How does that refute my argument? All you’ve done is list a whole lot of government activities.

The deep structure of your argument is only this “without government doing such and such particular thing we’d have worse results, because without government doing that thing we’d have worse results.”

So it’s illogical. You’re proving my argument, not yours.

In order to prove your argument, you have to show that particular government decision-making produces better results when all the costs are taken into consideration.

To do that you need to show that government has some rational criterion (rational in terms of the evaluations of the consumers of its services) for knowing whether it is providing the right amount of a service, or too much, or too little.

For example with building standards, there is a value in not having the roof fall down, and a value in economising on building costs. How do you know that government standards aren’t forcing people to pay for a Rolls-Royce standard when they only want a Holden quality and Holden cost? The difference may be tens of thousands of dollars per house. Multiply that out over all Australia, and think what better outcomes that money might produce in any of the other areas you mention, say education or parks.

Take parks. There is a value in devoting land to conservation, natural beauty and sympathetic uses. And there is a value in people having food here and overseas (human society doesn’t stop at the border); and in parks not spreading noxious weeds and feral pests. How do you or Gavan McFadzean know whether particular land is better used this way or that? The electoral process provides no way of knowing, because
a) campaign promises are completely non-binding on politicians
b) you can’t separate out the policies you want from the ones you don’t want
c) you have no say whether or not to pay for it, and
d) government has no way of knowing the balance of the different values that people are trying to satisfy in conservation versus development.

If you do, what is it?

“[E]ducation … services are provided … at appropriate standards…”

How do you know?

You can’t prove it by the fact that government provides the standards, because that’s circular. But that’s all you’ve done so far.

Different parents and students have different values and are trying to achieve different purposes. How do you know that education standards are not lower or higher than appropriate? The parents have no direct say, nor do the students. How do you know that the interests of particular children, for example the disabled or the gifted, are not sacrificed for the benefit of, say, the main stream of students, or the teachers’ union? You’re not seriously suggesting that a dissatisfied parent could exercise control through the ballot box are you?

Also, if the whole basis of government’s legitimacy is that it represents the people, and these same people can’t be trusted to ensure the appropriate standard of their children’s education, then what reason is there to presume that government in representing them provides the appropriate standards?

As for food safety, poisoning your own customers is obviously bad for business, and a business that does so will suffer losses or go broke (like the South Australian salami makers a while ago – one slip and they’re gone). They’re also liable in contract and tort. But if a government department fails to ensure food safety, they pay no price for getting it wrong, simply externalize the blame, and claim they don’t have enough resources.

“If a private business fails to perform its basic intended purpose, it ceases to exist. If a government department fails to perform its basic intended purpose, it gets bigger.”
P.J. O’Rourke

“… without quotas no water would have reached Adelaide at all.”

How do you know?

To believe that, we would have to believe that water for drinking or bathing is less valuable per litre than water for irrigating broad acres. It’s absurd.

Of course the government misallocated water rights. They have no rational way of knowing how *not* to misallocate them, that’s the whole point!

“…your 'economic calculation' … is just a construct in your mind…”

No it’s not. Economic calculation is a construct of the minds of all the billions of dispersed people concerned with all the different conflicting resource uses possible. It is the only way they can
a) express with a lowest common denominator the different competing values that they consider most urgent and important, and satisfy them in that order, and
b) peaceably harmonise their resource use and services with everyone else on the basis of equal rights for all.

It’s you who are advancing a value system that is just a construct of your own mind, because, as I have just shown, you have no rational criterion for how to allocate scarce resources to their most urgent and important social values, other than to assert in the abstract that your or government’s way is best, regardless of the wishes of the people consuming or paying for any given service, and in fact actively overriding their demonstrated preferences.

You ignore that for every such decision, greater social value must have been destroyed – else what’s that rational criterion you haven’t supplied yet? – and one group was able to get an unfair advantage by forcing another group to sacrifice their values; with everyone participating in a welter of coerced cross-subsidisations cancelling each other out. It’s you who stand for anti-social chaos.

Furthermore your argument is irrational because it discloses no principle for liberty and limiting government power, only a principle for endlessly expanding it, yet we already know that full government control is unethical and chaotic.

