Indiana's freedom to discriminate law

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Magical Realist, Mar 29, 2015.

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  1. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    No, you don't. That's not an opinion, it's a mathematical fact. Free market economies can get stuck in sub-optimal equilibria, and child labor can produce a stable, suboptimal equilibrium for an economy to get stuck in.

    And this has been observed.

    1) I have posted no rants. 2) The example, like the motel room denial, illustrates the kind of "freedom of contract" you consider harmless. Hence the need for laws, to provide at least some basic protection for people from the consequences of the contracts that racial bigots will make with each other if free to do so.

    Yes, it was. Here is is again: "The libertarian thinks completely different. He acknowledges that people are different, that there will be conflicts between them, some will hate others, and the best way to preserve peace is to separate those who hate each other, giving them the possibility to live their lives without those of the hated groups. " That's you, direct quote.
    The black people denied motel rooms and good jobs and their preferred choice of housing and access to hospital care and decent educations and so forth, did not freely agree to the terms white bigots agreed to in their happy freedom of contract.

    They were, instead, segregated whether they wanted to be or not.
    That's not quite what you asserted.
    Here's what I said wasn't true in real life: " in a free market, technical progress will be applied faster than in a heavily regulated or socialist economy."

    Part of the reason it isn't true is that the distinction between "heavily regulated" or "socialist" and "free market based" is hopelessly muddled: most of the heavily regulated and significantly socialistic economies in the modern world are free market based. But the major reason is that the more socialized economies, including the socialized aspects of "free market based" economies considered separately, have been generally much faster at "applying technical progress" than the free market ones. The US military, for example. The socialized medical care and public transportation setups of Europe.

    Living and learning about the Godfathers and Madoffs of this world.

    Until it runs out of money from not being able to levy taxes. Then whoever has taken over the reputational system, adjudicated the disagreements, enforced the terms, and shepherded the vast majority of people who haven't the time, education, or computer skills to handle all the privacy stuff and contractual language etc, will be your new government.

    Kind of a digital version of Sicily after the Cosa Nostra got its grip.
     
    Last edited: Jun 13, 2015
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  3. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    This seems to be something you believe, ok. There is a strong tendency to think that the own beliefs are "facts", no problem. To name them facts in a discussion with those who don't believe them is not even an argument. And to name something from economic theory a "mathematical fact" is simply nonsense.

    The motel room denial is indeed an example which is legitime from point of view of freedom of contract. Harmless or not is not the question, as I have already explained - legitimate self-defense can kill an attacker, thus, can be even very harmful for the attacker.

    And, no, to have the possibility to use every motel you like is not part of some "basic protection". And if the bigots make contracts with each other, this does not harm others.

    Yes. So what, any word about forcing them to separate? Any word about that whites hate blacks and reverse, and, therefore, one has to separate whites and blacks? No. This is a statement in favour of the right to separate for people who hate each other.
    Once there is no contract, there is no necessity to agree.

    What prevents the blacks and the "niggerlovers" to provide motels, housing, good jobs, hospital care and decent education? If it is some variant of Jim Cow law, the answer is clear, the law is unjust. If it is the point that some of the good jobs or decent education are provided for taxpayer's money, the answer is also clear - for things paid by taxpayer's money there should not be any discrimination.
    Such is live. I have no right to force other people to cooperate with me. If they want, fine, if not, their decision. That I want them to cooperate with me counts nothing. Cooperation requires two who want. Everything else would be a form of slavery.

    Feel free to believe this, but this is in nice correspondence with what I have seen.
    That's correct, but does not change the truth of the claim. A true claim about free markets remains true eve if there would be no free market at all on Earth.
    First, to compare completely different areas would be inherently problematic. Then, these things are difficult to compare because the socialized sectors of mixed economies receive a lot of taxpayer's money taken from the private sectors.
    The reputational system is by design decentralized and open to everybody, it is, essentially, similar to the old USENET groups. One cannot take over the USENET groups - all what can be done with them was to destroy them by spam. The black list of contract breakers contains records of a well-defined type, with electronic signatures of those in the black list themself (that they have accepted a given arbiter) and the arbiter who claims (that the arbitrage was not fulfilled). Thus, fake records to discredit persons are not a problem. The lists can be copied at many different places, like USENET servers, thus, to try to remove unwanted records is hopeless too. Thus, the "takeover" of the reputational system is phantasy.

    Those who adjust the disagreements need the acceptance, signed by those who sign the contracts with their signature. This is also not open to control by some particular group.

    There is no centralized structure which enforces the terms too. The abitr has to possibility to put a record on the black list, if the arbitrage is not accepted, this is sufficient to enforce most of the contracts, what remains unenforced is on the black list.

