Why behave as if we are unable to make distinctions?
Let’s review the meaning of the word govern.
Sure, Stalin governed just as equally as Jefferson. Distinctions much?
How would you fund government? Are you of the opinion that no government is required? How would your ideal society deal with the problem of public goods and/or externalities?
Well, there’s the Gulag Archipelago, and then there is progressive income tax. Distinguishable? You decide.
Post 45 reported
I’m really enjoying these discussions and apologize for the hijack but this just isn’t true. According to the Gallup page his average approval rating to this point is 48%.
I’m not sure you answered the question of externalities (air pollution for e.g), though it is unclear if that’s what was being asked. Markets can’t solve such problems by their very nature. I think that’s one of the(perhaps the) legitimate functions of government, but something like a carbon tax could fall afoul of your incentivisation paradigm. Thoughts?
While you seem to intend this as some sort of throwaway line, I think it cuts close to the heart of libertarian belief, if phrased differently. IANAL, inasmuch as I don’t think of liberty as an end in itself, but I sympathise with much of their thinking, especially the desire for small government. It stems from a very proper place I think, in that government is ultimately an exercise of power, while the market is ultimately a collection of voluntary transactions. It makes all kind of sense to want exercise of power, even if it has the sanction of the majority, to be as limited as possible, and wanting voluntary transactions to be as large as possible, because you are assured that every voluntary transaction that takes place is a pareto welfare enhancement, while every exercise of power is not. It doesn’t require any beliefs about moral superiority or inevitable corruption (even though the corruption that comes with power is a legitimate concern)
While I’m not a libertarian, per se, I definitely favor some of the libertarian stances. One of them that I like is the ideal of not forcing ideology via the government. In this case, the CO2 issue is front-page, but it overlooks other vectors of environmental contamination to focus on carbon as the pinnacle environmental concern.
Instead of going “Hey, carbon = bad, mmmkay?” it would be better to simply require that all pollution from all energy sources is mitigated by the producing plant/entity so that the market forces can decide what’s the cheapest form of mitigation for their energy source and pass that on as a direct cost to consumers of the energy.
If you have, for instance, a coal plant and you need to compete with other coal plants, you need to reduce your costs to sell to the energy grid(s). This means that if either planting trees or installing chemical scrubbers on the smoke stacks is more cost effective then that will be done.
But on the flip side, another energy source competing with coal might release no CO2 but still have hazards that need to be cleaned up. Let’s say that a magical energy source provides a lot of energy but puts out mercury as it’s byproduct. Is cleaning up the mercury is far more expensive than cleaning up the CO2? Should that energy source be cheaper to produce simply because we haven’t passed a regulation that deals with that energy source, yet?
In my view, the market can work if we don’t allow these energy sources to front-load the costs for construction and environmental assessment or, during operation, off-load the costs of their operations, as we do now.
Sorry for the double post, don’t know how that happened.
Anyway, if we’re going to set up rules such that taxes can’t be used to affect behavior, it it could be interpreted as an attack on government to strip it of its power. Considering Libertarian’s animus toward government, it fits.
Going with my thesis from the previous thread that this is an aristocrat’s philosophy, an attack on government authority (along with a concerted effort to destroy things like unions) is a way for aristocrats to consolidate their power by undermining everybody else. Without government, unions and so on, what voice do regular people have?
I know, tax everyone at the same rate (flat tax) because- principle! But can’t we open our eyes and just look at what effect that will have? Namely, one that the public won’t approve of. If you’re an aristocrat, the answer to that is easy- don’t listen to the public! Destroy government authority via We the People and replace it with We the Aristocrats. Which is pretty much what has happened anyway, see here, but we don’t have to drape it with some phony philosophy to pretend it is the way a democracy is supposed to work.
That’s not what I took septimus to mean, though I welcome any correction or clarification on that point.
Certainly, the government can and should address externalities. Imposing costs on others without their consent, such as polluting the commons (air, for instance), is a violation of the non-aggression principle.
I don’t accept that interpretation. You’ll have to do much more in the way of proving it than simply asserting that it “could” be interpreted thusly. Unless it must be interpreted so, then it’s really just your opinion. (And, to be clear, I don’t even accept that it “could” be interpreted that way.)
A few of us have already acknowledge that, if there is an income tax, there is nothing in Libertarian philosophy that would disallow a progressive tax structure.
**First Debate Point: Is this something that virtually all American Libertarians would agree on? ** Don’t know, don’t care. Libertarians are like that special uncle that nobody talks about. Yeah, we know they’e out there, but they’re never going to be the head of the household.
Second Debate Point: Is this a good or bad thing?
