Libertarian Nations

[Mapache]

@Sam_Stone

You’re citing the example of a government monopoly which had little incentive to answer to consumers.

A better example would be the PC industry, which has developed with almost no government direction at all. Today we have iPads, and portable phones more powerful than desktop computers of just a few years ago. The much-dreaded Microsoft monopoly wasn’t ended by government - it was eaten by competitive forces.

Is there anyone alive who thinks a government-directed computing industry would have resulted in anything like the the amazing infrastructure in computing we have today?

If anything, government has been a barrier to innovation. Regulations make it hard for entrepreneurs to get started. High corporate taxes benefit the big companies that can take advantage of the loopholes, but limit the ability of smaller firms to get off the ground. Regulatory barriers prevent innovation by raising the cost too high: Do you know how old the engines are that power today’s light airplanes? Most of them date back to the pre-WWII era! The reason is that the cost of government certification is so bloody high that there aren’t enough customers to amortize it at a reasonable cost. So no one even bothers. Most of the innovative light aircraft today have their roots in the unregulated homebuilt aircraft industry, which was for a long time the only real source of innovation in personal aviation.

Homebuilt aviation is where Burt Rutan got his start. In the meantime, Cessna was selling $150,000 tin airplanes designed in the 1950’s using engines designed in the 1930’s, because they had to operate in the highly regulated certified aircraft industry.

For comparison - the government-certified Cessna 150 has a 100hp engine, and could fly at a top speed of about 110 mph. A Rutan Varieze homebuilt also had 100hp, but could fly 195 mph. Both carried two passengers. The Rutan Long-Ez is in the same class as the Cessna 172, with 150-160hp. The 172 could go about 120 mph. The Long-Ez could do 185. But the Long-Eze was more stable, more manoeverable, cheaper, lighter, and has a range of over 2,000 miles - more than five times that of the Cessna.

Today, the Long-Eze is the basis for Xcor’s rocket plane. The Cessna 172 is still based on the same 1956 design - you could put a modern one beside a repainted 1960’s model, and only an afficionado could tell the difference.

A Long-Eze could be bult for about $20,000. The Cessna costs $310,000.

Does all that government regulation buy more safety? Not really. More homebuilt/experimental aircraft crash per flight hour than certified planes, but that’s not due to the unregulated nature of the industry - it’s because most homebuilts are higher performance planes that require more skill to fly safely. If you look at the most popular homebuilts like the Long-EZ, the Van’s RV series and the Lancair, you find that in terms of airframe reliability they are at least as good as the major certified planes, despite being built in garages by untrained people.

The government has been learning its lesson and has been slowly lightening up on regulating small aircraft in the U.S. They’ve allowed new categories of sport planes that have lower certification requirements and allowed more freedom for homebuilders to build their planes at the factory to save time and get expert guidance without government oversight, and it’s working. Quality and safety in the industry are going up and the cost to fly is coming down. Imagine that - getting government out out of the way to improve safety.

WARNING: semi-hijack.

Sam, you started a thread several years ago on this subject. I wanted to join in, but I had an old computer with a dial-up connection (over Mexican phone lines) so I didn’t. I think you’re wrong in almost everything you say about airplanes, and here’s why:

