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Thread: Public vs Private System of Representation

  1. #61
    Those are the most unscientific graphs in history. You aren't avoiding the logical point I made...that you support state socialism (coercion legalized and institutionalized, as opposed to a free market where competition with the state is legal, and refusing to pay the state in favor of one its competitors is legal).

    In a tax choice system, Tom the Taxpayer will be able to choose how he spends his taxes. For example...he can spend his taxes on...

    A. public healthcare
    B. public education
    C. rape cages
    Hence, I said

    What you call "choice" is just giving the slaves the right to choose which color shirt they will buy, but they MUST, on threat of violence, buy a shirt (even if they don't want one, need one, etc.), and they MUST only buy their shirt from the pre-approved vendors. They can choose not to fund the short sleeve department, or the no sleeves bureaucracy, but if they choose not to fund those, they MUST fund the long sleeve manufacturers by process of elimination.
    You are just proving my point exactly.

    Now, clearly you're not a fan of rape cages. So I get that you want to eliminate them. But if Tom the taxpayer chooses to spend his money on rape cages...then clearly the government is not the problem.
    1. Rape cages are the fault of the government, because as a monopoly/monopsony/cartel granter, it has less pressure from competition driving prices down, driving up quality of service, and making the service providers more accountable to consumers. This is an inescapable law of economics; coercive monopoly, monopsony, and cartel cause higher prices, lower quality service, and less accountability.

    2. I'm not against prisons in a free market, where sociopaths are kept to protect us all from them, and them from us (once they piss off enough people via their victimization). I'm against what prisons have become under the state - rape cages. More men are raped every year in the USA than women, and most women are raped outside prisons, while most men are raped in prisons. They ARE rape cages (it's not a hyperbole, and it's only euphemism to refer to them otherwise), and there is no honest market demand for rape cages...there is only a market demand that a tiny number of people be put in prisons to work to remunerate victims and be kept from victimizing others, whether for a limited time or permanently (sociopaths would be permanent, most likely). We currently, under the state, have about 50% of the people in rape cages for nonviolent offenses...because of their monopoly/monopsony/cartel creations.

    3. The government is always the root problem, as society didn't have these same issues in statelessness for thousands of years of legal systems. The entire legal system was tort, and there was no criminal law (the criminal law was the state's attempt to tap into the lucrative tort system of customary law, by inventing "violations of the King's Peace", or as we call them today, "crimes against the state", aka victimless crimes). There were no victimless crimes in stateless societies, so no rape cages existed (although prisons sometimes did, but if not, they had outlawry to deal with people who modern folks would lock away), and no criminal law existed...only tort law (which could resemble modern criminal law as long as a victim existed).

    4. You keep using 'taxpayer" and "choice" in the same breath, when "taxpayer" logically implies a lack of choice. It's like saying you give slaves the right to work for whatever master they choose, insofar as they remain slaves otherwise, and then referring to that as "slave choice". There is no such thing as "taxpayer choice"...you are simply giving them MORE choice than they would have now, but not a REAL choice, via A) not forcing them to fund the state's monopoly/monopsony/cartels, and B) not using violent threats to keep out possible competition so they can spend their money with those competitors and not the state.

    It's like you think that eliminating cigarette companies will eliminate the demand for cigarettes.
    No, I think people should have the choice to NOT buy cigarettes (the many different things the state does), not just to choose between a variety of brands of cigarettes (individual departments of the state and the services each one individually provides) or face property seizure and rape cages for refusal to buy cigs (fund the state) they don't want or need. I also think a monopoly or cartel for cig production (the state's monopoly/monopsony/cartels) is unnecessary, and no threats of violence should be used to artificially limit choice for those who DO want to freely choose to buy cigs.

    You, on the other hand, want to monopolize/cartelize cig production, artificially limit the brand choices to only those pre-approved brands, threaten any competition with violence who dare to better serve cig consumers by increasing the number of brands to choose from, and therefore lower the price of cigs, increase the quality of cigs, and make cig manufacturers more accountable to consumers. You also want to make people buy cigs, whether they want them or not....they only get to choose which brand to buy (tax choice). If they don't choose one cig brand or the other, by default they still have to buy one. They neither get a choice to buy from whomever they like, nor do they get the choice to not buy at least one of the brands available.

    And if you think there is demand for the state's monopoly/monopsony/cartels it creates, then you can legalize competition and legalize not paying the state, and consumers will choose to keep it around or shift demand to its competitors. Yet, you refuse to do this, and simultaneously tell me about it (as if I don't understand market economics). Take your own advice.

