Wouldn't it be nice that we all die debt free but also penny less?

[happyguy]

2 hours ago, GregBowman said:

Change your software otherwise we won't take your numbers for company tax - nothing to do with actually paying the tax

Take your children out of school and we will fine and ask to see your plane tickets

I don't like your vehicle bought in good faith so from April if you use in London we will charge you more

I will sneak in a probate fee so doesn't look like a tax but is  thousands of pounds

The majority of threats are fiscal obviously because all a government wants is your money but always backed up with violence if appropriate 

Bailiffs, Police or Army

I do not see these as a threat.  My company has to pay tax we have not changed our software my accountant deals with it.  

I would not take my kids out of school.

Taxing cars and probate is a change bit not a threat all govts change how they collect tax.  Tax from some areas such as tobacco has reduced as lifestyles have changed so it needs to be raised elsewhere.  

The police are not responsible for collecting debts and nor are the army. 

I have used bailiffs myself when companies have owed me money and have clearly had zero intention of paying.   There is a court procedure to follow and they do not kill anyone.  I have always paid by suppliers so no one has needed to get a bailiff involved with  my company.  

[doomed]

24 minutes ago, Riedquat said:

Who's to say what's excess and what's damaging? There are no non-subjective criteria. You mention fossil fuels but to some people plastering the country in wind turbines is pretty atrocious too. Others couldn't give a crap. It all boils down to individual values - you may be able to say for definite what effects will happen as a result of a particular action but positive or negative, which are which and which win, that's down to individual values.

Sorry but you can not compare a wind turbine standing in a field to the damage done through burning of fossil fuels. That certainly isn’t subjective.

To go with your point though I would like to see some sort of direct democracy to make decisions instead of leaving it to politicians who are in the pockets of donors.

[Locke]

24 minutes ago, doomed said:

damage done through burning of fossil fuels

Laughable.

Which form of this are you talking about? Nat gas, petroleum, diesel, coal? Power gen, transport, ocean freight, hydrocracking, plastic recycling?

Is CO2 even harmful? Are you talking about particulate? NOx? SO2?

How is the wind turbine made? How efficient is it?

 

[Locke]

3 hours ago, Riedquat said:

I'm pretty sure there's not a policy of killing people who resist

If you successfully resist, which would involve harming, or threatening to seriously harm those assaulting you and attempting to kidnap you (what you refer to as "police"), they will definitely kill you.

Since the UK is cuck central and failing to ensure that burglers won't be injured when robbing you gets you done for negligence, I expect you'll tell me that the party defending themselves here is in fact assaulting the thugs breaking down his door and deserves nothing less than death.

[Locke]

1 hour ago, Riedquat said:

People maintaining order makes it a state

 

What makes it a State is that the group of people claim the exclusive right to initiate violence.

[Riedquat]

17 minutes ago, Locke said:

What makes it a State is that the group of people claim the exclusive right to initiate violence.

Sticking a silly GIF up doesn't make your errors of arbitrary partitioning any more correct. Your "people" position only works if everyone is in agreement. If everyone was in agreement anyway there'd be no need for any rules. And you'll never have everyone in agreement about everything unless you're down to a population of one (and even then probably not). When you've got some people with one view and who are prepared group together to hold the rules they've created and some others who disagree you've pretty much got what you're complaining about, and that'll always happen.

What you're describing is merely something different in scale but not in fundamental concepts.

[Kosmin]

3 hours ago, Riedquat said:

People maintaining order makes it a state, or at least something that lies on the same scale.

This isn't true. We have a system of planning for housebuilding, of regulations for banks etc. If markets filled this function then by your argument the market would be a state. As I have said, we don't know whether the market would be sustainable. But I think it's a practical problem rather than a conceptual one.

 

3 hours ago, Riedquat said:

What happens when people disagree with the result of the arbitration? How do you stop people barging in to that private property and help themselves to whatever you've got there? (that's before we get into the flawed concept that it's fine to do what you want on your own property - it can still affect others). Your system still requires a significant enough group agreeing to some common rules, even if they're less than most states, and being prepared to enforce them, which is why I think that a no-state system is impossible unless people hardly ever interact with each other.

It's not my system. If you're interested read Nozick, Rothbard or David Friedman (bonus: he's still alive, so you can email him your questions!)

[Kosmin]

3 hours ago, happyguy said:

People of that incredible wealth are a rarity even now. 

