Taxation is not theft
Ed Ipser
writes:
>There have been several postings lately confidently tossing around
>claims that "Robin Hood was a criminal" and that taxation is theft. I
>find it incredible that any literate person in the final years of the
>20th century would consider the inheritance of property an axiomatic
>right. The concept of "property" is only a social construct.
This is a pretty wild statement. Care to back it up with anything besides
your personal conviction?
The concept of property is a natural and inalienable right of the individual
which has meaning totally irrelevant of society. The right to property is
different only from the right to life and liberty as a matter of degree;
we are somewhat more tolerant of infringement of our right to property than
our right to life and liberty. Nonetheless, the right to property is a
right recognized (not granted) by the US and and state constitutions.
No person shall ...
deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of
law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without
just compensation.
-- 5th Amendment of the US Constitution
...nor shall any
State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law...
-- 14th Amendment, Section 1 of the US Constitution
All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable
rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty,
acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining
safety, hapiness, and privacy.
-- Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution of the State of California
Inheritance of property is no more special than any other private arrangement
of property. The owner of the property is totally in control of its
disposition upon his death just as during his life.
Moreover, society /= government. Even if property rights were conferred
by society (which they are not), that would not imply that they were
conferred by government or that government could revoke said right.
Back before liberalism was corrupted by socialism, the liberal philosophy
recognized the personal nature of property and the limited role of
government. Classical liberalism held that:
1) the individual rather than the community, is the basis for society
and government;
2) the state exists to serve individuals, individuals do not exist to
serve the state;
3) the role of the state should be limited to the protection of life,
liberty, and property;
4) the individual possesses certain fundamental rights, the right to
life, liberty, and property, that should not be violated by the
state;
5) individuals are equal under the law or that they should have
an equality of opportunity (as distinguished from an equality of
condition);
6) the state should be a representative government.
I find it incredible that any literate person in the final years of the
20th century would consider property to be a privalege granted to
individuals by society or the government particularly in light of the
recent demise of socialism around the world.
Taxation, per se, for the general welfare is not theft but taxation for
special interests is. And especially, taxation whose intent and purpose
is the confiscation of income and property IS theft in the worst form.
If Robin Hood were not stealing from a corrupt King would he have been
a hero? (Every version of the Robin Hood story that i have ever heard
had the King imposing unfair taxes upon the British.) Can you name one
hero who stole from people who had acquired their property (however vast)
legitimately?
Brad Pierce
claims that "Robin Hood was a criminal" and that taxation is theft. I
find it incredible that any literate person in the final years of the
20th century would consider the inheritance of property an axiomatic
right. The concept of "property" is only a social construct.
-- Brad
David Casseres
> Can you name one
> hero who stole from people who had acquired their property (however
> vast) legitimately?
A number of people have been regarded as heroes by the public, even though
they stole property that was acquired legitimately (according to law, that
is).
Come gather 'round young people, a story I will tell
About Pretty Boy Floyd the outlaw, Oklahoma knew him well.
...
"They say that I'm an outlaw, they say that I'm a thief;
Well, here's a Christmas dinner for the families on relief..."
...
As through this life you ramble, you'll meet some funny men;
Some'll rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.
As through this life you ramble, as through this life you roam,
You'll never see an outlaw drive a family from its home.
--Woody Guthrie
It's a pretty romanticized idea of outlawry, but it reflects the
sentiments of the people involved, who saw the contrast between Pretty Boy
Floyd, a bank robber who did favors for poor families, and the banks he
robbed, which they thought of as predators because they foreclosed on
their farms, which were legally owned by the banks.
I think most people today agree that there are rights associated with
property, but there is lively disagreement as to what those rights are
morally, and what they should be legally.
David Casseres
Exclaimer: Hey!
Andy Freeman
I vote to transfer Pierce's "property" to the Church of Ubizmo.
Surely if enough people agree, he'll have no objection; it is merely a
social construct in his eyes.
That's not fair? He didn't consent to being governed by a vote of the
net? When did he consent to the governance of any government? More
to the point, when did I? (There is a crucial difference between a
net.election and a real government; we aren't going to throw him in
jail or have him beaten if he disagrees with our decision.)
-andy
--
UUCP: {arpa gateways, sun, decwrl, uunet, rutgers}!neon.stanford.edu!andy
ARPA: an...@neon.stanford.edu
BELLNET: (415) 723-3088
Piotr Berman
>writes:
>>There have been several postings lately confidently tossing around
>>claims that "Robin Hood was a criminal" and that taxation is theft. I
>>find it incredible that any literate person in the final years of the
>>20th century would consider the inheritance of property an axiomatic
>>right. The concept of "property" is only a social construct.
>
>This is a pretty wild statement. Care to back it up with anything besides
>your personal conviction?
>
>The concept of property is a natural and inalienable right of the individual
>..... Nonetheless, the right to property is a
>right recognized (not granted) by the US and and state constitutions.
Note that you are describing a social construct (the constitution)
recognizing a somewhat older construct (the property).
Question: in ca. 50,000 years of intelligent human existence, how many
years humans spend with the contemporary notion of property, i.e.
individual, free to dispose, not subject of obligations of feudal or
clannish nature?
>Inheritance of property is no more special than any other private arrangement
>of property. The owner of the property is totally in control of its
>disposition upon his death just as during his life.
>
Not exactly. For example, the Napoleonic code, still in force in
Louisiana and in many European countries, limits the rights of
an individual to disinherit his/her spouse and descendants.
Then we have gift and inheritance taxes (may be 'unnatural', but
how do you want to prove this?).
>Moreover, society /= government. Even if property rights were conferred
>by society (which they are not), that would not imply that they were
>conferred by government or that government could revoke said right.
>
Unfortunately, society expresses itself (partially at least) in the
form of government.
>Back before liberalism was corrupted by socialism, the liberal philosophy
>recognized the personal nature of property and the limited role of
>government. Classical liberalism held that:
>
> 1) the individual rather than the community, is the basis for society
> and government;
This is still a liberal claim. What you overlook is that the same individuals
who provide the basis for the government also happen to form communities.
If your community decrees that your lawn should be mowed, and no trash displayed
in the frontyard, you have no recourse to the constitution. These kinds
of 'community requirements' exist (as a principle) without interruption
longer than the modern property rights.
> 2) the state exists to serve individuals, individuals do not exist to
> serve the state;
Who contests this? At least, on the net.
> 3) the role of the state should be limited to the protection of life,
> liberty, and property;
and to provide services which cannot be efficiently provided by the free market.
Milton Friedman does support this principle, with the proviso that the technological
progress removed the barriers for competition in numerous cases (but not in all
of them).
> 4) the individual possesses certain fundamental rights, the right to
> life, liberty, and property, that should not be violated by the
> state;
> 5) individuals are equal under the law or that they should have
> an equality of opportunity (as distinguished from an equality of
> condition);
> 6) the state should be a representative government.
>
>I find it incredible that any literate person in the final years of the
>20th century would consider property to be a privalege granted to
>individuals by society or the government particularly in light of the
>recent demise of socialism around the world.
>
Property is a social construct which evolved. It is a good construct,
but at the very point of creation it posessed certain limitations,
tax liability being one of them, some equivalents of zoning codes being
another, occasional regulations concerning inheritnce being yet other,
and then there was eminent domain and crown property.
If you wish to evolve the notion of property further in the 'individualistic'
direction, you may argue your case, but do not call it natural, because it
never existed before.
>Taxation, per se, for the general welfare is not theft but taxation for
>special interests is. And especially, taxation whose intent and purpose
>is the confiscation of income and property IS theft in the worst form.
What is 'special inerest'? (Hint: what is beauty?)
The second sentence apparently refers to a strawmen, at least within the
limits of US and Western Europe.
>If Robin Hood were not stealing from a corrupt King would he have been
>a hero? (Every version of the Robin Hood story that i have ever heard
>had the King imposing unfair taxes upon the British.) Can you name one
>hero who stole from people who had acquired their property (however vast)
>legitimately?
But of course, The Pink Panther!!
Piotr Berman
Ronald BODKIN
>20th century would consider the inheritance of property an axiomatic
>right. The concept of "property" is only a social construct.
since it is a free disposition of that property by its owner -- allowing
it after their death is merely a courtesy so that people need not go
through incredible legal hassles to set up complex contractual arrangements
to produce the same effect. Anyhow, social constructs can be axiomatically
good -- just as the concept of "right to life" or "right to free speech"
is only a social construct (well maybe rights to property and these other
rights are a bit more than a "construct" but a political entrenchment of
correct ideas).
Ron
Matt Bartley
>In article <13...@venera.isi.edu> ip...@vaxa.isi.edu (Ed Ipser) writes:
>>Back before liberalism was corrupted by socialism, the liberal philosophy
>>recognized the personal nature of property and the limited role of
>>government. Classical liberalism held that:
>>
>> 1) the individual rather than the community, is the basis for society
>> and government;
>This is still a liberal claim. What you overlook is that the same individuals
>who provide the basis for the government also happen to form communities.
>If your community decrees that your lawn should be mowed, and no trash
>displayed in the frontyard, you have no recourse to the constitution. These
>kinds of 'community requirements' exist (as a principle) without interruption
>longer than the modern property rights.
OK. Move beyond keeping your house and yard in a trash condition. That's
too much of a straw man. What happens when I want to paint my house a color
my neighbors don't like? What happens when I want to install ham radio
antennas, not the huge ones, but about the size of the TV antennas everyone
has? What happens when I want to set up a satellite dish? If I get a boat
or RV? If my neighbors don't like those, do they have the right to force
me out of them, just because they are they and I am me? Neighborhood wars
start that way, when people try to force these things.
I've always wanted to see what would happen if in a "(mis)planned community"
like Irvine, CA someone repainted their house hot pink with green stripes,
pink neon tubes along the eaves, and filled the lawn with gaudy kitch items.
The flame war would be glorious to see.
Reminds me of an incident I read about. A guy had a house on a hill with
a great view in Oregon. A large condo complex started being built behind him,
totally blocking his view. He tried legal channels, jumping through all the
hoops, to stop or modify it, to no avail against the megabuck$ attorneys. So
when it was done, he painted the side of his house facing the new building
next door in multicolored checkerboard patterns, bright red wavy lines on the
roof, and a 7 foot mural of a person mooning the building.
>> 2) the state exists to serve individuals, individuals do not exist to
>> serve the state;
>Who contests this? At least, on the net.
No one on the net has directly said it but some opinions seem based on just
that. Outside the net, the constitution of the Soviet Union says it directly.
--
Internet: mdbo...@portia.stanford.edu Matt Bartley
Bitnet: mdbomber%por...@stanford.bitnet 73, KC6JRG
Kirk: "Spock! Where the hell's that power you promised?"
Spock: "One damn minute, Admiral." -- Star Trek IV : The Voyage Home
J Storrs Hall
pie...@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Brad Pierce) writes:
>The concept of "property" is only a social construct.
Hardly. The need to eat isn't a social construct. That which we eat is
a physical entity. By eating it (necessary for our survival) we remove
it from the grasp of others -- we monopolize an external resource -- we
make it our property.
Now, that which we eat, did not suddenly appear from nowhere just inches
from our lips. It grew or was raised necessarily on some extent of land.
Some of the resources of that land HAD to be monopolized by the plant or
animal that we just ate, for itself to have grown to be useful as food.
The modern concept of property is probably necessary for the continued
subsistence of the human race at present population levels, for much
the reasons you cite. However, I claim that in its modern form the
concept of real property (i.e. individual ownership of land)
originated only with the development of agriculture, i.e. relatively
late in the evolutionary scale.
Probably the concept of property in personal effects (clothing,
weapons, jewelry) is much older. This concept is practicable in a
hunter/gatherer milieu where real property is unnecessary and indeed
infeasible.
Since agriculture, private property has held an uneasy truce with
communal notions descended from tribal territoriality. Private real
property is one meme in a complex that has evolved into what has been
called the "private property order and the rule of law". This
complex, by virtue of its consistency, is one pole of a spectrum that
extends to pure communism at the opposite pole.
The various bastardizations which form the intermediaries between the
"State as sole moral agent" and "Individuals as sole moral agents"
poles usually gain their memetic success from (a) utilizing
psychological seduction factors such as class resentment, and (b) the
pragmatic intervention on their behalf by individuals and
organizations in whom they concentrate power and influence.
The consistency of the purely individualistic position appeals to
analytical types, like myself, but also works best, in the direct
operation of a society ordered on its dictates. Unfortunately,
the pure form of the private property complex does not mobilize
human resources directly against other meme complexes, and is thus at
something of a disadvantage in the conflict.
The public education meme, for example, is found in many socialist
and democratic complexes. It has its most pernicious effects in
using the physical and social resources of its hosts simply to kill
off competing meme complexes by direct indoctrination.
The reasoned adoption of the private property order as a presumptive
moral epistemology must be based on a thorough understanding of its
nature and that of the alternative contenders for its memetic niche.
--JoSH
Russ Nelson
pie...@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Brad Pierce) writes:
>The concept of "property" is only a social construct.
Hardly. The need to eat isn't a social construct. That which we eat is
a physical entity. By eating it (necessary for our survival) we remove
it from the grasp of others -- we monopolize an external resource -- we
make it our property.
Now, that which we eat, did not suddenly appear from nowhere just inches
from our lips. It grew or was raised necessarily on some extent of land.
Some of the resources of that land HAD to be monopolized by the plant or
animal that we just ate, for itself to have grown to be useful as food.
Whether taxation is theft or not, you make a logical leap from above
to below that I simply cannot follow. You go from monopolizing
(eating) food to monopolizing a "goodly size hunk of land." There is
an existance disproof of this step. How do people in a commune eat?
Are they collectively monopolizing external resources? How does a
group of people monopolize something? And if that is possible, what
is the limit on the size of the group?
Our daily food requirements and our agricultural know how are such that
each person needs a goodly size hunk of land monopolized for his OWN
use. Now he can own it directly or he can trade what else he owns for
the crops when he needs them -- but the end result of the transaction
is that the eater will have monopolized land area for his own personal
use.
--
--russ (nelson@clutx [.bitnet | .clarkson.edu]) Russ.Nelson@$315.268.6667
Violence never solves problems, it just changes them into more subtle problems
david director friedman
"I find it incredible that any literate person in the final years of
the 20th century would consider the inheritance of property an
axiomatic right. The concept of "property" is only a social construct.
-- Brad"
And I find it, if not incredible, at least surprising that a literate
person in the final years of the 20th century thinks progress in
moral philosophy has been rapid enough in recent decades to make the
fashionable moral beliefs of the late 20th century significantly more
likely to be right than those of the late 19th century, 18th century,
17th century, ... . Precisely how do you go about proving that the
concept of "property" is "only a social construct" (or, for that
matter, that it isn't)? Indeed, what does "only a social construct
mean?" The nearest thing I can think of to a positive meaning for
that statement is that property only exists among social animals,
which would seem both ethically irrelevent and empirically false.
"Back before liberalism was corrupted by socialism" (Ed Ipser)
Nonsense, they didn't corrupt us, they just stole our name. Or as G.
K. Chesterton put it, referring to the Liberal party early in this
century: "I'm still a liberal. It's those people who aren't
liberals." (quote from memory, may not be precise).
"Property is a social construct which evolved. It is a good
construct, but at the very point of creation it posessed certain
limitations, tax liability being one of them, some equivalents of
zoning codes being another, occasional regulations concerning
inheritnce being yet other, and then there was eminent domain and
crown property." (Piotr Berman)
I think this is somewhat dubious as history. In the Norwegian case,
at least, the idea that property was ultimately held from the crown
(essential for tax liability and eminent domain) seems to have been
introduced by Harald Hardrada in the 9th century, against vigorous
opposition by the property owners. This was the conversion from
allodial to feudal property. Many of the losers moved to Iceland,
which may help explain its somewhat ideosyncratic political
institutions (pre-Harald Norway with one central institution
omitted--the king).
