More Randian propoganda, pervert. I don’t resent businessmen. But I’ll take a look if I have time tonight. (I’ll look eventually, of course, just maybe later is all. )
This simply returns to my argument against compassion. If compassion were such a great motivator, charity would fit the bill. Since it doesn’t, if we are to affect change then there must be some other justification than social duty based in compassion.
Give a man a fish, and you’ve got him for a day. Teach a man to fish, then loan the rod to him at a certain interest rate for the privilege of merely existing in the warm glow of entrepreneurial ability, and you’ve got him for life. Hell, he’ll fish for you.
I absolutely agree and have never said otherwise ever. Even a 13% poverty rate means an 87% non-poverty rate, eh? As I’ve also indicated, I find it the economic system most likely to match intrinsic human activity. I love capitalism. I love the wealth I live in and around. Don’t let me every convince you otherwise.
Everything creates poverty. The better question is what we will do to minimize it, and which regulated economic systems better lend themselves to this task.
I don’t think that’s an adequate definition of a ‘liberal,’ I think the most befitting definition would have to be “Somebody with an unsteady policy that shifts from day to day according to what the base man seems to want more of today.” That sounds a little more appropriate. And a good definition for conservative would be “Someone who would prefer to spend their money persuing a pipe-dream of ‘national security,’ than actually use the money we have for something practical and beneficial.” Yes-yes. That suits them perfectly. Centrists are the good ones–trust me.
All right! Now we’ve slipped into a 3-way mexican standoff! BTW, to get into the gushy sentimenalism of the season, I’ve enjoyed corresponding with both of you.
In regards to pervert’s remarks,
I think it’s debatable whether private property per se is responsible for the increase in population density. Lots of cultures (Oriental Despotism, anyone? Incas? Maoist China?) that didn’t have private property have had dense and growing populations.
But that’s a quibble, really. I guess my real response would be something more along these lines:
“So what if I wouldn’t have ever been born except for the institution of private property emerging in aeons past? I’m alive now, and I have rights. After all, you wouldn’t say to me that ‘well, you’re alive now, so that’s better than being non-existent, so I’m justified in enslaving you, because existence under slavery is better than non-existence’ right? The institution of private property has deprived me of the chance to exist in the State of Nature of primitive subsistence. Primitive subsistence is my endowment. It’s what I’m entitled to. So gimme!”
Let me be explicit, pervert. I don’t believe that capitalism creates poverty–at least not on net, in the long run. I would even take issue with erislover asserting that everything creates poverty. 100% poverty (or close to it) is the State of Nature. If Post-Industrial Capitalism has a poverty rate of 13 percent, I think it would be rather strange to say that capitalism has created 13% poverty. Saying capitalism creates that 13% is like saying that modern medicine has caused infant mortality to be 0.5% when it has caused infant mortality to go from 20% (state of nature) instead of 0.5%.
I would disagree that ‘Everything creates poverty’. I would agree that “No economic system (so far) has completely eliminated poverty.”
I’d agree that eventually capitalism will morph into something else, if only because it’s a truism that nothing lasts forever. I’ll lay even odds on regression to a stagnant statist/collectivist regulated capitalism vs. progression to some Knowledge-Economy that radically alters the existing relations between factors of production.
My point is that there are types of poverty that can only exist under various economic systems. Though I must admit that supporting that point will require people to distinguish between causes and not ends, something I seem to have trouble with here.
Like, no wealth under anarchy, or do you mean pre-technological individuals scavaging for food without any social groups?
No, but it is hard to die from surgical sponges being left in the body before surgery, eh?
I’d hope for the latter but I really, really doubt it.
Sorry, I did not mean to imply that you resented businessmen. I appologize for not being more clear on that. I know that you have different reasons for confiscatory policies. The quote I included was merely the tail end of a long argument intended to show that capitalism will not survive. Specifically it addressed an issue you and I touched on earlier. That the labor unrest of the early parts of this century was due to a failure of capitalism to meet people’s needs. The point of the quote was, on the contrary, capitalism met peoples needs better than anything we have ever tried. There may be an entirely different reason for the common impression that “capitalism failed” in the late 1800s.
This is exactly why I have trouble understanding you. If you are not motivated by compassion for poor people, what exactly motivates you? Are you saying that the best excuse [sorry, deliberatley inflamatory term there :)] for welfare is that it increases GDP growth?
Yes, but steal half his catch year after year, imply that he must give up more of it for his neighbors who did not maintain their nets, and he may just decide that begging is easier.
You have absolutely not convinced me otherwise. If you had I would not have been drawn to this thread so often. I simply find many of your ideas incompatible with this statement. It is a conundrum for me.
Indeed. Which is why I am constantly harping on minimizing the drag to our economic engine. It seems self evident to me that little can be done about poverty without creating more wealth. Perhaps more importantly, however, is the creation of more wealth producing opportunities. The difficulty is that these are almost impossible to create by fiat. Mostly they can only be encouraged and not interfered with.
Perhaps our difficulty is in defining poverty. I think we are agreed that relative measures are not particularly useful. I also understand that an absolute number is equally useless. You have been throwing around accusations of starvation and genocide, but I don’t think you’ve seriously suggested that we have a significant number of people in imminent danger of starvation, in the US at least. Also, I think I remember you indicating that poor people should be given assistence for transportation to and from work, at least, which is significantly higher than subsistance.
