The key issue for libertarians in the ACT is a Canberra dragway. The LDP have been recruiting at Canberra’s Summernats. In Queensland, it’s guns.
[Via The Dead Roo.]
431 Responses to “Libertarians for loud noise?”
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The hypocrisy of this is a bit staggering. Noise and other externalities aside, the dragway can only be built with a substantial ACT government capital grant and probably an ongoing subsidy.
Where do these “libertarians” get off putting their hand in my pocket like this, at a time when the ACT can’t fund its hospitals and schools properly?
Vote 1 for a Canberra Dragway? Is the movie and now the Priscilla musical, not enough?
The LDP have a cunning plan.
They’re going to win popular power in Australia one sociopathic fringe group at a time.
I’m not aware of any LDP policy promising to build a dragway. Here are our actual ACT policies.
So, why does the ACT LDP set up a stall with a banner “Vote One for a Canberra dragway”, Yobbo?
Clearly the LDP have been the victims of entrism!
Trotskyite petrolheads: SHAME SHAME SHAME!
This is a tragic day for Australian democracy.
If people are happy to stump up the dough themselves, I don’t have a problem with it. What’s with the fun police around here all of a sudden?
I’ve heard their next marketing exercise is to appeal to the good citizens of Melbourne who’ve had to take the law into their own hands because of lax police response to anti-social behaviour. Fed-up residents torched a couple of cars belonging to hoons doing burn-outs.
Where does it say the LDP is looking for state sponsorship?
Funnily enough, I seem to recall reading that summernats required ACT government funding to survive this year. If this is the case, then following on from DD’s comment, it would appear that these so-called libertarians may have benefitted to some extent from subsidisies by taxpayers allowing them a venue to promote a scheme that would require further subsidies from taxpayers!!!
I can just see the next one: “Vote LDP for Free Beer” (you’ve gotta pay for it though, yourself)
Well yes Damien, and perhaps the roads are funded more than they should be but we can’t avoid using them. What’s your point?
Regardless of whether summernats could survive without subsidy or not if the LDP decided that summernats is a good recruiting ground, why should they hesitate to take full advantage of it? That is a mere *prudential* issue of furthering one’s interests, not a policy one. Why should libertarians have to handicap themselves to promote their agenda? They pay taxes like everyone else.
So do you support the idea that if you benefited from free education you have no right to support HECS? Lots of efficient policy reforms would be torpedoed this way.
Drag racing contributes excessively to greenhouse gas emissions. They must be stopped on environmental grounds.
silkworm,
Would you support (or at least not ban) carbon neutral drag races? If they planted enough trees? Or do you just oppose them as part of another agenda?
Perfectly logical Jason Soon.
Either the LDP has a policy on the Canberra Hoondrome, or it doesn’t.
It would appear that in the LDP universe (a small and dark one by all appearances) everything has a price, including truth.
Jason, if you were flogging margerine or toothpaste, we would understand, Jason. But I think you have claims to being a political party with integrity.
Jason, I was simply pointing out the irony of the LDP’s approach. In any event, as DD pointed out, they were advertising a policy that would require government subsidies to succeed.
I’m surprised you lefties have a problem with the LDP at Summernats. Or even with supporting shooters.
It’s hard to think of more blue collar sports than motor sports and sporting shooting. This is not silvertail territory folks, these are working class interests. Remember them?
The LDP obviously does not support spending taxpayers money on a dragway in Canberra. However, it does support the right of motor sports enthusiasts to establish a dragway without being regulated to death by disapproving upper class lefties.
Just so you don’t keep getting it wrong, the LDP’s traffic policy is here.
And try not to be so damn elitist.
Stop being intellectually dishonest or just plain obtuse Katz (actually likely the latter, from what I’ve seen of your performance, you’re a typical sufferer of verbal diarhhoea i.e. low on the actual IQ). I didn’t say the LDP should compromise on supporting spending for a dragway. I said the LDP has as much right to take advantage of the summernats as everyone else.
What’s the LDP policy on the environment, especially global warming?
Yet more irony!!! David asserts that upper class lefties are preventing average working class men and women from enjoying themselves. In doing so, he presents the LDP as defenders of the working class. Karl Marx must be turning in his grave!!!
Derrida, no one said anything about paying for it out of taxpayers dollars. It’s up to the enthusiasts and fans to pay for their own recreational activities. The LDP just wants to make sure that if a reasonable suggestion is put forward on where and how a dragstrip can be built, that the ACT government won’t ban it or bury it under reams of red tape in the name of the environment or the ‘public good’.
What seems hypocritical to me is that certain people and government officials will call for the banning of a facility like this in the name of the ‘public good’ when a large section of the public want it.
Katz’s view of working class Australians is perfectly clear from his earlier comment, David.
What’s the bet that Katz is your typical limousine leftie born with a silver spoon in his mouth? Pastoralist’s son? Doyen of a family of barristers?
Now you’re just being idiotic, Damien. You’re supposed to be an economist. You run a great economic rationalist blog. But you believe capitalism is the enemy of the working class?
Actually, given my previouys comment that mentions Karl Marx, I should note that I tend to think that the relatively free operation of market forces is likely to result in higher welfare for everyone, regardless of their class, than the alternative. Nonetheless, there are circumstances where intervention is required. These circumstances include environmental and other externalities. It is certainly not unreasonable to have some planning restrictions to account for these.
Revealing, isn’t it?
Jason, I did not say that capitalism was the enemy of the working class. I was not making a comment on economics. I was making a comment on the fact that most people of left wing persuasion tend to think much more in terms of class differences than others. In particular, I get the impression that Marxist economists view themselves as promoting the interests of the working class. It is somewhat ironic, then, that the left would be accused of preventing the working class from enjoying themselves.
Ironic indeed. If the left were genuinely interested in the working class they would endorse its sporting interests including shooting and drag racing. Instead it turns up its nose with elitist disdain.
Marx would turn in his grave at what the left has become, not the LDP.
Know your enemy!
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/leftlib.html
ALL of these thieving ‘libertarian’ creeps I’ve seen are statists – many of them are also xtian.
We are convinced that freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice, and that socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality so long live democratic and especially LIBERTARIAN-SOCIALISM!
Real libertarians don’t need no dragway (nor stinkin’ badges). We just race on the street.
wow, those vigilantes are keen. aren’t they concerned about tit-for-tat? i mean you can’t move a house from a street, or a street from a suburb…
the LDP rhetoric and actual policy in that ropad policy document is a classic case of right-wing libertarian ’small thinking’ where they ignore effects of individual behaviour that emerges on a scale beyond the individual, the thinking is posited as an expression of popularist ideologies, and from what i can figure out some of the policy ideas and justifications are just plain nonsense.
there is no evidence that a sentient being with a snifter of intelligent came up with this point besides the fact it has been written up and intended for communication.
am i to assume that these libertarians are all litigation lawyers looking to make a buck in actions brought by relatives of those that died ‘insignificant deaths’ against whichever government tries this little social experiment? because that is the only way i can see this point being logical
that is just funny. no, it is.
is this based on anything besides raw ideological sentiment recycled into policy (which is more distasteful than the current sewerage into drinking water issue)?
they are only the highlights of stupidity, more substantive comments can be made about the focus and rhetorical accent of the policy as being distinctly unproductive for working towards a better system of automobility.
only one good point was made (as half-a-point to something else):
sign-posted measures should be increased
David, the second example only involves irony if you believe both that the upper class is left leaning in the tradition of Marxist economists and that they are trying to prevent the working class from having fun. Neither of these is necessarily true. While I suspect that the people who are opposed to the dragway are probably also concerned with the welfare of less well off people, I doubt that see it as an upper class versus working class issue. The dragway is more of an environmental iussue for them. In particular, I suspect that they are concerned about noise externatities. Some people will also object to the use of public funds to either build or operate the dragway when those funds could be better used elsewhere. Both of these objections are quite reasonable and need to be addressed.
Anyway, in an attempt to be funny, I appear to have given the misleading impression that I viewed markets as bad things. This is not the case. My view is that the free operation of market forces, subject to suitable interventions to correct for market failures and inequality, is likely to result in better outcomes for most people.
You also need to take account of the history of the debate about the dragway in Canberra. You claim that the LDP’s policy is that it should go ahead onnly if it is funded by private sources. Yet much of the debate in Canberra has been about the extent that it would require government funding. For example, it appears that an upfront capital grant was going to be provided to assist with building the dragway. There has also been debate over whether or not the dragway would require further government support to actually operate. See the following link for example:
http://www.abc.net.au/stateline/act/content/2006/s1725326.htm .
The LDP enviro policy’s quite good, too.
ie do nothing – cf Easter Island
This whole project is missing the point. Drag racing is only fun if it is illegal.
Well, gotta go — Smokey’s on my tail, and so forth.
Lol -Yes it’s called the speedo guys!
What a crock. I also suspect libertarians have a rather unpleasant agenda when it comes to feminist issues but the website is coy on the subject.
This has nothing to do with the ‘fun police’, and everything to do with the geography of the ACT which doesn’t allow for a dragway to exist without greatly affecting nearby residents. It appears that Libertarians could care less.
There’s a world class facility in Goulburn, only an hour or so away.
Feminism means a movement relating to the liberation of women.
How is treating an individual as a sovereign entity antiethical to the above definition?
Unless you are referring to a proposed scuttling of the Office for the Status of Women.
What exactly do you suspect? Libertarians are one of the few groups who truly adhere to a philosophy of a woman owning her own life, choices, body and destiny. Not to mention equality of the sexes with regards to law. By the sounds of it I very much doubt your version of feminism can truly claim the same beliefs.
Junior Johnson: in nine words, you’ve taken the prize for makin’ a damn sight of sense.
May your carburettor always mix you a perfect cocktail, sweet, heady and full of air, a thousand times a minute or more.
Given the oh-so-sincere support of the alleged sacred sport of the working class, I’d suggest there’s been a bit of the slider clutch to ding a ding dang dang the dang a long ling long.
I can see how if these generous souls gave every voter a car and a gun they would be very popular for a while, but if you really want to have a party for the rich just join the Liberals. You’ll find your small government rhetoric will fit in well there, and you will get to cash in public assets to prove how little government you can actually handle.
The Poorer people will just ignore the LDP as there seems to be little if any reason for them to vote for paying more for less services.
I am equally sure that the competition for LDP votes will come from the right and not the left so I won’t be spending much time thinking about their policies. To my mind policies need to directed as those who can’t afford to pay for sevices the rich can look after themselves.
Yeah, anthony, he built mine too.
Right… so let me get this straight:
“Vote 1 for a Canberra Dragway” – LDP Propaganda
but…
“The LDP obviously does not support spending taxpayers money on a dragway in Canberra.â€? – David Leyonhjelm, LDP federal executive member.
“no one said anything about paying for it out of taxpayers dollars. It’s up to the enthusiasts and fans to pay for their own recreational activities.â€? – Michael Sutcliffe, LDP federal executive member.
Really now, a party so young to have so completely mastered the art of decievingly worded policy commitments!
That’s great Mr Devil, he actually ate my hot dog.
Anthony,
……….it’s a love affair, man,..
You poor misled soul, Kieran. You may be shocked to find that publicly useable facillities can exist without the government paying for them through taxation! It’s simply amazing! You need to get out of that ‘tax and spend’ paradigm and get on the freedom train, baby!
Kieran, I might also add that public facilities like a drag strip only tend to exist when the government gets out of the way. If it was Japanese herb garden for meditation and soy-latte appreciation it would probably not only have a good chance of funding in the ACT, it would be given a large section of prime public real estate by the lake somewhere between the High Court and the National Library. The LDP simply maintains a position that neither of these recreational facilities should be funded out of the public purse, and that the government has no right to decide whether they should be allowed to go ahdead on a basis of what is fashionable or politically correct. We’re not claiming that drag racing is the most environmentally friendly activity a person could take up, simply that it’s no worse than any number of permissable activities within our society. Just because Larvatus Prodeo readers think people following drag racing are a ’sociopathic fringe group’ doesn’t make it wrong.
Vote for us, you can have your dragway.
Just build it yourselves according to existing property covenants.
We won’t manipulate zoning, covenants, subsidise for or against you or create a blanket ban on such activity. On the other hand all land will become freehold including vast amounts of unused crown land.
It is inane to say that compressing that to a slogan is deceitful or manipulative.
So..
I get to put my ten million watt speakers on a trailer and park them outside Jason’s house and play my special “Hiroshima: sound of a city exploding” tapes do I?
I am bloody sure I could put a camera on it and sell a streamed version of his increasingly deranged responses and make a tidy profit.
Free enterprise, no government subsidy, and entertainment for the masses.
Herding cats, eh?
You look pretty organised to me
But they’re not, are they? That’s why the thing needs political support…
Nope.
Today, we’re the hypocrisy police.
Tomorrow, we’ll declare drag racing to be antithetical to the Aims of the Revolution,and THEN we’ll be the fun police.
David tiley, you know that’s not what we’re doing with our policy.
Does anyone on LP actually have any relevant and intelligent criticism? You put up the article on our policy, we turned up to discuss and defend it, and this is the best you can do?
“Does anyone on LP actually have any relevant and intelligent criticism? ”
Yes. What’s with your logo? That’s a seriously naff piece of design that looks like it belongs to a dodgy charter airline flying out of Vanuata. On the other hand maybe that is the kind of vibe you’re aiming for.
Also, what’s wrong with Wakefield? I’d imagine petrolheads of all people wouldn’t mind driving for a hour to indulge themselves at an existing top-notch facility.
Glad you’re happy to admit that.
You miss my point.
The simple fact of the matter is that “Vote 1 for a Canberra Drag way” will be read, for better or worse, by the punters as “vote for us and we’ll build you a dragway”. Furthermore, despite any qualification you might add after the fact, you are well aware of this.
Hence, promising a drag way, then int he fine print actually dodging the literal intent of the propaganda, which on the part of the LDP equals standard political deception.
Or, in light of your supposed ideals, hypocracy.
damn, I should really learn to proof read, especially with the lack of a public edit function in the comments.
Sorry – I’ll repost my previous comment with html markups so the libertarians can interpret it correctly…
<sarcasm>Tomorrow, we’ll declare drag racing to be antithetical to the Aims of the Revolution, and THEN we’ll be the fun police.</sarcasm>
Readers?
Despite rumours to the contrary, we’re not a COLLECTIVE HIVE MIND.
I’d have thought libertarians would be averse to assuming that because one person proffers a view in a particular forum, it’s shared by everyone who participates in that forum.
I expect to see the next LDP banner display that electorally enticing slogan then.
If the LDP (now where did that name come from) accepts the value of legislation that prevents excessive noise, they are acknowledging that the opponents of the track have a point.
From then on, it becomes a question of fact – will it or won’t it be noisy? I imagine the residents of Goulburn might have an opinion about that.
I live about five hundred metres from Albert Park in Melbourne. Personally, I don’t object to the chaos and noise of the race itself, but I am surely grateful it is not a permanent fixture.
Mark Hill: perhaps you’d like to explain the following comment you made on the “Thoughts on Freedom” blog: ”
Incest: As long as you’re consenting, I don’t care what you do, you weirdo. Now Bob, is this worth sending people to prison over?”
I mean I would say ‘yes’ but I’m clearly not living in your enlightened libertarian Universe. Perhaps I misunderstood though: I’m prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt.
There’s nothing wrong with Wakefield. It just simply hasn’t stopped people calling for a drag strip in the ACT. So long as they are willing to pay for the convenience and adhere to realistic planning laws then the LDP supports their right to have this facility.
I’m not a drag racing aficionado so I couldn’t compare the peculiarities of Wakefield and put up a case why there should be a different strip. Every time I’ve asked this question from various drag racing fans I’ve had various answers. My personal belief is that there is a bit of a rev head culture in and around Canberra, and as the nations capital it’s seen as a centre for ‘club level’ motorsport and car enthusiast events for a number of reasons. The main one is Summernats, but there’s also the dirt bike, flat track and go-cart tracks out near the airport which attract a lot of people who compete on various circuits. I personally believe that the people who attend these events want to round out their motorsport following with drag racing. This includes both the locals and people who travel to compete or spectate on the motorsport circuits.
And good on them. The LDP supports their right to the recreational activities of their choice.
One good turn deserves another.
And apart from you Mark (and maybe Glen), I’ve not seen evidence that anyone disagreed with that assessment, either. Much of this thread speaks volumes about various LP readers’ unwillingness to acknowledge that people you oppose may have reasonable views. As far as I can see, the only person who actually bothered to do any reading (and thinking) was Glen. Everyone else has either got on their greenie high horse or engaged in pointless snarks that reveal much about both (a) their ignorance and (b) their contempt for people who amuse themselves in ’socially unacceptable’ ways.
So that was explained to people who joined at the stall with the banner “Vote 1 for a Canberra Dragway”, was it, Michael?
Given what Damien and others have said about the context of the debate in the ACT and that the debate entailed taxpayer funding for the dragway.
From:
to
in only 62 comments.
Can anyone else spot the
hasty retreatstrategic refinement of policy?I don’t think so at all, SL. The comments here engage with the issues and do so politely, and are largely directed to whether or not the LDP is being disingenous with its electioneering/recruiting. Surely you’re not thinking of this sort of discourse as the sort of standard we should be aspiring to? I’d hate to say it was representative of Catallaxy as a libertarian forum:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/?p=2504#comment-17203
This is a lie. We make it perfectly clear that we don’t support funding from the public purse for these kinds of the facilities, or any other number of things. Anyone who cares to ask any question on this matter or look at our philosophy will be immediately aware of this.
Furthermore, the first hurdle to the drag way in the ACT is not funding from the public purse. It’s the red tape from the government, opposition from people who don’t like these ‘yobbo’ sports and have managed to get the government to pander to their bias, and people who are just fearful of a facility like this becasue they don’t have the facts (and the government plays on their fear). We oppose all of these things, and believe the government has no right to judge whether someone’s recreational activity is fashionable and politically correct enough to be permitted. So even if they didn’t ask questions about our policy, but cared about a drag way, we are representing their interests.
Nice try Kieran, but no cigar.
And signed up a few members to help with the AEC requirements into the bargain?
I’ve just reread the whole thread, Mark. A couple of people seem to want to hold the LDP to the highest possible electioneering standards (a very dangerous activity for those who’ve ever supported either the Rodent or the Kruddmeister). Most of it – including your post – is whinging about the noise all those nasty bogan yobs will make, and worrying that they may have guns as well. And a failure to understand that libertarians are always very, very upfront about three things:
1. Cutting taxes 2. Shrinking government 3. You want it, you pay for it.
I have no problems per se with the LDP targeting niche markets with hot button issues and barely veiled bribes. That’s just politics as usual.
And if they ever get a balance of power in any level of government, I’ll bet you a bottle of Glenlivet Gran Reserva to a UDL we’ll see even more politics as usual from factional infighting and bastardy to looking after mates and luxuriating in the perks of office. After all, as libertarians love to keep reminding everyone, we’re all too human.
My post really doesn’t say anything other than “this is what the LDP have been up to”, SL. It’s three sentences.
But it does seem to me that the use of such slogans and the choice of venue in order to induce people to join the party (I’m imagining that the LDP didn’t set up stalls at nudist conventions or the Nimbin marijuana fest or wherever else people might have recreations that should be free from government interference) lays the party open to charges of, at best, cynicism.
You can’t avoid that just by saying “other parties are as bad”.
The LDP also didn’t choose to highlight its opposition to most government spending (which as noted on this thread, has the potential to piss off heaps of voting constituencies):
http://ldpblog.wordpress.com/2006/11/23/what-to-cut-first
Err, no.
And I think that, as a number of other commenters have mentioned, excessive noise is a reasonable sort of externality to be concerned about. The two recreational practices I’ve just mentioned – ie nudism and pot smoking – both arguably have far less impact on others who don’t choose to participate in them. The choice of dragracing is obviously one that’s been made for a purpose. I’m just hoping that the tons of new members the website crows about have a full understanding of what they’re signing up for. That’s all.
If people want to get into recreational shooting or car racing, I don’t have a problem with it provided that it’s properly regulated so that the adverse impacts on those who are affected or potentially affected are taken into account.
And signed up a few members to help with the AEC requirements into the bargain?
We didn’t really need Summernats to achieve AEC requirements. The ones who filled out a registration form are more of a ‘buffer’ in this regard, in case lots of people resign or whatever. And we wouldn’t put them to the AEC anyway without first seeing if they adhered to all of our beliefs and wanted to be a member. Because, as you might know, the AEC conducts audits and we need people who are willing to say they are a member when asked by the AEC telephone operator.
It’s more about getting a list of people who may be responsive to our ideas if we contact them occasionally in the future. And you must admit, if you’re the party for freedom and individualism, Summernats probably isn’t a bad place to advertise?
Skepticlawyer, thank you for support, however as far as I’m aware the LDP has a faultless record with regards to electioneering standards. Everything is based on the classical liberalist philosophy, it’s clear for anyone to see, and we are truly the party of principle.
Yes, I imagine you outlined to all the prospective members there your opposition to middle class welfare.
skeptic, your claim that criticism of the LDP displays contempt for working people is itself an example of the presumption you’re condemning. My criticism, and probably that of others, is of the duplicity in the LDP’s promotion, not of the demographic you’re targeting.
It’s instructive that many libertarian enthusiasts were quick to categorise motor sports enthusiasts as working class and as a demographic different from their own. That categorisation says a lot more about libertarians than anyone else.
From my reading of LDP policies, the promotion to antique gun fans and motor sports fans was probably misleading if it didn’t explain to those groups what other positions your party supported. And, no, the major parties can’t get away with blatant misrepresentation to special interest groups because they know they would be exposed and crucified by the media and the opposition.
We haven’t done it yet, but it may well happen in the future. We have done gay and lesbian events however, on gay marriage and lifestyle choices. (And no Mark, we didn’t have a sign up saying that they also had to pay for their own marriages and lifestyle choices without government assistance).
We certainly support nudism (in appropriate places or on private property), and see marijuana use primarily as a ‘victimless crime’ which requires legislative reform.
But not:
4. Advertising slogan only. Actual results may vary.
Seriously, SL – the vast majority of posts on this thread haven’t about lambasting ‘bogan yobs’ – they’ve been about pointing out the hypocrisy of that campaign slogan, given your claimed points of principle. Your comment is as disingenuous as your campaign slogan itself.
But that’s OK, because:
Mind you, I’ll grant it’s a difficult position to defend without being disingenuous.
Even Jason Soon appears to have abandoned the cause…
Nimbin is definitely on the agenda, Mark – especially now we have enough people for NSW registration.
Crankynick, read the rest of the thread, ffs.
All pigs queued and ready for take-off, Tony.
“and we are truly the party of principle.”
I’m quite sure you are, as are most fledging political parties. The problem is in acquiring the power to put those principles into action which requires a lot of wheeling and dealing, compromising, pandering and other well..unprincipled behaviour. Stay brave and true! And don’t let the bedbugs bite.
Well, that’s kinda my point, Michael. A lot of the Summernats crowd are going to be benefitting from the sorts of welfare/tax breaks the Howard government has put in place. In fact for the majority of them who are straight, they’re going to benefit a lot more in terms of support for their “lifestyle choices” than gay and lesbian folks. The LDP has every right to sell its policies and its principles, of course, but I’d have thought that it would do better to do so by explaining exactly what they entail. That was the point of my link to the “cutting govermnent spending” thread on your blog.
Well, Mark, it was a car festival, so no, these kinds of conversations didn’t generally come up. However, we did have our economic expert on hand (he’s in the photo) for when they did. And occasionally they did, and we outlined our position. But believe it or not, most issues centred around car-enthusiast stuff like modified vehicles, drag strips etc and individual freedom.
To add some context to this discussion…
Shortly before summernats the ACT government made a decision to ban the construction of a new dragway. The government has also banned the use of the pre-existing dragway. The federal government has also added restrictions that prevent a dragway.
We are opposed to these restrictions. The viability of a new dragway is an open question… but the pre-existing dragway is much easier to make financially viable.
It is unreasonable to expect a party to outline their complete policy on a banner. We had our full transport policy on the table, along with information about the dragway.
Most of these welfare/tax breaks are simply churn, Mark. Most people have no trouble grasping (and preferring) a $30,000 tax-free threshold over baby bonuses, family tax benefit (everyone hates the form) and the like.
Actually, I’ll read into it, instead.
Jason Soon didn’t get the point of the slogan, and thought that you were “launching their debut in Canberra with a spending program?”
But I’m sure that your organisers at the event were explaining the nuances of your position to the 900 people that signed up on the day.