    If all this is the "new government", then this is what I want as no government at all. In this case, nobody receives taxes - the blacklists will be hosted and distributed for free as part of internet access, the arbiters, of course, receive money for arbitrage, but these are money for a particular service, and they have no monopoly to enforce it.

    Those who shepherded those who are too stupid to learn this simple system and use it will, indeed, remain a sort of governement over those stupid people. That a vast majority will be that stupid to allow this is your personal belief. The technical use will be made simple, simple enough that schoolchildren can explain it to their parents if necessary.

    And, yes, there will be standards for AGBs, developed probably by greater arbitration firms to minimize conflicts and simplify the work of arbitration. There may be a lot of different organizations proposing such standards, and everybody is free to have preferences. Some may be supported by churches or so as being in agreement with the moral teachings of the church, whatever. None of these standards can be enforced by law.
     
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  5. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    It's something I've seen proven, mathematically.
    I linked you to some research and one of the researchers involved in this standard stuff, including to his compilation of relevant articles. You decided not to bother informing yourself. Now you are claiming this ignorance of yours is some kind of legitimate "belief" that invalidates other people's arguments.
    You don't know what a stable equilibrium is, do you. You have no idea what I'm even talking about.
    I have now provided several examples of real life situations in which bigots making contracts with each other did very serious and significant harm to everyone (but especially black people) who ever lived or is living in the southern United States. Medical care, motel access, and decent paid employment, specifically (many others could be mentioned), were systematically denied to black people by white racial bigots making contracts with each other. These are examples in which no governmental law was involved in most cases.
    No, it isn't. You are arguing from theory only, without having observed a corresponding reality.
    If your claim is not intended to apply to markets that actually exist on Earth, I have no quarrel with it - it could be true by your definition, even, of the term "free market". It is not true of the markets we have here on this planet.
    So? More socialized economies and the more socialized areas of mixed economies tend to "apply technical progress" faster than the more capitalistic economies and the more capitalistic. areas of mixed economies. I pointed to a couple of examples, including the US military and the major European medical care and transportation systems.

    You have it upside down. As of right now the reputational system itself is fantasy, while the takeover of such systems by organized crime or other commercial interests is a frequently encountered reality.
    An elite, governing without accountability except to each other a mass of people the elites regard as stupid. Paradise.
     
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  7. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    A mathematical proof in economy is a non-existing entity. In physics, you have at least mathematically well-defined theories and can prove mathematical results about these theories. Economy is not even close to this. All the mathematics of such proofs is, essentially, empty formalism, what decides what can be proven are the assumptions made. They have to be sufficiently strong to prove something - but in this case, they are usually too far away from reality, and in quite obvious ways.

    The base of the application of mathematics in economics, is, in particular, the assumption that humans are ideal self-interested persons which behave rationally.

    No, I simply don't see why a link to a long list of articles is a relevant argument. What do you think, I have to run to the library, read them all, and if I find no support for your claim I come back an tell you about this, so that you can ignore this? LOL. Make specific points, and then give specific articles accessible on the internet which prove this point. This is the way one works in science.

    Sorry, but I would recommend you not to start speculations about what I know. They are anyway with high probability wrong.
    Denial of medical help may be a serious thing, if life is endangered, but not to be allowed to slip in a motel is nothing worth to be mentioned. As well as "decent employment".
    The more socialized domains in mixed economies live on taxpayers money paid by the free market domains, so this does not count at all. Regarding medical care I know that US prices are beyond everything reasonable, but not that the technical progress is worse than in Europe.

    It is not realized yet, but worked out in sufficient detail. And the question is in which way this particular proposal for a reputational system could be "taken over". It can be, and will be, used by organized crime as well as commerce. But they have no ability for taking it over, and there would be even no point of this, because it gives no money. Has the mafia tried to "take over" the HTML standard or the USENET?

    Its reality already today.
     
  8. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    But I think it is important to explain the differences. Those who are outside the 1% with power today, have not only no power, and are regarded as stupid by the 1%, they have also no chance, however intelligent they are.

    In the system I propose eveybody has the possibility not to be part of the sheeple, but to participate in the reputational system, and create the own reputation by making good proposals for contracts and holding them. Those who participate will not be sheeple. They will have untaxable contracts, make untaxable income on hidden bank accounts, buy what they want in darknet stores, also untaxed, possibly illegal, with home delivery by trusted distributors. This does not make them rich, and the state can yet tax what he finds in nature, houses, land, cars and so on - but they will pay less taxes than the taxpayers, the sheeple.
     
  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    And John Nash never lived.

