brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (08/21/84)
Ian, your arguments do bring out many of the good things that governments can do if managed appropriately. There are some more consideratons. 1) Governments are not managed appropriately. Unlike companies, which are managed for personal profit, Government officials strive for personal POWER. Now I trust far more somebody who is out to trade for my money than somebody who is out for power over me. If you don't know that this is the goal of the politician, in almost pure and simple terms, you've never been inside politics. 2) Almost all problems you stated are problems of information, and coordination of information, and computers are solving this. 3) If vast numbers of people truly do support this sort of system, they are encouraged to setup a "government corporation" within the system. They can elect their officers, and pay portions of their income to it. They can make the taxes scaled to punish the rich and reward the poor, or do it any way they like. They can have their corp buy out closing factories and support jobs. If the majority wants this corp, they will join it. It can provide all the advantages of government you seek. Except my thesis is that such a corp will go bankrupt quickly without the force of arms to support it. And if this is the case, where is the moral justification for using force of arms to support it. Unlike an army that defends a civilization, our government uses force to attack society. It's my impression that if anything, governments are MORE shortsighted than individuals. Individual freedom promotes individuality. Both for what is good and for what is bad. If we outlaw the physical crimes, the good easily outweighs the bad. There's enough evidence to say it's worth a try, at the very least. I find this much like the abortion issue. "pro-lifers" claim they have the interests of society (including the unborn) at heart, and they try to impose their will on others. "pro-choicers" claim they just want a world of individual freedom, where nobody is forced to have or not have an abortion. The pro-lifers state they have the right to use force because lots of people agree with them. The pro-choicers say the issue isn't clear, and should thus not be legislated. Well I'm a pro-choicer. As the debate in can.politics indicates, it's very clear that the issue isn't clear. Thus it doesn't belong in the law. -- Brad Templeton - Waterloo, Ontario (519) 884-7473
idallen@watmath.UUCP (08/21/84)
I'm going to disobey my own plea for brevity, to ask you all to help me
compare the directions of a traditional and non-interference society.
Proposition: Society should not force person A to pay more than necessary
for a service, to benefit person B (i.e. subsidies).
Such force constitutes a kind of approved theft.
This proposition puts forth a view of an individual's relationship with
society that is based on non-interference. Your problems and
circumstances are your own responsibility, whether created by your own
doing (e.g. you get lung cancer from smoking), or set up simply by
chance (e.g. you were struck by lightning and hospitalized, or you were
born in a geographic area with few comforts). Society does not meddle
by forcibly taxing everyone and subsidizing individuals in unfortunate
circumstances. One depends on charity and volunteer funds to provide
this assistance. This is a society that, as a whole, has no compassion
or standard of living; only individuals have these qualities, and each
individual is free to assist, ignore, or exploit his or her fellow
human. Basic rule: "If you want to do it, do it, but don't force me to."
What direction would a society so based head? What kind of decisions
are made by people in this society?
Now, the current political system allows a government to make decisions
for the society, and the government must answer for its actions later,
at election time. This time delay is important; it gives the society
time to reflect on the government's actions and it eliminates hasty
judgements of the actions. The actions made by the government are thus
ones that must stand up to long inspection and consideration by the
society. The society gets to look at the government's actions for a long
time, and form opinions that aren't based on passing concerns and fancies.
In the non-interference society, judgements must be made by each
individual more often and more rapidly, and are thus more subject to
concerns of the moment. An example will help show this.
If a factory folds, a traditional government may instantly step in and
keep it open with the funds it has taxed from the people, if it thinks
it is in the overall good of the society to do so. In a non-interference
society, the factory can only be kept open if a whole lot of people
know about it, are aware of its overall benefit to their society, and
make an immediate, personal snap decision to come to its aid and lay down
their own personal cash money right then and there. It is no harder
for a government with tax money to support another urgent concern in the
next week, but it is harder for an individual to make yet another
contribution if he or she has just made one last week.
Apathy does not hinder the good of society under the traditional
government; those that don't care about the factory today don't affect
the government's ability to save it. Apathy works *against* society in
the non-interference system; if not enough people are made aware of the
significance of the factory, and are willing to commit real cash money
*now* to save it, it won't be done.
The statement "people would pay for it if they wanted it" is too simple.
If things need to be done for the society as a whole, the more effective
way to get an individual to support them is to grab a bunch of money
*once*, do them, and later ask for approval. This is what the government
does when it taxes you once a year, makes your decisions, and later asks
to be re-elected. This works better than asking for donations every time.
The non-interference society demands that individuals make decisions
immediately, and always make them in the spirit of overall benefit to
society. (You don't want lots of people not contributing to the needy
factory just because they bought a car this week.) In practice, I don't
believe people will make day-to-day decisions in the spirit of overall
societal good. The traditional system only demands a high level of
societal responsibility when reviewing the performance of the past
government and electing a new one. Even this is still hard, but not as
hard as thinking on a nation-wide scale for every decision, every day.