I would agree that the details of property are a social construct,
although that does not answer the question of whether property rights
also and independently have some special moral status. It is, after
all, possible to believe that societies do wicked things--that there
is some standard of right and wrong, external to societies, by which
their institutions can be judged.
But property itself cannot be a social construct, since it pre-exists
society; lots of animals exhibit territorial behavior, which is to
say they act towards property (usually in land) roughly as we do
(minus contracts, etc.).
David Friedman
Dave Mankins
>which has meaning totally irrelevant of society.
This is a pretty wild statement. Care to back it up with anything more
than your personal conjecture?
The concept of property is *purely* a social construct[1]. Different
societies differ on what they believe can be ``owned''. For example,
European society for a long time believed that human beings could be
``owned'' (the institution of slavery). After a while, European society
dropped that concept of property.
When did the ``rights'' of the slaveholder change from being inalienable to
being alienable?
[1] Perhaps the best demonstration of this is the fact that the
notion of property is meaningless in a context of an isolated
individual. Property only becomes an issue when there is a
need to separate things into ``mine'' and ``thine''.
As another example, European society views _land_ as something that can be
owned by private individuals, even if they leave it idle. This is a fairly
recent innovation --- even in Europe --- and has been the cause of a good
deal of controversy (for example, the conflict in Central America can
perhaps best be understood as a conflict between different conceptions of
property and property rights: between the might-makes-property-right
supported by most of the governments of the region (including our own), and
the traditional, community-based, property-rights of the indigenous
societies).
--
david mankins (d...@think.com)
Andrew Bell
gajan) writes:
>pie...@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Brad Pierce) writes:
>Hardly. The need to eat isn't a social construct. That which we eat is
>a physical entity. By eating it (necessary for our survival) we remove
>it from the grasp of others -- we monopolize an external resource -- we
>make it our property.
No, we have control of it, which is entirely different. An animal maycatch a fish, and at that point have control of it. Another animal
might steal that fish from the first animal, at which point it has
control of it. No need for property of any sort.
Property implies socially recognized ownership; i.e. that individuals
will in some sense respect "property rights." It also implies some
non-coercive mechanism for transfer of property. (Otherwise, it is a
useless concept.) Animals survive very well without any such system of
ownership.
>Now, that which we eat, did not suddenly appear from nowhere just inches
>from our lips. It grew or was raised necessarily on some extent of land.
>Some of the resources of that land HAD to be monopolized by the plant or
>animal that we just ate, for itself to have grown to be useful as food.
Animals do not need to monopolize land, nor do anything equating to
ownership. What does an individual ant own or control? Does a deer stick
to a very small area? They may have *territoriality*, but this is not
ownership; it is possession supported by the threat of physical force.
If the possessor of a specific territory can be overcome, it loses
possession.
>Our daily food requirements and our agricultural know how are such that
>each person needs a goodly size hunk of land monopolized for his OWN
>use.
Hunter-gatherers did not individually monopolize land, nor did nomadic
herders in many instances. They had no need to, at least when the
world's population was fairly small.
>So property is NOT merely a social construct. It is a necessary attribute
>of human existance. We MUST monopolize external resources in order to
>survive.
Monopolization of resources is NOT the same as property.
Property is a social arrangement. It is advantageous to the majority of
the population to respect a system of property ownership, so we do so.
Since the majority can usually impose on the minority, this system is
self-perpetuating; not only are those who don't respect property rights
punished for doing so, but the young are also indoctrinated into believing
the system is advantageous to them.
In other words, it is a social construct.
-Andrew Bell
be...@cs.unc.edu
Ed Ipser
writes:
>Property implies socially recognized ownership; i.e. that individuals
>will in some sense respect "property rights." It also implies some
>non-coercive mechanism for transfer of property. (Otherwise, it is a
>useless concept.) Animals survive very well without any such system of
>ownership.
And are you similarly going to argue that the right to life and liberty
is a useless concept without social recognition? Did the Jews of
Germany simply have their PRIVALEGE to life revoked by the NAZI state?
>It is advantageous to the majority of
>the population to respect a system of property ownership, so we do so.
And, similarly, when a minority becomes burdensome to a society we have
the right to exterminate them?
>Since the majority can usually impose on the minority, this system is
>self-perpetuating; not only are those who don't respect property rights
>punished for doing so, but the young are also indoctrinated into believing
>the system is advantageous to them.
Certainly, this is more likely to be the case when the state has a monopoly
of arms. When individuals cannot resist the will of the state, they cannot
protect their rights. On the point, at least, we agree.
Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who
approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but
downright force: Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably
ruined.
-- Patrick Henry
Tom Doehne
In article <1990May1.0...@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
an...@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Andy Freeman) writes:
In article <34...@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> pie...@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Brad
Pierce) writes:
>The concept of "property" is only a social construct.
I vote to transfer Pierce's "property" to the Church of Ubizmo.
Surely if enough people agree, he'll have no objection; it is merely a
social construct in his eyes.
That's not fair? He didn't consent to being governed by a vote of the
net? When did he consent to the governance of any government? [...]
Not only is "property" a social construct, so are "nation", "state",
"church", and similar human organizations. We used to believe that
churches had a right to tax, and that certain individuals had a divine
right to rule nations. Perhaps in the future we will decide that
governments have no right to tax, and that individuals have no divine
right to govern economic organizations.
After all, animals, wind, and trees have no respect for national
boundaries or private property signs. They are strictly human, social
constructs. And most of us agree that governments have a right to tax,
and individuals have a right to direct companies and businesses -- but
that can change.
--
--
Tom Doehne
tom%amara...@mailgw.cc.umich.edu
...sharkey!amara!tom
John Logajan
>The concept of "property" is only a social construct.
Hardly. The need to eat isn't a social construct. That which we eat is
a physical entity. By eating it (necessary for our survival) we remove
it from the grasp of others -- we monopolize an external resource -- we
make it our property.
Now, that which we eat, did not suddenly appear from nowhere just inches
from our lips. It grew or was raised necessarily on some extent of land.
Some of the resources of that land HAD to be monopolized by the plant or
animal that we just ate, for itself to have grown to be useful as food.
Our daily food requirements and our agricultural know how are such that
each person needs a goodly size hunk of land monopolized for his OWN
use. Now he can own it directly or he can trade what else he owns for
the crops when he needs them -- but the end result of the transaction
is that the eater will have monopolized land area for his own personal
use.
So property is NOT merely a social construct. It is a necessary attribute
of human existance. We MUST monopolize external resources in order to
survive. Let anyone who doubts this act consistently with his beliefs.
For to cease monopolizine external resources is to cease to breath, to
cease to eat, to cease to live.
No, the monopolization of external resources, the propertization of
our environment, is a logical necessity for human survival. Social
arrangements and beliefs are irrelevant to the ultimate requirement
of propertization.
--
- John Logajan @ Network Systems; 7600 Boone Ave; Brooklyn Park, MN 55428
- log...@ns.network.com, jo...@logajan.mn.org, 612-424-4888, Fax 424-2853
Ed Ipser
>>In article <34...@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> pie...@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Brad Pierce)
>>writes:
>>>There have been several postings lately confidently tossing around
>>>claims that "Robin Hood was a criminal" and that taxation is theft. I
>>>find it incredible that any literate person in the final years of the
>>>20th century would consider the inheritance of property an axiomatic
>>>right. The concept of "property" is only a social construct.
>>
>>This is a pretty wild statement. Care to back it up with anything besides
>>your personal conviction?
>>
>>The concept of property is a natural and inalienable right of the individual
>>which has meaning totally irrelevant of society....
>>..... Nonetheless, the right to property is a
>>right recognized (not granted) by the US and and state constitutions.
>>[ quotes follow]
>
>Note that you are describing a social construct (the constitution)
>recognizing a somewhat older construct (the property).
Again, you are equating society with government. The constitution is a
legal document describing the form of our government, not the form of
our society.
>Unfortunately, society expresses itself (partially at least) in the
>form of government.
And society expresses itself in its art forms.
>>Back before liberalism was corrupted by socialism, the liberal philosophy
>>recognized the personal nature of property and the limited role of
>>government. Classical liberalism held that:
>>
>> 1) the individual rather than the community, is the basis for society
>> and government;
>
>This is still a liberal claim. What you overlook is that the same individuals
>who provide the basis for the government also happen to form communities.
>If your community decrees that your lawn should be mowed, and no trash displayed
>in the frontyard, you have no recourse to the constitution.
Except for the Fourteenth Amendment or State clauses regarding individual
rights. In particular, if your community required you to commit sepeku
on your front lawn, you would have recourse. In the context of our
discussion, the community does not have the power to take property without
just compensation.
>> 2) the state exists to serve individuals, individuals do not exist to
>> serve the state;
>
>Who contests this? At least, on the net.
When you argue that property is a right to be granted by the state (or even
by society) you are contesting this.
>> 3) the role of the state should be limited to the protection of life,
>> liberty, and property;
>
>and to provide services which cannot be efficiently provided by the free market.
>Milton Friedman does support this principle, with the proviso that the technological
>progress removed the barriers for competition in numerous cases (but not in all
>of them).
Within reason. In particular, the efficiency test is seldom applied to
liberal pet projects.
>> 4) the individual possesses certain fundamental rights, the right to
>> life, liberty, and property, that should not be violated by the
>> state;
>> 5) individuals are equal under the law or that they should have
>> an equality of opportunity (as distinguished from an equality of
>> condition);
>> 6) the state should be a representative government.
>>
>>I find it incredible that any literate person in the final years of the
>>20th century would consider property to be a privalege granted to
>>individuals by society or the government particularly in light of the
>>recent demise of socialism around the world.
>>
>Property is a social construct which evolved.
From where does this assertion arise?
Jochen M. Fritz
>recognized the personal nature of property and the limited role of
>government. Classical liberalism held that:
>
> 1) the individual rather than the community, is the basis for society
> and government;
> 2) the state exists to serve individuals, individuals do not exist to
> serve the state;
True.
> 3) the role of the state should be limited to the protection of life,
> liberty, and property;
Of *all* citizens. Including the life of the poor, who otherwise cannot keep
their lives. Without the use of the property of others (taxes). IMHO, life is
always supreme to property.
> 4) the individual possesses certain fundamental rights, the right to
> life, liberty, and property, that should not be violated by the
> state;
True.
> 5) individuals are equal under the law or that they should have
> an equality of opportunity (as distinguished from an equality of
> condition);
In this society, you need money to make money. Therefore, if you were born
rich, you will most likely dir rick. This does not mean equal oppurinity.
The rich have a better oppurinity to own cars, to take trips, to send their
children to school, and to live longer and healthier. This seems unfair.
> 6) the state should be a representative government.
A representative government of all people, not just those with the money
to make themselver heard.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Jochen Fritz | For though we live in the world, we do not |
| joef...@pawl.rpi.edu | wage war as the world does.-- 2 Cor. 10:3 |
| user...@rpitsmts.bitnet| You have heard it said, Love your neighbor |
| Noah [the peace monger] | and hate your enemy. But I tell you: Love |
| | your enemies. Matt. 5:43-44 |
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Doehne
The modern concept of property is probably necessary for the continued
subsistence of the human race at present population levels, for much
the reasons you cite. However, I claim that in its modern form the
concept of real property (i.e. individual ownership of land)
originated only with the development of agriculture, i.e. relatively
late in the evolutionary scale.
Probably the concept of property in personal effects (clothing,
weapons, jewelry) is much older. This concept is practicable in a
hunter/gatherer milieu where real property is unnecessary and indeed
infeasible.
In fact, there are nations in the South Pacific where neither personal
property nor individual private property have been accepted until very
recently (and are still unaccepted in some areas). Land is held by
the (matrilineal) clan, and tilling rights are granted. Personal
'property' can simply be asked for, and must be given to the person
asking for it. They must have some social conventions to prevent
people from spending all their time asking each other for the little
they have, but I didn't learn what the conventions are. This lack of
personal and real property has posed a tremendous problem for
Westernized people who wish for 'progress': land cannot be sold by an
individual to some corporation for plantations or mining; individuals
see little benefit to acquiring material goods, since their clan
members can simply ask for the things, and then the goods are gone.
In fact, people often hide unique things that they have in their
possesion, so that someone doesn't ask for them. Makes conspicuous
consumption (other than gift-giving) very difficult!
Private property, including personal private property, is not
universal in human cultures and is therefore not 'natural'. It does
confer many advantages on our society, for all that it is merely a
social construct! It is also a recent idea in some parts of the world
(introduced in the last 70 years).
For those of you with lots of cash and curiousity, the cultures now
converting to private property are in Melanesia. I specifically know
about the Solomon Islands (in the South Pacific near New Guinea), but
have been told that other nations with Melanesian culture have similar
values. In fact, there is quite a bit of variance in values and
ownership between islands in the Solomon Islands -- the nation is a
construct of the British Empire.
Ed Ipser
>In article <13...@venera.isi.edu> ip...@vaxa.isi.edu (Ed Ipser) writes:
>>
>> 3) the role of the state should be limited to the protection of life,
>> liberty, and property;
>Of *all* citizens. Including the life of the poor, who otherwise cannot keep
>their lives. Without the use of the property of others (taxes). IMHO, life
is always supreme to property.
If we were talking about preventing starvation in the inner cities, i don't
think you would be facing the anti-welfare backlash that now exists.
However, the "housing crisis", for example, has nothing to do with the
protection of life (issues of what causes the "crisis", aside).
>> 5) individuals are equal under the law or that they should have
>> an equality of opportunity (as distinguished from an equality of
>> condition);
>In this society, you need money to make money.
Socialist rubish. Interest and divident income accounts for a very small
fraction of income in the United States. Most money is made by labor, not
investment. (Not that investment is not important.)
>Therefore, if you were born
>rich, you will most likely die rick. This does not mean equal oppurinity.
>The rich have a better oppurinity to own cars, to take trips, to send their
>children to school, and to live longer and healthier. This seems unfair.
Thus begins the drift from classical liberalism to modern liberalism.
You have captured the fall of the "L" word in a nutshell.
Ed Ipser
The net.socialists have asserted that not just the right to property, but
the right to life and liberty are "social constructs" which governments
are free to regulate and define. Classical liberals, conservatives, and
libertarians, on the other hand, hold that the rights to life, liberty,
and property are "inalienable" rights:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers form the consent of the governed. That
whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is
the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
safety and happiness.
-- United States Declaration of Independence
classical liberalism: any of various theories or social and political
movements which advocate that
1) the individual rather than the community, is the basis for society
and government;
2) the state exists to serve individuals, individuals do not exist to
serve the state;
3) the role of the state should be limited to the protection of life,
liberty, and property;
4) the individual possesses certain fundamental rights, the right to
life, liberty, and property, that should not be violated by the
state;
5) individuals are equal under the law or that they should have
an equality of opportunity (as distinguished from an equality of
condition);
6) the state should be a representative government.
What are the differences between these two views and what are the implications
of the respective views. There is not much point in arguing which view
is "correct" as they are axiomatic. Rather, we should debate which view
is more useful and desirable both as a model and as a philosophy of the
relationship between the individual and government (and society).
Classical vs. modern liberalism influences the form of government which
is established. If rights are defined by government as in modern liberalism,
then governments should be designed to efficiently produce and enforce
such definitions. If the government decides that certain arrangements threaten
the welfare of the state, then it must be able to revoke the privilege to life,
liberty, and property. For example, it makes little sense to modern liberals
to allow citizens to have arms for their own defense as these arms might
interfere with government powers. Classical liberalism, on the other hand,
would regard government exercise of power which required a disarmed citizenry
to be illegitimate.
Classical vs. modern liberalism influences the attitudes of individuals
toward government authority in a minority vs. majority situation. Pure
majoritarian democracies are notorious for their mistreatment of minorities
hence classic liberalism avoided such democracies even while it favored
representative government. The US Constitution is singularly dedicated to
limiting the power of the government. Needless to say, modern liberalism
abhors such limits and the Constitutions of the various socialist nations
place the duties of the individual to the state on equal footing with the
rights of the citizen against the state.