First, the reason that airplane engines were designed in the thirties is because, in fact, no one has ever come up with a better design. Besides, it’s rather like saying that Mercedes Benz engines are based on a 1917 design because Peugeots had double overhead cams and hemispherical combustion chambers. There are basically no parts from a modern engine that fit an engine from the thirties; electronics, fuel systems, quality of materials, etc. are infinitely better than they used to be. But a horizontaly opposed, air cooled engine like a Lycoming or Teledyne seems to be the most efficient way to go. Teledyne spent tens of millions of dollars on their Tiara designs, which had all the bells and whistles- geared, overhead cam, liquid cooled, and so forth, and gave up in the end because the Tiara was heavier, a little less reliable, and more expensive than the old aircooled, pushrod designs you scorn. So they stopped making them.
Some years ago I was at OshKosh for the fly-in, and I had a long conversation with some engineers from Bombardier (They make everything from Lear Jets to snowmobiles) who were showing their new 250-400 horsepower V12s, like the Tiara geared, liquid cooled, integrated electronics and so on. They told me that:
The paperwork to get the engine FAA approved came to about ten percent of the development cost, and that they would have done most of the testing required anyway: and:
They weren’t sure their new engine would out perform a Lycoming 540.
They never produced the V12, as far as I know.
Most of the new engine designs, especially diesels, are coming from Europe- Germany, France and Czechoslovakia mostly, and they have much more intrusive government controls over aviation than the USA does.
As for the Vari-Eze, it’s a great plane, but the reason it costs $10000 is because you have to invest the time to gain the skills necessary to build it, and then the 1000 or 1500 hours to put it together. Which brings the price right up to the Cessna’s, unless you think you can run an aircraft factory for less than $150/hour/employee. And besides, Burt Rutan stopped selling the plans many years ago, and won’t even talk about it today, for the same reason that a Cessna 172 costs what it does: insurance against lawsuits.
Which is why the Cessna is the same airplane, more or less, that it was thirty years ago: any modernization, re-engineering, or any other upgrade will be immediately seized upon by lawyers to sue the manufacturer because the lawyer’s clients’s thirty-year-old airplane didn’t have it. Some years back somebody launched a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Piper because their 1947 Cub didn’t have safety harnesses factory installed, which no light planes had at the time; I think there was a thread about the suit here. And since lawsuits seem to be the basis of the Libertopian legal system, I see no reason to think that the suppression of innovation problem would be any less.

[Jas09]

@Sam_Stone

Again, it sounds like you’re having a hard time imagining how complexity can emerge without some central controlling authority like a big business or a big government. But it can, and does. All the time. And with levels of efficiency and complexity the government could never hope to achieve.

No, I’m really not - in fact, I think it’s wonderful, and generally to be vastly preferred to government-mandated action. I think we’re broadly in agreement that government intervention in most markets (I’m sure we would disagree on health-care, as a counter-example) should generally be limited to safety regulation, consumer protection, and monopoly avoidance - with some subsidization of basic technological research (I may be confusing you with another poster, but aren’t you largely supportive of the space program, for example?).

I was merely commenting on the fact that in the historical case of “the Internet” one can’t overlook the importance of front-end development and standardization by government agencies and public universities. You seem to be pointing more towards the HTML standard, which I can understand as most people view “the web” as “the Internet”, but I was commenting more on the IP stack itself, which sprang out of DARPA-funded projects in the early 70’s (as I understand it, this is all before my time). Although the Ethernet part came from Xerox, so it was already very much a public/private joint operation (although, obviously, that particular physical layer is not essential to “the internet”).

And, conversely, there are plenty of examples of free-market systems where insufficient government action led to either massive disaster or monopolistic practices.

Anyways, thanks for the interesting, if a bit digressive, discussion. As an aside, if an AOL-dominated world is the alternative Libertarian reality… thank God for big government!

[Dick_Dastardly]

@Sam_Stone

If you don’t have time to read that, here’s the short form:

Private charitable giving reached an all-time high by 2007. $295 billion dollars. More than HUD, DOE, and HHS budgets combined.

Harvard is a charity. So is yale, all the other multibillion hedge funds operating as universities, so is just vast amounts of charity money that never go near anybody remotely underprivileged. Even almost all the religious charitable spending is on community centres and spending for the people who actually donate the money. this idea that private spending could easily replace government spending is just another libertarian fantasy to help create ideology that means its adherents somehow wouldn’t have to pay taxes.

[Zeriel]

@furt

As a matter of politics, I agree. In this thread, we’re merely trying to fight the ignorance of some members of the SDMB. (and come right down to it, there are other Libertarians on TV – John Stossel, Andrew Napolitano and Greg Gutfeild have shows on Fox. Par of the problem is that much of the media is going to studiously avoid putting on people that don’t fit the tidy donkey vs. elephant mold)

That’s what I was trying to say when you jumped on me upthread. People on the dope are going to see what you and Sam Stone and John Mace are saying, and the only referent they have in real-world politics (by which I mean “people who have a chance in hell of getting elected”) are Ron and Rand Paul, and a bunch of college kids who think Ayn Rand is the second coming of atheist Jesus–of course they think you’re a deluded/naive minority. You’re fighting the same public perception problem, ultimately, as every moderate/liberal Christian who has to contend with everything from Camping to Phelps to Pope Palpatine.

