Confusion about Property Rights...

BlackShanglan said:

I think you might mean Neon's experience.

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D'oh! Neon pointed out the error to me even and I thought I'd fixed it. Need-more-donuts . . . D'oh!

BlackShanglan said:

Neon, thank you for your post! It is a very interesting exegesis of the effects of successive waves of reform in various directions. I think this sometimes one of the great hidden costs of living in a democracy with regular elections; it means that roughly once a decade there is a radical change in governmental policy in any given area, and a batch of new laws go into effect. Worse, they often don't clear off all of the old ones, and eventually one ends up with a baffling, labyrinthine system that begs to be vaulted over from its own sheer ponderous unresponsiveness. Very interesting reading -

Shanglan

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Take that byproduct of democracy - public policy volatility - as a given. It's not going to be changed or repealed. That suggests the prudence of government involving itself in the general economy as little as possible and with as light a hand as possible. It suggests that those determined to impose their grand economic or social visions through the use of governrment because "this time it's going to be different" are full of folly or hubris or both. It shows the wisdom of America's founding fathers (and classical liberals elsewhere) who, based on their reading of history and understanding of human nature, concluded that limited government is the ideal.

(BTW, at the political level what the elected officials are full of is ambition - almost all of them care less about good public policy for the long term than about getting their name on a bill that the newspaper doyens fawn over.)

neonlyte said:

J,
Re-reading and missed these points you raised above - they are similar (apparently) to the questions you ask in your last post on the thread, so a shortish answer.

It is tempting to say Politicians should be the last people to legislate to control economies, though of course politicians have little say in the technicalities of fiscal regulation, (in the UK, like else where, a bastion of civil servants fine tune regulation) Politicians tinker with the social direction of legislation. It is melding of contrary political ideology through legislation that causes so many of the problems. Cracks open in the legislation facade, and it is through these cracks that the speculators step and exploit the system.

The Joint Venture companies are a classic example, effectively hidden from sight to all but the accountants and the impact on the parent companies reduced to a single line in a voluminous annual statement of account. What is the motivation for respectable companies (and most were the 'blue chip' companies) to follow that path? The simple answer is greed. Prior to the late 70's, Income Tax in the UK was set at astonishing high levels, 98% over a certain level of income. Regulation effectively imposed a salary cap on 'Captains of Industry'. This engendered an attitude that it was obscene for an individual to earn more than a certain annual sum, an attitude still prevalent to some extent in the UK. When Thatcher arrived on the scene, income tax rates were reduced substantially and the dismantling of the union grip on industry commenced with hundreds of thousands losing their jobs. Company directors saw prudence in the face a still largely socialist minded (in terms of earnings) populus to restrict their pay packets, and turned instead to other ways to increase renumeration, through stock options, perfomance targets (largely set by themselves). JV's were the perfect vehicle to drive the bottom line. It would have required a Soothsayer and not politicians or an army of civil servants to introduce legislation to control these events.

Despite the rigours of 10% of the working population becoming unemployed, the private ownership of property became driven by personal greed in the same time frame as the JV's for complimentary reasons outlined elsewhere. House price inflation was increasing individual capital base at a greater rate than income for much of the 80's, and here's where we overlap with Glaeser, the City Ripple effect. As the price of 'good housing stock' inflates, buyers move to 'poor housing stock' at the fringes of the good stock, refurbish, see a substantial increase in value - and in many cases - realise the profit, move on and repeat the cycle until finally reaching the home of their dreams. There is no tax in the UK on selling your main place of residence, this was tax free money, no redistribution of wealth other than in the sense of having disposable income to spend on goods and services.

No one minded this. It was good for the economy and hugely offset the job losses inflicted by Thatcher bringing the unions to heel. It could have been stopped at a stroke by taxing profit made on main residence sales. And Glaeser is right in saying the private property owners want to protect the value of their holdings, and hints at the reason why without exactly spelling it out (it's not politically correct). Any home owner knows the value of the property can only be realised on sale. If you have to buy another home in the same market, you are no better off finacially. The reason people chain hop in the UK is to place themselves in an environment of like minded people, it's ghetto-isation of the middle classes, an uncontrollable human urge to place yourself within a community you imagine mirrors yourself. If prices drop, the undesirable might be able to afford the house next door.

So yes, the speculators drove the market, but they drove it in a direction most individuals found a way to exploit, and the sale of the municipality housing stock (mostly at lower prices than private housing stock) enabled even low earners to become property owners and within a few years, as the generally poorer quality municipality housing was improved by there now private owners, many of these people sold out, for vast profits (again the city ripple effect) because their purchase base was artificially low, and bought in 'more desirable' locations underpinning the market price.

How the market will move from here is anyone's guess. For the moment it is propped by the influx of foreign workers, demand continues to outstrip supply. Some relaxation of Green Belt policy is underway, a plan for 1.5 million new homes over a ten year period largely in and around the Thames basin and the speculatoors are already at work buying up potential 'greenfield' sites in the anticipation of future planning consent, this time with the novel twist of selling shares directly to the public whose avarice beggers belief.

I do think it is beyond the wit of man to legislate to control these events, and none of this goes anyway toward addressing perceived imbalances in social programmes and social investment. I say perceived because I believe a lot more work has been done by the governing Labour Party in the last ten years than people realise, the tangible benefits are taking a time to surface and they have to deal with a media largely controlled by Conservative minded corporations who paint a bleaker picture of reality. The greed of individuals, private or corporate is something else. Marx couldn't factor for greed. Egalitarianism is fine, for other people, seems to be the attitude.

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Wow - Neon and Shang waxing wise in the same thread. It's driving me crazy that this thread will fall into obscurity and all this great history and wisdon into oblivion! Neon, you have simply got to assemble this stuff, give it a quick polish, and kick it out the door to one of the many thoughtful journals that would welcome it! Also, you might email it to Glaeser. This exchange shows one thing that this kind of discourse is good for, however, which is test driving your ideas and finding where they need some tune-up or additional parts.

I can't help making one ideological point, which is your references to "greed." The economists did the world a disservice when the applied the term "rent seeking" to "the process by which an individual or firm seeks to gain through manipulation of the economic environment rather than through trade and the production of added wealth." (thanks wikipedia) It is so inelegant! If you insert "rent seeking" where you say "greed" I think it works better. Railing against "greed" is too close to the airy utopian's need to repace the Human, Mark I with the Man, New Socialist model. Clearly you are not an airy utopian. Also, per my post above about how public policy volatility is a given in democracies (building on Shang's points), so rent seeking behavior is a given, and so any reasonable policy will be designed so as to not provide opportunities for it, rather than hope that "this time" it won't happen. (The California electric policy that created the problems out there a few years ago was a classic example of "Duh! What did you expect?" in this regard.)

In the previous post I said "I can't help making one ideological point." I meant in that post, of course! (You could have seen this coming. )

The discussion about government price controls above leaves out two critical points. First is Hayek's lesson about disbursed knowledge and the inherent inability of central planners to ever be able to assemble the knowledge they need to set and then adjust prices in real time. As he explained, prices “coordinate the separate actions of different people . . . (in a) system in which knowledge is dispersed . . . .”

In a recent Hayek symposium, one economist characterized this coordination process as “the greatest information processing system in the world, more powerful than all the high tech computers. It can collect, sort, fragment, condense and deliver the right information to the right decision-maker at the right time for the right purpose to make the optimal choice. I may not know about the flood or the drought or the labor trouble. I don’t care or need to know, because all of that information is contained in a single data point: The price of tea (or whatever commodity) is up or down.”

There is the economic efficiency argument. Now the "social justice" one: I forget where this letter I saved was originally published, but I think it makes a very useful point. The issue was "price gouging" by merchants after a hurricane. The discussion is about a very important role prices play, which is rationing:

The excellent article about how price controls explained very well how supressing the rationing effect of prices causes perverse and harmful effects. Brown explained how comsumers are better off if retailers engage in “price gouging” by raising the price of ice from its usual $1 to $15 in the wake of a hurricane. This avoids the problem of “the first five people who want to buy ice might obtain the entire stock, (while) one or more of the last five applicants may need the ice more desperately than any of the first five.”

