Libertarianism/Europe tangent

[scottlowther]

It does not have to be conscious for the ideology to be just that.

What is more important in libertarianism? The good of everyone, or the good of the individual? In a moral dilemma posed against a libertarian that pits the need of the many against the so-called right to property of one person, who wins? The individual.

Sure, but that doesn't make it inherently selfish. That just makes it non-utilitarian: there's a different standard of morality than maximizing the good of many.

The arguement is that the "many" benefit by maximizing the liberty of the "individual."

Are humans a mass, or are humans a collection of individual beings with individual goals and capabilities?

By the way, relatively poor libertarians are certainly conceivable (and do exist)

Speaking.

the argument is not, "But that money is MINE, you can't have it!" -- it is, "But that money is HIS, you and I can't have it!"

Your money is yours. You worked for it; I didn't. If I want your money, then I need to provide you with a product or service you're willing to exchange it for. It's just that simple.

[scottlowther]

The source you provided for us only talks about infant mortality rate, and do not include other factors that will affect the ranking of the US health care system.

I provided multiple sources, one that factors in violent death. The most recent one discussed infant mortality.

[ray245]

Your money is yours. You worked for it; I didn't. If I want your money, then I need to provide you with a product or service you're willing to exchange it for. It's just that simple.

What about the public transportation system? Roads? Bridges?

I provided multiple sources, one that factors in violent death. The most recent one discussed infant mortality.

Does it cover every factors that was used by the WHO in their ranking system?

[Surlethe]

Either retract your infant mortality list or go find the error analysis in the original study.

Scroll upwards. Look for the NOTE.

If I give you any empirical analysis, if the chart has no error bars on the measurements you'll be immediately suspicious. Same deal with this. It's got nothing to do with infant mortality list or violent deaths or any other factor.

[scottlowther]

Your money is yours. You worked for it; I didn't. If I want your money, then I need to provide you with a product or service you're willing to exchange it for. It's just that simple.

What about the public transportation system? Roads? Bridges?

Sigh.

*Please* tell me you're not one of those morons who assumes that "libertarian" automatically means "there is no function for government whatsoever."

The vast majority of libertarians - note, that's small "l", not party-member Big "L" Libertarians - recognize a role for government. Where libertarians try to define themselves is in pointing out that:
1) Governemnt governs best when it governs least
2) Government needs to govern within the confines of the *Constitution,* whatever your nation's constitution might be.

This means that in the US Constitution there is a role for the FedGuv in interstate commerce, thus interstate highways. Intrastate roads and whatnot would be governed by the specific state constitutions.

And thus, yes, some form of taxation is required. I happen to think that a non-punitive form of taxation would be best... an end-user consumption tax. If this means that government tax revenues would fall drastically... well, the government is way bigger than it needs to be to do its constitutionally appointed job anyway.

Does it cover every factors that was used by the WHO in their ranking system?

No. Does it need to?

Well, I'm off to elsewhere. Y'all have fun.

[Samuel]

when you factor out violent deaths, which no health care system can help with.

Actually it was murders and traffic accidents, the second of which can be helped out with health care. The US health system does work with such situations (emergency room) though.

As pointed out int he references, a good chunk of our infant mortality is due not to the health care system but to the behaviors of the (often way-too-young) mothers.

Actually it states that younger mothers are likely to have underweight babies and underweight babies have a higher mortality rate.

Of course you could check the statistics by comparing the LE and IM between different groups in the US- if I remember correctly there is a large difference between the best off and the worst off.

The arguement is that the "many" benefit by maximizing the liberty of the "individual."

Are humans a mass, or are humans a collection of individual beings with individual goals and capabilities?

No, they don't. A certain amount of economic liberty for the individual benefits the many, but most other benefits from liberty tend to be personal gains (which doesn't mean they aren't worth having, only that they generally lose out to the common good).

Also, for the correction to infant mortality, the article does not say how much the results are changed by different measurement standards. For example "In Belgium and France, births at less than 26 weeks of pregnancy are registered as lifeless. "

How many babies are born under 6 months? The article doesn't say.

