How ironic that your arguments support the tree-change and sea-change phase of people who fantasise about a slower, less complex life.

The reasons for wanting this less complex life is the notion of 'lifestyle'. So they go and put up a McMansion in the country, freight in everything and still get found after they have died alone because 'lifestyle' doesn't include other people - except maybe as commodities.

As long as living standards are indexed by money and the capacity to acquire we are doomed to more of the same until the eventual slow implosion. By that time only the much maligned ageing hippies and greenies - the early adopters of sustainability - will actually have the skills to rebuild.

How ironic.

All the author’s concerns boil down to no more than the fact that resources are scarce.

This is true, and it is a reason why resources need to be valued and prioritised. It is a reason why more urgent uses should have priority over less urgent uses. And it is a reason why we need a method by which different resource uses can be compared by reference to a lowest common denominator, i.e. economic calculation.

But it is completely fallacious to jump from the premise that resources are scarce, to the conclusions implied in the article that society is a decision-making entity, that its mode of decision-making is top-down, that the decision-making of society and the decision-making of the state can be effectively conflated, that the values in issue are objectively and centrally knowable, that the reason we have high living standards is because politicians adopt that as a policy goal, and that what is called for is for the patterns of consumption and production to be decided and enforced by governmental central planning. This is no more than a re-run of all the fallacies of socialism in the 20th century, which were disastrous for the environment no less than for human beings.

Socialism is not an alternative economic system: it is the abolition of the possibility of rational economising because it abolishes the possibility of economic calculation in whatever capital market is taken over by the state.

Each time the socialists’ schemes result in chaos and disaster, like the destruction to ecosystems done by government’s ham-fisted “management” of “wilderness, the socialists are taken completely by surprise. But there is no need for this commitment to ignorance. This is because we already know in advance, on the basis of sound theory, that the effect of abolishing economic calculation in a particular field will be planned chaos, precisely because it will abolish the ability to prioritise more urgent resource uses over less.

The simple rationale for a growth economy is that a vast portion of humanity lives and dies in poverty. There can be only two ways to alleviate their condition; either a redistribution of existing money, or creation of new money.
For many decades now we have trod the second path, and the gap between the haves and have nots has only increased; all the new money has -inevitably- been pocketed by the already rich.
Why inevitably? Artificial creation of new money (as we have just seen) without the parallel creation of new resources and material goods can only debase the currency, making everything more expensive -which must have the greatest impact on the most vulnerable.
I agree with the author that living standards need to be reviewed, but does anyone really need a $200,000 car, that is only legally able to do the same speed as a $2,000 car?
Do we really need Mcmansions? Or throw away perfectly servicable clothes simply because the very people who so proudly made the clothes now tell us we should, because they don't like them any more?
Should a rational measure of standard of living include keeping up with, and beating the Jones's?
“The rich must learn to live more simply, so the poor can simply live”.

Continued:
This doesn't necessarily need to imply socialism. We have -for centuries- had a system of law designed to protect the (physically) weak from the strong. Why do we still allow bullying, and stand over tactics in the marketplace? We don't believe a large and strong man should have more rights than a child, so why do we allow strong corporations so much muscle?
Corporations have fought for years to be treated as if they were individuals. So why aren't they progressively taxed, like individuals?
We, as a society, don't need companies that “are too big, to be allowed to fail”. We need to pass laws preventing corporations from owning shares in other corporations. We need more competition, more players in the marketplace, not fewer.
The larger the institution, whether it be public or private, the greater the disparity between the ones at the top, and those at the bottom.

> The simple rationale for a growth economy is that a vast portion of humanity lives and dies in poverty.

Poverty was the universal condition of everyone for many thousands of years, until people learnt to understand the benefits of the division of labour, and that by savings they could accumulate the means of production, and thus increase their output per unit of input.

The decision to have a growth economy is not made on behalf of the whole of humanity as a decision-making entity, by wise central planners taking a Gods-eye view, exercising powers of forced redistribution so as to ‘even things up a bit’ as between richer and poorer.

It is made by all individuals in striving for a better life for themselves and their families.

> Artificial creation of new money … must have the greatest impact on the most vulnerable.

Bravo Grim. A glimmer of economic understanding in a cave of collectivist fallacies. You correctly recognize that the artificial creation of new money disadvantages the poor most of all. It also adversely affects the poor in many other ways than simple price inflation, especially by skewing the structure of production toward the areas where the new money enters the economy. The resulting boom unequally favours those who are already capitalized and financially sophisticated, and the following inevitable bust unequally disadvantages the poor and financially unsophisticated. The root of the evil – fiat currency and fractional reserve banking – should be abolished.

