The Minimum Wage was first introduced during the Great Depression, which was empirically the worst possible time to do it in terms of economic efficiency.
Yet, it passed with some good degree of popularity. Why? Answer: Because it's a normative question, not an empirical question.
To keep from double-posting, the answer to your real-politik point below is that a top-tier Republican candidate has recently called for reducing the minimum wage (I assume that's what sparked Chistopher's question) and the issue does in fact arise in Congress--and some state legislatures--with regularity.
So Minimum Wage is salient in a way in which minimum-income-transfer program is not.
Minimum wages impose the burden of supporting low-productivity workers onto the employers who hire such workers.
Because I think what it really does is shift the burden to low-skill-labor-intensive sectors. It's the sector that bears the burden and ultimately the consumers of the goods and services of that sector, not so much the employers.
All your arguing about employer incentives does is extend either the liberal or Marxist arguments for why wages might be depressed, or too depressed. I know all that. I might even agree with some or all it. But it's irrelevant. If the exogeneously-imposed Minimum Wage carries with it some bad incentives, we should simply exogeneously impose countervailing incentives.
However, that's not the core point. As Michael below just implied, the choice we have isn't between your preference and my preference, it's between my preference or nothing. And I mean that in both the terms of this thread set in the question Christopher asked up top and in terms of the social/political system we live in now.
There's ZERO chance that the US Congress is going to enact or the US President sign into existence the kind of minimum income transfer program you support any time in the foreseeable future. So until enacting that program is feasible, I prefer what we already to nothing.
Fair enough. You overstated your position and I overstated mine in support of the early liberal political economists who overstated their position and Marx who overstated his. So let me modify what I said to something like "Marx was less wrong about his position than his adversaries were about theirs."
The funny thing is, you reached the critical fact, but you dismissed it in a paranthtical as if it were a mere detail:
(barring temporary perturbations)
In the mainstream models, those perturbations are squiggles on a chart following the Marginal Product of Labor, but for the millions of wage earners "perturbed" it's a humane disaster. And it's not temporary for them because the effects alter the destiny of themselves and their children for a lifetime.
We only need to know that it could happen and indeed has happened--even if only temporarily--to be able to reach the normative question. And once we reach the normative question, the superiority of the mainstream models to Marx's model is irrelevant.
That is why thousands of years before those models even existed the Lord of Hosts commanded the ancient Hebrews to pay their employees a living wage (Malachi 3:5). A classic example of an exogeneously imposed condition, btw.
Harkening back to Erik's Marx was Right" thread from a couple of days ago, one of things Marx was right about that didn't make it into the lists (because he's been obviously right about it for over 100 years and only certain stuck-in-the-188os libertarians and assorted other Randian crackpots think it's even a matter of controversy) is the Minimum Wage.
Adam Smith and other early liberal political economists--Ricardo, if memory serves, but I could be wrong--suggested there was a natural floor to wages, that they couldn't fall below sustenance level. Marx on the other hand, claimed they very well could, and provided a theoretical basis for why they would, and then was later shown to be empirical confirmed because they did.
The reason, of course, is very simple. Capital's priority is not to "sustain labor" but to "maximize returns" It may be, and frequently is, the case that those two results may not be in conflict, so no problem. But when they do conflict, there's no wage floor unless one is exogenously imposed.
Thus, the question of the Minimum wage resolves to a normative one: Do we want to live in a society where wages can be--and will be--driven below sustenance level at certain points in the long cycle?
The humane answer is No. Any other answer, regardless of little charts posted by the CATO Institute or pumped by labor-intensive multi-national corporations or pretty models in economics textbooks, is inhumane.
Here's what blows my mind. Marx was obviously right about Capitalism back when he first wrote about it. Pretty much everything he predicted would happen, did happen, with the sole exception (as John Gray pointed out in the other link) that it didn't die.
The reason, of course, is that the Western liberal democracies adapted Capitalism, mostly through Social Democracy, to make it so Marx was no longer right about those things.
