The Glade 4.0

Okay. I felt like being nitpicky on a semantic point. I don't think it's strictly accurate to say thatconsidering there are regularly transactions that take place outside of the private sector where someone spends money in voluntary direct exchange for something else, like the ability to, for another year, legally keep your car on a road that you also probably paid for At best, most transactions do take place in the private sector, but not all.

I'd also hazard a guess that you think such exchanges should *not* be taking place outside the private sector. I'm inclined to agree in principle, if that's the case, but that's not where we are right now. I also have no idea what that would look like in practice.

Creating a legal government monopoly on services in fact denies public choice of consumership. In removing the element of consumership, it has disqualified me from being a customer, as the second requires the first. In addition consumership requires the presence of prices. Licencing and registration fees are not prices, as prices are a market based mechanism. They are taxes designed for the purpose of collecting revenues.

As I accurately stated before: words like citizen, stakeholder, constituent, and taxpayer fit the bill. Customer does not.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Hah. Your post just made me run through the germs of an amusing thought. Privatizing taxation...

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I read you to mean that the existence of consumership is predicated on the presence of choice. Do only government monopolies serve as barriers to consumership, or is this applicable to private monopolies as well? If Monsanto buys/controls 100% of commercial seed sources (created monopoly, they acquired their competition), and I buy some seed, am I or am I not a consumer? If the only source for cable television where I live is Comcast (de facto monopoly, no competitors have entered the market), and I buy it, am I or am I not a consumer? If I am, then how does a government monopoly differ?
Do private businesses not generate revenues?

Again, if Monsanto controls all the seed, is the value at which they sell that seed no longer a price? Is a "market" defined in some way by the number of components that comprise the market?

If Tennessee starts charging $10,000/yr for vehicle registration, will it not affect the number of registrations? Does it not behave as a market?

How is a vehicle registration a tax? Are you not paying a value, and getting something directly back for it in return? Is this transaction elective? Are taxes elective?

Sorry to carpet-bomb you with questions - but I'm trying to create a thorough model in my head here.

Monsanto still has competition from Meredith and Dow. They don't have a monopoly, furthermore, there are no barriers to new competition entering the seed market. The private sector has that advantage. The same thing applies to Comcast. There are no barriers to Cox entering that market, or Verizon FiOS, or a satellite provider, or one of many Internet based mediums on which television shows are readily available. A government monopoly differs because rather than provide a consumer with a service in exchange for a mutually agreed upon, market determined price, a government monopoly functionally restricts a liberty or privilege by disallowing all competition, placing regulatory mandates, and levying an arbitrary fee based on the collection of revenue to finance it's budgetary concerns. Not only does it have nothing to do with market established prices, based on supply and demand, it has no way to even establish prices as it has no competition.



I think I touched on all of your questions in my above reply. If there is anything I missed that you want further clarified, let me know.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I still disagree. I also think that your concept about "it has no way to even establish prices" is rubbish. Certainly there is a fair way to establish prices, through the evaluation of costs to provide the service to the number of customers [or insert whatever word that allows you and your thought process function instead of the word "customers"] needing the service. There are plenty of other factors that go into it as well, future planning, growth etc... but it's not that hard to do.

The main issue is whether or not you want trust the poeple running the program to look out for your best interests (ie if it is government run monopoly) or if you want to trust your own choice a group in an open market looking out for their own interests.

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Gorse

True, they do have competition. I'd intended to establish that I was proposing a hypothetical by saying "If Monsanto..." - what I was getting at was trying to determine if you thought choice was prerequisite to consumerism in the case of any private monopoly as well (you said a consumer of a government-monopoly backed product/good/service wasn't a consumer at all and I wanted to know if you thought a private analogue could exist). That's okay though, addressing it and the other Comcast hypothetical as specific, real examples still highlights some good points.
There are indeed barriers to Cox entering the market - there are regulatory hurdles to be cleared, as there are with the FDA for food and drug products. I know many people think this, and anything else that fetters a totally free market, is a bad idea, but that is simply where we are. When AT&T wanted to extend its U-Verse service to Tennessee, they didn't just start digging. They sought a franchise license, and made an agreement with the state to provide the service throughout Tennessee, and not to just cherry pick the most lucrative communities. As it happens, AT&T had some trouble clearing those hurdles in Connecticut in 2007 that I read about while thinking about stuff for this thread (decent starting point for that: Connecticut Judge Stands Pat on AT&T U-Verse Service).
Let's look at vehicle registration again. Is that price really an arbitrary fee? Are you really saying that what you're paying isn't a "price" just because there's no one else to go register your car with?

