I’m not posting much about politics, but I want to let ya’ll know that I am enjoying the stuff you are posting. I’m reading it all. I’m also reading various other sources, my personal favorite is realclearpolitics.com which reveals my bias I’m sure.
I/we have donated to Obama more than once. I/we have donated to No on 8 more than once. (Oh by the way honey… I donated again today. 🙂 I think these are both pretty big deals.
My politics have slid in the past year or so from where they used to be. I used to be a rather staunch Libertarian. At this point…I’m less of one. I’m hyper-aware of the fact that I am a very privileged person and I didn’t exactly get here through my own hard work. *cough* Sure, I have done some hard work in my lifetime… but I have not earned my present level of comfort. I kind of wonder if I ever really earned all that I felt I earned. How much of it was given to me? I’m still not real gung-ho on welfare programs, but I do feel that as someone with wealth it is my responsibility to help support the things I want in existence. I want marriage equality for all because why in the hell should I be treated special? I just happened to find a guy I wanted to marry. It didn’t have to be a guy. I want a president I feel some respect for.
I want to encourage my friends who can to put their money where their mouth is. I feel like this election may well be one of the most important ones of our lifetime. I want to know that I did something to help.
Responsibility to support
is not the same thing as forced to support.
I encourage you to be personally moved by your feeling of responsibility, but voting to compel others to go along with you is nothing less than tyranny by the majority.
For example, I may feel that diabetes research is more important than AIDS research even if the majoritymight disagree, but if my earnings are taxed by the government to support medical research, my opinion is ignored and my choice is stripped from me by force.
But, yeah, as far as who can marry who, I don’t think it’s any of government’s business and don’t really see why they regulate it at all or even pay any attention to it.
Re: Responsibility to support
I actually don’t think that people have to agree with me. I think people should support the things *they* believe in. Not what I believe in. Me sharing my point of view should never be considered to be me telling you (or anyone else) what to believe. In fact, I would really hope you don’t believe things just because I do. 🙂
In terms of ‘voting to enforce my beliefs’ I think that there isn’t much of a way for government to stay 100% out of life and that means that I really ought to vote hoping things go my way and other people will vote how they believe things should go. That’s how governing large bodies of people works. It wouldn’t be possible for each person in this country to live only by their own rules. The country is too big.
I am certainly not all for the Democratic platform. In my local elections I do not generally vote for them. However, I would give just about anything to ensure that a McCain/Palin White House is avoided.
Re: Responsibility to support
Government, by definition, can’t stay 100% out of life. But they could very easily stay out of most things, there is no compelling reason that countries, even big ones, need to work that way. And I think they really ought to stay out of most things, because of the usual Libertarian reasoning; that it’s morally wrong (not to mention counterproductive from a practical perspective) to use the unstoppable power of government’s physically violent force and threat thereof to impose anything on people, _except_ to enforce that the people themselves should not use force on others either. (And I think that the only reason government should exist at all, even for that limited purpose, is because if it didn’t, some group would inevitably see the power vacuum and use its own force to become a government anyway.)
If I don’t have the right as 1 individual to use force to acoomplish what I want, and a group of five doesn’t have the right to use force to accomplish what it wants over a group of four, then why is it justified for a group of 100,000,000 voters to have that right over a group of 99,000,000 voters?
And why exactly do big countries _have_ to work the way you suggest??? I just don’t see the need for the tyranny of it, in fact quite the opposite; the bigger the country, the less able the government could possibly be to be able to understand all the intricacies and complexities that are required in order to best govern it, and that really only free markets, for goods, services, charity, ideas, and everything else, is capable of organizing such a large entity of competing and conflicting interests effectively and efficiently.
I find it funny that just as I was about to write out a political post, I saw this post. Great timing.
Your Pinko Commie, Dirty Hippy, Intellectual Elitist Liberal Friend.
~Peter
🙂 I’m certainly not a Pinko Commie, but I am a dirty hippy. I gather that simply by merit of education I am an intellectual elitist and by gawd I am liberal on some matters.
I still think that welfare is a fucked up program that should be rebuilt from the ground up if it is to exist at all.
Obama’s tax plans
would give tax “rebates” to people who pay zero taxes already, turning the tax code into yet another welfare program. This is, as you say about welfare programs, fucked up.
Worse still, is that he would accomplish this by raising taxes on people who already pay a disproportionate share of their income in taxes already.
Moral hazards and practical pitfalls abound.
Re: Obama’s tax plans
Ok. I’m not going to get too far into this. Everyone who lives in this country pays taxes. They pay taxes on food or gas or clothing or whatever else.
What I am going to say about the Libertarian argument is this: I believe you are an intelligent and educated person. I believe you and I have looked at the same arguments and reached different conclusions because this is about our opinions. I’m ok with us having different opinions and I hope that you can accept the same. I still like you lots even though I don’t believe all of the same things you believe. 🙂
Re: Obama’s tax plans
Point taken about taxes; I was imprecise. To be more precise, these rebates would give to some people from federal tax funds an amount greater than they pay in total federal taxes including gas, income, and payroll taxes. This would, I still contend, turn the federal tax code into a welfare program.
I agree that everyone is entitled to their opinions, and I can be and am friends with people who have wildly varying opinions from mine. The problem I have is when people act, based on their opinions, in ways that work to bring about the infringement of the freedom of others.
Re: Obama’s tax plans
That sounds an awful lot like you think it is fine for people to have different opinions from you, as long as they do nothing to back up their opinions. So they can think anything, but they can only do what you want them to do.
Hm. Uhm. Yeah, no.
Re: Obama’s tax plans
I think that’s a misinterpretation, or at least an overgeneralization. I’m trying to point out an issue of consent. I will try to be clearer…
If people act on their opinions in ways that don’t impact the freedom of others, then I don’t think I have any reason or grounds to complain. Eat what you want, marry who you want, paint your house any color you want. Your opinion, and YOUR STUFF, so it’s not for me to say or stick my nose in.
But few people have my consent to impinge upon _my_ freedom from physical violence and threat thereof, and then only in certain ways, just as only certain people have your consent for same. So if people try to act, based upon their opinions or for any other reason, to have things done to me to which I do not consent, such as pin me down and shave off my eyebrows, or make me wear a bike helmet, or, more to the point of this discussion, take money I earned away from me by threat of force and give it away to people I don’t want them to, then I think it’s perfectly legitimate for me to have a problem with that. And if someone encourages that behavior against me, I think it’s legitimate for me to have a problem with that, too.
The only area I think that government has good reason to force me about is to support its defense against and punishment of others who would try to use force against me, and I only go that far because if they don’t do it then someone else certainly WILL come along and do so. You may have a different opinion on the matter with respect to _yourself_; you may disagree, and you may consent to allow them to use force against _you_ for more things. I don’t. Would you deny me that right, the right to withhold my consent in this matter?
Re: Obama’s tax plans
Wrong. People who pay no income tax still pay payroll tax, and Obama’s rebate is $500 of that payroll tax even though it comes back to the payer via an income tax refund. Not one cent moves from one person to another, it moves from a person to the government and back to the person.
Re: Obama’s tax plans
My understanding was that they’d receive this “rebate” even if it resulted in a net negative tax rate.
And if they have kids in college, they’d get a tax credit for 100% of tuition up to $4000, regardless of whether that would result in a negative tax rate.
If they put money into an IRA, that would get matched, too, regardless of whether that would result in effectively a negative tax rate.
If they have mortgage interest and don’t itemize, they’d get a 10% rebate for that, regardless of whether that results in a negative tax rate.
If they buy a hybrid car, they’d get up to $7000 towards that, regardless of whether that results in a negative tax rate.
Put them all together, and there will be a bunch of people who wind up with a negative tax rate, or, put another way, welfare through the tax code.
Which is not to say that some corporations don’t also currently have negative tax rates; corporate tax welfare. But I think that’s just as stupid.
Re: Obama’s tax plans
I believe you’re correct about the rebate.
A tax credit for tuition is only for money they’ve paid, but it’s true that it could result in a net negative tax rate in some cases. So it could easily be “the government paying for their tuition”. In concept, in fact, that’s exactly what it is.
Similarly, the other items that you’re listing would effectively be the government paying for things they had already paid for. So it’s welfare in the sense of the government paying for specific expenses, but not so much in the “handing them money” sense.
Unless they could buy a hybrid car for under $7000, but I don’t see that happening.
I think 100% libertarian is an interesting idea but a tad bit unrealistic, and tell a-certain-someone so all the time. He he he. I just gave $25 to the Obama campaign again today – they are having a matching deal going on right now, so my scarce graduate student dollars go a little further, which is nice. I am still a tad concerned about Obama’s inexperience, and I still wish it were Hillary who were running, but oh-hell-no do I want the McCain camp in the White House, especially after seeing them pander to the extreme right in recent months.
What’s unrealistic?
Or perhaps we have different definitions of “libertarian”.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
No fire stations. No public education. There are problems with Libertarianism.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
The suburb I grew up in had (still has) an all volunteer fire department. So it’s proven to be possible and workable and just fine to not have this as a government function.
And what’s the problem with not having public education? What is the benefit of having this as a government function? Do they really outweigh the downsides? And why does the majority have the moral right to impose their opinion onthis point?
Re: What’s unrealistic?
If education is purely private, people who can’t afford it don’t get it. People who get educations can earn more money than people who don’t, meaning they can pay a higher amount in taxes — even if the tax structure is as regressive as regressive gets. That’s the direct benefit. Indirectly, a more educated public generates more technological innovation, such as the computer you’re using and the network you’re sending posts over.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
1) There’s always charity. If society really felt that this was important enough, you wouldn’t have to resort to force of government to make it happen, people would donate freely to the cause. In fact a lot of people do exactly that already today. And if people didn’t have tens of thousands of dollars forced from them every year in taxes to fund government schools, they might freely give more. But this goes back to whether it’s morally right to measure societal opinion through majority rule by force or through the individual acts of free men and women. You did not touch on this moral cost in your post, and I think it’s important.
2) Is generating more tax revenue in and of itself necessarily a societal benefit? Is that what people are for? Probably not how you meant it, but comes across that way.
3) Can you really necessarily link technological innovation with government funded education, as opposed to private education? Got statistical data?
4) Public schools by and large educate less effectively and efficiently than private schools per dollar spent. This is inherent in the nature of government programs, that don’t have to compete in the free market. Does this higher average cost and lower average quality (Krissy’s classes excepted, of course, she being exceptional) perhaps swamp the benefits you allege with respect to overall societal benefit?
5) Once government has control of the education system, it can use it for indoctrinational purposes. Scary. And it happens. Even here. And you may not even have the opportunity to pull your kids out if government takes the money you otherwise would have used for private school and makes you send it to public schools.
6) Once you create the governmental structures to allow for taking of people’s wealth for various and sundry ends that the majority imposes, who’s to stop them from using that range of power for other ends besides education, ones with perhaps negative social benefit, any foolish thing you can get a majority to go along and vote for? Corporate welfare, faith based initiatives, nationalized banks, government cheese, whatever you can think of that government has done that you might be against. This is the downside once you take even the first step down this dark path. Certainly these costs swamp any possible benefit of public education.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
1) The moral basis for governmental power is outlined in the Declaration of Independence: People have “certain unalienable Rights.” People institute governments in order to “secure these rights” in the way the people think “most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” Those governments “deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Sole reliance on charity places those in a position to fund the charity in a position of power over those in need of charity, and the race to totalitarianism is on.
