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Anti-Capitalist Sentiment (with some morality)

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  1. #751
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    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    Although, I think history has shown every day for 150,000 years that nothing needs to be perfect in order for societies to run. It just needs to be good enough.

    Do I wish taxes were used more efficiently? Yes. Am I bothered by the fact that there are inefficiencies? No.
    I present to you a situation where the state is taking 37% of the stuff by force, owning about as much of the land, and almost certainly not returning to the people a value anywhere remotely comparable to that, and your response is a flip dismissal of "inefficiencies." Obviously one need not be bothered by inefficiencies if they are small, which is your implication. They're not small, they're mammoth.

    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    I'm not aware of the specific laws to which you refer.

    My gut says:
    Stifle a little growth vs. provide access to a slightly more robust infrastructure.
    Surely there must be a balance.
    Again with the diminutive language. How has the state earned the benefit of the doubt from you? Stilfling a lot of growth vs provide access to shitty, obsolescent infrastructure would be more accurate.

    I agree there should be a balance. But taxing corporations and capital gains is extremely misguided. There are better ways for the state to make it's nut. Taxing employers is just an attempt at subterfuge, putting degrees of separation between a citizen and the tax burden. It's a very popular tax because people by and large do not understand how business works. They believe that a corporation will hire the same number of people at the same wage whether there's a 25% corporate tax or no tax at all.

    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    Inflation is a tax?

    I thought inflation was... idk... a weird consequence of the free market and burgeoning wealth.

    Are you sure it's a tax? Which state's representatives proposed inflation? What year?
    Did wufwugy take over your account, too?
    Free market inflation 1) doesn't exist / never has existed and 2) wouldn't be a tax because it would be related to the amount of economic growth there is. In fact, it is quite likely the case that in an actual free monetary market that saving money in a shoebox would have a annual return.

    The inflation we experience is a tax because the state controls if it happens and how much it happens. It also controls how much banks lend by arbitrarily setting interest rates to a level that is usually below what market would be. Then the state insures banks against runs or even bails them out completely with tax dollars when they fail. This creates a generally fucked up system where banks can take crazy risks that they would never dream of taking in a free market. A side effect is excessive inflation, which we all experience like a sales tax as we watch prices of goods in the economy continually increase.

    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    I don't really see how taxes tie in to making sense of an economic system with complicated non-capital trade mixed in with capital trade. Taxes provide capital for non-capital goods. This is a part of the economy. To say that business or people do not receive benefit from taxes is not swaying me.
    I really don't understand what you mean by this. Taxes provide capital for non-capital goods? Please elaborate.

    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    I accept that some things for which we are taxed could be run better by private organizations, but I don't see why you feel that it's such a big deal.
    (And I completely disagree on roads. Terrible idea. I'll pay taxes for roads, zoos, public parks, schools, libraries, police, fire, medical services, wildlife reservations, clean food, clean drinking water, clean air if it comes to it, etc.)

    You tell me the system is broken, but at worst, I see a system that is sub-optimal.
    I won't spend much time on what you put between the parentheses because that could take days. I will say that its interesting that things like zoos and libraries made it into the illustrious 13. Private sector can't cage wildlife and charge a buck for its view? The internet has already supplanted libraries. You seem to have a pretty large bias for what you believe only the state is capable of providing.

    I feel it is a big deal because monopolies suck. Every time the state decrees that it and only it can provide a good or service to people, that sucks and should be avoided at all costs. We should be extremely particular with which services we subject to that restriction.

    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    That is your choice. Attend your community council meetings. Attend City Council meetings. Run for local office. Write your state legislators a letter. Schedule an appointment to meet with their staff, etc.

    Pros and cons. Two party hurts a third party, but what the parties stand for has swung 180 degrees over the years, so it's kind of a moot point to suggest that any particular ideology is excluded.
    So since I'm not completely upending my life in an attempt to move one of the gigantic boulders of party lines a few millimeters, I have no right to complain?
  2. #752
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    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    I present to you a situation where the state is taking 37% of the stuff by force, owning about as much of the land, and almost certainly not returning to the people a value anywhere remotely comparable to that, and your response is a flip dismissal of "inefficiencies." Obviously one need not be bothered by inefficiencies if they are small, which is your implication. They're not small, they're mammoth.
    I didn't mean to be flip. I kinda was, though. I grant you that. I'm trying to keep my frustration with wufwugy's use of language as a separate frustration in this conversation. I could have done better.

    Did I misunderstand when you said 37% is too high, but still less than comparable European governments? I thought you were kinda tongue-in-cheek saying that your opinions on the size of that number needed context.

    Context for the number means everything.
    Why is 37% too high?
    What is the target you prefer?

    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    Again with the diminutive language. How has the state earned the benefit of the doubt from you? Stilfling a lot of growth vs provide access to shitty, obsolescent infrastructure would be more accurate.
    Again with apologies, then. I'm sorry for any tone I had in my prior post. Thank you for continuing the conversation, despite my rudeness.

    Why I give the state the benefit of the doubt:
    I've met a lot of politicians, first of all. Those conversations have left me feeling a lot of respect for people who do a job that is damn near impossible, but whom do it nonetheless.

    The government is composed of people. Those people are dedicated to their job and want to make things "better." They may be under-qualified to handle the immensity of the problems they want to solve. Still, they are trying to help.

    You and I disagree on the function of government, a bit. If your system was the prevailing system, I would afford you the benefit of the doubt just the same. The system is too complex for me to pretend to know what's best. I am one person with highly eccentric views on a lot of topics. Why should I expect my ideas of society to mesh with the society as a whole?

    Also, I have taken advantage of my right to receive unemployment benefits and "food stamps" (in quotes because the current name of the program doesn't reflect the nature of the program.) I was not trying to be a leach on society. I paid the taxes for those welfare benefits. They kept me afloat and fed for a while. Ultimately, taking those welfare services played a role in my choice to go back to college and get a degree in Physics. I do not need those services anymore.

    ***
    I would need to see some data, in the appropriate context, to change my opinion as to the degree of bad that the 37% rate represents or the degree of good that the state of infrastructure represents.

    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    I agree there should be a balance. But taxing corporations and capital gains is extremely misguided. There are better ways for the state to make it's nut. Taxing employers is just an attempt at subterfuge, putting degrees of separation between a citizen and the tax burden. It's a very popular tax because people by and large do not understand how business works. They believe that a corporation will hire the same number of people at the same wage whether there's a 25% corporate tax or no tax at all.
    I couldn't agree more that the taxes should be taken once, and not over and over in multiple steps.

    I mean sales tax OR income tas, OR corporate tax. Don't take taxes out of my money twice. Lump it all together into one chunk.
    If you're taxing my employer, which is a tax on me, then get rid of the income tax AND the sales tax.*

    I don't care if you still take the 37%, or whatever the number is. I just want to have the actual amount of taxes I'm paying to be transparent as a single line-item on my finances.

    *disclaimer: I am not a trained economist, and this idea may be stupid for reasons I don't currently understand.

    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    Free market inflation 1) doesn't exist / never has existed and 2) wouldn't be a tax because it would be related to the amount of economic growth there is. In fact, it is quite likely the case that in an actual free monetary market that saving money in a shoebox would have a annual return.

    The inflation we experience is a tax because the state controls if it happens and how much it happens. It also controls how much banks lend by arbitrarily setting interest rates to a level that is usually below what market would be. Then the state insures banks against runs or even bails them out completely with tax dollars when they fail. This creates a generally fucked up system where banks can take crazy risks that they would never dream of taking in a free market. A side effect is excessive inflation, which we all experience like a sales tax as we watch prices of goods in the economy continually increase.
    Ugh. It's not a tax. This is misleading use of language. It is like a tax in some ways, but it is not a tax.

    Why is maintaining a certain rate of inflation considered to be a net gain?

    ***
    For the record, that bailout was paid back in full, with interest. It played out like a government loan. It was a dangerous gamble on the part of the gov't, maybe. It worked out in the end.
    I think too big to fail is too big to allow, personally. (taken from a protest sign, but I like it.)

    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    I really don't understand what you mean by this. Taxes provide capital for non-capital goods? Please elaborate.
    Taxes are capital. I think I can let that slide w/o further explanation.

    The non-capital goods are things like: The public availability of transportation means that a company can hire from a wider pool of potential employees. These employees are willing to travel longer/further to their job because the difficulty/time to do so is lessened. This allows the employer to select the best potential employees from a larger pool. Statistically, this means the employer has access to higher quality personnel. However, it's a non-quantified advantage.

    Things like: the FDA minimum standards on food safety. This means the average health of employees (and employers) is increased a non-quantified amount due to a lack of sick-days and other illness related work-slowages.

    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    I won't spend much time on what you put between the parentheses because that could take days. I will say that its interesting that things like zoos and libraries made it into the illustrious 13. Private sector can't cage wildlife and charge a buck for its view? The internet has already supplanted libraries. You seem to have a pretty large bias for what you believe only the state is capable of providing.
    Zoos make the list only if they're free to the public to enter, like the St. Louis Zoo. I feel the net cultural public good from having parks and museums open to the public far outweighs the cost. If these services are provided through grants or non-governmental funding, then that's grand. If they're not, then I support the government stepping in and ensuring public access to the artifacts of history / wonders of the natural world. Fostering inquisitiveness seems like a huge net benefit to the society (in my biased opinion).

