Ah, but in the case of tobacco, and alcohol, and fatty foods, and a host of
other products, people know that there is a risk inherent in them, and choose to
buy those products anyway.  And before you start talking about tobacco companies
denying the risk of their product, consumers were well-aware of the risks of
tobacco for _YEARS_, and nevertheless smoked.

It's a basic issue of whether or not the public feels they've been dealt with
honestly - in the case of Wampler foods, people felt wronged by Wampler's
actions, and punished Wampler accordingly.  In the case of tobacco, people knew
the risks, chose to smoke, and big tobacco dealt with the vicissitudes of the
marketplace.

The operative word there is "game", Alastair.  An economy isn't a game, it's a
system, like an organic system.  Sure there are rules that govern the system,
and it is up to some artifice to make sure that the rules are followed, but they
have to be simple rules that work in concert with the system with a minimum of
barriers.  Those barriers cause unintended consequences that have to be dealt
with elsewhere.

What rules?  Well, rules that essentially protect the rights of those within
that system, as both producers and consumers.  Rules against fraud, rules
against theft, rules against causing palpable harm.  The rules should extend
from that precept.

But what about rules that only tangentially relate to that precept?  Take
Maryland, for instance.  Maryland's legislature passed a law restricting certain
products that were not, in their estimation, energy efficient.

Is that really the role of a governing force in a marketplace?

And even the most ardent free-marketeer recognizes that there need to be basic
rules to govern the practices within that economy.  You're like those people who
claim that libertarians are anarchists, without examining the realities of
libertarian beliefs:  government serves a limited purpose - to preserve and
protect individual rights.  This holds true for the political system, as well as
the economic one.

Negligence is negligence is negligence is negligence.  Let me ask you this,
Alastair - if there is no regulation governing a particular action, should
someone therefore have no responsibility to redress a harm if a harm is caused
by that action?

See, what I'm getting at is that you don't necessarily need a "regulation" to
address every form of negligent act, and if you bury businesses under
regulations, it has the potential to give businesses an "out" (ie, there was no
regulation governing it, therefore we can't be held responsible).

A)  You can harness the power of the marketplace to reduce CO2 emissions, if
there is an important public purpose in doing so.  You don't need a new
regulatory state, certainly not one on a global scale as would be required.
National environmental bureaucracies are unwieldy and burdensome enough - a
global environmental regulatory bureaucracy would be an intactible bohemoth;

I've written a number of items on the use of market forces to produce
environmental benefits across national boundaries, generally through the use of
guilds and guild seals of approval.

B)  Furthermore, not only can you not hamstring nations by creating massive
regulatory schemes on unsettled science (without proper risk assessment and
cost-benefit analyses), but you also cannot make choices for nations that may
not be advanced as yours, either politically, socially, or economically.  It's
immoral and elitist to hobble developing nations that cannot afford to make the
same social policy choices that the developed world can when it comes to the
environment.

- Andrew Langer

Any posts by Andrew Langer are his own, written by him, for his own
enjoyment (and the education of others).  Unless expressly stated,
they represent his own views, and not those of any other individuals
or entities.  He is not, nor has he ever been, paid to post here.

     THE INDEPENDENT PORTFOLIO - CLICK HERE

     Blood on the virtual carpet: tempers flare as 'editor' is thrown out
of
     online town with 80,000 inhabitants
     By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles

     16 January 2004

     Peter Ludlow is not just a computer gaming enthusiast. He's also a
     philosophy professor, with an abiding interest in the relationship
between
     the real and the virtual worlds. So when the world's most successful
     virtual-reality game, the Sims, launched an online version just over a
     year ago, he didn't just join in for fun; he also decided that he
could
     carry out research for his next book.

     And that was where the trouble started. Alphaville, the game's
fictional
     city, could have gone in any number of directions, depending on the
     arbitrary decisions of the online game players who make up its people
     through their chosen "avatars", or game characters.

     Alphaville could have become a socialist utopia, a grand experiment in
     free-market capitalism or simply a reflection of the allure and the
     pitfalls of any real Western city.

     As it was, Alphaville quickly turned into a hellhole of scam-artists,
     crime syndicates, mafia extortion artists and teenage girls turning
tricks
     to make ends meet. It became a breeding ground for the very worst in
human
     nature - a benign-sounding granny, for example, who specialised in
taking
     new players into her confidence, then showered them in abuse. Then
there
     was the scam-artist known as Evangeline, who started out equally
friendly
     and then stole new players' money.

