The government can't do anything right

[agentflare]

I just feel like arguing with you, Essence

The statement: "Government can't do anything right" should be rephrased as "Government is much more inefficient than the private sector" which is very hard to argue against. Since your central argument is Argument #2, I shall address that.

You're referring to the Broken Window paradox with your: tax burden loss isn't actual loss, which essentially goes like this:
A young rascal throws a brick through the local baker's window. The baker now has to spend $250 to repair the window. But someone points out that the glazier now picks up business worth 250$, and the glazier is able to spend an extra 250$ and so spreads in ever expanding circles helping more and more people. And so it would seem the logical conclusion is that the rascal is not a public nuisance, but a public benefactor.

But wait, let's say the baker was going to buy a brand new suit with his $250. Now, the baker must repair his window, not obtain a suit. The community retains a window, but loses a suit, while if the youth didn't smash the window, the community would have both a suit and the window.

Deadweight lost in taxes is lost in a similar way to the Broken Window. What could've been used to buy something worth 500$ can now only buy 250$ because of tax loss. While a company could use the money from the consumer's purchase to create a job worth 10,000, the government would create a job worth 5,000 and that doesn't actually create wealth, but only redistributes it.

[Essence]

Pareto optimized prices absolutely guarantee a class of people that cannot afford a particular good or service.

Incorrect.
Counterexample: A market with a sufficiently elastic and low Supply curve. (the market for Air on Earth)

There is no 'market' if something is universally available.  A market is defined by the need for transactions.  There are no transactions for air.  If a good requires a transaction to obtain, there is a price.  If there is a price, and the market is Pareto-optimized, that price will be outside the reach of some of the participants in that market.  Therefore, markets guarantee the existence of class of have-nots.

This problem is a primary argument for why people have an inherent Negative Right from Murder rather than a Positive Right to be provided with life.

And that is thinly-disguised Social Darwinism.

"Government is much more inefficient than the private sector" which is very hard to argue against.

Not at all -- government is MUCH more efficient than the private sector in many areas of accomplishment.  The market, for example, cannot provide universal education, universal health care, universal law enforcement, or anything else that we as a society agree that everyone needs.  It's hard to get less efficient than "cannot accomplish this goal at all". 

As to the broken window paradox, it's a straw man, because the market can't do the things that the government does.  The tax burden isn't a choice between two different markets moving money around, it's a choice between the market moving money around and a non-market entity moving money around in order to do things that the market cannot.

[CCCombobreaker]

Just because the market currently doesn't provide something doesn't mean it can't.  Universal education could be a market function, but currently the government subsidizes 'public' schools so much it is not cost effective to compete with them in all areas.  There is still a quite healthy economy for private schools in a lot of areas.  If the government left the market on education, the private sector *could* fill that gap.

Saying the government does something the market doesn't in no ways means the government does it efficiently.  Operating at a loss is the opposite of efficient.  The government is like a corporation that loses money every year.  Even if we set aside the inefficiency at the macro level, the government is notoriously wasteful on a project by project basis.  The laws that govern how they award contracts are awful and it is virtually never on or under budget. 

Even social welfare programs introduce inefficiency.  Any time I give a hobo $10, they get $10 and it cost me $10.  If the government sends someone a $100 welfare check, that cost the society closer to $115, because the government has to pay people to assess who can receive the money, where it come from, and has to send the money... And none of those are free.  Heck the government even has to pay the person delivering the check.

Would a free market system cover all the social welfare programs we currently have?  Probably not because people aren't as generous as the government forces them to be.  But it still an inefficient system for redistribution of resources.

[OldTrees]

Pareto optimized prices absolutely guarantee a class of people that cannot afford a particular good or service.

Incorrect.
Counterexample: A market with a sufficiently elastic and low Supply curve. (the market for Air on Earth)

There is no 'market' if something is universally available.  A market is defined by the need for transactions.  There are no transactions for air.  If a good requires a transaction to obtain, there is a price.  If there is a price, and the market is Pareto-optimized, that price will be outside the reach of some of the participants in that market.  Therefore, markets guarantee the existence of class of have-nots.