> … does anyone really need a $200,000 car…? Do we really need Mcmansions? Or throw away perfectly servicable clothes simply because the very people who so proudly made the clothes now tell us we should, because they don't like them any more?

How could these questions ever be answered except arbitrarily? The Aborigines lived here for thousands of years with the simplest technology, so in that sense we don’t “need” doonas or beds, cappuccinos or internet bandwidth either.

But so what? Unless someone is to be empowered to use guns to stop this kind of behaviour, what do you propose to do about it?

> Should a rational measure of standard of living include keeping up with, and beating the Jones's?

People’s actions are always rational in the sense that by taking an action, they intend to cause an effect that will either satisfy a want, or remove a dissatisfaction. The underlying motivation is always subjective. There can never be an objective distinction between the value that a person sets on clothing as cladding, and clothing as satisfying their vanity or other subjective values; and the same with all other consumption.

There is no objective rational measure of standard of living.

“The rich must learn to live more simply, so the poor can simply live”.

Very pious, Grim. Perhaps you could start by giving up internet usage?

>This doesn't necessarily need to imply socialism.

If the income re-distribution you have in mind is not to be done by force, then how is it to be done?

> Why do we still allow bullying, and stand over tactics in the marketplace?

All consensual transaction that do not aggress against the person or property of others should be legal; otherwise it’s you who are advocating bullying. Why do we still allow bullying and standover tactics in government?

>We, as a society, don't need companies that “are too big, to be allowed to fail”.

Bravo, Grim. We’ll make a libertarian of you yet.

> We need to pass laws preventing corporations from owning shares in other corporations.

No we don’t. We only need to allow corporations to fail, and to deny them the legal privileges that are denied to everyone else.

>We need more competition, more players in the marketplace, not fewer.
The larger the institution, whether it be public or private, the greater the disparity between the ones at the top, and those at the bottom.

Governments are the biggest, most monopolistic corporations of all. Their capital consumption is by far the biggest single cause of poverty. Let’s start your reforms by reducing the size of government with a modest ten percent cut over five years.

I have always been happy to admit you get things half right (for a wit) Wing Ah Hume.
“Poverty was the universal condition of everyone for many thousands of years...”
Geoffrey Blainey reported that in 1788, the aboriginals around Botany Bay had a much higher standard of living than the whitefellas. It only took a few hours a day to find enough food. Making rudimentary tools and weapons only took a little more. Most of the day was spent in what we would describe as 'recreational activity'.
“...until people learnt to understand the benefits of the division of labour...”
The immediate 'benefit' of division of labour was the introduction of slavery, and the class system. Guess where all the libertarians were.
“If the income re-distribution you have in mind is not to be done by force, then how is it to be done?”
I would suggest as a starter: “We only need to allow corporations to fail, and to deny them the legal privileges that are denied to everyone else.”
“Bravo, Grim. We’ll make a libertarian of you yet.” Not so long as libertarians believe the greatest liberty is the unfettered right to exploit others without scruple or mercy, or 'interference from bullying legislators and police'.

Continued:
“All consensual transaction that do not aggress against the person or property of others should be legal...”
When the dairy industry in NSW was deregulated, Coles and Woolworths immediately increased their profit margins, and told the farmers what they would pay at the farm gate. Would you describe this as a 'consensual transaction'?
When was the last time you went into a supermarket and said: “I don't want to pay $2.80 for that loaf of bread, give it to me for $2.00”.
Or what about saying “I can't afford to pay $300,000 for that house, give it to me for $200,000”.
Only rich people can afford 'consensual transactions'. As soon as they bid up the price, they “aggress” against everyone poorer than they are.
“Governments are the biggest, most monopolistic corporations of all.” Agreed. That's why I'm essentially an anarchist. I'm merely realistic enough to understand that anarchy can only work on very small scales.
“Their capital consumption is by far the biggest single cause of poverty.” Actually, secular governments have done far more to alleviate poverty through rule of law, welfare and progressive taxation than slave owners ever have, or would.
Sadly, the only answer to monstrous corporations is monstrous governments.

Grim
So you, and everyone else in Australia, would be materially better off, or now worse off, if living at the standard of the pre-1788 Australian Aborigines? Don't kid yourself.

Yes, in many ways traditional Aboriginal life was better, and they had more time for recreational activity. Their life was also physically hard, often violent, exposed to the elements, and chronically exposed to hunger– read the many first-hand accounts of first contact, not the second-hand summaries of an Order-of-Lenin communist academic historian indulging a Rousseauian fantasy of noble savages frolicking in pristine nature. One statistic alone puts paid to your grotesque anti-capitalist fantasy: 50 percent of their children died in the first year, and only half reached age 15. Think about it.

