Seeing the Unseen

Criminal Justice in a Stateless Society

2021-08-04T10:42:00.006-07:00

Bronya Ferns: Wouldn't putting someone in jail because they have murdered or raped people be infringing upon their individual rights in favour of the collective? How do you feel about jails? Is there a line that can be drawn between scenarios which justify infringing individual rights and scenarios which don't?

Just asking out of interest. I don't know where I stand on this, it's complicated.

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Fair question. I would not say that jailing people for murder, rape, assault, fraud, or theft is a violation of their rights because they forfeit the right not to be put in jail because they threaten the other individuals. (jailing them for "victimless" crimes like drug use is a rights violation.)

The problem is, because we live in a state society, no one consented to the laws. In an emergent order, to be a part of a community; or get a house; or buy a car; or get a job; or to collectively buy into garbage collection and other amenities; you would have to agree to conditions first, and those would certainly include not doing The Big Five. Some housing associations might not want people owning firearms, having drugs, or what have you, so everyone would have options as to what the rules are in their area, even non-libertarians.

It may be that these contract states specific consequences for crimes, eg. "If you are found guilty of stealing, you will be evicted without notice" or "murderers are subject to the death sentence"; or it may be that you agree to submit to a certain arbitration procedures and these would be optimised by free competition on the market to be simple and effective and not unnecessarily bureaucratic unlike state courts, regulations and laws. However it is handled, no one could say their rights were being violated, if they were jailed or fined lets say, after having agreed by contract multiple times to by being subject to these consequences if they took a stated action.

I personally don't believe in the current penal system because it's inhumane, irrational and not based on evidence, and it does nothing to help or make whole victims. We are just interested in punishing criminals - not helping victims.

So I would say ideally if someone commits a crime they have to pay off the victim according to a reputed authority, and they are allowed to go to any "jail" that is willing to have them. If they are well behaved they can go to a very nice "jail" with lots of great, high-paying jobs to do and pay off the victim quickly. If they are badly behaved nice jails won't have them. If they are disturbed they will go to jails funded by charities, churches, insurance companies, courts and what have you to receive rehabilitation+counselling. These associations will have a huge incentive to implement the best and most effective methods and copy one another's innovations because they don't have a blank cheque from the tax payer, they need to figure out how to use their funds efficiently and stay abreast of innovations.

Those who don't respond to rehabilitation are probs psychopaths and a very small minority of people. They might end up being sent to farms to be with their own kind and have their own "lord of the flies" society, because otherwise they will just be parasitic upon everyone else.

Human Irrationality is an Argument For – Not Against – Free Markets

2021-07-26T14:38:00.007-07:00

If everyone was irrational all of the time we would be in big trouble. You’d never know when someone was suddenly going to swerve off the road for no apparent reason and drive into a building, or start babbling to you in tongues over the phone when all you wanted to do was order a pizza.[1]

That being said – people are irrational enough of the time, that behavioral economists are never done telling us that they are not suitable for a market economy and need regulations to “nudge” them in the right direction. They illustrate the point with examples such as the fact that if you want to motivate someone to run you are better giving them $105 dollars a week then fining them $15 a day every day they don’t run, than rewarding them with $15 a day every day they do run ~ even though these things essentially amount to the same thing. So, naturally, we need policymakers to save us from ourselves and make us do the right thing. The irony of this position is that it presupposes that people are rational enough to respond to the incentives the behavioral economists want to mete out to them. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs have been doing more to devise apps that interphase with human psychology and help them adopt better habits than governments ever have! After all, it was the market that gave us Fitbit, mindfulness apps, nicotine gum, calendar apps with build in alarms to make sure we don’t forget appointments; the list goes on and is ever increasing.

For the main part, the market is what defends us against the consequences of the irrationality of others. I will define, for our purposes, rational as: having and acting upon beliefs that are in accordance with reality.[2]

If someone was irrational at all times in all respects, they could not meet the demands of life or sustain themselves, therefore they would either be dead, under the care of others, in a mental institution, or in prison. So, while no one is rational all the time, most people are at least rational enough of the time to exist within a society.

The great thing about the market is, as far as we are concerned, others only need to be rational upon the basis we deal with them. My mechanic might be a raving lunatic who drives his wife up the wall (no pun intended) with his crazy theories about the flat earth and interdimensional big foot people when he is at home, but so long as he is rational when it comes to the operations of fixing my car, it need not be any concern of mine. The pizza delivery guy could have views on race that most people find abhorrent, and I would never even know so long as he delivered it on time! The architect hired to design a bridge for a new highway might be a fanatical communist who thinks all property should be publicly owned, but as long as he is rational enough to follow the laws of physics when it comes to the blueprints, the bridge won’t be built upside down and will not collapse under the weight of the vehicles crossing over it. No one is remunerated on the market for doing irrational things, for example, bringing Squid Waffles to market. No one is interested in buying or eating Squid Waffles. Therefore, they don’t exist.

Now, need I point out, that none of this is the case when it comes to the alternative to the market, which is the political process. All of a sudden everyone’s crazy, irrational views that were none of my business become very real problems to me, because they are going to entre the voting booth and try and model a society that is fashioned based upon them. Someone might even lobby for a government subsidy to open up the first ever Squid Waffles diner! Sound crazy? Well how come the government both subsidizes and taxes tobacco at the same time? This is seemingly “irrational” but it makes sense when you understand that one lobbying block wants tobacco farmers to remain in business, and another wants people to smoke less.

While people’s performance on the market is tied to their rationality, ie., the fact that their views conform to reality and therefore they can deliver the desired results, there is no such failsafe at the ballot box. In fact, as the public choice theorists have been pointing out to us, it’s rational for voters to be ignorant about abstract topics like economics, political science, sociology, statecraft and basically anything necessary to cast a good vote, because learning the facts is time consuming and costly with very few payoffs.[3]

Typically, when you go into the world with irrational views that affect your day-to-day life you will be met with negative consequences. If you have irrational views about eating, you will get sick; if you have irrational views about how to treat your spouse, you will have unpleasant arguments or even a divorce; if you have irrational views about how to run a business, you will soon go bankrupt. In other words – reality provides a corrective against irrational views, or at least tries to!

The dirty secret about government is that replacing the market with its “democratic” control – be it public institutions or regulations – ends up removing this corrective mechanism and encouraging irrational behavior. No one wants to suffer the negative consequences of their own irrational behavior, whether it be an illness resulting from not having taken care of their health, or having a child they can’t support, or setting up a business to sell a line of products for which there is no demand. But democracy is inherently a system where people can make bad decisions and then vote to expropriate the consequences of those decisions to everyone else via the tax system. Those people who conform to reality by building products and providing services that meet the real needs of other people will essentially be punished for good behavior when the tax man comes around to expropriate their gains to pay for rent seekers and vagrants. This creates a tendency towards more costly, irrational behavior and less beneficial, rational behavior in society relative to what there would be on a free market. Over the long term, everyone will be disadvantaged on the whole, including those who seemingly profit from exporting the negative economic consequences of their actions to the body politic because the society they live in will be far less prosperous.

[1] I note that some economists, following Ludwig von Mises, take the position that people are always rational. What they mean by that is that all human behavior is goal-directed behavior and that when someone makes a choice they are choosing what they think will make them achieve that goal. (Mises: “A historian can say... In invading Poland Hitler and the Nazis made a mistake... All that another man can say about it is: I would have made a different choice.” – Theory and History) In my view that is a very specialized usage of the world rational, so I am going with the more commonly used understanding of the term.

[2] Please spare me debates about what reality is or how we know we can know it, Mr. Descartes.

[3] See, for example, Caplan, B. (2007) “The Myth of the Rational Voter.”

Is Wholefoods "Conscious Capitalism" Effective Altruism?

2021-07-03T15:19:00.000-07:00

Wholefoods, one of the most consciously ethical companies in the world, was picketed by animal rights activists in 2003. At first, CEO John Mackey was incensed. After all, Wholefoods are the good guys! Couldn't these would-be revolutionaries take their complaints to McDonalds or Walmart?

After some reflection Mackey, the libertarian author of Conscious Capitalism (2013), decided that it might not be a bad idea to sit down with the activists and hear what they had to say. Asking them, “Why did you attack us?” he received the rather touching response: “Because we thought you would listen. Nobody else will.”

As a consequence, Wholefoods made the decision to undertake a long and wide-ranging ethical review of how they sourced their meat. In meetings spanning months, they consulted experts in farming, sustainability, animal welfare, economics and lord knows who else. They brought ranchers together with animal rights activists and scientists and worked collectively on establishing objective standards to measure animal welfare. Ultimately, they were able to significantly improve the living standards of the animals they sell. Mackay himself was motivated by what he learned to go vegan.

Mackey is extremely keen to rehabilitate the image that capitalism has, especially among young people who tend to perceive the market economy as cutthroat, exploitative and alienating. He believes the perception that businesses as driven entirely by the “selfish” profit motive is partly responsible for capitalism’s poor standing. He is eager to help people understand that business enriches lives, and fears that unless we rehabilitate the image of capitalism, we may soon slay the goose that lays the golden eggs. After all, free markets have created unprecedented leaps in living standards since the industrial revolution.

