I'll reply to the penultimate batch of David Bergland's questions as follows:
What is the best way to deal with the current massive budget deficits?
Pragmatic: First, cut out wasteful government spending (about 15% - 20% of all spending, or around £100 bilion per annum). Second, try and boost economy by deregulating, leaving EU, reducing barriers to trade, unilaterally if necessary. Third, simplify and reduce taxes, esp. phasing out VAT and Employer's National Insurance (the worst taxes of all). Fourth, shift from taxation of turnover/income to taxation of land/location values.
Is there a solution to the long-term financial problems of the Social Security system?
Pragmatic: The welfare system is, in practice, a pay-as-you-go system. As long as this is clear to taxpayers and welfare claimants, hopefully, society as a whole will be able to strike a 'fair' balance between benefit and tax levels. Older workers may be happy to pay more in tax if in exchange they are likely to get a higher pension. Students may be happy to accept lower grants (a form of welfare) if they know that they'll have to pay less tax once they get jobs, and so on. As long as people aren't living in absolute poverty*, then benefits are generous enough.
Should the government send foreign aid to other countries?
Pragmatic: Nope. We have been sending tens of billions of dollars a year to The Third World for negligible benefit. It just ends up going on waste, corruption and warfare. Even the massive transfers from West to East Germany, both civilized, law-abiding societies, since 1990 have achieved very little. The best we can do is scrap barriers to free trade and, at the margin, send clandestine help to democratic forces inside the worst régimes.
Should children be required by law to attend schools? Should parents be allowed to teach their children at home?
Pragmatic: 'No' to the first, provided their parents keep them off the streets and out of crime, either by making them find jobs, or indeed educating them at home, so 'Yes' to the second.
Should the ownership of firearms be restricted by law?
Pragmatic: Yes. There is no harm in shooting at private shooting ranges or on private farmland, provided gun-owners are trained/supervised properly. In practice, the idea that all citizens should be able to carry guns for self-defence seems a bit misguided. Unauthorised use of firearms (i.e. not at places mentioned above) should be punished most severely, with no lower age limit - the recent spate of black teenagers killing other black teenagers has arisen because the penalty for carrying weapons is much less severe for younger age groups.
* Except working age adults who refuse to do what work they can or otherwise sort themselves out, as a pragmatist, you have to accept that a hard core will fall through the safety net, the only question is "how many?".
Forbidden Bible Verses — Genesis 43:24-34
2 hours ago
10 comments:
"In practice, the idea that all citizens should carry guns for self-defence seems a bit misguided."
Add a "be able to" after the should - I don't think anybody is suggesting people be forced to, only that they should be able to. And, in practice, that has worked out perfectly. There is no issue with concealed pistol permit holders in the United States (most of which you can get very quikcly so long as you are not a criminal, drug abuser etc and require little or no training). In fact, apart from religious ministers they are the most peaceful demographic in the United States.
Of course, permit holders don't just help themselves, but everyone around them. For instance, over the ten years after Florida instituted its 'right to carry' law (the first in the US) the homicide rate fell by 36%, the firearm homicide rate by 37% and the handgun homicide rate by 41%. Over the same period the US as a whole saw the latter two rise substantially and the former fall by only 0.4%.
Words inserted, my bad.
a) Your stat's are in context of USA where underlying gun crime is far higher to start with, not sure if it's a fair comparison (altho' perhaps it is).
b) This series is about pragmatic answers in context of UK, if any party went overboard on freedom to carry arms (a constitutional right under BoR 1688!) then it would be too easy for other parties to dismiss them as gun nuts.
c) The point is that the pragmatic answer is usually (but not always) the same as the libertarian answer. Tax and gun control are clearly two areas where the two differ!
Well if you were a politician I could see how it would probably be a bad idea to talk about ending gun control (unless you were in it for the long haul maybe). But you're not! :P Shouldn't the pragmatic answer be whatever is best for the British people? In which case we come to: has gun control been, and will it be in the future, good for the British people? I think the answer is undoubtedly "no".
Certainly I agree that pragmatism and libertarianism are very similar, and that there's a few areas where puritans of the two will diverge (state funding of research and development for instance) but I don't think gun control should be one of them.
My pragmatic view on R&D is that is should not be state-funded, subsidised or given tax-breaks. Unless it is developing top secret weapons, I suppose. And it only seems fair for the State to hand over some of that £8bn it collects in tax on cigarettes to cancer research. Isn't that more-or-less the libertarian view?
The libertarian argument visa vi gun control and self defence is that it shouldn't be a state monopoly, surely?
Gun ownership should only be restricted in the same way as freedom , ie only to those who are mentally ill or convicted criminals, both of whom can be put away for the safety of others.
As to if one should be allowed to carry a weapon in public for self derfence ~ this is down to the owner of the said property. If that is property that is owned by the state locally, as I believe any state owned asset should be where ever possible, then the decision / laws should be made locally. Thus, a countryside council might have different concealed carry laws than an inner city council, and policy would be decided by local democracy.
Well the libertarian view would be no the government shouldn't spend on R&D and it shouldn't be taxing cigarettes anyway (perhaps a tiny fraction for the pollution they cause but I suspect that's less than a penny a packet or some other trifling some not worth the cost of collection).
Pragmatically speaking, most economists, such as Milton Friedman, recognise that there are a few limited cases where government functions beyond simple enforcement of property rights can be beneficial. For instance, some limited R&D funding, preventing and controlling contagions and so on. The reason R&D can make us better off is because we sometimes can't reimburse scientists or engineers or whatever for the full value of their research through markets. An example would be the wheel. The invention of the wheel has been massively beneficial to everyone but suppose it took millions of dollars to invent the wheel. A self-interested engineer (philanthropy might provide some of this R&D, it must be said) would be unlikely to go about inventing the wheel because as soon as he invents it every other engineer would start making wheels and he'd have gained very little, so he might be better off doing something else.
I can see this and a lot of libertarians would support such a scheme (consequentialist libertarians like Friedman) but personally my moral opposition to the initiation of force trumps the possible economic benefits.
I tend to favour gun control but do see some merits in allowing concealed weapons. I few years ago I was working in Dallas with a team of guys. On the first weekend I drew the short straw and ended up as duty driver and ended up with a few scares and upsetting other drivers by not tuning right on red etc.
When I mentioned to the red neck concierge that all the other drivers had been polite and waited for me to sort myself out he commented that other drivers didn't know if I was carrying a gun or not and that road rage had declined since the passed the concealed weapons bill.
I'm not sure if that was good enough reason for allowing guns but it did make me think.
Here's another, tongue in cheek argument about why we shouldn't send aid to poor countries.
Rich countries generate C02 with developing countries generating even more CO2 eg India and China. Increases in CO2, we are told, increase global warming. Global warming, we are told, will cause catastrophic climate events which will lead to lots of people being killed and dispossessed.
So if we help the poos countries improve they will cause more global warming, which will be bad for them.
Ergo its in their best interests to remain poor so we don't need to send them any money.
GS, as ever, you have outflanked me in the down-to-earth, pragmatic, tell-it-like-it-is stakes.
Good story GS. I once heard someone say that if people were allowed to carry guns, there'd be a shooting after every traffic accident. I have to doubt this, as there's only ever been a single shooting by a US concealed permit holder following a traffic accident - and HE was the one being attacked!
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