But if you persist in asserting that life without the division of labour is so good – why don’t you try it?

“The immediate 'benefit' of division of labour was the introduction of slavery, and the class system. Guess where all the libertarians were.”

Slavery is an aggression against the person and the property right of self-ownership. By definition it violates the tenets of libertarians, who abolished it.

The same classic liberals also repealed 80 percent of the laws of England – anything that bore against the liberty of the subject they abolished and replaced with nothing - a cleaning out the broom-cupboard of state that Australia needs.

Slavery was never in any country or age able to withstand competition from free labour, and was always only ever held in place by restricting freedom of contract. The arguments in favour of slavery are identical to those you use to justify “progressive” taxation; that those whose labour is to be expropriated are morally despicable and not entitled to the fruits of their labour. The same arguments, that "society" needs to restrict individual liberty so as to provide for the common good were used, for example, to provide the public utilities of ancient Rome, and the backbone of agriculture in the old South.

And now the welfare statists use essentially the same arguments as the pro-slavers: that the governmental elite know better what’s better for people, than people; that the political class have the moral right and duty to violate liberty and direct society from the top down; and that you are justified in coercively appropriating the labour and property of others because you claim to stand for a higher “social” value over and above individual liberty.

“When the dairy industry in NSW was deregulated, Coles and Woolworths immediately increased their profit margins, and told the farmers what they would pay at the farm gate.”

So why didn’t you enter the market, offer milk to consumers at a lesser price, and put the the supermarkets’ out of business at what you claim is the fair rate of profit?

If you assert that we can make the same quantity and quality of goods cheaper and more available by price restrictions, you are simply wrong, and trotting out a fallacy disproved a thousand times both in theory and in practice.

The flaw in your theory is that it consistently assumes that you know what’s better for everyone else in the world, than they do; and that if you don’t like what they’re doing, you have by that fact established a justification for coercive intervenion.

>As soon as they bid up the price, they “aggress” against everyone poorer than they are.

According to that theory, all competition whatsoever involve aggression and exploitation. And then you say we need more competition – provided by a biggest monopolist. Your theory is just a confused jumble.

>“Governments are the biggest, most monopolistic corporations of all.”
>>Agreed. That's why I'm essentially an anarchist.

An anarchist who believes in ‘monstrous government’. Not much of an advance on the original problem, is it?

The same classic liberals who abolished slavery also repealed 80 percent of the statute law of England since 1215. Anything that bore against the liberty of the subject, they repealed and replaced with nothing.

Australia is long overdue for a similar clean-out of the broom-cupboard of state.

Peter Hume, it is a little bit more nuanced than 'resources are scarce.' Our political, economic and social systems have developed during an era of unprecedented growth in the consumption of energy, resources and credit. My view is that we are entering a period where the availability of these core aspects of our civilisation will become progressively less and less and as a result how society is organised will change. This will likely result in a collapse to a lower level of complexity.

I think you have made a giant leap to suggest that I am proposing a socialist solution, or that I am implying that decision making is top down in a world that is essentially a self organising complex adaptive system. Far from it. I don't think anyone can predict exactly how things can and will unfold but I do believe that there are actions we can take that will make our future situation better (or worse). By failing to understand our current predicament, we are taking actions (both as individuals, businesses and governments) that are highly likely to make our situation worse.

Cameron Leckie

So many straw men. It just had to be Wing Ah Hume.
Firstly, a small problem of temporal dislocation. I compare blackfella culture to whitefella culture at a specific time, Hume comes back by comparing blackfella culture to modern culture.

“50 percent of their children died in the first year, and only half reached age 15. Think about it”
Today, out of 2.2 billion children in the world, 1 billion live in poverty. Think about it.

“But if you persist in asserting that life without the division of labour is so good – why don’t you try it?”
Now this is an interesting one. One of the major complaints of libertarians is the amount of tax they are 'forced' to pay. I have built my own houses, produced food, repaired and manufactured farm machinery and equipment, and in my home, if anyone makes a mess, they clean it up themselves. No servants.
How about you? Do you feed yourself, clothe yourself, house yourself, etc; or do you have to get others to do these things for you? If -like over 70% of the population- the answer is no, then I would suggest the greatest 'tax' on the time of people like me, is people like you.

