Irish Tea party movement?

Permabear · 19-08-2010 11:11AM

This post has been deleted.

oceanclub · 19-08-2010 11:14AM

The original poster also said "cannot". I know libertarianism doesn't acknowledge the existence of the poor, but they are out there.

P.

Laminations · 19-08-2010 11:20AM

Grand. So maybe you have a legitimate argument for a revision of our welfare system, I would agree this needs to be looked at to return the state to it's role as an helpful enabler to the disadvantaged. But how does any of that give credence to you wanting to see the state removed from education? In a Market the aim is to maximise profit, if you are selling apples you sell the good ones at a premium and the bad ones are sold at a discount or thrown away. Private education would overlook the disadvantaged or give them a substandard education

oceanclub · 19-08-2010 11:26AM

I would have thought we have a perfect example of how the mythical free market doesn't work - the collapse of the banking sector due to sheer greed, where profits were maximised at the expense of long-term security. Shareholders and executives, rather than acting rationally, acted irrationally like - shock - humans are often prone to do.

Even Alan Greenspan, a literal disciple of Ayn Rand(1), now acknowledges he was wrong and that regulation is needed:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/10/25-6

As Dawkins pointed out last night - look at faith schools. Parents don't choose these out of any rational basis; they choose them for simply tribal purposes.

P.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ayn_Rand_Collective#The_Collective

Permabear · 19-08-2010 11:31AM

This post has been deleted.

oceanclub · 19-08-2010 11:35AM

Sorry, but when you talk like this, you sound more like a religious fundamentalist than any serious political student. You do realise that the condition of humanity for most of history was less government, not more? Only in this century have most people even been taxed; income tax was only introduced in the UK in 1842, and only for a small majority til after WW1.

For most of history, people did lead relatively libertarian lives. And guess what? The vast majority were grindingly poor, and a few at the top were rich.

No, it's perhaps more "Oh, you just want to take away welfare and services and assume that the mythical "invisible hand" will take care of all the poor's needs, even though this has never happened in history."

The problem with both libertarianism, as with communism, is that they both have views of human nature that simply don't exist.

P.

Laminations · 19-08-2010 11:36AM

Firstly, poor people are not caricatures, they exist in real life. Secondly is the above supposition in any way evidence-based or is it as usual, libertarian wishful thinking?

Scofflaw · 19-08-2010 11:40AM

I could retype from my copy of "Fall of the Roman Empire", or "the Later Roman Empire", or "Byzantium", or "History of the Greek World", or "Venice", or "Georgian England", or...or any one of a hundred others - but Wiki is easier for a cut and paste, and I did say we were starting with the basics.

Which, as I'm sure you're aware from your historical reading, is a very high level of educational attainment.

A non-sequitur, I'm afraid.

It sounds as if what I'm recommending to you is to re-read your sources more critically, and read a little more widely and a little more recently - Marrou you should probably re-read with the appreciation that he himself is self-consciously part of an élite and discusses only the élite, as is common for history books written half a century ago. Marrou's interest is the education received by those who were educated, not in who was educated and who was not - the latter clearly didn't deserve it anyway.

If you can find in either of your sources any claim that education in pre-modern societies served the rich and poor alike, or indeed that education was even felt to be something the poor should have (and by poor I mean the lower social classes, rather than citizen families fallen on hard times), I'd be interested to see it. Personally, I can see even in a brief skim through Marrou the very clear implication that education was the mark of the citizen only - which in any case we know from other sources, but Marrou is not much interested in the issue.

In general, you'll find that history written in any of the previous generations is going to give you a slightly distorted picture of the pre-modern world. At the time, historical analysis concerned itself largely with what ancient societies concerned themselves with - the people who mattered, the people the ancient authors wrote about, since their information came largely form the literary sources. Not, that is, women, slaves, or anyone who had to work for a living - not, in fact, an estimated 99% of the population. What mattered were those who appeared on the stage of history - those who toiled obscurely in the wings were left to do so, and any attempt to shine light on them is cursory at best, and usually only by way of contrast. The histories that result are very lop-sided - to describe them as 'biased' towards men from the higher social classes would be to fail to do their prejudices full justice. They are essentially histories of the doings of men of the upper classes - and to take their views on education as a general social phenomenon as if they applied beyond that narrow scope is extremely unwise, and liable to give rise to extremely distorted views on ancient education and the historical predecessors of modern educational systems.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear · 19-08-2010 11:44AM

This post has been deleted.

oceanclub · 19-08-2010 11:51AM

No, they didn't. They acted simply because they wanted to make more profits. I doubt they even considered the possiblity that the worst would happen. It's the same reason that fishermen overfish 'til there's nothing left. Or that the islanders of Easter Island chopped down all the trees 'til there was nothing left. Humans act irrationally. Libertarianism doesn't take this into account.

