Australia needs to fund a paddle.

[bordsilver]

I'm getting confused about what is actually been debated here. The car industry in both Australia and places like Detroit received high subsidies paid for by profitable businesses for decades. In those decades a lot of people structured their lives around an assumption that the subsidies would continue or that the owners could reengineer the businesses to keep them operating. Despite the subsidies the businesses were still not economic. The very existence of the subsidies meant that other businesses in the Australian economy had more productive uses for the labour and (at least a significant chunk of) the capital.

JulieW - Are you discussing the pros and cons of a transition package or arguing for the continued misallocation of resources? Whether or not the industry could have survived if the regulatory regime had been less restrictive seems to be an entirely different question.

 

[bordsilver]

Also, based on a few of the recent thread discussions I'd suggest people re-read The Obstacle Mistaken for the Cause.

Man is originally destitute of everything.

Between this destitution and the satisfaction of his wants there exist a multitude of obstacles that labor enables us to surmount. It is of interest to inquire how and why these very obstacles to his material prosperity have come to be mistaken for the cause of that prosperity.

I want to travel a hundred miles. But between the starting-point and the place of my destination, mountains, rivers, marshes, impenetrable forests, brigands in a word, obstacles interpose themselves; and to overcome these obstacles it is necessary for me to employ many efforts, or, what comes to the same thing, that others should employ many efforts for me, the price of which I must pay them. It is clear that I should have been in a better situation if these obstacles had not existed.

On his long journey through life, from the cradle to the grave, man has need to assimilate to himself a prodigious quantity of alimentary substances, to protect himself against the inclemency of the weather, to preserve himself from a number of ailments, or cure himself of them. Hunger, thirst, disease, heat, cold, are so many obstacles strewn along his path. In a state of isolation he must overcome them all by hunting, fishing, tillage, spinning, weaving, building; and it is clear that it would be better for him that these obstacles were less numerous and formidable, or, better still, that they did not exist at all. In society he does not combat these obstacles personally, but others do it for him; and in return he employs himself in removing one of those obstacles that are encountered by his fellow men.

It is clear also, considering things in the gross, that it would be better for men in the aggregate, or for society, that these obstacles should be as few and feeble as possible.
:
:
:
To get at the root of this sophism it is necessary only to reflect that human labor is not the end, but the means. It never remains unemployed. If one obstacle is removed, it does battle with another; and society is freed from two obstacles by the same amount of labor that was formerly required for the removal of one. If the labor of the cooper is rendered unnecessary in one department, it will soon take another direction. But how and from what source will it be remunerated? From the same source exactly from which it is remunerated at present; for when a certain amount of labor becomes disposable by the removal of an obstacle, a corresponding amount of remuneration becomes disposable also. To maintain that human labor will ever come to want employment, would be to maintain that the human race will cease to encounter obstacles. In that case labor would not only be impossible; it would be superfluous. We should no longer have anything to do, because we should be omnipotent; and we should only have to pronounce our fiat in order to ensure the satisfaction of all our desires and the supply of all our wants.

Introducing obstacles to production is wealth destroying. Using your labour/capital to help remove the obstacles for others is adding value. As Silver Pauper famously said on here a couple of years ago - "stop looking for a job and start looking for work".

 

[bordsilver]

And a link to SP's Post so that people don't have the obstacle of trying to find it (and I didn't even charge money ).

 

[Stoic Phoenix]

Thanks for link Julie to article - up to 200k and indirectly effected persons, 2500 fits that bill. Yes people will be hit by this BUT less so if they prepared...this issue in the car industry just hasnt snuck up on us.
I would call bs on anything even close to 200k and would need to research further to see who actually funded the research and their motives behind it.
There are 3 types of lies in this world, lies, damn lies and statistics.

lets crunch the numbers as supplied by others.

Edit - There are approximately 12 million workers (thanks for more accurate figures Bordsilver)
Based on the 200k that's approx 1.7% of the supposed ENTIRE Australian workforce.
Take out the % of employees whom are govt employees and would be unaffected (NSW has supposed half its work force in this category) and that % goes up again.
I still say bollocks.

