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The Forum > General Discussion > Budget deficit, a whole new level of incompetence.

Budget deficit, a whole new level of incompetence.

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The obvious answer to those who urge the beneficence and necessity of government providing this, that, and the other goods or services, is to ask “Well if that’s so, why shouldn’t government provide all goods and services, i.e. full socialism?”

“Oh no!” reply the government apologists, instantly resiling from their own logical conclusion, knowing full well it would mean the total collapse of the economy and society in enormous human rights abuses. “What we mean is we need a balance between private and state provision.”

Okay, then by what rational principle do you know whether government is providing too much, too little, or just enough of whatever services is in issue? By what rational principle do you distinguish “infrastructure” from capital goods in general?

It’s completely illegitimate, and anti-economical, to point to mere benefits of governmental action, as you have done. Anyone can produce benefits if we don’t count the costs! You have to account for the resources withdrawn from some other area of activity, and demonstrate that the benefits they would have produced would not be greater, else you’re back to the original problem of assuming *any* governmental action must intrinsically be better for society than the alternative of private property and individual freedom. But how can you account for those uses foregone? There is nothing in the process by which government gets the money that would enable you to conclude so.

I say you can’t answer my questions because you know they prove your theory wrong. What do you say?

It should not be so easy to disprove your entire argument. As for your defence of Keynesianism, please don’t make me laugh. It’s you who should do more reading: http://mises.org/Books/humanaction.pdf
Posted by Jardine K. Jardine, Wednesday, 24 April 2013 8:47:59 AM
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Jardine K Jardine
So you would see no problem in privatising the armed forces, the police, the supply of water and sewerage, education, including the science curriculum and all the services supplied by councils.

You forget that water supply and sewerage became a public concern in the nineteenth century because private interests weren't interested in public health.

Democratic government came into existence because citizens had had enough of the tyranny of kings and feudal lords. If you had your way young children would still be employed to mine coal and slavery would still exist.

Government has a role where otherwise monopolies would exist. How can there be real and efficient competition where only one service is required to a home; one water service, one sewerage service, one power line, one phone or internet line, even one road or footpath.

Keynes theories were aimed at obtaining the best available performance from both private enterprise where it could be truly competitive and from government services wherever a monopoly was almost inevitable.

Have you not heard of Gresham's Law?

To quote from my copy of Adam Smith, "To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers…The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.
The Wealth Of Nations, Book I, Chapter XI, Conclusion of the Chapter, p.267, para. 10.
Posted by Foyle, Wednesday, 24 April 2013 12:41:04 PM
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Jardine K Jardine (and others)
The article in the latest New Statesman makes a lot of sense.

http://www.newstatesman.com/environment/2013/04/where-would-you-rather-live-small-government-somalia-or-big-government-sweden
Posted by Foyle, Wednesday, 24 April 2013 1:04:26 PM
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Foyle
Notice how you weren't able to answer any of my questions because they prove you wrong, and you know your whole argument would collapse if you tried?

This is significant, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it proves that, from the point at which you chose evasion, everything else you say is invalid because it includes all the same assumptions that I have just disproved. So the situation is, that I have completely proved your argument wrong and you've been unable to disprove my argument or prove your own except by circularity.

Secondly, I'm surprised that you found that the New Statesman article "makes sense", since it is full of self-contradictions, displays economic illiteracy, and I can disprove it as easily as I did your argument.

For example, only an ignoramus could think that the current financial crisis comes from unregulated capitalism, since the capitalism in which it has happened is very heavily regulated. In particular, governments have at all times claimed and exercised monopoly power over the supply of money and credit. Governmental manipulations of interest rates is clearly implicated in causing the crisis that have caused the crisis, even according to their own theory; and the interventionists must lose that argument any way you look at it.

But if the problem is not enough regulation, then you are back to the problem you have just tried to squirm out of – how do you know how much governmental counterfeiting, fraud, and looting is too much?

For another example, you obviously don't understand Gresham's law, which originated in observing the results of governmental attempts to rig the price of money in its own favour. It proves my case not yours.

Thirdly, because your intellectual technique is to start with the conclusion you want, and work backwards cherry-picking to confirm your bias, it never occurs to you that others aren't using the same technique. Unlike you, I actively seek disproofs of my own theory. I asked you questions which are capable of disproving me; you can't answer them.
Posted by Jardine K. Jardine, Friday, 26 April 2013 8:02:34 AM
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Fourthly, you make a good advertisement for abolishing state education since it obviously indoctrinates educated people like you into thinking it’s okay, in adoring the state, to look on disproofs of your beliefs in its favour, and actively prefer slogans and what is false, instead of actual critical thinking about what is demonstrably false.

As for research, you’ve already lost that argument, remember?

So, how do you know how much of people’s savings the state should be stealing by inflating the currency so as steal billions from the ordinary people, and give it to billionaire banksters, which is what you’re arguing in favour of?
Posted by Jardine K. Jardine, Friday, 26 April 2013 8:03:59 AM
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