How to Defeat a Liberal in a Debate

It comes from your self-defeating argument that people can't properly value public goods, and thus must be forced into taxation, but then have to value public goods and allocate their dollars. Being forced to value public works and then being asked to allocate value to those public works that you apparently didn't have enough value to allocate to on your own doesn't seem like it gains anything. And then your other conflicting opinion that the government can't allocate for public works, but they can decide how much needs to be allocated overall.

Let me correct my statement then. You support a contradictory contradictory philosophy ("pragmatarianism"), but you base this on the logic that individuals are capable of properly valuing public works on their own (anarcho-capitalism).

Who said I didn't support prevention? If you want to participate in a market that damages the environment, or has a substantial risk of damaging the environment, the burden is on you to fund that prevention, not me.

people poorly suited to value public works, even in aggregate.

 

To elaborate more on my position here, I start my position with a pretty negative opinion of business, big corporate business in particular: Corporations thrive in large part by externalizing expenses and risks. Shifting these risks lines their pockets at the expense of others. Pollution & environmental damage are common examples, but certainly not the only examples.

So to put it plainly:

Corporation externalizes risks, causes pollution, etc. ---> Corporation gains money.
People, who may or may not have much money to begin with, have to absorb that risk and pay for the corporation to minimize it ----> people lose money.

Something seems backwards about that scenario to me... and not only backwards, but impractical. You assume that those who are effected by environmental damage are capable of funding environmental protection, when in fact it's the corporations that are profiting from externalizing the expense that likely has the superior funding capabilities. So here's what I'm afraid your proposal will lead to: Corporation will decide to pollute in poor people's back yards, but not rich people's... naturally, because the poor people can't fight it with funding, but rich people can. And why would the EPA step up to the plate? If the EPA's job is to give the biggest bang for the buck of those who allocated their tax dollars to it, why would they focus on helping the poor people who likely allocated little to nothing to the EPA? You presume that the actual ability and willingness to fund DEFINES the right and demand for services such as environmental protection, but I do not.

The expense of performing preventative measures and environmentally sustainable practices should be on those who wish to profit from markets that put the environment at risk, not the people effected.

 

Not necessarily. Because part of the equation is "right to the resource" and "ability to pay."

Say I have no money, but I have built a house out of 500-year-old cypress.

Say a developer wants those logs and is willing to pay $1 million for them.

Does the developer's willingness to pay far more than I can hope to pay mean he values the logs more than I value my home? No. It simply means he is *able* to pay more.

And what gives the developer the *right* to buy those logs in the first place?

To whom do the fish in the sea belong? What is to prevent overfishing and the collapse of that common resource?

There are plenty of economic situations that the market is either unable to handle, or does not handle efficiently or fairly.

 

An interesting case. We of course typically refer to the tragedy of the commons (e.g. fishing entry will continue until marginal revenue equals zero, leading to severe overutilisation). However, the reaction often just induces an anti-commons problem (i.e. too many rights to exclude). Thus, regulation has led to problems such as fishing races and discard wastage. Perceived quota solutions have been linked to underexploitation (e.g. market restrictions enforced to protect the smaller fishing enterprise leading to under-use because of a lack of profitability)

 

The existent of pre existing property rights are an important concept here. Your right to your house means that the developer has to pay you to use your house, as opposed to you having to pay the developer to stop using your house. Your inability to pay to stop the developer from using your house should be irrelivant, and there's no reason to believe that you even have the capacity to pay. It's one of th functions of government to protect your property and enforce your contracts regardless of your ability to pay to do so.

 

Clearly. It's the only thing preventing a miscarriage of justice in that example.

However, some people call property rights "theft".

And you can also roll the question back a little and ask, "What gave me the right to cut down the cypress trees to make my house?"

 

Not really. Kinesian theory supports liberalism, but that's only one school of economics. And that school gets more discredited by the day -- Europe got into big trouble because they followed the Keniesian Ecomonic models that said that it's good to run a deficit in a recession to boost spending. Except that those acts caused Europe to run out of money and have a debt crisis which meant that no one was spending any money. Had they used a conservative model that encouraged surpluses, Europe would be fine.

 

What Keynesian model says you're supposed to run big deficits when the economy is growing well?