Continued:
“...that the political class have the moral right and duty to violate liberty and direct society from the top down...”
Political class? In a democracy, representatives can be elected from any 'class'.
Strangely, only rich people can belong to the rich class. Are you seriously suggesting that without governments, without legislation, without unions, corporations would offer a better deal to workers?
“So why didn’t you enter the market, offer milk to consumers at a lesser price, and put the the supermarkets’ out of business..”
Well gee, I wonder why I can't just enter the market, and compete against just 2 mega companies which effectively control it.
“If you assert that we can make the same quantity and quality of goods cheaper and more available by price restrictions, you are simply wrong...”
In the deregulation example supplied, small farmers were sent broke, and the price of dairy products to the consumer went up. Amazingly, Coles and Woollies managed to remain profitable in the regulated environment; which existed for several decades.
“An anarchist who believes in ‘monstrous government.” Cherrypicking. I believe -as I said- the only defence “the people” have against monstrous corporations is monstrous government.

Cameron
What would be an example of a relevant issue that does not boil down to the fact of the scarcity of resources?

Grim
You do realize, don’t you, that if everyone produced his own housing, food, and clothing, and repaired his own machinery, we would all be worse off? It is the division of labour - the fact that labour in co-operation is more productive than labour in isolation - that is the driving force for the existence of human society, which you seem to be opposed to.

If, as you seem to think, the division of labour operates to ‘tax’ people, then at the margins of subsistence, people who collaborated would have died out, and we would have evolved to be a solitary species, like the snow leopard.

You seem to be deeply conflicted or confused about wealth and the processes that produce it. On the one hand, you think the existence of poverty is immoral. But on the other hand, you think the division of labour is immoral and exploitative, even though it is this process that has lifted us all out of the poverty of pre-history.

(The comparison in question is between societies with a higher, as against those with a lower degree of division of labour; not between a ragged and starving band of exiles in the season of their worst misfortune, and the ordinary standard of living of specific Aborigines at Port Jackson in 1788 having no relevance to any other people at any other time. The straw man is yours; to which you have added the further false argument of accusing me of your fault.)

You think that transactions are exploitative notwithstanding the parties' consent, since according to your line of reasoning, a party who has more – who is richer – can take unfair advantage of one who has less. According to this theory, any transaction in which the parties are unequal, can be condemned as exploitative. This just happens to describe all transactions in the history of the world, and therefore human society itself.

But if the parties met as equals, they could obtain no advantage from an exchange, and would have no motivation to enter into any transaction.

So your theory is fundamentally anti-social and erroneous. You decry poverty while decrying the process that generates wealth; and believe that the basis of greater wealth and fairness is forced redistribution, which is ethically indistinguishable from armed robbery, and economically makes everyone poorer, not richer.

This fundamental ignorance about what makes human society possible and valuable also explains why, when socialism is put into practice, people starve to death by the millions. If the theory were true, the result would be a society that is more physically productive, as well as fairer.

> Well gee, I wonder why I can't just enter the market, and compete against just 2 mega companies which effectively control it.

According to you, the corporations are making excessive profits. But if you are not able to undercut them, then how do you reason that their profits are unjust?

By the way, milk isn’t deregulated. Government controls the price, so your example is invalid.

“Are you seriously suggesting that without governments, without legislation, without unions, corporations would offer a better deal to workers?”

Without governments and legislation, corporations wouldn’t exist – ie limited liability, separate legal entity corporations.

Your idea that forced redistributions make the workers better off takes account only of the benefits to them on the income side of the ledger, but ignores the greater detriments to them on the costs side.

If your fundamental assumptions and assertions were correct, then we would all be materially and ethically better off if we abandoned collaboration and living in society, and attempted instead to increase wealth by armed robbery.

> “I believe -as I said- the only defence “the people” have against monstrous corporations is monstrous government.”

And for that reason you are in favour of monstrous government? Yes?

Then it is not cherry-picking to call you on it.

Poor people exist because greedy people steal their share.
In my opinion everyone is entitled to a minimum of power, water and food. In fact it should be rationed. Take the case of electricity,
all houses should have say 1500 watts of solar power installed at the taxpayers expense and any more you have to install it yourself or installed by the power company and paid off your bill.
Whether it's a socialist or tory government everything is paid for by the workforce.-companies don't pay tax they pass their costs on to the purchaser.
Resources are not scarce. Too many people is the problem.

Grim,

Hume's is a world of abstraction in which any practical, collective decisions and actions are equal to socialism, which is axiomatically evil. The world's 'progress' (using the term advisedly) is down to individuals making rational decisions.