And after all that, the Galtian overlords and their silly high-profile spokespersons like Ron Paul want to GO BACK to exactly when we already know Marx was right the first time 140 years ago. Let's do Hurricanes like we did in 1904. Let's go back to Lochner says George Will.
It's amazing when you think about it. Do these people think Social Democrats put boundaries on Capital just because, you know, it was fun?
Last comment from me. The threading is just getting too annoying.
North:
Oh. Drivers exit the system en mass due to strong downward pricing pressure on labor costs? Whooda thunk?
That would disrupt the system of casual transport which has social utility in cities. Authorities would do well to avoid that.
Will:
So, you don't think they skipped class, you think their thinking is dominated by short-sighted focus on a largely imaginary threat. Maybe you're right.
"One system has a large number of poor cab drivers all puttering along on pretty much just as much money as they can net from the market."
Theoretically, maximized consumer surplus means ZERO net from the market, and Yes indeed it is the case that any profit that might nonetheless be generated would go to the owner before the driver.
An artifically-induced labor shortage (the effect of medallions) may not allow for good living for drivers, but it's better than literally nothing.
Will:
"And yet they, whose arses are really on the line, feel differently."
They probably skipped Econ 101 class the day they went over equilibrium prices in conditions of perfect competition.
"Okay, but how about we determine what the problems are, first."
I don't want to horn in on Herb's game, but I'm going to make an inference here. I have strong feeling Herb read the Haas Report from New York City, 1936, or a detailed summary of it's findings, because I did, too, and it's not that hard to find on the internet.
The City of New York DID INDEED find out "what the problems are, first," and the system they installed solved many of those problems.
Was the system they installed the best possible? Probably not. Are there new problems? Sure.
Is the idea of adopting Lima, Peru's system for Washington, DC a viable policy? Don't be a freaking idiot.
"So then in this scenario our concern is not with the welfare of the poor; whether they be customers of taxis or drivers of low rate taxi’s but rather with the welfare of either the middle class or the well connected class (which is synonymous with upper middle class or wealthy) yes?"
I don't know how Herb is going to answer that, but for my part I'm willing to answer Yes with a single but significant exception.
The system of casual transport that, as I argued earlier, makes for better cities, is in fact founded on the interests of the middle- and upper-classes as customers. Those are the people who use those systems, historically. The poor can't use it because they're poor.
But then, one of the things that makes for better cities is an affluent middle class, so, it's not a bad thing if certain aspects of city life encourage middle- or upper-class residency. If prompt and predictable casual transport is a selling point for the middle- and upper-classes, then municipal authorities do well to encourage it.
But go back to my very first post on this thread. While I don't care about the poor as consumers of taxi services, I DO INDEED care about them as PROVIDERS of those services. And the very model that James is touting of maximizing consumer surplus means the drivers are doomed to destitution absent intervention.
That's why I pointed out how dumb those "poor" drivers are to swallow Nick Gillespie's libertarian hogwash. The divers are the ones with the most to lose, and who will lose the most in a consumer-surplus-maximizing system.
"Seriously, will you please explain why suppliers of a good/service going out of business is a bad enough thing that costs have to be imposed on others in order to correct it?"
Because when the system provides social utility, the society suffers a decrease in utility.
New York City, London, and for that matter, your example of Lima, Peru, all function better as CITIES when there is a functioning system of casual transport. Bankrupt businesses and a stream of low-wage (no-wage) high-turnover labor makes for a constantly degraded SYSTEM nothwithstanding the maximized utility in the case of any individual consumer.
"I could not possibly overemphasize how strongly I disagree with that view."
Good.
I think you're wrong. You think I'm wrong. And it's fundamentally a normative conflict, as your use of the term "very good thing" indicates.
I do not accept that maximizing consumer surplus is a priori a good thing (nor that it's a bad thing) or that it's a workable First Principle for social organization. Sometimes it's a good thing and sometimes it's important as one of a set of competing principles that should be accounted for.
