The Interests of Consumers are the Interests of the Human Race

[a351]

These threads resemble a gypsy trying to peddle off faulty merchandise on unsuspecting dupes. You either have to run them off with threats and verbal insults or eventually allow them to paint your house with paint cut half and half with gasoline.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

I would wager than an ITEMIZED tax bill would open up eyes. Which is something I would LOVE to see. How much taxes were withheld, and where every single cent was spent.

Presumably, you already have a good idea of how much you paid in taxes. The federal budget submissions each February provide detailed analyses of how and where funds were spent during the prior two years. Most people spend zero seconds per year studying those materials.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

These threads resemble a gypsy trying to peddle off faulty merchandise on unsuspecting dupes. You either have to run them off with threats and verbal insults or eventually allow them to paint your house with paint cut half and half with gasoline.

The marketplace of ideas is not necessarily safe for minors. It is a flea market where anyone can set up shop without a license and attempt to peddle any sort of wares at all. Scoundrels and charlatans unfortunately abound. Along with well-intended over-reachers. If ever there were a place where caveat emptor applied, this would be it.

 

[Xerographica]

Some very insightful points here. A very challenging and intelligent post.

Thanks!

I'm not sure I would trust the business owners to self direct their taxes. There might be a whole bunch of self directed to self taxes directed.

But when it comes to taxes we're talking about public goods. Public goods are inputs that must be essential to the successful operation of our society. If they aren't truly essential then our taxes should not be paying for them. But if we give taxpayers the freedom to choose which public goods they pay for...and nobody chooses to spend their taxes on a certain public good...then people failed to put their money where their mouths were.

The other day my gf brought me a sandwich while I was in the middle of a project. Rather than eating the sandwich...I continued working on my project while lamenting out loud that I was starving to death. My gf's response was simply, "you can't be that hungry." No no no...I truly was THAT hungry...but I had a more important priority.

There's often a disparity between actions and words...which is why we say that actions speak louder than words. My words were not lies though...I truly was hungry...but my actions conveyed a far greater truth. My intellectual hunger outweighed my physical hunger.

We can base economics on less truth...or more truth. But the more truth we input into economics...the more we'll all benefit from the output. Allowing taxpayers to put their taxes where their mouths are will input so much more truth into the public sector than our current system does. I want to know what people's true priorities are in the public sector.

 

[Xerographica]

These threads resemble a gypsy trying to peddle off faulty merchandise on unsuspecting dupes. You either have to run them off with threats and verbal insults or eventually allow them to paint your house with paint cut half and half with gasoline.

Here you are...trying to warn unsuspecting dupes about faulty merchandise...yet you completely fail to understand the value of your own behavior. If taxpayers were allowed to directly allocate their taxes then you would have the opportunity to warn them about faulty public goods. And that's exactly what I want.

Of course, you're a lot more likely to persuade a consumer not to purchase a faulty good if you actually make the effort to explain exactly why the good is faulty.

 

[Xerographica]

Instead of listening to experts who understand the issues involved in matters such as these, you want to take a poll among a bunch of absolute hacks and hayseeds who have not got even the first clue as to the background actually involved to cast the final vote on such funding. That is an absolutely terrible idea.

Unfortunately, your argument is rather convincing.

Hehe. Cardinal Fang convincing you not to buy pragmatarianism is the same thing as Cardinal Fang convincing you not to spend your taxes on any given public good. Do you appreciate having the freedom to spend your money according to the experts whose advice you value? Or shall I spend your money according to experts whose advice you do not value?

That we are even having this debate offers the most convincing proof that we truly are living in the middle ages. I really really really shouldn't have to convince you of the value of your freedom to buy or boycott. It's really not a self-evident truth though. For some reason you believe that we can make progress by partially destroying your individual foresight. For some reason you're under the impression that your unique perspective has absolutely no value in determining the outcome of scarce resources.

All your life experiences DO matter...but they don't matter enough to destroy my own life experiences. In other words...your perspective ends where my life begins. If you think that your perspective is so valuable that it should override my own...then that is the very definition of conceit. That is you deciding for me what my life is worth. Humans have been down that road before...and based on your failure to learn from history...I fear that we'll be down that road again.

 

[Xerographica]

You'll never hear me disagree about that. What HAPPENS to those in the private market who make poor decisions, or lack foresight?

One time I sat down with a juicy peach and realized that I lacked the foresight to grab a napkin. So I had go get up and grab one. The end result was that I expended twice as much effort as was truly necessary. In other words...the juicy peach cost me twice as much as it should have.

