General

Re: I'm not a libertarian.

Kelvin Silva — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 07:56:12 GMT

The number of people with who the state has to resort to outright coersion is miniscule.

What is a war?

What is a genocide?

What is a soldier?

What is a casualty?

What is a taxpayer?

Are you serious?

Re: I'm not a libertarian.

shackleford — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 06:45:17 GMT

John James:

shackleford:
John James:
thetabularasa:
JJ it's grammatically incorrect to use a plural verb conjugation for a single person subject.
Are you sure about that?
You can be singular or plural.

So what? In this context it's singular. One person made the comment that it's "grammatically incorrect to use a plural verb conjugation for a single person subject", and my question was directed to him...the single person subject. Are you actually suggesting that that makes my sentence grammatically incorrect?

thetabularasa:
LOL Good point. I has a disagreements with many English grammars Iself! hah hah

Here's a great breakdown:

Why “aren’t I”?

Be is probably the most important irregular verb in English.

Re: I'm not a libertarian.

Cortes — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 05:54:43 GMT

Tim, it's not that I do not share your intentions regarding social welfare and mutual aid. It's just that I don't think society should be legally forced to entrust the allocation and organization of this service to a centralized monopoly that aggressively crowds out, distorts and/or removes altogether all other potential alternatives created by the people.

Re: I'm not a libertarian.

John James — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 02:09:24 GMT

shackleford:
John James:
thetabularasa:
JJ it's grammatically incorrect to use a plural verb conjugation for a single person subject.
Are you sure about that?
You can be singular or plural.

So what? In this context it's singular. One person made the comment that it's "grammatically incorrect to use a plural verb conjugation for a single person subject", and my question was directed to him...the single person subject. Are you actually suggesting that that makes my sentence grammatically incorrect?

thetabularasa:
LOL Good point. I has a disagreements with many English grammars Iself! hah hah

Here's a great breakdown:

Why “aren’t I”?

Re: I'm not a libertarian.

Johnny Doe — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 20:48:34 GMT

Tim67:
"The State in Norway practically runs people’s lives with the amount of control it has over economic outcomes."

Documentation to that effect? I've heard people say things like this a lot and never saw much to back it up; I'm not necessarily accusing you of this, but it sounds like a thing people say because they want it to be true and they vaguely suspect it to be true. I'll consider sources.

The norwegian government controls close to 50 % of the buying power/money directly and indirectly controls most of the rest via regulations etc.

Tim67:
"If you prefer a universalization of living standards, you have some serious issues."

I don't really. Although plenty of people would probably call me an outright socialist in many respects, I don't really care about "equality" in and of itself, I care about everyone(or at least as many as possible) having some decent 'minimum' standard to allow access to things people need(decent education, training, growing up in a socially stable environment, whatever) to live up to whatever potentials they have.

Do you believe norwegian socialists/socialdemocrats etc want equal rights for mankind, or just norwegians?

Tim67:
I do suspect that in a society where most people have more or less an equal opportunity regardless of whatever circumstances they were born into

Average Joe in Norway goes to a public school, the billionaires children goes to private schools in other countries.

Tim67:
(and Norway to me seems to be such a society, judging by the OECD stats) most people WILL obtain a generally similar living standard because most people are of generally similar capabilities(the vast majority of people being, obviously, around an "average" level of intelligence, etc.)

So since mankind are generally similar, what will happen if limitations on trade, migration/immigration(protectionsim) were repealed(i.e. global laissez-faire, minarchism, market economy etc was introduced?) Would the inequality increase or stay unchanged, compared to what it is today with the nationalism etc we have today?

Tim67:
"Learn economics, and realize countries can succeed for a multitude of reasons. That some countries are both "successful" (at least for the time being) and not economically free does not mean they are successful because they are not economically free. "

That some countries are "successful" (at least for the time being) and economically free does not mean they are successful because they are economically free.

Of course, the very fact that Norway has a welfare system and that it is less economically "free" in some respects does not by itself make it a prosperous country -- the fact it has a lot of capital, created through capitalist production processes (I'm not arguing for communism here), makes it wealthy.

Take away the natural resources, and Norway ia an average western industrialized country.

