The Logical Absurdity of Libertarianism: Partial Omniscience

[Xerographica]

Just answer the question, bro!

You want to decentralize everything, or not? If not, whatcha wanna central plan?

Who is S?

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Who is S?

S represents the idea that Congressmen are omniscient.

Rock on?

Rock on.

Got any more?

Now just answer mine, bro.

 

[Sam I am]

How did I know that this was a xerographica thread before I actually checked who the OP was?

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Let me just remind everyone to direct all discussion of Pragmatarianism itself to this thread:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?371947-Pragmatarianism-*The-FINAL-Thread*

We don't need any more Pragmatarianism threads. The purveyor is proudly uninformed and thus ineducable. No new arguments will be made by him.

But for discussion of why X thinks that libertarians believe in "partial omniscience" and why that is a logical absurdity (other than the term itself being a ridiculous absurdity and oxymoron), this is the place!

 

[Xerographica]

S represents the idea that Congressmen are omniscient.

Rock on?

Rock on.

Got any more?

Now just answer mine, bro.

Wrong answer. I modified the drawing so that even a stupid monkey should be able to figure out who S is...

 

[helmuth_hubener]

So you want us to attack a single individual, rather than the ideas he advanced? Samuelson was not the only man in history to advance the idea of central planning / omniscience / whatever. You say you are against the current system, which is based on the assumption that Congressmen are omniscient. Thus, you should want us libertarians to fight the assumption that Congressmen are omniscient (which we do). Apparently you also want us to refute Paul Samuelson in particular (which we do).

I really don't know what your problem is. Anyway, even if I'm wrong, you can't blame me for that, if I'm a monkey. I did answer your question. You can hardly be surprised I got it wrong.

So now just answer mine. I don't mind if you get it wrong. Just tell me if you support central planning in anything, if so what, and if so why.

Just as a reminder, I support choice.

 

[Xerographica]

So you want us to attack a single individual, rather than the ideas he advanced? Samuelson was not the only man in history to advance the idea of central planning / omniscience / whatever. You say you are against the current system, which is based on the assumption that Congressmen are omniscient. Thus, you should want us libertarians to fight the assumption that Congressmen are omniscient (which we do). Apparently you also want us to refute Paul Samuelson in particular (which we do).

Wow, you finally guessed it! Except now you need me to explain why you have to target Samuelson specifically? Yeah? But then you go on to argue that you have previously refuted Samuelson specifically. Seriously? Link me to where you specifically critiqued Samuelson.

If you have already specifically targeted Samuelson...then I shouldn't have to explain to you why you should specifically target him. Neither should I have to explain to you the insanity of targeting the entire government in order to remove Samuelson. It's the epitome of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The baby represents all the public goods that people truly demand...and the bathwater represents Samuelson. Tax choice removes Samuelson without threatening any of the public goods that people are truly willing to spend their taxes on.

So put down your nuclear bomb...and grab a sniper's rifle instead. Stop targeting the entire government...and instead target the fucking ridiculous assumption that it's based on. It's an EASY target. But it will require a group effort.

Right now you guys suffer from ADHD. Tax choice is a huge dose of Ritalin that will help us focus the debate with laser like precision.

 

[idiom]

Of course liking facebook is more effective. It aims at the actual target. It ignores the frivolous irrelevance and gets to the heart of the matter.

The problem with the children of this age.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Yo, X, my bro, you have presumably never even read a Samuelson textbook, unless you have done an awful lot of boning up since last we spoke. So how would you know:

a) what Samuelson says
b) how one would go about refuting it in a credible way
c) whether I have done so
d) whether anyone has done so

Hmm?

If you had followed my long-ago advice and started implementing my system of Informednessarianism in your life, then you would already be so far beyond me, given your amount of free time to spend on it, I would probably have no idea what you are even talking about any more. I would be feeling like the ignorant fool, then. And wouldn't that be satisfying? You could totally demolish and humiliate me in any debate.

Instead, you still appear to have a very shallow knowledge about the topics -- economics and political philosophy -- upon which you are so determined to spew so voluminously about.