It’s an easy position to defend because it’s logically consistent and based on clear morality…………….so long as you’re willing to be honest and open with yourself and everyone else, and are prepared to make the difficult calls when they come up and not cop out. I honestly feel I could destroy any economic left wing position in a logical argument, as I could a right wing conservative one. At the end of it I’ll be arguing on logic and you’ll be arguing on emotion.
Jason Soon, while a great bloke, never really was fully with the LDP cause. I don’t even think he’s a non-voting member. He’s more of a classical liberalist intellectual and economic rationalist (in my opinion).
Perhaps, SL, but that’s not the case anyone was putting. And I think (having read over the cutting spending thread) you’d need to point out as well that the LDP would basically be getting the government out of health and education. I don’t think you’d find that that’s an easy electoral sell!
And was also smart enough to see the slogan for the stupid idea that it was.
Jason’s a member, Michael, and his position is the same as mine – if people are prepared to stump up, their property, their choice. I must admit I didn’t know that the ACT govt had banned the use of the existing dragway (in which case residents have the government to blame for people hooning through their streets).
Anna, you & Michael both need to read the rest of the thread. Just sayin.
Dude, there is no way I can take you seriously if you’re going to say things like that.
OK – here is my premise:
The LDP slogan “Vote 1 for a Canberra Dragway” is electorally dishonest, given the broader principles which the LDP espouses.
Discuss.
I’ll be honing my emotions over in the corner.
The point, sl, is that his reaction was probably the reaction of most of the 900 new members.
Did they all get the benefit of a catallaxy thread?
Well he’s an economist and intellectual, Anna, so he’s looking for the economic basis and deeper meaning in everything. Believe it or not, out of the 900 people who put their name down on that day, not all of them were from that particular bent. I’m quite certain that some of them (perhaps even a majority!) knew that what we were defending is their choice of recreational activity against the latte-lefty, politically correct crowd who want to force their views on everyone else i.e. probably people like you.
If I set up a stall outside the local school with a sign that said “Vote 1 for a new childcare centre”, almost everyone would assume I meant “vote for me and the government will build one”, not “vote for me and we’ll make sure there are no impediments to you building one yourself”. If I mean the second and I know people will think the first, I’m being dishonest.
And defending people against “against the latte-lefty, politically correct crowd who want to force their views on everyone else”? Dog whistling, were you?
This issue has been discussed in some detail above. Read the thread and get specific if you want. I’ll refer you to this previous post as a summary of our position:
Michael and John were both at Summernats, and the big issue seems to have been a unilateral government decision to close the existing dragway, which does seem to be particularly stupid and wasteful. This is particularly the case if the dragway was shut in response to complaints by residents who had moved to the area after its construction.
Complaints in similar circumstances have led to a large number of live music venues being shut down, but depend on government action to have teeth. Traditional legal arguments with respect to the tort of nuisance accord the first resident party priority.
The question is, how many of them knew that this defense was going to be qualified with:
the first time the slogan saw any serious scrutiny?
And, in defense of Jason Soon – why does his being an economist preclude him from being able to spot stupid political stunts for what they are?
So you didn’t tell people that you weren’t intended to build it from taxpayers money as thy signed the form?
How does that quote advance your claim of electoral integrity?
And, on the other point – “unilateral government decision to close the existing dragway” from SL -
Was it a unilateral decision, with special unfair legisation introduced, or the application of “realistic planning laws”?
No need to defend Jason, no one was attacking him.
the first time the slogan saw any serious scrutiny?
I’ll reiterate my previous point, that someone like Jason who was aware of the party and knew exactly where our philosophy was heading, would have a different assessment of a slogan like that than someone who had never heard of the LDP or the idea of libertarianism.
This country does not have a strong history of libertarian thought. Some people have never heard of these ideas in the form of a consistent political philosophy. I am personally quite certain that plenty of people knew we were defending a politically incorrect lifestyle choice i.e. promoting individual freedom. That is what the slogan was meant to convey, and as far as I can see, that’s what it did.
So let’s get this straight: Jason knows what LDP policies are, yet assumed you were promoting the use of government funds to build a speedway.
But people who “have never heard of these ideas in the form of a consistent political philosophy” will naturally know intuitively that you in fact are promoting a policy that’s consistent with the philosophy they’ve never heard of.
???
That all reads like special pleading, Michael.
Suddenly the slogan has to convey a whole heap of subtle points, apparently. But then it’s too complex to explain to people at the event what the LDP means by its economic policies unless they ask!
Huh?
Only people who are “politically incorrect” get to make choices and live their individual freedom?
Yes… That is pretty much my point.
So, one of your own philosophical thinkers who is grounded in the history of libertarian thought assumed it was a cheap policitical stunt involving large amounts of Government spending.
BUT:
Other people who have no grounding in your consistent political philosophy are going to immediately connect it with your broader agenda, and just know that they’ll have to pay for it themselves, and that it will have to have no other external negatives…
Not sure that argument makes a lot of logical sense, dude.
True. You merely disavowed him – not quite the same thing, granted.
Anyway, if all the LDP was doing was to try to protest a government decision and the alleged political correctness behind it, why not have a petition for people to sign just on that issue?
As opposed to making it a recruitment tool for electoral registration purposes.
Since you were clearly not aiming to convey anything much about the LDP’s broader political philosophy, by your own admission.
Mark and Anna, this is ridiculous. John made the context perfectly clear in his comment. So has Michael. They know what they said and have no reason to lie. The LDP’s platfrom was on the table. When you join you get the policies handed to you. Sure, lots of people in the major political parties probably don’t read the party platform, but lots of them do, too. It now seems that you’re more interested in attacking a new party that may erode what’s left of the ALP’s working class base. And Anna, does the ALP pay you to go around head-kicking for it?
SL, there’s no comparison, really. If the ALP or the Liberal Party set up a stall everyone has a good idea of what they stand for, because they’re major parties and have been for many decades.
Perhaps that’s why he thought there was a conflict?
This still does not detract from my previous point that people who saw that slogan understood that we were defending a politically incorrect choice of recreational activity. That was the first thing on their minds, and considering that when you are electioneering like that you need get your message across quickly, that’s the message we got across with our slogan. There is nothing unusual about this, and as I’ve previously said, if they gave us more of their time we certainly were ready to outline our policies. There is nothing morally wrong with this, as you are implying. If they have’t heard of the philosophy of libertariansim we needed to start with one of the basic tenets: individual freedom and choice.
I’m not that strong a Labor partisan as you might think, really, but I don’t think the ALP has much to worry about to be honest with you.
But you’re not electioneering, you’re trying to gather signatures to get AEC registration as a political party. If you were being honest about it, you’d be taking the time to talk to people about what you stand for, and you’d be asking people to sign up to a mailing list for further information not a membership form.
Mark — The difference between your childcare example and the dragway example is that the ACT govt had previously shutdown a dragway and just prior to summernats had vetoed consideration of an alternative site. It is important to understand the context. A more appropriate comparison would be if the government had just banned soccer and we said “LDP supports soccer”.
Every political party uses slogans that will attract attention. And none of those slogans have all the details of a policy in them. Most people didn’t want a long discussion of political philosophy, although some did and we were happy to oblige. Some disagreed with us… some agreed.
My suspicion is that some people did support us because we were seen as un-PC. It’s not that PC people don’t get to make choices, but many people associated with cars and guns are acutely aware that PC people don’t like them. I’ve received my far share of distain when people find out I own a gun. Bigotry is alive and well within the left.
Also, it’s worth noting that the LDP forum is not LDP policy. The forum is for open discussion. Policy is written up as party policy.
I don’t have to do any head-kicking, Helen. You guys look set to fuck up all by yourselves.
But Anna is, Mark, and you’ve already lost one good blogger to internal ALP shit-fighting. That’s why I’m trying to work out where this attempt to portray the LDP is a party of liars is coming from.
I don’t know why you’d call it bigotry, John. I know a few people who own guns because they’re recreational shooters. They don’t necessarily advocate looser gun laws, and some vote Labor. I’d never think less of anyone or judge their politics on those grounds, nor, as I’ve said, do I care if people like drag racing. It doesn’t do anything for me, but I still don’t think reasonable objections to the nuisance excessive noise does cause to a lot of people are addressed by dismissing those people as “latte lefties” or whatever.
Doesn’t it suck when you have to defend a dumb decision of your parties leadership – one that makes it look like you’ve abandonded the principles that you’re supposed to stand for in the pursuit of a temporary political advantage?
Are you denying that at a stall at the SummerNats you buggers displayed a nice big banner that said “Vote 1 for a Canberra Dragway?”
’cause I could have sworn I saw it in the picture.
Anyone who glanced over at your stall, would come under the mistaken impression that you were a political party proposing to build some kind of drag way in Canberra.
This is nothing but the kind of scrutiny a political party should be put under. I’m sure you aren’t suggesting that libertarians should be exempt from that.
I’ve said nothing about the policy itself, only criticised what I believe to be dishonest electioneering and recruiting tactics.
We are both members of political parties, Helen. I’ve never suggested that you aren’t allowed to criticise the ALP, have I?
I think you’re over-reacting, SL. It may well be that this represents naivete more than dishonesty. I hope so. I’m standing by my belief that the slogan is disingenuous. I’m not trying to portray the LDP in any particular light – everyone who reads what I write would know that I’m critical of the ALP more often than not. But I think that this sort of conduct deserves to be discussed for what it is.
This convseration is going all over the place. To clarify:
SL — we didn’t have the entire party platform on the table. We did have a range of party slogans (“you pay too much tax”, “reduce the fuel tax” etc) and our material had our usual set of quotes (“I would prefer the inconvenience of too much liberty than too little liberty” etc)… but the only complete policy document was the transport one.
The LDP certainly has no desire to distance ourselves from Jason. He is a party member and a bloody good ambassador for the cause.
I’m not sure what Michael & crankynic are talking about. I am happy to admit that many of our members don’t know all the details about all our policies. This is true for pretty much all members of all parties. People often join parties because of key issues and I can’t see how this is new, unique, dishonest or even vaguely interesting.
We didn’t force people to join and we sent all new members a follow-up letter giving them the chance to quit. There is plenty of information available about the LDP, and we directed all new members to our webpage.
Next step – the ALP equivalent of a trust fund, Australians for Honest Politics, perhaps? This is particularly irritating coming from representatives of major parties that have lied and lied and lied again to the Australian people, when John and Michael have made it abundantly clear about the banner, the slogan and recent activities by the ACT government. Feh.
That’s great.
But what about the rest of the crowd, who simply walked past a sign that linked the LDP with what looks like support for a government-funded speedway? It isn’t just about members, it’s about voters, and this would have given them a very misleading view of what you stand for.
If the LDP wants to match the standards of the major parties then that’s cool. But you don’t get to pretend that you’re also more principled than they are.
Given that most of the posts I write about politics involve issues that are conscience votes in the ALP, I’m not sure how you can say that I’m any sort of head-kicker for the party.
I’m a member, and I spend a lot of my time criticising the ALP and trying to make it better. This is an opportunity for the LDP to do likewise, and take on board the criticisms of people who are seeing your campaigns from the outside.
Mark — I wasn’t calling you a bigot, or anybody in particular on this blog. I was thinking of my previous associates given their distainful response to my hobby & other similar situations that I (and plenty of others) have been in.
I’m certainly not trying to say that lefties are generally bigots either. Just that there is that element and because they only hate “bad people” they often don’t even bother to hide their bigotry.
FWIW, from what I know of you, you are a person of high integrity and tolerant & polite towards people with different lifestyles and opinions. The opposite of a bigot.
I can see why the slogan would seem misleading to people who didn’t have the context of what had happened previously in Canberra, and it’s therefore reasonable to raise the issue. I hope that when people consider the context they will see that it was a reasonable slogan that correctly showed that we (unlike the government) were supportive of people who are interested in a dragway.
The LDP has no problem with criticism and we’re always happy to take up the debate. Hopefully we will have plenty of chances to do this on more substantive policy issues closer to the election.
John has done a reasonable job of clarifying the context here, SL.
Neither he nor Michael have done any kind of job of convincing anyone that the slogan was not disingenuous, even in the context.
But I tell you what – there’s an easy way to settle this.
Send some DLP stuff over to WA. Get some people to sit at the Kwinana motorplex with all of the gear, minus that particular banner. If you get any kind of similar response, I’ll climb right down and accept that the DLP really is the voice of the Australian working class.
Feh yourself.
Thanks, John. I’m also glad to see that you don’t have any problem with discussion of these issues, which I think has indeed clarified some things. As Anna said, scrutiny of political parties is something that everyone should be able to agree is a worthwhile activity.
LDP stuff – sorry, y’all.
Anna — people who didn’t understand the context were probably not from Canberra or didn’t care about the issue. Are you suggesting that those people will care so much about a Canberra dragway in 10 months time that they will recall a side-ways glance they gave a banner from a minor party while at a car show and then change their vote?
Seriously though — people who noticed the sign generally came over and asked what it was about and we had a chat. The vaste majority ignored us and concentrated on the cars. I think it’s reasonable to cater slogans towards people who care about the relevant issues.
While we certainly intend to hold ourselves to high standards in behaviour, when we refer to ourselves as the party of principle we are generally referring to our policies. You may not agree with us, but we are involved in politics because we are passionate about the ideas and are committed to promoting them despite the fact that they often aren’t popular.
In my opinion, the only other party of principle in Australian politics is the Greens. Of course we have different principles, but I admire their consistency, commitment & intellegence. Having said that — we will do everything we can to beat them.
They’re going to win popular power in Australia one sociopathic fringe group at a time.
People who like cars or guns are sociopaths. No Bigotry There. Nosiree.
Well, it’s not a helpful comment, I’d agree, and it’s a view with which I’d disagree. But it doesn’t mean just because there’s that one comment on the thread, that everyone here shares that view, or that “the left” does.
crankynick: “Send some DLP stuff over to WA. Get some people to sit at the Kwinana motorplex with all of the gear, minus that particular banner. If you get any kind of similar response, I’ll climb right down and accept that the DLP really is the voice of the Australian working class.”
I don’t think we are the voice of the working class. Hopefully the LDP isn’t the voice of any class. In my opinion we are the voice for ideas of freedom… and I think that is in the interests of all classes. This just happens to be a situation were the freedom we are defending is more relevant to the working class.
We wouldn’t use the Canberra banner in WA. If we went to WA we would try to find a different appropriate banner that was relevant to the people who would see our stand. I don’t think it is unfair, unreasonable or dishonest to use banners that are relevant to your audience.
But it doesn’t mean just because there’s that one comment on the thread, that everyone here shares that view, or that “the left� does.
But the fact that you continually let comments like that go through to keeper means you probably do.
Yobbo browbeating Mark that he is a blind supporter of Katz’ slip on a banana peel is not going to get off the ground.
Comments which promote a viewpoint diametrically opposed to something Mark has said routinely are let go without counter-comment or reprimand of the commenter.
Katz’ shedding of the thin veneer thus exposing what lies beneath will probably never be able to be recovered from.
I doubt anybody else in here will make the same mistake by inadvertantly voicing their bedrock opinion of their fellow Australians. The guards will all be well & truly up now.
Save your breath.
Hold up fellas…
Mark — I hadn’t implied and I don’t believe that everybody here, yourself, or the left generally are bigots.
Yobbo — I don’t think you can say that Mark agrees with every comment on his blog that he doesn’t explicitly reject. I often ignore comments like the one Katz made.
I know that, John, as I said in a comment above. My last one was in response to Yobbo.
I don’t think you can say that Mark agrees with every comment on his blog that he doesn’t explicitly reject.
Maybe not, but he spends a fair bit of time arguing in the comments against those comments he really doesn’t agree with, and he is mighty quick to jump in with the delete/close thread button if people on his side are getting abused, but he makes absolutely no attempt to refute or chastise abusive/trolling comments from the left (“silk worm” ring a bell?) which leads me to believe that he tacitly approves of them, but won’t admit it in the interests of remaining “neutral”.
But hey Mark – your blog your rules. Feel free to play all the favourites you like. After all, you have no chance of gaining anyone’s respect at this late stage anyway. Might as well go all out like Leftwrites.
Wot’s this?
A thread about excessive and unnecessary burning of petrol, with only a single mention of CO2 emissions?
I agree totally with silkworm’s early comment, as well as with the anti-noise Canberrans, many of whom are…working class!
And as far as skepticlawyer’s comment goes: “in which case residents have the government to blame for people hooning through their streets”
No, I don’t think so. Racing and burnouts in urban streets are not just noisy and antisocial – they are a menace to innocent passers-by. And illegal. And should be dealt with as harshly as possible. Idiots who cannot cope with the idea that cars in cities are potentially lethal weapons, not toys, should not have licences, should possibly not be allowed on the street, and possibly are indeed sociopaths.
Yobbo at 5am in the morning:
“But hey Mark – your blog your rules. Feel free to play all the favourites you like. After all, you have no chance of gaining anyone’s respect at this late stage anyway.”
Shorter Yobs: The Elephant and Wheelbarrow still won’t let me in. Bloody leftists.
The shrill tone of the LDP apparatchiks and fellow-travellers on this thread is compelling evidence for their unfitness to be anywhere near the levers of power.
Not that they have any remote chance of political success.
It is now more understandable why the LDP has an affinity with sociopathic fringe groups. Like attracts like.
The anti-gun control agenda in Queensland is usually run with particular vigour by self-educated constitutional bush lawyers who maintain that the Australian Constitution, and all levels of government in Australia, have been rendered null and void since 1919 by Australia’s signing of the Treaty of Versaille. It’s not hard to see this argument being leveraged into a libertarian program.
When it comes to magnetism, I always thought that opposites attract!!! Like poles tend to repel each other.
Like…
“Vote 1 for a new Major Stadium”, I presume.
My point, really.
And once again there is distortion being put about here by the dragway’s proponents. The old dragway was closed at least a decade ago as it wasn’t financially viable then, either. The ACT government didn’t ban it – they just refused to keep subsidising it (though admittedly the decision was prompted by people living near it rather than a concern for fiscal principle). Reopening it would be grossly unfair to people who’ve moved there since, as well as still requiring a subsidy.
The LDP can’t wriggle out of the fact that they were recruiting from people who expect a taxpayer subsidy for their hobby, because that’s the only way a dragway can run in the ACT. If the dragway proponents didn’t need the subsidy (including free land) they would simply buy a farm over the NSW border – less than 3kms from their proposed site.
Report by the ACT government:
“The former Canberra dragway facility opperated successfully without Government subsidy”
http://www.cmd.act.gov.au/actdragway/documents/act_dragway_faq_feb2006 .pdf
The previous site of the dragway is near the airport and consequently has not had residential development. And the site was closed 9 years ago (not “at least a decade”). And the federal govt (not ACT) gets much of the blame.
crankynic — I don’t know what issue we would hypothetically propose in WA. If there was major stadium and the government shut it down and banned consideration of using stadiums, perhaps we would say “LDP supports stadiums”. If the government banned IVF for lesbians perhaps we would say “LDP supports IVF for everybody”. Note that neither implies government subsidy. We are generally opposed to government restrictions so if the government has recently restricted something it makes sense for us to raise the issue.
John’s link has not worked entirely successfully due to some odd formatting in the target link. Try going here and clicking on the “ACT Dragway Frequently Asked Questions” link.
DD,
I would suggest a quick read of the document on John’s link – it will correct the many mistakes in your comment.
The only one on which you are correct is the public subsidy – a one off (not continuing) $8m payment. This is clearly public money being used for a private purpose. A good case, however, could be made that without the current high levels of taxation this subsidy may not be needed; but you are right, a one off subsidy is currently part of the plan.
Mark, this is unfair. I doubt that these are key issues but rather ones on which the LDP thinks it will gain members. I imagine that key issues for the LDP would be liberal economic policies.
This thread reflects if nothing else the introspection of the blogging world. The LDP is a phone booth party that no one outside of this blog and Catallaxy has ever hear of.
What does it matter what leaflets they distribute at a drag race?
“It is now more understandable why the LDP has an affinity with sociopathic fringe groups”
Like the millions of Australian guys who seem to have a lurve thing going about cars and engines and stuff?
It’s a bit lost on me too, Katz, but I’d be hesitant to label it “sociopathic.’
Sacha, read the thread, please. By their own admission, the LDP didn’t highlight their economic policies at their major recruiting event.
I don’t have the time to read 147 comments! My comment was on the post.
I have to get back to work now.
Sociopathic, because drag racers don’t care about the impact their activities have on society, and that includes noise and greenhouse gas pollution.
You’d want a tardis phonebooth to fit 2000 members into, Spiros.
Umm no I haven’t abandoned the cause. Once David clarified that the sign was meant to refer to support for letting developers build a drag strip, that’s all I needed to know. And we’re not a party of blind followers. I don’t happen to agree with some of the LDP platform but I agree with more of it than that of any other party or more precisely even when account is taken of my placing higher weights on some polices than others the weighted average of what I agree with in the LDP platform is substantially higher than for any other party – and if some members of the Left were open minded they might find the same thing.
Reminds me of the Monty Python sketch where a spokesman for the Royal Navy vehemently denies that there is any cannibalism in the Royal Navy.
I notice that Katz hasn’t qualified any of what he said or even disavowed speculations about his background. Just as I suspected, another idle rich decadent from a declining toff line who is a leftist because he disdains the hard working noveau riche in their McMansions.
Mark — do you seriously expect us to outline all of our policies at all events and in all occasions? We were at summernats, so we promoted our transport policy. When we go to gun shows we promote our shooting policy. We we go to gay rights festivals we promote our civil liberties policies.
Sacha’s reasonable point was that just because we promote specific policies to relevant audiences doesn’t mean those are our key policies.
When I was invited to speak at a meeting to discuss smoking policy I didn’t talk about taxi deregulation. Do you consider that false advertising? When I was invited to speak to a church group I spoke about ethical issues such as abortion, euthenasia and drug legalisation (they didn’t like me) but I forgot to mention our policy on school vouchers and voluntary voting. Do you consider that false advertising?
John, I’d have thought as you’re a new party whose principles and philosophy are not well known, you’d take every available opportunity to make them more so.
Put a sock in it Katz. The policy has been clarified to death already.
Now do go back to your howls of re-sentiment and lament at your lost privileges to the better adapted hoi polloi, you flailing left-elitist prat.
What is the LP policy on compulsory disavowal?
McMansions? Where did that come from? Too much information, Jason.
Even if 900 of them joined on the basis of bodgy and misleading sloganeering…
So, Jason, how do you feel about it now that DD has confirmed that establishing a new drag strip will involve the expenditure of $8 million of taxpayers money?
Surely you’d revert to your original criticism of the LDP’s sloganeering, wouldn’t you?
Either that, or “Solidarity Forever” is a popular tune in the LDP as well as the ALP?
Jason whatever your peurile speculation as to Katz’s background has to do with anything, is anyone’s guess, but the fact that Katz chooses to ignore such speculation hardly validates it.
Crankynick,
Credit where credit is due, please. DD did not do that – I did. DD’s comment was so riddled with errors as to make it valueless.
.
Mark,
Are you seriously claiming that John should go through the entire policy position every time he gets up to speak on any subject? I would like to see you try to do it before you set that standard for everyone else.
.
Silkworm,
You have not answered my question yet – if they rendered the drags carbon neutral by planting trees (they do plan to plant some, how many I do not know) would you then withdraw your objection or do you just plan to ban any activity you do not like?
Andrew, my point is that at a stall at a public event recruiting members to a new party, you’d reasonably expect that the principles and philosophy of the party would be highlighted not just its policy on “x”. I might be all for a Canberra dragway, but also for a bigger welfare state. Signing me up on the basis of the first is disingenuous at best. To take a few minutes in a talk to explain where the party’s coming from generally is hardly an unreasonable expectation either.
In other words, I’m not saying he should read out ten policy documents, but surely saying “The LDP stands for small government, citizen choice, and minimal taxation” isn’t too much to ask. Anyone at a meeting where John is talking would have a reasonable expectation that the position which underlies his stance on whatever is made clear.
adrian,
Perhaps Katz should try to make a comment with some content. If he does that Jason’s position may lose some of its force. At the moment (IMHO) he is behaving in exactly the way that justifies Jason’s comments.
I really can’t understand how this issue is staying alive.
Mark — we take opportunities to increase people’s awareness of our party by talking to them about our approach on issues that they care about.
crankynick — DD didn’t link to the information about $8m from the ACT government. I did. DD got his information wrong.