 

[bordsilver]

FYI 3.8 million is just the number of people employed in NSW. There's closer to 11.9 million people employed throughout Australia.

 

[mmm....shiney!]

Shiney, as I've said often, I think your ideas are admirable but entirely unworkable in the real politik

I have seen no reason nor proof to suggest that Libertarian principles are unworkable, especially because once implemented they require no conscious effort to maintain, coordinate or plan. I see every reason and I see daily proof of the failure of the alternative, mostly because it requires conscious effort to maintain, coordinate and plan. No one person nor group has the capacity to consciously coordinate human behaviour flawlessly, so any attempt to do so will fail. It's a complete waste of time and resources and often results in unsatisfactory consequences. So your argument that my beliefs are unworkable in the real world is ironic.

 

[Newtosilver]

Shiney, as I've said often, I think your ideas are admirable but entirely unworkable in the real politik

I have seen no reason nor proof to suggest that Libertarian principles are unworkable, especially because once implemented they require no conscious effort to maintain, coordinate or plan. I see every reason and I see daily proof of the failure of the alternative, mostly because it requires conscious effort to maintain, coordinate and plan. No one person nor group has the capacity to consciously coordinate human behaviour flawlessly, so any attempt to do so will fail. It's a complete waste of time and resources and often results in unsatisfactory consequences. So your argument that my beliefs are unworkable in the real world is ironic.

Out of 200 countries in the world not one country has ever tried it, the vast majority of the population do not want it. The only place it has ever been put into practice is Chile on a small scale and the whole thing imploded before it got off the ground. People lost everything, the land is worthless because of the lack of water rights, there is no clear title for individuals. Ex Military personel were called in, threats have been made, hundreds of thousands in legal bills. Basically a huge shit storm and they were all very dedicated Libertarians.

Why didn't it work? Because of the Libertarian Principles which the place was based on. If it wont work on a very small scale there is no way it would work on a large scale. It is free market fantasy, unicorns and rainbows.

 

[mmm....shiney!]

So what makes a centrally planned economy, implemented and maintained by a select group of individuals who make decisions on behalf of everybody else more workable than a system where individuals get to make their own decisions based upon what they want and need?

Please provide concrete examples of where the State has met the needs of individuals better than a free-market.

 

[bordsilver]

Shiney, as I've said often, I think your ideas are admirable but entirely unworkable in the real politik

I have seen no reason nor proof to suggest that Libertarian principles are unworkable, especially because once implemented they require no conscious effort to maintain, coordinate or plan. I see every reason and I see daily proof of the failure of the alternative, mostly because it requires conscious effort to maintain, coordinate and plan. No one person nor group has the capacity to consciously coordinate human behaviour flawlessly, so any attempt to do so will fail. It's a complete waste of time and resources and often results in unsatisfactory consequences. So your argument that my beliefs are unworkable in the real world is ironic.

Out of 200 countries in the world not one country has ever tried it, the vast majority of the population do not want it. The only place it has ever been put into practice is Chile on a small scale and the whole thing imploded before it got off the ground. People lost everything, the land is worthless because of the lack of water rights, there is no clear title for individuals. Ex Military personel were called in, threats have been made, hundreds of thousands in legal bills. Basically a huge shit storm and they were all very dedicated Libertarians.

Why didn't it work? Because of the Libertarian Principles which the place was based on. If it wont work on a very small scale there is no way it would work on a large scale. It is free market fantasy, unicorns and rainbows.

Who's fault is the lack of water rights and property titles? Without clearly defined property rights it could hardly be called a libertarian community now could it?

If it has never happened please explain 1800's America (especially the West which had no government expenditure on law enforcement but had high levels of rights and property rights protection), ancient Ireland, saga-era Iceland, or even Monaco and Luxembourg? Crikey - even Switzerland is more libertarian than Australia and it's widely recognised as being one of the best places in the world.

But as I've said before (numerous times), it is irrelevant. People argued the world would go to pot if the slave trade was abolished. Our modern mass democracies was unheard of a couple of hundred years ago and yet look at the world now.

 

[BuggedOut]

Gawd, the Holy War has resumed in this thread.....