Every poor decision...every mistake...every failure of individual foresight or insight has economic consequences. Because everything can be understood from the perspective of loss or gain. We all want our gain to be greater than our loss. We all want to maximize our profit.

I get that, but this isn't about private vs public, in my opinion. This is about me smearing the good name and word of all the small business owners out there...the actual tax payers. Which is to say, I simply don't trust them; in fact, I trust them even LESS with the decisions of allocating tax dollars to public services than I do public officials.
Because there's a **** ton of heroes out there that no one knows about, that no one CARES about. But when the funding for THOSE heroes dries up, civilization as we know it runs like a, old car on bad gas up hill.

You say don't trust them...yet you voluntarily give them your money. Should I listen to your words or to your actions? All I know is that there's immense value in giving you the opportunity to put your money where your mouth is. You trust congress with your taxes? Fine...give them your taxes. You don't trust congress with your taxes? Fine...give them to the government organizations that need them the most.

To trust somebody is to put your life in their hands. When you work you exchange your life for money. So...to trust somebody is to put your money in their hands. I want to know who you trust in the public sector.

Not the ones I've met. From what I've seen libertarians believe that the government is not good at doing anything, other than violating people's rights.

Any libertarian that believes that the government is not good at doing anything...is not a libertarian. They are an anarcho-capitalist.

This assumes that an organization HAS consumers. That's my issue with people who view the world as being simply one giant market of consumption. It's not. Human civilization is an organism, and in order to function, it must do more than simply consume. And if it does more than simply consume, then CONSUMERS are not the end all be all of determining success.

Spend all your time picking your nose. You'll be an organization that does not have any consumers. How much limited resources should we give to an organization that doesn't have any consumers?

I agree. That's why we have elections. The producers, in this case, elected public officials, labor at things that DON'T always get consumed in the tradition since on the market. It's why we have them in the first place...to more effectively deliver those services that would be naturally...problematic for the end customer (the public) should the private sector be the one to provide True. Most people never make a single spending decision for the public services they receive, unless you would count voting for politician x over y.

Right now you're consuming what I'm producing. You're reading what I'm spending my limited time writing. Thinking of consumption in the narrowest possible sense prevents you from truly understanding economics. It prevents you from understanding that the market is just as much at work in the non-profit sector as it is in the for-profit sector. It prevents you from understanding the problem with allowing 538 people to decide how a huge chunk of our nation's limited resources should be spent in the public sector.

I would wager than an ITEMIZED tax bill would open up eyes. Which is something I would LOVE to see. How much taxes were withheld, and where every single cent was spent. Course, this would require the divulging of too many company secrets, so it will never happen. You see....what the american public doesn't know is exactly what MAKES them the american public. That's from Tommy Boy.

Transparency is great...but unless you empower taxpayers to spend their taxes according to what they see...then success will never be adequately rewarded and failure will never be adequately punished. If you prevent taxpayers from having the freedom to directly allocate their taxes then resources will not be transferred to the public servants that we truly trust with our lives. Why would you want your life to be in the hands of somebody that you truly do not trust?

 

[Xerographica]

Straight out of the Big Book of Made-Up Right-Wing Fairy Tales. What were the "consequences" of the Edsel, New Coke, or the Apple Newton? What were the consequences of Bhopal? The Exxon-Valdez? Deepwater Horizon?

Back here in the real world, all programs make mistakes. None of them in any existing or imagineable sector will be perfect. When the actual question is what happens to public programs when they don't provide value anymore, the actual answer is that they end up being defunded and done away with. Staff involved are transferred, offered other opportunities, or RIF'd. The same thing can happen in the private sector, although in many cases, a profitable conglomerate can carry a non-performing division for decades before actually doing anything about it.

When a public program doesn't provide value anymore? Seriously? When a public program doesn't provide value ANYMORE? LOL Please please please explain to me how you know it provided value in the first place!!! LOLOLOL You make me laugh so much! Please take your comedy routine on tour! Well...actually...unfortunately...way too few people would grasp your jokes.

A libertarian is most likely just a rebranded neocon seeking to run away from the implications of having voted twice for George W Bush.

Libertarians fail to understand that allowing a small group of government planners...aka our founding fathers...to determine the "proper" scope of government is essentially no different than socialism. The proper scope of government can only be determined by the opportunity cost decisions of the people who actually pay for government.

On account of the overwhelming evidence confirming it, liberals believe that government can and/or must serve as an agent for good. Some other people -- based on nothing at all -- believe that government itself is part of the problem.