One important addendum to this is addressing the "compassion" issue for people who "can't afford" $15 bags of ice and whose "need" is great.

Let's say the 10th person needs the ice to keep insulin fresh for his diabetic daughter, who will die without it. Where is the ‘compassion’ in a law that prevents the market from operating in such a way as to ensure that the lifesaving ice is available for this customer?

Now, let's say the this person can’t afford $15 ice. That raises a separate issue, which is charity. THIS is the proper realm for compassion. Government is too big and clumsy to exercise effective compassion. Not so individuals, and the institutions of civil society. Odds are, when the situation was explained, the store owner would donate the ice for free to save the diabetic daughter. If not, how hard would it be to raise the money through the institutions that make up what we call civil society: The network of private institutions, community associations, religious organizations, families, friends, coworkers, and their voluntary, from-the-heart interactions? Not very hard at all.

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Obviously this is a micro-example, but the principle can be applied to situations that do not involve emergencies. Also, if you insist on using government to perform the role the writer sees for civil society, then at least try to replicate the process described here. In a post above on my city having a garbage system where you pay a few bucks for garbage bags I make the exact same point, discussing the social benefit of creating an incentive to limit solid waste, and the proper way to subsidize those who you don't want to punish for generating lots of solid waste (families with babies).

Roxanne Appleby said:

Wow - Neon and Shang waxing wise in the same thread. It's driving me crazy that this thread will fall into obscurity and all this great history and wisdon into oblivion! Neon, you have simply got to assemble this stuff, give it a quick polish, and kick it out the door to one of the many thoughtful journals that would welcome it! Also, you might email it to Glaeser. This exchange shows one thing that this kind of discourse is good for, however, which is test driving your ideas and finding where they need some tune-up or additional parts.

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The social impact of these events is mirrored in a novel I'm writing covering the period 1965 - 2005. The book contrasts the social changes in Portugal and UK. Portugal moved from a dictatorship to a democracy and the UK moved to a party electoral democracy that is almost democratic dictatorship since the ideological between either governing party is virtually indistinquishable.

hi neon--- fine satiric posting, Roxanne!

Thanks for the analysis! (the book request was a joke!)

you said, So yes, the speculators drove the market, but they drove it in a direction most individuals found a way to exploit, and the sale of the municipality housing stock (mostly at lower prices than private housing stock) enabled even low earners to become property owners and within a few years, as the generally poorer quality municipality housing was improved by there now private owners, many of these people sold out, for vast profits (again the city ripple effect) because their purchase base was artificially low, and bought in 'more desirable' locations underpinning the market price.

That sounds right to me. It's an effect Glaeser was discussing in the later part of the article. The 'little guy' can easily become a speculator. His 'sin' is not properly the object of the law. But multiply it by 10,000 and you have a number of social ills. So one approach is through a tax policy. I loved the Glaeser line, (from memory) "the last the home owner wants is for his holding to be 'easily affordable.'"

---
Roxanne --keep 'em rolling in the aisles! That piece of satire was priceless (so to say)!

Brown explained,

this wouldn't be Michael Brown, would it?


how comsumers are better off if retailers engage in “price gouging” by raising the price of ice from its usual $1 to $15 in the wake of a hurricane. This avoids the problem of “the first five people who want to buy ice might obtain the entire stock, (while) one or more of the last five applicants may need the ice more desperately than any of the first five.”

yep, certainly avoids that problem; instead, the first five *with $15* get the ice!... and since they've got that kind of money, they likely worked very hard and *deserve* that ice. the first five in line are likely slackers with no jobs, who could easily get there early.

One important addendum to this is addressing the "compassion" issue for people who "can't afford" $15 bags of ice and whose "need" is great.

yep "need" in quotes. not real need, but poor folks whining about what they have, instead of working to improve their lot.

Let's say the 10th person needs the ice to keep insulin fresh for his diabetic daughter, who will die without it. Where is the ‘compassion’ in a law that prevents the market from operating in such a way as to ensure that the lifesaving ice is available for this customer?

Now, let's say the this person can’t afford $15 ice. That raises a separate issue, which is charity. THIS is the proper realm for compassion.

yep, send that 10th fellow to the local church, for a handout at the back door. keep 'im 'umble. and without that annoying tic of thinking health care is any kind of right.

moral: the free market, the minimal activity of government, and the churches can solve most any problem, Katrina included.

Roxanne Appleby said:

I lost track of who's who in your parable, and also I did not focus too much on the play-by-play of the real case because the outline was clear: Scummy wheeler dealer, corrupt city government. Old story, pervasive story, yawn.

Here's the point: The city has the authority to sell property that comes into its possession. If the individual public officials in charge of the sale are corrupt that must not impair the ownership rights (title) of the new owner, because the corruption was not the owner's fault, and it would be unjust to make him pay for it. It is made to look more complicated in this case because the new owner is also pretty scummy, but that is irrelevent (unless his actions in obtaining the property were illegal, ie. criminal bribery or fraud.)

Aside from the justice of the thing, you don't want to create a situation where any property sold by a unit of government must sell at a discount because it automatically has a "cloud on the title" - should it later be found that the public officials were corrupt, your property will be taken away. ("Sorry, Omar, you'll have to close the sub-shop you built because the mayor six years ago when you bought the land it's on was just convicted for being a crook.")

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My argument is that the "government" does have the right to sell, but the government isn't one person, nor is it beholden to one person. Knowing that, the government makes rules about how government property can be sold and sometimes it can't get its ass moving in deciding what to do with its property because of said rules (like the cross battle in San Diego).

One person thus does not have the rights to sell against the rules of sale. That is my argument. That the sale is problematic because someone sold what they had no rights to sell in that manner. This is why I brought in the sale of stolen property argument. Who owns the bike, the original owner or the man who bought it from the thief.

I suppose you are arguing that if the illegal seller is a government, that the person who bought it should still have rights over the persons who it was illegal sold away from. This is to protect I suppose small businessmen like Omar in your example.


Still it seems odd that Omar's Sub Shop is worthy of a sympathy vote and a "it's all right, we'll work something out" if he ended up buying property that was illegally sold, but the gardeners who trusted their elected officials to side with them but didn't even get that chance because one of those officials made an illegal sale are to be given no sympathy and should be shot for the miserable liberal freeloaders they are.


Is it because of the government step? You know, governments are bad and aren't made out of people but evil space monsters. Is it because a business is tied to an economic system and specifically capitalism whereas a public garden is inherently communistic. Is it because Omar's believed ownership was more than the people's perceived ownership (their ownership as members of the people is indeed slight in government terms as they are only a small amount of people who have voice in the debate and have only been able to cast a small amount of choice in the official best suited to serve their interests)?

For me, I would think that if strict adherence to property rights is going to be viable, strict adherence must be maintained. Rights to the property must be held by the individual making the sale for property rights to be sold.

Or is that not the case? Is it not important for someone selling property rights to hold the rights of the property being sold? Can I sell my neighbor's bike and is that sale valid or did I just totally graft someone and sell them nothing for money? Does that not break down the system of property rights?

If we're going to have a system in place where property rights are not merely maintained but held sacrosanct, it seems odd that we'd be willing to turn a blind eye to an illegal sale. Even if the one selling it was the government.


(Not getting angry, not getting political, just curious about how if one member of a government can sell a property if the rules of sale clearly state he does not have that right because he is not the government)







On the separate issue, scumminess of people, I fully agree. The owner is pure vile excrement who enjoys the hardon he gets from having power and wealth over people. The government official who sold the property illegally should be fired and have to work at McDonalds for the rest of his life in order to better understand the capitalist system of property rights and how capitalist transactions are supposed to be made (product for money). And the media circus could do much better to focus on getting to the truth of the matter instead of once again cashing in on heartstring pulling and infotainment. I even agree to the whole idea of property rights and their importance. Communism doesn't work, the non-ownership of land model used by the Native Americans falls apart when others buy the land, and so on and so forth.