1) Governemnt governs best when it governs least

This should be "a government doesn't govern beyond what it is better able to do than anyone else". To say one that does the least is good would be anarchy.

2) Government needs to govern within the confines of the *Constitution,* whatever your nation's constitution might be.

When did legalism become a cornerstone of libertarianism?

[Stark]

Since he defined political divisions as America-centric, I guess. It's even pretty ridiculous because many countries don't have constitutions that people use to micro their government.

[ray245]

Sigh.

*Please* tell me you're not one of those morons who assumes that "libertarian" automatically means "there is no function for government whatsoever."

That's because you sure act like one.

This means that in the US Constitution there is a role for the FedGuv in interstate commerce, thus interstate highways. Intrastate roads and whatnot would be governed by the specific state constitutions.

If the consititution doesn't mention anything about interstate commerce, does this mean that the US should not be allowed to build interstate highways?

And thus, yes, some form of taxation is required. I happen to think that a non-punitive form of taxation would be best... an end-user consumption tax. If this means that government tax revenues would fall drastically... well, the government is way bigger than it needs to be to do its constitutionally appointed job anyway.

I would like to see prove that end-user consumption tax is enough to cover for all the necessary expense.

No. Does it need to?

Err, yes?

[JointStrikeFighter]

America is a European nation because they have some European place names.

Q
E
D

Fucker.

[JointStrikeFighter]

And thus, yes, some form of taxation is required. I happen to think that a non-punitive form of taxation would be best... an end-user consumption tax. If this means that government tax revenues would fall drastically... well, the government is way bigger than it needs to be to do its constitutionally appointed job anyway.

It couldn't possibly be that the Consititionally appointed role of the US government is simply wrong FOR THAT WOULD INTRUDE ON THE HOLY IDEAS OF OUR HOLY FOUNDING FATHERS.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The arguement is that the "many" benefit by maximizing the liberty of the "individual."

Are humans a mass, or are humans a collection of individual beings with individual goals and capabilities?

Humans are both. Strictly speaking we are individuals with individual goals and capabilities. However we live in a HUGE social group which must balance the competing goals and capabilities of individuals against eachother, and provide for the actual needs of individuals. I say that last part because one of the assumptions of libertarianism (and non-behavioral economics) is the false assumption that people actually behave rationally.

They do not. Nor can they. They neither evolved to do so, nor do they often have access to or the competence to analyze all of the information that they would need to make a good decision.

Your money is yours. You worked for it; I didn't. If I want your money, then I need to provide you with a product or service you're willing to exchange it for. It's just that simple.

And that works wonderfully for commodities. However when it comes to things that are not commodities it falls apart.

In an unregulated system neither party in an economic exchange is cooperating. They are acting antagonistically. Both are trying to exploit the other. It works out when both parties have access to all relevant information, and when both parties have the ability to back out of the deal. However it breaks apart when either of these conditions is violated.

Take medication, it demonstrates both conditions perfectly. Individuals technically can go without a life saving medicine. But they will die. Therefore they are effectively coerced to pay whatever price the produce wants them to. I fail to see how the needs of the many are maximized by maximizing the liberty of the individual in this case.

As far as regulation is concerned, the sale of patented tonics and literally snake oil as medicines at the beginning the 20th century was enough to convince me that an unregulated system will not work here. People are not biochemists or physicians generally. They rely on one of those people to tell them that a drug is safe and effective at treating illness. However if this was privatized (say a certification company contracted by the drug manufacturers... and possibly owned by them eventually) then the certification company has an incentive to maintain their contracts by telling the pharma companies what they want to hear. This inherent conflict of interest does not exist with government regulation. There is opportunity for corruption of course, but it is not inherent in the practice and set into its structural framework. Failures in drug regulation can hurt or kill a lot of people. I fail to see how maximizing individual liberty is workable here.

No. Does it need to?