So yes, write a point-by-point demolition of Economics: An Introductory Analysis. By all means. But first you'll have to read it. And write an expose about how dreadful economic conditions were in the Soviet Union. By all means. But first you'll have to learn something about it. You'll have to find first-hand sources. Maybe move to Russia or Ukraine or Lithuania for a few years and do lots of first-hand interviews. It would be a great project.

Your project that you're doing right now? It's total junk. Worthless. You yourself are not motivated enough by it to address the rudimentary critiques that I and some others have made about it. You haven't organized your thoughts sufficiently to write a book about it. You've spent how many endless hours on it? But yet, there still is no Das Pragmatal. You will never have a movement without a substantive book. You must understand this. I'm sure you understand this. So write one. Until then, you are totally wasting yours and everyone else's time.

Sincerely and helpfully yours,

Helmuth

 

[Xerographica]

If you had followed my long-ago advice and started implementing my system of Informednessarianism in your life, then you would already be so far beyond me, given your amount of free time to spend on it, I would probably have no idea what you are even talking about any more. I would be feeling like the ignorant fool, then. And wouldn't that be satisfying? You could totally demolish and humiliate me in any debate.

You're too ignorant to realize that you should be feeling like an ignorant fool. Let me easily prove it.

You ignorantly think I have to read Samuelson's textbook...

Yo, X, my bro, you have presumably never even read a Samuelson textbook, unless you have done an awful lot of boning up since last we spoke. So how would you know:

a) what Samuelson says
b) how one would go about refuting it in a credible way
c) whether I have done so
d) whether anyone has done so

Hmm?

When anybody who knows anything about public finance knows that it's his paper...The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure...which provides the economic justification for our current system.

Here's the thread I posted back in January on the very topic...Voluntary Exchange Theory.

You don't know a damn thing about Samuelson...so you don't know a damn thing about public finance...which is exactly why you so mistakenly believe that my project is total junk.

There, you've been demolished and you should feel humiliated.

But have you ever asked yourselves sufficiently how much the erection of every ideal on earth has cost? How much reality has had to be misunderstood and slandered, how many lies have had to be sanctified, how many consciences disturbed, how much "God" sacrificed every time? If a temple is to be erected a temple must be destroyed: that is the law - let anyone who can show me a case in which it is not fulfilled! - Friedrich Nietzsche

 

[Len Larson]

Rothbard: The fallacy of the Public Sector

In the first place, we may ask: "public sector" of what? Of something called the "national product." But note the hidden assumptions: that the national product is something like a pie, consisting of several "sectors," and that these sectors, public and private alike, are added to make the product of the economy as a whole. In this way, the assumption is smuggled into the analysis that the public and private sectors are equally productive, equally important, and on an equal footing altogether, and that "our" deciding on the proportions of public to private sector is about as innocuous as any individual's decision on whether to eat cake or ice cream. The State is considered to be an amiable service agency, somewhat akin to the corner grocer, or rather to the neighborhood lodge, in which "we" get together to decide how much "our government" should do for (or to) us. Even those neoclassical economists who tend to favor the free market and free society often regard the State as a generally inefficient, but still amiable, organ of social service, mechanically registering "our" values and decisions.

One would not think it difficult for scholars and laymen alike to grasp the fact that government is not like the Rotarians or the Elks; that it differs profoundly from all other organs and institutions in society; namely, that it lives and acquires its revenues by coercion and not by voluntary payment. The late Joseph Schumpeter was never more astute than when he wrote: "The theory which construes taxes on the analogy of club dues or of the purchase of the services of, say, a doctor only proves how far removed this part of the social sciences is from scientific habits of mind."

SNIP

Most economists have two basic arguments on behalf of the public sector, which we may only consider very briefly here. One is the problem of "external benefits." A and B often benefit, it is held, if they can force C into doing something. Much can be said in criticism of this doctrine; but suffice it to say here that any argument proclaiming the right and goodness of, say, three neighbors, who yearn to form a string quartet, forcing a fourth neighbor at bayonet point to learn and play the viola, is hardly deserving of sober comment. The second argument is more substantial; stripped of technical jargon, it states that some essential services simply cannot be supplied by the private sphere, and that therefore government supply of these services is necessary. And yet, every single one of the services supplied by government has been, in the past, successfully furnished by private enterprise. The bland assertion that private citizens cannot possibly supply these goods is never bolstered, in the works of these economists, by any proof whatever. How is it, for example, that economists, so often given to pragmatic or utilitarian solutions, do not call for social "experiments" in this direction? Why must political experiments always be in the direction of more government? Why not give the free market a county or even a state or two, and see what it can accomplish?