A better example might be Elongated coins. Elongated coins have a near perfectly elastic supply and a low cost of $0.51 per elongated penny. Therefore everyone that wants an elongated penny for $0.51 can have one provided they have access to the market which they would in Pareto-optimized conditions.

This problem is a primary argument for why people have an inherent Negative Right from Murder rather than a Positive Right to be provided with life.

And that is thinly-disguised Social Darwinism.

No it is not Social Darwinism.

Social Darwinism is a term used by those opposing various late nineteenth century ideologies predicated on the idea of survival of the fittest.[1] It especially refers to notions of struggle for existence being used to justify social policies which make no distinction between those able to support themselves and those unable to support themselves.

As a geneticist I see the glaringly obvious misunderstanding in the theory of Evolution* that is required for someone to be foolish enough to be a Social Darwinist.

*"Fit" in Evolution is not a Normative statement. It is a descriptive statement about ability to reproduce. [This is still a vast oversimplification of the theory but it should be sufficient to point out the mistake.]

No, what I said is: "Since it is physically impossible for everyone to receive and unlimited supply of life, people cannot be entitled to such an unlimited supply."
In other words: "It is not morally obligatory to do the impossible."
Since a Positive Right to Life as described above is a contradiction, only a Negative Right from Murder or a Positive Duty to Try to elongate life can exist.

[BluePriest]

Not at all -- government is MUCH more efficient than the private sector in many areas of accomplishment.  The market, for example, cannot provide universal education, universal health care, universal law enforcement, or anything else that we as a society agree that everyone needs.  It's hard to get less efficient than "cannot accomplish this goal at all". 

I fail to see how we as a society all agree all of those things are needed. Law enforcement is the only one on that list that I believe you will find a vast majority of people who will agree (>80%) Once again though, something that is for a different subject altogether. The problem is the more things Government does, the more money it will need which will mean more taxes unless it is cut somewhere else (so in other words, more taxes) which will mean less money circulating which will mean less business for businesses. I dont believe the main problem is that Government CANT do things better, but instead that Government doing things has a greater chance to negatively effect businesses.
I am no economist, so please, if im completely off base, be kind lol.

If pro is the opposite of con, whats the opposite of progress?

[Belthus]

If pro is the opposite of con, whats the opposite of progress?

So that applies to "conservative"?

[BluePriest]

If pro is the opposite of con, whats the opposite of progress?

So that applies to "conservative"?

proservative???

[russianspy1234]

The reason I want the government doing only what it is absolutely necessary, is because government is somewhat insulated from the effects of many basic market forces such as competition. Normally those market forces would encourage efficiency by causing a company with lots of inefficiencies to weaken, and if not corrected, eventually collapse. For example, if a company offers a product/service that is of mediocre quality and not enough people buy to justify it's creation, that company will be forced to improve their product or suffer the consequences. If a government offers a similar product/service, they can support it through taxation, effectively forcing the consumers to buy the product whether they want it or not.

This does not mean that the government doesn't ever do something efficiently, merely that on a basic level governments can get away with more inefficiency than businesses can, so it makes sense to only have government doing what it absolutely must do, and leave the rest to the naturally slightly more efficient private sector.

And of course, the same authority which makes government less efficient at providing services is quite necessary in other tasks, such as enforcing moral laws and protecting human rights.

you know who else is insulated? giant corporations with enough money to advertise that their product is better than the competition, whether or not it is. look at windows vs linux.  linux is better than windows in every way, and it is free, yet windows still has a vast majority of the market share.  why?  because they made the money a long time ago, and today they have the money to both advertise and lock up exclusive contracts.  why do we not have alternative fuels yet?  because every time someone gets close, the oil companies buy the patent and dont do anything with it.  why is healthcare so expensive?  well what are you going to do if someone says "give me 10,000 or die"?  the iphone is a hunk drek, but apple has a damn briliant marketing department.  how many options do you have for internet?  i have 2: att, with its capped bandwidth and slow service and Time Warner.  what do i do if they both double their price? use dialup?  and this is only for things in which the quality is obvious from the get go.  when cigarettes came out, no one knew they caused cancer, and if it wasnt for government regulation you would still have people in doctor's coats telling you to smoke 10 cigarettes a day on your tv.