And the LDP hasn’t supported any subsidy. There are several options for proponents of a dragway, including finding money for a new one or working to return to their old premises where they weren’t subsidised and had spent considerable private money on capital improvements (which they were never compensated for when the ACT & fed govts kicked them out).
My apologies, Andrew – I scrolled up looking for the quote and that was the first time I saw it mentioned.
However – in response to your query of Mark. Neither Mark, nor anyone else, thinks that the LDP should go through their entire platform when they first speak to someone (though a distressing number of libertarians don’t feel the same way, in my experience) -
But surely you agree it’s reasonable to think that they should go through the salient points of policy which contradict the slogan which they have printed on a sodding great banner out the front of their stall…
Considering the market is sovereign, and your supporters obviously understand that if you want something you have to pay for it; I wonder how many of the 900 sign-ups are actually Voting Members… who put their money where their mouth/exhaust pipe is….
Andrew, if calling someone a “left-elitist prat”, an “idle rich decadent” etc etc is your idea of content, then I take your point.
Otherwise it seems to me juvenile and counter productive, with all the force of a wet tissue.
Mark: “To take a few minutes in a talk to explain where the party’s coming from generally is hardly an unreasonable expectation either.”
Some people didn’t want to talk, and I can’t see how we could force them. Other people did want to talk and we talked with them about a range of issues including the environment, shooting, tax etc.
Mark: “…but surely saying “The LDP stands for small government, citizen choice, and minimal taxationâ€? isn’t too much to ask.”
We did have various slogans around the stand that clearly showed that we were a low tax party. We had signs & stickers saying “you pay too much tax” and “cut the fuel tax” and various liberty-related slogans. The “you pay too much tax” stickers were the most popular.
Can anyone tell us what the other posters around the stall say? My guess would be that thy make the position clear on other topics too – perhaps the ones most energising the debate here.
Having been in this position for photos before, I know that the people taking the shots often want one banner given front and centre treatment and most of the time the inexperienced people on the stall comply. Perhaps a more candid shot of the stall would have given a more honest depiction of what happened. Perhaps not, but all this on the basis of one (obviously staged) photot is a bit rich.
RumRebellious — I can’t see your point. The sovereignty of the market has nothing to do with whether our members are voting (ie financial) members. There is nothing anti-market or unlibertarian about having an organisation that people can join for free.
This debate seems to be disappearing down the rabbit hole.
Adrian,
I would rather be called a “left-elitist pratâ€?, an “idle rich decadentâ€? than being accused of pandering to sociopaths or some of the other naked abuse that Katz was pedalling. I thought Jason’s reply quite moderate in comparison.
So, planting trees to counter the effect of greenhouse gas pollution is part of LDP policy? I don’t believe you. This appears to be just another piece of disingenuity alongside the claim that you don’t want government subsidy.
But this really isn’t the issue that’s being raised. The argument isn’t (at least, my argument isn’t) that every nuance of every LDP policy should be explained – god forbid.
My argument is that, if the nuances of LDP policy which impact on this development aren’t explained, you’re engaging in deceptive and misleading electioneering, and you should climb down off your high horses, ‘cos you’re clearly as bad as the rest of the political world.
Which highhorse are we on?
We explained our position to those who asked. We explained that the old dragway was closed down and the government promised to look into alternative sights but has now vetoed those plans to. We explained that we disagreed with their block on the dragway. Undoubtably some people would have wanted govenment funding… but from their perspective our position of allowing a dragway is still clearly superior to not allowing a dragway.
silkworm — Andrew never said that was LDP policy. I’m not even sure that Andrew is a voting member of the LDP. He was simply asking you a question to find out whether your opposition to dragways was absolute.
This one:
Annoyed that people make fun of the flats your Daddy gave you?
Don’t like being told not to speed in the new car Daddy bought you?
Convinced you should be able to get your own way now you’re 25, just like when you were a teenager?
Then join the Liberal Democratic Party. For stupid little rich boys everywhere.
Umbrage is no substitute for argument.
We don’t care about what your roots are. We could care less.
What will other parties do for low income earners regarding regressive excise taxes, poverty traps and the taxation of overtime?
silkworm,
Just FYI – I am not currently a member of any political party. I have also never been a member of the LDP. As John said, I was asking whether you oppose drag racing per se, or just because of the alleged bad externalities. An answer, rather than more obsfuscation, would be nice.
I will answer your question if you will provide proof that the LDP is planning to plant trees to offset the emissions.
I always enjoy a good shitfight. And having just read Andrew Bolt’s blog I’m inspired to nitpick and finger-point:
>
wbb – (RE LDP environmental policy)
>
Is that really a good comparison? After all if the politically motivated hype and anti-hype surrounding global warming was lifted and consumers had a clearer picture of the consquences of their decisions I think things would change rapidly. I don’t share the LDP’s enthusiasm for the removal of govt. regulation entirely but I do recognize that the market moves much faster than The Department.
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Also the Easter Island people didn’t ‘do nothing’ they did the wrong thing. Kind of like if we were to say: global warming!? That means God wants us to turn on all the heaters and run the appliances 24/7.
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Interesting tribal sterotypes guys (likewise the working class bogan thing. As a long term resident of several inner city neighbourhoods (long black with a dash of milk myself) I can tell you most of us are not correct !! Politically or otherwise. I’ve also met a fair few environmentally aware petrolheads in my time.
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Mark (RE: LDP’s selective spruiking)
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Every time I’ve been to Nimbin it has been free from government interference.
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Jason Soon –
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No but considering the vicissitudes of baby boomer intergenerational ethics I think it’s just another example showing them to be collectively a pack of selfish shits.
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Yep they both stand for the same thing:
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GET ELECTED.
SNOUTS IN THE TROUGH!!
OINK OINK
silkworm — Andrew isn’t an LDP member. He’s just a person asking you a question. The LDP does not have a policy of planting trees to offset car use.
crankynick — yeah well, Michael probably didn’t help things with that piece of hand-waving… but as I’ve previously explained, the point about being a party of principle is that we stick with our political philosophy even when it’s not popular. I don’t think we have been particuarly misleading in promoting transport policy at a car show… but I accept that we were following standard political tactics of catering our message to our audience.
The comments of Katz & thunderclap should be a point of embarassment to any reasonable LP regulars.
Not that our class is actually relevant — but I come from an immigrant farming family that left Rhodesia with no money and no education and grew up in a lower-middle class environment in regional Queensland. Many other LDP people have a similar story. And we support the freedom for smokers, car enthusiasts, shooters and other groups which generally have a high concentration of working class people. Accusations that we are a bunch of rich kids looking our for millionairs is both blatently untrue and seemingly said for no other reason than the joy of being rude.
The quality at this blog has been quite disapointing.
I think this thread has started to go around in circles and the personalisation of some of the comments is a pity. Does anyone have anything useful and constructive to add?
No, Mark – silkworm is quite clearly avoiding answering my question on a hypothetical point, so I do not see any point continuing. I can only echo what John has said.
Katz (inter alia) is quite clearly dog whistling and it would also be nice to have seen him/her called on it by others that those at whom he/she was whistling.
Don’t hold your breath Andrew. Mark already wants to close the thread now that he’s lost the debate.
Andrew, your question on a “hypothetical point” is about my motives. My question is about a supposed fact you have stated regarding the LDP’s intention of planting trees.
My question is fair. Yours is not.
John, let Andrew answer for himself.
I’m quite happy to keep it open, Yobbo. I’m not the first person here to note that it’s becoming unproductive – John just did so a comment before me. If you’re so cynical about what we do here at LP, I wonder why you bother. Do you have anything constructive to add, by any chance?
Silkwork,
I have no knowledge, one way or the other, on this. I have had no involvement in the LDP, do not live anywhere near Canberra (or, for that matter, a dragstrip) and have had no involvement in drag racing in any way and have never been to a dragstrip. I think I once drove past one on my way to a holiday. I have also occasionally planted trees.
I think John also answered your question further up – it would have been dishonest of me to answer it from a position of ignorance in the matter.
In any case, it was not LDP policy we were talking about – it was about whether you oppose drag racing per se or just because of its (alleged, but probable) negative externalities. LDP policy on tree planting is, I would submit, irrelevant to this. Whether it is or not, though, is IMHO, beside the point.
Do you have any knowledge on what your beliefs are in relation to drag racing?
Oh, and at no stage did I say it was LDP (or anyone else’s) policy. Please just answer the question.
I have found this to be a most productive exchange.
Katz makes an idle quip about the social and aesthetic quality of drag racing, and the LDP contingent throws a massive hissy fit. I haven’t seen a jaw so well glazed since Mark Latham.
John Humphery apart, the LDP sentiment has been simply to rise to the bait. Hides as thin as their manifesto.
well! in that case…. I refrained for commenting on the summernats thing because it is too close to home. Since my comments on the nonsense driving policy have gone uncommented (seriously, get someone who has at least read some road safety research, I’ve read quite a lot on young drivers and know that there are massive problems with such research, but your policy is so problematic you will actually benefit from it)…
pollitically incorrect? right… It is a politically correct activity. i am a latte-lefty (well a mocha-lefty) just finishing his PhD on contemporary modified-car culture in Australia. Now I am doing this PhD because I am something of an enthusiast and there is never going to be someone like me who can rebuild a 351 Cleveland out of my Falcon or the CA18DET out of my previous Silvia and understand high level contemporary ‘pomo’ theory. I am pretty much the expert on this stuff to the extent I have been the first and only person to engage with the culture in a critical way.
Part of my research involves tracing the emergence of the Summernats from the Street Machine Nationals. “Freedom and individualism” is not how I would describe the history of Summernats or the transformations that Street Machining underwent in the 1980s. It shifted from a largely amateur activity organised around particular shared enthusiasms to become a spectacle mediated by the Summernats-Street Machine magazine synergy. (I must disclose that I wrote for Street Machine on and off for about a year and a half and then later for another ACP magazine.) One of my main arguments for this part of my dissertation is that a quasi-professional milieu of enthusiasts emerges from the amateur mass largely to the detriment of the amateur social organisations (eg the ASMF). It all changes again with the intervention of online forums in the late-1990s. The online groups allow enthusiasts to organise again beyond groups determined by locality to groups determined a shared enthusiasm.
Another historical trajectory involves the consolidation of the culture of Street Machining after the founding editor of Street Machine, Paradise, gets the boot and is replaced by (the now head honcho of men’s special interest) Phil Scott. Scott buggers off all this talk from Paradise about turbos and ‘performance cars’ and focuses solely on V8s. Scott is a master of teasing out and consolidating exactly what an audience wants to read about/look at, in this case it meant a masculine and nationalist version of Street Machining. He really is a master of this. He did the same thing at Wheels a few years after the stint at Street Machine talking about how the Japanese are taking over a globalising automotive industry. Paradise had a progressive vision of enthusiasm and car culture, where ‘performance’ was not restricted to a certain type of car/engine. The ramifications of this shift from Paradise’s progressive formula to Scott’s consolidationary approach are still felt (eg v8 car culture lives on strong).
When you bring the two together you have a particular structural relation between the Summernats festival and its chief backer and greatest supporter, Street Machine magazine, organised around the reproduction of a particular enthusiast population enthused by a highly masculine and nationalist configuration of the culture. Now I get really tricky in my dissertation because I argue that political ramification of this is to recognise such individuated population segments — just as you have — and uses them to one’s own electoral advantage. The population masculine/nationalist enthusiasts was not constructed for politics at all, it was constructed to make money as an audience for Street Machine and a spectator population for Summernats, but it can be used and exploited for politics by people such as yourself.
Can you see how this would piss people off who can see straight through your attempt to exploit these social stratifications in such a blatantly non-representative way? You don’t actually want to represent car enthusiasts as car enthusiasts, you want to reduce them to being on the same level as anyone who may or may not be doing stupid shit, because you support the right of individuals to do what may or may not be stupid shit (and what that possible stupid shit is doesn’t actually matter). Awesome.
Now, enough of this silly buggers, I need to finish my diss to such a standard that competes against the rest of the better funded and longer educated group of PhD students in the US and Europe.
glen — we all know that summernats was created for a reason other than advertising the LDP. But I think it is perfectly fair to promote a pro-driving policy at a car festival. I can’t see how this could fairly be called “exploitation”. Do you consider it exploitation that the Defence Dept were recruiting at summernats and that many businesses were promoting and selling their products there?
You are right that we aren’t a party specifically dedicated to car enthusiasts. We don’t believe it is the role of government to support or oppose any hobby. We believe those decisions are for each person to make and so we support the removal of government restrictions on hobbies (including cars). You may mock the idea of individual freedom… but it is a perfectly legitimate approach.
There’s the new improved LDP banner, right there.
yes! WTF! when the six-wheeled army burnout truck blew up on the start line last year I cheered like I had never cheered in my life! I object to the amateur labour of enthusiasts that goes into building these cars being used so that enough of them can be brought together as a spectacle for others to exploit for their own non-enthusiast purposes. The businesses, the magazines and the event itself is not so clear cut because they do help with the structure and maintenance of the enthusiasm. This is one of the complexities of the enthusiasm. however wtf do you contribute to the culture besides some eye-candy promo girls and what I assume is a half decent conversation about the philosophies of extreme liberalism? sfa, I suspect.
I mock the idea that people — including me — are even ‘free’ in the first place. My thinking continually operates on the border between stupidity and high level thought because I am fighting a war against my own stupidity. Everyone is constrained by their own personal and cultural trajectories. You should be working to help free individuals from the unfreedom of their own respective minds and lives before working on compounding such unfreedoms by exploiting what may or may not be stupid shit for your own political gains. That is not legitmate because you are actually making the world a worse place.
ffs, that is enough, back to work.
“… and we plant trees too.”
I’m quite happy to keep it open, Yobbo. I’m not the first person here to note that it’s becoming unproductive
It’s becoming unproductive because some of your regular readers are trolling in comments in a post that was a troll to begin with, and you refuse to do anything about it because you agree with the trolls.
If you’re so cynical about what we do here at LP, I wonder why you bother.
Isn’t it obvious? I bother so you guys don’t forget that not everyone believes your bullshit.
Do you have anything constructive to add, by any chance?
I thought I was being constructive by informing you of your own hypocrisy. I guess you just don’t want to know.
John Humphreys, can you explain to me the value of a “pro-driving” policy in advancing your cause of individual liberty? And which political groups are anti-driving anyway? Gut feel: glen’s description of the policy as the free to do dumb-shit policy is a more exact description of what motivates it.
There lies a deep resentment of something (fate, Father, etc) here. The world is constantly teetering on the edge of disaster, and the LDP is going in hard for drivers. As if we aren’t all drivers, anyway.
I’m not.
glen — you have a strange definition of exploitation and freedom. You seem to think that exploitation is doing anything that you don’t like and that freedom is the ability to make perfect decisions. Not only do I disagree, but I think you are defining the legitimate political philosophy debate out of conversation.
We didn’t go to summernats to add to the culture. We were buying advertising space. You may hate the concept of advertising… but that radical communist critique is probably a bit beyond the scope of the current conversation.
Our policy is “pro-driving” the same way we are “pro-shooting” and “pro-smoking” and “pro-gay” and “pro-euthenasia”. In reality we are simply “pro-choice”. But it is perfectly reasonable for a political party to cater their particular message to their audience.
Our pro-driving policies include more realistic speed limits, lower fuel tax, fewer restrictions on car modifications, fewer restrictions on dragways, stop using fines as blatent revenue raising, etc.
You & glen are right to say that the LDP supports a person’s right to do dumb-shit. But I wouldn’t say that car lovers are dumb-shit.
I disagree that the world is teetering on the edge of disaster. Relax. Calm down. Don’t be scared. The world is a great place.
And we are not “going in hard for drivers”. Our transport policy is just one of many and it was a relevant one to mention at a car festival. We aren’t the ones emphasising driving… it was LP that brought it up and wanted to discuss it. If we ignored it you would have attached us, and when we respond you attack us!
Gosh!
Each time I return to this thread LDPers have ratcheted up their shrillness another notch or two.
Maybe there is just the odd outbreak or two of cannibalism in the Royal Navy after all.
(It’s an idle quip folks, a habit much enjoyed by us decadent lefty elitists.)
Is the LDP trying to look unelectable? I’m happy to help.
We don’t expect to gain much of the nostalgic socialist vote anyway Katz.
Shorter Yobbo: “We don’t expect to gain much.”
the ACT govt had previously shutdown a dragway and just prior to summernats had vetoed consideration of an alternative site
And to compound the shutdown, promised for two elections to replace the dragway. Petrolheads have a right to feel used.
Thanks glen for commenting on the culture of Summernats. I attended with my brother for the first time this year, and spent most of the day laughing with delight. And though we agreed that once a decade was enough, we were both better for the experience. My teenage girls enjoyed it too – and we left before things got too rough on the Saturday.
I think that the attitudes expressed by a few commenters here to the effect that Summernats people are sociopathic are shocking. If you can go to one of these events and not see the skill and artistry and sense of humour of these people, then you are remakably obtuse, or so ideologically disabled that you are blinded.
These are the working class. Let them play.
This isn’t an argument, Glen. You have a problem.
“You’d want a tardis phonebooth to fit 2000 members into”
“Is the LDP trying to look unelectable?”
The LDP must have the highest ratio of members to votes of any political party in Australia. Just 1.3% of the vote in its home base, the ACT, as the last ACT election. Outpolled by the Greens 7:1.
Must do better.
By the way, isn’t the case, in any case, that most of the people at Summernats don’t live in the ACT? Doesn’t the ACT government subsidise this event in order to attract people to Canberra (a mighty big ask, in January).
Correct I think Spiros. Around 100,000 visitors – from memory, about 30,000 locals.
Where’s my link gone?
well, less needy more neechy, you might say, than you libertarians.
your roads policy is nonsense. i drive maybe once a fortnight but have two cars (one on the other side of australia). i value my driving time more than you could imagine and certainly more than some joe blow stuck in peak hour traffic. you do not want to make a more efficient system of automobility that gets people places they really need to go more safely and with greater efficiency instead your proffer knee-jerk popularist ideas that are actually ANTI-driving. you should be trying to get people OFF the road so they value the considerable benefit that automobility provides in certain situations. the current scenario of suburban sprawl and mass intra-city migrations is NOT such a situation.
this is what I meant by feeding unfreedoms (and by classic right wing libertarian ’small thinking’ above), we are restricted by the system of automobility as the dominant form of mobility. real freedom would be to provide a greater range of options for mobility, so there is REAL choice, not try to encourage the stupidest form of mass-individualist transport by encouraging people in believing the idea that it is actually a good form of mobility. that policy is for absolute peanuts.
Dude… I’m not to be taken seriously. But since you did…
My point was that if the drag-racing folk did take the LDP’s politics seriously and to heart, they would have forked out for it. Hence the question about numbers…
Plus the looking glass of history has some interesting tid-bits about membership of political parties and their definitions – remember Pauline Hanson? And it raises questions about the ‘democratic’ structure of the party if a large chunk of your membership aren’t allowed to vote – especially if they are the reason the LDP managed to get ‘registered’ in the first place.
Other than that, ur civility and willingness to engage with critics has impressed this drunkard…
.. and they’re past the 200 lap mark …picking up the pace now…down in the pits the roaring and whining is just overwhelming…we’ve been seeing a bit of rubbing in the last few laps…the LDP team was drafting for a while…looks like Glen’s going for a sling shot…could it get any more intense?…a climatic moment now…it’s make or break in the next few seconds. We’ll be right back after these messages.
Cue lukewarm Aussie alt country rock rap trip hop classical music.
Earnest middle class male trying to talk slowly and soothingly VO:
“Hi, we’re the Liberal Democratic Party. You might not have heard of us yet but that’s alright because we’re already listening to you. All of you who know it’s just the Government that’s stopping you from making it really happen for you. Whether you’re gay, a shooter, a lesbian, an blue collar autodidact, an open collar daytrader, a petrolhead or a pothead, we’re the party of principle that’ll deliver all of you whatever you want. Without compromise or cost. What are you waiting for?
Title card: The LDP: Not just politics as usual.”
Cue clattering music library dance muzak.
Hysterical male VO:
“Crazy Joe has gone mad, mad, mad, mad. He’s just giving it away at these prices. So run, don’t walk to this once only lifetime sale. He’s just giving it away. You’d be crazy too not to miss these bargains. What are you waiting for?”
Cue nondescript ambient muzak.
Sultry female VO:
“Are you on your own? Looking for a little romance. A little excitement? Just SMS the number on the screen because thousands of beautiful girls are ready and willing to talk to you. Yes you. Call now. What are you waiting for?”
…and welcome back trackside…missed a spectacular crash just then…it’s pretty quiet for the moment…they’re cleaning up the wreckage…OK, the pace car’s coming out now…yes…it is…looks like we’re back on and racing again folks!
I stick by my earlier comment. Canberran’s don’t want a drag way because no matter where it’s put, it’s going to cause major disruption to people’s lives.
I also think that people are missing the point. People weren’t signing on because of vague promises about dragways – they were attracted to the cute girl in the short denim skirt
PS – When the LDP are in Nimbin signing up the locals with promises of legalised dope, I’m sure they’ll remember to tell them their welfare policy
And their tree-planting policy.
silkworm,
Perhaps you can also enlighten them on your “never answer a straight question” policy. Or maybe you will just not answer that one as well.
“..they were attracted to the cute girl in the short denim skirt”
That’s terribly sexist of you Alex. And Alex.
Howdja know some of them weren’t also secretly attracted to the big pecs twink as well?
Andrew, yours was not a straight question. It was a question based on a hypothetical.
You said: “…they do plan to plant some…”
Let me repeat: I will answer your question if you will provide proof that the LDP is planning to plant trees to offset the emissions.
You can settle this here and now by quoting your source for this piece of information – or is it a little lie that you have made up? Your avoidance of this simple request tells me it is the latter, and if you are a liar, as I suspect, then I have no intention of dealing with you.
“…and if you are a liar, as I suspect, then I have no intention of dealing with you.”
Oh but yes you will Mulberry Boy. You’ll be back to spar with ‘em again. You and your interlocuters on this thread may have utterly different convictions but not personalities.
Wot? Everyone’s pissed off to bed? Le Mans this thread is not.
Very well, you leave me no alternative but to get into drunken fights on blogs in other time zones. Leave the back door on the hook.
Oh dear silkworm. You continue to try to worm out of answering the question. Are you running for Parliament? I will have to take that as “I am never going to answer that question.”
Perhaps a little perusal of various other definitions and discussions of the meaning will help – try here, here and, especially here. All may be of assistance.
Here is (perhaps) a fair challenge – if you can find a dictionary definition anywhere that defines, or includes as part of the definition of, “a hypothetical question” as being, or related to, a lie, I will then concede that you have some possibility of an excuse for accusing me of lying.
.
Moving on. Without the hypothetical – do you object to drag racing per se or is it the negative externalities to which you object?
I fully expect you to avoid answering this one – as you failed to answer the question previously when I phrased it without the hypothetical – here.
Of course they are liars. Some of them tried to steal the good name of anarchism just recently.
‘ From each according to their gullibilty – to each according to their greed’ is the right-libertarian creed. And as statists they are only of use when they act like Ross Perot or the Bjerker and split the overall lunar-right wingnut vote.
Liars, statists, thieves…what else do you want to know?
Oh yeah – crackpot ‘ Austrian’ economists!
Sear – critiques of libertarianism website
Andrew, you refuse to answer my question, therefore I refuse to answer yours.
“Oh yeah – crackpot ‘ Austrian’ economists!”
You shouldn’t limit yourself to one school of thought, even mostly wrong economists have good insights.
As for being “crackpots”, note the convergence between and evidence of these two papers:
http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/Sechrest8.pdf (Austrian School)
and
Frenkel, M., and Mehrez, G. (2000) “Inflation and the Misallocation of resources� Economic Inquiry, Vol 38, No 4, October, pp. 616-628. (Neoclassical)
Your comment is also historically ignorant of the development of neoclassical economics arising from marginalist insights of the Austrian school.
The shorter LDP/Right-populist policy on driving: promise the old men in hats they can drive as slow as they like; promise the post-pubescents they can drive as fast as they like; arrange for Devine, Bolt, Albrechtsen, et al to denounce as inner-city latte leftists any experts who point out the chaos that such a policy is likely to cause; and then when the policy is implemented and leads to chaos, arrange for ACA and Today Tonight to run stories about how it’s all the fault of the cyclists.
If John Stuart Mill and other classic liberals had lived to see late C20 and early C21 patterns of motor vehicle usage, they would certainly conclude (a) that driving involves consequences for individuals other than the driver which require its regulation and (b) that what might be an unproblematic individual right when exercised by one individual becomes rather more problematic when millions of individuals are attempting to exercise that right simultaneously within a finite road network.