 

[idiom]

There, you've been demolished and you should feel humiliated.

Why should one feel humiliated when an argument is defeated? It should bring joy that one has learnt something.

Is your goal to create greater understanding or to stroke your ego? The world has very serious problems and doesn't have time left for philosophical masturbation.

 

[Xerographica]

Rothbard: The fallacy of the Public Sector

If you've actually read Samuelson then you'd know (assuming you've read enough Rothbard) that this passage is more relevant...

But this argument generates far more difficulties than it solves. It proves too much in many directions. In the first place, how much of the deficient good should be supplied? What criterion can the State have for deciding the optimal amount and for gauging by how much the market provision of the service falls short? Even if free riders benefit from collective service X, in short, taxing them to pay for producing more will deprive them of unspecified amounts of private goods Y, Z, and so on. We know from their actions that these private consumers wish to continue to purchase private goods Y, Z, and so on, in various amounts. But where is their analogous demonstrated preference for the various collective goods? We know that a tax will deprive the free riders of various amounts of their cherished private goods, but we have no idea how much benefit they will acquire from the increased provision of the collective good; and so we have no warrant whatever for believing that the benefits will be greater than the imposed costs. The presumption should be quite the reverse. And what of those individuals who dislike the collective goods, pacifists who are morally outraged at defensive violence, environmentalists who worry over a dam destroying snail darters, and so on? In short, what of those persons who find other people's good their "bad?" Far from being free riders receiving external benefits, they are yoked to absorbing psychic harm from the supply of these goods. Taxing them to subsidize more defense, for example, will impose a further twofold injury on these hapless persons: once by taxing them, and second by supplying more of a hated service. - Murray Rothbard, The Myth of Neutral Taxation

Samuelson never argued that the private sector couldn't supply public goods...he argued that because of their non-excludable nature...the private sector wouldn't supply optimal amounts of them. In this passage I shared by Rothbard...Rothbard critiques the idea that it's possible for the government to know how much of each public goods should be supplied.

If you get a chance you should read my latest blog entry... Incentivizing Honest Preference Revelation for Public Goods

 

[Xerographica]

Why should one feel humiliated when an argument is defeated? It should bring joy that one has learnt something.

Is your goal to create greater understanding or to stroke your ego? The world has very serious problems and doesn't have time left for philosophical masturbation.

Why you asking me?

If you had followed my long-ago advice and started implementing my system of Informednessarianism in your life, then you would already be so far beyond me, given your amount of free time to spend on it, I would probably have no idea what you are even talking about any more. I would be feeling like the ignorant fool, then. And wouldn't that be satisfying? You could totally demolish and humiliate me in any debate.

He asked for some humiliation so I served him some. Maybe I shouldn't have served it to him? That would have been rather paternalistic of me.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

He asked for some humiliation so I served him some.

I feel like your attempt fell short.

You see, I've actually read that paper. It's dense. It's math. It references his dissertation-cum-textbook standard, which I am sure you have not read, (and actually I haven't either; it's a difficult slog), and if not, you are not going to fully understand the equations he mentions, because he doesn't fully explain them - he already did that, after all.

Furthermore, although I disagree with Mr. Samuelson's scientistic mathematical methods, his conclusion was, I believe, correct in what it says which would be relevant to your tax-earmarking scheme. Ah yes, here you go:

any one person can hope to snatch some selfish benefit in a way not possible under the self-policing competitive pricing of private goods

And that is true. There are any number of things which are true about the difference between tax-earmarking and making a purchase of a good in a free market. There are incentives at work there that are not present in a market transaction. You can read about some of the differences in my essay on your scheme, and then go to that thread and refute them, if you care to.

