Well screw the middle class.
13 Oct 2012, 9:16 pm
DancingDanny wrote:
I am not arguing against capitalism in favor of replacing it with the Soviet Union! I am arguing against your libertarian sandbox that wants to wear the power of logic divorced from emotion while the things that you believe in are indeed very emotionally motivated.
Some are, some are not. For instance, my stance on government and taxes are motivated by possess losses and efficient utilization of resources.
DancingDanny wrote:
What history would that be? How about the history and the world where the government collecting taxes and spending is not tantamount to getting your wallet stolen at gunpoint? How about the consensus reality that all liberals and conservatives have agreed upon that there is a social contract that we have agreed upon with our government? The government is not an individual and it is not be held to the same morality that you hold an individual to or else is it effectively not empowered to collect tax and spend!
I don't believe I ever argued that taxes were the equivalent of getting my wallet stolen at gunpoint and while a whole lot of Randites believe in that, I'm a bit more moderate on that issue. I simply consider that government has certain things it should do (Protect it's citizens and their freedoms) and some things it shouldn't do, and at the moment government is very far into the "shouldn't do" area.
I'm familiar with social contract theory and I don't disagree with that either, but we do have to take into account that a lot of us differ in what we want a government to do. It's not a disagreement with the social contract, it's a disagreement about the extent of which government should meddle in the lives of it's citizens.
13 Oct 2012, 9:18 pm
DancingDanny wrote:
TM wrote:
DancingDanny wrote:
Oh, I certainly agree that I am not a perfect Apollonian. Atleast I can do that. Atleast I don't try to wrap myself in the magic word of objectivity by making a quick crack at the rich just to appear balance while being an obvious partisan hack for neoclassical economics.
Well you know, like most people with an education in economics, I lean towards neoclassical with some Keynesian influences. A bit strange that when dealing with global warming the left is screaming "listen to the people who study global warming" but when dealing with economics they scream "Don't listen to the people who study economics!"
I mean you do realize that a synonym for "neoclassical economics" is "mainstream economics" right?
You lean towards of changing the subject and changing the scope of what you believe in when it is convenient to try to win some points. This entire argument you have argued like a libertarian and now all of sudden you have these Keynesian influences. Mind boggling.
Keynes does have some valid points about counter-cyclical spending. You were the one who elected to label me as a straw man libertarian Ayn Rand objectivist, because it's very convenient to argue against. Hence why the other post of yours I just replied to was attacking a string of points I haven't even argued.
Also, just since you don't seem to know what exactly neoclassical economics is and seem to largely be confusing it with Austrian Economics and Objectivism, perhaps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoclassical_synthesis could enlighten you a bit about the role of Keynes in neoclassical economics.
13 Oct 2012, 9:27 pm
TM wrote:
DancingDanny wrote:
I am not arguing against capitalism in favor of replacing it with the Soviet Union! I am arguing against your libertarian sandbox that wants to wear the power of logic divorced from emotion while the things that you believe in are indeed very emotionally motivated.
Some are, some are not. For instance, my stance on government and taxes are motivated by possess losses and efficient utilization of resources.
DancingDanny wrote:
What history would that be? How about the history and the world where the government collecting taxes and spending is not tantamount to getting your wallet stolen at gunpoint? How about the consensus reality that all liberals and conservatives have agreed upon that there is a social contract that we have agreed upon with our government? The government is not an individual and it is not be held to the same morality that you hold an individual to or else is it effectively not empowered to collect tax and spend!
I don't believe I ever argued that taxes were the equivalent of getting my wallet stolen at gunpoint and while a whole lot of Randites believe in that, I'm a bit more moderate on that issue. I simply consider that government has certain things it should do (Protect it's citizens and their freedoms) and some things it shouldn't do, and at the moment government is very far into the "shouldn't do" area.
I'm familiar with social contract theory and I don't disagree with that either, but we do have to take into account that a lot of us differ in what we want a government to do. It's not a disagreement with the social contract, it's a disagreement about the extent of which government should meddle in the lives of it's citizens.
I didn't call the welfare collectors moochers, you just did. If someone is going to get something from another person, I prefer them to get it voluntary from that person, I realize you prefer putting a gun to people's head and forcing them to act according to your ideals, but I'm a fairly tolerant person and not in favor of authoritarianism.
Taking your argument at face value, you basically just said that the welfare program that America has agreed upon is a jackbooted thug that is stealing our liberty by gunpoint. Do you not get the connection between how awful this sounds and the ramping up of the intensity of my arguments? I know you prefer to talk about things in some kind of Apollonian approach but you have to try to present yourself in the Light better before telling me that I am emotionally compromised. Otherwise what is my incentive to meet you in the middle ground?