"But I do get antsy when I hear 'We need regulations! We just have to figure out what?'"
To be perfectly honest, a cold and clear-eyed examination of, oh, let's say, ALL OF RECORDED HUMAN HISTORY, indicates that something like that is pretty much the source of all regulation.
You can sit around pondering how Bastiat would approach a problem and submitting crazy ideas to libertarian think tanks, but political authorities don't have that luxury. They have devise real policies for the real world in real time for real problems suffered by real people.
"You could even get me on board for subsidizing them, if they can’t be profitable and they serve a public good."
Personally, I'd go with that or something like that in place of medallions. But that wasn't on the agenda in NYC back in 1936.
"Can you name any economic sector that has suffered “system collapse” because of too many competitors?"
Missed this earlier, sorry.
Yeah. The agricultural "panics" of the 19th century in which oversupply caused a collapse in prices with regularity.
The extry-special bonus of that particular example is that it occurred during your libertarian/classical liberal/lassiez faire paradise of utopinan goodness and wonderfulness.
And if I may add, that's one of the reasons my rejoinders to all this libertarian hogwash get so short and sometimes ill-tempered.
We had a bunch of these stupid arguments a hundred and fifty freaking years ago. And we already know the consequences of lassiez faire and WE DON'T LIKE IT. If we did like it, we wouldn't have installed regulations to ameliorate it.
I really haven't been making the safety argument, although as I point out, a medallion is actually a very powerful tool for ensuring safety if the issuer chooses.
I don't know why you keep saying I haven't answered your question when I have multiple times. The medallion artificially increases average incomes (drivers) and returns (owners) thereby ensuring a superior workforce than a natural price equilibrium would, plus it reduces externalities.
My quick Google seemed to indicate fare prices in Wellington are set by statute. Is that correct?
"Medallions and races to the bottom are, if anything, quite complementary."
That's an argument for better regulation. The appropriate regulatory tool for the kinds of situations you describe is to suspend or withdraw the medallion.
The SYSTEM collapses to the CITY'S detriment if that is not a regulatory concern.
So if a city decides it prefers having a functional casual transport system to not having one, or having a dysfunctional one dominated by low-wage, high-turnover drivers, then that's the city's choice. Not Nick Gillespie's because Ayn Rand wouldn't like it.
"what is the end that capping the maximum number of cabs is the means to doing "
99% of it can be attributed to two forces. On the part of the municipality, it's to reduce externalities. On the part of the driver, it's to impose average incomes high enough to maintain a living, and for the owner high enough returns on investment.
"I find it hard to be on anybody’s side but the taxis’, though."
That's actually a brutally difficult problem/value judgment, since one way to think of the primary conflict is as between incumbent taxis and potential taxis.
"Is limiting the number of cabs in these given cities a bug or a feature in your opinion?"
Grrrr. If the number is set too low or too high, it's a bug. If it's set about right, it's a feature. And the right number is basically a case-by-case thing in part depending on local conditions. That's why some idiot storming a municipal council meeting spouting crap from von Mises is laughable.
Capping the maximum is a means, not an end. Capping the maximum isn't an "aim" it's a method that aims to sustain a viable casual transport system.
As I've pointed out repeatedly, I don't know necessarily what intervention is needed. Medallions appear to be the favorite of most jurisdictions, but I'm not personally committed to them if a superior method can be demonstrated.
As for why intervention is needed, when you have the critical mass sufficient to sustain a functioning system of casual transport (population size and density, relatively high living standards, probably some geographical elements and such), all kinds of problems crop up in maintaining the system. Races to the bottom, collective action paradoxes, externalities, etc., etc.
I was simultaneously both disappointed and pleased when I looked up the first hackney carriage act, in London in 1635. Disappointed because I expected the reason was to establish trustworthiness in drivers but I wrong (that came later). Pleased because it turns out Charles I was pissed off that the developing industry was screwing up his roads, which is an argument you hear to this very day, though more commonly about things like double- and triple-trailer trucks.