     Professor Ludlow, who teaches at the University of Michigan, decided
he
     would chronicle Alphaville's seamy reality by setting up a
newspaper,The
     Alphaville Herald, run by his game alter-ego. He reported on the scams
and
     the prostitution rings, and also interviewed the protagonists.

     (Evangeline, his most intriguing source, turned out, in real life, to
be a
     spectacularly warped teenage boy.)

     But that was before his dispassionate academic inquiry ran smack into
the
     authoritarian brick wall of the game's manufacturer and controller,
the
     California gaming company Electronic Arts.

     The Alphaville Herald was closed down and Professor Ludlow's avatar,
     Urizenus, was kicked out of town. "While we regret it," Electronic
Arts
     told him in a letter, "we feel it is necessary for the good of the
game
     and its community."

     Officially, the reason for Professor Ludlow's expulsion was that he
     included links in his inside-the-game newspaper to outside websites,
     including one that gave players instructions on how to cheat. What
     Professor Ludlow and a growing band of academics and sympathisers
believe,
     however, is that his efforts to publicise the tawdry fantasy
activities of
     real-life teenagers were becoming simply too uncomfortable for
Electronic
     Arts to stomach.

     The company wants to draw the maximum number of players to the Sims
     Online, one of a growing number of interactive computer games
attracting
     audiences possibly hundreds of thousands of people. Such is the
interest
     in the phenomenon that the Sims Online game is to be featured in a
     California exhibition, opening today, which will feature a real-life
     recreation of a room from the game.

     The game is rated "T" for teenager and is sold, according to the
marketing
     materials, as a "fun-filled" exercise in fantasy projection. Publicity
     highlighting the very dark place that Alphaville had become was not
likely
     to be good for business, and could even get the company into trouble
over
     its rating.

     Shortly before he was thrown out of Alphaville, Urizenus and his
fellow
     reporters were openly questioning whether teenage game players should
be
     allowed to trade in human flesh, albeit virtual flesh, and wondering
     whether the Sims Online should be restricted to adults.

     Professor Ludlow's expulsion was only the beginning of a fascinating
new
     phase in the game. Electronic Arts, through its online game
controller,
     Maxis, has been cracking down on bad behaviour to clean up Alphaville
and,
     one assumes, try and boost its audience which is stuck at a 80,000 (EA
had
     hoped for a million by now). Evangeline and the psycho-granny have
been
     disciplined, as have various mafia syndicates and a parallel city
     government set up as a player-based alternative form of authority.

     You could compare it to Mussolini's crackdown on the Sicilian Mafia,
or
     even to President George Bush's war on terror. The academics are
having a
     field day as they see real-life issues of power and control played out
in
     cyberspace. The very premise of an online game is that it is
     uncontrollable - indeed, even the banned players have found ways to
sneak
     back in various disguises.

     That, in turn, presents a thorny set of philosophical problems. How do
you
     seek to curb the baser instincts of a community of autonomous players?
Is
     repression the answer? Or do you have to give people incentives to
behave
     better all by themselves? Such questions have been pondered even
within
     the august confines of Yale Law School, where one student, James
     Grimmelmann, wrote recently: "On the one hand, Maxis is close to
losing
     control over their game world. TSO is a positively Brechtian world of
     violence, flim-flammery, and low-down dirty tricks.

     "On the other hand, Maxis acts like a classic despot, using its powers
to
     single out individual critics for the dungeons and the firing squads.
The
     usual real-world justification for this kind of arbitrary action is
the
     need for a strong central hand to protect public safety and common
     welfare. But since Maxis isn't all that good at those aspects, the
Herald
     censorship smacks more of tyranny for its own sake."

     You can draw your own conclusions about how this relates to the
politics
     of the real world, but the parallels are there.

Has the public really been "harmed" by Microsoft?  I mean, we can get into
economic arguments about trusts, but when it comes down to it, but in the end,
there are a lot of consumers that really like Microsoft products.

- Andrew Langer

Any posts by Andrew Langer are his own, written by him, for his own
enjoyment (and the education of others).  Unless expressly stated,
they represent his own views, and not those of any other individuals
or entities.  He is not, nor has he ever been, paid to post here.

 And thus by definition, any business that has not gone out of business
must be doing right by the public.

 The author of that statement proves that either is either so ignorant that
he will purchase any snake oil from any pigopolist, or more probably he is
in the business of selling some form of snake oil himself.

 Everyone who smokes, owns a gun, loves their car, or believes a single
statment coming from the current White House or any NeoCon thinktank.