    Using your metaphor, you want to force people to buy cigarettes whether or not they really demand them, and you want to limit their choices as to which brands they can buy when they do buy them by outlawing most competitors. I want no artificial pressure to fund the state's services (artificial demand via coercion), and no artificial limits of their potential competition in the market (which would redirect funds away from them if consumers were given a choice). YOU want both artificial demand via forced payment (tax), and YOU want to artificially limit competition (people can choose which things to fund within the state, but cannot choose to not fund any of it, and cannot choose alternate competitors on the markets).


    You disdain free will, apparently, and think people need to be forced into paying for services they supposedly demand and think it's better to have higher prices, lower quality service, and less accountability to consumers by artificially limiting competition. It makes neither sense in a utility maximization sense, nor an ethical sense.


    I'm beating a dead horse here. I've completely proven my point, and you've helped me do it (with your own responses) - even if you didn't realize it.
    Last edited by ProIndividual; 02-15-2014 at 07:26 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by Xerographica View Post

    Yes, I want to force consumers to buy trampolines, popcorn, environmental protection and national defense whether or not they really demand them. And I definitely want to outlaw all alternatives. Nobody should be allowed to compete with the state. Private security companies, private healthcare, private package delivery, private education, private disaster relief, private militias...should all be outlawed.
    ^Minimalist state socialism (minarchy) taken to its logical conclusions; communism.



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  3. #62
    Quote Originally Posted by ProIndividual View Post
    No, I think people should have the choice to NOT buy cigarettes (the many different things the state does), not just to choose between a variety of brands of cigarettes (individual departments of the state and the services each one individually provides)
    You're saying that national defense and environmental protection are like different brands of cigarettes? Would you also say that trampolines and popcorn are like different brands of cigarettes? So whatever it is you buy...you're simply buying a brand of cigarette? What good is getting rid of the government then?

    ProIndividual: Let's get rid of the government!
    Xero: Why?
    ProIndividual: Because people are forced to buy different brands of cigarettes
    Xero: Are private goods also just different brands of cigarettes?
    ProIndividual: Yes
    Xero: So even if you get rid of the government, you're still forcing people to buy different brands of cigarettes
    ProIndividual: Yes
    Xero: Therefore, people are forced to buy cigarettes no matter what
    ProIndividual: Yes

    Quote Originally Posted by ProIndividual View Post
    Using your metaphor, you want to force people to buy cigarettes whether or not they really demand them, and you want to limit their choices as to which brands they can buy when they do buy them by outlawing most competitors.
    Yes, I want to force consumers to buy trampolines, popcorn, environmental protection and national defense whether or not they really demand them. And I definitely want to outlaw all alternatives. Nobody should be allowed to compete with the state. Private security companies, private healthcare, private package delivery, private education, private disaster relief, private militias...should all be outlawed.

    Listen, if you're still struggling with the concept, then I'm not smart enough to make it simple enough for you to understand. But I'm going to try anyways because I might just get lucky.

    No, I really don't want to outlaw private education. Arguing that I do is moronic. If the supply of private education meets the demand for education...then taxpayers won't spend any of their tax dollars on public education. If taxpayers don't spend their taxes on public education...then the public sector will shrink and people will pay less taxes. Why?

    1. Congress will still be in charge of the tax rate
    2. Congress is a government organization
    3. Taxpayers can choose which government organizations they give their taxes to

    If you add those three things together...then it's a given that congress will lose revenue if the tax rate doesn't match the preferences of taxpayers. Just like Pizza Hut will lose revenue if their pizzas don't match the preferences of consumers.

    Quote Originally Posted by ProIndividual View Post
    Those are the most unscientific graphs in history.
    Ok guy, let me see you make more scientific graphs. Really. Seriously. Because I have absolutely no idea what you mean by "unscientific" when my very point was that we have absofuckinglutely no clue what the actual demand is for any public good.

  4. #63
    Quote Originally Posted by Xerographica View Post
    You're saying that national defense and environmental protection are like different brands of cigarettes? Would you also say that trampolines and popcorn are like different brands of cigarettes? So whatever it is you buy...you're simply buying a brand of cigarette? What good is getting rid of the government then?