13 Oct 2012, 9:36 pm
DancingDanny wrote:
Taking your argument at face value, you basically just said that the welfare program that America has agreed upon is a jackbooted thug that is stealing our liberty by gunpoint. Do you not get the connection between how awful this sounds and the ramping up of the intensity of my arguments? I know you prefer to talk about things in some kind of Apollonian approach but you have to try to present yourself in the Light better before telling me that I am emotionally compromised. Otherwise what is my incentive to meet you in the middle ground?
No, I said that welfare programs some of America has agreed upon is compulsory to participate in, as opposed to private philanthropy which people engage in voluntarily. If you read more into it than that, that's on you. Furthermore, public programs have notoriously shown themselves incapable of eliminating enormous process losses.
13 Oct 2012, 9:39 pm
TM wrote:
DancingDanny wrote:
TM wrote:
DancingDanny wrote:
Oh, I certainly agree that I am not a perfect Apollonian. Atleast I can do that. Atleast I don't try to wrap myself in the magic word of objectivity by making a quick crack at the rich just to appear balance while being an obvious partisan hack for neoclassical economics.
Well you know, like most people with an education in economics, I lean towards neoclassical with some Keynesian influences. A bit strange that when dealing with global warming the left is screaming "listen to the people who study global warming" but when dealing with economics they scream "Don't listen to the people who study economics!"
I mean you do realize that a synonym for "neoclassical economics" is "mainstream economics" right?
You lean towards of changing the subject and changing the scope of what you believe in when it is convenient to try to win some points. This entire argument you have argued like a libertarian and now all of sudden you have these Keynesian influences. Mind boggling.
Keynes does have some valid points about counter-cyclical spending. You were the one who elected to label me as a straw man libertarian Ayn Rand objectivist, because it's very convenient to argue against. Hence why the other post of yours I just replied to was attacking a string of points I haven't even argued.
Also, just since you don't seem to know what exactly neoclassical economics is and seem to largely be confusing it with Austrian Economics and Objectivism, perhaps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoclassical_synthesis could enlighten you a bit about the role of Keynes in neoclassical economics.
Yeah I agree that today has been a day when neoclassical was stuck on my mind when I was really arguing against Ayn Rand and her peers.
13 Oct 2012, 9:42 pm
TM wrote:
DancingDanny wrote:
Taking your argument at face value, you basically just said that the welfare program that America has agreed upon is a jackbooted thug that is stealing our liberty by gunpoint. Do you not get the connection between how awful this sounds and the ramping up of the intensity of my arguments? I know you prefer to talk about things in some kind of Apollonian approach but you have to try to present yourself in the Light better before telling me that I am emotionally compromised. Otherwise what is my incentive to meet you in the middle ground?
No, I said that welfare programs some of America has agreed upon is compulsory to participate in, as opposed to private philanthropy which people engage in voluntarily. If you read more into it than that, that's on you. Furthermore, public programs have notoriously shown themselves incapable of eliminating enormous process losses.
What can be compulsory to participate in and what can't be?
13 Oct 2012, 9:49 pm
DancingDanny wrote:
TM wrote:
No, I said that welfare programs some of America has agreed upon is compulsory to participate in, as opposed to private philanthropy which people engage in voluntarily. If you read more into it than that, that's on you. Furthermore, public programs have notoriously shown themselves incapable of eliminating enormous process losses.
What can be compulsory to participate in and what can't be?
Off the top of my head, I tend to think that law enforcement, judicial system, education and military should always be public. I'm not a huge fan of public healthcare, welfare programs, pension plans and the likes but I can see some valid arguments in favor of them. For instance, if welfare programs help people who are down on their luck as a temporary solutions then there is an argument in favor of them, however if they end up becoming like the ones in large parts of Europe where it becomes a permanent situation its not positive. That is if you can eliminate the large process losses, and incompetent administration of them.
13 Oct 2012, 9:57 pm
TM wrote:
DancingDanny wrote:
TM wrote:
No, I said that welfare programs some of America has agreed upon is compulsory to participate in, as opposed to private philanthropy which people engage in voluntarily. If you read more into it than that, that's on you. Furthermore, public programs have notoriously shown themselves incapable of eliminating enormous process losses.
What can be compulsory to participate in and what can't be?
Off the top of my head, I tend to think that law enforcement, judicial system, education and military should always be public. I'm not a huge fan of public healthcare, welfare programs, pension plans and the likes but I can see some valid arguments in favor of them. For instance, if welfare programs help people who are down on their luck as a temporary solutions then there is an argument in favor of them, however if they end up becoming like the ones in large parts of Europe where it becomes a permanent situation its not positive. That is if you can eliminate the large process losses, and incompetent administration of them.