On a related note, I miss Browne and Friedman–frankly, there should be a term for “progressive libertarian” because Friedman was damn close to it.

[Sam_Stone]

@AlienVessels

Just how much of that giving is actual delivered services to the needy? How much of it is building churches, missions and preaching?

From the linked article:

The two largest categories of donations were to religious organizations, which received 32.8 percent of the total donations ($96.82 billion), and educational institutions, which received 13.9 percent ($40.98 billion). The fastest-growing field for donations was the arts, culture and humanities, which garnered 4.3 percent of the total ($12.51 billion), an increase of 6.5 percent over 2005.

But note that giving to churches doesn’t mean donations for ‘preaching’. In America, religious institutions contribute all kinds of money in the form of food aid, clothing, soup kitchens, you name it.

Also from the article:

Americans long have preferred to donate their money through the private sector or to private charities. Of the $122.8 billion of foreign aid provided by Americans in 2005, the most current data available, $95.5 billion, or 79 percent, came from private foundations, corporations, voluntary organizations, universities, religious organizations and individuals, according to the latest annual Index of Global Philanthropy, which is published by a Washington research organization, the Center for Global Prosperity at the Hudson Institute.

But as I said, this only includes monetary contributions - not contributions of time and labor. From the article:

More than 61 million Americans volunteered for charitable and national service organizations in 2006, and about half of all Americans participate in volunteer activities each year, according to Brooks. Volunteerism is “a major cultural phenomenon in the U.S.,” Brooks says.

How much do you think it would cost to replace all that charitable labor with public servants or paid employees? How much more of this kind of free labor would we get if government got out of the way?

[Acsenray]

@emacknight

My vote is for India. The country itself has a strong enough rule of law to protect property, but the government isn’t quite strong enough to enforce all the other layers of bureaucracy. If there is a store front left empty, someone will set up a shop and operate quite happily without licenses or paperwork for years.

Many of the states push religious doctrine concerning things like eating beef and drinking alcohol. But without enough force to actually stop it outright.

There are a lot of things I like about India, but the corrupt and ineffective government is one thing that creates a lot of suffering. The rich run roughshod over the poor and there’s often little the government can do to enforce the law.

Your fine little libertarian store front will run just fine until someone richer than the unlicensed street vendor decides he wants the property and finds a way to eject him.

I have to question whether there is very good protection of property either. Just as an anecdote – the Birla family – one of the country’s richest – is noted for building lavish temples wherever they please. They wanted to build a temple on the grounds of Banaras Hindu University, which thought about it and decided they didn’t want it. So the Birlas helicoptered in a priest in the middle of the night to consecrate the ground, and effectively the Birlas were able to convert B.H.U.'s property without permission or compensation, because after the ground was consecrated, no official was going to help the university get rid of the temple.

[TriPolar]

@Sam_Stone

A better example would be the PC industry, which has developed with almost no government direction at all. Today we have iPads, and portable phones more powerful than desktop computers of just a few years ago.

Utter tripe. The US government created the entire IC market by requiring second sourcing of components for military contracts. Your PC would cost at least 10 times what it does without that. And you wouldn’t have cell phones without government regulation of the radio spectrum.

If you don’t like what the government does, stay off the roads, stay off the internet, don’t use the public utilities, don’t eat the certified foods, and don’t use the public healthcare system, which happens to be all of it.

[Sam_Stone]

@Mapache

First, the reason that airplane engines were designed in the thirties is because, in fact, no one has ever come up with a better design.

Would you like to start a thread on this? You’re right - it’s a major hijack. But I think it’s silly to suggest that we hit the epitome of aircraft engine technology in the 1930’s - just look what’s happened with auto engines since then. And yes, I understand the reliability/weight implications - I’ve owned a plane that had an O-235 in it, and I’ve made all kinds of arguments against homebuilders using auto engine conversions because of reliability concerns.

But here’s an example of a lightweight modern engine that has made huge inroads into non-certified aircraft: The Rotax 912. It’s a modern engine with electronic ignition, it’s lighter than an O-200 of the same horsepower, it’s got water cooled heads, and it runs at high RPM and uses an integral propeller reduction gear. It’s superior in almost every respect to the old Continental, and as the Rotax units gain more time in the field their TBO keeps getting pushed up because they are proving to be very reliable. TBO on the 914s is now 2000 hrs, I believe, and there are reports of them running fine over 3000 hours. They also more fuel efficient, they’re cheaper, they’re lighter and they are certified to run on mogas.