2) Not only is did I not mean that this is not “what people are for,” that’s not what I said. Being able to generate more tax revenue is in and of itself necessarily a societal benefit, and for two reasons. First because given a tax based upon one’s income, more tax revenue from an individual means more underlying wealth for an individual; and people with more wealth are less likely to need governmental (or charitable, if that floats your boat) intervention. Second because the more each individual is able to contribute to the money a government needs to do what it does the less money is required from everyone.
3) You’ve constructed a scarecrow: I am not comparing public education and private education, I am comparing public education and no education.
4) Same scarecrow as in point 3.
5) Private institutions are just as capable as governments of using schools for indoctrination, as the Church has demonstrated for centuries. The difference is that a government is more responsive to pressure from the people to halt such practices when found than a private instution in a position of monopoly or oligopoly. A public option prevents those states.
6) We walk down the “dark path” as soon as government taxes people for anything, including the purposes you approve such as maintaining a military and police force. Government is not “them,” it is “us,” and there is no way around it. This is precisely why the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Given that this is a sunk cost, your assertion that it outweighs the benefits of public education are specious.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
1) “Pursuit of Happiness” comes after “Life” and “Liberty”. The Declaration of Independence does not support the idea that it is justified to sacrifice liberty (especially of others) in pursuit of happiness (yours). Governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed, but even the governed don’t have the right to take away the liberty of others in order to pursue their own happiness, therefore government can not derive that right from the governed; they don’t have it to give. And reliance on non-voluntary methods to provide for those in need is already totalitarianism, so the race is over the instant it starts.
2) I sort of thought that you didn’t mean it that way.
3) But you are then assuming that in the absence of public education that no education would be going on, and I contend that that is false; most people would engage in private education, especially once they are no longer forced to contribute to public education.
5) Public institutions are _extremely_ *** UN *** responsive to pressure from the people to halt such practices, and while private institutions may be as intransigent, in the cases where they are, the laws of supply and demand inform us that if there isn’t already an alternative, the opportunity to provide one will be undertaken in short order. Education is a pretty hard thing for there to be a “natural” monopoly or oligopoly on.
6) The _level_ of eternal vigilance required is variable depending on the conditions, therefore the sunk cost is not fixed. The fewer things the government is involved in, the fewer areas we have to guard against in terms of it usurping power.
p.s. This is a nice debate, thanks for engaging in it with me.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
In regard to 3), most people (about 95%) are receiving more government money than they are putting out, effectively. Giving them back a less-than-average chunk of money to spend on private schools will mean you’ll need some very cheap private schools. Most private schools are rather expensive.
It also means the poorest people will make the smallest advances since their tax burden is already light — they are currently getting the biggest chunk back from our government at the least cost to themselves. So social mobility and class mobility will take a big hit.
Which is presumably fine by you, but it’s a problem in terms of people (correctly) believing that they should just give up on a decent life from an early age. People like that are much more prone to violence, crime, armed revolt and so on, because they have little to gain from the current status quo, and little to lose by abandoning it.
Or to put it another way, notice how first-world nations with socialized health care and public education manage to raise far fewer terrorists and violent radicals, per capita? Whereas countries with a desperate starving underclass are generally great places to recruit such violent radicals? Suicide bombers in particular are usually paid a significant amount (to their family, naturally, not themselves), and it’s one of the bigger reasons that they do what they do. The standard payments (somewhere between $10k and $30k in the Middle East these days) are large enough that the people doing so often have no other way of reasonably getting such a thing. It’s still not palacial luxury, but it might, for instance, buy a decent house for their surviving family members.
The problem with seriously reducing social mobility is that you wind up with desperate, poor underclasses right in among the rich people in the country. While South America hasn’t imploded completely that way, you’ll note that they haven’t exactly benefited from the situation, either.
It’s possible to just have a really, really good police force and very expansive prison system, but that’s not a very cheap option, so you’ll still be paying rather a lot in taxes. In general, studies have found that paying for public education more than makes up for itself (at our current equilibrium) in reduced prison costs. This is worth considering in light of the above.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
1) You can’t have it both ways. Either the people can’t morally choose to enact a government that taxes people in order to field an army and a police force, or the people can morally choose to enact a government that taxes people in order to do other things the people decide they want the government to do. The former leads necessarily to anarchy, so the latter is the only coherent interpretation.
1a) The U.S. has been using non-voluntary methods to provide for those in need for quite some time. Either “And reliance on non-voluntary methods to provide for those in need is already totalitarianism, so the race is over the instant it starts” is refuted or your position is that the U.S. has been a totalitarian system since it’s founding, in which case I think you’re using a rather odd definition of the word “totalitarian.”
3) Public education was founded specifically because when there was no public education the number of people who were obtaining private education was very low. History does not support your assertion.
5) Again, history does not bear you out. Public schools no longer require children to pray to Jesus Christ thanks to public pressure on the government. Public schools are no longer racially segregated thanks to public pressure on the government. (Bob Jones University didn’t drop it’s rule against interracial dating until 2000) Public schools no longer teach Christian theology as science thanks to public pressure.
6) This is only true if you assume that one need only be vigilant against governmental abuse, a common libertarian fallacy. Pulling the government out doesn’t change the amount of vigilance required, it only changes who you have to watch.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
1) The only reason it’s moral to use taxes to field an army is because an army is a force that deals with other actively violent physical force. Other things, such as education, are not in defense of actively violent physical force, and are therefore morally inappropriate to deal with by means of such force. If we don’t limit the use of force in this way, how do we have a coherent boundary on it? Majority rule??? Benevolent dictatorship???
1a) There has in fact been aspects of totalitarianism in every place in every time throughout history. I’m advocating for a process of continual reduction. Is that a bad thing?
3) Public education was founded when there were fewer resources per capita for EVERYTHING, education being only one. By implementing forced contributions to public education, this merely diverted scarce resources from other important endeavors. If the society thought it was important enough, why didn’t they fund it freely? If it was because wealth was concentrated in the hands of a selfish few, why did that society give those people that wealth, in exchange for what? Something more important to them perhaps? And if those greedy few took the wealth by force rather than being given it freely, well we’re not talking about what happens in a free society anymore, are we?
5) It took a _looooooong_ time to get prayer out of schools. Whereas if you don’t like prayer in your kid’s private school, you simply take him out and put him in one you prefer.
6) If government does it’s core job of protecting against physical force, what other abuse do you have to watch out for from other sectors? Are they as difficult? I contend not, and that therefore the sunk cost is less.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
1) You have asserted several times now that actively violent physical force is a special case of force against which it is apporpiate for government to tax people in order to defend while other forms of force are not. I suspect this is axiomatic for you, which case we have a first principles difference. My position is that actively violent physical force is not a special case, that using taxes to defend against it is pat of a more general moral use of taxes to defend against other forms of force. If you’re going to want me to accept your position over my own, you’re going to have to make the case for it rather than simply asserting it.
You’re going to have your work cut out for you because I don’t think your special case assertion is internally consistent. We use taxes, and I believe you will assert it is moral for us to do so, to fund the mechanisms that enforce laws against crimes that do not involve active physical force, such as laws against embezzlement and fraud, breach of contract, etc.
In the U.S, we set boundaries on what laws may be passed through the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which works on supermajority rule rather than majority rule. It’s imperfect, but it has a consistent record of improvement. If you don’t like supermajority rule as the mechanism for developing and maintaining these boundaries, I’ve got bad news for you: there is no alternative. Libertarian structures, even outright anarchy, can only function if enough of a majority of the people who would live under it agree it’s the way to go, so posing libertarianism as an alternative to the tyranny of the majority is yet anothe scarecrow.
1a) I disagree with you that the policies you advocate tend towards a process of continual reduction of totalitarianism. Rather, they create and support an environment in which unrestrained economic force may be used with impunity by those who possess the resources to do so.
3) If the society thought it was important enough, why didn’t they fund it freely? They did — part of our fundamental disagreement is that you don’t see the democratic process as freedom in action, and I do. A free people freely elected to empower their government to organize and use the resources necessary to provide public education. If the public as a whole didn’t care for that option, they had and have the resources to change that decision. If specific indivudals who had already freely agreed to be a part of a system in which they accept that public policy decisions will not always go their way find this particular case a deal-breaker, they are free to take their money and go somewhere where the social contract is more to their liking.
5) It took mere decades to get prayer out of schools, and you can only take your kid out of another private school if the one you prefer is also one you can afford.
6) I mentioned fraud, embezzlement, and breach of contract as three examples of abuse that don’t involve physical force in point 2. Add to that list the various practices called “unfair restraint of trade,” and “unfair labor practices.” This by no means makes the list exhaustive, but we’ve only got so much space in these posts.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
1) Each person is unique, having their own unique set of priorities. Yes, really; some people even value their very life less than other things, and some of these people are even sane and noble. In order to even begin to pursue their unique priorities, they obviously must have the freedom from active physical force to do so. No other thing is universally required. To distribute this freedom non-uniformly is unfair by definition. To distribute this freedom uniformly requires that it be restricted to being used only against other active physical force.
To implement this against those who would use physical force for other ends certainly does require an amount of force sufficient to govern. That much is agreed.
1a) A system wherein what you called “economic force” (which is nothing more than withholding economic interaction from people you don’t want to ineract with) is countered by means of active physical force on average over the long term reduces the freedom of the people on the receiving end of the physical force more than it increases the freedom of those on who’s behalf the physical force is in theory being used. In the end, in fact, it harms everyone.
3) The validity of the concept of implicit agreement to a “social contract” by one’s continued presence is not universally agreed to, and in particular, I dispute it. I stay because there is no place else where the contract is less bad, not because I think it is agreeable. Perhaps some stay for other reasons; for love, or because the government physically forces them to stay. I also dispute that a social contract is a necessary foundation of a moral, workable, advanced society.
5) “Mere decades”?!?!?!!! Way longer than most people are in school. Insufficient. Changing private schools is much faster, yes, if a desirable and affordable alternative is available. But if there are more than just a few people (in a truly free society, at least) who want a private school of a particular type, the existence of the market opportunity to provide one will pretty universally cause a desirable one to be made. If it’s affordable. If it’s not affordable, then it wouldn’t be affordable to provide one via running the same available money through a government beaurocracy first, either.
6) Fraud, embezzlement, and breach of contract are simply forms of stealing; actively physically taking possession property in violation of the consent of the owner. But as for “unfair restraint of trade” and “unfair labor practices”, you;ll have to define them in terms of active physical harm before I’ll worry about them. As commonly used around here these days, I don’t consider them a problem.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
1a) Your analysis of “economic force” is inaccurate. Nor does history bear out your criticism of using governmental power to counter it. Since the passing of the Sherman anti-trust act, the freedom of the people who were shut out of the market by monopolistic abuse has increased more than the freedom of the monopoly holders has decreased. The freedom of people against whom racial and sexual discrimination was practiced has increased more than the freedom of people who wanted to discriminate has decreased.
