As in many of these discussions, this hinges very heavily on the notions of "free exchange" and "consent".

How do we account for the effects of power or leverage imbalances on free exchange or consent?

If you consider violent force and the like as just one extreme on the broad spectrum of potential leverage between two parties, then we see that a primary focus of most governments is to limit or prevent leverage of cetain forms or intensity.

>>How do we account for the effects of power or leverage imbalances on free exchange or consent?

If it's financial leverage not gifted by regulatory protection, why do we necessarily need to?

Although, my relationships with AT&T, Exxon, and my landlord do not seem to match this Wilt Chamberlain scenario.

The standard claim is that you need to be a better buyer, and to have backups for all of your suppliers. It can be painful to switch suppliers (and successful suppliers quite intentionally make it more painful to switch away).

The social world is entirely constructed, just as much as societies infrastructure. In capitalism the goal is to make as much as possible doing as little as possible, and the only way you do that is to become the supplier you despise. Personally, I believe a world with reproduction caps and universal income would do a lot to ensure that, at the very least, capitalism is "opt in".

Well that standard claim is utterly bunk given the reality is that we cannot just choose to switch to a different supplier when:

1. Most of the time there is no alternative 2. Even when there's alternative, it's probably crap 3. If the alternative isn't crap, then the existing market players will engage in anti-competitive tactics until there are only crap market players remaining.

Amazon is, by any definition, a company engaging in illegal anti-competitive business practices. Losing money in order to stifle competition is nothing new, and it's still as illegal as it has ever been: very.

First, losing money to edge out competition is not illegal. Loss-leaders are a normal business practice.

Second, none of your three points refute the Chamberlain argument.

1. There were limited alternatives to Wilt. When Wilt was named MVP in 1959, there were 8 NBA teams.

2. Technically, there were 39 other players in the starting lineups of NBA teams that year.

3. Among those starters was Bill Russell, whose Boston Celtics won their second straight NBA championship that year. The NBA has controlled membership very tightly in all the years since. It has been granted exceptions from laws prohibiting anti-competitive behavior.

And yet, Wilt is still featured in this classic thought experiment to illustrate fair distribution of wealth.

> First, losing money to edge out competition is not illegal. Loss-leaders are a normal business practice.

Well for a start, loss leading and intentionally lowering prices unsustainably to cut out competitors are different things. Loss leaders don't exist to be anti-competitive, they exist to attract people to your shop so they will buy the other things you have, which is how you make profit.

Selling some things below cost in order to sell other things to make a profit is fine. Selling some things below cost in order to not make a profit, living off of venture capital while your competitors go out of business? Completely different story.

And, quite frankly, 'normal business practice' means fuck all. Lots of things are normal, illegal and unethical.

>Second, none of your three points refute the Chamberlain argument.

No, the argument resting on a false dichotomy refutes itself.

>And yet, Wilt is still featured in this classic thought experiment to illustrate fair distribution of wealth.

I have no fucking idea what NBA is.

I was going to chime in, but you nailed it here.

Absorbing losses until your competition goes out of business is called price gouging. It's considered unethical and in many current cases is actively punished worldwide. Advantageous access to funding is usually (but not always) the enabler.

In the early 20th century US Industry invaded Brazil with much lower interest rates and absolutely decimated Brazil's budding manufacturing sector, to which it has never recovered. Then there's Wal-mart in the US -- Amazon's strategy is not unlike Wal-mart's was (ream the competition in a price war with lower prices and ginormous investments in logistics technology, which bring competitive cost-savings). It's impossible to beat that triad (low prices, being flush with outside capital, huge investments in cost-savings). Other businesses without all that money can't keep prices low and invest heavily at the same time. Another advantage:You hardly need to advertise. You make a name for yourself with the good deals you give everyone.

I don't think it's fair. I don't shop at a wal-mart, I don't use amazon, and I don't use uber(never have). That's about the only solution I can see: don't patronize scumbags.

Maybe one day the banking system will be less democratic. For now, the bankers pick favorites and those favorites become ever more favorable, because the goal of these schmucks is the centralization of wealth-- so why not get to centralizing it?

> Absorbing losses until your competition goes out of business is called price gouging.

No, it's called dumping. Price gouging is a different unethical pricing maneuver.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging

ERRATA: *maybe the banking systems will be MORE democratic

why are you talking about the basketball example? post you responded to was talking about consumer choice in sectors that suffer from monopolies or oligopolies such as internet (or mobile data) service provider.

Interesting. the solution should be to just to tax Wilt Chamberlain at a rate high enough that the astronomical net worths become merely "stratospheric".

"Interesting. the solution should be to just to tax Wilt Chamberlain at a rate high enough that the astronomical net worths become merely "stratospheric"."

The solution to what ? Could you describe the problem in the (above) Wilt Chamberlain example ?

unequal distribution of wealth is the underlying issue, so essentially they are suggesting a progressive tax system whereby higher earners are taxed at a higher rate. Which allows the government to redistribute that wealth towards poorer areas of society whilst not impacting significantly on the living standards of the higher earner.