I agree with Mackie that business is about creating value for others rather than cutthroat competition. I think most people go into business because they have an idea for a product or service which they think is cool and that people would benefit from, and fantasize about making large sums of money helping people – rather than exploiting them.

Mackey’s vision, and the story of Wholefood's ethical reforms is awe-inspiring in a way, and certainly demonstrates what big business can achieve in serving a higher purpose that speaks to the values of consumers. After all, a man does not live by organic, wholegrain, einkorn bread alone!

However, in the interests of rigor, I would like to open a discussion about whether this kind of “ethical” or “conscious” capitalism is really the most effective way for companies to “do good” in the world.

I confess I have not been able to reach an answer yet.

On one hand, the standards that Wholefoods have created for measuring the welfare standards of animal rearing will help all consumers and businesses who want to make ethical choices and minimize the suffering of the animals which they buy and sell.

On the other hand, everything comes at an opportunity cost.

The book Doing Good Better (2015) demonstrates that if you want to donate money to charity then making a choice based upon the best data will make a tremendous difference, because the best charities are literally thousands of times more efficient at allocating resources than the least efficient ones. (Happily, the entire audiobook is available free of charge on YouTube.)

The book was written by William MacAskill, professor at The University of Oxford. MacAskill is one of the pioneers of Effective Altruism, a philosophical movement seeking to bring empirical evidence to people on how to best have a positive impact in the world, be it by their choice of where to donate and spend their money, what career to pick, or where to volunteer their spare time.

Some of the fascinating conclusions MacAskill’s book presents are counterintuitive, and may even infuriate many a would-be conscious-consumer, for example:

1) If you want to reduce your carbon footprint, a donation of $110 a year to the most efficient carbon-offsetting company will help more than giving up your car, turning off all your lights, and taking a train instead of a plane. In fact, it will make you carbon negative, which not even giving up electricity in your house will do!

2) If you want to reduce the suffering of animals you better achieve that by donating to an efficient pressure group than by going vegetarian. (MacAskill is nonetheless a vegetarian.)

3) If you want to help the world's most impoverished people, buying fair trade products is not the way to do it. If you take the difference between the cost of the cheaper non-fair-trade product and the fair-trade product and donate it to one of the most effective poverty charities, your money will do hundreds or even thousands of times as much good per penny.

To summarize the key insight here: most well-intentioned people will assume that the best way to make a positive impact in the world is to make better consumption choices, but usually, donating a relatively small amount of money to an organization that knows how to spend it efficiently will often have a far greater impact then buying a product with ethical credentials or abstaining from the luxuries of civilization.

This is similar to how critics of capitalism tend to think that taxing the rich and giving it to the poor is the best way to alleviate poverty, when actually this creates a trade off in capital investment, which drives all the technology and innovations that increase living standards.

It is well known that our brains wired to respond to stories rather than statistics. For example, people are more likely to donate to a cause advertised by the moving story of one little girl and her tragic disaster than the details of thousands in dire straits, even if the second cause is more urgent and would allow fewer resources to go farther.

If the defence of capitalism is what we seek, then perhaps it will prove to be more important that businesses are seen to be doing good than the measure of how much good they are actually doing. It certainly seems to be important enough for many consumers to pay more for products or round up the cost of their purchases to donate to whatever inefficient charity has been selected by the owner of the kiosk they are shopping at.

As we know, shopping at Wholefoods is expensive. The question for the conscious consumer is whether they are doing better for the world by shopping there to support their policy of ethical meat sourcing, or if they’d have more impact by grabbing cheap animal products in a budget store and donating the difference to the right cause. (My writing on this matter, may strike some as somewhat ironic, as I, mystelf, am known by some in the libertarian community for being an ethical vegetarian.)

A more profound query still might be to ask whether Wholefoods would have reduced more animal suffering by investing in the best evidence-based causes than holding expensive consultations with environmentalists and agriculturalists.

The Whole Planet Foundation, which has alleviated poverty by issuing microcredit loans, is a credit to the world. The question is whether this is a case where the conspicuous benefit is seen, while what is unseen is that the same amount of resources allocated to the most efficient already existing organizations would have done far more good.

I don’t know how we would get the evidence to answer these questions, but there is someone out there who does. (Perhaps we could consult William MacAskill.)

I do not mean to be cynical. This is not an attempt to condemn Wholefoods, or the great John Mackey for their attempts to do good by consumers, animals, and the capitalist system. What Wholefoods have done is revolutionary, and I am happy that there is somewhere where people know for certain that they can get meat that is reared humanely.

But for us nit-pickers – obsessed with hard facts, efficiency and clear answers – the question will remain, what is the ideal libertarian strategy for is doing good in the world?

It is not a trivial question either. The welfare – and even lives – of real people depend upon the answer.

If you don't like it, you can't just leave.

2021-02-19T07:38:00.002-08:00

I can't actually think of a single other way the "powers that be" could get people, en masse, to literally cheer for having their basic human freedoms (that people fought for centuries and worked their bloody arses off) to be taken away, But not only that, to actually virulently and viciously attack anyone who dares to say "maybe all this has gone a bit too far, eh?" like the person had suggested it should be legal to molest children in public,

Offcom have literally banned anyone going on air who would say that the WHO or CDC are mistaken or question their position, even though these organisations have contradicted themselves multiple times and proven themselves wrong. Even for those in favour of the lockdown, it should be a complete affront to them that in what is called a liberal democracy, we are allowed no public debate on the media about the government policy. In fact Boris and Nicola (two cheeks of the same arse) have each been given the "emergency powers" to pass policies that affect everyone in the country unilaterally, without so much as a discussion in parliament which itself is dictatorial.

We read 1984 and in history we are told how in communist and fascist dictatorships there was censorship and only one opinion was allowed to represented on the media. They literally will not have ANY experts on who will present data against the government's position on television and have not since the beginning of the lockdowns. No one seems to notice, no one seems to care, no one seems to criticise except a few of us.

Finally, I hope you realise, they have literally BANNED you from leaving the country, right? This is critical here. They have banned you from leaving the country. Constantly we have heard the chorus from statists, over and over again, telling us, singing from the same hymn sheet over and over again like they were programmed to do so, (they were by the way,) "Well, if you don't like it, you can just leave." That's what they always say.

Well guess what?

If you don't like it, you can't just leave.

Live your life to the fullest you can under these conditions. Spend time with your loved ones, skype your granny, post letters to people who would never expect to get them for you. Read amazing novels, listen to insightful podcasts, watch those movies everyone says are fantastic but you just never got around to. Take exercise! Pursue your spiritual practices, pray to whatever deity you believe in, practice yoga, lean to meditate - I know you've been putting it off! But while you do that, oppose this flagrant regression to rule by barbarism with love in your heart.

Capitalism is for The People

2021-02-09T13:54:00.006-08:00

There has never been a true free market but there have been degrees and we can measure the success in degrees. Chile is the most free market country in south america and the most prosperous (including for the poor). Estonia is the most free market of the post-eastern block countries and the most prosperous. Hong Kong and Singapore used to be as poor as Africa but became two of the richest countries in the world in 30-40 years because they became MORE free market that Europe and america. The African countries which have come up THE MOST have been those who have adopted free market policies, Ghana, Ethiopia (which had famines constantly under socialism), Rwanda, Tanzania, Botswana, etc. I only despair because I don't know how much evidence we need of the poverty-destroying effects of adopting free markets to change peoples opinion when the ideology is so fixed in their heads that socialism is "for the people" while capitalism is "for the rich." It's not true, capitalism FORCES the rich to SERVE the poor by delivering them those goods and services which THEY choose to patronize. If they don't serve the masses they don't earn a profit. If they don't improve their living standards by lowering the price of products and improving the quality of the products, someone else will come in and do it and outcompete them. Capitalism is for the people.

Usual Caveats Apply: Under the current system of capitalism we have corporations use the government to gain special privileges and bias the market, and this IS NOT for the people, etc. etc. etc.

The Viewers Don't Want to See how Filthy their own Faces Are

2021-02-05T10:45:00.006-08:00

There's a reason why they don't show slaughter houses on tv. There's a reason why they don't discuss spanking in any great depth with inference to evidence, routine infant circumcision, how to resolve interpersonal conflicts, or even how to reason. It's because there is a big taboo on television. And it's not on discussing the bankers, or 'exposing the people who are really pulling the strings.' The biggest taboo on television is not the corruption of politicians, bankers, or corporations. They are fair game. Broadcasting them is unlikely to inspire much change. That's all still divide and conquer - us vs them....... The biggest taboo on television is you. Anything that might question or challenge your personal habits or ethics and make you have to make changes in your own life. That's taboo. That's not allowed. People will complain.

Horizontal vs. Top-down Control

2021-01-07T19:28:00.031-08:00

When I was growing up I got really into the "grand" global conspiracy. I went to see David Icke speak with my brother in a relatively small room in Stoke on Trent around 2002. There were only maybe a couple hundred people in the audience.

Later on, around 2007, I got really into economics and libertarianism. I began to think a less about the "global" conspiracy. Suddenly most of what I saw going on in society could be explained by economic incentives.

