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| Bret Cahill... |
 Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 4:20 pm |
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Guest
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Except for some tokens only whites watch Faux Noise.
Bret Cahill |
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| Bret Cahill... |
| Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 4:22 pm |
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Guest
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[quote]As you can see, Fred is hopelessly ensnared in justification of ownership
as opposed to rational expectations or common good.
Fred proudly advocates private property
[/quote]
Land ain't private property.
Read a little Jefferson starting with the DoI.
Bret Cahill |
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| Mark M.... |
| Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 4:50 pm |
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Les Cargill wrote:
[quote]Mark M. wrote:
Les Cargill wrote:
Mark M. wrote:
Fred Weiss wrote:
On Oct 28, 11:23 pm, Michael Coburn <mik... at (no spam) verizon.net> wrote:
As you can see, Fred is hopelessly ensnared in justification of
ownership
as opposed to rational expectations or common good.
Fred proudly advocates private property and consider it essential for
the common good.
Which is more important, the private good or the common good?
Mark M.
There is no common good. There may only be goods in common.
Proving the negative, eh, Les?
To do that you must show there is no possible condition, physical
environment, knowledge, tool, technology, that has ever existed or
ever could exist that could be a universal boon to humankind or even a
boon to a specific inclusive community of humans that happen to
inhabit a particular geographical area.
Not one.
How will you prove it?
There is no collective anything, only individuals. Public
goods are explicitly nonrival and nonexcludable, the common
*weal* is a social construct of language only. And the common
weal is not what people mean by "the common good".
QED.
[/quote]
What QED? You give declarative statements without support. Where is the
syllogism that includes a major premise, minor premise, and conclusion that
answers the points I made above.
It could go something like this:
Major Premise: Since....blah, blah, blah
Minor Premise: And since....blah, blah, blah
Conclusion: Therefore, there is no common good.
QED
Just fill in the blahs.
The major premise could be something like,"Since humans do not inhabit the same
environment," or "Since humans don't have similar bodies and desires."
Mark M. |
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| Nart... |
| Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 5:41 pm |
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darwinist wrote:
[quote]On Nov 2, 12:56 am, John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
darwinist wrote:
On Nov 1, 10:43 pm, John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
darwinist wrote:
On Nov 1, 9:40 pm, John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
darwinist wrote:
On Nov 1, 7:58 pm, John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
darwinist wrote:
[...]
Libertarian theory has no end of problems which would quickly
appear if anyone was foolish enough to try to apply it to
real life: Origin of ownership, funding of government,
regulating pollution, provision of road and communication
infrastructure, commercial monopolies, de- facto slavery from
lack of worker's rights, food and drug safety standards, the
proliferation of explosives, regulation of broadcast
frequencies. I could go on.
You could (and although some of your problems are a bit silly),
Which ones are they?
Libertarianism assumes that a society can be built in which
people become personally responsible; a bit pie in the sky, we'd
agree, but that's the ideal. Much of your list assumes a more
Calvinistic "utter depravity" condition where man is completely
selfish, and where their selfish urges must be controlled by a
high degree of coersion.
Which parts of the list are you talking about, specifically?
I see the pollution issues, monopoly issues, drug and safety
standard issues as being valid. The rest would get worked out in a
society of mature individuals.
How might you fund the police and armed forces, if taxes are
voluntary?
They're use taxes and sales taxes on all goods which are
nonsubsistence. If you want to live anything over subsistence,
you're paying them. Most states already exempt subsistence goods
from sales taxation, so you'd be collecting at least as much as you
are today. I don't think there'd be much trouble collecting enough
for police and fire; you'd certainly be able to work out a defensive
armed forces as well. Would there be enough to fund an armed forces
large enough to maintain hegemonic control over the entire world and
fend off a Klingon attack force, as we do today? Unlikely, but who
needs it? (Libertarians trend neutral/isolationist.)
Or divide up transmission bandwidth, if people can just jam each
others signals and say "I was using this frequency first"?
If they jam signals nobody wins. Mature people usually figure out a
way to cut deals so everyone wins.
Mature's got little to do with it. Like predatory pricing, the larger
companies can lose money in the short term in order to use dirty
tactics to drive the others out of business, in this case by over-
powering the other's transmissions. I predict you'd get a monopoly
quickly, at least in each region.
but
there would be no point. You could make the same sort of list
of "problems" for pure democracy, pure socialism, pure
anarchism, pure fascism, pure communism. Whenever any of these
systems are tried in heterogenous groups larger than
commune-size, they devolve rather quickly.
Yes, they are problems under any political view, but for
libertarianism they are problems that the government is
forbidden to address and which the market is fundamentally
unable to solve.
I don't know which genre of libertarian theory you're looking
at, but I'd have to disagree that there's any notion of
"forbidden to solve" inherent in libertarianism. Milton
Friedman, of course more of an economic libertarian than an
ideologic one, acknowledged the fact that free market controls
were ineffective at getting corporations to clean up after
themselves, and thus environmental regulation was a proper use
of government.
Not forbidden to solve, but forbidden to even address. You're
right it depends on which flavour of libertarian thought we're
talking about. I'm talking about the idea that (roughly stated)
government's only role should be to prevent direct attacks to our
life, liberty or property. That it should not be allowed to
regulate business or levy taxes (or at least not beyond what's
needed for this role).
