Reading Mishna

Reading Mishnah

Monday, Liv and I read Mishnah!

By "read" I mean, we opened Liv's copy of Mishnah (footnotes by Blackman) to Chapter 4 of whatever it was Jen suggested was relevant to implied contract law (Baba Metzia?). And read the first sentence of the first Mishnah ("[The delivery of] the gold [of the purchaser] gives him title to the silver [of the vendor], but [the delivery of] the silver [of the vendor] does not give him title to the gold [of the vendor]".)

I can't read the Hebrew, but the square brackets represent things which are not in the original text, but are understood to be what it means. (Either because it's fairly clear to a scholar of the times, or it's how the 500CE Gemara interprets the 200CE Mishnah, or it's a traditional interpretation accepted by later scholars/Rabbis).

Then there's a footnote which explains how this has been interpreted (the one for this sentence is a few sentences, most are shorter, or just describe the translation of one of the words). This is written by Blackman, so you don't HAVE to believe him, but you can assume he's normally fairly summarising scholarly understanding. In this case, it says Rabbis interpret this as saying that handing someone the purchase price doesn't complete a transaction: it's binding when you take the goods.

That is, this is how moral law is interpreted in every day life when you need a practical guideline for when transactions are enacted (eg. "when you start to pick up the goods or move them towards you"). Ie. If you're a community leader in the first millennium, what trading standard laws would you propose?

And then (also having glances at the following paragraph for context) we discussed what the sentence meant, how it was sensible for the first millennium, what general principles it might suggest, and how those were and should enacted in English law today.

And then we moved on to the second sentence, and so on for the rest of the chapter :)

Observations

There's also often a dissenting opinion by some Rabbi who said something else, and the Mishnah recalls that R. So-and-so said such-and-such, but everyone disagreed, and the accepted view is the other one.

It's really good training for conducting a discussion rapidly, forming and discarding proposals rapidly without becoming emotionally attached to them, which is good training for discussion in general. In fact, it feels like Neal Stephenson should have drawn heavily on it in concepting the academic monastries in Anathem, although I don't think he did (?)

A Bluffer's Guide to the Oven of Akhnai in 15m

This is a brief retelling of a story from the Talmud. [ie. Longer than the original story, but shorter than everything everyone has written about it in the 2000 years since.] However, the story is quite notable, so what I say is almost certain to need significant annotation by people in the comments, as you can read into the story significant generalisations about theology, and not all of the ones I suggest will probably be able to be accurate. It goes roughly like this.

R. Eliezer: *is da man*
R. Eliezer: *is generally accepted as one of the wisest, or THE wisest sage of his time*
R. Eliezer: *has a deep understanding of the universe and the law, which will later be demonstrated by invoking several miracles in order to make his point*
R. Eliezer: You know the bit with the oven of Acknai, where people argue whether [breaking it apart and gluing it back together again] [makes it an object still subject to ritual impurity]? Well, I've been thinking about it, and I'm pretty sure God's law implies that it does and I know what I'm talking about.
Everyone else: Nuh-uh!
R. Eliezer: Yuh-uh!
Everyone: [Retread of long argument, not recorded in this point in the Mishnah]
R. Eliezer: OK, this is rhetorically dodgy, but pretend there's a connection between the fact that I can do miracles and the fact I know what I'm talking about.
Water: *flows upstream*
Everyone else: Hmmm.... But honestly, although you're very wise (and you really ARE) we still think you're wrong about the stupid oven.
Everyone else: See, The Big Guy was pretty clear. He gave us the law. We interpret it according to set traditions. NOT according to whoever can make water flow upstream. Else chaos would ensue! We voted. You lost. STOP GOING ON ABOUT IT!
R. Eliezer: *makes the wall fall down with magic*
R. Joshua: *makes the wall stop falling down with magic*
Walls: *stay in crazy lean*
R. Eliezer: OK, OK, look. (Puts on big voice) If I'm right, let a sign from heaven show it!
Big boomy voice from The Big Guy out of heaven: DUDES, HE'S TOTALLY RIGHT. WHAT HE SAYS IS WHAT I MEANT BY THE LAW ALL ALONG. [1]
Everyone else: Nuh-uh. You gave us the law, and you told us quite explicitly how to interpret it according to the accepted majority opinion. It's RIGHT THERE in the bible. You can't go and take it back now or no-one would do anything in case You came and told them something different five minutes later.[1]
R. Eliezer: *grump* *grump* *is a sore loser.

[1] I am not making this up.

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Transaction costs: they exist

I was just reading another depressing internet debate. If all transaction costs for any kind of transaction were zero (no job hunting, no P&P, no retraining, no negotiation time, no getting up investment to start an alternative business, etc) then lots of things would just magically work well, and everyone would get fair prices for everything, and rainbows and puppies would fly out of...

Psst.

What?

Pssmbthowehojdslhrhubarb.

Wait, what?

GvchmtSDHJIfdjka.