    What is this, the tenth or eleventh assertion you have made that is simply ignorant - you not knowing what you are talking about?
    I did that.

    I made the following two specific points: 1) that institutionalized child labor in a modern "free market" economy can form a stable equilibrium, that is, perpetuate itself and the economy it structures, under the normal conditions and assumptions; 2) that this situation has been observed.

    I then linked you to a couple of articles reporting and demonstrating both of these points. I also linked you to a source for the actual research and technical papers, with the equations and so forth, in case you wanted to dig a bit.
    1) That is no longer wholly true. 2) So what? Are you claiming that what is sure to free an economy from a child labor trap is long term high cost irrational and altruistic behavior by the entire class of economically dominant people?
    Racially bigoted denial of medical help to the sick is a serious thing to everybody, not just the sick, and certainly not just the dying. Like the inability to get well-paid jobs, or travel safely more than a day's drive in a worn-out car, it blights the entire lives of entire groups of people.

    Your notions of what is worth mentioning in the way of harms done to other people are a clear indication of what you and your buddies mean by these "principles" of yours. Check out Lester Maddox - there's your principles, in real life. You don't want freedom for people (that would require government protection), you want freedom from State level government for you and your buddies, just like Maddox wanted. And you imagine your current freedoms would remain, without a government to maintain and defend them, because you don't recognize the extent to which they depend on such government.
    Not the mafia, afaik, but as far as taking the internet over - - you may not know this, but not too long ago there was a debate about whether the internet should be commercialized. Any idea what happened to that debate? How about the non-commercial internet itself?

    And when you have considered that carefully, take a look at this recipe for a Breaking Bad sequel:
    That kind of thing is already in operation, has been throughout human history. The Mafia, the Cosa Nostra, the triads, the yakuza, reputation and honor based systems all. The wise guys, with their contempt for the sheeple, are a fixture of civilization.
    Yes, it does. Without these socialized domains, the pace of technological progress in those economies would be held back to the "free market" pace, which is usually much slower.
     
  10. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    I couldn't care less what you name ignorant. I have given explanation, you have not given any counterargument, this is what matters.

    You didn't.

    and given no specific information about which papers in the long literature list prove these claims.

    One behind a paywall, so unclear what is written there (of course I will not pay a cent for such papers), the other one extremely short, supporting several of my points, and proving nothing of your.

    Fine, why not simply referring me to the Library of Congress? It possibly contains somewhere everything.
    Its a quite good approximation. And the point is, of course, a different one: The mathematics do not matter at all. What matters are the particular assumptions used in a particular "theorem". If these assumptions are off, the "theorem" is worth exactly nothing. If they are fine, then the paper would be fine even without giving the argument a mathematical form. So, the claim that something in economy is "mathematically proven" is a smokescreen.

    The only "protection" one gets from the state is "protection" from competitors in the racket business. And I simply judge about what harm is serious by imagining myself in the situation of being "harmed" that way. I would simply go out, may be saying "sorry", maybe if in bad mood "f... bigot", and no longer think about this.

    You know, I have lived in a state where the state has produced everything - so, if I would have been unable to receive things produced by the state, I would have to die. Today I live in a state who has monopolized much less, and I miss nothing, instead, I have almost everything in much better quality.
    And I believe the same will happen if the remaining functions of the state will be taken over by private business. I have made an explicit proposal for a system of enforcement of contracts, and it is quite obvious that it will be better than state courts.
    I couldn't care less. Internet providers are private firms anyway, at least where I have used to live.
    Indeed. You see, reputational systems work - the most powerful organizations which have been able to survive in the police states have all used them, successfully. But their use was restricted to small groups - because at that time there was no internet and no structure to organize such a world-wide open system. Such a world-wide system will be much more powerful, to loose the reputation much more harmful.
     
  11. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    The proof is what makes the assumptions matter. In order to argue against a well proven conclusion, you have to argue against the assumptions. That's the value of the mathematics.
    Sure. So?
    It would not be an unassailable proof. People would be able to deny its conclusions without having to contradict its assumptions - as you try to do here. You never deal with these assumptions you correctly recognize as key factors, and the reason you don't is that you don't want to deny them - your entire thesis of the superiority of free markets is based on those same assumptions.
    The papers have titles, they aren't that long, the website compiling them has guidance and information - and there's an entire internet of information available to anyone willing to type the words "child labor" into a search bar. You have been presented with two specific points, argument for them, and links to articles and sources supporting them. Your response has been simple denial.
    And to defend this belief from contact with real life, you maintain a state of ignorance fenced in with falsehood and ridiculous assertions about the world around you.