For one thing, people like free stuff, of course they are going to vote it for themselves whenever they can. They don't typically see this as looting the commonweal, living at the expense of their neighbour, but "fair" in light of the challenges they face in life. Society has never told public sector workers, for example, that this is shameful, all is fair under democracy. A vote is a vote and a policy is a policy.

As a corollary, those individuals that make up government want power - even if it is power to "do good" according to their own values. One way the government can get power, while garnering the support of the populace, is to bribe people with handouts. People who receive benefits are from the state are likely to be supporters of the state. All the public servants, school teachers, university professors, campaign contributors, not to mention the politicians themselves, are basically bought off with public funds to be tacit allies of government. In addition to this, they keep an underclass on welfare, who can always be relied upon to support the institution of government out of fear of starvation.

When our societies were not very affluent, only a small percentage of people's income could be appropriated in taxes because, say, a "0% reduction in the average person's living standards would have been huge. As we have grown richer, the total tax many people pay is far in excess of half of their income. This allows the government to have a far greater number of people than ever before on its payrolls to protest tax increases, however, it does not cause the tax-payer themselves to starve. In addition to this, they believe they are at least in receipt of some services that have come to be seen as impossible to provide without government by the great majority of people, including roads, hospitals and schools. By this final act, the support of even the net tax-contributors are won over to the idea of government, and all of this is explainable merely by the incentives of the system itself. This is what you could more or less expect to happen in an affluent democracy.

It's power being solidified, it's not difficult for the corporations, who deal with huge sums of money, to buy the government. In fact they are incentivised to do so. As soon as a corporation gains a greater return on their investment by lobbying the government than they do from serving their customer, that is what they are going to do. This completes the circle.

Organisations like WHO, IMF, World Bank and CDC work in the interests of the corporations, but people think they are "government" agencies; which they take to mean working in the public interest.

Now, this doesn't mean I don't believe individual conspiracies take place. For example, murder of Jeffrey Epstein. Other conspiracies such as The Lavon Affair or Operation Gladio are even freely admitted to have occurred. It just means that I don't necessarily think these need to be centrally orchestrated in smoky rooms by the same cabal of powermongers.

The term conspiracy theory, itself, is simply used to dismiss claims out of hand and relieve people of the need for further investigation. The term "conspiracy theorist" is synonymous with "nut," and it is popular to psychologize people who believe in conspiracies as having some strange motive to find patterns where there are none. However, someone can have psychological tendencies which drive them towards a position - and that position can still be true! One of the appeals of the "conspiracy theorists" in the pre-YouTube world was exactly that they would bring context to a media landscape devoid of it, where the media would portray complex events as a snapshot in time. For example, propagandizing the populace with the claim that, "Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds," without showing either of the videos of Donald Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, meeting with Hussein in the 80s to sell him weapons.

Like many, recent events regarding the Global Pandemic (or "Globalist Plandemic" to conspiracy theorists), like many, have really made me think again of the global conspiracy again.

A global conspiracy, of course, could exist, and by its very nature of being secret and covert we would not even know about it.

My question though, remains, what is actually the scarier thought?

If there are just a handful of evil men who are orchestrating world event, up to no good, then it is relatively easy to depose them.

If it is not a centrally planned conspiracy then the world becomes far harder to fix. You have a nice neighbour, but he doesn't believe you should be able to operate a hair salon without a licence. Your drinking buddies want to take your guns. Your churchmates don't think gays should be allowed to get married. Another friend says Soviet Russia wasn't real communism and real communism has never been tried. All the people at your local theatre group support you being taxed to pay for allopathic medical treatments that you disagree with, taking money from you to pay big pharma. Atheists want Christians to pay for abortions. Meat eaters want vegans to pay for subsidies to dairy farmers.

In other words - control is not exerted upon you vertically, from above, but horizontally, by the very people around you, whom you love.

Charity or Investment?

2021-01-04T17:17:00.002-08:00

There is general bias towards the belief that if rich people give away their money (or are taxed is more) then that will be more beneficial to humanity as a whole than if they reinvesting their fortune in the stock-market. When people hear that such-and-such is a billionaire, they tend to think Mr. Billionaire is 'hoarding the money' and he 'doesn't need it because he is rich enough' as though the money is sitting under his bed. But it's not, it's invested in businesses that often end up doing a great deal of good, not for Mr. Billionaire, but for the average person. To illustrate, imagine:

Option A. Mr. Billionaire gives away 1.2 billion to Africans, might be a drop in the ocean. This amounts to around $1 per person. Very soon the money is spent, nothing systematic has changed, and things revert to more or less the way they were before.

Option B. Mr. Billionaire invests 1.2 billion in an engineering company that invents an innovation in communications technology for people’s phones. This is driven by consumer demand, but it ends up making it significantly cheaper to build infrastructure in Africa. This sets aspects of the process of development forwards by a decade. It actively takes people out of poverty is a durable way.

The advantage investment has is it’s actually responsive to public preferences. I.e. If people don’t buy the products that Mr Billionaire invests in it will get re-diverted into things that people do want to buy. There is a feedback mechanism to prevent it from being wasted, as the rich guy does not want to lose his investment.

Giving is more guess work.

This process does not depend on the magnanimity of the investor either. He can invest out of pure self-interest and still benefit society as a whole. If the first millionaires gave away their money rather than reinvesting them in other businesses thinking that was the best way to do good it may have set back technological progress by decades we might not have computers yet.

These things are more complex than people intuit. If world poverty was as easily solved as some think it could be we would have done it already.

Corona Virus Lockdown Truth Bombs

2020-09-25T03:48:00.010-07:00

1) The simple fact is that if you want stuff - i.e. wealth rather than poverty... people have to actually Make the stuff. It doesn’t come out of thin air.

2) It’s nice to think that with a magic wand all we have to do is appropriate the wealth of "the greedy rich" and redistribute it, but the fact is almost all the money they have is invested in the machines and factories that make a modern standard of living possible, and the technology that promises to improve it in the future. Moving it from capital investment to consumption will make everyone poor not rich. They will go out to the shops and spend it, the price of goods and services will shoot through the roof, and we will be worse off.

3) Spending does not create wealth saving does.

4) If you stop people working for the best part of a year don’t be surprised when everyone is poor in the future. It’s going to take years for people to recover from the poverty, possibly decades.

5) If people blame the on eeeevil capitalism they will end up killing the goose that laid the golden eggs that bought all the privileges they are lamenting having lost from shutting the economy down.

6) It may be nice to fantasize that some benign gods will come along to take over and run everything in the interests of "the people" (whatever that means) - but we are infinitely more likely to end up looking like Venezuela or Cuba.

7) If you're not scared of this outcome you should be.

Governments Are Not Incentivized to Solve Problems

2020-09-20T04:42:00.002-07:00

States arose with agriculture, around the same time as slavery. When states were monarchies, it was relatively obvious that the institution existed - like slavery - to separate people into two classes. One that produced, and another one that consumed.

This fact became intolerable, and people demanded to have a say in how the state was run. They did not imagine that states, as such, were the problem, but simply that they were run by monarchs. They could no longer imagine forms of organisation that did not involve state, but really states are the anomaly. Throughout most of history there were none. They are a logical error predicated on misunderstanding of economics.

Economics demonstrates that people and institutions tend to act as they are incentivized to behave.

Companies gain wealth from providing goods and services for money, the consumer is king and puts them out of business if they don't deliver the goods. Charities have limited resources and must allocate them effectively if they are to do well in league tables. Even then there is still corruption.

The government is simply not incentivized to solve problems. First, they get paid whether they do a good job or not. Second, they monopolize services so they can't compare their performance to other strategies and adopt other people's innovations.

Damningly, the government derives its power from people being poor because the pretext for every government program is "how will the poor get xyz if the government does not provide it".

If poor people become rich they will just do what middle class people do which is take their kids of out public schools and put them in better private schools, take out health insurance so they don’t need to rely on poorer nhs hospitals, there will be less crime so less need for police, and no poor people to go in the army and fight endless wars in the Middle East. With the diminishing need for social programs because people are rich enough to solve their own local issues, there will be less need for social workers and other social services. Millions of government bureaucrats will no longer be necessary. How can the government even make them redundant given that A) they represent a huge voting block? and B) they are heavily unionized.

Solving problems reduces the need for government and no one puts themselves out of a need for a job unless they are forced to. The incentive structures are such that government are doomed to fail and basically everything that economic theory predicts you will find from government is exactly what you see the results to be. More and more dependence, less self-sufficiency, people bribed with public funds to support this or that policy, and driven to hatred of one another.

Private Ownership of the Means of Production confers a Social Benefit

2020-08-03T13:27:00.006-07:00

Perhaps the most difficult battle faced by the advocates of free markets it to convince people that Private Ownership of the Means of Production is not some special privilege conferring and advantage to "greedy capitalists" at the expense of everyone else, but that it serves a social function that is beneficial to all.

Private ownership makes the accumulated wealth of the entrepreneur a slave to the consumer - that is - to everyone else. We commonly understand private ownership to mean "for our own use," eg. the use of a toothbrush or a private residence, but in the case of private ownership, what is owned is almost exclusively for the use of others, placed at their service.