Yes. Otherwise there may be cherry-picking going on.

And thus, yes, some form of taxation is required. I happen to think that a non-punitive form of taxation would be best... an end-user consumption tax. If this means that government tax revenues would fall drastically... well, the government is way bigger than it needs to be to do its constitutionally appointed job anyway.

You mean the most regressive tax possible? Shifting the tax burden onto the poorest individuals? And as a matter of fact the mandate within our constitution is very very large. Much larger than you make it out to be.

[ThomasP]

Are we talking about right-wing free-market/capitalist libertarianism that's been in vogue in the US, largely thanks to Rand et al, or are we discussing the original classical libertarianism of Europe as per Bakunin, Proudhon, and co?

*ducks*

Seriously, I'm actually interested in a discussion on that point, because you don't hear too much about the so-called "libertarian socialism" these days, versus the right-wing free-market worshiping stuff. Maybe that's fodder for another thread.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Are we talking about right-wing free-market/capitalist libertarianism that's been in vogue in the US, largely thanks to Rand et al, or are we discussing the original classical libertarianism of Europe as per Bakunin, Proudhon, and co?

*ducks*

Seriously, I'm actually interested in a discussion on that point, because you don't hear too much about the so-called "libertarian socialism" these days, versus the right-wing free-market worshiping stuff. Maybe that's fodder for another thread.

I am referring to the free market capitalism that has been heavily influenced by Rand.

[Serafina]

Then there is the WHO's rankings of healthcare systems... Costa Rica does a better job than us.

It's a pity that it's just plain wrong.

http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=3507


Is the rest of your "reasoning" as equally one-dimensional?

(Picture retained due to relevance).
Wait - did nt one notice that his statistic is sorted be standarized mean and is not superior in actual mean life expectancy?

List of countries by actual mean expectancy according to his own statistic:

Japan 78.7
Iceland 78.0
Sweden 77.7
Switzerland 77.6
Canada 77.3
Norway 77.0
Netherlands 77.0
Australia 76.8
Italy 76.6
France 76.6
Belgium 75.7
Italy 75.6
United Kingdom 75.6
Germany 75.4
United States 75.3
Austria 75.3
Denmark 75.1

Well - only place 15 - yeah, definately "the best healthcare system in the world".

[Surlethe]

You can't even compare those numbers without standard deviations give. If the error on all of those is plus/minus three years, then there's no practical difference between any of them; if the error is plus/minus one month, then they're all very distinct.

[Teleros]

2) Government needs to govern within the confines of the *Constitution,* whatever your nation's constitution might be.

I'd love to see how that works with the unwritten constitution and parliamentary sovereignty of the UK (and elsewhere).

If the consititution doesn't mention anything about interstate commerce, does this mean that the US should not be allowed to build interstate highways?

Presumably it will require cooperation between the states involved (or a referendum, even) or private companies building toll roads. Perhaps the federal government could hold a referendum on raising a tax specifically to fund this program.

I would like to see prove that end-user consumption tax is enough to cover for all the necessary expense.

Well, depending on how libertarian you are, you could cut back drastically on defence ($782bn), medicare / medicaid ($676bn), social security ($678bn), and I doubt would have TARP ($151bn) at all. Source. Not saying that those figures would all be down to zero of course, but here's what you'd spend on defence if you did it like the UK (x5, assuming very rough 60m / 300m populations, converted at the current exchange rate) - just $292bn (£38bn x5). Healthcare, social security etc I haven't done, because under a libertarian system government would presumably pay a lot less for them, whereas the UK pays more than the USA.
From here and assuming the same simple multiplication, a consumption tax (like the UK's VAT) could certainly cover the above defence budget with plenty of room to spare (actually, x2.27 is all you'd need to cover $292bn).

Of course, I fully realise that this is a... pretty unrealistic scenario for a whole number of reasons, not to mention one that would hit the poorer sections of society hardest.

As far as regulation is concerned, the sale of patented tonics and literally snake oil as medicines at the beginning the 20th century was enough to convince me that an unregulated system will not work here.

