Rolled Out On: 6/2/2008 1:59 PM

Devil's advocate: What happens when my neighbor decides to build a pool in his front yard, gets it halfway done, can't afford to finish or fix it, and my property value gets cut in half because no one wants to move into a neighborhood where there's a giant, ugly deathtrap in one of the front yards?

Rolled Out On: 6/2/2008 2:26 PM

I'd take it up with whoever wrote the guarantee that your property will always be worth $X.

Rolled Out On: 6/2/2008 2:58 PM

If you live in a Deed Restricted/HOA (*hrgk*spit*) community, there is contractual/civil relief for your plight. If you live in an unzoned area, be thankful that the government hasn't taken away your right to do what you please with your OWN property. Otherwise I agree with Robb. Property value has to do entirely with the free market. If your neighbor's house is ugly and making your property value decline, buy their house from them and fix it your own damn self.

Rolled Out On: 6/2/2008 4:12 PM

1) That the founders would be rolling over in their graves is an unsupportable conclusion. The founders abhored in the federal gov't many things they themselves passed in their state gov'ts.

Ex. The 1A bans an establishment of religion, yet the founders themselves passed laws establishing official state religions.

So, just because the founders didn't include building permits in the Constitution does not imply that they would have opposed local regulation of same.

2) While gov't permitting isn't perfect, I think calling it an attempt to control people/political weapon isn't very well supported either. It is a tool, like any other, that can be put to good use or bad. When done properly, it is more about fraud and expanding the market. One seller and one buyer is not a market.

One of the qualities of a "free" market is that there are numerous buyers and sellers in an absence of force or fraud. By issuing permits you increase the number of legitimate sellers of goods and consequently the number of buyers. Last time I looked the L/libertarian answer to fraud wasn't "Oh, well. I guess you should have done your homework, sucks to be you". We can argue that .gov permitting may not be the best tool of fraud protection, but I don't see the argument that fraud isn't a legitimate responsibility of the .gov. (Personally, I think it works fairly well as ,unlike the police, this works *before* there is harm.)

Rolled Out On: 6/2/2008 4:44 PM

Here in VA the permits are used to ensure that the state can hike up your property taxes, which are probably the most unconstitutional thing I've ever come across.

Imagine what would have happened if VA told George Washington that the state would confiscate his estate by force if he didn't pay taxes on it for the rest of his life?

Rolled Out On: 6/2/2008 4:56 PM

Actually, the founders rolling in their graves is completely made up. Once you're dead, the ability to rotate about an axis is severely limited to external forces.

By issuing permits you increase the number of legitimate sellers of goods

Utter horseshit, sorry. I sell a service that, at this moment, doesn't require "licensing". I can find as much business as I care to invest the time in. A license, or permission from the state, isn't going to increase my ability to sell, nor will it increase my customer base. In fact, the cost of the permitting process would be incorporated into my billing, causing my costs to rise as I'd simply pass it on to my customers. With the increase in price, I could very well lose clients.

One seller and one buyer is not a market.

Nor can one have a market without a seller and buyer. And there's no need to put "free" in quotes. Free Market is just fine.

Last time I looked the L/libertarian answer to fraud wasn't "Oh, well. I guess you should have done your homework, sucks to be you".

And the last time I looked, I didn't mention anything about ignoring fraud. If you ask me who built my (homemade) pool, and I say "Company X" then I've committed fraud. If I sign a contract stating my house meets standard codes and it doesn't and I know that, then there's fraud. In that sense, I want the government to get involved for breech of contract, one of the few things they're tasked to actually do.

If you think it's an effective tool, then I have a question for you. What can the government perform that is more efficient, more cost effective, and produces better results than that of a private company who's sole existence is based on good results? Remember, the government suffers no consequences if their inspector misses a ground that causes a minivan full of kids to die a horrible, electrocution death when their car accidentally slams into the pool.

Rolled Out On: 6/2/2008 5:01 PM

CTone brings up another good point. If I request a permit, like everyone else who builds a pool, the county will decide that the addition entitles them to put a gun to my head and extract more money out of me. They call it "Property Taxes", as if somehow me having a pool actually costs the county & state more money each year.

Why? Why should my property taxes go up simply because I've changed the layout of my house? I'm already paying for the pool's construction, the water that goes in it, the electricity to run the pumps, ongoing maintenance, chemicals, etc. What work does the county / state perform that requires more of my money?

If taxes and permits were such a boon to the economy, then why do politicians have to fight for businesses by offering them tax cuts and lifting zoning restrictions?

