Curt Doolittle

Theme: Commons

  • HOW DO WE SOLVE GLOBAL PROBLEMS? (edited and re-posted from elsewhere) How do we

    HOW DO WE SOLVE GLOBAL PROBLEMS?

    (edited and re-posted from elsewhere)

    How do we solve global problems of pollution, conflict, corruption, and dispute over resources?

    a) a division of knowledge and labor using private property, money prices, accounting, contracts and rule of the common law: the science of cooperation;

    b) a division of knowledge and labor using empirical tests against the natural world: the physical sciences;

    c) a division of labor using rational tests of empirical results – logic and rational philosophy bounded by philosophical realism: the science of reason;

    d) education of the willing in all of the above – cooperative, physical and rational sciences – and the economic, political and social ostracization of the unwilling.

    In other words, the prohibition of authority and the elimination of the need for homogeneity of opinion, through the use of organized and self organizing trial and error by ratio-scientific man – accompanied by the ostracization and impoverishment of the magian and totalitarian man.

    Currently we have insufficiently privatized the capital of the natural commons so that prices limit overconsumption, and we are engaging in redistribution without matching restraint on reproduction largely because of it.

    That is how we solve global problems of pollution, conflict, corruption, and dispute over resources: science and reason bounded by rules of calculation and the elimination of authority, commons and consensus.

    (oh, my, god. I think I made a funny…. Profound, but funny.)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-14 17:40:00 UTC

  • I’M NOT SURE MOLINARI IS RIGHT “Private property is redundant. “public property”

    I’M NOT SURE MOLINARI IS RIGHT

    “Private property is redundant. “public property” is an oxymoron. All legit property is private. If property isn’t private it’s stolen.”

    — Gustave de Molinari.

    (from the libertarian page – by Francesco Principi)

    I’m torn Francesco.

    It looks like private property is a normative ethic (“should”) that produces multiple beneficial out comes, but that as a descriptive ethic (“is”), people act as though they have property interests in all manner of ‘commons’. And they are even resistant to quantification of ownership in any commons by a process of articulating all commons’ as shares. In my work I argue that the distribution of preferences for the allocation of property between private and public commons appears to be a reflection of reproductive strategy. That reproductive strategy is able to be expressed by individuals by a combination of the decline of the family as the productive and reproductive unit, and the ability to vote for preferences in the distribution of property rights between the individual and the commons.

    Elsewhere i’m being teased about this at the moment, but the natural order of human societies appears to be matrilineal with transitory males. The ‘innovation’ that led to productivity in a division of labor, was accidental: from pastoralism which was more productive and competitive than sedentary life, and which created greater conflict over property.

    Property is an innovation, as is paternalism. Both render the world ‘calculable’ and as ‘calculable’ create the possibility of incentives to specialize in a division of knowledge and labor.

    But if women can ally with a minority of males, and vote to reverse 10,000 years of social evolution, by maintaining very limited private property rights necessary to provide survival incentives, but not the rights to the profits from the use of that property, then it appears that they will do so, in order to regain their instinctual reproductive preference.

    Control over breeding between males and females has oscillated before. Males dominated as they do in the other ape species. Alphas terrorize and rape. Humans developed language, gossip and weapons and managed to constrain and kill wayward alphas. This made sex more widely available for males, and put females back in control of reproduction.

    When domestication made it possible for males to provide constant sources of protein at the expense of having to control territory and protect their livestock, grain stores, and irrigation channels, the paternal family was an innovation that altered the reproductive relations and familial organizational structure between men and women once again.

    At present, the combination of information systems and the state apparatus – allow extraction of abstract property (money) by various means, thereby eliminating the male advantage in possessing property for the purpose of selecting a mate – at least in the ‘beta’ or bottom half of society. Humans are returning to serial monogamy, with men unable to accumulate wealth because it is extracted by the child support, alimony, and various redistribution systems.

    Property rights were granted by our european ancestors to those who fought in battle – to protect private property rights. If the meaning of that sinks in, then what we learn is this: private property is an innovation that is the preference of the minority, and it was instituted over the reproductive preferences of the majority. It produced eugenic reproduction, the division of knowledge and labor, reason and science, literature and arts.