[Essence]

Just because the market currently doesn't provide something doesn't mean it can't.  Universal education could be a market function,

No, it couldn't.  The market would inherently set a price for education -- and the instant you make people pay money for something, there will be people who cannot afford it.  It really is that simple.  The fact that there are private schools that thrive here and now is completely independent of the fact that a country that had no public schools would have a class of people too poor to send their children to school.

Operating at a loss is the opposite of efficient.  The government is like a corporation that loses money every year.

No, no it's not.  This is one of those classic misunderstandings that makes me really sad to hear.  The government isn't ANYTHING like a corporation.  The government doesn't sell you products or services.  It PROVIDES THEM.  You don't have to pay the fireman to keep your house from burning down.  You don't have to pay the FDA to make sure that a farmer doesn't sell you toxic beef.  There is zero correlation between the amount of government services you consume and the amount of taxes you pay.

If that thought greatly pisses you off, let me ask you a question: do you have any kind of insurance?  Because if you pay health insurance, car insurance, homeowner's insurance, fire insurance, dental insurance, travel insurance, life insurance, or any other kind of insurance, you're participating in at least one other system there the amount of services you consume has a zero correlation with the amount that you pay.

The government operates on the same principle that insurance companies do: get a large enough pool of people, and have them all pay just above the average cost per person.  The ones who don't consume many services will pay for the ones who consume a lot of services.  The only difference is that, unlike the insurance companies, the government doesn't keep any profit for itself.  The reason that the government continually operates at a loss is because they're trying to not take as much of your money.

So if it's cool with you to have health insurance, why isn't it cool to pay taxes?

A better example might be Elongated coins. Elongated coins have a near perfectly elastic supply and a low cost of $0.51 per elongated penny. Therefore everyone that wants an elongated penny for $0.51 can have one provided they have access to the market which they would in Pareto-optimized conditions.

Except of course those people who can't afford an enlongated coin for $.51, usually because they have no disposable income, because they've already spent more than they actually make buying things like toilet paper, food, and heat.  Res ipsa loquitur, quo erat demonstratum.

No it is not Social Darwinism.
<snip>
What I said is: "Since it is physically impossible for everyone to receive and unlimited supply of life, people cannot be entitled to such an unlimited supply."
In other words: "It is not morally obligatory to do the impossible."
Since a Positive Right to Life as described above is a contradiction, only a Negative Right from Murder or a Positive Duty to Try to elongate life can exist.

Why is it physically impossible for everyone to receive an unlimited supply of life?  All that's required for life is food, clothing enough to survive your local weather and modesty laws, and shelter from said weather.  Assuming a military-esque lifestyle of dormitories, cafeterias, and uniforms, you should easily be able to get the cost of maintaining a single human life down to $5,000 per year -- and that's here in the First World.  Things would be even cheaper in other economies.  Even if you assume that every single person under the poverty line in the United States needs that kind of care (most don't), that's only 20% of the population, or just over 60 million people.   That's only $300 billion each year -- less than half of what the New York Times says a repeal of the Bush Tax Cuts would bring in.

It's not only 'not impossible', it's downright viable -- and we don't even have to return to the 90%+ marginal tax rates of the 1950s to do it.

So, let's try this again: your choices are between acknowledging that government has a role in moderating the marketplace (i.e. ensuring that people have the ability to live), or being a Social Darwinist (i.e. acknowledging that you would rather some people die because they 'failed at life' and YOU don't want to pay for THEM to exist.)


Oh, and on a philosophical note, if you're all for a negative right to murder rather than a positive right to life, I'll be totally chill with watching your children choke to death on a hot dog and not doing squat about it.  After all, they don't have a right to life, so who's to mandate me stopping nature from taking it's course?

OH WAIT -- They call that "callous indifference" and they put you in JAIL for it. 

(Edit: Also, whether you believe in it or not, it's in the United States' Declaration of Independence, so the US government is kind of obligated to provide it: "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" and all that.)

I fail to see how we as a society all agree all of those things are needed.

I never said we did -- what I DID say is that IF we as a society agree that there are things that should be universally available, we MUST acknowledge that government, not private enterprise, must provide those things.  The market cannot do it, and there's no guarantee that private charity would be able to do it -- only government has the power to assure universal availability of any good.