Lucifer_Carroll said:

My argument is that the "government" does have the right to sell, but the government isn't one person, nor is it beholden to one person. Knowing that, the government makes rules about how government property can be sold and sometimes it can't get its ass moving in deciding what to do with its property because of said rules (like the cross battle in San Diego).

One person thus does not have the rights to sell against the rules of sale. That is my argument. That the sale is problematic because someone sold what they had no rights to sell in that manner. This is why I brought in the sale of stolen property argument. Who owns the bike, the original owner or the man who bought it from the thief.

I suppose you are arguing that if the illegal seller is a government, that the person who bought it should still have rights over the persons who it was illegal sold away from. This is to protect I suppose small businessmen like Omar in your example.


Still it seems odd that Omar's Sub Shop is worthy of a sympathy vote and a "it's all right, we'll work something out" if he ended up buying property that was illegally sold, but the gardeners who trusted their elected officials to side with them but didn't even get that chance because one of those officials made an illegal sale are to be given no sympathy and should be shot for the miserable liberal freeloaders they are.


Is it because of the government step? You know, governments are bad and aren't made out of people but evil space monsters. Is it because a business is tied to an economic system and specifically capitalism whereas a public garden is inherently communistic. Is it because Omar's believed ownership was more than the people's perceived ownership (their ownership as members of the people is indeed slight in government terms as they are only a small amount of people who have voice in the debate and have only been able to cast a small amount of choice in the official best suited to serve their interests)?

For me, I would think that if strict adherence to property rights is going to be viable, strict adherence must be maintained. Rights to the property must be held by the individual making the sale for property rights to be sold.

Or is that not the case? Is it not important for someone selling property rights to hold the rights of the property being sold? Can I sell my neighbor's bike and is that sale valid or did I just totally graft someone and sell them nothing for money? Does that not break down the system of property rights?

If we're going to have a system in place where property rights are not merely maintained but held sacrosanct, it seems odd that we'd be willing to turn a blind eye to an illegal sale. Even if the one selling it was the government.


(Not getting angry, not getting political, just curious about how if one member of a government can sell a property if the rules of sale clearly state he does not have that right because he is not the government)







On the separate issue, scumminess of people, I fully agree. The owner is pure vile excrement who enjoys the hardon he gets from having power and wealth over people. The government official who sold the property illegally should be fired and have to work at McDonalds for the rest of his life in order to better understand the capitalist system of property rights and how capitalist transactions are supposed to be made (product for money). And the media circus could do much better to focus on getting to the truth of the matter instead of once again cashing in on heartstring pulling and infotainment. I even agree to the whole idea of property rights and their importance. Communism doesn't work, the non-ownership of land model used by the Native Americans falls apart when others buy the land, and so on and so forth.

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To clarify: The sale by the government was not in fact illegal. "The government" has the authority to sell the land, that is not in dispute. The actual deed is signed by a representative of the government who has the authority to do so.

Here is where the confusion comes, I think: The process by which the government officials decide to make the sale may be corrupt as hell, and every one of them may deserve to be indicted for malfeasance in office. But that is totally separate from the act of the sale itself. They (it) genuinely have the authority to sell. Once they (it) actually perform the act of selling (sign the deed), the process that generated the decision to sell becomes irrelevant for purposes of determining whether the sale itself is legal. The reason that this is desireabel I explained : Justice for Omar the sub shop owner, and a good return for Joe Taxpayer who would take a hit if all property ever sold by a government had to be discounted because the new owner could never be sure that the official who signed the deed (and had the authority to do so) wasn't later found to be corrupt as hell, and if he was then the property would be taken back.

I do think it is beyond the wit of man to legislate to control these events, and none of this goes anyway toward addressing perceived imbalances in social programmes and social investment. I say perceived because I believe a lot more work has been done by the governing Labour Party in the last ten years than people realise, the tangible benefits are taking a time to surface and they have to deal with a media largely controlled by Conservative minded corporations who paint a bleaker picture of reality. The greed of individuals, private or corporate is something else. Marx couldn't factor for greed. Egalitarianism is fine, for other people, seems to be the attitude.

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I smiled at this, Neon. The SO and I had a long discussion of this over lunch, and I thank you all for the impetus for it, as it was fascinating to hear the SO's ideas as well. Ultimately, we came to the same conclusion: Marxism works well if one assumes a motivated and committed group of reasonable people who care about the wellbeing of others, but then, nearly anything works if one assumes that. I think that works for capitalism as well; take, for instance, this portion of the article Roxanne quoted:

Roxanne Appleby said:

Now, let's say the this person can’t afford $15 ice. That raises a separate issue, which is charity. THIS is the proper realm for compassion. Government is too big and clumsy to exercise effective compassion. Not so individuals, and the institutions of civil society. Odds are, when the situation was explained, the store owner would donate the ice for free to save the diabetic daughter. If not, how hard would it be to raise the money through the institutions that make up what we call civil society: The network of private institutions, community associations, religious organizations, families, friends, coworkers, and their voluntary, from-the-heart interactions? Not very hard at all.

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This, too, works very well if one assumes a motivated and committed group of reasonable people who care about the wellbeing of others. Interestingly, they would in fact be doing on a micro-scale exactly what Marxists suggest on a large and ongoing scale: forgoing their right to accumulate property in order that the greater good might be served. However, I think that those motivated, committed, reasonable and caring people will be equally common (or sparse) regardless of which system is enacted, and both have ugly results when they are not there. If there is no capital or personal property, as the author notes, whoever gets to the ice first will take it without thinking about whether others might be more desperate. And if there is capital and personal property, we simply substitute the words "whoever has the most money" for "whover gets to the ice first." Either people are going to be charitable and decent, or they aren't; either system works well if they are, and both fail if they are not.

I would add that that comment of the author's on efficiency seems to me quite suspect. Some things are more efficient on the individual level, but some are not. A government agency with a listing of persons with critical medical needs for the ice seems to me able to distribute it much more efficiently to those with desperate needs than hundreds of indiviudals each working alone, trying to raise a charitable interest from scratch when they've only just learned that the ice is there and it's selling out as they speak. While some things are indeed done more efficiently at an individual level, I think the author too dogmatic and too airy in his assumption that all things are, or indeed that this is.

Roxanne, your point on variability of public and political opinion as an arugment against a large central government is an intriguing one, and it's got a good force of sense behind it. I'm mulling it over. I suppose that I perceive there to be trade-offs in this as in all things, so forgive me if I mention some of the advantages; I'm not particularly enamored of a large central government myself, but I'm a silly old crank for weighing all viewpoints, and even this afternoon found myself explaining to the SO why socialist communists defend the idea of a coordinating central government when, in fact, I personally think it completely at odds with the central premises of communism.

Central governments do seem to do some things quite well. They appear to be good at creating and developing militaries, as they are able to draw on large pools of resources and to marshall substantial forces under a single command. Similarly, they are good at creating infrastructures like interstate highways, as they are able to coordinate the actions of many people toward a single goal. Personally, I'm also grateful that we have a federal law enforcement division; small individual departments in any setting are generally poor at dealing with problems that crop up in a scattered fashion over multiple jurisdictions, or that have causes in one place and effects in another. On the topic of causes in one place and effects in another, I also see benefit in a federal or at least state-wide approach to pollution and industrial contamination, as these are problems difficult to resolve if one group of people is getting the benefits of the employment and products and it's the people downstream who have to deal with the negative consequences. I think them also useful in dealing with disasters. They are hardly so perfect as to incite the envy of the world, but it's good in time of massive disruption and wide-scale damage to have a coordinating body that is not entirely based, funded, and supplied in the area of devastation. Having that agency up, running, and - in an ideal world - competent before the disaster is much more efficient than trying to organize everything from scratch each time.

