Are collective efforts necessary?
POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Tuesday, November 8, 2005 21:59
VIEWED: 5226
PAGE 4 of 6
Lurk,
I've seen SK intevention in the free market, I still think the US intervenes more, particularly in medicine. NK like all socialist states, is a disaster.
Finally, while I agree that some corporations are very environmentally unsound, until recently, random peasantry was the biggest environmental threat, followed by govts. which far outweigh corporations in general.
Now I will admit free market logging and fishing concerns are a serious threat to the planet, and need to be dealt with. I think in the absense of any law, environmentalists, who vastly outnumber them, would simply kill them.
But still, these are issues which need to be dealt with.
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Rue,
Being a doctor doesn't give you automatic mastery. I am very familliar with the field, and spend many years studying it. The criticism was just directed at you, but at everyone who posts with an assumed air of superior knowledge. I think it's really just a cheap trick. I'm pretty familiar with medical advancement. Universities, freemarket companies and random hokey traditional medicine quacks actually seem to be doing quite well in terms of medical advancement.
Also, the fact is your post did nothing to discredit my argument, which you clearly had not read. You said "but but but govt. grants and univerisities" when I had clearly said govt. grants were part of my plan, and universities are part of the free world. Obviously this is where stuff comes from, and it also comes from corporations.
Finally, I'm not putting up with the pile on dreamtrove session.
This was a theoretical argument started by someone else on whether or not things could be done privately, instead of needing public control of everything.
Well. Gee. Now it's turned into a game of squash the capitalist. What do I care what you people think? Why do I even bother. If someone's interested in exploring possible ways to reform something which is a pretty serious disaster at the moment, such as the US healthcare system or the US education system, then great. If not, then please don't bug me.
I'm personally totally convinced that socialism is an utter failure, and this comes from someone who once supported the idea. Over time, I had to weigh the overwhelming mountain of evidence and cave. Now I'm pretty much a pro-free market extremist, and I'm not giving that up to go back to something I'm absolutely certain doesn't work.
If someone has reform ideas of how to prevent the private sector from falling victim to environmental catastrophes, corrupt medical schemes and other potential pitfalls, I'm intersted in hearing them.
If someone wants to continue to argue for socialism, I'm quite frankly not interested. This is a what if sort of debate, and if people want to carry that what if to socialism, then don't address me with it. It's just more or less an ideological personal attack, and not an argument based on substance.
I think the recent scientific discoveries are coming in large part from R&D corporations and universities, and these days even supposed state universities are really free market entities.
Many come from govt. grants, but then didn't I say govt. grants are good from the very beginning? The fact is that govt. grants are better than just having the govt. develop things, because though govt. labs do come up with some great things, my dad worked in a govt. lab over at argon, and he said the govt. would always take a look at whatever was developed and say, "yeah. but what's it's military application?"
Corporations make life conveniences and cure diseases, Govts. kill people and take their stuff.
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Whoa there. First of all, I'm not a doctor.
Have some patience. I had only begun to respond to your post, there were many issues that I had not yet addressed.
I have been extraordinarily busy the last 6 months and can't say anything about it for now. But I have some reason to hope I will have more time in a few weeks. So until then this conversation will have to progress slowly.
For now, I'd like your input on these questions -
1) is it fair to say you think government should spend tax money (money that comes from you and me) on basic research so that business can privately profit from those tax-funded discoveries?
2) is it fair to say you do NOT think government shold spend our money directly on us, the people, for our direct benefit?
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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Rue,
Yes, 1 and 2 are basically my position. Yes.
It's a rather involved and complicated position, but I want to start dealing with these sorts of things really succinctly because as of tomorrow I will be exceedingly busy as well.
If the govt. invests in business it creates progress and wealth. If the govt. invests in welfare and hand outs it does neither.
What govt. CAN do in this setting is select wisely the private projects that are worth investing in, and if it is more or less free of corruption, it can decide those objectively on what will be most helpful to society.
Well I loathe to see the poor suffer, since I am the poor, and I was raised on nothing. I believe we had 210/month for the 5 of us, so that often meant in the winter because bills were so high, there was no actual food. I recall scrounging around for dimes and pennies to buy a package of rammen noodles, so I do know what poverty is, and no, this isn't a I did it, so so can they argument. It's just not a wise long term investment for society.