Yes, but how common is it for there to be a more moderate disparity in the same direction (e.g. low earning parents, children are the first in their family to go to university, join a profession etc.)? It must be quite common.

3 hours ago, happyguy said:

There is certainly a trend of parents paying for education, house deposits etc if they are able to do so 

I'm arguing that perhaps there is a trend to pay a part of inheritance early.

In my family, people of all generations are fairly affluent (my siblings and I are 30s, parents are 60s and remaining grandparents are 90s). If any of us fell on hard times financially, the others could help out. If I were more successful and my parents less successful it would seem odd if they were saving in their old age, so they could provide an inheritance.

[Riedquat]

12 minutes ago, Kosmin said:

This isn't true. We have a system of planning for housebuilding, of regulations for banks etc. If markets filled this function then by your argument the market would be a state. As I have said, we don't know whether the market would be sustainable. But I think it's a practical problem rather than a conceptual one.

Markets themselves need some degree of regulation, as well as the more basic aspects of law and order. You could certainly have a country with far less state control, that leaves various things entirely to markets that aren't currently (as you say whether it would work or not being a separate issue) but I think you still absolutely have to have some basic level of state to provide enough security for any meaningful market to function.

To me any form of organised cooperation implies a degree of government, seeing as it inevitably has to have some rules and a means of enforcing them. Sooner or later someone will disagree with what the cooperation aims to do.

Another thing to consider is that even if you don't regard such things as being akin to a mini-government how do you stop them from becoming one? A study of early human (pre)history would be useful here, how we changed from the first humans doing whatever they pleased into what we've got today.

[happyguy]

16 hours ago, Kosmin said:

Yes, but how common is it for there to be a more moderate disparity in the same direction (e.g. low earning parents, children are the first in their family to go to university, join a profession etc.)? It must be quite common.

19 hours ago, happyguy said:

There is certainly a trend of parents paying for education, house deposits etc if they are able to do so 

I'm arguing that perhaps there is a trend to pay a part of inheritance early.

In my family, people of all generations are fairly affluent (my siblings and I are 30s, parents are 60s and remaining grandparents are 90s). If any of us fell on hard times financially, the others could help out. If I were more successful and my parents less successful it would seem odd if they were saving in their old age, so they could provide an inheritance.

I agree.  If my parents had financial problems I would help them out.  When I am at a certain  age money will not be of any use to me so I may as well pass it on to my kids who can use it to their own advantage.  As you say the thing now is that people are passing the inheritance on earlier.  

[zugzwang]

17 hours ago, Kosmin said:

This isn't true. We have a system of planning for housebuilding, of regulations for banks etc. If markets filled this function then by your argument the market would be a state. As I have said, we don't know whether the market would be sustainable. But I think it's a practical problem rather than a conceptual one.

 

It's not my system. If you're interested read Nozick, Rothbard or David Friedman (bonus: he's still alive, so you can email him your questions!)

Free markets are incapable of self-regulation. The neoclassical, general equilibrium models of Samuelson, Muth, Fama et al require wildly unphysical assumptions to make them work (infinite foresight, a hive mind, frictionless barter) and have been comprehensively refuted. Empirically, the issue was resolved ten years ago by the Great Recession.

[Kosmin]

17 minutes ago, zugzwang said:

Free markets are incapable of self-regulation. The neoclassical, general equilibrium models of Samuelson, Muth, Fama et al require wildly unphysical assumptions to make them work (infinite foresight, a hive mind, frictionless barter) and have been comprehensively refuted. Empirically, the issue was resolved ten years ago by the Great Recession.

Samuelson, Muth, Fama didn't have models of free markets, did they? I thought they were basically mathematical models, where a Walrasian "auctioneer" "barks out" prices and then "the market" chooses. Whether equilibrium is reached under these conditions a distraction for understanding the real world. Markets co-ordinate without reaching equilibrium.

 

The Great Recession only proves something about free markets if you can demonstrate that things outside of markets (central banking, regulation, government sector) had no impact on the economy. It seems the move to deregulation from the more regulated golden era (1945-70 or so, I think) was bad, but this doesn't mean we can just say the less regulated 1980s-2000s is the same as a pure market economy, or extrapolate how a pure market economy would operate, or conclude that it simply couldn't operate at all.

[Riedquat]

2 minutes ago, Kosmin said:

The Great Recession only proves something about free markets if you can demonstrate that things outside of markets (central banking, regulation, government sector) had no impact on the economy. It seems the move to deregulation from the more regulated golden era (1945-70 or so, I think) was bad, but this doesn't mean we can just say the less regulated 1980s-2000s is the same as a pure market economy, or extrapolate how a pure market economy would operate, or conclude that it simply couldn't operate at all.