The capitalist keeps his wealth only to the extend he continues to use what he has accumulated in the interests of the masses, as they judge them, by churning out whichever goods and services they demand. To the extent he succeeds, his wealth will grow. This is the economy’s way of saying that he makes sure and wise decisions with the capital we have amassed as a society - not wasting them on projects that the public have no interest in paying for. To the extent he fails to do so, those factories, machines and companies that his investments represent will be sold on at knock-down rates to whoever thinks they can do a better job of managing them in the public interest. This allows for the constant re-allocation of capital to those who can best manage it, and engenders the accumulation of more capital over time. As the capital stock increase there is more wealth generation and technological advancement can be expected, and this will necessarily be largely led by the preferences of consumers, not those who actually "own" the capital.

Capitalism is not "A System of Competition"

2019-01-26T10:13:00.000-08:00

Capitalism - A System of Competition?

Capitalism has often been described by as “a system of competition” by its adversaries, or a system “based on competition.” Naturally, this assertion is usually coupled with a spirited oration on how this “tooth n’ nail” competition psychologically corrupts us – pitting man against man in a “race to the bottom.”

Many of capitalism’s most vocal advocates have, themselves, imbibed this premise uncritically. They leap to a fervent defences of competition, extolling its virtues – real or perceived. In my view this is a mistake. To accept without evaluation the presupposition that capitalism is a system of competition – in contrast to other hypothetical systems of cooperation (namely socialism and communism) – is to frame the very debate itself in leftist terms and play the game on an unfairly tilted game-board.

Competition is Fierce for Government-Controlled Resources

This is not to say that those who defend competition do not raise some worthy points. For example: If not competition, then what is the alternative? Is there to be one central provider of each good and service available who gets to decide on our behalf how it is best to be produced and then allocated? Add to that, that if competition is wrong in the market, then why not in the political sphere? Surely democracy is out of the question if competition is a corrupting factor, because what do political candidates do if not compete for office? Think of the competition this generates between political parties, not to mention the ensuing competition between firms and individuals for preferential treatment from politicians and legislators, competition between lobbyists, think-tanks, and voters, to receive benefits out of the public purse. If the free and voluntary section of society is a system of competition, how much more so is government? Surely democracy is a “system of competition.” Politicians are competing for the very machinations of control in our society. For the right to pass and enforce laws which apply to everyone (whether they agree with them or not) and to force them to pay for their enforcement. They are not simply competing for market share where the winner of the competition is the one that satisfies the most demand. We can sidestep the more mundane economic arguments in favour of competition for the moment, such as the case that it increases efficiency and cheapens goods while driving innovation, as we are all familiar with them already.

Capitalism is a System of Voluntary Exchange

Nonetheless, parsing what is essentially a sociological debate – a meditation upon the effects of an economic environment upon the soul of man – in socialist terms; basing it upon left-wing premises without examining their foundation is to cede too much ground. A comical equivalent would be for a leftist responding to the clichéd assertion of the American right that “Hitler was a Socialist!” by arguing that many of his labour policies were successful in improving social conditions for the working class.

This is not to say that competition is necessarily an evil either. The problem lies in defining capitalism as “a system of competition” - in comparison to other systems which are somehow “cooperative”; that is a rhetorical ploy. Those who profess it may honestly believe it to be so, but it’s not true. Capitalism is not “a system of competition” any more than any other system. Capitalism (at least in its free-market, laissez faire ideal) is a system of the voluntary exchange of goods and services in the absence of physical coercion, theft, compulsion or fraud, predicated upon the fundamental right to own and accumulate property.

Or, for brevity: Capitalism is a system of voluntary exchange, predicated upon the right to own property.

One might even venture, therefore, that capitalism is a system of voluntary cooperation.

Granted, this definition still leaves room to debate the morality of accumulating property. Or perhaps whether the “negative” right to ownership when it comes to the rich should take precedence over the “positive” right to healthcare or education at their expense when it comes to the poor. We can even debate whether the relationship between capitalists and their employees are really free of coercion given the power disparity between the two groups. Indeed these are debates I delight in exploring further. However, there is no justification for defining capitalism as a system based upon competition.

Because Scarcity is a Fact of Life, Competition will Exist under Any System

The reason for this is that while the voluntary exchange of goods and services may give rise to a certain amount of competition, competition does not give rise to the voluntary exchange of goods and services. Scarcity does. In any situation of scarcity of resources, there is bound to be some form of competition over those resources (as well as over how those resources are allocated). To exemplify the mistake that is being made here, consider the uncontroversial statement: “The fact that things exist gives rise to motion.”; Now, if I were to conclude that because of this, “motion itself gives rise to the material world,” that would be a weird conclusion to reach. Motion is a feature of the material world, not what defines it or gives rise to it. Similarly, competition is a feature found within a capitalist economy, but it is not its defining feature, nor is it only a feature of capitalism…

If we have a system that allows voluntary exchange, some competition is bound to arise out of that, but that would happen under any system. Even if you had a completely communistic society, which was centrally planned and involved no exchange of money whatsoever, people’s time would still be limited. If you were a film maker in this society, you would probably want as many people to see your films as possible. As would every other film-maker. That would put you at least somewhat in competition with them. Does this mean that communism, too, is a system of competition? Certainly you would be competing for the only customer – the sponsorship of the state. Corruption and cronyism would surely be the result. Who gets their film made and who doesn’t? Who allocates the highly desirable job of being a film-maker over the undesirable job of being a street-sweeper or refuse collector, and how can their favour be courted? The competition will commence, but instead of being decided by the free and voluntary exchange of film-goers, investors and film-makers it will be decided by someone else, I would argue, in a rather more authoritarian fashion. (For a particularly vivid and chilling illustration of how communism substitutes market competition over customers [which is at least tied to the provision of desirable services] for the completely unmeritocratic competition over gaining favour from the corrupt power structure of the state, I refer the reader to Ayn Rand’s first novel, We The Living.)

Competition is a feature of living in a world of scarcity and would exist in any system. Socialism cannot do away with competition – nor can any other system. Therefore it is wrong, both logically and polemically, to define capitalism as “a system of competition” in contrast to socialism; let alone define communism – a system where individuals will have to compete for the favour of authorities who make decisions on their behalf – as a system of cooperation.

Scarcity Means Competition Extends Beyond the Economy

The implications of these facts reach into any circumstances of scarcity beyond the economy. For example, supposing two friends each invite me over to dinner of an evening, I might have to make a choice between their invitations which will result in one of them losing out on my company. Does this then mean that friendship is a system of competition?

We can’t see all of our friends all of the time, or even all of them at the same time. Even if we do, we are bound to have to split our attention between them. In addition to that we can only maintain so many close friendships at once, and we definitely can’t be friends with everyone. All of this means that inevitably we have to make choices. We each make decisions on who to make and maintain friendships with based upon our value judgements, conscious or unconscious. Perhaps based on how happy we feel around them, how long we have known one another, how much we have in common, how much we trust someone or how loyal they have shown themselves to be, how much they educate, enrich or enlighten us, or perhaps based upon what roles roles they allow us to fulfil in their lives. There can be countless other reasons. The fact is we decide. People who feel that they will benefit from our company, for whatever reason, will make attempts to spend time with us. We will invariably begin to make choices on who to spend time with based upon our values, schedule, and what other activities we are willing sacrifice to see them. These are basic facts of life, but they hardly make friendship a system of competition.

Similarly, on the market, our time and resources are limited. We make value-based judgements about choices of products and services to consume based upon what utility we think they will bring to us, sacrificing some options to others. Maybe we will choose a coffee shop based on which has the best tasting coffee, or maybe based on which provides the nicest atmosphere, or maybe based on which is closest, or where the customer service is best, or which is the cheapest, or which we have gone to the longest and therefore find familiar, or perhaps even based on which we think has the best ethos – for example, because they are a social enterprise that only sells fair trade produce and deliberately seeks to employ and train disadvantaged people. The fact is we decide. Each service provider believes they will benefit from our custom and will make attempts to attract us, placing an upward pressure on the quality of services and a downward pressure on price which we may correctly identify as a form of competition. Since human beings are not infallible, sometimes someone might buy a coffee that they don’t end up liking, but over the long term the competition is likely to be won by the satisfaction of customers.

Free to Choose

The miraculous wonder we miss when we focus our attention upon the competition which derives from choice is the ability to choose itself. For example, supposing two commercial events are being held on the same evening. Each perspective patron will want to choose whichever event appeals to them the most, and for whatever reasons they choose based upon what they value in an event. Now, to simply mention that these events are “in competition” would be to completely miss the crucial point that event-goers (who are in the majority compared to event-organizers) have a choice of two events which they may prefer to go to one of rather than one alone.

There is no necessity for competition implicit in the market either. If both events are in jeopardy due to a lack of patrons, then their organizers can always put their heads together and create one bigger, better event. Or they can choose distinct themes that are aimed at different audiences, or perhaps they will agree that it would be in their interests if one of them moved their event to a different night, and they could cross-promote one another. This is part of the free choice the market affords, unless the government has passed laws against it, calling it “collusion.”

