Honestly curious: this is what Rand Paul believes he did in medical school. Did he actually, or did he mostly fantasize that his ineffective nonsense was a spiderweb of Machiavellian schemes?
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Agreed, but wouldn’t you also agree that is hastening its own demise? Capitalism as we know it is not really a market so much as it is a game of capture the rent.
And just because someone discusses a viewpoint doesn’t mean they think it is correct.
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Perhaps the libertarian objection to lying comes from people who believe strongly enough in the free market to disapprove of monopolies and rent-seeking.
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Lying works very well in poorly regulated markets of the sort Libertarians are always calling for us to aspire to. It works precisely because people who follow that ideology are so eager to participate in them for the reason I discussed above.
There is no such thing as a self-regulating “free market” filled with rational actors acting honestly out of self interest. That term in current parlance (not Adam Smith’s) is yet another lie foisted on Americans by predatory Libertarians.
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You could even argue lying is what makes capitalism sorta work. When everyone operates assuming that a business is lying, it drives better research into products/services/investments and thus better options and offerings from businesses. However, that runs smack into the 27% rube and 2% sociopath distribution and the whole thing fails at critical points.
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Certainly the male enhancement product market.
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It’s cool to spread misinformation to throw off a malicious adversary. Fellow students are not malicious adversaries (with the obvious, ironic exception of Rand Paul).
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I’ll believe that when it’s dead inthe ground and we’re no longer at risk from it. We’re not remotely there yet and it still has plenty of cheerleaders.
whether you agree with them or not, you are pretty much taking them at their word.
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If you accept some of an ideology’s core premises as facts when they’re actually BS then you’re tacitly endorsing them. That’s not to say you’re discussing things on their terms consciously, since we’ve all been soaking in neoliberalism for 40+ years. This is a useful article on that topic.
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Is there anything more on brand for modern republicans than defining success as hindering others?
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So, where did he go to college again? It’s time to talk to them.
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So, basically proud of screwing over classmates in order to obtain a small degree of personal gain.
Low integrity stuff for sure but on brand for Rand it seems.
I just hope he never learns of the power derived by mixing misinformation with fear. /s
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Of course lying works for liars. My assertion was that lying works against markets. For those (@DukeTrout ?) who believe this to be wrong, please give examples of markets that would be less effective with less lying.
Lying works against well-regulated markets, the kind Libertarians claim we don’t need precisely because markets in-and-of themselves encourage honesty amongst their participants. Which is another way of stating your assertion, agreeing with them that markets are virtuous solely by dint of their being markets. That’s not true.
The markets for used cars, mortgage refis, diet supplements, penny stocks, cryptocurrencies, pornography … those and more wouldn’t exist to the degree and in the forms they have and do and make money for people without constant lying by participants.* They’re markets but few would call them inherently virtuous.
They’re also notoriously inefficient markets infested by rent-seeking middlemen and parasites who’ve made themselves integral parts of those markets, by the way. If they’re chased out the market collapses.
For those (poorly regulated) markets less lying = non-existent which in turn = less effective. In contrast, any market that you trust without thinking about it has a tonne of government regulation behind it to discourage bad actors.
There are markets not regulated by the state where lying makes one less effective: black markets for illegal goods and services run by criminals who regulate by other means to make sure they stay effective. That’s the market paradise that would come to pass if Libertarians’ dreams came true (not that those dweebs would last long enough to enjoy it).
[* a higher-than-average number of whom will spout some half-baked form of Libertarian dogma]
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Truly free markets inherent break down when liars cheat the credible. In order to counteract that, markets become regulated. Eventually, the amount of regulation reaches an equilibrium where the amount of graft is just below the threshold of revolution and mass violence. If it sneaks above that threshold, there are riots and violent strikes. If it gets far below that threshold, it stops resembling capitalism and more closely resembles socialism. These are patterns that have repeated historically since the beginning of the Industrial Age.
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And the closer they get to being truly free of regulation, the more they attract scammers and cheats and sociopaths who’d agree with Rand Paul about the benefits of lying.
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You make a good point about lying greasing some markets. Toward the end of the coin pay phone age, it seemed like there was no way to make a call without somehow getting screwed. For a while you couldn’t find a reliable USB hub at any price.
However most lying works against effective markets. People would still need to buy used cars and refi mortgages even without the dishonesty, just perhaps less. The markets would not disappear, and the excess market activity due to deception is not excess effectivity.
Is there such a thing as a market in the socialism you speak of capitalism resembling? I’m wondering if the real disagreement is y’all not thinking that a market is even possible outside of capitalism.
The issue is that, absent strong regulation by the state, the dishonesty is a sine qua non in those markets. Lying works so well for those poorly regulated markets that consumers who need to participate in them are stuck if they want the goods on offer.
The consumers are powerless to change things unless they demand regulation from the sstate, and the “free” marketeers in those industries suddenly get very chummy with politicians in order to to ensure that doesn’t happen.
Bottom line: we all have to get past the neoliberal dictum, propagated to us for 40 years by Rand Paul and his ilk, that markets are inherently virtuous solely because they’re markets.
Market economies, and not just top-down command ones, exist and have existed in non-capitalist settings. The early Soviet NEP and the Mondragon co-operative in Spain come to mind. Regulation plays a big part in both examples.
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Just the opposite.
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Curves?