I would prefer to see some program of maybe federal debit cards that allow the poor to buy basic necessities, but not, say, drugs. There is a friend staying with me right now, who showed up at my door while we were arguing about all this on the forums earlier, broke. Now he lives off of federal assistance, and he uses that money to support his habit. I've known many such people, and it basically comes down to my local corner crack dealer is federally subsidized. This is also not a good investment for society. My debit card idea would draw on a constantly funded account, but only be usable for the purchase of goods and services the govt. would want to assist. This would turn the poor into paying customers of normal goods an services at a fairly low cost. But still, it would be a last resort. I think it is far more important to create a functonal economy, so that there are no, or as few as possible, jobless poor that the system would have to support.
Society should invest in private sector for profit businesses that do what the society values. It should support more than one of these. If two people should be doing the same thing, it should support both of them, as long as they both seem honest and competent. If one has a record of pocketing the cash and creating no progress wealth or jobs, than the govt. can give up on it until such a time as it puts its act together.
As for regular services for the people such as public transportation and other services, it's been pretty solidly proven a very large number of times that because of the non-competitive nature of such govt. services, the govt spends more and more money providing them, as witness, the sidewalk figures easlier quoted. Private enterprise would not only provide these cheaper, but with competing services and ever evolving progress of those services.
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Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
I know this is a signature line, but I wanted to comment on it. I agree entirely. Most people who flame me on these forums think that I'm some old windbag who never got out of the tomato patch long enough to see the world and realize my right wing vision wasn't the only way of looking at thing.
Actually virtually all of my wisdom has come from arguments I have lost over the years, and times I've been wrong. I was once a liberal, actually. Not to say "liberalism is wrong" there are certain ideas like socialism I think are unworkable, but mostly I've just come to think that the problem with society is that the main causitive problems are not being address. So it's no longer the philosophy I subscribe to, which I could explain in detail, but that would turn this into a left/right debate which is not my point.
Every time I lost an argument, about politics or science, I was angry. I never thought, okay, I lost that one, either. I was always sure I'd either one, or it was a draw. I'd never think, oh, that guy was right. Not until months later, as it ate away at me, whatever someone had said, and then I
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Quote:Sorry I had to leave the thread for such a long time. Real life gets in the way.
If someone has reform ideas of how to prevent the private sector from falling victim to environmental catastrophes, corrupt medical schemes and other potential pitfalls, I'm intersted in hearing them. If someone wants to continue to argue for socialism, I'm quite frankly not interested. This is a what if sort of debate, and if people want to carry that what if to socialism, then don't address me with it. It's just more or less an ideological personal attack, and not an argument based on substance.
Dreamtrove: As you quite rightly perceived, this is a theoretical discussion. Unfortunately (for you) you're the only representative of free-market capitalism in this thread and so the arguments tend to take on a "pile on Dreamtrove" feeling, altho I don't think that is the intent. The argument as you frame it (reform capitalism v advocate socialism) IMHO are just different areas of the same spectrum.... I'm not sure where the boundaries are. So if it seem to you that my argument falls into the "advocate socialism" end of the spectrum, let me know, as I am really only interested in exploring ALL the possibilities with someone who has obviously spent a lot of time thinking about economic systems. ---------------------------------
Please don't think they give a shit.
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So, to the discussion at hand:
Dreatmrove, I want to make sure I understand your viewpoint. I've picked out three points that seem to be essential.
The first has to do with the nature of people. In your view, people work best for reward, and since "government handouts" are disconnected from effort, they foster dependency and laziness.
The second has to do with the the necessity of competition. Since government represents a monopoly, it is inevitably less efficient and more costly.
The third point is that competition drives progress. Without competition, newer/ better products never get implemented or distributed.
Am I correct? Did I miss anything important? Thanks in advance.
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Please don't think they give a shit.
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Quote:
Unfortunately (for you) you're the only representative of free-market capitalism in this thread and so the arguments tend to take on a "pile on Dreamtrove" feeling, altho I don't think that is the intent.
I agree. Being the only republican in a room will lead to this effect. Unfortunately, though I hate to admit it, I suspect being the only Democrat in the room probably leads to the same effect.