    But the source of property is the organized application of violence by a minority against a majority who does not desire it, and should not, because it is against their reproductive and instinctual interests.

    In the west, purely by accident, the battle tactics required expensive equipment, voluntary participation, and heroic behavior. THis resulted in a shortage of men, who, as a minority, could out-fight more numerous competitors. But they constantly needed to increase their numbers, so they extended the franchise of property rights to any of those who would fight to preserve it. having earned it, those members fought to keep it.

    This system of habits and incentives created what we call egalitarian aristocracy. It is unlike political leadership elsewhere, which cold rely on subjugating large numbers of warrior slaves, such as in north africa, the middle east, and the far east.

    Property produces a virtuous cycle when combined with contract, numbers, money, and especially literacy. But it isn’t natural to man. And it’s entirely unnatural to women. And they are, world wide, expressing distaste for it wherever they can vote.

    US Presidential candidates and therefore policy are at present determined by single female voters. They vote as a consistent block: to undermine 10k years of the development of property, and 5k years of european egalitarian property rights.

    Mainstream economists see this as increasing people’s choices, and suiting the Rawlsian ethic. But the external consequences are something quite different: the destruction of the nuclear family, and everything about that social order that we have created for millennia.

    I don’t know pricelessly what will happen over the next two generations, but I suspect that, as in all of history, unmarried men, and poor and unemployed men, who are currently assuming the change in their circumstances is temporary, will produce a generation that has a different perspective, and that different perspective will lead to catastrophic change in the social order, one way or another – Proving that Strauss and Howe were right, perhaps by coincidence.

    Small things in great numbers have vast consequences.

    The source of property is violence.

    Property is unnatural to man.

    Because it is against the interest of women.

    I don’t like it. But that’s how it is.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-06 14:29:00 UTC

  • LOVED THIS: THE LUXURY OF TREES How trees or lack of them correlates with urban

    LOVED THIS: THE LUXURY OF TREES

    How trees or lack of them correlates with urban poverty.

    Why? Trees are a commons. The poor don’t respect commons. We don’t invest in commons for the poor because they don’t respect them. We call this fact the twin problem of property rights and time preference. Some of us call it ‘discipline’ or ‘upbringing’ or ‘class’. But in the end, it’s the same thing: overbreeding children you can’t support is a short time preference, demonstration of lack of discipline and foresight, and a failure to respect the commons.

    http://persquaremile.com/2012/05/24/income-inequality-seen-from-space/

    Source date (UTC): 2013-06-12 03:04:00 UTC

  • IS BAD. “Will someone tell me this article is wrong?!” No, the article is not wr

    http://www.cato-unbound.org/2013/06/03/michael-c-munger/recycling-can-it-be-wrong-when-it-feels-so-rightRECYCLING IS BAD.

    “Will someone tell me this article is wrong?!”

    No, the article is not wrong. It is correct. Even graciously so.

    HOWEVER:

    1) THE ECONOMICS OF THE RECYCLING MOVEMENT

    The reasons to enforce recycling are (a) political in that it advances the leftist ideological vacuum created by the failure of socialism in theory and practice, (b) psychological – it creates awareness of the veyr important issue of maintaining a clean environment, and (c) it places economic pressure (the possibility of boycott) on marketing and packaging companies.

    But recycling anything other than ‘oil, gas, liquid poisons and radioactives’ is not ‘good for the environment’ or logical or economic in any sense of the word. The optimum solution is to compartmentalize deposits land-fills so that they can be sold off and ‘mined’ at a future date when and if it ever becomes economically viable. In other words, the cost of sorting, transporting, breaking down and distributing goods is not sensible.

    The problem with plastics is not recycling but that they don’t break down well. Plastic bottles and packaging in particular. Recycling is simply a means of providing political cover using false economic calculations for what is probably the most troublesome pollutant that we make. The seas are full of that junk (although, mining the seas for plastic might eventually become a good business for someone. it depreciates our experience of the environment.)

