I honestly don’t know whether to vote for the party that will introduce more controls on alcohol, or the party that will introduce more controls on alcohol.
It’s a good job we get to vote on these things.
I honestly don’t know whether to vote for the party that will introduce more controls on alcohol, or the party that will introduce more controls on alcohol.
It’s a good job we get to vote on these things.
Well, if you don’t vote, the wrong lizard might get in.
I, for one, welcome our new (old) lizard overlords.
Which reminds me, I have the original TV series of V on DVD, I must get round to watching it.
I admit having sympathies, but I refuse to make my mind up until I actually go into the polling booth when I’ve built a fully-formed picture of what each candidate stands for and what I want my vote to achieve.
The fact remains that all politicians are human and imperfect, so it’s no good mortgaging your interest in them for the sake of a quiet life because that’s exactly when they start taking us for granted and doing things we don’t like.
I’m interested – what do you think the biggest issues are?
Oranjepan: the biggest issue is the size of the state. None of the mainstream parties are offering to reduce it; nor do they ever talk in those terms.
Size? Do you mean in terms of cost, or activity?
I think there are plenty of areas where the state is hugely inefficient and offers bad value for money. There are some policies which are one or other and then there are others which are both.
The difficulty is in understanding that there is plenty which can be done to shift the mechanisms of the state so that they are more effective in what they do do.
For example I’ve never understood tax credits and the complex bureaucracy which administers them so badly that large numbers of needy people avoid the hassle of state help and are discouraged from working to help themselves, when a rise in the basic tax threshold would solve everyone’s problems for free.
Similarly, the terror threat is caused by a simple failure to invest consistently in diplomacy over a long period of time and has proved massively more expensive, intrusive and dangerous to mop up.
For me it’s not about the pure size of the state, but making the state more effective in its’ proper role (ie jobs and diplomacy, not welfare and wars etc), which will in turn enable us to quickly regain control over the size of it.
So, are there any specific areas you are most concerned about, or is it mainly the general business environment?
It might save time if I mention that the political party most aligned to my views is LPUK.
By size I mean cost *and* activity. Each one drives the other.
I agree that tax bureacracy is too complicated and seems to serve only to employ armies of bureaucrats. A flat tax would be an improvement.
For me, the state’s proper role is at most ensuring rule of law and defense or the realm. But we are a long way from there. I am most concerned about taxes and the way that the state interferes in the minutiae of individuals’ lives. In other words: personal and economic freedom. It is hard to separate issues: taxes are used for social engineering and the proceeds are used to fund yet more schemes.
That’s OK, I’ve met a lot of libertarians in blog-world and I have some sympathy with the complaints put forward, but I’ve never met a candidate, and from what I’ve read I have to say I’m luke-warm and cautious to say the least.
I’m mainly concerned about how libertarians propose tipping the balance of liberties completely in favour of negative freedom, which seems to designed to encourage economic volatility and disparity – things that have serious consequences.
I guess it depends on how far you subscribe to minarchist doctrine.
You say you support the state’s role in the defence of the realm, for instance, so does this mean you do in fact accept at least the principle of mutual self-interest and a common good?
Therefore, in how far would you be prepared to be flexible? eg a ‘flattened’ rather than ‘flat’ tax rate? And how would you decide when and where to be flexible?
I don’t agree that state control reduces economic volatility or disparity. Austrian business cycle theory explains how government causes volatility. And the trouble with talking about disparity is that it is important how you measure it — I would argue that there is very little disparity in the UK right now, and liberalisation would only make everyone richer.
My acceptance of the state’s role in defence is somewhat grudging, which is why I said “at most”. I don’t like *any* coercion, but I have sympathy with the idea that in practice a small state will be able to defend itself better from external threats than no state.
So mutual self interest is something that will normally be satisfied by groups of individuals voluntarily joining forces, and common good is too often an excuse for a solution that’s worse than the problem. If the idea is to maximise total happiness by helping the majority at the expense of the few, well, first you have to hurt the few, which is bad, and in the end you still don’t maximise total happiness, and the few turn out to be not so few.
Regarding flat and flattened taxes, I think that progressive taxes are worse by any measure. Taxing the rich more reduces tax revenues and makes the poor poorer. So flattened is better than what we have now, but flat is better still, and I will always argue for flatter.
Now, how flexible am I? Let me put it like this: I’d like to see no coercion at all, which implies no state. Do I believe it would work? Maybe, but I’m not sure. I would happily stop complaining in a small state with low taxes, which I am *certain* would work.
We are so far away from a small, low tax state that almost anything would be an improvement. I’d even be pleased to see discussions about *whether* the government should do something about a problem; at the moment politicians and the media seem only able to discuss *what* it should do.
I think you’ve brought this to an interesting area.
I also don’t agree that state control doesn’t reduce economic volatility or disparity, at least not alone, but nor doesn a market-based system of control. Rather I think a balanced system offsets the excesses on both sides by introducing standards and measures which can be checked against.
I do agree that there is relatively little disparity in this country compared to elsewhere, but I don’t think we can ever accept the lower levels of wealth, because this is an indicator and cause of wider social problems. So it becomes a question of how to make more of the people at the bottom richer, rather than just increase the overall average.
And this seems to lead directly into your desire for a more generalised discussion on what the role of the state should be. By definition elected politicians have a responsibility to concentrate on specifics, at least in public, so I’m not sure you’re likely ever to be satisfied at the way the media presents what they say.
So I want to ask what do you consider the measure of a small state to be, and what is the level of taxation you’d consider to be ‘low’?
I think simplified taxes would be much more effective, but I accept there are conditions where some form of differential tapering has disproportionately positive effects. For example while flat taxes are more equal, the reality is that people don’t start off equal and a perfectly flat system magnifies differences – this is why I’m a big supporter of the allowances system to provide balance on equality.
