JKJ

I concede your point about scarce resources - taking "afford the best" literally would mean devoting most of GDP to education and health care. Just taking health care, decisions have to be made about how much should be allocated to medical research, the construction and running costs of hospitals and medical schools, per capita availability of expensive medical equipment etc. I suppose deciding the level of GDP devoted to health care would be a bit like the way it is at the moment - inertia and people's expectations. The main change I think would be greater funding of research.

The Australian Tax Office does not electrocute or shoot people to get the tax revenue we currently spend on education and health. So I don't think a socialist tax office would need to. As for expropriating the 0.01 per cent, that may provoke acts of violence and rebellion that will need to be dealt with severely.

LEGGO

These are my past comments relevant to the notion that socialism has been proven to be a failure.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16764&page=0#294584
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16764&page=0#294710
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16764&page=0#294763
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16816&page=0#295857

The problems of Detroit are the problems of the existing order which most people call capitalism. This order includes a lot of government interference in the economy, much of which has perverse results. Firms, entire industries and regions capture government policy for their own interests while much of the bourgeoisie sees the need to avert revolution through the welfare system.

Free marketeers subscribe to what could be called a utopian pristine capitalism. They do not see that the actions of government are endogenous to the market system. They are not some external imposition by 'socialists'.

I would imagine when the next global financial crisis hits most of the bourgeoisie will insist that governments "do something" or look as though they are doing something no matter how ineffectual. Only the stalwarts at the von Mises Institute and the Cato Institute will call on the government to just get out of the way and let the crisis take its course. Everyone else knows that would simply further inflame mass unrest.

David
Your first paragraph runs into the economic calculation problem. You went out backwards failing to defend your argument to have solved it, here:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16764&page=0
remember?

To put it another way, given you have conceded that resources are scarce, there is no rational way for you to know that we need "more" research, independent of profit and loss. The issue is precisely how you know whether, and what, other human wants should be sacrificed for the sake of that "more", how you know which are less important, and whether your proposed policy would be providing
1. too much
2. too little, or
3. just the right amount
of research.

You have no rational way of demonstrating that in units of a lowest common denominator, and therefore lose the argument.

"The Australian Tax Office does not electrocute or shoot people to get the tax revenue we currently spend on education and health."

The socialists have already lost that argument here:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16764&page=0

The only way out of this is to try to claim that taxation is voluntary which is nonsense. Not even the state agrees with you, because all arms of the government define it as compulsory, so you haven't got a leg to stand on.

"The Australian Tax Office does not electrocute or shoot people to get the tax revenue we currently spend on education and health."

They threaten to, and if they don't get obedience and submission, yes they do. Why do you think cops carry tazers and guns when it's illegal for you and me?

Your claim that tax is voluntary is flatly incorrect, end of story. You're just wrong.

"So I don't think a socialist tax office would need to."
So according to you, tax would be voluntary under socialism?

Sounds like either:
a) a libertarian paradise, or
b) you're confused and self-contradicting, or lying.

Which is it?

JKJ

The two links just take us to the comments page. You need to provide links to specific comments.

I would imagine that contributing one's share to common provision would be something that people would feel happy about. Avoidance would be seen as like theft - taking without giving. Of course this would depend on people feeling that tax collection was equitable and the funds well spent.

David
"You need to provide links to specific comments."

I'm just reflecting back to you, your tactic of posting links in substitution of rational argument, like your attempt to squirm out of your defeat on the economic calculation argument by posting links to your own works. You sent me on an errand to construct your argument for you - I'm just doing it back to you. According to you, it's a valid argument. So go ahead: find where you're wrong; or admit your tactic was invalid and you have no basis for your claims to have solved the economic calculation argument.

"I would imagine that contributing one's share to common provision would be something that people would feel happy about."

a) It is moral gibberish to talk about violence based transactions AS IF they are voluntary. You might as well call war "peace".
b) we have already established that you support the use of aggressive violence as the basis of these so-called "contributions", remember?
c) if it's true that they're "happy" about paying tax, then there's no need for tax, is there? According to your (wrong) theory, if the Tax Act is repealed, government's revenue will be no less, because people will just write out a cheque for the same amount and voluntarily send it in to the government.
d) the reason they're not doing this is because your theory is wrong.
e) you have not established that paying forced tribute to a privileged class of coercive monopolists is "common provision" rather than the mere extortion/exploitation of a protection racket. Therefore you're assuming what's in issue, which is circular, which is fallacious, which is irrational.

"Avoidance would be seen as like theft - taking without giving."
That assumes that everyone's labour and the fruits thereof presumptively belong to government. In other words, you believe people are chattels owned by the government - and you JUST HAPPEN to be a socialist.

"... this would depend on people feeling that tax collection was equitable and the funds well spent."
No-one including you believes that, because it's not true.

Socialism failed everywhere it was tried and it is hardly "lazy thinking" to point out what is self evident reality.

The elephant in the room that you refuse to acknowledge, is that if socialism is viable, why did every socialist country that was not in the iron grip of some tyrant throw off socialism at the first opportunity? This is a question I have posed to you twice now, and twice you have dodged it. I can tell more about my opponents mindset from the questions they do not want to answer, than from the questions they feel comfortable giving a reply to.

You do not want to answer this question because you yourself know that the only way that socialism can be both implemented and maintained is through armed force. It is an unnatural system of economics based entirely upon idealism and it's only adherents are idealists and people gullible enough to believe it's empty promises. Your claim that socialism would not work in pre industrial societies looks odd, when you yourself extolled the virtues of socialism in advancing economic progress in such countries. It seems that the latest lame excuse for true believer socialists is that socialism can only succeed when it begins in an already successful and prosperous free market society. Success must adopt failure to succeed.

Idealists believe that the perfect society can be constructed by intelligent people and they invented socialism as the supposed way to achieve it. It is all based upon the logic that human beings are inherently altruistic instead of self interested, and will always act logically and with reason for the common good. And it would work too, except for the little inconvenience that human beings are not robots. Humans only think logically when all other means are exhausted. If people thought logically and with reason, there would be no obesity, no speeding tickets, no drug abuse, no unmarried mothers, no crime, no extreme sports, no high cholesterol, and no fashion.

The socialist way to solve overpopulation would be for some committee to simply tell teenagers to stop thinking about sex.