    The question is not whether reputational systems work, but how they work - what they do, what are the consequences of adopting them.

    So we expand your fellowship of the freedom loving libertarians, from Lester Maddox and his crowd to Al Capone and the boys. There are the real life examples of reputational systems, with unregulated freedom of contract, working.

    They don't work so good for the "sheeple", do they.

    You underestimate the scale of organized crime, btw. These organizations are not small, they are are internationally organized, and they have at times and in places risen to the status of governance, taken over entire societies and undermined their governments to the point of collapse. The results have been, in general, misery of various kinds.
     
  12. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    Yet another defamation - you have not presented yet a single proof, "mathematical" or not, thus, don't know how I identify the weak points of them. Whatever, my point is that this does not give much - to contradict the assumptions is sufficiently easy. Because the assumptions, to be usable at all in a mathematical proof, have to be very rigid, thus, cannot allow for exceptions, and in real life there are always exceptions.

    Try it out. Present a particular article (but not one behind a paywall) which contains a mathematical proof you think I don't want to accept, and you will see what I will question.
    So, fine, if it is that easy, it should not be a problem for you to find a particular open access article with a particular proof which makes your particular point. I'm waiting. I have to do more interesting things than to work through what is mostly ideology-laden nonsense, moreover, knowing in advance that this will not give me anything in this discussion.

    Fine, let's discuss this. The point is, of course, that it does not matter if we like this system or not. It will come anyway, once it is technically possible, and if the people find it useful out of their own egoistic interest they will use it.

    Don't forget to add Stalin or Hitler, for whatever claim they have made during their lifes I agree with.

    They work for small communities. These may be even small communities of poor people - like the citizens of a small village (which are notorious in traditional societies for rejecting "newcomers" for several generations). They cannot work for big communities - up to now, there this becomes possible.

    Popular literature likes to present them much greater, and much better organized, than they are in fact. The limits of reputational systems without modern informational technology one can expect to be around 10 000, which is sufficient for a mafia. The economy of crime has a large disadvantage of scale - a large criminal organization will always contain undercover cops and traitors. A network of small. independent entities who cooperate only if really useful is a much safer way to organize crime. (This changes only if they start to create mini-de-facto-states, territories which the police is no longer visiting because it is too dangerous. But even in this case the mafia has to be prepared to hide in the case of a big raid.)

    Of course, if I compare states with the mafia, naming it the most powerful criminal gang in a territory, I do not suggest that a takeover of the state by the mafia leads to an improvement - it is more of the same, that's all. And, of course, fighting between different mafia gangs, named "war" or "civil war" is usually much more harmful for the victims of the crimes than the dominion of a single gang, even if only for the single point that a single gang will not butcher the goose that lays golden eggs, because this would harm themself, while there is no or much less motivation for this during wars. Thus, what you describe - a takeover of a state by a mafia - is something expected to have negative consequences.

    The main difference between traditional reputational systems and the one I propose is that the traditional systems have to restrict participation, simply because they have upper limits of possible participants. So they are not open to the general public. You have to obtain by yourself the status which makes a participation possible - be it a scientific degree, a sufficiently big firm, a sufficiently strong own gang - if this is possible at all, which it is usually not, because they also use criteria depending on race, nationality, family, place of birth, gender and so on you simply cannot change. Instead, my system is open to everyone, because there is no limit of the number of participants.

    What is common to all reputational systems is that they work nice for the participants (they can successfully cooperate) but negative for non-participants, because the participants prefer cooperation with other participants (for obvious reasons, it is safer for them). Thus, the outsider has to pay more to cooperate with a participant. Once this is recognized, outsiders will try to participate, which gives a natural growth, up to the limits of the reputational system in question.
     
  13. Bells Staff Member

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    Mod Note

    From this site's rules:

    12. If you ask another member for evidence, be prepared to read the information that he or she provides for you. Don’t claim that evidence has not been provided just because you didn’t take the effort to read it.

    He provided two links, and supported his argument.

    Your repeated demands for evidence despite his having provided it is tantamount to trolling at this point. If you persist, you will be moderated.
     
  14. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    The two links which have been given were one behind a paywall, which is probably not a problem for some participants with institutional access, but unaffordable for an independent researcher. The other has been considered in the answer in some detail, it appeared that it supported two of my claims (forbidding child labor makes things wrong, by an example of Nepal where former child workers became prostitutes, and that the best way to get rid of child labor is increasing wealth) and essentially none of his.

    If it is considered as sufficient to provide links behind paywalls as evidence against me, ok, moderate me. I'm prepared to read the information provided for me once it is presented in a form accessible to me, without costs.
     
