EPTIf a government is implementing one policy and the economy is not improving, instead of jumping to conclusions that the policy doesn't work, you should ask instead: why might the economy not be responsive to this policy? Who are the intermediaries for this policy? What assumptions did we make when we thought this policy might be helpful?
Liberal Internet? - Page 22
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Sadistx
Zimbabwe5568 Posts
If a government is implementing one policy and the economy is not improving, instead of jumping to conclusions that the policy doesn't work, you should ask instead: why might the economy not be responsive to this policy? Who are the intermediaries for this policy? What assumptions did we make when we thought this policy might be helpful? | ||
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0neder
United States3733 Posts
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happyness
United States2400 Posts
On July 07 2010 08:07 Mindcrime wrote: Unless you are aware of some classless, stateless society that I am not, that word does not mean what you think it means. OK, I should say "the Soviet Union's, China's, North Korea's, and Cuba's attempt at a centralized government controlled economy which they claim is communism" have all FAILED | ||
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Rev0lution
United States1805 Posts
Therefore, the internet is liberal. There's also the crazy right wingers and jesus freaks but that's like 15% minority. | ||
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Rev0lution
United States1805 Posts
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt" Besides it's not even an argument it's just his opinion on how an ignorant person should behave when not understanding a discussion. Would you get involved in a conversation about quantum mechanics with two physicists given that you don't know shit about it? You'd come off as a douchebag. | ||
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gdroxor
United States639 Posts
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eckm
United States72 Posts
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jalstar
United States8198 Posts
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eckm
United States72 Posts
The internet as we experience it is an abstraction, a system that moves information so that we can look at it from anywhere. It's not defined by its users. The internet can't be biased, unless of course you're referring to the material infrastructure that allows for the rapid and far-reaching transmission of digital information. And I mean I guess it could be possible that the fundamental physical structure of the world wide web somehow promotes liberalism through subtle, nefarious, and totally non-sentient activity. Is that what you mean? Maybe you're talking about the content we may find online. But hey, anywhere? Maybe the content found on those vampire slash havens is actually advocating gay marriage, and the free-ballers forum is pushing a radical leftist testicle agenda. Even if we turn our sights to the most-trafficked content that is explicitly political, from nytimes to huffpo to freep, evaluating their bias tells us nothing about the political inclination of "the internet" because there is no such thing. I'll cut you some slack OP and cut right to what you're obviously asking: do the majority of individual internet users identify themselves as liberals? This is not an interesting question. It's like asking, how many people are sitting at this here dinner table? You just have to count them. That may be a bit tough to do, but it's not really up for debate. The proportion of liberal internet users to conservative internet users is totally meaningless and irrelevant, mostly because the huge majority of people merely come to identify with a political movement, whether through brainwashing or more abstract sociological influences or out of fear or a sense of superiority or whatever, and their "political beliefs" are derived thereafter. There is no logical debate. There is no reason. There is stupidity and stubbornness and the aesthetic, and we'll keep doing whatever stupid shit we're doing, dragging our feet, humanity's still-brief timeline perforated occasionally by the emergence of some wildly improbable figure clever enough to manipulate the drooling masses into doing what's best for them. | ||
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Fwmeh
1286 Posts
On July 07 2010 04:39 Yurebis wrote: What's that system for? The goal? And if you define "the market" as the group of individuals freely acting and trading voluntarily, I think what you say is a bit contradictory. Voluntarily acting men do not determine man's deserts? I believe you and I have vastly different view of what would constitute voluntary action. Today, more than at any time previously in the human history, people are dependent on one another. A vast vast vast majority of the people in the western world would, if left alone, starve to death. Surely even you realize that. Now, this give the people who provide you with food power over you, given that you would act to gain food so as to preserve your life. I presume you value your life higher than I do, so as to regard it as something worth preserving. Now