Thursday, November 28, 2013

Libertarian Fraud At Bloomberg

By, Chris Rossini

In the marketplace, consumers are king. And they are very tough kings to boot. Always zigging and zagging, with their changing tastes and desires. Entrepreneurs and businesses feverishly struggle to stay ahead of the curve, to anticipate the changes, and to do so with a positive rate of return. It's a never-ending race to satisfy the consumers cheaper, faster, and better than the competition.

Customer satisfaction is paramount.

So it should be no surprise that some retailers are starting their Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving day. If customers desire it strongly enough, the marketplace will provide it.

Doug Mataconis writes over at Outside The Beltway:
So, if you don’t like the idea of stores being open on Thanksgiving, then the solution is to not go shopping on Thanksgiving Day.
Pretty cut and dry. Each consumer holds the ultimate economic power - the right to refuse to make an exchange.

Well, over at BloombergView, Megan McArdle has something to say about Mataconis's cut and dry statement:
This is the standard libertarian answer. But let me offer a nonstandard libertarian counterargument.
This should be good, especially since Wikipedia says the following about McArdle's libertarian credentials: "Megan McArdle is a Washington, D.C.-based blogger and journalist. She writes mostly about economics, finance and government policy from a right-libertarian or classical liberal perspective."

Well, in that case, you have to give Bloomberg some credit. In a sea of statism that stretches as far as the eyes can see, they choose to provide a platform for the libertarian viewpoint.

Here we go....Megan McArdle....Libertarian...Providing a libertarian counterargument:
This is a collective-action problem. No one really wants to be out there on Thanksgiving, but no one can individually change a pernicious dynamic. [...]

If we could all collectively agree not to open these stores on Thanksgiving, everyone would be better off: Retailers would be able to keep the store closed and save all that overtime, and customers would be able to eat their turkey in peace. But we can’t, and as a result, we’re all worse off.

Of course, we do have a collective mechanism for handling these sorts of problems: the government. Not that I think there oughta be a law about this: The government can do almost anything, but it cannot do almost everything, and some problems are too small for the government to solve. This strikes me as one of them.
Merriam-Webster defines "fraud" as: "a person who pretends to be what he or she is not in order to trick people"

Bingo.



Follow @ChrisRossini on Twitter

15 comments:

  1. If anyone ever had any doubts about MMc's brand of communist libertarianism, this article should disabuse them of any notions about her liberty bona rides.

    Statist whore is more like it.

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  2. I've seen this women's tripe before, she's been claiming the label of libertarian for some time, just like those over at Cato.

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  3. The NYT Implies that Not Prosecuting JPMorgan Proves DOJ’s Vigor

    No one expects Andrew Ross Sorkin’s slavish “Deal Book” lackeys to demand that the elite Wall Street bankers whose frauds drove the financial crisis be imprisoned, but the slavishness to the banks revealed when major news stories emerge continues to irritate if not surprise. A recent embarrassment can be found here.

    The “Deal Book” Spinmeisters

    The context of the NYT article was the expected settlement between DOJ, various states, and JPMorgan. The spin comes fast and hard, which would be great in cricket (or quarks) but, sadly, exemplifies the national paper of record’s “Deal Book” devotional pages. The “Deal Book” shows that cricket masters can impart very different spins. The first substantive paragraph’s spin is to minimize JPMorgan’s fraud.

    http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/11/nyt-implies-prosecuting-jpmorgan-proves-dojs-vigor.html#more-6972

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  4. Customer satisfaction is paramount? Pretty sure it was said recently on this blog that customers do not matter because of scarcity. Customers are a given.

    Tuesday, September 24, 2013
    Henry Blodget 's Full Blunt Force Attack on Ayn Rand
    http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/09/henry-blodget-s-full-blunt-force-attack.html

    And, of course, this is Blodget, so we have a bit of Keynesian nonsense about the importance of the customers in an economy:

    What actually "creates jobs" in an economy is a healthy economic ecosystem, one comprised of entrepreneurs, investors, employees, and, critically, customers.

