Its often rational to act without all the information, but acting without reason never makes sense.

http://intelligenceexplosion.com/2011/w ... -rational/

You can get into a conundrum here though. Generating a random number may be a rational act to commit but the act itself has to be without reason. If there's reason behind your random number, it is not random.

controlled by what?

I might just be a fan of knee tunes.

how do you understand force? That tends to be where the liberal tradition splits in two. Is force applied only by governments, or can force be applied by markets, a contextual environment, etc.

yes, oil/energy is the controlling force of the world. next question.

I think both apply, though I'm typically more concerned about government force. In most cases, you can avoid markets you don't approve of by simply not participating in them. Governments, on the other hand, of course have very effective methods to ensure their desired compliance.

which markets can you avoid? Financial? Labor? Energy? What about externalities?

One of the arguments I often make in intro classes is that markets are a form of governance, insofar as they are capable of exerting power and influence over your life. The conditions under which you labor are more likely to establish the day to day boundaries of your life and the possibilities of what you can expect and hope for. Much of this power is coercive, since private governance has the capacity to withold from you most of the basic necessities you need to live a decent life.

One of the great triumphs of the folklore of capitalism is convincing all of us that somehow that this power isn't really coercive, and isn't an exercise of force, and that therefore the concerns we rightly raise about coercion in the political realm somehow no longer apply here.

I don't disagree with you in theory, mind you. I am not denying that political coercion is something to watch for and be fearful of. But it is only part of the story and under our current conditions, arguably the less important story.

Personally, I can think of examples from all of those three sectors you listed that I practice some avoidance:
--I think credit card companies are pretty scummy. I've only used one bank-issued credit card my whole life, and I only use it when there's no other option (usually for secure purposes online). I know I could make a killing racking up rewards points on other cards, but I also know that they only reason they're even able to offer them in the first place is because they make a killing off others via very high interest rates.
--I've avoided taking jobs at places that I feel would put my well-being at some sort of risk. I could probably make more money if I wanted to, but there's many other things in life that I value.
--I've been pretty famous for commute biking as a way to avoid being in the market for another car any time soon. There are the obvious environmental impacts here, but also monetary and health benefits to be had, as well.

Obviously, if your morality dictates a more strict avoidance, your required level of sacrifice will be quite greater. You could hold all your assets in cash and personal property, despite the inconvenience and the risk of theft or inflation. You could live off the grid, which, while not easy by any means, is still conceivable.

I'd generally consider externalities as an act of force. This is an area where I've been fairly consistent that the usage of government force may sometimes be necessary to overcome this.

I could envision this if "the market" was one monolithic entity, but it isn't. There are numerous sectors, industries, businesses, and consumers that interact with each other, and it's rare for too many of them to act in complete lockstep. People (of whom ultimately make up all this) can (or at least should be able to) cater their participation in certain markets to their appropriate needs.

Me, preferably. Huddle around me children, for I shall watch over you and protect you.

I don't necessarily know enough about your background to really comment here, but these are not options are really available for, say, my students, and I suspect your flexibility (in terms of your ability to be able to make these choices, not your willingness to do so) here is not particularly typical.





I'm not sure why 'the market' needs to be monolithic here? We're using the market as a shorthand for economic power (or at least I am). Even if important sectors war with each other that does not change the structural power they have over the people who are dependent on them, negate their political influence, somehow allow other options to sneak onto the table, etc.

Sure, the germans or the french or the british could have ruled the congo instead of the belgiums. Would it have changed their lives very much?

the technical turn for this is bmacarchy

I like the sound of that!

Oh, no doubt--that's why I said it was a personal take. But sometimes, the options don't have to require such drastic measures. For example, it could be as simple as shopping at WinCo instead of Walmart.

Do you think that structural power is consistent among all aspects of the market as you're using the term? I'm skeptical of that notion.

I don't think so? Certainly some sectors have far more power than others, and can influence politics, policy, and decisions to a greater degree than others. But they are almost always at the top of the heap.

I thought about answering this in the other thread, but it might be more relevant to what we're talking about in here. I guess the way is see it is that, ultimately, in order for any firm to survive in the marketplace, it has to get its customers to by in. The consumer has the power of his or her wallet to strengthen or weaken any firms at any given moment. Yes, the size of wallet matters, but that opens up all kinds of other avenues for discussion.

With politics, I don't see it as that easy. You have only one vote out of thousands or millions that you cast a few times per year, at best. The larger the constituency, the less that vote is worth. You can be as outspoken as you want, but your message may only go so far in the face of those with more resources. Unless, of course, you pool your small resources together with others in a nice little corporation to amplify that message.

pretty important avenues, I'd think. There are also some pretty important preconditions that need to be in place for this to work, and that are often not true.

1. Access to a marketplace is unfettered
2. Citizens have choices
3. There is minimal collusion amongst major players
4. Major players do not use their size and resources to force out smaller ones
5. Citizens have the necessary information easily accessible to make decisions that signal approval or disapproval of how a firm operates

And none of that address the money issue. The system you are describing is effectively and NECESSARILY (unlike politics) oligarchic in important ways. Your ability to have a voice is dependent on the resources you can bring to bear. Plus the institutions that you want the market to regulate are also able, through employment, to determine how the resources that can be brought to bear against them are distributed.

The money issue is tricky because it opens the questions of whom is in charge of the money supply, and how it is managed. In the United States and the eurozone, to name a couple, it's especially complicated. You also have the question as to whom and how the responsibility lies for declaring who has what property, via multiple methods (recognition of contracts, taxation, estate and inheritance, etc.) That's why I tried to set that aside as much as I could, since those can be difficult questions to answer without getting too broad.

But to try to address your five points, I'm curious as to how broad you're defining "access" and "choices" on 1 and 2 before declaring that I think that those preconditions may be satisfied.

3 & 4 bring up monopoly concerns that are important. I tend to be skeptical of the ultimate success of such strategies, but I need to read more about its history. Antitrust law can be so dry to read, though.

5 draws a delicate balance between the buyer's desire to know more and the seller's desire to protect, broadly speaking, its intellectual property. I think we can all agree that patently fraudulent communications crosses a line, though.

1/2: depending on how much thinking/writing you want to do try it broad and narrow
5: There is also the basic question of capacity, besides knowledge. Do we have the time and ability to absorb all the knowledge we need? Is it made available to us?

I don't think you're acknowledging the power of the individual in these issues. Re: #4 specifically, if the consumer wants a smaller business to survive in the face of competition with bigger, more powerful forces, they can make that happen. All the "major players" can do is attempt to appeal to the public in such a way that the public would decide (read: not coerced) to give them their patronage. The way they make that appeal can be through lower prices, better service, etc. But ultimately, if the community (the marketplace) decides it would rather bear the higher prices of a smaller shop for whatever reason, all are free to make that decision. I will grant you that under normal circumstances this is unlikely, but IMO #4 is a misleading statement because ultimately the decision of who to support is up to the consumer.