How to Defeat a Liberal in a Debate

That's easy. They fail to understand that perspectives matter. Do you understand that perspectives matter?

 

Socially, yes. Economically, no.

 

Yet you're probably a rightie..correct?

 

We have to specify the time then, "before 1980" includes the most conservatives times of US history, early nineteens and other periods.

 

You seem to believe that your perspective matters. Can you please help me understand why you believe that your perspective should matter in the private sector but not in the public sector?

 

If you're asking if people should be deeply involved in government, yes. If you're asking that the unregulated free market is the best answer for the country's problem, no.

 

Should taxpayers be allowed to directly allocate their taxes? If you don't believe that they should have the freedom to choose which government organizations they give their taxes to...can you please tell me exactly which congressperson you would trust with your own taxes.

 

It also includes the most economically "liberal" times of US history--the 1930s to the 1980s.

 

I'm not talking about perspectives, you're the one who keeps injecting that into this discussion. The only person here who seems to think his "perspective" is relevant is you.

 

Self-allocation would solve many problems, but it would also create others. There's a reason government exists in the first place: Because the free market does not do a good job allocating resources on its own. Free market is ill equipt to handle the consiquences of externalities and the valuation & allocation of community goods.

Why would I send my money to fund National Defense when I can benefit from someone else paying for it? Although in my "perspective", I may value National Defense, this may not be reflected in my allocation of money. I'll just send my money to a program that benefits me. - Free market & self allocation may be ill-equipt to handle community goods.

Entity A (let's say a power company) and entity B (let's say a city of people) make a deal - Power company generates power in exchagne for money from the people of the city. Entity C (let's say a small community down-wind from the power plant) now has to deal polution created by the power company. Should entity C have to shoulder the external costs created by the transaction between A and B? Why would entity A and B contribute to government programs and legislation that hurts them? A and B might not even be aware of the problems they cause. How do we account for entity C's "perspective" fairly and allocate the costs of externalities?

As a theory, Capitalism requires "perfect competition", among other things. Monopolies, for example, are anti-capitalistic and create a poor allocation of resources. But they are highly profitable. Can a self-allocation of money properly support programs that combat or regulate anti-capitalistic market advantages? Maybe. Maybe not. And again, who should carry the cost of this regulation?


And of course this is not to say that our government doesn't do a poor job allocating in their own right, nor that they can't be corrupt to the point of enhancing some of the above problems as opposed to fighting them. It's a complicated problem that requires a solution probably far more involved than simply self-allocating tax money. That's just exchanging one problem for another.

 

That is a very common misconception, a legal monopoly is a problem, a contestable monopoly does not bring anything harm, as anyone who thinks he can do better can join the game, breaking it the moment it gets inefficient.

 

A contestable monopoly is a very specific phenomenon. Over-egging it wouldn't be a cunning idea!

 

Can you explain to me how congress ended up with job of allocating our taxes?

If we implemented pragmatarianism...then nobody would allocate their taxes to national defense? Therefore, if all the other countries implemented pragmatarianism then that would end all wars? What's funny is that I made this same argument as well...but in support of pragmatarianism...The Opportunity Costs of War.

As I mentioned in this post...Priorities in Peril...I'm a huge fan of the environment. Therefore, in a pragmatarian system, I would allocate a substantial portion of my taxes to the Environmental Protection Agency. But even though I'm a huge fan of the environment...I'm an even bigger fan of the efficient allocation of limited resources. Therefore, I completely understand that the EPA should receive no more and no less taxes than tree huggers like myself are willing to give to it. In other words...resources are efficiently allocated when people are given the freedom to put their own money where their hearts/mouths/votes are.

Taxpayers...aka consumers...would carry the costs of breaking up monopolies. Who else should carry the costs besides the beneficiaries of increased competition?

Which has more value...the combined perspectives of 538 congresspeople...or the combined perspectives of 150 million of our most productive citizens?

If you get a chance...check out this page...Unglamorous but Important Things. You'll see that I added your response to the list.

 

Through a gradual expansion of power, resembling the similar pattern of taxes allocation that any other government on earth that I've ever heard of has done.

If everyone on earth adapted the model, perhaps. But that's like saying "if everyone one earth was nice and honest, we'd need no police". It's a nice thought, but unrealistic. In reality, you need a national defense.

National Defense was just an example of a common good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#The_free_rider_problem

You have established (or rather I take it as self-evident) that there is a balance in how much money and power should be allocated to the EPA, but you have not established that a self-allocation system would achieve this balance.