Thank you, now I certainly understand better and I can see we're not terribly far apart and that you have valid reasons to believe what you believe.
13 Oct 2012, 10:19 pm
Now to explain my worldview, I think you can certainly tell by the way I drop Marxist lingo like dialectic and History that I am influenced by that side of the camp in some fashion. That being said, there's a difference between using the myth and believing that the Soviet Union was really something that we ought to be shooting for. I recognize that the Soviet Union was a monster where the rights of the workers was lost. I believe in democracies and a free market where the definition of a free market is one without a player that is big enough to influence prices and that means corporations as well. Naturally in the course of this operation there is mayhem that affects some (the workers) proportionally more than it does others (the bourgeoisie.) It should be in the interests of a democratic, free people to establish a safety net so that the workers and increasingly the middle class don't slide into abject pauperism. Where I really pull away from you in disagreement is the scope of the safety net and some things that it can achieve, that is if it of course wisely managed to not spill so much waste over the sides or just generally so incompetently managed that it is null.
13 Oct 2012, 11:52 pm
TM wrote:
DancingDanny wrote:
Oh, I certainly agree that I am not a perfect Apollonian. Atleast I can do that. Atleast I don't try to wrap myself in the magic word of objectivity by making a quick crack at the rich just to appear balance while being an obvious partisan hack for neoclassical economics.
Well you know, like most people with an education in economics, I lean towards neoclassical with some Keynesian influences. A bit strange that when dealing with global warming the left is screaming "listen to the people who study global warming" but when dealing with economics they scream "Don't listen to the people who study economics!"
I mean you do realize that a synonym for "neoclassical economics" is "mainstream economics" right?
The difference is neoclassical economics is deduced from a bunch of axioms that are just assumed to be true. One pretty ridiculous flaw is pretending that the supply curve is always positive sloping for individual wage earners. This obviously flows from libertarian ideology, not actual behavior analysis. In reality it's pretty easy to get a wage slave to volunteer more hours of work by paying him less. Why? The marginal utility differential between starving and not starving is effectively infinite while the utility differential of the additional work sold to the hiring firm is finite.
14 Oct 2012, 12:27 am
A world where collecting taxes isn't tantamount to being robbed at gunpoint? Just because you rationalize the use of theft and violence doesn't change it from being what it is. What do you think happens when you don't pay these taxes? They send men with guns to your house. Just because the robber has a noble cause doesn't excuse his ignoble actions and make him not a robber.
Much like most common thieves, the noble cause usually isn't so noble when you hold it up to sunlight. My personal beliefs are that the initiation force against another is wrong, you can disagree or delude yourself into thinking that these actions don't constitute force.
14 Oct 2012, 5:44 am
Everything's guns with you Yanks, isn't it? Weird, cos if you don't pay your taxes in the UK, a group comprised largely of men but no guns eventually come and arrest you [Edit: I think it'd be two. It's non-violent crime, and unless as well as not paying taxes you've been sending out threats or something, they'd only send two. A pair of (most likely) men without guns will come and arrest you, eventually. Ah, civilisation.]
Unless you've come to an arrangement with the government, as lots of rich people and corporations have.
Thing is, it's a social contract. If you violate the terms of any contract, there's a good chance that, eventually, Men With Guns will come a-knocking. "But I didn't sign no steenkin' contract!". Well, no. You were born into a country that has a government that is funded via taxes. Indeed, it's a democracy, so you get a chance to re-negotiate the contract every few years, to vote on how the government works, how much money it takes. If you want to form a Libertarian Party, win a majority, and enact whatever legislation (or de-legislation, perhaps) was in your manifesto, go for it. Yes, I am being deliberately naive here. Of course a lot of politics is obtuse and corrupt. The problem is the corruption, not politics.
Or, you can leave for a country that better suits your ideology. Or take to the seas...
JK Rowling wrote some great stories. She also wrote:
I chose to remain a domiciled taxpayer for a couple of reasons. The main one was that I wanted my children to grow up where I grew up, to have proper roots in a culture as old and magnificent as Britain’s; to be citizens, with everything that implies, of a real country, not free-floating ex-pats, living in the limbo of some tax haven and associating only with the children of similarly greedy tax exiles.
A second reason, however, was that I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism. On the available evidence, I suspect that it is Lord Ashcroft’s idea of being a mug.
A second reason, however, was that I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism. On the available evidence, I suspect that it is Lord Ashcroft’s idea of being a mug.
