by government officials who work for the government, there are watchdog groups. Like the FDA, the EPA, OSHA, CDC…I could go on."
First of all, there would still be courts in an An-cap society do litigate if someone got ill from the food they ate.
Also, the FDA and the rest still aren't effective.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/02/01/mcdonalds-announces-end-to-pink-slime-in-burgers/ The state spends tax payer money on this and it still doesn't prevent gross and disturbing practices by some businesses.
Now you may think consumers are smarter now, with the internets and all (lol). But no, this is exactly what we would return to. It's a combination of apathy and time.
The FDA has failed to fix these problems, so we wouldn't be returning to anything. We would simply be maintaining the status-quo.
One exercise I would be interested for anyone to do on their own, regardless of their beliefs is this:
Make a few poster boards and write down all of the things on it that you get aided with such as the above govt programs. Now assume these are all gone. You now have to inspect your own food or grow it yourself, put a ton of research into all the different markets to determine the best to do business with, etc. etc. If you don't fill up an entire 2-3 poster boards filled with a list of rudimentary tasks that you are now left to deal with as an individual, you did it wrong. The point is that there are just sooo many things out there, that no one could possibly be living the "sweet and simple" lifestyle idealized by Rand while working a 40 hour work week and doing so many trivial things that should be done by a public good. And even if you can manage, what kind of a life is that? We're talking absolutely zero free time. Alternately, you could just read this, which simulates a small portion of all the work you would have to find solutions to as an individual: http://www.governmentisgood.com/articles.php?aid=1
It would simply open up new markets for businesses to open into. Anything the government can do, the private sector can accomplish. The private sector can own and maintain roads (better than the government), certify food, cleanliness of restaurants, etc. Just as it already does with rating products and restaurants. It's obvious once these government owned sectors of the economy opened to entrepreneurs, they would enter it.
Another problem I have with markets is that low cost is the main point, at the expense of quality. Car manufacturers purposefully sell vehicles that will break down around when you get done paying them off. We easily have the technology to make perfect cars, but no one is going to sell that because it would put them out of business. Imagine a car that is reinforced and gets passed down from generation to generation, lol. Either it will be too cheap and it would ruin return customers, or it would (more likely) be so expensive no one would ever think about buying it.
And what has the state done to fight this. I'm not going to say it's not true, I've suspected the same thing with some products, like my Xbox 360. It literally broke a week after the warranty expired. But this is a problem we have with the government rearing it's ugly head, so I don't see any change if it were in an anarchist society.
The video game industry is another example. Look at the past 4-5 Call of Duty games, to just look at the FPS market. They are all basically the exact same game, copy-pasted into a new format with a few slight tweaks and additions. The same is true of most sport games like the UFC series and FIFA. Competition is clearly not pushing us into the future, it's only trying to push the status quo of its own bottom line to make sells. CoD companies release a new game every year, and they all suck and are filled with glitches and balance issues, which is why I left that series a long time ago. But where is this free market invisible hand that is supposed to punish them for stagnating us? Last I checked, most FPS consumers still swear by CoD's formula, even though they are trying to charge more and more for the same thing. If a benevolent game dev were to sit down and spend 3-4 years making a badass game to compete with it instead of rushing out more crap year after year, do you know what would happen? No, consumers won't get smart and jump on the new train. This very thing did happen with BF3. And it did rock the boat a little bit, but most consumers are just total retards who don't change their ways or do research on what is out there. People go with the popular choices, or they go with gut feeling.
That is a problem the consumer has to deal with themselves, and as a group. Again, the government has done nothing to fix this, nor should they. So there would likely be no change if we were in an archaist society. I can certainly understand where you are coming from since I myself am a gamer. If people truly weren't happy with a product, they would stop buying it, or would switch to a different franchise. In regards to the FPS genre, yes the tend to release the same game every year, but there is nobody forcing us to purchase them. By the consumer purchasing the same game every year, we are signaling to the market that their formula is working, which it is. As soon as the consumer base thinks they are essentially paying $60 for a few new maps, they can choose not to buy Black Ops 2 in 2012. If the sales plummet, it will send a message to Activation to attempt more drastic changes in the next iteration. It's not my fault if I sell you a bag of shit over and over again when you know your buying a bag of shit.
To take this further. I recently purchased Elder Scrolls V on the PS3 on launch night. It was on a weekend that I made sure I had no other responsibilities. By monday, I had put about 60 hours into the game only to have it become unplayable. Not only were there broken side quests, but the Frame rate dropped so low, it made the game unplayable. So, I shelved it and waited for the patch. The patch comes and all the major issues are still there and dragons start flying backwards. So I returned it to Gamestop and am waiting to rebuy it used if the 1.4 patch fixes the game breaking issues. They still will not see a penny from me, ever again, because this is unacceptable in my view. If other people don't realize we can affect business when respond en mass than they simply need to be educated.
The, "people are stupid" argument simply doesn't work though. You can't hope to have an effective democracy when most of the population or complete idiots.
Now that's not to say I hate the private sector; it does a great job and is the backbone of a society. The problem is that there are some issues that individuals cannot handle. Some things are not problems for individuals but are problems for groups.
You don't need a government to act as a group...
I'm drawing from that past blog again, but here are some examples. Any individual can choose not to wear seat belts and it is no big deal on the micro level. But when you universalize that and look at statistics, this ramps up the hospital costs on the macro scale, which means people who are smart like me who wear their seat belt or bike helmet have to pay more to subsidize those who made dumb choices.
Again, I think people should be responsible for there own mistakes. Do you have a problem with stupid people, or the government subsidizing the stupids mistakes?
Bad choices rarely ever impact just the individual who made them. Same thing with cars and smog/pollution. Everyone has the freedom to drive their car. But if everyone decides to exercise this freedom at the exact same time, we all die. In Japan, cars would be pushed into the ocean. Anywhere else, exhaust would choke the life out of everyone.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Show me the study that says everyone would die if we all decided to start our cars at the same time.
See how that works?
No, please elaborate.
Some freedoms that the individual can exercise only become devastating problems when many individuals do them. I'm an objective thinker because I recognize things like this. I don't simply look at my own experience and think for myself, it's important to think of everyone's situation as a group. A group is not just a collection of individuals, an entirely new entity with unique traits is formed when people are together . The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Humans are specialist pack animals and cannot be expected to think for themselves in all aspects of life. We need to listen to experts in their own fields instead of being stubborn and thinking we know it all.
I agree with the second part of that statement. I would argue the individual is greater than the group however. I own my body and my property, just as you do. No one should be allowed to say what I can and can't do with my body and property UNLESS it infringes on their property or self. Many of the things you are referring to could likely be litigated in a private court as a result of negatively affecting another's property.
No offense to you anarchy, and I understand if you still disagree. It's just something to think about.
None taken, and I don't mean any to you or anyone else in this thread.