really, what your acquire is of course not food in itself, but money to buy it. That means that if left without money, people would starve to death. Or maybe rummage through garbage bins in the streets to provide sustenance, but I honestly think that particular resource is limited, and would soon be depleted. You claimed in your praxeology-thread that "One cannot coerce or force others with money alone." This is of course blatantly false, either through naiveté or dishonesty. Since money is in most cases necessary to survive, it means that people will go to disturbing lengths to acquire it. In your ideal world, that would be what determine a mans deserts. How much money he has. Voluntary action would have precious little to do with it, since no matter what you would wish to do in a given situation, you would be limited by what you are actually able to do. And you would find that given enough money, your options would increase dramatically. Say what you will about democracy, but it is the system that is best a preventing the worst possible scenario. And it seems that that is better than any other system. That means that I believe that a mans deserts is what the majority decides it to be. Same thing as his rights. Whereas in your case, the practical result would be that a mans rights is determined by his money, i.e. his power, or might. Might makes right. | ||
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Yurebis
United States1452 Posts
On July 07 2010 19:08 Fwmeh wrote: I believe you and I have vastly different view of what would constitute voluntary action. Today, more than at any time previously in the human history, people are dependent on one another. A vast vast vast majority of the people in the western world would, if left alone, starve to death. Surely even you realize that. Now, this give the people who provide you with food power over you, given that you would act to gain food so as to preserve your life. I presume you value your life higher than I do, so as to regard it as something worth preserving. The people living in big cities today can be said to be "dependent" on farmers elsewhere to bring them food. But there are two things that you've missed. First, it is a rational choice by the part of the city dwellers to rely in such a system. They evaluated that the chances of all farmers refusing to sell food at the same time would be very low, and therefore it is safe to work at the city without starving. Even in the offchance that the farmers were to all suddenly stop producing, there's still some food in the fridge and in the groceries left, which could give him some time to figure out what to do, so it wouldn't be instant death the next few days. So you can see that it's not a 100% dependence, and even if it was, I don't really see any problem with that. Second, the farmers by the same token also "depend" on the city dwellers to provide them with certain services they can not acquire in a low density population. It's funny that you chose to pick out one side of the equation and not the other. The farmers would not be exchanging their food for money if food is all they needed. They have food, if they trade it, obviously they want to buy other things. What could those things be, well, technology, drugs, guns, plastic junk, cellphones, entertainment, machines, services... whatever else you can think of. A trade no doubt is expected to make both people better off. And the converse could be true, it's expected that they'd be worse off if no trade is to be made. But I wouldn't call a voluntary trade "dependency". You can only be as dependent on a trade you expect to happen as much as you want... if you don't like to be dependent on the farmers well, start growing a bit of your own food, there's some people doing that now. On July 07 2010 19:08 Fwmeh wrote: Now really, what your acquire is of course not food in itself, but money to buy it. That means that if left without money, people would starve to death. Or maybe rummage through garbage bins in the streets to provide sustenance, but I honestly think that particular resource is limited, and would soon be depleted. Two things that I find wrong again, money itself is just a means of trade. That people pay more attention to earning an income doesn't deny the fact that money itself would have no value without goods and services being offered to be traded by it. Same deal with gold; you could have all the gold or money in the world, if no one ever trades other goods with you for that gold, you're a poor man Without money, all that means is that the economy returns to a barter type of market, where people would exchange their goods and services for more desirable goods and services. Those goods that present the most desirability and liquidity (and other particular qualities) would spontaneously rise to the top as "the new money". But of course, people could choose whatever means they want, as they can today, law aside. On July 07 2010 19:08 Fwmeh wrote: You claimed in your praxeology-thread that "One cannot coerce or force others with money alone." This is of course blatantly false, either through naiveté or dishonesty. Since money is in most cases necessary to survive, it means that people will go to disturbing lengths to acquire it. Can money command you to