"Just as when local governments spend most of their time deciding whether property owners shall be permitted to use their property, Loudmouth doesn’t notice that this in effect to socialise their property."

Peter, with respect, I think you are mistaken: can you give examples of when and where councils have socialised anybody's property ? Can you give us any details about roughly what proportion of council meetings' time is taken up plotting how to take over ratepayers' property ? No offence but that sounds a bit paranoid :) If there was the slightest hint that a council, wouldn't there be marches in the streetsd, or at least packed council meetings from then on ?

Joe

Loudmouth, short answer is Peter is probably a libertarian and anything down to having to pay taxes, fund infrastructure or obey the law or regulations of conduct is akin to communist fascism and in his eyes, nothing more than an unreasonable attempt to suppress him.
Of course, realizing nobody else sees it that way, he needs to add more flare and drama by adding words like "socialism".

But to answer you last post, that is indeed pretty much the case.
In the local debates/voting- there has never been a conspiracy by the wicked plebs to steal somebody's private business- nor is it ever likely (unless that business were formerly a public-owned to begin with, and also reigning over public infrastructure like roads, public rail, water or something).

Hazza, Loudmouth, thinker2

None of you has joined issue yet.

Hazza’s post is a veritable welter of fallacies:
• misrepresentation (note: no-one is arguing that there should be no regulation of conduct you fool)
• mind-reading (telling me what I think)
• *assuming* without proving what is in issue (that any given act of government represents the people better than the people represent themselves, and that coerced social relations are better than voluntary ones)
• trying to squirm out of the issues by changing the name of forced expropriations when the *name* of them is irrelevant.

Hazza’s tack is to try to deny that socialization of the means of production is socialism. Fine. Call vesting property in common ownershp and making forced expropriations and redistributions of property what you want. The explosions of your argument’s fallacies follows just the same, leaving you completely unable to defend your arguments, or refute mine.

Hazza does not even try to defend taxes on the basis that they are voluntary: the proposition is obviously false. If they were voluntary, there’d be no need of taxes, would there?, since everyone would just send to Consolidated Revenue a cheque for what they think government “services” are worth, and the total revenue would be the same: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Hazza has swallowed hook, line and sinker the standard statist nostrum that any given action of government represents the community. But the electoral process provides no evidence of this proposition.

Hazza has provided no reason in favour of coerced over voluntary social relations.

But perhaps if you repeat a few fallacies that might work – to satisfy your intellectual standards?

Loudmouth
There are only two possibilities: either you own your life and your property and can deal with them by consent, or someone else does and can deal with you by coercion. Government by definition comprises the latter case. Denying it merely demonsrates your failure to understand what in issue. Give me an example of any governmental action including the actions of local government that is not predicated on, and intended to, forcibly override other people’s property rights?

Thinker2
You reply has advanced the argument any further than where I left it.

Governments already own and control the aquifers. *More* socialism – or whatever you want to call forced redistributions and holding property in common - can only make matters worse not better because:
a) it depends on a presumption of government’s competence which the evidence disproves
b) it must take us *closer* to full socialism where we already know beforehand that the economic and social chaos is greater, not lesser, and non-viable.

You have simply *assumed* what is in issue:
• That the problem is caused by capitalism rather than socialism, and
• That government presumptively fixes everything up, like a god making up for human imperfections
• Without coming to terms with the arguments that show that government must necessarily expand the tragedy of the commons, and spread the economic chaos that is the original rpoblem you are trying to solve by more government control.

The problems with the aquifers is just a re-run of the Russian collectivization of agriculture, which was a complete disaster for all the same reasons. The socialists have learnt NOTHING from the last hundred years.

Your beliefs are unfalsifiable, have you noticed that? If government doesn’t work, the solution is more government?

None of you have even begun to deal with the issues, namely, showing why social relations are better based on coercion than voluntary. You haven’t got to square one. None of your arguments can withstand rational critique. All you’ve done, on your beliefs being challenged and disproved, is to *recirculate* the same old fictions and myths about state power and privilege representing the greater good without any attempt to prove them.

Peter Hume, you want to know what the funny thing is?

"Hazza’s tack is to try to deny that socialization of the means of production is socialism. Fine. Call vesting property in common ownershp and making forced expropriations and redistributions of property what you want."

That your own posts don't even contradict what I said.
Carry on!

I'm not so much hoping for more Gov't Peter, but better Govt. If that is at all possible through democracy. More accountable Gov't, more representative Govt. The same should be expected of Big Business, if we are to progress to a sustainable future.

So therefore as an inevitable truth, Gov't has to, and does play a part in the outcomes of it's constituency, (purportedly the people) re their relationships with Big Business. If we were to allow a completely un-regulated business environment, it is likely we would see a free for all and environmental disaster equivalent to the Socialist Russia experience.

I don't think any evidence is required in support Peter, when assuming that balance is required, and to some degree excepting that coercion is necessary. e.g. Law enforcement. I think that most people above all else, want a sustainable future for themselves and their descendants. I don't think there is any evidence required in support of this assumption either.