  15. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    I was crediting you with making sense, when you said mathematical proofs used to draw conclusions about reality stand or fall on their assumptions. Did I misunderstand you?
    It would not include me, or most other people. We would be its sheeple, or prey. Are you looking forward to that?
    The enacting of bad laws in Nepal did not support your argument, which was that child labor would vanish of its own in a free market economy due to the general enrichment supposedly inevitable in such circumstances. In that example of the ill-considered law making things worse, Nepal harbored a stable child labor market based economy, multigenerational, that was not going away on its own due to market forces.

    I had thought an example of a researcher acknowledging your point that bad laws and bad governments make things worse would create some mental space for your considering that researcher's findings and conclusions. He is one of the premier researchers in the field, after all. He has, like, data and stuff. And he is fully aware of your issues and arguments concerning child labor. So - - - .

    Sorry about the paywall. You did read the abstract? You don't seem to have noticed it. I was in a hurry, and you had repeatedly proclaimed your lack of interest in the grit, so I figured the abstract should do even if you had no academic access. I don't like being sent on rabbit hunts by people with their own internet connections and apparently plenty of time to post reams of rubbish and demands. The child labor issue was an example, after all - just one of the four or five in play here as illustrations of the consequences of your political "principles" in action in the real world.

    So a link to the home page of one of the premier researchers in the field, and his thorough compilation of hard core technical articles by others (if you are unhappy with his alone, which are right there), is dismissed by you, unread and unexamined, as "mostly ideology-laden nonsense".

    Look: you have presented no argument, evidence, links, data, or coherent theory, to support your improbable and extraordinary claim that child labor will always, or even usually, go away under the influence of free market forces.
    And you have not even begun to address the overall argument, for which that was merely one of several examples.

    1) There is an upper limit to the size of any reputational system, because it requires personal knowledge of the source of the reputation. Using the internet to record the reputation does not increase this maximum size, but merely speeds up the means of communicating the reputation. Your reputational system will not be able to accommodate more than about twenty two thousand individual people, 150 groups of 150 people each, Dunbar's number, in theory. In real life, it will probably max out around a couple of thousand, like most such systems - the rest will be sheeple.
    2) Reputational systems of the past were not restricted in size by their slower means of communication - letters worked in the old days, organized crime has long had telephones, etc. But their reputational elite has never extended to the larger body of minions even, let alone the general public. Reputational systems restrict their elite not of necessity but by preference, for advantage. The result in the past has been tribalism, feudalism, or fascism economically, depending on the nature of the support economy.
     
  16. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    The way as I have understood your "as you try to do here" it was defamatory, because I have not tried to do what you have described before this. But maybe I have misunderstood you.

    There will be a few who reject this for ideological reasons, but, given that the system would allow also for hidden participation, it would not be easy to enforce this for the ideological leaders on their sheeple. So, I doubt about "most other people". I would guess even many, if not most of those who would officially reject it, would participate.

    It supports another one I have made, namely that all those things done to "protect" all the "poor exploited people" in the Third World usually harms them more than to help them. I'm too lazy to search for this, my memory is not the best, if I have made there some specific remarks about child labor here too. But IMHO I have mentioned street kids, who, after forbidding child labor, end up in even worse conditions.
    "child labor market based economy" is nonsense, children are part of the market, but not the base of it. And it will go away if Nepal becomes sufficiently rich. Which is not probable in short time, given the long low level civil war.
    Impossible. If I think something is wrong, I say it is wrong, without any considerations about personal sympathies for the researcher or so. An if he has good arguments, he may be a guy I hate, I will reconize this.
    I don't remember, but I think so, else I would not have tried to download to article itself.
    Ok, this may have been unjust, but this is what I expect in such an emotionally laden domain of research.
    No. The theory is that child labor goes away when the society becomes rich enough that families no longer need child labor for subsistence. This was supported by your link. The other part of the theory is that free markets is the best way to make societies rich. This is a well-known mainstream thesis about the results of free markets. Combine these two parts, that's all.
    No. The reputation is absence of an entry in the black list, and such an entry contains the signature of the guy X in the black list that he has accepted the arbiter Y as the arbiter, and the signed claim of Y that X has not accepted the arbitrage decision. You don't really have to know Y in such a situation, you know X himself has accepted him.
    Given that you accept yourself that there was an upper bound in the past (and think there is one even today) this is an irrelevant unbased speculation. There are, of course, some secret organizations which had this intention, and especially in the criminal world this was even necessary. But other reputational systems had no preference for restrictions.