Rolled Out On: 6/2/2008 7:06 PM

Lol... if you build a pool without permit, the government will probably declare it a Federal Protected Wetland, and seize it from you to make a habitat for some rare species of duck...

Rolled Out On: 6/2/2008 7:11 PM

OK, first I'll deal with CTone's issue: That's a completely different problem. Your problem there is whether or not property taxes are proper at all.

If they aren't proper then increasing taxes for improvements isn't proper anyway.

If they are proper then how the county determines value (through permits or annual reappraisal) isn't the real issue either.

As to the permitting: The reason that I put free in quotes is that no market is truly free. It is a fiction. All markets are dependent upon the societal recognition of some legitimate authority to use force.

Anarchical markets are not free. You have no recourse against the fraudulant party unless you can bring more force to the table than the other party. The little old granny ain't much good against the Crips by herself, and likely can't afford the private army required to collect restitution on her behalf.

But once you have a societally recognized authority (I.e. Gov't) they can step in on her behalf to prosecute (Police).

But before a contract can be enforced by society, it must be recognized as legitimate by that society. Therefor society gets to decide what must happen for a contract to be considered enforcable. Maybe it's as simple as money changing hands, maybe it's as complex as a corporate buyout. But now you have a market regulated by the state (or tribal chief if you want to go to the simple extreme). So it's not free either.

So, there is no such thing as a free market. Never has, and never will. All markets are backed by the legitimacy of the .gov whether you like it or not. That is why I put free in quotes.

Like you, I tend to think the .gov is too involved. But it must be involved at some level. Generally speaking, small trifles require must less involvement than large ones. As I alluded to earlier, buying a vacuum cleaner at Wally world isn't a big deal. Building a house is a much bigger deal. And if you think that is bad, try buying (or selling) a corporation (moreover try doing it in the banking sector).

And if you want to look at the successes of gov't regulation versus private sector solutions (market forces) you just have to look at the slaughterhouses that inspired Upton Sinclaire's "The Jungle". The market was delivering contaminated and in many cases unsafe product because the public was not, and could not reasonably be expected to be, informed about what they were buying. And while, you could make the argument that the workers were perfectly free to starve had they not wanted to work in such an unsafe environment, I certainly wouldn't claim their working conditions were a "pro" on the Market side of the balance sheet.

Rolled Out On: 6/2/2008 7:55 PM

Yu-Ain, let me preface this with a thank you, as I enjoy civilized discussion, especially when I learn from it. I just want to make sure that any disagreement here is not construed as attacking you. I tend to write almost stream of conscious, so if I stick my foot in my mouth, I apologize up front ;)

I understand there is no perfect Free Market. Humans are a paradox in and of themselves and every system we try to create follows the same, illogical system of thought. However, I work within the system I'm provided and I honestly believe, through every last bit of economic history and theory I've ever read, that the more unregulated an economy is, or more precisely the more CHOICE an individual is given in his economic decisions, the better off the society is over all. Yes, there is "too much". We need oxygen to live, but pure oxygen is poisonous. Same principle.

I cannot agree more that it requires a base government to prevent us from poisoning ourselves with that which we need. The problem, as you've put it, isn't so much in the single transaction as it is when there is no barrier to prevent fraud.

As for "The Jungle", I'm not intimately familiar with the writing and only know the 'cliff notes' version. He never got what he wanted and instead, we got a government bureaucracy created, if I'm not mistaken, by the meat companies themselves. But when people realized the conditions their meat was being packed in, they agreed with it. In fact, I would be willing to bet that once eyes had been opened, people would have accepted a free market approach where inspections by private companies would have been acceptable. It's just easier to use the force of the government.

My personal utopia would be a government whose force was used to provide transparency. Don't want to hire white people? Fine, but you have to tell people that. Want to put arsenic in your cereal because it extends the shelf life? Fine, label the box so that consumers can make their own decisions. Can't make your own decisions? Fine, buy into a service that reads crap for you. ;)

This is why I'm not a Libertarian. You're correct in that there needs to be some sort of force we can resort to that is in our best interest to go along with. My problem is that we shouldn't assign that force to others and that we should all be called upon at some time to pay for the social contract we sign onto. I still believe that voting should only be given to those who perform some sort of task that indicates they have the necessary understanding of the system and what is required of us to maintain it - be it military / police service, political office, civil service, etc. Unfortunately, I cannot conceive of any test or requirements that would be incorruptible and hence cannot actively support this idea. It's one of those imperfect paradoxes.

As for the pro side of the Market, it's not perfect by any means. But the fault to the Jungle references lay not at the corporations' feet, but those who purchased their wares. If there was fraud in the contract (i.e. selling a product as safe and germ free when you know it isn't), then the government was to be involved.