I suppose I could add more, but I don't wish to be tiresome. My point (if I have one) is that I see some good in a central government, a good that is doubtless tempered by problems like changes in policy, corrupt and self-serving politicians (and there I entirely agree with Roxanne), and difficulties in wringing efficiency from entrenched bureaucracies, but some good nonetheless - enough that I resist dismissing the entire concept of a central government as a bad idea from the start. While recognizing the problems that restrictions on trade and activities can create, it's hard for me to set aside something that I haven't found many libertarian/free market capitalists keen to address - the fact that England and America, at least, did go through a period of almost completely free-market capitalism in the 1800's, and the results in many cases were nothing short of horrific. Much of what we have now in both countries, for good or for ill, is not an invention from whole cloth; it's a reaction to what happened when people tried it the other way first. In its own way, it had failures as grotesque as those of the various attempted communist states.

Shanglan

Roxanne Appleby said:

Obviously this is a micro-example, but the principle can be applied to situations that do not involve emergencies. Also, if you insist on using government to perform the role the writer sees for civil society, then at least try to replicate the process described here. In a post above on my city having a garbage system where you pay a few bucks for garbage bags I make the exact same point, discussing the social benefit of creating an incentive to limit solid waste, and the proper way to subsidize those who you don't want to punish for generating lots of solid waste (families with babies).

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Oops, I missed this in the last post, and it's a good point. A relative described something similar in Germany. There, the local council gives people several different bins into which they are asked to seperate recyclables of various sorts. They also get a small bin into which they can put mixed refuse of a non-recyclable sort. One can, if one wishes, simply throw everything into the "mixed" bin, but it's not very big, and one exceeds it, one pays a fee in order to have any other mixed refuse picked up. That seems to me a reasonably fair alternative, as it allows people to decide for themselves whether it's worth the money to save the time. Some people will of course be short of both, which makes it more difficult, but the task itself is not so complex as to be an insurmountable burden to nearly anyone.

The difference I see here, however, is that the supply of people capable of sorting their refuse (or reducing it) is very large; nearly everyone can manage this. Both capitalism and communism do well in circumstances where a commodity (here, time in sorting the garbage) is in ample supply, and so it's relatively easy to show that each system works in that circumstance. The example of the ice, however, to me shows that neither extreme deals well with a situation in which the commodity is very limited. There, much as it goes against my grain, I confess that I see coordinating governmental agencies as likely to be the best answer. Otherwise, everyone with money will decide that it is indeed worth fifteen dollars to have a cold drink, and no one without money is likely to get any ice. Even if they succeed in eventually organizing their neighbours in an act of charity, the ice is likely to have sold to those with the cash in hand.

There is this, as well, which tends to operate in people's mind with the "gouging" example, and I think it's a reasonable question, if perhaps - as Neon observes - unanswerable. Even if there is no one in desperate need of the ice, and everyone just wants to cool off, is it fair that only the wealthiest people get it? Why them? What makes them more deserving? I recognize that the traditional answer is that they are wealthy because they produce more goods or services that others desire and therefore command greater salaries, but I consider this in the same class as Marx's belief that people will spontaneously distribute the ice to those in greatest need first and then share what is left out of commitment to the good of all. It's a lovely idea, and sometimes it will actually work that way, but it's hardly to be relied upon. On the other hand, preventing merchants from raising the price of the ice beyond its normal level means that, as noted, the first people to arrive have the option to take the ice; that means that persons of different economic circumstances have an equal chance at something that can't be given to everyone and can't be produced in any greater quantity.

In fact, now that I think of it, that's the other notable hole in that author's assumptions; if charity works, the first people there would be just as likely to give the ice to someone in need whatever the cost. It might end up in individual homes faster, but then if the charity-needing people were going to have to draw their friends and neighbors together to help them get the ice anyway, now they can just go to the one house that has the ice instead of going to everyone else asking for money. There seems to be some assumption on the author's part that individual charity would be absent if the price was controlled; it's not clear to me how this could be true.

Shanglan

BlackShanglan said:

This, too, works very well if one assumes a motivated and committed group of reasonable people who care about the wellbeing of others. Interestingly, they would in fact be doing on a micro-scale exactly what Marxists suggest on a large and ongoing scale: forgoing their right to accumulate property in order that the greater good might be served.

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There are three monumental differences between Marxism and civil society, and these largely explain why micro-scale civil society interventions are plausible while Marxism just is not:

First, individuals get real personal satisfaction out of helping those they know or who belong to a finite community with which they identify. Second, on the comparatively small scale at which most institutions of civil society operate, one has more assurance that the needs addressed are real, the resources will not be wasted, and they will not be used in a way that creates moral hazard. Third, a large part of the satisfaction individuals get from helping others through charitable contributions comes from the fact that the act of giving is voluntary. None of these apply in the case of either Marxism or the welfare state.

Some things are more efficient on the individual level, but some are not. A government agency with a listing of persons with critical medical needs for the ice seems to me able to distribute it much more efficiently to those with desperate needs than hundreds of individuals each working alone . . .

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An agency like, say, FEMA? Hmmm – are you sure you would rather trust your daughter's life to FEMA than to the generosity and good will of neighbors? The record of government in this regard is not good. This is not accidental – see below.

Central governments do seem to do some things quite well.

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Max Weber explored how bureaucracy gives organizations like central governments the power to efficiently perform complex tasks on a mass basis. This applies to routine functions where the rules and procedures can be narrowly defined, such as processing millions of tax returns (at least under a rational tax system.) When bureaucracy is applied to social or human needs, however, it fails, as FEMA failed in New Orleans, and will always and inevitably fail in any disaster. I copied the following from a scholarly site after New Orleans:

'Yet Weber also noted the dysfunctions of bureaucracy. Its major advantage, the calculability of results, also makes it unwieldy and even stultifying in dealing with individual cases. Thus modern rationalized and bureaucratized systems of law have become incapable of dealing with individual particularities, to which earlier types of justice were well suited. The "modern judge," Weber stated in writing on the legal system of Continental Europe, "is a vending machine into which the pleadings are inserted together with the fee and which then disgorges the judgment together with the reasons mechanically derived from the Code." ' http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/Weber/WEBERW8.HTML

Thus my preference for the institutions of civil society is not pie-in-the-sky Pollyannaism, or based on unreasoning hostility to government, or mindless adherence to the ideas of Ayn Rand, but on reason and evidence that indicates government institutions are incapable of performing certain types of functions. There is more to it than I have discussed here, but this is a good starting point.

BlackShanglan said:

Oops, I missed this in the last post, and it's a good point. A relative described something similar in Germany. There, the local council gives people several different bins into which they are asked to seperate recyclables of various sorts. They also get a small bin into which they can put mixed refuse of a non-recyclable sort. One can, if one wishes, simply throw everything into the "mixed" bin, but it's not very big, and one exceeds it, one pays a fee in order to have any other mixed refuse picked up. That seems to me a reasonably fair alternative, as it allows people to decide for themselves whether it's worth the money to save the time. Some people will of course be short of both, which makes it more difficult, but the task itself is not so complex as to be an insurmountable burden to nearly anyone.

The difference I see here, however, is that the supply of people capable of sorting their refuse (or reducing it) is very large; nearly everyone can manage this. Both capitalism and communism do well in circumstances where a commodity (here, time in sorting the garbage) is in ample supply, and so it's relatively easy to show that each system works in that circumstance. The example of the ice, however, to me shows that neither extreme deals well with a situation in which the commodity is very limited. There, much as it goes against my grain, I confess that I see coordinating governmental agencies as likely to be the best answer. Otherwise, everyone with money will decide that it is indeed worth fifteen dollars to have a cold drink, and no one without money is likely to get any ice. Even if they succeed in eventually organizing their neighbours in an act of charity, the ice is likely to have sold to those with the cash in hand.

