And now for the even stupider questions you felt the need to ask a second time:

1- Because paid leave is a zero-gain circumstance; There is no profit, so there is no 'encouragement'- and ultimately I'm not that bothered about its limitations beyond that. YOU are the one who's itching for some Nazi intervention suggestions, not me Peter. Similarly, the use of subsidies reduces expenditure to 0 or simply a less severe number- it's a basic business concept Peter- the fact that you don't understand it says a lot.

2- Based entirely on Anti-Vilification/hate-speech laws and advertising and school policies that prevent neo-nazis making TV ads or visiting schools for talks.
Peter- I must wonder, do you support Neo-nazis giving a speech on the need to exterminate non-white people in a public school? It seems you have a problem with existing standards preventing them from doing so.

3- It has to do with population in that it ensures a motive for lobbyists to demand an increase is removed. Simple. A community is free to reject and accept developments that suits its own needs, and if it decides to put a stop- then the kids of the voters will have to stay at home or rent elsewhere, and people from outside suburbs simply will have to find another area where people are actually needed. It also corresponds much more closely to employee demand given the circumstances of people promoting/rejecting developments. Similarly, people won't feel like having kids if they're a bunch of NIMBYs and they will be keeping them in the house.

4- Well as I'm an employEE, I am not permitted to hire anyone; of course I would be perfectly happy to hire older people (let alone 50+) with the skills I need.

5- "ou’re failing to understand that businesses do it on the basis of profit and loss"
I WAS talking about businesses in that example and they ARE profiting from that transition. I'm not sure how that simple post could possibly leave you so confused.

You really don't even know what you are talking about anymore, do you?

Saltpetre
I didn’t contend that “lax government regulation” caused the GFC; but government permanently inflating the money supply. I have shown that the financial markets were very highly regulated and therefore it is wrong to lay the blame to “unfettered capitalist markets”, and you have not shown otherwise.

The Fed alone was able to create money without restraint and without fear of losses, and to give it away to whomever it wanted without accounting to anyone including Congress. Its pet favorite handoutees were billionaire bankers, big corporations and foreign governments. The “unregulated shysters” and “greed merchants” were centred in the monopoly Federal Reserve. The privatization of profits and socialization of losses was a product of governmental control of the money supply and its bubble policy of permanent inflation by lowering interest rates below the market rate.

In an “unfettered capitalist” money market, where the only regulations were laws against fraud and theft, and the parties’ consent permitted all else, banks that did what the Fed does would go broke, and that is as it should be. The consumers would have direct control over the fraction on reserve. Each could choose his own and have the consequences – perfect security with no interest; or higher degrees of risk and return. Bubbles could still happen, but couldn’t get enormous, precisely because of profit – their competitors’ – and loss – the bubbleers’ own. And the costs of bubbles would fall entirely on those who had undertaken the risk, which is as it should be, not spread throughout the whole society, distorting the entire economic structure. There would be no so-called ‘too bit to fail’ sucking on the government teat at everyone else’s expense.

This would remedy the current system of permanently, systematically ripping off the masses of workers and savers on a grand scale, to fund paper-money speculators, instant-grat consumerism, and handouts to billionaires. The problem is the something-for-nothing mentality of unfettered socialism, let loose on the money supply, caused by government powers which you unjustifiedly support, and which unfettered capitalism would send broke in short order.

(cont.)

“How then to reduce the need for large families? … By … hands-on and targeted aid programs.”

The West didn’t reduce the need for large families by welfare handouts, did they? The West achieved zero pop growth (absent immigration) it without anyone planning for it, by getting wealthier, that’s my point. (If anything, it’s the welfare families who have larger families these days.)

It is possible that without government interventions, world population would stabilize within the limits of sustainability. Thus although we can’t have infite growth on a finite base, that does *not* mean
a) that crisis is imminent or inevitable, nor
b) that government intervention can improve the situation, all relevant values considered.

As I have shown, it can only make things actively worse both environment-wise, and poverty-wise.

If you ask the refugees, you’ll find the problem is unfettered government, not unfettered individual freedom and private property subject to a ban on initiating aggression.