I watched the US Libertarian debate today and was pretty impressed with Gary Johnson. I am generally a pretty skeptical guy and cynical about people trying to implement ideologies overall, but what impressed me with Gary was his pragmatism. A journey toward a more libertarian society would (and should) be an evolution. Trying to whiz-bang invent a 100% libertarian city or country is never going to be a stable way to go about it and the Chilean thing I consider nothing more than a wild experiment.

For me, our current societies are far too authoritarian, so I can see a shift toward Libertarianism being a very good and positive thing. Maybe we won't get 100% of the way toward the sort of pure ideology that shiney promotes but we can sure as hell move in that direction and the sky won't fall. We may even rediscover some of our lost prosperity.

People need to be more open minded about what can be achieved in the future. Communism, socialism, tyranny, theocracy and even capitalism has had enough failures in history that it's worth looking for new answers.

I actually think that many Australians are naturally libertarian. How many times have you heard "Its a free country" or "He's not hurting anyone" in day to day conversations? These are libertarian responses to people trying to tell us, or others, what to do. Live and let live.

 

[mmm....shiney!]

People need to be more open minded about what can be achieved in the future. Communism, socialism, tyranny, theocracy and even capitalism has had enough failures in history that it's worth looking for new answers.

Fear of the unknown and the uncertainty that comes with moving out of your zone of comfort are natural reactions of some.

I particularly like your point about looking to the future with an open mind and with what possibilities are available, it's a pertinent point when considering what we can achieve both socially and technologically in solving problems we may encounter eg environmental degradation, poverty, food/water availability etc. The free market is more likely to find a solution to those problems than the State.

Edit to add: have I mentioned that libertarians are optimists? Its why we are happier.

 

[Newtosilver]

Libertarians always say "freedom" the freedom to polute the enviroment, the freedom to make and sell dangerous consumer goods, the freedom to run through a school shooting kids, the freedom to rip off the vulnerable, the frredom to eliminate competition, the freedom to intimidate and bully suppliers, the freedom to work for $2 an hour or starve.

Freedom is portrayed as being "all things good" freedom is not always a good thing. There ia a reason why we have regulation (sometimes there can be to much regulation, no argument there)

"In a true free market, the price of goods and services will reach a natural equilibrium with no bureaucracy needed. A truly free market, however, is virtually unattainable in a modern economy.

If there are several competing businesses in a market based on voluntary trade, a customer can refuse to buy from a business that provides worse service or shoddier goods than the others. This acts as an incentive for companies to keep service (or at least toappearto do so). Nevertheless the quality of service is generally higher under these conditions than when a firm has a natural and/or legal monopoly.

A free market puts minimal restraints on innovation: if you have a bright idea and can finance its development, or get any one of the large number of venture investors to do it for you, you can develop your bright idea without being stopped by harrumphing or political meddling from a regulatory bureaucracy. Ifpatents(another form of government regulation) are removed, you don't even have to worry about patent trolls; however, mega-corporationswill be free to copy your idea and out-compete you.

All these upsides rest on the critical assumption that businesses have the ability to compete with each other; cases in which this is not true are discussed below."

"Also, in many cases the assumption that a free market means free competition does not hold up. There are many industries that are recognized as "natural monopolies" public utilities, for example in which an unrestrained market will lead to or maintain a monopoly for one supplier. Even an industry that is not a natural monopoly may be dominated by a cartel or oligopoly that make competition impossible and hold theconsumerby theballs, if not permanently then at least for a few years; more creative monopolists may attempt to conceal this with the use of multiple brand names for products produced by the same company. Unfortunately, businesses don'tlikecompetition; they'd prefer to drive their rivals out.

Capitalism, regulated or not, opposes innovation in the sense that whatever is being produced cannot be so good it'll never have to be replaced, even if technology exists that could make items last longer that any human could ever need. It pits business interests against humanity; one has no choice but to disregard the damage an intentionally-faulty product can do to survive in a capitalistic economy. The concept of innovation and sustainability is fine forStar Trek, but in an economy like ours it's impossible to entertain the thought.