If the right to life, liberty, and property are but "social constructs" and
if government is the natural expression of society then it follows that
these rights are granted by government and, hence, may be revoked by the
same government to serve the general welfare. By contrast, classical
liberals hold that the general welfare must be limited by the respect for
life, liberty, and propety.
Brad Pierce
>the right to life and liberty are "social constructs" which governments
>are free to regulate and define.
Please specify the people you consider "net.socialists". Please give
quotes from the net to support your claim that anyone, socialist or
otherwise, made such an assertion.
-- Brad
Fergal Toomey
>The public education meme, for example, is found in many socialist
>and democratic complexes. It has its most pernicious effects in
>using the physical and social resources of its hosts simply to kill
>off competing meme complexes by direct indoctrination.
Tell that to some people I know in Hackney, London, who are dirt-poor and
who rely on the state to educate their kids. If education was opened up
to "market forces", they'd get a very poor class of education indeed, and
they'd end up dirt-poor just like their parents.
Things like education and health, provided by the state in most western
countries to some extent, can not be opened up to the free market
until everyone becomes rich. If you accept what someone else said, that
there is a lower limit on unemployment, then that will never be clearly
the case.
As for "indoctrination", I don't think you're talking about democratic
countries here; in a democratic country, the state schools teach kids what
the kids' parents want them to teach. So if there is any indoctrination
going on, it is parental indoctrination, not state indoctrination.
I think the bottom line on taxation, from a personal viewpoint, is that I
pay it because I want to pay it. I want to pay it because I realise that
someday either I myself or someone close to me, a relative or friend, may
be relying on social charity in some form. Obviously, my paying taxes is
not then incompatible with the principles of Liberalism, but should people
who don't want to pay taxes be forced to pay them. In principle, probably
not, but the practical implications of this are horrendous. For example,
people who refuse to pay taxes would not have the right to:
use public transport
travel on public roads
attend a school or university which receives funds from the government
use electricity or water produced or purified by the government
enter a public building
buy the goods or services of a company subsidised by the govt.
be protected by the police
etc, etc...
The point is that governments exist in order to do things. You need
money to do things. Therefore we pay the government taxes. If you don't
pay taxes, the implication is that you don't want any of the things the
government provides. In a modern country where the government is involved
in almost every area of life, it is inevitable that each individual will
avail of government-provided services almost every day of his/her life.
Therefore, everyone should pay taxes. A fair-minded person who didn't
want to pay taxes would be obliged to either leave the country or else
stay in bed all day.
If you feel that the government shouldn't be involved so much in people's
everday lives, then fair enough, vote in a minimalist party. Taxes will
then fall *automatically*, so obviously this isn't a problem with
taxation. (I'll wager that the quality of your life will also fall pretty
drastically, but that's another point. Excessively high-spending govts.
also screw up your quality of life, of course).
Taxation in itself is neither a good nor a bad thing, but individual taxes
can be either good or bad, depending on how they are collected and how
the money is used. In a democratic country, the people decide how taxes
are to collected and used, so there is no need for this irrational fear of
taxation *per se*.
>--JoSH
Fergal.
Avi Belinsky
>
>Tell that to some people I know in Hackney, London, who are dirt-poor and
>who rely on the state to educate their kids. If education was opened up
>to "market forces", they'd get a very poor class of education indeed, and
>they'd end up dirt-poor just like their parents.
>
>Things like education and health, provided by the state in most western
>countries to some extent, can not be opened up to the free market
>until everyone becomes rich. If you accept what someone else said, that
>there is a lower limit on unemployment, then that will never be clearly
>the case.
I believe that you make the assumption that education and free markets
are incompatible. IMHO you are wrong. What I would like to see is a
system where every student gets a voucher from the government for X$
where X$ dollars is the amount the gov't is willing to pay to educate
each student. The student may then take this voucher to ANY school
and use it to towards tuition. Public schools would not be allowed to
charge more than X$, private schools would.
I think this injection of free market economics would drastically
improve the education system. I imagine that the really bad schools
would either improve their 'product' or go broke because of lack of
'clients'.
A friend of mine took a course in educational issues and this was one
of the discussed proposals. He told me of some research that supported
my beliefs. Sorry, no references but I'm sure someone out there will
be able to come up with pro/con references.
- Avi
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Avi Belinsky Electrical Engineering, University of Waterloo
(519) 888-4762 abel...@sunee.uwaterloo.ca
abel...@sunee.waterloo.edu
...uunet!watmath!sunee!abelinsk
david director friedman
"They may have *territoriality*, but this is not
ownership; it is possession supported by the threat of physical
False. What is striking about territorial behavior among animals is
that the weaker animal defeats the stronger (i.e. the latter backs
down) on the weaker animal's territority. Of course, if the weaker
animal is sufficiently weak, that will not longer be true. But the
fact that the territory is perceived, by both parties, as "belonging"
to one of them has a substantial effect on the outcome of the
conflict. So it really is property, not just might makes right.
"European society views _land_ as something that can
be owned by private individuals, even if they leave it idle. This is
a fairly recent innovation --- even in Europe ---and has been the
cause of a good deal of controversy" (David Mankins)
If recent means within the past two thousand years, I think you are
clearly wrong. If you mean much farther back than that, I am curious
as to your evidence.
"In fact, there are nations in the South Pacific where neither
personal property nor individual private property have been accepted
until very recently (and are still unaccepted in some areas). "
How sure are you of your facts? The reason I ask is that I remember
reading an article some years ago debunking such an assertion about
some primitive (I think South Pacific) people. The author claimed
that the anthropologist who described the society as without property
was simply misreading it--that property was public only in the sense
in which private property in a fraternity or sorority is. Widespread
borrowing, but everyone knew who things actually belonged to.
Obviously, my vague memory of assertions in an article that may or
may not have been about the same society does not prove your claim is
wrong, but I do think that when a description of a society is based
on analysis by only one or two observers one should be a little
sceptical. Along similar lines, I gather some anthropologists are now
arguing that Margaret Mead's description of the Samoans was wildly
off.
Also, I think we should distinguish "lack of property" from
"different structure of ownership." The most absolute libertarian
position is still consistent with complicated property forms created
by contract--partnerships, survivorships, etc. I heard a talk
recently by an economist interested in Papua New Guinea. I would
describe that society (judging by his comments) as having complicated
property rights, not no property rights.
On a more general line, I think a lot of the noise in this thread
comes from people using "rights" in two quite different ways. To the
believers in rights, they are a statement about right or wrong.
Roughly speaking, the statement "I have a right to that property" is
equivalent to "someone who uses that property without my permission
is acting badly." This has very little to do with the question "will
someone who tries to use that property without my permission
succeed," which is what the opponents of property rights are asking.
I am not sure whether the anti-rights people understand this and are
simply asserting that right and wrong are imaginary, hence "rights"
ought to be used in their way and when so used are non-existent (or a
social construct), or whether they do not understand what the other
side is saying.
"If education was opened up to "market forces", they'd get a very
poor class of education indeed, and they'd end up dirt-poor just like
their parents." (Josh Fergal)
No doubt many people believe this, but that does not make it true. As
counter-evidence:
Ed West has done work (I think a book) on the development of
government education. One conclusion (I heard this in a talk he gave)
was that the introduction of universal public education in Britain
could not be detected in data on literacy. Literacy was rising before
and after the change, and there was no noticable difference.
In general, when government provides something, it is easy to assume
that if it were provided on the market "the rich would get it all."
But if you actually contrast government provided goods (police
protection, schooling) with privately provided goods (food,
clothing), my impression, at least in the U.S. where I live, is that
the inequality is greater in the former group.
David Friedman
DD...@Tank.UChicago.Edu
Paul A. Sand
In article <34...@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> pie...@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Brad
"The Mad Crossposter" Pierce) writes:
> I find it incredible that any literate person in the final years of the
> 20th century would consider the inheritance of property an axiomatic
> right.
Questions: (1) Do you really mean "axiomatic"? (2) If so, can you
actually *name* any person, literate or not, that considers inheritance
of property to be an "axiomatic right"? (3) If so, what did they say to
make you think so? References, please.
> The concept of "property" is only a social construct.
Whaddya mean, "only"? [And do you really mean "property" or "property
rights"?] There are a whole lot of concepts that might be said to be
social constructs; just ask Peter Nelson for a list. Among these
concepts are murder, attitudes toward pork products, genocide, slavery,
and appropriate styles of dress. How do you tell which deserve to be
labelled "only" social constructs?
--
-- Paul A. Sand
-- University of New Hampshire
-- uunet!unhd!pas -or- p...@unh.edu
J Storrs Hall
> In article <May.1.22.02....@klaatu.rutgers.edu> jo...@klaatu.rutgers.edu (J Storrs Hall) writes:
>
>
> >The public education meme, for example, is found in many socialist
> ... If education was opened up
> to "market forces", they'd get a very poor class of education indeed, and
> they'd end up dirt-poor just like their parents.
>
> Things like education and health, provided by the state in most western
> countries to some extent, can not be opened up to the free market
> until everyone becomes rich.
On the contrary, the upper classes are just as adept at using
the political process to their advantage as they are at using
the market process. In fact, even more so. I don't have figures
for education, but when you mention health care I'm sure you'll
be surprised what your own NHS has done "for" Britain's poor.
An article in the Cato Journal a few years ago discussed the
effects of nationalised health care there, using figures from
the Economist:
"The evidence suggesting that the poor in Britain have been harmed by
the expansion of transfer payments that took place through the NHS is
rather dramatic. The death rate of the poorest segment of the British
population actually increased after the NHS went into effect, and this
was at the same time that medicine was being revolutionized with the
introduction of antibiotics and the overall death rate was dropping.
Furthermore, the death rate for the least advantaged in Britain
continued upward. The male mortality rate for unskilled workers was
16 percent higher for the years 1970-72 than it was for the years
1949-53. This contrasts with decreasing mortality rates for all other
classes of British males over the same period. For example, over the
interval 1949-53 unskilled male workers had a mortality rate 37
percent higher than professional male workers, but by 1970-72 the
mortality rate of unskilled male workers was 78 percent higher than
that of professional male workers."
--JoSH
Floyd McWilliams
writes:
A few random points before I start in earnest:
1. I could go on for several paragraphs about your last statement.
Is the concept of property a social construct? I could argue that _any_
concept is a social construct, because when we express ideas like
"property" and "theft", we are using words defined by the usage of
a large number of people -- a "society". Or I could be contrary and
claim that each person has his own idea of what property is, and that
notion is likely to be a bit different from the definition of property
espoused by any member of "society" selected at random.
2. I consider the _possession_ and _use_ of property to be
an axiomatic right. This subsumes the distribution of property after
its owner's death -- what we call inheritance -- but you have focused
on one small aspect of any theory of property.
3. Robin Hood was not necessarily a criminal -- it's quite
possible that his victims gained their wealth through taxation, or the
more overt means of plunder and conquest.
4. There are literate people in the final years of the 20th
century who think it's proper to run over protesters with tanks. Watch
the hyperbole -- there's enough of it on the net already.
And now for my main rebuttal [drum roll please...]
For the sake of argument (and because it may well be true),
I am willing to concede that "property" is a social construct. I
maintain that this construct was formulated and accepted because
it is useful. "Property" is the recognition that humans manipulate
objects, and that it is convenient for humans to maintain control
over objects so that they can be used when needed.
If it is useful for someone to maintain control over a
possession, then it is not useful if the control of that possession
is transferred, against its owner's will, to another person. This
is the crux of my argument -- taxation is the involuntary transfer
of property from one individual to a group of people who have
attained recognition as a "government". As such, taxation violates
the assumptions that are responsible for the social construct known as
"property".
--
Floyd McWilliams -- fmcw...@oracle.com
An armed society is a polite society.
Fergal Toomey
(david director friedman) writes:
>"They may have *territoriality*, but this is not
>ownership; it is possession supported by the threat of physical
>force." (Andrew Bell)
>
>False. What is striking about territorial behavior among animals is
>that the weaker animal defeats the stronger (i.e. the latter backs
>down) on the weaker animal's territority. Of course, if the weaker
>animal is sufficiently weak, that will not longer be true. But the
>fact that the territory is perceived, by both parties, as "belonging"
>to one of them has a substantial effect on the outcome of the
>conflict. So it really is property, not just might makes right.
It has long been observed that an animal will fight much more fiercely
on its own territory than elsewhere. Most fights between animals of the
same species are concluded by one of the antagonists backing down before
serious injury has been inflicted on either participant (this is a
survival mechanism). However, even a weak animal will rarely back down
when fighting on its own territory. Therefore, fights over territory will
end either with the intruder backing down or with a crippling injury
being inflicted on one of the fighters. The intruding animal knows that
the defending animal is not going to back down, and thus to win the fight
he has to inflict a very serious injury. This would probably involve
suffering injuries himself unless the defender is very weak. Therefore
the intruder is likely to back down, even if he is stronger than the
defender. This has nothing to do with a perception of territory "belonging"
to anyone.
In fact, I think it's pointless arguing about whether property rights are
"natural" or not. We don't have to look to history to find out what to do
next. All we have to do is ask ourselves whether or not we want to recognise
private property. We can then look to history to find the pros and cons of
private property. But the idea that if private property is "natural" then
it must be right is ridiculous. I can think of a lot of "natural" things
that are definitely not right.
Btw, before somebody flames me, I am in favour of private property.
>"If education was opened up to "market forces", they'd get a very
>poor class of education indeed, and they'd end up dirt-poor just like
>their parents." (Josh Fergal)
>
>No doubt many people believe this, but that does not make it true. As
>counter-evidence:
>
>Ed West has done work (I think a book) on the development of
>government education. One conclusion (I heard this in a talk he gave)
>was that the introduction of universal public education in Britain
>could not be detected in data on literacy. Literacy was rising before
>and after the change, and there was no noticable difference.
>
>In general, when government provides something, it is easy to assume
>that if it were provided on the market "the rich would get it all."
>But if you actually contrast government provided goods (police
>protection, schooling) with privately provided goods (food,
>clothing), my impression, at least in the U.S. where I live, is that
>the inequality is greater in the former group.
On the other hand, rich people generally eat better food and wear better
clothes than poor people. Similarly, if education were a free market then
rich people would begin their adult life with a far better education than
poor people. In a society where everyone is supposed to start off with
an equal opportunity to do well, that would be unacceptable. I am not
arguing against all forms of elitism here. If someone shows an aptitude
for maths, for example, they should receive a more advanced education in
maths than someone who is bad at it; but people shouldn't receive better
educations just because their parents have more money.
If the government is providing rich people with a better education or
better police protection than poor people get, then I will vote against
that government. In order words, I can do something about it. If a
privately-owned police company decides to provide a better service to
people who pay more, I can do nothing about it. Therefore, I feel that
the government should continue to maintain a public police force, and
a public education service.
>David Friedman
>DD...@Tank.UChicago.Edu
Fergal Toomey.
David H. West
|An article in the Cato Journal a few years ago discussed the
|the Economist:
|
|"The evidence suggesting that the poor in Britain have been harmed by
|the expansion of transfer payments that took place through the NHS is
|rather dramatic. The death rate of the poorest segment of the British
[lots of figures comparing 1949 and 1970, omitted]
You (and the Cato Journal?) omit to mention that between those dates
there were several significant waves of immigration, so that "the
poorest segment of the population" changed totally in culture,
customs and environment of origin from the beginning of that period
to its end. Sounds like bad research methodology to me.
Tom Doehne
I write: "In fact, there are nations in the South Pacific where neither
personal property nor individual private property have been accepted
until very recently (and are still unaccepted in some areas). "
ddf writes:
How sure are you of your facts? The reason I ask is that I remember
reading an article some years ago debunking such an assertion about
some primitive (I think South Pacific) people. The author claimed
that the anthropologist who described the society as without property
was simply misreading it--that property was public only in the sense
in which private property in a fraternity or sorority is. Widespread
borrowing, but everyone knew who things actually belonged to.
