News Us politics - read first post before comment

[scout86]

@ShikibuZ , great article! The author did a great job of expressing that people, even famous ones, come in many shades of gray. That's the way history should be taught, IMO.

 

[Anarchy]

Waterways connect. We breathe the same air. And all of us suffer the consequences of oppression.

It's a long post, I identify and analyse the problems, explain how the state cannot a solution, and offer a non state solution.

How best to address those problems?

Historically, states blocked tort claims by people who were harmed by pollution
Those states also blocked the establishment of private property rights in clean air, clean water and such things as waterways, sea fishing grounds and certain birds and animals.
The result of that is the present "tragedy of the commons" situation.

In badly written ancient Greek plays (another tragedy), when the hero found his or her self in an impossible situation. The same tired and lame plot device was used time and again; a god appeared from mount Olympus and saved the day - the Deus ex machina.

The state is popularly assumed to fill that role. Something terrible is happening, all it needs is a political committee to meet, laws to be passed, and taxes charged (oh, and perhaps a new bureacracy or five to be established). And suddenly world peace will reign and the seas will stop rising - just like they did[n't] for king canute.

One institution, doing so many things, and doing them all well?

If it limited itself just to the collective defense role foreseen by the Jeffersonians., there might be slight justification for believing that it could be held to account, and might achieve some results. But so many diverse roles? How can a concerted lobby be brought to bear, holding it to account for each one?
The state has already created the situation in which air and waters can be polluted, without individuals who are harmed that pollution having redress.

Without penalties for polluting, there has been no insensitive for anyone to develop (let alone to choose) less polluting technologies. We are already about 150 years behind on those technologies.

State sector funding for academia, has also resulted in a state orientated skew to the mainstream understanding of the problem: The work of people like Coase and Demsetz at Chicago, on externalities, plays right into the high tax big state people's hands.

Starting from the normative assumption that externalities should be internalised (and the lamestream understanding of what constitutes an externality is fairly confused - Philip Bagus covers this pretty well in his Rothbard memorial lecture on monetary externalities ).

why should they be internalised? No one says, it is just assumed that they should be.

They suggested that negative externalities should be taxed, and positive externalities should be subsidised, and that this will encourage externalities to be internalised...

We only need to look at the role that tobacco taxes have come to play, and the dependency that states have on that revenue stream, and the reluctance states have to go with the lobby to ban tobacco, on the basis that a ban would result in a loss of revenue... (For the record - I'm not in favour of banning any substance, or levying any tax - tax is an instance of partial slavery and I'm an abolitionist).

Is the EPA going to cut off its revenue stream from polluters? Expect to see pigs flying before it does. Instead it has a strong incentive to licence and to approve pollution.

And at what levels should pollution be approved and licensed?

Here we run into instances of Mises' "the problem of economic calculation in the socialist commonwealth" and Hayek's "the use of knowledge in society"

States have prevented the homesteading of clean air, of clean water, of waterways and of fishing grounds. Instead there is communism in all of those areas, and the confusion and conflict which innevitably accompany communism.

Without private property in those areas, there is no market for those things (clean water, clean air...)
Without a market, prices cannot arise
Without prices, rational economic calculation is impossible.

This is the insight by Mises, which initiated the long running "socialist calculation debates" amongst economists in the twentieth century.

In both Walrasian mathematical economics, and Marshallian neoclassical economics, "perfect knowledge" is frequently assumed (along with perfect competition, and general equilibrium), in order for the equations to be written.

If economists are used to assuming that something is "given",. It is easy for them to assume that it can be given. that it actually occurs in the real world, rather than only being an assumption in the severely abstracted world of their equations.

On that basis of assuming that the inputs for equations can be available in the real world, it was stated that rational economic calculation in the socialist commonwealth is possible, you simply plug the figures into the equations that had already been worked out by Oskar Lange, and solve them.

This is where"The knowledge problem" appears.
The knowledge of the values of different resources which are subject to competing uses (eg water to drink, to fish, as a habitat, as a place of quiet beauty, as a source of hydro electric power or as a place to discharge shite) is never given to as single person, and never in a form which can be harvested as input to a central planner.

this is the Basis of Hayek's 1945 paper, "the use of knowledge in society", and it applies to all instances of central planning and all instances of socialism (and states of all colours are instances of socialism).
all of them are innevitably incapable of rational calculation, and must result in chaos. This is innescapable.

- where does this leave us with "the environment"?
state force, through state monopoly courts and fiat law, and state fiat preemption of land and water ways, has prevented homesteading and the emergence and recognition of private property rights in such things as clean air and clean waters.

It has also licensed the pollution and prevented redress for these torts
having created a "tragedy of the commons" situation, the state has the insolence to offer itself as saviour, through the likes of the EPA.

