Dr Amburgey raises an excellent point in Adam’s equally excellent, most recent post. Responding to a link by economist Peter Boettke on the effects that institutions have on political economy, Dr Amburgey writes:

Very nice post; it crystalizes many of my objections to what I sometimes see here, a neglect of the literature on market failure in general and opportunism specifically.

[Dr Amburgey quoting Boettke:] “In my book, Why Perestroika Failed I argue that in assessing the workability of utopian schemes we must first subject them to a coherence test, and then a test of their vulnerability to opportunism. Schemes that are incoherent are deemed impossible; schemes that are coherent but vulnerable are impractical; and only schemes that are both coherent and invulnerable should be considered in the feasible set of workable utopias.”

An anarchist regulatory regime *is* a utopia, but raising taxes on corporations as an alternative is not? Then why propose such a policy in the first pace? I think it’s because Dr A doesn’t realize that his utopia is incoherent. Workable, absolutely, but not coherent.

Do you see how his argument is proposing a utopia, though? There are a number of theoretical responses to the market failure argument. Economist Peter Boettke lists four general responses to the market failure argument: Definitional, institutional, entrepreneurial, and comparative analysis. Adam’s post is an example of a defintional rejection of the market failure argument. I make institutional arguments all the time. Rick’s post on entrepreneurship is a good example of the third. Perhaps we need to do a better job of explaining that our arguments are rebuttals of market failure arguments, but I also think that such rebuttals are implicit in most of our writings.

Dr Amburgey also takes Adam to task for ostensibly failing to see the current regulatory apparatus in place (even though Adam’s initial post was all about current regulations and what to do about them). Dr Amburgey thinks Adam’s argument is all about unicorns and pixie dust:

Unicorns: We’ll completely deregulate one of the most oligopolistic industries in the history of the universe and then the invisible hand of market competition will make everything ok.

Okay, but market competition would include a market for buying and selling regulatory apparatuses. That is to say, regulations themselves would not disappear were they to be withdrawn from the purvey of the State, but rather they would be subject to market competition.

There is also the fact that the oligopolies Dr Amburgey identifies are a result of the state-sponsored regulations.

Pixie dust: “The oil companies should be liable for the full cost of any damages done by their rigs.” Yup. We’ll just add that on to the long list of tort reforms barrelling through the American legislative and judicial systems.

Just because the political system is currently preventing the reforms necessary for full liability does not mean that Adam’s argument is “pixie dust.” Is it not logically sound? If the logic is there (and I see no reason why it is not) then the reforms necessary can take place. Whether or not they will take place is an entirely different topic. I think they could, but only if we can get enough smart people like Dr A to see how they are not thinking their arguments through.

Sure. But they weren’t doing anything they didn’t want to do anyway [see the point just above] they were just externalizing the downside risks. As Adam points out “If the site is not economically viable then there is no reason to drill there.” Classic corporate capitalism in the contemporary US. If it works we get the profit, if it doesn’t you bear the cost.

I don’t think we are disagreeing here. Here is where our misunderstanding begins: Adam’s argument (as I understand it) is that Big Oil is able to externalize these costs through the regulatory apparatus. I think you would have to agree provided you think through the logic of your statement. We all agree that Big Oil was able to externalize the risks involved in drilling off the Gulf, but how, for example, do firms go about “socializing the costs”? If they don’t go through the existing regulatory apparatus, how do these firms achieve the externalization of costs?

“It looks to me like Adam is proposing an alternative for regulating how oil is drilled for by corporations.”

It looks to me like Adam’s alternative for regulating oil [NOT just drilling] is to not regulate it at all. Did I miss some regulations that he would keep?

Again, I don’t know how I can be more clear: Just because government regulations would not exist does not mean that no regulation would exist.