3) It is not only your continued presence that constitutes your implicit and explicit acceptance of the social contract. Do you vote? Do you use the roads our taxes pay for? Eat food that’s been inspected for cleanliness on the public dime? Use electricity provided by a utility company that receives a public subsidy, delivered to you over wires built as part of a public works project? This list could go on. Every day, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep you reap the benefits of the social contract you disparage.
If you dispense with a social contract, you dispense with government altogether. Even if your government’s only an agreement to come to your neighbor’s aid if someone else attacks her and vice versa, you have a social contract.
5) How many schools sprung up to meet the needs of people who didn’t want to pray? How many such schools do you pretend existed before public education? And yet the schools would never have changed had the demand not existed. The notion that “the market opportunity to provide one will pretty universally cause a desirable one to be made” is refuted by history.
6) “Fraud, embezzlement, and breach of contract are simply forms of stealing; actively physically taking possession property in violation of the consent of the owner.” You previously said that the only role of government was to protect people from the use of active physical violence against them. You are now backpedaling to include forms injury that don’t involve active physical violence. “Unfair restraint of trade” and “Unfair labor practices” are well understood terms, and if you are not familiar with them I encourage you to research them.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Bogus logic about the fire department: that doesn’t prove anything except that it is possible and workable for the suburb in question to have one.
But that’s typical libertarian politics: the observation that something can work in some circumstances is magically (i.e. with no visible means of support) extrapolated to infer that it will work in all circumstances.
Still, why do you exempt defense and (bits of the) criminal justice system?
The libertarian argument boils down to “you want it, you pay for it”, EXCEPT when it involves something THEY think you should want, and then it’s back to some wooly attempt to pretend that there’s something special about their sacred cow, but not about anyone else’s.
[ Sure, defense may benefit everyone, but it doesn’t benefit everyone equally, and the same can be said of every other area in which government funding may be used. ]
Re: What’s unrealistic?
The existence of the fire department I mentioned proves that it works in at least one place. You have not presented any reasons why it wouldn’t work everywhere else, and you haven’t demonstrated anywhere it has failed, so your argument is weaker than mine. And it seems pretty clear to me that if fire protection is important, people will contribute to it voluntarily, so there’s at least one plausible argument that it will work everywhere. Do you have an actual counterargument?
And you completely misrepresent the Libertarian position and philosophy. The Libertarian philosophy is all about the morality and practicality of active physically violent force. We believe that force is only moral, and only really useful in the long run, in defense against other force. There are reasons why we believe this, but they take a few pages to explain and I don’t feel like going through all that here; suffice it to say that your mother hopefully taught you pretty much the same thing before sending you off to kindergarden, and it still holds true in the bigger world, too. And since government is _defined_ as the thing in a place which chooses and ***enforces*** rules which otherwise might not be followed, it is inherently based on being the most powerful active physical force in the area, so Libertarians believe that the role of government should be limited to those for which force is moral and practical; which as I said above, is defense against other force.
That’s pretty much all there is to it, and it is nothing whatsoever like what you said it was. It also explains why Libertarians exempt the military, the police, the courts, and the penal system from the prohibition against force.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
The primary counterargument against a privatized fire department is “we tried that, and it didn’t work.” The problem with corporate fire insurance is that they need to make sure that non-subscribers’ houses burn down, so that everybody else is willing to keep paying. This is reasonable in one sense — they need to support themselves, and so they need to ignore fires that aren’t insured through them — but unreasonable in the sense that it means more people lose their houses and, y’know, die horribly in fires.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Your argument assumes that the only non-governmental structure for fire departments is fee-for-service. This is not the case, and I provided an example thereof. There could be any number of other non-government but still non-corporate solutions as well. The idea that ONLY government can ever possibly provide a workable fire department system is false, and the recognition that having a workable fire department system is important will inevitably bring people to find what will work in their specific situation without the need to resort to force to bring it about. As my hometown did.
Re: What's unrealistic?
Your hometown, as was pointed out, very likely used government money to provide equipment, and certainly paid taxes toward fire relief. So no, it really didn’t.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
It had been suggested by others, but I disputed that.
I remember fundraisers for a new truck.
And what taxes for “fire relief” are you talking about???
Still your argument assumed that the only possible non-governmental structure for fire departments is corporate, and as I pointed out, the possibilities for other variations are in fact vast, and possibly different in different situations.
Re: What's unrealistic?
Right. So when I say the argument goes, “we tried that and it didn’t work”, I mean no such structures happened. Instead, we just got a lot of extra property damage and fatalities, and then eventually the current (very effective) governmental structure.
As for “what taxes for fire relief?”, bear in mind that you pay at the state level for putting out wildfires, and for extra firefighters called in when serious fires occur. There were probably also county, and likely municipal taxes, for it as well.
And just because you remember a fundraiser for an engine, doesn’t mean there weren’t basic taxes for basic constant equipment. Or to put it another way, even though there was a bond measure for extra funds for preserving Coyote Creek this time around in Alameda County, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t originally Alameda County tax money funding it. It means the basic budget wasn’t (in the minds of people filling out a survey) enough.
It’s very unlikely your town had a fundraiser every time you needed uniforms, or medical certification, or gasoline for the fire engine. It’s much more likely that these things were taken care of with municipal tax money, and only more expensive or more optional things (like an extra fire engine) got fundraisers.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Where’d the money come from for your suburb’s al volunteer fire department? Sure, the people donated their time, but fire equipment doesn’t just appear. Many volunteer fire departments have equipment, training, insurance, etc. that is paid for by taxes and federal grants in addition to donations.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Many get tax money in addition to donations. I recall the one I referenced being financed by voluntary contributions. So at least that point still holds. You raise others elsewhere, I’ll address them separately as time permits.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
What I think is unrealistic is expecting the government is going to stay 100% out of our personal matters, out of science, out of the arts, out of education… etc etc… and only do what they were “designed” to do, i.e. national defense. Just don’t think it’s gonna happen, though I wouldn’t argue that it’s a bad idea to have more libertarian voices in the gov’t. (I’m not going to get into a long discussion about this, though.)
Re: What’s unrealistic?
It may not happen, and very unlikely to happen soon.
That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be advocated at every turn.
I don’t see why it’s unrealistic to expect, even demand, that government stay out of matters which are, as you stated, personal.
I don’t see the justification, on either the moral or the practical level, for government involvement in science, arts, or education. It certainly wasn’t always this way in all places at all times throughout history, and it needn’t be now, either, except that too many people are used to it being that way.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Hello, are you my boyfriend? 😉
Seriously, though, I’m not going to get into it…
Re: What’s unrealistic?
No I’m not your boyfriend, but I know him, and we share a lot of the same political opinions, often in group settings on Wednesday evenings.
Please do not feel obligated, socially or otherwise, to engage in discussions you don’t want to engage in. But to the degree you do engage in them, you must expect that you may be engaged in return.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Yes boss.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Did I say something bossy? Didn’t mean to. Perhaps it was my use of the word “must”. Not intended in the sense of compulsion, but rather in the sense of unavoidable consequence, like if you let go of your pencil in midair you must expect that it will drop.
Just pointing out that if you engage in conversation, it’s realistic to expect that some people hearing you may feel justified to engage you back.
Again, didn’t mean for it to sound bossy, and sorry if you took it that way.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Yeah, I did hear the ‘must’ as an instruction. Thanks for clarifying and sorry for not being more generous in my reading of your post.
It’s totally fine that you engaged me in the conversation, I just don’t have a lot of time to get into an online debate about it. Hope that’s okay. Maybe sometime we can argue the relative merits of Libertarianism over greasy Denny’s food. 🙂
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Sure, if you like. I’m there frequently lately. He can point me out.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
The general problem I have with libertarianism is the fundamental belief that the market will regulate itself, and that pure free-market capitalism is the way to go about it.
Which may be true in a vacuum, but getting there from where we are now would cause a great deal of social and economic upheaval and result in a system that history has shown not to be beneficial to the masses of “have-nots”.
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding your definition of libertarianism, though.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
I do believe that the market will in fact regulate itself, as long as the government effectively does its job of preventing and punishing the use of active physical voilence and threat thereof. Without that, you just go from one form of totalitarianism, specifically Socialism, to some other form of totalitarianism, specifically Plutocracy, which is no better or worse.
But what evidence of history shows that getting from here (somewhat Socialist) to there (Libertarianism), or being there, causes long term negatives to the “have-nots”? The recent (in historical terms) liberation of the Eastern Block countries such as the Czech Republic, Latvia, Poland, etc. for example shows quite the opposite, I’d say. Do you have a particular counterexample in mind?
Re: What’s unrealistic?
I think more in terms of the late 1800s/early 1900s where the free market system could hardly be used as a good example.
Between collusion between big business and the oligarchies that developed, and the rise of unions, where the government very specifically failed in preventing violence, we have a situation where limited choices result in limited methodology. I will also point out that mass protests and the threat of public violence is what helped bring about the changes in those countries you mention. Changes there didn’t come exclusively at the ballot box.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
One argument for Socialism (and I know that posing it this way makes it a strawman argument, but it seems to be relevant to the point I think you’re making) is that Capitalism always inevitably degenerates into Plutocracy; force of government under the control of the rich, a form of Totalitarianism. To this I’d counter that while it _may_happen that way, there is scant proof that it _must_, but meanwhile Socialism is _already_ a form of Totalitarianism, no better than Plutocracy, and I think I’d rather take my chances with the freedom thing while it may last.
Now certainly there was a touch of Plutocracy in the period you reference, as there is now, and I’m as against that form of Totalitarianism as I am against any other, please make no mistake. Certainly government had fallen down on the job of protecting the people against force back then, as it sometimes does now, and that’s bad and should be fixed.
And yes, agreed, liberty is often paid for in blood, both in the fall of the Eastern Block as well as in the formation of this nation. I don’t see why that’s a condemnation of my point that freedom is a good thing and Totalitarianism, whether in the form of Plutocracy, Socialism, Theocracy, Monarchy, or any other, is not. Is it that force is sometimes required in order to bring about or protect freedom? I’ve argued that that is the one situation where force is justified; to protect against other force.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
My general argument is that the state of the state *now* is not so bad as the journey to change it would be. That the system can be modified with minor changes (in the overall scheme of things) as opposed to large systemic ones.
Then again, as one of the relatively comfortable haves, as opposed to a have not, it’s easy for me to make that decision.
As the saying goes:
Under Communisim, man exploits man.
Under Capitalism it’s the other way around.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
I think it’s OK if the changes are small and incremental, as long as they are moving in the direction of greater human freedom. A little change in health insurance tax policy here, a little change allowing personal accounts for Social Security taxes there, maybe some private school vouchers, and eventually things get a little better and a little better. Nobody is expecting or suggesting overnight miracles. Right now I’d be happy with just holding the line on personal freedom, economic and otherwise, against the gathering forces of encroaching government, um, force.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Does history record anywhere, at any time, a capitalist society unregulated by governmental power that didn’t devolve into plutocracy?
“Certainly government had fallen down on the job of protecting the people against force back then, as it sometimes does now, and that’s bad and should be fixed.”