Humanity started off with complete freedom and no restrictions, the first trades would've been entirely free market (even if they were simple barters). How did that eventually lead to the system, and issues, that we have today? To make your vision work requires figuring out what made it stop in the first place, and why that wouldn't inevitably happen again.

[Kosmin]

3 minutes ago, Riedquat said:

Humanity started off with complete freedom and no restrictions, the first trades would've been entirely free market (even if they were simple barters). How did that eventually lead to the system, and issues, that we have today? To make your vision work requires figuring out what made it stop in the first place, and why that wouldn't inevitably happen again.

I don't think this is strictly true. We probably already had rudimentary power structures before people started trading, which would imply we never had complete freedom, and so we need lost it. But if we did ever had complete freedom and trading existed without a state, then it suggests a state isn't required.

 

As I've said before, it's not my vision. I'm saying we don't know the extent to which markets are required, or whether they can exist without other forms of organisation. I've been quite strongly influenced by Geoffrey Hodgson, who came up with the impurity principle (he says no pure economic system can exist - neither pure markets, nor pure central planning). It's plausible, but I don't think there's an argument for it. Note that there are non-market forms of economic organisation outside of the government (families and corporations* are examples). The impurity principle could still be true without a government sector.

* corporations in their current form wouldn't exist without government, but organisation which employ labour and are "islands of central planning" which reduce "transactions costs" could exist, in the absence of government and would constitute an impurity.

 

 

[zugzwang]

9 minutes ago, Kosmin said:

Samuelson, Muth, Fama didn't have models of free markets, did they? I thought they were basically mathematical models, where a Walrasian "auctioneer" "barks out" prices and then "the market" chooses. Whether equilibrium is reached under these conditions a distraction for understanding the real world. Markets co-ordinate without reaching equilibrium.

There's no Walrasian auctioneer in the neoclassical, free market. Perfect foresight and perfect conformity of all agents is assumed. No trades are made at any non-equilibrium price. Agents must exchange information, adjust their prices until equilibrium is reached and then goods are exchanged. In the real world markets co-ordinate imperfectly without reaching equilibrium. Convincing, reproducible evidence for the existence of an Invisible Hand has never been presented. Markets whose dynamics are well-enough defined to admit description by falsifiable stochastic models (Black-Scholes) are unstable and operate far from equilibrium at all times.

[Kosmin]

51 minutes ago, zugzwang said:

Free markets are incapable of self-regulation. The neoclassical, general equilibrium models of Samuelson, Muth, Fama et al require wildly unphysical assumptions to make them work (infinite foresight, a hive mind, frictionless barter) and have been comprehensively refuted. Empirically, the issue was resolved ten years ago by the Great Recession.

If we apply this reasoning to alternatives, we'll get really depressed really quickly!

We can't have democracy, because impossibility theorems have demonstrated that it's impossible to aggregate voter preferences.

We can't have economists trying to correct for market failures (see Public Choice).

We can't have monarchy, oligarchy, dictatorships, because these either exist for the benefit of a small number, or end up being corrupted so that happens.

 

So there is no good alternative. Democracy, markets and alternatives are all bad. But they do not fail completely. So we have some combination of them.

[Kosmin]

2 minutes ago, zugzwang said:

There's no Walrasian auctioneer in the neoclassical, free market. Perfect foresight and perfect conformity of all agents is assumed. No trades are made at any non-equilibrium price. Agents must exchange information, adjust their prices until equilibrium is reached and then goods are exchanged. In the real world markets co-ordinate imperfectly without reaching equilibrium. Convincing, reproducible evidence for the existence of an Invisible Hand has never been presented. Markets whose dynamics are well-enough defined to admit description by falsifiable stochastic models (Black-Scholes) are unstable and operate far from equilibrium at all times.

This is the argument for markets not being stable. Yet the economy still functions.

Democracies do not function perfectly. You mostly have to be rich (particularly in the USA) and well-connected (Oxbridge, woe betide someone who wants to be anti-Zionist). Democracies fail like markets fail (i.e. not really).

[Riedquat]

1 minute ago, Kosmin said:

So there is no good alternative. Democracy, markets and alternatives are all bad. But they do not fail completely. So we have some combination of them.

