Investment and employment into the future.

KyussBishop

Valmont wrote: »

Take a deep breath and read my very short post again very carefully. To paraphrase, I said the problem of unemployment would be alleviated by the abolishment of the minimum wage, not solved. But don't let reading get in the way of your continuing love affair with the ever-present straw man. Just a thought though, to the extent that everyone who disagrees with you is guilty of erecting straw men, maybe the fact is that your long garbled posts of righteous indignation just don't make sense to anyone?

You were replying to counter me saying: "The private sector does not want these unemployed workers"

Here you say:
"The private sector does not want many of them at the price set by the government. Abolishing the minimum wage would solve the unemployment problem for many people within a week"

So you take a minor claim (solves for 'many'), and present it as if it provides a substantive reply to my argument, when it does not, it's just trying to push the discussion into anti-government "public vs private" nonsense once again.

If your point does nothing to counter mine, then why even bring it up in the first place, other than to derail.


At least we can agree now, that the private sector does not want these unemployed workers.
So, rather than force them to sit around doing nothing (a complete and permanent waste of labour potential), it's better to give them jobs (while the private sector fails to), so they can do something productive.
The solution I propose eliminates almost all involuntary unemployment, and provides a massive economic stabilizer that brings economic crisis to an end, without anyone being thrown into the gutter.


Also, if people are bad at reading comprehension, or find economic topics difficult to track, that is not an issue with my posts, and that's not a justification for completely making stuff up that was not said, after having been told dozens of times over the last year that it is wrong - that's a fair bit different, from mistaking your post as an actual substantive reply to mine, when it actually did nothing to counter my point at all.

I mean the logical response to thinking "Hmm, I don't understand that" isn't "Oh he's talking about Communism, and a command economy - he must be a Marxist too; yes I understand now. When he said he didn't support any of those things (dozens of times now), it must have just been a mistake, so labeling him any of these isn't a straw-man after all".

Valmont wrote: »

I completely acknowledge the fraud and corruption exhibited by Anglo Irish Bank. Unlike you however, I am not blind to the fact that there were two parties to the theft: Anglo and the state, who are more culpable in my opinion, them being the ones who actually handed over taxpayer's money.

If somebody robs your shop with the help of someone on the inside, legs it, leaving the complicit staff member behind: do you pat them on the head and say don't worry about it, we still want you working here? And you say I'm the blind one?

You presented the directors in Anglo as just "asking and receiving", massively playing down the corrupt nature of their actions, after fraudulently baiting government into the bailout - now you're trying to switch-up your analogies.

Your reply to every instance of pointing out private fraud is "but government" (i.e. just whataboutery), and it amounts to exclusive downplaying of private fraud (something which is left to run rampant in the political/economic system you support), and trying to make every instance of private wrongdoing, focus solely on blaming government.

You also know perfectly well, that I don't absolve government of blame over anything; you dishonestly try to present my arguments that way to try and put me on the defensive, to control the debate.

Your constant lurch to turn every instance of pointing out private fraud and corruption (while never pointing out any solution to it - because facing up to the argument that you have no workable solution that prevents fraud, is one you try to avoid at all cost), into a discussion about the faults of government, amounts to nothing less than a playing down of and defense of private fraud - which is what your entire ideology is about.

You have no answer to the problem of fraud, that is anywhere near adequate enough to prevent it, the only solution you have is a semi-religious belief that people well magically behave, in an impossible-to-achieve 'free market' (where you just won't get the perfect information sharing required, to achieve self-regulation against fraud).

KyussBishop

Valmont wrote: »

Attempting such a feat could only end in tyranny. The great challenge, as I see it, is to have plan, controls, and restraints by the many, and not by the few. This involves letting each individual have supreme control and freedom over their own economic lives and not handing it to the totalitarians who wish to micromanage everything for the good of
'society'.

This is naive nonsense, made of baseless assertions - you don't understand anything about how economic power commands political power, and that economic anarchy leads right back to the tyranny of the few (except completely divorced from any concept of democracy); a tyranny your blindness to preventing private fraud ensures.

Nevermind the problems of peak oil and global warming - two massive future problems that your ideology charges straight into, without any solution to whatsoever, other than a blind trust that 'free markets' will somehow figure it out.

Another two good examples of issues that need preventative action, which you have no adequate solution for.

Valmont

I can imagine a debate similar to this occurring in the higher echelons of the Soviet Union:

Soviet Debate wrote:

Strawmankov: “I think we should stop trying to centrally direct food production and distribution and just leave it to the people to sort out”

KyussBishopkov: “What naïve nonsense! You can’t just blindly trust that ‘free markets’ will somehow figure it out!”

But it is always figured out, people working together freely will come up with the most ingenious solutions to any problem or need expressed by other individuals. The production and sale of food in this country is relatively ‘anarchic’ by your own totalitarian standards yet nobody is hungry and food is plentiful.

The free market isn’t a central intellignce or unit, it isn’t even something that can be grasped in its entirety because it is merely the term given to the voluntary interactions between billions of people. You say 'we' need a plan; I say let each individual make his own plan and work with those whom he chooses to work with. Until we dispense with the idea that we need a society based primarily on coercion and power, we will be condemned to suffer the stupid mistakes of politicians and technocrats meddling in affairs they couldn't begin to understand.

