Dear Mr Jardine,

Let's return to what you wrote: "Production is not made more efficient by putting it in the hands of central planning bureaucrats, you fool, especially not those who think that humans are a plague of pests."

A person looks for a job as a central planner. That is a bureaucratic function. The opportunities for such a function are in government or the corporate world. He or she can also go into a university and teach.

Central planning is done in both corporations and government. What is your evidence that any of those who function as central planners think that "humans are a plague of pests?"

What is your evidence that those who do central planning for government are essentially different than those who perform the same function for a corporation?

You attacked central planners as such. You have cited no evidence to justify your attack?

"You fool" is insulting and rude. You were not civil. I hope you will be civil. This is a discussion group where such language is out of place.

Please cite evidence to justify your attack on central planners.

I make no apologies for being a realist, Ludwig.

>>...why don’t you have any answers, or at least some pretty good ideas of how to face these issues? Where’s the Pericles Solution?<<

If I were so inclined, I could dream up any number of schemes that would stabilize the world's population, and ensure that everyone is properly fed. Sadly, due to the nature of the problem itself - in that it involves human beings, and not merely numbers on a spreadsheet - none of those well-meaning fancies would have the remotest chance of success.

The logic behind this is as follows.

Any "solution" would need to be mandated by government.

Any government who interfered with their citizens' lives to such an extent, would not be elected.

Any non-elected government would discover that even they do not have sufficient control over their citizens' lives to achieve the desired result. Even well-intentioned actions, such as China's one-child policy. Note its effect on gender balance in the community, and ponder what actually had to happen, in order to cause that imbalance.

What we are left with is, in its purest sense, the will of the people. To impose any "solution" is in direct violation of this, and simply a matter of nanny-knows-best.

Or Ludwig, in this instance.

>>Huh?? You aren’t suggesting that I’m trying to assert that a reduction in Oz immigration would be a cure for world population growth are you??<<

Not at all. But consider the problems associated with even that one small policy step. Creating "Fortress Australia", and repelling all boarders, would be interpreted as an act of belligerence, and would have many economic and social repercussions. You might like to think some of these through, alongside any internal population-control mechanism you may have in mind.

>>Fact is that if we were to get our government to reduce immigration to about net zero, which could be done with the stroke of a pen<<

The stroke of a pen? That's pretty impressive. What would be the words on the piece of paper that is being signed, do you think?

Saltpetre, there's a big difference between Marx and Marxism.

Jardine K. Jardine,
That's very amusing, but like I said, only a strawman. Marx's LTV is far more complex than that. Besides, your scenarios take the already existing, utterly corrupted, state of affairs as the real data, like treating a cancer "as" the organism it's invaded. This isn't fair to Marx or to the kind of free-market ideology you favour. If we had a genuinely free market, QC's wouldn't earn $10,000 per hour, unless it was the kind of neo-feudalist/corporate-rule I alluded to.
As you well-know, speculation is part of the entrepreneurial process and is a calculated, science-based, statistical-investment whose losses are gambled against projected profits. Reckless gambling produces bankrupts (small speculators), but this has minimal effect say on the price of gold overall as it's anticipated, in fact amounts to a dividend, driving up the price, for the big players whose own investments are virtually guaranteed. In order to analyse the crime scene, Marx went back to first causes, life, whereas you analyse the tumour.
The sophisticated state of late capitalist economics has the illusion of having transcended quaint notions such as the LTV, yet it is ultimately reducible to the "surplus value" derived from underpaying or overworking labour, or some such fundamental inequality/exploitation. Profit can't be created from nothing, it depends on exploiting need, both at the level of production (labour) and consumption.
But I'm more interested in your economic/anarchist ideology, the economic utopia of pareto optimality, which even if achieved would surely prove a dystopia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCuI-2LI6-M
and couldn't be sustained in a closed system anyway. It's not a matter of whether or not to regulate the capitalist cancer, but of killing it before it kills us.

One attempt at finding an answer has been around for nearly 300 years – though limited to addressing issues in Ireland, it was at least written by the Dean of St Patrick's in Dublin, so combines a religious perspective with local knowledge.

It is a modest proposal.

No really, that's what it's called – "A Modest Proposal: For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being Aburden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public"

It is not a particularly long, but it is a particularly rewarding read.

http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html

*Profit can't be created from nothing, it depends on exploiting need, both at the level of production (labour) and consumption.*

Squeers, healthy profit can be generated, by simply cutting waste.
No need to exploit anyone.

Soviet collectivization of agriculture? Rudd and Gillard’s pink batts? You’re already looking at loads of evidence: you’re not understanding its significance because your theory is wrong.

I just showed three reasons why private and state economic planning are categorically different. Your last post pretends it didn’t happen. Can you show why my three reasons are wrong? If you can, please do; and if you can’t please admit them.

I also challenged you to give a meaningful definition of monopoly that applies to any business in the real world and show why it’s bad. You just pretended it didn’t happen. If you can’t do it, then admit it; and if you can, please do.

This means that I’ve shown why private and state economic planning are categorically morally and economically different. You responded by just re-asserting your erroneous belief that the economic planning that corporations and that states do is essentially similar.

“A person looks for a job as a central planner.”

The basis of your mistake is that you’re looking at it from the point of view of the employee. You have to look at it from the point of view of the person directing their operations.

Your belief that they are both “bureaucratic” is wrong, because one operates by profit and loss, and the other doesn’t. They are fundamentally different. You won’t be able to understand why, unless you can show reason why my 3 reasons are wrong. All it means is that you’ve just lost the argument.

The green movement, by shutting down production all over the world on the basis that the environment has value over and above (other people’s) human interests, is already causing the deaths of large numbers of people.

Considering your belief system is violence-based and killing large numbers of people, the fact that you don’t understand what you’re talking about is no excuse, because I’m showing you rational disproofs and you’re evading them; and the same goes for the author of the article and Ludwig and the green movement in general. Being called fools is the least of the backwash you should expect.