Pseudo-demand, Pseudo-supply

[Colanth]

Show me how you spend your time/money and I'll show you who you worship.

So Bill and Melinda Gates worship the poor?

Bri has a few graphics for you.

[Colanth]

You keep saying pseudo-atheist like a fucking moron, you know that?

Atheism has nothing to do with political science. So pull that stick out of your ass.

So Buchanan, the Nobel Prize winning economist, had no idea what he was talking about when he said that the state had replaced God?

No more than someone who said that all Americans are Episcopalians.  (Or don't you understand that?)  

Richard Musgrave, a highly respected public finance economist, had no idea what he was talking about when he said that our current system is based on the assumption that congresspeople are omniscient?

//https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Achyperbole&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Yeah, people should be free to boycott me...but taxpayers shouldn't be free to boycott specific government organizations?

Specific ones?  No.  If you want to opt out of financing the government, you also opt out of receiving any benefit that you'd get by having a government.  (Like not being cheated, sold bad food, drinking polluted water or breathing polluted air, not being invaded by a foreign army, etc., etc.)

Alternatively, you can opt out of paying for certain programs, but the government can opt out of providing you with the benefits you receive from other programs that suffer because their funds have to be cut to pay for the funds you aren't paying.

Can you just opt out with no penalty?  TNSTAAFL.

Even some liberals aren't that stupid...Velazquez: Funding war should be taxpayers' choice.

You mean he isn't that intelligent.  Even ants know that if individuals can "opt out of war", the whole clan dies.

Tell you what - when you graduate high school (I don't care if you have a diploma - when you actually learn what a high school graduate should understand), let me know and I'll think about taking you seriously.  Right now, every post of yours screams "I really don't understand anything I'm talking about, but I want to keep posting".

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Right now, every post of yours screams "I really don't understand anything I'm talking about, but I want to keep posting".

Yeah that's all this joker is good for. There's always someone who is extremely selfish and screams 'I don't like government! Everyone should hate government like me!' Whilst they post from a country that probably is extremely stable and relatively safe thanks to government infrastructure.

On almost every forum there's always one, although technically this guy isn't a member as he just comes here to spam the same shit in every thread he starts.

Whate a boring, tedious individual. The 'market' says he should be hung drawn and quartered. None of his ideas are new, but all of them are tripe. He knows a lot of books, but he hasn't read any of them. yet he still insists on trying to lecture people who know better how the world works. We had a word for people like that at Trinity, "a cunt".

[Xerographica]

Gotta eat dude.  I'm not against people doing better than me.  In fact, I'm all for it.  What I am trying to get across, is that it is not a fair playing field and if it was many of those 1% er's would be replaced.  Right now we have hierarchical government under a different guise.  Yes, there are a few who break into the upper ranks, who do deserve to be there, but most are born into the position.  Then they manipulate government to stay there and keep others down.

I totally agree with the following passage...

Their resources can be used in two ways:investment in capital goods that can be used to produce a product for sale in competitive markets, or investment in lobbying and bribing politicians and in trying to develop legislation that will protect firms from competition or provide them with a share of the public budget.  Under a large government, "political investment" can become relatively more profitable than "market investment," and a shift in investment from the market to the political arena should be expected.  In private competitive markets, a firm must appeal to buyers to enter mutually beneficial trades: in political markets it can enlist the power of the state to force people to give up part of their income for the firm's benefit. - Richard B. McKenzie, Bound to Be Free

But as I've tried, and failed, to explain...pragmatarianism would solve the problem of "concentrated benefits and dispersed costs".  

Farm subsidies are an example of a concentrated benefit and a dispersed cost.  What would happen to farm subsidies though if taxpayers could choose where their taxes go?  You still gotta eat...so you'd still give your money to farmers...but would farmers still bother with lobbyists and congresspeople?  Maybe?  But they could also give their taxes directly to the Dept of Agriculture.  The question is...how many other people would give their taxes to the Dept of Agriculture?  Clearly there's a threshold where if too few taxpayers gave their taxes to the Ag Dept...then society would debate whether or not the Ag Dept qualified as a truly "public" good.  Do you know what I mean?  The more concentrated the benefit...the stronger the argument for the good being private rather than public.  

It's the same exact concept with war...

There are multitudes with an interest in peace, but they have no lobby to match those of the 'special interests' that may on occasion have an interest in war. - Mancur Olson

There will always be people who stand to benefit from war.  But my theory is that only a very small percentage of any society would choose to pay for offensive wars.  As such, if too few taxpayers were willing to support a war, then the war could not truly be considered a "public" good.  