That's an extreme view, it should be said. Libertarianism is not
at odds with the idea that people need to sit down and hammer out
what it means to have a civil society, at least as far as I am
aware.
Good to know.
All these theories are, to their holders, utopian ideals; or,
if you
will "In a perfect world, wouldn't it be great if....?"
In practice, libertarians are simply the polar opposites of
statists.
Yes. It's like solving the problem of obesity by banning all
food except eggs and bananas.
Quite so.
They exist to point out the folly of anyone ever thinking that
it is possible to have a political class that will work in the
best interests of a populace, rather than themselves; and also
to point out that there is such a thing as economic freedom;
if 100% taxation is perfect
slavery, the obviously the higher taxation rates move to that
number the less personal liberty one has.
On the one hand, that is false: There's a lot more to personal
liberty than just the rate of taxation. On the other hand it's
irrelevant, since you can't have 100% personal liberty and a
society at the same time.
I don't agree that it's false. In any economy that uses money,
having none renders you unable to enjoy the fruits of liberty.
But, regardless, the statement is more of a thought exercise
than anything else.
What I mean is you can have a society with 5% taxation that's less
free than a society with 20%. There's more to freedom than tax.
In any case if you can suggest a way to fund the government other
than taxation, I'm sure we're all listening.
Well, in a "libertarian paradise", I assume all taxes would be
optional, IOW, all collected in the form of use taxes and some
sales taxes levied only on materials over and above subsistence
products.
Why tax products but not income or property? Earning an income above
the tax-free threshhold, or owning land is also voluntary.
I think doing so would be perfectly in keeping with the basic
philosophy.
Fair enough.
It would be
possible to live tax free if you lived in a hovel without a car
never using a road and buying nothing but nontaxable items such as
basic foodstuffs, pharamceuticals, and the like. The poor would
therefore live nearly tax free as a natural function of their
lifestyles, and the rich would pay most of the taxes. But it would
be possible for the very rich to live tax free if they were
willing to live in the manner of the poor.
There is a way to substitute
at least some of the funding, but libertarians tend to be dead
against it: A set of state-owned for-profit companies that
compete in the open market. IOW: State capitalism.
Well, free marketers tend to be dead against it, since such
enterprises almost always operate at a deficit that taxes are
required to fill. Free marketers really don't see why they should
forced to fund their own competitors.
Almost all new businesses (of any kind) run at a loss for the first
few years. That's not to say they need extra capital added each
year, or that they won't eventually make a profit. There are plenty
of examples of profitable state-owned enterprises. Telcos, banks,
venture- capital, general investment funds. I think it's
short-sighted to rule them out because they require tax-funding to
start with. In the long run they can - and often do - decrease the
proportion of government funding that comes from tax.
There are definitely certain areas that can tolerate state-ownership
better than others. However, it's a complicated matter.
I am very focused on the worldwide telecommunications marketplace
with my job, so I can give you some background here. Up until ATT
divestiture, virtually every telecom in the world was government
run. We hit a worldwide wave of privatization in the 1990's. So,
most countries today have (a) the "old" formerly public company and
(b) a host of new independent companies, some startups, some foreign
sponsored (Vodaphone, TMobile, etc).
In every case of which I am aware, the old-line formerly public
company is getting the shit kicked out of it competitively. The
state-owned structure was not only stifling to innovation, but it
created a status-quo mentality where the way to earn more revenues
was to ask for a rate increase instead of innovate. As a result,
they are well-behind in building up the infrastructure to support
value-added services.
It's important to distinguish between three different stages: A public
monopoly in telecommunications, a publicly-owned competitor in an open
market; and a fully privatised industry. In the first case the public
company tends to lose money
[/quote]
No it doesn't. Because its a monopoly that very rarely happens.
[quote]and lag behind in r&d (not surprisingly,
since what choice do people have),
[/quote]
Few telcos do much R&D.
[quote]in the second case they make money
[/quote]
That is the main situation where they can lose money, because they don't compete as well.
[quote]and encourage competition
[/quote]
It's the non govt operations that do that.
[quote]and in the third case a lot of (remote) people miss
out or fall behind on new services because there is no
longer a public company to ensure universal service.
[/quote]
Universal service can be mandated legally even when there is no govt operation.
And can be served quite adequately via satellite etc too.
[quote]At least that's how it progressed in Australia.
[/quote]
Like hell it did. Telecom produced a MASSIVE 'dividend' for the govt
every single year before any of it was sold off. That ended up at a
billion bucks a year just before the first tranche was sold off.
And we still have a universal service obligation even when its fully privatised too.
[quote]I haven't looked into the details of other countries,
[/quote]
Have a look at Singtel sometime.
[quote]but I expect this is not a unique case.
[/quote]
It isn't.
[quote]India's a particularly interesting case. They had two state-run
companies (BNSL and VNSL), and kept them private but opened their
market to competition in the late 90's. Most of the big Indian
conglomerates (Tata, Bharti, Reliance, Spice, etc.) got in. Airtel
(owned by Bharti) now has 100M subscribers and is tooled to grow to
200m by 2014. The public players have been unable to keep up; they
survive by providing bare-bones service on the cheap to the Indian
masses. Bharti charges a premium for premium services. The public
companies are a net drain on the tax coffers, but in the Indian case
it's not a bad call keeping them around, since the privates would
focus on the high-end market and ignore the villages, where there is
little or no wireline.