Obviously, my vague memory of assertions in an article that may or
may not have been about the same society does not prove your claim is
wrong, but I do think that when a description of a society is based
on analysis by only one or two observers one should be a little
sceptical. Along similar lines, I gather some anthropologists are now
arguing that Margaret Mead's description of the Samoans was wildly
off.
I agree that we should be sceptical of observations made by only one
or two people. In the case of South Pacific cultures, we should also
be very wary of generalizing from single cases. It may very well be
that the anthropologist who described that particular society as
without property was incorrect: the different melanesian ethnic groups
vary widely in their forms of determining kinship, government, tilling
rights, and in what is considered property.
Also, I should clarify a bit: the cultures without what we consider
private property do have some forms of 'private property', but those
forms of property are limited to tokens for counting social
prestige/wealth. (Where I was, it was shell 'money' of a sort which
can not be 'spent' on what we consider private property: personal
private property, food, land, or tilling rights. It was used for
paying fines or reparations for social wrongs like adultery.)
Part of our definition of private property includes the ability to
alienate (sell or give away) the property. As I mentioned before,
that kind of property does not exist in some (many?) Melanesian
cultures, making economic development difficult.
In some areas, Westerners are (or were) warned that the locals had no
compunction about simply taking some personal item (such as a camera)
that they liked, and that they did not considered such lifting to be
stealing (wrong). My point is that _our_ notions of private property
are very far from universal. When I traveled in the Solomons, I was
told that this could happen in some places, and to not be surprised.
Further, one can look at early native Americans' view of real
property: from what I've read, some of the tribes did not view land as
something that could be owned by individuals or alienated.
As for the ideological revisions of Margaret Mead's work, my
impressions are that the jury is still out, and perhaps can never come
in (we will never really know what was going on).
Randy Price
> As for "indoctrination", I don't think you're talking about democratic
> countries here; in a democratic country, the state schools teach kids what
> the kids' parents want them to teach. So if there is any indoctrination
> going on, it is parental indoctrination, not state indoctrination.
>
ha, ha, ha, heh, heh, guffaw, chortle.
I did't know rec.humor crossposted.
That's a good one. Public education isn't state indoctrination. A real
knee slapper.
John Dewey would be proud of you.
Randy
________________________________________________________
Randy Price ra...@uutopia.dell.com
The opinions are my own, not my employers, cognito.
"Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have
removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift
of God?"
Thomas Jefferson
John D. Mathon (593-0923)
> In article <34...@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> pie...@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Brad Pierce)
> writes:
> deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of
> law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without
> just compensation.
> -- 5th Amendment of the US Constitution
>
> ...nor shall any
> State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without
> due process of law...
> -- 14th Amendment, Section 1 of the US Constitution
>
> All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable
> rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty,
> acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining
> safety, hapiness, and privacy.
> -- Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution of the State of California
I couldn't delete these. Forgive me.
> Inheritance of property is no more special than any other private arrangement
> of property. The owner of the property is totally in control of its
> disposition upon his death just as during his life.
2 Points.
One. I believe in absolute property rights, but, it would be wise to
understand that there is a notion of selling certain rights and not
others to property. For instance, you may sell a piece of property
but someone else may retain water or gas rights, etc... When you sell
software, you sell certain rights. You cannotdo with this property
anything that you want, because you have not purchased those rights.
In our society I interpret most government laws as essentially coming
from this principle. For instance, I buy a property, but I realize
when I buy the property that certain rights are retained by the city.
I have a choice of which city and which rights I wish to give up
when I buy a property. Some cities retain more rights than others.
Much of this same logic can work for taxes, etc. This leads to
point number 2.
Two. Taxation may be considered acceptable to a libertarian such as
myself if it is voluntarily accepted. While I have the right to leave
the US anytime I please, unfortunately, I do not have the right to
go wherever else I please. This applies to others who wish to come
to the US. Liberal immigration and emigration laws are extremely
important in order to have a free society. In spite of the strong
influence of government and tax enthusiasts, this country is still
the best place to live in the world in my opinion.
Further, taxation of different groups of people at different levels
without the express authorization of the members of that group is
inexcusable. I.e. the notion of graduated tax rates is abominable
unless the people in the highly graduated zones agree in a seperate
vote to such taxation. This is a minimal condition for democracy
in my opinion. However, as a libertarian I find the whole notion
of taxation somewhat abhorrent. I would favor less authoritarian
ways of encouraging the same behavior voluntarily. For instance,
giving to a private homelessness support group should be a tax
credit (not deduction, there is a big difference) up to a limit.
In this way we could privatize services to the indigent in our
society. Further, companies could get tax credits for Research
of certain types. In this way, research could be privatized.
Ronald BODKIN
>who rely on the state to educate their kids. If education was opened up
>to "market forces", they'd get a very poor class of education indeed, and
>they'd end up dirt-poor just like their parents.
be able to receive bursaries by the educational institutions (to increase
their prestige) and corporate sponsorship, in return for an agreement to
work with the company, or loans on the basis of expected return. Simply
put, the extent to which it is an economic benefit to educate people
is the extent to which they would receive education. This ignores any
public benefits from education (e.g. a democracy benefits by educated
citizens), but to what extent this is extant, if one believes the
government has a role in providing public goods, the government should
subsidize private education, not provide public education with the
extreme expense of double payment for those who do not believe the
public education system to be adequate (a lot of middle class families
are unable to privately educate their children, inspite of their
preference, due to large educational taxes which are imposed).
>Things like education and health, provided by the state in most western
>countries to some extent, can not be opened up to the free market
>until everyone becomes rich.
I don't see why this holds at all. If there is a public good
from these, then perhaps subsidies are in order, but certainly there is
a strong case for total deregulation and non-governmental provision.
In the case of health care, medical socities provide a wonderful supply
restriction which drives prices sky high. But the arguments against
public medical care are probably not news to any readers of this
newsgroup, if they are I think a grand summary is found in "Economics in
Our Time" by Dwight Lee and Robert McNown (in chapter 6, section 6).
>As for "indoctrination", I don't think you're talking about democratic
>countries here; in a democratic country, the state schools teach kids what
>the kids' parents want them to teach.
No, they tend to teach them what all the teachers have learned,
which is generally derived from Mr. John Dewey's philosophy of education.
The method of education is not a strong topic of debate, instead incident
concrete subjects are debated, to the extent anything about education
is debated at all.
>The point is that governments exist in order to do things.
Is that all that you think a government should be restricted
to? I can see the argument for provision of truly public goods, but
the argument for government provision of private goods is spurious
and offensive.
>...Therefore, everyone should pay taxes.
I agree that the government should indeed enforce taxation for
the minimal services it does provide, but that is all that I would
advocate. The effective tax rate should be at about 10% and not 30-50%.
>If you feel that the government shouldn't be involved so much in people's
>everday lives, then fair enough, vote in a minimalist party.
Good political advice, but the point is that the government should
be disallowed constitutionally from such intervention; it should not be
subject to public decision at all.
Ron
Thant Tessman
corruption (or name theft) of the 'L' word. However, I think the
original point was lost.
The point "Taxation is not theft" because "The concept of 'property'
is only a social construct." If indeed one accepts that 'property' is
a social construct, *and* that this implies that taxes aren't theft,
then I claim it also implies that there is no such thing as theft.
Having gotten that off my chest...
In article <1990May2.1...@maths.tcd.ie>, fto...@maths.tcd.ie
(Fergal Toomey) writes:
[...]
>
> Tell that to some people I know in Hackney, London, who are dirt-poor and
> who rely on the state to educate their kids. If education was opened up
> to "market forces", they'd get a very poor class of education indeed, and
> they'd end up dirt-poor just like their parents.
Maybe the reason that they are dirt-poor is that the government is
busy bleeding the economy dry and justifying it in people's eyes by
spending small and inefficient amounts of money on 'public education'
and 'public health.' Maybe the reason they can't afford education or
health care is because it isn't open to 'market forces' (just like they
aren't in the U.S.).
There is a movement here in California to try to raise property
taxes to help pay for child care subsidies because (the claim is)
child care is unaffordable. How it is that people can't afford
child care but can afford more property taxes is never fully explained.
If the claim is that the people who pay the property tax are the ones
who can afford it, then how come the support for the movement is
coming from the wealthier segment of the population.
[...]
>
> As for "indoctrination", I don't think you're talking about democratic
> countries here; in a democratic country, the state schools teach kids what
> the kids' parents want them to teach. So if there is any indoctrination
> going on, it is parental indoctrination, not state indoctrination.
In 'public school' was where I was taught that 'public school' was such
a great thing. It was where I was taught that F.D.R. was one of the
greatest presidents that this country had because he "saved capitalism
from itselt." The amount of government approved social indoctrination goes
much deeper than most people realize. In biology, we skipped the chapter
on evolution. (This was Utah.) It's not that I think that evolution
should be forced down everyone's throat. Believe it or not, I think
parents should be able to select their child's curriculum. As it is,
(and in contradiction to your statement), unless parents are willing to
pay for both private education and public education via taxes, the
childeren get taught one big compromise. In my case, although they didn't
feed us creationist dogma, neither did we learn about evolution.
>
> I think the bottom line on taxation, from a personal viewpoint, is that I
> pay it because I want to pay it. I want to pay it because I realise that
> someday either I myself or someone close to me, a relative or friend, may
> be relying on social charity in some form. Obviously, my paying taxes is
> not then incompatible with the principles of Liberalism, but should people
> who don't want to pay taxes be forced to pay them. In principle, probably
> not, but the practical implications of this are horrendous. For example,
> people who refuse to pay taxes would not have the right to:
>
> use public transport
> travel on public roads
> attend a school or university which receives funds from the government
> use electricity or water produced or purified by the government
> enter a public building
> buy the goods or services of a company subsidised by the govt.
> be protected by the police
> etc, etc...
A deal I for one am very willing to make. (-if I could. They don't
even give you the choice, because they'd lose.)
Have you thought about just how inefficiently your taxes are being
spent on the stuff you listed? Or how many kinds of subsidizations
make you pay more for products, not less? Or that public libraries
are used by rich people, not poor? Or that government subsidization
of roads might have been a major deterrent to development of alternate
forms of transportation? Etc...
[...]
> If you feel that the government shouldn't be involved so much in people's
> everday lives, then fair enough, vote in a minimalist party. Taxes will
> then fall *automatically*, so obviously this isn't a problem with
> taxation. (I'll wager that the quality of your life will also fall pretty
> drastically, but that's another point. Excessively high-spending govts.
> also screw up your quality of life, of course).
The problem is one of misinformation. You demonstrate one right off the
bat by assuming that less government will lower the quality of life.
Where did you get that idea, and where has it been demonstrated? On the
surface, all I see are examples to the contrary. (I'm sure there are
exceptions, but the point is that people say it like it's a given.)
Another example I have mentioned before is that people still seem to
think that taxes went down under Reagan. They then point out that things
aren't that much better (if not worse) than they were before, so
obviously the answer must be to raise taxes. However, tax revenue went
up by over 50 percent during the Reagan administration. How could the
government possibly be tight for money? And yet that is exactly the
impression everyone is given. There was a government study done under
the Reagan administration that claimed that $400 billion (something like
that, don't quote me) was pure waste. How come the government was
completely silent about it?
Another example of misinformation is all the claims that the cuts in
social spending are the cause of the increase in the homeless. A
little while back I posted an article that I hoped proved that the
major cause of the lack of affordable housing is zoning, not lack
of subsidization. A case of too much government, not too little.
Okay, one more and I'll shut up. There are still articles and
t.v. news stories that offhandedly comment about the S&L crisis
as a result of deregulation. I posted an article that pointed
out that although the financial watch-dog aspects of the S&L
business were deregulated, the deregulation was also accompaied
by an *increase* in FSLIC insurance coverage. This practically
invited the kind of misinvestment and fraud that destroyed the
industry. Again a case of too much government, not too little.
>
> Taxation in itself is neither a good nor a bad thing, but individual taxes
> can be either good or bad, depending on how they are collected and how
> the money is used. In a democratic country, the people decide how taxes
> are to collected and used, so there is no need for this irrational fear of
> taxation *per se*.
Aren't you scared yet?
>
>
> Fergal.
thant
P.S. And for whom can one vote to lower taxes? (Hint: it isn't
the Democrats or the Republicans.)
david director friedman
Question: by "opponents of property rights," do you mean "people who
say that rights are a social construct?" (Andrew Bell, responding to
me).
Yes; that is what I meant. Sorry if I was not clear; when in the
midst of an argument I tend to write somewhat elliptically, on the
assumption that the other participants will understand.
"On a more general line, I think a lot of the noise in this thread
comes from people using "rights" in two quite different ways. To the
believers in rights, they are a statement about right or wrong." (Me)
"With God to reward those who obey them and punish those who ignore
them? Where do these decisions about right and wrong come from?"
(Andrew Bell, responding)
What does God have to do with it? Even if one could prove that there
was an all-powerful and all-knowing being, it would still not follow
that his will was good--he might be the Devil (in a world with no
God). The question of where "ought" statements come from and what
such statements, if any, are true, is logically separate from the
question of whether God exists, although the two issues are bundled
in many religions.
Whether normative beliefs are in some sense true or false or are
merely errors that we are trained into by our society or programmed
into by our genes is no doubt a very interesting question, but not
one I was trying to deal with in that passage. My point is that a
very large number of people believe that right and wrong are real
things, and it is foolish (and, incidentally, arrogant) to answer
arguments made in terms of those beliefs as if the people making them
were talking about what one could do when they are obviously talking
about what one should do. What much of the "anti natural rights as
more than social constructs" school seems to be saying is: "Your
philosophical beliefs are so absurd that you cannot really believe in
them, so I will interpret what you are saying in terms of my
philosophical beliefs, which must be what you really believe in."
They are saying this despite the observed fact, which I doubt you
would dispute, that most humans of whom we have knowledge, including
most of the moral philosophers, regarded right and wrong as more than
merely social conventions. They may have been wrong, but one should
not take their being wrong as the axiom with which you start the
argument.
On the subject of whether Peter Nelson, and other empiricists, are
ultimately resting their beliefs on faith, I offer the following
argument, for which I claim no originality.
In order to do science, one requires something called the inductive
hypothesis--the assumption that the future resembles the past.
Without it, evidence of what the laws of science are today is
irrelevent to what they will be tomorrow.
Unfortunately, in order to get evidence for the truth of the
inductive hypothesis, one must first assume it. Unless we first
assume the inductive hypothesis, the observation that it held last
week does not tell us it will hold this week. The fact that the
scientific laws were the same yesterday as the day before is only
evidence that the future used to resemble the past.
With regard to some more of Peter's postings, I am reminded of a
wonderful passage in one of Orwell's essays; the following is from
memory, and not precise:
"For the past two hundred years, any man of any real ability has been
an enemy of religion. We have been sawing away at the branch on which
we were sitting. Now it has broken, and we have fallen, not into a
garden of roses, but a cesspool filled with barbed wire."
Like Peter, Orwell agreed with the intellectual changes he was
describing, but regarded their practical consequences as dangerous.
It seems to me that one difficulty with Peter's position is that he
holds values and acts on them, while at the same time holding a
philosophical position according to which his values are merely an
accidental result of is upbringing with no moral status at all. One
would think that, after being shown that one believes something
("killing is bad," for instance) for a bad reason (social
indoctrination--the same reason a pre-bellum southerner believed
slavery was good), one would stop believing in it, unless one could
find another and better reason for it. Yet Peter retains his beliefs,
as judged by his actions, while rejecting all the reasons he believes
them.
"Obviously I would like to THINK that my values are a product of the
power of pure, raw, logic. But I'm sure that they are heavily
influenced by culture, experiences and whatever biochemical features
of my nervous system are dominant at any given moment." (Peter)
Unless you are being sarcastic here, I am mystified. How could your
values be the product of logic when, according to your position,
there is no moral truth for you to use your logic to uncover? Logic
might show that certain values have certain consequences, but then
you have no basis for deciding what consequences are good or bad.