Some of the problems with that come from treating them as black and white - entirely free markets or entirely controlled, everyone voting on everything or an absolute monarch etc., whereas usually the arguments should instead be where along the continua we should be, rather than at which extreme. The extremes are useful to illustrate why going too far is a bad idea rather than for refuting any move in that direction (although they often get used erroneously to try to do just that).

[Kosmin]

6 minutes ago, zugzwang said:

Convincing, reproducible evidence for the existence of an Invisible Hand has never been presented.

The traditional usage of invisible hand is that markets create signals and people respond to them. There is a shortage of some product (perhaps it's harder to produce, e.g. crop failure, or demand increases because of immigration), so it sells quickly. Vendors realise their sales won't decrease if they increase their prices, so they do so. They also realise they could sell more, so they increase their orders or production. New vendors spring up. Production increases and prices fall back towards where they were initially. And vice versa when demand falls.

You have to try really hard not to see this. I'm sure you've observed changing patterns of demand and economic activity for various goods and services.

 

Walras, Pareto, Arrow, Debreu etc. tried to develop a mathematical model to see whether all markets could be in equilibrium simultaneously. Their models are so restrictive that it doesn't really matter. The same way people don't think the problem with democracies are Arrow's impossibility theorems.

[Riedquat]

Just now, Kosmin said:

The traditional usage of invisible hand is that markets create signals and people respond to them. There is a shortage of some product (perhaps it's harder to produce, e.g. crop failure, or demand increases because of immigration), so it sells quickly. Vendors realise their sales won't decrease if they increase their prices, so they do so. They also realise they could sell more, so they increase their orders or production. New vendors spring up. Production increases and prices fall back towards where they were initially. And vice versa when demand falls.

Or vendors form a cartel to keep prices high, and they're big enough to take the hit and temporarily drop to make it unviable for anyone smaller than the cartel to try to undercut them.

[zugzwang]

10 minutes ago, Kosmin said:

As I've said before, it's not my vision. I'm saying we don't know the extent to which markets are required, or whether they can exist without other forms of organisation. I've been quite strongly influenced by Geoffrey Hodgson, who came up with the impurity principle (he says no pure economic system can exist - neither pure markets, nor pure central planning). It's plausible, but I don't think there's an argument for it. Note that there are non-market forms of economic organisation outside of the government (families and corporations* are examples). The impurity principle could still be true without a government sector.

Yes! Both Marxists and Neoclassicals contend that economies evolve towards stable equilibria, the equivalent mathematically of assuming their dynamics are embedded within a fixed point attractor. Similarly, Monetarism and Keynesianism are examples of one-parameter models (that have become ideologies politically) because they are attempts to describe and control the behaviour of the economy using a single parameter, like the money supply or the level of govt spending while ignoring everything else. But we know from even the simplest chaotic, dynamic models (the Lorenz model for instance) that constant forcing of a single control parameter does not lead to stability. Assuming the dynamics of the economy are complex and non-universal, full of novelty and surprise, we should expect these simple, universal one-parameter solutions to fail, and generally they have.

[Kosmin]

32 minutes ago, zugzwang said:

Yes! Both Marxists and Neoclassicals contend that economies evolve towards stable equilibria, the equivalent mathematically of assuming their dynamics are embedded within a fixed point attractor. Similarly, Monetarism and Keynesianism are examples of one-parameter models (that have become ideologies politically) because they are attempts to describe and control the behaviour of the economy using a single parameter, like the money supply or the level of govt spending while ignoring everything else. But we know from even the simplest chaotic, dynamic models (the Lorenz model for instance) that constant forcing of a single control parameter does not lead to stability. Assuming the dynamics of the economy are complex and non-universal, full of novelty and surprise, we should expect these simple, universal one-parameter solutions to fail, and generally they have.

Which one-parameter solutions have failed? (In reality. I don't dispute that the theoretical demonstrations. I just don't see their application to reality)

[zugzwang]

4 hours ago, Kosmin said:

Which one-parameter solutions have failed? (In reality. I don't dispute that the theoretical demonstrations. I just don't see their application to reality)

Keynesianism failed to repair the stagflation of the late 70s. Monetarism succeeded in bringing down inflation in the early 80s but only by driving up unemployment to levels last seen in the Great Depression. Margaret Thatcher abandoned her monetarist credo in 1985 (without admitting so publicly) and adopted a policy of financial liberalisation instead which continued under successive Tory and Labour administrations until September 2008 when it too failed catastrophically.