Under free trade, and without politically oriented government-monopoly militaries, no country would be able to harm another. But with the existence of politicians “leading the country,” it’s a different story. FULL ARTICLE by Kel Kelly
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/14820/what-threat-china/
What Threat, China?
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There is no such thing as domestic, international, or local trade. There’s just trade. The distance and identity of the trading partner is irrelevant. I have something, you have a different something, we trade them. When we grasp that basic concept, all this fear vanishes.
You’re not a locavore? Gasp!
Locavorism taken to its logical conclusion means you can’t even move to get food, and thus will starve.
Well, ‘illogical conclusion’ would be more like it. I don’t like ‘trendy’ ideas any more than you do, but in moderation, local trade is a pretty darn good thing. Especially food. Fresh local food, organic or not, is almost always better than aged, mass produced stuff at the supermarket.
NATURALLY, if you want berries in winter, or some exotic stuff, or CANNED food, etc. OF COURSE you can get that at the super. Choices. Isn’t that what a free market is about?
Ohh, if you prefer it because of your tastes and people freely provide it, then that’s fine. I was more lamenting the problem with defining ‘local’ in the locavore movement. Trade between 10 miles of distance is not better or worse than trade between 1,000 or 10,000.
Mr. Kelly actually discusses this idea very well in his excellent book. At one point, he points out the flaw in ‘Buying American.’ His point, which the two of you above touched on, is basically that knowingly buying an inferior product based on an arbitrary attribute, like that it was produced locally, or in the United States, is bad economic sense. Of course, if the product is the best available at the price you’re willing to pay, then buying it makes perfect sense.
Though, really, if having been produced locally makes an objectively inferior good subjectively better for you, then there’s nothing wrong with only buying locally, I suppose.
Sure, SOME produce makes sense. It doesn’t make sense for me, living in Florida, to buy oranges shipped in from Brazil because the local oranges haven’t been sitting in a box for weeks and came off a tree yesterday. But I wouldn’t want to buy locally produced kiwi fruit because the climate just doesn’t allow for a good crop to grow. Or deprive myself of apples because they aren’t grown in the area at all. Quality and price trumps where the thing was produced every single time.
Strange but true: “Locavorism” lives!
“Joe Smith started the day early, having set his alarm clock (MADE BY Steve Next Door) for 6 a.m. While his coffeepot (MADE BY John across the street) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (MADE BY Carol two doors down). He put on a dress shirt (MADE BY Ellen across town) designer jeans (MADE BY Jared the next block over) and tennis shoes (MADE BY Richard at the end of the cul-de-sac).
After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet (MADE BY Bill the other side of the hedge), he sat down with his calculator (MADE BY Jimmy on Baker Street) to see how much he could spend today. After setting his watch (MADE BY Earl on Main Street) to the clock on his VCR (MADE BY Francis down by the creek), he got into his car (MADE BY Tom down at his garage) and continued his search for work.
At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day, Joe decided to relax for a while. He put on his sandals (MADE BY Starfire at the hippy commune near the school), poured himself a glass of wine (MADE BY Linda at her orchard), turned on his TV (MADE BY Sam in his basement) and then wondered why he can’t find a good paying job… in MY OWN HOME! “
Excellent article! If China intends to challenge the US militarily, it must grow its economy in order to be able to finance it. But to grow its economy it needs to become more free market oriented and if it does that, it will have little reason to attack anyone. If it tries to grow its military without growing its economy it will destroy both as did the USSR.
Oh I don’t know about that. We spend what we spend due to the lack of personnel which forces us to gain the advantage via technology whereas a populous country such as China can attain the same goals with lower technology but with a greater number of personnel.
Case in point was a few years ago where a simulation was conducted using the F-22 or F-35 vs. China airforce. China ‘won’ because our technology superior aircraft couldn’t carry enough missiles to overcome the sheer number of Chinese aircraft.
It’s a temporary advantage that China can’t maintain. Additionally, to maintain the military, they have to engage in trade with potential military enemies. Cutting off that trade shuts down the military.
Also, those simulations assumed a dogfight situation, which just about never happens. A more realistic outcome would be the same thing that was done to the Iraqi airforce, which also outnumbered US planes stationed in the region. Destroy them before they ever have a chance to take off. China lacks the capability of stopping or detecting stealth attack planes like the F-22 or to identify and counter long-range missiles.
The truth is that although China has an enormous number of manpower, they have absolutely NO way to move it. I refuse to be scared of a military with only 1,900 airplanes, less than 500 helicopters, 760 TOTAL navy ships (including a whopping 1 carrier), and enough land-based vehicles that each would have to contain 25k soldiers to move the army. Now, those numbers may not be exact, but even doubling them doesn’t make it that much easier for China. They just don’t have the resources to engage in war with us.
source: http://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-detail.asp?country_id=China
fundamentalist, nice summary of the article, but I’d say that’s quite a bit of optimism, don’t you think. The USSR did build the Tsar Bomba after all. As for isolationism, from the article one might conclude that all the Poles, the Finns, the Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ucranians,.. had to do is “keep to themselves” and with some luck they would have never been attacked. I don’t quite buy it.