But whether any given good is truly worth the cost can only be truly determined by the people who bear the cost. Liberals fail to understand the value of putting their own taxes where their hearts are. Any liberal that does understand the merit of this simple concept is a pragmatarian.

First-year pie-in-the-skyism. Markets are a tool, and as most of them are corrupt and horribly imperfect, the solutions they come up with in response to what are only foolishly taken to be pure economic signals need to be carefully watched, reviewed, and where warranted, invalidated in whole or in part.

Great...invalidate them however you want...but please do so with your own taxes. I'm going to be the last person to complain if you give your taxes to the EPA. Well...assuming the EPA is actually doing its job of protecting the environment.

 

[Xerographica]

You don't list any of the assumptions about markets or consumers or producers that are necessary for your theories to have even a ghost of a sliver of a prayer of being functional. Is that because you don't know what they are or because you do but recognize that revealing them would relegate your theories to the dustbin of pointless ruminations?

You're not going to buy my product unless I add more value? That's my argument. What more argument do I need for allowing taxpayers to choose which public goods are worth their taxes?

For one thing, because of indivisible goods and services and others for which no discrete point of sale exists around which any form of market could be built.

LOL...yes...because the market does not work in the non-profit sector. Seriously...if you really want to damage my argument...then you actually have to understand it first. I've told you countless times that my argument is based on the opportunity cost concept. The market itself is based on the opportunity cost concept. As Thoreau explained, "the price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it." If you want more public goods...if you want more public education or more environmental protection...then you have to decide for yourself how much of your own life you are willing to exchange for those public goods. Can I make that decision for you? How could I truly know what your life is worth? You're the only one who can truly know that. That's why markets work! You have the freedom to decide for yourself what your life is truly worth.

Then there is the matter of natural monopolies or quasi-monopolies wherein heavy regulation is required for efficiency if not outright nationalization.

Make whatever you want a public good...just allow taxpayers to choose which public goods are worth exchanging their lives for.

And there is the matter of simple private sector failure, one example of which would be so-called orphan-drugs that cure the illnesses of people afflicted with something rare enough that not enough profits can be made to justify producing those drugs. Without government, such people are simply left to die from their entirely curable diseases. Markets, after all, don't care one whit if they do.

Do you really not understand that economics is all about overcoming scarcity? We have limited resources which are efficiently allocated on the basis of consumer's opportunity cost decisions. Their opportunity cost decisions reveal their priorities which is why markets allocate limited resources according to our priorities. If you take limited resources and allocate them to a lesser priority...then this means that you do so at the expense of a greater priority. You think curing rare diseases should be a bigger priority than curing cancer? Fine, no problem, just don't expect me to spend my taxes on your priorities.

Only a fool vests so much confidence in himself as to be able to judge the utility of an embassy in a city he has never heard of as easily as he does the utility of a bar of soap. Listen to th crap that people whine over as "government waste" simply because people like Tom Coburn or CAGW have told them to. Research into the sex life of zebra mussels? Putting shrimp on little tiny treadmills? Who but some useless government bureaucrat could be so dumb as to use your hard-earned tax dollars to fund anything as idiotic as that?

Of course most people don't know that zebra mussels cause hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage annually to municipal water systems in the northern Mississippi valley and Great Lakes areas and unknown damages for addtional scrubbing of hulls, docks, buoys and the like that become encrusted with them. Understanding the mating systems of these invasive pests would open doors to controlling their populations and impacts. Similalry, ocean currents have been bringing new forms of bacteria to major portions of US shrimping waters. Shrimp depend on their quick reactions and speed to escape predators. Knowing the degree to which exposure to these new bacteria may reduce shrimp mobility would tell us a lot about whether steps need to be taken in order to protect shrimpers from potential damage as they seek to compete with major shrimp exporters such as China and India.

Instead of listening to experts who understand the issues involved in matters such as these, you want to take a poll among a bunch of absolute hacks and hayseeds who have not got even the first clue as to the background actually involved to cast the final vote on such funding. That is an absolutely terrible idea.

I mean really? Really really? You're going to dazzle me with your peacock feathers of partial knowledge in the hopes that I'll see the folly of allowing taxpayers to allocate their taxes according to their own partial knowledge? LOL...are you Deuce reincarnated? That guy spent pages and pages telling me about all the important public goods that taxpayers would forget to fund.