With WWII...many voters supported the war.  Why not?  Just like voters now...why not accept a lunch that somebody else has to pay for...

As was noted in Chapter 3, expressions of malice and/or envy no less than expressions of altruism are cheaper in the voting booth than in the market.  A German voter who in 1933 cast a ballot for Hitler was able to indulge his antisemitic sentiments at much less cost than she would have borne by organizing a pogrom. - Geoffrey Brennan, Loren Lomasky, Democracy and Decision

But who had to bear the cost?  Taxpayers.  And who were the taxpayers?

By the way, during Germany's Weimar Republic, Jews were only 1 percent of the German population, but they were 10 percent of the country's doctors and dentists, 17 percent of its lawyers, and a large percentage of its scientific community. - Walter E. Williams, Diversity, Ignorance, and Stupidity

In China the working conditions are terrible.  People are working 16 hour days 7 days a week for a little more than subsistence.  Is that what you would have for us and the rest of the world.  Screw that!  I don't want to be a slave in anyway.

When I lived in China I didn't see any slaves.  I saw more and more fat people in nice, if not a bit outdated, clothes talking on cell phones that were newer models than we had over here.  Not that I didn't see poverty...but I didn't see 30-40 million people starving to death as a result of the famine that Mao Zedong caused by his allocation of the country's resources.  

If you want what's best for a country...it really helps to understand what truly helps raise the standard of living.  As I've said before, progress depends on efficiently allocating resources...which depends on giving people the freedom to choose how they spend their time/money.  

I'm sorry, but you completely lost me here.  What does the pagan Rome have to do with eternal happiness an Marx?  What I was trying to get across is, that the government and the ruling elite have to appease the masses or the whole system breaks down.

Marx's argument was that the rulers pushed religion on the peasants so that they wouldn't revolt.  

This makes no sense.  First you say the masses should decide how to spend the money, then you say they don't know how.  I already conceded that some people are better able to use resources than others.  But, allowing an electorate, many of who don't even know who their congressman is, to decide how to spend the money, just doesn't make sense.  We are supposed to have a representative republic, but many people don't even understand that.  The idea being, some people can spend the time and effort to figure out the best uses of governmental resources.  Your idea turns the country into a democracy.  If I am right in what I am reading, then I find it illogical.

Everybody has ideas...markets give us the freedom to spend our time/money on the ones we value most.  When you, I, and millions of other people...all agree that the same exact idea is "good"...then we give our money to the people responsible...which increases their influence over how society's resources are used.  So their influence is directly tied to our benefit.  If our benefit diminishes...then so will their influence.    

In essence, allowing people to say "no thanks" is a fail safe device that does not exist in the public sector.  Without it, resources can really really be misallocated...as was seen in Germany with Hitler and China with Mao.  

Xerographica. Just to see if you are paying attention, you do realize that the top 1% control like 85% of the money don't you?

Of course, they have that influence because we indicated, with our dollars, our sacrifice, that we benefit from how they are using society's limited resources.  As such, I'm almost entirely certain that WWII never would have occurred if pragmatarianism had been implemented.  Please reread Williams' passage.

Another question, do you (Xerographica) have plans for any other changes besides eliminating the minimum wage and allowing the masses to vote on government spending?

Uh, plans?  Heh...you make it sound like I'm running for office.  I'm a pragmatarian...which is all about ceteris paribus (all other things being equal).  So there's pragmatarianism...and then there are my own personal views and preferences.  

In terms of the logistics of tax choice...taxpayers would be able to pay their taxes at anytime throughout the year.  You could go directly to the EPA website and make a payment.  They'd give you a receipt and you'd submit all your receipts to the IRS by April 15.  Anybody who didn't want to shop for themselves would still have the option to give their taxes to congress.  

Personally, I don't see any reason why taxpayers shouldn't be allowed to give their taxes to specific congresspeople.  Plus, rather than limiting the "menu" to only our country's government organizations....I'm leaning towards the idea that taxpayers should be free to order from any country's menu.  For example, if you're an environmentalist, then you should have the option to give your taxes to Brazil's EPA in order to help conserve the rain rain forest.  If you think their EPA gives you more conservation/value for your tax dollar than our EPA...then maybe you know something that I don't.  Markets create the most value because individuals are allowed to spend their money on whatever it is they value most.    

Kinda along the same lines...I believe voters should have the freedom to sell their votes...and the age restriction should be eliminated (universal suffrage).  I'm also against preventing business owners from discriminating for any reason.  Just like you should have the freedom to shoot yourself in the foot, business owners should have the freedom to arbitrarily limit their customer base and labor supply.  But, just like my support for abolishing the minimum wage, these are my personal views...and are separate and distinct from pragmatarianism.

