[zxcdw]

(Note that I am not the person you replied to.)

I do honestly feel that there should be a law against that in the society which I live in, since I find such actions taken by the restaurant owner to be manipulative and purposefully deceptive (excuse me for not coming up with better terms, I am not a native English speaker), knowing that many people -- not all of them, but many -- thus end up drinking far more than they would personally intend to.

I see no reason to promote such dishonesty, deception and misleading actions towards customers within a society, especially when the vulnerable ones are not vulnerable to it by choice, but by nature. It's the exact same thing which goes on with say gambling addicts or alcoholics. And no, I am not arguing for giving up the notion of personal responsibility, but I am arguing that these actions exploit vulnerabilities in people, which I see as no different from a ethical point of view than say committing a fraud against someone you know who has a psychological or neurological condition making them vulnerable for excess goodwill (or, someone suffering from e.g. dementia).

[vezzy-fnord]

I am not arguing for giving up the notion of personal responsibility, but

But you are.

When you get to micromanaging such trivialities, there's no limit what a planner's mentality will settle on next. A ban on restaurants that offer salty free lunches with every purchase of beer because they're relying on the customer to make up for it by ordering drinks.

It is absolutely not fraud. A happy hour was advertised, and the contract was heeded.

The property owner may deliberately arrange the environment so as to maximize an expected consumer end. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Supermarkets are architected to encourage higher shopping. Clothing retailers will arrange their luxurious brands to have a higher aesthetic appeal inside their stores.

Taking your logic of needing to regulate any "misleading action" to its conclusion will only entail the abolition of the market economy. There's no way around this. Anything and everything can be shoehorned under such flimsy logic.

(Moreover, expecting that consumers are morons who cannot regulate their own behavior will generally lead to policymakers drafting proposals that assume as such and end up fulfilling the prophecy on their own, since the resulting bureaucracy will be internalized by consumers in their expectations.)

[zxcdw]

> But you are.

No, I am not. You're seeing binary where there is none. My point is not to abolish the notion of personal responsibility, but to acknowledge that there is more to human behavior and decision making than cold, rational free will.

> When you get to micromanaging such trivialities, there's no limit what a planner's mentality will settle on next.

This is a slippery slope argument.

> It is absolutely not fraud.

And I never claimed it was a fraud, why would you interpret it that way? Or do you feel I communicated my point regarding fraud poorly?

> The property owner may deliberately arrange the environment so as to maximize an expected consumer end.

This is where we disagree at. I do not believe that the property owner may do whatever they wish within their property. I believe there should be laws limiting what and how the property owner may arrange their property -- to defend the customers from themselves, just as there are laws limiting for example gambling, or selling of alcohol and other drugs.

> Taking your logic of needing to regulate any "misleading action" to its conclusion will only entail the abolition of the market economy.

Sure, if you take it to the extreme, and in that case then perhaps and if so, I am personally fine with that. I have no personal stake -- or ideology -- in free market economy. It is a mere implementation detail, not an end in itself.

> (Moreover, expecting that consumers are morons who cannot regulate their own behavior will generally lead to policymakers drafting proposals that assume as such and end up fulfilling the prophecy on their own, since the resulting bureaucracy will be internalized by consumers in their expectations.)

It is about acknowledging that among consumers there are individuals who are vulnerable to various lures (in lack of a better term, but consider alcohol as an example), and that I do personally view exploiting such vulnerabilities as unethical and hence I propose regulation. And I am speaking as someone with social problems due to not having enough control over my own actions regarding certain matters. Thus, I greatly fail to externalize this matter to "them" who "can't control themselves".

[vezzy-fnord]

I do not believe that the property owner may do whatever they wish within their property.

Then you don't really support property rights. I mean, certainly, property owners must be within the bounds of the common and civil law framework of their jurisdiction. Limiting how property is internally arranged is a wholly different matter, it's a direct veto on how someone schedules their production structure for no reason but the failings of people who they have no stake in. By protecting customers from "themselves" and thus also protecting owners from customers, you are curtailing rights of both to engage in voluntary contract.

It is a mere implementation detail, not an end in itself.

Not free market economy. Market economy in general. It's not at all an "implementation detail," it arises quite organically out of interpersonal exchange.

hence I propose regulation

You know what I loathe?