I've said three freaking times now that I'm not committed to a medallion system per se. For a variety of reasons, not all of which are strictly related to maximizing efficiency, the medallion system has become something of a standard municipal response when problems associated with casual transport that we've known about for 400 years begin to crop up in a given jurisdiction.
I will readily concede that SOMETHING else might be better than medallions, and if it is, I'll go for it. But there has to be a SOMETHING. Your nothing doesn't cut it.
As for evidence and chain of logic, I learned a long time ago not to waste my time. If I point out clear evidence of market failure to some ideologue who a priori rejects the concept of market failure, what's the point? If I employ the logic of the collective action paradox to someone who denies such a thing is possible, or that it should be addressed if it seems possible, again, what's the point?
"That’s the cab drivers’ problem."
No, it isn't. It's the CITY'S problem and all the people in the city who would be served by a functional system of casual transport. That's what you and Nick Gillespie and all the other libertarians will never understand, and that's why I don't want you or Nick Gillespie or any other libertarian (I should say "classical liberal" since, as I pointed out, you have MattY on your side) anywhere near an urban casual transport system. Except in the back seat muttering about Bastiat while the driver is muttering about the All Blacks.
This particular market has needed state intervention since before people even knew about such things formalistically. 1635. Every attempt to allow such a market without intervention failed. Every attempt that succeeded (to varying degrees and/or with arguable tradeoffs) included some strong element of state intervention.
It doesn't have to be a medallion, but it has to be something. Since Reason.tv and most other libertarians hate that something on principle no matter what it is, they are especially ill-qualified to design it.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “On Lowering or Eliminating the Minimum Wage”
James:
That's actually funny. And true. And paradoxical.
The Minimum Wage was first introduced during the Great Depression, which was empirically the worst possible time to do it in terms of economic efficiency.
Yet, it passed with some good degree of popularity. Why? Answer: Because it's a normative question, not an empirical question.
To keep from double-posting, the answer to your real-politik point below is that a top-tier Republican candidate has recently called for reducing the minimum wage (I assume that's what sparked Chistopher's question) and the issue does in fact arise in Congress--and some state legislatures--with regularity.
So Minimum Wage is salient in a way in which minimum-income-transfer program is not.
"
James:
First of all, I think this wrong:
Because I think what it really does is shift the burden to low-skill-labor-intensive sectors. It's the sector that bears the burden and ultimately the consumers of the goods and services of that sector, not so much the employers.
All your arguing about employer incentives does is extend either the liberal or Marxist arguments for why wages might be depressed, or too depressed. I know all that. I might even agree with some or all it. But it's irrelevant. If the exogeneously-imposed Minimum Wage carries with it some bad incentives, we should simply exogeneously impose countervailing incentives.
However, that's not the core point. As Michael below just implied, the choice we have isn't between your preference and my preference, it's between my preference or nothing. And I mean that in both the terms of this thread set in the question Christopher asked up top and in terms of the social/political system we live in now.
There's ZERO chance that the US Congress is going to enact or the US President sign into existence the kind of minimum income transfer program you support any time in the foreseeable future. So until enacting that program is feasible, I prefer what we already to nothing.
"
James:
Fair enough. You overstated your position and I overstated mine in support of the early liberal political economists who overstated their position and Marx who overstated his. So let me modify what I said to something like "Marx was less wrong about his position than his adversaries were about theirs."
The funny thing is, you reached the critical fact, but you dismissed it in a paranthtical as if it were a mere detail:
In the mainstream models, those perturbations are squiggles on a chart following the Marginal Product of Labor, but for the millions of wage earners "perturbed" it's a humane disaster. And it's not temporary for them because the effects alter the destiny of themselves and their children for a lifetime.
We only need to know that it could happen and indeed has happened--even if only temporarily--to be able to reach the normative question. And once we reach the normative question, the superiority of the mainstream models to Marx's model is irrelevant.