Just as a sidethought – if millions of individuals did attempt to exercise their individual rights simultaneously within a finite road network, it is quite possible that a new set of road using behaviours would spontaneously emerge as people adapted their driving behaviours to the new circumstances. It would be interesting to see if the collective set of behaviours would be stable over time.
Yes, it’s called gridlock.
Every tried driving in Italy?
I almost gave up on this thread at the 148th comment. I’m so glad I didn’t!
Thank you, glen (:
silkworm,
I have answered your question, making quite plain that the original question was a hypothetical. It was not a lie and I have no information beyond that given by John on LDP policy.
I have also re-phrased the question to remove the hypothetical. Can you think of a further excuse for not answering the question? Come on – I know you must have another excuse there somewhere. I dare you to think of another excuse.
I wait with breath that is baited.
professor rat,
Perhaps we can put the the non-libertarian creed as “Because you are too stupid to work out your own best interests we will do it for you. No – don’t thank us for taking over your lives – we will just pay ourselves a nice salary out of your hard-earned wealth for doing your thinking for you.”
If you are going to use words like “Liars, statists [and] thieves” I think this is fair comment.
Taking up Andrew on his hypothetical to silkworm, the concept of planting trees as an offset to carbon emissions has come in for a range of criticisms.
Some of these relate to specific problems with particular offset plantations, e.g. cases where people in developing countries are forced off their land for the plantation, cases where the trees are logged or die off before they’ve been in place long enough to offset, cases where the person/s agreeing to the offset have been conned because trees haven’t been planted.
The more fundamental criticism is that tree planting doesn’t actually offset the emissions from fossil fuel burning. Trees are part of the “active carbon pool” in which carbon passes between trees (and other organisms), oceans and the atmosphere. The total quantity of carbon in the active pool is largely unvarying. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, are the “fossil carbon pool”, and burning fossil fuels means that carbon is transferred from the fossil carbon fuel to the active carbon pool. Therefore, whilst planting the trees may effect a redistribution of carbon within the active pool, it doesn’t offset the overall increase in the active pool due to the transfer from the fossil pool.
Therefore, there is ultimately no substitute for reducing emissions.
Whether banning drag racing is a more effective means to this end than placing a price on carbon which internalises the negative environmental externalities is another matter.
Paul,
An individual tree stores carbon, pulling it (temporarily) out of the active pool. A forest, or a jungle, represents a large store of carbon. Left alone it is a fairly permanent store of carbon.
Just because an individual tree dies and the carbon stored in that tree is released does not mean that there is a (long term) increase in atmospheric carbon – other trees will grow in a forest or jungle, if you leave them alone.
Sorry, I cannot see this as anything other than a failure to see the difference between a tree and a forest.
I know this is a digression, and I’m no expert like Paul on this stuff – but Andrew if he’s having trouble seeing the forest for the trees, you can’t see the trees for the plantation.
There is a _big_ difference between a plantation and a forest. The vast majority of current carbon offsetting schemes promote the former, not the latter (in many cases without a choice, you can’t just plant a forest), and with said promotion comes the attendant problems Paul has mentioned.
Andrew –
You said:
Yet John has contradicted you:
Would you like to try again?
One day you might actually try to understand, but I will not hold my breath.
It was not a lie (it was a hypothetical as I have stated ad nauseum – try any of the links I gave if you fail to understand what a hypothetical question is) and John gave what I presume to be LDP policy – about which, as I have stated, I have no knowledge beyond that which John gave. No contradiction; just a failure (again) to understand plain english on your part.
I have also restated the question (twice at least) without the hypothetical. Any further squirming?
silkworm, the phrase “quit while you’re behind” comes to mind.
Andrew was asking you about your views. The LDP’s policy is irrelevant to that.
Answer Andrew’s question or don’t – but you are currently making yourself look quite silly.
Mark,
I think the LDP could have explained just 2 of their policy positions at Summernats – Medicare and public education to score a 0/900 rate.
Working class people are the primary users of public hospitals and public schools.
This bulldust discussion about “WE” are the ones who care about blokes with 8 cylinders…last time I was at a public kids hospital (two hours ago) the joint was jumping with blokes with tatts and women with mullets, lugging around their much loved, sick off-spring and lots of hard-working migrants and McMansion dwellers as well. The only middle class people this arvo (as per the Jason Soon sterotype) had photo ID attached to their belts or around their necks, and were wearing blue booties and surgical gowns etc.
This mass sign up by the LDP, was grossly dishonest.
LDP – If you guys have any integrity, you’d leave recreational/personal side issues like drag-racing and smoking to the back-end of your policy platform, and start informing the public that you would not fund either public health or public education if elected, and then see how many people agree with your major policies, and subsequently join your party.
(Even Ratty, wont touch bulk-billing beyond a certain level.)
nabakov — very funny
silkworm — Andrew never said that the LDP had a policy of planting trees.
jo — where are you getting your information on LDP education and health policy? The LDP hasn’t even announced our health policy! And if the LDP has a position on recreational/personal issues, then why shouldn’t we promote them? It seems that you’re saying the LDP should only promote health & education policies. That is absurd.
Paul Norton — We are promising each person the freedom to pursue their own hobbies. That is not an unreasonable position. Of course, it makes sense to speak to your audience, so we don’t concentrate on our pro-choice abortion policies to a smokers group or our pro-choice smoking policy to shooters. In this instance we spoke about our pro-choice transport policy to people at a car show.
From the LDP education policy:
Isn’t it reassuring to see that the “sovereignty of the market” doesn’t extend to middle class welfare. What a bunch of tossers!
I know that. What he did say was that you told him that the LDP was planning to plant some trees, but not how many. Did you, or did you not, tell him this?
What has “pro-choice” got to do with being “pro-gay”? People do not choose to be gay. That is a delusion that the religious right suffer from.
silkworm — I don’t think Andrew said what you’re accusing him of saying. Please give the quote. As for “pro-gay” and “pro-choice”, I think it is fairly obvious that we support a gay person’s freedom to choose their own lifestyle and not be discriminated against by the government.
adrian — school vouchers are a market based approach to subsidising education and this is a perfectly reasonable moderate libertarian approach to education reform. If you are complaining that we don’t have a fully libertarian education policy then I would respond that we are a moderate libertarian party looking for reform in the right direction. If you are complaining that we don’t support a more interventionist system of government ownership then I would argue that a system with more competition and choice will lead to better outcomes for all students.
Strangely, jo (who called LDP “grossly dishonest”) is complaining that we oppose all government spending on education and adrian (who called us “tossers”) is complaining that we have equal government spending for all students. Damned if we do… damned if we don’t.
silkworm
It’s very clear to me from its wording that the policy proposes to do away with any proscription based on gayness. That being the case, it’s irrelevant whether gayness is a choice or not.
You sure you’re not getting your libertarians and your neo-cons mixed up?
Rubbish. This is a formula for more religious schools, which are worse for children’s education. All schooling should be secular.
John,
Andrew said:
…if they rendered the drags carbon neutral by planting trees (they do plan to plant some, how many I do not know)…
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/02/04/libertarians-for-loud-noise/#comment-345019
He later said:
I have no knowledge, one way or the other, on this.
He later said:
Oh, and at no stage did I say it was LDP (or anyone else’s) policy.
He later said:
I have no information beyond that given by John on LDP policy.
He later said:
John gave what I presume to be LDP policy – about which, as I have stated, I have no knowledge beyond that which John gave.
(Sorry I can’t give you links to each individual post – that would put this post in the spaminator – but you can verify these quotes yourself.)
Andrew’s shuffling and tapdancing can’t get around the fact that he initially said that the LDP was planning to plant some trees.
John, it is absurd to sign people up to a political party which adovcates de-funding the state public education system amongst it’s other major policies, without informing people of these policies, beyond one very minor policy ie. being pro – a drag-racing facility (in which you were also not explicit, in outlining to the punters – that you would upon election, actually provide NO Govt support for the facility).
The demographic at Summernats, as many LDP supporters have posted here – are just “working class people who want a drag racing facility in the ACT”. As such, they are unlikely to know a libertarian from a hole in the ground. Does “informed consent” have any bearing in this situation?
As to your public education policy, you might like to look closely at the Howard Govt’s model of Long Day Care Centres – to see where a voucher system leads i.e to corporatised facilities with lower educational standards, poorer working conditions, lower staff to child ratios than in community/local govt based/church and small private operations, not to mention – constantly rising fees. On the other hand – a whole lot of rising profit for shareholders and the executive of corporate childcare. The obscene amount of tax-payers money going to the major shareholders of ABC Learning Centres, is a national disgrace – an operating after tax profit of $81 million dollars in 05/06 – 40-60% subsidised by us all.
Having been on the volunteer boards of management for a large 3-centre community based LDC and an community Out of School Hours Centre – there are only a few ways to make money out of these facilities – to reduce staff ratios, employ less qualified staff, reduce food, craft and excursion budgets and/or raise fees beyond the reach of working people, to the point where – the Govt needs to increase subsidises, yet again to quell public demand.
And please don’t forget that babies and children are being looked after for up to 50 hours per week at LDC’s, and up to 5 hours per day at OOSH’s over 50 weeks per year. Staff surveys at corporate child care paint a depressing picture.
John, I am assuming your education policy allows “for profit” infants/primary/secondary schools, something that ABC operators & other sharks are lobbying strenously for.
More taxpayer subsidies for a lesser essential service, John. Can’t wait for your health policy.
Ahhhh finally, silkworm, some form of justification – a failure, perhaps, as the others on this thread have noticed, but an attempt at last. The “they” in the quote you gave was not the LDP, it was the usual “they” when referring to a third person, as in “they are looking at a cure for this”.
I had not even considered that you may have mis-construed the usual attempt in English to overcome the active / passive verb construction problem, used in this case to frame a hypothetical question.
This now clarified, can you answer the actual question?
silkworm — “All schooling should be secular”. While this isn’t a thread about school policy, it is probably clear that the LDP supports a parent’s right to choose the type of education they want for their child.
jo — you say it is “absurd” to sign people up without telling them all our policies. I disagree. Most members of most parties are probably unaware of every policy their party supports. We were at a car show, so we catered our message to our audience. Likewise, when/if we speak with an education lobby we would talk about education policy and not transport policy.
You can rest assured that we understand the arguments for and against school vouchers, and suffice to say we conclude that they will produce a better outcome that the status quo. The reality is that private schools provide a better standard of education for about the same cost as public schools. The reason for the difference is that market competition leads to higher efficiency. This is true for industry generally (as we saw with the failures of planned economies) and it is true for education.
The failure was down to your poor English usage.
Now, which “they” are you referring to, Andrew? The ACT government? People on ‘Work for the dole’? The Greens?
It seems to me that neither you, nor the LDP, nor Summernats are willing to take responsibility for the greenhouse gas pollution that is endangering us all.
Moreover, it seems that you want someone else (the government?) to make belated reparations for damage caused by the private sector. For shame!
John, there are no “for profit” schools – non-government schools are not-for-profit, run by churches or community based groups etc.
So what is the LPD policy on allowing ‘for profit’ schools in Australia – not just maintaining funding to the current non-govt ‘not for profit’ school sector?
As for providing a “better education” than state schools – the amount of churning between public and non-govt schools is quite considerable and goes both ways!! The top schools in NSW are all public, albeit selective, while the AB demographic non-govt schools come second – then it’s a mix of state and non-govt down the line – and the public system HAS to educate everyone regardless – unlike non-govts. Some private schools are crap, as are some public schools. Talk to parents who leave the non-govt system every day. It aint one perfect system vs one imperfect system.
As to Summernats: I think the strategy of joining up people via one tiny policy, when you have a suite of policies, isnt good for your party, in the long run. If I’m reading this thread correctly, then it seems like you require members to get over the line for the AEC & not because you actually want Shazza and Dazza to come along to meetings and get involved – especially if they dont actually agree with most of your policies……….One Nation Party all over again?
Jo,
The last time I looked at the LDP website I noted they also do a lot of recruiting at gun events. I think it’s great to see petrol heads are not the only market for the Libertarian brand.
Does the LDP have a position on whether Missy Higgins is lesbian? Are they recruiting at her gigs? That’s a significant 300 thread constituency, you know.
Hey, John? Had a look at the amount of government subsidy private schools get lately?
silkworm,
I note yet another attempt not to answer the question, point the problem back to me and otherwise act as if in a hissy fit. Can you please just answer the question?
Actually, Mark, I was speaking to that fucking activist Bono just the other day on this very subject, and he assures me that Missy is a fan of drag racing, but not in heels.
The fact is, Andrew, that your “hypothetical question” assumes that someone else will clean up the mess that Summernats creates.
Trying to shift the blame onto me for not answering your idiotic question in reality shows that this is what Libertarianism is all about – trying to shift the blame onto the government or the community for damages that this private sector activity creates.
Stand up and take responsibility for your your actions – if you have a spine.
And again, silkworm. It is not just me that has noticed your many attempts not to answer the question – both Anna and John have. Anna, at least, would not accept the label of “libertarian”, I presume.
I am fascinated to see how your next attempt to avoid the question goes.
Are people here pissed off at LDP policies, or at what they think is an underhanded way of recruiting members so that the LDP can get registration?
Both
I thought it was only PoMo cultistudi radical leftists that championed relativism?
Does this extend to choosing a type of education which will render the child an indoctrinated and credulous idiot, a bigot who hates all cultures and creeds other than her own, a religious fanatic of the kind who engages in suicide bombings, or a slave to superstition who is incapable of grasping what science has to say about the origins of the universe and ourselves? This point is far from academic in today’s world.
Any party committed to any democratic ideology of Right, Left or way out there should uphold the right of children to be educated and socialised to be competent democratic citizens capable of assuming their adult responsibilities and intelligently exercising their adult rights, and hedge any presumed rights of parents accordingly.
Although the word ‘policies’ is hardly an accurate description of a bunch of incoherent and contradictory statements lacking either detail or depth.
Paul –
Beautifully written.
Yes, wot Paul said.
BTW, silkworm. You are free just to say “I am not going to answer the question.” It will mean that you have run away from it, but cowardice is a perfectly legitimate life choice.
From the way you are arguing, I presume you never discuss anything with people who disagree with you. If this is the case (oops, hypothetical again – but this is a statement, not a question) you must have either very short or very boring (or both) conversations.
.
Paul,
Provided the schools meet the minima you have identified (silkworm, warning – another hypothetical) do you support the ability of parents to choose to which school they send their children or should we be forced to enrol our children in the government school to which our children are allocated?
The more pertinent question is why should the state subsudise such a choice.
Since you are supposedly pro-choice I would like the choice not to have my taxes given to already wealthy (in some cases obscenely so) private schools at the expense of public schools.
I went to primary Qld state schools in the first half of the 80s – people weren’t restricted to sending their kids to their nearest state school. I lived in Indooroopilly and went to Ironside state school in St. Lucia (the nearest primary school was Taringa), and a friend who also came to Ironside lived in Camp Hill (from memory). Ironside was attractive to parents as it had good facilities and was the “wealthiest” state primary school in the area (it had a 25 m pool, which was almost unheard of for state primary schools).
The choice that parents had in which school to send their kids seemed to work well. I don’t know what the ability to choose cost the state govt. I don’t remember there being any school bus passes (well not for me anyway) – maybe there were train passes, but I don’t know if there were.
I wonder if issue of education vouchers is the libertarian policy in the US in order to get around the matter of the US constitution not allowing direct government funding of church schools: i.e., if a US parent’s choice was education in a religious school, only a voucher system would work to subsidise them -direct government subsidy is unavailable. With Australia lacking this constitutional ‘problem’, is the subsidy system we currently have really any different to vouchers?
Someone pointed out above that our private schools are non-profit schools and any profit schools would face this as a competition barrier. Nor is there choice for parents who don’t want their children to go to church schools. Church schools will always be non-profit and I can’t see that the LDP has addressed this restriction on non-church schools entering the market. And what about the ‘tyranny of distance’-type factors impacting people outside the cities and larger towns in matters of educational choice?
I couldn’t work out whether the LDP supports issue of vouchers for ALL children (doesn’t sound like LDP’s principle of ‘Small government, limited public tax, limited government spending and regulation’) or if it proposes to means test eligibility.
Sorry LDP, too much polemic and too many motherhood statements and not enough nitty gritty.
adrian,
I think we would all like the ability to choose where our tax money goes, but I think that was more by way of a throw away line.
I would like my original question on school choice answered, if someone would.
Would you regard any payment by the State to the school as being a subsidy of that choice, even if it is below the amount it costs the State to put a kid through a government school?
One of Governor Bill Clinton’s reforms (either proposed or achieved) was to allow students to go to different school districts rather than the one they were “allocated” to, as part of an attempt to improve education available to kids. Of course, the teacher unions were against it (at least initially).
aml,
I think that is part of the voucher idea in the US. Here we could just fund $X per student direct from the govenment.
In fact I don’t think it is such a big issue here because we already have funding of non-govt schools. To a large extent we already have that choice here. The only different would be a consistent funding per student rather than formulas based on the relative parental wealth of the average sutdent’s at a school.
Comparisons between One Nation and the LDP are inappropriate. One Nation had registration problem because instead of putting in a list of 500 members they put in a list of 500 supporters who joined a “friends of pauline” club.
The approach of setting up a stall and asking people to join your party is done by all minor parties and is neither exciting or immoral. Neither is pitching your message to your audience.
Further, the policies of One Nation and the LDP are nearly exactly opposite. One Nation is economically left-wing and socially right-wing while the LDP is economically right-wing and socially left-wing. Greens & LP readers probably agree with more One Nation policies than I do.
jo — yes, we would allow for-profit schools.
Mark — yes, I know about the federal govt’s support for private schools. I would prefer that we remove the jurisdictional battle by removing the federal government entirely and have a voucher system at the state level. (This would increase the need to reform the current vertical fiscal imbalance.)
Captain oats — there was nothing morally relative about the statement you quoted.
Paul — subject to a school meeting minimum teaching criteria then I would leave the decisions to the parents about which school is best for their children. I do not support the idea that the government should micro-manage the raising of children.
adrian — You say our policies are “incoherent”. If you can’t understand them, feel free to ask us to explain. You say that our policies are “contradictory”, which is patently untrue.
aml — it is silly to suggest that the US libertarian party supports vouchers to get funding for schools. First, the US libertarian party doesn’t support vouchers (they want a completely free market). Second, libertarians are generally secular.
It is also absurd to say that people who don’t want to go to a church school don’t have a choice. There’s a simple choice. Don’t go there.
You complain that vouchers are inconsistent with small government. I’ve addressed this already. We are a moderate libertarian party and vouchers are a fairly standard moderate libertarian reform that introduces greater choice and competition to the market.
We have not proposed a means test for education vouchers because the largest single factor keeping poor people poor is the high effective marginal tax rate and that would be made worse by adding additional means-tested payments.
Andrew, I would be very pleased if all schools currently met those minima. The testimony of a number of my younger female friends over the past 15 years suggests otherwise (especially when religious organisations are heavily involved in running the schools). I have particularly in mind one friend of mine who was a gifted and talented child and who is now showing great promise as a philosopher, yet who was expelled from a certain Catholic high school in south-east Queensland, and spent the next 6 years as a street kid, because she would not cop the religious indoctrination and related authoritarian practices which the school regarded as its highest priority.
Obviously if all schools met those minima my main fears about potentially misguided or perversely motivated parental choice would be allayed
Having said that, I think there is another important issue here which makes it difficult to give an unqualified yes or no answer to your question. On the one hand, in a multicultural, multi-confessional society (which Australia is and will become more so) I think it is extremely important that there be at least one significant agency of socialisation which enables people from different cultures, during their formative years to interact positively with each other and come to understand each other better. I can think of no more obvious agency than the school system. On the other hand, for some minority cultures and communities (I have in mind indigenous communities) the viability of the culture may depend in part on being able to school their children within the culture/community.
you still have not defended your so-called “pro-driving policy”.
I have made some remarks and so has Paul Norton regarding the emergent quality of complex systems such as the system of automobility. Why don’t we pick up on this simple point?
Do you deny that certain effects emerge in complex systems only on a scale beyond the individual?
If you do deny such emergent effects then I suggest you brush up on some complex systems math. Prigogine, maybe? Some of his earliest work was looking at the relationship between cars on the road, flow, and speed. This early work is amongst the first taught to modeling students at higher levels of university. There is a tipping point where the number of cars on the road travelling at a certain speed transforms the situation from being one where a driver is _on the road_ to being a situation where a driver is _part of traffic_. In my own work I talk about ‘traffic’ as an immanent socio-technical system (or event) for the distribution of a resource: the road. This is only the simplest example. Other variables would need to be included regarding safety and efficiency, time of travelling and quality of travel.
These effects are only within the actual system of automobility, and yet the system of automobility impacts many other areas of life. Oil based, automobilised mobility? Suburban distribution of the population? Waste of resources in the production of vehicles? For example, a few of the first eco-marxist researchers into the system of automobility (1970s and earlier) talked in terms of a beach houses. Not everyone can own a beach house because their is finite amount of land available (argument made in france), this is like the road. Or a different person did some math regarding the energy consumption used in different forms of mobility, cycling came out on top as it leveraged energy consumption versus mobility by a factor of six compared to walking. Automobiles were not anywhere near this.
Your policy indicates zero thought engaging with such complexities. It is a popularist manifesto for stupidity not driving.
I dunno about the libertarian Party, I wasn’t referring to them. Certainly there are more prominent libertarians whose policy supports a voucher system, e.g. the Friedmans. That is what I was talking about. How is our current system of funding different, in practical terms?
If the LDP doesn’t consider this an issue, fine. But again, in the absence of more information, it means that LDP policy doesn’t seem too different from what we already have so it is hard to see that it would bring ‘greater choice and competition to the market.’
I trust you don’t call people absurd and silly when they ask these quite reasonable questions of you at summernats and wherever.
John, just one example among many from the party’s web site:
Except when that funding relates to private schools.
John, you and I have different conceptions of ‘relativism’ it seems.
Not that that’s necessarily a surprise, since the prevailing sense of the term (esp. as used to characterise the supposed position of ‘pomo theory’) is so ridiculous and indefensible that no one would want to claim it as theirs.
That prevailing sense of ‘relativism’ defines it as seeing all moral (or cultural) principles, practices or standpoints as equally valid. Ergo female circumcision is as valid as funding public schooling.
Let’s put that ridiculous view aside and begin again. Here’s your statement:
Two assumptions underpin this argument — one stated, one unstated — both of which I agree with. First, the stated one: “Most members of most parties are probably unaware of every policy their party supports”. Second, the unstated one: effectively that it would be impossible, or at the very least impractical, to explain every one of your policies to every person who you attracted at the event.
As I said, I agree with both of those. Where we differ, though, is that from there you leap to a position that is governed by no other standards than a particular form of self-interest (i.e. recruit as many members as possible). Here’s the ‘logic’ at work in this leap: because we can’t explain every one of our policies in the recruitment scenario, we need only explain some; because we need only explain some, we “need” only explain those that will appeal to the potential members.
Note the shifting use of the term “need” in that logic. At first it’s a matter of necessity — one need explain only some policies because one simply cannot explain them all — but this is transformed to into something far more (self)interested: we have to choose which policies to explain and it is much better for us (because we need, or want rather, the members) to explain the ones which will appeal to our “audience”.
The absence of an imperative defined in terms of a totality (e.g. you must tell the whole truth) is transformed into an absolute freedom to present whatever partial truth you care to choose.
The same thing happens to the second premise: because members of political parties wouldn’t ordinarily be expected to know all the parties policies, it isn’t realistic or fair to demand of us that we explain all our policies to all our potential members; because we aren’t thereby obliged to do so, we are “free” to explain to our “audience” only the policies which will appeal it.
No other possible (contextual) standards are allowed to play a part in this argument: either you’re obliged to tell the whole truth, or, if that’s impossible, then you can tell whatever partial truth you like. In both cases, what’s missing here is a consideration of whether there may be other standards — again contextual, rather than absolute — that warrant acknowledgement. Let me consult that definition of relativism again: all cultural/moral practices — such as, say, presentations of partial truths — are equally valid
In that respect, it’s interesting to note your use of the term “audience”. You use the term as though it’s a completely neutral description of the people you spoke to. And it’s here that the relativism really shines though. This construal of those people as an audience helps to reduce your conversations with them to the status of any other communication (all communications are equal) a move which masks the extent to which you’re defining them as such for a very specific political purpose.
