Daggett

The usual rule is that the onus of proof is on the person asserting the motion. This is logical since those against, can’t rebut the argument without first knowing what it is.

The issues here are a) whether sustainability presents us with a problem in practice, and b) whether there should be political action for that reason. Therefore the onus should be on those asserting it.

Ecology is the distribution and abundance of species. Any human use of natural resources affects these, and therefore sustainability. If the motion were conceded, government might need to control any given use of such resources, without which, the aim of achieving sustainability could not be guaranteed. So if the onus were reversed, it would require any given person in the world before taking possibly any given action, to prove (to whom?) that it should be permitted, which is neither ethical nor practical.

The question of onus of proof is also important because it is whether our general starting point should be that human beings have a right to be free to do what they want so long as they are not hurting others (liberty); or whether virtually any use of natural resources is presumptively forbidden unless ‘our’ political masters arbitrarily give permission for it.

Therefore the onus must be on those urging for political action, not those against.

Secondly, People already have the right to use resources to live their lives. The issue is not whether to ‘hand over’ decision-making power to ‘corporations’. Most people are not corporations. The issue is whether to deprive people in general, in their capacity as consumers, of liberty to do anything in particular.

Thirdly government, whether democratic or not, involves a claim to a legal monopoly of the use of force, in other words, violence or the threat of violence. The use of government, law or policy, always involves the underlying threat of police and prisons and the risk of further violations in prison.

For example, taxation is a compulsory impost: if you don’t pay, ultimately they’ll imprison you.

(cont.)

By contrast, private entities including corporations, cannot force you to pay for their services if you don’t want to, as governments can and do.

Because of the fact that theft and fraud are illegal, all the revenue of private associations (absent governmental privileges) comes from transactions in which the payers have the legal right not to pay. Therefore commercial corporations are not governments.

Two redeeming features of corporations are that, absent governmental privileges, all their profits are a direct reflection of the behaviour of the mass of the people, as consumers, in preferring their goods and services over all the other options that the consumers could have spent their money on. The same cannot be said of the revenues of government, which are obtained by force (taxation) or fraud (monetary policy).

On the other hand, corporations that fail to serve what consumers judge to be their most urgent wants, face losses and bankruptcy. The people transfer property out of the hands of those who cannot or will not serve best them, and into the hands of those who do. By contrast, government departments continue to forcibly take payment for services that people would not willingly pay for, and often grow bigger as a consequence of their own failure to perform their intended purpose.

Each and every service on offer in the market is the subject of voluntary dollar-votes. Thus the market is far more representative of what the masses of the people want than democracy’s one - compulsory - vote every three years, with no remedy for breach of promise, no ability to withhold payment for services you don’t want, no ability to distinguish in the package deal what you want from what you don’t, the liability to be forced to pay for others’ values that they are not willing to pay for voluntarily, back-room factional power deals, enforced uniformity, and a requirement of general obedience.

I continue to answer your questions with lean muscular arguments, for which the wisdom of our Editors, to promote the virtues of patience, hath decided that you must wait 24 hours.

While we are waiting, an interesting discussion regarding a hoax is being discussed here:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/windschuttle_hoaxed.php#comment-1367266

(Read the before and afters)

Tim Curtin seems to be batting for Wing's team, and Jeff Harvey for the Ludwig camp.

Daggett

To continue answering your questions…

Greed is not part of my argument, it’s part of yours. I presume you arbitrarily mean excessive desire for possessions. My point is only that, whatever evil you denote by the term, the same flaw inheres in human action generally. It doesn’t magically disappear by the expedient of force-based governmental, rather than consent-based private decision-making.

The flaw in Naomi Klein’s general thesis, is that she does not distinguish between the problems caused on the one hand by private, and on the other hand by governmental control of resources. She tars them all with the same brush.

For example she rightly condemns the recent obscene bailouts. But she wrongly condemns them as the fruits of ‘capitalism’. I condemn them because they are a massive violation of private property rights by government. Who believes that the people would *voluntarily* pay to bail out these billionaire bankers? The very suggestion is laughable. This proves that the problem is not liberty and private property, it is government using its coercive powers a) to forcibly take property from the whole population and b) hand it out to political favourites on the basis of c) a supposed democratic collective intelligence for the solution of common problems.

That is the opposite of capitalism. It is a perfect example of the arguments *against* governmental central control of economic and natural resources and *in favour of* liberty and private property.

It is precisely this kind of political decision-making that we will get more of if you and the Naomi Kleins of this world get what they are arguing for: *all* decisions on *all* resources will be political!

We are going beyond the question of sustainability, but the point is that Klein calls by the name of ‘capitalism’ a system of government monopoly control of the money supply, permanent inflation with permanent malinvestment, booms and busts, of governmental confiscation of half the entire product of the nation every day, and spending virtually all of it on programs to forcibly override the market.

Thus Klein displays either inexcusable ignorance, or inexcusable dishonesty, by confusing the term with its opposite: the result is a hopeless jumble of good ideas and bad.

To make the best decisions we need to have a clear understanding of the characteristics, the downside, and the benefits of private versus public action. To satisfy yourself with mere ignorant grotesque caricatures of your competing arguments, without being able to show that you know or understand them, merely displays the intellectual level that satisfies your standards. If you want to understand the philosophy and economics of liberty, you can find out about it at mises.org and lewrockwell.com. If you don’t, you are not qualified to comment on the general issue whether governmental, rather than private action is warranted.

While ever this confusion over the meanings of the term capitalism continues, I will not agree to discuss it further unless you nominate a word to be used to mean a system of social co-operation based on individual liberty, private property, sound money, and little or no taxation or government. I don’t care what this word denoting liberty is, but it is completely unacceptable to use the same word to refer to massive interventionist government programs, based on socialist ideas of community, which violate life, liberty and property in ten thousand ways every day.

In short, Klein’s work give us an argument against governmental interventions and privileges, not an argument in favour of more.

Ludwig
Because you have not yet assumed the onus of proof (as you should), you have not yet put forward your argument, nor thought through your line of reasoning to its logical conclusion. Your approach has simply been to repeatedly express astonishment that anyone could possibly dare to question your belief system.

Even the irreducible core of your argument, that we can’t have indefinite growth on a finite base, was not put forward by you, but by me.

...

Wing Ah Ling, this has reached the ‘too stupid’ stage. You implore people to answer your questions, but you’ve just completely skipped over my questions. What gives? Are they just too hard for you? I’m trying to further this debate and you’re totally stifling it.

“The usual rule is that the onus of proof is on the person asserting the motion…”

Firstly, you are asserting the ‘motion’; that sustainability is bullsh!t. How obvious is it that something like this, that just seems entirely ludicrous, needs to have some very strong corroboration before you can expect it to be taken seriously?

Secondly, as I’ve said before, the onus of proof, or of the strongest evidence that can be mustered in the absence of provability, should not be concentrated on one side of the debate or the other. It makes no sense whatsoever that one side of a debate should be required to prove a position while all the other side has to do is put forward conjecture.

“Therefore the onus should be on those asserting it.”

You are asserting a ‘motion’. You are failing to live up to your own primary principles.

You are talking about a concept that really does seem to be just entirely off-the-planet and raving on about logic at the same time. What do you think the readers of this thread are supposed to make of that?

Why on earth can’t you at least address the questions at the end of my last post, so that we can gain a bit of a basic understanding of just what your position is? At the moment it is extremely vague, and it appears that you want to keep it that way.