Canada & Progressives

[Tom O'Donnell]

Okay, let's clarify a couple of things:

1) When I wrote "assuming there is no law against it" I meant that there are some things that a particular society might consider so detrimental overall that they collectively decide to outlaw it. An example might be someone trying to sell heroin or a bioweapon. Each country would have different laws. What might be okay in one country (e.g. marijuana) might be strictly prohibited in another. I've yet to meet a Libertarian who thinks there should be no laws.

2) Something that increases value to an individual also increases overall value to the country. Billions and billions of tiny, voluntary transactions will incrementally increase the overall value to the society.

No person or group of people are capable of determining on a case-by-case basis if any particular transaction is of value to the society as a whole. How would it be possible to determine this?

The only way we can know is by the revealed preference of people spending their money on goods and services at various price points. For example, if John Doe spends $500 on a widget it is reasonable to conclude that he values the widget more than the $500. If he didn't buy the widget yesterday at $600 it is also reasonable to conclude he values the widget less than $600. The value to Doe of the widget can only be determined by how he chooses to spend his money. There is no other way, is there?

And sure, there will be misjudgments as businesses misallocate capital. Even experts in their specific fields make errors. There is no system that can solve that problem, nor would we want to, imo. Without making these errors society also misses out when companies create things whose approximate net value isn't determined until decades later.

[Dilip Panjwani]

When I wrote "assuming there is no law against it" I meant that there are some things that a particular society might consider so detrimental overall that they collectively decide to outlaw it. An example might be someone trying to sell heroin or a bioweapon. Each country would have different laws. What might be okay in one country (e.g. marijuana) might be strictly prohibited in another. I've yet to meet a Libertarian who thinks there should be no laws.

The Natural Law would cover the problem you describe, as it would most problems. A lot of specific laws are not only unnecessary, but often become contradictory, making lawyers play around with them preventing the ones harmed from obtaining justice...

[Pargat Perrer]

......

1) When I wrote "assuming there is no law against it" I meant that there are some things that a particular society might consider so detrimental overall that they collectively decide to outlaw it. An example might be someone trying to sell heroin or a bioweapon. Each country would have different laws. What might be okay in one country (e.g. marijuana) might be strictly prohibited in another. I've yet to meet a Libertarian who thinks there should be no laws.

This relates to our previous discussion about borders. The increasing fragmentation of the world into countries, each with their own set of laws, seems to create chaos. I am not advocating for one world government, BUT some things need to be agreed to UNIVERSALLY.

The U.S. Constitution is often cited as the best example so far in human history of this ideal set of universal principles.

Something that increases value to an individual also increases overall value to the country. .....

No person or group of people are capable of determining on a case-by-case basis if any particular transaction is of value to the society as a whole.

THESE TWO STATEMENTS SEEM TO STRONGLY CONTRADICT EACH OTHER.

The first statement is an absolute fallacy.

The second statement is not true in practice even in modern democracies. In PRACTICE, we allow our elected governments to tell us what transactions are of value to society as a whole. As one example. Trump voters and supporters seem to agree that green energy transactions are NOT beneficial to society as a whole. How did they decide this? Probably because Trump said it.

Billions and billions of tiny, voluntary transactions will incrementally increase the overall value to the society.

If this were true, we would be heading towards perfection here on Earth and every increase in population, by the mere fact of increasing these billions of voluntary transactions, must be improving society.

In fact, the reverse has now become the case.

The only way we can know is by the revealed preference of people spending their money on goods and services at various price points. For example, if John Doe spends $500 on a widget it is reasonable to conclude that he values the widget more than the $500. If he didn't buy the widget yesterday at $600 it is also reasonable to conclude he values the widget less than $600. The value to Doe of the widget can only be determined by how he chooses to spend his money. There is no other way, is there?

And sure, there will be misjudgments as businesses misallocate capital. Even experts in their specific fields make errors. There is no system that can solve that problem, nor would we want to, imo. Without making these errors society also misses out when companies create things whose approximate net value isn't determined until decades later.

Again, when you say "misses out" you are supposing that the overall trend is towards perfection. Misallocation of capital is a HUGE problem, as China is currently discovering. China is in a downward tailspin economically because of such misallocation.

We definitely SHOULD want to solve that problem as much as humanly possible.

[Tom O'Donnell]

1) Agreed about one world government. I think it is impractical. I also like the idea that people can choose from a variety of different cultural practices where they want to live.

I think it is also impractical to have a set of common norms that are acceptable to everyone, or even say 95% of people world-wide.

Take something like female genital mutilation (FGM). There was a case in Michigan a few years ago where a doctor was performing this. Should this be a crime? If that's a crime, what about circumcision? You will never get people to agree on this world-wide.

2) The goal of free trade is to increase "happiness" (admittedly an inexact word, maybe an economist would use satisfaction or improved situation or ...?). In the FGM case above, someone paid the doctor to do this. The doctor presumably got money and the parents of the girls got what they wanted. If a country allows this, even if you or I think it is barbaric - I certainly do - then people pass laws to disallow it. But expecting every country to do this is unlikely and I am not going to judge the standards of other cultures, so long as those practices are not performed here.

In the case of something like green energy, if demand for say windmill farms or nuclear power plants is great enough, if there is money in it, someone will supply it.

3) In the general case, capitalism has raised more people out of poverty than anything in human history. If you strive for perfection, presumably you have to meet people's basic needs first. This will involve people making errors about how capital is allocated. Trying and failing is the precursor to trying and succeeding, most of the time. There is no person, or group of people, so intelligent that they can predict what works and what doesn't in all cases, which is what central planning attempts but fails to do. Perhaps some sort of computer will eventually be able to do it, but as it stands now you can wish that people had this level of foresight but that's all it is, wishing.