Are these companies meant to be profitable or are they designed
only to be a public service? It's possible to be both but if you're
only mandated to be one or the other then likely that's all you'll be.
[/quote]
That is wrong too, again, most obviously with Telecom/Telstra and Singtel.
[quote]India also owns about fourteen banks, none of which are particularly
competitive with the high-value competitors. Same story, though ---
India needs to provide services to two entirely different societies
cohabiting the peninsula else see the larger and poorer one stay like
that forever.
By "particularly competitive" do you mean "profitable at all" or "as
successful as some of the private players"? I submit that a profitable
entity is all the government needs to reduce taxes, as long as it's
only a little bit competitive it can stay around. If it's providing a
useful service at the same time then even better.
[/quote]
Yes, but the most rabid libertarians hate that sort of thing.
[quote]The government has to get funding from somewhere. The more money it
makes with with the capital it's already got, the less it has to
take from private businesses and personal incomes.
If it could be assured of turning a profit, that would be fine with
me. The reverse is, unfortunatly, the typical case.
Well then the question is whether a loss is typical because that's
inevitably the case, or whether there are sensible investments that
government can make which will be more likely than not to create a
profitable company. I suggest it's the latter, or at the very least
it's not worth ruling it out. Such investments would include banking,
venture capital, infrastructure. But there are others. In Australia we
have a "private" health insurance company that's wholly government
owned and competes (on some fronts) with the universal medicare,
and it's profitable.
[/quote]
Yes, but the industry would work fine without it.
[quote]I expect the government could make a profit while promoting
competition in almost any industry, as long as that's the mandate of
the organisation in question.
[/quote]
It's much more complicated than that. It really depends on how well
served the particular industry is. Some are so competitive that no
one can make much money, most obviously with the airline industry.
Its those very difficult to make money in areas where govt operations
tend to lose money, just because of the way they operate.
[quote]JG
JG
Hell, you're not running around thinking that big goverment is
always good for you, are you?
Of course not.
*Whew*.
JG
JG[/quote] |
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| John Galt... |
| Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 6:21 pm |
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Guest
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darwinist wrote:
[quote]On Nov 2, 12:56 am, John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
darwinist wrote:
On Nov 1, 10:43 pm, John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
darwinist wrote:
On Nov 1, 9:40 pm, John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
darwinist wrote:
On Nov 1, 7:58 pm, John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
darwinist wrote:
[...]
Libertarian theory has no end of problems which would quickly appear
if anyone was foolish enough to try to apply it to real life: Origin
of ownership, funding of government, regulating pollution, provision
of road and communication infrastructure, commercial monopolies, de-
facto slavery from lack of worker's rights, food and drug safety
standards, the proliferation of explosives, regulation of broadcast
frequencies. I could go on.
You could (and although some of your problems are a bit silly),
Which ones are they?
Libertarianism assumes that a society can be built in which people
become personally responsible; a bit pie in the sky, we'd agree, but
that's the ideal. Much of your list assumes a more Calvinistic "utter
depravity" condition where man is completely selfish, and where their
selfish urges must be controlled by a high degree of coersion.
Which parts of the list are you talking about, specifically?
I see the pollution issues, monopoly issues, drug and safety standard
issues as being valid. The rest would get worked out in a society of
mature individuals.
How might you fund the police and armed forces, if taxes are
voluntary?
They're use taxes and sales taxes on all goods which are nonsubsistence.
If you want to live anything over subsistence, you're paying them. Most
states already exempt subsistence goods from sales taxation, so you'd be
collecting at least as much as you are today. I don't think there'd be
much trouble collecting enough for police and fire; you'd certainly be
able to work out a defensive armed forces as well. Would there be enough
to fund an armed forces large enough to maintain hegemonic control over
the entire world and fend off a Klingon attack force, as we do today?
Unlikely, but who needs it? (Libertarians trend neutral/isolationist.)
Or divide up transmission bandwidth, if people can just jam each
others signals and say "I was using this frequency first"?
If they jam signals nobody wins. Mature people usually figure out a way
to cut deals so everyone wins.
Mature's got little to do with it. Like predatory pricing, the larger
companies can lose money in the short term in order to use dirty
tactics to drive the others out of business, in this case by over-
powering the other's transmissions. I predict you'd get a monopoly
quickly, at least in each region.
[/quote]
If you do, you move against it; since libertarianism requires a free
market perspective, it cannot logically oppose anti-monopoly regs, since
monopolies subvert free markets.
[quote]
but
there would be no point. You could make the same sort of list of
"problems" for pure democracy, pure socialism, pure anarchism, pure
fascism, pure communism. Whenever any of these systems are tried in
heterogenous groups larger than commune-size, they devolve rather quickly.
Yes, they are problems under any political view, but for
libertarianism they are problems that the government is forbidden to
address and which the market is fundamentally unable to solve.
I don't know which genre of libertarian theory you're looking at, but
I'd have to disagree that there's any notion of "forbidden to solve"
inherent in libertarianism. Milton Friedman, of course more of an
economic libertarian than an ideologic one, acknowledged the fact that
free market controls were ineffective at getting corporations to clean
up after themselves, and thus environmental regulation was a proper use
of government.