That is why thousands of years before those models even existed the Lord of Hosts commanded the ancient Hebrews to pay their employees a living wage (Malachi 3:5). A classic example of an exogeneously imposed condition, btw.
"
Harkening back to Erik's Marx was Right" thread from a couple of days ago, one of things Marx was right about that didn't make it into the lists (because he's been obviously right about it for over 100 years and only certain stuck-in-the-188os libertarians and assorted other Randian crackpots think it's even a matter of controversy) is the Minimum Wage.
Adam Smith and other early liberal political economists--Ricardo, if memory serves, but I could be wrong--suggested there was a natural floor to wages, that they couldn't fall below sustenance level. Marx on the other hand, claimed they very well could, and provided a theoretical basis for why they would, and then was later shown to be empirical confirmed because they did.
The reason, of course, is very simple. Capital's priority is not to "sustain labor" but to "maximize returns" It may be, and frequently is, the case that those two results may not be in conflict, so no problem. But when they do conflict, there's no wage floor unless one is exogenously imposed.
Thus, the question of the Minimum wage resolves to a normative one: Do we want to live in a society where wages can be--and will be--driven below sustenance level at certain points in the long cycle?
The humane answer is No. Any other answer, regardless of little charts posted by the CATO Institute or pumped by labor-intensive multi-national corporations or pretty models in economics textbooks, is inhumane.
On “Beyond Capitalism”
Erik:
You don't have to make that argument to me.
"
Erik:
Here's what blows my mind. Marx was obviously right about Capitalism back when he first wrote about it. Pretty much everything he predicted would happen, did happen, with the sole exception (as John Gray pointed out in the other link) that it didn't die.
The reason, of course, is that the Western liberal democracies adapted Capitalism, mostly through Social Democracy, to make it so Marx was no longer right about those things.
And after all that, the Galtian overlords and their silly high-profile spokespersons like Ron Paul want to GO BACK to exactly when we already know Marx was right the first time 140 years ago. Let's do Hurricanes like we did in 1904. Let's go back to Lochner says George Will.
It's amazing when you think about it. Do these people think Social Democrats put boundaries on Capital just because, you know, it was fun?
On “Libertarianism and Privilege”
Will & North:
Last comment from me. The threading is just getting too annoying.
North:
Oh. Drivers exit the system en mass due to strong downward pricing pressure on labor costs? Whooda thunk?
That would disrupt the system of casual transport which has social utility in cities. Authorities would do well to avoid that.
Will:
So, you don't think they skipped class, you think their thinking is dominated by short-sighted focus on a largely imaginary threat. Maybe you're right.
"
North:
I thought you were the one arguing abstractly?
"
Will and North:
North:
"One system has a large number of poor cab drivers all puttering along on pretty much just as much money as they can net from the market."
Theoretically, maximized consumer surplus means ZERO net from the market, and Yes indeed it is the case that any profit that might nonetheless be generated would go to the owner before the driver.
An artifically-induced labor shortage (the effect of medallions) may not allow for good living for drivers, but it's better than literally nothing.
Will:
"And yet they, whose arses are really on the line, feel differently."
They probably skipped Econ 101 class the day they went over equilibrium prices in conditions of perfect competition.
"
Will:
"Okay, but how about we determine what the problems are, first."
I don't want to horn in on Herb's game, but I'm going to make an inference here. I have strong feeling Herb read the Haas Report from New York City, 1936, or a detailed summary of it's findings, because I did, too, and it's not that hard to find on the internet.
The City of New York DID INDEED find out "what the problems are, first," and the system they installed solved many of those problems.
Was the system they installed the best possible? Probably not. Are there new problems? Sure.
Is the idea of adopting Lima, Peru's system for Washington, DC a viable policy? Don't be a freaking idiot.
"
North:
"So then in this scenario our concern is not with the welfare of the poor; whether they be customers of taxis or drivers of low rate taxi’s but rather with the welfare of either the middle class or the well connected class (which is synonymous with upper middle class or wealthy) yes?"