Since she's dead, I'm not sure how you think she could either advocate or refute his policies.

Yes. And they more often choose faith-based schools because they don't want their children to go to school with prods, taigs or muzzies.

Really, now; are you honestly going to even attempt to argue that parents in Northern Ireland compare their faith-based school to the equivalent school pf the other faith, check the test results, and base their decision on that?

I'll admit that humans act rationally on occasions, but you refuse point-blank to admit they will also act irrationally. As I said; libertarianism is entirely based on a false premise about human nature.

P.

Scofflaw · 19-08-2010 12:07PM

If parents do not care about educating their children, there is little anyone can do about it—including the state.[/QUOTE]

There is a great deal more that the state can do about it than anyone else, though. They could, for example, make it compulsory for the child to attend school up to a specified age. They could standardise the curriculum and examinations so that the child received an education that was comparable to his richer peers. They could subsidise the schooling so that the burden of it no longer fell on parents who would not opt for it. And so on - and indeed, those things have brought about a revolution in the general level of education in the population.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear · 19-08-2010 12:31PM

This post has been deleted.

bryanw · 19-08-2010 12:40PM

How do you honestly think that government and institutions, that are just humans at the end of the day, also don't act irrationally?

Permabear · 19-08-2010 12:52PM

This post has been deleted.

Permabear · 19-08-2010 01:06PM

This post has been deleted.

Scofflaw · 19-08-2010 01:12PM

And as usual, we find the huge flawed fact in amidst the polemic - tell me, are Trinity graduates standing in the dole queue in the same proportion as those who dropped out at age 14?

The answer is no.

Is this current period typical in some way that we should use it as a metric for all other periods?

Again, the answer is no.

Flawed facts, flawed thinking. As to the polemic - yes, I know that's what you claim and what you believe. Unfortunately, you seem entirely unable to demonstrate it to the doubters, and your only response to that failure is to dismiss the doubters as unbelievers.

On the other post exchange - you dismiss historically very high levels of educational attainment because they're not high enough, while lauding pre-modern libertarian educational systems that produced their results only within a very narrow social stratum and left the majority of the population in every area completely illiterate (not just with "functional difficulties" in some pockets). That's breathtaking - and even more incredibly, it appears you can't even see what you're doing. Does the idea of comparing apples with apples never even occur to you? Or do you just not like the results?

regards,
Scofflaw

oceanclub · 19-08-2010 01:24PM

I have a relative who earns a relatively high amount of money, and lives in a country where (a) little income tax is paid and (b) school standards aren't very high and there is a little or no attempt to counter truancy.

Out of all my relatives, he's also the one who spends the least effort sending his child to school. His opinion is that he doesn't really need education as through hard graft he'll become a success like his father. As a consequence, the child is a teenager and barely able to read. Attempts by other relatives to intervene have all been rebuffed as his father insists that he knows best.

Sorry, but again your mythical fantasy world doesn't exist. Governments do sometimes have to compel people to send their children to school. People aren't always rational beings. They do not always act in their best interests of their children. Your insisting that this is always the case is counter to reality and shows up why, when exposed to the real world, the lovely theory of libertarianism pops like a bubble. Your only argument is that current society isn't perfect. We all knew that anyway.

P.

deise go deo · 19-08-2010 01:27PM

Your just makeing claims here, Unless you can provide some evidence that this will hapen dont be suprised if people remain doubtfull.

bryanw · 19-08-2010 01:34PM

Governments have been so good at promoting the education and welfare of children haven't they? We've plenty of experience of that in Ireland, where the government compelled the people to send their children to schools: Ryan Report

Also, Libertarians argue that society can't be perfect, something the progressives choose to ignore... because we're all irrational human beings, remember?

oceanclub · 19-08-2010 01:41PM

Perhaps you missed the line where I said "Your only argument is that current society isn't perfect. We all knew that anyway." So, just to repeat, your only argument is that current society isn't perfect. We all knew that anyway.

My point is that at least having society attempting to ensure that parents give their children a good basic quality of education - that is, assuming that there are both good parents and bad parents - is better than assuming all parents are self-enlightened actors and will do the best for their children and having no regulation.

