Businesses should be allowed to turn away women, gay and black people

[SpontaneousOrder]

Ultimate power rests with the people, as a state can always be overthrown, but I think that the state is the best place for such power to reside on a day to day basis, given the alternatives.

The point I'm trying to make is that there doesn't need to be any power anywhere. If people accept the idea of free markets and remove the state's legitimacy when it comes to meddling with economics and markets, then there doesn't need to be any power - it was the supposed legitimacy of the state in business matters which gave rise to that corrupting force in the first place. Giving more power to the state will only encourage more corruption. Removing power from the state removes power to corrupt.

It's like a chicken & egg scenario where there are good chickens and a few evil chickens. People keep getting more chickens knocked up in order to dilute the influence of the evil chickens, while failing to realise that the good/evil chicken ratio will always remain the same, and all you need to do is not let any chickens lay fertilised eggs and they'll just go extinct all by themselves.

[SteelyDan]

they are permitted to already, businesses reserve the right to refuse to serve, they cannot make that decision based on discriminatory grounds. You can refuse admittance because of say a dress code, or behaviour, which is why pub or shirtlifting bans work.

FTFY

[doodab]

The point I'm trying to make is that there doesn't need to be any power anywhere. If people accept the idea of free markets and remove the state's legitimacy when it comes to meddling with economics and markets, then there doesn't need to be any power - it was the supposed legitimacy of the state in business matters which gave rise to that corrupting force in the first place. Giving more power to the state will only encourage more corruption. Removing power from the state removes power to corrupt.

Power is, whether it needs to be or not. It's inherent in the operation of the market and the existence of individual will. You can't stop it coming into existence any more than you can stop the wind from blowing. All you can do is attempt to control it's distribution so that not too many end up powerless, which is a natural consequence of the operation of many totally free markets. Your dogma may say this isn't the case but hard maths in the form of game theory says it is.

It's like a chicken & egg scenario where there are good chickens and a few evil chickens. People keep getting more chickens knocked up in order to dilute the influence of the evil chickens, while failing to realise that the good/evil chicken ratio will always remain the same, and all you need to do is not let any chickens lay fertilised eggs and they'll just go extinct all by themselves.

Our extinction is hardly a cure for what ails us.

[Zero Liability]

Game theory isn't hard maths. It's a way at looking at a problem, predicated on a given set of assumptions. More often than not it comes out with answers interventionists like to hear when they limit it to one-off games rather than iterative ones, where things like reputation driven by past action can matter, and rarely is it applied to problems of political action, except within the confines of public choice economics.

Call it "dogma" if you so wish, but all it amounts to is recognising that government, being comprised of individuals, is subject to the same incentives as other organisations on the market, with the very privileged position of being an effective monopolist for particular services, including the very important market for law and order. Historically, it was expected that institutions like democracy or interdictions on government action, like constitutions, would limit its scope and power but of course they do nothing of the sort; they are incapable of it. In fact, the former of the two has generally biased it even more towards the short-term. Corporations rightly see it for what it can offer them - easy access to other people's money through little cost to themselves, under the auspices of its legitimacy, as it is usually perceived to be acting "for the people" on whose behalf it supposedly administers 'public resources'.

[Sysman]

I don't think that's true. For a market where volume is what matters, you are willingly taking in less profit by serving fewer customers. It should be your right to do so, but it is a matter of fact that if you're an entrepreneur who is motivated purely by financial gain, discriminating may not be in your best interest.

Not too sure about the "less profit" there, "less turnover" maybe. If you are lucky enough to be able to jettison customers who cost a lot to service, you may be able to make the desired profit out of a lower turnover.

Luxury markets, by contrast, are high value, low volume markets, where the good in question may be rare to begin with, or made from rare supplies. If no one else is serving this market, or any other niche market, in preference for the safer waters of mass volume markets, there is profit to be had, and an enterprising capitalist would gain from addressing this portion of the market. The point to be taken away here is that for the majority of entrepreneurs/capitalists, there's little to be gained from discrimination, on account of their business models.

