Where is the Libertarian explosion coming from?

Laminations · 11-05-2010 12:13pm

Correction. We pay the government (in taxes) to pay for such things as education. Why? because as a society we think these things are important, so even if you dont have kids, these things remain important for the society in which you live. And society exists whether libertarians like it or not. If you dont think societal values are important, either make a case or leave.

Permabear · 11-05-2010 12:18pm

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Laminations · 11-05-2010 12:23pm

Really? That bizarre proposal is the only solution you see? You dont see free primary education and targeted child benefit as solutions to the inequality of opportunities that exist as birthrights?
Callous is the best word I can think of to describe libertarians.

'Thats just tough' should be your mantra.

Amhran Nua · 11-05-2010 12:25pm

So you're holding up the poor areas of Ghana and Kenya as the model to follow now? I've done some work with similar schools in the Philippines, what you have is families beggaring themselves to put one child through school, and assuming that child succeeds, they spend the rest of their lives keeping their family at approximately the same level they were at before, unless they get very lucky. Yes, socialised education is a good thing.

Exile 1798 · 11-05-2010 12:26pm

In poor areas of Ireland, the UK, US, Spain, Italy, Australia, Canada, France ect 99% of children attend schools, both private and public.

Permabear · 11-05-2010 12:29pm

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Permabear · 11-05-2010 12:39pm

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Eliot Rosewater · 11-05-2010 12:40pm

I never denied the existance of society, did I? I merely question the sytem whereby people are forced to partake in it.

And leave? Where to, exactly?

The reason I ignored the meaningful points made by people such as Amhran Nua was because thre thread was smoothered by the other kind of fud. It wasn't exactly a framework for productive debate.

You should really read what I have said here before making such declarations.

Akrasia · 11-05-2010 12:41pm

That is an extremist ideology that I am glad would never ever be fully implemented.

What use is 'liberty' if you are born to a family with absolutley no opportunity to fulfil your potential.

The kind of repression that the propertyless would experience in a libertarian society would be worse than all but the most totalitarian state, certainly far far worse than life in a modern social democracy.

I can not understand why anyone would be a principled libertarian when those principles would make the world a much worse place to live in under practically every measure I can think of.

Laminations · 11-05-2010 12:42pm

Families, communities.... go on, if you keep going you'll get to a 'group of interacting organisms' at the level of society and you'll see we have some responsibility for each others mutual welfare.... and if you keep going you'll see we are all members of the human race, sharing one planet with a duty of care to each other and the environment. Duty ought be a stictly moral issue but as libertarians often do in their naiveity, they confuse ought with is, and duty is not always done out of a moral imperative therefore there has been (and remains) a need to have legal duties. Governments merely act to formalise values/traditions/duties of groupings of people into laws.

Valmont · 11-05-2010 12:43pm

For anyone that is interested, look no further than article 45.

Laminations · 11-05-2010 12:43pm

To give a libertarian answer. Thats not my problem.

Laminations · 11-05-2010 12:46pm

Sorry this seems quite a fundamental flaw in the extreme dogmatic ideology? This flaw will always exist, even in the fantasy world of Star Trek this flaw exists. So either you remain libertarian with this giant flaw poking from your face or you agree that you are simply liberal, and acknowlrdge the all-seeing, all-knowing market cannot solve everything.

Permabear · 11-05-2010 12:47pm

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Scofflaw · 11-05-2010 12:47pm

We're not, really - we just like pointing out that the doctrine has unpleasant results and is intellectually vacuous, both of of which are features libertarians necessarily ignore.

I favour liberty, but I'm not stupid enough to believe that it trumps everything else.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Laminations · 11-05-2010 12:49pm

He will never answer that question, because it doesn't affect him, he has had opportunity, he had good parents, he has gotten an education, other peoples problems do not concern him. Hence, callous.

BluePlanet · 11-05-2010 12:50pm

Poor example.
Private schools operating here have an unfair competitive advantage.
Namely that is the STATE that is paying the teachers wages.
Private schools are just another coporate welfare scheme.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0427/1224269158554.html

Permabear · 11-05-2010 12:52pm

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Laminations · 11-05-2010 12:54pm

Just on the idiotic notion that liberty trumps all else.

DF, you have a daughter, do you let her freely play in the traffic? Or do you recognise that her security trumps her liberty. Do you let her decide where she goes to school or what she learns.

'Today daddy I want to learn what is happening with Sporticus in Lazytown'

Or do you accept that her education trumps her liberty? And that in the long run, an education will maximise her liberty?

Eliot Rosewater · 11-05-2010 12:55pm

So with the one hand you're berating me for not engaging with people, and with the other your contributing stuff like this.

My problem isn't with the market; my problem is that I percieve a lack of responsibility and planning ahead in people in general. A reluctance to save up for their child's education, for example, or to ensure that they're financially stable before they have a child. Stuff like that.

Libertarianism is an ideal. I've never suggested that that ideal be placed upon an unwilling population. I think elements of it could be introduced succesfully in Ireland, creating a balance between libertarianism and what we have now. I'm not the big bad evil person ye've made me out to be!