Addressing them as “an audience” makes it seem like the only questions to consider here is “the message” and how to effectively convery that message. But these people are much more than simply an audience of various messages — and this is especially true when those messages concern a claim to represent their interests. Any non-relativist approach to this scenario — i.e. any approach that refused that all communications, all partial truths are equal — would insist on recognising and addressing the ways in which these people are not simply an audience.
In this instance, most obviously such a calculation would require recognising and responding to the fact that these people have interests other than the one that you would claim to “represent”, and indeed those other interests (e.g. the health and education interests already mentioned) may very well conflict with your policies on those interests.
A non-relativist approach would take it as a matter of fact that education, health, the economy, etc are rated by most if not all voters much more highly than a drag-way, and it would thereby seek to address potential party members accordingly.
A relativist approach, on the other hand, would say whatever needed to be said in order to get what it wants.
Adrian quotes the LDP as saying:
“Abolish all government funded programmes and bodies that cater to particular ethnic, religious or gender groups”
and then remarks;
“Except when that funding relates to private schools.”
Adrian, we’d fund parents and not schools. Ultimately we want to give ownership of the school to local residents, who can sell off their share of the entity as they see fit.
How are parents or residents favoured ethnic, religious or gender groups?
This discussion is not very illuminating. People are just talking at each other.
adrian — the issue isn’t telling the whole truth or part of the truth. We were at a car show so we spoke about transport policy. We had other information there and spoke about other issues too… but the obvious priority was transport policy.
I have been invited to speak at a meeting for the anti-smoking lobby. I spoke about smoking (and how I support the right of a pub to allow smoking on their property).
I have been invited to speak at churches. I spoke about how the government shouldn’t be making moral decisions regarding abortion & euthenasia.
I have been invited to speak about tax/welfare issues. I spoke about high EMTRs, churning and the possibility of integrating an income and negative income tax system.
We sent to a car show. We spoke about… [fill in the blank].
I can’t see how any of this leads to an accusation of relativity or similarity with pomo.
aml — “silly” and “absurd” were used to describe what you wrote, not you. And I think it was a fair comment as you were accusing libertarians of supporting libertarian policies to for the purpose of subsidising religion despite the fact that libertarians (including Friedman) promote a secular approach to government and libertarians are relatively less religious than most groups. Friedman wasn’t a christian.
glen — nobody is denying the existence of complex systems. It is perhaps not suprising that we endorse the conclusions of prominent evolutionary economists in their discussion of the best institutional arrangements for coordinating complex systems — property rights, rule of law and voluntary exchange.
Of course, this isn’t to imply there should be no rules on the road. But the LDP believes that current laws are overly restrictive. I can’t see how allowing a dragway or relaxing certain restrictions are supposed to lead to the break down of our civil society. Civilisation isn’t that fragile.
Yeah, close this thread – it’s getting too long.
The pomo bit, I’ll concede, was a kind of private joke. And my choice of the term relativism, precisely because it is open to such misinterpretation, won’t have added clarity to the point.
Having said that, I’ve provided a pretty detailed and clear argument as to why the recruitment strategy may be viewed as questionable. I think your shift in emphasis — from talking about “your audience” to the “topic” you’ve been invited to speak on — suggests that you’ve (partly) recognised my point.
You’re right: the issue is whether to tell the whole truth or to tell part of the truth; the issue is whether to tell this part-truth or that part-truth. It seems that you think the only criterion that need inform that decision is the particular “audience” (though you’re backpedalling now to “topic”) that you’re speaking to. (Hence the charge of relativism; all that matters is that the message is effectively conveyed, i.e. conveyed in such a way as to recruit the members of your “audience” — no other standards apply).
But, as I said before, the “audience” is not a pre-existing entity. It is constituted by your address as an audience that is defined by a particular set of attributes and interests. The image that you thereby produce of the audience speaks volumes about the use to which you want to put the people whom you’ve constituted as that particular audience and the relation that you want to establish with those people: you’re making use of some event that is otherwise marginal (if not completely unrelated) to your own concerns in order to encourage people to identify with that image of the audience.
Put simply, you’ve constituted them as people solely or primarily as interested in dragways (or transport policy) rather than as people potentially interested in a much broader range of social/economic issues, and you’re encouraging them to identify with that first image rather than the latter. And you’re doing this because it is far more useful for the LDP (i.e. will generate more memberships) if those people fail to recognise that they might prefer to identify with the latter image rather than the former.
The LDP would hardly be the first or the only political party to do this, but I don’t think that the debate here centres on whether any other party is doing it. The question concerns, rather, whether it’s appropriate or honest to do so.
So Andrew, if we are not with yr little sect we are with the terrorists?
Typical of the grossly idiotic ahistoricism of this lunatic cult. Only the most pig-ignorant have never heard of two of the greatest social revlutions of all time in the Ukraine and Spain. Both revolutions led by libertarian socialists. But hey Andy, if you stop running for government office I’ll stop calling you statists – hows that for a deal you thieving liar?
I don’t think the people at summernats are solely or primarily interested in transport policy. Like most people, I’m sure they have a very broad range of interests and concerns.
But if we want to promote our transport policy then summernats seemed like a good place to go. And if we were going to go to summernats then transport policy seemed like an appropriate topic to promote.
I don’t think that mentioning “topic” is back-peddling.
“libertarian socialism” exists in name only. I has never and can never exist is reality because the philosophy is internally incoherent.
There are only three ways to coordinate behaviour. Through violence/coercion (government) through voluntary behaviour for profit (market) and through voluntary behaviour for love (civil society). The reality is that, as David Friedman so elequently put it, “love is not enough”. So we need to decide whether we complement civil society with the market or with government or with some mix of the two.
If you want mostly government and little market, you’re socialist. If you want mostly market and little government you’re libertarian or classical liberal. If you bits and pieces of each then you’re a social democrat. If you want all market and no government, you’re an anarcho-capitalist. If you want no market and no government you’re confused and/or naive (also known as “libertarian socialist”).
If prof rat wants to look a bit closer at the Spainish example he will find that despite abolishing the word “government” the local “anarchist” communes still were forced (through threat of violence) to follow rules set out by a council. Government by any other name smells just as bad.
And then he has the nerve to refer to classical liberalism as a “lunatic cult”! Oh, the irony.
So in LDP world, transport policy equates to ‘ Vote 1 for a Canberra Dragway’ just as providing funds to parents to allow them to enrol in private schools doesn’t equate to a subsidy to those schools.
Maybe ‘tossers’ is too polite a term to describe this mob.
adrian — we have never said that transport policy “equates” to one slogan.
And a subsidy to parents is a subsidy to parents — they can spend it on the school of their choice. Of course, because the voucher is only for education, this is an effective subsidy for the education industry — which drives up the return on inputs into education (eg teacher wages) which encourges greater supply of those inputs (more teachers, more schools). This is in comparison to a no-subsidy counter-factual.
If you’re worried that government payments might indirectly go to churches then how do you propose to prevent dole recipients or public servants giving a tithe to their church?
“So in LDP world, transport policy equates to ‘ Vote 1 for a Canberra Dragway’ just as providing funds to parents to allow them to enrol in private schools doesn’t equate to a subsidy to those schools.”
1. No.
People should be allowed to use their property as they see fit, that is build noisy recreational facilities if they are there first or if it doesn’t break covenants. If you want a Canberra dragway, your best hope is to vote for the LDP, unless another party promises to allow this or, wrongly, publicly fund it.
2. No.
Private and competitive education is better, but there are concerns about equity issues and public funding is rotten because it is so biased and doesn’t fund students. A voucher system goes a long way to solve these issues. There is no subsidy because the parents can spend it wherever they please. Public schools would eventually be privatised, by granting proprietorship to local communities (initially, tie it to the land). They can set fees and run the schools as they wish, and individuals can sell their interests as they please.
I can’t see why giving strong property rights, reducing planning regulations and cutting out bureaucracy makes you a “tosser”.
Rat,
Simple abuse is always a poor substitute for argument – unfortunately it is an alternative you seem wedded to.
1. I have not equated anyone with, nor alluded to terrorism. If you want to make a strawman find a field somewhere.
2. Socialist revolutions I have heard of, almost invariably involving large loss of life; as it did in Spain and the Ukraine. Both of them, IMHO, corrupted their basic ideals and then were put down. How is this relevant?
3. I am not now and have never run for government, nor am I now or have ever been a member of the LDP (does that sound sufficiently McCarthyist?).
.
An apology on all fronts would be nice – but I do not expect one. People throwing personal abuse into an argument normally do not have the guts to admit they are wrong.
900 new members? Not bad, till you realise it is free to join the LDP. Methinks this (and the Qld Guns stunt) is all about achieving registered party status. Better look at your name and then consider s 129(1)(d) of the Commonwealth Electoral Act lads – the Libs redrafted it when they lost their court bid to keep ‘liberals 4 forest’ off the register.
Correction – the Libs redrafted the laws on candidate names.
Thanks John, for clarifying the LDP position on allowing “for profit” schools, in that case – I provided a post in respect of the corporatisation of Childcare in Australia yesterday at 10.30pm – this real working model has NOT (repeat NOT) provided better care, better outcomes, better teaching standards, it has led in the complete opposite direction towards higher child-staff ratios, less employment of qualified staff and very high fees, which have led to ever increasing Federal Govt subsidies to cover parent out of pocket expenses, most of which are ending up in the greedy hands of a small group of owners and banks/investors of these very new corporate centres.
The obscene profits being gouged out of, what was once, a community or small private operator sector – an essential service which existed ONLY to provide the very highest standards of care for our babies and children and NOT a 40-60% taxpayer subsidised $81 million in after tax profit.
Raising staffing ratios and standards is always welcome, as most non-profit centres use surpluses in this way – but it’s a very blunt instrument and only increases fees again beyond most working people’s reach & like an arms race – the corporates just increase their fees again – as they did immediately after Howard’s latest 30% CCB tax rebate!!
What part of this actual working model – isn’t going to be replicated when ABC Learning and international corporate providers enter the infants/primary/secondary school system?
Honestly, if common sense was dynamite – it wouldn’t lift the hat of most of you blokes’ heads!
Paul Norton says:
“…I think it is extremely important that there be at least one significant agency of socialisation which enables people from different cultures, during their formative years to interact positively with each other and come to understand each other better.”
I often make the same argument myself. Australia, like all multicultural nations, is always at risk of fracturing into tribes that are distrustful of each other if not openly hostile. Compulsory state education could be an important prophylactic against this contingency. Private schools should consequently be banned.
Mel: “Private schools should consequently be banned.”
I’m curiuos whether the other LPers agree with this sentiment?
Personally, I don’t trust to government to correctly socialise it’s citizens any more than I trust any other agency. They have a poor track record and questionable incentives. I’m constantly amazed at the faith that people have in the benevolence and intelligence of politicians and bureaucrats.
jo — I’m not going to comment on childcare until I’ve done more research. However, with regards to school choice I have survied the literature and I find evidence that private schools provide a higher quality education for a comparable cost, the current system forces people to double-pay for a good education and that a less biased funding approach will lead to more choice, more competition, greater efficiency and better educational outcomes.
Government ownership of business generally leads to inefficiency, excessive rent-seeking, powerfull vested interests and poor outcomes. The education industry is no different. Profits are not evil.
Humphreys: “Personally, I don’t trust to government to correctly socialise it’s citizens any more than I trust any other agency. ”
I went to Government primary and secondary schools. They were ran by teachers, principals and the parent’s council. I never saw a politician or a bureacrat prowling the corridors. As with most Libertarians, you are obviously a rigid idealogue who views the world through the insights of an undergraduate’s Economics 101 textbook. Gorgeous.
Methinks this (and the Qld Guns stunt) is all about achieving registered party status.
Wow, you are some kind of ubergenius. I am eagerly awaiting your next post, where you will inform us on the colour of the sky.
Neither do I but I trust the ability of myself and my fellow citizens to chuck said government out if they get too big for their boots.
But education is not an industry in the sense that fast food or textiles are. Education is an attribute: the acquisition of knowledge and skills. It is in the general interest that everyone is educated but can you make a profit doing so. The vouchers suggestion is interesting but who will end up owning the schools and how will that affect education? Will it become like The Simpsons:
T. If you order three Pepsis at a $1.75 each, how much does it cost?
S: Pepsi.
T: Partial credit.
Alright glib. But I believe this ‘lets privatize the world thing’ can be taken too far. Publuc transport has been privatized and the result’s been disasterous. The trains are cheap trash and the prices go up twice a year. Why? Because you can’t really put pubic transport on the market. I can’t walk out my door and say I’ll catch Tram brand A today. They’re a bit more expensive but the seats are better and no-one vomits in the doorway. Or I’ll take brand B ’cause even tho’ it’s bushpig city I spent all money on the pokies.
There’s no real competition. Sure companies tender for government contracts but isn’t that the same old ineffecient government you’re talking about. I don’t have a choice. And if I complain the govt says it’s their fault. It’s the worst of both worlds.
Pertinent to education I can’t be sure that: a profit based education system can assuredly supply quality education universally regardless the socio-economic conditions of the parents, that it will impart that education in strict standards ie if you fails you fail you aren’t going to get a certificate because you bought it; and that that education will serve the needs of society and the individual generally and not the interests of the corporate entity delivering it.
I realize the education systems shite right now but I’m not convinced privatizing the whole shebang is really the cure-all. Profit’s not evil but it’s not the answer to everything either.
Munn: “As with most Libertarians, you are obviously a rigid idealogue who views the world through the insights of an undergraduate’s Economics 101 textbook. Gorgeous.”
I wasn’t brought up a libertarian. As I have read more and better understood the world my views evolved, and I’m sure they will continue to evolve.
While econ 101 does teach many important lessons, it generally concentrates too much on neoclassical equilibrium theories at the expense of the dynamic market process. This can lead to some rather unfortunate conclusions such as anti-trust legislation and too much regulation.
Clearly, my approach to economics draws more from the classical teachings of Say, the Austrian approach (Mises, Hayek, Hazlet), NIE (Coase, North) and the evolutionary approach currently being promoted by Metcalfe, Potts et al. But I’m sure you already knew this.
Humphrey Bear,
It isn’t difficult to envisage the type of dystopia your Libertarian social engineering would produce.
Democracy would soon give way to plutocracy; a rich elite will live in fortress-like mansions full of servants; the fretful middle classes will hide in gated communities; and the working classes and a vast army of lumpenproles will inhabit a lawless Made Max type of world.
Any sense of community will have vanished. Each man will be at the throat of every other man.
Indeed, there will no longer be “any such thing as society”.
Adrien — you obviously think more highly of Howard than I do. I think it’s fair to say that even democratic government’s make mistakes and are still run by people less than perfectly informed or benevolent and with distorted incentives.
Education is an attribute in a person, but it is also an industry. It is often assumed that there is a positive externality from educaiton, though the actual evidence is scant. Assuming there is a positive externality from people being educated the logical solution is to subsidise people getting an education (ie voucher).
I don’t know who will end up owning each school. I also don’t know who owns each shoe shop. I imagine there will be a variety of owners — including charities, civil society groups, churches, businesses etc.
Your argument against private transport options are based on what you percieve to be inadequate choice. Government ownership doesn’t fix that.
Nobody has claimed that a private school can assure the outcomes of their students or is a cure-all. But we don’t have the choice of picking “utopia” and then walking away.
Your fear that a corporation may not serve it’s customers could equally be said of fish’n'chip shops. They are only trying to make a profit (evil bastards) so surely the government would provide better fish’n'chip shops?
An interesting article was written a while ago about how food is so much more important that education, so for the sake of society and the common good we need government supermarkets which will be run for the common good instead of those evil profit-maximising supermarkets.
I know you’re not arguing for nationalising fish’n'chip shops or supermarkets… but the general point holds that a profit-maximising business will generally offer a better quality product/service than the government. This is exactly what we learned when the planned economies failed and the lessons we learn from a proper understanding of economics — and the lesson applies to all industry. Including education.
Munn — libertarians generally don’t support the government influencing your choices, so we are generally against any sort of social engineering. The life you get would be the one you choose.
Your amuzing sci-fi vision of a free world is not supported by theory, history or reality. I am more optimistic that a free world would lead to more opportunity for all and a more meaningful life. Removing government will allow civil society to flourish and communiites based on voluntary association will be stronger. By reducing the power of government we will by definition remove the cause for much conflict as problems must be solved through agreement instead of coercion. And David Friedman gives good reason to believe that increasing the role of voluntary exchange is likely to lead to higher levels of social capital, trust & honesty. This is supported by history.
There will always be a society. The choice is between a voluntary and vibrant civil society of free people who control their own lives… and an enforced social structure imposed on people who have limited control over themselves or the government.
I understand you hate choice and freedom — but in a free socity you are free to join a commune. Live & let live.
Humphrey,
That spiel was beautiful.
I suggest you record it with a violin and piano accompaniment.
John
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Yeah it will provided there’s a profit to be made. Simply because the government doesn’t run public transport efficiently doesn’t mean privatizing it is better for the simple reason that it’s not viable to have a choice. Even in the event that it was a totally privatized affair some services say 11pm on a monday night would not be profitable and yet are necessary if you’re a worker relying on PT to get home that night. The problem with corporatized PT is that we don’t have a choice so the market mechanism of buy some other brand doesn’t work. It’s effectively a monopoly. On the other hand we can’t hold the government responsible because it isn’t. And the results are higher prices and worse service.
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I’m not sure what you mean exactly by ‘positive externality” but I believe that education has attributes that aren’t entirely economic in character. It’s not a question of whether or no things are important and therefore the province of the public or provate sectors. It’s what works. I’m sure you agree. I don’t discount the vouchers idea, I think it’s interesting. But it’s vital that education is universally accessible and of a certain standard. My questions occur from this point.
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Incidentally by universally accessible I don’t mean everyone’s got a ‘right’ to a PhD.
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As for the question of ownership of schools one thing that puzzles me about libertarians is that don’t seem to address the fact that corporations can be coercive and illiberal institutions. Private does not always mean freedom loving.
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I believe, for example, that a 21st century student should be equipped with media literacy, ie the capacity to critically read the media analogous to not believing everything you read. Many people make their living by twisting truth, taking things out of context and obfuscation. Their audiences lap it up as objective reality. Many people are likewise passive receptors to advertising. I know this has been exaggerated but my point is if you’re a massive corporation who runs a large chunk of the ‘education industry’ it would not be in your interests to teach kids the tricks TVCs use to bullshit.
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Liberal society depends on the principle of enlightened self-interest. But anyone who’s worked in sales knows that the dumber the mark the easier the sale. If I was in some higher committee of a corporation that ran schools and had a fast food chain I’d be pretty tempted to knock anything about nutrition of the home ec curriculum.
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That’s just one example. What if an evangelical church was to control a large chunk of the market, teach creationism and thereby possibly rob us of some breakthrough which would have come from a genius if she’d only been taught the theory of evolution?
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Moreove would there be profit in teaching everyone? Wouldn’t the wealthy get even better options? From a purely economic rationalist point of view this is squandering of human resources. From a social justice point of view it’s just terribly unfair. And from a libertarian point of view it could lead to a totalitarian nightmare perpetuated by corporations rather than governments.
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Hyperbolous? Yeah I guess so. But I think these questions have to be considered without recourse to theory. Theory only gets you so far. One of the reasons for American success is their formerly very strong public education system now in decline.
>
We need to massively improve our education system. I’m not sure the answer lies in private ownership, tho’ vouchers are an interesting idea. I think the answer lies in new techniques. Maybe privately operated schools and competition will foster that kind of innovation. But my questions I feel are valid and still stand.
Wow, this is still going on, eh. Just build the drag strip on top of this thread!
“By reducing the power of government we will by definition remove the cause for much conflict as problems must be solved through agreement instead of coercion.”
BULLY: Don’t we both agree that you should hand over your lunch money?
NERD: Now that there’s no Leviathan-like government in place to protect me from the consequences of my choices, I am finally free to fully agree with your suggestion!
steve munn: “Democracy would soon give way to plutocracy; a rich elite will live in fortress-like mansions full of servants; the fretful middle classes will hide in gated communities; and the working classes and a vast army of lumpenproles will inhabit a lawless Mad Max type of world.”
Futuristic, my eye. The place is called Rio de Janeiro.
Junior,
Wow! Perhaps we can use the strawman you have created as the starting post for the drag strip!
The debate above has been about transport, drag racing, health and (mainly) education – you imply that libertarians are some form of anarcho-capitalists. I cannot speak for the LDP; but, personally, one of the functions that is clearly that of the state is the criminal law, both police and courts. Can you please point out where anyone has advocated abolishing the police or courts? The alternative is to indicate that you were simply wrong in creating this straw man.
.
Adrien,
Why is it that the problem with “corporatized PT is that we don’t have a choice”? Could it be that it is government regulation and subsidy that is restricting choice?
On to the more substantive points and, yet again, I am not a member of the LDP and can not speak for it.
You seem to believe that the parents of kids (those who make the choice where that voucher is spent) will dumbly walk up to their local school and just hand it over to whomever. I would strongly disagree with that. There may be a few dumb marks (as you put it) around – but a business relying on the stupidity of their clientele would not (IMHO) last long. I believe that the average person, while less than perfect (as we all are) is capable of working out for themselves what is best for them and then spending their money, or voucher, or whatever, in that way. They will make mistakes, but I would argue that those mistakes will not be worse, and very likely to be better, than the mistakes made by any government on their behalf.
Some on this thread may choose to believe that most people in this country (and other countries) are systematically unable to make good choices on their own behalf. I reject that notion – that is why I believe that, to the greatest extent possible, they should be allowed to make those decisions by themselves.
It really is that simple – do you believe that adults are capable of making decisions for themselves or not?
In the case of children there is a difference, which is why I believe that schooling not only should but must be available to all at a price all can afford. To extend from that belief to the point where you say that no-one should be able to choose a school for their child is to stretch logic way past any possible breaking point and (IMHO) into the counter-intuitive.
Well, her is another possible scenario for a Libertarian future- Rollerball http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollerball_(1975_film)#Corporate_authority_in_Rollerball
“It’s for your own good Jonathon. The Corporation has your best interests at heart- you know that don’t you?”
Nature abhors a vacuum and so does politics. In a Libertarian future the plutocrats and corporates will fill that vacuum and the little guy will be squashed like a cockroach in a kitchen cabinet.
“Nature abhors a vacuum and so does politics. In a Libertarian future the plutocrats and corporates will fill that vacuum and the little guy will be squashed like a cockroach in a kitchen cabinet.”
Explain how it happens – don’t relate it to some historian’s wishy-washy reinterpretation of fluid dynamics.
I think this is wrong – societies which allow for more social mobility have the most civil and political rights.
Junior’s Johnson — the situation you mentioned is called “coercion” and that is the way that government coordinates behaviour. In contrast, the market and civil society is based on voluntary interaction. That means no violence and no coercion.
And are you really implying that you want the government to “protect” you from the consequences of your choices? Freedom and responsibility are the two sides of the same coin.
Adrien — there is certainly profit to be made in transport and education. There are many examples around the world and through history of private transport and education. There is a wealth of information about how private transport & education has worked in the past and might work again in the future.
If the market doesn’t offer the product you want or the price you want that doesn’t prove there is a failure. We live in a world of finite resources where we must always make trade-offs. And the monopoly and externality arguments aren’t strong either. And the idea of intervening whenever somebody thinks they have a bright idea (but can’t justify it properly) is a policy doomed to disapointment.
Corporations can’t be coercive by definition. The can use influence (offer you something you want) but they cannot use coercion (threaten to take away something that is already yours). For example, K-Mart can offer you a 2-1 deal to influence your decisions, but the government can threaten to take away your money or freedom to influence your decisions.
If a school was being run badly and tricking everybody to eat McDonalds, then people wouldn’t send their children there.
A liberal society doesn’t require perfect information. There is rational ignorance and all knowledge has costs, so there is an efficient amount of knowledge that is non-infinte and non-zero. Like most things.
As for religious schools… I was brough up in a wacko christian school (which exists under the current system anyway) and I turned out fine. I think you’re underestimating people’s ability to think for themselves.
You talk about the wealthy getting better options in education. That’s true for everything wealthy people buy. They have better options for housing, health, travel, transport etc. That’s what being wealthy means: being able to buy more.
But the reality is that the current system already let’s rich people buy better education. By not giving equal vouchers for private schools, the current systems makes it harder for poor people to go to private schools.
You say that we need new techniques in education. The best system for promoting diversity, innovation and new ideas in any market is to make it more competitive.