The defining feature of the market, clearly, is not competition, but choice. The freedom to choose. It is only when event organizers can go to the government to force people to buy tickets, or shut down other events, or get preferential legislation passed to make it easier for them to advertise, or regulate the market so tightly that only established events-managers can survive, that we see competition become the dominant force. Coercion has entered the market which is no longer free. This is not free market capitalism but what we observe in many sectors of our society today – crony capitalism, or “neo-liberalism” as some may call it. (Unfortunately the failings of “neo-liberalism” are endlessly pinned on the market economy itself rather than the state’s nefarious influence in the market.)

It is worth mentioning that there is actually far more cooperation involved in providing people with goods and services than competition. You have to cooperate with buyers, sellers, managers, employees, suppliers, customers, advertisers, promoters, marketers, collective buyers, and so on. Leonard E. Read (1898-1983), founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, illustrated this in his most famous essay, I, Pencil, first published in 1958. In it he noted that not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make a pencil. He goes onto explain that the cedarwood is sourced from Oregon and the logs milled in California. The graphite is mined in Ceylon, mixed with clay from Mississippi, then treated with a hot mixture which includes candelilla wax from Mexico to increase its strength and smoothness. The six coats of lacquer come separately from the growers of castor beans and the refiners of castor oil. In fact, when you include those who manufacture and transport the equipment involved in these processes you cannot help but marvel at the fact that millions of people have a hand in its creation. They are working in concert, in cooperation, and as a result you can get a pencil for pennies.

To the extent that it is free, the self-interest of the producer is subordinated to the hardly antisocial end of meeting the desires of others. A producer wins the competition only by organising a vast degree of cooperation in the service of satisfying the demand of consumers. This means producing things that regular people like you and I value enough to part with their scarce resources for. To the extent the government interferes in the market, firms are enticed to compete over government contracts, subsidies, preferential legislations, and so forth. This is a corrupting factor in the market as companies no longer have to focus on serving consumers but doing whatever it takes to beguile officials. Sometimes that may well be providing the best service, but this becomes far more likely as the end user is no longer the buyer. Instead they may lobby, bribe, or bait with promises of high paying positions for officials after they leave office. In my book Universal Basic Income – For and Against I note that according to The Sunlight Foundation, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that aims to make government more accountable and transparent, “For each of the 5.8 billion dollars spent by America's 200 most politically active corporations between 2007 and 2012 on federal lobbying and campaign contributions they got $741 in return in kickbacks and benefits. This poses a tremendous problem because as soon as it becomes more profitable for a business to lobby the government than serve their customers then lobbying will become their top priority. This is why government is often a corrupting actor in the economy rather than a referee. The mutual benefit of politicians and big business getting in bed together often outweigh those of serving the public. These incentives drive companies to misallocate resources by making products that the general public doesn't want profitable, and products that they do unprofitable. In other words, the government has become the client of these corporations rather than their customers.” The competition has turned sour.

Those free-market advocates who extol the virtues of competition may point out that every service provider is, in one sense, actually competing with every other product that someone can possibly conceive of buying with their money, and argue that is a good thing as encourages firms to really try their best to create things that will please people in order to earn their cash and do business with them. Still, it cannot be said that capitalism is a system of competition – because competition is not the basis of the system, but choice. The freedom of consumers to choose gives rise to trial and error between competing service-providers attempting to draw a profit by catering broadly to as many consumers as possible or narrowly to meet certain niches depending upon their expertise and predilections. As human desires are infinite, there will likely always be incrementally more beneficial ways of meeting those desires, and thus infinite scope for innovation. What the market allows is for different producers to fill different niches. Buyers are able to compare the relative merits and drawbacks of competing products and vote with their cash on which they feel will better meet their needs according to their own values. Producers themselves are able to observe innovations in the marketplace and attempt to improve upon whichever products or services are already available. Customers will ultimately be the arbitrators of which models are successful and which will be weeded out the market. While there is clearly some competition in this process, overall it is a system of cooperation between buyers and sellers to reach a mutually satisfying voluntary exchange. In comparison to a centrally planned economy (or sector of an economy) where the amount of trial and error is very limited, and the state must roll out a one-size-fits-all solution scarcely tested against other possible solutions – a little competition between service producers might be worthwhile in exchange for a greater degree of autonomy and cooperative communication between service users and service providers which takes the form of supply and demand.

The beauty of the free market, when it is allowed to function, it that it is a constantly self-correcting and self-optimising system. Producers can reflect upon what is available and look for gaps in the market, or improvements upon existing services, and the public will quickly be able to provide signals of what is serving them and what is not by which variations they choose to part with their money for. Over time this leads to a general improvement in the standard of service available to them and decrease in cost which is probably why most of the products we buy are pretty decent. If someone sells a faulty watch then we have somewhere else to go for watches. If we did away with choice in the name of eliminating competition, if there was a design flaw in one watch it would have already been rolled out to every store and it would be too late. What is more if someone could think of any small way to make the watch better, more accurate, more durable, more energy efficient, the new model would probably not hit the market for fear of someone making another improvement upon it making all of those obsolete as well.

The Primary Feature of Capitalism is Choice, Not Competition

So to review, because people make choices with scarce resources and limited time, competition will be an inherent part of any economic system so long as there is scarcity. The primary feature of free market capitalism is not competition, but choice. Rather than moderate the amount of competition in an economy, state intervention will replace competition to serve customers on a voluntary basis with competition over gaining the favour of whoever is responsible for allocating resources within government. Instead of competing to serve their customers as best as they possibly can to achieve the biggest market share – firms can, will, and do, compete for government favours, and to have their products “rolled out” by the state to as many people as they can using public funds or subsidies out of the public purse. This is where the real “tooth and nail” begins.

Snow

2018-11-28T00:31:00.001-08:00

I remember seeing this cute little meme posted, without irony, on facebook a couple years ago.

Clearly the fact that the picture highlighted the failure of a state program escaped the OP.

More seriously though, it's hard to see how the removal of snow would pose any problem for the private sector at all. Some entrepreneur (or community serviceman reprisenting a nonprofit organisation) comes round the neighbourhood and asks if people are willing to contribute however much (or little) would be necessary to insure them against heavy snows. If necesseary, the organisation could draft a contract which says if the necessary amount of people to fund the program is not reached, the people who agree do not have to pay.

Everyone who does pay up gets placed on a register, and gets a nice big siver snow-flake medallion to put on their mailbox or gate to show off to their neighbours that they have contributed. If some people can't afford to pay they can be offered a discount rate, or perhaps they could be included on register in return for agreeing to volunteer for the snow removers should their help ever be needed.

If people choose not to buy into the system, when the snow falls eventually come, the company will drive by houses that are not on their register and don't have a snow medallion on display, or they will bill them out of pocket for a far larger sum than the original insurance fee to clear their driveway, offsetting the costs for everyone else. Perhaps they will think better in future. Even so, they will not necessarily be stranded - they can pay the neighbours children to take shovels and clear it like in the old days.

Problem solved.

Similar arrangements could be made for other services considered "public goods", like municipal garbage removal. For things like street lighting, which are near impossible to exclude those who do not pay for provision of, the medallion system would allow neighbours to apply social pressure to free riders without applying the use of coercion to subtract funds. Those who don't have theirs on display might attract disapproving looks, or have people round saying, "hey man, you are taking money out of everyone's pocket, when everyone pays, everyone pays less." With the technology we have today, it would be easier than ever to apply pressure to those who shirked the responsibility of sharing in the costs of local services they benefit from. The local shop could choose not to serve them and they may need to drive further to the supermarket which will not be worth the hassel of not buying a medallion. Their neighbours could choose not to allow them to collectively buy other services unless they paid in, meaning they would have to make their own arrangements which would prove costlier than choosing not to cooperate.

Libertarians! You can't beat Something with Nothing!

2018-10-21T23:32:00.000-07:00

Here is a decent presentations on Libertarian Strategy and Psychology by me.

The NHS is a False Prophet

2018-07-05T04:58:00.000-07:00

According to a recent article in The Guardian by Polly Toynbee, The NHS is our religion in the UK and that's why the conservative government can't destroy it. Of course, the Conservative government has never actually tried to destroy the NHS. They haven’t even reduced the amount spent on the NHS. They haven’t even halted increases in healthcare spending. The only thing they have done is reduced the rate at which spending is going to continue to increase.

Before the National Health Service was created in Great Britain, our nation was a world-leader with an unrivaled record in making major medical breakthroughs. People came from all over the globe to study medicine, and to be treated in the UK. Dr. John Snow proved that the source of cholera epidemics was the water supply in London. Edward Jenner pioneered a vaccine for smallpox in rural England, and Sir Almroth Wright one for typhoid. Sir Humphrey Davy, also a Briton, first suggested the use of nitrous oxide as an anaesthetic in 1800. Sir Joseph Lister pioneered the use of antiseptics in operations in 1865 using impure carbolic acid, saving countless people dying from infections after surgery. Alexander Flemming, the Scottish physician discovered Penicillin in one of the charitable hospitals in London in 1928. Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, brought it to fruition working in a laboratory in Oxford in 1941.¹ Britain had established the best record in the world for achieving major medical advances and had just developed the landmark drug of the 20^th century, as well as playing a leading role in 5 out of the 7 leading medical breakthroughs between 1750 and 1948 when the NHS was established.² Britain is no longer a leader in medical advances. Despite its costliness, nepotism, and other flaws, America’s private system has taken the lead.