Of course, the Soviets had absolutely no way of moving the Tsar Bomba, making it as effective in war as a marshmallow lit on fire.
J Murray,
What are you talking about?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
The bomb, weighing 27 tons, was so large (8 metres (26 ft) long by 2 metres (6.6 ft) in diameter) that the Tu-95V had to have its bomb bay doors and fuselage fuel tanks removed. The bomb was attached to an 800 kilogram fall-retardation parachute, which gave the release and observer planes time to fly about 45 kilometres (28 mi) from ground zero.
The Tsar Bomba detonated at 11:32 on October 30, 1961 over the Mityushikha Bay nuclear testing range (Sukhoy Nos Zone C), north of the Arctic Circle on Novaya Zemlya Island in the Arctic Sea. The bomb was dropped from an altitude of 10.5 kilometres (6.5 mi); it was designed to detonate at a height of 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) over the land surface (4.2 kilometres (2.6 mi) over sea level) by barometric sensors.[1][4][5]
re: locavor:
I think we’re all in agreement. As I said, moderation and choices.
Movement be damned, if the locavor meme encourages farmer’s markets, local fruit, veggie stands, etc. I’m all for it.
MORTAL KOMBAAAAAT!
does any one else think they are in a bubble like japan in the 80s they are buying up a lot of assets here in nz i see it every where i go.i bet my asssss they like japan will or have over extended and find all they had was credit and not the skills to run all our(their sorry) golfs courses and dairy farms ect.jim chanos has even more to say bout their bubbles
S Burgess
Are you in New Zealand?
Sione
yea nelson nz
Today I am visiting in Auckland.
Sione
The only thing worse than having government is government which does nothing at all to help its’ subjects. The fact is, all the sophist arguments to the contrary, “free trade” has destroyed American industry and the jobs which went with it. When we have another war I suppose we’ll fight it with Japanese cars and hamburgers, since we seem to make little else these days.
When the home-grown industry is hamstrung with taxes and regulation while being baited with more profitable situations for the factories overseas, there really is nothing free about it.
“When the home-grown industry is hamstrung with taxes and regulation…”
You have anwered your own question. We do it to ourselves, just as Mr. Kelly says. We are taxing and regulating the country into poverty for no good reason.
By the way, this was a magnificent essay!
Lee
“The only thing worse than having government is government which does nothing at all to help its’ subjects.”
Better to have no government at all.
“The fact is, all the sophist arguments to the contrary, “free trade” has destroyed American industry and the jobs which went with it.”
The term “Free Trade” is one of those false and deceptive lables employed by politicians, bureaucrats, academics, sundry mercantilists and the like. If what they were referring to really was people freely trading amongst one another, then there’d be no need for inter-government “free trade” agreements. No need for governments to get involved whatsoever.
Put it like this. If I want to purchase a nice car from my colleague, Siotu, I do not require the assent or permission of a third party to so do. I go up there to Siotu’s place and we sit around and drink a little Kava and we negotiate a trade directly and between ourselves. Now whether Siotu happens to live next door, in the next village, in the next island, in Samoa or in Australia or in Outer Mongolia or on the *&^%$#* moon, it shouldn’t make a blind differnce to the trade. That’s what free trade is really like.
On the other hand, when some government loons get involved and set the terms and conditions of how Si and I are allowed to transact our trading (or else), that is RESTRICTED TRADE. It’s ironic that they call such a thing “free”. It aint.
“When the home-grown industry is hamstrung with taxes and regulation while being baited with more profitable situations for the factories overseas, there really is nothing free about it.”
Yup. Now the question is, what is the causal agent of this regime of tax and regulation?
Sione
For decades I watched the Washington crowd in stunned amazement they could be so stupid. After some reading other than the newspapers I learned to look, like the homicide detectives, at who benefited from their apparent stupidity. Aside from the obvious_the politicians with over-filled hands out_the answer is, mostly places like Communist China, India, Mexico. Our loss has been largely to Socialists’ gain.
Aside from the tirade of conservative fallacies, the US is a socialist country too. Your losses are the gains of socialists, who rule you.
@Lee, Do you feel like a subject? In this country the USA we are not subjects but owners of this country and government. We haven’t been the best owners lately but hopefully we can turn it around. As for the factories overseas I see it as a benefit to us. How do we increase our standard of living? Capital, savings and productivity. We need to find our “comparative advantage” and start producing what is advantageous to us as individuals and as a country. This is not a zero sum game but an ever expanding world economy. I do understand how the socialists in this country keep on hounding about outsourcing to other countries. They just want to protect their unions and the votes that follow.