Surely, according to your position, your values are not merely
"heavily influenced" by culture etc., they are and must be based
entirely on such factors--hence entirely without logical
justification.
As one way out of the (very plausible) hole in which you have put
yourself, I suggest the following variant of Pascal's wager:
Suppose one concludes, on philosophical grounds, that normative
statements might be illusions or might be real true/false statements,
like positive statements. Further suppose that you assign substantial
probability to both possibilities.
If normative beliefs are an illusion and you act on the assumption
that they are real, you will have followed one arbitrary set of
values instead of another equally arbitrary one--by assumption, in
this case there are no correct values. You will have been wrong, but
it is not clear that the error imposes any sort of cost. Certainly it
cannot impose a moral cost, since in this situation there are no
morals, only false beliefs about morals.
If normative beliefs are real and you act on the assumption that they
are an illusion, you are likely to end up taking actions that are
really wicked. On this assumption, right and wrong are real, and by
the meaning of the words, wrong acts are ones you ought not to take.
It follows, in a sort of moral version of expected utility theory,
that as long as you assign substantial probability to the second
alternative, you should act as though moral propositions are real
(and, of course, try to find out which ones are true). In some other
context, when I am feeling more energetic, I may try to persuade the
normative-unbelievers on the net that they should assign significant
probability to the alternative they have rejected.
Yet another point. Peter asserts, in effect, that his moral beliefs
are true but dangerous. The fact that they are dangerous is not a
good reason for him to change them, but it is surely a good reason
for him to keep silent about them. In terms of his own values,
arguing for moral relativism causes human death and misery and is
therefore a wicked act. It seems to follow that he prefers his own
entertainment, and a chance to persuade himself of his intellectual
superiority to his fellows, to the well being of the people injured
by the popularity of his (in his view true) beliefs. He seems to be
in precisely the same position as the biologist or nuclear physicist
who has discovered a new and better way for people to kill each other
and chooses to make it public, knowing its bad consequences, because
he wants the ensuing fame and glory. In that example too, one is
proclaiming the truth.
This is getting too long.
David Friedman
Dave Mankins
>There has been some excelent discussion on property rights and the
>corruption (or name theft) of the 'L' word.
Ahh. It's good to see that I'm not alone in thinking that most people who
call themselves ``Libertarians'' would be more honest if they referred to
themselves as ``Propertarians'' instead.
--
david mankins (d...@think.com)
Randolph Fritz
But property itself cannot be a social construct, since it pre-exists
society; lots of animals exhibit territorial behavior, which is to
say they act towards property (usually in land) roughly as we do
(minus contracts, etc.).
I'm having real trouble understanding this argument. Human property
behavior, in all but the simplest social situations, is always bound
up in contracts, rights, and so on -- socially determined symbolic
abstractions which have no parallel in the behavior of known non-human
animals. "Contracts, etc." change everything. One cannot simply say
"animals have territoriality; humans have property -- territoriality
and property are essentially the same, they are natural, and they are
right". Shall we model our property laws and ethics on the behavior
of baboons? On dogs or cats? All the social ethics and laws of
property are social constructs.
On the other hand, it's hardly the case that social constructs can be
ignored. Yes, they change, yes, they're manipulable -- but don't
let's be silly; changing the thinking of hundreds of millions of
people is very, very difficult and enormously dangerous. I prefer to
treat major cultural elements as worthy of respect (even when I
dislike them), accept them, and try to find ethical ways of living
with them.
__Randolph Fritz sun!cognito.eng!randolph || rand...@eng.sun.com
"The fault, brute steersman, lies not in her spars, but thyself."
-- Poul Anderson
David H. West
|[...] most humans of whom we have knowledge, including
|most of the moral philosophers, regarded right and wrong as more than
|merely social conventions. They may have been wrong, but one should
|not take their being wrong as the axiom with which you start the
|argument.
"should"?
[lots more good stuff omitted]
|One would think that, after being shown that one believes something
|[...] for a bad reason [...] one would stop believing in it, unless one
|could find another and better reason for it. Yet Peter retains his
|beliefs, as judged by his actions, while rejecting all the reasons he
|believes them.
To mangle a quotation from M. G. Kendall, "the struggle for
existence compels us to hold beliefs". Reasons are optional.
[version of Pascal's Wager omitted]
If the space of possibilities is large enough (i.e. if you have a
fertile imagination), Pascal's Wager doesn't buy you very much.
[...]
|--by assumption, in
|this case there are no correct values. You will have been wrong, but
|it is not clear that the error imposes any sort of cost. Certainly it
|cannot impose a moral cost, since in this situation there are no [...]
Some actions may lead, possibly slowly and imperceptibly, to the
extinction of those who perform them. Whether this is a "cost" depends
on your belief system.
|when I am feeling more energetic, I may try to persuade the
|normative-unbelievers on the net that they should assign significant
|probability to the alternative they have rejected.
But why "should" they believe you?
-David d...@iti.org
david director friedman
Randolph Fritz questions my claim that the similarity between human
and animal property behavior implies that property is not a social
construct. Perhaps I should have said "not merely a social
construct." My point was that a simple form of the behavior predates
human society, so although our elaborated version may be (on the
evidence is) in part a social construct, it is built on an underlying
pre-social behavior pattern.
Of course, that has very little to do with the underlying issue of
this thread--the question of whether property rights have any innate
moral status, whether taking my property is bad even if my society
sanctions your doing so. The fact that a particular behavior pattern
is hardwired into my genes does not make it right--but it does make
it something more than merely conventional, which was the assertion I
was disputing.
How does one explain territorial behavior in animals? My view is that
it is a biologically enforced commitment strategy. In certain
contexts, the animal will fight to the death to defend what it
regards as its territory--and other members of the species recognize
this. Since, in most cases, a fight to the death costs the winner
more than the prize is worth, members of such a species mostly
respect each others territory.
I think, incidentally, that the same behavior pattern is an imporant
element in human property, although we have a much more elaborate
procedure for deciding what belongs to whom. If you try to view a
human society as an open-ended bargaining game, it is hard to see how
it can be stable and functional--how we can get out of the Hobbesian
war of each against all (with or without a state). Consider the
neighbor who points out to me that he can inflict a lot of minor
costs on me without my being able to impose any legal penalty
(dumping garbage on my lawn, breaking windows, ...) and threatens to
do so unless I pay him a modest monthly tribute. We expect that
almost all such situations will end up with a "neither side pays
tribute" equilibrium. Why? Because each party is pre-committed to
fight much harder (bear larger costs for the apparent benefit) in
defense of what both parties regard as "his" than in trying to steal
what both regard as "not his."
This is a short summary of a long argument, and I am not sure if a
full discussion is appropriate to this forum.
"One measure is how much of the total "wealth" is owned by the top 1%
of the population." (Ron Ezetta, on measuring inequality)
This is a very deceptive measure, because wealth in the sense used in
such calculations produces only about 20% of national income. Most
income is payment to people for their labor. What one really wants is
the distribution of the present value of lifetime income, or perhaps
lifetime consumption; I do not know if there are good estimates of
how that has changed over time.
A second problem is that the definition of wealth is sufficiently
fuzzy so that one can juggle the results according to what one does
or does not include. Including in each employee's wealth his share of
the accumulated money that will pay his pension, for instance, would
make the distribution of wealth appear substantially more equal. So,
I suspect, would including owner-occupied housing at market price
instead of acquisition price. I have no idea how your source defined
wealth--do you? I am constitutionally, or perhaps professionally,
suspicious of people who write books entitled "The great
depression/hyperinflation/devaluation of (insert future year)."
Peter Nelson replies to my version of Pascal's wager by pointing out
that, even if you decide that normative beliefs are about something
real, you still have to decide which of various conflicting
normative beliefs to accept. As an empirical matter, I think this is
a much less serious problem than he suggests. One can certainly find
examples where different people's beliefs are diametrically opposite,
but I think they are the exception, not the rule. Almost all
societies, and almost all moral philosophers, for instance, would
agree that for Peter to kill his aunt is wrong. So if you assume that
normative beliefs are about something real, and accept any belief
that seems to be the concensus of most societies and most
philosophers, then (supposing your assumption is right) you should
avoid lots of wicked acts. You do not avoid all wicked acts but, in
moral terms, you do far better than if you assume normative beliefs
are noise.
Incidentally, C.S. Lewis, in "The Abolition of Man," (a good book
even for non-Christians) argues that, as an empirical matter, the
relativists are wrong--that the pattern of human ethical systems
(what he calls the Tao) is general agreement, with disagreement
mostly on details.
"If the government is providing rich people with a better education
or better police protection than poor people get, then I will vote
against that government. In order words, I can do something about it.
If a privately-owned police company decides to provide a better
service to people who pay more, I can do nothing about it. Therefore,
I feel that the government should continue to maintain a public
police force, and a public education service." (Fergal Toomey)
You have an odd idea of "doing something about it." Unless you cast a
lot more votes than most of us, the chance that your vote will change
the outcome is a good deal less than the chance that you can convert
the manager of the police company into an egalitarian (not very
likely--but better than the one in ten million or so chance of one
voter casting a decisive vote).
To put it differently, if, as I and others claim, real-world
government services are provided in a very unequal fashion, and if,
as you surely believe, there are a considerable number of
well-meaning people like yourself, why have they not done something
about it? Could it be that political markets, like economic markets,
produce outcomes determined by their own internal logic, not the
wishes of their ideological supporters, and the logic of neither
market is egalitarian?
David Friedman
Russ Nelson
I'm sure he's talking about something he thinks I said. Sure, the right to
life and liberty, etc., are "social constructs". However, I *never* said
that the government is free to regulate and define them. Society is not
so easily molded.
--
--russ (nelson@clutx [.bitnet | .clarkson.edu]) Russ.Nelson@$315.268.6667
Violence never solves problems, it just changes them into more subtle problems
Robert Hellmann
>Things like education and health, provided by the state in most western
>countries to some extent, can not be opened up to the free market
>until everyone becomes rich.
There will never be a time when everyone is rich. Rich and
poor are relative terms. By many third world standards, just
about everyone in the US is rich. There are exceptions,
namely the homeless.
>If you accept what someone else said, that
>there is a lower limit on unemployment, then that will never be clearly
>the case.
The lower limit on unemployment is about 4%. These are people
between jobs.
>As for "indoctrination", I don't think you're talking about democratic
>countries here; in a democratic country, the state schools teach kids what
>the kids' parents want them to teach. So if there is any indoctrination
>going on, it is parental indoctrination, not state indoctrination.
You may not realize that you've been indoctinated, by I do!
Looking back, there is an incredible amount of BS that my
teachers fed me. Of course, most of it was their own personal
views. It is absolutely amazing that US society has survived
considering the drivel we're fed in our schools. Of course,
maybe our educational system used to be better.
>I think the bottom line on taxation, from a personal viewpoint, is that I
>pay it because I want to pay it. I want to pay it because I realise that
>someday either I myself or someone close to me, a relative or friend, may
>be relying on social charity in some form.
Taxes are different than charity. Taxes are taken from you by
coersion to run the government. The government's job is to
protect your Human Rights: Life, Civil Rights, Property Rights.
The problem is of course, that in order to function, the
government(s) need money. To get the money, they necessarily
infringe on your rights. Therefore:
a) A good government doesn't try to bleed you dry.
b) A good elected official tries very hard to AVOID creating
lots of silly excuses to spend money!
c) It can be concluded that there aren't a hell of a lot of
good elected officials.
>Obviously, my paying taxes is
>not then incompatible with the principles of Liberalism, but should people
>who don't want to pay taxes be forced to pay them. In principle, probably
>not, but the practical implications of this are horrendous. For example,
>people who refuse to pay taxes would not have the right to:
>use public transport
>travel on public roads
>attend a school or university which receives funds from the government
>use electricity or water produced or purified by the government
>enter a public building
>buy the goods or services of a company subsidised by the govt.
>be protected by the police
>etc, etc...
>
>The point is that governments exist in order to do things. You need
>money to do things. Therefore we pay the government taxes.
Unfortunately, the government feels free to do things that don't
need doing, or that are outright wrong to do.
>If you don't
>pay taxes, the implication is that you don't want any of the things the
>government provides. In a modern country where the government is involved
>in almost every area of life, it is inevitable that each individual will
>avail of government-provided services almost every day of his/her life.
>Therefore, everyone should pay taxes. A fair-minded person who didn't
>want to pay taxes would be obliged to either leave the country or else
>stay in bed all day.
Why do you insist that it is an all or nothing deal? Why not
break it down into a cafeteria type plan? Then you could choose
those things you want. (An these taxes could be renamed user
fees!) Then if you want to generate lots of garbage, filling up
landfills as fast as you can, you pay! The government doesn't
need to bother creating new laws, fines, etc.
>If you feel that the government shouldn't be involved so much in people's
>everday lives, then fair enough, vote in a minimalist party. Taxes will
>then fall *automatically*, so obviously this isn't a problem with
>taxation. (I'll wager that the quality of your life will also fall pretty
>drastically, but that's another point. Excessively high-spending govts.
>also screw up your quality of life, of course).
Obviously you haven't been around too long.
>Taxation in itself is neither a good nor a bad thing, but individual taxes
>can be either good or bad, depending on how they are collected and how
>the money is used. In a democratic country, the people decide how taxes
>are to collected and used, so there is no need for this irrational fear of
>taxation *per se*.
And on that note, I guess I'll assume you want your dirt-poor
friends in Britain should pay their poll taxes as they decided
that they should be taxed that way! Besides, you claim it's
for a good cause. They should shut up and stop complaining.
Gordon Fitch
)>The concept of "property" is only a social construct.
)
log...@ns.network.com (John Logajan) writes:
)Hardly. The need to eat isn't a social construct. That which we eat is
)a physical entity. By eating it (necessary for our survival) we remove
)it from the grasp of others -- we monopolize an external resource -- we
)make it our property.
But what if I _share_ my bowl of rice?
--
Gordon Fitch | gcf@panix | gcf@mydog
Gary Corby
>In article <1990May2.1...@maths.tcd.ie> fto...@maths.tcd.ie (Fergal Toomey) writes:
>>
>>Tell that to some people I know in Hackney, London, who are dirt-poor and
>>who rely on the state to educate their kids. If education was opened up
>>to "market forces", they'd get a very poor class of education indeed, and
>>they'd end up dirt-poor just like their parents.
>>
>>Things like education and health, provided by the state in most western
>>countries to some extent, can not be opened up to the free market
>>until everyone becomes rich. If you accept what someone else said, that
>>there is a lower limit on unemployment, then that will never be clearly
>>the case.
>I believe that you make the assumption that education and free markets
>are incompatible. IMHO you are wrong. What I would like to see is a
>system where every student gets a voucher from the government for X$
>where X$ dollars is the amount the gov't is willing to pay to educate
>each student. The student may then take this voucher to ANY school
>and use it to towards tuition. Public schools would not be allowed to
>charge more than X$, private schools would.
This is largely the situation in New South Wales in Australia, although
the accounting is much more complex. The state government doles out
funds to every school, public or private, depending on a number of
factors but largely centering on the number of students in the school.
Public school education is free. Private schools can charge what they
like on top of what they get from the government, and in general their
fees are much larger than the government grant, so if necessary they
could survive without the grant.
The result is that most people who can afford it send their kids to
private schools. They have better facilities, attract better teachers
with higher pay, and certainly seem to give their students a greater
boost into the future.
>I think this injection of free market economics would drastically
>improve the education system. I imagine that the really bad schools
>would either improve their 'product' or go broke because of lack of
>'clients'.
It is certainly true that bad private schools die quickly. That means
the average peformance of private schools far exceeds public. Also
it is not possible to close too many public schools that don't perform
up to spec, since the government is required to offer public school
education everywhere. Therefore many schools in the outer suburbs and
in the countryside out west are seen by teachers as deadends, and they
refuse to go there. Hence those schools mostly get hopeless teachers
and rapidly become education ghettos.
