Extension of Turnea's snake oil salesman from a different era. I'm not saying that the lion's aren't trying to serve their own interests...they are. However, in order to do that over the long term, they need to be serving a market interest as well. Those that don't will eventually die off, no matter how much propoganda and advertising they employ. With the advent of the internet, I think this time frame is getting shorter and shorter, as there are now ways for the public to become aware fairly quickly that the snake oil salesman's product isn't really all that.



Of course, they will indeed try. I would offer that in this era, that agency can simply be the Internet. Probably not there yet, but getting closer and closer all the time on this as well. Any upset customer can start a blog which can be read by millions. So, while I won't argue that the government was indeed probably needed in the past, that need is decreasing constantly. The Internet makes a true market much more reality than theory. Anybody can start up an Internet business, reducing barriers to entry, and any customer can shout their rant out to millions of others. In such an environment, it is harder and harder to externalize costs. Not that it doesn't still happen--but it is getting harder to do.

I strongly disagree, particularly assuming this scenario makes a statement about the nature of the market itself. You can see a business in the south where serving black customers chases away white customers, but an equally valid context would be a place where serving blacks and whites does not chase away white customers. Perhaps there is such a place that, by serving blacks, a business could increase their customer base beyond the extra blacks they do serve.

In other words, I don't make unnecessary assumptions about the customers one way or the other. "It simply assumes to much and adds unnecessary complexity, and in the end, we are saying more about these unnecessary changes than we are about the competitive market itself."

Furthermore, I have been specifying competitive free market because it is an easy, clear reference point for debate. In my last post, I said I didn't see why competitive pressure wouldn't occur in a reasonably, or practically competitive market. The difference would be between an immediate correction and an eventual one.

Lastly, lets take you example, though we are manipulating context beyond a proper characterization of the market, as it is one of many contexts like present day San Francisco, Salt Lake city ten years ago or Nazi Germany in 1941, each of these which would have a different effect on our theoretical company, and take a business in the south during radically discriminatory times which won't serve to black customers, even though companies did serve to black customers back then. If the customers weren't racist, the business could have gotten the white and the black customers. Because the customers are racist, however, the company gets only white customers. Therefore, racism costs the business money.

That is true is some sectors but it gets highly complicated.

Sure the internet makes it possible to enter in a very small way, but any serious business needs start-up capital so the barriers to entry haven't shifted all that much, bankers still rule.

The point I really wanted to make about snake-oil is that that "era" will never end. At least as long as we refuse to educate the masses on things like pay-day loans, no money down, you're pre-approved! rent-to-own, low-introductory rate, guaranteed results...

Sucker bets built for a country full of people who couldn't work out compound interest if you put a gun to their heads. It's not their fault, most are never taught, certainly not to apply it in real world situations.

When we learn to avoid credit -cards like the plague they are for instance... then maybe we can talk.

..but then you've got the medical industry. Talk about a captive audience.


Snake oil lives.

Don't disagree at all. That was in fact why I responded to Quark's analogy above of mass marketing with your prior reference to snake oil saleman...same thing, different time. In fact, if you've seen the movie Idiocracy, one could even argue that snake oil salesmen will eventually rule the world. "It's got, like, electrolytes, man."

I assume you mean “our” government. If not we are not even in the same ballpark since we know that “governments” around the world – esp. since 1917 and Communism have felt free to murder tens of millions of people.

Corporation cannot do this obviously and when they do violate rights it is a failure of government, and law. The governments primary job in this area is to regulate and enforce laws on individuals and corporations so as to protect the people.





Decreases them – as I said above. The private sector is not free to do as they please – WE enact laws at all levels to regulate their behavior and the enforcement of those laws is our protection.

The opposite is true with tyrannical governments were the citizen is at the mercy of the government .

Some quick blurbs about how the free market reduces discrimination:

Racism

A snazzy description, though not an academic one:


The economics of discrimination

Most of the revelations belong to:
The Economics of Discrimination

A business with a profit margin of 5 per cent and a wage bill of 20 per cent of revenues could double its profits if it could lower its wage bill by a quarter. A chief executive who staffed his business with cheaper workers from downtrodden minorities would look like a financial genius.




Some very good points – thanks.

Oddly enough the statement above is relevant in the illegal alien debate. Certain parts of the economy have been living on, and profiting by, the use of illegal, low cost labor. Now as we attempt to crack down we here these crooks crying and moaning on TV.

Last night I saw one dope in front of a field of vegetables trying to tell us all the jobs would go overseas. – Ya right was my thought
So what we have in this case is discrimination against US workers – with the minimum wage being the driver, and government (state and federal) lack of enforcement being the culprit.

Really, I am surprised that this moribund topic has come up again. It eventually became clear that the entire topic of discussion was a model of the so-called free market that BecomingHuman keeps in his head. Since, under the terms of his intellectual model, certain things are "impossible," they are therefore impossible in reality. Yet there was never any reply to numerous and weighty arguments (I except those made by me, which anyone may judge on their own merits) based upon actual reality. There was only constant retreat into, "No, I mean this model that I have here." It was entirely sophomoric and, really, intellectually disingenuous.

If I were his Econ 201 teacher, then based on this level of intellection, he would get a C-.

This implies you have some other model?

I feel I have translated the economic argument faithfully. After all, I'm not the first one to think of this.

I gave examples, outsourcing being my main one, as to why discrimination is costly.

This is a generalized discussion about the private sector versus government, and we are talking about discrimination in particular. I wouldn't bring up Nazi Germany to refute a governments ability to handle discrimination. I sure there are historical examples that go all over the place.

But there is a leaning towards non-discrimination in all markets (even monopolies), a burden any government does not necessarily feel.

The private sector does not reward burdens taken unnecessarily.