Joe, I don’t feel like a subject, but an individual who has and is being treated like one. I’ve long been relieved of the really absurd idea that we own the government or much of anything else for that matter, since “ownership” implies control; so tell me, Joe, what the hell do we really control? To an ever increasing degree not even our own bodies, much less anything else.
@Lee,
Now that is the spirit. Get mad and let’s take it back one step at a time. Even the founding fathers had to start somewhere.
Why is there on mises.org always this religious faith in anything being technically possible?
” Man has literally only scraped the surface of the earth’s resources, and has not even begun to obtain resources that lie two miles deep in the ocean, under its floor (not to mention those on other planets — billions and billions of other planets). ”
Austrians believe they have uncovered some undeniable truths, but do not show any hesitation to ignore, what other sciences have discovered to be rather close to or the truth.
Humans watch about 15 billion cubic light years of space and conduct trillions of experiments with high energetic particles. Nowhere has ever been an object observed, which moved faster than the vacuum speed of light. And that this cannot happen is well established and explained by special relativity theory. So even the closest of those billions of planets outside the solar system is a 4 year one way trip away. But there are also energy and momentum conservation and this means, that for any “practical” (meaning, that one assumes a drastic technological advancement) purpose the one way trip will take 400+ years. (the crucial problem is, that you want to decelerate when you are there or accelerate whatever you pick up there and this means you have to take a lot of fuel with you at the intended speed) So unless Einstein was wrong regarding speed of light and(!) someone is clever enough to realize this, extrasolar planets are out of bounds as sources of resources.
So why this notion, that those billions of planets are in any way accessible if already the closest planets are out of question?
And the optimism about other planets in solar system should at least be limited due to energy and momentum conservation. Picking up something from Mars or Jupiter moons and bring it to earth requires a certain amount of energy due to the gravitational forces of the various bodies. As energy is conserved there is no magic source of energy, but something has to be expended. What has to be expended depends of the efficiency of the energy creation method. As a rule of thumb, they are more efficient the higher the energy density of the “fuel” is. The most “fuel” efficient processes known from observing are supernovae, discs around black holes and other for human purposes unavailable processes. Most efficient “available” (meaning 20-50 years and several billion dollars in research) is fusion and even with that available the cost for metal from Titan would be astronomical. So even for resources on neighboring planets or deep inside earth, there can be limits from laws of nature, which could prevent any use of such resources.
So why this optimism, that it would be possible in a free society?
Of course, it its possible, then a free society has the best chances to succeed in these tasks. But whether or not its possible depends not only upon made-up of human society, but also upon natures laws.
“With respect to foreign countries and terrorists, we have to ask: If we didn’t bother them, what possible reason could they have to attack a country keeping to itself halfway around the world? Would they want to invade us and take our buildings and homes and ship them to their own country? Do they want to steal our bank accounts (in which case massive amounts of dollar bills flowing into their local bank accounts would only raise prices and dilute the effects of their new wealth)? Do they want to reside in Virginia and Oklahoma instead of their native lands? What would they actually gain?”
Why always assuming that other people act rational and act according to similar premises?
No with current China, that seems to be sensible, but as a general statement?
Other nations might feel compelled to force the blessings of communism or some religious doctrine upon USA or some individuals might believe that the unknown forces beyond or some God with promise of paradise commands them to go to war to spread their faith.
As such things have happened how can one exclude such motivations for today?
Especially considering, that islamists do claim they wage war according to their gods commands, which certainly could go beyond a mere self-defense rules.
A little encouragement for you Mr. Carn. Basic second law of thermodynamics says any natural process must result in an increase in entropy, which is another way of stating a decrease in available energy, free energy it is called. Information theory has advanced to the point where information can be quantified and its mathematical equivalence to free energy can be calculated.
The amount of information available in the DNA of the simplest of life forms is greater than the amount of information available in all the rest of the entire known inorganic universe.
This means we have, for all practical purposes, an infinite amount of everything we may ever need. The requirement to take advantage of this information and convert it to free energy is simply freedom. (This also can be shown analytically, but the Austrian economist should understand this anyway.)
The alternative to freedom is fear.
carn
Yeah and if you travel faster than 60 mph your lungs will explode. Man will never fly. General anaesthetic is unfit for Man as God made him to exist in a state of suffering. There will never be more than 15 computers. Electricity can’t be transmited over longer distances than a few miles.
This was all state of the art “scientific knowledge” at one time. All of it was………. wrong.
Don’t be so fast to tell everyone what your “science” and your “theories” exclude or render impossible. You may well be wrong (and likely are).