Here, this thread is about Libertarianism being a logical absurdity. You have yet to make a case that it is. Perhaps it is also about how libertarians believe in partial omniscience. I have yet to see that case, either.

I also have yet to hear an answer to a simple question I've asked several times. Bad form, X. Bad form.

Also, you just edit out whatever parts of my posts you don't want to reply to and completely ignore them. I guess that's your modus operandi now? Again, bad form.

Why don't you read a book? There are lots of free ones available at your local government library. Take a break from your online time-wasting, and get informed. Get respectable. Get credible. Until then, I really can't take you seriously.

Your friend,

 

[Xerographica]

I feel like your attempt fell short.

You see, I've actually read that paper.

Prove it.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Prove it.

It's 3 or 4 pages, bro my man. I gave you a little book report on it. That's good enough proof for my 4th grade teacher.

Are you saying you're better than her? You want me to re-read it and make a video of myself doing it?

Once again, I invite you: Come back to the world of pleasantness and reason. Leave the world of blind rage and agitation and obsession behind.

 

[erowe1]

The OP assumes there's such a thing as public goods.

 

[Xerographica]

It's 3 or 4 pages, bro my man. I gave you a little book report on it. That's good enough proof for my 4th grade teacher.

Are you saying you're better than her? You want me to re-read it and make a video of myself doing it?

Let's review. I'm arguing that Samuelson's assumption that congresspeople are omniscient should be the sole target of libertarians. Clearly you disagree. Now that you've actually read his paper for the first time ever...please provide an argument as to why there are more important targets to aim at.

Let me repeat my argument just to be safe. Here's the illustration I created...



My argument is that our current system is based on Samuelson's (S) assumption that congresspeople are omniscient. In other words, I see Samuelson as Atlas. He's shouldering the weight of our current system of government. Your argument is that the real target is not Samuelson. You're arguing that libertarians are on the right track by attacking public goods, taxation as theft, welfare, fiat money and so on. You're arguing that I'm the one tilting at windmills because I'm using my resources to attack Samuelson.

Having thoroughly studied public finance...I'm relatively certain that you're the one who is tilting at windmills. You're merely attacking the symptoms that stem from the assumption that congresspeople are omniscient. If you think that I've got it wrong...then please explain why Samuelson is not the most important target that we can attack.

 

[Xerographica]

The OP assumes there's such a thing as public goods.

The government uses society's limited resources to supply things. Whatever you wish to call these things, however you wish to perceive them, my argument is that the government cannot supply optimal amounts of them. Rothbard agreed (and so do many other economists) ...

But this argument generates far more difficulties than it solves. It proves too much in many directions. In the first place, how much of the deficient good should be supplied? What criterion can the State have for deciding the optimal amount and for gauging by how much the market provision of the service falls short? Even if free riders benefit from collective service X, in short, taxing them to pay for producing more will deprive them of unspecified amounts of private goods Y, Z, and so on. We know from their actions that these private consumers wish to continue to purchase private goods Y, Z, and so on, in various amounts. But where is their analogous demonstrated preference for the various collective goods? We know that a tax will deprive the free riders of various amounts of their cherished private goods, but we have no idea how much benefit they will acquire from the increased provision of the collective good; and so we have no warrant whatever for believing that the benefits will be greater than the imposed costs. The presumption should be quite the reverse. And what of those individuals who dislike the collective goods, pacifists who are morally outraged at defensive violence, environmentalists who worry over a dam destroying snail darters, and so on? In short, what of those persons who find other people's good their "bad?" Far from being free riders receiving external benefits, they are yoked to absorbing psychic harm from the supply of these goods. Taxing them to subsidize more defense, for example, will impose a further twofold injury on these hapless persons: once by taxing them, and second by supplying more of a hated service. - Murray Rothbard, The Myth of Neutral Taxation

The government cannot supply optimal amounts of these things because congresspeople are not omniscient.

Stop focusing on the things that the government supplies...and instead focus on the assumption that congresspeople are omniscient. Once you do this, then you'll transform from a libertarian to a pragmatarian.