tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post8757358939277485751..comments2023-09-21T05:14:00.254-04:00Comments on Euvoluntary Exchange: Does Pure Subjectivism Require That All Transactions Be Euvoluntary?Mungowitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02340064320347875601noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-42412815626108778192012-04-13T17:36:20.756-04:002012-04-13T17:36:20.756-04:00Don't cross the streams, Ray. The answer to yo...Don't cross the streams, Ray. The answer to your last sentence up there depends heavily on what constitutes coercion. In an alternate world with legitimate blackmail contracts, would blackmail be "voluntary"? According to Posner, we'd look for wealth maximization as our criteria for legitimacy. Is he right? What's the appropriate metric here? <br /><br />And what role externalities? If Jeff and I collude to fix prices against you to our mutual benefit and your detriment, this is a rent contest, not wealth creation, not Max U. as Deirdre likes to put it. It's a voluntary transaction, but a voluntary transaction to expropriate rents.<br /><br />Likewise with my Armin Meiwes example a few posts down. Sure, that was voluntary, perhaps even euvoluntary, but it would be a stretch to pick out an Austrian economist who thinks that sort of contract should be valid before the law (I managed to squeeze some thoughts on the subject from Don Boudreaux on this in class... ask me about it the next time we have lunch). I don't think it's especially reasonable that the rule-consequentialist or Kantian deontological underpinnings to the meta-rules of EE are especially fixed. Hayek and the vagaries of location and time and all that.<br /><br />You're right though, it's a good topic for discussion.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07675280324246893316noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-52412866167096929442012-04-13T17:25:37.371-04:002012-04-13T17:25:37.371-04:00Did you mean voluntary, or euvoluntary? It'd b...Did you mean voluntary, or euvoluntary? It'd be quite interesting to take BATNA to task on a subjectivist basis; indeed I think that's what rubs me wrong with BATNAs, the idea that there's some objective threshold below which we find a transaction objectionable.<br /><br />Of course, BATNAs *are* subjective. But my brain won't stop trying to contort it into some truthy thing, since that's how I'm programmed. It's all relative; it's all ad hoc moralizing. And that's the way it should be.<br /><br />See what i did there? :PAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16153702750268298333noreply@blogger.com