    ProIndividual: Let's get rid of the government!
    Xero: Why?
    ProIndividual: Because people are forced to buy different brands of cigarettes
    Xero: Are private goods also just different brands of cigarettes?
    ProIndividual: Yes
    Xero: So even if you get rid of the government, you're still forcing people to buy different brands of cigarettes
    ProIndividual: Yes
    Xero: Therefore, people are forced to buy cigarettes no matter what
    ProIndividual: Yes
    Your fake conversation above is a totally made up straw man. The only force going on here is your idea of statism. You want to extort people into buying things they may not even want or need (taxes), which artificially boosts demand for those things funded via extortion (which is anti-free market, and has NOTHING to do with the Invisible Hand as Smith explained it). You want this extortion, and you want also to prevent legal potential competition with the state funded by extortion. You want both of these FORCED aspects, and then say "well in the absent of this force, there would still be force". NO THERE WOULD NOT. I am not forced to have a phone line, nor a home, nor to feed myself. I can at any time, as an adult of sound mind, CHOOSE to have no phone, have no home, or starve myself. No one can stop me, nor should they. If people don't want legal protection, they don't need to sign up for it (like a phone). No contract, no service. The poor can get service for free, IF they want it, and IF they do not want it, they can be free to live with the consequences of having to no legal insurance. The same goes for defense, or any other service the state coercively monopolizes, cartelizes, or monopsonizes.

    You call voluntary interaction FORCE, and call state FORCE therefore a "lesser evil". It's totally illogical bull$#@!. You call free choice "force", and therefore keep using oxymoronic terms like "tax choice", which are conflicts in terms. This is an example of pure cognitive dissonance. Tax is not a choice, by definition, and free choice whether or not to purchase a service (or get it via charity if you need it) is NOT a form of force. The state is force, and you try to justify it by calling the need for life's necessities "force", when that is nature, not man-made government, and therefore no logical excuse for government.

    As with all state socialism, your preferred form of it (capitalism in the context of the state) relies on positivism, and a rejection of consistent application of negative rights. NATURE forces you to eat to live, but that doesn't mean you should be forced by government to eat, or that government should force others to spend their labors to feed you. Adults of sound mind have to labor to get their own food, and the coercion of nature is no convenient excuse for the coercion of the state. You can no more thwart coercion of nature with non-defensive state coercion, than you can put a fire out with more fire.

    You are simply illogical, hence you keep up this debate when you've been so thoroughly shown to be wrong on nearly every count.

    So people are NOT forced to buy cigs (defense, roads, courts, police, etc.) no matter what...unless you have a state. People should have the choice to buy them or not. Whether or not that comes with consequences for them is irrelevant. That incentive will affect their choices, as all market incentives do. But the choice still remains unless they are extorted (taxed) to fund things by force. Also, they should have the right to fund competitors with the state IF they choose to buy the services it provides...the state should be allowed to artificially boost demand via both extortion (tax) and laws against potential competition. If any other entity or individual in the world did this, you'd call it what it actually is...organized crime.

    Again, your lack of consistent logic leads to lack of consistent ethics.

    Yes, I want to force consumers to buy trampolines, popcorn, environmental protection and national defense whether or not they really demand them. And I definitely want to outlaw all alternatives. Nobody should be allowed to compete with the state. Private security companies, private healthcare, private package delivery, private education, private disaster relief, private militias...should all be outlawed.
    Because you support state socialism (albeit a minimalist form of it). You MUST admit this to yourself. You are sounding more like a state communist with every post! Trampolines and popcorn? Are you literally insane?![/B]

    No, I really don't want to outlaw private education. Arguing that I do is moronic. If the supply of private education meets the demand for education...then taxpayers won't spend any of their tax dollars on public education. If taxpayers don't spend their taxes on public education...then the public sector will shrink and people will pay less taxes.
    No, the public sector will not shrink. You will still be forced to spend your tax dollars with the state, just in other areas of it. And BTW, how can market demand for education be met by market supply (of private education) if the money the consumers would have spent on private education is being taxed away from them and they are forced to spend it on some other state socialized market?

    You distort EVERY market to some degree via the ripple effects of just one (or more) market(s) being socialized. You are redirecting funds, and thereby demand, away from consumer preference to political preference (which is not subject to the consumer bearing 100% of the costs of their choices).

    And EVEN IF your plan somehow allowed the tax burden and rates to recede when people chose private alternatives, it would not lead to minarchy...it would lead to statelessness (hence I said I'd support "tax choice" as ONLY a transitional plan to a stateless society). Without the state using threats of violence to thwart competition, it would slowly evaporate (provided the tax rates and burdens were allowed to decrease as the market filled the gaps via consumer preference).