“societies which allow for more social mobility have the most civil and political rights.”
Do you mean Europe, Mark?
What nonsense of course they can. Corporations have the same status as a person.
Unless you use a different definition to everyone else on the planet.
Reading Doc Hill and John Humphreys defense of libertarianism on this blog just shows they are magnificant examples of what is great about libertarianism. Both these guys belong in parliament as our representatives… Now if only Humpreys got real about the Miliatant Islamic threat.
“Corporations can’t be coercive by definition.”
How so, Steve? How does a corp compel you to buy their goods. You seem the sort of guy that wouldn’t take nonsense lying down, so please explain.
Personally, I have never had Coca Cola compel me to buy their drink twice a week. So…..tell us.
Fats says:
“Do you mean Europe, Mark?”
You mean the north Africa population of France that is about 15% of total which is highly unemployed and live in barrios that Police are too afraid to enter. Is that who you refer to……. as socially mobile?
Well, despite the best attempts of myself and some others to lower the tone, this has turned (in patches) into a surprisingly thoughtful and well argued thread. In fact, here and there, it’s been a better and more rigorous debate about libertarian thinking than you’d find on most
libertarian blogs.
Kudos to Adrien and Glenn R for generally and seriously playing the idea and not the man. And a big hats off to caffe-rod Glen for introducing an original and well-argued perspective and to John Humpreys for being so cogent and unflappable in arguing his corner.
As for you Mulberry Boy and Sam Ward – 2 out of 10. Off to Snark Farm over winter I feel.
And Steve M, you can take your underpants off your head now. The novelty’s quite worn off. Plus they need a good wash.
And ooh, just thought of a good one-liner.
“The nanny state evolved because so many adults still persist in behaving like children.”
So this is the “Naah, but…” defence.
q: “Complex systems?”
a: “Naah, but they don’t matter cause I can’t see the causal connection.”
Let’s speculate on the rest of the conversation assuming that the person who can’t see the causal conection doesn’t go read some research (which was suggested many comments ago) and is more than happy to live in a state of blissful ignorance because thinking anything otherwise would disrupt the materialistic narcissism that results in the championing of a malfunctioning mass-individualist form of automobility.
q: “Why can’t you see the causal connection?”
a: “Naaah, but I can see the causal connection and me doing what I wanna cause then I am freee.”
q: “No, the complex causal systems that lead to emergent behaviour like lung cancer for bar staff in smoking pubs or road accidents and a horrific waste of resources in thoroughly automobilised societies?”
a: “Naaaah, but I wanna be freeee, don’t you seeeee? Living in a treeee, doing a weeeee, with me, meee, MEEEEEEEEEEEE…”
I think you would have to be an extreme ideologue to believe that advertising does not have a coercive effect. Some have called this ’symbolic violence’ not because it _makes you do things_ but because it makes you believe that _no other option is possible_. Like, for example, if you thought a pro-driving policy was a good transport policy then this means you would be suffering from a certain kind of symbolic violence which results in an intellectual disposition that refuses to imagine and then comprehend that other and arguably better* forms of mobility and habitation could serve as a policy basis.
* safer, more efficient
“Corporations have the same status as a person.”
Until it comes to admitting individual responsibilty.
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My point exactly,Nabakov. Hasn’t the whole workchoices debate been about how corporations have more power than any individual and therefore by definition the corporation is in a position to coerce employees
How about the recent bunfight in Sydney where the corporation wasn’t going to pay a dyinng man what it owed.
How about James Hardy dragging the chain on paying out asbestos victims
What about shonky builders and used car companies who have made livings out of coercing people.
What about the mob who are buying QANTAS, not being able to guarantee work conditions is coercion by a corporation in my book.
Piss off, Nabakov. If you want to throw insults around use your real name. You play the man half the time you post, so quit it with the whining hypocrisy, old man.
Anyway Humphrey is telling porkies. He says here:
“Corporations can’t be coercive by definition. ”
Then over at Yobbos site he supports a publican who threw out a couple of girls who were caught kissing:
“I agree that it wasn’t fair.
I believe that a pub has the right to discriminate… but that doesn’t make it fair. ” http://yobbo.wordpress.com/2007/02/07/women-behaving-badly/#comment-14091
So utilising a couple of beefy bouncers to frog march women out of a bar isn’t coercion? Huh?
Let’s check the dictionary Humphrey:
1. forcing of somebody to do something: the use of force or threats to make somebody do something against his or her will
2. force used to compel somebody: force or threats used to make somebody do something against his or her will. http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/coercion.html
Humphrey, you are a dolt.
“Both these guys belong in parliament as our representatives… ”
Paid for out of our taxes? Yes, they’re both intelligent and intellectually diligent people but like so many libertarians they’re pretty naive about how the real business of politics really works. They’d be eaten alive or go native within months.
“Now if only Humpreys got real about the Miliatant Islamic threat.”
If only the (sic) Miliatant Islamic threat got real. They pulled off one geo-politically shattering coup on 9/11. Since then they’ve basically been on the run – tracked, hunted down and dobbed in by everyone from their neighbours to the Western world’s intelligence, security, police and finance tracking services. And cluster bombed from time to time as well.
Always amuses me how the poor old crazy joe chickenhawks and birdies of this world who pose as armchair defenders of Western Civilisation are such defeatists when it comes to believing our way of life won’t be triumphant in the long run.
Of course there is the seething cauldron of Western hating and now well experienced networked guerillas now brewing up in Iraq. Now how did that happen?
“If you want to throw insults around use your real name.”
Why? Will knowing who I really am add or detract from the insults? And how you react to them then anyway?
And do you really think most aus blogosphereites acquainted with you wouldn’t argue with my thinly veiled description of you as a fortysomething desperately pushing seventeen?
“Paid for out of our taxes? ”
No, not necessarily. A good system would be covering the expenses of the peoples representatives meeting in Canberra a total of two weeks a year. That would limit our taxes having to pay salaries and it would also remove a lot of those who want to make politics a professional career.
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“Yes, they’re both intelligent and intellectually diligent people but like so many libertarians they’re pretty naive about how the real business of politics really works.”
Yea, so and how exactly do you know? And if they met a few weeks a year the entire landscape of the poltical class would change.
Heaven forbid, but if a large number of idiots actually voted for someone like me I would donate the salary back to the tax office. Pity politicians haven’t tried that.
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“They’d be eaten alive or go native within months.”
See above.
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“Now if only Humphreys got real about the Miliatant Islamic threat.”
that is what I said to which you replied:
If only the (sic) Miliatant Islamic threat got real. They pulled off one geo-politically shattering coup on 9/11. Since then they’ve basically been on the run – tracked, hunted down and dobbed in by everyone from their neighbours to the Western world’s intelligence, security, police and finance tracking services. And cluster bombed from time to time as well.
Thanks for siccing the typo, pedant. I can’t really understand the rest of the missive. I’m sure it was important.
———————————————————————————
“Always amuses me how the poor old crazy joe chickenhawks and birdies of this world who pose as armchair defenders of Western Civilisation are such defeatists when it comes to believing our way of life won’t be triumphant in the long run.”
So you’re one of these people who believes deep oxygen therapy will cure cancer? Ha. Never knew you into faith healing too. Must be another side line of yours.
———————————————————————————
“Of course there is the seething cauldron of Western hating and now well experienced networked guerillas now brewing up in Iraq. Now how did that happen?”
Anyone can find the answer to that. All you have to do is pick up a copy of the NYTimes and read Modo. Isn’t that what you do before you “form” opinions?
———————————————————————————
Steve says:
“My point exactly,Nabakov.”
I’m not sure nabakov was making that point Steve.
———————————————————————
” Hasn’t the whole workchoices debate been about how corporations have more power than any individual and therefore by definition the corporation is in a position to coerce employees.”
How so? By firing people? So let me get this straight… coercion is now defined as firms having the power to fire when they didn’t before unless it paid a ransom. This is definition hijacking. No mention that the low skilled will have more opportunities available to them as has been proved time and time again.
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“How about the recent bunfight in Sydney where the corporation wasn’t going to pay a dyinng man what it owed.”
Was it taken to court? I cannot understand why anyone would avoid paying a debt if they are solvent and risk legal costs. Is this the full story because it doesn’t sound rational to me.
———————————————————————–
“How about James Hardy dragging the chain on paying out asbestos victims”
And the CEO was fired wasn’t he… along with the managment that got tangled up in that sorry tale.
———————————————————————–
“What about shonky builders and used car companies who have made livings out of coercing people.”
How so? There’s builder and car warranties these days. Didn’t you know?
———————————————————————
“What about the mob who are buying QANTAS, not being able to guarantee work conditions is coercion by a corporation in my book.”
Oh, yes the thousands upon thousands of shareholders who made out like bandits, getting a 60% premium on the Qantas, shouldn’t have because there may be a threat to the overpaid airline pilots.
I agree, and stop calling me Mulberry Boy. It’s insulting, and you know it.
Oh, and in case you missed it, piss off.
Put a sock in it, folks, and behave, please.
Poor old crazy joe. Too poor in thought, too old in thinking and too crazy to actually respond with anything beyond non sequitur insults hastily ripped together out of the pink stress ball next to his um..laptop.
“…and stop calling me Mulberry Boy. It’s insulting, and you know it.”
Tell me something I don’t know.
Hmm, actually why do you find having your net de plume funked up like that insulting? Don’t tell me my wild guess somehow hit home. I’m not sure I could handle being right again by accident.
Wot? Sorry Mark, foot linen engagement underway.
Where’s the moderator?
Wanting to go to sleep.
Please be nice.
1. “Poor old crazy joe”
2. “Too poor in thought, too old in thinking and too crazy to actually respond with anything beyond non sequitur insults hastily ripped together out of the pink stress ball next to his um..laptop.”
3.“…and stop calling me Mulberry Boy. It’s insulting, and you know it.�
Tell me something I don’t know.
4.“If you want to throw insults around use your real name.�
5. They’d be eaten alive or go native within months.
6.Well, despite the best attempts of myself and some others to lower the tone
7. Why? Will knowing who I really am add or detract from the insults? And how you react to them then anyway?
and the others I missed.
Nabakov
Why don’t stop the insults, the petty siicing of typos and stick the story on hand?
It’s pretty piss poor you need to target people rather that the subject as Munn has said.
Let me remind you, you did that so frequently (without much else to add at Catallaxÿ) you were finally asked not to come back.
What I suggest you do is stop it with the pathetic insults and deal with the subject on hand. It’s a good subject and one that interests many people by the look of things.
Please. Thanks.
Steve,
Even where there is the appearance of a real name here, how do we know it is or is not correct. For all we know his real name could be “Nabakov”. I neither know nor care whether your real name is “Steve Munn”.
Sure he/she does play the man too often, but the inability to cope with a few insults or carelessly thrown mud normally indicates a personality that is lacking in self-confidence. I know it does in my case.
I find trying to forensically take apart an argument normally helps. JC’s method can be good too.
.
Despite an almost overwhelming fear of being told to “piss off”, I was also wondering if silkworm had an answer for me yet. I am still waiting, more now in hope than expectation. I am genuinely not trying to make a point here, silkworm – apart from you not answering what I thought to be a legitimate question – I am actually interested in your view.
Nabs himself said there’d been some interesting discussion on this thread. I agree. The meta stuff about who’s insulting whom isn’t part of it. Let’s stop that, and have a clean break and go in an insult free spirit.
JH said:
I’m tempted…
Still going, I see. Is this (drumroll) going to be LP’s Thread of Doom?
We have nearly everyone here – all we are lacking is GMB. I think that is going to be the only way to drive this passed the 4,000 (or so) mark that the old one reached.
“What I suggest you do is stop it with the pathetic insults and deal with the subject on hand.”
So, poor old crazy joe, visited any catallaxy threads lately? You’d be appalled by what jc gets up to there.
But Mark’s right. Everyone cut out the abuse and meta-abuse.
Especially you Nabakov.
“Especially you Nabakov.”
Oh fuck off. Don’t try that holier than shit on me Nabs, you prick.
And for fuck’s sake don’t start typing until you actually know how you want to say what you want to say.
eg: “that holier than shit” should really read “holier than thou shit”.
It’s bad enough correcting your typos and syntax without pointing out the puerile wholes in your arch ontological observations as well.
Getting back to the story
Someone above suggested that if the LDP ever got representation behavior would resemble what others do when they get to the levers of power.
That’s interesting as a supposition but the evidence actually doesn’t point to that. Libertarians or quasi libertarians in the US who have run under the GOP banner (as parties are more losely tied there) have shown ample evidence of “strong libertarian principles.
Floyd Flake is a terrific GOP libertarian. So is Ron Paul, who Reason magazine has endorsed as their best candidate to carry the flag. The past New Mexico governor. Arnie, when he isn’t doing his motor vehicle emissions mandate from hell. The North Carolina governor, Mark Sanford, who actually took a pig under his arm into the state house to demonstrate why he wasn’t signing/vetoed the appropriations bill. These have all been principled people who haven’t fallen for the trappings office that one sees. So yes, an OZ LDP senator would be great by the evidence.
“Floyd Flake is a terrific GOP libertarian.”
I can feel a sitcom pitch coming on. ‘cept of course the networks would demand a less blatantly obvious name for the title character.
Yes, Nabakove, you were the first to pick that up. How highly tory smart of you.
————————————————————————————-
How many of you actually think the war of Drugs has been effective in the us and the lessor version of prohibtion here?
2 million inmates in US jails are there because of non-violent drug use or distribution.
Australia to the lessor degree, but the criminal element has control of the market.
The LDP policy is one for legalization.
Can any of you explain how effective current policy has been and why?
“So, poor old crazy joe, visited any catallaxy threads lately? You’d be appalled by what jc gets up to there.”
So you lurk, quietly, in the dark of early morning hours, hoping someone will ask you in. How lonely you reallyare, aren’t you.
“The North Carolina governor, Mark Sanford, who actually took a pig under his arm into the state house to demonstrate why he wasn’t signing/vetoed the appropriations bill.”
And there’s a lovely little B story arc right there. This is gold, poor old crazy joe. Keep it coming. Do you remember the name of the pig by any chance? Please let it be Delay. Surreality demands it.
Snark off.
After fucking up the first act, I think Arnie’s starting to find his pace a bit now. Especially now he’s dropped the old 20th century GOP party machine advisors and worked out to start hanging with the region’s real wealth creators and bubbling minds as a legislator instead of as talent.
The Stem Cell thing was a bold move that is paying off and unlike most Cal Govs of recent years and all parties, he instinctively understands what Cal’s real competitive advantage is: a critical mass of brillant, ambitious and frequently crazy people – whether it’s Hollywood, the Skunkworks or Silicon Valley.
For the first time in his life, he gets to play the Director/Producer, and after a crappy low budget independent debut flick I think he’s now finding his stride in the State which has pioneered just about everything funky and bleeding-edge for the whole world over the last few generations.
Snark on again.
And all that sailed right over your head didn’t it, poor crazy little old joe? You just the Governator in terms of how he’ll affect short term blips on your daytrader screen.
“So you lurk, quietly, in the dark of early morning hours, hoping someone will ask you in. How lonely you reallyare, aren’t you.”
And yet you’re here and I’m not there.
You and Birdy really think the worse putdown you can hand out to others is “lonely”. And you hand it out at all hours of the morning. And then start demanding responses to your previous comments of four minutes ago.
I know you are but what am I?
Please turn the snark off permanently on this thread!
Jesus feck, Mark, you are quite the killjoy. I already had the beer on ice and the party pies in the oven.
Munn & others — discrimination is not coercion. Coercion involves the threat of violence or the threat to take away something that already legally belonged to another person.
It is possible to discriminate in coercion/violence (ie only rob a black person) and it is possible to discriminate in trade (ie only sell a beer to a black person) and it is possible to discriminate in love (ie only date a black person).
In a free world a person is free to trade and love discriminately. The only thing not permitted in a free world is coercion/violence (whether discriminatory or not).
glen — you can’t just say “complex systems” and expect us all to agree that dragways should be banned. There is nothing inherent about complex systems that require excessive government control. In a free society the burden of proof rests with the person advocating coercion/violence… and you haven’t given sufficient reason to justify your preferred restrictions.
And advertising does not have a coercive effect, by definition. Advertising is about influence. As is this debate and when you offer $5 for a burger. The difference between influence and coercion is that with influence you are using your property to change somebody’s decision… with coercion you are threatening to take away their property. These things are different.
Quite right. Temptation is not force, you can always say “get thee behind me, Pepsi Max, the things that you savour are not genuine“. Advertising as coercion—bah, next people’ll be saying that political propaganda is a dangerous tool.
I do find the ‘libertarian’ preoccupation with property and possessions a bit disconcerting: is the slogan to be “you can take our lives, but you can never take our assets”?
Fyodor, iced beer and party pies at 6.37am: mad props. For the record, ‘feck’/'fuck’: the difference is U.
Some information on the “terrific GOP libertarian Floyd Flake” can be found here and also here. His reported views on abortion and gay rights seem somewhat less libertarian than could be wished for.
Andrew wrote:
We’ve also yet to hear from Jack Strocchi, Rafe Champion, Evil Pundit, Bring Back EP at LP, and (at the up-market end) John Quiggin and Andrew Norton.
“And advertising does not have a coercive effect, by definition. Advertising is about influence. As is this debate and when you offer $5 for a burger. The difference between influence and coercion is that with influence you are using your property to change somebody’s decision… with coercion you are threatening to take away their property. These things are different.”
Okay, forget the word coercion. What about lies? Distortion? Misrepresentation? Fraud?
Nah, feck U.
We can add manipulation of young children (the target audience for much advertising) leading to emotional blackmail of parents and/or formation of substance dependencies which undermine the capacity for rationally self-interested behaviour.
I would add that economic libertarianism seems to assume that the world is peopled entirely by perfectly rational utility-maximising adults.
Paologies.
Not Floyd Flake the ex black congressman.
I meant Jeff Flake
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/116651.html
Here is his very frank Reason interview prior to the mid terms …. sounding very unhappy with the GOP.
Scroll down 1/2 way.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/116504.html
You know, before I started reading this thread I had no idea who the LDP are, what they think, or what you’d have to believe in if you were to agree with them.
No I see it: LDP stands for the Literal Definition Party
“I would add that economic libertarianism seems to assume that the world is peopled entirely by perfectly rational utility-maximising adults.”
Or well-behaved children of perfectly informed parents.
Confronted with the notion that people WILL fall for dodgy advertising and make “choices” that aren’t actually in their interests, a libertarian will do one or more of three things:
1) Accuse their interlocutor of “knowing what’s best for the proles” and thus supposedly undermine their “leftist” credentials. [Irrelevant distraction]
2) Suggest that such corporate behaviour will, by the magic of market forces, eventually put the company out of business or force them to change their ways. [Faith-based nonsense, which even if it were correct ignores the harm done in the meantime]
3) Engage in I’m Alright Jack Darwinism, e.g. “it’s your funeral, underinformed careless consumers. You used your freedom to make the wrong choices”. [This one's hard to argue against, other than to point out that it's callous and again faith-based - i.e. many small wrongs (poor outcomes for citizens) are preferable to one large one (evil gummint intervention in corporate affairs)]
“We can add manipulation of young children (the target audience for much advertising) leading to emotional blackmail of parents and/or formation of substance dependencies which undermine the capacity for rationally self-interested behaviour.”
Oh please.
Yes, let’s stop all targeted advertising because parents are too weak to say no.
When xmas cames along parents will have to guess what the latest snazzy computer games and toys are around for presents. Advertising, often enough though not always, is informative that makes people aware of such things like new model cars, new computer gaming etc. Without advertising we wouldn’t be aware of such things.
You don’t sound like a person who buys Foxtel so all free to air Tv and radio would probably no longer be around.
“I would add that economic libertarianism seems to assume that the world is peopled entirely by perfectly rational utility-maximising adults.”
Paul, so er, you’re actually saying that you need a very high IQ to make choices. Is that what you’re saying? I don’t think most people have a problem choosing what mobile plan or telephone provider they use.
And why do you think that the opposite person ie. one who isn’t able to make rational decision would not be able to survive in a world with more choice. You seem to have a low regard for a large % of people if you think they can’t make choices in the most basic things.
Humphreys says:
“Coercion involves the threat of violence or the threat to take away something that already legally belonged to another person.”
Humphreys, you deadbeat, it the dictionary that defines coercion not you. The women in question were forcibly removed from a bar. That is coercion. It also happens to be illegal, but that is neither here nor there in terms of the definition of coercion.
JC:
“Without advertising we wouldn’t be aware of such things.”
Dude, nobody’s talking about banning advertising. It ain’t so black and white. Just for advertisers to stick to their own codes of practice would be a good start!
I’ll have chips with the two Flakes
Sometimes corporate advertising kills: http://allocasuarina.blogspot.com/2007/02/children-sacrificed-at-alter-of-market.html
Apologies for self promotion, but this “advertising is benign” schtick is crude ill-informed nonsense. Advertisers make use of psychological and sociological research to manipulate people. Don’t believe me? Type the requisite search terms into Google Scholar and check for yourself.
well, firstly, I didn’t just say ‘complex systems’ I am pretty sure I have written a number of comments that were more than two words. Secondly, where have I suggested that dragways should be banned!?!?! lol I think you have again radically misunderstood where I am coming from. I have simply said your ‘pro-driving policy’ is stupid.
The drag racing motorsport was developed as an initiative between a number of interested parties, Peterson Publishing through Hot Rod magazine, the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA), and various smaller parties (such as airport owners, governments, local police, etc) who were interested in providing a space for youth in the 1950s US to run that was more accessible than the salt lakes. Hot Rodding shifted from a culture organised around street-based and salt lake activities to being one organised around street-based and drag strip activities. Drag strips were understood as a public good. The issue of drag strips is mostly nonsense and is a local problem concerning local actors. The alleged ‘transport policy’ concerns more than the local concerns because automobility is a ‘global’ problem in both sense (systems theory and geography).
Again you frame my suggestions as restrictions when I have argued repeatedly that the current system of automobility combined with the a population distributed through suburbia is already a restriction. People are forced to own and drive a car to be mobile. This is a kind of violence built into the urban environment and socio-technical systems of mobility. Do you agree or disagree that people who live in suburbs are forced to own and drive cars if they want to have the mobility expected of them by the rest of society (work, friends, and various social institutions)? If you agree that they are indeed forced to own and drive a car (or face the prospect of public transport and other measures, such as moving to the inner-west like I have), then how is this not a violence?
The current distribution of people into suburbs and the development of the current system of automobility go hand in hand. It is a complex system because the emergent effects can not be located with any any simple notion of causality. Causality is distributed across many actors (social and technical). The previous era of train-based mobility saw the distribution of suburbs/towns according to breaking and accelerating capacity of trains. Now we have a distribution of urban populations according to the real and imagined mobility afforded not just by the car but by the system of automobility. (Another example of this is how the smoking issue was resolved in the courts in the US. The decision handed down distributed causality across a number of parties, the companies had to pay damages for that component for which they were responsible.)
I am not sure how many times I need to explain this. You want to restrict the conditions of the problem to the narrowest (and I argue stupidest) view of the current state of affairs regarding the experiential relationship that automobolised subjects have to the system of automobility. However, the system of automobility can not be imagined only from the point of view of drivers and any transport policy based on this perspective will be fundamentally flawed not only in terms of logic but in terms of the technical problems in making a better system of mobility. There is no way around this.
umm, right. Do I own my TV? I think so. Oh, but I don’t own the ads that are broadcast on it? How about if I used the TV as a weapon and ‘influenced’ the bloke down at the corner shop? No, of course not. So ‘influence’ is not ‘coercion’? Changing someone’s decision does not involve violence? These words are not weapons that I launch against the near-comical stupidity of your ‘pro-driving policy’?
But Glen, you’re forgeting that for the LDP you would always have the choice not to go to work, not to have any friends and not to make use of those institutions. Ergo, no coercion.
FDB says:
“I would add that economic libertarianism seems to assume that the world is peopled entirely by perfectly rational utility-maximising adults.�
Or well-behaved children of perfectly informed parents.”
People make informed rational decisions most of the time. There are some who don’t and therefore you are arguing that we need to reduce choice and liberty because of the few who aren’t able to make rational decisions often enough such as the mentally disabled etc.
——————————————”Confronted with the notion that people WILL fall for dodgy advertising and make “choicesâ€? that aren’t actually in their interests”
Oh bullshit. Evidence does not show that people will make irrational decisions because they saw a fucking Coke ad at the bus station. In any event there are consequences for lying through a fully developed tort system. If someone lied to you and you ended up with a motorbike instead of a car there is legal redress.