In this instance you have been dealing in theories and suppositions regarding the future. You do not know what technologies will be developed in the future and what clever ways people will come up with to achieve their goals (or even what some of those goals may happen to be). Don’t be so quick to write off what people can achieve.
Regarding Einstein. His theories are based on certain assumptions. Do you know what they are? It’s important, as that reveals some of the limitations of what he attempts to describe. As with Newton, Einstein is not the last word- far from it.
–
Regarding a free society. What can be achieved when individuals are unshackled and allowed to express their freedom is far and away superior to the results of the stifling limitations and arbitrary encumberments of compulsory collectivism. That’s but one reason to embrace freedom. Why not allow people to strive to achieve their own goals, rather than restrict them with some prejudiced ideology (which necessarily imposes laws and rules far and away more limiting than what reality allows)? Set them free and see where that leads. It’ll certainly change the nature of science and scientific enquiry.
–
I live outside of the USA. I and everyone I know have no intention of invading the USA to rape, pillage, steal and generally cause mayhem and violence. None of us are interested in invading the place in order to over-throw the present regime and impose our own one. None of us are interested in exploiting the residents of the US in order to obtain their wealth. Fact is, people like us make up the vast majority of the population of the planet. Fact is, most Moselms are like this (the local ones are too busy running their retail shop to take time off to do invasions and the like). Fact is, if you leave people in peace, limit yourself and your colleagues to mutually voluntary trade and transact peacfully with them, avoid trying to rule over their lives, then there is no reason to fear trouble. How would anyone develop the motivation to want to detroy you? Why would they? How would such ideas ever gain traction and popularity? It would be bad for business, bad for life and too much effort for too little gain (especially when you can gain more by trading then you can ever hope to attain by destruction).
There are however those who do like to undertake criminal activities. There are so few and they are so unproductive. They are readily dealt with. They get marginalised. They get pushed aside, excluded from our community. Some are never allowed to return. What you do with your ones is a matter for you and your community.
Now we come to those who like to acquire a power over others so they can impose their ideas by coercive means and even by force. These are every bit as criminal. They are dangerous indeed. When they get into a position of exerting power or authority over others their nature is inevitably to seek to impose a state of violence and fear and hatred. Right now you have a lot of these ones in your midst. Worse is that you allow them to export their canker all over the world. It’s infectious. It spreads like a metastsis.
Invade a country, shoot up their children, laugh at them for “bringin’ thar chilren into a war zone” (who made it so?) and, of course, there will be blow back. Don’t reckon it’s avoidable if you follow the course of violence. It’s economically costly too.
The productive output of all your talented, industrious labours must be garnished to pay for it. What eventually occurs is that the productive efforts are eclipsed by the costs imposed by the destructive. Then bigger and bigger debts manifest themselves. At that point the violence is introduced at home, in order to squeeze out a little more wealth to consume. Then you really are unsafe- unsafe in your own home, assailed by local and hated by foreigner. Best not to let things devolve to that.
In my experience, I’ve found that the best defense is self-defense. That’s one reason why I don’t head on over to the other villages to threaten them and bash them and burn their homes and so on. If I did that, there will be trouble and who knows where it’ll end up. Best to leave them look after their stuff while I look after mine.
Sione
so are you a kiwi to
No, but have lived there and come to see the relatives there often enough.
Sione
@Sione
“Yeah and if you travel faster than 60 mph your lungs will explode. Man will never fly. General anaesthetic is unfit for Man as God made him to exist in a state of suffering. There will never be more than 15 computers. Electricity can’t be transmited over longer distances than a few miles.
This was all state of the art “scientific knowledge” at one time. All of it was………. wrong.”
You do not understand science. To place those predictions about technical limitations for humans(!!!) in the same category as speed of light limitation, energy and momentum conservation, which seems to restrict every bit of whatever is there, shows that.
Some objects move faster than 60 mph, question was at most, whether humans can copy this.
Birds do fly, question was just whether humans can copy it.
Electricity is transmitted over several miles in lightnings, question was just whether human can copy it and have it in a more controlled and less destructive way.
You confuse mere technical problems and limitations, which very well can be put aside with the right approach, with natural laws, which could be as binding as 1+1=2. What great idea is there to get around 1+1=2?
To put it in perspective what you said about overcoming energy and momentum conservation and speed of light limit, is just as or even worse than someone claiming “Well you Austrians think state always has to be inefficient, but that is just the current state of knowledge with enough advancement, we will be able to devise an efficient state.”.
Take energy conservation, thats not just some concept derived from observation. It can be shown mathematically, that any large scale violation of energy conservation is impossible in a universe where time travel is impossible. And if large scale violations are possible, then time travel is possible as well. You think one day humans can ignore energy conservation?
Ok, please explain where are all those time travel tourists. Otherwise you are just deluding yourself.