The good private schools on the other hand are only to be found in the
richer sections of cities, for the obvious reason that only those areas
can afford the school fees. A private school is after all a business that
has to break even at the very least. Nobody would even contemplate
starting a private school in the poorer outer suburbs. The school would
be broke within the year.
Therefore although it looks a good idea there is a very strong tendency
to stratify society based on local wealth, which I guess in a free market
isn't very surprising. It's hard to see how you could prevent that
while retaining the free market.
Gary
--
Gary Corby (Friend of Elvenkind) Softway Pty Ltd
ACSnet: ga...@softway.oz
UUCP: ...!uunet!softway.oz!gary
Randolph Fritz
director friedman) writes:
> Randolph Fritz questions my claim that the similarity between human
> and animal property behavior implies that property is not a social
> construct. Perhaps I should have said "not merely a social
> construct." My point was that a simple form of the behavior predates
> human society, so although our elaborated version may be (on the
> evidence is) in part a social construct, it is built on an underlying
> pre-social behavior pattern.
>
> Of course, that has very little to do with the underlying issue of
> this thread--the question of whether property rights have any innate
> moral status, whether taking my property is bad even if my society
> sanctions your doing so. The fact that a particular behavior pattern
> is hardwired into my genes does not make it right--but it does make
> it something more than merely conventional, which was the assertion I
> was disputing.
My point is a bit different. Human cultures have had an enormous
range of property systems (examples have been cited on the net). If
there's "hard-wired" property behavior in humans the wiring must be
very limited; as far as I can tell, "instinctive" human ideas of
property cover at most what's in my hand at the current moment and the
land that my "tribal" social unit currently occupies. It is false to
say that property, as any human culture constructs it, is hardwired;
certain no libertarian conception is -- for better or worse the
libertarian property ethic is a thing libertarians choose, rather than
a necessary, instinctive behavior which libertarians are attempting to
more rightly express.
As for the idea that some norms are necessary -- may I suggest that
ethics are patterns of human behavior intended to produce particular
goals in human relations. Ethics, then, become dependent on your (and
society's) goals and on your knowlege of human relations; they can be
a difficult subject which is not well known and change with your
understanding and goals. In this way, one can avoid the trap
of, on the one hand, declaring ethics to be arbitrary, and thereby
validating any behavior, regardless of consequences and, on the other
hand, declaring ethics to be a set of simple and rigid rules, which
serve more to oppress than free.
Finally, Floyd McWilliams writes:
I consider the _possession_ and _use_ of property to be an axiomatic
right. This subsumes the distribution of property after its owner's
death -- what we call inheritance -- but you have focused on one
small aspect of any theory of property.
In my view, this means you choose to consider only the human relations
of such a property system as ethical, sweeping all existing and past
human societies into an ethical void (since property rights have never
been absolute at all scales of any society--personal, family, small
group, business, city, nation-state--at any time). As you probably
know, I've written at length on the reasons for understanding the
ethics of existing societies; I won't repeat that. I will make only
the following sharp criticism of this view: this is a rigid and
limiting viewpoint and more what I would expect from a totalitarian
ideologue than from an advocate of freedom. There are ethics to be
learned from property within a family, property within a corporation,
and property within a city, none of which currently recognize this
axiom. Why do you choose to ignore them?
__Randolph Fritz sun!cognito.eng!randolph || rand...@eng.sun.com
"Between the pen and the paper-work,
There must be passion in the language.
Between the muscle and the brain-work,
There must be feeling in the pipeline."
-- Suzanne Vega
Matthew T. Russotto
>If the government is providing rich people with a better education or
>better police protection than poor people get, then I will vote against
>that government. In order words, I can do something about it. If a
>privately-owned police company decides to provide a better service to
>people who pay more, I can do nothing about it. Therefore, I feel that
>the government should continue to maintain a public police force, and
>a public education service.
Actually, the rich win anyway-- They will simply supplement their
security and their children's education with private security
and education. Just because the government funds police doesn't
mean that rich aren't better protected, and just because the
government funds education doesn't mean that the rich aren't
better educated.
So even given government funded police and government funded
education, the rich get more protection and their kids enter
adult life with a better education. Given that, what is your
objection to totally private education?
--
Matthew T. Russotto russ...@eng.umd.edu russ...@wam.umd.edu
][, ][+, ///, ///+, //e, //c, IIGS, //c+ --- Any questions?
Fergal Toomey
(I wrote:)
>> Tell that to some people I know in Hackney, London, who are dirt-poor and
>> who rely on the state to educate their kids. If education was opened up
>> to "market forces", they'd get a very poor class of education indeed, and
>> they'd end up dirt-poor just like their parents.
>
>Maybe the reason that they are dirt-poor is that the government is
>busy bleeding the economy dry and justifying it in people's eyes by
>spending small and inefficient amounts of money on 'public education'
>and 'public health.' Maybe the reason they can't afford education or
>health care is because it isn't open to 'market forces' (just like they
>aren't in the U.S.).
The govt. in Britain is not at this moment bleeding the economy dry. They
have been cutting back on health and education and reducing taxes for the last
ten years. During
this time, the number of people living below the poverty line has increased.
As for your second point, that education would become more affordable if
it was opened up to market forces, that may very well be true but I see
no evidence of a mechanism by which that could happen. The poorer sections
of society simply cannot afford to give their kids a decent education.
The present arrangement is that people who are better off chip in and help
them pay. In my opinion, this arrangement will be neccessary as long as
there are people living in poverty. The argument of the free marketeers is
I believe, that this arrangement itself perpetuates poverty, presumably
because taking money from the rich decreases incentive and investment, and
thereby increases unemployment and decreases wages. Ten years ago I myself
believed that this might very well be the case, but not now. Free market
economics have done very little for the poor in Britain, and Reagonomics
didn't exactly do much for the poor in america. In fact, the opposite is
the case.
>There is a movement here in California to try to raise property
>taxes to help pay for child care subsidies because (the claim is)
>child care is unaffordable. How it is that people can't afford
>child care but can afford more property taxes is never fully explained.
>If the claim is that the people who pay the property tax are the ones
>who can afford it, then how come the support for the movement is
>coming from the wealthier segment of the population.
Presumably the wealthy are in this case following some misguided notion of
philantrophy. :-)
>> As for "indoctrination", I don't think you're talking about democratic
>> countries here; in a democratic country, the state schools teach kids what
>> the kids' parents want them to teach. So if there is any indoctrination
>> going on, it is parental indoctrination, not state indoctrination.
>
>In 'public school' was where I was taught that 'public school' was such
>a great thing. It was where I was taught that F.D.R. was one of the
>greatest presidents that this country had because he "saved capitalism
>from itselt." The amount of government approved social indoctrination goes
>much deeper than most people realize. In biology, we skipped the chapter
>on evolution. (This was Utah.) It's not that I think that evolution
>should be forced down everyone's throat. Believe it or not, I think
>parents should be able to select their child's curriculum. As it is,
>(and in contradiction to your statement), unless parents are willing to
>pay for both private education and public education via taxes, the
>childeren get taught one big compromise. In my case, although they didn't
>feed us creationist dogma, neither did we learn about evolution.
In my case, there was no big compromise. I was taught evolution in Biology
class and I was taught Creationism in religion class (this was Belgium,
Europe). Seriously though, I think such foul-ups as the one you mention
above would be handled just as badly in the private sector. The object
of a private education commpany would of course be to maximise its number
of customers. That would inevitably involve compromise, unless you are
wealthy enough to send your kids to an exclusive school.
It's not economic to have separate schools for people with different
beliefs. Even in the private sector, where more money would be
available due to less wastage on burocracy and less people complaining
about the size of the taxes, it would not be economic to build schools
for, say, ten pupils (the number of Muslim students who attended my
school). It is far better to try to cater for everybody, not by compromise
but simply by providing, as far as possible, different classes for
people with different beliefs. This was followed to some extent in my
school, a super-state-run school (run by European Community), where
it worked quite well; but I'm digressing.
>> I think the bottom line on taxation, from a personal viewpoint, is that I
>> pay it because I want to pay it. I want to pay it because I realise that
>> someday either I myself or someone close to me, a relative or friend, may
>> be relying on social charity in some form. Obviously, my paying taxes is
>> not then incompatible with the principles of Liberalism, but should people
>> who don't want to pay taxes be forced to pay them. In principle, probably
>> not, but the practical implications of this are horrendous. For example,
>> people who refuse to pay taxes would not have the right to:
>>
>> use public transport
>> travel on public roads
>> attend a school or university which receives funds from the government
>> use electricity or water produced or purified by the government
>> enter a public building
>> buy the goods or services of a company subsidised by the govt.
>> be protected by the police
>> etc, etc...
>
>A deal I for one am very willing to make. (-if I could. They don't
>even give you the choice, because they'd lose.)
What you are saying is that you don't want a government. That's fine
by me. But I think it's pretty clear that they wouldn't lose out on
the deal. Sure, there'd be plenty of private companies building roads:
only problem is, they'd be using your ten year old kids to build them.
It's happened before, and there's no reason why it shouldn't happen
again. In the meantime, how am I to prevent you from enjoying the
benefits of government which you're not entitled to?
>Have you thought about just how inefficiently your taxes are being
>spent on the stuff you listed? Or how many kinds of subsidizations
>make you pay more for products, not less? Or that public libraries
>are used by rich people, not poor? Or that government subsidization
>of roads might have been a major deterrent to development of alternate
>forms of transportation? Etc...
I don't consider this to be an argument against the morality of taxes.
If government road building is inefficient, then by all means scrap it.
It's just that I see no acceptable private sector alternative in areas
like health, security, and education.
>[...]
>
>> If you feel that the government shouldn't be involved so much in people's
>> everday lives, then fair enough, vote in a minimalist party. Taxes will
>> then fall *automatically*, so obviously this isn't a problem with
>> taxation. (I'll wager that the quality of your life will also fall pretty
>> drastically, but that's another point. Excessively high-spending govts.
>> also screw up your quality of life, of course).
>
>The problem is one of misinformation. You demonstrate one right off the
>bat by assuming that less government will lower the quality of life.
>Where did you get that idea, and where has it been demonstrated? On the
>surface, all I see are examples to the contrary. (I'm sure there are
>exceptions, but the point is that people say it like it's a given.)
Note that I qualified my assertion. Too much government is a bad thing.
Too little is also a bad thing. If you really want to go back to a state
of nature, then I'd say you're in a pretty small minority. The only
problem is deciding what government is neccessary and what is
unneccessary.
>Another example I have mentioned before is that people still seem to
>think that taxes went down under Reagan. They then point out that things
>aren't that much better (if not worse) than they were before, so
>obviously the answer must be to raise taxes. However, tax revenue went
>up by over 50 percent during the Reagan administration. How could the
>government possibly be tight for money? And yet that is exactly the
>impression everyone is given. There was a government study done under
>the Reagan administration that claimed that $400 billion (something like
>that, don't quote me) was pure waste. How come the government was
>completely silent about it?
Most of the tax expenditure, as far as I heard, was on the expansion of
the so-called National Security State, ie. bombs etc. It's arguable
that this expenditure was justified since it apparently brought down
Gorbachev, but I would say that it was probably pure waste.
>Another example of misinformation is all the claims that the cuts in
>social spending are the cause of the increase in the homeless. A
>little while back I posted an article that I hoped proved that the
>major cause of the lack of affordable housing is zoning, not lack
>of subsidization. A case of too much government, not too little.
The opposite is the case in Britain. Over there, the increase in
homelessness was caused by a sharp drop in government house building,
and a sharp increase in the price of property fuelled by speculation.
It's interesting that the drastic shortage of housing in Britain in
the 1930's was resolved by government intervention, ie. they used
government (tax-payers) money to build houses. This is, I think,
a clear case of government intervention having a beneficial effect.
>> Taxation in itself is neither a good nor a bad thing, but individual taxes
>> can be either good or bad, depending on how they are collected and how
>> the money is used. In a democratic country, the people decide how taxes
>> are to collected and used, so there is no need for this irrational fear of
>> taxation *per se*.
>
>Aren't you scared yet?
Takes more than a couple of taxes to scare me. Note that I'm no raving
socialist. It's just that I disagree with the (nowadays fashionable) belief
that less government is always better. There are, I contend, some areas
where the government can have a good effect. In my opinion, less extremist
economics is always better.
>> Fergal.
>
>thant
>
>P.S. And for whom can one vote to lower taxes? (Hint: it isn't
>the Democrats or the Republicans.)
The Anarcist Party?
Keith Jackson
$In article <34...@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> pie...@ucla.edu (Brad Pierce) babbles:
$>The concept of "property" is only a social construct.
$
$I vote to transfer Pierce's "property" to the Church of Ubizmo.
$Surely if enough people agree, he'll have no objection; it is merely a
$social construct in his eyes.
Here's my vote.
-*^*-*^*-*^*-*^*-*^*-*^*-*^*-*^*-*^*-*^*-*^*-*^*-*^*-*^*-*^*-*^*-*^*-*^*-
Keith Jackson {convex, texsun}!smu!jackson == jac...@smu.edu
UN*X - live free or die
Keith Jackson
>..
> 2) the state exists to serve individuals, individuals do not exist to
> serve the state;
>..
In the words of the Classic liberal JFK: "Ask not what your country can do
for you..."
Andy Freeman
>better police protection than poor people get, then I will vote against
>that government. In order words, I can do something about it.
Yes, and that something has proved to be remarkably ineffective.
Education subsidies flow from poor neighborhoods to rich ones. (The
rich may subsidize, slightly, police protection in poor neighborhoods,
to keep the lid on.)
>If a privately-owned police company decides to provide a better
>service to people who pay more, I can do nothing about it.
With private services, you can refuse to buy from providers who
subsidize others. True, you won't get a subsidy, but you won't pay
one either, and the poor always end up paying subsidies to the rich in
any political system. In other words, you'll get what you pay for
from private systems, which is a better deal than the poor poor get
from political ones.
-andy
--
UUCP: {arpa gateways, sun, decwrl, uunet, rutgers}!neon.stanford.edu!andy
ARPA: an...@neon.stanford.edu
BELLNET: (415) 723-3088
Fergal Toomey
(I wrote:)
>>Taxation in itself is neither a good nor a bad thing, but individual taxes
>>can be either good or bad, depending on how they are collected and how
>>the money is used. In a democratic country, the people decide how taxes
>>are to collected and used, so there is no need for this irrational fear of
>>taxation *per se*.
>
>And on that note, I guess I'll assume you want your dirt-poor
>friends in Britain should pay their poll taxes as they decided
>that they should be taxed that way! Besides, you claim it's
>for a good cause. They should shut up and stop complaining.
In my article, I said that taxation is not in itself a bad thing, but
individual taxes may be wrong. People in Britain feel that the poll tax
is a bad tax. I agree with them, and I certainly think that they should
complain. It's worth noting that in a recent poll, most of those questioned
felt that the poll tax should be scrapped and that the old system, the
rates, should be brought back. They did not, however, say that all taxation
should end.
Fergal.
Fergal Toomey
(Matthew T. Russotto) writes:
>Actually, the rich win anyway-- They will simply supplement their
>security and their children's education with private security
>and education. Just because the government funds police doesn't
>mean that rich aren't better protected, and just because the
>government funds education doesn't mean that the rich aren't
>better educated.
>So even given government funded police and government funded
>education, the rich get more protection and their kids enter
>adult life with a better education. Given that, what is your
>objection to totally private education?
My objection is simply this. I feel that everyone who is willing to
make some contribution to society is entitled to some minimum level of
education and security, as long as society can afford to give it to
them. At present it seems that there are significant sections of
society who cannot afford to give their children an adequate education,
or provide an adequate level of security for themselves or their
families. Public education and a government police service is
therefore a neccessity for these people, and in my opinion should
be given to them for as long as society can afford to do so.