    This is a complicated view I hold whereby the notion of private property is abused a bit. I am aware of the dissonance.
    It stems from this: Who can own the Mona Lisa?
    For me, there is an argument that says the seminal works of human creativity belong to all the humans (after a suitable amount of time after the creator has died / themselves and/or their family profit from the work, etc.).

    I accept that the internet is replacing libraries. As such, I am a proponent of net neutrality. It is looking more and more like the corporate world is going to fail to recognize this is linked to the right to "free and open access to information."

    ***
    The best point here is the, "only the state is capable of providing," bit.

    Which bring up the question:
    Why (historically) are services provided for by taxation?
    Why are the specific services offered by the current regime?
    Which of these motivations has since been solved in a different manner?

    I'd like to further explore this line of thought.

    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    I feel it is a big deal because monopolies suck. Every time the state decrees that it and only it can provide a good or service to people, that sucks and should be avoided at all costs. We should be extremely particular with which services we subject to that restriction.
    Agreed.

    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    So since I'm not completely upending my life in an attempt to move one of the gigantic boulders of party lines a few millimeters, I have no right to complain?
    Of course, you have the right to free speech. I'm certain you know that I respect your right to express yourself however you see fit. (Accepting that you don't hurt anyone but maybe yourself.)

    However, your choice to criticize from the sidelines rather than get involved says something about the perceived amount of passion you express vs. the actual amount of passion you are willing to commit to.
  3. #753
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    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    I didn't mean to be flip. I kinda was, though. I grant you that. I'm trying to keep my frustration with wufwugy's use of language as a separate frustration in this conversation. I could have done better.

    Did I misunderstand when you said 37% is too high, but still less than comparable European governments? I thought you were kinda tongue-in-cheek saying that your opinions on the size of that number needed context.

    Context for the number means everything.
    Why is 37% too high?
    What is the target you prefer?

    I believe 6 trillion dollars is an unbelievable amount of money to take out of only 300 million people's pockets. I brought up the point that its low compared to western euro nations only to show how gross those nations are, not to make the U.S. look good. To be fair to them, they are at least providing a much more comprehensive welfare state. The U.S. just spends the money on weapons and bureaucracies.


    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    The government is composed of people. Those people are dedicated to their job and want to make things "better." They may be under-qualified to handle the immensity of the problems they want to solve. Still, they are trying to help.

    You and I disagree on the function of government, a bit. If your system was the prevailing system, I would afford you the benefit of the doubt just the same. The system is too complex for me to pretend to know what's best. I am one person with highly eccentric views on a lot of topics. Why should I expect my ideas of society to mesh with the society as a whole?

    Also, I have taken advantage of my right to receive unemployment benefits and "food stamps" (in quotes because the current name of the program doesn't reflect the nature of the program.) I was not trying to be a leach on society. I paid the taxes for those welfare benefits. They kept me afloat and fed for a while. Ultimately, taking those welfare services played a role in my choice to go back to college and get a degree in Physics. I do not need those services anymore.

    ***
    I would need to see some data, in the appropriate context, to change my opinion as to the degree of bad that the 37% rate represents or the degree of good that the state of infrastructure represents.

    The largest share of the money, about 1/3 and growing, goes to an ineffective healthcare program. Maybe the ACA will improve on that, but medicare has been an unmitigated disaster. It's way too expensive for the limited amount of benefit it provides. It's also going to ruin the budget more and more every year now that baby boomers are dying off.

    The stuff you like about the U.S. government is actually a pretty small percentage of the budget. Welfare benefits for poor people are like 15%. Transportation is 4%. "Defense" is about 15%. Yes, the U.S. spends a comparable amount of money on maintaining unnecessary military bases and building defunct warplanes to what it spends on the poor.

    Education is another noble cause that is killing the budget. Education is primarily funded at the state level, and a lot of states are struggling to pay for it, with CA and IL notably being in pretty fucked shape. And for all of the expenditure, the U.S. scores abysmally in education stats compared with other developed countries.


    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    Ugh. It's not a tax. This is misleading use of language. It is like a tax in some ways, but it is not a tax.

    Why is maintaining a certain rate of inflation considered to be a net gain?

    The state prints money to pay for things, then we have to pay more for products. It's like a sales tax, only worse because at least you can dodge sales tax by not buying anything. Excessive inflation perverts incentives by discouraging people from saving (generally a good, prudent habit). There's nothing to be gained by "maintaining" any rate of inflation. The act of controlling it centrally is exactly the problem. Inflation or deflation is fine if its market-based, because that means it comes as a result of voluntary exchange. It's not fake.


    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    Taxes are capital. I think I can let that slide w/o further explanation.


    The non-capital goods are things like: The public availability of transportation means that a company can hire from a wider pool of potential employees. These employees are willing to travel longer/further to their job because the difficulty/time to do so is lessened. This allows the employer to select the best potential employees from a larger pool. Statistically, this means the employer has access to higher quality personnel. However, it's a non-quantified advantage.

    Taxes are not capital. Capital is defined in wikipedia as a "type of good that can be consumed now, but if consumption is deferred an increased supply of consumable goods is likely to be available later." In other words, capital is property that can be used to create or facilitate the creation of new property. A hammer is capital. A printer is capital. A person's skillset is human capital. Money, if invested and earning a return, is capital. You could argue that the infrastructure built by the state or the education granted to children in public schools are both forms of capital that the state builds. Very little of what the state does increases capital, and much of what it does actually destroys capital. For example, corporate taxes and capital gains taxes are directly destructive to capital. The defense budget is destructive except for the rare cases that it results in new technology. The police budget is mostly destructive, since the vast majority of it's resources are spent prosecuting and subsequently jailing non-violent people.

    I don't doubt there are benefits to the non-capital stuff you mention in the quoted paragraph, but it's hard to believe that the value of them compare with the outright destructive things the U.S. government is doing with your money.


    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    Things like: the FDA minimum standards on food safety. This means the average health of employees (and employers) is increased a non-quantified amount due to a lack of sick-days and other illness related work-slowages.

    The FDA could also be blamed for millions of needless deaths due to the unbelievably slow and expensive process it takes to approve pharmaceuticals. Economic analysis requires considering unseen factors like this. The vast majority of the food supplied in the U.S. comes from large corporations with a lot to lose. It is not worth it for them to produce dangerous products and suffer the backlash that comes with making someone sick. The gains from FDA approval are minor at best, and again, we pay dearly for those gains.


    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    The best point here is the, "only the state is capable of providing," bit.

    Which bring up the question:
    Why (historically) are services provided for by taxation?
    Why are the specific services offered by the current regime?
    Which of these motivations has since been solved in a different manner?

    I'd like to further explore this line of thought.

    1. Because there's no other way to provide a service to someone against his will than to expropriate him and take away his other choices.

    2. Inertia. It seemed like a good idea for the government to provide the services hundreds of years ago, and the institutions have stuck. As I mentioned earlier in the thread. The government adds and adds, but it very rarely subtracts.

    3. I'm not sure I understand the question. In theory the government seeks to provide mandatory services whenever the services are difficult to exclude. This is called the free rider problem. At one extreme is a product like pizza, which can easily be handed to some people and not others. At the other extreme is border defense, in which everyone benefits from it whether they contribut or not. Basically the less excludable the service, the more necessary it is believed that government should necessarily provide it.

    The other motivations for government programs are largely patronizing. Pension programs are an example of this. If you approached each American and offered to allow him to opt out of S.S. and Medicare, and thus to not have to pay the SS and FICA taxes, 95% would snap accept. Now this could be argued that people are subjectively valuing money now over money 40 years from now. But proponents of SS/Medicare believe that human beings are frail and must be compelled to consider their futures because they are incapable of doing so on their own. This type of nanny logic is responsible for a huge amount of prevailing policy in the United States.
    Last edited by Renton; 06-29-2015 at 05:29 PM.
  4. #754
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    Then the government is not beholden to its citizens for its income.
    You're going down a weird logic path based on the mistake in believing taxation makes government beholden to its citizens. That is like saying a guy who takes something from you is beholden to you because you're affected by his taking.

    Taxation has the opposite effect of what you claim. It makes the citizens beholden to the government.


    Also get over your kick of saying I'm using words wrongly. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt and being nice when I conceded that I could have been clearer. I haven't been using any words wrongly. Instead I've been using them in ways of more understanding than is colloquially standard. You're basically complaining about having to learn more about what these words mean.
  5. #755
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    I guess I just can't get on the same page with either of you on the issue of how to characterize taxation.

    I don't see it as an inherently bad process.

    It seems like the bottom line is that taxation is voluntary in the sense that the government is composed of citizens. So all tax laws come from the citizens. Once it's a law, then it's not voluntary to follow or not.

    I obviously agree that it is illegal to avoid paying taxes. Yes, you face fines, imprisonment, whatever legal ramifications whenever you break the law.

    The disagreement seems to be on the origin of the laws and whether it is self-government.

    ***
    Whether or not all taxes are good is not in question. Just whether taxation, as a process, is good.
    I don't think we're going to meet each other on this perspective. So we should move on.
    I'm not sure I see how it's that important a question to agree on, anyway.

    Personally, I'm a bit exhausted with the conversation and I don't even know what questions to ask.
  6. #756
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    Many laws are unjust and involuntary. Was slavery voluntary for black people? It isn't as if they subject every tax law to an annual popular vote to see if they should remain with us. Political influence isn't distributed evenly. People in small states have more say. People in swing states have more say. People in Iowa have far more say. The rest of the country is against farm subsidies, but Iowans are in favor of them, and since they hold the most important primary, the laws are hence untouchable.

