Interesting People mailing list archives

more on Off-shoring and the Free Market


From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 17:02:09 -0500


Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 16:44:58 -0500
From: Russell Nelson <nelson () crynwr com>
Subject: Re: [IP] : Off-shoring and the Free Market
To: dave () farber net
Cc: "Bosley, John - BLS" <Bosley.John () bls gov>

I'd point out two things:

1) John Bosley's job at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and a free
market in labor are incompatible with each other.  As a rule, one
cannot control what one does not measure.  Measurement, then, can be
seen as the first step to control.  His failure to find any
free-market economists in his workplace was quite predictable.
As to the quality of the economists that he did find, their failure to
appreciate the freedom of markets speaks volumes.

2) The commentary to which he refers was emailed directly to him and
never made it to IP.  For those who want to read it, it's now posted
at http://angry-economist.russnelson.com/offshoring.html

3) John's necessity to label neoliberals as "twits" is solely because
the facts are not on his side.

4) While I have a tendency to rant, the rant that John forwarded goes
WAY beyond the pale.  It completely fails to explain why societies are
prosperous to the extent that they allow people to trade without
restriction.

5) The alternative to leaving people be to trade as they wish -- free
markets -- is to force them to trade in a way OTHER than the one they
would choose.  Personally, I'm not wise enough to control somebody
else's life.  Who here can claim to be?

Okay, so I got carried away and pointed out five things.

--
--My blog is at angry-economist.russnelson.com  | Free markets react to
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