If, at some future time, everyone has acquired enough wealth to pay
for these services themselves, then education and the police could indeed
be privatised. I have no objection to that. This is not then a matter of
principle; I think the only difference between me and my opponents is
that my opponents feel that, at this moment, everyone is wealthy enough
to pay for their own education and security. I don't think so.
As for the hard-core Libertarians who think that taxation per se is
wrong, I suggest that they should be allowed to set up their own little
tax-free society (on land that they purchased themselves, of course) and
be allowed to live there peacefully. How long do you think it would take
them to set up their own little sub-government, and then pay it taxes?
Seriously, I think this is an interesting question and the answer is
perhaps not so facile as it first seems. Would any of you Libertarians
like to comment?
>--
>Matthew T. Russotto russ...@eng.umd.edu russ...@wam.umd.edu
>][, ][+, ///, ///+, //e, //c, IIGS, //c+ --- Any questions?
Fergal Toomey.
John D. Mathon (593-0923)
> In article <72...@odin.corp.sgi.com> th...@horus.esd.sgi.com
> (Thant Tessman) writes:
>
> (I wrote:)
> >> Tell that to some people I know in Hackney, London, who are dirt-poor and
> >> who rely on the state to educate their kids. If education was opened up
> >> to "market forces", they'd get a very poor class of education indeed, and
> >> they'd end up dirt-poor just like their parents.
> >
> >Maybe the reason that they are dirt-poor is that the government is
> >busy bleeding the economy dry and justifying it in people's eyes by
> >spending small and inefficient amounts of money on 'public education'
> >and 'public health.' Maybe the reason they can't afford education or
> >health care is because it isn't open to 'market forces' (just like they
> >aren't in the U.S.).
>
> The govt. in Britain is not at this moment bleeding the economy dry.
Yes they are. British tax rates are still worse than the US and the US
government is bleeding the country dry.
>They
> have been cutting back on health and education and reducing taxes for the last
> ten years. During
> this time, the number of people living below the poverty line has increased.
This is a marked fallacy. Like in the US THatcher and Reagan talked a lot
about reducing the size of government, but only by privatization in Britain
did Maggy accomplish this. Health care and other spending have gone up
significantly during her reign. It is nearly impossible to restrain
government. It is like an obese person taking a fad diet. No matter
how many times you say you are dieting the fact is you just keep on
getting fatter. Government spending seems to be about the most difficult
thing to control. Defeating communism turned out to be trivial compared to
trimming the health budget.
This is a very good reason to fight any new responsibility
of government tooth and nail, because the debilitating effects of this
new responsibility will almost certainly be incredibly difficult to
stop once started.
We must fight hard to reign government in, because the power of government
is so strong and because it wants to grow. Even conservatives find it
difficult to cut the power once they are IN power. All the special
interests resist it. And then there are all the do-gooders and socialists
who actually believe the government is useful and think government force
is necessary for human life. All in all the fight to restrain government
is against enormous odds and tremendous political force. It is a heroic
struggle for a people to remain free of the choke of government.
> As for your second point, that education would become more affordable if
> it was opened up to market forces, that may very well be true but I see
> no evidence of a mechanism by which that could happen. The poorer sections
> of society simply cannot afford to give their kids a decent education.
There are several ways to privatize education. Complete stopping of
public funding is possibly an eventual solution, but short term, it
is more important to open up the providers of education to competition.
Second, we should look at making the subsidy means tested and third,
we should figure out how to make it affordable for everyone. Education
you see is something that does add value. Like building a home, the
land is worth far more after the building. Similarly, people who
get an education are more valuable and capable of earning more. They
should not need a subsidy to justify getting an education.
For instance, if you go to medical school, usually, you get a lot of
loans in the USA to pay for your education. Some pay in cash, others
recieve some aid, but on the whole most take out loans. Well, a loan
to a medical doctor is hardly a significant risk and naturally there
is no shortage of such loans in the private or public sector. So,
the concept can be extended and has at the college level for school
loans. There is no reason that people cannot take out loans which they
can pay off later in life for their education. The reality is that
we all pay taxes which are used to subsidize education. Why not have
the people who directly benefit from education pay for it. This
would produce a much sounder basis for funding and would provide a
needed link between quality and costs. Of course, the system would be
designed to make it easy to repay the loans with generous time to
repay when things got difficult, etc..., possibly subsidized interest
rates, etc...
> The present arrangement is that people who are better off chip in and help
> them pay. In my opinion, this arrangement will be neccessary as long as
> there are people living in poverty. The argument of the free marketeers is
> I believe, that this arrangement itself perpetuates poverty, presumably
> because taking money from the rich decreases incentive and investment, and
> thereby increases unemployment and decreases wages.
And for many opther reasons. Government is not motivated to provide a
good education to poor people because, first off, who cares, and
second, they have no money, i.e., no tax base, etc... If all people
had choice then schools would have to provide an education that
was worth something. Otherwise nobody would pay for it.
> Ten years ago I myself
> believed that this might very well be the case, but not now. Free market
> economics have done very little for the poor in Britain, and Reagonomics
> didn't exactly do much for the poor in america. In fact, the opposite is
> the case.
In america, the poor are richer than ever NO MATTER HOW YOU LOOK AT THE
STATISTICS. Some liberals try to argue that the relaitve poverty is
greater and this appears to be true, but, that was because of a huge
runnup in the value of stocks and property in the 80s which increased the
value of the rich at a faster rate than the poor. The fact is that
some 20 million americans got jobs who did not have them before. The
overall welath of every group of americans has risen substantially and
this is without increasing the size of the government. (government in the
US has reminaed at a flat 24% of GNP for many many years now.) It
is far better to have this situation without having to use the government
because of the problems that I have stated above.
> In my case, there was no big compromise. I was taught evolution in Biology
> class and I was taught Creationism in religion class (this was Belgium,
> Europe). Seriously though, I think such foul-ups as the one you mention
> above would be handled just as badly in the private sector. The object
> of a private education commpany would of course be to maximise its number
> of customers. That would inevitably involve compromise, unless you are
> wealthy enough to send your kids to an exclusive school.
Yes, but unless you have missed the significance of what has happened
in Eastern Europe, Western Europe not only produces much more of
everything, they also produce VASTLY and INCOMPARABLY better quality
of everything. The ultimate example: A 14 year waiting list for
a cardboard 2-stroke polluting minicar called the trabant from E.Germany
compared to a 27 paint layer crash resistant 150 mile per hour
tempature and sound isolated Mercedes with no waiting list. Amazing
what free people can accomplish when they are motivated to do so!!!
> It's not economic to have separate schools for people with different
> beliefs. Even in the private sector, where more money would be
> available due to less wastage on burocracy and less people complaining
> about the size of the taxes, it would not be economic to build schools
> for, say, ten pupils (the number of Muslim students who attended my
> school). It is far better to try to cater for everybody, not by compromise
> but simply by providing, as far as possible, different classes for
> people with different beliefs.
You are now arguing economics. You are saying that YOU believe the
economics of schooling are such and such and that YOU believe these
are the costs and benefits possible. The fact is that you and me
know nothing about the true potential economics and the real
choices that real people will make about how to school their kids.
This is always better left to the parents to decide, not you and me
and not government bureaucrats.
It is really a crime to continue to argue that people should not
be able to have the freedom to make their own decisions regarding something
as important as education. I consider it a crime, simply the lack of
choice!! Education is far too important to be left to government
bureaucrats. We cannot afford as a society to continue to allow
petty and ignorant people to continue to make decisions about our
life that are so critical to our development individually as well as
a nation. I really feel that the case for privatizing education is
compelling and straightforward. It is clear how to start to accomplish
the goal and the only people who seriously are fighting this proposal
are teachers unions. Ironically, teachers would probably have the
greatest to gain from a freer system, both in terms of expanded
freedom and responsibility and in terms of pay and opportunities.
Of course, teachers now look at it as a threat, but, in fact, they
would be the lifeblood of a private school system and as a result they
would call most of the shots in a private system. Of course they would
have to face financial reality as well, so there would be a lot of
work especially initially.
> What you are saying is that you don't want a government. That's fine
> by me. But I think it's pretty clear that they wouldn't lose out on
> the deal. Sure, there'd be plenty of private companies building roads:
> only problem is, they'd be using your ten year old kids to build them.
> It's happened before, and there's no reason why it shouldn't happen
> again.
This argument has been used for a while now and is totally falacious.
We used to have cars that had bad clutches. Does that mean that
we have to again have cars with bad clutches? No, the conditions
that spawned that activity are not there today. People's productivity
is much greater and is more dependent on education. We dont need people
to do these jobs anymore. We need people who can think. Stop thinking
that somehow government is protecting you from sinking into prehistory.
The times have changed. THe technology has changed.
Government cannot regulate productivity.
If it regulates fewer hours of production, then production will fall.
The government cannot regulate both higher wages and lower prices. The
government does not invent, it simply regulates. Therefore, just
because the government regulates an 8 hour day does not mean that
everybody makes the same amount of money as before with the same
prices and service, but we all have to work less. This is ridiculous
and the argument that the government can regulate our lives better is
just as stupid. People work together freely to innovate and improve
our lives. Whenever government impedes this process it works against
progress and justice. This is certainly what happenned in E. Europe
and that is the danger of government and it is much too easy to fall
into the trap of believeing in simple government regulation fixes which
are falacious.
> I don't consider this to be an argument against the morality of taxes.
> If government road building is inefficient, then by all means scrap it.
> It's just that I see no acceptable private sector alternative in areas
> like health, security, and education.
But there is.
> The opposite is the case in Britain. Over there, the increase in
> homelessness was caused by a sharp drop in government house building,
> and a sharp increase in the price of property fuelled by speculation.
> It's interesting that the drastic shortage of housing in Britain in
> the 1930's was resolved by government intervention, ie. they used
> government (tax-payers) money to build houses. This is, I think,
> a clear case of government intervention having a beneficial effect.
I have been in Italy and they have a lot of public housing there.
Public housing is inferior and actually in many cases dangerous, i.e.
Russia. In the US public housing has created hell holes of crime.
Public housing as I have seen it is no benefit. It would be much
much better to stimulate private construction than to rely on
governemnt housing. The last thing we all need is a bunch of ugly
poorly constructed buildings that are a crime sink.
Thant Tessman
(Fergal Toomey) writes:
>
> The govt. in Britain is not at this moment bleeding the economy dry. They
> have been cutting back on health and education and reducing taxes for
the last
> ten years. During
> this time, the number of people living below the poverty line has increased.
> As for your second point, that education would become more affordable if
> it was opened up to market forces, that may very well be true but I see
> no evidence of a mechanism by which that could happen. The poorer sections
> of society simply cannot afford to give their kids a decent education.
> The present arrangement is that people who are better off chip in and help
> them pay. In my opinion, this arrangement will be neccessary as long as
> there are people living in poverty. The argument of the free marketeers is
> I believe, that this arrangement itself perpetuates poverty, presumably
> because taking money from the rich decreases incentive and investment, and
> thereby increases unemployment and decreases wages. Ten years ago I myself
> believed that this might very well be the case, but not now. Free market
> economics have done very little for the poor in Britain, and Reagonomics
> didn't exactly do much for the poor in america. In fact, the opposite is
> the case.
I somehow doubt that Britain has anything even close to free market
economics. I don't know much about Britain, but I know enough about
the U.S. to suspect that you aren't fully aware of what's going on
in Britain. Most people aren't aware of what's going on over here.
As I have already tried to point out, Reaganomics has *increased*
tax revenues by over 50%. Tariffs and trade restrictions have
*increased*. And it's not just the military: During Reagan's
administration, farm subsidies went from below $10 billion to within
$50 billion. The average family pays $45 a year to subidize (of all
things) the sugar industry. Not exactly free market.
The few industries that were truly deregulated are doing far better
(as far as offering better service at cheaper prices) than they were
when they were regulated.
However, on the whole, the U.S. has become *less* free market, not
more. I suspect the same of Britain.
[Stuff on education deleted.]
There have been far better responses to your claims made about private
vs. public education than I could make. I hope you've been following
them. And your claim that 'indoctorination' doesn't happen in
schools just leads me to believe that your indoctorination was
quite thorough and sucessfull.
>
> What you are saying is that you don't want a government.
Not true. I would be very happy with a government whose sole
purpose was to protect the individual and their property from
agression (force, fraud, polution, etc.). Heck, I'd be happy
if the Constitution of the United States was still enforced.
That and hard currency. Yeah. Good start.
The idea that government's purpose is to redistribute income
is a relatively new invention, and, no matter how noble it
sounds, it always just winds up as an excuse for the government
and people in power to take more money.
> That's fine
> by me. But I think it's pretty clear that they wouldn't lose out on
> the deal. Sure, there'd be plenty of private companies building roads:
> only problem is, they'd be using your ten year old kids to build them.
> It's happened before, and there's no reason why it shouldn't happen
> again.
As for the refrence to ten year olds building roads I assume you are
referring to the beginning of the industrial revolution when it was
quite common for children to be working in very terrible conditions.
Every one has heard horror stories about factory work, but what you
don't hear about is just how common starvation was before the
industrial revolution, and that even if these jobs would now be
considered living hell, they were far better than anything else open
to these people. There were usually waiting lists to get these jobs,
often more than a year long.
Yes, there were very rich people taking advantage of the sheer number
of poor, but even for the poor, things were getting better. The
thing that started the socialist thinking was not how bad things
were, but the the huge span between rich and poor.
Technology and the market place have managed to make most
people in the U.S. rich enough that they wouldn't want to
or have to work under similar conditions.
Besides, would you mind that much someone who offers to pay
a child to pick strawberies all day on a farm even if that child's only
alternative is to starve? You may say that some form of welfare
subsidization should be used to take care of that child. I would
(and do) voluntarily give to an organization that took care of children
in bad situations. But what really happens is that the child gets
deported back to Mexico.
> Takes more than a couple of taxes to scare me. Note that I'm no raving
> socialist. It's just that I disagree with the (nowadays fashionable) belief
> that less government is always better.
It became fashionable and I missed it? Damn!
> There are, I contend, some areas
> where the government can have a good effect. In my opinion, less extremist
> economics is always better.
Yes, the government appreciates citizens who are willing to compromise.
Both socialists and libertarians acknowledge that there are injustices
being committed. The difference is that while socialists think that
more government is the solution, libertarians recognize that government
is the main mechanism by which these injustices are committed in the
first place.
thant
robinson@van-bc
>In article <1990May7.1...@maths.tcd.ie>, fto...@maths.tcd.ie (Fergal Toomey) writes:
>> In article <72...@odin.corp.sgi.com> th...@horus.esd.sgi.com
>> (Thant Tessman) writes:
>>
>> >
>> >Maybe the reason that they are dirt-poor is that the government is
>> >busy bleeding the economy dry and justifying it in people's eyes by
>> >spending small and inefficient amounts of money on 'public education'
>> >and 'public health.' Maybe the reason they can't afford education or
>> >health care is because it isn't open to 'market forces' (just like they
>> >aren't in the U.S.).
>>
>> The govt. in Britain is not at this moment bleeding the economy dry.
>
>Yes they are. British tax rates are still worse than the US and the US
>government is bleeding the country dry.
The US probably has the lowest tax rates of any industrialized country. I
only wish Canada was being bled dry in such a manner :-).
--
Jim Robinson
{uunet,ubc-cs}!van-bc!mdivax1!robinson
Jack Lund
>pie...@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Brad Pierce) writes:
>>The concept of "property" is only a social construct.
>
>
[...]
>
>So property is NOT merely a social construct. It is a necessary attribute
>of human existance. We MUST monopolize external resources in order to
>survive. Let anyone who doubts this act consistently with his beliefs.
>
Not true. There have been many societies which have no concept of "personal
property" when it comes to land use, yet members of these societies manage
to survive. There IS a difference, albeit subtle, between "common use of land
for common good" and "private ownership of land with ownership of all that
is grown or taken from there".
