Barry
"I know this is impossible to you, but you may actually be wrong."

In case you haven't noticed, I've been trying to prove myself wrong the whole thread. ALL my questions are directed at attempt to falsify my own beliefs. And none of you can answer them! You slink off throwing personal insults over your shoulder, David goes out backward and goes quiet, and Aidan goes round and round in circles contradicting himself in EVERY post.

ALL your replies to me have been based on mere personality, as if ad hominem argument will establish your socialist paradise for us.

If you can just answer my questions without self-contradiction, you will prove me wrong. Go ahead.

1. How do you support socialism without supporting aggressive violence to force people to submit and obey in anything that involves human co-operation and therefore, according to you, "social wealth"?

You have seen the impossible self-contradiction that Aidan has gotten himself into, on the one hand denying that he supports aggressive violence, and on the other hand agreeing that he does support electrocuting and shooting people so long as the state sanctions its own violence to enforce socialist policies - which it does.

So come on. What's your answer?

2. How is "the community" is going to know how to combine the factors of production without making the productive class worse off, because of the incentive problem, the knowledge problem, and the economic calculation problem that we have jsut seen David and Aidan COMPLETELY UNABLE to begin to address, let alone to demonstrate a superior alternative.

All you guys are doing is chanting a superstitious liturgy of state-worship, while supporting the exploitation of the productive class in favour of the ruling class, while stupidly believing you stand for the opposite. Just like in your last post you believe Marx stood for the private ownership of the means of production. It's laughable confusion and ignorance.

Spare us your ad hominem snivelling. Answer the questions.

Jardine K. Jardine,

So few of these business levies exist in Australia - but they are increasing. We now have three business levies in my area alone. One is being considered for a precinct in Adelaide - and I live outside of Adelaide, in the Adelaide Hills.

Why were the council levies brought in, after only being approached by about 2-3 high profile business people? For council to be seen as pro-business.

Since finding out these groups can do whatever they like with the money they get - I've called for the levy to be removed (as our community don't know what may happen next) - but the elected members and council staff won't change their mind (when they set council rates), as council wants to share costs on various projects with the business group.

The previous business group had 100% voluntary membership - with not many paid members and was not political. The current group is political and for example, used funds to oppose a shopping complex it didn't want as competition using an expensive planning consultant.

We have two sets of groups (one, business based with a compulsory imposed funding base) and others (100% voluntary, based on volunteering and fundraising). This has lead to a two tiered, system of community groups and it is a very unfair, unjustified society to live in.

But of course as we all know from local, state and federal governments we live in a "free market economy". I'm still confused, why compulsory business levies exist right now.

Jardine, what I'm contradicting isn't myself, it's the stuff you falsely accuse me of believing.

Every time I try and explain it to you, you accuse me of lying because it contradicts your prejudices! You've frequently libelled me, making up the most ridiculous accusations (such as supporting rape).

Your attitude seems to be "socialism is evil because it requires violence because Jardine says it does and Jardine can't be wrong so anyone who explains why it isn't is lying". But we've established that the only violence it requires is general law enforcement (which capitalism also doesn't work well without).

You lie when you claim that I "support electrocuting and shooting people so long as the state sanctions its own violence to enforce socialist policies". Such measures by police would not be regarded as "reasonable force" when enforcing anything to do with economic policy (which is rarely a police matter anyway). Guns and Tasers are used in law enforcement to stop a suspect who is a danger to others. I suppose there could be a link if gangsters are arrested for tax evasion, but it is very tenuous and certainly not contingent on socialism.

"You have not even begun to provide any *rational* reason for your claim that government can increase economic efficiency or sustainability"
I did begin, but we got sidetracked when you took my words out of context, made false claims about my beliefs, and started accusing me of lying.

Once you cease to do so, we can continue the discussion.

Regulation is the main way governments increase environmental sustainability. Why is that so hard for you to understand?

How much detail do I need to go into to explain about efficiency? For instance do I need to explain why, when there's something that the government decides needs doing immediately, doing it in-house can be cheaper than contracting it out?