I think there were a couple of socialists who really went off when I posted my socialism is evil rant. I believe I compromised on socialist states are facilitators of evil. This is one of the real problems I have with Chavez btw, he advocates spreading socialism around the region, and some random latin american coutry is going to end up with an evil dictator if this comes to pass. Oddly, threads being what they are, the Chavez thread, I ended up defending him because everyone else was from the angle "let's invade venezuela right away." I don't think it's THAT bad.
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The first has to do with the nature of people. In your view, people work best for reward, and since "government handouts" are disconnected from effort, they foster dependency and laziness.
The second has to do with the the necessity of competition. Since government represents a monopoly, it is inevitably less efficient and more costly.
The third point is that competition drives progress. Without competition, newer/ better products never get implemented or distributed.
Essentially yes. I'm not sure specifically that handouts foster laziness, I think laziness is already there, but they fail to foster any sort of work ethic. In the ultimate equality society, the majority of the population will not work if the reward for not working is the same as the reward for working. People value their free time as they should. If I built on that, I might say if a decent free market society were in operation, there would always be some people left out in the cold, and anyone who can should be enrolled in some sort of education program until they can be useful. I recognize there may be people who need handouts in order to survive, but this is not the best incentive mechanism for society, and so it's impact needs to be minimized however possible without leaving people out in the cold.
One more note. I think this applies to a general labor situation. There is an exception which is if someone have a decent plan to start a new business, there should be a good program in place to support that. I've known many businesses to fail and been in a couple myself, where the reason for failure was less a flaw in the viability of the idea, and more simply running out of money before the idea came to market. This is where grants would come in. But any such process would require some review of the idea. I think this is one reason for govt. But it could be some sort of "angel" corporation.
Logically following this thought:
Take two people have two ideas with what to do with this money, in case you were thinking "what's the difference between a handout and a grant?"
1. Bob has an idea to snort coke up his nose.
2. Sam has an idea to make solar powered semiconductors.
If Angel Inc. reviews the situation, it will see possible potential profit coming from investing in Sam, and none from investing in Bob. Sure, Sam may fail anyway, but that's the risk Angel Inc. takes every time it signs someone on.
In a way I kind of like this better than just govt. grant, since Angel Inc. would have competitors. But that's the basic idea.
True, Angel might decide to invest in Guido's Organized Crime LTD, and make a profit. This I think though would really drift outside of the question of commerce without govt. and into the question of law enforcement without govt.
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Let me jump in here, starting with the trivial and parenthetical, going on to the general, and then the specific:
Parenthetically - "tomato patch'? It's an image I'm not familiar with that I think is meant to imply a stereotype ... which is ... ?
Generally - I've found that people adopt worldviews that reflect an image they want to have of themselves.
As a personal example I could see myself as a self-made success. Got my degrees by sweat and sacrifice, advancing in a meritocracy ... It would be natural for me to subscribe to the vision of society as a ruthless competition that I 'won' by work and talent. And I think most people with a similar history end up with that composite view of self-in-society.
Fortunately, I feel, I get reminded from time to time of the advantages I had that others were denied. ie Coming from a family that had better than average education, having good nutrition and adequate care, having a good basic (public) education, being English-speaking and white, and having a scholarship that paid tuition. Also, having friends who drove me to jobs and gave me a place to stay when I had none. I heard these impersonal factors addressed humourously one day - a co-worker was going for a higher position and asked another what qualifications did he have that were special. The other person answered - "you're male, white, and tall".
I will guess - and I freely admit I could be wrong - that you have a substantial 'bootstrap' self-image. In support of this you view society as a competition which is won by personal effort.
Obviously I disagree.
This is not to say that personal efforts don't count - they sometimes do and then again they sometimes fail. But without exception, some get rewarded far more than others for the same amount of work. This society is not a reliable meritocracy, there are other social factors driving the results.
Another general idea most people keep in the back of their heads is that society is like evolution. Even people who deny evolution per-se assume social Darwinism is the basic social machine. By that is meant ruthless individual competition for survival.
It would take far too long for me to explore all the ways this is wrong, but I will try to briefly generalize some basic points:
1) there is individual survival. Within a group (or species), where competition sometimes occurs for the exact same resources, you will occasionally get individual competition (often on the basis of some token trait like size, song, or color.) Usually it's not lethal b/c of the reason below.