Tim67:
And it redistributes that wealth through a state-run system that has created a very stable and generally equal society (again, I'm not touting equality as some metaphysical moral good, but when a wealthy industrialized country is 'more equal' it necessarily means more people have a higher standard of living)

Would norwegians accept it if the petrodollars were out of the equation? Would mankind produce/develope the technology etc that it has, if we had global socialdemocracy, like Norway?

Tim67:
wherein people are still free to read what they want, eat what they want, persue their own interests, get rich if they so desire(as plenty have), marry whom they want, associated with whom they want, travel where they want if they can, etc etc etc.

But what about using the fruits of ones labor as one sees fit, i.e. actually having the money/buying power one has produced, so one can acctually be able to choose what books to buy, what food to buy, pay for ones own hobbies(not other peoles hobbies/interests), can norwegians do that? Can norwegians sell/buy sexual services? Can norwegians play poker for money? After all one spends a big part of ones lives when one is awake, producing stuff(aquiring buying power), and the rest of the time buying/consuming the goods/services that that money buys?

Tim67:
And of course Norway's oil (state-owned production)

Privately owned oil companies, foreign/domestic companies, norwegian government owns 2/3 of the biggest company producing oil in Norway.

Tim67:
is a big factor in its ability to do this; but plenty of other high welfare states are able to do so without the oil.

But then the populations of those countries would have to produce more, or settle with less.

Re: I'm not a libertarian.

ToxicAssets — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 15:00:23 GMT

Read Mises.

I've read Human Action and a few other things.

I find the general austrian approach of methodological individualism to be the most adequate, however not due to an alleged strict a priori character of praxeology as a science. It is due to the very much observable fact that, ultimately, are individuals that take the decisions, not groups, classes and whatnot.

Even when these decisions are somehow compounded through a complicated organizational scheme, they are originated by individuals.

Groups don't think and don't act, and that's not an "a priori fact", but an assumption that seems to be in accordance with the real world evidence.

Rothbard said in Man Economy and State that economists don't make assumptions, but he is wrong.

This whole "a priori science" thing is an unfortunate epistemological misconception that haunted Mises, Rothbard and still haunts most of the remaining austrian economists to this day, due to it's status of sacracy.

Anyway, I found many of the policy analysis carried on in the book to be very insightful. The entire argument of socialist miscalculation due to a nonsensical price system is brilliant. The chapters on monetary history and business cycles are very interesting too.

However, I failed to agree with his objections to the use of statistical data and mathematical models as tools for enhancing economical understanding.

Some of the arguments are very pertinent, and timely, due to the widespread mystification of scientistic looking equations that were indeed meaningless or at least much less powerful than people seemed to think, but this is not a justification for ruling them out altogether.

Of course some understanding of economics is amenable to some sort of measurement, and people do that all the time, when they make their transactions seeking profit. The relations may not stay the same forever, and what works today may not work tomorrow, but that doesn't mean that measurements taken today are useless.

His argument that in economics there are no "natural constants" therefore mathematic equations are meaningless is not correct, and his whole chapter sketching a new theory of probabilities seems to be little more than verbose nonsense.

Of course, it is a very import book and I recommend it to everyone who wants to acquire a deeper understanding of economics, but as you can see, I don't take it as gospel.

More to the point, I would recommend you Friedrich Hayek, since his methodology seems more in tune with the evolutionary approach you seem to be interested in.

Hayek's style is less clear cut, engaging and forceful than Mises', but it is also a lot more careful. Mises sometimes gets too extremist, and too prophetic. No wonder there's a cult around him. Hayek is less of an idealogue, even though he's not entirely saint either. A lot of stuff inside "The Constitution of Liberty" is propaganda.

Anyway, I prefer Hayek.

Much of my previous arguments here are actually fragments of my understanding on the general Hayekian idea. My previous post can be considered an elaboration on his famous quote that "the mind cannot foresee its own advance".

Re: I'm not a libertarian.