    People with money have more say than people who don't. Rich donors are able to buy the congressional votes needed to erect barriers for their competitors or to get juicy no-bid contracts. In many cases they get >10000% returns on their bribes.

    Even if the country were actually run democratically, anyone with a minority opinion would be subject to the majority, so the laws are still involuntary for up to 50% of the population. Democracy really really sucks when the majority of people are crazy.
  7. #757
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    Taxation is not voluntary by definition. No amount of trying to bend words will change that.
  8. #758
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    I guess I just can't get on the same page with either of you on the issue of how to characterize taxation.

    I don't see it as an inherently bad process.

    It seems like the bottom line is that taxation is voluntary in the sense that the government is composed of citizens. So all tax laws come from the citizens. Once it's a law, then it's not voluntary to follow or not.

    I obviously agree that it is illegal to avoid paying taxes. Yes, you face fines, imprisonment, whatever legal ramifications whenever you break the law.

    The disagreement seems to be on the origin of the laws and whether it is self-government.

    ***
    Whether or not all taxes are good is not in question. Just whether taxation, as a process, is good.
    I don't think we're going to meet each other on this perspective. So we should move on.
    I'm not sure I see how it's that important a question to agree on, anyway.

    Personally, I'm a bit exhausted with the conversation and I don't even know what questions to ask.
    It's okay to take time away. These can be exhausting. For when you return, I'd like to respond to this:

    Whether or not all taxes are good is not in question. Just whether taxation, as a process, is good.
    Let's use analogy. Let's turn McDonald's into a tax regime:

    Every week, you write a check to McDonald's based on your income. If you do not write this check, McDonald's comes to your house with a force far stronger than anybody else has and either coerces you to write the check or puts you in prison. Every week, McDonald's distributes food to its taxpayers. It choose how to based off its revenues that it receives from taxes. There are no consumers, only people who stand in line and get their food stipend. There is no menu for individuals to choose from, because we vote. After much deliberation, the people who choose to partake in the voting process set up all sorts of rules about how the food is distributed. The poor get $5 of food for every $1 they are taxed, the rich get $1 of food for every $5 they are taxed. The fat are given 40% of their food in salads, 40% in burgers, and 20% in fries. The thin are given 60% in burgers, 30% in fries, and 10% in salads. Food can be exchanged for stamps, and those stamps can be exchanged for different food.

    The rich don't like this setup. The fat don't like it. The thin and poor love it. Those who make a lot of stamp exchanges are split. The rich and fat make up a coalition of 43%, thin and poor make up 43%, and the stamp exchangers make up 14%. The rich and fat know they will never get along with the thin and poor, so in order to change the laws, they lobby the stamp exchangers. They construct a coalition of the 43% rich and fat with 8% from the stamp exchangers for a total of 51% of all voters. The deal they strike reduces the amount of salads distributed to the fat while increasing the burgers, reduces the amount of dollars taxed of the rich, and give a handful of better exchange rates for the 8% that made up the heavy stamp users.

    The thin and poor are livid. Some of the other stamp exchangers are also livid. They attempt to create a new coalition to undo the changes. The 43% thin and poor are solid, 6% of the stamp exchangers are solid, and they just need a small portion of the 8% stamp exchangers to hit 51%. But wait, the 8% got deals they really like. The fat and rich gave them all sorts of concessions in order to enter the previous coalition, and there's little this new coalition can offer them to change their minds. The new coalition changes strategy: it tries to break up the fat and rich group. The campaigns work. A chunk of the fat group, making up 5% of the total vote are convinced that they should go back to more salads. The new coalition is complete and they're about to overturn the rules created by the previous coalition. But just before they can do that, the stamp exchangers who got a dynamite deal in the rule change are LIVID and they spend gangbusters to break up the thin and poor group. All they need is to just dent it, and the new coalition can't reach 51%.


    I'll stop here because you get the picture. If this was a college course, it would be called Political and Policy Operations of Tax Regimes and Democratic Votes 101. The process creates a situation where nobody gets what they want except for tiny groups of special interests who get exactly what they want on specific items. The claim that democracy is dictatorship of the 51% is not entirely correct because what really happens is the small 1-2% groups on the margin are necessary for any coalition of 51%. This not only creates oppression of the minority, but also creates oppression of the majority. If 49% of people hate a new policy while 47% love a different policy but they can only get that policy by bending over backwards for the small remaining 4% in order to get their coalition, you're left in a compromise where a bunch of rules are passed at the same time, with many rules that up to 90% of the voters may not like.



    Let's change gears a little here. What kind of food industry would this McDonald's create? Well, it would likely become the only or majority distributor of food since most people would not choose to buy food from any businesses since they already pay in taxes to McDonald's for food. Every fast-food joint would disappear, and all we'd be left with are likely high end boutique restaurants with rich clientele.* The dynamism of food compared to today would be easily cut down to degrees nobody would want to admit. The variety and quality would sink to the Marianas Trench. No more small Teriyaki, BBQ, delis, or Mexican joints because low revenue businesses couldn't compete with the tax regime. Food is never fast anymore because the lines at McDonald's are ridiculous. McDonald's no longer has to please its customers since it receives their funds by mandate instead of choice, so their quality and quantity of service and products drop dramatically.


    Again, I'll stop here. Please absorb this information. At every step of the way in turning McDonald's into a food source with tax power, the entire food system gets worse and more complex. This spreads to more than just food though, as I explained in the asterisk below, it indirectly creates things like class disparity. Every dynamic I listed is super standard in our current bureaucracies and landscape of any industries with heavy intervention from the government. This can be contrasted to the areas that most people currently believe the government should be involved, and we can see that those things are likely just as bad now as our food industry would be if McDonald's was a tax regime.

    You personally say you love the great infrastructure and amenities we get from government. But I'm telling you, those are nothing compared to how great they would be if the government did not intervene. We know this to be true because we know how the markets function and how governments function. The foundational difference between the two is that one operates on taxes and the other operates on consumption choice. That small difference is as big as the difference between a planet and an atom.


    *This is a main way we get disparities between classes or various groups. Tax regimes with laws based on the democratic vote are more easily contorted by those with lots of a resource, be they wealth, a group identity, or a rent-seeking interest. How ironic is it that the government that we all try to use to eliminate such great disparities is itself the cause of them?
    Last edited by wufwugy; 06-30-2015 at 06:40 PM.
  9. #759
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    I only read half, but it sounds like you take issue with the democratic voting system more than the concept of taxation.
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  10. #760
    Quote Originally Posted by rong View Post
    I only read half, but it sounds like you take issue with the democratic voting system more than the concept of taxation.
    It is only because of tax that democracy can be a thing. I certainly wouldn't say "taxation without representation", so it wouldn't be that I think democracy is worse than taxes.
  11. #761
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    I like that my opinion has changed somewhat since this thread began. I now believe in a much smaller and less interfering state. But I still want one for some things.
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  12. #762
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    I guess my issue is the ability for people to fall through the cracks of an unregulated world and get stuck in the arse end of life.

    For example, let's assume no min wage or employment regulation.

    Min wage would be the minimum for someone to get by. So for example, a girl gets knocked up with no family or partner to support her. She needs to work to feed/house/clothe the kid.

    That means she will accept a wage that allows her to just about exist and take care of child. Shed also work every hour available to do this.

    So the minimum wage (and I mean the lowest that anyone would take) is underpinned by this desperation.

    This won't include spare cash for self improvement and education. Why would it? The market will look for the lowest wage it can pay and pay it. So this individual would be stuck in this rut for life.

    This is just one random example of how many people could get stuck in this situation.

    With no state to support those who fall on difficult times through circumstance or one poor decision a whole bunch of people could end up here. Having that safety net reduces the chance of this happening. I think that's important.

    So I agree that the state needs to be reigned in and regulation reduced. But I always want a safety net, and want health care and some form of subsidy for those that screw up at a bare minimum. And still stand by education, defence, policing to be part of it.

    I guess utilities is a step too far, but infrastructure such as roads and rail networks should be part of it.
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  13. #763
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    My thoughts pretty much exactly. Making sure people aren't left stranded is essential. That's what creates crime, poverty, ghettos, sickness etc and results with huge loss of productivity. Unless of course we're talking about social darwinism and feel it's ok for them to just die off.

    I want no part with a nanny state. There are definitely limits to where I want the state to stick its nose in, but I also think there are parts in which I think its nose is needed. Not all people are concerned how they harm others when they're reaching for their goals and taking care of themselves, and somebody needs to keep them in check. The best solution I'm aware of is a government with central policing. I don't care if it's optimal with regard to efficiency and I don't care how much your local police force is corrupt and useless, in many places it's been shown to work and can most likely therefore in other places too. The key is it needs to be available for everybody, not just those who can afford it.

    I don't care what the number of regulations is, important is that there's enough of them and they're smart. The legislative process should be a science and evidence based PDCA cycle. Laws and regulations should undergo continuous improvement and refinement based on results and metrics.
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  14. #764
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    On the above two points, I just want to point out that heavy taxation hurts charity in a major way.
  15. #765
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    I think a state providing support is far better than charity doing so. Charity might cover it, we can decide that the state will cover it.
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  16. #766
    Quote Originally Posted by rong View Post
    I like that my opinion has changed somewhat since this thread began. I now believe in a much smaller and less interfering state. But I still want one for some things.
    That's great.
  17. #767
    I think quoting people and changing the text without making note of it is a criminal offence.
  18. #768
    I don't intend to make this a big debatey post. I wanted to respond to a couple things specifically, but felt that if I didn't go line by line, it wouldn't work that well.