2) group (or species) survival. Deadly individual competition is not advantageous to long-term group survival. It reduces numbers and population variablity. For long-term survival, different equations take hold with a different optimum solution. And it is long-term mass survivability that drives outcomes.
3) there are many paths to survival. Each species gives up (invests) something to ensure the next generation. Bacteria give up lifespan, complexity and genetic stability to generate many and varied progeny. Squid give up body mass - and their lives - to generate many eggs, and therefore ensure survival of enough offspring. Humans invest massive social resources into their offspring, which are few. In fact, the demands of raising children are such that there are very few societies made of individual families surviving in isolation.
The point is to address the notion that capitalism is a natural extention of Darwinism. It simply isn't. It is frankly, a perverse notion of the real mechnisms of survival.
And there is the general notion that human advancement is made through competition. Not only is that not supported long-term (did competition drive the discovery of langauge, fire, writing?), it fails to account for the fact that most societies survive through group effort (cooperation) and investment.
So to specifically respond to your post, I see far too many black/white false dilemnas. As examples - either society is competitive or it is a hand
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Quote:
tomato patch
Oh, I farm tomatoes. I was stereotyping myself. I don't really think before I post. I believe I started out here by saying I'm kind of abrasive and Jayne is my favorite character so I have issues ;)
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Generally - I've found that people adopt worldviews that reflect an image they want to have of themselves.
I basically agree. I guess I was figuring these to be part of the non-thinking 40%. There are also 'economic ME voters' who fall into this. These would be people who are republicans because they want a tax break, or people who are democrats because they want a social benefit program of some sort. These people are also not politically thinking, they are just voting from pragmatic self interest.
I think I kind of have already said it's not a bootstrap image. I support an equal opportunity, that's very different from equality.
I am, for instance, appalled that in my home state of New York, on a per student/per year basis, predominantly white public schools get twice the funding that predominantly black schools get. This is a disgrace. Furthermore, I am also appalled that public schools as a whole get ten times the state funding that private schools do. Paying for education is about the only major the govt. does here, and this is what makes private education a benefit of the extremely rich. It's not right. Private education options are often superior, as my free market philosophy would predict, particularly in specialty areas.
In the city, thing are better, particularly Bloomberg has instituted some new reforms which may help straighten some of that out, but I'm specifically talking about the state here. Our black population is very poor upstate, and the education funding may be worse locally than the 2:1 statewide figures I just quoted.
I don't think you're application of darwin is on target here.
It IS darwinian, but not in a kill or be killed way. Businesses which can function effectively survive, those which cannot don't, thus evolution ensues. This is the way in which it is darwinian. Individual humans are obviously all going to survive. Social and economic evolution have parallels in biological evolution, that is very different from saying that they ARE biological evolution.
Let me take an example.
In the case of state education, all schools will survive because they have budgets, and the citizens have essentially no choice over their choice of school. If you want to sent you children out of the school district here in new york, you'll end up paying a couple thousand per child per year in mandatory tuition fees, plus you will have to provide your own daily transportation for each child, and distances are quite far. The poor can't afford either. So the schools stay in existance more or less regardless of performance, provided they meet some abominably low statewide standard.
In a pseudo-free market situation, like the one which was proposed back in the late 80s, multiple schools would compete openly for students. Those that provided the highest quality of education and the lowest level of drugged out criminal dropouts would get the most positive attention, and would get the most students. Since the school would be paid equally for each student it took, it would not be a matter of catering to the rich, but every school would gain financial advantage for every student. Schools that could not demonstrate that they were a good educational environment would be pushed out by the more successful educators, and thus the quality of education would evolve.
Special schools would clearly evolve as well, as a niche evolution, to handle those students that other classes didn't want because they were discipline problems, developmentally delayed, mentally unstable or whatever. These schools would evolve because these students too would be worth money. Even in this evolutionary niche, evolution would take place. Parents would preferentially send their problem children to the schools with a proven track record of turning such children into productive m
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Seems that there is some blurring between Occam's Razor and Darwinism. The universe is not "evolving" in a Darwinian sense (selection of the fittest).
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Please don't think they give a shit.
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