    Contrary to popular belief, landfills are small, inexpensive, and concentrate waste, and create an opportunity for future recycling at low cost. They concentrate resources at low cost for future use. They are ‘savings accounts’ full of resources that can be mined when the economics make it sensible to mine them. Conversely, it’s extremely expensive to transport all that nonsense around to use it now, when we don’t NEED to use it. And we can only tell that we NEED to use something if FIRST, the pricing system tells us so, and SECOND if our moral codes, once understood, suggest that there are not involuntary transfers being created .

    Of course, the economic solution is to drastically reduce population and drastically increase consumption. It’s not that we consume too much. That’s not really logical. It’s that we have too many people consuming.

    Consumption is like information. The more the better. Space travel for example, is the ultimate consumption. It’s freaking expensive. The mass required to convert into energy necessary to get to another planet is terrifyingly expensive in every possible term. So is the information necessary to solve the problem. Every cost we distribute widely is a cost not dedicated to the narrow pursuit of something like space travel.

    2) MORAL RULES ARE PROHIBITIONS ON THEFT

    The author is correct in what he senses, but cannot articulate:

    (a) the pricing system does not make visible ALL costs. (This is one of the three or for conceptual failures in libertarian economic theory – because it discounts the cost of morals – norms, and morals are extremely costly to develop in any society.) Prices tell us what people WANT, what they NEED, and are WILLING TO DO to get it. The last being the most important. But that’s ALL they tell us.

    (b) He doesn’t understand that morals costs are material costs. Because our actions are costly. Our time is costly. But most importantly, our OPPORTUNITIES that we DON’T TAKE are very costly – that’s what manners and ethics are: lists of opportunities that we do NOT take, because it transfers costs in time, opportunity, effort and money, from others involuntarily. Most economists do not make this mistake. Almost all political science, and all political philosophers make this mistake – almost bar none.

    3) LIES AND DAMNED LIES

    The excuses offered by producers of pollutants, and those of the recycling movement are as ridiculous as the carbon market argument: POLLUTING IS STEALING. PERIOD. And GOVERNMENTS created the ability to pollute by giving SANCTION to polluters, and requiring that ordinary consumers have ‘standing’ in order to sue polluters. There is no reason that we cannot require x number of signatures in order to produce ‘standing’ for a crime of pollution, in which every single person has only a micro-claim against the polluter.

    The current argument is that our politicians are elected for this purpose. The stupidity of the argument never ceases to amaze me: why then do we need demonstrably influenceable and corruptible politicians elected by majority rule instead of courts to resolve what are of necessity property rights? This is yet another illustration of the argument against representational government and in favor of the common law, courts, and property rights.

    You can’t sue polluters because the government prevents you from doing it. The common law allows you to. It allowed you to. Governments took away that right on purpose in order to increase taxation available from pollution generating manufacturers. (Yes, you can look it up.)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-06-04 05:36:00 UTC

  • Values And Principles: Should The Us Government Have The Power To Tax One Group In Order To Help Another?

    all commons are redistribution. The question is whether the comons that we contribute to create either hazards, perverse incentives, and free-riding. 

    There has been an organized effort for the beter part of a century, to support rather than avoid free riding, and penalize the middle class to fund reproduction by the lower classes.

    Redistribution is probably EARNED if you adhere to manners, ethics, morals and laws – albiet the argument is too complex for this post.    If you do not adhere of manners, ethics morals and laws, it is very hard to argue that you have earned any form of redistribution.

    https://www.quora.com/Values-and-Principles-Should-the-US-government-have-the-power-to-tax-one-group-in-order-to-help-another

