Divergence
I can’t download that document: try again perhaps?

“Australian Wildlife Conservancy (which I support) for doing a much better job of protecting endangered species and ecosystems than government….”

I think that’s great, and I support nature conservation in a similar way too. I think that’s the way of the future.

“This can feed back into values because not only do different people have different values, but the same individual can have a number of different values, which can compete with each other.”

Indeedy. That’s my whole point. There is simply no basis whatsoever for government’s pretensions to know what those values are, because they are
a) subjective
b) not inter-subjectively comparable
c) not objectively measurable
d) dispersed among billions of people (it’s not only Australians how have an interest in Australia’s environment and resources)
e) constantly changing.

“It is very doubtful if either government or business would be pushing population growth if they had to pay for the externalities…”

That presupposes that the issue is a political one, that the Australian polity is the relevant decision-making entity, that the relevant values can be sensibly aggregated, and that the relevant time-preference is common ground. All these assumptions are problematic.

“..as there is no good evidence of a significant per capita benefit, as stated in the 2010/2011 Productivity Commission Annual Report (p. 6).”

The PC’s methodology is false as its error in aggregating. We aren’t just property belonging to the State.

Take a couple who want to have a family, and are ready, willing and able to pay the costs. Who are the PC to deny any significant per capita benefit? Especially to those who would not otherwise have lived!

So there are much deeper questions about value, epistemology, depletable resources, time preference, and the State, in issue here.

If Austin had had to pay the externalized costs of thim thair rairbits, I don’t think he woulda placed such a high value on “providing a touch of home”. But so what? That’s no argument for government management of the environment; just for better internalizing externalities through private property rights.

Jardine,

I have tested the link and it works. Maybe there was a problem with the server.

When I said "per capita benefit", I really meant "per capita economic benefit". The growthists like to claim that more people will make us richer on average and will solve the problems of an aging population. The Productivity Commission disputes this. So far as people having children is concerned, we can afford to leave that as a decision for the individual couple in Australia. A relatively few people want large families, but they are balanced by all the people who don't have children or only have one. Whether the rest of us should be forced to subsidise large families, other than on the basis of means tested welfare, is another question. In China, where arable land per capita was becoming dangerously small, it could be a question of your right to breed conflicting with your neighbours' right to eat.

I don't see that a human right exists to trash your own country and then move into someone else's, creating externalities. If government doesn't manage immigration or invasion, then who does? If you can't pay for the infrastructure and public services that you will use up front, for example, then the existing residents will have to pay. It doesn't matter if the electricity is supplied by government or a private company. The network, power plants, etc. will still have to be expanded and paid for by taxes or charges on all of us. See

http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/6869/1/MPRA_paper_6869.pdf

Divergence

Okay got those docs.

“The growthists like to claim that more people will make us richer on average and will solve the problems of an aging population.”

I think the growthists face the same problem as the anti-growthists in arguing for their respective preferred policies on that aggregative basis. The question is not whether growth will make “us” richer on average, since entirely within that parameter many, perhaps most, can still be unjustly mulcted to pay for others’ benefits.

There seems to be no issue in either of those papers, in Ludwig’s view, in yours, or in mine, where private benefits are privately paid for. For example Ludwig has no issue with immigration so far as it concerns people enjoying each other’s company in their own homes. The issue is where a migrant’s benefit can only be obtained at a national’s expense, or at the general expense including the environment.

“If government doesn't manage immigration or invasion, then who does?”

Both the PC and MPRA reports assume from the outset that government can and should, so they provide no support for the statist argument because they never consider what is in issue in this thread.

To join issue requires at least an understanding of what the voluntarists like me are actually arguing.

For a concrete example, take asylum-seekers. Some people, like the Greens, say that “we” need to provide them, not just with protection, but free medical, free legal, free English classes and so on. (What they really mean is that others should be forced to pay for the Greens' opinions.) Others say that “we” need to sink the boats etc.

The tragedy of the commons is precisely that, once matters pass into common ownership, there is no way that these kinds of intractable conflicts can be avoided, and indeed no way to avoid A getting an unjust benefit at the expense of B.

My suggested solution is for those who want asylum-seekers, to sponsor them and indemnify any person including any government against all the costs, including processing, settlement and any criminal compensation.

(cont.)

Those who don’t want ‘em, aren’t forced to pay. What could be fairer and more sustainable than that?