    Quote Originally Posted by rong View Post
    I guess my issue is the ability for people to fall through the cracks of an unregulated world and get stuck in the arse end of life.
    Would you feel the same if you believed that regulations are responsible for increasing the amount of people who hit the arse end of life?

    For example, let's assume no min wage or employment regulation.

    Min wage would be the minimum for someone to get by.
    I think we have a false narrative. You know how simplistic use of data by the media always shows that even the highest minimum wage in the US is still not enough to "get by"? Yet those receiving minimum wage or below it are "getting by".

    So for example, a girl gets knocked up with no family or partner to support her. She needs to work to feed/house/clothe the kid.

    That means she will accept a wage that allows her to just about exist and take care of child. Shed also work every hour available to do this.

    So the minimum wage (and I mean the lowest that anyone would take) is underpinned by this desperation.
    That's how a market-set "minimum" is. We have a lot of these already. Like a good computer programmer has a market-set minimum wage range. Nobody can quantify exactly what it is at any point in time, but it's definitely a bit higher than any known mandated minimums.

    I might be a little confused on what you're getting at, because what you've said here seems to be an argument against your thesis of needing a "safety net" mandate.

    This won't include spare cash for self improvement and education. Why would it? The market will look for the lowest wage it can pay and pay it. So this individual would be stuck in this rut for life.
    I'm happy you said this, because it opens the door for explaining why economists don't think this is the case.

    I guess I'll hit the three different things you said specifically:

    This won't include spare cash for self improvement and education.
    It always does. Nobody's net inflow and outflow are absent of fluctuations or inefficiencies. It can be astounding what people think their necessary spending habits should be. That said, this point isn't terribly important, since I'm trying to focus on macro instead of micro, but I figured I'd mention it just for comprehensiveness.

    The market will look for the lowest wage it can pay and pay it.
    It will also look for the highest wage it can pay. I get what you're saying, and what I'm saying here is a little contrarian to that, but I want to make the point that market behavior is multi-faceted. If a business is looking for certain types of workers yet it is unable to get those workers, one of the strategies to aiding in getting those workers is to raise the offered wage. Combine this sort of competition with the marginalism that businesses already operate with, and you get a situation where the wages are also as high as they can be. Saying the market shoots for low wages or me saying it shoots for high wages is missing the ball, because what it's really doing is shooting for optimized wages.

    So this individual would be stuck in this rut for life.
    If you only pay attention to one thing in this post, make it this part. I used to completely agree with you on this. It's super standard populous narrative, and it makes sense. But I don't think I have ever seen an economist say this, and I have seen them say the exact opposite.

    The "rut" that people get in, is unemployment. The primary tool that people have to increase their skills and their income is what they gain while working. The popular belief is that academic education is the best way to increase skills and earnings, but it is second to work experience. Education is very valuable, but work experience is far more efficient. It's ironic that we're sending a bunch of low-skill people to school when the most cost-effective way for them to get skills is to instead send them to work. It doesn't even matter where you're working. Every job I have heard of includes the ability to have your wages raised, to move into higher positions, or develop skills to move diagonally. Probably the only aspect of this that education is better is efficiency in breaking through some wage ceilings, but by that time, we're far away from any sort of "arse end fallen through the crack" thing.

    Because of this, all "safety net" policies that disincentivize work, regardless of the wages, have a deteriorating effect on the skills and earnings capabilities of the poor. If somebody takes a "bare minimum" job, they are learning new skills, and those new skills are what turn that "bare minimum" into a surplus. The macroeconomic rut is unemployment, not low wage employment.

    My personal theory is that the major subsidization of education is the foundation for why we have this problem in the first place. Back when the government didn't intervene in college or local schools, it was commonplace for young people to enter the work force and expect to remain in it until they would retire. Their wages, skills, and job descriptions would increase the whole while. But today everybody is over-educated, over-subsidized, and people are doing "entry-level" work ten or twenty years later than they normally would, after they've already established the expenses of adulthood.

    This is just one random example of how many people could get stuck in this situation.

    With no state to support those who fall on difficult times through circumstance or one poor decision a whole bunch of people could end up here. Having that safety net reduces the chance of this happening. I think that's important.

    So I agree that the state needs to be reigned in and regulation reduced. But I always want a safety net, and want health care and some form of subsidy for those that screw up at a bare minimum. And still stand by education, defence, policing to be part of it.

    I guess utilities is a step too far, but infrastructure such as roads and rail networks should be part of it.
    FWIW I think public education is the bane of our existence. I've always wanted to make a mega post on it, but I don't think I ever will. But to give a little taste, public education does so much wrong for us, from anywhere from creating a ridiculous sub-culture mentality in youths that influence us all as we grow, to wasting enormous funds and time on educating people on things they will never use, to making it impossible to work in many fields because they only hire grads because of over-supply.
  19. #769
    Quote Originally Posted by CoccoBill View Post
    My thoughts pretty much exactly. Making sure people aren't left stranded is essential. That's what creates crime, poverty, ghettos, sickness etc and results with huge loss of productivity. Unless of course we're talking about social darwinism and feel it's ok for them to just die off.
    The data is not conclusive that these things are created by people "falling through the cracks". As for the common claim that poverty increases crime, ghettos, and sickness, I think the only one the data may one day conclude is true is for sickness. The data linking poverty and crime has not been holding up lately, and there are much better explanations for ghettos.

    What we know is that economics can help understand this. The field can't explain everything about why ghettos and their facets exist, but it is well documented that those regions are among the most regulated and subsidized. Which is interesting since economic predictions are that this is what would happen if you regulate and subsidize something a lot.

    I want no part with a nanny state. There are definitely limits to where I want the state to stick its nose in, but I also think there are parts in which I think its nose is needed. Not all people are concerned how they harm others when they're reaching for their goals and taking care of themselves, and somebody needs to keep them in check. The best solution I'm aware of is a government with central policing. I don't care if it's optimal with regard to efficiency and I don't care how much your local police force is corrupt and useless, in many places it's been shown to work and can most likely therefore in other places too. The key is it needs to be available for everybody, not just those who can afford it.
    There are two big issues with this: (1) what you're describing is how it would work in a poorly functioning system. Nobody is arguing that the state can't do a whole bunch of stuff and then have some of that stuff work better than others. That's standard variation. It should be expected that if you have violence monopolies, you're going to have varying outcomes based on other factors. Also, your claim that some places work well because of their violence monopolies (like where you live) is not accounting for the many other variables that academics believe to be more applicable, like variations in level of cultural homogeneity.

    (2) Admitting a reduction in efficiency is admitting that your way is not the right way. Even an annual 0.1% increase in efficiency by a market system is enough to develop a more functional and moral system than the status quo. Not engaging efficiency is subsidizing ourselves at the expense of our progeny, so to speak. Of course, we're not dealing with numbers so tiny because the real amount of efficiency, growth, and innovation that the markets bring is far greater than 0.1%.

    I don't care what the number of regulations is, important is that there's enough of them and they're smart. The legislative process should be a science and evidence based PDCA cycle. Laws and regulations should undergo continuous improvement and refinement based on results and metrics.
    I agree that our approach should be science and evidence based. That's what this is all about. I think the science is telling us that limiting government works best.

    The Law of Unintended Consequences

    Regulation by monopoly is antithetical to the endeavor of producing positive results. Unintended consequences and moral hazards are unavoidable when regulation is used, it doesn't matter how "good" they may be. It's like hydrating by drinking salt water.

    That said, regulations can certainly be less bad. For example, if Jeb Bush gets elected president, he may pursue an education voucher system by national mandate. A law like that would have unintended consequences and thus be worse than having no mandate on education in the first place, but it would have much lower unintended consequences and produce fewer moral hazards than the current existing mandates.
    Last edited by wufwugy; 07-02-2015 at 01:47 AM.
  20. #770
    That link has such a great quote from Bastiat:

    There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen
  21. #771
    On bubble hysteria

    http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=29826

    What it does show is that people are very receptive to data that supports their preconceived bubble theories. And this is a part of my anti-bubble theory. I’ve done posts on how the Economist magazine once bragged that it correctly predicted a bunch of housing bubbles, whereas the article it cited was actually totally, spectacularly WRONG about the future course of house prices in a number of countries. Prices actually rose in markets where they predicted declines. And yet the Economist put their “successful” prediction into an ad for the magazine. Someday China will have a big crash, and the people who have been predicting it for a long time will say, “I told you so.” And I’ll say, “Market prices rise and fall, that’s what markets do.”
  22. #772
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    Hey, look what's coming!



    This will probably be influencing my questions and whatnot in the near future.
  23. #773
    That might be fun. I'll watch it. If they stick to the textbooks it should be quite informative

    You could check this out. It's done by two legit PhDs who blog at MarginalRevolution

    https://www.youtube.com/user/MrUniversity
  24. #774
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    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    The data linking poverty and crime has not been holding up lately
    Could you provide a link?

