I agree with a lot of that... especially on the idea that some advantaged may wish to agress against another individual or his property. That's why I would like to use the coercive power to create a government who protects people from this. I don't want big and powerful Bob to be able to beat up little Timmy. So I'd like for Timmy to be able to get the government's help to stop Bob. For this reason, I'd like to make government's role very clear: To defend individuals and their property from aggression.

I'm not such a fan of the "net-good" line of thinking as what's good for some is not good for all, and I'd be curious as to how one determines if it's "net-good" or not. I also think it shouldn't undermine the point we brought up above which is that we want to stop people from being taken advantage of. I think a lot of "net-good" type of actions do exactly this... usually plundering from a small group of people. Those doing the plundering generally see it as a "net-good" because it helps them and those being plundered hold the opposite view (if they didn't, they would be free to donate it anyways).

I also want to say that at this point, I've not brought any sort of coercive wealth redistribution into the mix whose goal is to do anything other than sustain the entity that is supposed to defend the individuals from agression from others. It would be counter-productive to the "protecting individuals" if the state was able to initiate agression on people in the society for anything other than paying for it's ability to defend others (eg. using this coercive apparatus to take wealth from one party to give to another).

I completely agree that people will always out of greed try and "rig the game". I'd basically rephrase it as, "they will try to have wealth flow to them through coercive means" (instead of only through voluntary means, which is the alternative). As such, I think the most obvious place to channel your efforts for this would be the entity that has the coercive monopoly and is the one that's supposed to defend individuals from agression. That's why I wanted to clearly define the State's objective above (to only DEFEND individuals) so that it would be incredibly easy to spot this sort of rigging because red flags would go up all over if you saw someone receiving a wealth transfer from government. I think once one opens up the door to coercive wealth redistribution then they create the incentives to try and rig the apparatus that is now re-allocating wealth. I think it's a useful thinking exercise to think about how one would "rig the game in their favour" if we started with the idea that government is only defending individuals from aggression and isn't engaging in any coercive wealth redistribution that isn't for fianancing it's ability to defend individuals from other individuals.

I am not at the "mixed economy" conclusion in the sense that I am not yet wanting to have coercive wealth redistribution. At this point, I'd be having the State fund itself through taxation and for its role to be to defend individuals. Basically, they do all they want to and it's just there as an observer to step in when it has to because it sees someone agressing against another. I think most people use the term "mixed economy" when they're supporting the idea that the State whould intervene beyond this role, where it is actually initiating agression for a purpose other then defense.

I too have no fixed concept of what the situation would look like namely because the overwhelming majority of resources would be allocated by the owners of the capital. I just know the government would play the role of stopping any Bob's from agressing against Tim's.

I don't have anything in the system that is something like "I believe all people should be entitled to an X standard of living" because I think that's a fake "guarantee" from the get go. It also rests on coercion and assumes there will be wealth to plunder to move to another. I also think this begins to open up that door where the State is now initiatinig agression and actually transforms into a "Super Bob" which is exactly the sort of thing we worried about to begin with. I see the incentives in such a structure to be where people begin to immediately try and rig this "Super Bob" in their favor for their own personal gain. I think with lots of people trying to gain through coercive transactions, where they gain at someone's expense, as opposed to volutnary transactions, where both parties gain, then the path is set where one would expect to see a decline in wealth in that society... ironically moving in the exact opposite direction intended from the coercive wealth redistribution in the first place. I also think once an apparatus like this has been setup it's incredibly difficult to dismantle because it's going to be a "bigger Bob" then anyone else in the land and you're also going to have people who are on the "good side" of this coercion who will likely want to keep it around (because it benefits them personally, despite being a net-negative to the whole because capital is being consumed that isn't being replaced... if it were, they could have just bought it instead of having it coercively transferred to them). I also think that once "Super Bob" is allowed to do these sorts of transfers, it is in his own best interest to try and promote even more and more transfers because then his power grows.

I too think that too much or too little regulation would be disastrous. I also have no doubt that if people are wanting some assistance in a decision, or regulation in a sector, then they'd be willing to pay for it. As such, I see no reason why regulation can't function fine in a free market.

I personally think most of the Western World's success had a lot to do with it embracing a more free market approach to most early on, then accumulating a lot of capital, and then being able to become the "Super Bob" to the other nations. I think a lot of the heightened standard of living has to do with their position in our monetary system and their ability to gain at other nation's expense. I think it's also easy to run a lot of coercive wealth redistribution programs when you are wealthy. I think the challenge would be in how do you stay wealthy once you switch from the very behavior and incentive structure that got you there in the first place? I also do not like thinking about what sort of aweful situation is created when you expand a "safety net", people then grow reliant on it or factor it into their future decision making, and then all of a sudden you seemingly "fail to deliver". That is also a contributing factor as to why I think it's at least a dangerous and risky proposition to begin allowing coercive wealth redistributions into an economy; because people may act as if they will always be there and they're not nearly as resilient as if they built there lives around capital that was all flowing voluntarily.

I too think information is never perfect. I don't see how that ever changes though, I think it's a reality of life and the nature of information, and I also don't see why that's any sort of a problem for a market to funciton. I would expect that those with the best information would get more control over our limited capital so as to be able to make better decisions with it then those who weren't as well informed. I also think that some people have great information for some things, and terrible information for other things so I'd like to leave the voluntary flow of capital as the decider on whether or not they should be able to allocate it. For the most part, I don't understand at all the logic behing people being against a market process of voluntary transactions because they recognize that man can make mistakes.