As I said before, if you don't believe that there are goods that should be universally available, you have to accept the alternative, which is that people can and will actually die because of your beliefs.

[OldTrees]

A better example might be Elongated coins. Elongated coins have a near perfectly elastic supply and a low cost of $0.51 per elongated penny. Therefore everyone that wants an elongated penny for $0.51 can have one provided they have access to the market which they would in Pareto-optimized conditions.

Except of course those people who can't afford an enlongated coin for $.51, usually because they have no disposable income, because they've already spent more than they actually make buying things like toilet paper, food, and heat.  Res ipsa loquitur, quo erat demonstratum.

Note here it is the cost of production per unit (marginal cost of production) that is the problem (not sufficiently low unlike the production cost of air on Earth). As I said earlier sufficiently elastic supply and sufficiently low cost are the two criteria that would enable everyone to have. The have vs have not division is not due to the pareto optimal pricing but due to insufficiently elastic supply and insufficiently low cost of production.
In other words: For specific theoretical Markets with Supply curves that close enough to the Quantity axis, this problem dissolves. Hence the have/have not problem is not absolutely guaranteed by having a Market system of distributing scarce goods.

I was also pointing out where the problem comes from (the supply curve).

No it is not Social Darwinism.
<snip>
What I said is: "Since it is physically impossible for everyone to receive and unlimited supply of life, people cannot be entitled to such an unlimited supply."
In other words: "It is not morally obligatory to do the impossible."
Since a Positive Right to Life as described above is a contradiction, only a Negative Right from Murder or a Positive Duty to Try to elongate life can exist.

Why is it physically impossible for everyone to receive an unlimited supply of life?  All that's required for life is food, clothing enough to survive your local weather and modesty laws, and shelter from said weather.  Assuming a military-esque lifestyle of dormitories, cafeterias, and uniforms, you should easily be able to get the cost of maintaining a single human life down to $5,000 per year -- and that's here in the First World.  Things would be even cheaper in other economies.  Even if you assume that every single person under the poverty line in the United States needs that kind of care (most don't), that's only 20% of the population, or just over 60 million people.   That's only $300 billion each year -- less than half of what the New York Times says a repeal of the Bush Tax Cuts would bring in.

It's not only 'not impossible', it's downright viable -- and we don't even have to return to the 90%+ marginal tax rates of the 1950s to do it.

So, let's try this again: your choices are between acknowledging that government has a role in moderating the marketplace (i.e. ensuring that people have the ability to live), or being a Social Darwinist (i.e. acknowledging that you would rather some people die because they 'failed at life'.)


Oh, and on a philosophical note, if you're all for a negative right from murder rather than a positive right to life, I'll be totally chill with watching your children choke to death on a hot dog and not doing squat about it.  After all, they don't have a right to life, so who's to mandate me stopping nature from taking it's course?

OH WAIT -- They call that "callous indifference" and they put you in JAIL for it.

This segment has too many mistaken assumptions about me and emotion infused in it to address them each in turn. I suggest you step back and reread what I wrote a few times. We come from different perspectives and you keep jumping to conclusions. Below I will put a few classifications.

So your plan for proving everyone with unlimited life is to sustain their life until they die of old age. Forgive me but finite life is not unlimited life. Finite life is possible to provide to everyone with a length depending on resources and technology. However unlimited life (aka Immortality) is still impossible. Also your plan only accounts for supplying life to those that are already alive. What about the infinite that are not alive? Providing an immortal life to every possible person is not in the least bit possible. (although feel free to prove me wrong) Proponents of positive rights tend to forget or underestimate the magnitude such a right would demand if it existed.

Almost everyone agrees that preventing a death is not morally prohibited.

Legality and morality of an action or inaction are completely separate characteristics.

In case that is not sufficient to correct your mistaken assumptions I will lay out one of my defining beliefs that might highlight the differences.

I am not entitled to anything. Everything is a gift (singular). Sure if you look the gift horse in the mouth you will see that it could have been better. You might even expect the gift to turn out better than it does. As such I am content and will be content as the gift continues as it will or even if the gift ends as I write this.

This philosophy differs drastically (from my perspective) from the Social Darwinists who believe that things apt at continuing were entitled to continue.