Thus, the traditional system tends to evolve with decisions based on
overall public good, because people have time to see the government's
decisions divorced from personal daily concerns, and the government
knows this. Looking back on a decision, one can say "I'm glad that we
did XYZ; it costs us all a little more, but I think it's a good idea."
The non-interference system evolves with decisions based on lots of
little snap personal judgements. There is no government making your
decisions; you do it every time. The thought goes: "Yeah, sure, I think
that XYZ's a really good idea, but see, I have my car payment this week,
and besides I already paid for ABC last week, and furthermore I don't
see any of my friends spending any of *their* money on this..."
Comments?
--
-IAN! (Ian! D. Allen) University of Waterloojeff@dciem.UUCP (Jeff Richardson) (08/21/84)
The "traditional" (as Ian! calls it) system of having governments make
decisions for us for the benefit of society makes sense, but only when it
is necessary to do so. The problem is that Canada's governments have been
making far too many decisions for us unneccessarily, and many of them are
of questionable benefit to society. I know you're going to ask me how to
determine when it's necessary for the government to make a decision for us,
and I agree that it's not always easy, but the line has to be drawn somewhere
and I think it should have been drawn a long time ago. By the way, I don't
expect the situation to get any better, regardless of who is elected.
--
Jeff Richardson, DCIEM, Toronto (416) 635-2073
{linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,floyd}!utcsrgv!dciem!jeff
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!dciem!jeffhenry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (08/22/84)
You want comments, you get comments... > ...[in Ian!'s strawman proposal]............. Society does not meddle > by forcibly taxing everyone and subsidizing individuals in unfortunate > circumstances. One depends on charity and volunteer funds to provide > this assistance. This is a society that, as a whole, has no compassion > or standard of living; only individuals have these qualities... I would comment, parenthetically, that many of the people (like me) who have been expressing strong leanings in this direction do not favor the extreme non-interference approach that Ian! is discussing. While I strongly believe that the functions of government should be minimized (and that our present government is far too big and is involved in far too many things), I do not see any practical way to reduce them to zero. > .... Basic rule: "If you want to do it, do it, but don't force me to." This is technically known as "freedom". A most important concept, not to be confused with "democracy", which is a form of government. > .....................the government must answer for its actions later, > at election time... Oh really? When our choice is between Tweedledee, Tweedledum, and poor old Ed Broadbent who has no real chance of ever getting in? Canadian elections provide essentially *no* meaningful input to the government. > ... [the delay until the next election provides] > time to reflect on the government's actions and it eliminates hasty > judgements of the actions. The actions made by the government are thus > ones that must stand up to long inspection and consideration by the > society. While I do favor schemes in which the people running the show don't have to be looking over their shoulders every minute, the claim that the electorate carefully considers past performance is hogwash. It's not an accident that governments have a habit of calling elections just after something nice has happened (e.g. a new leader replacing a disliked and distrusted incumbent); the electorate's memory is very short. > ...If a factory folds... ... In a non-interference > society, the factory can only be kept open if a whole lot of people > know about it, are aware of its overall benefit to their society, and > make an immediate, personal snap decision to come to its aid and lay down > their own personal cash money right then and there... Nonsense. The factory will be kept open if a new owner can be found, who believes that the factory is profitable enough to continue. Said new owner is very seldom a whole mob of people; more usually it's a company, i.e. an organized mob of people (stockholders) whose money is invested by a central management which can act quickly and professionally if needed. Said central management's decisions are subject to later scrutiny by the stockholders, of course. Sound familiar? Quite, except that the stockholders didn't invest their money irreversibly on threat of dire punishment if they refused. Incidentally, one can argue that inefficient and obsolete factories do not have any overall benefit to our society whatsoever. To the workers and the owners, perhaps, but not to the customers and the rest of society. > It is no harder > for a government with tax money to support another urgent concern in the > next week, but it is harder for an individual to make yet another > contribution if he or she has just made one last week. Even government budgets are finite, unless "with tax money" really means (as it increasingly does) "with the willingness to print money in whatever quantities appear useful". This argument makes no sense to me. If what you are addressing is willingness (as opposed to ability), see the earlier comments on companies. A company is a group of people acting together, with a central management because that works better, to invest their money in places they think appropriate. > Apathy does not hinder the good of society under the traditional > government Cough, splutter, choke. Dead wrong. Apathy eliminates the (already minimal) feedback the government gets on its performance. The result is what we have today. > ...The non-interference society demands that individuals make decisions > immediately, and always make them in the spirit of overall benefit to > society.... This, and a great deal that I've omitted, all assumes that investing is always done by individuals, never by voluntarily-formed organizations. Nonsense. What you are really setting up is a society without organizations of any kind, not just a society with a non-interfering government. No surprise that it doesn't look attractive. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (08/22/84)
