Top earners, means testing etc.. Justified?

Scofflaw · 09-04-2009 3:48pm

That's a humorous idea - local communities in poor rural areas are also most likely to have hard-to-maintain roads (bogland, mountain) with large distances between communities, while wealthy gated communities won't have to maintain anything except a bit of driveway. Wealthier communities would have good roads, attracting businesses and keeping the prosperous prosperous, while poor communities wouldn't.

As usual - the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Still, after a while, nobody would be able to reach poor remote communities by road, so I suppose the problem would be tucked neatly out of sight, and I guess the wealthy business communities might pay to have good roads through poor areas sometimes, as long as there weren't too many access routes onto them.

bleh,
Scofflaw

thebman · 09-04-2009 3:51pm

Those aren't problems with state education. Private education could do the same thing to get more people to go to their schools/colleges.

It is a problem of the system that needs to be tackled. I think it would be easier to tackle the problem in a public system than private because it isn't always practical to go to the best school that is 200 miles away anyway.

That's great but they are still there for you if you need them. Your choice not to use them and find your own alternative. As you have said, your contributing less to tax anyway so you can't really complain about all the tax you pay since most of the tax you pay is going to fund the things you do still use like the roads and electricity network.

Because it isn't viable in many areas so they have the choice of high price and reasonable road or really crap road, low prices and possible law suits closing them down for their poor quality road damaging peoples cars.

Toll roads need an integrated system to function efficiently or you have to stop all the time to pay in cash (slows you down and burns a lot of fuel). Since there is no state in your system, there is no centralised system. You can't have an integrated ticketing system. Even if you could, since there is no state, prices for each toll wouldn't be displayed and since there is no justification for two roads to the same location, you'd end up with expensive monopolies all over the place with extortionate prices. The reason this didn't happy before is people didn't have to travel long distances all the time. Now you have to go miles to the nearest shop, post office, hospital etc... so the system won't work today even if it has worked in the past.

Society has changed substantially since then.

Why would he sell them cheaper when he can make a massive profit off a few sales each day and do less work for the same money? That is the general attitude in this country especially. Hell when pub trade falls, they increase their prices to make up the difference not lower prices.

Anyway if he did that the expensive seller could just lower his prices temporarily, even sell at a loss to kill the cheaper seller off and then go back to charging high prices again since he'd have cushion of high profit margin. The ability to kill off the cheaper buyer would make everyone else think twice about trying the same trick.

RealityCheck · 09-04-2009 3:53pm

If that idea was to be a runner it would have to be subsidised.
You could also end up with a lot of corruption as Tom the chairman of the community council might decide that his dead end bog road is more important than more viable roads in the area. You would end up with lots of local disputes.
Also the local communities are more likely to get ripped off by private road contractors.

Permabear · 09-04-2009 4:59pm

This post has been deleted.

Scofflaw · 09-04-2009 5:27pm

It isn't a desirable result, but it's something that would not only happen under the system you propose, but be locked in. That makes yours the worse system when it works, when compared to when the other system doesn't.

Well, look at the rest of the abstract:

I don't have any problem at all with local communities assuming responsibility for the roads "based on a well-structured institutional framework for private ownership of low-volume roads that includes a law on private roads and financial and technical incentives" - but that's not what you have proposed. You have proposed a turnpike system of privatised roads - the Swedish success is irrelevant to your ideas, and addresses none of my objections to your ideas.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear · 09-04-2009 5:47pm

This post has been deleted.

Scofflaw · 09-04-2009 6:53pm

I can see that you see that - unfortunately I can't see any basis other than belief for your belief. That is the the problem I eventually find I have with all libertarians - they say "it will all work out beautifully, because we know that it will work out beautifully, and nobody can say it won't because it's never really been tried, but this looks a bit similar so we'll chalk it up as a success for the way we believe things will work".

Libertarians, in my experience, simply can't see that there's any gap between their theories and reality, which makes argument fruitless. Libertarian theories appear, by their nature, to be unfalsifiable.

cordially,
Scofflaw

RealityCheck · 09-04-2009 7:16pm

Exactly. Many of the Privatisation notions are based upon pure theory. They are difficult to operate and manage in the real world. The potential for total failure is too high.

silverharp · 09-04-2009 7:33pm

there is nothing wrong with failure , that is one of the principles of capitalism. if failure isnt a possibily you end up with stagnation and lack of innovation.