Some of the Rotax engines are now certified for use in regular aircraft, but that engine would never have been developed if the homebuilt/non-certified market did not exist.

They told me that:
The paperwork to get the engine FAA approved came to about ten percent of the development cost, and that they would have done most of the testing required anyway

There’s more to it than that, though. A certified aircraft has to be recertified if the engine is changed, or a supplemental type certificate has to be acquired for a change.

As for the Vari-Eze, it’s a great plane, but the reason it costs $10000 is because you have to invest the time to gain the skills necessary to build it, and then the 1000 or 1500 hours to put it together. Which brings the price right up to the Cessna’s, unless you think you can run an aircraft factory for less than $150/hour/employee.

Those things would not require anywhere near that much labor to build in a factory. A homebuilder does not have jigs and sophisticated equipment. He has no assembly line.

If you’d like a better comparison, let’s compare the Van’s RV-10 to something like a Cessna Corvalis (which is actually based on a design that came out of the homebuilt industry). The RV-10 is available in a regular kit for $42,400, or in a ‘quickbuild’ kit in which about half the labor is done for you at the factory, for $55,000. That gives some idea of how much the labor cost is.

According to Van’s cost estimator, the total cost to build an RV-10 from the quickbuild kit, including a new, certified Lycoming O-540 and a Hartzell constant speed prop, is just over $100,000 (half of that is the engine and the prop - the entire airframe kit is $55,000. This is for a modern, 4-seat aircraft that will cruise at 210 mph.

The Cessna Corvalis is $733,000. It’s about 30 mph faster, but other than that it’s a very similar aircraft. Or, we could look at the Cessna 172, the traditional certified design: The Skyhawk XP has a constant speed prop but less horsepower than the RV-10. It only goes 128 kts. It’s $307,000.

The problem isn’t just government certification. It’s a combination of regulatory/certification costs, plus product liability costs, plus a shrinking market that has destroyed economies of scale and driven unit costs up. The Cessna 172 has to compete against a huge market in perfectly good used 172’s, which has reduced the size of the new market. That in turn has driven up the cost of new certified airplanes. The time and cost of certification means aircraft manufacturers can’t come up with new designs every year to obsolete the old ones, and the maintenance requirements in aviation ensure that the old ones stick around virtually forever. So it’s a complex problem and government regulation is only one part.

Which is why the Cessna is the same airplane, more or less, that it was thirty years ago: any modernization, re-engineering, or any other upgrade will be immediately seized upon by lawyers to sue the manufacturer because the lawyer’s clients’s thirty-year-old airplane didn’t have it. Some years back somebody launched a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Piper because their 1947 Cub didn’t have safety harnesses factory installed, which no light planes had at the time; I think there was a thread about the suit here. And since lawsuits seem to be the basis of the Libertopian legal system, I see no reason to think that the suppression of innovation problem would be any less.

I agree that litigation is a problem, but it’s not THE problem - the homebuilt industry also has the same litigation issues but it’s thriving. The Light-Sport-Aircraft category is thriving, even though those are factory built machines. They just operate in a simpler regulatory environment and are therefore cheaper. But they have the same liability issues.

Cessna makes an LSA plane - The Skycatcher. It’s only $112,000, but has the same liability costs as the 172. So clearly that’s not the only issue.

If you want to discuss this more, please start a new thread to avoid hijacking this one further.

[TriPolar]

@Sam_Stone

I agree that litigation is a problem, but it’s not THE problem - the homebuilt industry also has the same litigation issues but it’s thriving. The Light-Sport-Aircraft category is thriving, even though those are factory built machines. They just operate in a simpler regulatory environment and are therefore cheaper. But they have the same liability issues.

More tripe. Litigation is the only problem. The home built industry doesn’t have the same litigation issues because you can’t sue yourself. The Light-Sport-Aircraft category is thriving because the government used their regulatory powers to end the libertarian system of resolving problems after the fact.

[Digital_Stimulus]

@Sam_Stone

So private charitable giving by individuals is ALREADY significantly more than HHS, DoE, and HUD combined.