  • SACRED – “SACREDNESS” AS A COMMONS

    SACRED – “SACREDNESS” It is very hard to build the concept of ‘sacred’ into the values of a population. External threat, common strife, shared ambition, education, and indoctrination all can achieve it. Sacred concepts are a form of The Commons. They are a community property. And a community property, whether real land, built capital, formal institution, or cherished narrative, may be used by all, but not consumed by any. Conservatives invest in a large portfolio of such commons, and as such treat them as sacred. Conservatism is, by and large, a government of norms. It is intrinsically anarchic, but not intrinsically libertarian. And as such, ‘Sacredness’ is pervasive in conservative culture. Rothbardian Libertarians disavow the existence of a commons, other than the institution of property itself – a seeming contradiction. But the purpose of that denial is to forbid the existence of a state which must arbitrate the use of such commons. Hoppeian Libertarians restored the commons into libertarianism, while prohibiting any commons that consists of an organizations of human beings- thereby forbidding the existence of a state, while allowing for the existence of contractual, private government. Social democrats treat all property as a commons, and the means of distributing it as a commons. But they treat nothing as sacred other than the emotional predisposition to prevent harm and express care-taking. Sacredness is an act of self denial, and progressives avoid deprivation at all costs. As such, all forms of property other than the current-consensus for the purpose of reducing conflict, are absent. With that absence must also go the sacred. Under this analysis, Sacredness is not exclusive to conservatism. It is only that conservatism treats moral capital – forgoing opportunities, and building moral capital in the population – as of high value, Rothbardian libertarianism of little to none, and to progressives, an antithesis of their world view. This is somewhat confusing unless we take into account that those with predispositions toward libertarianism and progressivism are searching for experience and stimulation. While conservatives are searching for improving the excellence of established themes. This is why conservative art tends to be illustrative and progressive art tends to be experiential. Contrary to popular, studied, and academic belief, the debate as to whether the enormous power of fiat money eliminates the need for sacredness – forms of property we call norms which require self denial – is not over. Fiat money can be used Conservatism is not so much about the seen as unseen. Its pretense is a form of respect of the sacred. And the sacred consists of common property that they pay for with constant acts of self denial. Having paid this high price for the commons, it is no wonder why they object to the consumption of it by progressives, or the destruction of its institutions by Rothbardians.

  • What Is The Libertarian Position On Laws About Filming Up Women’s Skirts Without Their Consent?

    Anon is correct.

    The reason that someone can violate another’s privacy is because there are insufficient property rights due to the ‘tragedy of the commons’ in ‘public’ areas.

    However, we don’t need to get that complicated.  If all citizens of a village are shareholders, and shareholders vote to create a contractual obligation that we don’t look up women’s skirts, then there is nothing that violates ‘libertarian’ principles.  It’s a private corporation.  The shareholders determined the rules.  The people can voluntarily go to that village or not.

    The problems for libertarians are a) that we don’t have the right of exclusion (we can’t randomly forbid people from shopping malls or city streets), and b) we don’t have the right of secession, which means we can’t set up our own rules for our own neighborhoods.  This amounts to the government causing and subsidizing bad behavior.

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-libertarian-position-on-laws-about-filming-up-womens-skirts-without-their-consent

  • What Is The Libertarian Position On Laws About Filming Up Women’s Skirts Without Their Consent?

    Anon is correct.

    The reason that someone can violate another’s privacy is because there are insufficient property rights due to the ‘tragedy of the commons’ in ‘public’ areas.

    However, we don’t need to get that complicated.  If all citizens of a village are shareholders, and shareholders vote to create a contractual obligation that we don’t look up women’s skirts, then there is nothing that violates ‘libertarian’ principles.  It’s a private corporation.  The shareholders determined the rules.  The people can voluntarily go to that village or not.

    The problems for libertarians are a) that we don’t have the right of exclusion (we can’t randomly forbid people from shopping malls or city streets), and b) we don’t have the right of secession, which means we can’t set up our own rules for our own neighborhoods.  This amounts to the government causing and subsidizing bad behavior.

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-libertarian-position-on-laws-about-filming-up-womens-skirts-without-their-consent

  • Straight Dope: Would Communal Ownership Result In Fewer Oil Spills?

    No. But increased liability would. I found the Straight Dope forums and they’re full of fairly good libertarian thinking. So I’m going to add them to my crawler’s roundtable. This is the second or third posting I”ve made there. And in it I’m making a bold claim in response to this statement:

    And I think you’ll find it makes a difference to the wider community, too. It’s hard to imagine a worker-owned oil company, with broad shopfloor participation in decisionmaking, making the kind of decisions that led to the BP oil spill — and got several BP workers killed.

    That’s an interesting statement. The problem is, that such an organization would never be able to exist at any size in order to make that kind of decision, and without that size could not concentrate enough capital to create and combine sufficient technologies to get into the position in the first place.