Not forbidden to solve, but forbidden to even address. You're right it
depends on which flavour of libertarian thought we're talking about.
I'm talking about the idea that (roughly stated) government's only
role should be to prevent direct attacks to our life, liberty or
property. That it should not be allowed to regulate business or levy
taxes (or at least not beyond what's needed for this role).
That's an extreme view, it should be said. Libertarianism is not at odds
with the idea that people need to sit down and hammer out what it means
to have a civil society, at least as far as I am aware.
Good to know.
All these theories are, to their holders, utopian ideals; or, if you
will "In a perfect world, wouldn't it be great if....?"
In practice, libertarians are simply the polar opposites of statists.
Yes. It's like solving the problem of obesity by banning all food
except eggs and bananas.
Quite so.
They exist to point out the folly of anyone ever thinking that it is
possible to have a political class that will work in the best interests
of a populace, rather than themselves; and also to point out that there
is such a thing as economic freedom; if 100% taxation is perfect
slavery, the obviously the higher taxation rates move to that number the
less personal liberty one has.
On the one hand, that is false: There's a lot more to personal liberty
than just the rate of taxation. On the other hand it's irrelevant,
since you can't have 100% personal liberty and a society at the same
time.
I don't agree that it's false. In any economy that uses money, having
none renders you unable to enjoy the fruits of liberty. But, regardless,
the statement is more of a thought exercise than anything else.
What I mean is you can have a society with 5% taxation that's less
free than a society with 20%. There's more to freedom than tax. In any
case if you can suggest a way to fund the government other than
taxation, I'm sure we're all listening.
Well, in a "libertarian paradise", I assume all taxes would be optional,
IOW, all collected in the form of use taxes and some sales taxes levied
only on materials over and above subsistence products.
Why tax products but not income or property? Earning an income above
the tax-free threshhold, or owning land is also voluntary.
I think doing so would be perfectly in keeping with the basic philosophy.
Fair enough.
It would be
possible to live tax free if you lived in a hovel without a car never
using a road and buying nothing but nontaxable items such as basic
foodstuffs, pharamceuticals, and the like. The poor would therefore live
nearly tax free as a natural function of their lifestyles, and the rich
would pay most of the taxes. But it would be possible for the very rich
to live tax free if they were willing to live in the manner of the poor.
There is a way to substitute
at least some of the funding, but libertarians tend to be dead against
it: A set of state-owned for-profit companies that compete in the open
market. IOW: State capitalism.
Well, free marketers tend to be dead against it, since such enterprises
almost always operate at a deficit that taxes are required to fill. Free
marketers really don't see why they should forced to fund their own
competitors.
Almost all new businesses (of any kind) run at a loss for the first
few years. That's not to say they need extra capital added each year,
or that they won't eventually make a profit. There are plenty of
examples of profitable state-owned enterprises. Telcos, banks, venture-
capital, general investment funds. I think it's short-sighted to rule
them out because they require tax-funding to start with. In the long
run they can - and often do - decrease the proportion of government
funding that comes from tax.
There are definitely certain areas that can tolerate state-ownership
better than others. However, it's a complicated matter.
I am very focused on the worldwide telecommunications marketplace with
my job, so I can give you some background here. Up until ATT
divestiture, virtually every telecom in the world was government run. We
hit a worldwide wave of privatization in the 1990's. So, most countries
today have (a) the "old" formerly public company and (b) a host of new
independent companies, some startups, some foreign sponsored (Vodaphone,
TMobile, etc).
In every case of which I am aware, the old-line formerly public company
is getting the shit kicked out of it competitively. The state-owned
structure was not only stifling to innovation, but it created a
status-quo mentality where the way to earn more revenues was to ask for
a rate increase instead of innovate. As a result, they are well-behind
in building up the infrastructure to support value-added services.
It's important to distinguish between three different stages: A public
monopoly in telecommunications, a publicly-owned competitor in an open
market; and a fully privatised industry. In the first case the public
company tends to lose money and lag behind in r&d (not surprisingly,
since what choice do people have), in the second case they make money
and encourage competition
[/quote]
Haven't seen this in practice.
and in the third case a lot of (remote)
[quote]people miss out or fall behind on new services because there is no
longer a public company to ensure universal service. At least that's
how it progressed in Australia. I haven't looked into the details of
other countries, but I expect this is not a unique case.
[/quote]
Probably not, but not all countries are like Australia (or India, for
that matter). It would be hard to have remote people lose out on a
service in Belgium, for example.
[quote]
India's a particularly interesting case. They had two state-run
companies (BNSL and VNSL), and kept them private but opened their market
to competition in the late 90's. Most of the big Indian conglomerates
(Tata, Bharti, Reliance, Spice, etc.) got in. Airtel (owned by Bharti)
now has 100M subscribers and is tooled to grow to 200m by 2014. The
public players have been unable to keep up; they survive by providing
bare-bones service on the cheap to the Indian masses. Bharti charges a
premium for premium services. The public companies are a net drain on
the tax coffers, but in the Indian case it's not a bad call keeping them
around, since the privates would focus on the high-end market and ignore
the villages, where there is little or no wireline.
Are these companies meant to be profitable or are they designed only
to be a public service? It's possible to be both but if you're only
mandated to be one or the other then likely that's all you'll be.
[/quote]
They were originally designed to be profitable, but the objective
changed to public utility after it was clear that they were unable to
compete.