Does that mean you support, say, the Sherman anti-trust Act? If so, you’re the first libertarian I’ve come across that didn’t maintain that monopolies are just hunky-dorey.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Does history record anywhere at any time a capitalist society unregulated by government power AT ALL? But certainly there have been places and times where there was LESS regulation, and I’d suggest that they were better than where there was more; the US just after the Revolution compared to just before, Zimbabwe before Mugabe as compared to since, South Korea compared to North, China and Viet Nam after they started permitting private property compared to before, Eastern Europe after the fall of the USSR as compared to before, Russia under Yelstin compared to under Putin. In any event, I’ll take my chances with the _possibility_ of devolving into a Plutocracy over _inviting_ the creation of some alternate form of totalitarianism, thank you very much. I simply don’t see the benefit of one form of totalitarianism over the other.
Are monopolies examples of active physical violence? Is a monopoly even actually possible without a government imposing it? Can you give an example?
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Does history record anywhere at any time a capitalist society unregulated by government power AT ALL?
Not that I know of, Hamurabbi regulated the markets of his day. You’re the one who maintains that the evidence for a capitalist system being capable of doing anything other than devolving into a plutocracy over time is “scant.” I’m just trying to winkle out if that’s closer to maintaining that “the Large Hadron Collider will produce a detectable Higg’s Boson” or to maintaining that “water will run uphill if only we pray hard enough.” If you can’t provide a single example of a capitalist society that didn’t devolve into a plutocracy that would tend to point to the latter.
I’m particularly perplexed by your citing Russia under Yeltsin and under Putin — you’re making my case for me. Yeltsin’s administration set new land-speed records for a capitalist society to become a plutocracy, and Putin is Yeltsin’s hand-picked successor. It’s far from clear how many Russians would agree with you that things were better under him. Which is not to say that I approve of Putin, but merely to note that things must have been very bad indeed under Yeltsin for Putin to be seen as an improvement. Between the Chechen war, the advent of the Russian mafia, Russia defaulting on it’s national debt, and the rise of oligarchs, one might see where they’re coming from.
I also note with amusement your assertion that we had a “touch of plutocracy” during the gilded age — rather like saying Europe had a “touch of illness” in the fourteenth century.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
I think the evidence for less regulation being better is found in the examples I gave, but OK, perhaps Russia under Communism compared to Russia afterwards is a better example with respect to Russia; even with all that’s going on there now, most still think it’s better than the USSR. Which is why the Communist Party failed so badly in elections.
And North vs South Korea is a more pointed and stark example, as is Zimbabwe.
Care to tackle these?
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Regarding Russia, I think your analysis is still flawed. The Communist party doing poorly in elections as an indicator of a Russian preference for less regulation over more[1] would be more crediible if the place wasn’t being run by an ex-KGB agent who’s been steadily expanding control of the oligarchy Yeltsin built. Putin dreams himself Czar.
Your analysis of North and South Korea misses much, too. North Korea’s problems don’t stem from the extent to which their markets are regulated, they stem from the fact that the government has spent the last 50 years so much money on maintaining a military to make a U.S. or South Korean invasion unpalatable that there isn’t enough money left over for food.
Zimbabwe, too, exemplifies the methodological error of your analysis: using regulation itself as the metric rather than examining the specific regulation to find the root cause.
By counter-example history shows places with more regulation where things are better than when there was less regulation. Starting right here in the United States — unless you care to try to make the case that everyone was happier, more prosperous, and more free under the robber barons. The fact that the US isn’t totalitarian refutes the notion that regulation makes totalitarian states inevitable.
[1] with no consideration of what those regulations are…
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Are monopolies examples of active physical violence?
You said previously:
I’ve argued that that is the one situation where force is justified; to protect against other force.
Are you seriously asserting that “force” is synonymous with “active physical violence?” That rather odd view of force might explain exactly why libertarian philosophy is so divorced from reality.
Is a monopoly even actually possible without a government imposing it? Can you give an example?
Are you serious? You’ve never heard of Standard Oil? AT&T? The NFL[1]? Or are you under the impression that monopoly means “100% ownership” rather than “a specific individual or enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it.”[2][3]
[1] The National Football League was specifically exempted from the Sherman Anti-trust Act by public law 89-800.
[2] Milton Friedman (2002). “VIII: Monopoly and the Social Responsibility of Business and Labor”, Capitalism and Freedom (paperback), 40th anniversary edition (in English), The University of Chicago Press, 208.
[3] Or “a business concern that prohibits competitors from entering the field, with the natural result being that the firm is able to make pricing and production decisions independent of competitive forces.” if you prefer Greenspan to Friedman.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
“Force” and “active physical violence”… here, yes, I’m being sloppy and using them synonymnously. I don’t have a problem with the sense of the word “force” which means “passively leaving no other alternative” because to bar this form of force would require active physical violence. As morally reprehensible as I believe it to be for a rich person to allow a poor person to starve to death, I believe it is more reprehensible for the poor person to actively violently force the rich person to feed them, or for two poor people to vote to actively physically force him to feed them; give me liberty or give me death and all that, plus in the end such actions tend to simpy make everyone poor and not solve anything in the long run. Ref. North Korea, Zimbabwe, etc.
Monopolies…
It was a purposely leading question, thank you for following.
Standard Oil was a monopoly, yes. Fine. How did it become so? By selling fuel at a lower cost than everybody else! Had it not been broken up by active physical violence bythe government, then in order to maintain their monopoly, to keep out competition, they would have had to continue selling fuel at lower prices than anybody else would have. I.e. somebody else can always enter the market if the monopoly tries to use its position to the detriment of the consumer. In other words, it’s not a probelm in this case.
How is the NFL a monopoly? Other football leagues have been started up from time to time and simply not caught on. XFL anybody? Arena Football?
Re: What’s unrealistic?
You create a false dichotomy by limiting your consideration to “passively leaving no other alternative” and “active physical force” and therefore fail to address the case where a rich person or rich people in collusion actively use economic power to create and maintain circumstances in which (to use your example) poor people have no alternative but to starve to death, or even have as their only alternative working for just enough money to feed themselves and remain poor.
If you’re talking about how to change policy in the US, pointing to North Korea and Zimbabwe is another scarecrow. We’ve had regulation here for longer than North Korea has existed as a polity without going that route.
Regarding monopolies, are you honestly unaware that Standard Oil only charged a lower price than anyone else when someone else was trying to sell oil, and charging excessive prices the rest of the time? Only so many fledgling companies had to be destroyed — and their investors ruined — before people stop being willing to enter the market. Standard Oil was broken up by the government specifically because they had found a way to use their position to the detriment of the consumer without having to fear someone else entering the market. In other words, it was exactly a problem in this case.
Regarding the NFL, you are confusing a monopoly with the abuse of monopolistic power. The NFL is perfectly aware that it is allowed to exist as the NFL because of a specific act of Congress that permitted the merger of the AFL and the NFL, and that they’d be broken up with a quickness if they sought to abuse it.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Is a monopoly even actually possible without a government imposing it?
I’ll point out in passing, since it seems relevant, that “government imposing a monopoly” includes “government enforcing copyright, patent, and other intellectual property rights.” That is a case, not necessarily bad, of a government “only enforcing property rights” while also creating specific monopoly situations.
So if you’re pro-intellectual-property, you’re already in favor of at least the possibility of a government-enforced monopoly, via the same police departments you feel are appropriate for enforcement of physical property rights, and the same threat of force they use in those circumstances.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Depends on whether you consider an idea as a property or as a monopoly on the use thereof.
Not an area I actually spend a lot of time thinking about, and sort of tangential, but probably an interesting discussion in its own right, at some point.
Re: What's unrealistic?
Well, do you believe in police enforcement for, say, CD duplication or book duplication (and selling) cases? So yes, if you’re opposed to all copyright, trademark and patent enforcement, you can avoid that.
However, the US constitution actually describes copyright as “a monopoly” for a limited time. So even if you don’t spend time thinking about it, your stances of “copyright enforcement” + “police enforcement” = “using government power to enforce government-granted monopolies”.
I mean, unless you’re also 100% against intellectual property enforcement.
Physical property enforcement, while it could also be considered a government-granted monopoly, is a more limited and specific monopoly in the sense that you have to physically seize something to violate it, while IP monopolies are a bit less intuitive — patents especially.
Re: What's unrealistic?
Kind of a small corner case. I’ve seen the case made both ways. I guess I’m sort of in the camp of “fruits of one’s time, effort, and skill” being something one voluntarily exchanges part of one’s life for. Since I believe that one starts off owning oneself, and I believe in voluntary exchange of ownership rights, I guess that puts me in the camp of intellectual property being just as valid and real as physical property.
In any event, a lot smaller of an issue I think than the problems that tend to crop up with unlimited majority rule, such as, oh, involuntary slavery, death camps, and the like.
Of course, putting it the way I did also begs the question of voluntary slavery, but that’s less of an issue among some of this crowd than perhaps elsewhere. I just don’t think it can extend to progeny. Perhaps that is somewhat arbitrary, but that’s where I’m at. And in any event, a considerably smaller corner case.
Re: What's unrealistic?
Kind of a small corner case
You’re dismissing the whole of intellectual property law as “kind of a small corner case”? Really? Well, um, okay.
I’ll point out that there’s a lot more day-to-day copyright enforcement than there are death camps. And as my lovely wife points out, things like welfare, Sarbanes-Oxley and universal health care are also a lot less severe than slavery, death camps, et cetera.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Unfortunately for your “beliefs”, all the evidence is that markets do NOT regulate themselves if left to their own devices, because individuals attempt, and sometimes succeed, in manipulating them for their own advantage — by forming power blocs, by deceit, by predation, whatever.
This was first understood with the “tragedy of the commons”, and nothing has changed since then.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of libertarians like to pretend that their article of faith (self-regulating markets) is a fact, despite any evidence to support that. Which makes it hard to discuss anything approximating reality with them.
Basically, libertarianism boils down to the “I’m alright Jack” school of politics: the firm belief that if they can do OK with the enormous benefits of their birth (usually — but not always — white, middle-class and male), then anyone else can too, and (critically) they shouldn’t be expected to recompense society in any way for their good fortune in being born they way they were.
This is the microscopic view of the world; in practice, they only have the ability to casually dismiss all of a governments obligations to its people (except the ones they want, like defense) BECAUSE they follow in the footsteps of people who would have recognized libertarianism as selfish and greedy. The Constitution, for example, clearly was written by people who knew that an unregulated market leads to chaos.
Finally, I find it quite amusing that you seem to believe that the Eastern European countries you list are anywhere near “libertarian”! They are part of the friggin’ EU, for heaven’s sake!
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Actually, the “Tragedy of the Commons” has nothing to do with free markets. “Tragedy of the Commons” is what happens under Communism; when something is “owned” by everybody, nobody really feels any ownership of it or has much interest in taking care of it, and everybody tries to use it for their own advantage to the detriment of the whole. This is why collective farms and factories in the USSR produced so poorly, for example. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
And what evidence do you have that _free_ markets, ones kept free of physical force, do not self-regulate? Consider for example that expected demand has gone down for gasoline recently, and as a result the price has dropped accordingly; self regulation. MPAA is self-regulation. Kosher certification is self-regulation. UL. S&P and Moody’s. Consumer Reports. All parts of self-regulating free systems, all of which work and continually improve and adapt, with far more agility than government regulation possibly could. So, there’s several examples of working self-regulation. Got any counterexamples? Let’s discuss them.