Personally, I'd rather have more environmental protection than more shrimp on my plate. But if enough voters want shrimpers to be a public good...then I certainly wouldn't stop taxpayers from using their own taxes to subsidize the shrimp industry.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

When a public program doesn't provide value anymore? Seriously? When a public program doesn't provide value ANYMORE? LOL Please please please explain to me how you know it provided value in the first place!!! LOLOLOL You make me laugh so much! Please take your comedy routine on tour! Well...actually...unfortunately...way too few people would grasp your jokes.

I guess this is the sort of thing that "pragmatarians" (LOLOLOLOL!!!) would take to be reasoned, well supported rebuttal. The desperate haplessness of your claims and positions is simply staggering.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

You're not going to buy my product unless I add more value? That's my argument.

Your inadept misuse of an argument does not deny its legitimate use to others. The product you are peddling is meanwhile a completely worthless one. It is fabricated not from fact and reason, but from crude and primitive distortions and misconstructions across an array of the social sciences. There is a difference between a gadfly intellectual and a preening hack, and many of us do recognize that difference.

LOL...yes...because the market does not work in the non-profit sector.

It has nothing to do with non-profit versus for-profit. It has to do with the nature of public goods as described for your benefit earlier. And unless carefully monitored and regulated, markets don't work in any sector at all. For one thing, unregulated markets are highly vulnerable to efforts at externalization of costs. For another thing, markets are totally amoral. They are perfectly capable of reaching and then remaining at equilibria that imply all sorts of socially unacceptable consequences such as suffering, pain, and devastation being visited upon broad swaths of the population. Perthaps you can remember all the way back to 2008 when a recent example of reliance upon markets to regulate themselves came once again to utterly disastrous ends.

I've told you countless times that my argument is based on the opportunity cost concept.

And I've had to tell you each time that you overglamorize and overextend that concept on a galactic scale. It has none of the absurd implications that you seek to attach to it. You are trying to hang all sorts of silly fulminations on something no more insightful than Gee, I could have had a V-8!

Do you really not understand that economics is all about overcoming scarcity?

Well, that's apt to be mentioned in any Econ 101 course right after the part where prof finishes telling you what his office hours are and when the exams will be. Otherwise, once you've obtained an upper level degree or two in economics, perhaps you can start trying to be a lecturer on the subject. For the moment, you are simply not qualified.

LOL...are you Deuce reincarnated? That guy spent pages and pages telling me about all the important public goods that taxpayers would forget to fund.

I can imagine how sublimely effective your responses to him or her must have been. No need to repeat any of them here.

 

[code1211]

Thanks!



But when it comes to taxes we're talking about public goods. Public goods are inputs that must be essential to the successful operation of our society. If they aren't truly essential then our taxes should not be paying for them. But if we give taxpayers the freedom to choose which public goods they pay for...and nobody chooses to spend their taxes on a certain public good...then people failed to put their money where their mouths were.

The other day my gf brought me a sandwich while I was in the middle of a project. Rather than eating the sandwich...I continued working on my project while lamenting out loud that I was starving to death. My gf's response was simply, "you can't be that hungry." No no no...I truly was THAT hungry...but I had a more important priority.

There's often a disparity between actions and words...which is why we say that actions speak louder than words. My words were not lies though...I truly was hungry...but my actions conveyed a far greater truth. My intellectual hunger outweighed my physical hunger.

We can base economics on less truth...or more truth. But the more truth we input into economics...the more we'll all benefit from the output. Allowing taxpayers to put their taxes where their mouths are will input so much more truth into the public sector than our current system does. I want to know what people's true priorities are in the public sector.

Maybe referendums that are open only to tax payers?

 

[Cardinal Fang]

That would expand the electorate. If it were legal.

 

[Xerographica]

When the actual question is what happens to public programs when they don't provide value anymore, the actual answer is that they end up being defunded and done away with.

When a public program doesn't provide value anymore? Seriously? When a public program doesn't provide value ANYMORE? LOL Please please please explain to me how you know it provided value in the first place!!!

I guess this is the sort of thing that "pragmatarians" (LOLOLOLOL!!!) would take to be reasoned, well supported rebuttal. The desperate haplessness of your claims and positions is simply staggering.

Way to avoid my argument. I asked you to explain how you know that the public program provided value in the first place. Of course you couldn't explain it because even the White House admits that they just don't know!

For too long, the U.S. Government has funded programs based upon metrics that tell us how many people we are serving, but little about how we are improving their lives. As part of this Administration’s commitment to using taxpayer dollars effectively, we are employing innovative new strategies to help ensure that the essential services of government produce their intended outcomes. Now more than ever, federal programs must be measurably effective and designed to do more with fewer resources. - Paying for Success​

Even your own leaders admit that they are clueless. That's why your joke was so hilarious.