Let's say it costs about $100 to renew my registration (which is pretty much accurate - it would be less, but I pay a little extra for Smoky Mountains novelty plates, and the extra goes straight to the park). Do I have to pay to register my car? I do, but only if I want to put my car on the road. I'm not compelled to do it; I can always opt to take a bus, or carpool, or ride a bike, or any of a host of other alternatives to registering and driving a car rather than use the state's sole control of vehicle registration - I suppose just like I could get DirecTV, or FiOS or something else instead of Comcast's sole source of cable. At $100, the cost of vehicle registration is acceptable to me, and so I pay it and go on my merry way.

What if they raise that cost to $1000/year? $10,000? Even if the state has determined that's the price it really needs to set, in order to balance its budget and continue paying for roads and schools and whatnot, I'm going to balk at that cost.

Again, I do not have to register my car. If I have done so, by definition it's a "mutually agreed upon" price, regardless of the fact that the government basically sets the condition of "you cannot put your car on this road", and then sets itself up as a payee, and then once you've registered says "ok you can drive now". Do you think that if this system was not in place, that there was no public effort to create roads, that some private entity would lay down asphalt, and then make that asphalt free to all? Nope. You're still gonna be paying someone to put the car on the road. The road costs money. Difference is, in that case you're either going to wind up with monopolies, and someone arbitrarily charging whatever the heck they want (edit: similar to what we have now, really, although I'd argue as Gorse does that it's really not arbitrary at all, and a lot about who you'd rather trust with your interests), or you're gonna wind up with way the hell too many roads to the same things, and some phenomenally craptacular urban planning.

I think thoroughfares are a great point at which to look at an issue like this, by the way - because they're one of those points at which it's really difficult to orchestrate something that satisfies all the disparate interests.

Actually, Gorse, it's impossible to do, and as much as I would like to thank you for attributing that concept to me, it isn't mine. The concept belongs to Ludwig von Mises, and has been improved upon by Steve Berger. In fact, it is the core economic reason socialism fails. The fact remains that central planning has never devised a system capable of emulating prices. It's the reason Hong Kong was "allowed" to remain a free market entity on the doorstep of China. The Chinese government needed a market drive mechanism to determine prices.

Here is where our problem lies. You are trying to conflate words, which don't mean the same thing, because they share one thing in common. I don't hold you solely responsible, as the Orwellian mutability of language is a trend in our country in our times.

Price means something specific. It is an economic term. For something to be considered a price it must meet certain standards. That's why there are other words that mean different things. You may disagree all you like, but this isn't an argument where opinion matters. We are discussing objective fact here, and I have those facts on my side.



The main philosophical issue perhaps, but not the main economic issue, which is what we are discussing.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Except you're claiming it's objective fact because it happens to mean a certain thing within the framework proposed by the economic theorists you favor. Price means something else viewed within, say, the framework of market socialism.

We can toss economists and philosophers at each other all day, but I don't think it's reasonable to say that any economic theory or model, or operational definition contained therein, is objectively factual or correct.

Interesting and somewhat topical:

Jeryn:

As I said, I'm not discussing philosophy, I'm discussing economics, and your quote has nothing to do with prices which is the specific topic of the discussion. In addition, the point I am making has nothing to do with a specific school of economics. The information I am giving you can be found in any economics text book.

It is the reason that centrally planned economies are consistent in the constance of their shortages and surpluses. They lack the ability to price. Centrally planned economies "price" necessities low and luxuries high, independent of production costs. As an example, rent in the Soviet Union was "priced" at around $80/mo. for a one bedroom apartment in Moscow in the 1980's, while at the same time the same apartment in New York was market priced at $1000/mo. This might sound great on the face of things, but the ability to arbitrarily set prices didn't free them from the burden of actual market forces. The laws of supply and demand still operated, and as a result there were massive surpluses of goods whose arbitrary "prices" had been set too high (like washing machines, and cars), and massive shortages of things for which they had set their "prices" too low. Finding an apartment in Moscow required a wait of five years or longer as a result.

There are a litany of things that effect this outcome in central planning in segments of an economy: Perverse incentive, the inability to adjust prices quickly, lack of information about demand given bureaucratic incentive to set achievable production levels as opposed to creating saleable goods and services, and an inability to adjust plans quickly; all this on top of an ideological social impetus restricting market intervention.

In addition, there is no product they are trying to sell you. You already have every single thing you needed to drive. You have the car, you have the gas, you have the roads (and don't argue that the roads are state funded, they don't need to be, and even if you insisted that they did, there are still better ways to fund them). You don't need a licence, a registration, or an inspection sticker to put your key in the ignition and turn it. Those things are, in function, nothing more than an artificial government structure used for the purpose of catalouging us in a manner which makes it easier for them to track and identify us in order to fine, or lay other taxes on us in order to fund other things that have nothing at all to do with cars or driving. The craziest part is that they even charge us for catalouging us. At the DMV. Where they aren't offering a service of any sort. Alternatively, they are nothing more than tax collecters doing nothing more than placing unnatural restrictions on, and forming unnatural barriers to travel.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Okay, let me try approaching this a different way. Are the following references to "price" systems in centrally planned economies just inaccurate, and perusal of some survey-level textbook would have dispelled the authors' illusions?