    In fact, if you are part of a reputational system, you are interested to have all those you want to cooperate with in the reputational system too. Simply because it increases your security that contracts will be hold. There are two ways: to choose cooperators only among participants, or to solicit those you want to cooperate with to participate. Once the system itself has no membership or so which can be denied by some leadership, but is as open as the USENET, it does not matter if some participants want to restrict it.
     
  17. Bells Staff Member

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    I was able to access the second site, which wasn't behind a paywall. And which didn't really support your contention about child labour laws.

    As for the first link, yes, that one was behind a paywall. But it wasn't hard to find a free copy. It took me about 3 seconds. Literally.

    "The Economics of Child Labor" by By Kaushik Basu and Pham Hoang Van

    Considering you have yet to actually support your arguments in this thread, I don't particularly care about what you think is sufficient or not. Nor do I care for your whining about what you can or cannot access.
     
  18. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    I would have to add that this is the base. On this base, one can construct also positive reputation. The way to create positive reputation is simple too: sureties. Once you have had a successful cooperation with somebody, and made a profit from this, you can exchange some surety/guarantee with him: If he appears on the black list, you will have to pay some amount of money to the victim of his contract breaking. In exchange, you receive a similar surety/guarantee from him. To give big guarantees to unknown people would be stupid, because it would be too dangerous. But if you gives, say, 10% of the profit you have made from the cooperation with this guy for a guarantee, this would be an acceptable risc - failure will seldom happen, and if it happens, then your payment is not very harmful. And after a not very long time you will have a large enough sum of guarantees for yourself.

    Then, the evaluation of the value of the guarantees can be done automatically - the program should care about a sufficient amount of money and that it is distributed among a large enough number of different real people, all of them without black list entries. So, the reputational system is quite simple if the real names of the participants are open, so that it is not possible to create a fake identity.

    The problem how to make it possible to hide the identity without the danger of an infinite number of fakes is a difficult one, but solvable. Darknet networks like silk road have proven that reputational systems work, thus, can be created even if there is no legal base. The reputation based on guarantees can work there too. It is, of course, more difficult, because if the whole network is pseudonymous, it becomes problematic to distinguish whole fake networks. So, here one would need or starting points of trust, or real persons who give guarantees for pseudonyms.
     
  19. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    Fine, let's consider the points which you think contradict my position. They are?

    Thanks. Let's have a look.

    The only difference with my opinion is that I would replace "can be" by "usually and predictably will". But for a scientific paper a more cautious formulation is fine.
    What is "precription" without "analysis"? A decent formulation for what I have named, polemically, "mostly ideology-laden nonsense".

    Full agreement.
    Contains a trivial economic error, by not taking into account that the prices will raise too. Which effect will be more important? Essentially quite simple - the society as a whole produces less if children don't work, thus, there is less to consume for the society as a whole, thus, the average will be poorer. And those who are most damaged by this are those who loose their job - the very poor families whose children have worked.
    An example where the free market leads out of child labor. By the natural way which I suggest - the society becomes richer.
    100% my point, where I name the competition of Western firms (in nice cooperation with the Western "working class") against competition from poor countries as the main hidden agenda.

    In a situation where a large amount of child work is simply the children working in the family business this is nonsensical. Anyway, it is purely ideological, the typical anti-capitalistic image.
    Thus, the point that less is produced - thus, there is less to consume, magically disappears by an "open economy".

    In full agreement with my position: It is a necessity in very poor countries and does not play a role in rich countries, without any necessity for state regulation. So, even if we would accept the (unreasonable see above) assumptions, multiple equilibria exist only in some special situations, and economic progress which makes the whole society richer drives it out of this situation.

    Fine, he really names protectionism - the fight of Western firms and labor unions against Third World competitors - as the hidden agenda.
    Let's translate this: the usual arguments for a ban are simply wrong. Acceptable arguments would have to be much better (simply because there are strong arguments not to forbid it - see above, except for exceptional situations the poor households will be worse of) and do not really exist.

    Among the things admittedly not covered by the analysis we find:
    I think much more important is the failure to consider that raising wages leads to higher prices as well, and, given that the society as a whole produces less without child labor, there is less to distribute, thus, most likely the average household will be harmed. But the income of the households is what, even according to this model, really matters.

    This paper also supports the general remarks I have made about political sciences: What the media write is one thing, of type "child labor is horrible, should be forbidden rigorosly, boycott them". Behind the media, there is a hidden interest - in this case, protectionism. The proposals made are inherently wrong and harmful.

    The scientists know about this. One can find the evidence, if one looks into the papers, and knows what to look for. Here, we find the word "protectionism" two times, above nicely hidden inside, none in the abstract, intro or conclusions. What does the abstract criticize?
    A popular argument "loses force". Quite different from naming it a lie used for protectionism, which will, if successful, harm the children.