Faced with those facts, it’s pretty hard to argue that it’s impossible for private charitable giving to take up the slack from government if we eliminated government charity.

This is a terrible point. So bad, in fact, that I’m having difficulty coming up with an appropriate analogy. It’s vaguely akin to saying, “Of course everyone in your neighborhood can have an electronic security system installed. The consumer electronics market is worth billions!” It doesn’t even rate at an “apples to oranges” level; more like “apples to food-bearing plantlife”. But both of those are also terrible; sorry about that.

Now ask yourself how many people out there don’t give to charity because they either feel they give enough through their taxes, or because they make the assumption that this is the government’s role.

Not all that many, IMHO. Clearly, you have a different opinion. Naturally, I’m more than willing to consider evidence to the contrary, but it seems to me that you’re spouting a belief about the belief of others – always easy to do, yet rife with inaccuracy. I’d hazard a guess that the problem is one of projection, but (non-hypocritically) hesitate to ascribe a particular mental state/motivation to you.

And in fact, that’s the pattern you see around the world - when government charity steps in, private charity recedes. That’s why the U.S. has the highest charitable giving rate in the world - people expect less of that from government.

Cite? Both for “when government charity steps in, private charity recedes” and that the reason “the U.S. has the highest charitable giving rate in the world” is because “people expect less of that from government”.

Gah. I’m not saying that you’re incorrect. What I am saying is that you are simply continuing the pie-in-the-sky assertions to which I object. Perhaps these things are common knowledge to you; if so, they are not to me, and I’d like at least some supporting evidence.

And this doesn’t even count the biggest form of private charity (by far) - charity given to family members and friends.

And what set this off was talk of orphanages. Y’know, children who, by definition, don’t have family members and friends. Gah again!

I’m sorry if my frustration is showing and I’m coming off as brusque, impolite, or just rude. But I am frustrated now, and thus won’t be addressing the rest of your post. I will say, however, that I’m willing to look at evidence and be convinced of the (a?) libertarian position concerning charity. But little has been provided, and it seems to me that little will be.

And I can’t believe you actually included an Obama pot-shot complaining about “nationalizing student loans”. I’d expect you, of all posters here – with your claimed concerns about government efficiency, corporate welfare, and letting rewards be commensurate with risk taken – to applaud whacking off that particular government teat. Or at least simply engage in private, quiet approval.

[ElvisL1ves]

The LSA market is hardly “thriving” by any plausible measure, but that has more to do with the results of the financial collapse (that was caused by insufficient government regulation) on high-end luxury goods.

[Digital_Stimulus]

@furt

http://www.usatoday.com/news/sharing/giving-by-numbers-volunteer.htm
The chart isn’t super-clear on the year, but something caused a big rise around 2003.

I’m sorry, but I can’t see whatever is on that page. But look, it seems to me that my request shouldn’t be that hard to fulfill if reality matches your outlook. Here’s my take on it:

Under Bush 43 there were large tax cuts, while most of the population’s income was fairly stagnant (not sure if “most” is technically correct; feel free to object as you feel is necessary). Since it seems clear to both of us that when people’s income rises, their charitable giving also rises, the point is to remove income growth from the equation and simply leave the effects of tax cuts. Obviously, it’s more complex than that; I’d say that to do it justice is beyond my analysis capabilities. But you can see why I reject your previous cite (that was only concerned with the top 1%), right?

Again, it seems like this should be an easy request to fill – but I admit that when I tried to find the information, I failed. Believe me, if I had found such stats, I’d be posting them, whichever position they supported.

Government income drops during a recession, too. When needed, they borrow money, or (if they’re well-run) save up for such an occasion. Charities already do the same.

Yes, and…? Are you saying that during a recession loans to charities are typically forthcoming? Or that [most|many|enough] charities are so well-run as to be recession-proof to the point of being able to increase (not simply not scale back) their services?

If that’s not what you’re saying, I don’t see how the comment is relevant. And if it is what you’re saying, I’ll just express my disbelief yet again.

[furt]

@Digital_Stimulus

I’m sorry, but I can’t see whatever is on that page. But look, it seems to me that my request shouldn’t be that hard to fulfill if reality matches your outlook.