Let's take everything you've said at face value.

You provide a case for perceived suboptimal behavior of markets, but then by proposing regulation you completely ignore the prospect of suboptimal government action! That is absolutely disingenuous. Your proposal exists outside of reality and assumes a hypothetical benevolent exogenous regulator that doesn't actually exist (as opposed to real states which are complex institutions).

You'd do yourself good by reading up on some public choice theory.

[brc]

The salient point here is the massive disconnect most people carry around in their heads. If presented with a problem, the automatic response of most people is to get the government to fix it. If you quiz the same people on something their government does well, you're unlikely to get a clear answer. Anytime you propose a private solution to a problem, people will get upset and say 'you can't make a profit from that'. But again, what are government employees than people making a profit on the trade of their time? We are all aware of government employees who have traded their way into highly paid, unsackable positions. Are these people more or less moral than a small business owner who takes home a similar amount of pay?

I don't know when the knee jerk of 'regulate it' came in, despite decades of evidence of failure and unintended consequences from that same instinct.

[zxcdw]

> Then you don't really support property rights.

Or we simply disagree what rights and liabilities the property owner should have in the context, which I define as business property. I see no problem with this as there are many countries with extensive liabilities and regulations when it comes to property and business practices one is allowed to conduct.

> By protecting customers from "themselves" and thus also protecting owners from customers, you are curtailing rights of both to engage in voluntary contract.

Oh I indeed am, or I at least am not opposing regulation in this matter from any ideological perspective. I don't see such regulation as inherently bad, as it seems that you see.

> It's not at all an "implementation detail," it arises quite organically out of interpersonal exchange.

Many things arise "quite organically" from individual actors acting for their own benefit, but in many cases it can be argued for that there are places and times where regulation (governmental or otherwise) does indeed improve the society and the lives of the people within it.

> You know what I loathe?

I suppose I don't despite having some suspicions, but please, don't assume I care either.

> You provide a case for perceived suboptimal behavior of markets, but then by proposing regulation you completely ignore the prospect of suboptimal government action!

How couldn't you say this exact same about any form of regulation within markets? And if so, to me it seems that you oppose regulation out of a principle -- and really, how you come off as suggests the same.

> You'd do yourself good by reading up on some public choice theory.

Oh, always, though I am almost certain our differing views lie somewhere else completely. I suppose you have recommendations though?

[vezzy-fnord]

Actually my opposition to regulation isn't an ideological default. It's borne out of my analysis weighing endogenous regulation (contracts signed by actors with judicial assistance to enforce them) against exogenous regulations, like that of a collective body of action, i.e. government. There's been a lot written on this subject.

(To answer your statement, if there is a stalemate such that both government failure and market failure are inevitable, I would prefer the latter, for the simple reason that it entails less layers of indirection and that it doesn't impose any upper bound on heterogeneous consumer preferences.)

That said, I do have some reading recommendations.

James M. Buchanan was an eminent economist and political theoretician. I'd recommend his classic The Calculus of Consent co-written with Gordon Tullock, supplemented with his own The Limits of Liberty and Costs and Choice.

William A. Niskanen wrote Bureaucracy and Representative Government presenting a budget-maximizing theory of government akin to a utility-maximizing theory of an economic actor. Both have limitations, but it's worth reading.

Don Lavoie wrote great primers such as Rivalry and Central Planning and National Economic Planning: What Is Left? which equally apply to a mixed economy.

R.H. Coase formulated the Coase theorem in his paper "The Problem of Social Cost," demonstrating how private property rights plus low transaction costs lead to endogenous self-regulatory actions.

Oliver E. Williamson wrote a technical work on transaction cost economics entitled The Mechanisms of Governance. Another technical writer was Lester G. Telser, particularly his work on the "core theory" related to cooperation, coordination and collusion.

Essays and papers by Armen A. Alchian, Harold Demsetz and Yale Brozen are also worth examining.

For a bare introduction, see Government Failure: A Primer in Public Choice, or a recent paper using behavioral theory to analyze public policy [1].

[1] http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2015/...

[s73v3r]

It absolutely is dishonest, and quite possibly fraud. There is absolutely no reason why we should allow this to happen, either.