It doesn't matter whether or not a public program is effective...or resourceful...if whatever is being produced is being produced in the absence of the accurate feedback mechanism. As I mentioned in the original post...the accurate feedback mechanism is the spending decisions of consumers. Given the fact that taxpayers can't choose which public programs they give their OWN taxes to...there is no accurate feedback mechanism in the public sector. Without the only vetting process that matters then there's absolutely no way to know if a public program ever provided value in the first place.

When it comes to economics...actions speak louder than words. Without people having the opportunity to put their own money where their mouths are...there's no way to gauge what their true priorities are. This is the point of the opportunity cost concept... there's no such thing as a free lunch...and...you can't have your cake and eat it too. This is the basis of economics. So without each and every taxpayer considering the opportunity costs of their spending decisions...the government might as well consult a magic 8 ball when deciding how to spend trillions of dollars.

Rules are an important part of a healthy society. If we fundamentally break the rules of economics then we will suffer the consequences and forego the benefits.

Now, please feel free to choose to spend your own limited time to tell me how wrong I am. Sacrifice your other priorities to argue that the opportunity cost concept is just trivial nonsense with no economic significance. Make my day.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

Way to avoid my argument. I asked you to explain how you know that the public program provided value in the first place. Of course you couldn't explain it because even the White House admits that they just don't know!

No, that's not what they said, but I'm not surprised that you would so completely misunderstand it. The discussion was political hyperbole about metrics. That's all very well, but soundbite drama isn't going to get you an appropriation. Have you ever worked on preparing a defensible agency budget proposal? Have you ever sat on the other side of the table as an OMB budget analyst challenging agency staff to show you where their bang for the buck is here? Have you ever given testimony to appropriators reviewing budget requests? No, you haven't. You in fact have no idea of how the federal budget process works and know nothing of "what really goes on" in Washington in this regard.

Now, please feel free to choose to spend your own limited time to tell me how wrong I am.

You are very wrong.

Sacrifice your other priorities to argue that the opportunity cost concept is just trivial nonsense with no economic significance. Make my day.

I'm really sorry if this spoils your day, but obsessing over such a trivial bit as I could have had a V-8 is not going to be a pathway to a Nobel Prize for you. Maybe work on a cure for cancer or something instead

 

[Xerographica]

No, that's not what they said, but I'm not surprised that you would so completely misunderstand it. The discussion was political hyperbole about metrics. That's all very well, but soundbite drama isn't going to get you an appropriation. Have you ever worked on preparing a defensible agency budget proposal? Have you ever sat on the other side of the table as an OMB budget analyst challenging agency staff to show you where their bang for the buck is here? Have you ever given testimony to appropriators reviewing budget requests? No, you haven't. You in fact have no idea of how the federal budget process works and know nothing of "what really goes on" in Washington in this regard.

What will get somebody an appropriation? Do you really have to know "what really goes on" in Washington to understand the concept? Every kid who has begged his parents for something understands the concept. Every non-profit organization that has had to beg people for donations understands the concept. Every for-profit organization that has had to sell a product/service understands the concept. The difference between appropriation in the public and private sectors is that appeals in the public sector are not directed to the people who actually earned the money...

There are four ways to spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why you really watch out for what you're doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well then, I'm not so careful about the content of the present, but I'm very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else's money on myself. And if I spend somebody else's money on myself, then I'm going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else's money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else's money on somebody else, I'm not concerned about how much it costs, and I'm not concerned about what I get. And that's government. And that's close to 40 percent of our national income. - Milton Friedman, The 4 Ways to Spend Money​

I'm really sorry if this spoils your day, but obsessing over such a trivial bit as I could have had a V-8 is not going to be a pathway to a Nobel Prize for you. Maybe work on a cure for cancer or something instead

But this is more important than curing cancer, ending hunger or saving the rainforest simply because Pragmatarianism provides the framework that facilitates solutions. It allows the people who genuinely care about curing cancer or ending hunger or saving the rainforest to evaluate whether public or private organizations are making the biggest strides towards effective solutions. If we don't know what our biggest public priorities truly are...then how can the next generation of bright minds know where they can make the biggest positive impact?

How could I not be on the pathway to a Nobel Prize? Pragmatarianism reveals where the pathways to Nobel Prizes are. How's that not worth a Nobel Prize...or two?