kill another man? Against your will? Can money make you do anything without you taking it and doing what was requested by the evil rich guy who wants you to do nasty things? No, money is an inanimate object. It's silly to think money is making people kill, rape, steal. You confound the means with the ends. It's what people want to do with that money that makes money valuable. That's one of praxeology's first lessons; a good's value is determined not by what it is but what you think can be done with it. On July 07 2010 19:08 Fwmeh wrote: In your ideal world, that would be what determine a mans deserts. How much money he has. Voluntary action would have precious little to do with it, since no matter what you would wish to do in a given situation, you would be limited by what you are actually able to do. And you would find that given enough money, your options would increase dramatically. Okay, sure, money does allow you to trade it for a lot of things, no doubt. On July 07 2010 19:08 Fwmeh wrote: Say what you will about democracy, but it is the system that is best a preventing the worst possible scenario. And it seems that that is better than any other system. That means that I believe that a mans deserts is what the majority decides it to be. Same thing as his rights. Whereas in your case, the practical result would be that a mans rights is determined by his money, i.e. his power, or might. Might makes right. What worst possible scenario? Read this if you want to know a bit bout free market law http://mises.org/daily/4147 Basically, a private court in a free market would obviously have no monopoly on jurisdiction, and would only be employed as a third party if it was hired for it and agreed upon by both parties. They would be in direct competition with other courts that may or may not use different law codes. If person A and B enter in a conflict, and person A wants to go to court X, while B wants court Y, then court X and Y would most likely provide a solution by calling another third party, court W. That's just being an example, of course, of how a non-monopolistic court system settles disputes. But what would happen is person A was mega-rich and payed court X to be extremely uncompromising against court Y? Well, that court X, by more often than not being worried about winning cases in a way that may be seen as unfair will be called less by other non-rich-evil people, and will lose credibility, therefore profits. You see, a successful market court does not make it's earnings on wins or losses of cases, but by how credible it is seen and consequently how many clients it hears. A court becomes popular by its conflict-resolution efficiency to both parties, not just the preferred or richest one. Bribes can happen. But they can happen in the present monopolistic too. The question is, for what money is worth, in which system is it cheaper and more effective to bribe a judge? The one with multiple competing courts, or the one with the one court where every case has to go to? The one where judges have to constantly improve to earn a living, or the one where judges are cycled around and paid at a fixed rate? I'd say might-makes-right should be more prominent in a one-size-fits-all democratic solution. | ||
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Sabu113
United States11048 Posts
On July 07 2010 06:45 deadbutmoving wrote: You've been brainwashed to hate Conservatism. In reality you are as Conservative as can be. The founding fathers of this country based our constitution on a Libertarian Philosophy. Anyone who tells you otherwise is full of crap. Learning some history is your friend. Christ. You know how relevant the constitution was for our first 100 years right? Surprised this thread is still surviving. It's philosophy versus fact. | ||
kineSiS-
Korea (South)1068 Posts
On July 05 2010 19:42 Neobick wrote: Depending how you define bias? Nothing is surely objective, so there are biases everywhere. And internet is a big place without an agenda, so to notice a general bias there you have to look really closely. Every opinion is represented on net. Edit: My definition of bias is only seeing things from one side, or giving one side an unfair advantage- It's like you can't read... GENERAL BIAS. Is different than the bias of a specific group, person, or entity. | ||
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hifriend
China7935 Posts
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
On July 08 2010 02:28 hifriend wrote: Come to think of it, isn't the internet largely atheist as well? How would you explain this? A factor is that you won't get discriminated against for being an atheist on the Internet, and if you do, you don't care. In real life it makes mom cry and the christian schoolgirls call you a demon... I'm just guessing though, because where I live, there's very few religious people under 40 year old. | ||
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ixi.genocide
United States981 Posts