A bad thing, obviously. Point by point:
Only the truly deranged would advocate no taxes at all. Even in the early days of the republic, tariffs were indirectly paid by everybody and were needed to sustain the government, as small as it was.
Should be high enough to fund the government.
This would be a disaster. Suppose for a moment that we did a calculation and determined that if all income was taxed at say 15% with no deductions, then the government would be fully funded. The trouble with that is that it’s a whole lot easier for the guy with a $250,000 income to spare his share of $37,500 than it is for the guy with the $25,000 income to spare his share of $3750. As put by Adam Smith “The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich . . . . It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”
“It must always be remembered, however, that it is the luxuries, and not the necessary expense of the inferior ranks of people, that ought ever to be taxed.”
Why not? As a society, we have determined that certain behaviors should be encouraged. Most people believe that home ownership is a good thing, it instills stability in communities and encourages people to keep up their homes. For this reason, we encourage home ownership by allowing people to deduct their property taxes and mortgage interest. Why should this be objectionable? We want to encourage people to reduce their carbon footprint, so we allow them tax credits for improvements related to energy efficiency. These credits benefit all, from reducing the need for power production and reducing carbon emissions.
Of course, everyone points to Big Bird, as Mittens did in 2012. But there’s more to it than that. What were the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and Mount Rushmore if not publicly funded arts projects? Would we really not want to have them? Do we want to live in cities without art galleries or orchestras? Cultural spending is one thing that societies have always deemed worthy of public funding. Sure, some arts would flourish without public funding. But we as a society have determined that we would not be willing to live with that level of culture so we as a society have devoted public resources to it. If that offends your libertarian sensibilities, go ahead and be offended. Doesn’t mean we need to listen to you.
No, we need public science research. Not every science endeavor has commercial potential, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t research them. One of the biggest public science projects in world history, the Apollo Program,yielded enourmous public benefit with some of the spinoffs that many of us use every day. Health research is another area that needs public research. Sure, the drug companies try to develop cures for diseases that could profit them handsomely. But not only do we need public researchers to verify their work, we need research in areas that may not have a commercial potential.
We have a vested interest in weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels. Since the private industry’s response to climate change science is to deny the science, it is clear that we need to develop alternative energy and that government needs to be the lead horse. If I have a choice between toeing a libertarian ideal or in developing solar energy and saving the planet, it isn’t hard for me to choose the latter.
Living in the real world, we have to realize that there are people in other nations in truly dire straits. Many will die without direct assistance from more propserous lands. We also have to recognize that not every nation is ruled by the benevolent. Some have evil intentions. FDR recognized the threat posed by Hitler, and began to help the UK long before Germany declared war on the US. Without this American involvement in the early stages, the Nazis might well control Western Europe to this day.
**Third Debate Point: Are there institutions in the private sector that could/should replace the strong arm of the government in taking care of some of the functions it currently performs? **
There may be a few areas, but I doubt any significant ones. I’m perfectly happy with the USDA inspecting my food and the FDA regulating my drugs.
A common misunderstanding. There were poor houses at the time of Dickens, people still starved to death. Churches helped some people in hard times in the past but could not help all, people still starved. Maybe somehow private charities will magically take care of all the poor. But I’m not willing to bet the lives of others on it.
Perhaps theoretically possible but any potential savings are trivial. If this is the best you’ve got, you haven’t got very much.
So we could put our heads in the sand and pretend that nobody would starve without public assistance, that private enterprise will take care of the needy and fund the arts, that other nations will prosper and not need our assistance, that evil governments will not seek world domination, that we can get along without our food and drugs being regulated, and so on. Or we can live in the real world and run our governments like they matter, because they do.
If it is untrue, you have not proved it. His average approval rating does not say that he has not had an approx 40% approval rating for the majority of his term.
Mathematically, he could have had a 65% approval rating for 1/3 of his term and 40% for 2/3. That would give him approximately 48% average approval rating that mirrors your not quite relevant statistic, but my claim would still be 100% true.
He has not had anything close to a 65% approvalf or 1/3rd of his time in office, nor has he had a 40% approval for more than half of his time in office.
Do you have any evidence that Obama’s approval has been “hovering under 40%” for over half his time in office?
I certainly see what you’re trying to get at, but the only reason I bring up carbon tax and why it’s “front page” is that carbon emission has not historically been regarded as an externality/pollution.
Also I don’t understand your last paragraph. If you’re saying that we need to figure out a way to price in externalities, certainly. But that needs to be driven by government, and as such is not the ‘market’ working.
OK, but that’s not quite what you said, you said he spent the majority of his term hovering below 40%.