    You act as if A) tax rates automatically would fall simply because funds were diverted from one market the state socializes (which isn't logically true, since the citizen has no choice but to then spend it in another area, creating a constant musical chairs effect of what is funded most or least at that particular budgetary moment), and B) that everything the state already coercively monopolizes, cartelizes, or monopsonizes isn't already a market demanded thing (the state only supplies anything because the people, the market, demands it, but can only guess at the proper allocation of resources for that demand because of the economic calculation problem, hence the state never perfectly meets demand like private markets do, and we end up with either perpetual surplus or perpetual shortage, depending on the state socialized market in question). Hence, the state twists and disfigures every market is socializes by force...defense becomes offense (surplus), roads and bridges get neglected (shortage), courts and prisons become drug war battlefields and rape cage factories (surplus), money supply is not perfectly supplied at 0% inflation because it doesn't meet perfectly the demand for currency (surplus when inflation occurs, and shortage when deflation occurs), and so on.


    The only way your plan will get anything near my support is to A) make it transitional ONLY, not an end unto itself, B) build in the ability for "tax choice" to have an option to not to fund ANY of the state socialized markets (whether or not the taxpayer gets to keep the money, or it is applied to national debt, or allowed to go to charity), to a degree or in totality (they can withhold all their funds from the state services, or just a portion of it), so that demand and consumer preference for the state can ACTUALLY be expressed, instead of forcing them to fund one thing or another, which still distorts their actual preference and expressed demand, and therefore makes it appear that even as they decrease demand and payment for one thing the state socializes, that it is simultaneously increasing it for another (because as of now, that's just automatic given you can't choose to not fund the state with your tax money, either in part or in total), and C) have a HARD deadline for this program (I don't care if it is 1 year or 100 years, for the sake of this discussion), which ends and results then in fully free competition with what would be left of the state (not much) at that point, and makes all paying the state completely voluntary (abolish legal extortion, aka taxation).


    If you can't do those 3 things, your plan is horrible, and will have horrific results. If you do them, you'll find me supporting the idea, and you'll find it will lead to the gradual abolition of the state via peaceful means and pure expression of consumer preferences in supply and demand. No one in their right mind would fund the state if they had better, cheaper, and more accountable private alternatives...and so, without threats of violence against innocents who wish to compete with the state, or threats to make people fund it, the state just goes away.

    So, why not then let the state coercively monopolize all markets? Why just the few you arbitrarily pick out? Why not let them takeover food production and distribution? Why not support the cartel of the Federal Reserve and support the continued ban on currency competition? Why not let the state coercively monopolize housing? How about clothing manufacture and distribution?

    Because then your (il)logic falls flat on its face, and you can see the disastrous outcome of state socialism. Your logic seems to magically stop when someone waves some flag, sings some anthem, says the magic word "republic" or "constitution". You stop thinking logically, and therefore abandon consistent ethics, and start railing for the state's tyrannical control of certain markets via socialism, and all the threats of violence against innocents to support it (both on the supply and demand sides, via thwarting potential competitors and taxation, respectively). You become a minimalist state socialist (something you haven't bothered to even TRY and deny; because you know you can't).


    And you can't ethically justify these acts of tyranny...you just act like it's ethical and act as if it maximizes utility for society (which was the point of the state do begin with, if you read Hobbes and Locke - although I dispute that romantic notion based on historical and anthropological evidence). The tyranny you support is neither a way to maximize utility for society (in fact, it's a dead state socialist hand on the market economy and its growth), nor is it a way to have a more ethical society. It's the opposite of those things.

    If you add those three things together...then it's a given that congress will lose revenue if the tax rate doesn't match the preferences of taxpayers. Just like Pizza Hut will lose revenue if their pizzas don't match the preferences of consumers.
    Pizza Hut acts on consumer preferences, the state does not...hence tax is necessary to fund it, and they have to threaten all potential competition with violence, unlike Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut taxes no one. You don't give a DAMN about consumer preference, you just want to extort people to fund YOUR preference for the state, and their POLITICAL preferences (which is TOTALLY different from consumer preference where they stand to lose something if they make bad choices, unlike the state where political preferences are subsidized by people who ordinarily would never choose to buy those things to begin with...you want to socialize things because you don't want people who supposedly want those programs to bear the FULL cost of funding them....you want to force others to fund them who don't even want or need them).