On July 06 2010 13:08 Djzapz wrote: People wouldn't give a sufficient amount of money to build an actual infrastructure. Trying that would certainly be disastrous. If you think otherwise you make huge assumptions about human nature. Tax-cutting the rich doesn't affect the production costs and such. Lowering their taxes wouldn't directly affect their prices in a significant way. What evidence do you have that a country without a fair amount of taxation can take off at all, it has never even come close to happen. In the US, you can get an OK job fairly easily, get a comfortable apartment or even a house. You get education easily. All of this comes from the taxes people paid before. If people were going "Free for all" like what you're advocating, it would be in the same state as all of the other countries which have tried to do that. Poor and underdeveloped. The countries who have tried flat taxes have done really badly if you care. What are you suggesting? Provided you were raised in the US, so little of what you have would have been so easy to reach if there wasn't a government taking money from people in order to make it work. If you don't want to pay taxes, go away. The only reason why you want to stay in the US is because it's a good place to live. WHY is it a good place to live? Because it was built to be a good place to live. It was built with taxes. Taxes which used to be a lot higher, btw. People who try to argue for any type of anarchy expect people to be better than they are. If you were to explain anarcho-capitalism, you would make a lot of assumptions about how to build an utopia. If it could work it would be wonderful but it can't. Read the name. It's the United-States. That's a body. You're suggesting the standards of living spawned there out of thin air for the couple hundreds years you've been there? That's ridiculous. I'll state the obvious here. Your country's success is largely based on its governing body which made it quickly rise to be the most powerful country in the world. Your money represents a country. Not a bunch of people, not a landmass, but a body which is governed by a president which has taxed its people for a long, long time. It started well before the US was powerful, too. People don't know. And people obviously want others to pay for it. Everybody knows that. If a person makes $50,000 a year and some project requires 20 billions to be completed, $5000 is nothing, even $50,000 is nothing. It's foolish to expect people would chip in NEARLY enough. But I guess anarchists can distort human nature so it fits. People wouldn't give a sufficient amount of money to build an actual infrastructure. Trying that would certainly be disastrous. If you think otherwise you make huge assumptions about human nature. The only tax that we should have is income tax at less than 7% of your income. that means the government makes up 7% of our GDP. Before FDR the government took less than 5% of our GDP. Tax-cutting the rich doesn't affect the production costs and such. Lowering their taxes wouldn't directly affect their prices in a significant way. Yes it does. Business owners don't want to lose money so they find a way to keep profits however they can. If a business owner makes more than he did last year and wants to keep growing he will higher more people and create a bigger economy; If he loses another 3% of his gross income then he will cut corners and people to make that money back. What evidence do you have that a country without a fair amount of taxation can take off at all, it has never even come close to happen. In the US, you can get an OK job fairly easily, get a comfortable apartment or even a house. You get education easily. All of this comes from the taxes people paid before. If people were going "Free for all" like what you're advocating, it would be in the same state as all of the other countries which have tried to do that. Poor and underdeveloped. The countries who have tried flat taxes have done really badly if you care. America became the biggest economy in the late 1800's and didn't have any tax (except income) until the 1900's. This country has proven you wrong, just because someone or some party pushes "Progressive" ideas doesn't mean they are correct ideas (and bigger government is progressive). Provided you were raised in the US, so little of what you have would have been so easy to reach if there wasn't a government taking money from people in order to make it work. If you don't want to pay taxes, go away. The only reason why you want to stay in the US is because it's a good place to live. WHY is it a good place to live? Because it was built to be a good place to live. It was built with taxes. Taxes which used to be a lot higher, btw. On a sliding scale America is one of the lowest for taxes and government control, Other countries (GB) are becoming less and less powerful while Capitalism truly succeeds. America is a good place to live because (example) if your corner market has too high of prices everyone stops going there and he goes out of business; after that Joe's market comes in w/ cheaper prices. Taxes have never been higher than they were before Bush Jr and will continue to rise now that we have extra government spending. How else are we supposed to pay for the government 4Trillion budget (that they are going over >.