There is this, as well, which tends to operate in people's mind with the "gouging" example, and I think it's a reasonable question, if perhaps - as Neon observes - unanswerable. Even if there is no one in desperate need of the ice, and everyone just wants to cool off, is it fair that only the wealthiest people get it? Why them? What makes them more deserving? I recognize that the traditional answer is that they are wealthy because they produce more goods or services that others desire and therefore command greater salaries, but I consider this in the same class as Marx's belief that people will spontaneously distribute the ice to those in greatest need first and then share what is left out of commitment to the good of all. It's a lovely idea, and sometimes it will actually work that way, but it's hardly to be relied upon. On the other hand, preventing merchants from raising the price of the ice beyond its normal level means that, as noted, the first people to arrive have the option to take the ice; that means that persons of different economic circumstances have an equal chance at something that can't be given to everyone and can't be produced in any greater quantity.

In fact, now that I think of it, that's the other notable hole in that author's assumptions; if charity works, the first people there would be just as likely to give the ice to someone in need whatever the cost. It might end up in individual homes faster, but then if the charity-needing people were going to have to draw their friends and neighbors together to help them get the ice anyway, now they can just go to the one house that has the ice instead of going to everyone else asking for money. There seems to be some assumption on the author's part that individual charity would be absent if the price was controlled; it's not clear to me how this could be true.

Shanglan

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Part of the problem in thinking about things like this is that we are completely conditioned to thinking in terms of "that's the government's job" and sending the problems "downtown" rather that accepting the responsibility ourselves as individuals and communities. They are radically different models, and the habits of thought that come with the first make it difficult to comtemplate a society in which human needs are not consigned to bureaucracies downtown but are part of life around us, met by people around us.

Roxanne Appleby said:

There are three monumental differences between Marxism and civil society, and these largely explain why micro-scale civil society interventions are plausible while Marxism just is not:

First, individuals get real personal satisfaction out of helping those they know or who belong to a finite community with which they identify.

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Yes, I agree that this happens. It would also happen in exactly the same way under communism, at least as theorized by Marx. He didn't suggest that a massive central government undertake these things. Communism, of course, comes in many flavors and varities, but it's not inherently tied to a large central government enforcing the dictates of the state. In fact, I would argue that that is antithetical to the ideals of communism. In Marx's vision, a communist state would come into existence through the dawning of class consciousness in the greater part of the population. This class consciousness would be a transformative recognition that the communal good was more important than private capital and that competition was a less effective and less humane model than cooperation. Under that presumption, exactly what you describe would happen; individuals, actuated by a commitment to the good of their fellow men, would get real personal satisfaction out of helping people living in their own communities. They would just take that joy a step further and relinquish the goal of building capital altogether, sharing with others the fruits of their mutual labors. There's nothing inherently impersonal about the vision; in fact, it relies (perhaps too strongly, but so does the capitalist vision) on the good will of people who care about their neighbours. While I do recognize that socialism tends to look to a more federal and more distant government to help with some things, communism does not inherently assume that, and some schools - anarcho-communism, for instance - wholly reject it.

Second, on the comparatively small scale at which most institutions of civil society operate, one has more assurance that the needs addressed are real, the resources will not be wasted, and they will not be used in a way that creates moral hazard.

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I disagree. Small may mean "more direct control," but more direct control is not inherently good or evil. More direct control is good when the controlling people are good; it is bad when the controlling people are bad. A small local government can work efficiently for the good of the people; then again, there's Huey Long. The smaller the scale, the less opposition one needs to overcome to become a corrupt despot. While I do agree that large-scale governments create opportunities for waste and for bad expenditures of money, I think it equally fair to say that small governments often lack the ability to create opportunities for broad-scale investment and change. There are strengths and weaknesses to each.

Third, a large part of the satisfaction individuals get from helping others through charitable contributions comes from the fact that the act of giving is voluntary. None of these apply in the case of either Marxism or the welfare state.

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In a welfare state, no; in a Marxist state as Marx envisioned it, that is actually the continual and ongoing state of the society. It is a voluntary decision on the part of all members to forgo the accumulation of capital and to work for the common good. They are actuated by the belief that this is both right and effective, and not by the punitive apparatus of a government. Really, when it comes down to it, it's as much a sort of religion-sans-God as it is an economic theory, but then once more, so is the version of capitalism you describe. I think that still takes us back to the same point; generous, good people will live happily in either system, and in fact will behave in very similar ways.

An agency like, say, FEMA? Hmmm – are you sure you would rather trust your daughter's life to FEMA than to the generosity and good will of neighbors? The record of government in this regard is not good. This is not accidental – see below.

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My point is that I would rather trust FEMA and my neighbours. One does not obviate the other. Why have one source of aid when we can have two? I'm not a great fan of FEMA, but that a thing is far from perfect is not, to me, proof that is is worthless.

Max Weber explored how bureaucracy gives organizations like central governments the power to efficiently perform complex tasks on a mass basis. This applies to routine functions where the rules and procedures can be narrowly defined, such as processing millions of tax returns (at least under a rational tax system.) When bureaucracy is applied to social or human needs, however, it fails, as FEMA failed in New Orleans, and will always and inevitably fail in any disaster.

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And yet it succeeded in integration and the civil rights movement.

Bureaucracy is indeed an imperfect tool for addressing massive human needs or social problems. So, however, is free-market capitalism and private charity. In fact, humans being both very diverse in their needs and very treacherous in their greed, nothing works perfectly, and at times nothing seems to work very well. I would still prefer a government that makes some attempt to address such issues if there seems hope that some good may come of it without excessive drain on resources. That's always the difficult part, of course - balancing those issues. However, I don't think that there is a single answer that is always right. Human needs and difficulties are too diverse for one thing to be the right answer every time.

I copied the following from a scholarly site after New Orleans:

'Yet Weber also noted the dysfunctions of bureaucracy. Its major advantage, the calculability of results, also makes it unwieldy and even stultifying in dealing with individual cases. Thus modern rationalized and bureaucratized systems of law have become incapable of dealing with individual particularities, to which earlier types of justice were well suited. The "modern judge," Weber stated in writing on the legal system of Continental Europe, "is a vending machine into which the pleadings are inserted together with the fee and which then disgorges the judgment together with the reasons mechanically derived from the Code." ' http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/Weber/WEBERW8.HTML

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I find this very interesting indeed, because it reminds me of a conversation the SO and I were having just the other day. Once upon a time, in England, there was a thing called the Chancery Court. It was intended to deal with just that sort of problem - the issue of cases in which the letter of the law did not ultimately do justice. It sounds like a wonderful idea, and I found myself wondering why on earth we had no such system.

Then, of course, I learned a bit more about how the institution was seen by the people of the day. It was in fact notorious for incredibly lengthy cases that were never resolved to anyone's satisfaction. The Jennings case, as an example, began with a man's death and will in 1798 and reached the twentieth century, the year 1915, still unresolved. In fact, there was a manuever in boxing known as getting one's opponent in Chancery. It consisted of locking his neck under your arm and pounding him on the head with your fist.

In keeping, of course, with my comments above, I do believe that it's necessary to consider the individual. I do believe that we need strong, good, intelligent judges who decide appropriate penalties on a case-by-case basis. However, I think that here again we're up against human nature. Impartial, knowledgable, wholly unbiased and just people are not in great supply, and balanced against them we have, for instance, the judge in my old home state who gave a man convicted of repeatedly raping his daughter the lightest sentence possible on the grounds that the 11-year-old's manner was "seductive."

I'd argue that the continuing contraction of judge's powers has the same roots as the continuing expansion of industry regulation. It generally comes when someone does something so outrageous that the general population consider it worth outlawing.

