Letter From A Tory weighed up the pro's and con's and came down on the side of the German government in 'banning' the HDJ. With my natural aversion to any sort of policy based on "should..." or "it would be nice if ...", I commented as follows:
Before we ask whether there is ‘a problem’ we have to ask whether there is anything ‘the state’ can do to help. Yes, I find such brainwashing of children just as awful as Muslims brainwashing their own children, but you just cannot stop it. If you somehow prevent these people meeting up in semi-public, then they’ll just brainwash their children at home. So in the absence of a solution, there’s no point looking for a problem.
Which as far as I am concerned, is the end of the matter.
Wednesday 1 April 2009
Nazis versus Libertarians: The Pragmatarian view
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9 comments:
Whilst I come at the problem from the same side of the aisle as you, your answer is not satisfactory for two reasons
1. because the pragmatic Statist would probably acknowledge the failure of regulation to stop a tiny minority teaching their kids to be racists but respond by increasing the control of the state. If you start from the concept that the collective has rights over the individual then by definition they have the right to remove children full stop.
2. Second the Statist would argue that our failure to absolutely stop crime doesn't stop us from trying to reduce it. Assuming therefore, that a wrong is done, the state has the duty to attempt to stop it regardless of the efficacy.
On this line think of Polly's reaction to the utter failure of Sure Start (aka No Child Left Behind). It isn't, "this doesn't work: let's do something else", it's "the results are trivial: let's spend even more".
In other words your comment comes across as a challenge to the Statist: "there's something unregulated just out of view."
TDK, so what would you do if you were in charge?
As I wrote at Letter From A Tory, the reason I support educational freedom isn't because I want extremists to be able to teach nonsense to their kids, it's because their freedom is a cost I have to pay for having my freedom. Once we say that the state has a monopoly on determining what is the good we are lost.
Hi,
What would happen if tax payers could directly decide which public goods their taxes support? The reason I'm asking is I've labeled this approach "pragmatarianism"...and I found your blog while searching for the word.
Solely applying free-market principles to public goods wouldn't work because plenty of people would free-ride off the contributions of others. So the pragmatarian approach is to acknowledge the necessity of coercion while recognizing that the invisible hand is more efficient at allocating resources than the visible hand.
C; "if tax payers could directly decide which public goods their taxes support?"
Do you mean 'public goods' in the narrow sense of law and order, defence, immigration control, fire brigade and rubbish collection?
I think 90% of the population are pretty much agreed on these sort of things and don't really mind paying for them (they cost about £1,000 per citizen per year).
And while these things are cheap to provide, the value they create (or the losses that they prevent) are enormous. The free markets can then get on with organising everything else.
Mark, it all boils down to narrow or broad. The freedom to swing your fist ends where somebody else's nose begins. This is known as the harm principle. Is it harmful if somebody cannot afford education or healthcare? Those with a narrow definition of harm (negative liberties) say "no" while those with a broad definition of harm say "yes" (positive liberties).
By acknowledging that the free-market would under-produce your public goods you've provided an excellent argument for the government to produce additional goods.
You're saying that the free-market would fail at producing "your" public goods but it would succeed at producing "my" public goods. You're willing to gamble on the things I value but not willing to gamble on the things you value.
You and I wouldn't purchase the same private goods and it's highly unlikely we would use our taxes to fund public goods in the exact same proportion. Different people have different values and we all are exposed to different market signals.
For example, having served in Afghanistan I've had access to different "market signals" than somebody who hasn't served in Afghanistan.
Additionally, a limited government... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Libertarianism/Archive_24#Scope_of_Government ... would still be an inefficient government. The only way to ensure maximum efficiency would be to force governmental organizations to compete for our taxes.
C, I gave you a list of public goods in the narrow sense, for sure, no two people will ever quite agree (should bins be emptied every week or every fortnight? Should there be separate bins for recycing?) but the differences aren't huge.
"... having served in Afghanistan I've had access to different "market signals" than somebody who hasn't served in Afghanistan."
Aha, but that's not 'defence', that's 'attack', which is not a public good, it's not essential to the running of the USA.
"Is it harmful if somebody cannot afford education or healthcare?"
Health & education are 'merit' goods which is something slightly different to 'public goods'. Yes, it is harmful if people can't afford it. Mainly harmful to them but slightly harmful to society as well. But state-provided healthcare or education tends to be very poor quality (at least in the United Kingdom).
But my point is that if we collected 'public income' properly (i.e. ground rents or Land Value Tax) and shared it out to everybody out as a Citizen's Income, then everybody would be able to afford healthcare or education, so problem solved. And then we wouldn't need ANY OTHER TAXES (like income tax, sales tax etc).
Mark, is the best defense a good offence? Does a stitch in time save nine? Is an once of prevention worth two of cure?
Given a choice, would you allocate your taxes to public healthcare programs that encourage preventative medicine? Or would you allocate your taxes to hospitals? Would you allocate your taxes to after school programs targeted at high risk youth or would you allocate your taxes to paying for prisons? Would you allocate your taxes towards retaliating against attacks from other countries or allocate your taxes towards preventing future attacks?
Incidentally, if we were just "attacking" in Afghanistan I probably wouldn't allocate my taxes towards the war effort either. Unfortunately, our civil efforts over there don't sell as many papers.
There are no "right" answers. Just signals that each and every one of us are exposed to on a daily basis. All those signals would factor into how everybody would allocate their taxes.
Collecting taxes differently, just like limiting the scope of government, has no influence on how efficiently government produces goods or how well the government responds to signals. The LVT certainly might increase the overall GDP though...and it's definitely not incompatible with the pragmatarian approach.
The pragmatarian approach allows the invisible hand to determine whether a good is produced by the private or public sector...or by both.
C: "Mark, is the best defense a good offence? Does a stitch in time save nine? Is an once of prevention worth two of cure?"
The war in Afgh is not a 'public good' from the point of view of anybody outside Afgh (in which case for some it was a 'public bad') and is something that could be entirely privatised - don't forget that Bin Laden effectively bought the whole country for a few (hundred) million dollars.
Afgh has some wealth potential - mining, opium, cannabis, possibly tourism (if they hadn't blown up the twin Buddhas), and these are all things which the Afghan people (not corrupt officials or foreigners) should be put in charge of. And if they choose civil war over peace and relative prosperity, that's their decision.
You also ask a long list of (very good) questions as to how we prioritise other stuff. And you are quite correct, there are no 'right' answers to the extent that no two people will ever quite agree on everything. But...
1. Medical stuff is private decisions for each citizen to pay for out of his own Citizen's Income or earned income, and of course the government has a low level role in educating people about the merits of immunisation, but if people choose to save $50 on immunisation and risk facing a hefty hospital/insurance bill or dying later on, well, that's their decision.
2. Exactly the same applies to Education Vouchers, which are an earmarked form of Citizen's Income.
3. As to crime, keeping us safe is a 'public good' but the easiest way to measure the success of any program is by looking at land values.
If, for example, for the same $ expense, prisons keep us safer than after-school clubs, then land values will be higher in safer areas where there are more prisons. So prisons are what the government will spend money on, resulting in a slightly higher Citizen's Income for everybody.
Or maybe after-school clubs are better value. Or legalising the drugs trade. Or allowing private enterprise to create more jobs (more jobs = less crime).
Or simply allowing more homes to be built. Youths hang around on street corners because their homes are too small or cramped. Kids in nice houses with nice gardens are happy staying at home with their friends, or visiting other friends' homes.
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