On what *principle* do you say anyone has any right to any freedom? Why doesn’t that principle apply to the other areas?

All the points you raised only beg the question and ignore the costs, and your argument is thus invalid.

But let’s put aside all your invalid and unsound arguments so far.

Okay. So. Your refutation of the argument from economic calculation is … what?

Peter Hume,

You argue as though governments operate in vacuo, which is so far from the case it is just not funny. Why do you think governments have scientific and practical research facilities, planning and testing organisations, a CSIRO, a Health Commission, EPA, PBS, etc, etc, and conduct community consultation, as has been happening regarding Murray-Darling water allocations and second Sydney Airport, etc? Just how much consultation would you suggest, how could it be implemented, and what overall benefit would you expect to gain? Your implied suggestion that governments should consult fully and effectively with all those billions of minds you mentioned is just plain ridiculous.

Government is spread over federal, state and local levels, and with input from a wide range of interest groups, local, national and international, from industry and commerce, civil rights, environmental, fiscal and economic. Popular movements have swayed government policy, as in Gordon on Franklin, old growth forest logging, Gunns pulp mill and Tom Price Point, Vietnam war, etc. The people do have a voice, and use it where merited. What people don't do is sit around and bitch and expect things to get better.

If you really think you have something better to offer, why don't you start up a lobbying organisation to do something about it?

For your own benefit though, you haven't convinced me that you have anything worthwhile to offer, and I doubt you have convinced anyone else on this forum. So, unless you can come up with something far more concrete than you have thus far, on this or any other thread contribution you have made on this forum as a whole (that I have seen), then I would not waste my time. Just a suggestion.

Saltpetre
"Just how much consultation would you suggest, how could it be implemented, and what overall benefit would you expect to gain?

For your argument to be sound, it would have to equal or better that which the market does.

"Your implied suggestion that governments should consult fully and effectively with all those billions of minds you mentioned is just plain ridiculous."

Why? The market does so, and does it in a way that is peaceable, that equilibrates supply and demand, does not involve massive avoidable waste, that harmonises conflicting claims, does not permit rent-seeking, and that and does not unjustly enrich one privileged group at the expense of another. The only reason you say it's "plain ridiculous" for government to be expected to do that, is because government is so far from being able to equal, let alone better that system, that's it's just plain ridiculous.

"If you really think you have something better to offer, why don't you start up a lobbying organisation to do something about it?"

Because you haven't explained why any given decision should be political in the first place.

"For your own benefit though, you haven't convinced me that you have anything worthwhile to offer"

Perhaps not, but that's obviously not because you can refute my argument, so your failure to re-think your beliefs reflects only on your irrational method, not on the merits of the ethically and pragmatically superior alternative of liberty and property over coercion and bureaucratic central planning.

All it means is that, like the mediaeval religious, you have plumped for an irrational belief in a superbeing and, being shown disproofs of your superstition, you choose to persist in in it.

Australia as a desert Island is, yes, in a sweet spot. Like a glass full of "stuff" it gives an air of OIL & COAL primed & Pumped confidence. But greedy, wanton, lustful civic and business leaders BELIEVE they can fill up the full glass endlessly. These fools are smitten with all the 7 deadly sins of immigration. All these sins have one common point: they use up mineral, energy, environmental sump(rivers,trees, swamps) and biodiversity RESOURCES. Like ALIENS leave for greener (New Zealand) pastures when they have consumed every thing of value on ours.

I don't think we care as a Nation if these chamber of commerce thieves and politicians of Greed all succumb to their sins ON THEIR OWN TIME. But Frankly, we WILL find a way to cut them loose in their own folly.

Do all the things (selectively Tax 'em HARD) that let the TOO BIG to FAIL ..Fail and watch as they all slough off the New Zealand and Tasmania like cockroaches under the light. For a short time Australia will be isolated internationally.

This won't last:

The US needs us as a Uranium source and a Pacific base.

The Commonwealth needs us for credibility

Our environment will REBOUND and we will be the only Nation that has zero climate change impacts, A huge saving that would EQUAL lost income from the lost souls who seek to destroy this land in a blaze of glory, undeserved wealth and lus7t.