    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    There are two big issues with this: (1) what you're describing is how it would work in a poorly functioning system. Nobody is arguing that the state can't do a whole bunch of stuff and then have some of that stuff work better than others. That's standard variation. It should be expected that if you have violence monopolies, you're going to have varying outcomes based on other factors. Also, your claim that some places work well because of their violence monopolies (like where you live) is not accounting for the many other variables that academics believe to be more applicable, like variations in level of cultural homogeneity.
    I'm not really saying they work because of them, maybe more like despite them, but in the process the local brand of "violence monopoly" is ensuring a lot of basic necessities for everybody.

    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    (2) Admitting a reduction in efficiency is admitting that your way is not the right way. Even an annual 0.1% increase in efficiency by a market system is enough to develop a more functional and moral system than the status quo. Not engaging efficiency is subsidizing ourselves at the expense of our progeny, so to speak. Of course, we're not dealing with numbers so tiny because the real amount of efficiency, growth, and innovation that the markets bring is far greater than 0.1%.
    I don't see how any regulation automatically prohibits all increases in efficiency. There's been quite a bit of regulations for the past few hundred years and yet we've had a pretty good run of increased efficiency.

    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    The Law of Unintended Consequences

    Regulation by monopoly is antithetical to the endeavor of producing positive results. Unintended consequences and moral hazards are unavoidable when regulation is used, it doesn't matter how "good" they may be. It's like hydrating by drinking salt water.
    That seems a bit inane. Unintended consequences [can] occur when not all the variables and dependencies are known, but they occur everywhere, not just with regulation. We learn more about them every day and we can learn from our mistakes. Hence the PDCA cycle.
    Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit.

  25. #775
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    Quote Originally Posted by CoccoBill View Post
    I don't care what the number of regulations is, important is that there's enough of them and they're smart. The legislative process should be a science and evidence based PDCA cycle. Laws and regulations should undergo continuous improvement and refinement based on results and metrics.
    I'm totally cool with this, my fear (and the reason I started this thread) is that many/most of the regulations are borne out of blatant economic fallacies, and not science and evidence.
  26. #776
    Quote Originally Posted by CoccoBill View Post
    Could you provide a link?
    I can't. I don't remember exactly what the data was looking at either. It probably had something to do with how the steady drop in crime the US has had for decades doesn't correlate well with changes in wealth. My opinion on this is not backed by data like would be needed to say one way or the other, but I do know that the data is inconclusive on why crime has been dropping. My personal opinion is differences in regulation, welfare, and cultural sensibilities.

    I'm not really saying they work because of them, maybe more like despite them, but in the process the local brand of "violence monopoly" is ensuring a lot of basic necessities for everybody.
    Do you think it is possible that people would get more of what they need if they were not subjects of a violence monopoly?

    I don't see how any regulation automatically prohibits all increases in efficiency. There's been quite a bit of regulations for the past few hundred years and yet we've had a pretty good run of increased efficiency.
    We've had this despite all the regulation. You could probably say the government doesn't intervene in most ways in the West and markets have been mostly embraced for lots of things. The flip side of this was seen in the rise of socialism, where the government intervened everywhere and the societies all went to shit. What I advocate for is to take our free market principles and apply them to more things. Food and software/hardware are far more robust industries than education and healthcare and security, and what I've learned about economics tells me that the operating principle for why is that food and software/hardware don't have a whole a bunch of government regulation while the other three have a ton. We can even get into specifics, like how many targeted government regulations of healthcare restrict supply which in turn increase prices. Today the narrative is that prices are way too high and we need government to solve it, all the while the real cause of high prices is government intervention into the market in the first place.

    That seems a bit inane. Unintended consequences [can] occur when not all the variables and dependencies are known, but they occur everywhere, not just with regulation. We learn more about them every day and we can learn from our mistakes. Hence the PDCA cycle.
    This is a fantastic case for why markets work better than monopolies. There are indeed unintended consequences to everything, but the reason they're so much more harmful in government is that when a monopoly creates a mandate, those unintended consequences are locked in stone. It takes forever for them to change. Compare how slowly the legal monopoly reacts to problems with how quickly businesses operating in markets react. There's no comparison. The scientific approach is the one that allows for more robust change. Monopolies are awful for this.

    Just like how our ability to choose the food we buy makes a more robust food industry, an ability to choose what legal arbitration to live by would make for a more robust legal system. Market advocates are not interested in doing away with rules. Our sensibilities tend to be conservative and rule-based. What we advocate for is a dissolution of monopolies.
    Last edited by wufwugy; 07-02-2015 at 04:48 PM.
  27. #777
    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    I'm totally cool with this, my fear (and the reason I started this thread) is that many/most of the regulations are borne out of blatant economic fallacies, and not science and evidence.
    I think that if governments pursued the scientific approach, they would just keep privatizing more and more things until eventually everything was private. Monopoly regulations are just not conducive to a robust scientific approach. At the very least, they'd be signing a whole bunch of "freedom laws" not unlike freedom of speech, etc. They would be things like "the state shall make no law regarding the production, distribution, or consumption of goods".
  28. #778
    The scientific community is arguably the best example in existence of markets at work. It's totally decentralized, totally open to any individuals and any companies. Its robustness comes from the peer review. Businesses in a market get their robustness from a similar thing to peer review: choice of consumers.

    Imagine how swiftly the scientific community would be destroyed if government intervened. If government regulated the peer review process, we could kiss the whole thing goodbye.
    Last edited by wufwugy; 07-02-2015 at 04:55 PM.
  29. #779
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    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    The scientific community is arguably the best example in existence of markets at work. It's totally decentralized, totally open to any individuals and any companies. Its robustness comes from the peer review. Businesses in a market get their robustness from a similar thing to peer review: choice of consumers.

    Imagine how swiftly the scientific community would be destroyed if government intervened. If government regulated the peer review process, we could kiss the whole thing goodbye.
    What are your thoughts on the patent office, NSF, FDA, etc.?

    It seems to me that these are government regulatory systems which are intended to act as another layer of peer review.

    Peer review is great when it works, but there are, sadly, just as many lazy people, liars and hacks in the scientific community as anywhere else. There are too many examples of outright fraudulent claims which have passed through multiple layers of peer review. History has taught us over and over again that a policy of skepticism is always best.
  30. #780
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    The libertarian community is pretty split on IP laws, there's a lot of good debate to be found on youtube about it. The only consensus seems to be that they suck and are counter productive as they currently exist but ultimately might be necessary in some form. I'm not well-read enough to take a side on it.
  31. #781
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    What are your thoughts on the patent office, NSF, FDA, etc.?

    It seems to me that these are government regulatory systems which are intended to act as another layer of peer review.
    In a broad sense, I support any institution that means to do anything as long as its revenues do not come through coercion. Within that environment, I would not personally support lots of different institutions with my efforts, but I think they should be allowed to gather the support of others.

    As to your specific question, I'm not well-versed in IP to be able to give details explaining the effects of any specific positions. However, I think these sorts of things would work just fine in a market. I'll use the FDA as an example.

    Let's imagine there is no FDA anymore. Individuals and businesses are allowed to sell any food they want. Do you think that this would open the door for businesses to start selling contaminated food? I do not. I think doing so would be a death knell. If consumers do not trust a food source, that source is likely to go out of business, which means the source will make itself trustworthy. The likely main way that companies would show their trustworthiness is by endorsements from other companies that specialize in food safety. There would likely only be a handful of these companies, since they would require a ton of capital, experience, and prestige to operate, but they would all have meaningful niches and be in competition with each other. I think instead of seeing labels like "FDA approved", we would have labels like "Safety Company A approved" or "Safety Company B approved". Enough consumers would have opinions of these brands, and their choices would reflect. Groceries would develop contracts with these companies for those reasons and others.

    That's all a long way of saying I think the market can do what the FDA does just fine. I also think the market can do it much better, since that's what markets do. The "better" would include things like costing less to the taxpayer (since the businesses wouldn't receive revenues based on tax and would be more efficient and priced into the products themselves), and having higher standards in determining approval. While the FDA is full of good people and good policy ideas, if shit hits the fan and a whole bunch of people get sick, it does not lose its funding. But if Safety Company A approves a product and it kills some people, the company will be at threat of going bankrupt. The safety companies would know this, and their risk assessments would determine that they need to be even more sure that the products they endorse are safer than what we currently get in from the tax-funded FDA.

    Peer review is great when it works, but there are, sadly, just as many lazy people, liars and hacks in the scientific community as anywhere else. There are too many examples of outright fraudulent claims which have passed through multiple layers of peer review. History has taught us over and over again that a policy of skepticism is always best.
    Indeed. I completely agree. Imagine what it would be like if any hacks or charlatans got monopolistic power of the scientific review process. Instead of merits rising to the top and the scientific community weeding out the bad even though at times the process is turbulent, we would have long dark ages.

    The free market is a way to keep the bad people from rising to the top. Tax regimes seem to encourage bad people rising to the top. Even if they don't encourage it, the amount of damage a bad person can do when given power in a government monopoly is far greater than in any business in a free market. A lot of people hate the Koch brothers. Let's assume that hatred is not ill-founded. How many people have they killed? How many have they jailed? How many have they made sick? How many have they beaten up? How many have they imposed moral beliefs on their personal lives? The answer to those questions is a number much smaller than what happens when a bad person has monopolistic legal authority.
  32. #782
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    In a broad sense, I support any institution that means to do anything as long as its revenues do not come through coercion. Within that environment, I would not personally support lots of different institutions with my efforts, but I think they should be allowed to gather the support of others.
    I should add that I think people should be allowed to influence others with aggressive measures. What I'm getting at is that what I initially said could be construed as saying it should be okay for a child molestation ring to exist and even though I wouldn't support it, I think others should be allowed to support it. While I think that is true, I also think people should be allowed to support a company that finds child molesters and shoots them in the head.