Britain has less of the latest equipment and the old equipment is often being kept beyond the time when it is safe.³ If a private company was using out of date intensive care machines and x-ray machines, obsolete cancer care equipment, and operating tables over twenty years old – double their safe life span – the champions of the NHS would no doubt be clamouring for more government oversight and regulation. When government agencies are culpable, they are more or less given a pass on public outrage because they are perceived to be acting in the public interest rather than for profit.

In the UK we cannot compete with cancer survival rates in the US. A 2011 report demonstrated that the average cancer survival rate was 71.18% in the USA as compared to 54.48% in England.^⁴ Our healthcare may be free at the point of service, but fewer of us survive it. It is costly in terms of lives. In fact, the BBC recently ran an article that reported “patients ‘dying in hospital corridors’.”⁵ In one month 300,000 patients were made to wait in emergency rooms for more than four hours before being seen, with thousands more suffering long waits in ambulances before even being allowed into the emergency room.

The sad reality is that in the UK or Canada people die waiting in line for what would be quick and routine medical treatments in the US. In Britain a shocking 4 million people languish on waiting lists according to official sources^⁶ up from a 7 year high of 3.4 million in 2015 as reported by The Guardian, a left-leaning newspaper,^⁷ and this in a population of scarcely over 65 million. At current trends this number is set to rise above 5 million in 2019 unless we do something to reverse them.⁸

In the UK you could turn up to an emergency room with an appendix about to burst and still be asked to wait overnight before they find you a bed. One patient reported that a lack of treatment rooms led hospital staff to examine her for gynaecological problem which had left her in severe pain and bleeding in a busy corridor, in full view of other patients. Such humiliating anecdotes could be dismissed as embarrassing one-offs were it not for the shocking fact that as many as 120 patients per day are being attended to in corridors and waiting rooms, in the public areas of hospitals, and some even dying prematurely as a result. In the first week of 2018, over 97% of NHS trusts in England were reporting levels of overcrowding so severe as to be “unsafe.”⁹

25% of British cardiac patients die waiting for treatment, and an investigation by a British newspaper found that delays in treatment for colon and lung cancer patients have been so long that 20% of cases were incurable by the time they finally received care.^¹⁰193,000 NHS patients a month wait beyond the target time of 18 weeks for surgery.¹¹According to the OECD Britain has the lowest number of doctors per thousand population in the advanced world.¹² A chart displayed in James Bartholemew’s book The Welfare State We’re In in 20 documented that while only 1% of patients of patients in the USA had to wait over four months for surgery, while the number was 12% in Canada, 17% in Australia, 22% in New Zealand, and a shocking 33% in the UK.^¹³

Where free-at-the-point-of-entry resources are limited older patients are viewed as a drag on the system – especially since they require the most frequent care which costs much more. The average 65-year-old costs the NHS 2.5 times more than the average 30-year-old. An 85-year-old costs more than five times as much.¹⁴ Although a third of all diagnosed cancers in the UK are found in patients seventy-five and over, only one in fifty lung cancer patients over seventy-five receives surgery, and the NHS does not even provide cancer screening to patients over the age of sixty-five.^¹⁵

The government can make waiting lists look shorter by denying patients services outright because those who have been refused services will no longer appear in statistics. If someone’s disease proves fatal because they failed to receive treatment in time, the government figures appear more cost effective because instead of having to budget for a series of expensive surgeries, they have a deceased person on their hands who will not rack up a whole lot of medical accounts. It’s not to say that anyone is perniciously trying to kill off patients, but with pressure constantly mounting for officials to show meaningful improvements, the incentive to coldly take advantage of manipulated statistics “for the greater cause of saving the NHS” will always loom. It is, after all, our religion. In one interview, prominent columnist Dr. Dalrymple reported “Managers going around the wards telling the doctors who they thought ought to be discharged. They had no medical training or knowledge. But they would try and influence the doctors to discharge patients quickly… This is a problem, of course, wherever the person paying for the care is not the patient himself… But where you have one giant organization that decides everything the hazard is even greater.”¹⁶

The failings of socialised medicine are invariably blamed on budget cuts and a lack of funding by advocated of the NHS who are used to expecting medical services to be paid for by the government. The assumption is that if we were just spending more money none of this would be happening. The thing is, we are spending more money than ever before already.

In fact, the budget of the NHS doubled in real terms between 1995 and 2015^¹⁷and now waiting lists are longer than ever! This is because the shortages and inferiority of services are not caused by a lack of funding in the first place. They are caused by how we are choosing to pay for healthcare.

If you are interested in receiving and advanced copy of my eBook Why Healthcare in America is so Expensive, please email me at frequency528@hotmail.co.uk to let me know.

1 Tooley, J. (2004, 2013) “The Welfare State We’re In” p106-109

2 Tooley, J. (2004, 2013) “The Welfare State We’re In” p109

3 Tooley, J. (2004, 2013) “The Welfare State We’re In” p131

4 https://www.pop.org/cancer-survival-rates-far-worse-in-great-britain-than-u-s/

5 Triggle, N. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42572116

6 https://fullfact.org/health/four-million-hospital-waiting-lists/

7 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3158591/Hospital-waiting-lists-seven-year-high-3-4m-need-treatment-6-000-forced-wait-year-operations.html

8 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/03/nhs-annual-health-budget-increases-conservatives-ifs

9 Pickering, G. https://mises.org/wire/patients-are-%E2%80%9Cdying-corridors-britain%E2%80%99s-socialised-health-system

10 See DiLorenzo, T. J. (2016) “The Problem With Socialism” Chapter 9. p96-97

11 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jan/13/193000-nhs-patients-a-month-waiting-beyond-target-for-surgery

12 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2533698/Britain-just-2-71-doctors-1000-people-fewer-Latvia-Estonia-Lithuania.html

13 Bartholomew, J. P126

14 Triggle, N. (2017) "10 charts that show why the NHS is in trouble" BBC News, Health

15 See DiLorenzo, T. J. (2016) “The Problem With Socialism” Chapter 9. p101

16 Gunn, C. and Dr Olsson, P. R. (2015) "Wait Till It's Free." Gunn Productions LLC, Waco, Texas. p67

17 Author Unspecified (2015) “Health Spending”, The Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Why do Markets Work? Public vs. Private

2018-06-07T07:38:00.000-07:00

Can Government Make a Business Run "For The Good of Society" ?

2017-12-05T04:48:00.001-08:00

The New York Post recently reported that a judge in Indiana has temporarily barred Starbucks from closing 77 Teavana stores that were failing because "the very profitable Starbucks could absorb the financial hit". Industry experts said the ruling will send a chill down the spines of distressed retailers, and with good reason! The prospect of not being able to shut down an outlet that is bleeding the rest of the business may have countless unintended consequences that will affect not just owners but consumers in general. Firms are likely to take this as a signal to be more cautious about opening up new stores, and become reluctant to invest, take risks, and employ people in the first place. Customers stand to lose.

Amidst the debate upon the justice of the justice in question, I heard a voice clamour, "The question is not of profit, but whether a business should be run for society or society should be run for business!" and to be quite frank the claim struck me at first as vacuous; professing much while saying very little. Yet we must admit that throughout history many governments have believed they were "serving society" (rather than the business community) by forcing companies to fix prices, continue operations at a loss, or even subsidising or bailing them out with public funds. Many have believed this is in the interest of "the greater good."

Could it be that government forcing Starbucks to maintain unprofitable stores - in some circumstances - would be good for society?

First we should examine the use of the word "society" itself. Rather than bring clarity, it obscures the issue, making it more difficult to apprehend the facts of the matter. Who exactly is society and how do we measure what is and isn't good for it? Society is made of a whole bunch of different individuals and groups with different interests, and what is good for one might not necessarily be good for another.

It's not that keeping a Teavana open despite the owner's desire to close it won't be good for anyone; clearly the proprietor of the shopping centres is willing to fight hard for what they stand to gain, and certainly regular patrons will be happy to be able to get their regular cup of chai before leaving a hard-days-shop. However, the point is the move privilege a few individuals who want to continue going to those outlets at the expense of everyone else in the area who has demonstrated that they would rather something else opens up in that space instead. Starbucks then will need to recuperate the loss somehow or other, perhaps by increasing prices slightly at all other locations. If the locality can only sustain the demand for three tea houses and the unprofitable Teavana happens to be the forth then they are also bleeding demand away from the other three, and so on. We can continue counting negative consequences to other parties.

If Starbucks are deprived of however many millions it costs to operate 77 unprofitable stores that is less money they have to invest in stores that are wanted by enough people to keep them afloat. It's less cash for shareholders who will take it out to the shops to spend it or reinvest it in other businesses, it's less for Starbucks customers who have to pay slightly more for a cup of coffee and therefore don't have to spend on something else, it's less for Starbucks employees who might have to forego a raise because there is less to go around..

Clearly the effect of this policy is not something that can be broken down into whether it ‘benefits society’ or not. All we can say is that it benefits some groups and harms others.