The cost of maintaining this balance also rests on those who would be harmed most by it, and thus would be inclined to allocate money to the EPA. This is often a third party not involved in the transactions that caused harm in the first place. If entity A and entity B want to execute some transaction that will harm entity C in the process, the cost should be on entity A and B to account for that harm, not entity C.

Out of necessity, most likely. But the expense of dealing with harm inflicted on others should usually be paid (when possible) by the party that inflicted the harm, not the other way around.

Depending on the scenario, it's not always possible to make the harm-causers pay. Sometimes money is needed before-hand to allow proactive regulation, which would have to be obtained either from the general tax-payer, or from the business/entities that are most likely to cause the harm. Usually it will be with some combination of both.

The system of government and people at large are both part of the solution, and problem. Exchanging one set of solutions & problems for another set of solutions & problems... Maybe you see your solution is less damaging, but I'm not convinced either way.

That all said, I'm not a big fan of our government system and congress. Given the choice between self-allocation and allocation by our current system, self-allocation certainly has its virtues. But this doesn't preclude a different system that would be more virtuous than both.

 

Nearly 1000 years ago some barons were upset with out the king was spending their taxes so they took the power of the purse from him. That's it. That's the only reason that we have parliaments/congress spending our taxes.

Why did the king have the power in the first place? Because people believed that he had a "divine authority". If you believe that congress has any sort of divinity then, in a pragmatarian system, you'd be welcome to give them your taxes. Personally, I don't think the average taxpayer really needs to spend more than 30 minutes watching C-Span to realize that there is absolutely nothing superior or divine about congress.

That does not follow. If we implemented a pragmatarian system then it would have absolutely nothing to do with whether people are nice or mean. If we gave people the freedom to allocate their taxes it would be because enough people came to realize that it's a complete and utter myth to believe that 538 congresspeople can efficiently distribute funds.

If allocating resources by proxy had even the vaguest hint of economic reality then more people would hire personal shoppers. What we do see are spouses shopping for each other...what we don't see are random strangers shopping for 1000s of other random strangers. I know you better than congress does but you'd LOL until the cows came home if I told you to trust me with 1/4 of your income.

Pragmatarianism is libertarianism that acknowledges the free-rider problem...Libertarianism and the Free-rider Problem.

The balance can ONLY be determined by the choices that consumers make. This is the basic supply and demand concept. Demand determines the balance...really really not the other way around. You can't go out there and count how many cars/factories are admitting smog and then base the EPA's funding on how much money it would cost to solve the problem. What the EPA CAN do is tell us how much it would cost to solve these problems and then give taxpayers the freedom to decide if it's "worth" it to give the EPA their taxes or not. If the EPA doesn't get its desired funding then guess what? It would have to make do. The EPA, like taxpayers, would be forced to prioritize how it spends its limited resources. That's how resources are efficiently allocated.

Taxpayers want the most bang for their buck. Everybody wants the most bang for their buck. Liberals will try just as hard as conservatives to get the biggest tax refund they can. In a pragmatarian system taxpayers would give their taxes to the government organizations that provided them with the most bang for their buck.

Would any taxpayers get any bang for their buck by going after harm-causers? Of course they would. And if people didn't give any of their taxes to combat a harm-causer...then that's the only objective measurement of exactly how much harm was truly being caused.

For example, just because one person out of a million suffers food poisoning doesn't justify a gazillion dollars being spent on food regulations. So how much money should be spent on food regulation? That should only be determined by concerned taxpayers who are given the freedom to put their own taxes where their hearts/mouths/votes are.

The part that you're not grasping is that values are only revealed by how people spend their time/money. It doesn't mean a thing that people would vote for space exploration. What does mean something is if taxpayers actually spent their own, hard-earned taxes on space exploration. The amount of money that NASA received would reveal exactly how much society values space exploration. It's a misallocation of resources if NASA receives more or less funding than society values space exploration.

Pragmatarianism isn't an end solution...it's merely a system that facilitates solutions. It empowers 150 million of our most productive, innovative citizens...aka taxpayers...to use their own taxes to highlight the best government solutions to society's problems...while simultaneously defunding the gazillions of ineffective/counterproductive government solutions to society's problems.

All ideas should be subjected to market forces. We end up with considerable waste if we believe that somehow government ideas should be exempt from this fundamental process of allowing consumers...aka taxpayers...to use their own money to nurture the most effective ideas and weed out the most harmful ideas.

 

It follows just fine. You claimed there would be no wars (or fewer wars at least) if everyone in the world had to justify war based on opportunity cost. But the problem is that's not going to happen - even in the USA moved to a self-allocation system, it does not follow that the rest of the world would do so as well. You can't use an un-realistic scenario to justify your own position.