    I don't adhere to the non-aggression principle like many libertarians. The principle I am against is tax regimes handing down legal mandates. I have no problem with rules established through personal choice, community choice, contracts, or insurance and arbitration companies. I just don't support only one entity having a monopoly over violence and law.

    Rilla and I argued about this a lot because he thinks that if there isn't a violence monopoly then one will just arise. I don't necessarily agree, but that is a reasonable argument to make. Regardless, if he's right, it still wouldn't negate the principle a violence monopoly should be restrained in certain ways. Of course, I think that if a monopoly is capable of restraining itself, it necessarily means a market would more easily execute as much and more restraint.
  33. #783
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    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    Hey, look what's coming!
    REDACTED
    This will probably be influencing my questions and whatnot in the near future.


    Something to get you started.

    And for the scientist mind in you, money and goods and services and debt et all are useful work. You got 100 bucks, you command 100 bucks worth of work. You've produced 100 widgets, you can trade 100 widgets worth of work (pray someone values your work like you do). Though it's a fuzzy exchange.
    Last edited by a500lbgorilla; 07-02-2015 at 07:28 PM.
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  34. #784
    Quote Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla View Post


    Something to get you started.

    And for the scientist mind in you, money and goods and services and debt et all are useful work. You got 100 bucks, you command 100 bucks worth of work. You've produced 100 widgets, you can trade 100 widgets worth of work (pray someone values your work like you do). Though it's a fuzzy exchange.
    This is good. It's important to not extrapolate too much from it though. For example, if an economy is running too sluggishly, lowering interest rates will help it. This makes it seem that if interest rates are low, then the economy is not sluggish. But that's not true. Oftentimes, low interest rates are a sign of a sluggish economy even though lowering interest rates is a tool that is often used to turn a sluggish economy around.

    Another example is that since one person's spending is another person's income, many people think you can just increase spending to grow an economy and make it more productive. That also isn't true. These two examples are of what happens when some is understood about economics, but not enough is understood. I do that constantly, but I hope I do it less now than I used to.
  35. #785
    Also I don't think the business cycle theory as presented in the video is complete. You can't say that the business cycle is caused by credit or that credit causes a bubble. Sometimes it's probably like this, but there are mitigating factors. For example, economies with stable currencies don't have these sorts of things. I don't really understand why except that a currency monopoly controls the nominal economy, which makes it able to keep lots of the reduction in demand for credit from turning into reduced nominal growth. Or something to that effect.
  36. #786
    I wish you people could get your point across using less words. This thread has become really difficult to keep up with. I've given up.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  37. #787
    The video falls apart in some around midpoint. Like he discusses redistribution like it's an exclusively good thing since the money can be used to pay more debt, but doesn't account for the productivity reductions this entails will just makes total debt even worse. Also he seems to say the only problem with stimulus is that it increases government debt, but again it reduces productivity so much that it makes total debt even worse. Fiscal austerity also isn't net negative. It doesn't decrease productivity.
  38. #788
    I also disagree with the "beautiful deleveraging". Currency manufacturers are capable of doing so much more than is presented. By using monetary tools to keep nominal growth stable, they can keep debt deleveraging from exiting their sectors. Not everybody develerages at the same time until the central bank drops the ball and reduces nominal growth from trend.
  39. #789
    His final three points are stellar. Economic policy should be all about incentives that increase productivity. Sadly most legislators and voters do not believe this, or at least they don't know how to effectively achieve this.
  40. #790
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    I wish you people could get your point across using less words. This thread has become really difficult to keep up with. I've given up.
  41. #791
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    You do realise that "fewer" and "less" have identical meanings, right? Is this just some cultural joke that I'm not getting?
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  42. #792
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  43. #793
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    But this is the Internet so who gives a fuck.
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  44. #794
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    Good example though.

    I couldn't give fewer of a fuck.
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  45. #795
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    Fewer is correct when the thing is countable, and less is correct when it isn't countable. For example, you can have less rice, less gasoline, less water, but you can only have fewer kilograms of rice, fewer gallons of gasoline, fewer bodies of water. U.K. has fewer residents than the U.S, but has less crime per capita.
  46. #796
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    I couldn't give fewer fucks?
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  47. #797
    I must've missed this English lesson at school.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  48. #798
    Anyway, I can't count your words. It's beyond infinity, therefore "less" is correct.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  49. #799
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    Lol
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  50. #800
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    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    You do realise that "fewer" and "less" have identical meanings, right? Is this just some cultural joke that I'm not getting?
    <a href=http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png target=_blank>http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png</a>
  51. #801
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    Quote Originally Posted by rong View Post
    I couldn't give fewer fucks?
    Depends on if you can give half a fuck.
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  52. #802
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    I think plural vs singular dictates fewer or less.
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  53. #803
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    It's countable versus degree.

    Less sand versus fewer bits of sand.
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  54. #804
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    I think that's pretty much the same thing as I was saying.
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  55. #805
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    No, because I dunno what you're saying and I know what I am saying.
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  56. #806
    There's less bullshit and fewer wankers.

    Today I learned something.

    Also, I have a new bike. £30 from some dodgy guy in Stourbridge. He had a shitty little house in an estate and a swimming pool in his garden with his three children playing in it. He had a hottub with fish in it. His knuckles were touching the floor. He seemed like a nice guy.

    Oh wait, this isn't the random thread. Sorry. Carry on about capitalism, I'm vaguely following.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  57. #807
  58. #808
    On the topic of safety nets.

    This is an important concept that needs to be addressed. I don't disagree at all with the idea that society needs safety nets, and I don't think claiming it's okay for a lack of safety nets would convince anybody. However, the kicker is that welfare is not a safety net, while market policies are safety nets. Here are a few examples illustrating why this is.

    Unemployment insurance epitomizes the concept of welfare for the purpose of safety nets for any who "fall through the cracks". When we examine what unemployment insurance actually does, however, it is an incentive to not produce. It turns robust capital into less robust capital. When viewed in a vacuum, unemployment insurance may look like a safety net for each individual from their own anecdotal perspective, but on the macro scale, it makes the economy worse and increases the probability and severity of "falling through the cracks" in the first place. As we've seen over the last few years, employment is depressed when job-searchers receive enough unemployment benefits. When those benefits run out, there are noticeable boosts in employment growth. This means that the "safety net" of unemployment insurance isn't a real safety and suppresses production. For these reasons, any real safety net policy cannot reduce production incentives.

    So what increases production and production incentives? Many things, one example of which is unemployment insurance and a lower minimum wage. Let's take two different economies, one where when people lose their jobs, they go on unemployment insurance and when benefits run out they take another job (which is almost always lower paying than the job they lost), and one where when people lose their jobs, they take other jobs for lower wages soon after or within a reasonable time frame. In the economy with unemployment insurance, people are paid to not produce and when they started producing again it is usually lower pay and with lost skills. In the economy without employment insurance and now wage floor, people are paid only when they produce. Skill loss is less and the lower pay is less long-lasting.

    What I hope I've illustrated is how welfare does not provide a safety net, and that the real safety net is the economic power actors in markets have. A restriction of actors' freedom in a market, even when meant as a "safety net", has the opposite effect, making the economy less stable, labor conditions more fragile, and deteriorating the real embedded safety nets.


    I've posted this link several times in the past. It's the type of welfare system that would do the least amount of damage to production and stability. I think in a free market, it would be redundant and less good than just a regular market, but it's about six billion times better than any welfare system anybody today has.

    http://www.morganwarstler.com/post/4...oss-the-market
  59. #809
    I would like to comment on the line from Marx that was posted a while back: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution".

    In effect, this is capitalism. By mandate, it's communism. Marx, or at least the socialist left that followed, believed that capitalism created an ever perpetuating class of haves at the expense of the have-nots. By now we know this isn't true. We still do have some supposed "haves" and some supposed "have-nots", but we know that capitalism isn't the cause of this and we also know that capitalism is the most effective known solution to this. Regardless, the rise of the socialist left didn't have the history or sound economic theory that we do today, so it developed a different theory, one that says since the assumption is that freedom creates more power disparity, the solution to the problem of haves and have-nots is mandates. This coincides with why every iteration of socialism since its birth has restricted freedom and supported centralized powers with welfare agendas.*

    Capitalism is the opposite. It says freedom is good and it has been demonstrated to be more effective than any imaginations at promoting prosperity for the have-nots. That's not an embellishment; poor people have smart phones. Capitalism has been enormously more effective than even Adam Smith could have fathomed. The concept economists have for why this could be the case is exactly what Marx wanted: each according to his contribution. Economists view capitalism's effectiveness mostly emerging from the meritocracy it creates, where workers are capable of getting more by contributing more.

    Marx was right in that each should get according to his contribution. But his prescription was antipodal. Capitalism is what effects this meritocracy; socialism is what strips it away.



    *The more aggressive versions of socialism have been violent. It should be noted that in socialism, violence isn't ideologically wrong. It is extremely effective at subverting freedom and installing states that can enact the socialist paradigm. Baked into the philosophy is the idea that if violence creates such a state, it's good. The Bolshevik revolution was not a bastardization of socialist philosophy like many today would claim. It was standard engagement of the philosophy. Perhaps a way to see how this is the case is that capitalism is ideologically against violence, while socialism requires a monopoly on violence to engage its agenda.
    Last edited by wufwugy; 07-05-2015 at 11:46 PM.
  60. #810
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    Your notion that being unforgiving to honest, hard-working people leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

    ***
    As someone who has taken unemployment benefits, and gone through the goddamn ringer on keeping up with their demands while learning to take advantage of the wealth of job-finding resources they had to offer, I can say that it's no easy ride for free money. There's no slacking and avoiding an active daily job search unless you commit fraud. They audit your claims to a certain extent to look for fraud.