The EPA is subject to lobbying and capture by vested interest groups. It has an economic interest in taxes arising from activities that many people assume that EPA is there to prevent

and even if it was not tainted by these, even if it was run by incorruptible angels, it cannot possibly act rationally, because in the absence of private property in such things as clean air and water, no market can arise.

Hence no prices can arise, and hence no knowledge can arise to allow a rational basis for action. EPA limits for pollutants, definition of pollutants and the EPA's actions must always be in a state of chaos.

what to do?

force had to be used to prevent homesteading. remove the restrictions on homesteading and it will occur
(one lesson from the former Soviet union - the people who held the positions controlling resources, continued to control them when the Soviet system collapsed, becoming the oligarchs. Popular means may be needed to oust such a stateocracy. The example of the standoff over The Bundy Cattle, shows that this is potentially possible, even right now. Similarly the Warlords around Mogadishu, are remnants of the Soviet client regime of Said Barre. Private entrepreneurs (eg somalicom a mobile phone service provider) have shown themselves able to defeat even the Warlord who ousted American forces from Mogadishu).

The remains of the state monopoly on court and dispute resolution services needs to be ended. Force had to be used to achieve the monopoly, and to maintain it, remove the force and the compettive systems will flourish again.

There are already many systems of dispute resolution outside of the state monopoly courts, eg contractual mediation and arbitration and private courts. Law has emerged and can emerge outside of the state, for example most international commercial law is based on merchant law (see Benson, the enterprise of law, for a scholarly discussion, large excerpts from the book are available free on the net, with Benson's blessing).

competitive courts have a vested interest in integrity, they are much less prone to lobbying, corruption, patronage etc than state monopoly courts (a competitive court that gets a reputation for being corrupt will very rapidly lose custom to its competitors). They are also far faster, simpler and cheaper!

Socialism (which all states are an instances of) always results in chaos.

remove the force that was necessary to create and maintain that chaos, and the mess that is left behind is soon cleared up. People find and learn to defend their own boundaries.

In an environment where actions such as polluting air, are likely to result in tort claims, it becomes necessary for each individual and each business to insure against tort claims (under a customary and polycentric law system, this happens, all individuals in Anglo Saxon Britain, mediaeval Ireland, mediaeval Iceland... even present day Somalia, are insured against tort).

under such a system, insurers have a very strong incentive to avoid claims. insurers cooperatively and concensually police their clients very closely in order to prevent actions that might result in claims.
Accidents do happen, people can be incompetent, lazy, stupid. I'm not saying that crap wouldn't occasionally arise under such a system,. I'm not a utopian.

But can you imagine the dangers of asbestos being ignored for as long under such a system, as they were under the statist system?

and under a system where everyone is insured, recompense will be made.
and if an insurer did mess up, theyd stand to lose massive amounts of money. Compare that to a statist regulator. If they mess up, they blame it on lack of funding and use it as a basis to beg for even more money!

the answer is therefore not coercive one size fits all statism
the way to that is to end the acceptance of a legal right to initiate force. (and to stop looking for an initiation of force as a solution). As soon as any initiation of force is outlawed, the state is ended and a consensual order can no longer be surpressed.
@

 

[Deleted member 41765]

It's a long post, I identify and analyse the problems, explain how the state cannot a solution, and offer a non state solution.

Wow. I'm going to be embarrassingly honest and say that I understood approximately 1/4 of this! In addition to feeling overwhelmed re: current political situation, I now also feel stupid (which is humbling, in a good way, as I'm getting too big for my britches on this thread)! I will try to read this again later and see what will sink in...

 

[Deleted member 541]

Dems are now calling for article 25 to be implemented and some are calling for impeachment. I can only hope and pray.

 

[scout86]

There is one teeny, tiny problem with impeachment. We'd end up with President Pence. Or President Ryan,, if Pence got tossed out too. Then you have a conservative without the crazy factor, the party would have no reason to be conflicted, and they'd really be able to dismantle the social safety net. As it is, the crazy factor, I think, is helping keep the republicans from accomplishing all of their goals.

 

[Deleted member 41765]

Aren't they all guilty of something, other than moral bankruptcy of course? Can't we "drain the swamp"? Pretty please?

 

[Anarchy]

Attacking social welfare is a shibboleth for so many conservatives, and for some of the libertarian capitalists and populists.

IMO they're plan wrong to do so.

The whole system of restrictions and subsidies, through out all of the economies is so complicated and contradictory, that it is almost impossible to work out whether the social welfare payments compensate for the reduction in opportunities open to people, the increased prices for goods and services, and the massive and contradictory licensing and compliance requirements...

And the inflationary monetary system, that silently transfers wealth from the poorer people to the wealthier.