[Atheon]

Anyone who disagrees with minimum wage should be forced to experience working for next to nothing, yet still have to pay rent, buy food, get to and from work, etc.

[Plu]

Personally, I don't see any reason

Well, you got that part right  

[Xerographica]

No more than someone who said that all Americans are Episcopalians.  (Or don't you understand that?)

Who's "someone"?  Were they a Nobel Prize winning economist?

Richard Musgrave, a highly respected public finance economist, had no idea what he was talking about when he said that our current system is based on the assumption that congresspeople are omniscient?

//https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Achyperbole&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

What was "hyperbolic" about Musgrave's statement?  Before you answer that, why not first learn something about public finance?  If you truly want to defeat my argument...then you'll have to actually understand it first.  So go ahead and google the preference revelation problem.  

Specific ones?  No.  If you want to opt out of financing the government, you also opt out of receiving any benefit that you'd get by having a government.  (Like not being cheated, sold bad food, drinking polluted water or breathing polluted air, not being invaded by a foreign army, etc., etc.)

Thanks for sharing that argument.  Next time I run across an anarcho-capitalist I'll be sure to share it with him.  Can you give me your e-mail address so that I can share it with him?  Better yet, why not start a thread where you critique anarcho-capitalism and then I'll share the link with him?  

Uh, by the way, I'm a pragmatarian.  Maybe eventually you'll figure out the difference between myself and an anarcho-capitalist.  I'm not gonna hold my breath though.  

You mean he isn't that intelligent.  Even ants know that if individuals can "opt out of war", the whole clan dies.

If you'd read the article, then you would have known that opting out of war doesn't mean opting out of taxes.  And if you were smarter than an ant you'd know that war doesn't necessarily mean peace...

A second point of broad consensus among critics stresses that publicness in consumption must not necessarily mean that all persons value a good's utility equally, Mendez (1999), for example, illustrates this point by examining peace as a PG. Some policy-makers might opt for increased defense spending in order to safeguard peace. However, this decision could siphon off scarce resources from programmes in the areas of health and education. Other policy-makers might object to such a consequence and prefer to foster peace through just the opposite measure -- improved health and education for all. Especially under conditions of extreme disparity and inequity, the first strategy could indeed provoke even more conflict and unrest, securing national borders by unsettling people's lives. - Inge Kaul, Public Goods: Taking the Concept to the 21st Century

Tell you what - when you graduate high school (I don't care if you have a diploma - when you actually learn what a high school graduate should understand), let me know and I'll think about taking you seriously.  Right now, every post of yours screams "I really don't understand anything I'm talking about, but I want to keep posting".

You're welcome not to take me seriously...but that's why I share a lot of passages from people who should be taken seriously.  The fact that you don't know that they should be taken seriously is proof positive that your critiques do not reflect what serious thinkers know.  No surprise there...

It is easy to believe; doubting is more difficult. Experience and knowledge and thinking are necessary before we can doubt and question intelligently.  Tell a child that Santa Claus comes down the chimney or a savage that thunder is the anger of the gods and the child and the savage will accept your statements until they acquire sufficient knowledge to cause them to demur.  Millions in India passionately believe that the waters of the Ganges are holy, that snakes are deities in disguise, that it is as wrong to kill a cow as it is to kill a person - and, as for eating roast beef...that is no more to be thought of than cannibalism.  They accept these absurdities, not because they have been proved, but because the suggestion has been deeply embedded in their minds, and they have not the intelligence, the knowledge, the experience, necessary to question them.
We smile...the poor benighted creatures!  Yet you and I, if we examine the facts closely, will discover that the majority of our opinions, our most cherished beliefs, our creeds, the principles of conduct on which many of us base our very lives, are the result of suggestion, not reasoning...
Prejudiced, biased, and reiterated assertions, not logic, have formulated our beliefs. - Dale Carnegie

Right now you accept an absurdity...that congresspeople are omniscient.  Except, you don't realize that you accept an absurdity because you haven't seriously studied the topic.  Why should you?  You're not a public finance economist.  Then again, neither am I.  However,  I have studied the topic because I find the topic fascinating.  

You're not going to spend any time doing any relevant reading.  Why should you?  It's far easier to believe that I'm just some nut case.  Because, what are the chances that I'm right and most everybody else is wrong?  Pretty slim...right?  Well...that's how it goes...