    I'm not saying people don't abuse the system. I'm certain they do.

    I'm saying, in my personal experience, limited though it is, that office was filled with people using the computers and waiting in line for personal meetings with employment workers. It was a room of strained hope and desperate smiles. It was full of people trying their damndest to get back into the system, not people slacking on a free dime.

    ***
    Without data to put this into perspective, we're just sharing anecdotes.

    Here's the first 3 links on googling the phrase, "what percent of welfare is abused"
    Huffington Post
    ThinkProgress
    wikipedia

    Looks like that abuse of the system you describe amounts to ~2% of all welfare transactions.

    Those economic powers can change in ways that leave a person or a region of people on the losing end of the stick. They are perfectly willing to retrain and find a new job, but they need to feed their kids while they take a few weeks to do so.

    What I hope I've illustrated is how welfare does provide a safety net - one that compliments the free market.
  61. #811
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    Your notion that being unforgiving to honest, hard-working people leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

    ***
    As someone who has taken unemployment benefits, and gone through the goddamn ringer on keeping up with their demands while learning to take advantage of the wealth of job-finding resources they had to offer, I can say that it's no easy ride for free money. There's no slacking and avoiding an active daily job search unless you commit fraud. They audit your claims to a certain extent to look for fraud.

    I'm not saying people don't abuse the system. I'm certain they do.

    I'm saying, in my personal experience, limited though it is, that office was filled with people using the computers and waiting in line for personal meetings with employment workers. It was a room of strained hope and desperate smiles. It was full of people trying their damndest to get back into the system, not people slacking on a free dime.

    ***
    Without data to put this into perspective, we're just sharing anecdotes.

    Here's the first 3 links on googling the phrase, "what percent of welfare is abused"
    Huffington Post
    ThinkProgress
    wikipedia

    Looks like that abuse of the system you describe amounts to ~2% of all welfare transactions.

    Those economic powers can change in ways that leave a person or a region of people on the losing end of the stick. They are perfectly willing to retrain and find a new job, but they need to feed their kids while they take a few weeks to do so.

    What I hope I've illustrated is how welfare does provide a safety net - one that compliments the free market.
    I'm not talking about fraud or abusing the system and I said that things like unemployment insurance look good on the anecdotal level. Almost everybody who has been on welfare has benefited from it in isolation. But this has no bearing on how the system as a whole functions. Who here would not benefit if they received $5k in their bank accounts every month from the government? No one. Every individual would benefit from this greatly. But the economy as a whole would become a disaster and everybody would end up being worse off than they otherwise would be without that extra $5k. This sounds like a contradiction but it's not a contradiction and is well established consensus in macroeconomics. The unemployment insurance example was meant to illustrate part of why this is true.

    I'm talking macroeconomics, and the first thing you do is call me a prick. Most of what I post here I don't make up. I just bring concepts I learn from economists to this board. If you wish to have a productive discussion, you have to assume that you have something to learn.
  62. #812
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    The problem with your (MMM) anecdote about benefiting from the welfare state is that it presupposes an identical universe except with you not having the unemployment benefits. In a world where the state doesn't take 40% of the shit, you would probably have had a much easier time finding work, and would have had a much lower cost of living to cover in the meantime. By the way, when you were working you paid a 6% unemployment tax.

    Quote Originally Posted by IRS
    Only the employer pays FUTA tax; it is not deducted from the employee's wages.
    Yeah that's good for a chuckle. It comes from the employer's magic money box and has NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on how much he budgets to pay his employees, or on the number of employees he can hire.

    Anyway there's nothing to stop you from buying your own unemployment insurance from the private sector, and if you have a decent job it will probably be highly competitive with the 6% rate you were already paying.
  63. #813
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    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Almost everybody who has been on welfare has benefited from it in isolation. But this has no bearing on how the system as a whole functions.
    So...
    People who use it say it's great,
    But
    people who don't use it are hurt more than the people who use it are benefited?
    Overall, it's -EV.
    Is that what you're saying?

    Is it enough to only consider raising the mean? Doesn't the variance matter, too?

    Doesn't the fact that we're talking about providing a service that desperate people need and appreciate play a part?

    I get that numbers are callous. I don't get why that means we should act callously.

    ***
    The rest is really another non-sequitur. That terrible $5k plan is terrible.
    However, it's not comparable to welfare or unemployment insurance.

    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    the first thing you do is call me a prick.
    This never happened. That's not even my kind of insult.
    Now that you mention it, though, you are a tiny stab, sometimes...
    almost cutting, but just grazing the surface.

    (That's my kind of burn.)
    ;p
  64. #814
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    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    The problem with your (MMM) anecdote about benefiting from the welfare state is that it presupposes an identical universe except with you not having the unemployment benefits. In a world where the state doesn't take 40% of the shit, you would probably have had a much easier time finding work, and would have had a much lower cost of living to cover in the meantime.
    Dude, it's purely anecdotal. It only serves to explain why I think the benefits of this particular service are good.
    It's not an argument for anything but why my POV is what it is (right now).

    The %-age of money isn't important to either of us. What's important to both of us is that the money is well-spent. We agree that the money is not being particularly well-spent.

    ***
    Probably...? :/
    You're gonna need a distribution function to go along with that probability to sway me.

    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    By the way, when you were working you paid a 6% unemployment tax.
    Yes. I read the forms which I signed when I was hired. It's like a super power of mine.

    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    Yeah that's good for a chuckle.[...]
    I don't know how this relates to the current discussion, or that anyone disagrees with that point.
    Am I missing something?

    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    Anyway there's nothing to stop you from buying your own unemployment insurance from the private sector, and if you have a decent job it will probably be highly competitive with the 6% rate you were already paying.
    Right. And?

    People should do this if they want the service, right? But people don't do this. That's the reality. If private agencies and/or charities can provide the same or comparable service, then by all means... let them. However, if they don't, then having a short-term safety net for everyone is OK with me. Obv. I want it to be not corrupt, if possible, please.
  65. #815
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    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    Probably...? :/
    You're gonna need a distribution function to go along with that probability to sway me.
    Let's just say that I am highly confident that the unemployment rate and median income would be dramatically improved if the state wasn't squandering so much of our resources. I don't know the exact probability, but it's safe to say that there would be many fewer people in your predicament.

    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    I don't know how this relates to the current discussion, or that anyone disagrees with that point.
    Am I missing something?
    Most people in support of this tax would disagree. They enact this employer-side taxation, along with other taxes like the social security tax (another 6%) and the corporate tax because they believe the money just comes out of the profits. It takes this kind of "money from nothing" belief to support a majority of taxation and economic policy.

    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    People should do this if they want the service, right? But people don't do this. That's the reality. If private agencies and/or charities can provide the same or comparable service, then by all means... let them. However, if they don't, then having a short-term safety net for everyone is OK with me. Obv. I want it to be not corrupt, if possible, please.
    Yes, you think everyone should be made to overpay for a service whether they want it or not. You believe they are incapable of making the correct call. I guess I'm a little more optimistic about people.
  66. #816
    There's no slacking and avoiding an active daily job search unless you commit fraud. They audit your claims to a certain extent to look for fraud.

    I'm not saying people don't abuse the system. I'm certain they do.
    This is an interesting use of the word "fraud". It implies I'm a fraudster. I have to exaggerate my job search in order to meet the requirements. Am I committing fraud? Well no, because the only part where I actually sign is the part where I say I've done no work since I last signed. If I lie when I make that declaration, then I am committing fraud. That's because it's made clear where you sign that providing false information is fraud. To say one applied for a job when one didn't, that is not fraud, not unless someone actually makes you sign a declaration making it clear that lying will be fraud. Fraud is not just lying to obtain money, if that was the case then everyone who fills in their time sheet at work to say they worked until 5pm when actually they stopped working at 4.50 then dicked about on facebook for ten minutes is committing fraud, because they are obtaining money by means of deception. Would the employer pay them for the final ten minutes if the employee was honest about what he did as the day closed out?

    In law, fraud is deliberate deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain. Fraud is both a civil wrong (i.e., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud and/or recover monetary compensation) and a criminal wrong (i.e., a fraud perpetrator may be prosecuted and imprisoned by governmental authorities).
    Here's the definition of fraud, according to google. Note the use of the words "unfair" or "unlawful". The money you claim as a result of your deception, if you lie about your job search efforts, is neither unfair nor unlawful. It's a basic right.

    The day lying about job search actually becomes criminal fraud is a very worrying day indeed. That's a lot of people at the bottom of the food chain who are now at risk of going to prison.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
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  67. #817
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    Or they could just stop abusing the system and actually look for a job.
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  68. #818
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    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    Let's just say that I am highly confident that [...]
    I'm not questioning your confidence. I just want to see the data that led you to this confidence, so I can judge for myself.

    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    Most people in support of this tax would disagree.
    What have I said that led you to think that I would agree with them?
    OR
    What does their opinion elucidate about my opinion?