[quote]
India also owns about fourteen banks, none of which are particularly
competitive with the high-value competitors. Same story, though ---
India needs to provide services to two entirely different societies
cohabiting the peninsula else see the larger and poorer one stay like
that forever.
By "particularly competitive" do you mean "profitable at all" or "as
successful as some of the private players"? I submit that a profitable
entity is all the government needs to reduce taxes, as long as it's
only a little bit competitive it can stay around. If it's providing a
useful service at the same time then even better.
[/quote]
The government can do whatever it pleases as long as it doesn't fund the
public competitor with the taxes of the private competitors. If that
occurs, all you have is a welfare program.
[quote]
The government has to get funding from somewhere. The more money it
makes with with the capital it's already got, the less it has to take
from private businesses and personal incomes.
If it could be assured of turning a profit, that would be fine with me.
The reverse is, unfortunatly, the typical case.
Well then the question is whether a loss is typical because that's
inevitably the case, or whether there are sensible investments that
government can make which will be more likely than not to create a
profitable company. I suggest it's the latter, or at the very least
it's not worth ruling it out.
[/quote]
I would suggest (having done years of business with both public and
private) that there is an inherent difference in the mindset of the
public and the private employee. A very common joke in sales is to never
schedule a meeting that could run long in a government entitty at 4PM.
At 5PM, everyone walks out the door, even if you're in mid sentence. Not
so in the private entity.
Such investments would include banking,
[quote]venture capital, infrastructure. But there are others. In Australia we
have a "private" health insurance company that's wholly government
owned and competes (on some fronts) with the universal medicare, and
it's profitable.
I expect the government could make a profit while promoting
competition in almost any industry, as long as that's the mandate of
the organisation in question.
[/quote]
Again, history has far more examples of government companies losing
money than the reverse.
JG |
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| John Galt... |
| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 3:11 am |
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Guest
|
darwinist wrote:
[quote]On Nov 2, 10:21 am, John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
darwinist wrote:
On Nov 2, 12:56 am, John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
darwinist wrote:
On Nov 1, 10:43 pm, John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
darwinist wrote:
On Nov 1, 9:40 pm, John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
darwinist wrote:
On Nov 1, 7:58 pm, John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
darwinist wrote:
[...]
Or divide up transmission bandwidth, if people can just jam each
others signals and say "I was using this frequency first"?
If they jam signals nobody wins. Mature people usually figure out a way
to cut deals so everyone wins.
Mature's got little to do with it. Like predatory pricing, the larger
companies can lose money in the short term in order to use dirty
tactics to drive the others out of business, in this case by over-
powering the other's transmissions. I predict you'd get a monopoly
quickly, at least in each region.
If you do, you move against it; since libertarianism requires a free
market perspective, it cannot logically oppose anti-monopoly regs, since
monopolies subvert free markets.
If it's a known (I would say inevitable) problem, wouldn't it be more
efficient to prevent it than to counter it? After all it's not like
the available bandwidth is unpredictable or variable the way a market
is. You can release more of it for public use of course, but the
resource itself is of a known and fixed quantity.
[/quote]
I'ts always more efficient to prevent, but proactivity isn't something
that government does particularly well; and when they try, they often
get it wrong, with unintended consequences.
[quote]
[...]
I am very focused on the worldwide telecommunications marketplace with
my job, so I can give you some background here. Up until ATT
divestiture, virtually every telecom in the world was government run. We
hit a worldwide wave of privatization in the 1990's. So, most countries
today have (a) the "old" formerly public company and (b) a host of new
independent companies, some startups, some foreign sponsored (Vodaphone,
TMobile, etc).
In every case of which I am aware, the old-line formerly public company
is getting the shit kicked out of it competitively. The state-owned
structure was not only stifling to innovation, but it created a
status-quo mentality where the way to earn more revenues was to ask for
a rate increase instead of innovate. As a result, they are well-behind
in building up the infrastructure to support value-added services.
It's important to distinguish between three different stages: A public
monopoly in telecommunications, a publicly-owned competitor in an open
market; and a fully privatised industry. In the first case the public
company tends to lose money and lag behind in r&d (not surprisingly,
since what choice do people have), in the second case they make money
and encourage competition
Haven't seen this in practice.
Well you need look no further than the example I cited. There was a
period between opening up the market to competition, and privatising
the government-owned player. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstra
[/quote]
I am well aware of Telstra, not just from the outside, but from the
inside as well. It is a the prototypic example of the post-regulatory
dinosaur, and they are more lucky than smart that entering the
Australian market is unusually expensive for the more innovative
competitors that will eventually remove those profits from them. Unless
they streamline, they are unlikely to be making money in the future, and
any frank discussion with a Telstra representative (which I have had)
will tell you no different.
[quote]
and in the third case a lot of (remote)
people miss out or fall behind on new services because there is no
longer a public company to ensure universal service. At least that's
how it progressed in Australia. I haven't looked into the details of
other countries, but I expect this is not a unique case.
Probably not, but not all countries are like Australia (or India, for
that matter). It would be hard to have remote people lose out on a
service in Belgium, for example.
