Comments on: "Diminishing the price of law" http://truthonthemarket.com/2009/12/18/diminishing-the-price-of-law/ Academic commentary on law, business, economics and more Thu, 16 Feb 2012 16:48:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: ToddHenderson http://truthonthemarket.com/2009/12/18/diminishing-the-price-of-law/#comment-8053 Wed, 30 Dec 2009 17:48:25 +0000 http://www.truthonthemarket.com/?p=3552#comment-8053 For one difference, see, for instance, here:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/It_s-a-wonderful-life-working-for-the-government-8697601-80294522.html

]]> By: ToddHenderson http://truthonthemarket.com/2009/12/18/diminishing-the-price-of-law/#comment-8052 Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:55:16 +0000 http://www.truthonthemarket.com/?p=3552#comment-8052 I didn’t mean to suggest that “untrammeled private action” has no costs. Surely it does. No sensible person would say otherwise. The point of the post was simply to say that most disagreements about public policy are about the role the state plays on the margin. In general, conservatives lose these battles, since the state is growing and growing and growing. My call to arms, so to speak, was to try to convince conservatives not to give up the fight, since even in lost causes, margins matter.

As for the comparison between private and public, institutional labels do matter. Public institutions have a monopoly on legal violence, and this makes them different. If I don’t want to interact with a private supplier of a good or service, I can choose to go to another one; if I don’t want to interact with my government, I can lose my liberty. Another way of saying this is to point out that private monopolies and other bad actions tend to be unstable, unless, of course, the business interests are able to capture the government to support their position. Government bad actions, in contrast, are less unstable, since there is less of a market check on government.

This doesn’t mean that government is bad and private institutions are good. Far from it. There are bad actors everywhere, and CEOs are as selfish and greedy as politicians. The question is whether, on the margin, we prefer more market or more government. That was my only point.

]]> By: Michael F. Martin http://truthonthemarket.com/2009/12/18/diminishing-the-price-of-law/#comment-8051 Mon, 28 Dec 2009 04:46:50 +0000 http://www.truthonthemarket.com/?p=3552#comment-8051 This dichotomy makes me yawn. There is a price of untrammeled private action to match the price of law. The question is not what form of public institution is most efficient, but what forms of institution are most efficient. Let the question of whether an institution should be called public or private not confuse the issue of whether it is the best means for coordinating dispersed activity into ends we consider beneficial at lowest cost.

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