Thus my preference for the institutions of civil society is not pie-in-the-sky Pollyannaism, or based on unreasoning hostility to government, or mindless adherence to the ideas of Ayn Rand, but on reason and evidence that indicates government institutions are incapable of performing certain types of functions. There is more to it than I have discussed here, but this is a good starting point.

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I don't dispute at all that governmental institutions do a poor job at some of the things that you have described (although I disagree on others). I think where I disagree is that I see little in the way of a viable alternative. I'd much prefer to have a job done quickly, efficiently, and well, but if the choice is between having it done slowly, expensively, and poorly and not having it done at all, then I think that there is no single answer. It really depends on the job. Given that some of the jobs will have the answer of "yes, I would prefer it done badly to having it not done at all," I think that ultimately I've got to accept the presence of a central government and instead devote my attentions to more specific battles about what it should and should not involve itself with. Of course, like any tool or power structure, it can be used badly or maliciously, but the total lack of tools or power structures also has consequences, and those I think are due their fair share of recognition as well.

Shanglan

Roxanne Appleby said:

Part of the problem in thinking about things like this is that we are completely conditioned to thinking in terms of "that's the government's job" and sending the problems "downtown" rather that accepting the responsibility ourselves as individuals and communities. They are radically different models, and the habits of thought that come with the first make it difficult to comtemplate a society in which human needs are not consigned to bureaucracies downtown but are part of life around us, met by people around us.

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This is an excellent point; I think it addresses one of the great difficulties of a central government that attempts to provide for the needs of its people. I agree that it can dull people's sense of responsibility. However, their perception is at least partly due to the fact that the government is ministering to people's needs, or at least to some of them, and those so aided gain real help that should not be dismissed. Given that history generally seems to demonstrate that persons not aided by their governments have a very hit-or-miss chance of being aided by anyone else, I think it's a significant good that has to be weighed against potential losses.

Ironically, of course, that last sentence seems to me to bring us once more back to that issue of commonalities. It's as applicable to anarcho-communism as it is to free market capitalism. But then, we're back to those civically-minded people who care about each other. We really need to get more of those.

Of course, I suppose it's only fair to observe, too, that a dedicated believer in socialized welfare would argue that people who elect officials who create a socialized state and levy the taxes to create the governmental programs are, in fact, taking responsibility. They're contributing money and forming an orgnanized institution to address the problem. They may not get the personal reinforcement of seeing the results of their actions, but in counterbalance, they can contribute money to many more different causes than they are likely to have time for and can help create specialists with more advanced knowledge of the needs and issues. The government being, really, simply formed of the people themselves using the people's money to carry out their will (in the ideal form of course), then as an ideal it's no worse than any of the others. If we staffed the government with some of those fair, just, compassionate, civic-minded people we're looking for, I think they'd do just fine.

Shanglan

I risk descending to quibbling, but I can't resist a making a few points.

BlackShanglan said:

This class consciousness would be a transformative recognition that the communal good was more important than private capital and that competition was a less effective and less humane model than cooperation. Under that presumption, exactly what you describe would happen; individuals, actuated by a commitment to the good of their fellow men, would get real personal satisfaction out of helping people living in their own communities. . . . (There would be) a voluntary decision on the part of all members to forgo the accumulation of capital and to work for the common good.

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But in what I describe the means of production are not part of the equation. The institutions of civil society operate alongside economic institutions, allowing the latter to run at full efficiency, thus creating greater wealth with which the former will be empowered. I view this as a fundamental distinction.

I disagree. Small may mean "more direct control," but more direct control is not inherently good or evil. More direct control is good when the controlling people are good; it is bad when the controlling people are bad. A small local government can work efficiently for the good of the people; then again, there's Huey Long. The smaller the scale, the less opposition one needs to overcome to become a corrupt despot. While I do agree that large-scale governments create opportunities for waste and for bad expenditures of money, I think it equally fair to say that small governments often lack the ability to create opportunities for broad-scale investment and change. There are strengths and weaknesses to each.

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Your analysis does not incorporate the "knowledge problem," per Hayek. When you get down to the level of addressing unique individual problems small is better, because it can engage individuals at a much deeper level.

"Roxanne: When bureaucracy is applied to social or human needs, however, it fails." Shang: And yet it succeeded in integration and the civil rights movement.

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I'm afraid that is a non-sequitor. Integration and the civil rights movement succeeded essentially for two reasons. First, with obvious exceptions, the nation's conscience had been pricked, and there was a consensus about making it work. More relevant to the conversation here, a simple change was made in the law: It became illegal to discriminate in the provision of public services and accomodations on the basis of race and other inherent characteristics. No massive bureaucracy was needed - just cops (or in some cases the national guard) and courts.

I would still prefer a government that makes some attempt to address such issues if there seems hope that some good may come of it without excessive drain on resources.

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Draining resources is not the only consideration. Indeed, our society is wealthy enough that it is no longer the primary one. (Although I may be drummed out of the libertarian movement, I have no objection to one particular form of welfare: Food stamps. I would hand them out willy-nilly to whoever asks, if for no other reason than to shut up the phony advocates for the phony problem of "hunger" in the U.S. If anyone is hungry in this country it's not for economic reasons. Plus, I want to make damned sure that no one is hungry – that would be inexcuseable in a society as rich as ours.)

No, and I'm speaking of the welfare state now, the real cost is that it takes the responsibility for our lives out of our hands as individuals, as families, and communities, and sends it "downtown."


I am certain that taking away the responsibility from individuals and communities is the cause of most of the social pathologies that plague our society, and it diminished human dignity in countless ways. That is the real reason I am a libertarian.

Sorry, just had to pass this on. Such is the patient suffering of the magnanimous SO ...

(Evening. A kitchen. At the counter, a horse, occupied with toast, grapes, and a glass of water. Enter SO.)

HORSE: (Various comments on property rights and governmental systems.)

SO: (Various more trenchant comments on same.)

SO: (departing and looking for water) Is that your glass of water?

HORSE: Well, under an anarcho-communist state, it would be my glass of water if I happened to be drinking it or had invested labor in preparing it in order to drink it --

(Exit, pursued by a bear.)

BlackShanglan said:

Of course, I suppose it's only fair to observe, too, that a dedicated believer in socialized welfare would argue that people who elect officials who create a socialized state and levy the taxes to create the governmental programs are, in fact, taking responsibility. They're contributing money and forming an orgnanized institution to address the problem. They may not get the personal reinforcement of seeing the results of their actions, but in counterbalance, they can contribute money to many more different causes than they are likely to have time for and can help create specialists with more advanced knowledge of the needs and issues. The government being, really, simply formed of the people themselves using the people's money to carry out their will (in the ideal form of course), then as an ideal it's no worse than any of the others. If we staffed the government with some of those fair, just, compassionate, civic-minded people we're looking for, I think they'd do just fine.
Shanglan

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I fear that the motives of those who vote for the welfare state are not so "clean." I will apply a little Randian analysis here: People are told from day one that putting others before self and sacrificing one's own interests for others is the right thing they do, but to actually live in the world they cannot abide by this ideal, and certainly in their economic lives behave very differently. This creates guilt, part of which they assuage by voting for a welfare state.

Setting that aside, there is a temptation to duck the responsibility by handing it off to the bureaucrats downtown, even if that is expensive. I do not view this as anything to be admired; quite the contrary.

BlackShanglan said:

Sorry, just had to pass this on. Such is the patient suffering of the magnanimous SO ...

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Oh damn, you have a life . . . Nirvana chides me that I should get one, else I risk not acheiving my human telos, but it's so inconvenient . . .

(Actually Nirvana never chides, she models, as in role-model.)

Roxanne Appleby said:

I risk descending to quibbling, but I can't resist a making a few points.

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Oh, please do quibble. It is such a delightful word.

But in what I describe the means of production are not part of the equation. The institutions of civil society operate alongside economic institutions, allowing the latter to run at full efficiency, thus creating greater wealth with which the former will be empowered. I view this as a fundamental distinction.

