From: Greg Jordan (jordan@chuma.cas.usf.edu)
Date: Fri Mar 21 2003 - 13:27:34 MST
On 21 Mar 2003, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> ### It is a very dangerous path to stray from the rules of reciprocity
> and allow the redefinition of an economic activity as the use of
> "force". Richard Epstein writes about it at length. The only situation
> where the line between violence and economic "force" is blurry is in the
> monopoly situation. In the multilateral market, "economic force" is a
> contradictio in adiectio.
>
> But still, I'd be interested in reading some specific examples of
> non-monopoly market behaviors which you would describe as the use
> "economic force".
>
> Rafal
How would you define the "rules of reciprocity"?
It seems to me a straightforward way to analyze huge numbers of economic
activities as deployments of force ("the capacity to do work").
Moving money is work and can instigate work - whether the result is
"violent" or "nonviolent" is an aesthetic judgment. Paying someone to
manufacture a product is parallel to paying someone to murder a person -
just different results of the exercise of force. Moving (enough) money can
influence the circumstances under which a manufacture or a murder may
be considered legal or popular, for example. One could also look at the
ability to direct labor - for violent or nonviolent purposes, or the
economic ability to own and use materials which may be violent or
nonviolent in their effects, depending on your aesthetics. Is it violent
to kill someone? Is it violent to make them buy your product? Is it
violent to keep them in a single area? Is it violent to control and
direct their behaviors? Is it violent to control how much property they
own? Is it violent to make people sick?
Since the various natural sciences are built around examining forces, and
economic & sociological & many other sciences/fields, too - it would be
probably be best to speak of the world as a continual welter of forces,
and to see ideologies' ability to aesthetically categorize some outcomes
as "violence" or "nonviolence" as just another force. The myth would be
"forcelessness" - the idea that anything has no effect on other things,
that it exercises no force, no force that an ideology could label either
"violent" or "nonviolent".
gej
resourcesoftheworld.org
jordan@chuma.cas.usf.edu
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