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From: glosser@ut-ngp.UUCP (glosser)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: a question
Message-ID: <1030@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 14-Oct-84 12:57:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.1030
Posted: Sun Oct 14 12:57:13 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 16-Oct-84 03:30:00 EDT
References: <655@oliven.UUCP>
Organization: U.Texas Computation Center, Austin, Texas
Lines: 32


If you want to argue it is a good, it is not the same
type of good you had in mind.
If I were to call liberty a good, it would be an 
externality. An externality, according to Nobel
Laureate in Economics, Kenneth Arrow, "...are goods,
they are commodities; they have real pratical, economic
value; thet increase the efficiency of the system, enable
you to produce more goods or more of wwhatever values you 
hold in high esteem. But they are not commodities for
which trade on the open market is technically possible
or even meaningful."

It is because of such externalities that markets break down.
If you had to put a price on liberty (in terms of dollars or
any other currency) would you really have liberty? Given the
struggles we all hear about for obtaining liberty, it seems
liberty is not a free good either.  If you want to argue that
liberty is a good and can be allocated, something more than a
market is needed for this accomplishment  Other ways can be 
through government, religion, or any other type of collective
action that seeks to allocate goods using non market methods.

Hence the issue (if you believe liberty is a good) is: given
the conflict between social claims and individual self interest,
how should liberty be allocated? Given that the market is not
capable of resolving such a conflict, what other social
institutions are capable for accomplishing such a task?

In conclusion, I would like to point out the major drawback
of this response. It is not clear what liberty actually means.
Further, I argue, it is not possible to define such a vague concept.