, a libertarian will do one or more of three things:
Accuse their interlocutor of “knowing what’s best for the proles� and thus supposedly undermine their “leftist� credentials. [Irrelevant distraction]
Actually you seem to be arguing that, not libertarians. Libertarians say that we don’t know what’s best for you; only you can make a better-informed decision than I can from a distance. You are actually arguing to reduce choice because you think that more choice is worse.
——————————————
“Suggest that such corporate behaviour will, by the magic of market forces, eventually put the company out of business or force them to change their ways. [Faith-based nonsense, which even if it were correct ignores the harm done in the meantime]”
That does happen and will continue to happen unless we allow rent-seeking enterprises to gain leverage through government monopolies. As big as Coke is it had to buckle under and return to old formula coke when it realized that its customers were about to leave them in droves.
——————————————
Engage in I’m Alright Jack Darwinism,
Oh yes. The law of the jungle makes an appearance for the first time on the thread, which is surprising seeing we have gone for over 350 posts. A free enterprise structure could not survive without laws and custom.
e.g. “it’s your funeral, underinformed careless consumers.
And what, the cabinet is better informed than you are in terms of making your own decisions?
You used your freedom to make the wrong choices�. [This one’s hard to argue against, other than to point out that it’s callous and again faith-based - i.e. many small wrongs (poor outcomes for citizens) are preferable to one large one (evil gummint intervention in corporate affairs)].
Yes. The war of drugs has been a monstrous blight in the way we treat people who use recreational drugs or want to self medicate. It’s a little preposterous that people can obtain anti-depressants so easily but end up in jail if they are using a recreational drug instead of alcohol.
I fail too see how the “gubermant� can help people when they make frequent wrong choices in life.
JC says:
“I fail too see…”
Yes, Joe, we’ve already worked that out.
OMG the cylons have taken over the gubermant!!! wow, so the only non-individualist entity in the libertarian cosmology is the “gubermant”? but it must be teh cylons in “gubermant” cause it is not made up of people making right and wrong choices. WHAT THE FRACK!
Mel
Behave yourself.
Paul Norton
That’s his name, he can’t help that. What’s your excuse.
Glen
So you think the drug laws are necessary because they will stop hard drug abuse with the threat of going to jail? Ha.
Yep. The “gubermant” sure got that one right.
Glen
You think weekend trading restrictions in WA help how exactly?
Of course we need to reduce shopping hours on weekends to stop people from having more choice because going out shopping on a weekend in WA is a bad thing as it increases choice. Is that another one of those great “gubermant” mandates that helps people?
Still going…
All we need now is the Panelbeater to turn up and start talking about fractional reserve
Jc, are you willfully missing glen’s point?
I haven’t seen anything in what he’s written that suggests that government is infallible or that it’s attempts to manage social-economic systems never have adverse effects on its populations.
glen’s point (and others have made the same point with reference to other entities, e.g. corporations) is purely and simply that the LDP policy imagines that it is only government that restrains choice or coerces in some way. glen’s diagnosis of automobility systems and trends shows that choice is already structured by a network of complex factors that far exceed government regulations. And simply removing or limiting such governmental regulations would actually increase the effect of such non-government forms of restraint.
Any policy that truly championed increasing choice/freedom would have to acknowledge and respond to the ways in which choices are already structured by non-government factors in such systems.
Oh, and glen: my apologies for over-simplifying your excellent argument.
“I haven’t seen anything in what he’s written that suggests that government is infallible or that it’s attempts to manage social-economic systems never have adverse effects on its populations.�
In his response to me he strongly inferred that. Haven’t bothered to read his other missives so I wouldn’t know what he is saying. Are you suggesting he’s on both sides of the fence then?
————————————————————————————————
“glen’s point (and others have made the same point with reference to other entities, e.g. corporations) is purely and simply that the LDP policy imagines that it is only government that restrains choice or coerces in some way.�
Yes. The road to hell is usually paved with the best of intentions.
———————————————————————————————–
“ glen’s diagnosis of automobility systems and trends shows that choice is already structured by a network of complex factors that far exceed government regulations.�
I really don’t know what you’re trying to say here, as I don’t understand it. I said I only replied to Glen’s responses to me.
————————————————————————————————
“And simply removing or limiting such governmental regulations would actually increase the effect of such non-government forms of restraint.�
Don’t leave it there……….. Because………..
“Any policy that truly championed increasing choice/freedom would have to acknowledge and respond to the ways in which choices are already structured by non-government factors in such systems.�
Why. Why fully opening up the TV spectrum say have to cause us consumers to evaluate if it is better or worse for Packer and his cohorts. I frankly don’t give shit and neither should you, quite frankly.
Go take a read of the current media laws and tell me if they make sense or in some cases actually contradict each other. The present Govt. has not reduced the abortion left by the previous one nearly enough. Go read them and come back and tell us if you’re comfortable with them.
The fact that you’ve not read his other posts explains why you responded with such frankly bizarre retorts.
Seems to me that you also failed to read his response to you. I, at least, read it as a parody of your assumption that “the government” is the only entity, institution or force that constrains individual liberty and that “the government” is some monolithic, single-minded, consistently oppressive automaton. I would’ve thought that the reference to “the cyclons” was enough to signal that reading, but I’ll admit in the light of the evidence (i.e. your misreading) that I was wrong on that point.
No, I’m not suggesting that glen’s sitting on both sides of the fence. I’m suggesting that he’s trying to tell you that your fence is a mirage.
What mirage is that Capt’n? That I prefer choice and you don’t for some peculiar reason?
Not interested in reading “Glen” further up the thread.
I left you some questions to ponder, Capt’n, any chance of getting a response.
Since the questions are premised on a misconception of my “preferences” regarding choice and a refusal to read the argument that served as the context for my original remarks on this particular topic, I really don’t see any point in responding to them. You’ve already shown that you wouldn’t be interested in reading any response I might have.
Gosh, I thought this post would get about 3 or 4 comments…
Quickly!
Someone call the Batcave and tell Jason that defending libertarianism has been left to ol’ Joe. We’ll never get to 3000 comments like this.
But I am Capt’n. I am actually very interested.
I’m sorry, but I am not going to read all of Glen’s comments simply to please you.
That’s a very unfair expectation to make. It’s perfectly exceptable to repsond to Glen’s immediate comments to me.
Now how about answering my questions.
I assume these are the questions you’re refering to. If so, I’m sorry to admit, I’m not sure that I can answer them. This is partly because (1) I think there’s a word or two missing in there somewhere; (2) I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at with the first part; (3) I’m not a media law expert and, in any case, I don’t think you seriously expect me to read up on current media regulations in order to answer your questions; (4) you’re setting up a situation which invites us to draw a principle or general rule from a case, whereas I would argue that even if you’re 100% right in your analysis of this case that doesn’t in any way mean that it can be used as exemplary; and (5) extrapolating from points 3 and 4, I don’t have a ready-made position on every single issue you care to put to me.
Now, on the question of preferring more or less choice, if push came to shove I would argue that increasing options is far preferable to decreasing options. Unfortunately, I don’t think the world is so simple that every decision, issue, etc. can be assessed according to some single, inflexible rule or formula.
I could take issue on the libertarian philosophy (insofar as it has been expressed by various contributors to this debate) on a number of fronts, but I’ll take stick to that one you just set me: the simple dichotomy of being for choice or against choice. The problem with a simple blind principle of freedom of choice is better is that — as many other contributors here have tried to point out — it can (note: I said “can”, not “will”) lead to less freedom of choice. Markets, for instance, are not simply aggregates of individual actions or choices; rather the aggregate acquires a power that is greater than the sum of the individual choices that constitute it. (Glen’s post on automobility systems is a brilliant demonstration of the point; but, alas, you’re not interested in reading it.)
Put simply (too simply, perhaps), majority will always has the potential to impinge on the preferences of individuals outside the majority. I’m not convinced that this is always a bad thing, but I am certainly convinced that it’s not always a good thing (because, push come to shove, I prefer choice).
Don’t be defeatist, FDB. We could get there if every LDP member commented. They’d have to know what libertarianism IS, of course, but that’s a trivial detail, right?
More seriously, I’m actually on Josephine’s side on this one and his truly abysmal defence of liberal ideology is SO bad it’s shaking my whole frackin’ world view.
Shit, maybe I AM a tax-eating commie faggot vampire after all? Quelle horreur infâme.
Do we really need traffic lights? I’m sure I could get to work much faster.
Capt’n
Good, at least we’re getting somewhere.
The reason I brought up media laws and that industry is that it is so large, very regulated and slap bang in a market segment that is moving by the minute rather than by hour. I wouldn’t expect you or anyone to read those laws, as my point was obviously a leading one. The industry is perfect example of why it is wrong to interfere and regulate through government mandate. It’s a dog’s breakfast. In addition it is a closed shop where the government regulates the spectrum and the big wigs happily make lots of money by not having to do much. Choice in this instance would mean opening up to all and sundry that wanted to create a television station- even if it was a localized community one. We can’t because we’re not allowed to. The same for radio!
Think how perverse it is: there is nothing stopping anyone from publishing a newspaper yet there are frightful restrictions to broadcasting.
—————————————————————————————————–
Now to your points:
“Now, on the question of preferring more or less choice, if push came to shove I would argue that increasing options is far preferable to decreasing options. Unfortunately, I don’t think the world is so simple that every decision, issue, etc. can be assessed according to some single, inflexible rule or formula.�
How could any reasonable person want to avoid a voucher system for schooling? It wouldn’t cost any more yet give parents far greater choices than they had before. Why should residence determine where a kid goes to school? This is in denial of the obvious. Anyone concerned with children getting along in life with a chance at a decent education would support a voucher system. This is a great example of increased choice.
I could take issue on the libertarian philosophy (insofar as it has been expressed by various contributors to this debate) on a number of fronts, but I’ll take stick to that one you just set me: the simple dichotomy of being for choice or against choice. The problem with a simple blind principle of freedom of choice is better is that — as many other contributors here have tried to point out — it can (note: I said “can�, not “will�) lead to less freedom of choice.
I can’t see that. I cannot see how more choice leads to less. This you will have to explain.
“Markets, for instance, are not simply aggregates of individual actions or choices; rather the aggregate acquires a power that is greater than the sum of the individual choices that constitute it. (Glen’s post on automobility systems is a brilliant demonstration of the point; but, alas, you’re not interested in reading it.)�
Markets are simply people transacting at favourable terms to themselves. I buy a coke a few times a week because I like it. Both parties to this transaction enter it willingly and are pleased with the final outcome. Interfering with this process will simply cause dislocation. I also see left leaning people have a dislike of large corporations but they fall short of seeing the obvious. Large companies are large because consumers make them that way. If consumers desert their products they go bust.
Put simply (too simply, perhaps), majority will always has the potential to impinge on the preferences of individuals outside the majority.
I really don’t see this happening. I can’t see how a large number of buyers or sellers of goods and services can “impinge� on anyone’s rights. Maybe you could elaborate on this too.
—————————————————————————————————–
I’m not convinced that this is always a bad thing, but I am certainly convinced that it’s not always a good thing (because, push come to shove, I prefer choice).
Again, please explain.
Anthony says:
“Do we really need traffic lights? I’m sure I could get to work much faster.”
I think one city in Germany? has actually done away with a great of it’s road regulations etc. They’ve found the traffic flow is actually superior to the way it was before.
In any event, roads are communl property which is something the government does need to be involved with.
Some libertarians suggest we can also privatized the road system, but I don’t know enough on that to comment.
thanks capt. oats! I think you have represented my points well.
the massive, huge, japanese-man-in-a-monster-suit sized irony to jc’s refusal to read my other posts is that his position is a homological equivalent to the libertarian position i have been constructing in all my comments to this post. he is representing libertarianism in more ways than I suspect he or she realises. Of course I am an (almost) expert in certain cultures of automobility so maybe it is a bit unfair to take me on regarding the actual substance of the alleged transport policy, but my general point made right up there in the very first comment I made was that the ‘pro-driving policy’ is a classic example of right wing libertarian ’small thinking’. By that I mean there is zero evidence of the complexities of any context being taken into account besides the most superficial popularist perspective of actual ’single interest’ drivers, and rather stupid drivers at that.
jc’s refusal to read the rest of my posts is a homological equivalent to the libertarian party thus represented in this thread by their wilful refusal (I am assumiing it is not ignorance) to take into account the complexities of the system of automobility. A right wing libertarian will never engage with complex systems because such an approach is a fundamental challenge to the basic premises of their political philosophy. (The closest I have seen this to ever happening is amongst admittedly good-willed economists when they talk about ‘externalities’.) Any form of governance that does not take into account complexities either to include them (such as multiculturalism) or, for example, to use them as a signifier in quasi-fascist policies (not the actual immigrants, but the ‘wave’ of immigrants that will ‘flood’ Australia if we let these ones in) is going to fail miserably.
The ‘pro-driving policy’ contains no evidence of engaging with the complexities of the situation.
JC’s referring to the Naked Streets movement in various European cities. It’s a libertarian response to managing traffic flows.
More here.
Mark
Just a question.
Why did you delete my comment/response to his vapidness yet let the other snarky comments like Freddy Fyodor get through.
Honest question here.
Hardly ‘libertarian’: talk about removing certainty for the rights of users, wheeled or not. What’s a road if you can’t drive, cycle or walk on it with the confidence than nobody else is going to give way to you?
In any case, nobody’s free unless they’re allowed to drive like Hunter, who sits at My right hand these days:
They say that it’s irresponsible to manage a moving vehicle when you’re too intoxicated. Maybe they’re right, but sweet Jesus on a Yamaha, there aren’t too many things more enjoyable than blasting down an empty residential road on a warm night on the outside of a couple of cold cans, scotch chasers and a hot Chinese meal.
I haven’t deleted any comments at all, Joe.
It might have got caught in the spaminator. Will just go check.
Sorry, Joe, can’t find it. Must be a glitch in the system somewhere.
JC, I don’t know that I can explain the point in such a way that you will understand it. I’ve tried; glen’s tried; others have tried. I have little choice but to accept glen’s argument that you refuse to understand it because it challenges the premises of your own position.
Consequently, here’s my last ditch effort:
When said company goes bust, it does so not because there are no consumers for their products, but rather because their aren’t enough to keep the operation profitable. For the consumers of those products, there has been a decrease in choice. (Note: I didn’t say that “a large number of buyers or sellers of goods and services can “impingeâ€? on anyone’s rights”; I said that it can impinge on the range of options available to choose from).
My choices potentially affect the options available to others, as do the choices of others potentially affect the options available to me.
Does that mean that I think governments should prop up every company that fails to become profitable, or that government should provide every service and product imaginable, even if only one person needs to make use of them? No. But neither do I believe that all products/services are purely and equally economic concerns.
Just walk away from the refinery.
Or don’t, if you like; you’re free to choose, after all.
The same way that I am free to choose how to direct my angry hordes in their response to your free choice.
Freedom, glorious freedom, without much reasonable concern for the maintenance of the overall health of the complex social matrix that supports it! After all, it’s how we all wound up living in this magnificent Millerian post-apocalyptic hellscape, innit?
Well, gotta go; I’m late for my lunch with Colonel Kilgore.
[just doing my bit, here; I expect that 5 or 6 angry responses will help push the grand total towards the magic 500 line]
Glen says
“the massive, huge, japanese-man-in-a-monster-suit sized irony to jc’s refusal to read my other posts is that his position is a homological equivalent to the libertarian position i have been constructing in all my comments to this post.”
Glen, I didn’t want to say it, but you forced me. I tried reading the first few sentences but lost me as a reader when I found a lot of it to be wind-bagging nonsense. Sorry, I genuinely am, to say this but that’s how I felt.
References: Homlogical = Similar in evolutionary origin but not in function
But let me try with this one seeing I sort of forced to;
——————————————————————————————————
“ he is representing libertarianism in more ways than I suspect he or she realises.�
So please explain how? Begin with ……. because…….
“ Of course I am an (almost) expert in certain cultures of automobility so maybe it is a bit unfair to take me on regarding the actual substance of the alleged transport policy, but my general point made right up there in the very first comment I made was that the ‘pro-driving policy’ is a classic example of right wing libertarian ’small thinking’.�
Ok. Are you simply boasting you are an expert in cultural auto mobility because if you look carefully I never mentioned anything about stop signs, nor parking infringement notices?
“ By that I mean there is zero evidence of the complexities of any context being taken into account besides the most superficial popularist perspective of actual ’single interest’ drivers, and rather stupid drivers at that.�
See above. However I would prefer to cross reference anything you say even about this subject.
“ jc’s refusal to read the rest of my posts is a homological equivalent to the libertarian party thus represented in this thread by their wilful refusal (I am assumiing it is not ignorance) to take into account the complexities of the system of automobility.�
Glen. I already said that I haven’t spoken up about parking signs etc.
“ A right wing libertarian will never engage with complex systems because such an approach is a fundamental challenge to the basic premises of their political philosophy.�
Ok. So let’s swing away from talking about silly parking tickets and discuss the marginal productivity theory and it’s meaning in terms of supporting freeing up labour markets. I would much rather talk about that than parking tickets quite frankly. You up for it, Glen.
“ (The closest I have seen this to ever happening is amongst admittedly good-willed economists when they talk about ‘externalities’.)�
And what do you know about externalities Glen? Tell us. The Carbon tax?
“ Any form of governance that does not take into account complexities either to include them (such as multiculturalism) or, for example, to use them as a signifier in quasi-fascist policies (not the actual immigrants, but the ‘wave’ of immigrants that will ‘flood’ Australia if we let these ones in) is going to fail miserably�
My swill alert meter was just going off at full throttle with this one.. The only bit I can understand you’re saying is that you don’t like open borders. Well, neither do I until we dismantle the welfare state. And then only when it is fee based by the immigrant.
“The ‘pro-driving policy’ contains no evidence of engaging with the complexities of the situation�
Glen, I honestly say this to mean nothing bad, but I really don’t think you even know what complexity means to justify using it.
Complexity:
The quality of being intricate and compounded
No libertarian worth his salt is saying that the world we live in isn’t complex. A modern economy is extremely complex especially with its many stages of production etc. However that complexity mostly resides or should in the private sector.
In any event, a voucher system is a complex idea because it is counter intuitive to most lefties view of the world. So I would suggest you get your head around that idea.
Sorry, mark. It was there then disappeared. It would be a good thing if the two Catallaxy bootess didn’t cross over their hostility to other sites. But maybe that’s just hoping to too much.
Well, indeed, Joe, we discourage people bringing their ancient hatreds and conflicts across the LP border!
I’m going out now on a Tapas and wine bar crawl to entertain a visiting friend from Perth, so hopefully everyone will engage in self discipline rather than waiting for moderation while I’m gone!
“When said company goes bust, it does so not because there are no consumers for their products, but rather because their aren’t enough to keep the operation profitable.�
Ok. That’s correct.
“For the consumers of those products, there has been a decrease in choice.
Ok. That’s correct.
(Note: I didn’t say that “a large number of buyers or sellers of goods and services can “impinge� on anyone’s rights�; I said that it can impinge on the range of options available to choose from).
Fair enough
——————————————————————————————————-
My choices potentially affect the options available to others, as do the choices of others potentially affect the options available to me.
Ok. You bought the last airline seat that I wanted. So welcome to the world of scarcity. What’s the point?
People bought BHP at 10 bucks and it’s now 28. In you world then the 28 bucks buyer was “impinged� because someone else bought it at 10 bucks. This is silly isn’t it.
“Does that mean that I think governments should prop up every company that fails to become profitable, or that government should provide every service and product imaginable, even if only one person needs to make use of them? No. But neither do I believe that all products/services are purely and equally economic concerns.�
Ok. Here is an idea. Tell me of one good or service that is currently consumed for which you can’t draw a nifty demand/ supply curve? If You can find one, I suggest you put yourself up for a Nobel prize in economics as you would win it hands down.
The point is that ALL goods and services will repsond to demand and supply according to the their utlility.
I’m issuing a fun little challenge to all you small government self help libertarians.
Try living it, and then maybe you can see why Libertarian philosophy would in practice restrict the freedoms of anyone without money.
The fruits of an poorly regulated, libertarian approach to education: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23384657-details/We do use books that call Jews %27apes%27 admits head of Islamic school/article.do
I’ll try that link again. Damn libertarian links:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23384657-details/We do use books that call Jews %27apes%27 admits head of Islamic school/article.do
Having read most of the thread still can’t see why anybody would vote for the LDP any more than Australia First, Family First, or One Nation or any other of the second string right wing stable of parties. The Corporation based philosophy is not an attractive option and we have far too much of it now. I believe that the mollycoddling of unethical corporations is the problem not the solution.
Still going…
There is a sense in which this does resemble the Thread of Doom. Glen and JC are coming from completely different places intellectually, and frankly I don’t think the two are capable of reconciliation. I’m more in sympathy with JC’s position, but I also did a whole degree that traversed much of the theoretical territory Glen raises in his writing – not only in this thread, but elsewhere. It’s like arguing with Graeme on his view that fractional reserve banking is a form of theft. In certain economic systems it would be, but not in ours. Constructing it as such is very awkward and involves all sorts of intellectual contortions.
If I may just make a couple of observations: JC, you need to read peoples’ stuff, particularly Glen’s, because his ideas are coming from a particular place that – while it may seem strange – is intellectually consistent. And Glen, you have the talent to allow you to avoid writing like your various postmodern idols (you wouldn’t have gotten anywhere at Street Machine if you didn’t). You need to simplify your prose. Otherwise, you allow people to baulk at reading your stuff.
I still don’t think you’re going to find much common ground, though.
Mel:
You need to look at the policy package and not do the same thing as the Greens do when they’re scaring the shit out 80 years about nuclear fuel rods.
Most libertarians would not support open borders without dismantling the welfare state. People like Hilaly would be very unlikely to come here unless he could get welfare for his small family of 35 kids from 3 wives. Yes he must be going at it every night with each wife…. a terrifying thought for any one.
Anyway anyone coming here would be hit with an entry fee and possibly a higher tax rate.
This automatically implies that people arriving here would more than likely think that educating their kids is a little more than going killing Jews or gays.
In any event Libertarianism doesn’t extend past our borders in the sense that we don’t have to allow in everyone who wants to come here. It doesn’t work that way. In fact the libertarian way would actually dissuade a Hilaly-arious type creature from coming here.
Seeing that multiculturalism would be dismantled we could also openly decide to which nationals we open our doors to particular groups appeared problematic.
Humphreys also mentioned that there would be standards based approach fro schooling effectively supervised and audited.
We have been through this before and all you’re doing is causing mischief, aren’t you Mel. Behave.
———————————————————————————-
Steve says:
Having read most of the thread still can’t see why anybody would vote for the LDP any more than Australia First, Family First, or One Nation or any other of the second string right wing stable of parties.
Steve, if you are lumping the LDP with those other parties then it is clear you simply can’t tell the difference and haven’t read the thread. There would probably be not one LDP policy that could be married up with those parties. DO you even understand the LDP policies?
—————————————-
“The Corporation based philosophy is not an attractive option and we have far too much of it now. I believe that the mollycoddling of unethical corporations is the problem not the solution.”
Who is actually babying corporations? Most regulations used to protect say the Packers et al would be removed. Protection of useless industries would be eventually taken away. Import duties would be rescinded. Rural socialism where sugar farmers get subsidies and ruin the north Eastern seaboard would be taken away.
Read the policy booklet on the web.
skepticlawyer, i tried using ’singularity’ once for a car article in the soft porn 2DMax magazine, to talk about the convergence of different styles. Didn’t get through the subby. I think ACP underestimates the intellectual capacity of car enthusiasts. My problem is that I don’t want to write like how I am ‘meant’ to write, to the LCD using language with a particular affective tonality to capture their interest. I enjoy working when reading. Surely someone of your calibre must also enjoy working hard when reading?
BTW, the link you posted is brilliant. If there is to be no mediation of traffic at all then there has to be a radical decrease in the number of vehicles (travelling at human killing momentums at least). I think I may have mentioned somewhere a little earlier that any transport policy worth its salt should endeavour to actually be removing cars from the road. I am all for less socio-technical mediation between road users, but there has to be fewer road users for this to work (and other considerations like increased duration of visibility, etc).
JC. homology (wikipedia) as I know it comes from structural sociology, which is bad juju for poststrucutralists like me, but a good tool to use sometimes. It means there is a (to me, superficial) isomorphic congruency between one set of relations and another set. I know it from the work of Paul Willis (quoted in the wikipedia page) on motorbike enthusiasts. Looking up a dictionary to find the meaning of a word is an admirable activity, but assuming that I am talking nonsense when the dictionary definitions provides a general or irrelevant meaning is not really that admirable.