KyussBishop

Question: Why do you keep running to soviet/communist/command-economy comparisons, when the inconsistencies (and the fact I've specifically rejected those ideas) have been pointed out so often to you, that people know you are aware the comparison is wrong?

Do you not think that, maybe...that might make people think, you are not interested in honest debate, just maligning others views with only a pretense of argument?


As for the free market figuring it out: You don't have a free market, and you can't show a practical model of the system you need to get one (one completely without government), because you can't show how such a system would not immediately implode on itself.

You can't even explain how the concept of private property could legitimately exist without government, and not be subject to competing private legal systems (and then competing militia...).

If you tried to explain, from the ground up, a complete political/economic system encapsulating your views, you would fail because of massive inconsistencies and practical problems - yet this imaginary unachievable perfect world, is what you are using as comparison, to bash any opposing economic views with. That's no better than the neoclassical economists, insisting theory trumps reality.

Valmont

KyussBishop wrote: »

Question: Why do you keep running to soviet/communist/command-economy comparisons, when the inconsistencies (and the fact I've specifically rejected those ideas) have been pointed out so often to you, that people know you are aware the comparison is wrong?

I was merely pointing out that the logical extension of your argument of 'you can't just leave it to the free market' is also an argument for complete state control of everything.

KyussBishop wrote:

You can't even explain how the concept of private property could legitimately exist without government...

Why then does the state continually flout the property rights of its citizens? Our recent property tax surely casts doubt upon your claim that we rely on the state for private property, given that the state would not exist if actually respected private property and stopped stealing. Just like George Bush said before bailing out the banks in 2008, we need to break the rules of the free market in order to save it. This is nothing but inconsistent hogwash.

KyussBishop

Valmont wrote: »

I was merely pointing out that the logical extension of your argument of 'you can't just leave it to the free market' is also an argument for complete state control of everything.

That's a really silly thing to say to be honest, particularly seeing as free markets are literally impossible (and that's even skipping over the fact there, that the argument itself is inherently fallacious too).

Valmont wrote: »

Why then does the state continually flout the property rights of its citizens? Our recent property tax surely casts doubt upon your claim that we rely on the state for private property, given that the state would not exist if actually respected private property and stopped stealing. Just like George Bush said before bailing out the banks in 2008, we need to break the rules of the free market in order to save it. This is nothing but inconsistent hogwash.

So you have only whataboutery, no way to explain how the concept of private property could exist without government.

Try to explain, from the ground up, how private property could exist in a non-coercive way, without government? You can't.

Where is your logical consistency, if you want to completely get rid of government? It mutually contradicts what your political views aim to achieve, because you have no answers to the problems it throws up.

Valmont

KyussBishop wrote: »

Try to explain, from the ground up, how private property could exist in a non-coercive way, without government? You can't.

How can private property be exclusively reliant on the state when it is private property that the state must expropriate in order to exist in the first place?! In your scenario the state must have preceded private property -- could you support that assertion?

But I think you need to clarify what you mean by 'exist' before I respond in detail.

KyussBishop

Valmont wrote: »

How can private property be exclusively reliant on the state when it is private property that the state must expropriate in order to exist in the first place?! In your scenario the state must have preceded private property -- could you support that assertion?

But I think you need to clarify what you mean by 'exist' before I respond in detail.

Private property doesn't somehow innately exist. It is granted by laws.

Unless you want competing private legal systems (and competing militia backing them....), you need government to grant legal status/protections for private property in the first place (hell, you need government/laws to define it to begin with).

Valmont

KyussBishop wrote: »

Private property doesn't somehow innately exist. It is granted by laws.

Try telling that to a two year old.

KyussBishop

Go on then, how are you going to decide who gets to own land, a lake, even the air, or any other physical materials, in any kind of a legally binding way? (and how are you going to deal with 'externalities', such as polluting a river - affecting everyone downstream, or polluting the air, or making land unusable through pollution?)

Will it just be a matter of "I want that! That's mine!", takers keepers, and "my land/lake/river! I can do what I want!" followed by "nyah nyah nyah nyah nyaaah!" to the rest of society? (Libertarianism, imagined from the perspective of a two year old, certainly makes for a much more honest representation of its goals)

Iwasfrozen

KyussBishop wrote: »

Go on then, how are you going to decide who gets to own land, a lake, even the air, or any other physical materials, in any kind of a legally binding way? (and how are you going to deal with 'externalities', such as polluting a river - affecting everyone downstream, or polluting the air, or making land unusable through pollution?)

Will it just be a matter of "I want that! That's mine!", takers keepers, and "my land/lake/river! I can do what I want!" followed by "nyah nyah nyah nyah nyaaah!" to the rest of society? (Libertarianism, imagined from the perspective of a two year old, certainly makes for a much more honest representation of its goals)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

KyussBishop

KyussBishop wrote: »

Private property doesn't somehow innately exist. It is granted by laws.

I remember reading an article in the economist many years ago about property rights/laws or rather the lack of them in the developing world.

The anecdote given was that even without title to land it was clear who owned what - when you moved from one farm to another a different dog barked.

srsly78

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Yup and that's why we need to have various restrictions and rules.