All human decisions made by individuals, not impinging on others' rights, are rational - this is true by definition, or axiomatically again, even when it leads to destruction of a person's own rights or life, or is made by those suffering from psychosis, paranoia, schizophrenia, desperation, hysteria, mania....

You can be bedazzled by what is allegedly simple but inexorable logic, and end up facing this ineluctable position: you're either a socialist/communist (hints of Stalin, Mao, Castro), or you MUST be a Libertarian.

All initiations of 'force' are wrong, and taxation is pure theft equal ethically to armed robbery. Thus, a pauper or group of paupers (heaven forbid, a group!) has not the right to satisfy his/her/their needs for very survival itself by taking from those who are so wealthy as to be able to satisfy their many superfluous 'needs', some of their excess, either by collective action (eg. taxation) or, failing that, any other form of compulsion.

And so on. Wearying it is, if you ask me. You've made a brave attempt, but Hume will follow you to the ends of Online Opinion, regardless of the topic. But perhaps I'm wrong, and you're enjoying it....

... One other thing:

Peter says,
>> Each time the socialists’ schemes result in chaos and disaster, like the destruction to ecosystems done by government’s ham-fisted “management” of “wilderness, the socialists are taken completely by surprise. But there is no need for this commitment to ignorance. This is because we already know in advance, on the basis of sound theory, that the effect of abolishing economic calculation in a particular field will be planned chaos, precisely because it will abolish the ability to prioritise more urgent resource uses over less. <<

It's worth reading about some of the Libertarian 'experiments', based on sound theory of course, that were, paradoxically, forced on the people of Chile by the Chicago group, 1973 to 89 (libertarianism for the wealthy, great economic progress!), on New Zealand by Roger Douglas (Rogernomics!), on Iceland since the mid-1980s, or just US health care until a few days ago. Or the USA period. And so on.

Unfortunately, there is no Libertari-opian state, and will never be - by definition? But Peter could find some countries that go close, in some ways, to satisfying his ideological needs - Somalia, for one. No government, no police, and it's tax-free.

Rapscallion
You are only demonstrating that misrepresentation satisfies your intellectual standards. The question is not whether you *disagree* with my arguments; it's whether you can *refute* them. You have not proved anything that is in issue.

The USA government currently takes about 50 percent of the GDP of that country. Similarly, even before the recent unconstitutional take-over of health insurance by the government, the provision of health services was intensively and extensivelly regulated at all levels, you name it.

To allege that that represents a libertarian state of affairs is laughably stupid or dishonest. I challenge you to debate any issue when you have something other to offer than mere intelletcual dishonesty Rapscallion, on one condition: three counts of misrepresentation, personal argument or assuming what is in issue, and you lose. That pretty much rules out anything you have ever been able to advance against me.

Rapscallion, you're right of course.
It's clearly impossible to argue with a libertarian who enjoys the liberty of changing history. Apparently the deregulation of the NSW dairy industry (July 1, 2000) was just a socialist fantasy. Didn't happen.
Also, the recent GFC so closely and clearly following Bush's deregulation of the US banking industry was caused by too much regulation, rather than too little.
And the propping up of the world (and particularly Australia's) economy by socialist China doesn't appear to rate a mention.
How strange.

Grim
Do you deny that the price of milk is regulated by the NSW government?

Do you deny that the banking industry in the USA is governed by thousands of pages of regulations every word of which is intended to, and does, change supply, or price, to something other than it would otherwise be; that government's monopoly cartel the Federal Reserve exists to do nothing but change the price of money from what it would otherwise be; and that it is therefore a complete furphy to claim that the banking industry is deregulated?

Having been thrashed and beaten on all the issues you raised, and all your furphies called as such, you retreat into snivelling more fallacies and untruths.

But why don't you answer the question: if the division of labour is immoral or creates poverty, why don't you live without it and enjoy the better standard of living and of ethics that result comes from producing your own food, housing, and sandals? What are you doing tapping away on the internet? Why, in your own terms, do you exploit people by buying their products and services, enslaving those who are poorer than you?

As usual, when the socialists are stripped of their fallacies, there is nothing left of their argument. Their two favourite fallacies they always rely on are: assuming what is in issue, and personal argument - as both Grim and Rapscallion have used in their last posts.

Is that the best you can do?

It is hard to know whether socialists
a) constantly use these arguments because they know that if they abandoned them, they would be incapable of sustaining their side of the argument, or
b) genuinely can't understand that they are fallacies, which is why they are socialists in the first place.

The living standards we enjoy here in the first world is dependent on lower living standards elswhere.

Jasper
Lower than what?