Laminations · 11-05-2010 12:55pm

Spot on. And I'd be in favour of removing state aid to private fee-paying schools for trust fund kids.

Permabear · 11-05-2010 12:56pm

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Laminations · 11-05-2010 12:57pm

No man is an Island

We are interacting and inter-reliant whether that suits your mad ideology or not

Amhran Nua · 11-05-2010 12:57pm

And in a privatised system, the employer holds the coercive ability.

This is almost physically painful. The state isn't an alien entity, the state is a group of people elected by the rest of the people to look after their pooled resources. Your inability to grasp not only the basic reality of the way society works, but in fact the basic underpinnings of your own philosophy (it had to be pointed out to you at one stage that austrian economics doesn't use empirical evidence, the scientific method, or mathematics, nor does it make falsifiable predictions), richly justifies the general disgust that is being expressed in this thread

You're pushing voodoo in the physics forum, but as Churchill put it, a zealot is one who will change neither his mind nor the subject.

Akrasia · 11-05-2010 12:58pm

All of those things are well and good (although I think you seriously over estimate the ability of actuaries to properly account for the correct level of risk) but none of them detract from the main point that the belief that the financial sector thought they had insured their own risk would have led them to act recklessly without ever having to even consider that there might be a governemnt bail out somewhere in the future. The market failed, all these insurance products were fraudulent, they did not have enough capital to meet the risks they were insuring, and the premiums that they took in were being 'invested' in assets that were vulnerable to collapse in exactly the same scenario that would also mean they would be needed to pay claims.

The psychological problem of moral hazard is excessive risk taking in the belief that your risks are covered by others. The financial collapse was a result of excessive risk taking and inadequate oversight/regulation to ensure that all the agents had the ability to meet their obligations. The libertarian position is that the only moral hazard worth talking about is the mere existence of governments that would bail out the banks if everything went tits up.

That is just a cop-out. the fundamental problems were with the market failiures and the lack of regulation, both of these are serious problems for libertarian theory

"The government" pays for these things because the people fought tooth and nail over generations for these social protections to be implemented. Because we choose to live in a compassionate society that tries to protect those who have made bad or unlucky decisions, or have been struck down with unforseen circumstances. For example,a young family for example, would have very very little chance of having enough savings built up to cover the costs of giving birth to a child with severe physical or mental disability requiring life long care. This is the kind of situation that affects tens of thousands of families in Ireland and millions around the world. We choose to support social welfare and support services because that is the kind of society we would like to be a part of.

Amhran Nua · 11-05-2010 1:01pm

So you're linking to an article from 2005, the peak of the bubble, saying that private school enrolments were increasing. BMW purchases were increasing at the same time; however I find this entire article to be fairly amusing, the little of it that can be seen, since we have other articles claiming that public schools are on the verge of collapse due to an influx of recent arrivals to the country.

Permabear · 11-05-2010 1:01pm

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Sleepy · 11-05-2010 1:05pm

Not sure if I'd be one of those the OP referenced when speaking about Libertarians on this forum. I agree with the Libertarians on many issues but wouldn't label myself as one as I'd see the equal provision of at least secondary education and health care to all citizens as a primary duty of a state. An equitable society requires an even playing field where accident of birth shouldn't determine one's ability to make something of oneself imho.

I tend to side with Libertarian views on size and scale of government though and it's for the reason that the state has proven itself so utterly incompetent in areas of resource allocation and utilisation.

Our political system is fundamentally broken imo and those with the power to fix it are those that benefit most from it being broken.

Combine an incompetent government (and opposition) with such a system that, unless changed by those people with no incentive to change it, and is it any wonder you'll see a rise in idealogies that espouse little or no government?

Zombrex · 11-05-2010 1:05pm

I wonder how many would agree if one of these schools went bankrupt and 2,000 children were kicked out onto the street facing an uncertain educational future. Saying ah well thats just the market then isn't going to give your son or daughter an education.

Just like the bank problems the free market only works when it works. When it fails society crumbles and government takes up the slack because the government is actually charged with looking after the people where companies are only charged with making money.

The phrase "Too big to fail" is the achilles heal of pure libertarianism. Institutions that cannot fail (health, school, defense, transport, water etc) cannot be put in solely in the free market

Permabear · 11-05-2010 1:06pm

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Permabear · 11-05-2010 1:10pm

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Amhran Nua · 11-05-2010 1:22pm

Bad government doesn't mean all governments are bad, as has been pointed out exhaustively. Just on private schools in Ireland, the majority of these were built recently, you could just as well say there has been a gradual increase over the last hundred years, they receive the same funding from the government as public schools, and apply a further fee on top of that. So much for the free market.

Laminations · 11-05-2010 1:24pm

Nice strawman/false dichotomy. Because we disagree with you does not mean we support either Mary Coughlan or FF. And why are you thanking Sleepy, he has a fundamentally different position to you.