With momentum conservation its even worse, then forget the concepts up, down, forward, back, left and right, you will have to reformulate them or ignore them completely. I agree that speed of light limit is less strict, because its just based on trillions of controlled and repeatable experiments and on observing 15 billion cubic light years of space and on light speed being constant (also tested in trillions of experiments) .
“It’ll certainly change the nature of science and scientific enquiry.”
This is magic thinking. While the nature of science is dependent on how we conduct it, it is also dependent upon nature. And nature does not change, whether we have a socialistic, a semi-socialistic or a free society. Therefore be convinced of drastic changes in the nature of sciences, although the most important factor does and will not change, is magic thinking.
“Fact is, most Moselms are like this (the local ones are too busy running their retail shop to take time off to do invasions and the like).”
If 95% of the Moslems are like this, this still leaves 65 million of the other sort, which is more than enough to cause trouble. And why is this a fact?
You are skeptical about energy conservation, which is based on mathematics and countless experiments, but are convinced of something, which is based on polls and some several hundred people you have met in your life.
“How would anyone develop the motivation to want to detroy you? Why would they? How would such ideas ever gain traction and popularity? It would be bad for business, bad for life and too much effort for too little gain (especially when you can gain more by trading then you can ever hope to attain by destruction).”
Again the serious mistake of assuming a rational and materialistic behavior of all humans. People have convinced themselves and others, that some alien vessel will arrive soon and that to get a trip to save themselves from the imminent apocalypse, they have to commit suicide. How could they convince themselves of such a nonsense?
I do not know. But obviously if this is possible, people can also convince themselve, that they get a trip to paradise by killing the right people.
And while a majority of humans often is not convinced of the nonsense of the established philosophy, where it is written, that you need a majority of nuts, to make the whole society behave in that way?
History is full of ideologies and religions, whose central tenets could influence the whole society, although they are quite beyond what you and i would put into the the range of sensible behavior. In south america large temples have been built and wars conducted, so that priests could offer human sacrifices for the gods. In middle ages on the promise of abdication of their sins, thousands went on crusades. And in early renaissance thousands were murdered because people thought them to meet with the devil and bewitch their fellow citizens. So why assume, that the only deciding factor for other peoples decisions about war and peace, is, what is bad for business?
As far as i know, that was the argument around 1905-10, that in Europe business is so intervened and war so bad for business, that war will never happen again. What a great argument and reliable argument.
(Nope, it was not only the state, large parts of the population were in favor of war – not the majority maybe, but a sizable minority is enough)
(Again, nothing against the argument, that by not invading other countries you could avoid to make a lot of enemies, but my point is, that other reasons for enemies to act are possible and that they do not have to be in anyway from our viewpoint rational.)
carn
I’ll put aside the Nature of Science and for the moment. Same goes for Nature of Man (a key topic to investigate). We can return to them and discuss them in due course. There are a couple of steps to take in preparation. Starting with “science”:-
You write, “Take energy conservation, thats not just some concept derived from observation. It can be shown mathematically, that any large scale violation of energy conservation is impossible in a universe where time travel is impossible.”
What assumptions have you made? Can you list some of them?
You write, “With momentum conservation its even worse, then forget the concepts up, down, forward, back, left and right, you will have to reformulate them or ignore them completely.”
What are you trying to say here exactly? What does the term “up” have to do with momentum?
More importantly, can you explain what momentum actually is? What is its cause?
Sione
carn
Are you still around?
Sione
May I suggest you read Null physics by Terrence Witt. Just another theory, but one that outperforms relativity at many crucial points. There are just too many unexplained things yet.
You say for example that nature does not change. But we know that the act of observation changes it. Several eminent scientists, among them John Archibald Wheeler, followed this to its logical conclusion: that we not only change present reality, but we are involved in creating it.
As for conservation of energy, we know that if the universe had a beginning, energy has not been conserved. There are several possible mathematical models of the universe, including hyperbolic space, in which energy can enter this universe from outside it, violating energy conservation within.
Again, these are theories, but the point being I am not ready to give up my morality in order to survive.
Yes, but this is the long run, right? In the short run, people can starve, suffer and lose self worth before they manage to complete the search for a good job. That search is also made much more difficult because of the mercantilist policies of the trading nations. The fear is a real one.
The answer is a high trust society with a good safety net. In such a society, when the economists mention that freer markets are better for them, people trust them.Being sympathetic to the thoughts of Henry George, I am all for free trade among all humanity. I also believe that a basic citizens dividend to all adults, paid for by a simple tax on land is needed in the long run.
The dividend itself is a safety net that translates the unseen economic gains into tangible gains to all citizens, thus obtaining political popularity for free market ideas. Present day regulations on the free market are due to the fear that people will lose their sustenance.