Fair point
India's a particularly interesting case. They had two state-run
companies (BNSL and VNSL), and kept them private but opened their market
to competition in the late 90's. Most of the big Indian conglomerates
(Tata, Bharti, Reliance, Spice, etc.) got in. Airtel (owned by Bharti)
now has 100M subscribers and is tooled to grow to 200m by 2014. The
public players have been unable to keep up; they survive by providing
bare-bones service on the cheap to the Indian masses. Bharti charges a
premium for premium services. The public companies are a net drain on
the tax coffers, but in the Indian case it's not a bad call keeping them
around, since the privates would focus on the high-end market and ignore
the villages, where there is little or no wireline.
Are these companies meant to be profitable or are they designed only
to be a public service? It's possible to be both but if you're only
mandated to be one or the other then likely that's all you'll be.
They were originally designed to be profitable, but the objective
changed to public utility after it was clear that they were unable to
compete.
I'd appreciate any references you've got, but from my cursory
research, here are two public indian telcos that have a positive net-
income.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTNL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSNL
[/quote]
I don't have any others in mind, but I'd check the profit trends over
time on these companies.
[quote]
India also owns about fourteen banks, none of which are particularly
competitive with the high-value competitors. Same story, though ---
India needs to provide services to two entirely different societies
cohabiting the peninsula else see the larger and poorer one stay like
that forever.
By "particularly competitive" do you mean "profitable at all" or "as
successful as some of the private players"? I submit that a profitable
entity is all the government needs to reduce taxes, as long as it's
only a little bit competitive it can stay around. If it's providing a
useful service at the same time then even better.
The government can do whatever it pleases as long as it doesn't fund the
public competitor with the taxes of the private competitors. If that
occurs, all you have is a welfare program.
It has to get the startup capital from somewhere, but as for
*continued* funding from tax-revenue, I agree. Then it's just
corporate welfare, which is possibly the worst kind of welfare.
[/quote]
Quite.
[quote]
The government has to get funding from somewhere. The more money it
makes with with the capital it's already got, the less it has to take
from private businesses and personal incomes.
If it could be assured of turning a profit, that would be fine with me.
The reverse is, unfortunatly, the typical case.
Well then the question is whether a loss is typical because that's
inevitably the case, or whether there are sensible investments that
government can make which will be more likely than not to create a
profitable company. I suggest it's the latter, or at the very least
it's not worth ruling it out.
I would suggest (having done years of business with both public and
private) that there is an inherent difference in the mindset of the
public and the private employee. A very common joke in sales is to never
schedule a meeting that could run long in a government entitty at 4PM.
At 5PM, everyone walks out the door, even if you're in mid sentence. Not
so in the private entity.
I'd agree for public-service departments, but that's a very different
beast from a for-profit business who just happen to have the
government as their majority, controlling or even sole shareholder.
[/quote]
It can be. If you're simply talking about government hands-off
investment in a private endeavor, you're quite right. However, as we've
seen from the US banking investments, governments aren't particularly
good at keeping their hands off management once they've made an
investment, as they believe the fact that they've used "taxpayer funds"
gives them a moral high ground.
[quote]
Such investments would include banking,
venture capital, infrastructure. But there are others. In Australia we
have a "private" health insurance company that's wholly government
owned and competes (on some fronts) with the universal medicare, and
it's profitable.
I expect the government could make a profit while promoting
competition in almost any industry, as long as that's the mandate of
the organisation in question.
Again, history has far more examples of government companies losing
money than the reverse.
JG
We don't need the word "government" in that sentence. History has far
more examples of companies losing money than the reverse. To my mind
this is an argument (public or private) to get it right, by learning
from past mistakes and taking a sensible approach. It's not an
argument to dismiss the endeavour, especially when it's a way to
reduce the proportion of funding taken through tax.
[/quote]
If you want to remove the "busts" from the free market cycle you also
remove the "booms." I'm personally not interested in living in any
nation that has removed the risk out of living.
JG |
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| James A. Donald... |
| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 4:51 am |
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Guest
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On Sun, 1 Nov 2009 14:26:02 -0800 (PST), darwinist
[quote]Mature's got little to do with it. Like predatory pricing, the larger
companies can lose money in the short term in order to use dirty
tactics to drive the others out of business,
[/quote]
You are a moron.
Suppose company A sells ten times as much as company B. To drive
company B out of business, it lowers its prices to make a loss - but
oops, it is making ten times as much loss as company B.
There is no such thing as predatory pricing, there is just government
intervention against the consumer. |
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| Rod Speed... |
| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 11:41 am |
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Guest
|
John Galt wrote:
[quote]darwinist wrote:
On Nov 2, 10:21 am, John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
darwinist wrote:
On Nov 2, 12:56 am, John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
darwinist wrote:
On Nov 1, 10:43 pm, John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
darwinist wrote:
On Nov 1, 9:40 pm, John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
darwinist wrote:
On Nov 1, 7:58 pm, John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
darwinist wrote:
[...]
Or divide up transmission bandwidth, if people can just jam each
others signals and say "I was using this frequency first"?
If they jam signals nobody wins. Mature people usually figure out
a way to cut deals so everyone wins.
Mature's got little to do with it. Like predatory pricing, the
larger companies can lose money in the short term in order to use
dirty tactics to drive the others out of business, in this case by
over- powering the other's transmissions. I predict you'd get a
monopoly quickly, at least in each region.
