From: Petro <petro@playboy.com>
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 04:08:00 +0800
To: Jim Choate <cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer)
Subject: RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone(fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199811062338.RAA00510@einstein.ssz.com>
Message-ID: <v04011707b26cda546a55@[206.189.103.230]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 6:38 PM -0500 11/6/98, Jim Choate wrote:
>Forwarded message:
>
>> Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1998 12:34:34 -0500
>> From: Petro <petro@playboy.com>
>> Subject: RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone
>>  	 (fwd)
>
>> 	Assuming your definition of "free market" is "a market without
>> regulation", you can't have a black market in a free market since a black
>> market is trade in violation of regulations.
>
>Actualy a black market is usualy goods gotten through theft or other illegal
>means, not necessarily anything related to how or what is sold. If you don't
>corrupt free-market to include legitimizing theft as a viable market
>strategy then yes, you can in fact have a black market in a free-market.

	Usualy != Correctly.

	Take tomatoes. Perfectly legal (AFAIK) everywhere, here in this
country a 5 year old child can buy a tomato from a farmer with a stand on
the side of the road.

	If you go back 10 years, and if "this country" was the soviet
union, a tomato purchased from the wrong person could get you in trouble.

	Entirely HOW the item was sold.

	This is true in this coutry. Licquor is legal if purchased thru the
approved store.

	Try selling the same thing out of the back of your truck.

	It is the product, or how the product is sold.

>Let's consider auto-theft. The issue isn't that you can't buy the car
>through legitimate means, it just means you have to have more resources than

	So take ampthetimines (well, don't take them, but take the case of
them), if I get them from Joe Random Drug Dealer, it's black Market, if I
get them from Paul the Doctor, it's "white" market.

	In fact, if I get them from Paul the Doctor, and then sell them to
someone else, I am selling them on the black market, even if I recieved
them legally, so in this case, it isn't how the item was aquired, it's
whether the _sale_, the *exchange* is legal.

>you have. So what do you do? You find somebody whose stolen a vehicle and is
>willing to sell it to you at a discount.
>
>> 	In other words, a Black market is when you trade either illegal
>> goods illegally, or legal goods illegally.
>Too strict and unrealistic a definition of black market.

	Not at all. It's quite wide open. It covers every non-legal
transaction.

>> 	If there are no illegal goods, and there is no regulations limiting
>> trading, then the black market cannot exist.
>Of course not since we've now legitimized theft and murder with your
>definition.

	I didn't think of theft when I wrote the above, and I don't usually
consider murder for hire markets as part of the black market, altho you
have a point.

	I still maintain that as one moves closer to a completely free
market, there is less and less of a black market, and to be the extrememe
case of a free market, there would be the potential to trade in both human
lives, and in stolen property.  In a free market, the selling of stolen
goods might not be a crime in and of itself, but the posession of those
things could be, and the aquireing would be, as well, the _hiring_ of an
assassin might be legal, as long as no killing took place. When it does,
you hang the assassin on murder, and the hirer on conspiracy, aiding and
abetting or whatever, and stick them in the same cell.
--
"To sum up: The entire structure of antitrust statutes in this country is a
jumble of economic irrationality and ignorance. It is a product: (a) of a
gross misinterpretation of history, and (b) of rather nave, and certainly
unrealistic, economic theories." Alan Greenspan, "Anti-trust"
http://www.ecosystems.net/mgering/antitrust.html

Petro::E-Commerce Adminstrator::Playboy Ent. Inc.::petro@playboy.com