What are your political views?

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If someone is in desperate need economically or in matters of health (and to deny that this exists for millions of people at this moment is to be totally unaware of what is obviously going on) and to characterize this as cry-babyness is to be brutally callous when the means to help them not only exist but are diverted to the crooks who are responsible for the condition. There is no argument that government can be bad, and the USA has in the last administrations been treated to monstrously bad government,. But to claim that good government cannot exist is to have no confidence in the social possibilities of humanity and is more a symptom of perverse disgust and lack of imagination than an understanding and hope for possibilities.

Pretty much, yeah.

thank you for this, it needed to be said well, and you did.

I have a revolutionary idea. How about letting the people who own their own money hold on to as much of it as they can consistent with funding a police force, an army and a system of law courts. That way money won't be transferred from honest people to crooks by a political process.

ruveyn

How about eliminating all taxes so that rich people will have to fund private police to fight off all the poor people who have no jobs or food or places to live and therefore grab guns to rob the rich in order to have some manner of keeping alive. That way the streets will be totally unsafe for everybody except those skilled gunsmiths who shoot straight. The roads will be unrepaired for lack of taxes, the kids will grow up dumb and vicious since there will be no public schooling, the food will be unsafe because there will be no government inspection, the crooks on Wall Street will remain unsupervised and will ravage anyone who tries to invest. Harbors will fall apart and aircraft will be dangerous but the very rich will have their own jets and be unaffected by that. That's the ideal society ruveyn wants to live in.

Actually I would really bet that it would work better than what you are selling. The fact that Somalia is doing better than some other African nations kind of provides reason to rethink some of these issues.

Most jobs aren't that dependent on government.

I mean, the streets could probably be made safe, as all that is important is that muggings don't pay off that much and that people feel that better outcomes exist for not mugging, so if we just had people commonly hold guns and businesses had cameras, then the issue would likely end up dying down.

The roads are a bigger issue, but at least everybody on a road would probably want to keep it in reasonable repair.

Parents would likely send their kids to school regardless of whether the government paid for it, and some private entities would likely pay for education as well. Even homeschooling could work to some extent.

The food will probably be safe. People get pretty bugged if they get sick from their food, and so if a food company of any sort wants to stay in business, it has to make sure people don't get sick. Do we need regulations for the flavor of food? No.

As for aircraft, the issue is still that aircraft safety is important for producers and for providers of air transport.

I mean, I doubt that most of these things will work so badly, even if we grant that regulation will improve the functioning significantly. A lot of public goods can be made private(especially relevant once we take into mind that the idea of government is to to provide an institutional framework for doing this). The biggest issue is going to just be transaction costs, and I doubt that this would be too difficult once people knew what to look for.

I could comment on the silliness of your concept but the hell with it. I had assumed a bit of respect for your ability to think clearly and I'm afraid that has evaporated pretty much totally. The current financial disaster is primarily due to a lack of proper government regulation and if you are totally unaware of the multiple disasters throughout the country in allowing the "invisible hand" to run free, it's not really worth my effort to go into detail.

The same government that does not fix pot holes in the roads, maintain bridges safely and is corrupt clean to the core? Is that what you want to regulate our lives with? You may as well hire Acorn to become the police department.

In the U.S. government is not fit to run a dog pound well. And you want them to regulate?

ruveyn

Presumably you are referring to Peter Leeson's paper "Better off stateless." As I'm sure you know from reading that paper, even Leeson does not attempt to demonstrate that anarchy is preferable to government. He was comparing anarchy against some of the most corrupt and inefficient governments in human history. All he succeeded in demonstrating was that it is possible in the worst-case scenario for some governments to perform as bad as or slightly worse than no government.

For the rest of your predictions, I highly doubt it but I will only mention one:

Empirically, when we have not had regulations plenty of food companies have produced and sold unsafe products without going out of business. You can try to argue the theoretical punishment of the market, but you would be going against observed fact.

High Heeled Shoes - Impractical.
Motorcycles - I'll take a quad instead, quads are great fun.
Baked Beans - Delicious hot, disgusting cold.
Mickey Mouse - Sa lang is he's no' loose aboot mah hoose.
Broccoli - The leafy bits are nicer than the stalky bits.
The Tuba - Dunno, never played one, but given that I never played anything creative with a euph. probably not much good for me.
Marshmallows IN SPACE - Define "intense" and I'll try for an answer. They'd probably just freeze in Earth orbit.

