Isn't market failure cost shifting success?

[ann li <ann_z_li@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Without trying to get into a fight here about what constitutes failure
or success, I would suggest that sub-optimal solutions are part of the
discourse semantics of commons theories and that they are not
necessarily "anti-dialectical". I agree that "commons tragedy" arguments
are anti-communistic, but the sustainability issues remain important
especially as they relate to modeling the informal social (control)
relations regulating resources. I recall Ellison's work on cattle
fencing which studied legal disputes among ranchers in Michael's neck of
the woods.

Robert C. Ellickson, Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes
(Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1991).

Ann

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In reply to:

Isn't market failure cost shifting success?

Gene Coyle


On Jun 21, 2007, at 3:38 PM, Julio Huato wrote:

> Jim Devine wrote:
>
>> It's a market failure as we
>> of the Econ tribe typically
>> use the term: a deviation of
>> the real-world market from the
>> idealized Walrasian world.
>
> I don't think that's the way economists understand a market failure.
> A market failure is the inability of a market proper (i.e. with duly
> stipulated private-ownership rights) to turn out an optimal or
> efficient allocation.
>
> The "tragedy of the commons" is the exact opposite.  It's an argument
> against communism.  It's about the inefficiency of communism.  So,
> obviously, the "neoclassicals" don't need to respond to it.
>
> A Marxist response to this argument is, however, implicit in Gotha.
> The mode of distribution cannot be ahead of the mode of production.
> The mode of distribution cannot be ahead of the level of
> public-mindedness of the producers.  Etc. The evolution of them all
> is, well, dialectical.
>
> It's not semantics.