It's a fairly obvious point, I've repeated it four or more times by now, and every time I repeat it, libertarians repeat the exact same thing: "But things now aren't perfect. Ergo, let's throw the baby (literally) out with the bathwater."

I mean, we have a criminal system where laws are enforced. These laws are often wrongly applied; some people are wrongly jailed for murder, while others get away with it. The solution is not to have no laws whatsoever (although I'm sure there are libertarians who do argue this, the "invisible hand" will provide bunkers and semi-automatic rifles to those who want them).

P.

silverharp · 19-08-2010 01:43PM

2 things. The way I look at it, once you set "need" above justice , one by definition has to create acts of injustice to cater for a "need". it's great that others get to choose who gains and who loses and that they have the god given ability to know how to maximise the needs to be met with the absolute minimum of injustice caused :rolleyes:

secondly arguing that the state has done X, Y, & Z "good" things, usually glosses over the bad things the state has done. There is more importantly an implied blind spot in calculating the "unseen" in a seen/unseen calculation or in fact the calculation is impossible and the discussion is left to whoever to pull whatever stats to justify a past or present course of action. The only real justification for anything is that 51% (if you are lucky) people voted for it at some time or another.

Permabear · 19-08-2010 01:44PM

This post has been deleted.

oceanclub · 19-08-2010 01:45PM

Sorry, but I don't see anyone from the non-liberatarian side arguing this point. By contrast, it's the libertarians who are talking in absolutes.

P.

bryanw · 19-08-2010 01:50PM

Well then you're not getting the message. I'm trying to say that I have no faith in the state to provide education anymore than anyone else. What makes you think that the state is going to act in the best interests of the child more so in future than at any time in the past?

Don't get me wrong, there is a legitimate case to be made to compel parents to send their children to school, since they are not fully free citizens until they reach adulthood. Children cannot make a decision themselves on education. Where I have the problem is that you seem to think that the state is the most effective instrument to deal with this situation, where it is clearly not.

When you talk of windy rhetoric like "society should attempt to provide education for children", you don't conflate that with your point that people are individual, irrational human beings. When you make statements like that, you begin to show that "society" doesn't exist.

Permabear · 19-08-2010 01:53PM

This post has been deleted.

Scofflaw · 19-08-2010 01:54PM

No, because that's not the claim you made. You should substantiate the claim that a libertarian economy would produce those things. Otherwise, we're in danger of over-extrapolating, like the Victorians who calculated that by now we'd all be half a mile deep in horse shite, but hadn't realised the Internet would make it largely virtual.

Most of us (not all, I suppose) would cheerfully accept that removing regulation will result in higher levels of business growth - the questions, though, are "is that sustainable?" and "at what cost?". It would certainly be far cheaper for many industries not to have to worry about polluting either the environment around them or their products, or about harming their workers - and we'd undoubtedly see "higher levels of capital accumulation, investment, and employment" if we removed the protective environmental, consumer, and labour regulations from those industries. The question is, though, so what? Is that the whole point?

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw · 19-08-2010 01:58PM

The short answer is that the state is now regarded as having such a duty, which it didn't in the past (or interpreted it differently), and that the state is not an abstract entity, but a bureaucracy answerable to politicians who are elected by people who care about the best interests of their children.

Certainly aristocratic states tended (only 'tended', though) not to give much thought to the interests of the children of the lower orders - but we no longer live in such an aristocratic state.

cordially,
Scofflaw

oceanclub · 19-08-2010 02:00PM

So briefly, what is the solution in this case? No utopian flowerly claims for libertarianism, please; just your proposed solution.

P.

oceanclub · 19-08-2010 02:04PM

But I'm not making a general point!

Again, the "baby out with the bathwater" argument. Because some regulations are bad, get rid of them all. It's getting old at this point.

P.

bryanw · 19-08-2010 02:07PM

You don't realise that it is not in the self-interest of a business to kill people, make them sick, sell faulty goods or pollute the environment. When government imposes regulation, oftentimes you will find that companies just try to satisfy those regulations and usually don't strive to do better. In a situation where companies are free to, and must compete for business, the need to try to sell to the public the best quality product at the lowest possible cost.

But where you have state control, taking for example environmental records, where you have large scale state control or oppressive regimes, environmental records are usually bad. Why is it that in the west, in mostly free societies, we have higher standards of living, lower scale pollutions, cleaner air...? Surely the state is in a more powerful and compelling position in the likes of Russia and China to impose stringent regulations that protect the public... hmm?

Irish Tea party movement?

Comments