The problem with places like Greece is that the did use a conservative model. They cut tax revenues. Deficits and debt exploded. Same thing that happened here.

 

Naturally the argument relies on the idea that property rights are pre-existing. Asking where they came from is another question >.< lol. Some claims to property rights might be better understood as theft, arguably. This being a reason why some resources should be publicly owned or regulated, rather than owned by private entities (like water sources, fish stock, etc.). The nitty gritty of this could get nasty fast, but I presume we can safely assume, for the sake of current arguments, that SOME things are acceptably owned privately.

 

We force people to pay taxes because they can't properly value public goods? That's ridiculous. We force people to pay taxes because of the free-rider problem. The free-rider problem doesn't say that people don't value public goods. How would that make any sense? If I don't value something then how would it be a free-rider problem if I don't pay for something that I don't value? The free-rider problem says that people who value public goods can free-ride off the contributions that others make to public goods.

We solve the free-rider problem by forcing people to pay taxes. If people have to pay taxes anyways then why wouldn't they spend their money on the public goods that they value?

Great...so go around collecting funds from the various companies. Call them dues or fees or whatever you want...you still need an enforcement/monitoring mechanism and that enforcement/monitoring mechanism is the EPA. If the EPA covers all its operating expenses from money it collects from companies then that's outstanding! If it doesn't...then it would be up to taxpayers to fund the difference.

 

Agreed. I was playing a little bit of devil's advocate there.

 

You say it's your home...which implies ownership...so if you're not willing to sell your home for the $1 million dollars that he's offering to you...then clearly you value your home more than you value the $1 million dollars. If you're saying that it's not your home...then why would he be offering you $1 million dollars for something that you do not own? If you're saying that a third party owns the logs...and both of you want the logs...then the third party should sell the logs to the highest bidder...which will probably be the guy with the $1 million dollars.

The resources should...and do...go to the people who use them most productively. The alternative is to give resources to people who waste resources and nobody benefits from that.

That being said, my issue isn't with public ownership, me issue is with the fact that we allow 538 congresspeople to determine the distribution of public funds. Whatever the tax rate is...we should allow taxpayers themselves to determine which government organizations they give their taxes to. The productive use of resources is a function of all our perspectives...not just the perspectives of 538 congresspeople.

 

This simply is not true. Either you have a poor grasp of the political philosophy of conservatism, or you are uninformed in regards to Greek politics and what led to the Greek crisis.

Greece is a welfare state. A large portion of its expenditures are for various social programs like universal health care, state sponsored pensions, social security, etc. Up until recently (and leading up to the crisis) their tax rates have also been high - certainly higher than in the US. The reason for for the massive deficits was the evasion of taxes which was rampant.

There is nothing about Greece that would lead anyone with any knowledge of political philosophy to assert that they "used a conservative model."

What an incredibly silly thing to say.

 

A known practice among large companies in mature industries is to buy up competitors who might challenge them and then simply bury them. Is that a productive use of resources?

I'm not suggesting that should be illegal. I'm just pointing out that people buy things for lots of reasons, many of which have zip to do with economic efficiency.

Right. Because taxpayers are going to take the time to research all the available options and carefully weigh what needs funding.

For that matter, who decides what options are available to be chosen from? Within a broader category (like, say, defense), who decides what weapons systems will be bought, and how many?

We have representatives for a reason: they're supposed to spend the time developing the expertise and studying the options to make good decisions on our behalf. We can then judge them by the results, and vote them out if we don't like the results. It's a very rational division of labor.

The fact that many Congresspeople are idiots, or deep partisans from safe districts, is a problem. But direct democracy at the level of granularity you're talking about isn't a solution.

BTW, there's a science fiction short story based on the premise of individual allocation of taxes. It's called "We the People", written by Jack Haldeman:
http://www.sff.net/people/jack.haldeman/people.htm

 

Conservatism, unlike liberalism, doesn't have an economic paradigm. In terms of an economic concept it will be refer, for example, to a social welfare function where losses are weighted greater than gains. In that sense generous social expenditures can be called conservative. Those infected by party politics might not appreciate that though

 

This is simply a display of ignorance of political philosophy of epic proportions.