And once again you’re putting up a “strawman” argument about what Libertarianism is and what it means, but one which is completely untrue. See my other post on this. Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawman_Argument
As far as the Constitution goes, what on earth is in it that you think suggests in any way that the founders believed that government should regulate free markets or engage in wealth redistribution??? In fact it clearly intends to severely LIMIT government and protect the rights of the individual AGAINST the tyranny of the majority.
And while Eastern Europe is not nearly _completely_ Libertarian, they are clearly far _more_ Libertarian than they were under Soviet domination. And the transition, though vast, wasn’t awful in the long run for the “have-nots” as the other poster had asserted it always must be. Which is why it was a reasonable argument for me to make.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
If you’d actually read your Wikipedia page, you’d see that Thucydides made the point a _little_ before Marx/Lenin/USSR, and the label is the only “modern” thing about the concept. Now, care to address the point, hmmm?
As to your specious argument about free markets, what “threat of physical force” caused the California energy crisis of a few years back? What physical force created this sub-prime mortgage crisis?
(Mind you, since you seem to think that Kosher certification is self-regulation, I’m not sure you are really qualified to respond — you seem to have a few soundbites, and no substance. And the notion that Europe is somehow “more libertarian” is gibberish, too: it would be true to say they are “less communist”, but only a complete naif would try to assert that political theory is a single axis concept with a communism on one end and something on the other)
However, I will demolish your “fire department” nonsense: you assert that the existence of volunteer fire departments in a (tiny) minority of cases is evidence that volunteer departments would be satisfactory in all or most. This is trivially disproved by considering a community that lacks the wealth to obtain the equipment a department needs — a basic subsistence “hand to mouth” community. They, lacking resources, could have all the volunteers you’d want, but the fires would still burn. Whoops. Still, not your problem, right? You’re all right! But have you heard of wildfires…?
Meanwhile, you’ve not done a thing to justify your “sacred cow” exemption for defense — while you have wittered on about how defense from aggression is somehow miraculously different from (say) defense from fires, the core problem you’ve evaded is that whatever level of potential threat you think is appropriate to defend against, I may think is unnecessary or even provocative. So who decides? By libertarian mantra, it should be me, yet you’d be imposing a levy to support your preferences. Whoops.
Next, pretending something is a strawman argument and providing a clever linky thingy to a definition does not, in fact, make the argument a strawman. You seem to be behaving like Sarah Palin when she claimed the investigation into her “Troopergate” conduct cleared her — it’s a fiction that suits you, but you can’t actually support it.
Finally, I thought I’d close with your biggest gaffe: what on earth makes me think the founders should regulate free markets is an document you’ve clearly never actually read: it’s called the Constitution, and Article I, Section 8 reads, in part:
“To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes; “
… which does rather lead me to believe that the founders believed that the governmen should regulate free markets. Because if they thought otherwise, they’d have written something like:
“To NOT regulate commerce, even with foreign nations, or among the several states, or with the Indian tribes”.
If you read carefully, you may detect the subtle difference!
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Yo… So I love the debate. I love watching you bring up points that I hadn’t necessarily thought of, but I would really appreciate it if you could chill on the insulting tone. It is not necessary for proving your points and just serves to inflame snottiness, which doesn’t make for a good debate. The dude you are arguing with is exceptionally polite in his tone and you are being bratty.
This is my sandbox. You don’t get to be an asshole in my sandbox. 😛
Re: What’s unrealistic?
The idea of collectivism has been around longer than Marx, as the references you bring up point out, since even the ancient Greeks used this term in the manner I described, not the one you tried to use it to mean.
The California Energy Crisis was caused by strong but poor regulation of the energy market by the California government, since it did no such thing as deregulate it as many claim. I’ll dig up a very nice link over at Cato later that explains this really well.
Similarly, the sub-prime mess has its roots in the Community Reinvestment Act, especially as extended under Clinton, which forced banks to lend to borrowers who were bad risks. I have some good articles showing this as well.
Does that answer your question?
And while politics is not single axis, axes can be singled out for discussion. The one I’ve been talking about is the individual freedom/government control axis. Certainly you can see that Communism is on one end of this spectrum and Libertarianism is towards the other.
What’s wrong with the idea of kosher certification as an example of self-regulation? There are several kosher agencies, which food producers choose among and contract with to certify their products, without government intervention. I think it’s a fine example, little different from Underwriter’s Laboratories for electrical equipment, which I also mentioned.
I’m sorry if you didn’t see my point about force in general. Let me try again. It seems moral to restrict force to use in defense against other force specifically because the thing you’re defending against is itself force.
Your characterization of Libertarian arguments is in fact a strawman. You are knocking down an argument which is not the one I made and then claiming you have knocked down my argument. That is the very definition of strawman argument.
Lastly, the Interstate Commerce clause was clearly intended ONLY to prevent states and tribes from using their own force against each other. Like so much of the Constitution, it has been perverted over the centuries to mean all sorts of things gthe Founders never intended.
Oh, and yes, please try to refrain from the ad hominem, thanks.
The fire department argument is interesting; I’ll try to get to it later.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
OK, fire departments in poor communities…
If they don’t have the money to put one together voluntarily,they don’t have the money to put one together through government force, either, at least not without sacrificing something that they voluntarily turn what little wealth they have towards instead. Government doesn’t create wealth out of thin air, it only has any by taking it from the people, who in your example, don’t have enough to fund a fire department by any means whatsoever.
Furthermore, what wealth governments collect, they run through a layer of generally unresponsive beaurocracy worse in that way than pretty much any other, wasting more than would otherwise have been wasted along the way, reducing the total wealth available; yet another reason to want to minimize government.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
If they don’t have the money to put one together voluntarily,they don’t have the money to put one together through government force, either,
The fact that poor neighborhoods that don’t have the money to put together a volunteer fire department have government-funded fire departments refutes this. The reason it is so is that what is beyond the resources of a neighborhood is not necessarily beyond the means of a town, a city, a state, or a nation. It’s the same principle that has a nation field an army rather than hope everyone who might get called up in a militia can afford their very own rifle and ammunition, tank, or fighter interceptor.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Can’t find the exact Cato article; it’s some years ago now. The thrust was that the California Energy market wasn’t deregulated at all, just different, stupider regulation, centered on Cal ISO.
Here’s a couple of articles making the case for CRA as the main cause of the sub-prime problem:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Mzk3MzFiYWY3NjUyNzUyNzA4MzYzNTk2ZDVhMDFiMWE=
http://www.forbes.com/2008/07/18/fannie-freddie-regulation-oped-cx_yb_0718brook.html?partner=yahootix
Re: What’s unrealistic?
The particular stupidity of what’s been called the “partial deregulation” of the California energy market was that it left loopholes in place that permitted companies like Enron to manipulate the market supply and demand in order to raise the cost of energy. See the Wikipedia entry on the california energy crisis, particularly the referenced documents therein.
As to the sub-prime problem, “Contrary to some media commentary, there is no evidence that the Community Reinvestment Act was responsible for encouraging the subprime lending boom and subsequent housing bust. This Act only applies to depositories, and did not cover most of the important subprime lenders. Depositories showed a lesser tendency to write subprime loans than lenders not subject to the Act (Yellen 2008).” — Ellis, Luci. “The housing meltdown: Why did it happen in the United States?”. BIS Working Papers (259): 5.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Ah, the “CRA caused the problem” Koolaid:
For the record, how could the CRA, which in no way requires lending to unqualified applicants, be responsible for loans to people without documentation or adequate income? How come at least half, and maybe as much as three quarters of the subprime loans are those made by lenders that are not subject to the CRA? Even if one assumes that the CRA required lenders to provide loans to unqualified applicants (which is a false assumption), where _precisely_ does the CRA require that the institutions create and trade derivatives of those loans? And since the housing crises is centered primarily on “exurban” areas, how is the CRA is relevant (there’s no community to worry about)? And why are the loans made by the CRA-covered institutions less likely to be sold, and less likely to have high interest rates, and so be less “toxic”?
So, no, the CRA is not the problem. The root of the problem is the lack of regulation of the mortgage originators (which let them make false promises and use arbitrary property valuations) and the lack of regulation of the banks in what they did with those loans once they were made. And yet you, like many demagogues, choose to blame a piece of legislation for acts that were in no way caused by, or a required by, that legislation.
Typically, the subtext of that demagoguery is blatantly racist: since the CRA prohibited red-lining and decisions based on race, those who blame the CRA for the mess are, effectively, stating that the problem loans are those made to people who were being denied lending prior to the CRA i.e. those in the red-lined neighborhoods and non-whites.
The reason right wingers can get away with this deceit (your deceit) is that they are blurring causation and correlation. The correlation is that the CRA expanded an opportunity for non-traditional lenders, lenders who are not traditional banks, so not FDIC insured, so not subject to the CRA.
But correlation is not causation.
Re your confusion over the Tragedy of the Commons: no, it has little to do with “collectivism”, although I understand why you so desperately need to try to pretend that the phenomenon (which is what it is) doesn’t apply. The Tragedy applies to any and all shared resources, be they roads, fisheries (when you’re done with the fire department problem, explain the fisheries!), common land or marketplaces. (Atmospheric pollution is great one, too!).
Next: Kosher certification is a prime example of an EXTERNALLY REGULATED environment, not “self-regulation”. Different External Regulator, same logical structure.
Ah… the strawman gibberish: I’m not simply responding to your statements. In fact, my analysis of your libertarian political “theories” is based on 20-odd years of observation, reading, discussion, etc., so there’s no “strawman”, merely a rejection of the thing concept you are supporting. My remarks were editorial in nature, not responding to your “argument”, so no strawman for you to feel smug about.
What else? Oh, yes: you are evading addressing why YOUR sacred cow of defense is somehow different. You don’t need to try to recast your assertion yet again, you just need to explain why defense from aggression is different from any other possible expenditure. Unless you can do this (and I doubt you can, given that no else has ever managed it), you’re entire philosophy is simply hypocritical: _your_ sacred cow is more important than _mine_.
Oh, and your attempt to assert that the Constitution explicit enumeration of the regulation of trade is not, in fact, an enumeration of trade regulation because the reason for that enumeration was to prevent use of force (in your opinion, which is by no means universally shared, notwithstanding your bogus use of the word “clearly”) DOES NOT negate the fact that the Constitution explicit embraces the regulation of trade.
Or to put it another way: it doesn’t matter WHY trade regulation is explicitly in the Constitution, the fact is that it IS there.
Lastly, try not to swim out of your depth. You need more than soundbites, biases, bigotry and the odd link to make a cogent argument. And you’ve not demonstrated any greater ability at that than Sarah Palin.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Damnit Malc! Please stop with the ad hominem attacks. You are not going to actually win any argument by being a bully.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
Are you actually _advocating_ active violent physical force for _whatever_ the majority decides is OK?
So you’re OK with the (elected) Nazis killing the German Jews?
Enslaving African Americans (by the elected US government for 87 years)?
Interning Japanese Americans (by the elected US govt. in WWII)?
Starving Tutsis (by the elected majority Hutus in Rwanda)?
If not, where do YOU draw the line?
Because I still think my idea about only using active violent physical force seems pretty common sense; it’s the same morality most everybody agrees to on the individual and small group level, isn’t it?
