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From:
Fred Foldvary <[log in to unmask]>
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Societies for the History of Economics <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:20:30 -0400
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 > Bubbles can arise for any reason whatsoever,
 > Daniele Besomi


I agree that bubbles can arise from voluntary action.
The question is whether a bubble constitutes order or chaos.
In a financial bubble, speculators speculate on what other
speculators believe, and so they can push the price up beyond
that warranted by the normal yield or by the demand for use.
But such speculation is explainable, and thus the elements
of bubbles are predictable, and so bubbles exhibit order.

 > we all pay the price in terms of bankruptcies,
 > failures, bailouts, unemployment, waste of resources, etc.

In a pure market economy, that would not happen.
Consider a bubble in works of art; suppose that the paintings
of some particular artists suddenly became a fad, and
their prices were bid up to extreme levels, and then crashed.
The recent buyers would be hurt, but not the economy.
Those losses would be offset by gains to those who sell
prior to the peak.

The massive, economy-wide costs you refer to are the
result of an economy-wide recession and depression.
The question then is the cause of booms that crash,
is it the market or is it governmental interventions?

My research on business cycles strongly indicates that
the significant recessions during the past two centuries
have been caused by the fiscal and monetary policies of
government.  See my article,
"The Business Cycle: A Georgist-Austrian Synthesis." American Journal 
of  Economics and Sociology 56 (4)  (October 1997): 521-41.
<http://http://www.foldvary.net/works/geoaus.html>

and my booklet
The Depression of 2008.  Gutenberg Press, 2007.
http://www.foldvary.net/works/dep08.pdf

In these and other works, I have created a
synthesis of the cycle theory of two schools of thought,
the Austrian, and the Georgist, and tested the
synthesis with the economic history of cycles,
including the real estate cycles discovered by
Homer Hoyt (One Hundred Years of Land Value in Chicago).

Thus, if my synthesis is warranted, the "insanity" of
economic depressions is caused by perverse governmental
policies.

 > and we still haven't learned how to prevent them.

Since depressions are caused by bad policy, they can be
prevented with sound monetary and fiscal policies.
It is true that most economists have not learned this,
but not because the knowledge is absent.

 > If all entrepreneurs succeed in such a policy,
 > the worker's purchasing power is reduced,
 > and may result in the impossibility of selling the
 > produce at the desired price, or may even give rise to a general
 > glut.

A general glut could not happen because of lower wages,
since that would be offset by higher profits or greater employment.
A general glut occurs because of rapid deflation, making people
hang on to money to buy goods cheaper later.

 > if 'spontaneous' means the emergence of unintended consequences,

In my judgment, that is not an apt definition.
There can be unintended consequences from a designed order also.
Government policies often have unintended consequences.

 > the collective curve is not the sum of the individual ones.

Yes, that happens with voluntary action.
When everyone stands on tip toes to watch a parade, the
individuals behind the front are no better off; indeed worse off.
But I don't see this divergence as chaos.
It would be closer to chaos if some individuals attacked others to
force them to fall down so that the attackers could see better.
If there is no coercion, then the parade viewing has order in
that the first comers homestead the front positions, being
rewarded for having to wait a longer time. The later comers
respect the property rights of the first comers by not forcing
them to move away.

 > Even chaos (in the sense of chaos theory) is
 > deterministic, after all.

Ultimately, every effect has a cause, and is thus determined,
but practically, if a process or outcome is largely
unpredictable, it exhibits chaos.
In my "Dictionary of Free-Market Economics" (Edward Elgar,
1998), I define "order" thus:
"An environment in which a person can learn to form
reliable expecations as to the elements of the system
and their rates of change."

I agree that "order" does not imply goodness.

Fred Foldvary

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