>> Actually, the market is based on the freedom to voluntarily trade with
>>whoever you wish, for whatever reasons you wish. People are free to loose all
>>their money on a noble cause they believe in if they wish to, rather than try
>>to optimize expected return.
>
>The famous "escape clause" of free marketeers. Although it would be stupid
>to do other than to maximize return on investment, and the theoretical models
>of free markets from Adam Smith's work onward are *explicitly* based on the
>assumption that people will do so, they *can* lose their money by failing to
>try to maximize their ROI if they wish.

I don't see it as an escape clause, but as the very essence and reason for the free market to exist. It is true that it would be stupid to do anything other than maximize return on investment, but the question is whether there is any reason at all that the return has to be monetary. If someone wishes to solve a social problem, obviously they'd like to get as much return as possible for the investment of resources (time, money, whatever). I don't recall there being a law, or having ever signed any contract saying that I can only engage in free trade if my goal is entirely to accumulate the most money.

Simply because the outcome of the free market is analyzed based on the fact that most people wish to make money rather than lose it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that it allows people the freedom to choose how to allocate their own resources towards both monetary and non-monetary goals. Perhaps it used to be the case that everyone was socialized to work only for money at a 9-5 job that they didn't need to care about and that it was silly to look for any non-monetary rewards from their work. Yet that can be changed, most of the people I hang out with now look at money as only one factor in what they do, and usually as a means to other ends. Which may include a nice lifestyle, which I don't see any reason anyone should object to people wishing to be comfortable. Is it written someplace that it is necessary to wind up being poor if you wish to help people, and that you can't try to help yourself as well? Educate people to value different things, and to decide that things like being concerned about social causes is in their own self interest, and you will see a different result in the marketplace, there is nothing inherent in the free market which prevents it from being used to solve social problems.

If it is "stupid" as you put it for people to throw away money on a noble cause, then it seems its equally as stupid for people to vote to pay tax money for those causes. If they act "stupid" when they vote, why shouldn't they when they act in the marketplace? Are you depending on them being tricked into not realizing how "stupid" they are being when they decide to allocate resources indirectly like this? It seems a better approach is to persuade people they aren't being "stupid" when the allocate resources to something rather than forcing them to do it anyway.

The free market is basically reflecting reality, in order to live people need to obtain their own food, shelter, etc., through either obtaining/making it themselves or exchanging something of value for them. It may be non- monetary value that people are willing to pay for, including simply their humanity that people are willing to charitably contribute to pay for their living expenses). The question is basically who gets to decide what to exchange the product of your effort for, you or someone else.

> How about if your own ends are to make money?

People that have developed agricultural technology that has fed huge numbers of people have presumably made money, as have people who produced medicines which have saved peoples lives. Making money usually implies producing something of value which people need (with some small subset of people producing nothing but only shuffling money, but which allow the rest of the productive economy to function (with admittedly some questionable ways to make money and provide no real value to anything)). Overall, what is produced presumably reflects the values of the consumers, and if you wish different things to be produced (i.e. more social programs, etc.), then you need to persuade the consumers to change their values, and not argue with the people that are filling their needs.

> How about if you control other people's decisions by
[...]
>creating a monopoly and then charging as much as you wish for a vital
>service?

Do you mean like government? It seems its the biggest monopoly, which pretty much seems to get away with charging as much as it wishes, wasting as much money as it wishes, and forcing people to purchase its service. In the private sector, monopolies tend to stem from government interference. With the increasing number of entrepreneurs and improved flow of communication in this country, if a monopoly appears in a certain industry that is charging too much money it is likely someone will try to compete with it, and that eventually the monopoly will get too fat and lazy to be able to compete. Even if someone can find a contradictory example, that simply means that no system is perfect, that such cases are rare if they exist, and it may be that it simply will take time for that particular monopoly to fall. Life can't be legislated to function well all the time everywhere with no problems, regardless of what form of government or economy you have.

>How about if you control other people's decisions by hiring or firing them, or
>by offering or not offering them affordable housing,
...
>What does happen is that other people constrain the choices they have. For
>example, a mugger limits the choices of their victim (not to one choice, but
>to fewer than the victim would prefer). So does a government collecting
>taxes. So does a corporation setting policy. If one can really go deep and
>look critically at one's life, it exists in a matrix of limited choices very
>much constrained by others, yet we have free will to choose within those
>constraints. What we need to look at is who creates the restraints; we need
>to look at this afresh, apart from the brainwashings, um, cultural baggage
>that whitewash some constraining of choices while exaggerating others.