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I had difficulty following you here, probably because I'm growing sleepy. My comment was directed to your statement that "First, individuals get real personal satisfaction out of helping those they know or who belong to a finite community with which they identify." My comments on class consciousness were intended to convey that this can also be the case in a Marxist society; communism does not require a central government to supply the needs of the disadvantaged because it assumes a population that believes in helping each other. For this reason, it could be enacted on a small community level or use a coordinating governmental structure; neither is inherent in the theory, although personally I find the anarcho-communist model more appealing and slightly more consistent.

I'm not quite sure where the means of production enters into the question of individual contributions to the community, or whether perhaps I'm confused in thinking that that was the focus of that paragraph. While Marxism does assume that the superstructure of society arises from its economic base, there's latitude in there for different ways of enacting the central communistic principles, and one can go with a large central government or not depending on how one chooses to enact it. At any rate, I will quibble back in suggesting that there seems to me at the end to be an assumption that wealth is inherently empowering. I think that depends very much on who has it, how they use it, and how it's distributed. Wide-scale generation of wealth that flows into the coffers of a despotic tyrant would not to empower people in general. But I will await assistence; I am sorry that I have read this poorly.

Your analysis does not incorporate the "knowledge problem," per Hayek. When you get down to the level of addressing unique individual problems small is better, because it can engage individuals at a much deeper level.

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Apologies if I missed a link on Hayek; I'm a little patchy on the reference. I found this -

In a recent Hayek symposium, one economist characterized this coordination process as “the greatest information processing system in the world, more powerful than all the high tech computers. It can collect, sort, fragment, condense and deliver the right information to the right decision-maker at the right time for the right purpose to make the optimal choice. I may not know about the flood or the drought or the labor trouble. I don’t care or need to know, because all of that information is contained in a single data point: The price of tea (or whatever commodity) is up or down.”

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- but there he is discussing supply and demand, and it seems to me that here we're on a somewhat related but also substantially different issue of government size. One can have a free capitalist marketplace in which prices float to their own level and still have a socialist state that taxes the profits and attempts to supply various physical and social services; one can have a communist state in which no private property exists and have no government at all. I say this because it seems to me that there's an assumption that communism is inherently a "big government" thing and that capitalism is not; I think that these connections are not inherent in either economic system as defined by the ways in which they manage property rights and the marketplace.

The speaker has an interesting point on information, and I think he's right in it - but that doesn't convince me that the system is a good one. I think that the chief goal of a planned economic structure should be supply of goods to the participants in as bountiful, efficient, and fair a manner as possible. Conveying information is only useful, in that context, if it allows me to do something useful with it. I think that the chief complaint about capitalism is not that it doesn't supply information about what is scarce and what is not; it's that it doesn't let people use that information in ways that seem just to them, i.e., by communicating something other than "rich people have first dibs."

That said, it seems to me that your comment is more about governmental administation rather than the marketplace; am I right in thinking you mean that small-scale government is better because it allows greater knowledge of the individuals involved? Of course feel free to kick me, but at this point you probably known what I'm going to say - it's good in some cases and not in others, a thing that is useful, but not without its flaws. Distance can create problems in understanding; distance can also allow objectivity and greater impartiality. If I'm bidding on a government contracting job, I'd really prefer if I was dealing with a faceless government than with the one man in town running the show, who happens to have some personal animus for me stemming from a small indiscretion with his wife. I'd rather that a federal government overseeing the schools ensure some parity in their funding rather than leaving it to the local mayor who knows which districts voted for him and which didn't. While it's true that people can gather more knowledge about things close to them, and in some cases it's a much better way of making sure that money is well spent, it's also true that they can know enough to bias them and that they can get overwhelmed in the details - as in the dreaded Jennings case.

I'm afraid that is a non-sequitor. Integration and the civil rights movement succeeded essentially for two reasons. First, with obvious exceptions, the nation's conscience had been pricked, and there was a consensus about making it work. More relevant to the conversation here, a simple change was made in the law: It became illegal to discriminate in the provision of public services and accomodations on the basis of race and other inherent characteristics. No massive bureaucracy was needed - just cops (or in some cases the national guard) and courts.

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I disagree. Some bureaucracy was needed to enforce the law - not just to send in the police and the national guard, but to determine where and when the law had been violated, what activities and institutions came under it, and how best to stimulate compliance as well as to punish. The mere fact that states receive funding from the federal government for all sorts of things has often been the chief tool of achieving compliance in such situations; rather than having to enact a military solution, the federal government can threaten their purse strings.

But possibly we disagree less that we think. I'm not sure what you're counting as "massive bureaucracy" in the service of a social cause. If you're saying that it's fine to make it illegal to behave in a socially disruptive or objectionable way and that it is also fine to use the courts, the police, and the national guard to enforce that, I'm not sure what it is that we would disagree upon. Could you bear to give an example of a level of bureaucracy with which you disagree? Is it the nature of the structure itself you object to, or is it more the things for which it is used?

Draining resources is not the only consideration. Indeed, our society is wealthy enough that it is no longer the primary one. (Although I may be drummed out of the libertarian movement, I have no objection to one particular form of welfare: Food stamps. I would hand them out willy-nilly to whoever asks, if for no other reason than to shut up the phony advocates for the phony problem of "hunger" in the U.S. If anyone is hungry in this country it's not for economic reasons. Plus, I want to make damned sure that no one is hungry – that would be inexcuseable in a society as rich as ours.)

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Hmm! This is very interesting. I like the idea, myself, of ensuring that no one will be hungry, and I agree with you that we make enough food, certainly, to go around. But I am curious; what distinction do you see between this and the ice example? Is there a reason why relying on the individual charity of others is not desirable here?

The chief defect of the welfare state from this perspective is not that it is ineffectual in making good on its promises (though it is), nor even that it often exacerbates the very problems it is supposed to solve (though it does). The welfare state is pernicious ultimately because it drains too much of the life from life. . . Aristotle was right. Virtue is a habit. Virtue does not flourish in the next generation because we tell our children to be honest, compassionate and generous in the abstract. It flourishes because our children practice honesty, compassion and generosity in the same way that they practice a musical instrument or a sport. That happens best when children grow up in a society in which human needs are not consigned to bureaucracies downtown but are part of life around us, met by people around us. (Charles Murray, A Plan to Replace the Welfare State.)​

I am certain that taking away the responsibility from individuals and communities is the cause of most of the social pathologies that plague our society, and it diminished human dignity in countless ways. That is the real reason I am a libertarian.

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Hmmm. Well, at heart I can't believe that any single thing is the cause of most of our pathologies. I say that just to have it out of the way. I inherently distrust any theory that suggests that most of society's problems have one cause, with the exception of the theory promulgated by the employees of the animal shelter at which I used to work and summed up succinctly in the phrase "fucking humans." Here, for instance, I completely and wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Murray's statements about virtue. It must indeed be taught and shown and demonstrated, made a real thing that is every person's responsibility. I just don't see that a governmental system is ultimately the foundation of this, or that it's even closely related to it. Capitalism, communism, socialism, big and large governments, free and planned economies - except at the bizarre extremes, any of them will work when enacted amongst virtuous people, and all of them foster some kind of virtue well. For instance:

Capitalist libertarian: "I am a person of individual responsibility. I will demonstrate my individual virtue through hard work rewarded by personal property and capital and through individual personal charitable efforts effected on an efficient and informed local scale."

Capitalist socialist: "I am a person of individual responsibility. I will demonstrate my individual virtue through hard work rewarded by personal property and capital and through my decision to elect representatives and establish a government that supports the needy and upholds the rights of the weak, even when it costs me some of my property."

Communist socialist: "I am a person of individual responsibility. I will demonstrate my individual virtue through hard work rewarded by small amounts of personal property and great gains for the community and through my decision to establish a government that supports the needy and upholds the rights of the weak by coordinating the efforts of the community on a wide scale."

