Comments on: The Market Will Solve

By: Protection Agency Cartels and Organizational Innovation « Brad Taylor’s Blog

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:30:09 +0000

[...] course, just because there’s an incentive to provide something doesn’t mean it can actually be provided. Anyone inventing a perpetual motion machine would become very rich. Unfortunately, such a machine [...]

By: Patri Friedman

Patri Friedman — Wed, 27 May 2009 02:02:22 +0000

It’s all a question of scale. When there is only 1 provider of any piece of central infrastructure, someone (say, your friendly neighborhood dictator & president Patri Friedman) is gonna have to make sure that piece of infrastructure is provided. Emergency Rooms, ferries with supplies, internet access – someone has to think of these things. Carnival Cruise Lines designs the facilities on each of its ships, it doesn’t just allocate a bunch of commercial space and throw it open to the market.

On the other hand, as you grow from “tiny company town” towards city, with multiple providers of each piece of infrastructure, I think you really can just throw up your hands and let the market provide.

I know I’m taking a silly question seriously, but the question really does have some meat to it and it’s one I have been thinking about lately in regards to Ephemerisle, the floating Burning Man-type festival we are throwing in October. In theory, it should be magic anarcho-capitalist land with competing clusters of land, and all the organizers need to do is name a place and time. In practice, in year 1, we’re gonna have make sure there are porta-potties and a medical evacuation plan.

By: David

David — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 23:02:39 +0000

This brings up a question I’ve had. Do libertarians actually believe in Says law? Even a version thereof? I only ask because you include it in your caricature.

By: Miscellaneous Links « Brad Taylor’s Blog

Miscellaneous Links « Brad Taylor’s Blog — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:34:10 +0000

[...] Ready the dinghy. [...]

By: Todd Seavey

Todd Seavey — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:09:12 +0000

Let it not be forgotten, though, that in the end, it took only one boat ramming Cthulhu to destroy him. The better world to come is fragile.

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:45:23 +0000

Brilliant.

A cheeseburger is manifesting my appetite even as we speak.

By: Julian Sanchez

Julian Sanchez — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:43:00 +0000

I should probably add that this is emphatically not supposed to be a dig at Patri; I was really just being silly.

By: Micha Ghertner

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:50:51 +0000

I’ll have what you’re smoking, please. Also, having chilled with both Julian and Patri separately, it would be freakin’ sweet to watch you two go at it in person, intellectually speaking, of course. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

By: William Newman

William Newman — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:49:36 +0000

It’s a cruel barb, and I can see the humor. But I also find it cruelly funny in return that nursing, a specialty often filled by trained immigrants who seem to be on net more excluded than promoted by current policy, is nominated as one of the two prototypical examples. Ooh, the cluelessness and lack of perspective of libertarian dreamers, check!

I see various things which could go easily terribly wrong with any new sovereign organization, libertarian or not, but fundamental inability to get nursing services (or cane sugar, or textiles) does not seem to me to be among them.

By: Christopher M

Christopher M — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:06:41 +0000

Wouldn’t a dinghy have to be five-dimensional to have a shadow that was, itself, a tesseract?