ToxicAssets — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 14:53:37 GMT

z1235:

And yet, logical arguments could be made about the likely fate of a hypothetical society in which the "rape everyone that moves and eat all babies for dinner" norm has taken hold. Just so happens that not many such societies could empirically be discerned, as well. The "right" not to be raped, or not to be eaten for dinner if you are a baby does not have to come from God for it to have REAL objective (inter-subjective) ramifications in a society. It could be that societies in which everyone had the "right" to rape everyone else and the "right" to eat any baby for dinner are simply logically and evolutionarily incompatible with human action, hence dead.

I don't disagree with your line of evolutionary argumentation, I just don't see how can you use it to establish anything certain about the future.

The most common mistake, I think, people engage when they talk about evolution is their predisposition to read too much into it, and to let their hindsight bias confound them about what's predictable and what's just random.

Once things have already happened, it is not that hard to look at the events and make some historical sense of them, and say that they've unfolded following some rational pattern of evolution.

Fair enough, I don't disagree with that. But that doesn't mean that such rational pattern was as predictable in foresight as it looks now, in hindsight.

I consider the dinosaurs as a much telling example. I'm no paleontologist, by the way, all I know about dinosaurs is that they were these big and bad-ass lizards that lived 100 million years ago.

It seems fair, though, to assume that they had evolved from smaller lizard-like or amphibian-like creatures.

So during millions of years, the evolutionary trend was to get bigger and stronger, and that's how the dinosaurs came about.

And all of the sudden something happened and this trend reversed, and the mighty dinosaurs got smaller and smaller and now they are the relatively feeble birds we see all around.

However if someone observed the T-rex reigning all over the Jurassic, he would never guess that its distant descendants would look like fowl. And that the puny rodent-like mammals of the time would evolve and become the new boss.

So if an apex predator as powerful and ruthless as the Tyrannosaur-rex can evolve into something as pathetic and helpless as a domestic chicken, the major insight we get is that in the long run, evolution is a very counter-intuitive thing.

Now back to economics and politics.

Even if we can track record several societies and identify a similar institutional trend going on for most of them, it is still a far cry from saying that such institutional trend will continue the same path forever, regardless of all other factors involved.

You can even take the condemnation of rape as an example.

Most modern societies seem to have evolved institutions that condemn rape, that is, social mechanisms that increase the expected costs for a given individual engaging on a sexual assault against someone else.

Such institutions are things like thorough criminal investigations and women carrying concealed handguns and tasters for advanced western societies, and public lynching and stoning elsewhere.

However, those mechanisms are not enough to extinguish all rape activity from happening.

And for anyone to pursue such a moral crusade against rape would mean accepting the enormous costs involved.

A cost that no one seems to be in position to bear. The vast majority of people do not dedicate all their available resources to stop rapists, they have other priorities.

Therefore, a certain amount of rape seems to be tolerated as another distateful fact of life by people on every society, as these people divert resources that could be used to decrease rape statistics to other ends.

The future of rape depends on the fluctuating costs and dispositions of people to persecute and also to perpetrate rape activities.

And you cannot foresee how these fluctuations are going to take place.

Maybe you can form a somewhat educated guess for the short run, but the long run is a weird and completely foreign land.

In the long run the T-rex becomes the chicken.

Re: I'm not a libertarian.

thetabularasa — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:10:39 GMT

John James:

thetabularasa:
JJ it's grammatically incorrect to use a plural verb conjugation for a single person subject.

Are you sure about that?

LOL Good point. I has a disagreements with many English grammars Iself! hah hah

Re: I'm not a libertarian.

z1235 — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 19:59:09 GMT

ToxicAssets:

Things are much more complex than that.

And yet, logical arguments could be made about the likely fate of a hypothetical society in which the "rape everyone that moves and eat all babies for dinner" norm has taken hold. Just so happens that not many such societies could empirically be discerned, as well. The "right" not to be raped, or not to be eaten for dinner if you are a baby does not have to come from God for it to have REAL objective (inter-subjective) ramifications in a society. It could be that societies in which everyone had the "right" to rape everyone else and the "right" to eat any baby for dinner are simply logically and evolutionarily incompatible with human action, hence dead.

Read Mises.

Re: I'm not a libertarian.

ToxicAssets — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 19:07:25 GMT

My take on rights is thus radically different from the hardcore libertarian one.

Much like socialists, they believe that rights are emanations of some rationally "self-evident" and universal justice principle.