It still happens to be honest. And if you need new $1000-per-yard power cables with built-in quantum fields to make your speaker system sound even better, I can get you them too...

However if this was privatized (say a certification company contracted by the drug manufacturers... and possibly owned by them eventually) then the certification company has an incentive to maintain their contracts by telling the pharma companies what they want to hear. This inherent conflict of interest does not exist with government regulation.

Of course, supposedly under libertarian systems the certification company would realise it's in its best long-term interest to certify properly. Much though as I like Adam Smith, flat taxes and the idea of "good government is minimal government", it should be obvious that this won't work well in practice (or at least not for long).

There is opportunity for corruption of course, but it is not inherent in the practice and set into its structural framework. Failures in drug regulation can hurt or kill a lot of people. I fail to see how maximizing individual liberty is workable here.

As you noted, libertarianism requires people to be moral & rational.

[open_sketchbook]

He's just some punk kid that thinks that the way the US does things is right... because it's the way the US does things. He should either put his misguided patriotism to work as a public servant or soldier (which he won't, as Randroids don't have either the concept of altruism or selflessness) or he should shut the fuck up about things he doesn't know about. I just hope that one day he's going to figure out that hard work doesn't automatically equal success and that death by starvation, exposure or easily treated medical condition is not a fate befitting those not lucky enough to be born of free-market nobility.

There is opportunity for corruption of course, but it is not inherent in the practice and set into its structural framework. Failures in drug regulation can hurt or kill a lot of people. I fail to see how maximizing individual liberty is workable here.

As you noted, libertarianism requires people to be moral & rational.

Moreover, it requires people to be moral and rational in a situation where morality can be a hinderance. The rich in a libertarian society would be those most able to ignore the people they step on to get where they are, basically encouraging a sociopathic view of the world. Charming.

[Ritterin Sophia]

2) Government needs to govern within the confines of the *Constitution,* whatever your nation's constitution might be.

Guess the US Air Force won't need to worry about replacing it's aged F-15s, then. I mean after all the Constitution doesn't provide for an Air Force, just an Army and a Navy.

[bobalot]

2) Government needs to govern within the confines of the *Constitution,* whatever your nation's constitution might be.

Guess the US Air Force won't need to worry about replacing it's aged F-15s, then. I mean after all the Constitution doesn't provide for an Air Force, just an Army and a Navy.

I think this douche has run away from this thread to a forum with other libertarians where he can spout off bullshit unchallenged and reassure himself. Why are we even debating this tool? He has refused to answer arguments and thrown out red herrings left, right and centre.

His red herring about the Queen being on Australian currency and in Australian "culture" alone proves he's a retard.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Of course, supposedly under libertarian systems the certification company would realise it's in its best long-term interest to certify properly.

And we can test this empirically.

Bit of background. The pesticide Atrazine is one of the single most common plant pesticides on the planet. It was suggested that it may function as an endocrine disruptor in amphibians (it induces aromatase which turns testosterone into estradiol and chemically castrates male frogs, turning genetically male frog, into an intersex frog or even a phenotypically normal female, many of which can lay fertile eggs) at ecologically relevant dosages which BTW are way the fuck under what is allowed in our drinking water.

Naturally the chemical manufacturer did not like this very much and they funded a panel to investigate this. By investigate I mean engage in scientific fraud. Every study they funded contradicted the growing consensus on the matter and in 2004 Tyrone Hayes at UC Berkely published a paper that bitchslapped them. He combed the literature on the subject and showed that the scientists funded by them were engaging in fraud using a Fishers Exact Test of independence and a Path Analysis. Essentially he showed that their funding a study lead to a poor study design, which lead to the same fraudulent result. Including one scientist who at one pointed supported Hayes' hypothesis (because he was the one who did the original work) using the same data and publishing a new paper contradicting it.