    I feel like you're attributing ideas to me based on stereotypes and not based on what I've said.
    Case in point:
    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    Yes, you think everyone should be made to overpay for a service whether they want it or not.
    What I said is that I like the service. I want the service provided efficiently.
    Not for nothing, but it seems like you're trying to rattle me by putting the word "overpay" in there. I doubt you believe that is the language I would use to describe my position.

    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    You believe they are incapable of making the correct call. I guess I'm a little more optimistic about people.
    Am I supposed to feel bad for being a bit cynical about people acting for their own long-term benefit?
    :/
    This is one of those things that I would buckle on if asked to provide data, so feel free to call me out on that. However, look around. With the tiniest preparation, most people could solve or avoid their own biggest problems. Yet they don't.

    One the one hand, serves them right for failure to plan ahead. On the other hand, no one can foresee all the challenges that will crop up. I don't believe the system should ignore this human problem, nor should it cater to it. It needs to be a balance.

    ***
    This discussion is so emotionally loaded.
    I guess with the word sentiment in the thread's title, I should expect as much.
  69. #819
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    @Ong: If you are giving false information to acquire a gain, then that's fraud.
    Plain and simple.
    That mental gymnastics whereby you pretend that you're entitled to the money while not preforming their requirements is absolute BS.
    You're only entitled to the benefits of the program to the extent that you follow the program.

    I would not be at all surprised to find some fine print on something you've signed which says exactly as much.

    If you even remotely believe that you are correct, then I suggest you have a meeting with your favorite legal representatives and have a chat with them about it.
    Let me know the results, please.
  70. #820
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    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    I'm not questioning your confidence. I just want to see the data that led you to this confidence, so I can judge for myself.

    The theory backs up my case more strongly than the data. There haven't really been any post-industrial states that haven't robbed their citizenry blind. There is plenty of data to correlate the size of the tax burden inversely with the rate of economic growth, though. And reams of data that make a causal link between rate of economic growth and reduced unemployment / increased median wage.


    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    What have I said that led you to think that I would agree with them?
    OR
    What does their opinion elucidate about my opinion?

    I feel like you're attributing ideas to me based on stereotypes and not based on what I've said.

    I'm assuming your in favor of a welfare state based on the opinions you've expressed in this thread. Belief in economic fallacies generally goes with the territory. I'm not accusing you of falling prey to those fallacies, merely suspecting you are. The objective was to get you to respond with why those fallacies aren't fallacies, or that you want a welfare state for a different reason entirely that doesn't rely on fallacy-based reasoning. We can cover more ground that way than if I have to verify every bullet point of your position before I criticize it. No offense is intended.


    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    What I said is that I like the service. I want the service provided efficiently.
    Not for nothing, but it seems like you're trying to rattle me by putting the word "overpay" in there. I doubt you believe that is the language I would use to describe my position.

    You wouldn't. Overpay is appropriate though because there is no market feedback for what you pay for the service. It's a completely arbitrary amount of tax for a completely arbitrary amount of benefits. The mechanism with which the benefits get established or altered is completely unrelated to the means with which the tax gets increased or decreased. Yes surely there is a committee which manages the budget of the unemployment program, but that committee has no ability to affect the necessary on-the-fly changes to the program itself, since those changes have to be routed through the political system. It's a total clusterfuck in which the 6% tax might create a massive surplus or a massive deficit depending on which way the wind is blowing.


    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    Am I supposed to feel bad for being a bit cynical about people acting for their own long-term benefit?
    :/
    This is one of those things that I would buckle on if asked to provide data, so feel free to call me out on that. However, look around. With the tiniest preparation, most people could solve or avoid their own biggest problems. Yet they don't.

    One the one hand, serves them right for failure to plan ahead. On the other hand, no one can foresee all the challenges that will crop up. I don't believe the system should ignore this human problem, nor should it cater to it. It needs to be a balance.

    It's reasonable to be realistic about the fallibility of human beings. I'm with you there. But don't you think part of the reason why people are so bad at thinking ahead is because of the existing incentive structure? I think the welfare state predisposes people to excessively risky behavior. I also think that the absence of the welfare state will foster prudent human beings, in time. But mainly I just believe that people ought to be free to fuck up their lives, and free to face the consequences of that. I support everyone's decision to have 6% more money at the cost of a lack of unemployment insurance if they want. Or to spend only 2% of their income on a lighter benefits package. Or to spend 10% of their income on a premium package. I think in a world where the state doesn't take care of everyone, people would come to understand the value of insurance.
    Last edited by Renton; 07-06-2015 at 03:26 PM.
  71. #821
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    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    I'm assuming your in favor of a welfare state based on the opinions you've expressed in this thread.
    Why not just ask me what my thoughts are, rather than assume?

    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    Belief in economic fallacies generally goes with the territory. I'm not accusing you of falling prey to those fallacies, merely suspecting you are. The objective was to get you to respond with why those fallacies aren't fallacies, or that you want a welfare state for a different reason entirely that doesn't rely on fallacy-based reasoning.
    You suspect that I'm foolish?
    Ouch, bro. Very ouch.

    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    We can cover more ground that way than if I have to verify every bullet point of your position before I criticize it.
    You're just waiting for the opportunity to criticize me?
    While I'm here asking questions to figure out what are the strengths and weaknesses of my knowledge of economics?
    the internet
    What if I answered your physics questions like this?

    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    No offense is intended.
    I'm not offended; I'm bored.
  72. #822
    Renton's Avatar
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    Points taken. I'm dealing with some very stupid people in twoplustwo politics and it is possible that my frustration is seeping from that to my posts in this thread. It is not intentional.

    To be fair to your physics analogy, physics isn't a subject that laypeople are as susceptible to forming wrongheaded emotionally-charged opinions about. In my questions to you I presented some minimal hypotheses that I fully expected were wrong, and would have accepted any response from you (a physicist) as correct. The trouble with economics is that people with little interest in learning about the subject nonetheless feel the need to form strong, unyielding opinions. It's understandable considering it affects everyone so much and it's a key part of politics. There just isn't as much of an authority imbalance with this subject, considering I'm not an economist and you're not a rank novice in these matters yourself.
    Last edited by Renton; 07-06-2015 at 05:47 PM.
  73. #823
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    So...
    People who use it say it's great,
    But
    people who don't use it are hurt more than the people who use it are benefited?
    Overall, it's -EV.
    Is that what you're saying?

    Is it enough to only consider raising the mean? Doesn't the variance matter, too?

    Doesn't the fact that we're talking about providing a service that desperate people need and appreciate play a part?

    I get that numbers are callous. I don't get why that means we should act callously.

    ***
    The rest is really another non-sequitur. That terrible $5k plan is terrible.
    However, it's not comparable to welfare or unemployment insurance.
    The $5k plan is perfectly comparable. Every element for why it is terrible is also present with unemployment insurance. The unemployed seeking employment are market actors just as much as the employed, and they are subject to the same elements of supply, demand, incentives, etc. When an economy is structured in such a way that the unemployed are paid for unproductive behavior, its eventual effect is that it will be more difficult for them to find productive work and when they do it will be of lower quality or for less compensation. I already went into detail for this but you swept it aside, so whatever.


    Safety nets are defined as policies that help people when they lose their jobs. Unemployment insurance is this type of safety net in a vacuum, but because it decreases the productivity of overall capital, it is bad for the economy, which necessarily means it is not a real safety net when all factors are accounted for. However, an elimination of the minimum wage is a real safety net since it also "helps people when they lose their jobs" since it means there is more available work, and it increases production and the overall productivity of capital, which means that the economy is overall better, which means the probability and severity of the downtrodden is reduced, making no minimum wage a true effective safety net policy.


    This never happened. That's not even my kind of insult.
    Now that you mention it, though, you are a tiny stab, sometimes...
    almost cutting, but just grazing the surface.

    (That's my kind of burn.)
    ;p
    I assumed you meant as much since the first thing you said is I'm being unforgiving to the down-trodden. On the contrary, the policies I propose provide that safety net that welfare doesn't. Welfare looks like it's a safety net on the surface, but when you dig deeper it does not behave as such. Market policies (like lower/no minimum wage) appear to not be safety nets on the surface, but when you dig deeper they behave as safety nets.
  74. #824
    Pretty sure I need to read Heinlein

    https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/697...f-man-advances
  75. #825
    Here's an analogy to how unemployment insurance helps individuals in a vacuum but because it hurts the overall market, it hurts individuals more than it helps.

    http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/...yee_theft.html

    TLDR: every patron being given free stuff from employee theft benefits from it. However, employee theft comes from employers, and some of those patrons are themselves employers, which means they are hurt more by an economy with employee theft than one without. Additionally some of the patrons are employees, which means they are employed by employers who have a finite amount they can pay their employees, which means the patrons receive lower compensations and are hurt more by an economy with employee theft than one without. Furthermore, some of the patrons are unemployed, and they desire employment from a potential employer, which means that employee theft hurts their chances at finding this employment since employers have higher costs and cannot hire as many employees.

    If you are a patron that receives something from employee theft, you benefit in that isolated instance. But since you exist in an economy with employee theft, you are harmed by its existence more than you are benefited. Likewise and by the same elements, if you receive unemployment insurance, you benefit in that isolated instance. But since you exist in an economy with the deteriorating productivity of unemployment insurance, you are harmed by its existence more than you are benefited. These are still true even though at any point you can say "But I would benefit by having this thing!"

    Economics is not unlike physics, where the micro and macro behave differently.

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