IAN!'s ``saved needy factory'' is precisely the sort of thing which politicians use to play ``show and tell''. You can have a lovely song and dance about ``what a good thing has been done'' but it is what they *aren't* telling you that is significant. Consider the situation where a company needs 20 Million dollars or it will go bankrupt. Suppose the 20 Million dollars is available in tax money. And, to take IAN!'s example, suppose (worst case?) nobody pays for the needy factory and everybody pays car payments. What has happened? Well, first off, that needy factory goes bankrupt. But at the same time the auto manufacturers get a lot of money - because people who otherwise would not be able to afford cars will be buying them. The auto manufacturers will have to increase production. They will hire more people. There will be increased demand for steel -- the steel industry will get a lot of money. And the banks will get a lot of money to invest where they see fit. Actually, it is unrealistic to assume that everybody will be buying cars. But they will be buying *something*, or leaving their money in the bank where the banks can invest it, or investing it themselves. The ``needy factory'' benefits -- at the expense of all the other industries who are competing with it for as much of the 20 Million dollars as they can acquire. However, from a politician's point of view this can be used to great advantage. First you bail out the factory, and then you watch the auto industry decline, and then you offer to bail them out as well. You don't have to worry about the smaller companies who will also be effected by the subsidies to the needy factory -- if the software company that I run out of my basement goes out of business because nobody is buying games for the Apple ][ because they are all paying taxes to support the needy factory -- well, Laura only has one vote anyway. If all else fails you can get up on your soapbox and talk about the econony in the same way that you might describe a hurricane, or an earthquake, or the magic of the witch-doctor in the next tribal village. Using this technique you can either proclaim that ``my magic is stronger than the next guy's'' (and launch a new government scheme with a lot of rhetoric) or completely hide the fact that the government is in some way responsible for any of it. If you are really slick, you can do both at once -- say launch a government program to combat unemployment while at the same time not making any connection between ``deficit spending'' and ``inflation''. Is it really a good idea to bail out the Frozzbozz computer company (especially for the Nth time, as keeps happening with many companies I could mention)? The demand for the goods produced by the companies that would receive the money that the government wants to allocate to Frozzbozz is demonstrably real. The demand for the goods which Frozzbozz claims it is going to produce may only be a figment of some politician's imagination -- or something which he thinks will look good on his record next time he goes campaigning, or next time he wants to outdo another elected politician for a government position. And what if Frozzbozz's real problem is that it can't compete with the Gimpex computer company because Gimpex received a 15 Million dollar grant last year... Laura Creighton utzoo!laura
mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (08/23/84)
From Brad Templeton
====
1) Governments are not managed appropriately. Unlike companies,
which are managed for personal profit, Government officials
strive for personal POWER. Now I trust far more somebody who
is out to trade for my money than somebody who is out for power
over me.
If you don't know that this is the goal of the politician, in
almost pure and simple terms, you've never been inside politics.
====
1)(a) Not all governments are mismanaged. The "management" provided
by a government depends not so much on its politicians as on its
Civil Service. Under Pearson, Canada had a fine Civil Service. More
recently, it has been overmanaged and overcontrolled and underpaid
so that the people whose motivation is other than service to the
country (and there are people with that as their primary motive) tend
to leave public service. With a Civil Service demoralized from within
by overregulation, and from without by unfair sniping, it is no
surprise that we now have a mismanaging government.
(b) The power motivation of politicians is GOOD, not bad, because it
provides a different set of ethical objectives to the private money
motive or the businessmen. Add to that the sincere public service
motive of many politicians and public servants, and you have great
possibilities for cooperative benefits.
===========
2) [MMT numbering]
It's my impression that if anything, governments are MORE shortsighted than
individuals. Individual freedom promotes individuality. Both for what is
good and for what is bad. If we outlaw the physical crimes, the good
easily outweighs the bad. There's enough evidence to say it's worth a try,
at the very least.
===========
Yes, governments don't want to do things that interfere with their
chances at the next election, and still less do they want to do something
that will lead to good times after the opposition wins the next election.
That argument comes down heavily on the side of minimal government
involvement in affairs. But it isn't a sufficient argument when
balanced against all the other factors mentioned in other notes.
I don't think you can say individual freedom hasn't been given a try,
or isn't being now. There are all sorts of unnecessary and annoying
regulations and stupid paperwork (part of the result of the demoralization
of the Civil Service), but basically you can do more or less what you
want, possibly more than you could in a totally "free" society.
--
Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt
{uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsrgv!dciem!mmt