The difference is a minor one.

Libertarians believe this principle is the non-initiation of aggression.

And Socialists believe this principle is the equitable distribution of wealth.

Both think society does seek (or, at least, should seek) the application of their vision of Justice.

Both, at some point or another, believe to have a fair amount of concrete evidence that societies around the world are approaching their vision, even though they admit some occasional setbacks. They believe they have figured out the historical mechanism that serves as the social input of ethical norms and civilized behavior.

And both of them are completely delusional.

No such universal "self-evident" principle could ever make any sense.

Neither aggression nor wealth are universal concepts to begin with.

They have different meanings to different people, and they can only make sense once a context is provided.

Some people consider themselves aggressed by the mere existence of some other people.

And there are many forms of wealth that are not amenable to distribution.

We can know now what is traditionally considered as aggression or wealth, but we cannot predict the future perceptions of future people.

The future of these traditions will depend on the complicated and very unpredictable way the developments unfolds.

Rights and laws do not emanate from some rationally, self-evident, axiomatically established justice ideal.

Rights and laws emerge from the self-organization of a social system of individuals acting within an environment of circumstances that change, and whose global evolution is of transcendent complexity and cannot thus be foreseen, much less reduced to the rise of some simple cosmic principle of justice that we were trained to worship.

Even if we can discern a rational pattern for the evolution of rights, morals and the idea of justice, it doesn't mean they have a purpose to fulfill , much less that we are in a position to claim anything about their "ultimate design". If anything, such a design would be the less self-evident of all things.

Both hardcore socialists and libertarians visions are very much like the creationist take on life and the Universe, but even worse, because creationists don't usually claim to understand the designs and intentions of the creator.

Things are much more complex than that.

Re: I'm not a libertarian.

Autolykos — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 18:50:17 GMT

Tim67:
An overwhelming majority at least oblige the state.

Irrelevant to Marko's question.

Tim67:
The number of people with who the state has to resort to outright coersion is miniscule.

Not according to my definition of "coercion", which is "the use or threat of violence". The state threatens everyone with violence all the time. Therefore, per my definition of "coercion", it coerces everyone all the time. I consider that coercion to be aggressive and thus immoral.

Tim67:
Even in a libertarian society, there will be people from whom it would be in their own preference to be serial killers, or violent rapists, etc. Whatever private security forces that attend to whatever geographical area those people operate in may have to stop them by force, perhaps even going up to killing them.

Irrelevant to Marko's question.

Tim67:
Not to liken those who may refuse to pay taxes to murderers or rapists, but just to say that in any conceivable society there will be people who will be forced into conforming to some set of norms.

The question is which set of norms.

Tim67:
Even in a voluntary society, there will be agencies that will force people to obey some certain set of norms because they feel there are compelling social reasons for going so -- the outcomes are "good enough" to warrant it.

The set of norms to be obeyed in a voluntaryist society is much smaller than that in today's society or the kind of society you seem to support.

Tim67:
Sure it would be regrettable if someone put up such a resistance to paying taxes that violent force was necessary, but the benefits of well funded social programs are worth it for society.

I invite you to prove that "social programs" are "worth it" for "society".

Tim67:
Would I do it myself? I'm not sure exactly what arm of the police, or FBI, or whathaveyou takes part in those operations. Either way my back and knees are sort of in bad shape, I'm not sure how well I'd meet their physical criteria. I don't think it's a job I'd enjoy anyway.

I invite you to actually answer the question. Would you do it yourself? What sort of physical shape you're in is completely irrelevant to that question. Would you be willing to do it yourself?

Tim67:
But of course, this is all completely academic, because no one would refuse to pay taxes anyway, since social programs help people. This isn't a question of being a libertarian, or a social democrat, or whatever -- it's a question of being a human being. Right?

I invite you to prove that "no one would refuse to pay taxes" and that "social programs help people".

Tim67:
A related question: if the government had a mechanism set up, where at the 18th birthday of every citizen (or pick any random date you like), a government official goes around and has a contract for them to sign, basically a literal "social contract," in which they explicitly agree to pay taxes, etc. If they refuse, they are immediately deported to a foreign land and left to their own devices and not allowed back in the country, though they can take whatever property they want with them and can still manage whatever immovable property they have in the country(though not while being there physically). Would the demands of the state then be just for those who remain?