(Lord Ashcroft is a tax exile, and a - if not the - major funder of the Conservative Party)
Last edited by Hopper on 14 Oct 2012, 6:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
14 Oct 2012, 7:37 am
That's certainly a twisted definition of the social contract. I was born in a country with a government that is funded by tax money therefor they are justified in initiating force against me and if I don't like it I can leave or if I'm lucky enough to live in a democracy, vote them out of power. What about Jews in Nazi Germany, was their persecution and attempted extermination justified under the terms of this supposed 'social contract'? The people of Germany did vote them into power after all and if they didn't like they could always leave right? Mob rules. If they stay, that implies consent to this 'social contract' of yours.
Wars of aggression, bailing out bankers, locking up my brothers and sisters for what they put in their own body, warrantless wiretapping, the suspension of habeus corpus, the building of sports stadiums, assassinations. Do Sound like legitimate function of government? Does the social contract require me to support those things?
Government exists to protect our natural rights. Life, liberty, and property. The social contract exists amongst individuals (not between you and your government) to the authority of a government that protects these natural rights. A government that violates these natural rights is illegitimate and should be overthrown. That was the social contract that my country was founded upon.
14 Oct 2012, 8:25 am
marshall wrote:
The difference is neoclassical economics is deduced from a bunch of axioms that are just assumed to be true. One pretty ridiculous flaw is pretending that the supply curve is always positive sloping for individual wage earners. This obviously flows from libertarian ideology, not actual behavior analysis. In reality it's pretty easy to get a wage slave to volunteer more hours of work by paying him less. Why? The marginal utility differential between starving and not starving is effectively infinite while the utility differential of the additional work sold to the hiring firm is finite.
The labor supply curve, always going up is somewhat logical considering that it has wage rate as it's veritical axix and hours worked as it's horizontal axis. As nobody can work negative hours, nor be paid a negative salary, it would be hard for it to be negative. You do get the substitution effect where you see the effects of labor supply elasticity in the chart at higher wages (less hours worked at a higher wage).
So long as there isn't a negative wage or negative hours, you could start someone off at a lot of hours at a low wage, and the curve would still be sloping upwards. The person in your argument is also at all times free to decide that the pay isn't satisfying for the hours and find a new job, of course that clashes a bit with your ideology of work being more like a slave contract signed at gunpoint than a voluntary contract.
Now Marshall, what is your preferred school of economic though, I'm dying to find out so I can criticize that.
14 Oct 2012, 8:37 am
Jacoby wrote:
That's certainly a twisted definition of the social contract. I was born in a country with a government that is funded by tax money therefor they are justified in initiating force against me and if I don't like it I can leave or if I'm lucky enough to live in a democracy, vote them out of power. What about Jews in Nazi Germany, was their persecution and attempted extermination justified under the terms of this supposed 'social contract'? The people of Germany did vote them into power after all and if they didn't like they could always leave right? Mob rules. If they stay, that implies consent to this 'social contract' of yours.
Wars of aggression, bailing out bankers, locking up my brothers and sisters for what they put in their own body, warrantless wiretapping, the suspension of habeus corpus, the building of sports stadiums, assassinations. Do Sound like legitimate function of government? Does the social contract require me to support those things?
Government exists to protect our natural rights. Life, liberty, and property. The social contract exists amongst individuals (not between you and your government) to the authority of a government that protects these natural rights. A government that violates these natural rights is illegitimate and should be overthrown. That was the social contract that my country was founded upon.
Wars of aggression, bailing out bankers, locking up my brothers and sisters for what they put in their own body, warrantless wiretapping, the suspension of habeus corpus, the building of sports stadiums, assassinations. Do Sound like legitimate function of government? Does the social contract require me to support those things?
Government exists to protect our natural rights. Life, liberty, and property. The social contract exists amongst individuals (not between you and your government) to the authority of a government that protects these natural rights. A government that violates these natural rights is illegitimate and should be overthrown. That was the social contract that my country was founded upon.
Then overthrow it already! Tch.
But really, that's a whole load of different arguments there. A government function is legitimate assuming it has democratic assent and doesn't go against whatever constitution or bill of rights etc that a particular country has. Where there is sufficient discord, there will be uprisings, civil wars etc. Where you break a law, the government assumes legitimacy in (if necessary) using force. That goes for every law, and would be the same even under the most minimal of governments. What those laws should be - if they should be at all - is a matter for political discourse. I'm a Socialist in the UK. I loathe a whole heap of stuff my government is doing. I follow a lot of debates and talks and thoughts on the left, and there is a lot of confusion as to what to do.
You have a political philosophy at odds with the country you inhabit. Though I disagree with your philosophy, I genuinely sympathise. What, realistically, can be done about that? Gather together with similarly minded people, buy up land and then lobby to secede? Seasteading? Engaging with the process as best one can?