Rolled Out On: 6/2/2008 8:17 PM

The problem with "The Jungle" wasn't fraud per se. It was that information was not as available as necessary for the market to work. On either the consumer or employee side.

And that is essentially where I go with construction permits, professional liscensing, prescriptions, etc.

The public has no ability to be "reasonably" informed about most of these issues. I can read statistical research and know BS when I see it, I'm a statistician. When a lawyer is blowing smoke up my ass on tort law? Not a clue. How your average adult is supposed to know the difference is asking too much. There must be some accredidation. But then who accredits the accreditors?

Rolled Out On: 6/2/2008 8:34 PM

Ah! That's where the market comes in. A market who has interests in providing accurate representation of who they certify has a lot to gain and / or lose by the way they accredit their clients.

No one person can know every last thing. No one company can know everything. And no government can be benevolent enough to do it either.

I personally feel a market driven approach to certification (take diving for instance. NAUI and PADI) provides faster transfer of the information needed to make the best decisions. Where there's error, it has to be chalked up to luck of the draw. The government, with it's inability to respond to market forces due to its monopolies, is less efficient at meeting the needs of its customers.

Who accredits the accreditors? Beats me. That's a paradox!

Rolled Out On: 6/2/2008 11:21 PM

Actually, I accredit the accreditors. That's a curious, yet often overlooked aspect of economics in general and free market economics in particular... When all other market-driven controls against collusive behavior fail, call Joe.

Hey, it's a living. :)

Unrelated PS - 6.8 LWRC upper on the way. Mmmm, tasty.

Rolled Out On: 6/3/2008 12:06 AM

Not quite. The market will only solve the problems that someone can make a profit at. There was no profit to be made by disclosing working conditions and manufacturing process to public scrutiny. Secrecy was the more profitable option and thus it wasn't done.

This is the market's weakness.

Now the question isn't so much over the necessity of regulatory oversight, but who conducts it. And given the paradox of accrediting the accreditors, the buck has to stop somewhere. The legal authority enforcing the contracts is not, by definition, the improper authority, even if it is gov't. (It is also not, by definition, the best either)

Rolled Out On: 6/3/2008 10:06 AM

I should also clarify, that just because I believe the County.Gov has the legitimate power to regulate contracts in such a way (requiring permits for technical expertise) that does not imply that I think they are the best/most efficient organization to run the permiting process.

For example, I do believe the fed.gov does have the power to secure it's airspace from attacks on the State (which is what flying a plane into the Pentagon and WTC really is). Therefor federalizing TSA in an attempt at securing said airspace is a legitimate power of the fed.gov. The problem is that you're not going to even come close to being successful by taking people off the streets and giving them a couple weeks training on an X-ray machine. It's wholly inadequate to the task *and* they aren't the point of failure of the system anyway.

So while they do have the legitimate power to do so, it's stupid for them to do it.

Rolled Out On: 6/3/2008 10:27 AM

YAG: You clearly don't understand the free market. It may be based on profit, but profit does not equal doing everything as cheaply as possible and abusing labor and putting out poor-quality products. If it is needed, people eventually demand change via their purchasing. For instance, the tuna industry killed lots of dolphins... people didn't like that and were willing to pay a few cents more for dolphin-safe tuna. Ultimately, dolphins were made safer because of the market, not gov't regulations. The free market's only weakness is that people have given too much power to the government to screw things up.

Rolled Out On: 6/3/2008 10:41 AM

Greg, I'm going to defend YAG here - I think he understands the market just fine. There are flaws in the system, because, as I've stated, it's a system set up by flawed beings. I'm always going to try to be as cheap as possible and if I can get away with slave labor, I would.

My view is that the ultimate arbitrator should be at the individual level so long as the contract between the two parties is based off of valid data. When fraud or coercion exists, then and only then should the government step in with overwhelming force.

That, and I believe that, in the instance of the meat packing industry, I'd be willing to bet that I could find business opportunities in making a cleaner environment then selling my wares at an increased cost (to cover the sanitation costs) while informing my customer base that my meat is more expensive because it is cleaner than my competition.

Rolled Out On: 6/3/2008 11:34 AM

Up in the "burbs", my mom needed to get a permit to have her gutters replaced. At a recent family get together at my place, my sister asked why my deck wasn't "up to code" as the slats were spaced fairly wide. To show the difference, a council-critter recently tried to have roofers licensed in our area. He was laughed at.

The only thing we need inspected in our area are septic and aeration systems.