>) People who try to argue for any type of anarchy expect people to be better than they are. If you were to explain anarcho-capitalism, you would make a lot of assumptions about how to build an utopia. If it could work it would be wonderful but it can't. While I'm not asking for any sort of anarchy (hence the word) I am asking and will always ask for a limited government instead of a government based on European ideals. Read the name. It's the United-States. That's a body. You're suggesting the standards of living spawned there out of thin air for the couple hundreds years you've been there? That's ridiculous. I'll state the obvious here. Your country's success is largely based on its governing body which made it quickly rise to be the most powerful country in the world. Your money represents a country. Not a bunch of people, not a landmass, but a body which is governed by a president which has taxed its people for a long, long time. It started well before the US was powerful, too. Our country is the most powerful in the world because we have a lot of resources and the government doesn't get into the way of capitalism. Why would we have someone mediate and take 20% of a deal between John and Bob. The U.S government is here to enforce federal laws, Census, and run the judicial system. The powers of congress have gone far beyond what they were before and what they should be. Because we don't have a monarchy to represent us it really is just a bunch of people and therefor will last longer than said monarchy. The U.S was powerful before we were our own country (Defeating the greatest country on earth at the time, even after the english/french wars). People don't know. And people obviously want others to pay for it. Everybody knows that. If a person makes $50,000 a year and some project requires 20 billions to be completed, $5000 is nothing, even $50,000 is nothing. It's foolish to expect people would chip in NEARLY enough. But I guess anarchists can distort human nature so it fits. First off, we have taxes that should be in place. It is a citizens duty to provide some taxes. 5k out of 50k would be reasonable. Secondly the government shouldn't be building something that it doesn't have a budget for, It seems a lot of people just look at taxes as a black hole that can go for anything when really needs to be divided between things like national defense, schools and programs already out there THEN new projects built. Third point is that I can guarantee that said 20 billion dollar project would be greatly reduced if it was done by a private contractor and bidded on by companies. Since their seems to be an endless pit of tax money the words "Get it done" come to mind when thinking of the governments spending habits. [/QUOTE] | ||
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Motiva
United States1774 Posts
On July 07 2010 12:07 Rev0lution wrote: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt" Besides it's not even an argument it's just his opinion on how an ignorant person should behave when not understanding a discussion. Would you get involved in a conversation about quantum mechanics with two physicists given that you don't know shit about it? You'd come off as a douchebag. That's kind of my point. If all your staking is a possible change in perception of yourself, and yet you stand to gain a little to a vast amount of information. It's clearly +EV  Obviously to really get gritty with it, we'd have to start theorizing situations calculating the ends and means, I suppose I just disagree completely with that common quote. Better to speak out and be perceived a fool than to be a fool at the end of the day. | ||
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Salty
United States90 Posts
It's kind of like saying "do you think men in the WNBA aren't represented enough?" | ||
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3clipse
Canada2555 Posts
On July 08 2010 04:38 ixi.genocide wrote: The countries who have tried flat taxes have done really badly if you care. Not entirely true. Some countries, such as Estonia, have done very well with flat income taxes. I'm a Policy Studies student and I recently wrote a comparative jurisdiction review on the differing tax structures of Estonia, Japan and Canada. I'm pretty psyched whenever I actually find an application for my research, so here's an excerpt for anyone interested. xD "Estonia's innovative taxation system has been the subject of much critique over the past decade, the majority of it positive. There are, however, distinct disadvantages in their model of medium-low flat income tax, equal corporate tax and medium-high consumption tax. There are also some advantages which are completely inapplicable to the Canadian situation. The most notable of these advantages which only holds in the Estonian context is the symbolic and practical attractiveness that flat income and corporate taxes have imparted to foreign investors. A former soviet satellite state, Estonia has been independent only since 1991. After such an extended absorption in the communist empire, Estonia faced the same challenge that much of eastern Europe did at the time; transition into a market economy from the rubble of cultural and institutional systems deeply entrenched in the tradition of a planned economy. Somehow Estonia has managed to rise above most of its neighbours, enjoying a streak of economic prosperity which has gained it the nickname “The Baltic Tiger”. It is likely that the flat, low taxes imposed by Estonia in 1994 have been a contributing factor in signaling