Our creed is that the science of government is an experimental science, and that, like all other experimental sciences, it is generally in a state of progression. No man is so obstinate an admirer of the old times as to deny that medicine, surgery, botany, chemistry, engineering, navigation, are better understood now than in any former age. We conceive that it is the same with political science. Like those physical sciences which we have mentioned, it has always been working itself clearer and clearer, and depositing impurity after impurity. There was a time when the most powerful of human intellects were deluded by the gibberish of the astrologer and the alchemist; and just so there was a time when the most enlightened and virtuous statesman thought it the first duty of a government to persecute heretics, to found monasteries, to make war on Saracens. But time advances; facts accumulate; doubts arise. Faint glimpses of truth begin to appear, and shine more and more unto the perfect day. The highest intellects, like the tops of mountains, are the first to catch and reflect the dawn. They are bright, while the level below is still in darkness. But soon the light, which at first illuminated only the loftiest eminences, descends on the plain and penetrates to the deepest valley. First come hints, then fragments of systems, then defective systems, then complete and harmonious systems. The sound opinion, held for a time by one bold speculator, becomes the opinion of a small minority, of a strong minority, of a majority of mankind. Thus the great progress goes on, till schoolboys laugh at the jargon which imposed on Bacon, till country rectors condemn the illiberality and intolerance of Sir Thomas More. - Thomas Macaulay

[Plu]

Because, what are the chances that I'm right and most everybody else is wrong?

We've long figured out it's 0%. You don't actually have any interesting revelations, because if you did you
A) would not be posting on some backwater forum, but have an actual name in the scientific community
B) be able to rebut even the most basic counter arguments against your position
C) not keep posting wordpasta every few months without ever bringing anything new to the table
D) be living in some african country in the middle of a civil war, because that's the kind of civilization you're arguing for

(But you don't even understand that D) is the most likely outcome of your "solution" to civilization's problems, which is why we know the odds of you being right is 0%. Cue some stupid response about "why don't you give me all your money then?" right about..... now)

[Xerographica]

Because, what are the chances that I'm right and most everybody else is wrong?

We've long figured out it's 0%. You don't actually have any interesting revelations, because if you did you
A) would not be posting on some backwater forum, but have an actual name in the scientific community

What's the difference between my argument and Buchanan's?  What's the difference between my argument and Le Grand's?  

B) be able to rebut even the most basic counter arguments against your position

If you haven't studied public finance...then how would you know whether or not I've rebutted your counter arguments?  

C) not keep posting wordpasta every few months without ever bringing anything new to the table

Yet, here you are, just like clockwork.  

D) be living in some african country in the middle of a civil war, because that's the kind of civilization you're arguing for

If I thought that a civil war truly matched the preferences of American taxpayers...then I wouldn't support giving them the freedom to choose where their taxes go.

[Plu]

What's the difference between my argument and Buchanan's? What's the difference between my argument and Le Grand's?

Yours is stupid.

If you haven't studied public finance...then how would you know whether or not I've rebutted your counter arguments?

A better question, perhaps... if I haven't studied public finance, how would I even know how to spend my own money? What makes you think I'm qualified to determine how much of my money a hospital needs in order to run properly?

Yet, here you are, just like clockwork.

I'm bored and exhausted. Posting in non-sensical topics is good in such cases.

If I thought that a civil war truly matched the preferences of American taxpayers...then I wouldn't support giving them the freedom to choose where their taxes go.

Ah, so people being able to choose where their taxes go is only important as long as they put them towards things you personally consider important? Why, who would have thought your entire argument was only about "I don't like when money goes to places that I don't want any money to go to"

If the people want a civil war, who are you to deny them one? Isn't that what your whole argument is about? People being able to choose?

[Bibliofagus]

Plu nailed it. This guy doesn't care at all about consequenses for people.
He is just butthurt about the fact that some taxes are being spent on stuff he thinks have no benefit for him.

[LikelyToBreak]

Xerographica wrote in part:

Uh, plans? Heh...you make it sound like I'm running for office. I'm a pragmatarian...which is all about ceteris paribus (all other things being equal). So there's pragmatarianism...and then there are my own personal views and preferences.

I think this indicates why we cannot endorse your ideas.  The market, and society in general doesn't work as you seem to think it should.  You need to expand your thinking to encompass the whole, rather than just the parts.  Consider the doctor who states, "The operation was a success.  Unfortunately, the patient died."