Philosophical pragmatism is an essential American development. Its animating principle is that truth is social and constructed rather than transcendent and objective. It holds that ideas prove their worth in action, and that the results of an idea are the best criteria by which to judge its merit. And since what works for me might not work for you, pragmatism advocates a strenuous openness to all perspectives. - James Walsh​

I'm strenuously open to your perspective...which is why I want you to have the freedom to choose which government organizations you give your taxes to. If you think that congress can spend your taxes better than you can...then you would have the option to give them your taxes. And nobody would stop you from trying to persuade other taxpayers to do the same thing.

 

[Xerographica]

Maybe referendums that are open only to tax payers?

Kinda...it could possibly be more effective than our current system...but a direct democracy that consists of only taxpayers misses the point of both democracy and economics. Here's the overview...

Democracy - whether or not drugs should be illegal - voters

Economics - how much money should be given to drug enforcement agencies - taxpayers

The basic concept is that actions speak louder than words. Voting is merely words. Everybody should have the opportunity to say whether drugs should be illegal. But if we want to truly discern how big of a priority drug enforcement truly is to society...then we need people's spending decisions...their actions...to reveal their priorities. How much of their own taxes would a taxpayer give to the DEA? The aggregated spending decisions of taxpayers should determine exactly how much revenue the DEA receives.

The concept of opportunity cost (or alternative cost) expresses the basic relationship between scarcity and choice. If no object or activity that is valued by anyone is scarce, all demands for all persons and in all periods can be satisfied. There is no need to choose among separately valued options; there is no need for social coordination processes that will effectively determine which demands have priority. In this fantasized setting without scarcity, there are no opportunities or alternatives that are missed, forgone, or sacrificed. - James M. Buchanan​

 

[Cardinal Fang]

What will get somebody an appropriation? Do you really have to know "what really goes on" in Washington to understand the concept?

Concept? I'm talking about reality. The reality that you have never been even approximately exposed to, thereby rendering you utterly unable to say any useful thing at all about it. What we get from you is staggering overreach and free-floating speculation.

But this is more important than curing cancer...

LOL! Full of yourself much? I'm sure that a great many among the rest of us are just as happy NOT to have had a V-8 in this case.

 

[Xerographica]

Concept? I'm talking about reality. The reality that you have never been even approximately exposed to, thereby rendering you utterly unable to say any useful thing at all about it. What we get from you is staggering overreach and free-floating speculation.

What a joke. It's televised on C-Span. That you didn't even know that shows how little you yourself know about the reality of the process. And whatever goes on behind closed doors with my money is hardly a solid argument against pragmatarianism. It's actually an argument FOR pragmatarianism.

Have you even worked in the public sector? And don't bother telling me that you have if you can't prove it. I have worked in the public sector...and have plenty of pictures from Afghanistan to prove it. The amount of fraud, waste and abuse was staggering.

LOL! Full of yourself much? I'm sure that a great many among the rest of us are just as happy NOT to have had a V-8 in this case.

Yeah, I'm full of myself which is why I want to run for congress. I'm full of myself which is why I'm certain that I can spend your money better than you can. Except...neither of those things is what I'm arguing. My argument is for you to spend your own money in the public sector.

Based on your own experiences of spending your own money in the private sector...please help me understand why you shouldn't have the freedom to spend your own money in the public sector. Or does your entire argument stem from not having watched congress on C-Span?

 

[code1211]

Kinda...it could possibly be more effective than our current system...but a direct democracy that consists of only taxpayers misses the point of both democracy and economics. Here's the overview...

Democracy - whether or not drugs should be illegal - voters

Economics - how much money should be given to drug enforcement agencies - taxpayers

The basic concept is that actions speak louder than words. Voting is merely words. Everybody should have the opportunity to say whether drugs should be illegal. But if we want to truly discern how big of a priority drug enforcement truly is to society...then we need people's spending decisions...their actions...to reveal their priorities. How much of their own taxes would a taxpayer give to the DEA? The aggregated spending decisions of taxpayers should determine exactly how much revenue the DEA receives.

The concept of opportunity cost (or alternative cost) expresses the basic relationship between scarcity and choice. If no object or activity that is valued by anyone is scarce, all demands for all persons and in all periods can be satisfied. There is no need to choose among separately valued options; there is no need for social coordination processes that will effectively determine which demands have priority. In this fantasized setting without scarcity, there are no opportunities or alternatives that are missed, forgone, or sacrificed. - James M. Buchanan​

It sounds like a possibility of a good system, but what happens if critically needed services go unfunded or underfunded? Social Security? Police and Fire?

 

[Xerographica]

It sounds like a possibility of a good system, but what happens if critically needed services go unfunded or underfunded? Social Security? Police and Fire?

