🚀 go-pugleaf

Phil Ronzone (phil@netcom.com) wrote:
: I'd suggest you take a course in micro-economics. Since the State controls
: (sets) the initial (non-market) price, and in some states, controls who
: can use the land and how, there is no market.

Interesting.  I've noticed that the supermarket I shop at sets all the
prices of the products it sells and even controls who can buy some of
those products (cigarettes and liquor, for example).  According to Phil,
these facts mean that the supermarket is not a market.  I wonder where he
found a course in microeconomics that espoused such nonsense. 

: What you have is, instead, a pseudo-market as per apartments in Berkeley
: or Santa Monica -- the apartment are subleased (etc.) to other tenants,
: but, due to the State (the cities) setting the price via rent control,
: there is NO market.

: If (hopefully when) rent control goes away, you'll see a real market.

Ah, I get it.  So when the property management company sets the price of
rent on an apartment and chooses who can rent it, that is a market, but if
the government sets the price of rent on the land it manages and limits
the people eligible to lease it, that is not a market.  It's all very
clear, now. 

: If grazing lands are leased to the highest bidder in an open market,
: then you'll have a free market too.

What if the highest bidder bids less than the minimum (some of) the owners
consider fair compensation for grazing lands? 

: Whener the State intervenes and "sets" a "price" for a good or service,
: the market goes away.

So there is no market for the billions of dollars worth of local 
telephone services that are being purchased by millions of our fellow 
citizens?  Kinda makes me wonder where they are buying such services if 
not in a market for them.

: A market is what individuals (without coercion) do when they exchange
: things like money and property.

Ah, I think I understand, now.  So when the "tooth fairy" takes the tooth 
from under a child's pillow at night and leaves some money of an amount 
the child had not agreed to, that is a market because neither the "tooth 
fairy" (typically the parent) nor the child were coerced into the 
exchange of money and property.  How very insightful!

: The State can only set a "price" that is too high, the same as a free
: market, or too low. The middle case is moot and rare. The other two
: common cases prevent a market.

Gee, I never knew that.  So even if the state sells unlimited, exclusive 
grazing rights for one cent, that price would be "too high"?  Or is the 
point that the state could set the price at, say, a billion dollars be 
day per steer and cattle ranchers would pay that price even though it 
would bankrupt them?  This doesn't seem quite as clear as the other 
examples.  I can't figure out which nonsensical conclusion Phil had in 
mind.