Or do you think you individually have the right to rob me because you see someone else you think needs my money more than me, and the right to kill me if I don’t comply? Because that would be pretty sociopathic.
Some of your other points…
The Federalist Papers describe the intent of the Interstate Commerce clause, as well as the rest of the Constitution. You should read them. They make it clear that the intent of the Constitution was to limit government power, and in this case specifically simply to prevent states form having tariffs on goods from other states. It was specifically NOT intended to be perverted in the way that it has been, and your interpretation was NOT embraced by the Founders. So the intent certainly does matter.
Strawman: Your “experience” and “reading” is completely different from mine, though no more extensive. But a strawman is, as described and as we seem to agree, when one person claims an argument is that of someone else and then proceeds to show its flaws in order to try to be convincing that the other person is wrong, when in fact the claimed argument is not one that the other person is making. Which is exactly what you did. Strawman.
Kosher is not external, in the sense that it is contracted for; the certifier is in some sense nothing more than a sub-contractor of the business being certified. The value comes from the fact that the sub-contractor is trusted by the consumer. In any event, internal or external is an irrelevant distinction; they are in any event not part of the government and in no way forced upon the producers, which is all that is relevant to my point.
Asserting that CRA is the root of the sub-prime problem is not in any way racist. Large corporate banks are singularly focused on earning money, not on skin color. They’d be happier lending to Michael Jordan than to me despite skin color. Banks didn’t lend in certain areas and to people with certain kinds of credit histories because their business experience led them to believe that to do so would be bad for their bottom line and for no other reason. CRA is nothing more than Affirmative Action in Lending, and Affirmative Action is itself by definition racist. Further, the ex-urb areas you mention as the locus of most of the foreclosures are in fact quite full of people with bad credit who would not have gotten loans but for CRA. On top of that, Fannie and Freddie were required by CRA and follow-on legislation to package up these loans into securities, and in order to sell them Credit Default Swaps were needed to make them palatable to the market. That’s not just correlation, that’s a causation argument. I haven’t seen statistics you seem to be referencing regarding CRA vs non-CRA loans. Care to provide a reliable link to them?
Reagrding “collecitivism”; isn’t that the very definition of “how a shared resource is used”???
And you’ve been very rude. It makes your arguments seem weaker, as rudeness is usually a sign that you don’t really have logic and facts on your side, or that you are closedminded not open to having your preconceptions challanged. Plus it makes you seem like a rude person that people are less likely to want to associate with.
Re: What’s unrealistic?
For the record: you are doing a great job of being polite in your debating. Thanks!
I too have scarce graduate student dollars. Do you have a link to this matching campaign?
I think this will do it:
https://donate.barackobama.com/page/contribute/finalmatch11?match_campaign_id=16&match_is_pledge=1&source=20081014_DP_D1_X
too many indentations
getting harder and harder to keep up with each tangent.
I’d start a new spot in my own LJ except I don’t post to my own LJ.
Shall we start again off of this top-level reply, or take it to email
( this_is_not_my_real_name@hotmail.com ) ?
Re: too many indentations
I’d be in favor of top-level replies. So here’s one: you contend that because you remember a fundraiser for a fire engine, your home town contributed directly for the costs of the volunteer firefighting force. I contend that state, county or municipal taxes would have had to be involved.
In support of my position, I suggest that it’s unlikely that the volunteer firefighters, who are already volunteering their time, would want to also spring for the costs of fire station maintenance, fire engine maintenance, gasoline, insurance (auto, building and hazard), firefighting and medical supplies, and all relevant training. I also consider it unlikely that local businesses would contribute all of those things purely voluntarily.
Your response?
Re: too many indentations
I can try to find out specifically and explicitly.
Meanwhile, I suggested that there are any number of possible non-government yet non-corporate implementations for fire departments. Do you contend that none are ever actually possible, or even that there might be places where no workable implementations are possible for fire departments except a government run one? Even assuming that money otherwise taken in taxes are instead left available? Do you contend that running that money through a government by taxation adds some value to the process of arranging for such “necessities” as fire departments? Or am I missing something?
Re: too many indentations
You continually tell me that there are any number of such things. Can you name two that have actually existed?
I do not claim that no such thing can exist. I claim that your optimistic assumption that they will materialize and take care of the problem is historically wrong.
Re: too many indentations
Sorry, I read your statement buried way below somewhere as saying, “If government doesn’t do it then there would be a corporate structure, which might have this shortcoming…”, implicitly precluding other possible solutions. But you explicitly say here that that’s not what you meant, so OK.
There are communities of people in Israel, ranging in size from a few hundred to several thousand, which are not governments but explicitly voluntary organizations, some of which are large enough and remote enough that they provide their own fire services out of their own funds.
There are many corporate areas which are large enough that they feel the need to provide fire services, not to others in the surrounding community, but just for their own property.
There are communities so sparse that no fire department is necessary. Some of them are nomadic. Some build their homes out of packed snow, which rarely catches fire. 🙂
I’m not recommending any of these arrangements for the vast majority of people, I’m just pointing out that other approaches do exist and work in this regard, specifically to answer your point to name two. This suggests that further non-governmental configurations are also possible in the real world and aren’t necessarily some fairy tale dream.
Re: too many indentations
Fair enough. I’ll point out that several of your examples (corporate, remote community) require supplemental firefighting in case of serious fires, just as municipalities often do.
Also, if you assume that firefighting will be taken care of by the individual communities, wildfires become a problem — it’s easy for a lightly-populated area to have very large, very dangerous fires, and few people live there. A solution of the form, “we’ll just wait until it burns far enough to threaten larger, richer areas” has some obvious drawbacks.
But yes, you’ve given some fine examples of non-government, non-corporate firefighting (in the first case, for some definition of “non-government”).
I have more trouble with the idea that in a large city, you could have a voluntary-contribution firefighting service that still doesn’t need to let non-paying people’s homes burn down. But perhaps there’s some way to do it that just didn’t happen when we had private fire departments, but could eventually be figured out.
Unfortunately, absent government compulsion, such a system would have to be more than just less likely to kill people. It would also need to be more profitable than the historical private corporate firefighting system, or else it would need to coexist successfully with that corporate system taking the more profitable customers. As health insurance demonstrates, sometimes it *is* more profitable to kill people than to serve them, and (again) as health insurance demonstrates, that’s pretty much how it works out in a lot of cases.
Re: too many indentations
In a large city I suppose you _could_ have a voluntary-contribution service that doesn’t need to let non-paying people’s homes to burn down, but you might not. To refine the problem you raise, it would really suck if the ONLY services available let non-paying homes burn down. But that assumes a community SO greedy or uncaring that there existed NO service which didn’t let non-contributors’ homes burn down. In which case, how likely is it that such a mean, awful community would vote to create via government an entity that didn’t let non-contributors (such as people who’s tax rates are zero or even negative) homes burn down, either?
This is a basic class of problem with many arguments against Libertarianism; if the people are moral and wise enough to vote to force everyone in the community to do something good and just (perhaps such as funding and running a fire department), wouldn’t they by definition be moral and wise enough to do that good and just thing voluntarily. Conversely, if they were not moral and wise enough, would they really vote to use force to do the good and just thing, either?
And why is it legitimate for others to impose their view of good and just over me without my explicit consent? Simply because they’re a majority??? What if the majority changes and now they’re imposing some different opinion of good and just on YOU? I’ll go straight to one of the most extreme cases, and point out that the majority of Germans in the 1930’s voted to raise Hitler to power knowing what he believed and specifically because they thought his proposals were moral and wise, and that instance of majority rule turned out to be very very bad for many of the minority of Germans who happened to be Jewish. If such an extreme case is possible under straight majority rule and you believe government’s powers should be limited to prevent such things, where/how do you draw the line, and why? I believe I have already stated where I think the line goes and given my reasons.
Re: too many indentations
if the people are moral and wise enough to vote to force everyone in the community to do something good and just (perhaps such as funding and running a fire department), wouldn’t they by definition be moral and wise enough to do that good and just thing voluntarily?
Nope. Many people are willing to contribute to such an effort, if they are guaranteed that everybody will contribute fairly. In a purely voluntary system, there is no such guarantee. One thing government provides is the guarantee that, within certain limitations, everybody has to contribute rather than just choosing whether to do so.
And why is it legitimate for others to impose their view of good and just over me without my explicit consent?
Because, fundamentally, saying, “you can’t govern anybody without their consent” quickly degenerates into near-anarchy. For instance, why can’t a criminal say, “I’m not shooting anybody in the middle of this burglary, the guy who lives here isn’t home. I haven’t agreed to his property rights, and I don’t see why the police should violently prevent me, without my consent, from nonviolently making off with his jewelery, furniture and garden gnomes.”?
To your mind, the answer is because physical property rights and certain undefined-by-you other rights, which you collectively refer to as “protection from force”, are exempt from the whole “don’t impose your view on others without their consent” thing. One of many problems with that is that it’s a very, very blurry line, as our earlier discussion on intellectual property helped illustrate.
You have stated where the line goes, and given your reasons. I believe that while majority rule isn’t always just or reasonable, that it’s still by and large the best choice. Yes, it’s had some pretty lousy effects in certain cases, the rise of Hitler being one of them. It’s also done pretty well, by and large, especially compared to its various predecessors.
You believe that the next obvious step is to delineate some set of things the government is allowed to do, rather like Ayn Rand’s prohibition against “force and fraud” except to prevent other “force and fraud.” She doesn’t say very clearly where that line is, either. The problem being that “force” is very poorly spelled out, especially when you start including things like theft and breach of contract as “force,” which is less than thoroughly intuitive. Burglary is bad, but I wouldn’t intuitively use the word “force” for it.
Re: too many indentations
How about “non-consentual active harm to life, health, or property” as a cleaner definition of “force”? I don’t find that particularly vague for most applications, with the exception of intellectual property, which I suppose one could go either way on.
Plus, you don’t mention a line you’d argue for at any point to restrict majority rule _whatsoever_. You seem (and pardon me if I’m worng here) to be arguing for _unrestricted_ majority rule as the best possible system.
I find leaving it completely open ended like that far more dangerous and troubling, in the sense of… which is worse: Hitler, or not having a government fire department? Robert Mugabe, or some vagueness about intellectual property rights?
I further dispute that the places and times that have implemented the “majority rule” that you allude to which have done well actually implemented the kind of _unlimited_ majority rule you seem to be advocating. I’d argue that it’s because of the _limits_ on majority rule, because of the _inalienable_ RIGHTS of the individual even in the face of majority rule, that have been what made these places be prosperous and happy to the degree that they have.
Re: too many indentations
How about “non-consentual active harm to life, health, or property” as a cleaner definition of “force”? I don’t find that particularly vague for most applications
So let’s say “harm” (which is vague) can include appropriation, so burglary counts as “force”. “Active” harm is also rather vague — for instance, if you booby-trap just outside somebody’s front walk, you’re passive when the harm occurs, but were active in setting the trap. If you’re not okay with the booby trap, are you okay with heavy pollution with toxic metals on your own land, which will then flow slowly out in water or air? If that’s not okay either, what about producing huge amounts of smoke, noise, et cetera? You seem to be fine with all forms of market manipulation, and blurry on IP questions, but there are a lot of them that are similar to questions of booby-trapping or pollution in terms of the kind of effects…
I’m arguing, like another commenter, that you can’t really avoid majority rule. So not exactly unlimited, but the limitations are, well, limited in effectiveness. It’s nice to have a representative democracy, judges, etc, so you have some limits on that, but your limits are *also* chosen by a majority. Basically, try and get people to select wiser heads to prevail, but those (hopefully) wiser heads are still chosen by a majority, so good luck on that.
