"Bag Men"

[SolicitorJacket]

Bill Curry told me this back in the '80's when he was coaching---and cheating was even more obvious than today: Curry went to Homer Rice and said "such and such" a school is cheating. Homer told him that if he could prove it to turn them in.

Was this before or after Curry told that booster group that Tech would "bring the cheaters to their knees!" ?

 

[takethepoints]

I hear echoes of Hayekian spontaneous order...

Not quite. Hayek assumed that markets would produce "spontaneous order", but only within a set of formal rules that would protect market mechanisms. This, indeed, is what most people (Douglas North, for instance) who take an institutional view of economics assume as well. That's why they make such a distinction between a world based on traditional and religious constraints and one based on formal rules.

But … it turns out that they are wrong. Informal institutions continue and thrive in modern societies, so much so that formal rules have evolved to accommodate them (tax rules for religious organizations, for instance). Also, however, informal institutions can be created out of whole cloth by general agreement among participants (the school example I gave before) or by elites that are interested in getting results that formal rules forbid (the use of torture in the War on Terror is a good example). In both cases, rules are bent and purposely diluted. And when the informal pattern is discovered, all involved can tsk-tsk about it, say they had no idea this was going on, and enforce the formal framework they worked around. And blame the poor stiffs who did what the people on top said they should, of course.

Well, enough.

 

[jacketup]

It was after Homer Rice brought Bill Curry back to reality on the subject.

 

[bartoma]

Not quite. Hayek assumed that markets would produce "spontaneous order", but only within a set of formal rules that would protect market mechanisms. This, indeed, is what most people (Douglas North, for instance) who take an institutional view of economics assume as well. That's why they make such a distinction between a world based on traditional and religious constraints and one based on formal rules.

But … it turns out that they are wrong. Informal institutions continue and thrive in modern societies, so much so that formal rules have evolved to accommodate them (tax rules for religious organizations, for instance). Also, however, informal institutions can be created out of whole cloth by general agreement among participants (the school example I gave before) or by elites that are interested in getting results that formal rules forbid (the use of torture in the War on Terror is a good example). In both cases, rules are bent and purposely diluted. And when the informal pattern is discovered, all involved can tsk-tsk about it, say they had no idea this was going on, and enforce the formal framework they worked around. And blame the poor stiffs who did what the people on top said they should, of course.

Well, enough.

I wouldn't say that Hayek assumed markets produced spontaneous order - he would say that markets are spontaneous order...

Of course, institutions, like a lot of things, change over time - just like language and morals... Informal or otherwise, they do arise out of deliberate action, but their character - at least in a liberal society - changes to reflect practices that generally accrue benefit... Property rights, for example, continue evolve as technology changes underlying circumstances...

 

[LongforDodd]

I wouldn't say that Hayek assumed markets produced spontaneous order - he would say that markets are spontaneous order...

Of course, institutions, like a lot of things, change over time - just like language and morals... Informal or otherwise, they do arise out of deliberate action, but their character - at least in a liberal society - changes to reflect practices that generally accrue benefit... Property rights, for example, continue evolve as technology changes underlying circumstances...

Allright, enough of this you two. Go get a room or something or your own thread.

 

[takethepoints]

Allright, enough of this you two. Go get a room or something or your own thread.

Now, now. Who started asking about the way "bag men" work, anyhow?

But enough.