    Listen, if you're still struggling with the concept, then I'm not smart enough to make it simple enough for you to understand. But I'm going to try anyways because I might just get lucky.
    I'm not the one struggling with any concept. You are struggling with concept of consistent logic, ethics, and market economics. You think extortion is wrong...unless you slap the word "government' on the extortionists. You think logic is good to apply consistently....unless it's applied to the state. You think market economics are great....unless it concerns something YOU like being state socialized. You think consumer choice maximizes utility for society....unless of course it concerns the markets the state coercively monopolizes, monopsonizes, and cartelizes for its cronies.

    I'm not struggling with anything...you clearly struggle with the very basic concepts on which most of our shared ideas are founded, and the consistent application of which make your ideas unethical, illogical, and anti-free market. If you used logic consistently you'd have a consistent ethical code, and you'd be in favor of free markets (not capitalism in the context of the state). This is the failing of all minarchist libertarians...they fail to take their PROFESSED ideas to their logical conclusions. They also fail to realize how their ideas can never work therefore...a limited government IS an oxymoron. They always grow relatively quickly into murder machines and oppression assembly lines...not to mention they start out as tyrannical no matter how small they are, just because they fund themselves via one type of extortion or another (user fees in markets they coercively monopolize - no competition means the user fee is a form of extortion, taxation, licensing fees, regulation of the innocent which carry compliance costs, etc.), and thwart competition via the same threats of violence used to extort people.

    You think freedom and liberty are being ruled by an extortionist regime of competition-destroying organized criminals with a fancy flag, anthem, and pledge. I'm logically consistent enough to see that for what it is...support for criminal acts, unethical domination of the innocent, albeit with fancy flag, anthem and pledge. You essentially have statist Stockholm Syndrome. You've come to love your master, like a house slave.


    Ok guy, let me see you make more scientific graphs
    Why would I make arbitrary visual aids? They aren't required here. This is a debate about utility maximization, ethics, logic, and free will...every graph you displayed was useless to the conversation, even if they had been based on data instead of made up bull$#@!.

    If you want to use graphs in a debate, they should contain actual data. You have a lot of visual aids, but not one contains anything remotely related to scientific data. They are all just visual aids you made to convince people who apparently are easily swayed by bright colors and overly simplistic metaphors. I'm swayed by neither in the absence of consistent logic, and therefore consistent ethics.

    Because I have absolutely no idea what you mean by "unscientific" when my very point was that we have absofuckinglutely no clue what the actual demand is for any public good.
    LOL. And yet you ignore WHY we don't know it...because it is artificially stimulated, logically, via state coercion! If you allowed market competition and stopped extorting people to fund these things against their will, we could measure ACTUAL market demand. Instead you continue to advocate for state socialism in those markets, and act like we don't know that means every one of those markets will suffer from what Mises called the economic calculation problem (which is caused by such central planning instead of pure market expression of price via consumer preference dictating supply AND demand).


    Then again, Mises didn't take his own ideas to their logical conclusions either....so maybe you think that's a convenient excuse for you to do the same.

    And don't you understand?...I used to be a minarchist. I didn't come to this very radical position of anarchism without a LONG, deep thought process where I considered every alternative to it. I abandoned minarchism ONLY after I found it to be indefensible using consistent logic, and therefore indefensible using consistent ethics. Using consistent logic I also found minarchy (minimalist state socialism) to NOT be a way to maximize utility (maximize human happiness for a society, and minimize human pain for a society). Once I educated myself about philosophy and economics, and applied what I had learned completely consistently, the state became clearly illogical, unethical, and a way to decrease utility for society.

    You really remind me of myself in my twenties, honestly. Maybe in ten more years the inconsistency of your logic, and therefore ethics, and the economic harm to utility, will dawn on you. Or, like so many people in society, you will face a lifelong battle with your own mind via cognitive dissonance and illogic, and thereby remain, at least in part, unethical.
    Last edited by ProIndividual; 02-16-2014 at 03:57 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by Xerographica View Post

    Yes, I want to force consumers to buy trampolines, popcorn, environmental protection and national defense whether or not they really demand them. And I definitely want to outlaw all alternatives. Nobody should be allowed to compete with the state. Private security companies, private healthcare, private package delivery, private education, private disaster relief, private militias...should all be outlawed.
    ^Minimalist state socialism (minarchy) taken to its logical conclusions; communism.

  5. #64
    Maybe you just don't understand how tax choice would work. Can you explain how the tax rate would be determined in a pragmatarian system?



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