How long can you go without eating? How long can you go without sleeping? There are signals/indications whenever critically needed services are underfunded. The longer we fail to respond to these signals the stronger they become. The longer you go without eating the harder it is to ignore the hunger pangs. The longer you go without sleeping the harder it is to stay awake. This is the bottleneck concept..."a phenomenon where the performance or capacity of an entire system is limited by a single or limited number of components or resources."

What are the symptoms associated with underfunding the police? Perhaps somebody you know was mugged...or you see drug dealers or prostitutes...or you see graffiti? Why would taxpayers fail to respond to these signals? They would have to pay taxes anyways...and they would be able to do so at any time throughout the year. All they would have to do would be to visit the police website and submit a tax payment. So why wouldn't they give some of their taxes to the police? Why would they ALL not give some of their taxes to the police?

We're all humans...and we all make mistakes...but the biggest mistake we can make is to homogenize activity. Progress depends on diversity and freedom so we'll make far greater progress by giving taxpayers the freedom to respond to crime however they think is best. Chances are good that plenty of taxpayers will associate more funding for the police with lower crime rates. Taxpayers, by virtue of being taxpayers, will understand that an ounce of prevention is worth two of cure. This means that some people might choose to give their taxes to after school programs that keep high risk youth out of gangs.

We don't solve problems by forcing people to tackle them from the same angle. This is why heterogeneous activity is so important. We all have unique perspectives which allows us to see the same problem from different angles.

Here's the overview...

1. Taxpayers as a group have access to far far far far far more signals/indications than the police, or any other government organization does. This is Hayek's concept of partial knowledge...

The problem is thus in no way solved if we can show that all the facts, if they were known to a single mind (as we hypothetically assume them to be given to the observing economist), would uniquely determine the solution; instead we must show how a solution is produced by the interactions of people each of whom possesses only partial knowledge. To assume all the knowledge to be given to a single mind in the same manner in which we assume it to be given to us as the explaining economists is to assume the problem away and to disregard everything that is important and significant in the real world. Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society​

2. Taxpayers as a group are the people in our society with the most individual foresight. They understand that piss poor planning promotes piss poor performance. If they weren't relatively effective at identifying/preventing/solving bottlenecks then they wouldn't be taxpayers.

3. The police, just like all the government organizations, would have a strong incentive to persuade taxpayers of their importance, value, effectiveness and efficiency. Their revenue would depend on it. This means that government organizations would have to promote their services just like for-profit and non-profit organizations have to. In other words...all organizations would have to compete for our money.

Here's the bottom line...or two...

The biggest objection is that important programs will be underfunded. But that consequence is actually logically impossible. If Americans don't think a program is important enough to provide more funding, then in a democracy, by definition it isn't a priority so doesn't deserve more funding. I also think you would be surprised at how much money Americans would choose to provide to entitlements. More Americans might want contribute money to Social Security and less to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, because they might prefer to provide for the retirement of Americans instead of bombs in the Middle East. - Daniel Indiviglio, What If Taxpayers Could Decide How Their Money Is Spent?​

 

[gavinfielder]

2. Taxpayers as a group are the people in our society with the most individual foresight.

You contradict yourself. You argue that taxpayers have foresight, and then tout the line of thinking that starts with the bottleneck theory in which the system rectifies itself through hindsight.

Bottleneck, I can see. Foresight, I can't, and that's where most people disagree with you anyway. Just go with the hindsight option, it's actually logically sound.

I would still disagree with it, of course, because it ignores the immediacy of a situation. If you get shot, the best option is not to sit around and wait to see if the wound is infected before you take action. In policy, you don't wait until people are dying before realizing that you should do something about it.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

What a joke. It's televised on C-Span. That you didn't even know that shows how little you yourself know about the reality of the process.

Oh, C-SPAN is terrific. Book TV, their history channel. Some of the very few worthwhile things to be found on the tube. But I don't think it quite matches working here for forty years. Especially perhaps when it comes to understanding the difference between what gets said and goes on when the cameras are rolling and what gets said and goes on when they aren't. This is just one part of the reality that you have never been even approximately exposed to, thereby rendering you utterly unable to say any useful thing at all about it. This is just one part of why what we get from you is staggering overreach and free-floating speculation.

And whatever goes on behind closed doors with my money...

Your money? LOL! Once you pay your taxes, the money isn't yours anymore. You have no right to it, and no claim, say, or control over it. Taxes are no different from the money you fork over at the end of the grocery store checkout line. It all belongs to somebody else now. If you can't walk out the door with it without being charged with a crime, it isn't yours.