Is there some measure of purchasing power that we can assign a minimum level of reasonable existence to? Some measure of cost of living for instance? Perhaps some sort of minimum transportation range combined with a minimum housing and food budget? In order to minimize encouraging people to move around, we might have to comprimise on a national average. But it still seems reasonable to discuss what this might go into calculating this lower safety limit.
Once we have an idea about a working lower limit, we could add to it a reasonable upper limit of confiscation. Something like a certain percentage of GDP. All we would have to do then was determine how much of the minimum we can support with that level of confiscation. Comprimise would be just a few short rhetorical cat fights away!
Of course, all we would have to do is give up our respictive sacred cows.
When I refer to State of Nature, I mean the whole shebang. Paleolithic technology and social structure. Almost a 100% of people living in those conditions are living in conditions of primitive subsistence. Slightly better in a good year, slightly worse in a bad year.
I’d be the last to deny that causal reasons should be ignored and all emphasis be placed on states alone. But we are going to get into some debate over proximate vs. ultimate causes. The surgical sponge may be the proximate cause of death, but the ultimate cause was the medical condition which necessitated the surgery. If, without surgery, that medical condition would have caused me to die with greater probability than that medical condition would have caused me to die with surgery, then the ultimate cause of my death is the medical condition.
My being in state S1 (poverty) instead of S2 (non-poverty) can only be said to be caused by ultimate cause C (capitalism) if I would have be more likely to be in S1 than S2 if C had not ocurred.
Yea. I did not mean this explicitly. I meant capitalism in general and only used private property in stead of that word due to referencing your comment.
No, not at all. But at the same time, I wouldn’t listen when you told me “My ancestors used to be able to hunt bison, so I am now going to enslave you.”
I agree with this as well.
[QUTOE]**I’d agree that eventually capitalism will morph into something else, if only because it’s a truism that nothing lasts forever. I’ll lay even odds on regression to a stagnant statist/collectivist regulated capitalism vs. progression to some Knowledge-Economy that radically alters the existing relations between factors of production. **
[/QUOTE]
I agree here, as well. I maintain, however that our decent[my characterization] into statist socialism is due more to a misunderstanding of capitalism than it is to a failure of capitalism. Eventually the desire to plunder will overwhelm our system. The only possible defence against it is to “fight the ignorance” as it were. If we accept that capitalism was responsible for the abject poverty of the disaffected workers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we accept that it must be “fixed”. I’m just not sure this is true.
The same thing that motivates me to purchase insurance, personally. In any system we will face compromises since idealized goals are often conflicting. If you wanted me to sum up this debate, it would be a discussion about just what compromises are reasonable on our goals.
They can indeed be created by fiat. Witness the patent and the corporation, both of which are man-made designs there to encourage the creation of more opportunities.
They are as useful as any other measure, the matter is more of being able to settle on one.
Unambiguously? No, because each person is different in need and ability. This is similarly why I think “absolute poverty” is a difficult bar to set, as well, without a degree of arbitrariness.
Honestly, I don’t think either is possible and you likely already know why. Every action we take in either end will affect the other. Because the economy is not static, this limit is only as good as any snapshot. What is more important is to strike a balance between the competing goals. What is an acceptable range of people in poverty? What is an acceptable range of diminished incentives? It is your contention, and Hayek’s, and mine, that we cannot seperate the two questions. So then the final question becomes, can we dance around a point through intelligent action to ensure we stay within these ranges?
On the level of local choices this is probably a pretty useful distinction. As we widen our net the ultimate cause of death becomes life itself, so I think we begin to lose coherence of the principle. Furthermore, capitalism has been around for quite some time. Being born into it, it isn’t like I actually have a standard of comparison in anything other than an academic sense. The greatness of its benefit is relative to how well it can live up to its own promises of opportunity, increase of wealth, and so on. Historical perspectives might indicate we don’t want to abandon capitalism in favor of previously tried systems, but if capitalism depends on subjective value, and the value of capitalism to someone in capitalism is lower than it could be in a more mixed economy, then have we reached a paradox?
But this proves my point exactly. Patents and coporations encourage wealth creation. They do not create wealth themselves. The government can provide a stable legal environment. It can provide a certain infrastructure. It cannot create wealth. Which is one reason I continue to harp on limiting the power of government to muck with wealth creation.
I think the government can create wealth (Hoover Dam, interstate highway system, human capital via school), but it’s just not particularly good at it relative to the private sector, esp. in cases that aren’t public goods of one kind or another.
Hell, even Soviet-style central planning can create wealth–they did have economic growth, after all–just very inefficiently.
I suppose my rhetoric was a little over the top. Obviously, the government is just a group of people. As such it can engage in the same activity a corporation engages in. The problem, as you allude to, is that the government is unique in its ability to aquire revunue by force.
However, I think that the dams, roads, and schools are more of infrastructure which encourage wealth creation. Although they can be said to represent assets, I’m not sure they act in the same way that produce does in terms of trade.
If I make widgets and sell them for a profit, while you need widgets to make widgetty gadgets which you sell for a profit, the road we use to transport our goods will increase this profit potentiality (by reducing transportation costs). But I’m not sure that the road without our trade is as useful. Dams are another matter, perhaps, because they produce electricity. But if I am not mistaken, they are operated by quasi private groups.
I guess what I am saying is that governments start with expropriated wealth to begin with. So, unless the asset they build repays this wealth, any economic activity governments engage in starts with a net loss. You get an asset, but nobody owns it.
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