I did a little looking into pragmatarianism and it just doesn't look very pragmatic to me.  Way to narrow minded.  It also does not take into account how people really are.  Ask any salesperson and they will tell you, people don't buy what they need, they buy what they want.  Which is why you see so many Corvettes on the road.  You have not convinced me that pragmatarnism would work in running a small general store, let alone the whole damn country.

Consider what Xerographica quoted and wrote here:

LikelyToBreak wrote:
Xerographica. Just to see if you are paying attention, you do realize that the top 1% control like 85% of the money don't you?

Xerographica answered:
"Of course, they have that influence because we indicated, with our dollars, our sacrifice, that we benefit from how they are using society's limited resources. As such, I'm almost entirely certain that WWII never would have occurred if pragmatarianism had been implemented. Please reread Williams' passage."

So how would getting rid of the minimum wage change anything.  The bottom 10%, hell the bottom 50% can do little to nothing to cause or stop inflation.  And the top 1% can use it to take even more money from those with less to "vote" with.  Yes, if the people of the world could have voted against WWII under pragmatarianism, it would never have happened.  Because there would be no need to try to expand any country's borders.  Enough people would have starved to death to make it not worth the bother.

[Colanth]

But as I've tried, and failed, to explain...pragmatarianism would solve the problem of "concentrated benefits and dispersed costs".  

Farm subsidies are an example of a concentrated benefit and a dispersed cost.  What would happen to farm subsidies though if taxpayers could choose where their taxes go?  You still gotta eat...so you'd still give your money to farmers

Bad example, since almost all farm subsidies go to large agribusiness.  (You DO understand how they're insulated from the problem subsidies are supposed to solve, right?)

But if we were a nation of family farmers, and there were no subsidies, there would be no farmers.  No one throws money into a hole in the ground, year after year, with a negative return.  Either you can't pay off this year's seed loan, or you can't pay your real estate taxes, and you're no longer a farmer.

What do you eat when the last farm is taken over by the bank?  What you grow in your own kitchen garden?

(Why doesn't anyone heed Santayana?  It was only 80 years ago.)

I will grant you this - farm subsidies are NO LONGER needed (for the most part) - to keep farms in existence.  But if they ceased tomorrow, the cost of food would skyrocket.  And the poor would starve.

[Colanth]

No more than someone who said that all Americans are Episcopalians.  (Or don't you understand that?)

Who's "someone"?  Were they a Nobel Prize winning economist?

"Nobel prize winning" != "is never wrong".  George Reisman, for example, is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Pepperdine, and well-respected in economics circles.  And a proponent of a particularly stupid economic fallacy.  (Not according to me, according to Thomas Sowell and John Kenneth Galbraith.)  Even Friedman, a Nobel Prize winner, clings to the nonsense.

Sorry, but "Nobel Prize winning" doesn't convey some "higher than thou about everything" status.

Richard Musgrave, a highly respected public finance economist, had no idea what he was talking about when he said that our current system is based on the assumption that congresspeople are omniscient?

//https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Achyperbole&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

What was "hyperbolic" about Musgrave's statement?

His statement.  Intelligent people don't think that most congresspeople are particularly knowledgeable.

Before you answer that, why not first learn something about public finance?

Says someone whose only understanding of economics seems to be having read a few quotes?

If you truly want to defeat my argument...then you'll have to actually understand it first.  So go ahead and google the preference revelation problem.

Not everyone believes that Congress is omniscient - or even very intelligent.

Our current system is based on the fact that it takes enormous sums to get elected at the national level, and only the wealthy have enough money to finance campaigns.  (And yes, that's pretty much a tautology.)  Whether the common man believes that congress is omniscient, or that congress is a bunch of buffoons, doesn't change who holds the purse strings.  Or which way the beneficiaries of that purse will vote.

Uh, by the way, I'm a pragmatarian.

A non-pragmatic pragmatarian?  Quite a funny creature.

You mean he isn't that intelligent.  Even ants know that if individuals can "opt out of war", the whole clan dies.

If you'd read the article, then you would have known that opting out of war doesn't mean opting out of taxes.

If there's no armed force - for whatever reason - any nation is free to march in.  See what happens when all you know is what you read?

You're welcome not to take me seriously...but that's why I share a lot of passages from people who should be taken seriously.  The fact that you don't know that they should be taken seriously is proof positive that your critiques do not reflect what serious thinkers know.

Or that the people you think should be taken seriously shouldn't be.  You probably even believe that you should be.

[Colanth]

The bottom 10%, hell the bottom 50% can do little to nothing to cause or stop inflation.

Neither can the top 1%.  Capitalism is based on inflation.  If you want to stop inflation you have to stop Capitalism.