Whether or not you agree with it, the point is that this would be an example in principle of internalizing the externalities in immigration, and managing the issue through voluntary relations based on private property, rather than on coerced relations – policy - and the tragedy of the commons.

(But, one might say, what about their tax etc? However this only proves my starting point that the social problems, and the evaluational chaos, are coming from the commonalty in the equation – i.e. the State’s involvement. My answer is: make more social relations free and voluntary! Reduce the State!)

The MPRA and PC documents are nothing but multifarious attempts to come to terms with these problems of unjust externalities. But they can’t be resolved at the aggregate level, that’s the whole point! It’s the State that’s causing them!

For example, the real question is not whether immigrants *as a whole* pay more, or less, in tax, than they receive in benefits. It’s whether particular immigrants do.

I reject the methodology of both those government reports because
a) they assume government can and should manage immigration, whereas that’s what’s in issue here, so they are no help.
b) they are riddled with the aggregative errors, logical fallacies, and moral confusion that are the expression of the tragedy of the commons.
c) All their calculations are based on the unspoken and unjustified assumption that all the people and their property belong to the State to dispose as it thinks best.
d) All the comments that they make on the different aspects of this topic really provide no advance on that fundamental problem.

I think as much as possible policy responses should be avoided, in favour of individual freedom and private property. Only where that would involve A aggressing against the person or property of B, is a policy response justified. And there the only legitimate response is to internalise the externality NOT to engage in forced redistributions which intrinsically describes all state interventions.

Those who don’t want ‘em, aren’t forced to pay. What could be fairer and more sustainable than that?

Whether or not you agree with it, the point is that this would be an example in principle of internalizing the externalities in immigration, and managing the issue through voluntary relations based on private property, rather than on coerced relations – policy - and the tragedy of the commons.

(But, one might say, what about their tax etc? However this only proves my starting point that the social problems, and the evaluational chaos, are coming from the commonalty in the equation – i.e. the State’s involvement. My answer is: make more social relations free and voluntary! Reduce the State!)

The MPRA and PC documents are nothing but multifarious attempts to come to terms with these problems of unjust externalities. But they can’t be resolved at the aggregate level, that’s the whole point! It’s the State that’s causing them!

For example, the real question is not whether immigrants *as a whole* pay more, or less, in tax, than they receive in benefits. It’s whether particular immigrants do.

I reject the methodology of both those government reports because
a) they assume government can and should manage immigration, whereas that’s what’s in issue here, so they are no help.
b) they are riddled with the aggregative errors, moral confusion, and logical fallacies that are the expression of the tragedy of the commons.
c) All their calculations are based on the unspoken assumption that all the people and their property belong to the State to dispose as it thinks best.
d) All the comments that they make on the different aspects of this topic really provide no advance on that fundamental problem.

I think as much as possible policy responses should be avoided, in favour of individual freedom and private property. Only where that would involve A aggressing against the person or property of B, is a policy response justified. And there the only legitimate response is to internalise the externality NOT to engage in forced redistributions, which intrinsically describes all state interventions.

Freedom.

Wow Jardine, you are really going at it. Good stuff. I do like a passionate debater.

I am unable to commit the time at the moment to fully keep up with you. I’m also torn between the urge to do so and the feeling that it is not worthwhile, given that your whole premise seems to have such a bizarre foundation.

You wrote:

<< My theory of government – that it’s a legal monopoly of the use of force and fraud without any intrinsic ability to rationalise scarce social resources to their most socially valued ends >>

( :>|

I’m with Divergence:

<< I am just as skeptical about government as you are. The only difference is that I am also very skeptical of business >>

I couldn’t agree more that government often doesn’t do things very well. But I think that in practically every instance, a lack of any regulatory effort from government would result in a worse outcome.

In some cases the private sector could definitely do a better job, if they got their act together. AWC is a shining example, which as a professional botanist and ecologist is an organisation I have had a fair bit to do with.

But overall, the private sector needs a strong regulatory regime to keep it from running amok. Societies around the world haven’t imposed restrictions on their citizens for no reason. Laws have been implemented to keep us all more or less on the straight and narrow.

In the absence of government and hence of the organisations that administer all these laws, there would be mayhem.

So your fundamental point is surely wrong. We shouldn’t be working towards eliminating government or taking it out of the population/sustainability arena, we should be striving to improve its functionality.