Grim
Firstly, you haven’t even attempted to answer my questions what policy you propose to provide equal life-chances and equal minimum standards for all; how that solves the “infinite growth/finite base” problem; why it’s not self-contradictory to include goods made possible by industrial capitalism when you think it’s exploitative and unsustainable; and why no-one could use any non-renewable resource ever under your dispensation?
Secondly I’m still waiting for you to refute *each* fact and reasons disproving your assumption that the government represents the people more and better than the people represent themselves: http://economics.org.au/2010/08/unrepresentative-government/

“…I found it difficult to identify exactly which…”
Communication breakdown. I was referring Hazza to this thread:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4305&page=0#109991
and to the 6 questions in my 3rd and 4th last posts.

1.
Can you not see the ethical difference between them? Tell me if you can’t, and I’ll explain it to you.

2.
The market method doesn’t just use “trial and error”; it uses trial and error *based on profit and loss*.

Are you suggesting government employ that tactic? If so, thank you for conceding the entire argument.

If not, how are the voting public or their official delegates to *know* how best to combine the factors of production in every particular service so as to satisfy the most urgent wants of the people as a whole (not just the majority) and minimise loss?

(Answer: they can’t.)

Please consider my last 6 questions to Hazza in that thread, which make clear the problem facing government, that is not facing private businesses, in providing “infrastructure” (capital goods).

I have never contended that “the marketplace is perfectly rational, and therefore is capable of unerringly accuratedly setting the price of all items the very time” (which appears ungrammatical).

So if you first acknowledge that that was a misrepresentation, I will prove that the marketplace satisfies the most urgent wants of the people as a whole (not just the majority).

3.
>*HOW* are the people or the executive going to have any incentive to do so?”
>>”Why is it that the word 'incentive' is to you only monetary?”

It isn’t and I have never contended so.

Try making your argument without misrepresentation?

People act on their values in order of priority, regardless whether monetary or not. For example, people forego income for a better family life. There is nothing about a market system that requires them to prioritise monetary values unless they choose that over other non-monetary values.

But you haven’t answered the question. A private bus service is able to know directly whether or not the people want this service, or a particular route, or particular stops, by consulting profit or loss. How are people in assembly or their official delegates to know this for any and all public infrastructure questions? Bus routes? Bus stops?

Admit it – they can’t.

Proft and loss enables all factors of production to be compared using a lowest common denominator – money prices – which enables calculation. Without that, the central planners are stuck comparing quantities directly. That’s why the Soviets watched the butter and sausage queues.

How are the people, or their delegates, to *know*? By counting disgruntled letters to the local MP?

*The West achieved zero pop growth (absent immigration) it without anyone planning for it, by getting wealthier*

That is only part of the story, Peter. The discovery of the pill,
free availability and affordibility of the pill, the legalisation
of abortion in most Western countries, all came together.

Many in the third world simply can't afford family planning and
abortion is still banned in many third world countries. So they
keep popping them out, encouraged by the dear old Catholic Church.

(cont.)
“Would that [parliamentarians] had other incentives than just personal profit.”

Indeedy. But since politicians are no more selfless than everyone else, wouldn’t it be better to tie their personal profit *directly* to the actual satisfaction of the consumers of their services, and punish them with losses if they fail or neglect their duty?

How can it be a better system to jumble up all the signals coming from the consumers so no particular signal is isolated, and to delegate people who pay no price for getting it wrong?

Hazza
I’m the one opposing coercive measures, and you’re the one advocating them, remember?

I will respond to your argument when you can present it without a load of bitter insult, misrepresentation, allegations of my supposedly supporting incitement to extermination, alleging that I am “itching for Nazi interventions”, and similar ad hominem nonsense.

I assure you and everyone else, that stripped of these dirty tactics you are unable to sustain your argument.

All
Still no interventionist has been able to shown how government is going to be able to be any improvement, and if we correct for their tactics of
a) assuming a moral superiority in government that it does not have
b) assuming a greater ability in government to allocate resources to their most urgent and important uses, that it does not have
c) blaming capitalism for problems either caused by government, or caused by nature and relieved by capitalism more than any other system.