Rolled Out On: 6/3/2008 2:47 PM

I agree the system has "flaws" as you call them, but I think requiring cost-effectiveness is the major strength in capitalism.

That a person or an organization can get away with doing "bad" things can be considered a flaw. That they can't get away with it forever is a strength that is only found in capitalism. If something is "bad" according to the market, then the market will eventually fix it. The difference with either fascism or socialism is that it can be "fixed" right away. The problem is that the fix is often as bad as, or worse than, the original problem. Capitalism works over time, and does not tolerate knee-jerkiness. Other socio-economic systems do not allow for long-term solutions. "I want it fixed now" is the battle cry of the progressive/socialist. "I want it fixed right" is the call of the free market capitalist.

Rolled Out On: 6/3/2008 3:48 PM

Greg, it's that "eventually" thing that is the operative word. To use your example, if the public does not become aware of the dolphin issue, the problem may not be solved until after dolphins are extinct. And while it may prevent the extinction of further species, it was a change made too late.

To use my example, because the unsanitary meat did not kill or harm a large portion of the population and information did not flow easily enough to link deaths/illness in different cities or narrow down the cause to a particular food (Refrigeration was not the norm, you bought meat and prepared it that day. By the time you died/got sick of food poisoning who can tell which of that weeks groceries caused it? There certainly aren't preserved samples still around for forensic analysis). Nobody knew, or was even capable of knowing there was a problem. Even Upton Sinclair didn't do it for the safety issue of the food. He was trying to address the labor conditions. The discovery of poor sanitation was a mistake.

So, after decades of killing/injuring others through their neglect, let's say the market finally catches up and solves the problem(Robb starts his boutique meats shop and grows it big enough to compete with the Chicago Slaughterhouses). Again, I can't say I'd put those deaths in the interim in the "win" column of the market.

The question to me, is not, should there be legal oversight of processes that people cannot be reasonably expected to be knowledgable on their own. But rather, who does the oversight. The .gov or a private party.

And as Robb mentioned, he believes the .gov's job should be to create/enforce transparency. This is all well and good. And I would like to believe that in most cases, a private entity could do it faster, cheaper and with more accountability.

So I agree, you have to claim your Accounting practices are "Above Board". But who defines "above board"? There are so many different accounting practices that are "perfectly acceptable" that can be used to hide negative information. So when they are used to defraud investors the company can still claim "Hey, we're 'above board'". The private regulator says "It's not fraud, it's one of our acceptable standards" our hands are clean. And legally, they are, it's not fraud. And you, of course, due to your long experience of *not* being an accountant should have known both these guys were loophole exploiting scumbags and not done business with them, right?

The gov't, however, you pretty well know just how much of a scumbag they are. Tennessee: meh; Massachusetts: Sewers are cleaner; New Orleans: Well, Massachusetts has to have someone to look down their noses at.

While there's not a lot of recourse in either situation, at least you were informed in the latter.

Rolled Out On: 6/3/2008 5:30 PM

That, and I believe that, in the instance of the meat packing industry, I'd be willing to bet that I could find business opportunities in making a cleaner environment then selling my wares at an increased cost (to cover the sanitation costs) while informing my customer base that my meat is more expensive because it is cleaner than my competition.

I can point to a couple of examples right off hand -- kosher meats and the kosher certification authorities, along with free-range and organic meats. Both can be considerably more expensive than the common alternative.

Rolled Out On: 6/4/2008 11:09 AM

Neither of which competed in any meaningful way in 1900 (In 1900, no one would understand what "organic" meant: "No, our steaks aren't organic, they're 100% quartz!" /sarcasm).

Why didn't they? Because no-one had "valid" data, as Robb put it.

That is the point of construction codes, medical licenses, prescription scheduling etc. To ensure that the consumer does have valid data.

Lies of commission are easy to establish and prosocute as fraud. The lies of ommission are much harder.

The meat packers never came out and said their meat was clean. They didn't have to. You assumed it for them.

The Kosher butcher can claim his meats are clean all he wants, but it doesn't matter, because you assume that what you are already buying is clean enough because the information that would tell you otherwise isn't available.

Rolled Out On: 6/5/2008 1:53 AM

I agree with you 100% Rob. The government is too big & has its clumsy fingers in too many things. It should stick to what it was intended to do - fill potholes, maintain fire & police forces (for investigating violent crime & locking up violent criminals, not setting up speed traps to line their coffers), and deliver the mail. That's about it, can't think of a single other thing our local governments should be doing including education or healthcare.

There is one simple fact that has always been true - if you really want to screw something up, create a government agency to regulate or control it.