partTimeParent
Yes,

“When goods don’t cross borders, armies will.”
Bastiat

The greens don’t seem to have thought through the security implications of locking up Australia’s great productive potential in parks that no-one visits.

Why, as a matter of fairness, should China with their hungry millions sit idly by, and look on this selfish anti-human stupidity?

If people want lands to be used to produce frogs or wombats (and I do), they should have to pay for this as much as, perhaps more than, people who want to use it to produce food.

PaulL
“Are you admitting any role for the state at all?”

In theory, I don’t know, and in practice I don’t concern myself with that question.

In practice, I think the problem is that our current big government does not make our society fairer or more affluent – on the contrary. And we are very far from any question of an absence of government. I’ve heard of a number of people from the old USSR saying that government is more intrusive, and life more minutely restricted in Australia than it was in the USSR, and I think that’s a disgrace to Australia.

It is a mystery to me why anyone would think it good to have an ever larger proportion of the Australian population in enforced idleness instead of working for a living at a higher income. Add the direct costs to everyone else, the destruction of employment and productive activity, and the dreadful bureaucracy invading civil society at every turn, and it seems to me a positive evil, and unnecessary.

I would like to see a reduction in government of at least 50 percent (it’s grown that much just in my lifetime). We could shrink it by 10 percent just by abolishing flex leave and above-market conditions for so-called public servants. No-one else gets paid for taking holidays and calling it work so I don’t see why the priviligentsia should. We could abolish income tax if we reduced government to the size it was in the Keating years. What’s not to like about it?

In theory, the objections to a stateless society are obvious. If the free market would be so much better at providing security services, then how come it keeps on getting out-competed by state monopolies? To say, because states have a monopoly on guns, is only to beg the question. And ‘nature abhors a vacuum’. In a completely free market for security services, in theory the biggest firm could become the biggest aggressor, monopolise, violate the common law, take over the commanding heights of society such as money and jurisdiction, and thus found a state.

Mind you, these objections do not show that states are *better* as a matter of ethics or practicality; nor that the state is necessary or beneficial – only that it is *no different* from a gang of thieves writ large.

The relevant theory is this. The Austrian school maintains that physics and nature impose certain limitations on human action and production, that these logically give rise to universally valid propositions of human action and to the possibility of economic science.

By contrast, the social democrats, channeling Marx, assert that there is only “ideology”, not economic science.

(That is why Squeers’ asserts that the argument, that we can’t make wealth out of thin air by printing money, is “fundamentalism”. In other words, there is no possibility of rationality, no such thing as economic reality; there is only the possibility of faith immune to disproof, and name-calling. It is why Squeers alleges “consumerism” – a meaningless slogan implying only that *other* people consume too much (Squeers doesn’t of course.) Presumably others should either not consume, or what they do consume should be politically decided by the would-be dictator in Squeers – typical socialist stuff.)

According to the social democratic orthodoxy, economics is socially-constructed, society means state, “we” means the police, and the common weal consists only of the political decision who shall be permitted to exploit whom and call it fairness.

The defining characteristic of human action is the very high degree of social co-operation. The renunciation of the possibility of economic science, and the embrace of the idea of the social construction of reality by the state, dove-tails perfectly with the unfalsifiable magic-pudding mentality of the Keynesian inflationists, and hence gives rise to the topic.

However Mises has exploded the economic theories on which the entire intellectual foundation of the welfare state rests, in “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” 1921: http://mises.org/econcalc.asp . This shows that public ownership of the means of production is incapable of economic calculation, in other words government is incapable of rationalizing scarce resources to their most highly valued uses, as it would need to be able to do for its economic interventions to be justified.

The social democrats and statists have not been able to advance one word of refutation against the devastation that Mises has wrought.

That being so, Chris Lewis’s assertion of a supposed need of a “balance” between governmental and private services is *completely and totally refuted* because it shows that government does not have the capacity to do what it would need to do, in order to be able to do what its adherents claim it should, or rather *assume* that it can do. Chris shows the standard leftist response of just ignoring the entire intellectual field and carrying on as if nothing relevant has happened.

I anticipate either no response, or the usual slogans and assuming what is in issue.

But if Chris, or any welfare statist, is able to:
- correctly represent the argument from economic calculation;
- show why it does not prove that the state functions advocates are incapable of allocating scarce resources to their most valued ends, all things considered;
then I will happily buy him a schooner of the finest beer, and perhaps fifteen.

But if not, then it is not the advocates of freedom who are fundamentalists, but those who erroneously advocate systematic aggression and planned chaos as the basis of a fair and prosperous society.

Peter,

I am currently writing a response to the various comments made about my article.

I don't see myself as a typical leftist statist, although I do note the importance of govt. I do not claim to have 'the' answers, but my faith is with liberal democracy to hopefully find an effective balance between national and international considerations. I observe politics from an understanding that we need a variety of political parties, with the public feeding off the strengths and weaknesses of both centre-left and centre-right parties, and others such as Greens or whovever.

I will see how I go with my next article which will explain my thoughts and understanding of politics, and then look forward to further comments from yourself and others.

"... although I do note the importance of govt."

Well that's assuming what's in issue, isn't it?

Peter,

Yes, I will stick to some of the basic tenants I believe are important to explaining policy trends, including the importance of govt, and you can stick to whatever you think is best.

Like I said previously, I will offer a response. If it agrees or disagrees with you, no sleep will be lost on my part, although I do respect your opinion.

Also, I am still waiting for you to offer an example of works without some govt intervention.

If you can find some, I may be able to respond to you.