A georgist regime will have need for minimal regulation, probably only pollution laws. The lower regulation and the lower price for land will create a situation where there will be minimal barriers to entry for entrepreneurs. This will result in further prosperity and much lower political support for protectionism.
prakash
“Yes, but this is the long run, right?”
No. It is available right now. There is always more work available than there are people to undertake it.
“In the short run, people can starve, suffer and lose self worth before they manage to complete the search for a good job. That search is also made much more difficult because of the mercantilist policies of the trading nations.”
In other words, governments, their policies and actions and back room deals, hinder people from working and trading with each other. Thus some are caused to starve, suffer and lose self-worth, before they manage to complete the seach for a job to do. The sacrifice of such people is for the continued survival of government, its denizens and cronies. Is that acceptible to you?
“The answer is a high trust society with a good safety net.”
There is no right for one to survive at the cost of another, no matter how dire his needs may appear to be.
For example, that you have two good kidneys and my friend Selesele has none is not a justification for me (or anyone else) to force you into the surgery, there to have one (or possible both) of your kidneys excised for implantation into Selesele. There is no safety net in the sense that someone else is to be forced to pay for it.
“I also believe that a basic citizens dividend to all adults, paid for by a simple tax on land is needed in the long run.”
This is the imposition of a theft. It requires the imposition of force. Hence it requires an entity with the means to calculate the size of the theft, the means to expropriate it and the means to enforce its demands. That entity requires the ability to exercise a monoply on the initiation of coercion and violence against people and, ultimately, the right to incarcerate, injure or kill them. Such an entity must hold sovereignty over any individuals living within a geographical area. In such a case those individuals are left with no Individual Right to Property, not in a real sense. What they may be fortunate enough to receive are permissions (permission to occupy, for example) but those depend entirely on what the sovereign entity arbitraily allows from time to time. This brings us back to the social and individual costs of such a set-up.
Some (many) people are going to be sacrificed for the continued functioning of the soverign entity. Some are caused to starve, suffer and lose self-worth. Hardly acceptible, surely?
Sione
Hi Sione,
Your definition of force is arising from your premises of private property. If you believed as I do, the basic georgist premise that a share of the earth is a human right and pragmatically speaking, is needed for a stable civlization, then a redistribution of ground rent is not an imposition of force. It is merely a clever taking of the positive externality provided by a stable society around the landowner. The lockean proviso (as long as there is enough and as good for others) is not possible to implement in a finite world. The georgist solution is much better.
Anyway, we are drifting too far from the topic. Georgist libertarians are free traders and universalists in the sense of not hating “the other”. However, you should recognise that anarchism of the kind you are seeming to support is an opinion of a very small minority. It is not a viable stepping stone. Free trade is moral. You agree to it and I agree to it. If you want free trade to be popular, then a dividend paid to all adult citizens will make this agreement widespread. It will do in a few years, what decades of economic education have not achieved. It is too easy for the borders of the world to get shut again, as it happened before WWI. Let’s not lose this worldwide market which has been setup after so many years of effort.
Prakash
The “definition of force” arises from the observation that Individual Rights are negated or destroyed by ANY initiation of force, fraud or coercion. Individual Rights are not an arbitrary construct. They are derived from consideration of the Nature of Man and Morality. Those in turn are derived from Epistemology and that from Metaphysics. Concepts such as initiation of force, property, rights (what they are an what they are not) etc. rely on a hieracrchy of logical thought anchored to reality and referent to it at every level. A break of the chain of logic invalidates the concept with which you are dealing, as does a departure from reality.
The premise that a share of the Earth is a human right is an abrigation of the concept of Individual Rights. It means that no individual can own any real estate since all are entitled to it collectively. Hence there can be no property, hence no Individual Right of Property. All are entitled to the land, including that which is produced from it or upon it (since that is what is going to be extracted in order to pay the tributes demanded), regardless of the individual who happens to occupy it, regardless of the nature of his claim of ownership, regardless of what he does with or upon that land. All have a share of it and therefore the notional “owner” is not really an owner in the real sense. He is merely a tax payer whose purpose (as far as the collective is concerned) is to have an amount of wealth expropriated from him to feed them. What he ia allowed is a permission to occupy and use land so long as he pays the tribute and allows expropriations of his wealth to continue indefinately.
Notice that once the idea that all have a right to a share of land and hence of the wealth of the “owner” is accepted, then the amount of wealth to be extracted is merely a matter of arbitary calculation and arbitrary fiat. It may be 5% or 55% or 105% of some “valuation” of the land or some other random amount of wealth calculated by an enforcer…
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“then a redistribution of ground rent is not an imposition of force”
Oh yes it is. It doesn’t matter that it is renamed or that clever wordcraft be employed to disguise its nature. It is what it is.