The results were independent of the type of study (field or lab) species of frog, etc. The correct conclusion held under those differences (changes in study type, species etc) and changed because of the funding source. Third party agencies such as the NSF, NIH and a few private foundations, vs the chemical manufacturer.

[ThomasP]

I recently read a book called Supercapitalism by Robert Reich, and he makes a very good case for the behaviors of modern corporations, in the sense of hyper-competitiveness and focus on profits to the exclusion of all else, as being a product of consumer choice and "bargain hunting" for lack of better phrasing.

I bring it up because his key premises are that corporations are able to get away with so much unethical behavior because, firstly, they have to remain competitive in the market even if that means being unethical (profits come first), and secondly, because politics has become just another field of competition - after all, if you rig the laws in your favor with lobbying
efforts, you can beat out your competitors and secure your place.

I do wonder sometimes if the right-wing/capitalist libertarians are actually on to something with their "get rid of gov't influence" mantra; not in the sense that "gov't is bad" is actually a valid axiom, but in the larger sense that corporations can and do influence laws, and more fundamentally, a corporation is a gov't created entity in the first place. In that sense, I do think they have a point about "big gov't" at least being an enabler of private-sector malfeasance. If you translate "gov't bad" into "undue private-sector influence into mis-managed gov't is bad", it's not nearly such an awful ideology.

Unfortunately that's not a subtlety you usually hear discussed by the rank-and-file libertarian groups in the US, who do genuinely seem to be more of the "mine is mine" stripe and entirely focused on the "fuck taxes and welfare" mentality. Fundamentally I can't agree with that group for that simple reason; you just replace one form of authoritarianism with another.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Either retract your infant mortality list or go find the error analysis in the original study.

Scroll upwards. Look for the NOTE.

If I give you any empirical analysis, if the chart has no error bars on the measurements you'll be immediately suspicious. Same deal with this. It's got nothing to do with infant mortality list or violent deaths or any other factor.

Not necessarily. Only when you are taking a sample. There are only error bars if you are sampling say, 2000 out of the entire population and creating a 95% confidence interval for the mean. If life expectancy is calculated for the whole population and is thus the parametric mean for life expectancy. There is no error. Of course mean life expectancy is a projection so there should be error bars.

Infant mortality rate however is definitely the parametric.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Oh, and because I forgot to add this. Even if they are statistical means and not parametric means, just because the confidence intervals overlap does not mean there is no statistically detectable difference. You can for example use simple T Tests (though other tests would work better) to detect differences in the statistical means between sample groups. As a matter of fact, with their sample size, power (and thus the ability to detect small effects) is REALLY fucking high.

[Simon_Jester]

Not necessarily. Only when you are taking a sample. There are only error bars if you are sampling say, 2000 out of the entire population and creating a 95% confidence interval for the mean. If life expectancy is calculated for the whole population and is thus the parametric mean for life expectancy. There is no error. Of course mean life expectancy is a projection so there should be error bars.
Infant mortality rate however is definitely the parametric.

My statistical literacy is really quite bad for someone who aspires to a career in the sciences. Let me see if I understand:

If you are making a statement about the general population based on a (relatively) small sample, there will be error bars, to reflect the chance that sheer chance has biased your results away from the true value you'd get if you sampled the whole population.

On the other hand, if you are making a statement about the general population based on statistics gathered from the whole population, there may not be error bars, because there is effectively no chance of your results being biased by simple luck.* Thus, for example, if I calculate infant mortality rate by dividing the number of dead infants by the total number of infants, there is no error bar because there is no error, simply a count of all the dead babies in the country,** and of the total number of birth certificates.

*There may, of course, be things like biases in the data collection process, but these are hard to estimate and it may not be practical to put them in an error bar.
**Again, these counts may be wrong, but the degree to which they are wrong can't be predicted by statistical means, the way one can predict the degree of probable wrongness for a study of a small sample.

Right?

[Alyrium Denryle]

We biologists are basically statisticians at the end of the day. If it makes you feel better, you can probably do calculus better than me. Still. You are correct.