Your dictionary activities exemplify another ‘homological’ correspondence to how I imagine the ’small thinking’ of right wing libertarianism. Instead of believing that I may actually be using a word which may actually have a different perhaps more complex meaning (your meaning is there in the wikipedia disambiguation page), you present what I assume is a simple dictionary definition. It is a kind of withdrawal from thought that I recognise in such (non)engagements and which I quite frankly think is not a very becoming attribute of a person. This is what I meant by “representing right wing libertarianism more than you may realise” or whatever I said. Your very actions belie your ideological underpinnings like a pin through a bug on a insect collector’s ’spreading board’.
If you haven’t noticed I have made made basically three points on this thread:
1) a general point about small thinking and right wing libertarianism
2) a point about the history of Summernats
3) a critique of the pro-driving transport policy presented by the LDP.
Now this thread has had many topics of conversation but I have basically stuck to the original point in the actual post with these three main points. If you are asking what stop signs have to do with the above, then I am not sure what your point is. I am not a traffic engineer, although I am familiar with some of the basic concepts. Are you trying to use some sort of ‘random attention to detail’ fallacy?
My apologies, but I can’t be bothered talking about marginal something or another. Perhaps you should start a thread on the topic and see if I am convinced that I should comment. Isn’t that the libertarian way? No coercion, only influence? Just because you have a strong desire to participate in this conversation should not stop you from asking yourself, “What have I got to contribute?” The desire to change the conversation to something you feel more comfortable with is fair enough. However, this is not what I have understood the conversation to be about. Clearly I have beat a single drum: LDP party and the stupidity of their pro-driving transport policy. For me it is a perfect example of what is wrong with right wing libertarianism, that is why I keep coming back to see if anyone can defend the position or can mount some sort of counter-argument.
aka freedom only for people we like. It’s like Fascism, but with blonde chiicks in t-shirts at car rallies.
What you’re really trying to say is that Libertarians are basically pussies – you want to tell everyone how to live their lives (“free” based on a very narrow selection of free activities aka produce product or die). How this is any different from marxism or fascism is something you really need to explain.
Only sometimes. Most of the time I enjoy working hard while writing. I work hard as a writer because my aim is to write as simply as possible. That doesn’t mean simplisticly. It means clearly, coherently, and using commonly understood word meanings.
Remember, too, that JC has access to a sophisticated language that you too find difficult. His comments on marginal utility are are a vital part of economics. I have no doubt he’s trying to move the conversation to places where he’s got it over you (economics and commerce). You’re doing the same thing, however (social policy and philosophy).
That said, I know what he means, and I also know what you mean. That’s an eccentricity that’s come about through my non-standard intellectual history. Few people are in the same position as me, which means the explanatory effort has to come from the writer. Although I understand economic terminology, I seldom use the language of economics. Instead, I aim to distil the concepts so that any thoughtful reader will understand what I’m saying. I do the same with high postmodern theory, on which I’ve blogged extensively at Catallaxy. JC has read a great deal of that stuff, and he’s understood every word.
Now, would the subby have let you use ‘convergence’ rather than ’singularity’? Maybe not at 2D Max, but I think Street Machine would have been amenable
(Speaking as an erstwhile subby).
“JC. homology (wikipedia) as I know it comes from structural sociology, which is bad juju for poststrucutralists like me, but a good tool to use sometimes. ”
I did a commerce- a while ago- laced with finance and that sort of stuff. Like a lot of others I would know little about post-colonial Homolgy and have as much interest learning about as deliberately inducing a coma. Like you suggested I ought to do with labor economics: if you want to talk that way you too could start a blog and see how it goes. But anyways you keep tripping back to this complexity schtik and traffic signals: if it isn’t complex enough it must be fallacious or for stupid people. I have already responded to that which you seem to ignore.
I have explained to you that a modern economy like ours, or any modern economy for that matter is deeply complex. In fact the one signal to anyone wanting to understand the workings of a modern economy is to examine the various layers of the production cycle and structure…. stages of production. The longer it is the more complex. So if you want “complex�, you’re living in the right place. Only thing is, it seems to be going over your head.
Manufacturing a simple pencil is far more complex than a subsistence farming for example.
There is something like 500 million transactions per day in the US, which go from making a telephone call to buying an expensive piece of machinery. Free market economics says that the further away the State is from interfering in that enormous daily undertaking the better for all concerned. The reason is “simple”. No one could possibly figure how to interfere in a market without causing damage despite the best intentions.
In other words the complexity resides in the private sphere and people should be left alone to figure things for themselves as interference does more harm than good. If you wish to see complex plans etc, you ought to try to analyze a large company. You will meet complexity head on.
Libertarians believe, or at least most do that if you have the right fiscal and monetary policies in place the free markets will more that adequately service the needs to the individual. Interfere with it from afar and you well on your way to reducing the economic well being of the people despite the best of intentions.
ElCattivo (bad boy).
“aka freedom only for people we like. It’s like Fascism, but with blonde chiicks in t-shirts at car rallies.”
Yep. Fascism is all about blond chicks at car rallies. Ill Duce would have agreed with you.
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What you’re really trying to say is that Libertarians are basically pussies – you want to tell everyone how to live their lives (â€?freeâ€? based on a very narrow selection of free activities aka produce product or die).
Libertarians are fascists but also pussies. That certainly makes sense.
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How this is any different from marxism or fascism is something you really need to explain.
Free societies have less compulsion with less state interference. Those other you mentioned are all about compulsion and state interference resulting in the death of over 100 million last 20th C.
Think of it like the jackboot is to a sneaker.
glen,
Perhaps to keep it simple for the non-sociologists like myself, you could explain how government action, which is inherently slow and unsophisticated, can possibly deal with problems of complex systems (as you have called them) beyond setting a reasonable framework for interaction?
You speak above of an “eco-Marxist” who looked at problems of beach houses. He was right there is only a certain amount of land. A Soviet-style Marxist response would be to allocate the land on the basis of need, with the government and their friends needing most of it. This is, historically, the normal way of powerful governments.
A market based response to the allocation problem is simple – sell the land and allow it to be re-sold. Over time, the land will be allocated to the highest-value use which will change from time to time without any need for further intervention.
A quick discussion of Coase’s Theorem would be, if I have understood you correctly, be handy.
So what exactly is fractional reserve banking? Can anyone explain?
Kimbo
1. lending out more than your capital
2. borrowing short term to lend out long term
3. Banks leverage their balance sheet up to 15:1 … 1 dollar capital/ 15 loans.
Er… lets not get back to the thread of doom on this one but some very notable people think this action combined with government supplied moral hazard is a recipe for trouble.
Here’s wiki example which is good one
An alternative way of describing fractional reserves is to imagine that the bank receives a deposit of 400 paper dollars, against which it issues 400 checking account dollars. The bank then lends 300 of its paper dollars to a borrower, receiving the borrower’s $300 IOU in exchange. Under either alternative, the result is the same: The bank has issued 400 checking account dollars against a total of $400 of assets–$100 in paper bills and $300 in IOU’s.
Do you want me to get GB over here to explain why it’s a rotten system?
Fyodor could join in too….. and Andrew R…. and me.
Hey, Joe, I was joking.
I had no idea what it means, but thanks anyway.
But, yeah, I thought it might be one way of getting this thread to go on for evah!
It’s already beaten Missy!
Fractional reserve is particularly dangerous during times of economic recession, and there’s a serious argument that it turned the 1929 Wall Street crash (a dangerous stock bubble) into the Great Depression.
Bank customers – suddently discovering that their other assets were in strife – called on their deposits. Due to fractional reserve, the banks didn’t have enough ‘money in the safe’ to make good on the calls, which led to a serious banking panic (you’ll sometimes hear this called a ‘bank run’). This was exacerbated by the US Federal Reserve opting not to increase the money supply (which in the circumstances wouldn’t have produced inflation – it just would have reassured the public that their money was safe).
FDR’s first day as president was marked by an (enforced) ‘bank holiday’, imposed to try to cope with the ongoing economic instability.
Didn’t know this thread had gone past Missy, either. In any case, I’m waiting for Glen to get back so we can continue our interesting economics/postmodernism discussion, so I’ll bow out until he’s got some spare time to comment.
Kieran: If you want to reduce medical costs, start with tackling the AMA cartel.
Why are the poor better off with the status quo, such as work for the dole, poverty traps, low tax thresholds, high tax rates, regressive excise taxes and tariffs? Not to mention buying services from legally backed professional cartels.
If rationalising the tax base and microeconomic reform doesn’t help, direct cash subsidies or voucher system would be much better than Medicare.
SL,
I disagree, as would most people who work in banking, but I would strongly suggest we drop fractional reserve as a topic.
If you want, I would be happy to start a fractional reserve thread on my blog – I could do with the heavy traffic that would result. ;->
Yes, it appears to have been a thread killer!
Dang, Mark, I thought you had your very own Thread of Doom ™ happening here…
Pity.
Killed it dead completely, this fractional reserve stuff.
Andrew’s a brave man – he’s started a fractional reserve thread over at his banking blog.
It just seems to keep intruding into many other threads. If we can keep it to one – a blog that is not going to worry about excessive traffic (i.e. wordpress) we may be able to get somewhere without it costing the good people here too much in hosting costs.
I think the last major cost catallaxy 2 hosts.
What? Did I miss the debate? Damn… you leave the internet for a few days and everything falls apart.
I never argued that advertising (or any form of influence) is harmless. People influence others to make the wrong decision all the time. It’s just not coercion. And while influence can be misused… it is inevitable and I don’t think using coercion to prevent influence will make the world a better place.
glen — you say you didn’t argue for banning the dragway. But you aruged our transport policies were wrong and the most topical transport policy on this thread is to NOT ban the dragway. Just because we frame our policy in terms of individuals doesn’t imply we have ignored the impact that people have on others. Nobody is denying the existence of complex systems. It’s just that we have concluded that allowing individual freedom generally does more good than harm. And I have never suggested that restrictions don’t already exist in driving (as with every area of life), but the relevant issue for public policy are those restrictions maintained by government. These are the only restrictions maintained through the use of violence/coercion.
I am no hegelian, but how is this not a contradiction: “The market is the best measure because it is ‘free’, but the market needs to be constructed through policy”?
Instead of measuring reality in terms of transactions (as a projection of the market), my approach would be to talk about the reality of transactions. Or to put it another way, I am not talking about making simple things complex, I am saying that everything is complex. I think you have misunderstood what I mean by complexity.
1) A basic complex system approach argues that everything is complex, even the most ’simple’ element. It is not a question of complex ‘enough’, rather it is a question of what is the complexity of this or that relation. In the maths versions I have witnessed (or very basic versions I did many years ago) the art is to select those elements that allegedly matter over others and model them through complex equations, etc. Right, but maths geeks are not the best people for figuring out which elements matter in complex social systems.
2) Our habits and physiological make-up allow us to reduce the complexity of the world so we can survive. Which is an awesome evolutionary development and goes to the heart our conceptual apparatus and our various perceptual systems. Elements of our system of automobility have become habituated. A complex systems approach would also include _our habits_ as part of the system. So car traffic lights driving habits … The system is not something ‘out there’, we are inseparable from it. Therefore we (lay people) are not necessarily the best people either for figuring our which elements matter because we necessarily draw on our own habitualised responses to situations.
3) You may believe that it is a question of making a perfect market to deliver a perfect world, whatever. I don’t agree, the ‘market’ always needs some viscosity in the system. Regardless, the system of automobility is not the market. The movement of capital, goods and services is not the same as the movement of people (who may be moving capital, goods and services). The necessary reduction which is forced upon the 500 million ‘transactions’ per day so it can be discussed in terms of a ‘market’ does not work for the system of automobility. For example, sometimes a notion of the ‘road’ is talked about in a similar way to this abstraction the ‘market’, i.e. a silly example like “the Great Ocean road is a great driver’s road” or some nonsense about the recent tunnel in sydney. Abstracting the road from the complex systems of traffic, etc is like abstracting the ‘market’ from the reality of 500 million transactions. It requires certain habitualised visibilities or perception in general of the system of automobility as a ‘road’ (or 500m transactions as the ‘market’)
4) The system of automobility can not be talked about purely in terms of drivers as if they are the privileged subjects of automobility. It would be a like a unionist getting on here and talking about how the labour market is for the ‘workers’. Or John Howard getting on here and saying Australia is for the ‘mainstream’.
i don’t think I have given an opinion on the dragway. It is a local issue. I have nothing to say about it.
Unless you have your own ‘road’ then ‘individual freedom’ in the system of automobility is a myth. More than that it is a dangerous myth. The sort of myth that gets idiots thinking that someone travelling slower than they want to be travelling is in ‘their way’. No, the person is sharing in the (duration of the) road as a scarce resource. They are ‘in traffic’ not ‘in their way’. Can you see how there is a fundamental difference here? That is your first problem, in that you fail to fully appreciate how much every road user has to rely on every other road user, not only for equal access to the ‘road’ but so they are not killed (from this POV, crashing is merely poor distribution of a resource).
I interpret your policy in terms of advocating a position that allows people to grab as much of the resource of the road as they like. I can see a resonance of this in JC’s propaganda about ‘markets’ were certain privileged individuals, lets call them the ‘drivers’ of the economy, are divied up more of the market resources than others. Why? Because of good economic policy? Right…
I was advocating a position that grappled not with the superficial problem of feeding the habituallised desires of drivers in their ‘individual’ appreciation of the system of automobility, but saw this as one problem out of many that are intrinsic to the system of automobility as a complex system. You want to frame the system of automobility and your policies about it in terms of individual freedom. Unfortunately the system of automobility is not about individual freedom, it is actually about mobility. Increasing individuals’ motility (potential for mobility) and therefore increasing their real mobility is what is at stake. By encouraging the use of cars and this flawed system of automobility you are actually increasing the social, economic and technological burdens that people have to carry so as to be mobile. Why support such a stupidly inefficient system?
Another way to look at it, in terms of a city-wide urban phenomena: If the real issue at stake is mobility then the mobility of an individual over their entire lifetime needs to be taken into account. This mobility must be made more efficient. For example, increase the mobility-potential for moving house, and reduce the costs involved, especially in bloated rental markets. Instead of ‘owning your own home’ as a dream it because a question of, how much home-mobility do you have? Mobility therefore can be imagined on a different scale, like comparing the mobility of backpackers to the immobility homeowners. Mobility is not something provided by cars, or by the system of automobility. This is merely the crap system that has evolved through greed, negligence, short sightedness, and yes, misdirected good intentions about ‘freedom’.
The real issue then becomes one of why should those with high medium-grade mobility (ie home-mobility) have to be burdened with the waste of resources that those with far too much medium-grade stability (outer suburbs travelling to city) have to consume to have high low-grade mobility, such as automobility. For example, to change the system of autmobility also requires rethinking the distribution of home and work in the urban lanscape. This is also flawed, but it gives you some idea of what I mean when I talk about the complexity of the situation. To start thinking on these terms is a massive step, requiring a huge amount of resources and research.
hmm it took away my ‘plus signs’.
a line above should read:
car plus traffic lights plus driving habits plus …
glen,
You are looking at mobility and seeing a huge management problem, “…requiring a huge amount of resources and research…”. This then naturally is a task for government to manage, requiring a department of roads, integrated with the department of housing and works, data collection tools, bureaucrats to organize it in an integrated fashion and policies, procedures and rules. You also need a means to force people to do what the planners want. Into this mix you then have to throw considerations not of where people want to live but where the system allows them to live – misdirected good intentions of ‘freedom’ be damned.
I would argue that this is close to the system we currently have – and it is, as you note, “crap” and “stupidly inefficient”.
I do not see the solution as being to make the central control stronger. To me, this will merely make things worse as people, being human, try to make their own life within this planned infrastructure. It will fail for one, simple, reason – people do not work that way. They want to be able to decide for themselves where and how to live and all the best attempts to railroad (pardon the pun) them into doing what the planners want will founder on that rock.
If people manage to pass externalities in their behavior on to others, then the role of the State is clear – pass them back and, if it is severe and egregious, use a criminal sanction.
Some planning is, of course, unavoidable – but, to me, it should not attempt to tell people where and how to live.
The line I take the most issue with is this one: “Unless you have your own ‘road’ then ‘individual freedom’ in the system of automobility is a myth.” To me, it shows a clear misunderstanding of the nature of individual freedom. Individual freedom is not some mythical scenario where all are perfectly free to do anything, just as a market is never (AFAIK) assumed to be perfect either. Neither of these is needed or even possible.
In a social democratic / big government conservative / traditional socialist framework, the government tries to frame and enforce progressively more rules on how people interact. To me, you are simply saying that there should be more rules, imposed by government, on our automobility. I would disagree. If there are externalities in the automobility, then try to ensure those externalities are priced in and step back.
If you need planning, as you do with roads, then it should react to people’s expressed will, not attempt to push them down paths fixed as part of some master plan.
Who’s the blonde?
I’ll vote for her.
The more I find out about free market economics, the more it sounds like voodoo superstition. “Can’t touch the market, don’t know what’ll happen!”. Christ.
That’s a very unenlightened point of view.
We don’t know what will happen with great certainty either way what will happen, because no one has the capcaity or skill to process all of the information.
We do know that inflation, market protectionism, high taxes, deficit spending, resource and credit mispricing and regulatory excess are bad for our well being.
Maybe you should read a bit deeper.
And maybe you should think a bit deeper.
Thinking deeper may not have lead to such a dismal conclusion about laissez faire and otherodox economics generally. What happens when we make interest rates artificially low? What are the consequences of PMV subsidies in a country with high transport costs? reading about business cycles and the impacts of PMV subsidies can help the thought process in this regard.
Neither of us “needs” to think deeper (but it always helps), but Christian does need to read deeper, he mightn’t yet like the conclusion but there are valid reasons for it. The economy isn’t some mythical entity, it is the process of achieving certain ends. When you alter incentives, ends and action will change as so will valuations and perceptions.
Again this isn’t an abstraction. Subsidising sugar porduction in the US for example increases phosphate pollution and wetlands degradation and drainage. It also leads to the use of cheaper corn syrup (cheaper after the inflating subsidy) which is a contributing factor to increasing obesity rates.
Thank you for the clarification and quick notes, Mark, I suppose I should read deeper to find out more about how economic systems work. My concerns are social concerns, not economic, and I approach broader problems thusly. Yes I know the two are intertwined, but approach to these things matter, and I believe in the division of intellectual labour. Just as intervention in markets creates unintended consequences, as does intellectual interventions such as deciding that ‘regulation is too hard’ and ‘its best for the market to evolve its own solutions’ ends up with an unwillingness to admit systematic failure of a system not at all dissimilar to byzantine state solutions.
My concern is that ‘laissez faire economics’ had its day and didn’t quite cut the mustard. Like when Milton Friedman suggested that the Great Depression was a result of -too much government regulation- in the market. Well, Milty, history can either be a set of things that happened or it can be a fairytale. I grew up in a poor area of London during Thatcher’s economic ‘restructuring’ of England, and I won’t accept – and will argue vehemently – that the approach taken to modernise the British economy, partially fuelled by a taste for laissez-faire was a catagorical, absolute economic disaster that stunted the move from manufacturing and agriculture into service by a decade or more. History regards that period as an economic miracle, but aside from the (admittedly very necessary) extrication of the unions from the wages agreement debacle of the early 1980s, you will be hard pressed to find a successful law passed in that period – and most of them referenced laissez faire. You’ll excuse me, then, if my perspective is skewed, or that I seem uninformed to you.
I actually deeply sympathise with a good deal of LDP policy, but things like a version of free trade where chinese tomatoes flood our market, not allowing local farmers to compete, is just stupid government. The massive waste of resources involved is epochal, and to say ‘well, that’s just the way love goes’ is nothing short of voodoo superstition. There’s a field, here’s my mouth. Why am I eating chinese tomatoes grown with wildly inferior health standards and composition? Because its cheap? Again, poor government.
We need to produce cheaper corn syrup in order to distill more ethanol, don’t we? Isn’t this the backbone of Bush’s new ethanol plan? Look how the topic has gone back to cars, see how unintended the consequences of conversations are.
Christian,
Actually reading what Milton had to say on that, rather than reading the second or third hand accounts may be more informative. On the depression, The pumping up of the money supply, rather than excessive regulation, was, from my memory, the main reason he gave. The forced removal of a large chunck of the money supply immediately after the collapse then made a bad situation worse.
To follow it up with sterilised spending on (predominately) useless capital works and punitive tariffs was not exactly a work of genius – overall it ensured that what was a recession ended up lasting nearly a decade.
The sort of protectionism you seem to be advocating, being against “…a version of free trade where chinese tomatoes flood our market, not allowing local farmers to compete…” has been dealt with time and again – have a look, as a start, at the work of David Ricardo on comparative advantage. His work has been updated, but it is still relevant, particularly in the sorts of situation you are talking about. It does involve structural change and flexibility, but the alternative is stagnation and rigidity.
I’ve got the Friedman at home and will find his comments and expand there. (I have read it, by the way.)
But I don’t advocate protectionism per se, I do wonder about the wisdom of an economic system that says cheap imports of produce are better for our economy that the locally made and higher quality. If the Chinese imports were of the same quality (they are not – grown with human excrement, polluted, DDT-infused, protein life already expired when you open the can and yet labelling laws allow them to use fresh tomatoes as content indicators) – if they were of comparable quality and the laws were just, and we still could not compete, then fine, fuck the farmers. Perhaps dumping legislation is dumb, fine – but you need to come up with solutions to situations like the above. You’ll get your way with either party I suspect.
well, no. It is not the system we have at all! It is a hodgepodge of special interests (such as business) and stupidity.
One quick example, which is close to my heart and really annoys me, there has been no attempt to make it more attractive to own what the Japanese call kei-class cars, the only one currently for sale in Australia that I know of is the Smart car. The Japanese have a ‘kei-class’ because of beneficial parking and registration laws. Instead we have a bloody government that allows farmers to subsidise 4WD ownership. A kei-class car is literally half the size of most 4WDs. To me this is a very good example of getting “cars off the road” by reducing the size of cars themselves. If people could by a brand new kei-class car for under $10,000 and then pay bugger all to run it (insurance, rego, parking, tolls, etc), how many people wouldn’t buy them? Instead we have stupid luxury brand kei-class cars that are far too expensive. They are not all stupid little boxy things either, there are some very cool cars available. There is no force here. A brilliant opportunity was missed in mid-1990s with the high visibility of import car culture as the various enthuisast cultures swung away from traditional cultures.
I suggest you need to do some more research about the current system of automobility because it is frankly very frustrating having a discussion with someone who seems to have a very abstract sense of the problems at hand.
As you admit, there has to be some planning. I am saying there should be different rules that endeavour to release urban populations from the burden of the current system of automobility. This is the complete opposite of your alleged ‘policy’ which appears to have been formulated with a focus group of boofhead accountants who all wished they played football. Of course, I am not the one trying to produce policy.
What I have been trying my hardest to repeatedly indicate in many different ways is how simply freeing up what you clearly misunderstand to be mere ‘restrictions’ will somehow make the system of automobility better. No, the system of automobility will not be better, it has already been constructed through these ‘restrictions’ it already exists and unlike the ‘market’ cannot change overnight so it will be more of the same but in intensified form.
OMG! The system of automobility ALREADY PUSHES THEM DOWN CERTAIN PATHS, THE EXACT SAME PATHS THAT YOU WANT TO INTENSIFY AND REPRODUCE. The material conditions of the system of automobility, the roads, the technologies, etc are already pushing people down paths, LITERALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
People do not have any will that is not in part determined by the already established system of automobility. Have you ever lived in a non-automobilised society? Has anyone?
Any policy from a properly libertarian party will endeavour to enable people to have a will that is free from the already existing material conditions that in part produce it. You transport policy does not help people build on their freedom, it forces them to be further forced into the current system of automobility. I think the key is to get people to use the already existing infrastructure in different ways, but you know, that is just me. I am a car enthusiast because I have made the choice and a number of subsequent decisions involving the affirmation to drive my car when I want, which is very rarely, not because I am compelled to.
I can’t see what you are peddling is freedom at all, it is further subsumption to the already existing state of affairs. I am not sure if you are aware of how complexity theorists talk about ‘degress of freedom’, but I am trying to convince you that real freedom comes from increasing the degrees of freedom, not just intensifying the already existing situation.