    So, we have a nice graduation: Mass media (full of harmful lies) - visible science (titles, abstracts) which does not really protest these lies, but suggest minor modifications, - the content of the papers themself, which contain already much more truth - and what would be the content, if serious scientists would not run away from politically distorted sciences.

    What would be the last, we cannot know, but, given that I was able to identify major faults in the model, being simply a scientist working in a completely different area, strongly suggests that this would be quite different.

    Thank you, again, for providing this link. To make these last points by analysing a paper of my own choice would prove, of course, nothing, but that all these points can be nicely demonstrated by a paper presented by my opponents makes this quite different.
     
  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    The problem is that you are saying things are wrong without considering what they are. The hope was that you would pay some attention to what a researcher had to say, if they demonstrated they had taken your concerns into account.
    Well, you have failed to do that several times. Right here. So - - - - .
    So you won't read any of it because you have low expectations, but you demand that other people produce it for your uninformed dismissal.
    It wasn't "unjust" - it was just wrong. Completely ignorant.

    What my links support is the key fact that the child labor providers do not necessarily become rich enough without intervention in the free market for their labor. There are two reasons: 1) The society becoming richer does not necessarily make the child labor providers richer, 2) the society involved cannot become much richer if its economy is based on child labor.
    And that was disproven, or at least qualified, in the case of child labor based economies (as well as a host of other real life circumstances) - once again: child labor can trap a "free market" economy in a suboptimal equilibrium. It can't get more than so rich, because it cannot invest in its children, which is necessary to increase the productivity of its adults, which is necessary to increase the wealth of the society involved. This has been demonstrated in theory, and the situation observed in the world.
    That's what I did. Here's the quote: "your improbable and extraordinary claim that child labor will always, or even usually, go away under the influence of free market forces". Where's your evidence, argument, data, coherent theory, links, anything at all to back up this claim?

    You have to know either X or Y personally, and you better know a lot about X's relationship with Y, or you're going to get skinned. They call them "confidence games" for a reason.
    Try typing "long con" into a search engine. Or "Ponzi Scheme".

    And that is before the organized crime aspect comes into play - which it will as soon as the stakes get high enough - and the computer security, and the bureaucratic management of all these "sureties" and so forth.

    No, it's an observation - the Dunbar theoretical limit on solely reputational systems, 22500, has never been remotely approached afaik.
    Name one. Catholic Church?
     
  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Uh, no, what you named "mostly ideology-laden nonsense" was a compilation of research articles in the field, and reports of their findings. Which you have discovered - as soon as you actually read one - are instead full of accurate information.

    Bad laws often have bad motives. So?

    It allows that position, but does not support it.

    The problem is that State regulation is necessary in a country's becoming rich - and whether or not some of that State regulation needs to be devoted to preventing a slide into child labor traps is the sub-issue at hand (discrimination and abuse prevention in general is the thread topic).

    What you need is evidence that free market forces alone are both reliable and sufficient means of extracting an economy from what you have agreed is a suboptimal equilibrium - as you emphasize repeatedly, simply banning child labor without altering the market forces involved leads to everyone being worse off, which is strong evidence of the stability of the free-market child labor economy. Obviously the market forces that punish people for not sending their children to labor are not going to get them out of that trap.

    Instead you then jump immediately to criticism of a particular, specific approach - careless or callous and poorly motivated legislation imposed by outsiders that simply forbids or boycotts child labor, in order to protect the incomes of other people from the competition. That, to you, is the sum of the alternatives to your preferred laissez faire approach. It's either free market child labor and wait for everybody to get rich in the right way, or badly motivated and callous bans imposed by outsiders. This is so ingrained in your viewpoint that you assume it as an interpretation of historical data - you assume that the decline in child labor prior to the Factories Act was a consequence of free market enrichment, for example.
     
  22. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    I want read all of them because I have low expectations. But, as you have seen, once you argue that a particular paper makes your point, and I get free access to that paper, I'm ready to read it. Fully, not only the abstract.
    Not really, it was (in more polite language) supported by your link, which writes "This is a field of study where prescription has outstripped analysis by a wide margin."
    (And, BTW, how "ignorant" I am, you simply don't know. )
    Again, I don't care about good will or so, if somebody takes some concerns or not. As in this case too. A reasonable guy, obviously "takes concerns", obviously not stupid, sees even the protectionism behind the anti-child-labour movements and the harm caused by their "successes". So what? His error in the model is an elementary classical one, of the same type as Bastiat's broken window argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window Forbidding child labor destroys the wealth which would have been created by this labor, thus, makes the society as a whole more poor.
    Repeating it again and again does not help you. The one article I have considered in detail was based on an elementary error, thus, has not shown it. And even not really claimed that it can be really trapped for a long time. The point was that there may be some intermediate periods with multiple equilibria, and if, by accidents, forbidding child labor happens in such a moment, then its fine.