    Customers are a given. And they are always around since we live in a world of scarce resources. It is entrepreneurs, capitalists and workers that meet the never ending demands of consumers. Only in paradise would things be different.

    It is shocking Blodget doesn't get these fundamental points

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    1. Jerry: Customers are a given. That they choose to purchase from Vendor X rather than Vendor Y is not. Hence their supremacy in unfettered markets. Are you really this oblivious to something so blindingly obvious?

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    2. Yes Chris, I can assure you that he really is that oblivious.

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    3. happy thanksgiving Jerry! even with all the turkey around, you still manage to be a sheep.

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    4. Mr Jerry: It seems that you made a sloppy mischaracterization in order to find something to quibble about with the statement that "Customer satisfaction is paramount." You say you are "pretty sure" RW's Blodget post said that "customers do not matter." I rechecked that post & it says no such thing. What it does say, which you do correctly quote later in your comment, is that customers are a given. Customers not mattering and customers being a given are entirely different things. There are many things that are a given that also matter very much, like customers, for example. And even if customers are a given, customer satisfaction most certainly is not. Therefore, I can't see how even your mischaracterized version refutes the statement that customer satisfaction is paramount.

      Customers are a given, but without customer satisfaction, they will not be YOUR customers. They will definitely still exist as a given. It will only look like they disappeared, but they are in reality just off patronizing some other more successful entrepreneur. Statists like you have a problem with being able to see only what is right in front of you.

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  5. "nonstandard libertarian counterargument"? More like "standard nonlibertarian counterargument."

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  6. "No one really wants to be out there on Thanksgiving"?? What??? How about all the people who voluntarily show up on Thanksgiving Day to shop? They are there against their wills according to this idiot.

    "Pernicious dynamic" - What about this is a dynamic and how is it pernicious? Does McCardle believe in some God who has declared that the secular Thanksgiving holiday has a holy status such that shopping on it is pernicious?

    "If we could all collectively agree" - How about just dropping "collective" and saying "If we could all agree" (which of course we all never will), which is why it is not pernicious that those who want to shop can, and those who don't, wont.

    "Retailers would be able to keep the store closed and save all that overtime" - Has it ever occurred to her that just maybe the stores have decided that paying overtime is well worth it given the profits they expect to make by opening on the holiday? This "libertarian" somehow knows that all these store owners are so stupid that they have just randomly decided to open on Thanksgiving even though the overtime will turn it into a losing proposition?

    "Customers would be able to eat their turkey in peace" - What is stopping them from eating in peace? Just the very thought that other people are out shopping? Or how about first eating their turkey in peace and then going out for some fun shopping?

    "But we can't, and as a result, we are ALL worse off" - WHAT?? I am worse off because someone, somewhere went shopping today??

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    Replies
    1. Excellent line by line destruction of McArdle's "nonstandard libertarian" nonsense.

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  7. "This is the standard libertarian answer. But let me offer a nonstandard libertarian counterargument."

    Counter argument? Yes.
    But it neither libertarian nor nonstandard. It is a standard STATIST argument.
    "I know what people really ought to want better than they themselves do."

    This twit is a great example of why it is important to keep underlining which self-described "libertarians" are anything but. That goes for Cato, several writers at Reason, a great number of people in the "Tea Party", people just like McArdle, and ALL politicians currently active that get some support from other self-described libertarians.

    Like McArdle, there are other examples: Neil Boortz, Glenn Beck, Jack Hunter, Larry Elder, etc...
    All wannabes who deeply fail the anti-state test.

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  8. The Libertarian and its party is a fraud period.
    -https://anarchocapitalism.us

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  9. I have never understood how this dunce managed to acquire the label "libertarian," since I'm not sure I ever remember her making a libertarian argument for anything.

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