You don't have people being hired to shop for you because, as you say, "your perspective" is what matters with private transactions. Transactions that effect the community and can suffer from the free-rider problem involve other perspectives.

You simply assume that self-allocation would properly allocate resources for public concerns appropriately. You justify this by saying the self-allocation of all americans would be better, but you do this without justification... you simply assume it as true, betting the question.



Consider this problem: A few years ago, I was part of an organization gathering supplies for a natural disaster relief effort. We asked the community to drop off donations - specifically, we asked them to NOT BRING FOOD because we already had more than enough food donations from food manufacturers. Of course, not everyone red the memo, and guess what we got? Lots of food. People's instincts for what to bring naturally went to the basics... food. It's the first thing many of us would think about needing in the event of a disaster.

In other words, people can be short-sighted. People could not properly allocate what was needed for a disaster relief effort, and you want to assume people can properly allocate funding for government agencies? In a sense, isn't that the same thing? Aren't you just sending money to government agencies that will divide it up as they see fit? You give your money to the EPA because you want them to take care of a problem in california, and instead they use it to take care of a problem in Texas? What did you accomplish, besides possibly giving the money to the wrong agency in the first place?

Also consider the budget issues... How do government agencies deal with the fact that one year, they might be getting 10,000,000,000 allocated to them, and the next year they get 10% of that, and the next 1000%, and the next 5%, and the next 20%? How can a government system function with that sort of swing in available finances? People are often driven by their passions, and you can expect such swings to happen based on sensational news events, disasters, or heck, even a good movie that inspires you to allocate to one cause or other.

The three compromises you put forward don't seem to address the problem.

Yes, the money would be collected one way or the other and given to some agency or other, but that does not address the nature of the free-rider problem.... the idea that the "free-rider" can't be excluded from the benefit of something, so he may not be inclined to donate to that cause, even though he may value it. He may choose to allocate to the Department of Education because his kids are in school, but that does not mean he doesn't value the work of the Department of Defense and the EPA... but because he can't be excluded from the benefits of the DoD and EPA, his allocation may not reflect this value.

There may be virtues to allowing self-allocation, but eliminating the free-loader problem isn't among them.

Well if you automatically assume that, then you're simply begging the question. If the basics of supply and demand were all that mattered, there would be no need for government agencies in the first place.

If you understand the basics of supply and demand theory, you know that it's meant to describe the nature of transactions between self-interested parties. Two (or more) people make a trade, each to benefit themselves. Based on the amount of flexibility in pricing that suppliers and buyers are willing to sell for/pay, you come up with a price. This scenario rests on several principles: That the parties are self-interested, than the transaction does not create externalities, and that the parties are well informed of the nature of the transaction.

How does this work in self-allocation of taxes?

With government agencies, you can benefit from the free-rider problem, taking away the "self-interested" principle that guides supply and demand.

Government agencies are often created to create positive externalities (the Department of Education), or to oppose negative externalities (EPA). Self-allocation might be able to appropriately value positive externalities, but people are financially inclined to oppose agencies like the EPA - there's no reason to believe appropriate money will be given to the EPA to oppose negative externalities.

I also question the ability of each individual to be informed of the complex nature and purpose for each agency and their various programs. It would be great if they were, but it's impossible for each individual to be properly informed on every issue, every agency and every program that does or could exist. Be it a group of congressmen or a different group, we would still have to rely heavily on other parties ("experts") who have the in-depth knowledge to understand the various issues facing our communities.



continued...

 

This doesn't represent efficient allocation at all. "efficient allocation" implies properly valuing the cost of a transaction, including any negative and positive externalities involved. If entity A and B perform some financial transaction that will help or hurt entity C, a bystander not involved in the financial transaction, supply and demand alone will not properly value the cost/benefit of that externality that impacted entity C. Failure to do so creates an inefficient use of limited resources.

In the case of smog, the cost of dealing with the negative externalities should rest on those who created and benefitted from the financial transactions that created the smog ("entity A and B"), not bystanders ("entity C") who were not involved in the transaction and now have to pay the price of it. Your disagreement with this, suggesting that the tax payer should pay for it, represents a fundamental difference in in where we believe liability for such damages lies.

No, that's only an objective measure of how financially able they are to combat that harm. If that harm has already drained all their finances, they they may not be able to combat anything at all. Why should they have to pay the price for harm caused by others?

You assume the infallibility of capitalism and supply and demand. There are a variety of reasons, which i've already gone over, why individual decisions in supply and demand do not necessarily represent the true value of transactions.

 

National Defense is a great example of common good and common bad. The problem is when these programs balloon over time.

National Defense of the US has ballooned into the biggest welfare program on the planet.