Here’s my take on it:Under Bush 43 there were large tax cuts, while most of the population’s income was fairly stagnant (not sure if “most” is technically correct; feel free to object as you feel is necessary). Since it seems clear to both of us that when people’s income rises, their charitable giving also rises, the point is to remove income growth from the equation and simply leave the effects of tax cuts. Obviously, it’s more complex than that; I’d say that to do it justice is beyond my analysis capabilities. But you can see why I reject your previous cite (that was only concerned with the top 1%), right?

You mean you can’t physically see it? There’s something about your computer that prevents you from seeing USA Today’s website?

I’ll summarize-- it’s a chart showing steady growth in charitable giving since 1968, with two periods of more dramatic increase: the 1990’s boom years, and 2003-2007. In that year, as the cite Sam already provided confirms, an all-time record was established. The two charts here tell the same basic story steady growth for decades, including and even especially in 2003-2007: http://www.philanthropyuk.org/quarterly/articles/what-gives-recession-historical-perspective

There’s more here: http://www.projectappleseed.org/givingusa2006.html

Yes, and…? Are you saying that during a recession loans to charities are typically forthcoming?

Yes, I have worked for charities that borrowed money, including one during the 2001 slowdown. I also know of charities that sock away money to prepare for future needs (e.g. downturns). Also, very often foundations ramp up their grant-giving when individual donations are down.

I’m not going to say it’s all a barrel of laughs; an economic downturn sucks for everyone. But it’s not like funding drops 50% or something. In fact, it usually still goes up, just at a lower rate.

http://iufoundation.iu.edu/pdf/3-24-09BloomingtonCommChat.pdf

[Digital_Stimulus]

@furt

You mean you can’t physically see it? There’s something about your computer that prevents you from seeing USA Today’s website?

Yes. It’s asking for a flash plugin – I do have one installed, but evidently not the right one – where I assume the graphic should be.

I’ll happily look at the other cites you provided and respond, but not tonight. Probably not tomorrow either (morning, anyway), as we’re (hopefully) closing on a house with all the attendant time commitments. But I look forward to reading through them, thanks.

[Digital_Stimulus]

Something woke me and I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I figured I’d spend the unexpectedly free time looking at your cites furt.

@furt

The two charts here tell the same basic story steady growth for decades, including and even especially in 2003-2007: http://www.philanthropyuk.org/quarterly/articles/what-gives-recession-historical-perspective

Oy, what an example of tweaking definitions so data fits the conclusion one wants. Specifically, their definition of “recession” flouts that commonly accepted in economics (one that I know well due to Sam Stone’s fairly constant assertions that the economy was doing just fine during the Bush years). IMO, their use of the term goes so far as to border on propaganda – I particularly like the way they put “Using one definition of a slowdown…” on the first graph.

It’s reminiscent of smoking studies I’ve read where “addiction” is defined as “thought about smoking sometime in the last month”. Yes, smoking is addictive; but that definition of addiction waters down the concept to the point of meaninglessness. So, since I know the foundational metric is suspect, I can’t trust any of the conclusions. And, not having the time, desire, nor knowledge to do it, I’m not about to attempt to put them in a proper frame.

There’s more here: http://www.projectappleseed.org/givingusa2006.html

Did you read your own cite? From there:
[ul]
[li]Compared with 2007, 54 percent of human services charities saw an increase in need for their services in 2008; 30 percent saw little change in need; and 16 percent saw a decline;[/li][li]For 2009, 60 percent of the surveyed human services organizations were cutting expenses, including cutting services or staff, due to funding shortages;[/li][li]The type of human service agency most likely to be underfunded was youth development/serving children and youth. Of this type of group in the study, 74 percent said they are underfunded or severely underfunded, meaning that current available funding was insufficient to meet current demand; and[/li][li]Among organizations working to meet people’s basic needs (food, shelter, clothing, etc.), more than half (53 percent) said they are underfunded or severely underfunded for 2009.[/li][/ul]
Not a ringing endorsement for support of charity in the “Human Services sector” during a recession. Perhaps there is support in there that I’ve missed – I didn’t read the entire thing and I don’t have time to do so right now. If there is, might you explicitly point it out?

Furthermore, since you echo Sam Stone’s “charitable giving breaks records” as evidence, I have to explicitly say: I don’t care how much total charitable giving there is, not when that amount includes giving to foundations, arts/culture, etc. In the context of this discussion, it’s so misleading as to be purposely disingenuous.