Also: you can’t avoid people like Hitler and Mugabe. You can only avoid bad leaders by having no leaders. You can’t avoid leaders entirely because your faceless “national defense” has faces when it turns into humans, and leaders of those humans, and if you have no civilians doing the governing, you wind up with military leaders who have enormous amounts of weaponry and force, and zero oversight of them. This is not, traditionally nor historically, a recipe for peace and prosperity. If you have leaders, you can’t ordain that no bad leader will ever be chosen. You can only have checks and balances on leaders *after* they begin serving and (potentially) doing bad things. Your system will not be perfect, and will be game-able, whatever it is, so those checks and balances must be executed by individual human beings at some level. In a majority rule system, those human beings are the voters.
I’ll continue in a moment, but this comment is long enough.
Re: too many indentations
We can try to refine “harm” and “active”; it’s not impossible. I’d say it’s fairly common sense that robbing and booby-trapping and heavy metal polluting count as active physical harm. Noise, and for that matter, light, comes closer to the line where the rights of one person start being in closer balance to the rights of the other. And if you’re willing to look back as far as to include Solomon, there’s literally thousands of years of case law to help us parse through it all.
And I’m all for checks and balances and majority rule to be applied within the government, independent of the fact that I suggest that that government be limited in scope, so I don’t think I have to forfiet any of the benefits of these which you mention.
Re: too many indentations
And if you’re willing to look back as far as to include Solomon, there’s literally thousands of years of case law to help us parse through it all.
Well, yes, but you’re in favor of throwing most of that out. Governments historically go for more complex and subtle interactions than the (admittedly pithy) “your right to throw a punch ends where my nose begins”, and they often manage it with agencies, complex rules, and solutions not based on harm in your definitions.
So you’re in favor of military and police, and presumably by extension judges, generals, quartermasters and other military support and police support personnel. And that’s pretty much the whole government. “Checks and balances” have traditionally come partially because of other powers wielded by legislators, budget managers, those who allocate influence and money and perform regulation, but you’ve gotten rid of the vast majority of them. You need many fewer legislators and a much smaller set of rules without most tariffs, without the post office, firemen, public schools… Really without anything in the federal government except military and police.
Which means, in terms of money and influence, you have the police as a check to the military and the military as a check to the police. Because that’s all you have left, so they’d better be the checks and balances on each other.
In the current system, huge layers of bureaucrats wield influence (primarily from regulation), money (in many and various forms) and difference sorts of approval or push-back. That’s horrifically inefficient, of course, but it makes it much harder to have, say, a military coup, because of the number of people that can help or hinder it, and thus the level of organization necessary to turn the whole apparatus. A president can (sometimes) do so, but he’s about the only choice, and his effectiveness is highly limited.
Under your far more efficient system, if you’ve got the military and the military is stronger than the relocatable force of the police, you’ve already got everything you need for an instant military coup. But we could, you know, write a regulation forbidding that and see how well it works.
Re: too many indentations
No, the checks and balances I was referring to, the ones I thought you were referring to, are between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
And there’s no need to reduce the number of legislators; that’s independent of the number of bills. Walter Williams recently had a piece suggesting that we’d be better off with a couple of thousand congressional districts, and he’s about as Libertarian as they come.
I had never considered the idea that the bloat of government beaurocracy was a check against a coup or expansion of government power beyond intended limits. Frequently beaurocracy is a mechanism for _extending_ government power, rather than limiting it.
As far as the case law goes, I believe there’s lots of stuff in there that’s applicable within and in order to help define and refine the limited scope I suggest, staring with the most famous precedent attributed to the person I mentioned.
Re: too many indentations
And there’s no need to reduce the number of legislators; that’s independent of the number of bills
I’m including things like legislative aids. The less you’re governing, the fewer folks you need in the trenches. You don’t need to reduce the number of, say, Congressmen, though they’ll do less work and be in session less.
I had never considered the idea that the bloat of government beaurocracy was a check against a coup or expansion of government power beyond intended limits.
Glad to hear that I’m expanding your horizons.
Re: too many indentations
Opinions on my comment that government beaurocracy in my experience and view tends to _extend_ government power rather than check it?
Re: too many indentations
I’d say sometimes true, sometimes false. As you point out, food relief (a very simple form of additional governance, equipped with a lot of foreign resources) can easily be subverted to extend government control. I’d argue that, say, the OMB (a complex, accounting-based chunk of government designed to provide checks and balances, which comes with few additional resources) would be the exact opposite.
Re: too many indentations
Not exactly sure of the scope of OMB, but certainly there are relatively small regulations which exact an enormous toll. Sarbanes-Oxley is the most recent horrendous example. Reduces GDP more in compliance EACH YEAR than all the Enron-type companies going belly-up cost combined.
So I’m still skeptical.
Re: too many indentations
We were discussing how easily government could be coopted for tyranny (in the imposed-violently-from-outside sense). You’re welcome to not like the OMB, and to consider it tyrannical in the “it cuts corporate efficiency and profits and you don’t like it” sense, but it is *not* tyrannical in the “easily coopted to work in favor of a military government” sense. They are different meanings of the word.
Or perhaps you mean, “a military dictator would be able to use the OMB to be more tyrannical by doing something like passing Sarbanes-Oxley.” I hope you don’t, because I’ll be forced to mock you mercilessly. Besides, you’re the one claiming that an imposed tyranny will do everything he can to keep the country worth saving.
Which argues for a benevolent dictatorship model, which is what you claimed to be absolutely against (unlimited government). So now I’m confused.
Re: too many indentations
Does Sarbox even fall under OMB? I was just using them as similar sorts of things. And my thrust was that each is in and of itself an example of tyranny in the imposed-violently-upon-those-who-don’t-consent sense. They contribute to the sum total tyranny. And Sarbox could certainly be coopted to work in favor of extending tyranny further, given all its reporting requirements.
And while a dictator might refrain from destroying his country outright by dropping FAEs on it, they are sometimes not so wise as to avoid destroying it in more subtle and slow acting ways; see North Korea.
Which I think still argues for maximal individual liberty and majority rule by active physical force over only what is absolutely necessary to achieve that maximum, and I argue elsewhere that “only what is absolutely necessary to achieve that maximum of freedom” is no broader than “other uses of active physical force besides this one”.
Re: too many indentations
So then, you’re unwilling to distinguish between the two forms of tyranny, regardless of context? Or you’re just done with this argument?
Re: too many indentations
Another way to look at it is that limiting the scope of government adds another layer through which someone like Hitler or Mugabe would have to get through and tear down before they could do the horrible things that they did.
This gets back to my point about Libertarianism maybe possibly degenerating into Plutocratic totalitarianism but Socialism, even Democratic Socialism, already starts out being a form of totalitarianism right out of the gate.
Re: too many indentations
Another way to look at it is that limiting the scope of government adds another layer through which someone like Hitler or Mugabe would have to get through and tear down before they could do the horrible things that they did.
Nope. They’d become military leaders instead of civilian leaders, and they’d have no effective limits or oversight.
Re: too many indentations
Becoming a military leader is a more difficult task than becoming a political one. Especially in larger, more established militiaries. You can’t just file an application, collect some signatures, buy a few ads, go on Larry King, and become a general, much less one that the military will follow.
Re: too many indentations
So then you’re saying that, say, in Rome, where they had very little civilian government and mostly a strong military, they were probably mostly immune from military coups?
I’d recommend reviewing some history before answering.
Re: too many indentations
There have been plenty of military coups in countries and times where government was more extensive as well. Latin America and Africa spring to mind. Which had more frequent coups? What are the statistics here?
I’d suggest that having a broader scope of government is no impediment at all to military coups, but that broader scope of government allows for such tyrannies to be more pervasive into the lives of those governed by it.
Re: too many indentations
I’d tend to argue the other way. Rearranging a large, complex government is a difficult thing. Rearranging it by military power is even harder, oddly enough.
Re: too many indentations
I’m not following what you’re saying here.
I suggested that expansive government is no impediment to military coup specifically based on the examples of Latin America and Africa, who’s governments involve themselves in much more than just defense against other force, yet who have military coups with at least the same frequency as the average in the Roman Empire, which was the example you gave.
Re: too many indentations
Latin America and Africa have governments who claim a mandate much wider than just defense, yet set aside relatively little money for most activities other than defense. There are exceptions like Cuba, of course, which spend disproportionately on things like literacy, but the ones I can think of (Brazil, Cuba and Peru primarily, and Argentina until it went to Hell in a handbasket) also aren’t the ones that have big problems with armed revolution or military coups.
Colombia’s kind of a weird case because they have a lot of foreign investment (us, mainly) but still a lot of armed insurgency and political instability, but part of the confusion is probably that the foreign investment and the political instability are strongly linked through that whole “growing lots of drugs” connection.
Venezuela’s also kind of a weird case. They spend a lot on non-defense, they are very socialist, and the only armed coup/insurgency they had recently was both instigated and financed by the US, right after Chavez got elected. So again, hard to call.
All of this is contingent on bribes and corrupt payouts to ruling families not counting as governmental expense, of course. If one counts bribery, graft, et cetera as a valid governmental expense and count it against the total, all of this would change. For starters, you’d have to figure out how much graft money paid to ruling families and used to maintain private weapons and security would count as “military” governmental expense versus nonmilitary. But I’m treating all of that as non-governmental, in the same way that I’m not going to separately break out money defrauded from the US government by various defense contractors as a valid military or nonmilitary expense. It’s just stolen money.
So, now that I’ve finished that ramble… What I’m saying is that having money spent on nonmilitary, nonpolice chunks of government make the government hard to take over militarily. You can get people to hand you money or follow simple orders at the point of a gun, but it’s much harder to make the HUD, the OMB, the Welfare office, the Department of Trade, and similar work in that way. They’re simply too complex. If there’s no money for those services then it doesn’t matter — cut them off and nothing changes. But if people are used to complex services working well, the new coup will have more complaints from people who lost government service that they were used to.
If you can just cut off government service completely, that’s no big deal. But then you’re talking about a much more hostile coup. And if you don’t want to cut off government services, you need a lot more cooperation and can use a lot less direct (forcible) compulsion to keep your complex, expensive government working. So you can’t just turn it around in a few weeks at the point of a gun.
That’s the basis of my argument. If the bureaucracy is 1) considered necessary, 2) expensive and 3) complex, then it’s hard to seize usefully in a simple “we have the guns, give us control” sort of coup.
Re: too many indentations
Uh, huh.
Maybe.
Then there’s Africa. Maybe you’d use the same argument there. Or maybe it doesn’t fly.
But there are certainly lots of examples of places and times with frequent coups where there was also lots of government involvement in non-“protection-against-other-force” type of affairs. Which I think weakens your point.
On top of which, I might argue that the risk of military coup has to be weighted against the costs in terms of liberty and in terms of economics against the penalties that having such a large beaurocracy causes.