Another important note: I continue to talk about what is morally obligatory. Do not assume that I do not think there exist morally praiseworthy things. Nor assume that by stating something is not morally obligatory that I also believe it is not morally praiseworthy.

[CCCombobreaker]

Wall of text alert!

Honestly I don't have any form of insurance and am philosophically opposed to insurance as well... (It is one more tool for those with resources to slowly drain resources from a larger pool of people with less resources).  If the government operated AT COST then I'd have significantly less objection to it, but it operates at a loss, and it is losing *everyone's* money.

And the government is analogous to a large corporation.  It has costs and provides a variety of services and goods.  It has governing groups that make decisions about how to allocate it's resources.  I could keep going... But the government is LIKE a corporation (but technically is not).

All the services the government provides have real costs that are being paid in part by today's taxpayers and in part by tomorrow's taxpayers... Or at least the interest on the loans is being paid by taxpayers until even the interest exceeds tax income.  Eventually the government will be forced to default (like a corporation), which is a function of inefficiency and mismanagement.  That mismanagement is of my money.  The money they take out of my paychecks this week, and mismanagement of their current resources affects my future paychecks too.  You can say there is no correlation between taxes and services, but the same budget they create is using those taxes to pay for those services and pay interest on previous services it couldn't afford at the time.  Do they continue to budget past the income they have from taxes?  Yes, but that doesn't mean they aren't correlated, it just means they can't balance a freaking budget.

I'm not opposed to government and I think some national governments today do a reasonable job, but the US federal government is in a spiral down to failure and needs a major overhaul, especially in how it handles money.

And if you will grant me that taxes do pay for as many services as they cover (and the government borrows to cover the rest), then it is hardly arguable that the market can't provide what the government does.  The market already provides many services the government does at lower cost (per unit) than the government does.  Private companies build and maintain toll roads for less than the government spends on comparable roadways.  Many private schools provide better educations with the same or less money per student.  These things seem more expensive now because when you buy them you are still paying your share of the public service you aren't using.

Do I think the private sector WOULD provide all those services?  No.

Do I think people's goodwill and charity would fill the vacuum? Not entirely.  But at least then people with good intentions could have discretion over how there generosity was applied.

Some governments make money, and so can provide more services than the taxes they take in without leveraging their taxpayer's future.  Or they provide the requisite services and return the extra to their citizens (like Alaska's state government has done for years).

Even with 'universal' government provided services, some people can't afford them.  Free doctors visits still require you can get to them.  Free schools still require students have their own supplies.  Free roads little use unless I have my own car and gas.  So I see no real advantage to paying indirectly for all these things through a government or paying directly for them to a company that provides them.

[johannhowitzer]

Not at all -- government is MUCH more efficient than the private sector in many areas of accomplishment.  The market, for example, cannot provide universal education, universal health care, universal law enforcement, or anything else that we as a society agree that everyone needs.  It's hard to get less efficient than "cannot accomplish this goal at all".

I feel the need to point out that the market is not the only part of the private sector.  Since you define a market as an arena for transactions, excluding abundant resources such as air and in some cases water, because no transaction is necessary, then you have also excluded charitable organizations from the market.  Charitable organizations are however a part of the private sector, and in fact when you include charitable contribution, it is possible to provide "universal" education in the sense that it is available to everyone (not in the sense that everyone takes advantage of it, or is aware of its availability).

In a vacuum created by the absence of the current public school system, we can theorize that many entrepreneurs - with more disposable income thanks to the tax drop that would result - would rise up to take advantage of the opening in the market.  Some of these entrepreneurs would gradually find ways to provide a decent education (not a world-class one) cheaply, perhaps cheaply enough to be accessible to all but the poorest of poor - which would be poor indeed, as the lower-class would also benefit from the tax drop and be more often capable of saving for their children's basic education.  The remaining gap between rock bottom and the extreme marginal consumer would be much narrower, and charities would again conceivably have more resources to work with, due to the charitable segment of the population having more disposable income.  So charities providing educational services could conceivably manage to fill that gap.

This is of course unprovable, as the proper environment doesn't exist and can't be produced - in fact, we are too far gone: the public education system cannot be rolled back overnight without causing severe social and economic damage.  It would have to be rolled back gradually.  However, the above situation seems very plausible, to me at least.