Similarly I also have to admit I have a strong dislike for coertion (which is probably why I like a good debate), but I recognise there must be limits. A debate is more worthwhile if it leads to some sort of actionable decision, so it’s often helpful to introduce time restrictions etc.
Talking of looming issues I have to ask about the environment – if we can’t ignore it, then it is surely incumbent to work out a coordinated response. The chaos caused by the snow recently showed how things break down when there’s a communication failure in the authorities – cascading network collapses have knock-on effects in ways that are difficult to predict in an increasingly urbanised and inter-dependent society. We can’t just meekly accept our fate, so even if we disagree with the specific action it does remain that we can’t do nothing.
You make the people at the bottom richer by cutting taxes. This increases economic activity because a given business is more likely to succeed. It would also be helpful to reduce things like employment regulations.
There is a *vast* unseen cost to taxes and regulations. I’m not a stupid guy, and I have business ideas from time to time. But I don’t attempt to casually make money on the side because of the tax and bureaucracy, and I would never *think* of employing anyone, because it’s a minefield of paperwork I have no interest in getting involved with. How many are like me?
Low tax is 10%. Even churches didn’t ask for more.
The allowances system is the main cause of the the problem that flat tax tries to solve. It wastes the effort of those who must understand it. The flat tax isn’t completely flat — tax is zero up to a certain level of earning so that the poor don’t pay tax. I don’t really understand how non-progressive tax “magnifies differences”. I suspect that it doesn’t and that differences are not a big problem anyway. The difference between a Ford Fiesta and a Rolls-Royce is aesthetic.
The environment is tricky, but I suspect there is little that cannot be dealt with by property rights and tort.
The recent snow chaos showed how things break down when they are too centralised. For example, roads are gritted by a central authority who also decides how much grit to buy. So only one bet is made. There are no rival gritting companies ready to take advantage of someone else getting it wrong. Cascading network collapses are less likely when decision making is decentralised.
Ah, I think you’ve hit on an aspect which is very important.
Cutting taxes does have the effect of freeing the resources of an individual so we can make choices, but there must be a limit to usefulness of the choices on offer. So while ‘makes people richer’ is theoretically accurate, it is not necessarily, universally, generally or specifically true.
The NHS was, for instance, introduced because millions of people couldn’t afford to pay for basic healthcare. It’s possible to argue that this was as a result of less farsighted financial planning on the behalf of individuals, but it’s also possible to say employers took advantage of the hidden costs of health by avoiding increasing wages to provide health insurance or simply refusing to accept responsibility for their workforce and their conditions.
Either way some coercion was necessary to avoid manual labour spending the majority of the extra on alcohol once it became clear that banning alcohol altogether was both undesirable and impossible to enforce, and then it became a choice between a centralised state control or greater hypothecation in the tax system.
Anyway I agree that there are unseen costs, but these must be balanced against the unseen benefits they pay for, as in the example of health, increased lifespan.
I agree that centralised decision making is prone to over-reliance on single measures, but at the same time there is a requirement for security – which means reliance on private firms taking over from the state is unacceptable without the guarantee they will not subjugate quality of service for increased profit, which most ownership models are biased against.
So my personal theory is that there must be some formula which correlates tax levels and profitability on a scale of public utility as the means to fund investment (eg I don’t like being held to ransom by the foreign institutional owners of Thames Water, which operates an effective local monopoly – how could the provision of water and sewerage systems be broken in a way which provides competition through consumer choice?).
Ultimately while I agree the difference in effect between a Fiesta and a Roller is largely aesthetic, it is not only. Initial cost outlay versus maintenance, running costs and resale prices all play factors, and then there’s specific social requirements (eg space) – I don’t see many fiestas for commercial wedding hire!
I think where we really disagree is here: “some coercion was necessary to avoid manual labour spending [their money on what they wanted]“. You can explain to people that they are not acting in their own interests, but if they tell you to go away that is the end of the matter.
“the guarantee they will not subjugate quality of service for increased profit, which most ownership models are biased against” — plenty of firms differentiate themselves by offering a higher quality of product. What you are saying is that if people don’t make choices of which you approve — beer over health insurance; beer over ice-free roads — that this is a market failure that must be corrected for with coercion.
Your formula may exist but most of the coefficients are stored away in the brains of individuals and there is no way to get them out.
Ah, you have me on one point of principle, but I have to raise it’s twin – the ‘harm principle’.
Coertion is wrong, fundamentally and in practice, but if it is the only principle we abide by then it becomes self-contradictory.
I’m not saying I support intervention against self-harm, but I am saying choices which lead to self-harm often do not only harm the self – “no man is an island” etc.
The choice to spend disposable income on frivolous items is to be supprted, but it requires a stronger understanding of what ‘disposable’ means.
Part of the libertarian opposition to state welfare is based around the use of benefits (for example the jobseekers allowance claimant who buys fags and booze rather than using it to become self-sufficient), but it is unrealistic to simply abandon vulnerable people, as they become excluded from society with counterproductive effects. So I don’t think it is accurate to describe the limiting of choice (to within reasonable limitations) as synonymous with coertion.
Equally I agree that private business does offer a range of higher quality service, but within the range of choices offered by the market this is never the whole story.
The way round the problem is provision of reliable information about minimum standards and labelling of products which is made universally available – because consumer choice also requires an educated consumer for the advantage to be spread. The guarantee is not in restriction, but in education.
I’m a firm believer in the benefits of increasing trade and the free exchange of goods and ideas, but it is a condition of government that power is distributed evenly for fairness to exist.
What I’m saying therefore is that the limitation of choice is not equatable with coertion against people, but it is equatable with coertion against government. Which I think is something you may support.