NathanJ
Yes, interesting. You would wonder how council could possibly present itself as pro-business by a tax on businesses, i.e. a compulsory taking of their property. Clearly the council has an interest in getting more money but, one might ask, what interest would the businesses have in it?

The answer is that the tax is on *all* businesses, but the political process allows for a concentration of a small minority of affected businesses to use it. They get to use other people's money. The effect is that the tax can then go to satisfying the values or wants of the small minority of businesses who are motivated to get active in politics, not "business", and not "the community".

This makes a wider economic point. The confiscations of government - even huge production goods such as education or the ABC - become the *consumer goods* of the people whom government gives the power to use them: usually government officials, but often other government dependants. Owing to the problems I have alluded to (the 1. knowledge, 2. incentive, and 3. economic calculation problems), those people *cannot* use that property to satisfy the most urgent and important wants of society, as defined by society. They can only use it to satisfy *themselves* either
a) as to what they themselves want, or
b) as to what they *believe without any rational basis* that society wants.

The term "right wing" is always confused in a sense that left wing is not. Both leftists and non-leftists are agreed that left wing invariably refers at a minimum to government control of the means of production, whatever else it may refer to. But "right wing" is used to refer to at least 4 different and inconsistent political belief systems:
1. totalitarian national socialist fascists like Hitler
2. neo-cons like the American republican hawks
3. classical liberals like Acton or Mises
4. anarcho-capitalists like Rothbard.

For mine, anyone - businessman or not - calling for council to tax businesses so they can spend it on "public" purposes are by definition left wing. That's got more explaining power, hasn't it?

Aidan
Your entire argument that you don’t support aggressive violence to force people to submit or obey depends on the factually false proposition that the state doesn’t use or threaten it to enforce law and policy. They do, and that’s not me misrepresenting either the state or you. By law, tax, law and policy are not voluntary they are compulsory.

Your denial of this is vain. It just means you’re denying the facts.

Your attempt to paint the issue as one of self-defence is nonsense. The state, in enforcing laws violating people’s liberty or property, is not acting in self-defence. They will go to whomever they want to charge with breaking any law, and if he doesn’t submit and obey, they will escalate aggression, and if he still doesn’t submit and obey, they will keep escalating it up to and including electrocution, caging or shooting.

This being so, it is not a misrepresentation of what you are saying, to say you support the use of aggressive violence to force people to submit and obey.

The state’s claim of a legal monopoly of the use of aggressive force is a defining characteristic which distinguishes the state from other social organisations.

It is this claim which underlies all the state’s revenues, both directly in taxation, and indirectly in borrowing which depends on its power to tax (also its power to finance by inflating the supply of money and credit.)

The claim of a legal monopoly of coercion underlies the enforcement of ALL law and policy. This is what distinguishes law and policy from other rules of conduct in society. The reason why people resort to policy suggestions, rather than suggestions of a voluntary order, is because with policy, they can *force and threaten* people to obey. If this were not so, there would be no call for policy: people would satisfy themselves with seeking voluntary co-operation, not coerced.

As tax , law, and policy all depend on the state’s powers of coercion, therefore you cannot even start with your economic argument until you have cleared this first hurdle.

Go ahead.

Jardine
Like most capitalists, I recognise the need for law and order and support the limited use (in a legally predefined way) of violence in law enforcement.

I do not support any right of the police to shoot or electrocute people except in self defence or the defence of others.

"This being so, it is not a misrepresentation of what you are saying, to say you support the use of aggressive violence to force people to submit and obey"
By the broadest definitions, I concede it's not a misrepresentation.
However, if you imply I support the use of excessive violence, it becomes a misrepresentation.
If you imply I support the arbitrary use of violence, it becomes a misrepresentation.
If you imply I support the use of violence to force people to submit and obey to anything other than the law then it becomes a misrepresentation. It's certainly a misrepresentation to claim, as you have done, that I support the use of violence to submit and obey to "the regime" or to "socialist policies".

It is true that the state's coercive powers enable it to do things it would not otherwise be able to do. But taking advantage of that does not equate to violence. Quite the opposite, in fact – by giving people less reason to resort to violence and more reason not to, it reduces the total amount of violence.