RealityCheck · 09-04-2009 7:53pm

Of course, thats the reason why all the dodgy banks across the globe were allowed fail :rolleyes: That is just more theory.
Your point about stagnation and lack of innovation is correct. That is why I think this recession/depression wont be ending in a hurry.

Scofflaw · 09-04-2009 9:46pm

Um, no - there's nothing wrong with a business failing, and that is indeed one of the principles of market capitalism. That isn't the same thing as an unsuccessful privatisation at all.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear · 09-04-2009 11:19pm

This post has been deleted.

Scofflaw · 10-04-2009 12:33am

Well, now, I call libertarian thinking nineteenth century thinking as an insult, but if you're prepared to consider that period as being dominated by libertarian economic theories, then you don't really need to hear my 'alternative history' of it. While I might occasionally think the redistributive and statist tendencies in modern society go a little too far, I don't have any doubts whatsoever on the absolutely dire results of the economic and social theories of that period.

It's bizarre, though, that libertarians detest the "coercion" of the state, yet wish to return us to a period where the state relied on the pretty regular use of troops against the populace. I presume most of you simply don't think of yourselves as the kind of people who the troops would be used against.

Hm. The problem there is that it wasn't the welfare system, or the income tax system, that suddenly exploded, but the much more "liberal", market-driven, bonus-oriented, and comparatively de-regulated financial sector. So while you're welcome to personally see that as evidence of the "failure of social democracy", I frankly think the guys selling snake oil in the bottles marked "failure of liberal capitalism" will probably have more buyers - not that either of you are right, or are doing anything other than reflexively attributing the bad stuff to the things you respectively always attribute bad stuff to, and holding out the solution that each of you respectively always hold out to everything.

cordially,
Scofflaw

silverharp · 10-04-2009 6:05am

Roll the clock back to 2001 please in the US , or back further to LTCM. To put it simply if the bailout mentality hadnt been used back then the system woulnt be in this mess. Gov. and central bank policy was not to let recessions happen (snake oil at its best) , the answer to the correction was to pump excess money into the economy and remember the phrase " the Greenspan put" that was basically a green light for the finance industry to lever up and go nuts.
This mess is very much a failure of big gov. The US gov made the same mistakes as Ireland , for instance making it public policy to get people into their own homes at any price when as can be seen today thats not always a good thing.

Scofflaw · 10-04-2009 10:19am

I'm hardly disagreeing with the idea that some governments made extremely poor policy choices starting in about 2001 - indeed, as you say, in particular the choice to "avoid" what was clearly a structural recession by blowing up an interest and asset bubble of astonishing proportions was disastrously stupid.

So far so good - but then we find that the Marxists claim that this shows the failure of liberal capitalism, the libertarians claim it shows the failure of social democracy, the Greens claim it shows the failure of consumption-driven economics, the neo-liberals claim it shows the failure of regulation, the racists claim it shows the failure of 'mass immigration', the eurosceptics say it shows the failure of the EU, the god-squad claims it shows that godlessness doesn't pay....

...in short, everyone has taken it as (a) proof of the failure of something they don't like, and (b) by corollary, proof that things would be better if their preferred way of doing things were substituted.

It would be more believable if everyone wasn't doing it.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear · 10-04-2009 11:21am

This post has been deleted.

Permabear · 10-04-2009 11:41am

This post has been deleted.

silverharp · 10-04-2009 1:02pm

I appreciate that you see the policy failings in the US for what they were.

I had a quick look at the 2007 Manifesto for the greens , from a financial point of view they seem to be worried that interest rates were to high. lol

Other then that stuff to do with energy policy and spatial policy , I dont see any evidence that they were overly concerned with the way the country was been run. If they are crowing now , I see no basis for it

http://www.greenparty.ie/en/about/party_archives/election_2007/manifesto_2007/manifesto

Banks and Financial Services
Ireland has one of the highest interest rates in the
Eurozone. We will implement the recommendations of
the Competition Authority to ensure that customers
are given accurate, reliable and understandable
information on alternative banking products.
The Green Party will:
• reform legislation to make the Financial Regulator
and the Competition Authority more accountable;
• grant greater powers to investigate, regulate prices,
lift entry barriers and penalise malpractices;
• appoint a Registrar of Credit Unions as an
independent officer with a view to increasing credit
union penetration of the financial services market.