I think the economy and transactions between men will necessarily be complex, but I don't see why we can't create a fairly simplistic role for the State to play when we use it as the "defender of men from aggression from other men".

I also think it's dangerous to use terms like "the general welfare" because such an entity doesn't exist. Whatever policy you prescribe, it will benefit some individuals and hurt other individuals. I think all too often those that are on the benefiting side just simply say, "it's for the common good". I also think if their plan is to try and raise their standard of living by increasing the coercive flow of capital in the economy, and thus reducing the voluntary flow of capital in the economy, they'll often end up moving in the very opposite direction from which they intended.

I too champion equality but only in so far as making sure everyone is playing by the same rules. I'd like to not allow anyone to aggress against another. I find it bizarre to try and make people of equal wealth without also trying to make people of equal athleticism, looks, intelligence etc. I see nothing morally wrong with the level of someone's wealth, I only place a moral position on the means with which they obtained that wealth... I think it's "bad" if they did so through coercion and "good" if they did so through the voluntary transaction with another. I also find the fight for equal wealth to be funny in the sense that it seems to imply that a society with unequal wealth distribution, but where the bottom 20% had standards of living enormously high, would somehow still be "bad". For the most part, I think striving for equality in wealth is probably the best idea for the State to promote because it allows it to more easily become a "Super Bob"... namely because it can keep saying, "yep, I'm still needed to reallocate wealth because it's not all equal yet".

For the most part, I wonder what sort of "distortions" can create negative effects if the government is able to do its duty of defending individuals from aggression form others? If the government isn't capable of stopping that force, I wonder what force could possibly do so in an alternative system (wouldn't the collective coercion of the people, the government, be the "best chance")?

I think the price mechanism is the only rationale way to be able to determine to which competing ends should the limited capital go to; when you acquire wealth through a voluntary transaction then you can at least feel an opportunity cost, but when you acquire it through coercion then you are blind. I think if a society embraces a lot of coercive wealth redistribution then it will begin to have great trouble allocating the limited capital and maintaining a complex society. I think the price mechanism is also the best way to quickly accumulate wealth in the society which then goes towards alleviating its problems that result from a lack of wealth.

I think the only sustainable way to raise the standard of living of a people is to:

1) Grow the capital stock (more tables, chairs, shovels etc.)
2) Which lowers the marginal cost of capital (shovels are now cheaper)
3) Which allows workers on the margin to raise their productivity (some guy digs with a shovel now who dug with his hands)
4) Which allows the worker to demand higher pay for his work (he digs 10 holes a day instead of 2)

Fair enough, we've all got lives to live Thanks for your thoughts.

Well, think of exploitation as a continuum. Anything done to someone else for one's own benefit can be considered a form of exploitation. Now, when there is an asymmetry of power and that is used to have someone do something they would not do of their own accord such exploitation can become harmful from the perspective of overall utility (what the exploiter gains is less than what the exploited suffers).

However, getting hung up on words or even precise definitions is not helpful here--this is not an exercise in pure analytic philosophy (which is impossible in such an empirically muddled realm, I would argue, as political relations) or even precise definition. Regardless of how the framing of the issue could be tightened up, the point is that there is a tendency toward disequilibrium in human affairs where the strong will have an advantage in acquiring resources at the expense of others and in acquiring those resources they will be in a better position to acquire more resources and so on in a positive feedback loop (obviously external pressures, such as social forces or a sense of morality can serve to check this, but ultimately some form of equilibrium will result where a few have much and many have very little and the many will be forced to do the bidding of the many for want of basic sustenance. I take this as a historical pattern that has developed in most societies, such as babaylon, egypt, china, medieval europe, pre revolutionary france, and probably many others (though always with many complex externalities).

At bottom I am making the rather uncontroversial statement that wealth and power do not tend toward an equilibrium where they are distributed evenly or even rationally. [Except perhaps in smaller societies where everyone more or less knows one another such that kinship and other social relations are sufficient to check excessive exploitation of others.] Some may think this incorrect, but I think it borders on the self-evident when one considers just about any reasonably complex society that has ever existed.

simplicitus using exploiting the MissileDog Tactic ITT

There is too much here to respond too, particularly as I'm quite tired and jacked up on caffeine to the point of incoherence, but you raise many good points, such that I think a discussion would be beneficial (at least if this were some kind of grad school seminar on building a society). We at least seem to be playing the same game of trying to get it right based on the world instead of proceeding from platonic principles (the Republic took up similar issues and ended up at a point very different from what most would reach today, and Plato was pretty smart). However, I do suspect there are plausible and existing scenarios where you will want to expand the role of the state when doing so could be done at little expense in relation to the general benefit (e.g., limited food safety labeling). From there, though, it can be a slippery slope (one I largely embrace) to wanting to do that in fairly many places (see, historical expansion of the state in western society). That is, as much as possible, to arrange society justly, however one conceives of that.

one eyed man is king in a world full of blind men imo.

you regressed

Should probably move all the fundamental ideology stuff out of this thread that's supposed to be devoted to this one particular politician.

Bump for Chris Christie being a completely standard government toolbag.

Pretty much attacked anyone against government spying with the GG argument:

"Think of the 9/11 widows!"

With ridiculous appeals to emotion like that I really think this guy's the Republican frontrunner for 2016. He's useless enough to be worthy of their nomination.

Ya Christie is a toolbag

.