Yes, I was thinking about luxury markets, and various companies do succeed here.

[Zero Liability]

Yeah, revenue is a better word for what I had in mind.

[xoggoth]

Very much in favour of reducing power of the state. The only problem is that if you do, somebody else will try and assume it, whether parties, dictators, corporations, tribal leaders or religions, it's the way of man. Look at the ideal of communism - lovely principles where everything is held in common and all power is shared but, unsurprisingly, it has never happened, all communist states have been one party dictatorships.

Probably a free market society with strong government regulation is the best we will ever get. Great if we had more democracy too, like mandatory referenda to force governments to respond to long term public concerns, as in Switzerland.

[doodab]

Game theory isn't hard maths. It's a way at looking at a problem, predicated on a given set of assumptions. More often than not it comes out with answers interventionists like to hear when they limit it to one-off games rather than iterative ones, where things like reputation driven by past action can matter, and rarely is it applied to problems of political action, except within the confines of public choice economics.

Any handwaving argument for how a particular market does or doesn't operate can be modeled in the form of a game. In general when considering a market one considers a repeated game precisely because a repeated game provides for concepts such as punishing people who don't adhere to contracts and so forth. Game theory provides all of the mathematically rigorous arguments in favour of free markets, so I'm not sure why you dismiss it as "more often than not giving answers interventionists like to hear" when it's actually one of the main weapons in the non-interventionist arsenal. I can only assume it's due to ignorance which is understandable as most strongly opinionated people have never got beyond the handwaving.

Anyways, the simple fact is that in most markets power is asymmetric, because the payoffs are asymmetric, because buyers and sellers are different. You aren't going to change that unless you make the payoffs for buyers and sellers the same, which is very interventionist indeed.

You seem to think you can make power simply vanish, and you can't. Even if you destroy or redistribute all accumulated wealth new wealth will be created and it will be distributed asymmetrically.

[Zero Liability]

How, precisely, does game theory demonstrate "mathematically" what you think it does? What does the word "mathematically" add? Again, your own statements at the moment don't really amount to much more than handwaving themselves.

Regarding:

Game theory provides all of the mathematically rigorous arguments in favour of free markets

...

More often than not it comes out with answers interventionists like to hear when they limit it to one-off games rather than iterative ones

[doodab]

How, precisely, does game theory demonstrate "mathematically" what you think it does?

What I said is that most real world situations are not symmetrical. That's true whether you apply game theory to them or not. A low wage worker has more to use than an employer who can easily find another one, for example.

I also said that you can model a market as a game. For example, you might consider a situation where you have two parties trying to agree on something (e.g. a price, or how to divide a sum of money) and assign a payoff for each player in the case they reach an agreement and the case that they don't. In the case of say wage bargaining or price determination you would consider the repeated version of the "game", which means that considerations such as reputation, willingness to adhere to a contract etc are factored into the payoffs. That's a useful way of thinking about a lot of real world situations, and if you accept the basic premises that the parties can either agree or not agree, and there is a value each party associates with agreeing or not agreeing, there are a lot of things you can say about which agreements are viable.

What does the word "mathematically" add? Again, your own statements at the moment don't really amount to much more than handwaving themselves.

Selective quoting of a single word. I referred to "mathematically rigorous arguments". These are arguments that can be considered watertight if you accept the assumptions upon which they rest. I was referring in particular to mathematically rigorous arguments in favour of free markets, such as the proofs that they are pareto efficient under certain assumptions. To be fair some of this goes beyond game theory and requires quite a lot of mathematical background.

More often than not it comes out with answers interventionists like to hear when they limit it to one-off games rather than iterative ones

But who is limiting it to one off games here? Only you. The fact that some people make simplistic arguments by applying a mathematical tool incorrectly doesn't make it useless anymore than a trying to open a tin with a hammer means hammers are useless.