Well stated. All of the arguments above amount to "sure inequality is happening, but that's just capitalism so what can be done?" This.

Inequality.

The problem is, nearly never, access to resources: modern society (including in poor countries) puts necessary resources (food, clothing, shelter and even transportation) available to all at a very small price. Our material needs are 100% guaranteed.

The problem is that most of the goods that modern society produces are unavailable for most of the population. By reducing inequality, we could improve life quality for the masses.

I was asking specifically about the WC example, not real life.

Dissatisfaction

That's just another way of saying people shouldn't be allowed to give their shares freely. You give your shares to Wilt, the government gives them back to you (assuming the government has no overhead).

So the original argument stands: forced wealth redistribution is incompatible with free will and liberty. The word "force" itself means the removal of freedom.

The government doesn't give you back everything you gave to WC and it doesn't necessarily give it back to you.

You van spend your money however you want. Taxes simply mean that everyone benefits from spending, not just WC.

Right but in this particular thought scenario it doesn't matter what the government does with the shares. It is still the case that the government constrained your liberty regarding your shares. You wanted Wilt to have them, Wilt didn't get them.

I'm not making a moral statement here. I'm not saying whether it's good or bad for the government to do this. I'm just making an observation that, logically, the parent didn't provide a "solution" to the grandparent's thought experiment.

you're coming dangerously close to the precipice of far-right libertarian "all taxes are tyranny" ideology here.

This is an argument I haven't seen before, and I've been trying to follow the tree of wikipedia links, but I'm not understanding terminology like "patterned principle." Is it a fixed distribution of wealth, or opportunity, or some other thing? Would Wilt spending all his excess income bring things back into balance, or do extra possessions also violate the principle? What if he spent the money on experiences?

Or better yet, can someone translate it into plain old equations for me? Words get very slippery, especially since this is a proof by contradiction and it's hard to make sure you've eliminated all the possibilities without enumerating them.

> I'm not understanding terminology like "patterned principle."

See here: https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/34r4vg/endst...

This awkward terminology is something that infuriates me about Nozick.

Thank you! My math brain says I can define (I think) a pathological system that is both "patterned" and "non-patterned," and a bunch that are non-patterned but still result in equality given the right initial conditions, but these definitions aren't meant to be rigorous in that way, right? He's talking more about what's likely to be true given what we know of realistic human societies?

Yes, if wilt spends the money he made on things that don't further concentrate his money-making ability then it will cascade and circulate, helping create the imbalances necessary for activity (economy).

The effects of spending your money can have three types of impact: 1) you spend money in ways that don't directly offer you further capacity to concentrate wealth (food, drugs, entertainment, (clothes, cars, and houses are arguably marks of status which in many societies is a tool for further wealth concentration). 2) you spend money in a way that reduces other's capacity to concentrate wealth (you spend money to abolish the school board in the liberal capital of a rural state in the bible belt, like the Waltons and Stephens just teamed up to accomplish in Little Rock, Arkansas. (thanks guys!)) 3) you spend money in ways that can directly benefit your competitive advantage in making money. In the business world we call this Capex, or capital expenditure. Spending money on things that help you make more money.

I think it's important to say:

What is money? Money is a store of value, which is used to peacefully coerce others to do what you want them to to. It can be used to convince others to do your bidding, or in the case of a well established (specified) civilizatiobn, people have already done the work they expect you to want, and are ready to make the exchange. Changes to the product or process happen over time, with the consumer communicating to the providers what and how he or she wants a specific thing, and will guide businesses with the placement of his or her own dollars. This is why these guys spend more on 2 and 3 of this list: money is a form of power, where you can dictate not only what but the way products and services are rendered. And as a member of the elite class of producers and financiers, it is further advantageous to impede any one unit or subgroup of consumers from having enough money to coerce the elite into business practices that favor consumers

This argument is trivially inconsistent. The state must protect liberty by interfering with one's liberty?

State interfence is a direct transgression against an individual's liberty. Thus far the majority has decided that such interfence is a greater evil than the "inequality" that it could reconcile.

The only way to have the freedom from being punched in the nose, is by taking away the freedom to punch people in the nose, punishing punchers with more nose-punching, but constrained by due-process (peer-reviewed violence).

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes!

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/waltwhitma132584...

(You dropped a clause.)

I contradict myself and mis-quote Whitman.

That's the point.

Which is why the most morally consistent position is to be an anarchist. Perhaps not practical in many cases, but morally defensible.

Anarchism is a paradox though. Because it doesn't exist naturally. We always develop some kind of hierarchy. To do away with hierarchy, we need some kind of enforcement body. And how do we get that without some kind of hierarchy?

I'm kind of anarchic myself, in that I like decentralization of power and resources.

I think the key is to realize that no ideology will work by itself in its absolutist form. Rather we try to get close to it.

So the question to me is, how do we get relative equality without losing the benefits of companies like Google and Amazon.

It's a hard problem. Maybe we're already at the best compromise?

There's a difference between "statelessness" anarchism and the type of anarchism entirely opposed to power structures or other forms of central authority.

"It's full of contradictions!"

"So is independence!"