me:
> It's a market failure as we > of the Econ tribe typically > use the term: a deviation of > the real-world market from the > idealized Walrasian world.
Julio:
I don't think that's the way economists understand a market failure. A market failure is the inability of a market proper (i.e. with duly stipulated private-ownership rights) to turn out an optimal or efficient allocation.
this is where the semantic argument comes in, but I'll ignore it. My question is instead: Are individual property (private-ownership) rights _ever_ "duly stipulated"? aren't external costs and benefits ubiquitous? (in Engels' language, isn't production _always_ socialized, even when appropriation and property rights are individualized or private?)
The "tragedy of the commons" is the exact opposite. It's an argument against communism. It's about the inefficiency of communism. So, obviously, the "neoclassicals" don't need to respond to it.
the original T of C was anti-communist, yes. But the concept has taken on a life of its own, getting beyond Hardin, so that there's a government solution and a Ostrom solution too.
A Marxist response to this argument is, however, implicit in Gotha. The mode of distribution cannot be ahead of the mode of production. The mode of distribution cannot be ahead of the level of public-mindedness of the producers. Etc. The evolution of them all is, well, dialectical.
well, in the historical materialist perspective, the phrase "market failure" is redundant. -- Jim Devine / "The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side." -- James Baldwin