I don't know how Herb is going to answer that, but for my part I'm willing to answer Yes with a single but significant exception.
The system of casual transport that, as I argued earlier, makes for better cities, is in fact founded on the interests of the middle- and upper-classes as customers. Those are the people who use those systems, historically. The poor can't use it because they're poor.
But then, one of the things that makes for better cities is an affluent middle class, so, it's not a bad thing if certain aspects of city life encourage middle- or upper-class residency. If prompt and predictable casual transport is a selling point for the middle- and upper-classes, then municipal authorities do well to encourage it.
But go back to my very first post on this thread. While I don't care about the poor as consumers of taxi services, I DO INDEED care about them as PROVIDERS of those services. And the very model that James is touting of maximizing consumer surplus means the drivers are doomed to destitution absent intervention.
That's why I pointed out how dumb those "poor" drivers are to swallow Nick Gillespie's libertarian hogwash. The divers are the ones with the most to lose, and who will lose the most in a consumer-surplus-maximizing system.
"
James:
"Seriously, will you please explain why suppliers of a good/service going out of business is a bad enough thing that costs have to be imposed on others in order to correct it?"
Because when the system provides social utility, the society suffers a decrease in utility.
New York City, London, and for that matter, your example of Lima, Peru, all function better as CITIES when there is a functioning system of casual transport. Bankrupt businesses and a stream of low-wage (no-wage) high-turnover labor makes for a constantly degraded SYSTEM nothwithstanding the maximized utility in the case of any individual consumer.
"
James:
"I could not possibly overemphasize how strongly I disagree with that view."
Good.
I think you're wrong. You think I'm wrong. And it's fundamentally a normative conflict, as your use of the term "very good thing" indicates.
I do not accept that maximizing consumer surplus is a priori a good thing (nor that it's a bad thing) or that it's a workable First Principle for social organization. Sometimes it's a good thing and sometimes it's important as one of a set of competing principles that should be accounted for.
"
Will:
"But I do get antsy when I hear 'We need regulations! We just have to figure out what?'"
To be perfectly honest, a cold and clear-eyed examination of, oh, let's say, ALL OF RECORDED HUMAN HISTORY, indicates that something like that is pretty much the source of all regulation.
You can sit around pondering how Bastiat would approach a problem and submitting crazy ideas to libertarian think tanks, but political authorities don't have that luxury. They have devise real policies for the real world in real time for real problems suffered by real people.
"You could even get me on board for subsidizing them, if they can’t be profitable and they serve a public good."
Personally, I'd go with that or something like that in place of medallions. But that wasn't on the agenda in NYC back in 1936.
"
James:
"Can you name any economic sector that has suffered “system collapse” because of too many competitors?"
Missed this earlier, sorry.
Yeah. The agricultural "panics" of the 19th century in which oversupply caused a collapse in prices with regularity.
The extry-special bonus of that particular example is that it occurred during your libertarian/classical liberal/lassiez faire paradise of utopinan goodness and wonderfulness.
And if I may add, that's one of the reasons my rejoinders to all this libertarian hogwash get so short and sometimes ill-tempered.
We had a bunch of these stupid arguments a hundred and fifty freaking years ago. And we already know the consequences of lassiez faire and WE DON'T LIKE IT. If we did like it, we wouldn't have installed regulations to ameliorate it.
"
James:
I really haven't been making the safety argument, although as I point out, a medallion is actually a very powerful tool for ensuring safety if the issuer chooses.
I don't know why you keep saying I haven't answered your question when I have multiple times. The medallion artificially increases average incomes (drivers) and returns (owners) thereby ensuring a superior workforce than a natural price equilibrium would, plus it reduces externalities.
My quick Google seemed to indicate fare prices in Wellington are set by statute. Is that correct?
"
James:
"Medallions and races to the bottom are, if anything, quite complementary."
That's an argument for better regulation. The appropriate regulatory tool for the kinds of situations you describe is to suspend or withdraw the medallion.