If I own land, then I do not pay rent to anyone for the land is mine. Forcing me to pay for that which I already own is indeed an initiation of force. It is theft. That is a criminal act.
This can be considered from another aspect. To get the tax from me, or from other owners of land, an intiation of force is required. In its absence I and almost every other land owner on the planet are not going to voluntarily pay anything. So an entity with the ability to initiate force, up to and including deadly force, is going to be required to coerce land owners to pay. If this expropriation of tax is to be claimed not to be a theft, if it is to not be an initiation of force, then leave people alone and let them act on a mutually voluntary basis. If your system can’t survive under those conditions (and it can’t), then what you are dealing with is indeed an initiation of force, a system with the crime of coercive theft embodied right at its core.
“Georgian” taxation is the same as any other form of taxation. It requires the sovereignty of individuals be usurped by a powerful entity- one which claims a right of power and control over those individuals. In the end such a system becomes ruinously expensive, as like a malignant cancer, it consumes more and more resource to run itself, feed its denizens and satisfy the claims of those who grant their fictional legitmacy (that is, those who think they can use it to get something for nothing). This scheme isn’t a solution. It is an attempt to square the circle- to unify tyrany and liberty.
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“If you want free trade to be popular, then a dividend paid to all adult citizens will make this agreement widespread. It will do in a few years, what decades of economic education have not achieved.”
This is known as a bribe. It won’t work. It is never possible to create freedom by paying bribes, especially when you do it with coercively expropriated wealth. Bribes, like this one, teach people that there is such a thing as free money to which they are entitled as of right, even if it has to be stolen from someone else.
Various methods of free pay-offs (bribes) to citizens has been tried for several generations now. It’s called welfare. What results is that the recipients demand ever more welfare (a bigger “dividend”). The industry that survives on the back of the welfare recipients grows ever more influencial and it demands MORE as well. The trouble with bribing is that it isn’t sustainable over the long run. Eventually it gets unstable and the scheme falls over. It ends catastrophically for someone or even everyone involved. Best to avoid a system with yet another crime concealed within its dark heart.
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To get free trade what you require is free trade. That means allowing people to trade without interference. That means not attempting to interfere with their property, whatever form it may happen to take. It means not attempting to impose control over them or steal from them or initiate ANY force, fraud or coercion against them. It means nothing less than the consistent adherance to the fundamentals of liberty. And that necessarily excludes taxing anyone.
Sione
Sione,
It is not possible for humans to live without access to resources. To deny this is to deny reality. In different societies, there are different ways of gating the access to these resources. The anarchist pattern which you have described is merely one of the possible arrangements.
In your society, when the entire earth is owned, then anyone new, just think of a family having 3 children instead of two, will either end up paying rent to those already present or will die. And the present landlords will extract as much as they can and will leave only enough that the new person can survive. This is similar to slavery in terms of the percentage extracted.
What I have described is the current world at the level of states. All property is owned and distributed, by the state and there is nothing that a newcomer to the world can take on his own. The seasteading guys are trying to create new countries on the ocean, bless them and are trying to break the equilibrium from one angle.
The georgist solution breaks the equilibrium from another angle. By shifting the taxes from income, sales, value-added, etc. to land, it makes sure that almost all land moves to its highest usage. This improves wages and profits, the percentage that the value adding labourer or capital deployer actually keeps with himself. It also makes it more difficult for competing jurisdictions, as in every country one might have to pay both land price and taxes. In a georgist country, it is only land rent and a very nominal land price. This is a gradualist approach to improving the human condition.
About the degradation of systems, every system degrades. The most hopeful anarchy will also degrade. It’s failures may not be imaginable to you now, but there are many critiques.
Prakash
Quoting, “The anarchist pattern which you have described is merely one of the possible arrangements.”
Firstly, what I described is not exclusively restricted to an anachist philosophy. For example, Objectivists identify a similar hierarchy (suggested reading is “Objectivism, the Philosophy of Ayn Rand”, by Prof L Peikoff). There are others.
Secondly, the “pattern”, as you call it, is logical and moral, whereas the Georgist approach is arbitrary, contains self-contradictions and is immoral.
Quoting, “when the entire earth is owned, then anyone new, just think of a family having 3 children instead of two, will either end up paying rent to those already present or will die. And the present landlords will extract as much as they can and will leave only enough that the new person can survive. This is similar to slavery in terms of the percentage extracted.”
This is silly. You are postulating that a free market is utterly nihilistic, destructive of human value and life.
That a man rents property does not make him a slave. For example, the creator of Facebook, a Mr Zuckerberg, rents his primary residence. He is wealthy enough to purchase it and many others like it outright. He prefers not to. Still, in your imaginary scenario the owner of that property would set the rent high enough to reduce Mr Zuckerberg to penury, scrabbling for enough discretionary funds left over just to find food to eat. Isn’t it obvious to you that Mr Zuckerberg, in such a situation, would move to a residence with a cheaper rental? After all, in the scenario, the choice he faces is move or live in penury, permanently on the border of starvation. Reckon he’d seek alternative lodgings which allows him to keep more of his income? I do.