It seems ironic to me that most of those who will cheer on the judges ruling, forcing Starbucks to run 77 tea outlets - against their own interests - for the interests of others are probably the most likely to complain when a Teavana opens up that it will "drive out" locally owned tea houses (which are probably actually collapsing under the strain of the regulations they have to comply with, not being able to afford Starbucks team of expensive lawyers and accountants.) If anything you'd think this crowd would be cheering on the closures! As they carry with them a certain prejudice that whatever vexes big business is necessarily good for the rest of us, we can only conclude that supporting the ruling is less about what is good for society and more about what is bad for Starbucks.

Surplus Value

2017-09-15T10:15:00.000-07:00

It's still a very prevalent view that employers are somehow exploiting the people who work for them when they draw a profit from their business, despite the fact that a person's employer is clearly doing more for their finances than all of the people who are not employing them. I might add, perhaps somewhat facetiously, including those keyboard-warriors who claiming that entering someone into employment is exploiting them.

It is true that workers do get paid less than the total value of what they produce, but that is because what they produce is made with other resources which have to be bought, and in a factory or work place which has a price and requires overheads to operate. The capitalist is responsible for paying for marketing and advertising to link the product to potential buyers - and at the end of the day, if the product doesn't sell, everyone else has already been paid but the capitalist walks away with the loss.

The capitalist lays out a vision of what he thinks will meet people's needs better than they are being met at present. This requires a particular expertise which is in itself a labour contribution over and above that of the other employees which is unique to the entrepreneur. If his vision is clear, indeed he will make a profit. If it is faulty he will make a loss. This is not a necessary risk, absent the profit motive a rich person is more likely to buy a bigger house or go on a cruise. But the capitalist takes a risk now, and foregoes consumption, in hope that he will reap the benefit later. That is part of what he is being paid for.

Another part of what he is being paid for is the time between making the investment and getting paid for that investment. We would all rather have resources in the here-and-now than some time in the future, because the future is uncertain, that is why lenders can charge interest on money that they borrow. They are choosing to forgo a smaller amount of consumption now for a larger one in future. The workers get paid now, the capitalist gets paid later only after the product has sold, and only IF it is sold, after everyone else has been paid. Austrian Economist, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk explained that far from exploiting labour, the capitalist removes the burden of waiting for income from the workers. If they wanted to produce the goods themselves they would also have to wait until they could find a buyer before gaining a stable wage, and first save or borrow in order to accumulate the resources to buy a factory or workshop without the help of the capitalist.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that the capitalist is increasing the value of the workers labour! If a man decides to try out the same manoeuvres which might get them somewhere in a factory out in a field it will not produce much of value to anyone else. Clearly workers can earn more working for their employer than for themselves otherwise they would simply declare themselves self-employed and get on with making a higher income. Perhaps some of them can earn more working for themselves but do not want to take on the responsibilities entailed which are currently met by the firm which employs them. This too is evidence that capitalists are providing value.

Marxists hold that capitalists simply skim their profits off the top while providing no value of their own. That they are "extracting surplus value" from their workers. But if that was true, non-profit organisations would just swoop in and undercut profit-making firms by eliminating the "dead weight" costs of paying a capitalist. They do not because they cannot. Capitalists are clearly providing some competence or vision which benefits their workers. Each benefits from the mutual exchange, as evidence by the fact that if the worker could get a better deal s/he would take it, and if the employer could find a better worker s/he would hire them instead.

Ultimately, wages are not an arbitrary figure but a reflection of how much value an employee is able to provide to a customer. If a person wants to do away with an employer they can do so by learning skills, either on the job or on the side, which will allow them to work for themselves. Likewise, profits are not arbitrary but a reflection of how much value a company is providing on the marketplace. Provided - of course - that they are drawing their profits from serving the market place rather than lobbying or appealing to the state, but that is another article.

"In order to show that it is a half-truth, we must have recourse to long and dry dissertations."

- Frederic Bastiat

Think Like an Economist

2017-08-30T10:32:00.001-07:00

Human Action for Beginners

2017-08-24T09:06:00.001-07:00

The Austrian Economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) authored his Magnum Opus Human Action (1949) in which he laid out his case for laissez-faire capitalism based on a rational investigation of human decision-making. Mises, and the work by extension, is often maligned for "rejecting the scientific method" but this criticism is based on a lack of understanding of Mises' arguments. Admittedly, while few of his critics have read the man himself, Human Action was not exactly written with a lay audience in mind and so the basis of his ideas cannot be easily grasped at a glance. In the interests of clarity, allow me to make his case for him in my own words.

Mises did indeed attest that the empirical method (positivism, or the scientific method) is not the correct methodology for reaching reliable conclusions on matters of economics. However, he did not reject the scientific method. He merely pointed out that the empirical method is ideal for matters of the natural sciences because when it comes to inanimate objects results are predictable. This is because the natural world is deterministic. Copper always melts at 1,085 °C. That which does not melt at 1,085 °C is not copper. Human beings, however, have differing values, tastes and information all of which strongly influence their decision making. Will a person buy a hamburger at half price? Certainly many more will than at full price, but for example I will not because I am a vegetarian, whereas some others may buy several times as many. It all depends on their individual ideas, expectations and preferences.

When it comes to matters of economics there is no way to set up an experiment and control for all factors as we can in a laboratory. We cannot, say, increase the minimum wage in one region to measure the effects on overall employment and compare it to the effects in another region where it is not increased, firstly because the implementation (or lack of it) in one region will also affect the behaviour of individuals in the other (some may move to take advantage of higher wages, others may stay to take advantage of cheaper labour costs.) Secondly because an economy is complicated, and thousands of other factors would also be at play in both regions which cannot possibly be controlled for. We cannot say (for example) that just because employment rose in one region after a minimum wage increase that this change was due to the minimum wage increase, only that it happened. Because we have no counter-factual there is no way to tell if employment would have increased even more if the minimum wage increase had not been enacted.

In light of this, Mises attested, a more suitable method of approaching economic questions would be necessary than the empirical one, based upon the foundation of certain axioms about human nature which could be reached by introspection (or thymology as Mises labelled it to distinguish from different uses of the term introspection.) In the interest of brevity and simplicity we only need to consider three of these; and I will explain why each should be uncontroversial.

The first is that humans act. This claim is hard to argue against because the very act of doing so would be to make a performative contradiction. The second is that when people act, they do so in order to substitute a state of affairs which they consider preferable for one they consider less preferable according to their own values. Again, I see no argument against it; if one is completely satisfied with their situation as it is they do not act but stop. Even the attempt at meditation or mindful acceptance of the present moment is based on the impulse to substitute a pleasant state of surrender to circumstances outside of ones control for a less pleasant state of resisting them. Finally, I add, that people respond to incentives. This axiomatically true because what people do not respond to can hardly be considered an incentive by the very definition of the word.

(To anticipate a potential objection I draw an analogy; a person might scold a dog for poor behaviour in the hope of stopping that behaviour, without realising they are reinforcing it because their dog enjoys negative attention better than no attention whatsoever. This does not mean that the master is failing to incentivise the dog; it just so happens that he is not incentivising the dog to do what he thinks he is.)

An acceptance of these three axioms (for which their is unlikely to be any disproof) reveals that it is incentives which guide economic decision making among individuals. This we all accept, if not in our conscious philosophy then by our actions. To illustrate with our earlier example of the half-price hamburger, the business owner offers this deal in the hope of selling more burgers by creating knowledge of his product. A person buying the burger at the lower price incentivises burger joints to offer burgers at a lower rate. (One might argue that not everyone will respond to incentives, illustrated by the fact that I will not buy the burger because I'm a vegetarian - but in fact in my case the incentive is simply not great enough to suit my values; were the price of the burger was -$10 [minus ten dollars] I might take the money and give the burger away to a homeless person.) Our policy-makers are often led by their unconscious acceptance of these axioms, for example, they may put a tax on alcohol do discourage its consumption, while placing a subsidy on a solar panel to encourage its use. These are not policies guided by the empirical method which is better suited to the natural sciences, but by the aprioristic understanding that humans act, and in their actions they respond to incentives. That is the method, named praxeology, which Ludwig von Mises advocated.

Slavery did not advance Western Civilisation.

2017-08-23T09:17:00.000-07:00

Every now and then someone will say something like "Despite the fact that slavery was immoral the modern world was build upon slavery and we owe the lifestyle we enjoy to the sacrifice of slaves..." Sounds compelling - except its not true. Slavery held back the advance of civilization because its pointless to innovate, invent or automate when you have (free) slave labour. Absent slavery the agricultural revolution may have begun decades earlier. Slavery was an abomination, and positive ends can never become of corrupt means.