I would say that one must have some rudimentary idea of property ownership
to survive, but not the all-inclusive one we have.
>No, the monopolization of external resources, the propertization of
>our environment, is a logical necessity for human survival. Social
>arrangements and beliefs are irrelevant to the ultimate requirement
>of propertization.
>
Whoa there, bucko. Your argument goes from "food is property" to "food is
a necessity" to "therefore property is a necessity". I would hazard a guess
that your stereo or your car are not vital to your survival, even if food is.
Even the idea of private ownership of land seems to be a bit of a construct.
Do I really need the concept of "This land, and all it yields is mine" to be
able to survive? Many societies, most notably the American Indians had little
concept of land ownership. There's seems to have been a "land stewardship" idea
coupled with a nomadic way of life.
>--
>- John Logajan @ Network Systems; 7600 Boone Ave; Brooklyn Park, MN 55428
>- log...@ns.network.com, jo...@logajan.mn.org, 612-424-4888, Fax 424-2853
Jack Lund
Systems Analyst
University of Texas at Austin Computation Center
ccj...@agl.cc.utexas.edu
Steve Lamont
>In article <1990May8.1...@tss.com> mat...@tss.com (John D. Mathon (593-0923)) writes:
>>In article <1990May7.1...@maths.tcd.ie>, fto...@maths.tcd.ie (Fergal Toomey) writes:
>>> In article <72...@odin.corp.sgi.com> th...@horus.esd.sgi.com
CAN WE *PLEASE* DROP alt.conspiracy THE NEWSGROUPS LIST???? AAAAAAARRRRGH!
spl (the p stands for
paranoid, not
political...)
--
Steve Lamont, sciViGuy (919) 248-1120 EMail: s...@ncsc.org
NCSC (The other one), Box 12732, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
Don't send in no bums. I want deals.
-John Steinbeck, _The Grapes of Wrath_
Keith Jackson
$I feel that everyone who is willing to
$make some contribution to society is entitled to some minimum level of
$education and security, as long as society can afford to give it to
$them. At present it seems that there are significant sections of
$society who cannot afford to give their children an adequate education,
$or provide an adequate level of security for themselves or their
$families. Public education and a government police service is
$therefore a neccessity for these people, and in my opinion should
$be given to them for as long as society can afford to do so.
$If, at some future time, everyone has acquired enough wealth to pay
$for these services themselves, then education and the police could indeed
$be privatised. I have no objection to that. This is not then a matter of
$principle; I think the only difference between me and my opponents is
$that my opponents feel that, at this moment, everyone is wealthy enough
$to pay for their own education and security. I don't think so.
The problem with this is that it can be taken too far, as in the case of
Edgewood School District in San Antonio, TX. The ruling in the school
district's case made it manditory for richer districts to subsidize the
poorer districts. Your typical Robin Hood approach to things. This is all
well and fine if you live in a poor district, but if you're rich, you get
screwed. You have to pay more taxes (remember, your property is worth
more) and receive less benefits. So much for rewarding those who succeed.
It's a `Fuck the rich' law and is disgraceful to anyone with common sense.
It means that the rich have reason to limit their taxable investments (thus
reducing the growth of the economy) and the poor have no incentives to work
hard and raise their standards of education (with the rich paying for it,
who needs to work harder, they can just sit back and enjoy the benefits of
the people who are actually making money instead of sitting on their asses
complaining about their standard of living which they themselves created).
IMHO, Robin Hood was an asshole!
Ian G Batten
> government is bleeding the country dry.
I know the basic taxation rates are lower in the US, but what is the
ratio between (UK Direct Tax + UK Indirect Tax) to (US Direct Tax + US
Indirect Tax + US Health Care)? I know this is tricky because the third
term in the US side isn't salary related, but howsabout some rough
figures at about the national average wage? I pay about 26% of my gross
salary to direct tax and national insurance. From what I know of US
health care rates, I suspect this is not too different.
[[ Is this another use of unbundling? Sorry Sir, the compiler is
extra...]]
ian
John Sparks
>The US probably has the lowest tax rates of any industrialized country. I
>only wish Canada was being bled dry in such a manner :-).
>--
Hah. Sure the federal taxes aren't that high, but they are nickle and diming
us to death on state and local taxes. Kentucky is terrible in that manner.
There are state, local, city, property, and sales taxes. There are license
(car) taxes. cigarette taxes. gasoline taxes.
And recently a report came out saying that Kentucky has a poor educational
system so now they are using that to charge us higher taxes for schools.
First they start a lottery, saying that the proceeds will subsidize schools.
Now that the lottery is in place you don't hear a word about how much is going
to schools. But the govenor is preaching that his mission in life is to
make Kentucky's schools the best in the nation. So they want to raise taxes
across the board and raise the state sales tax to support the schools.
What about the lottery? Wasn't that what it was for? No one is talking.
I figure the whole school thing is a conspiracy to line the pockets of
the politicians. They figure who could turn down the education of poor
cute little children. They are worth sacrificing a little more taxes right?
Ha!
I think I will move. But there is nowhere to go. It's the same all over.
we can't go start another country like they did 200 years ago. I can't
wait till they start colonizing Mars.
--
John Sparks | D.I.S.K. 24hrs 2400bps. Accessable via Starlink (Louisville KY)
spa...@corpane.UUCP | | PH: (502) 968-DISK
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The Wanderer
>countries here; in a democratic country, the state schools teach kids what
>the kids' parents want them to teach. So if there is any indoctrination
>going on, it is parental indoctrination, not state indoctrination.
...is this guy for REAl or WHAT?!?! ..Do you know how few parents know what
goes on with the kids in school? Waaaaaaay back when I was a sophomore in HS,
I had _already_ gone beyond what my parents had learned in the math & sciences..
....and as for indoctrination...well, that was one thing that hadnt changed
between my parent's time and mine..the same old lies were being sold in history
and government classes. No Indoctrination? Get real...get a US High School
history book and have fun seeing on which page are the glaring lies maximized...
...who decides what books to get? the administration. Based upon what? Recommendations
from national [read: government] education organizations, with minor [dep. upon
the people involved] input from the instructors, and even less input from the
parents.
--
Disclaimer: "I'm the only one foolish enough to claim these opinions as mine."
Reality: cri...@wpi.wpi.edu Outside: 100 Institute Rd #296
cri...@wpi.ibit Worcester MA 01609
Blue Blaze Irregular Havoc In The Society: Bronnton of Atlantia
Matt Bartley
>Taxation in itself is neither a good nor a bad thing, but individual taxes
>can be either good or bad, depending on how they are collected and how
>the money is used. In a democratic country, the people decide how taxes
>are to collected and used, so there is no need for this irrational fear of
>taxation *per se*.
Except that The People in this country have almost no say in how much
the taxes are or where they are spent. Just read the reports of what
stupidity is going on with the budget, how much of the GNP taxes
siphon off, etc. And then Congress has a ~2% turnover rate. We get
the same gang of clowns for centuries at a time. Also, a president
who stated time and time again in his campaign that raising taxes was
out of the question is now changing his mind, and Congress is only too
happy to help.
--
Internet: mdbo...@portia.stanford.edu Matt Bartley
Bitnet: mdbomber%por...@stanford.bitnet 73, N6YWI
Kirk: "Spock! Where the hell's that power you promised?"
Spock: "One damn minute, Admiral." -- Star Trek IV : The Voyage Home
Robert S. Lewis, Jr.
>In general, when government provides something, it is easy to assume
>that if it were provided on the market "the rich would get it all."
>But if you actually contrast government provided goods (police
>protection, schooling) with privately provided goods (food,
>clothing), my impression, at least in the U.S. where I live, is that
>the inequality is greater in the former group.
A good bit of the food and clothing of the poorest citizens in the
United States is actually provided by the government through welfare,
food stamps, etc. And then, there are all those agricultural
subsidies, which might lead an impartial observer to say that
providing food is only a semi-private activity in the United States.
The examples you choose, food and clothing (or shelter), are probably
the two most basic necessities of life. They are the first things
that the poor must provide themselves with, so of course they are
widely distributed. Given a choice between the basics necessary for
survival and any other goods, almost everyone will choose the basic
necessities (winos and religious fanatics are obvious, but not
particularly significant exceptions). Other "privately" provided
goods are much less likely to be widely distributed among the poor,
since they are not so necessary to life, and so are less likely to be
purchased by people whose resources are severly limited.
If you are trying to argue that private systems of distribution ensure
a more equitable distibution of wealth than public ones, I think
you'll need better examples than these.
david director friedman
"A good bit of the food and clothing of the poorest citizens in the
United States is actually provided by the government through welfare,
food stamps, etc. And then, there are all those agricultural
subsidies, which might lead an impartial observer to say that
providing food is only a semi-private activity in the United States.
"
better with regard to goods sold on the market than with regard to
goods distributed by the government.)
Your first point is a legitimate one--government does do some things
that transfer money to poor people, although it also does some things
that transfer money in the other direction (State Universities, for
instance, and the farm program). The net effect is hard to estimate.
My point was only that, for a given distribution of income (whether
resulting from government transfers or the market), poor people
seemed to do better with regard to goods they bought on the market
than with regard to goods that were produced and allocated by the
government.
Your second point, however, is exactly backwards. The net effect of
the farm program is to raise the cost of food, not to lower it, so it
tends to make the poor worse off (and farmers, who on average are
very far from poor, better off).
"The examples you choose, food and clothing (or shelter), are
probably the two most basic necessities of life. They are the first
things that the poor must provide themselves with, so of course they
are widely distributed. " (Robert S. Lewis, Jr.)
My first response is that one of the advantages of market
distribution over government distribution is precisely that it lets
the poor concentrate their resources on what is most important to
them. I would think that protection from violent crime would rank
right up there with food and clothing as a high priority
objective--and one that the poor do not get, in part because it is
produced by government.
A second response is that the poor end up way above "subsistance"
with regard to food and clothing. I believe the figures on nutrition
indicate that calorie consumption in the U.S. has no correlation with
income, and protein consumption only a slight positive correlation.
Similarly, wandering around the South Side of Chicago, one can tell
the difference between lower class and Middle class neighborhoods by
things like boarded up stores, but not by the clothes people are
wearing.
David Friedman
Robert S. Lewis, Jr.
>Your second point, however, is exactly backwards. The net effect of
>the farm program is to raise the cost of food, not to lower it, so it
>tends to make the poor worse off (and farmers, who on average are
>very far from poor, better off).
I didn't claim that farm subsidies made things cheaper; I just wanted
to point out that the production and distribution of food was not a
purely private enterprise--subsidies, interstate highways, government
funded research in universities, etc, might all be factored into the
equation.
I am not at all convinced that the present crop subsidies do anything
good at all.
>My first response is that one of the advantages of market
>distribution over government distribution is precisely that it lets
>the poor concentrate their resources on what is most important to
>them. I would think that protection from violent crime would rank
>right up there with food and clothing as a high priority
>objective--and one that the poor do not get, in part because it is
>produced by government.
I'm not quite convinced that the poor would get any better
crime-protection services if the government ceased to provide them. I
agree that the poor get worse services (and more abuse) from the
police than the rich, but it doesn't follow that they would get better
services if the police force were disbanded. You'll have to show me a
model.
>A second response is that the poor end up way above "subsistance"
>with regard to food and clothing. I believe the figures on nutrition
>indicate that calorie consumption in the U.S. has no correlation with
>income, and protein consumption only a slight positive correlation.
>Similarly, wandering around the South Side of Chicago, one can tell
>the difference between lower class and Middle class neighborhoods by
>things like boarded up stores, but not by the clothes people are
>wearing.
But you haven't shown that this is the result of a private production
and distribution system. You haven't separated the existence of a
private distribution system from other factors, like the existence of
public welfare, large tracts of arable lands, government funded
research into better farming techniques, a good public highway system,
America's military strength, etc. All of these things contribute to
the general well-being of Americans, too, and you can't rightly assume
that the condition of the American poor directly relates only to the
part of the American economy that is private.
Rob Lewis
david director friedman
"You haven't separated the existence of a private distribution system
from other factors, like the existence of public welfare, large
tracts of arable lands, government funded research into better
farming techniques, a good public highway system, America's military
strength, etc. All of these things contribute to the general
well-being of Americans, too, and you can't rightly assume that the
condition of the American poor directly relates only to the part of
responding to him responding to me.)
That is not what I said. What I said was that "poor people seemed to
do better with regard to goods they bought on the market than with
regard to goods that were produced and allocated by the government."
The question I was discussing was not whether we should abolish
government but whether the argument "X should be produced and
allocated by the government because if it is produced and allocated
on the market the rich will get it all" was correct. That argument is
normally made in the context of our present system, with its mix of
public and private features.
As it happens, I believe that the poor would be better off in an
anarcho-capitalist society, providing that such a society could
maintain itself. If you want the model on which that opinion is
based, it is presented in part III of my book The Machinery of
Freedom. It was not, however, what I was asserting in my posting, and
I am not claiming (and, so far as I can recall, did not claim) that
the observation I made in my posting is sufficient evidence to
justify that conclusion.
David Friedman
Gordon Fitch
)>Taxation in itself is neither a good nor a bad thing, but individual taxes
)>can be either good or bad, depending on how they are collected and how
)>the money is used. In a democratic country, the people decide how taxes
)>are to collected and used, so there is no need for this irrational fear of
)>taxation *per se*.
mdbo...@portia.Stanford.EDU (Matt Bartley) writes:
)Except that The People in this country have almost no say in how much
)the taxes are or where they are spent. Just read the reports of what
)stupidity is going on with the budget, how much of the GNP taxes
)siphon off, etc. And then Congress has a ~2% turnover rate. We get
)the same gang of clowns for centuries at a time. Also, a president
)who stated time and time again in his campaign that raising taxes was
)out of the question is now changing his mind, and Congress is only too
)happy to help.
It seems to me The People have exactly what they want. Only this can
be the explanation of the low turnover rate in Congress, and the apathy
about elections.
The only interesting question here is whether they know what their
choices are. The mass media are controlled by a small number of
corporations, who select what will be brought to public attention and
what will be hidden. The government (if it can be distinguished from
this elite) participates. In this sense, the taxation decided upon
may indeed be theft -- but by fraud, not by force.
Robert S. Lewis, Jr.
>That is not what I said. What I said was that "poor people seemed to
>do better with regard to goods they bought on the market than with
>regard to goods that were produced and allocated by the government."
>The question I was discussing was not whether we should abolish
>government but whether the argument "X should be produced and
>allocated by the government because if it is produced and allocated
>on the market the rich will get it all" was correct.
Good enough: I agree that the argument that the rich will get
everything if it is allocated through the market is flawed--most
simply because I don't think the rich have much interest in starving
the poor and I don't think the poor would tolerate it long anyway.
Every society must support its people and if it fails to do this I am
sure it will collapse. However, the argument that a market
distribution system will distribute more of the society's wealth to
the poor than will some other distribution system is not immediately
evident. I don't deny that a market system is in some respects
remarkably efficient, but I also suspect it needs some checks to keep
it functioning fairly.
As far as your argument goes, I am not convinced that the fact that
the American poor are relatively well fed and clothed has all that
much to do with the market system. However, maybe you're not claiming
this?
>As it happens, I believe that the poor would be better off in an
>anarcho-capitalist society, providing that such a society could
>maintain itself. If you want the model on which that opinion is
>based, it is presented in part III of my book The Machinery of
>Freedom. It was not, however, what I was asserting in my posting, and
>I am not claiming (and, so far as I can recall, did not claim) that
>the observation I made in my posting is sufficient evidence to
>justify that conclusion.
The problem that I see with government control (and here I agree with
many UC economists) is that the rich tend to control the government,
so, of course, government serves the rich's interest more than it
serves the poor's. However, the fact that the government is not
likely to be completely fair to the poor does not mean that government
regulation of the market should be completely abandoned, since, at
least in my opinion, the market is not necessarily any fairer to the
poor and in some cases may be much less fair. I am not convinced
that markets cannot be beneficially regulated at times.