In a few threads I have been on it seems like this forum is filled almost exclusively with anarchists with the odd minarchist thrown in. Maybe I'm wrong but I can't help feeling that perhaps some of the more famous Austrian economists are not quite so fundamentalist as they guys here. I thought I'd test this out with the following question. For each person in the list below, please append the percentage of GDP that you estimate that each person would ideally like to be spent on the public sector (police etc). I know this is very unscientific and you'll be guessing to a large degree, but I'm curious to see if everyone will insist its zero for all of them.
Ludwig von Mises ......?%
M Rothbard...................?%
Tom Woods.................?%
Peter Schiff...................?%
Ron Paul.......................?%
Henry Hazlitt ................?% (I know its not zero for him)
The list may seem strange to you - it simply corresponds to the ones I've heard of or have watched on youtube. Feel fee to add names.
What Went Wrong with Economics
It's been a problem on the forum lately. People have what they want to talk about, and instead of making new threads, they inject it into any current discussion.
@ the premise of the thread,
Hoppe is an anarchist. Block is an anarchist. I don't know if Doug French is an anarchist, but I know he was a student of Rothbard's, who was an anarchist. There are far more anarchists @ LvMI (GMU and other institutions may differ) than there are minarchists. There are minarchists, but in almost all cases, they are very radical, and firemen are not part of radical minarchism. A fireman has nothing to do with justice, he is merely a service provider, no different from pest control or flood restoration service.
There is a reason why many of us are anarchists. Two years ago, I was a Ron Paul minarchist. I'm also a Schiff fan, and he is very radical. Now whether he is or is not an anarchist, I don't really know. Obviously, with a potential campaign, he has to parse his words, so I don't think we could call his radio show and get a definitive answer.
As far as Mises and Hazlitt, they have passed. A lot has changed in the world since they were in the debate, and knowledge has continued to advance.
Ron Paul, definitely an anarchist at heart. No one who references Lysander Spooner and supports secession down to the individual level could be a minarchist. A minarchist is not for a minimal voluntary state, a minarchist is for a minimal involuntary state.
...liberty race
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
Daniel: Why exactly do we more than 150,000 government workers?
Why exactly do we more than 150,000 government workers?
Well I hadn't thought it though in any great detail, but I figured that if there are 1.1 million firefighters now then 150,000 for the total of *all* government workers seemed a little on the low side.
mickanomics: Daniel: Why exactly do we more than 150,000 government workers? Well I hadn't thought it though in any great detail, but I figured that if there are 1.1 million firefighters now then 150,000 for the total of *all* government workers seemed a little on the low side.
The government is inefficient as it is. Why should we give it more resources? If a plumber did a bad job cleaning your pipes, would you give him more money?
To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process. Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!" Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."
mickanomics: Well I hadn't thought it though in any great detail, but I figured that if there are 1.1 million firefighters now then 150,000 for the total of *all* government workers seemed a little on the low side.
Why do you insist on planning our lives! As I asked you before since you're thinking along these lines - Can I have a 20x20 swimming pool in this central plan of yours?
mickanomics, you assume a minarchist state would leave fighting fires to the government. You can make a case for the court system and the police, but beyond that is turf where the private sector has proven its ability.
BioTube: mickanomics, you assume a minarchist state would leave fighting fires to the government.
mickanomics, you assume a minarchist state would leave fighting fires to the government.
No. *Henry Hazlitt* suggests leaving fighting fires to the government.
mickanomics:No. *Henry Hazlitt* suggests leaving fighting fires to the government.
well he is wrong about that being a good suggestion, but even so, in Economics in One Lesson he writes "In the railroad industry, the unions insist that firemen be employed on types of locomotives that do not need them" this implies a resource misallocation doesnt it?
wilderness: Why do you insist on planning our lives! As I asked you before since you're thinking along these lines - Can I have a 20x20 swimming pool in this central plan of yours?
I don't understand how anything I've said in this thread leads you to believe that I want responsibility to make the decision about whether or not you get your swimming pool. If this relates to a different thread then post there not here.
the swimming pool is analgous to a hydrant
nirgrahamUK: well he is wrong about that being a good suggestion,
well he is wrong about that being a good suggestion,
That's fine. The object of this thread was just to discover who thinks what, not the merits of what they think.
nirgrahamUK: in Economics in One Lesson he writes "In the railroad industry, the unions insist that firemen be employed on types of locomotives that do not need them" this implies a resource misallocation doesnt it?
in Economics in One Lesson he writes "In the railroad industry, the unions insist that firemen be employed on types of locomotives that do not need them" this implies a resource misallocation doesnt it?
Is there a typo there? The grammar seems strange. What page is that, I can check it myself.
http://jim.com/econ/chap07p1.html
You are suffering a cognitive abberation. Individualist philosophies are unsuprisingly not dependent on hero-worship.
What are you trying to say? Maybe Hazlitt was being inconsistent? It sounds to me that he was just complaining that unions were bad. That's not the same as saying that he thought public firefighters were bad.
In reply to several posts.
This thread was never intended to be "what % of GDP should be spent on public service provision" merely "what % of GDP did the guys in the list think should be spent on public service provision".
it means if there are a dozen firefighters in a town and one of them is riding a train that doesnt need him because thats where union influence put them, then the headcount for the fire service can be dropped without reducing cover. ergo. lower percentage of spending. He was telling you that the fireservice is bloated and could be scaled back.