If you actually look at the link you would see that isn’t really the case. By weekly averages the approval rating is mostly in the mid to upper 40’s.
Here is the breakdown (Approval Rating for the week/Number of weeks there)
40/10
41/11
42/12
43/19
44/15
45/28
46/32
47/19
48/24
49/18
50/22
51/11
52/12
53/8
54/4
56/2
57/1
58/1
59/2
60/2
61/3
62/6
63/2
64/4
65/3
66/2
67/1
The problem is the way the legislation is written. We tend to write legislation that looks at a single problem in a single area with a single criteria and use a single solution. So, we target, in your example, carbon pollution. “If you emit X tons of CO2, you pay X*$1 in taxes/fees.” These taxes and fees benefit the government and directly exclude the market from attempting to find the most efficient way to handle this.
With this, no matter what, you are paying $1/ton of “CO2 cleanup”. If you discover a way to process CO2 more effectively, you get to spend a lot of time trying to pony up enough money to lobby Congress to switch methods from the current technology’s heavily funded lobbies.
Instead, we can write the same legislation in a different form: “Section 1: All substances deemed pollutants are cleaned up by the manufacturer of the good or service. This must be fully documented. Refer to Section 2 for pollutants. Refer to section 3 for punishments. Section 2: * Carbon Dioxide * Mercury *Bronies. Section 3: In all cases of violating this law, the person or corporation will receive death by fire in whole.” (I know, simplistic, but I’m only illustrating here.)
Now if we assume that the current way to process CO2 is 1/ton and your coal plant figures out a way that allows them to process it for .50/ton, you have an incredible advantage for selling your energy. You either undercut your competitors or build up a huge cash advantage. It also allows small businesses to feed this process. If you as a one-person business discover a way to process this CO2 for .50/ton, you can sell your services to those power production facilities for .75/ton and still save them money.
You can see this in the current efforts to remove the corn subsidies from the ethanol requirements in gasoline. Several other potentially better methods of producing ethanol for gasoline have come forward, but we aren’t yet stopping the corn subsidies because the states that are big corn producers love the extra money they get. The government distorts this market meaning that potential advancements are left aside because they are never going to be cost-competitive with a subsidized method of making ethanol.
Now there are two caveats to this: The market is far from perfect and corporations can certainly monopolize or distort the markets in their interests. And this is also a possibility that adding new pollutants to the list being difficult due to special interest lobbies. But both of these issues would have to be tackled separately to the issue of market driven regulations. (Anti-monopoly and anti-lobby movements, respectively)
Surely you realise that your example and a carbon tax would give a company that figured out a better way to process CO2 exactly the same advantage? And the problems that you mention about adding things to a list of pollutants are exactly the same problems that are involved in declaring carbon pollution as pollution?
Your point is applicable to a different class of items - if a particular solution was being pushed, as for example, when you say ethanol. Or if wind farms were being subsidised. Declaring carbon as pollution and instituting a carbon tax does not fall into that category.
As I noted, the “tax/fee” method doesn’t allow for that sort of mobility across potential cleanup vectors as easily as the market does because the government has invested in a method and has no impetus to change it. Even if it manages to squeeze actual costs from $1 to 0.75c per ton, what impetus do they have to reducing the taxes collected? None. They aren’t in competition. There are a lot of taxes at all levels of governments in the US that were started for one reason but never eliminated after that reason expired. (You are still paying the ‘luxury tax’ on telephones. 
)
Yes, but, as I said, that’s a different problem in need of a different solution. I hope we can both agree that the government we have today is hardly ideal and that there are multiple things to be addressed, some of which are outside the scope of general regulations directed at business.
Except that it does. It creates a tax that doesn’t allow for the costs to go down as new and better solutions are adopted, as I stated above.
My point is that society can add in the cost of things that should be considered as a part of the production costs (in this case, pollution) without directing that the cost increase should go to government. By doing so, we can allow the market to make things more efficient over time with little attention to how it’s done as a society, only assessing that it’s actually being done. This costs less to monitor as a government entity and it lends itself to being more a more efficient, assuming other factors can be controlled for.
Look at it this way: When you buy an apple from the grocery store, the cost of production, the cost of transportation, the costs of worker and CEO pays of the grocery story, the cost of those little sticky labels on the apple, the cost of throwing away the unsold product, the cost of throwing away general trash of the grocery store is all factored into the cost of providing the apple to you.
Now assume that we as a society agree that we should irradiate the apple to eliminate MRSA contamination: why should we charge a specific 8% tax on the apples sold to fund the government setting up an irradiation center for apples instead of simply mandating that they are irradiated appropriately and monitoring compliance and penalizing those that do not comply?