Libertarian smackdown

Radley Balko and Pejman Yousefzadeh have dueling articles in Tech Central Station over whether the Do Not Call registry -- about which I've posted here -- is consistent with the libertarian credo. Start off with Yousefzadeh's original TCS essay. Then move onto Balko's rejoinder essay. Then check out Pejman's response to Radley, and Radley's responses to his critics. If you checked my original post, you'll see I'm torn on this one. I'll post my thoughts after reading everything I just assigned. UPDATE: OK, I've read everything, including this Julian Sanchez post, and Yousefzadeh wins by KO. I'll explain why sometime this weekend. Hint: it has something to do with Ronald Coase. ANOTHER UPDATE: Well, this is what I get for procrastinating -- "pj"'s comment below summarizes what I was going to say in a more pithy way than I could have devised. The problem here is that because of the absence of well-defined property rights, the issue is a distributional one. Either the telemarketers are assigned the property right of being able to make automated calls, or the individual consumer is assigned the property right of blocking unwanted calls. I have no problem whatsoever with the consumer receiving this particular property right, particularly given the blackmail problems associated with allocating the property right to producers. Another fact, which neither Balko or Yousefzadeh mention, tips me in favor of the registry: unless one believes that consumers are irrational or have time-inconsistent preferences, the registry should be a Pareto-optimizing move. The consumers who don't want the service of unsolicited offers don't get it by signing up. The producers, are also provided valuable information. They are told which calls would be completely unproductive. Even if the cost of making the calls is minimal, it's still greater than zero -- ergo, a profit-maximizing producer should be glad to receive this information as a way to cut costs. Of course, this raises an interesting theoretical question: if the government merely informed the telemarketing industry who had signed up for the do-not-call registry, but provided no sanctions for making calls to those individuals, would the telemarketers still comply? I suspect not, because the telemarketers believe they could still extract a high-enough yield to warrant the costs. That action, however, suggests that these firms believe they could override an individual's prior choice -- and that bothers the hell out of me. In the end, any theory of libertarianism must place great confidence in the ability of individuals to make choices that will maximize their self-interest. Balko's argument regarding the nanny state violates that assumption for me. LAST UPDATE: A final hat tip to Balko for linking to all of the negative reaction he's got while still sticking to his guns.