He goes on to express his deep unhappiness with government performance, we are all (bar the die hard FF apologists here) deeply unhappy with government, but we are not as deluded as to think we can privatise absolutely everything and in so doing, maximise our liberty.

Exile 1798 · 11-05-2010 1:24pm

No.

I also don't approve of what Wall Street has been doing to plunge the world economy into recession.

And I'm not going to stone the Fire Fighters attempting to the quell the blaze and let the arsonist off the hook as you would.

What needs to happen is the arsonist needs to be locked up to prevent him from starting more fires. Then we can have a discussion with the Fire Fighters on how to improve their methods and responses.

Laminations · 11-05-2010 1:27pm

Yep. I'd like to see how well private schools would do if they weren't subsidised by the state. The true cost of private education would then be recognised as exorbitant and exclusionary

Permabear · 11-05-2010 1:29pm

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Permabear · 11-05-2010 1:30pm

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Laminations · 11-05-2010 1:32pm

I wish you would

I wouldn't vist you, you know in case I got sick and you simply rolled me off a cliff so I didn't impact in any way on your liberty.....hmmmm, reminds me of the film The Beach, and that film is how I'd imagine a libertarian society ending - one person ruining it for the rest, even if it is after 'the rest' allowed someone to die to stop them spoiling their freedom to enjoy themselves.

Permabear · 11-05-2010 1:34pm

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Laminations · 11-05-2010 1:35pm

Yes its called emigration. Why are you only concerned about your choices? Where is your concern for the limited choices of the disabled? the vulnerable? the needy?

EDIT: and its not about want. I couldn't give a flying f*ck what you want, in the same why you care two hoots about what a poor person wants. Its about your duty as a member of the society. If you can't accept this duty, you should be shown the door.

Permabear · 11-05-2010 1:40pm

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Permabear · 11-05-2010 1:43pm

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Amhran Nua · 11-05-2010 1:46pm

If the government's educational policies are unpopular, people vote to change them. The coercive force you are talking about is the voice of your friends, family, and neighbours.

So you're all in favour of paying for things privately, but when it comes to paying for the infrastructure of the state, roads, streetlights, police protection and so on, which you also use, theres a problem?

There are many ways that society can work. We tried your way back in the middle ages, it was non-optimal.

Yes it did. As I recall you said you weren't aware of any aversion to the scientific theory within that economic system.

So everyone who made money was an adherent to austrian school economics? I certainly remember when the regulation was removed from the market and it collapsed shortly afterwards, regulation whose removal was supported by that idiot Greenspan in the name of your free markets.

Bah, this is an exercise in futility. I won't resort to abuse but what a waste of time, you don't comprehend your own philosophy and you make exceptions to it when it suits you. Just remember that when people stop talking to you, it sometimes just means that you're all alone.

silverharp · 11-05-2010 1:47pm

very good, here is an example of the kind of stuff I was reading back in 2005. Without needing to be a market timer, the general advice was that a crash was baked into the cake, so pay your debts down and buy some gold.

May05

http://www.safehaven.com/article/3010/deflation-is-in-the-cards

Laminations · 11-05-2010 1:47pm

Ok so it averages out at €2,000. Seeing as every man woman and child doesnt attend school, this average would be far higher if school goers had to pay for themselves - upwards of €7,000. So How many median earners could afford that per year to see their child through primary and secondary education??

Sleepy · 11-05-2010 1:48pm

Just speaking for myself but I'd often 'Thank' a post for it's merit in adding something to the conversation. Off the top of my head I've regularly thanked P. Breathnach's posts in topics where we're coming at the topic being discussed from 'different sides'.

Maybe I'm using it wrongly but I don't just see Thanks as a sign of 'I agree with this post', I'd see it more as 'there's merit to what you're saying'.

Akrasia · 11-05-2010 1:50pm

We're not in america. We're in Ireland. American public services are a disaster, not least because there is such a strong 'small government' ideology in the U.S. and they have been starved of resources. If you want to argue that public schooling is not effective, why pick the worst examples, why not pick the best examples of public schooling, (probably somewhere in Scandanavia)

(and then compare that to your best case example of private only schooling in Ghana

)

Laminations · 11-05-2010 1:52pm

You nicely left out the part where I said

People have responsibilities to others within a society in which they live. Those responsibilities ought to be carried out as a moral imperative, such as the volunteerism expounded by libertarians, but the reality (and I've put it in bold because you don't seem to live in it) is that people do not act out of a sense of pure moral obligation and hence we need agreed upon rules. Libertarians confuse ought and is in their naiveity.

Permabear · 11-05-2010 1:55pm

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Laminations · 11-05-2010 1:56pm

Agreed. But if there is merit in what you are saying, and what you said echoes the issues that the rest of us are raising (sorry to burst your bubble but it was nothing new), then Df cannot acknowledge this merit and remain firm in his position. He either accepts that the state should provide basic education and welfare to overcome inequalities of birth or he doesn't. He quite clearly doesn't so he doesn't find merit in your position

Where is the Libertarian explosion coming from?

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