Scofflaw · 10-04-2009 2:14pm

That's right.

Well, that's a nice try, but I'm not claiming the "impossibility of objectivity" - I'm saying that none of those groups have bothered to provide any objectivity. In most cases they also appear to be incapable of even recognising what would be involved in doing so.

I'm not sure how to respond to that except by laughing. Are you really really trying to claim that it was the momentum provided by the nineteenth century that gave us the advances of the twentieth? What rot. What utter drivel. The rate of advance in the nineteenth century was undoubtedly unprecedented compared to the equally libertarian period before it, but the rate of scientific advance per decade now outstrips quite comfortably that of the entire nineteenth century - if that were "momentum", it would be declining, not accelerating - an acceleration that has largely gone hand in hand with increased social democracy. There's even a causative mechanism there - the huge expansion in educational opportunities that resulted from the social changes.

I'm not going to ask whether you honestly believe this dreck, because the hilarious thing is that you clearly do! You also believe that it's a rational belief - but Creationists believe that theirs is a rational belief, so that doesn't get us anywhere either.

laughing,
Scofflaw

Permabear · 10-04-2009 3:00pm

This post has been deleted.

Scofflaw · 10-04-2009 4:16pm

Ah, you'll see the world differently once you have kids. Libertarianism makes perfect sense when you don't really need to engage with the world.

cordially,
Scofflaw

silverharp · 10-04-2009 5:43pm

Where have you read that libertarians dont want to engage with the world? Having kids has made me more scared that they will pay the price for the arrogant way this country and others have been led. I would hold my head in shame if I passed on debt to kids yet this is policy using the "in the long run we are all dead logic"

Permabear · 11-04-2009 12:51am

This post has been deleted.

Permabear · 11-04-2009 1:05am

This post has been deleted.

silverharp · 11-04-2009 9:47am

Austrian economics and libertariansim aside , if something has lies build into the core of system then feel free to throw bricks at it or as least watch out and prepare for when it fails. The lies as I see it are inflation which is a form of theft that also encourages speculation over work and investment, moral hazzard in various guises , corruption based on state monopolies false promises based on ponzi style policies and lack on choice in areas like healthcare and education.
This global crash is probably 30 or 40 years in the making , that is plenty of time for nonsense politics and economic polices to be accepted as normal and sustainable. lol

Permabear · 11-04-2009 10:42am

This post has been deleted.

thebman · 11-04-2009 11:01am

I don't think anybodies minds are being changed by the discussion so I don't really think there is a winning or losing end of the argument.

It is easy to point at the failings of an existing system and say that a theoretical system will solve all of societies problems when it has never been tried in a modern society so there is no evidence of failures or successes to back it up.

Anytime anybody proposes something that doesn't work in a Libertarian system, you can just say whatever you like and come back with something which would most likely never work if implemented (but has the benefit of never having being implemented so nobody can point to a failed example) or would never happen in the first place.

The whole thing will never happen in the first place IMO. I don't think we will ever have a Liberterian society. I don't think it is what the people want so I don't think we'll ever have it.

Permabear · 11-04-2009 12:20pm

This post has been deleted.

Scofflaw · 11-04-2009 2:23pm

You haven't put forward an argument (or arguments) for me to be on the losing end of - instead you've put forward a belief position. I have accepted that you believe in your belief position - there's not much more I can do. I gave up on the great big Creationist thread over in the Religion forum because of their stubborn refusal to move out of the nineteenth century or to accept any evidence that contradicts their beliefs - I see no point in taking up those particular cudgels all over again here. Just like them, you are welcome to regard yourself as having won the discussion.

cordially,
Scofflaw

thebman · 11-04-2009 3:13pm

Of course we have conclusive proof as far as your concerned. Whenever anything goes well, you attribute it to the free market working and whenever something goes wrong, it is the "welfare state's" fault.

I remain unconvinced.