If you do, you move against it; since libertarianism requires a free
market perspective, it cannot logically oppose anti-monopoly regs,
since monopolies subvert free markets.
If it's a known (I would say inevitable) problem, wouldn't it be more
efficient to prevent it than to counter it? After all it's not like
the available bandwidth is unpredictable or variable the way a market
is. You can release more of it for public use of course, but the
resource itself is of a known and fixed quantity.
I'ts always more efficient to prevent, but proactivity isn't something
that government does particularly well; and when they try, they often
get it wrong, with unintended consequences.
[...]
I am very focused on the worldwide telecommunications marketplace
with my job, so I can give you some background here. Up until ATT
divestiture, virtually every telecom in the world was government
run. We hit a worldwide wave of privatization in the 1990's. So,
most countries today have (a) the "old" formerly public company
and (b) a host of new independent companies, some startups, some
foreign sponsored (Vodaphone, TMobile, etc).
In every case of which I am aware, the old-line formerly public
company is getting the shit kicked out of it competitively. The
state-owned structure was not only stifling to innovation, but it
created a status-quo mentality where the way to earn more
revenues was to ask for a rate increase instead of innovate. As a
result, they are well-behind in building up the infrastructure to
support value-added services.
It's important to distinguish between three different stages: A
public monopoly in telecommunications, a publicly-owned competitor
in an open market; and a fully privatised industry. In the first
case the public company tends to lose money and lag behind in r&d
(not surprisingly, since what choice do people have), in the
second case they make money and encourage competition
Haven't seen this in practice.
Well you need look no further than the example I cited. There was a
period between opening up the market to competition, and privatising
the government-owned player. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstra
I am well aware of Telstra, not just from the outside, but from the
inside as well. It is a the prototypic example of the post-regulatory
dinosaur, and they are more lucky than smart that entering the
Australian market is unusually expensive for the more innovative
competitors that will eventually remove those profits from them.
[/quote]
That is very arguable indeed. While the country is larger than most
modern first world countrys, it is also one of the most urbanised
modern first world countrys outside europe, with the absolute vast
bulk of the population concentrated in the strip from BizVegas thru to
Adelaide, to that claim that its unusually expensive is just plain wrong.
[quote]Unless they streamline, they are unlikely to be making money in the future,
[/quote]
And that is just plain silly. They make MUCH more profit than ALL THE
REST OF THEIR COMPETITORS COMBINED. VASTLY more in fact.
[quote]and any frank discussion with a Telstra representative (which I have had) will tell you no different.
[/quote]
He either didnt have a clue or you heard only what you wanted to hear.
[quote]and in the third case a lot of (remote)
people miss out or fall behind on new services because there is no
longer a public company to ensure universal service. At least
that's how it progressed in Australia. I haven't looked into the
details of other countries, but I expect this is not a unique case.
Probably not, but not all countries are like Australia (or India,
for that matter). It would be hard to have remote people lose out
on a service in Belgium, for example.
Fair point
India's a particularly interesting case. They had two state-run
companies (BNSL and VNSL), and kept them private but opened their
market to competition in the late 90's. Most of the big Indian
conglomerates (Tata, Bharti, Reliance, Spice, etc.) got in.
Airtel (owned by Bharti) now has 100M subscribers and is tooled
to grow to 200m by 2014. The public players have been unable to
keep up; they survive by providing bare-bones service on the
cheap to the Indian masses. Bharti charges a premium for premium
services. The public companies are a net drain on the tax
coffers, but in the Indian case it's not a bad call keeping them
around, since the privates would focus on the high-end market and
ignore the villages, where there is little or no wireline.
Are these companies meant to be profitable or are they designed
only to be a public service? It's possible to be both but if
you're only mandated to be one or the other then likely that's all
you'll be.
They were originally designed to be profitable, but the objective
changed to public utility after it was clear that they were unable
to compete.
I'd appreciate any references you've got, but from my cursory
research, here are two public indian telcos that have a positive net-
income.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTNL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSNL
I don't have any others in mind, but I'd check the profit trends over
time on these companies.
India also owns about fourteen banks, none of which are
particularly competitive with the high-value competitors. Same
story, though --- India needs to provide services to two entirely
different societies cohabiting the peninsula else see the larger
and poorer one stay like that forever.
By "particularly competitive" do you mean "profitable at all" or
"as successful as some of the private players"? I submit that a
profitable entity is all the government needs to reduce taxes, as
long as it's only a little bit competitive it can stay around. If
it's providing a useful service at the same time then even better.
The government can do whatever it pleases as long as it doesn't
fund the public competitor with the taxes of the private
competitors. If that occurs, all you have is a welfare program.
It has to get the startup capital from somewhere, but as for
*continued* funding from tax-revenue, I agree. Then it's just
corporate welfare, which is possibly the worst kind of welfare.
Quite.
The government has to get funding from somewhere. The more money
it makes with with the capital it's already got, the less it has
to take from private businesses and personal incomes.
If it could be assured of turning a profit, that would be fine
with me. The reverse is, unfortunatly, the typical case.
Well then the question is whether a loss is typical because that's
inevitably the case, or whether there are sensible investments that
government can make which will be more likely than not to create a
profitable company. I suggest it's the latter, or at the very least
it's not worth ruling it out.
