General

Re: help me improve my anti-statist line of attack?

liege — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 04:36:48 GMT

ama gi:
I think the part about skimping on quality is entirely appropriate. If you aren't enticing customers to come voluntarily, you have no incentive to provide good quality.

It is good. The lack of quality in public goods is important to get across. The part I was concerned with is the attachment to revenue. The only time 'government' is concerned with savings and revenue is when a politician is trying to sell himself to the electorate. Other than that, its like Ronnie Reagan said,

The Government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.

Re: help me improve my anti-statist line of attack?

Jon Irenicus — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 03:54:12 GMT

Interesting... it had to come with the obligatory, snide attack on Rand, of course. I wonder if he's even so much as read her.

Re: help me improve my anti-statist line of attack?

scineram — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 03:37:28 GMT

Voluntaryism touted and welfare denounced. In the [url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/22/switzerland-firefighters-citizenship]Guardian] to boot! Inpossible is nothing.

Re: help me improve my anti-statist line of attack?

krazy kaju — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 01:01:35 GMT

ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

I would love to see the facial expression of left-wing Wal-Mart haters when you tell them that!

Re: help me improve my anti-statist line of attack?

ama gi — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:50:59 GMT

liege:
Governments are not really concerned with revenue anymore. Modern statist governments get all the revenue they need through borrowing, deficit-spending, taxation, etc. If I were you, I'd remove the part about raising revenue by skimping on quality.

I think the part about skimping on quality is entirely appropriate. If you aren't enticing customers to come voluntarily, you have no incentive to provide good quality.

Re: help me improve my anti-statist line of attack?

liege — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 22:35:38 GMT

If you are attempting to draw an analogy to government-privileged monopolies, then you're dead on, I'd say. If, however, you're trying to draw an analogy solely to statist forms of government, then I want to make one point:

nazgulnarsil:
In this scenario wal-mart has you as a captive customer. Before it made money by convincing you to buy milk from it with high quality and a low price. Freed of having to convince you to buy it, wal-mart can now make additional revenue by cutting costs associated with producing the milk any way it can. This will have an impact on the quality of the milk. Hell, at this point wall-mart doesn't even care what you do with the milk once you take it.

Governments are not really concerned with revenue anymore. Modern statist governments get all the revenue they need through borrowing, deficit-spending, taxation, etc. If I were you, I'd remove the part about raising revenue by skimping on quality. Governments tend to be even less concerned with saving on production costs, charging the normal price, and then pocketing a profit. In fact, profit never figures into socialist calculations. If anything, a statist Wal-Mart government would continually raise the price of milk and then use the new milk-tax revenues to pay Haliburton to build dairies in the middle of the Iraq desert (or Iran, Syria, etc.)

Other than that, 'A' for effort!

Re: help me improve my anti-statist line of attack?

nazgulnarsil — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 22:00:09 GMT

yeah. the standard explanation I go with on that one is that subsidizing something like college tuition sounds good...until you realize that it just drives up tuition costs. net effect approaches zero.

Re: help me improve my anti-statist line of attack?

Nitroadict — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 21:55:29 GMT

ivanfoofoo:

Nice point. But I think there is another statist point much difficult to attack: the socializating of services. Consider that milk costs $40 in the free market. It is of very bad quality. Now Walmart charges $20 of every guy in the neighbourhood. What will happen is that those who can afford better-quality milk will do, and will not claim for the "public milk service", but would have to pay for it anyway; it is mandatory. Those who can't pay for better milk will benefit for this service, because they pay $20 for something that in a free market they would have to pay $40. They have socialized the milk service.

Could you not point out the fact that socialization of services distorts the markets, and while may be beneficial in the shorter terms, such distortions add up overtime? I am short of a direct answer here due to my lack of economic education, but I'm sure there is some sort of term for negative outcome due to socialized services...

Re: help me improve my anti-statist line of attack?

ivanfoofoo — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 13:08:43 GMT

Nice point. But I think there is another statist point much difficult to attack: the socializating of services. Consider that milk costs $40 in the free market. It is of very bad quality. Now Walmart charges $20 of every guy in the neighbourhood. What will happen is that those who can afford better-quality milk will do, and will not claim for the "public milk service", but would have to pay for it anyway; it is mandatory. Those who can't pay for better milk will benefit for this service, because they pay $20 for something that in a free market they would have to pay $40. They have socialized the milk service.

Re: help me improve my anti-statist line of attack?

Eric — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 05:32:41 GMT

I like it, very easy to follow(for Obama lovers), and very effective.

Re: help me improve my anti-statist line of attack?

ama gi — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 05:13:29 GMT

You've got yourself a perfect argument there. Now spread your wings and fly!

help me improve my anti-statist line of attack?

nazgulnarsil — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 02:56:30 GMT

I have come up with an angle of attack to help statists see the folly of their ways. I would love if people could point out any flaws they see so I can strengthen it before "field testing" with actual statists.

Would you put up with wal-mart taking $40 from your paycheck every month and telling you that you can come get a gallon of milk every week for "free"?

firstly you're overpaying.

secondly you should be free to choose whether or not you even want milk in the first place.

thirdly you have no recourse if the quality of the milk goes down. you can try to sue wal mart..good luck with that. You might claim that people are still free to go buy other milk, but any other company selling milk is at a huge disadvantage. People have to pay that $40 a month regardless, so most figure they might as well get the milk out of it. competitors milk could cost half of what wal-mart charges, $20 a month. But from the perspective of the citizen that "private milk" costs $60 a month since they have to pay the $40 regardless.

In this scenario wal-mart has you as a captive customer. Before it made money by convincing you to buy milk from it with high quality and a low price. Freed of having to convince you to buy it, wal-mart can now make additional revenue by cutting costs associated with producing the milk any way it can. This will have an impact on the quality of the milk. Hell, at this point wall-mart doesn't even care what you do with the milk once you take it.

I'm basically trying to point out that capitalism actually creates more equality than socialism does. when you have "free" government service the only people who get superior quality service are the people who can afford that extra $20 a month for better milk. You wind up with a tiered society whereas with capitalism products and services naturally sink to a reasonable price.