Communist anarchist: "I am a person of individual responsibility. I will demonstrate my individual virtue through hard work rewarded by some personal property and great gains for the community and through individual personal charitable efforts effected on an efficient and informed local scale."

All of these systems can foster virtue and responsibility. I think that the chief flaw in each of them is a tendency to see the problems of humanity as being caused by the other systems. After all, when those systems are enacted, humans behave in a flawed fashion! It seems clear that the systems are causing it.

I don't believe that the systems are causing it. I believe that on the whole, the problems of humans are caused by humans, specifically by them being so often the opposite of all that Murray rightly praises - honest, generous, hard-working, compassionate, etc. Virtuous people can work well in any of the systems; I also think that any of those systems can, by good people, be used to encourage personal responsibility and virtue in different ways. I think that the chief problem is that it's often easier, in any system, to be bad than to be good, and it's easier still to be indifferent. The socialist may think that it's the government's problem; the libertarian (present company of course excluded) may decide that he or she owes the other nothing. Ultimately, a selfish person will find a reason to be selfish, and a good person will be good regardless, and I suspect that much of what makes us selfish or good as adults has little to do with our governments.

That can be depressing, but I think that there is hope in it as well. I think it quite true that any system will be used in ugly ways by ugly people, and that as Neon observed, no system enacted will really be able to stop humans from being nasty if they want to. On the other hand, no system known to man has ever prevented good people from existing and from being good within it. Even the Nazi party was not able wholly to stamp it out, and I don't think anyone else will either. It's true that I don't believe in a panacea, but then I am comforted by the fact that I also don't believe that anything can wholly destroy humanity in its best sense.

Shanglan

I would hand them out willy-nilly to whoever asks, if for no other reason than to shut up the phony advocates for the phony problem of "hunger" in the U.S. If anyone is hungry in this country it's not for economic reasons.

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I know it wanders way off topic here, but I simply have to ask - Can you expand on this? Considering the number of homeless and/or jobless in this country, and the even larger number of working poor, I'm curious about your intent and meaning.

Roxanne Appleby said:

Oh damn, you have a life . . . Nirvana chides me that I should get one, else I risk not acheiving my human telos, but it's so inconvenient . . .

(Actually Nirvana never chides, she models, as in role-model.)

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And that is so much more charming and persuasive in the long run. No one loves a chider who has no other talents.

Shanglan

Roxanne Appleby said:

I fear that the motives of those who vote for the welfare state are not so "clean." I will apply a little Randian analysis here: People are told from day one that putting others before self and sacrificing one's own interests for others is the right thing they do, but to actually live in the world they cannot abide by this ideal, and certainly in their economic lives behave very differently. This creates guilt, part of which they assuage by voting for a welfare state.

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Hmmmm. Quite possible, but then Wilde attributes the same impulses to private individual charity in a capitalist society. We set up an unequal system in which some profit at the expense of others and then assuage our consciences by working a weekend at a soup kitchen. But I'm curious, for you've mentioned something I've heard before about Rand, but never very coherently. If being told to sacrifice one's interests is a major source of problems, what middle ground does Rand perceive between that and ruthless disinterest in others - or is there one? What does she see as the mediating influence?

Setting that aside, there is a temptation to duck the responsibility by handing it off to the bureaucrats downtown, even if that is expensive. I do not view this as anything to be admired; quite the contrary.

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Hmmm. I'm not sure that I see it as ducking responsibility. Sometimes one has more money than time, and sometimes more time than money. Very often one has no expertise in the field that needs work; I, for instance, wholly support low-cost spay and neuter programs and contribute to them financially, but there's nothing I could do in the surgery but get in the way. I did do some volunteer work cleaning up at the end of the day, but really they needed money for equipment and supplies a great deal more than they needed a bit of mopping.

Too, I can say from the experience of working in such a place that all of the man-hours in the world do one no good if they don't come in substantial chunks. Having forty people volunteer an hour each is staggeringly different to having one full-time employee for a week; in fact, you would need the full-time employee to coordinate those forty, and probably more than one. We had both a full-time volunteer coordinator and several other people who were partially involved in training, directing, and scheduling volunteers, and that's not counting our two full-time people working on special needs - foster care, rescue liaison, etc. We actually were turning people away in a steady stream because they could not commit to enough time to make up the investment of our time in training them. If they would have given us cash at even five dollars per hour for the eight or ten hours they wanted to offer, we could have done enormous good with it. It's not their fault that most of them had full-time jobs and could not possibly devote a full-time level of concentration and time to volunteer work, but it's also true that a dozen 4-hours-per-week people cannot replace a single specialist with regular, constant work in and understanding of the institution. Sometimes it really is better just to fund the institution.

Shanglan

Add on to Shanglan

BS Central governments do seem to do some things quite well. They appear to be good at creating and developing militaries, as they are able to draw on large pools of resources and to marshall substantial forces under a single command. Similarly, they are good at creating infrastructures like interstate highways, as they are able to coordinate the actions of many people toward a single goal. Personally, I'm also grateful that we have a federal law enforcement division; small individual departments in any setting are generally poor at dealing with problems that crop up in a scattered fashion over multiple jurisdictions, or that have causes in one place and effects in another.

On the topic of causes in one place and effects in another, I also see benefit in a federal or at least state-wide approach to pollution and industrial contamination, as these are problems difficult to resolve if one group of people is getting the benefits of the employment and products and it's the people downstream who have to deal with the negative consequences. I think them also useful in dealing with disasters. They are hardly so perfect as to incite the envy of the world, but it's good in time of massive disruption and wide-scale damage to have a coordinating body that is not entirely based, funded, and supplied in the area of devastation. Having that agency up, running, and - in an ideal world - competent before the disaster is much more efficient than trying to organize everything from scratch each time.
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P: I think these are good points. Industrial pollution is not going to get solved at low levels or by the corporations doing (of their own free will and conscience). Of course, Ms. Roxanne would add the centralization does not, of itself, lead to 'cures' for pollution, since China is *very* polluted, for example. The central power has to be 'of the people' and 'by the people' and by the mechanisms of courts etc (for 'people' sometimes get too short range).

One point you haven't mentioned, which is a bone in the throat of 'minimum government' folks, some of whom used the label 'libertarian' (many Randists do not). A strong central goverment can permit and encourage more *freedom.* The 13th Amdt brought freedom to slaves. The 14th amendment gave the central (federal) government a role in citizens' rights-- it is the backbone of a thousand cases that have gone to the supreme ct.
Without it, you would not have 'freedom of religion' or speech at a state level, since the BR, e.g., on these cases says "Congress shall make no law...."

All those who love the 'founders' vision so much, should be ready to admit that freedom of religion and speech--at state and lower levels-- were not protected. Connecticutt, indded had a 'state church' at the time the Constitution was written and ratified.

The classic 'free speech' and 'freedom of religion' cases were decided at a federal level. You don't get freedom to read 'Lady Chatterly' from most town councils. Heck, even the freedom to read Darwin or "Catcher in the Rye" (perennial bone of contention for decades). Cases of evangelists handing out pamphlets have gone to the SC; local ordinances banned them. SC upheld them.

Of course some central govs suppress freedoms, as do the Chinese; centrality and power by themselves are not sufficient for the effects I mention. It's clear though that decentralization, e.g. around 'porn' creates a crazy patchwork of censorship in Peoria, and liberty in Manhattan S. A minimalist might argue that's better: The people in Peoria don't get offended by Lawrence and Joyce. But with all due respect, I must say, 'f**k 'em--they don't need to buy books!'

No one 'gave' you, or your forebearers, freedom, Pure, they fought to achieve it.

There is no recipe, or pre ordained 'plan' for human freedom for human and individual rights, we have to discover it as we go along and we do so with errors and wrong directions.

Mainly from the ilks of those such as you, who only criticize our failures and do not appreciate what has been accomplished.

I am ashamed of you.

amicus...