    [callout]**In general there will be no case that you can contrive of where the above sequence of logic does not apply.**[/callout]

    Why? Because of the very reason we have markets, corporations, organizations, political systems: because while people can agree upon the sentimental ends, they cannot agree upon the requisite means, cannot do so in time to sieze opportunities, and they cannot do so in large numbers, and as the complexity of the division of labor increases, necessary ignorance intervenes on the part of all people involved such that additional opinions actually REGRESS back to the mean. This fact in turns results in the “Iron Law Of Oligarchy” wherein decisions making is delegated in every form of voluntary organization to an elite, which upon attaining the ability to make decisions, always seeks to preserve it, expand it, and to expand it to the point of their necessary ignorance and incompetence.

    [callout] while people can agree upon the sentimental ends, they cannot agree upon the requisite means, cannot do so in time to sieze opportunities, and they cannot do so in large numbers, and as the complexity of the division of labor increases, necessary ignorance intervenes on the part of all people involved such that additional opinions actually REGRESS back to the mean. This fact in turns results in the “Iron Law Of Oligarchy” wherein decisions making is delegated in every form of voluntary organization to an elite, which upon attaining the ability to make decisions, always seeks to preserve it, expand it, and to expand it to the point of their necessary ignorance and incompetence.[/callout]

    The problem isn’t the corporation’s size, or the worker interest, it’s the limits of liability granted to the executives, and the limit of liability given to the insurers. These limits were GIVEN by GOVERNMENT with KNOWING INTENT to these companies precisely to avoid the principle of responsibility inherent in Capitalism, to ensure that we would have oil supplies. In other words, the state became the insurer, and did a bad job of quality control, and the insurer, the state (the people) have to pay for taking that risk. WHen they should have maintained liability of all involved. This would have dramatically increased the costs, and made the drilling unprofitable, and it would not have occurred. We transfer risk all over society. Between age groups, between classes, between races. IN fact, that has become the purpose of 20th century government. Transfer. We grant people all sorts of special rights as a means of mutual insurance. THe most controversial is free speech. Much free speech is theft of abstract forms from one person or another (libel and slander). Much of it is erroneous, deceptive, ignorant or intentionally harmful, for the purpose of transferring property from one group to another (Political). We allow one group rights of expression but deny another group the same expression. (Political) Most news opinion for example, upon analysis, is patently false. (Profitable) Most advertising is targeted at the proletariat and middle class, for the purpose of selling the consumer fantasy by appealing to human status senses. We have not (as an absurd example) sued the Bank Of Sweden for awarding Nobel prizes to purveyors of the use of probabilistic Gaussian mathematics in economic theory, which in turn was used to create this debacle of an economy over the past half century or more. So the Nobel Prize was issued and used as a political lever and caused vast harm. The Academy ‘insured’ these theories, and then marketed them. Yet we do not hold them accountable for this damage to society, as we do any other product like hot coffee or ladders. Because we grant them the freedom to err, under the assumption that we are better off this way than the opposite. Capitalism and markets exist to provide calculative capacity to the mediocrity of human minds. Socialist should focus on redistribution and avoid the fallacy of believing their own opinion. Ignorance is mandatory for all human beings. And it is nothing but a childish vanity to think otherwise, and is demonstrable in all fields of human activity. it is even MEASURABLE in most fields of human activity. (in particular, the horrid errors in academic research.) Property rights allow for accountability, because they require risk in order to obtain the rewards from the use of them. It is when we do not respect those rights and their liabilities, and grant limits to the liability for those rights that we have oil spills. **In general there will be no case that you can contrive of where the above sequence of logic does not apply.** That is why the world has adopted capitalism. TOtalitarian capitalism. But capitalism none the less. It’s democracy that’s being abandoned as a goal. Worldwide.

  • IEA Thinks Taxis Are Not A Public Good

    Over on the IEA Blog, Eric Masaba asks the question: Why do black cabs cost more than Concorde? I couldn’t point out ALL the holes in this article, because the IEA blog limits the number of characters per comment. I find the argument for the virtue of brevity a ‘cute’ one because affirmations are the most brief of comments, while refutations are the longest. The state subsidizes the ‘Black Cabs’ of London.