"
James:
"I repeat, not a legitimate regulatory concern!"
Sez who? Rothbard?
The SYSTEM collapses to the CITY'S detriment if that is not a regulatory concern.
So if a city decides it prefers having a functional casual transport system to not having one, or having a dysfunctional one dominated by low-wage, high-turnover drivers, then that's the city's choice. Not Nick Gillespie's because Ayn Rand wouldn't like it.
"
North:
"what is the end that capping the maximum number of cabs is the means to doing "
99% of it can be attributed to two forces. On the part of the municipality, it's to reduce externalities. On the part of the driver, it's to impose average incomes high enough to maintain a living, and for the owner high enough returns on investment.
"
Jay:
"I find it hard to be on anybody’s side but the taxis’, though."
That's actually a brutally difficult problem/value judgment, since one way to think of the primary conflict is as between incumbent taxis and potential taxis.
"
North:
"Is limiting the number of cabs in these given cities a bug or a feature in your opinion?"
Grrrr. If the number is set too low or too high, it's a bug. If it's set about right, it's a feature. And the right number is basically a case-by-case thing in part depending on local conditions. That's why some idiot storming a municipal council meeting spouting crap from von Mises is laughable.
Capping the maximum is a means, not an end. Capping the maximum isn't an "aim" it's a method that aims to sustain a viable casual transport system.
"
North:
As I've pointed out repeatedly, I don't know necessarily what intervention is needed. Medallions appear to be the favorite of most jurisdictions, but I'm not personally committed to them if a superior method can be demonstrated.
As for why intervention is needed, when you have the critical mass sufficient to sustain a functioning system of casual transport (population size and density, relatively high living standards, probably some geographical elements and such), all kinds of problems crop up in maintaining the system. Races to the bottom, collective action paradoxes, externalities, etc., etc.
I was simultaneously both disappointed and pleased when I looked up the first hackney carriage act, in London in 1635. Disappointed because I expected the reason was to establish trustworthiness in drivers but I wrong (that came later). Pleased because it turns out Charles I was pissed off that the developing industry was screwing up his roads, which is an argument you hear to this very day, though more commonly about things like double- and triple-trailer trucks.
"
Jay:
Oh. If they were illegal, I presume the state lowered its iron fist righteously upon the miscreants. If not, that's a problem of overall governance.
"
James:
I've said three freaking times now that I'm not committed to a medallion system per se. For a variety of reasons, not all of which are strictly related to maximizing efficiency, the medallion system has become something of a standard municipal response when problems associated with casual transport that we've known about for 400 years begin to crop up in a given jurisdiction.
I will readily concede that SOMETHING else might be better than medallions, and if it is, I'll go for it. But there has to be a SOMETHING. Your nothing doesn't cut it.
As for evidence and chain of logic, I learned a long time ago not to waste my time. If I point out clear evidence of market failure to some ideologue who a priori rejects the concept of market failure, what's the point? If I employ the logic of the collective action paradox to someone who denies such a thing is possible, or that it should be addressed if it seems possible, again, what's the point?
"That’s the cab drivers’ problem."
No, it isn't. It's the CITY'S problem and all the people in the city who would be served by a functional system of casual transport. That's what you and Nick Gillespie and all the other libertarians will never understand, and that's why I don't want you or Nick Gillespie or any other libertarian (I should say "classical liberal" since, as I pointed out, you have MattY on your side) anywhere near an urban casual transport system. Except in the back seat muttering about Bastiat while the driver is muttering about the All Blacks.
"
James:
Except you're wrong and there is a need.
This particular market has needed state intervention since before people even knew about such things formalistically. 1635. Every attempt to allow such a market without intervention failed. Every attempt that succeeded (to varying degrees and/or with arguable tradeoffs) included some strong element of state intervention.
It doesn't have to be a medallion, but it has to be something. Since Reason.tv and most other libertarians hate that something on principle no matter what it is, they are especially ill-qualified to design it.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.