I'm not saying centrally planned economies aren't capable of creating some poor price mechanisms, I'm saying that it seems an awful lot like you just don't want to call a price a price, because that wouldn't dovetail well with your reluctance to consider Hopwin a customer because the entity on the other end of a transaction was a governmental one.

Oh, and I thought the quote was topical because it was, in a nutshell, a notable economist and philosopher emphasizing the necessity of some degree of government involvement in economies. Consider the unalienable rights laid down in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Call it a stretch, but a relevant bit of the government involvement we see in economies - say, labor law - is a response to an inequality of bargaining power in the forming of contracts between employers and employees. A total laissez faire government would in all likelihood wind us up in a culture of princes and paupers as inevitably as a big government bent on taxing the middle class out of existence. There may not be anything wrong with letting things run their course, if you really believe in a hands-off stance, but try telling that to the paupers who also feel entitled to the pursuit of happiness. Historically speaking, they've tended to get pissed eventually. If you look at government as being sort of a brain and nervous system for a societal entity, it makes sense for it to evolve mechanisms to ensure the society remains relatively stable. The theory that a totally free market will fail as readily as a totally planned one seems like a valid idea, to me.

The quote itself isn't a direct statement about "prices", as you said, but it underscores that government isn't categorically some bogeyman any time it gets involved (which seems to me to be one of the underlying points in most of your commentary about all things federal).

No, I'm saying that it is somethinmg other than a price because it doesn't behave like a price, isn't managed like a price, and isn't calculated like a price.



He is perpetrating a fraud. Wrapping an aversion to economic freedom in eloquence doesn't somehow change what it is. He didn't offer any sort of evidence of need, he simply wrapped a very old, and very ugly argument in a fancy new dress, and trotted it around on his arm. He reminded me of Deepak Chopra, in his tone, and in his gobbledy-gook.

I tend to agree with Hayek's approach: that the extent of government's involvement in economics should be those things non-detrimental to growth, such as protection against fraud and individual free-trade agreements with other nations.



Unalienable means nontransferable, which means that the Founders, early on in the document you are discussing, as if to preface the rest of the document with the notion, stated that they weren't laying down those rights for anyone. That those rights already existed, and didn't come from man or groups of men or from Kings or any other form of government, and could not be stripped away. That while those rights could be oppressed they still existed, and any government that did so was tyrannical and should be looked harshly upon.



Honestly, I feel most labor law is garbage, and achieves more undesirable results than desirable. Most of those laws hurting the poor more than anyone else, indirectly, and in unforeseen ways.



You have no evidence of this. None. Constant competition levels the playing field. Innovation in business and technology are constants. The inconceivably huge multinationals you see today only exist because of direct government involvement and regulation, they wouldn't have been likely to achieve their dominance in a laissez faire economy. Big Businesses love to be regulated because it exponentially broadens and then guarantees market share, and protects them from the responsibility of poor management and risky business practices. Under this model it is the middle and poorer classes who suffer the most. Small and medium sized local businesses face insurmountable financial barriers to markets, while at the same time being forced to share the financial burden of the failures of the multi-nationals in the form of taxes.



They should feel entitled to it. They are entitled to it. The problem is that they are only entitled to the pursuit of happiness, not to happiness itself, and certainly not in any way that imposes on the liberty of others.



Getting pissed off doesn't make them right. If you want make a habit of moving away from what is right because you don't want to offend people, well, I don't know what to tell you.



I could not disagree more strongly. Good government reflects the people, it does not try to conform them, as the people, as you argued earlier, are entitled to their liberties. The system you advocate here is tyrannical at best, and if it is the brain of the beast, than the beast is mongoloid.



I've never once heard a decent argument for that theory, nor seen a working example of any alternative.



Not all things federal. Just things that don't work well, or are ideologically opposed to liberty.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Now see? All the makes a lot more sense. Posts were made in plain english in a rants forum and injects were made use very specific terminology that can not reasonably be recognized as coherent without the background from which they were derived and used. And there's no wonder your reasonson seems like pyscho-bably and double talk to me. There's a whole lot of time and money spent on that education, and it seems your are certain of the words you are saying. I'm glad we provided a venue where you could acutually use them.

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Gorse

To quote a friend of mine that survived post-World War II Eastern Europe ...

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What have western military powers got to do with it?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Imports, DE

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