    Hackney cab drivers inexplicably enjoy a rule stating that no one else can describe a taxi service as a “taxi” in their marketing, and the important restriction that no one else can pick up passengers on the street. These regulations have deep historical foundations, dating back to the days of Dick Turpin. In today’s world, they are anachronistic, anti-competitive and pointless.

    London cab drivers are a pleasure to deal with. They are an intrinsic part of the tourist trade. The Danes pay an entire social class to stay home so that the average clerk in a train station is educated, literate, well mannered, and a pleasure to deal with.

    When there are price comparison sites for insurance, airlines, hotels, holidays and office supplies, where we can buy the same product from a myriad of suppliers at different prices, how is it that there are very strict rules requiring that Hackney drivers receive a minimum wage for every mile driven yet private hire drivers do not?

    Because the market is an unlimited physical space and the streets of London are a limited physical space (and the tube is a monopolized space. And therefore Cabs require a very simple set of regulations in order to maintain quality.

    Why is it good for certain stripes of taxi driver to be able to oblige people in London to pay higher rates than the market would support if such a law was not in place?

    Why is it a good for the state to regulate any kind of competition?

    Why do the same drivers, who expect to be able to choose what clothes they wear (and how much they pay for them) and which airlines and car insurance firms they use, want to deny travellers in London the basic freedom to choose another vehicle service they can hail at the airport or on the street?

    They don’t. You can hire a car from the airport. You just can’t pick someone up on the street.

    If people want to pay for the superior knowledge that the Hackney drivers clearly possess, they will do so. If they do not care, they will find cheaper alternatives until the market has informed the black-cab community what customers really think and what price they are willing to pay.

    They are not paying for the knowledge. The state is using a knowledge criteria to create a hurdle for market entry. Just like they do for just about every kind of specialist.

    Many people are disgusted with the special treatment bankers received, but through the price controls and regulations on taxis in London, transport markets are being distorted to favour one type of vehicle provider.