a fundamental regime change and encouraging foreign investment (Keen et al 2006, 39). In both a symbolic and literal sense, government is stepping out of the way and allowing the market to function with less obtrusive intervention and reallocation. The appeal and effectiveness of a flat tax in a nation with an already well-established market economy is thought to be greatly decreased, limiting the utility Canada could obtain by flattening its tax structures. One function of Estonia's tax policies that do present a clear advantage for Canada is their effect on discouraging tax evasion. Tax evasion has been steadily declining in Estonia, and while improvements to their auditing system is clearly a factor (Kriz et al 2007), the flatness of the income tax and the equal rate of corporate tax also play a role here. The steeper income tax becomes, the greater incentive citizens have to risk prosecution by illegally circumventing it. This results in total income tax revenue eventually slowing to a halt and beginning to decrease as rates rise beyond a certain threshold, an effect commonly known as the Laffer curve. It is worth noting, however, that in all eastern European states but Russia, the effects of the Laffer curve were not powerful enough to increase or maintain total personal income tax revenue when the flat tax was set towards the low end of a previously progressive tax (Kriz et al 2007, 3). On another positive note, Estonia's system decreases not only the motivation for tax evasion, but also the available means. When high-tier income taxes exceed corporate taxes, manipulative bookkeeping often takes place to reallocate funds into the less expensive tax category (Azacis et al 2008, 38). For example, corporate employees reclassify themselves as self-employed consultants and enjoy lower taxes on their incomes while performing the exact same job they have in the past. The combination of low income tax and high consumption tax in Estonia has also been evaluated by many as conductive to general macroeconomic health. Karsten Staehr (2008) reports that Estonia's low income taxes have a relevant effect on participation in the economy (although they do not entice those already working to work more hours). He has found that lowering the basic tax exemption by 10% would reduce employment by slightly less than 0.5%. Increasing the tax rate by 1% would reduce employment by 0.35%. The VAT is necessary, then, to make up the revenues lost by keeping income tax low to decrease unemployment, a vital goal during recessions. Luckily, Zeiger et al (2005) have calculated that reducing the VAT on food in Estonia is not a necessary procedure. Expanding the tax exempt threshold by linking it to the minimum wage would be a more effective measure which would likely further boost employment and provide tax relief more targeted to those who truly need it. It's also been found that the VAT often has little immediate effect on consumer goods pricing. This was exemplified when the VAT rate imposed on books in Estonia was decreased from 18% to 5% without considerable price change. It seems clear, then, that the most important taxes to keep low during times of economic slowdown are income taxes (Zeiger et al 2005, 8). Even if one is to buy into a low, flat income tax as being ideal from the above examples, there exists a fundamental question which must be addressed: is a flat tax equitable? The rationale behind a progressive tax is that, while the rich pay a larger proportion and a much larger amount of money to the government, because they are already so wealthy the amount of marginal utility derived from each dollar is phenomenally lower than that derived by those living around the poverty line. Our social responsibilities require us to provide the poor with some means of support, and lower tax rates coupled with social programs financed by the wealthy is the primary mechanism of redistribution in the modern welfare state. Keen et al (2006) argues that flat tax systems are not necessarily regressive; they may even be more progressive in certain cases. This is primarily due to the increased tax compliance of the wealthy and the increases in base tax exemptions often seen at lower levels. Fuest et al (2007) agree with this principle, but are not optimistic about the general prospects of an Estonian type flat tax applied to other western European nations. While a high flat tax with a high exemption allowance could be very progressive and equitable, “the scenario with the lowest parameter values for basic allowance and tax rate is the only alternative that leads to positive labour supply and significantly positive welfare effects” (14). A tradeoff would have to be made between an equitable system and an efficient one which promotes employment." | ||
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
On July 08 2010 05:41 3clipse wrote: Not entirely true. Some countries, such as Estonia, have done very well with flat income taxes. Estonia doing "very well" is an overstatement. Also flat tax obviously can do ok when there's not an huge disparity between the people's income. Pretty sure nobody in Estonia goes around with A billion. Let alone 50. And I say it can "do ok", that's quite relative. | ||
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