Permabear · 11-04-2009 3:40pm

This post has been deleted.

Scofflaw · 11-04-2009 3:50pm

Any reading of nineteenth century history - however brief - will illustrate the extent to which soldiery was used either successfully (as in England) or unsuccessfully (everywhere else) against the populace as a result of the appalling inequities in the then-current social/economic systems. Nowhere did the liberal state succeed in resisting the movement to social democracy.

Of course, I'm sure you just chalk that up to the "tyranny of the majority" - and no greater illustration of the depth of the gulf between the libertarian notion of "fairness" and that of the rest of humanity is required. That gulf is unbridgeable by argument in either direction.

The parallel is obvious to anyone who is neither a Creationist nor a libertarian.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear · 11-04-2009 7:39pm

This post has been deleted.

Scofflaw · 11-04-2009 10:02pm

And I was assuming your question was rhetorical - any history of the period will cover them, unless libertarians have special editions that leave them out - look up Chartism, Luddites, the Peterloo Massacre, the Reform Bill, and so on. Now that's England, where suppression went hand in hand with reform, and was successful in defusing the situation. Everywhere else, the suppression was eventually unsuccessful, but otherwise followed the same pattern.

Cavalry charge, German riots in Leipzig, 1892

How do you not know this stuff? If you're unaware of the use of state repression in the "Liberal" Victorian period, it's clear that your view of it as some kind of utopia is based on a profound ignorance.

Actually, the industrialisation of warfare was already producing far more deadly wars before the end of the liberal period - and your attempt to claim that it was social democracy that produced it rather falls in the face of the way that yet further increases in social democracy have produced no further wars. It would be nice, though, if you even attempted to link the two causally, as opposed to simply stating an extremely contentious claim as if it were a fact.

As to Ireland, it has become prosperous almost exactly as it has moved towards social democracy and away from a church-dominated corporatist state. Again, since you're simply stating your claim as a fact, I'll simply say you're wrong and leave it at that - argument would require refuting, but claiming requires mere rebuttal.

Slavery was not "virtually wiped out" during the liberal period - it was industrialised during the early liberal period, and slowly made illegal by the efforts of interfering busybodies, who eventually made a sufficient nuisance of themselves that the state repressed it, contrary - as people pointed out at the time - to the freedom of trade.

You're capable of believing that the outlawing of slavery was a result of liberalism. I think that tells us everything we need to know, including why you cannot see the parallel.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear · 11-04-2009 11:57pm

This post has been deleted.

Scofflaw · 12-04-2009 12:22am

Well, I've seen people deliberately miss the point before, but not by quite such a wide margin. Did it take you long to come up with that particular angle?

I know what you wrote. I also know that you didn't bother to offer any argument to support it, so I just dismissed it. I can do it again if you like.

The nineteenth century - so peaceful. Not in any way full of wars at all.

Yup.

Look, I'm very sorry I'm not engaging with you, but I can't take you seriously. The idea that returning us to a nineteenth century socio-economic system would produce a juster, fairer, more prosperous and peaceful world is...well, let's start with amazing. That someone is prepared to espouse such a view in public while offering no better argument in support of it than that the nineteenth century was juster, fairer, more prosperous and peaceful than today is...well, let's move up to incredible.

I've always appreciated the line "those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it", but never expected to find someone urging people to follow it.

cordially,
Scofflaw

silverharp · 12-04-2009 8:05am

Here is a question. If people are generally are willing to live with the current system , be it in the US or here , do they have a right to be angry now? we have to assume they understand the moral hazzard and inefficiencies built into the system and that there must be consequences? I assume smokers dont get angry with cigarette companies if they get ill , they understand what they have signed up to.

trickymickey · 12-04-2009 8:12am

seems like the commies are on the rise again..people with wealth create jobs and the more jobs they create the less tax they should pay and the bleeding hearts and begrugder go vote for joe higgins next time around then we will be all equal.

Scofflaw · 12-04-2009 10:44am

They have a right to get angry because the understanding is that we will accept a tax on our effort as long as that tax is then spent wisely. We are, if you like, in the position of people in a shared building who are paying a management company to maintain the property. We don't like it, but we accept that the alternative is worse...but we've just discovered at the first winter storm that the roof has not been maintained, the gutters and drains not cleared - and the management company is asking us to cough up more money to pay for those things.