Municipal police budgets often make up 30% of the total much of which is spent on going after pot smokers and dealing with the gang related crime due to prohibition.

Stop trying to police the world. Stop making laws that require over policing of our own people.

The OP does not seem to understand the nature of the arguments for the collective good.

The most common type of argument used to create stupid laws is "utilitarian" in nature. Utilitarianism looks at what is "supposedly" for the collective good and completely disregards individual rights and freedoms.

These types of arguments come often from both sides. I had a poster the other day cite stats from the 70's related to the estimated decrease in drunk driving deaths due to keeping the drinking age at 21 vs 18. The stat's were somewhat bogus (as they often are) but even so the numbers were acutally quite small.

Still .. if we could prevent even one death by making a law then should that law be made ?

On a strictly utilitarian basis .. perhaps.

By this rational we should definately ban cars, skiing and knives as well. Think of all the lives saved.

I would rather have individual freedoms thx.

 

Common good and bad? Meaningless terms. You could put them in terms of very specific economic vocab (e.g. given elements of the population can be excluded, such as the use of the military within strike breaking, it cannot be easily classed as a 'public good'). Alternatively, you'd have to refer to more general government waste terms. Even then its far from straight forward. Its clear, for example, that we cannot understand how the military burden has evolved by just referring to the liberal's military industrial complex

 

Like I said, one example of a common good.... in other words, no need to get bogged down on it as an example. Naturally, deciding what to police and what to use our military for are important questions, but are only tangentially related to the topic of the economics of financing them. Individual freedom is a great thing to have, but sometimes practicing your individual freedom impacts others (externalities) and sometimes people won't be motivated to contribute to non-excludable goods (free-rider problem).

Other examples of common and public goods: free-to-air television, clean air, national defense, fish stock, oil, bridges, public information, software, digital music, street lights, invention/technology, irrigation, medical treatment, etc, etc, etc. Each of these markets can be undervalued/overvalued based on the misallocation of positive and negative externalities. Market forces can still be used within each of these various markets to achieve maximum efficiency, but the free-market itself is ill-suited to handle it all on its own.

 

I'd suggest you're overplaying the 'public good' term. That has to refer to excludability and rivalry in consumption. A positive externality, in contrast, could be summed up within more basic merit good analysis. Then you can't necessarily make comment about the free market being ill-suited. Its just an issue of protecting property rights after all (e.g. Take a negative externality such as pollution. A tax solution could actually lead to 'underproduction' of that pollution as, given the analysis used in the Coase Theorem, subsequent bargaining can occur because of the distinction between marginal benefits and marginal costs)

 

I included "common good", as well as public good there for a reason, which has the rivalry but lacks (practical) excludability. But I can appreciate the fact that the solutions to various markets and externatilites can be complex, and a one-size-fits-all solution is unlikely.

 

The problem is the Coase Theorem. That ensures, at the very least, to make a clear distinction between public goods and merit goods. We're then left to distinguishing further according to the types of externalities being studied (i.e. the extent that we have asymmetric information and the magnitude of any bargaining costs with market solutions)

 

Good - We need a defense .. we have the best military technology in the world.
Bad - Do we need to spend so much on defense that it bankrupts the country putting our long term security at risk ?

We were far ahead of our rivals in the year 2000 when we were spending roughly 350 Billion a year - Total Defense Spending.
Was it necessary for this spending to increase to 900 Billion 8 years later ?

I do not know why one would claim that the military industrial complex is somehow owned soley by "Liberals". Such a claim is patently absurd. Both sides of Congress often support increased military spending. This needs to change.

Our income has fallen from 2.7 Trillion to 2.1 Trillion since 2008. 450 Billion goes to pay interest on 15 Trillion of debt leaving us with 1.65 Trillion in income prior to borrowing.

900 Billion on an income of 1.65 Trillion is too much IMO.

 

Bankrupted by the military? Go ahead and try and prove that with economic analysis. Its not going to be easy, given the various benefits that you will have to control for (from Keynesian effects to spin-off technologies).

Does the US have too much focus on the military sector? Indeed. However, that's not a "bad". That's a value call (e.g. subjective views over the possible advantages of using social expenditures to stabilise the economy instead)

We were far ahead of our rivals in the year 2000 when we were spending roughly 350 Billion a year - Total Defense Spending.
Was it necessary for this spending to increase to 900 Billion 8 years later ?

Who made that claim? MIC is used by liberal political economy to understand the military sector. It suggests that the role of the military is dominated by the 'public good' and we just get waste because of self-interest and a lack of accountability. Whilst it has some relevancy, clearly it underplays the importance of the military sector for the US economy.