My instinct is that welfare doesn't come anywhere near to mitigating the harm done by the other policies.

A quick and superficial example. There's a paper by Sidney Webb on the virtues (to him!) Of a minimum wage law (Webb with his wife Iris, were pretty much the centre of British Fabian socialism in the early twentieth century. Fabianism, not marxism is the root of the British labour party, Britain's largest party of the left.
The Webbs were ridiculously prolific pamphleteers. Their ideas cross fertilised with American progressives and with the equivalents on continental Europe, groups that are now commonly viewed as extreme right!)

Webb took one of the Australian states as his case example. IIRC, it was Victoria. If anyone is interested, I'll link the paper. I've quoted from it before on The forum

I think that Webb's observations were correct, and I think that his forecasts were correct too, but his aims and intentions were in line with the worst of the progressive era's racist and eugenicist authoritarians (remember that another leading Fabian, H.G. Wells, had an affair with Margaret Sanger, who saw no conflict in giving page space to Hitler's head of eugenics, or to addressing meetings of the KKK)

To Webb, the virtues of a minimum wage (set above the minimum wage on the unhampered market) were that it would force women, ethnic minorities, young people, those with physical or learning disabilities, those with mental health issues, substance abuse issues...

Out of the job market!

To Webb,. An unhampered market was providing too many jobs and too many opportunities for all of those people, and he strongly disapproved.
His contempt is obvious when he points out that furniture manufacturer had come to be dominated by people of Chinese origin.

Webb goes on to suggest that all of those groups would be better variously staying at home, confined in institutions, or paid a small amount of support.

I think that his forecast that a minimum wage would reduce opportunities for all of those groups in the workforce, was correct.

I disagree totally with his aims and sentiments, and with the aims and sentiments of others writing on the subject at the to Fortunately they committed them to writing, so that we can see the actual thinking behind the policy, Which is now disingenuously sold as being to help the poorest and most vulnerable

Was it hell supposed to help them, it was intended to hurt them.

It doesn't take much more reading to find some of the further intentions and plans.

Once forced out of paid employment, those groups were to be encouraged to claim the proposed state welfare payments

These were openly discussed as being a bait, to get the people's names onto lists.

Once on lists, they could be rounded up into institutions (concentrated into camps)

Another leading Fabian thinker and writer, playwright George Bernard Shaw, was openly filmed calling for scientists to invent a poisonous gas that could be used to humanely euthanise "the lazy". It's up on YouTube in numerous places.

In real life, Shaw, Webb, Wells, Margaret Sanger etc were all in close contact. It's not too much of a jump of imagination to link the plans to force people out of work, onto lists and into concentration camps - and intentions to euthanise "the lazy".

- minimum wage s just one of scores (perhaps even thousands!) Of policies which force the poorest and most vulnerable onto welfare.

Poor and vulnerable people on welfare are not an organised lobby

There are no shady payments, no offers of well paid and underworked non executive directorship and consultancy positions, no $700,000 an appearance after dinner speaking engagements that we can offer to persuade decision makers to back us. We cannot hop into the corporate jet and make an unscheduled visit to see top title holders In The administration (like the automakers could when they wanted you to bail them out because no one wanted the crap cars they made at the prices they were charging for them).

Which is a long way of saying that there are hundreds and perhaps thousands of policies that need to be identified for what they really are and removed (or nullified), years before anyone tries to attack the basic safety net of welfare payments and medical support.

 

[Deleted member 41765]

@Anarchy You seem to know a thing or two. Hop on over across the pond and sort this mess out for us?

 

[Deleted member 541]

I believe that when the GOP has gotten their agenda done(tax reform, health care and the budget). That they are going to impeach Trump so fast that our heads will spin. He is their puppet, and they are using him, to get stuff done. All focus is on Trump, while they work behind the scenes to push things through....

 

[anthony]

The whole system of restrictions and subsidies, through out all of the economies is so complicated and contradictory, that it is almost impossible to work out whether the social welfare payments compensate for the reduction in opportunities open to people, the increased prices for goods and services, and the massive and contradictory licensing and compliance requirements...

Shit, you would put an entire Government out on the street, unemployed, if you started making things simple, easy and open to understand. White collars need to keep complicating everything they touch to keep themselves, and associates, employed and paying the bills.

 

[Fadeaway]

I am just embarrassed by our manchild in chief's recent twitter escapades. Not really shocked, but i feel like the American populace has an out of control toddler that we can't figure out how to discipline.

"God save the U.S.A blame the president and your prayers tonight"~ Pennywise

 

[scout86]

White collars need to keep complicating everything they touch to keep themselves, and associates, employed and paying the bills.

And think of the mischief they could get into if they didn't have gainful employment.......