I get the following mini budget summary from a friend who is a tax advisor:

The assumption, by the way, that those who are not libertarians have signed away their rights to be angry with the inefficiencies and moral hazards in the system argues a deep but unsurprising incomprehension of anyone else's point of view.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear · 12-04-2009 11:11am

This post has been deleted.

Scofflaw · 12-04-2009 11:22am

You're claiming that social unrest in the nineteenth century (in England) was for greater libertarianism, yet the outcome of it - as we can observe - was greater social democracy.

How do you go about reconciling those two things, out of (mild) interest? And have you read out beyond England?

Ok.[/QUOTE]

Well, you've done it again.

amused,
Scofflaw

Permabear · 12-04-2009 12:13pm

This post has been deleted.

Scofflaw · 12-04-2009 12:45pm

I don't think anyone can realistically claim that the agitation in favour of state interference in things like working conditions and poverty were 'liberal agitation'.

So the Jarrow Marchers - for example - were in search of psychological comfort?

Well, I was going to say that I was interested to see how deep the rabbit-hole goes, but I'm aware you're simply repeating the standard historical analyses offered by libertarian historians, who appear to be the only ones you're prepared to consider.

While many of the social reformers of the nineteenth century were undoubtedly Benthamites who believed in statist intervention as an instrument of social control, to argue that this is all there was to the movement to social democracy, and that the people were thereby somehow tricked out of a situation in which they were really better off, requires a level of delusion similar - again - to those who see geology as the result of the Biblical Flood. To argue that the movement to social democracy was driven by a psychological need for a paternal state rather than grinding poverty, labour exploitation, gross social and legal inequity, and a repressive state apparatus in the hands of the wealthy liberal minority, is, frankly, monstrous. Fortunately, I doubt anyone will buy that snake oil - but no doubt you'll be able to hold enough snake oil parties amongst yourselves to keep the flame alive.

cordially,
Scofflaw

LoveDucati2 · 12-04-2009 12:54pm

Exactly, any country that sterilises people with a low IQ gets my vote.
They clearly could see how to improve society.

Think of all the scumbags that would never have been born here, and legions of generational dole scum would not exist.

Permabear · 12-04-2009 1:10pm

This post has been deleted.

Scofflaw · 12-04-2009 1:17pm

I doubt any "historian of liberalism" is reliable. Would it not be more sensible to discover liberalism through a general history of its times?

What a waste of time it was me reading all those history books. I should just have asked you.

Er, no - does that form part of your mythology?

cordially,
Scofflaw

LoveDucati2 · 12-04-2009 1:37pm

This is the real reason why Ireland is destroyed.

As an accountant I have watching this deterioration happen since 2003 and I have had to put up with ignorant co-workers shouting ne down and telling me I was mad, that nothing bad was coming. Now the same people are experts.

Majority of Irish people are f*ckin idiots.

Permabear · 12-04-2009 2:16pm

This post has been deleted.

Scofflaw · 12-04-2009 2:46pm

I explained that quite some way back. At no point have I seen any arguments offered as to why libertarianism works, or why its alternative history is correct. I don't see any reason for me to be running about offering arguments against what are simply unfounded claims on your part.

cordially,
Scofflaw

silverharp · 12-04-2009 3:54pm

I'd take the mgt. company model any day , if extreme free market is 0 on a scale of 10 , your analogy is about 2 , the mgt co doesnt have the power to borrow and the mgt co isnt incentivising poor economic and other behaviour.

I am honestly scratching my head here , it appears that the state and the majority of people have signed up for a delusional status quo. I can demonstrate that economic policy and monetary policy have serious flaws that undermine the stability of the system to the extent that from a cost benefit analysis is hard to defend, if there is no desire to change the system then who exactly has a right to complain. If on the other hand "dodgy" economics has followed dubious micro managing of economic affairs then there maybe hope that real reform will eventually come however it looks like the system needs to break before and real change will occur.
if "they" manage to pull this out of the fire , I'll tip my hat to them but i am not optimistic.

Top earners, means testing etc.. Justified?

Comments