Obviously people are limited by reality in the choices they can make. They can't simply chose to run a 1 minute mile and have it happen. They can't choose to never eat and be able to live very long. If you wish to go to the north pole but no one else does, that's a constraint of reality that can't be changed without using force to get someone else to go.Or providing them incentive, such as money, to voluntarily chose to go. When talking about political and societal issues, we can't alter reality, we can only decide what ways it is appropriate and allowable for people to try to influence or constrain other people's choices. Obviously if you point a gun at someone, it is going to become in their self interest to obey you, so the question is what is appropriate to allow. What ways is an individual able to use to influence the behavior of another and constrain their choices.

The basis of libertarianism is that people have basic rights to do whatever they wish as long as they don't try to constrain other people's choices by initiating physical force, fraud, or theft. As a result of this a complex society and system of voluntary interactions between people will develop, and the results will not be necessarily to everyone's liking. However, it seems that the results are just another constraint reality places on people's choices, just like the results of the complex chaotic process that produces weather may not please people but is part of reality. From a few simple rules and a large number of participants, complex structures arise. The question is what those rules should be, and what actions are allowable to deal with the structures that naturally evolve from those rules. How able, and with what right, do people tamper with and second guess the results of people peacefully living their own lives. In a centrally planned economy there would be hiring and firing, etc., and individuals have more constraints placed on them than even the end result of the free market.

If you wish to alter the results of this voluntary process because you don't like the choices it provides, the only way to do this is by using threat of physical force, fraud, or theft, even if it is done by the government.

>Of course; and the free market is too. All systems allow some to impose
>their selfish view of what the choices of others should be. It may be "sign
>here or go to jail", or it may be "work for this much money or starve".
>No system has any self righteous claim to avoiding such impositions.

Reality forces people to do certain things, like find a way to provide food and shelter, etc., regardless of whatever economic or political system you need to work within. In a free market, people are free to make their own choices, and unfortunately those choices may constrain the choices of others. Unfortunately people need to cope with bad luck, and with the gamble that reality is. The difference is whether these constraints arrive from a peaceful process of natural evolution, or through forced structures created by people who initiate force and feel justified in using guns to impose their will because they feel their choices need to be obeyed by others.

>All systems of interaction are based on the use of force. Private property
>is based on the use of force. Tort law is based on the use of force. ALl
>contract law is based on the bottom line being that armed people will
>eventually force you to do or not do something (by constraining your
>choices), EXACTLY as much as taxes are.

I posted a flyer recently talking about the fact that there are different kinds of force. There is a great deal of difference between defending yourself, versus committing murder or robbery, etc. The objection is to the initiation of force, and not its use. The initiation of force includes the non-physical ways of altering the choices of others such as through fraud. A contract isn't considered valid if someone pointed a gun at your head to get you to sign it. When do you consider it valid to initiate force, to use a gun to tell someone to obey your will? If you vote for a particular tax, you are effectively saying that you would be morally justified in pointing a gun at your neighbors head and forcing him to hand over money for a cause that you wish to see pursued. It just happens that government agents are available to do this so individuals don't need to think about what is really implied in their action. If the neighbor had stolen your money and broken one of the minimal set of rules that are required for people to coexist and pursue their own lives, then you would be justified in getting the government to force him to return the money. Basically, what is the minimal set of things required for people to be able to coexist and pursue their own lives without using force to control other people's choices.

>Huh? I'm writing messages trying to persuade people of certain points. So
>are you. How do you think this makes me anti-freedom, and you pro?

If you voluntarily persuade people of certain points and get them to expend their own time and money pursuing a cause, that is letting people to be free to choose for themselves what causes are worthwhile. If you persuade the government to tax people to fund your cause, you are taking away from people the freedom to spend the money in the way they wish. Perhaps they wish to fund aids research and would have provided enough money to save thousands of lives, except that you selfishly thought your opinion of what cause was important was worth using a gun to force them to give to your cause rather than theirs. No one is forced to buy a given product at gunpoint, so even if the person selling has "selfish" motives, no one is forced to go along with them, or at least has the option of producing a competing product with different motives.