This has nothing to do with party politics. "Conservatism" - paleoconservatism in particular - is the equivalent of the philosophy of classical liberalism in the 19th century, of which Edmund Burke was considered the founder, and to which Thomas Jefferson made significant contributions. This is not to be mistaken with neoconservatives (like George Bush, or any member of the Republican Party in the US with the exception of Ron Paul) which have their roots on the Left - specifically the Trotskyist movement. In fact, most neocons tend support government intervention and running enormous deficits so long as it achieves some desirable end (usually this comes in the form of defense expenditures and nation building.)

When one refers to conservatism, they are referring to the ideals of classical liberalism as outlined by figures like Edmund Burke, Thomas Jefferson, etc - IE a government of limited size and scope, adherence to a constitution, individual liberty, etc.

There is nothing about Greece, or even the US for that matter, that would suggest to anyone with any knwoledge of political philosophy that they are "using a conservative model." To claim otherwise is a demonstration of a pedestrian understanding of the subject.

 

You may want to play pretend and there is some entertainment in it (given you've effectively said 'conservatism is liberalism'). But back to reality...

Liberalism is of course a political economic school of thought and indeed it would be fair to say that it shouldn't be confused with 'cardigan wearing, slipper buyer' bleedin heart party politics. We see, for example, a distinction between liberal trade analysis (which assumes, for example, mutinationalism is a positive development) and 'historical structuralism' political economy (which assumes that its particularly negative). There is no such political economy for conservative. We instead get rather bland specific analysis, such as trade protectionism to minimise the losers from trade.

The use of social expenditures, particularly in an environment of increased openness (created by the Eurozone and previous preferential trade agreements), is certainly consistent with a conservative social welfare function.

 

What makes this difficult is that you're a limey, so of course you would be completely oblivious to US political history. It is commonly accepted, within the realm of US politics, that modern conservatism refers to classical liberalism. The poster I was responding to made the claim that Greece was utilizing a conservative model. Thus, the implication was that, because Greece had declining tax revenues, they must be implementing policies which favor a limited government. When in reality, that was not the case at all, as I have already outlined.

 

So, in US politics, we have "conservatives are liberals" and- to understand Greece- we have to refer to US politics? Wowsers! Back to the political economy:

The use of social expenditures, particularly in an environment of increased openness (created by the Eurozone and previous preferential trade agreements), is certainly consistent with a conservative social welfare function.

 

The use of the term conservatism was in the context of American politics, given that the poster is an American. I responded to him accordingly.

Irrespective of terminology, Greece did not exhibit limited government. I know you agree with this.

 

The use of the term conservatism was in the context of American politics, given that the poster is an American. I responded to him accordingly.

Irrespective of terminology, Greece did not exhibit limited government. I know you agree with this.

 

You've stated that American politics says "conservatism equals liberalism". I suppose you do have consensus politics, but be serious! In contrast, I've referred directly to political economy (a jolly good idea when referring to international political economic 'news'!) and demonstrated that the original poster actually had a point!

 

Platitudes do nothing to refute the numbers. Economic history is full of examples of military empires that crumbled due to the increasing cost of maintaining hegemony over time.

The return on investment for military expenditure is good in the initial phases of an empire. In the latter phases however it is trying to maintain hegemony that causes the downfall of the empire.

This has been explained to you numerous times. You did not understand then, and today will likely be no different.

 

You can't compare empire with what the US has achieved, particularly as the nature of weaponry has so radically changed (i.e. there has already been a massive increase in unit costs, but that increase has also been associated with numerous spin-off technologies

Still don't know who you are! However, the "empires fail you know" argument is just a low brow dodge as you accept you cannot refer to the political economy required to understand the military sector

 

Let's start with a quote to you from another poster.

I second this in relation to your display of ignorance of economic history.

It does not take an economist nor a historian to realize that the costs of policing the world have become unbearable. I have given you the numbers multiple times .. once again.

2.1 Trillion in revenue - 450 Billion in interest = 1.65 Trillion = what we have to spend without borrowing from others.

Total military spending is in excess of 900 Billion (conservatively .. some sources have it higher)

Only someone that has no clue about economic history thinks the US can not be compared to other empires.

Give one economic historian that thinks this. You don't believe this. As you usual you are posting without thinking.