I hear this complain a lot in my country: Romania.
"The state electrical/gas/etc company was sold to a private investor and we didn't get any real benefits, there is no real competition."
There's also the accusation that laissez-faire capitalism will automatically lead to monopoly. Law of the jungle stuff.
How should I best address that?
The fact that Bush may or not may not be an idiot is irrelevant. The same idiot has worse incentives as elected president than he does as monarch so far as the consumer is concerned. He may still make mistakes, anyone human will, but he will not gain from them. Democracy rewards the mistakes. Monarchy punishes them. Hence, monarchy is preferable to democracy.
Indeed.
-Jon
I cannot be caged. I cannot be controlled. Understand this as you die, ever pathetic, ever fools.
Irenicus' Diaries.
Stranger:He may still make mistakes, anyone human will, but he will not gain from them. Democracy rewards the mistakes. Monarchy punishes them. Hence, monarchy is preferable to democracy.
QFT
The critical difference is time preference. Bush's opportunity to profit from graft, corruption, etc., is guaranteed to end in January--so he needs to get while the getting's good. Ideally, he should suck the country 100% dry on exactly the day he leaves office, taking with him the entire nation's wealth. He can't, by a long shot, but he's doing the best he can--just as Clinton did before him, etc.
As a monarch, he would have an incentive to preserve his personal capital by keeping the nation productive in 2009, 2010 and onward, for him to continue preying upon. The strategy that makes sense under term limits is, to a monarch, killing the golden goose.
--Len
Juan:That's just an hypothesis. Too bad that historical facts prove it wrong. It is not true that monarchy was superior to democracy.
Check your facts. Hoppe documents quite a few of them. For example, "democracies" charge tax rates of which a king would be terrified to charge half, knowing that there would be assassins behind every tree just waiting for him.
What "historical facts"? It's incredible how fast you are to reject praxeological insights as "hypothesis" when they don't suit your ideological inclinations. Positivism when we feel like it, and at all other times praxeology, hm? Relative to democracies, monarchies involve far less expropriation, as a theoretical point and as a matter of fact.
Jon: What "historical facts"? It's incredible how fast you are to reject praxeological insights as "hypothesis" when they don't suit your ideological inclinations.
Len: The critical difference is time preference. Bush's opportunity to profit from graft, corruption, etc., is guaranteed to end in January
Juan: Jon: What "historical facts"? It's incredible how fast you are to reject praxeological insights as "hypothesis" when they don't suit your ideological inclinations. Are you bothering to read this thread at all ? Sorry for thinking that Ralph Raico's knowledge of history is superior to Stranger's and yours. Please take a look at post Wed, Jun 4 2008 4:04 AM - THANKS.
History is meaningless without the theory to interpret it. That something happened in monarchy does not imply that it happened because of monarchy.
Minarchism failed because it is socialism || A challenge to minarchists || Private roads and cities || A two-stage strategy for freedom
Juan: Len: The critical difference is time preference. Bush's opportunity to profit from graft, corruption, etc., is guaranteed to end in January But government is composed of tens of millions of people who will not be going home in January, so your argument is baseless. As it has been pointed out governments are always oligarchies.
Too bad their longer time-preference didn't prevent Bush from murdering about a million Iraqis, now, isn't it?
Jon: It's incredible how fast you are to reject praxeological insights as "hypothesis" when they don't suit your ideological inclinations.
Juan:Too bad indeed, but that's not the point is it ?
Apparently you completely missed the point. Bush's time preference carried the day. The existence of millions of drones with longer time preference, whose time preference doesn't actually affect policy decisions, is completely irrelevant.