>this may be the most praiseworthy thing in the world, or the vilest -
>depending on how and why.

Whose morality do you use to determine what actions are praiseworthy and what are "vile"? Yours? The religious right? Extremist Islams? It seems when you start doing anything other than allowing people the most opportunity to freely chose what to do themselves, you start getting into the murky water of legislating morality. Admittedly in some sense laws against murder are legislating morality. However there seem to be a minimal set of moral codes, such as those against murder, which are necessary for people to be able to have the freedom to live as they choose without being physically forced, or defrauded, to act counter to the way they wish to (within the constraints of reality and other people's freely made choices). Unfortunately natural processes in the physical world, and evolutionary processes in the social world are going to limit people's choices, but that's life. We all can't have everything we wish.

>Everybody is selfish, from Mother Teresa to a psycho rapist-murderer
>to the president of GM to the guy who drowns trying to save a stranger fallen
>from a boat. So what? We learn nothing from that tautology. What we can
>learn a lot from is how narrowly or broadly different people understand their
>self interest. The ones who are too narrow strike us a stingy selfish SOBs
>whom we want to avoid; those who strike a healthy balance seem like good
>friends to have; those who are too broad become space cases or saints. So
>we are back to the meaning of selfish again.

Part of the point I was making comes out when you say "strike us". People's level of selfishness and the nobility of their actions is decided relative to your own world view and values. It may be that some entrepreneur makes a fortune selling a new medicine, which also saves many more lives than Mother Teresa. Should he be condemned as selfish? It could be that Mother Teresa might have been a brilliant scientist and invented something that would have had more of an impact on the world than what she has been doing, but that she selfishly wished to have contact with people. I've spent money on luxury things to improve my mental state. Was that being selfish, given that I produced more because of an improved mental state? Should I not be allowed a luxury item because you think its selfish and the money should go elsewhere, though I feel the world would gain more by my purchasing it?

We can personally learn from the type of thinking you describe, but what do we wish to impose on the country as an "objective" view of these things, and how is it justified as being "objective"? Do you look at results or just motivation? "Selfish" results can come from apparently on the surface unselfish motives. "Unselfish" results, things which benefit others, can still happen as a result of apparently selfish motives. Usually in fact the business strategy that works best is the reasonable one of looking for win-win opportunities.

Customers are more likely to deal with you if they "win", receive some benefit, and you are going to "win" if they do. To me that seems a reasonable strategy and the natural way the free market winds up operating. It forces people to benefit others even if they have selfish motives. That is the nature of trade, the other party has to want what you wish to trade more than what they are trading in return, both sides win and have what they perceive as a gain in value on their side.

>This is another of the founding premises for the "logic" of pure free markets.
>Since everybody acts in accord with their self interest, suicide doesn't
>exist, nor any lesser behaviors which are against one's self interests.

I'm not sure where you get "suicide" not existing from this. Given the perhaps distorted world view of someone committing suicide, that may be the option they wish to chose. Obviously in most cases it seems desirable to try to be sure there aren't other options the person isn't aware of which might he might conclude would be in his self interest, such as psychological treatment. However, some people into the "self deliverance", Dr. Kevorkian, Hemlock Society type of suicide feel that people might rationally decide it is in their self-interest.

If someone chooses to go off and work for the peace corps versus becoming a rich entrepreneur, or vice versa, who other than the person is to decide what is in their own self-interest? Given whatever world view people have, however distorted it might be, they are acting in accord with their own self interest to the best of their awareness, sort of tautologically as you say. The point then is that you need to re-educate people to persuade them that solving some particular social problem is in their self-interest. This is true whether they are acting through voting or through the free market. Yet once they've changed their view of their own self-interest, this interest may be expressed in either way. And I would argue it is best expressed by a voluntary action rather than a vote to impose their morality, their own view of what is in other people's interest on other people.

>This makes it very
>ironic when such folks get on a high horse about "selfish control".

Which is actually my feeling when I hear the implication that if you aren't a politically correct liberal that you are selfish. To me it is selfish to wish to point a gun at someone else and tell them that, no, they can't contribute to aids research because they need to give the government money to fund my pet project. The implication that these people in government get to take our money and spend it on what they wish to decide (which really is only very indirectly influenced even by the majority, but usually a small group of special interests), that they know somehow what is best for us more than we do.