WHAT? You say in the real world transaction costs aren't zero? And may in many cases be very large? But in that case you'd have lots of conversations like:

A: OK, I'll sell you a widget for $99.
B: OK, cool, that's slightly cheaper than Cara's price of $100. I'll drive over and get it.
A: Haha! Actually, I was lying and I'm going to charge you $101, possibly with some transparent pretext to make it seem less like a rip-off. And you're going to metaphorically take it because it'll cost more than $1 to drive to Cara's and get hers. And after all, maybe she's going to do the same thing.
B: Mutter, mutter, grumble.
Person on internet: Why are you complaining? Assuming you can instantly teleport around town and compare the functionality and prices of widgets by ESP without spending any time, you've not lost anything, you can just take Cara's. Why are people so whiny?

The person on the internet has made an understandable mistake, in that their approximation (no transaction costs) correctly predicted that B would normally get a widget within a few percent of the best price, and they forgot that their simplification wasn't true.

This incredibly simple and obvious example is nevertheless a good example of why you can't fix everything in the real world by going online and saying "FREE MARKET ECONOMY" loudly.

After this conversation, there are a few possible results.

1. If it's a really small issue, or big and important but sufficiently rare, everyone will have to put up with it (if you're buying a penny sweet, you don't care, if you're buying a house, there's little way to stop people being tempted to, or accidentally, doing this, you just have to accept some unfortunate overhead).

2. Everyone will band together and agree that they won't put up with it. B will say "yes, ok, you tricked me, but then I'm not going to buy from you even if it puts me out, and I'm going to warn everyone else too" and everyone will refuse to buy from A unless they're honest. And there will be some defectors, but in general, A will be blackmailed into honesty. This always happens to some extent, the question is to what threshhold people will put up with it.

3. It's so widespread and hard to measure that people (via government) make it illegal.

The same applies significantly to the concept of a worker's union or other collective bargaining, or to anti-monopoly laws, etc. Yes, if it were trivial to set up a competing company to a monopoly, monopolies wouldn't be a problem. But it really isn't which means it really is.

A: If you don't like it, then leave. Hah!
B: Hmmm... I don't think I can put up with it. Are you going to start giving a fair [price/wage/contract] or shall I leave.
A: OK, I'll give you a better offer by tomorrow.
B: OK...
A: Ha! Tricked you! There's no better offer. I was lying.
B: Gah! Then I'll leave.
A: OK, I'll give a better offer TOMORROW. I'm sorry. I totally repent. And setting up a new company/finding a new job/etc is SO much work.
B: OK, maybe...
A: TRICKED YOU AGAIN. OK, but tomorrow I really mean it...
B: Fuck you. *leaves to find replacement-A*
B: *replacement-A is nearly finished*
A: OK, well, now I'll give you an actually reasonable offer, although not as good as you like. After all, it's ridiculous to have TWO As even if you know I'm evil and you've already done 90% of the work on replacement-A.
Internet person: B IS SO STUPID. ASSUMING THEY CAN START A NEW COMPANY, FIND A NEW JOB, OR WHATEVER INSTANTLY FOR NO EFFORT, WHY WOULD THEY EVER PUT UP WITH ANYTHING THEY THOUGHT WAS UNFAIR FOR MORE THAN A SECOND? I AM A THROBBING SUPERMAN AND MY LIFE IS PERFECT AND EVERYONE WHO LIVES IN THE REAL WORLD IS AN IDIOT!

This is why, in many situations and many people's lives, there are problems that can't be instantly fixed. You have to know when they're too much. But instantly quitting in pique at any problem is probably too much.

It is much, much, better for EVERYONE if people recognise an impossible situation IN ADVANCE and make steps to compromise. In the real world, instead of relying on the potential threat of a theoretical competitor (that's an insane amount of work and the monopoly may be able to crush), it's better to persuade them that if things get that bad then people will go that much trouble, and that it's in their own best interests to transact fairly now.

Likewise, if the cost to an employee of finding a new job is significantly more than the cost of the company of finding a new employee (especially if, say, it's the only employer in the area) (or the reverse), or if the employer has multiple employees and can survive on 90% of them for six months (which is usually the case), then any individual employee can be intimidated by the company. The company can offer minimum survival wages, and they're still better than quitting and starving, so the company has all the power. However, the company certainly can't survive without ANY of the employees, so if the employees all bargain TOGETHER, they have as much power as the company.

This is why unions exist in the first place. It's not BREAKING the free market -- it's ENABLING the free market.

(Of course, the thread I was reacting to also had many examples of unions which had themselves become ridiculous counterproductive bureaucratic or downright evil, so it's not that "unions are always good" it's that "the concept of collective bargaining fulfils a necessary function in many situation".)

But many people seem to resist any sort of compromise at all. Yes, compromise can lead to bad things, but it can also lead to a fair division, where demonstrating each party's strength of position and committedness facilitates finding a compromise that might be found in a free market, but without all of the stabbing each other in the back manoeuvring first. Having settings between "everything's perfect" and "blow up the world" is probably good.