In my opinion, no they wouldn't.

Re: I'm not a libertarian.

NonAntiAnarchist — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 18:39:30 GMT

Great post, Z.

Documentation to that effect? I've heard people say things like this a lot and never saw much to back it up; I'm not necessarily accusing you of this, but it sounds like a thing people say because they want it to be true and they vaguely suspect it to be true. I'll consider sources.

I mean, what else do you think is the necessary result of proportionally high state spending, restrictive taxes which limit consumption, among other things, and economic regulation? The state determines what services people are getting, in what quantity they are getting them, and for what price. You don't see an inherent problem in nationalized industries, and state spending in general? Norway may only be 5 million people (and therefore decentralized in some sense just by that fact alone), most of whom are largely ethnically homogenous, and this probably limits the damage done by state spending, but how could you possibly see the gov't stealing and spending nearly half the product of its citizens as anywhere near preferable to the citizens spending their own money themselves, in way they deem most beneficial?

"In 2011, 28% of state revenues were generated from the petroleum industry."

And there's your giant subsidy to inefficiency. It's a shame the benefit of having such valuable resources in the country is eaten up by the state.

I don't really. Although plenty of people would probably call me an outright socialist in many respects, I don't really care about "equality" in and of itself, I care about everyone (or at least as many as possible) having some decent 'minimum' standard to allow access to things people need(decent education, training, growing up in a socially stable environment, whatever) to live up to whatever potentials they have.

You say you don't care about equality, and then you completely defy that statement on the next line. If you support some minimum standard that you subjectively determine, then you value equality in itself in some degree - just likely not in the degree that you'd support an "equality of poverty."

I'm sorry, but I see this as kind of disgustingly controlling. Sure, I definitely sympathize with a standard in which the vast majorities are free from poverty, but if I were to support any standard above that level, I'd have serious qualms about stealing on a grand scale to achieve it. Luckily, capitalism has made concerns about my conception of poverty mostly obsolete in places like America, and if allowed to function more freely, would surely continue the trend.

I've been to Denmark once before, and my impression is that everybody has about the same size house (small), most don't have cars (they use the rail system), restaurants, clothes, and other consumption goods are very expensive. It is a beautiful country, and people are generally happy. Great. In some sense, I can see the appeal in equality among a small number of culturally knit people, all living similar lifestyles. But this if for people to determine by themselves, consensually, as groups of people; not at the expense of those around them. I should have no right to steal from you to relieve me of my envy. And the reality is, the people of Denmark would probably be much better off if they had more decision-making at the individual level. They'd be wealthier and get the goods and services they actually desire for prices they think are reasonable, and their tight knit culture, and general "happiness" (who wouldn't be happy in such a beautiful country?) wouldn't disappear or collapse. Once again, we come back to the same point. Is Denmark "successful" because of state spending, or in spite of it? This is a question no statistic can answer.

when a wealthy industrialized country is 'more equal' it necessarily means more people have a higher standard of living

Nah. Their standard of living leeches off the creations of billionaires from past and present, of whom they are not equal in income to. Great innovations, especially in this day and age, usually create income inequality. There is nothing wrong with this.

Re: I'm not a libertarian.

z1235 — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 18:05:26 GMT

Tim67:
And of course Norway's oil (state-owned production) is a big factor in its ability to do this; but plenty of other high welfare states are able to do so without the oil.

USSR had oil and high welfare. Former Yugoslavia, Greece, Portugal, France, and Italy had high welfare and not much oil. Each and every other western socialist-democracy is on the verge of a total collapse as we speak. Do you actually think that free markets, greed, and speculators are responsible for the "once in a century" financial crises we seem to be experiencing almost every year, at this point? What evidence is there that high welfare actually produces sustainable flourish and prosperity in a society?