Otherwise, communist, after the fashion of William Morris and Alexander Bogdanov.

High heel shoes: I don't see the point, they make women uncomfortable without making them any more attractive (that is presumably the purpose?)
Motorcycles: I do not trust my reflexes, coordination, and depth perception enough to attempt to use one
Baked beans: smelly
Mickey Mouse: That high-pitched voice gets on my nerves
Broccoli: Good when it's cooked properly, disgusting raw
Tuba: I'm a fan, but probably biased as I play the tuba
Marshmallows: I dunno, but I don't think the answer would be quite so interesting. Marshmallows are much better at the end of a stick over a campfire than in a vacuum.

Umm.... ok?

1) "Current financial disaster" is not equivalent to anything you've written at all. The current system is compatible with the business cycle, so saying "we'll have less regulation, therefore we'll have booms and busts" doesn't say a lot. Secondly, blaming a "lack of proper government regulation", doesn't help much if you think that government regulation has problems in keeping itself together anyway, both with the regulators and the politicians.
2) All I am rebutting is your grandiose statement about how it would be a craphole. A complete lack of government not being a craphole is compatible with regulation having benefits. It is merely the statement that those benefits are grandly overstated.
3) I actually don't care about your evaluation of my intelligence or thinking ability. At all. Period.


Sure, but the issue is that I don't think Sand's model even fits Somalia well enough.



You mean empirically in the early 20th century/late 19th century? I mean, Orwell, you do know that issues with quality are going to be relatively correlated with disposable income and technology, and that in the early 20th century/late 19th century, disposable income was not generally that high, and that processes used were not as good. I mean, as it stands it is almost like an argument that the minimum wage created the middle class. I mean, yes it can potentially account for some of the results, but it really seems kind of implausible to say that without this minimum wage/food regulation, everything would be terrible.

I mean to me, my position seems very clear. Food is highly competitive. Generally damages passed on to consumers are costly in most industries. Food quality has been increasing. People are sensitive to food issues as well, and for instance avoided Peter Pan peanut butter when it was found out that some jars had Salmonella. I mean, saying "oh this is all the regulations" seems silly and like a very very very naive empiricism Orwell given that there are a *lot* of other factors between the late 19th century and the early 21st that can and would reasonably account for a lot of variation.

My views are, make me world emperor

This is one of may articles describing the very recent recall of infected meat in the USA mainly out of the dearth of in-house federal inspectors in meat packing plants which send their defective products out to many distributors throughout the nation.

http://www.newsinferno.com/archives/18981

This is a repeated problem through the lack of proper supervision by federal authorities and a clear danger to many individual consumers.

Ok?

You do realize that any problem could potentially be blamed on "lack of regulatory power", don't you? To the point where "lack of proper regulation" can presumably be an answer to any organizational problem. The issue is that there is an optimal level of regulation anyway, and this likely will involve bad products going to market and possibly even people dying from bad products on the market. Even Toyota, which has historically been renowned for good products, has recently sent out some crap, so... yeah, failure is a part of business.

Secondly, in a world where we didn't expect regulators to do this, different systems of handling risk would emerge. It's just that simple. It isn't as if people would stop caring and give up and die from E Coli, but rather they would investigate labels more carefully, sellers of food would investigate, restaurants would investigate, investigators would investigate, as losses due to bad products are costs all the way down the product line.

Now, is this necessarily going to be perfect? No, but I used a vague term: "food will probably be safe". What does this mean? Who knows, but it is likely a statement about how most food we run into still being relatively edible and food poisoning still being relatively rare. Certainly my comment about transaction costs seems relevant: "The biggest issue is going to just be transaction costs, and I doubt that this would be too difficult once people knew what to look for." and I think this also fits for food.

And who the hell is supposed to do all this investigation but government? Toyota is now under investigation by government. There are reports that Toyota workers repeatedly warned management that the lack of proper testing would bring trouble and it has, but management ignored the protests. (http://www.counterpunch.org/macaray03182010.html). This is why proper government is necessary. At present it doesn't fund the Food and Drug administration sufficiently to provide proper inspection. Your blanket acceptance of people dying for corrupt practices smells a bit too much like the fatal acceptance of religious organizations that this is "the will of God". I'm afraid the "will of corruption" doesn't carry that kind of emotional weight.