Green Free Market Solution to Food Waste

2017-07-22T03:27:00.000-07:00

Three Psychological Stages of Political History

2017-07-03T14:58:00.001-07:00

I have a wacky theory about the history of ideas (or history proper as Mises would consider it.) When a child is born as far as s/he is concerned the parents are God. They are the authority on what is correct and what is false, they are also morally absolute. Their defining attitude towards their parents is a big "yes." Even if the parents are cruel or abusive, it must be me at fault not them - since they are the authority. At some point between 2 and 7, then later again in the teens, the youngster begins to assert their individuality by rebelling against the parent, the more the parent tries to apply authority and demand certain behaviours, the more the child will rebel against this authority with a resounding "no!" The child feels empowered by making the parents feel out of control emotionally, s/he asserts their dominance over them because the parents want compliance, and the child has the power to mete it out or not - causing the parents an easy time or grief. If the response to this "no!" is overly authoritarian or permissive and lacks engaging with reason and appropriate boundaries bad patterns can be set for life. The child can become compliant and later susceptible to peer pressure as he gets stuck in "Yes" or overly rebellious (even to his/her own detriment) and stuck in "No." From this point on any instructions or even mere advice from others - sometimes even from oneself - result in the involuntary impulse to rebel, stick heels in, and refuse to comply even if the request is in the child-now-adult's interests. This can create tremendous problems including a lack of self-discipline and relationship tumults. A wise parent manages to avoids unwittingly molding this kind of character by creating opportunities for his children to say no and rebel to safe and relatively trivial things. For example s/he does might not tell them not to smoke, know that if s/he does they will smoke. Perhaps they will be told not to climb that tree or to play in the muck instead, something relatively innocuous.

A mature person is able to say "yes" or "no". Without the ability to say "no" a "yes" is utterly meaningless because it does not come from the person's individuality. A "no" without consideration is also a counterfeit individuality, it makes one feel like they are having a say but actually they are purely governed by involuntary impulses as sure as those of the "yes man" or people-pleaser. The new man says "yes" to life; and in that he in many ways seems similar to the primordial man, but there is a critical difference - his yes to life is out of fully integrating all previous stages of development rather than an arrested development.

It's my assertion that maybe we have seen a similar evolution in the political sphere. Classic Liberalism arose as a response to a form of conservatism that was very much a "yes" to authority; the authority of the state, aristocracy, church, powers that be. The authorities of the time were very puritanical and their morals and social norms severely restricted the freedoms of people in terms of whom they could marry (usually whom their parents decided) what they could do for a living (what their parents did) what they could own (most of it belonged to their lord, many could not own land) what they could put in their body (moralizations about alcohol) what they should learn and read (mostly the bible) how they could pray (no pagan gods, no Judaism, etc.) and so forth. Now the arrival of liberalism was a resounding "No!" to authority. In a Hegelian fashion it formed an antithesis to the prevailing mores of the time. It continued to develop into other rebellious schools of thought that claimed to rebel against the prevailing authorities: socialism, marxism, communist, progressivism, &c. and reached its hedonistic peak in the 60s with the free love movement and all the big government and welfare programs - but it went to far too fast for a first attempt and soon there was a reaction against it which turned the tide back for a while. After the 80s it came back swinging though and has reached its second crescendo today with the social justice warrior movement. This has become the new thesis and it required an antithesis to counteract it. Clearly I believe that is libertarianism. It is the new man who integrates all previous stages of development in his evolution. In many ways it seems to harken back to certain "conservative" concepts which liberalism reacted against, but in reality the context of the acceptance of certain aspects of authority and tradition is now based on reason ("they have been shown empirically to work better than all that libertinism") rather than authority alone.

What do you think of my thesis? Are you the new wo/man?

If you're not growing you're dying.

2017-05-21T06:25:00.000-07:00

It takes a long time to make changes in public institutions. You have to get enough of the public interested to make it an issue, you might need to get into the media which itself is a hell of a job and even if you do rouse some attention the best most people can hope for is to vote, and they need to vote for one of the package deals on offer. Even if your reform is quite modest and sensible and its benefit is uncontroversial, it may be adopted by a party who have several other ideas on your mind that you disagree with. There is another path, and that is to get a small concentrated number of people who already have a lot of influence to get on board with your ideal and push it through as a bill but even then the matter is not settled; it needs to go through levels of bureaucrats, managers and administrators before the change enters into the system at large and even then many employees will resist the change because they resent being told what to do by central planners.

If we take the example of our education system there has been no small amount of evidence on how to improve it since the 60s when a wave of intellectual idealists from the flower power generation began discussing how "getting things right" when it came to government could change the world. Some of this data has been around for over fifty years, some of it is still coming out. Have these reforms not been adopted for a lack of political will? Yes to a degree but also because of the insurmountable obstacles to mustering the political will. The largest is the simple fact that most people are more comfortable doing what they have always done than doing something new. Doing things differently is anxiety-provoking and it is very irritating to be told or forced to do it by an authority figure, even one who has the evidence on their side, when you think, "Well I have been on the front lines doing it this way my whole life, this is how I was taught to do it in four years of university I think you'll find I know how its done thank you very much you government busy body."

One of the reasons why markets are so important, and why products adapt to user preferences far quicker is because only one person needs to be bothered enough to accept a new innovation in order to force all the other providers in their sector to step up and do a better job. They can do that by matching the innovation, by implementing one that is equally valuable, by providing an inferior service but at a lower price, or in numerous other ways - but the fact is they have to step up and serve customers or on average over time they will be out of business. This means people don't even need to all be receiving the same service or a one-size-fits-all but it does mean that services that are way behind the times will fall out of favour. Public institutions are not under the same pressure to adapt to the times because people cannot divest from them easily since they are funded through the tax system rather than voluntary contributions that can be withdrawn if the service is poor, and also because they have a relative monopoly on the provision of services in their sector which means that people can't compare their performance to those of competitors who are trying different approaches which may have their own advantages or drawbacks.

People need to have a choice when it comes to services if the quality of services is to increase and not stagnate or fall behind the times. This is not because "ruthless tooth n' nail capitalist competition drives innovation" but simply without the petri-dish of trial and error which is a multitude of entrepreneurs with different information and ideas trying to sell them to a skeptical public there is really no way of discovering the best way of doing things. No one has all the answers, but many people have some of the answers, and by constantly turning over the soil society learns to combine the best ideas and discard the worst ones over time. The soil of government turns very very slowly and that's why innovation in the private sector continues (despite various government restrictions on who can innovate) while public institutions stagnate and become more expensive each year while providing poorer standards to the people.

6 Reasons Why Healthcare is so Expensive in the USA

2017-04-22T04:19:00.000-07:00

- In many states if you want to open a hospital you are obliged to go before an official board and demonstrate that the community needs this hospital and that you are willing and able to fund it all by yourself. The people on the board are going to be the big hospital administrators from already existing institutions who want the competition like a hole in the head.

- Nineteen states are even limited to having only a single medical school! There are only 123 in the US despite thousands of perfectly capable students being turned away every year because they can't find places.

- Not everything a doctor does requires 7 years of training but the law requires everyone to have at least 7 years of training to do it. (In some cases a practitioner will have to do 4 years of undergrad, 4 years of medical school, then 3 years residency by the end of which many are so burned out and seriously debt laden before they even begin their career.) The natural prescription is to allow doctors surgeries, clinics and hospitals to train and certify their own assistants to take responsibilities off the hands of highly specialised staff so that fully fledged professional can focus their time and attention on what they alone are capable of doing. Healthcare costs would plummet.

- In December 2011, the Administrator for the Centres for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Dr. Donald Berwick asserted (as he was leaving his job) that 20-30% of health care spending in the US is going to waste. He listed the five major causes as over-treatment, failure to coordinate care, the administrative complexity of the system, burdensome rules, and outright fraud.

- One study found that per capita prescription drug spending in the United States exceeds that in all other countries, $858 compared with an average of $400 for 19 other industrialized nations, and the most important factor allowing manufacturers to set high drug prices was market exclusivity, protected by monopoly rights awarded upon Food and Drug Administration approval and by patents.

- A Harvard Business Review analysis published in 2013 revealed that while the U.S. healthcare workforce grew by 75 percent between 1990 and 2012 a whopping 95% of the new employees were administrative staff rather than doctors or nurses meaning 19 administrative workers for every doctor. The Annals of Internal Medicine last year, observed 57 physicians found that 29 percent of total work time was spent talking with patients or other staff members and another 49 percent was spent on electronic record keeping and desk work.

I am writing a book called Why is Healthcare in America so Expensive if you want to get notified about it when it's ready download my last book for free.

Seeing the Unseen

Criminal Justice in a Stateless Society

Human Irrationality is an Argument For – Not Against – Free Markets

Is Wholefoods "Conscious Capitalism" Effective Altruism?

If you don't like it, you *can't* just leave.

Capitalism is for The People

The Viewers Don't Want to See how Filthy their own Faces Are

Horizontal vs. Top-down Control

Charity or Investment?

Corona Virus Lockdown Truth Bombs

Governments Are Not Incentivized to Solve Problems

Private Ownership of the Means of Production confers a Social Benefit

Capitalism is not "A System of Competition"

Snow

Libertarians! You can't beat Something with Nothing!

The NHS is a False Prophet

Why do Markets Work? Public vs. Private

Can Government Make a Business Run "For The Good of Society" ?

Surplus Value

Think Like an Economist

Human Action for Beginners

Slavery did not advance Western Civilisation.

Green Free Market Solution to Food Waste

Three Psychological Stages of Political History

If you're not growing you're dying.

6 Reasons Why Healthcare is so Expensive in the USA

If you don't like it, you can't just leave.