Whatever affluence and prosperity you observe in the quickly-unravelling social-democratic western world are remnants from the capital created during the industrial revolution which has been eaten up through the socialist-Keynesian, centrally-planned policies over the last hundred years. If you take your head out of the fallacious correlation=>causation "scientific empirical evidence" mirages and learned some real economics (Austrian) it would become abundantly clear to you that private property and free markets create (capital) while socialism, central-planning, wellfare, warfare, and Keynesianism devour it. Everyone is much better off with the former while all but the polit-buro elites end up as feeder cattle in the mud with the latter. How many times must history repeat these lessons before people like you finally learn them? You get taken each and every time!

Here's some evidence for you to gnaw on:

Presenting the decline of the West in two easy infographics

" According to Toshl’s data, users in Western Europe earn an average of $2,062 per month, but spend $2,396. This is an average monthly deficit of $334 per person, or roughly 16% of income.

Toshl users in the United States are in even worse shape, earning on average $1,871 per month. But they spend $2,290 per month, an average monthly deficit of $419, or 22% of income.

So who in the world is living within their means? Australian, Brazilian, Russian, Canadian, Filipino, and Indian users all show positive surpluses each month. Chinese and Singaporeans are essentially at breakeven levels.

Both of these infographics point to the same conclusion: the west is living far beyond its means and is struggling with pitifully anemic growth. This is a long-term trend, and one that is only going to accelerate."

Re: I'm not a libertarian.

ToxicAssets — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 18:04:43 GMT

Jargon:

ToxicAssets,

Whether rights metaphysically exist or not has zero bearing on their suitability as a grounds for a legal system. I hardly think that most of us here accept them as metaphysically existent, so there is no need to point it out anytime rights are brought up in the legal sense.

I think we all agree that rights do exist in some sense, since rights are talked about all the time and they are the reason why some things happen and other things don't.

My point is not on the existence of rights, but on their nature.

What are they and where do they come from?

My definition is that an established right is any practical constraint on the potential behavior of some others towards oneself, that one may generally expect from the rational consideration of alternatives by each of the others.

Rights are violated insofar as these expectations of constrained behavior are not met on occasion.

And rights are denied insofar as these expectations do not exit and/or are generally not met.

That is, a "right" that is constantly violated is not a right, but something else. A wish, a desire, an unsatisfied claim perhaps.

Re: I'm not a libertarian.

Tim67 — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 17:25:03 GMT

"The State in Norway practically runs people’s lives with the amount of control it has over economic outcomes."

Documentation to that effect? I've heard people say things like this a lot and never saw much to back it up; I'm not necessarily accusing you of this, but it sounds like a thing people say because they want it to be true and they vaguely suspect it to be true. I'll consider sources.

"If you prefer a universalization of living standards, you have some serious issues."

I don't really. Although plenty of people would probably call me an outright socialist in many respects, I don't really care about "equality" in and of itself, I care about everyone(or at least as many as possible) having some decent 'minimum' standard to allow access to things people need(decent education, training, growing up in a socially stable environment, whatever) to live up to whatever potentials they have. I do suspect that in a society where most people have more or less an equal opportunity regardless of whatever circumstances they were born into (and Norway to me seems to be such a society, judging by the OECD stats) most people WILL obtain a generally similar living standard because most people are of generally similar capabilities(the vast majority of people being, obviously, around an "average" level of intelligence, etc.)

"Learn economics, and realize countries can succeed for a multitude of reasons. That some countries are both "successful" (at least for the time being) and not economically free does not mean they are successful because they are not economically free. "

That some countries are "successful" (at least for the time being) and economically free does not mean they are successful because they are economically free.

Of course, the very fact that Norway has a welfare system and that it is less economically "free" in some respects does not by itself make it a prosperous country -- the fact it has a lot of capital, created through capitalist production processes (I'm not arguing for communism here), makes it wealthy. And it redistributes that wealth through a state-run system that has created a very stable and generally equal society (again, I'm not touting equality as some metaphysical moral good, but when a wealthy industrialized country is 'more equal' it necessarily means more people have a higher standard of living) wherein people are still free to read what they want, eat what they want, persue their own interests, get rich if they so desire(as plenty have), marry whom they want, associated with whom they want, travel where they want if they can, etc etc etc. And of course Norway's oil (state-owned production) is a big factor in its ability to do this; but plenty of other high welfare states are able to do so without the oil.