more posner fun

James Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
Thu Dec 2 12:38:18 PST 1999


And the banning of slavery is likewise an outrageous intrusion by government into the free market. Should not people have the right to sell themselves into slavery if they so wish? And should not people be free to buy and sell slaves in the free market with their prices being set by the sacred forces of supply and demand? Such unwarranted government interference creates an artificial shortage of slave labor which drives up the wage rates of free labor generally and leads to a decrease in overall economic efficiency. This outrageous interference by Big Government in the operations of the free market must be stopped!

Jim F.

On Thu, 02 Dec 1999 10:07:50 -0800 Michael Perelman <michael at ecst.csuchico.edu> writes:
>Posner, Richard A. 1977. Economic Analysis of Law (Boston: Little
>Brown). 113: "[The baby] shortage appears to be an artifact of
>government regulation, in particular the uniform state policy
>forbidding
>the sale of babies. That there are many people who are capable of
>bearing children but who do not want to raise them, and many other
>people who cannot produce their own children but want to raise
>children
>in their homes, suggests the possibility of a thriving market in
>babies,
>especially since the costs of production by the natural parents are
>typically much lower than the value that many childless people attach
>to
>the possession of children. There is, in fact, a black market in
>babies, with prices as high as $25,000 reported recently, but its
>necessarily clandestine mode of operation imposes heavy information
>costs on the market participants, as well as significant expected
>punishment costs on the middlemen (typically lawyers and
>obstetricians). The result is higher prices and smaller quantities
>sold
>than would be likely in a legal market." 114: "The objections to
>permitting babies to be sold are, first, that there is no assurance
>that
>the adoptive parents who are willing to pay the most money for a child
>will provide it with the best home. But willingness to pay is a
>generally reliable, although not infallible, index of value, and the
>parents who value a child the most are likely to give it the most
>care." 115-6:"Opponents of the market approach also argue that the
>rich would end up with all the babies, or at least all the good babies
>.... Such a result might of course be in the children's best interest
>--but is unlikely to materialize. Because people with high incomes
>tend
>to have high opportunity costs of time, the wealthy usually have
>smaller
>families than the poor, and permitting babies to be sold would not
>change this situation. Moreover, the total demand for children on the
>part of wealthy childless couples must be very small in relation to
>the
>supply of children, even high-quality children, that would be
>generated
>in a system where there were economic incentives to produce children
>for
>purchase by childless couples." 116: "A final objection to baby
>selling is that it involves the spectacle of 'trafficking' in human
>lives. This objection, the basis of which is unclear, may have been
>undermined by the recent changes in public policy concerning abortion.
>Is paying a pregnant woman to carry the child to term so offensive an
>alternative to the abortion of the foetus?"
>
>--
>
>Michael Perelman
>Economics Department
>California State University
>michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
>Chico, CA 95929
>530-898-5321
>fax 530-898-5901
>
>

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