On top of which you have to wonder how big the downside of a military coup is, if the _lack_ of beaurocracy is considered necessary and there’s not much a new coup leader can actually DO to the people using his new government. Or seen another way, how long and difficult it would be for such a new leader to create and generate such a beaurocracy from scratch, and would he be sowing the seeds of his own downfall by trying to do so?
Re: too many indentations
Maybe you’d use the same argument there. Or maybe it doesn’t fly.
It seems like my argument works pretty well there. The governments (at least the unstable ones) don’t do much for the people, which matches up pretty well with that last bit. Or do you mean the more stable bits of Africa?
But there are certainly lots of examples of places and times with frequent coups where there was also lots of government involvement in non-“protection-against-other-force” type of affairs
I can believe that. Which ones are you thinking of?
On top of which, I might argue that the risk of military coup has to be weighted against the costs in terms of liberty and in terms of economics against the penalties that having such a large beaurocracy causes.
You might. You seem to be the one here who really worries about that.
On top of which you have to wonder how big the downside of a military coup is, if the _lack_ of beaurocracy is considered necessary and there’s not much a new coup leader can actually DO to the people using his new government.
Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with guns, bombs and similar, which can do rather a lot to people using no bureaucracy whatsoever. Alternately, you could review discriptions of dictatorial government and how property can be seized with a minimum of bureaucracy, and generally is.
Do you truly believe that a military coup can *never* institute a more repressive form of government than the one it replaces? I would argue that it does more often than not.
Or that there’s nothing a man leading an *army* can do to a country without an extensive bureaucracy?
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Property is perhaps moderately easy to seize, but somewhat more difficult to hold and make use of, without the mechanisms already being in place to do so. Siezing is perhaps less interesting than holding to those leading a coup. If they have any forethought, anyway.
And sure, coups can institute more repression than the previous government, although often they simply replace one repressive regime with another. Again, it’s just easier for them to be more repressive if the machinery of the beaurocracy is already in place. That’s all I was pointing out.
And sure, there’s lots of bad things a man leading an army can do to a country without an extensive (civilian) beaurocracy, but if it’s their OWN country, one that they’re trying to continue have being worth the effort to dictate over (usually the very purpose of a coup), they’re somewhat less likely to do as much of what you’re alluding to as they might be if it was somebody else’s country. And this also circles back around to our discussion of insurgency.
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Again, it’s just easier for them to be more repressive if the machinery of the beaurocracy is already in place
So you figure a military coup in, say, Singapore, where things work pretty well, would be easily able to repress more than in, say, Cambodia, where things have mostly already gone to pot (yes, pun intended). I disagree.
but if it’s their OWN country, one that they’re trying to continue have being worth the effort to dictate over (usually the very purpose of a coup), they’re somewhat less likely to do as much of what you’re alluding to as they might be if it was somebody else’s country.
So you’re saying we could rely on Hitler’s good graces to the Germans, since he more or less was one (Austrian, but he liked Germans well enough), so he wouldn’t be repressive to them? Or you’re saying that had he been a general instead of a Fuhrer, it would have somehow been better?
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I further dispute that the places and times that have implemented the “majority rule” that you allude to which have done well actually implemented the kind of _unlimited_ majority rule you seem to be advocating. I’d argue that it’s because of the _limits_ on majority rule, because of the _inalienable_ RIGHTS of the individual even in the face of majority rule, that have been what made these places be prosperous and happy to the degree that they have.
The USA has limited majority rule in the sense that there are (amendable by majority rule) documents that put (amendable) limits in place, and they’re (mostly) respected. Those inalienable rights are only inalienable to the extent that officers of the government choose to enforce them. For instance, “inalienable” was a lot less true for black Americans before the 1950s, occasionally because the laws said so, and more often because it’s human being enforcing those laws. Regardless of the laws, the majority (primarily whites) oppressed and disenfranchised blacks, regardless of what the law had to say on the matter. Because, y’know, it was majority white people *enforcing* that law.
You’re assuming that such laws work as laws, regardless of the disposition of actual power in the government. As I argue in several other places, I disagree — having no real power except military and police power strikes me as a recipe for disaster. We could ask South America how well it’s working for them…
You could say, “but I mean have power elsewhere, not just military and police power”, and I’d say, “in the government, power equals money.” Or you could say, “non-governmental power would act as checks and balances” and I’d say, “you’ve removed all non-lethal, non-forceful aspects of government power. Private individuals and companies can’t do much against them now. Do you think making the purely forceful and lethal will make them any less effective or intimidating?”
Or you could say, “but it won’t work like that, people will be too responsible to abuse lethal force and force of arms,” and I would laugh before saying, “well then that works in my system too, and we’re not exactly free of that sort of corruption.”
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South America is an invalid example in that the government is not limited; it is Plutocratic, which is vastly different that Libertarian. And I don’t think they devolved into Plutocracy from a starting point of Libertarianism, either.
And as overhwlming as military and police power are, I don’t see how adding ADDITIONAL powers to the hands of government could possibly make them LESS dictatorial. Perhaps you could try to explain that part again.
Another check on military power in a democratic but limited government is that the people will also be armed. Not as much as the military, but enough to give them pause. Sure, the military could nuke a place and ensure “victory”, but how much of a victory is that really when the place being nuked is _inside_ the country they’re trying to control? And short of that, as we’ve seen in various places around the world recently, armed insurgency is a bitch. This, of course, was the intent of the Second Amendment, and the Federalist Papers go to some lengths to point this out.
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And as overhwlming as military and police power are, I don’t see how adding ADDITIONAL powers to the hands of government could possibly make them LESS dictatorial. Perhaps you could try to explain that part again.
Sure. Having additional squabbling bureaucracies makes it harder to get all the power aligned in one direction. The thing about seizing the reins and becoming a dictator is that the more quickly the government aligns to it, the easier it is. The more fragmented and squabbling the government is, the harder it is. The military is designed to be *extremely* dictatorial because it has to about-face very quickly. Police are less so, but still mostly so, and civilian agencies very quickly get into “hard to turn” territory.
but how much of a victory is that really when the place being nuked is _inside_ the country they’re trying to control
Depends on their goal. If their goal is to say, “the problem with armed insurgency is that we’re happy to kill you all with several large fuel-air bombs”, then destroying large areas inside the country is a thoroughly serviceable goal. It may not competely *work*, but it’s likely to give potential armed insurgents pause.
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I see your point about beaurocracies, but at the same time, I believe that they can also serve to extend/reinforce dictatorship. Hitler Youth, for example, helped change the Nazis from simply the elected party into the dictatorship it became. Hutu control over food relief distribution in Rwanda helped them extend their power over the Tutsi minority.
Regarding FAEs as an anti-insurgency weapon; it’s one thing when the insurgency is in a different country than the one the army is from, it’s quite another when it’s one’s OWN country, where one’s OWN side also lives. You tend to lose supporters that you drop FAEs on, or even near. And historical as well as current events have demonstrated that insurgency is a difficult thing to deal with. All the more so when the country had, before the insurgency started, a heavily armed general populace. I’m sure you can think of several obvious examples.
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I agree that the insurgency problem is a serious one. It is traditionally much *less* serious when it’s an internal coup rather than an external (of a different nationality) force. I don’t see a Vietnam-style insurgency happening if, say, General Petraeus were to come back and seize the reins.
However, that’s exactly the kind of problem I’m worried about. Same-nationality military leaders are usually considered heroes, which is one reason so many military coups happen from that quarter.
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If a coup by a hero is supported by the populace, certainly there won’t be much insurgency. Of course, such support generally only comes when the coup is displacing something perceived as yet still more tyrannical than the military leader coming in, and that support tends to evaporate when/if that perception amongst the populace changes.
And so where are we now on expansive government with large beaurocracies with respect to whether they make it more or less likely to allow for coups, as well as more or less tyrannical once they assume power?
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Of course, such support generally only comes when the coup is displacing something perceived as yet still more tyrannical than the military leader coming in, and that support tends to evaporate when/if that perception amongst the populace changes.
That’s not really how Rome worked. Maybe it does in the US.
And so where are we now on expansive government with large beaurocracies with respect to whether they make it more or less likely to allow for coups,
Just posted a large reply about that…
as well as more or less tyrannical once they assume power?
Haven’t discussed that. Depends what you mean by “tyrannical”. It sounds like “tyrannical” to you means “not what you’d do voluntarily, or something you’d do voluntarily anyway but accomplished by compulsion (e.g. charity vs welfare)”, in which case large governments are almost by definition more tyrannical.
I believe that small governments are unworkable for large countries because I believe that, for instance, market manipulation can accomplish most of the same unwelcome effects that can be accomplished by things like theft or blackmail, neither of which are actual literal force either. So I believe a larger government can help makes one’s fellow *citizens* less tyrannical, but in return the government has more control and does more compulsion. This is the same tradeoff as giving the government soldiers and policemen to prevent forcible compulsion among the citizenry, but made at a different point on the spectrum.
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Well, yes, that’s pretty much what I mean by “tyrannical”. It’s why I use the term “Tyranny of the Majority” to describe unlimited majority rule. And I think the African decended slaves in the early US might concur with the use of the term, as might Nazi concentration camp victims, the Tutsi in Rwanda, Zimbabweans not part of Zanu PF, Americans of Japanese decent during WWII, German victims of the Holocaust, the British man recently denied ankle surgery because he smokes, and the German family who’s daughter was removed by the State a couple of years ago and sent to foster parents for the crime of homeschooling.
Theft is active violence against one’s property, by changing location or control over something against the owner’s will. Blackmail in and of itself isn’t force, but the act that is threatened may or may not be, depending on what the threat is. If the threat is to burn down someone’s house, that’s different than threatening to release proof of someone’s extramarital affair.
What kind of market manipulation are you thinking? Cornering the silver market? Tying the browser to the OS? What kind of nefarious effects do you believe to be possible by such methods? Then we can debate them further.
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Theft is active violence against one’s property
That’s a rather weird definition of violence, particularly given that you don’t believe monopoly price fixing, which reduces the value of one’s money, is in any way violence (neither do I, but I also don’t consider theft to be violence).
Hm. So you’re okay with blackmail (for money) if it’s about releasing proof of an extramarital affair? You think the government should be out of the business of preventing that, since it’s a nonviolent interaction between consenting citizens? So is extortion okay until somebody actually gets hurt?
As far as market manipulation, cornering the silver market is closer to what I’m thinking. Companies towns are a better and nastier example. So’s Standard Oil. Really, AIG getting to the point where bailing them out is required is also a decent example.
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Is it violent if I physically take _you_ someplace you don’t want to go?
Then why not for your car, or the $20 in your bank account?
Address other points later, gotta run.
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Is it violent if I physically take _you_ someplace you don’t want to go?
Depends how you accomplish it. For instance, if you’re a taxi driver and drive me to the wrong place, then no. If you grab me off the street and forcibly shove me in that direction, yes.
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If I’m a taxi driver and I take you to the very wrong place on purpose?
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For my personal definition, still not violent. Irritating, maybe even dangerous, but not violent.
Thanks for letting us all
crap 90 or so posts on your LJ on one topic in such a short period of time, most of them not even addressed to you.
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I love hosting debates. It lets me see all the action without having to go check someone else’s blog. 🙂