I would suggest (having done years of business with both public and
private) that there is an inherent difference in the mindset of the
public and the private employee. A very common joke in sales is to
never schedule a meeting that could run long in a government
entitty at 4PM. At 5PM, everyone walks out the door, even if you're
in mid sentence. Not so in the private entity.
I'd agree for public-service departments, but that's a very different
beast from a for-profit business who just happen to have the
government as their majority, controlling or even sole shareholder.
It can be. If you're simply talking about government hands-off
investment in a private endeavor, you're quite right. However, as
we've seen from the US banking investments, governments aren't
particularly good at keeping their hands off management once they've
made an investment, as they believe the fact that they've used
"taxpayer funds" gives them a moral high ground.
Such investments would include banking,
venture capital, infrastructure. But there are others. In
Australia we have a "private" health insurance company that's
wholly government owned and competes (on some fronts) with the
universal medicare, and it's profitable.
I expect the government could make a profit while promoting
competition in almost any industry, as long as that's the mandate
of the organisation in question.
Again, history has far more examples of government companies losing
money than the reverse.
JG
We don't need the word "government" in that sentence. History has far
more examples of companies losing money than the reverse. To my mind
this is an argument (public or private) to get it right, by learning
from past mistakes and taking a sensible approach. It's not an
argument to dismiss the endeavour, especially when it's a way to
reduce the proportion of funding taken through tax.
If you want to remove the "busts" from the free market cycle you also remove the "booms."
[/quote]
He wasnt talking about doing either, just rubbing your nose in the fact that
your claims about profit from govt operations is true in spades of private ones.
The mindset difference is real, but the profit claim isnt.
[quote]I'm personally not interested in living in any
nation that has removed the risk out of living.
[/quote]
Having fun thrashing that straw man ? |
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| Rod Speed... |
| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 11:44 am |
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Guest
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James A. Donald wrote
[quote]darwinist wrote
Mature's got little to do with it. Like predatory pricing, the
larger companies can lose money in the short term in order
to use dirty tactics to drive the others out of business,
You are a moron.
[/quote]
Wota stunningly rational line of argument you have there.
[quote]Suppose company A sells ten times as much as company B. To
drive company B out of business, it lowers its prices to make a
loss - but oops, it is making ten times as much loss as company B.
[/quote]
Mindlessly superficial. It doesnt have to lose ten times
as much as company B to put it out of business.
[quote]There is no such thing as predatory pricing,
[/quote]
Bare faced pig ignorant lie.
[quote]there is just government intervention against the consumer.
[/quote]
Bare faced pig ignorant lie. |
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| *Anarcissie*... |
| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 1:31 pm |
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Guest
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On Nov 2, 3:11 am, John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
[quote]...
If you want to remove the "busts" from the free market cycle you also
remove the "booms." ...
[/quote]
It seems rather curious that that hasn't happened already,
indeed, hadn't happened long before the idea of evening
them out through government intervention was thought of.
For those who own much, there is little to be gained by
taking chances. The situation, the behaviors, suggest
pathology. |
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| James A. Donald... |
| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 7:14 pm |
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Guest
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On Mon, 2 Nov 2009 15:31:40 -0800 (PST), "*Anarcissie*"
<anarcissie at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
[quote]It seems rather curious that that hasn't happened already,
indeed, hadn't happened long before the idea of evening
them out through government intervention was thought of.
For those who own much, there is little to be gained by
taking chances.
[/quote]
How do you think they got to own much? |
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| Rod Speed... |
| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 7:21 pm |
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Guest
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Anarcissie wrote
[quote]John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote
If you want to remove the "busts" from the free market cycle you also remove the "booms." ...
It seems rather curious that that hasn't happened already,
indeed, hadn't happened long before the idea of evening
them out through government intervention was thought of.
[/quote]
It did. The USSR never saw the great depression.
[quote]For those who own much, there is little to be gained by taking chances.
[/quote]
Yes, but you're taking one hell of a chance trying that route.
[quote]The situation, the behaviors, suggest pathology.
[/quote]
Or just thats the way things work. |
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| James A. Donald... |
| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 8:05 pm |
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Guest
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On Tue, 3 Nov 2009 11:21:43 +1100, "Rod Speed"
[quote]The USSR never saw the great depression.
[/quote]
Millions died of hunger in the USSR while the US was having the great
depression. |
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| Rod Speed... |
| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 8:42 pm |
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Guest
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James A. Donald wrote:
[quote]Rod Speed wrote
Anarcissie wrote
John Galt <kady... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote
If you want to remove the "busts" from the free market cycle you also remove the "booms." ...
It seems rather curious that that hasn't happened already,
indeed, hadn't happened long before the idea of evening
them out through government intervention was thought of.
It did. The USSR never saw the great depression.
Millions died of hunger in the USSR
[/quote]
Not during the great depression they didnt.
And that wasnt due to a depression either.
[quote]while the US was having the great depression.
[/quote]
Utterly mangled all over again. |
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| Rod Speed... |
| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 8:44 pm |
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Guest
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James A. Donald wrote
[quote]Anarcissie <anarcissie at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote
It seems rather curious that that hasn't happened already,
indeed, hadn't happened long before the idea of evening
them out through government intervention was thought of.
For those who own much, there is little to be gained by
taking chances.
How do you think they got to own much?
[/quote]
By fucking over their competition. Thats not taking chances.
Gates didnt take any chances either. |
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