    But let's see how plausible it is. First of all, the family fights for subsistence, only that's why the children work. Now the child loses its job. Fight for subsistence becomes even harder. This family is immediately and directly harmed.

    The researcher invents some side effects of the broken window - less working force once children no longer work, means higher pays for workers. So some workers will be happy by gaining more. The happy glazier repairing the broken window. But to work for the particular harmed family, the gain in increase for the father should be greater than the loss by the child getting nothing. This is something one can invent, but already extremely implausible. The side effect of higher wages - higher prices for the goods - is completely ignored. But the overall price-independent picture - the children no longer produce anything, the society has less to distribute - shows that, like for the broken window, the overall effect will be negative.

    Then, the society as a whole is never trapped in child labor. Because, according, again, to your link, even in the worst cases much less than half of the children work. Thus, there are enough non-working children where to invest education and so on, and one can be sure that forbidding child labor will not really improve the education of the children of the poor. In fact, they loose the professional education one obtains from "learning by doing", and what they get is usually indoctriantion in public schools which even in modern Western societies creates horrible levels of functional analphabets.

    This has not been demonstrated in the paper you have linked, so, please give the evidence.
    This claim is your invention, and an obvious exaggeration, thus, I see no necessity to back it up.

    In the scheme for negative reputation, there is no window for confidence games at all. You have to cheat a new person completely, with everything including passports and birth certificates (and it is quite clear that there is room for improvement of the old technique of state-made passports) if you have appeared on the black list. To fake a lot of people to give you guarantees may remain possible, and there is also the possibility to cheat a lot of customers at one moment. So, no doubt, the one strike you can make may be a quite powerful one and harm a lot of people. But what makes the system stable as a whole is that everybody has only one strike. The very point of a scheme is that you can repeat it as often as you like, every time with new victims.

    In fact, there could be different reputational systems using the same technique. This would allow it to apply the scheme once in each system. What would the providers of the system do against this? Very simple, they don't hide their black lists, but make them open to everybody.

    Computer security is, of course, an issue. Who does not care enough about computer security, can become a victim of crime. So what? The software for securing your computer is known and available, open source. The system as a whole is not endangered if some people behave irresponsible - they endanger only themself.

    Which is, clearly, based on the necessity to know the guy Y who gives good reputation to X. But it is not a limit for systems of negative reputation, which punishes violators. And, given the detail that only those entries are allowed, where the arbiter who punishes the violator has to be one who the violator has accepted as an arbiter, entries are extremely hard to fake, thus, can be trusted without knowing the particular arbiter.

    For example. Of course, each reputational network has to restrict its size, because else if fails to work. So, a big enough church will, necessarily, not allow simple members to participate in the reputational network which makes the decision. But churches as well as professional groups, communities, parties want to grow.
     
  23. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    I have quite different criteria for "quite accurate". The article is not completely off in the general description of the situation, which is the best what one can say. The point of the paper itself - the real content - contains elementary faults.

    That's a quite general claim, and a claim which I think is wrong. Most of the regulation is unnecessary, as indicated by the simple fact that it differs very much in different countries. It is helpful for big firms to fight competitors, and that's why it exists in most states, organized by lobbies. So, if big firms appear, and become afraid of competition, there appears a "necessity" for regulation in their favour.
    Again, the model which is proposed in the article suggests that child labor is used in situations where it is necessary for subsistence of the family, and in such a situation the decision of the parents is the optimal one. And the way out of child labor is a long one - by increasing the income, and the only way to do this for poor people is by working. There are no easy ways out of poverty. A free market remains the best one to reach this.
    Without doubt, there may be a lot of other inventions. The point is, they usually predictably cause harm because they reject the free market.

    It is, of course, known that the free market is not always optimal - for the common goods problem the market outcome is suboptimal. But child labor is a private good. It has some public aspects too - if street kids can legally work, there will be less criminality and prostitution, for example, or that they get some professional education (learning by doing), and there will be also some aspects where child work has negative impact (say, allowing american competitors to enforce protectionism against Third World firms using "agaist child labor" propaganda).

    And this is quite typical. To justify state intrusion into almost everything, ideologists named "scientists" invent public aspects of 99% private goods.
    If you have a better explanation, give it. To use "ingrained" for name-calling is nice - it is interesting to observe that the most innovative aspects in forums are inventions for name-calling.
     
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