    Bankers recieved special treatment because the state printed money without regulating it and forced banks either to compete for profits or to go out of business. This process of moral hazard created large banks that are pseudo governmental agencies, that were so responsible for subsidizing the national payroll and cash disribution and management system that if they were not rescued then the crash would have been worse. On the other hand, the state CREATED the moral hazard. But it did not have to. The problem has been that creating the ‘rules’ of the fair game in banking (defining the properties of property and it’s rules of transfer) has become extraordinarily complex because the object of definition has become exceedingly plastic. Derivatives and new financial instruments were a new form of property that many of us decried at the time, but that was unregulated because both the state and the purveyors of these new devices foolishly bought the argument that it was possible to insure that kind of risk, and secondly, because So, I have to disagree with the IEA’s position. Travel to NYC, Chicago, LA and ask yourself if the London policy is better or worse for everyone involved. And if we subsidize transportation like subways why cant we subsidize Cabs. If price is a concern, then If you want another choice, call a less expensive cab company on your cell phone. Prices aren’t everything. In fact, low prices and full competition in a market often accomplishes the lowest cost service at the lowest quality that is tolerable by consumers, and bars quality from availability within a geography. (Home Depot and Walmart in the US, and superstores versus butchers, bakers and the like in Europe). I am happy that superstores exist to provide additional choice, but only if there is a replacement ‘tax’ for using them by distancing them. From this simple analogy of taxis and tubes versus superstores and specialty stores, we can illustrate that reduced prices and a free market within geographic boundaries produce commodities, and thereby prevent societies from capitalizing long term values of aesthetics, choice, and the ‘special’ environments we adore across all of europe in favor of a bland, disposable environment. We restrain competition in order to raise prices and therefore concentrate capital and we do it in many ways: political subsidy (money transfers like taxation, redistribution, and outright subsidy) constraining the market by qualification (lawyers, doctors and london cabbies), and constraining the market with monopolies (public transportation like Tubes and Buses). We unrestrain the market to reverse the concentration of capital and to reduce prices, and we do it in many ways: political subsidy of The natural order of man is to attempt to circumvent the market. The free market is a byproduct of the civic republican tradition’s advocacy of meritocratic equality. It is a rebellious movement against the control of markets and the expropriation of wealth by the state. Markets are a solution to corruption that asks us to create fair competition among equals and to maintain that set of ‘rules’ we call “competition in the market”. However, the natural behavior of man is to circumvent that market. The means by which he circumvents it are those tools we consider fair market competition: reducing prices, increasing choices, advertising and marketing. Not all cultures have taken this route. In fact, in history, the free market is an exception that concentrates wealth in hte hands of the monied, productive and creative minority. THis concentration benefits all by decreasing prices for nearly everyone. It limits the power of capitalists as long as there is enough money in circulation to create inexpensive competition. But since the culture or state determines the definitions of property (the means of calculating the use of opportunities to act) the rules for any ‘game’ are particular to that game. Rules are not universal to all games. They are plastic. And this comparison of Taxis to Tubes is perhaps one of the best ways to illustrate that these rules are inconsistent. But what may not be obvious is the DISTORTION that is created by the myth that rules must be equal for some things and unequal for others. Or, that lowest prices are the ultimate virtue to be sought by economsts and political economists. As a libertarian, I care that the choices available to me are not constrained by Concentrating capital attracts talent to the private sector where it is skimmed by private individuals, and those who lack talent to the public sector where it is skimmed by bureaucracy. Yet this is what most cultures seek to impose: expropriation by the bureaucracy. WE also constrain capitalists, and unconstrain capitalists. Capitalists can temporarily distort a market by applying capital that profits one company or anotther, requiring competitors to rely upon capital or depart. They can do this by simply extending debt, so that prices may be decreased in the anticipation of driving competition out of the market, and later increasing their share of the market as these competitors disappear. the problem with this technique is that talent accumulated in the industry is sometimes forced out. Niches are abandoned (the wall mart and home depot effect). The state acts like a disruptive capitalist creating temporary price decreases in return for decreased niche services, and in doing so makes it impossible to concentrate capital in niche excellences. It makes it impossible to subsidize a public good: choice of the more expensive, better, prettier. The purpose of the London cabbie is largely to create a public ‘good’. It enforces quality so that quality personnel can afford to work in the industry (rather than the horrid service, delivered by the filthy, ignorant and incompetent in US cities). Prices would drive down quality, and all that will happen is that you will need additional regulation to managed an impoverished and corrupt network of marginal businesses that deliver cheap but intolerable service that prevents quality competition from competing in the market. If you are willing to spend money on the tube. You have no argument against spending money to maintain a quality system of taxis. Just because market mechanics are POSSIBLE for taxis and IMPOSSIBLE for tubes, that doesn’t mean that taxis are not serving the same function as tubes. Lowest costs does not generally create a good. It creates a marginal enterprise. Aesthetics are forms of capital that are perhaps, the best investment that any civilization can make. For a country like the UK, whose history is an industry, you’d think that such a principle would be better understood. For a country that is creating demand through immigration, cash by selling off it’s assets, and the illusion of prosperity by dilution, inflation and redistribution, rather than by increases in productivity, it is understandable why a myth of exceptionalism would be a useful distraction from the fact that the UK is selling off its exceptionalism and it’s heritage, and would do even more so along with it’s taxi subsidies. Prices alone do not a world make. The purpose of the market is exploration. The purpose of unbridled market is prevent government exploitation. THe purpose of the regulated market is to capitalize SOMETHING for a social good. And not all social goods are consumables. Some social goods capitalize distortions to create beauty, which is a high return for a society, as all monuments, arts and architecture demonstrate. So, instead of universally pursuing consumption as an ultimate good. Instead of the keynesian virtue of spending. Perhaps we should balance our capitalist strategy with the art of saving. It took english civilization a very long time to create a culture of saving, and the institution of interest, so that the middle aged could save until they were old, and the old could lend to the young, in a virtuous cycle of investment that distributed the risk of long term calculation across a vast number of people, and wherein retirement security was an insurance scheme for the underclass rather than a mandate of the majority. This virtuous cycle was undermined. Perhaps we should return to it, and to other forms of capitalizing our civilization, so that we leave something behind for our heirs rather than the record of a visitation by locusts. Subsidizing quality is the entire point of aesthetics and the arts. And capitalizing everything from street signs, to cabbies to historic buildings to libraries and museums is an antidote to anti-historicism.