I have to get on with real-life tasks, so I gotta pack it in for the morning. I’d welcome presentation of better (or actual) evidence, though, that I’ll look at later.

[furt]

Y’know, I wish I could say I’m disappointed, but sadly, It’s pretty much what I expected.

You asked, w/r/t tax cuts and charitable giving:

As I put the question to Sam Stone, I’ll put it to you: do you have stats on charitable giving from the Bush years?

So I gave you an article entitled “The impact of changes in tax rates on charitable giving,” showing that over the last thirty years, drops in the tax rate were consistently followed by increases in charity giving.

You responded by saying that you needed to see data specifically on the Bush years.

So I gave you a cite specifically for the Bush years, and you said you couldn’t see it.

So I and Sam gave you three more cites indicating that charitable giving rose sharply during the 2000s. Your response?

Nothing – you change the subject to the definition of what a “recession” is (I do not know or care), and argue that the need for charity increases in a recession (which no one disputes), and proceed down a whole different line of discussion, and then imply that you’d want to see a whole different kind of cite.

Sorry, no. I have better things to do than play “cite hunt” so you can continue handwaving them away. I made a claim, and I substantiated it. If you’re not prepared to either concede the point or offer contrary evidence, we’re at an impasse.

[Digital_Stimulus]

@furt

You asked, w/r/t tax cuts and charitable giving:

As I put the question to Sam Stone, I’ll put it to you: do you have stats on charitable giving from the Bush years?

Not quite. A fuller quote gives the context for my question:

@Digital_Stimulus

@furt

It’s absurd to imagine that if the politicians suddenly all decided to stop aiding the poor and instead returned the money to the taxpayers, that they would shrug with indifference at starving children in the streets.

Clearly, some (or many; again, the qualifier is unimportant to me) people would shrug with indifference. And I do not think there would be nearly enough people who do not to provide adequate support. It seems that you’re more idealistic than I…which is very much the point others have been trying to get across in making the communism/libertarian ideology comparison.

The question, then is whether J=Z. And I’m pretty confident it would be.

Again, I am not confident of that at all. I’ve done a similar mathematical exercise – although it’s years ago now – and reached the opposite conclusion. As I put the question to Sam Stone, I’ll put it to you: do you have stats on charitable giving from the Bush years?

Re-reading, I believe it’s pretty clear that my question about charitable giving during the Bush years was aimed at, in your very own words, “aiding the poor”. Yes, I suppose you did answer my exact question – as it would’ve been posed in a vacuum. But since a discussion follows a progression – that is, has a context – I think you simply overlooked my point. I suppose I’m at fault for not using more and longer run-on sentences.

Hardly “handwaving”, but OK.

[Le_Jacquelope]

@Sam_Stone

Gah. After all these years, some of the long-term posters here don’t even seem to understand the first principle of libertarianism, let alone understand enough about it to be able to identify it.

Let’s get this straight: The primary purpose of government in a libertarian society is to protect the citizens from others using force against them. That automatically rules out Somalia or any other anarchistic ‘failed state’. BY DEFINITION.

What we’re trying to explain to you is that a libertarian state is inherently unstable. It eventually becomes a failed state. You’ll have throngs of poor people without the benefit of a social safety net. They’ll either starve to death quietly or go out fighting. The latter means anarchy and a failed state. The former, ain’t gonna happen for long.

Hong Kong is often mentioned as a libertarian example because the British governor of post-WWII Hong Kong took a very deliberate ‘laissez-faire’ approach to governing.

So many errors, where to start.

Prior to China’s takeover (and probably still), the land in Hong Kong was owned by the Government. Businesses paid 50 year leases on the property. On the contrary in socialist America I own my house and I don’t pay a lease on the property. There was (is?) no absolute right to property ownership there. They controlled the amount of land that is for sale in a Government-enforced state of scarcity, artificially keeping land values high and property taxes high, thus allowing them to have lower taxes in other areas. Plus, Hong Kong also did not have to pay for its own defense.

[5-HT]

@Acsenray

There are a lot of things I like about India, but the corrupt and ineffective government is one thing that creates a lot of suffering. The rich run roughshod over the poor and there’s often little the government can do to enforce the law.

On the bright side, the rampant cholera and dysentery should clear up that pesky orphan problem.