It's actually an argument FOR pragmatarianism.

As far as I have been able to discern, there ARE no arguments for such staggering overreach and free-floating speculation.

Have you even worked in the public sector? And don't bother telling me that you have if you can't prove it. I have worked in the public sector...and have plenty of pictures from Afghanistan to prove it.

Pictures from Afghanistan. Well, that's impressive. But nothing from say Dupont Circle or Pennsylvania Ave SE?

The amount of fraud, waste and abuse was staggering.

Shame on you. I stay strictly above board in my line of work.

Yeah, I'm full of myself which is why I want to run for congress. I'm full of myself which is why I'm certain that I can spend your money better than you can. Except...neither of those things is what I'm arguing.

You are full of yourself because you so imperiously overestimate the actual levels of talent, experience, accomplishment, and ability to contribute that you bring to the table.

My argument is for you to spend your own money in the public sector.

I would expect to do a better job of that than most people might. But consider a new kind of grocery store, one where every item is packed in identical gray cardboard boxes, such that the consumer doesn't know and can't immediately tell what's inside. Would you want to shop there? Would you expect someone who does shop there to end up having spent his or her money wisely?

Based on your own experiences of spending your own money in the private sector...please help me understand why you shouldn't have the freedom to spend your own money in the public sector.

When I shop in the private sector, I am representing my own needs and interests. I am familiar with those, and if I make a mistake of some sort, the burden for it falls only on me. Shopping in the public sector is very different. It requires learning and then representing the needs and interests of 310 million people. As has already been pointedly illustrated, that job is too big for any individual. This is why from the very beginning we have chosen representatives who are deliberately removed and insulated from the masses to make public shopping decsions on behalf of the country. Things have gotten so complicated, that we have given them around 15,000 staffers and better than 20,000 lobbyists to help educate and guide them in their decision-making. Do you have say three dozen top notch, blue-ribbon staffers at your house to research, report on, and advise you in regard to spending and other matters? No? Why would you think that you could do a better job than a full-time elected specialist who does, and that with you starting from a base so weak that it allows you to believe that watching C-SPAN makes you an insider?

 

[Xerographica]

You contradict yourself. You argue that taxpayers have foresight, and then tout the line of thinking that starts with the bottleneck theory in which the system rectifies itself through hindsight.

Bottleneck, I can see. Foresight, I can't, and that's where most people disagree with you anyway. Just go with the hindsight option, it's actually logically sound.

I would still disagree with it, of course, because it ignores the immediacy of a situation. If you get shot, the best option is not to sit around and wait to see if the wound is infected before you take action. In policy, you don't wait until people are dying before realizing that you should do something about it.

Is brushing your teeth hindsight, insight or foresight? Is eating healthy hindsight, insight or foresight? Is using a condom hindsight, insight or foresight? Is staying in school hindsight, insight or foresight? Is picking a useful major hindsight, insight or foresight? Is studying instead of partying hindsight, insight or foresight? Is avoiding unhealthy relationships hindsight, insight or foresight? Is starting a successful business hindsight, insight or foresight?

We can't foresee every single problem...but are you really going to argue that people are equally effective at avoiding problems? Are you really going to argue that people are equally effective at dealing with problems? Who are taxpayers if not the most effective people in our society? If they aren't effective...then why do we give them our money? Why do we put our lives in their hands?

When reasonable people are ill...then who do they give their money to? Doctors. When reasonable people need legal advice...then who do they give their money to? Lawyers. When reasonable people want their public interests protected...then who do they give their money to? Congress.

Well...except...here we are debating how effectively taxpayers would spend their taxes in the public sector. Errr...why are you assuming that taxpayers wouldn't just give their taxes to congress? This would certainly still be an option. Aren't congresspeople policy experts like doctors are medical experts and lawyers are legal experts? So why do you assume that taxpayers wouldn't give their taxes to congress?

I don't assume either way...I just know that reasonable people don't put their lives in the hands of random people. Reasonable people put their lives in the hands of experts who have earned their trust. If reasonable people wouldn't put their lives in the hands of congresspeople...then clearly congresspeople have not earned the trust of reasonable people. Why would I want reasonable people to put their lives in the hands of people that they do not trust? That would be absurd.

If congresspeople want to spend our money...then they should have to earn it just like everybody else.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

How long can you go without eating?

That's not the actual question, is it? The actual question is over how long someone in Maine has to go without eating before someone in Arizona actually notices? And in Part-B, is that likely to be a longer or shorter period of time than it would take for an elected representative from Maine to notice?