The only way for your scenario to achieve that which you intend it to is for all the landlords to set rentals high enough to ruin Mr Zuckerberg. That way he can’t avoid the penurious slavery you intend to doom him to. That has problems. At a rental level high enough to reduce Mr Zuckerberg, all the other renters of property would be in dire straights. They’d possess no left over funds- most after less than one week. Indeed, anyone not earning as much as Mr Zuckerberg would soon be starving and end up stone cold dead! Then there’d be restricted rental income for the landlords leading to a reduction in their standard of living. Doncha reckon them landlords are likely to reduce rentals in order to get tenants? If they don’t then many, many of them end up in the position to have to sell property in order to survive. Then they end up as renters and soon enough they’d be starved dead as well. On would go the carnage with rents staying high enough such that only those with the very highest of incomes could continue to survive (and that at a penurious level). Gradually (OK then, rapidly), those earning only slightly less than the highest of incomes would fall over financially and drop out of the economic system to their deaths! Shit-oh-dear!
Another problem with the scenario is that with the elimination of so many people, productivity would be devastated. Manufacturing and service industries would face huge problems- can’t get staff… The landlords would soon find themselves living a very restricted lifestyle indeed, for there would be little available for them to purchase.
The reality is that your scenario fails. Its premise and illogic are false.
A free market operates by voluntary exchange (sugested reading are “Human Action” by L Von Mises and “Capitalism” by Prof G Reisman). In a free market, if Mr Zuckerberg considered his rent too high he could either negotiate with the landlord to reset it to a lower amount or locate a cheaper residence and enter into an agreement with that landlord. So it is with every other renter. It is important to realise that landlords are in competition with each other for tenants. Possession of an unoccupied rental property is a losing proposition. There are holding costs and losing money is not one’s goal in investing in property.
As explained in my previous post, the Georgist approach negates the principle of Individual Rights for it requires institutionalised theft, coercions and initiations of force. It negates the concept of property. It is immoral.
Sione
“Military threats come only from political leaders, not from individual citizens.”
While I agree that military threats do not come from individual citizens, isn’t it more accurate to say that “military” threats can come from ANY leader who can arouse passion in his followers and vilify another group (I am thinking religious wars, race wars, etc.). Don’t know…just wondering. And yes, I am using the word military loosely (i.e. mass violence/force perpetrated against hapless peoples due to some difference of mind, practices, etc.).
While you may have a lot of experience in economics, your understanding of China and its culture are obviously limited. You have made the same mistake that many westerners do, in believing that the people of China ‘think like us’… they don’t.
My views are not out of patriotic ignorance or a “Cold War mentality”, they come from having spent nearly a decade living in, and studying China.
You are referring to a nation that prides itself on purity of race, and ultra-nationalism trough indoctrination by the oligarchy – A land where they view the world in simple terms of “us and them”.
You say “For the most part, only individuals and individual firms engage in production and exchange; governments do not.” Well, China does not fall into the “most part” of that statement.
This “us and them” attitude can be shown quite easily: While, as you say, individuals may be engaging in the production and exchange of goods, the government is the one leading them through it. The “comparative advantage” that you speak of is one that is created and manipulated by the government, not by natural economic development.
In 1980, China devalued the Yuan from Y1.2:$1 to Y8.25:$1 in one day, and locked it there for over 15 years. The value of the Yuan has only been allowed to rise $0.30 over the past 30 years. This advantage is a direct result of State planning.
While it is true that other nations have done similar things with the trade value of their currency, it was as a short/small step in development… the result for China has been:
China’s foreign trade has grown faster in the past 25 years than its GDP.
Half of China’s economic growth comes from foreign trade.
China has the largest trade surplus.
China is the largest holder of forex reserves.
China has the fastest growing economy.
China has the second largest economy in the world.
China is the second largest importer of luxury goods.
China has the largest automotive market.
China is second in the world for number of billionaires.
China gives over $25 billion away in foreign aid each year.
Yet they still like to consider themselves a “developing nation”, needing $25 billion in foreign aid each year from the west, and manipulating the trade value of the Yuan.
Remember… HALF of all of that development has come from where? That’s right – Right out of your pocket. As long as we keep feeding them, they are going to keep eating.
The real threat is ignorance in the west of what is really going on here. Articles like this, showing the naivety of thinking that they are “simple folk, just like us”, abound.
And let’s not forget the perfect example of China’s mentality, which we saw recently in the news – China accepted “charity” oil from Venezuela for $5 a barrel and then sold it for a profit to truly developing nations.
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