Ironically, maintaining a maximally free market without such monopolism, and the abuses that follow from it, requires eitherthe personal intervention of Satancompetent governmental regulation (provided by farsighted, patient, and completely rational people of uncompromising self-restraint and discipline, committed to the maintenance of stability and sustainability even at the expense of short-range profit) or a business community (comprised,without exception, of farsighted, patient, and completely rational people of uncompromising self-restraint and discipline, committed to the maintenance of stability and sustainability even at the expense of short-range profit). Oy."

 

[mmm....shiney!]

Who wrote that nonsense? I recognise the first two paragraphs as yours, typical fear mongering mixed with myth and a n unhealthy dose of untruths, but the last few paragraphs are perplexing.

One minute we have rational insights into human economic behaviour eg businesses don't like competition, and then we get complete rubbish especilly the notion that capitalism opposes innovation. The author obviously is not aware of the history of countries such as Albania, or North Korea, the USSR or Cuba for instance.

I think you ducked up the cut and paste for the last paragraph.

 

[BuggedOut]

Libertarians always say "freedom" the freedom to polute the enviroment, the freedom to make and sell dangerous consumer goods, the freedom to run through a school shooting kids, the freedom to rip off the vulnerable, the frredom to eliminate competition, the freedom to intimidate and bully suppliers, the freedom to work for $2 an hour or starve.

This is as far as I got before realizing you are talking out of your ar$e and haven't done your research.

Go and watch the libertarian debates for the 2016 US election. These guys are the highest profile libertarians in the world right now and they discussed the role of the EPA - which is an issue obviously needing debate. Another was gun control and what sort of checks/licenses should be applied (eg, mental illness). These issues are NOT considered carte blanche in a pragmatic implementation of libertarian policy as far as I am concerned.

One fundamental philosophy of libertarianism is that you can do what you like as long as you're not hurting anyone. If you are polluting the environment you are hurting people. If you are selling goods that harm people then you are hurting people. Maybe there might not be explicit regulations against some of these things but I think you'd certainly be liable and you'd be put out of business or thrown in jail if you're hurting people. Libertarians believe in the rule of law and that everyone is equal before the law. That does NOT mean there are no laws and it does NOT mean there is anarchy.

Please do some research before you start sprouting off about what libertarianism is and isn't next time.

 

[Guest]

Now that we've killed the car industry perhaps it's a good time to visit some interesting thoughts from "our Yanis"

"Australia has very talented people, it has very talented small companies. But what it lacks is a government which is willing to do that which the American government has been doing for the last 60 years or so.

What Australians do not understand is that there is a major disconnect between the United States' official ideology and its practice.

"Because what Australians do not understand is that there is a major disconnect between the United States' official ideology and its practice. The ideology is one of free market, but the practice is one of a state that is extremely activist, and is investing very heavily in whole networks of innovation and production: the military industrial complex, the medical industrial complex, even the prison industrial complex. They are investing heavily through the state to create networks of value creation, and actually producing things. And Australia is moving very rapidly into divesting itself of actual production."

The Australian government's aversion to spending hasn't always been the norm. Varoufakis uses Wi-Fi as an example, a key patent of which was invented by the publicly-funded CSIRO an Australian organisation that had its funding cut by $115m in the 2014 budget. The government argued that bailing out Holden and Toyota amounted to corporate welfare, but that kind of thinking belies the extent of government involvement in successful economies.

The idea that individuals create wealth and that all governments do is come along and tax them is what Varoufakis calls "a preposterous reversal of the truth".

"There is an amazing myth in our enterprise culture that wealth is created individually and then appropriated by the state to be distributed.

"We are conceptualising what is happening in society as if we are an archipelago of Robinson Crusoes, everybody on an island, creating our own thing individually and then a boat comes along and collects it and redistributes it. It's not true. We are not individual producers, we produce things collectively."

He points to an iPhone.

"This machine, inside of it, contains technologies that were created collectively. Not only through collaboration but a lot of public funding. Every single technology in there was created by government grant."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...kis-australias-negative-gearing-is-scandalous

On Australia and its debt.

"Firstly, Australia does not have a debt problem. The idea that Australia is on the verge of becoming a new Greece would be touchingly funny if it were not so catastrophic in its ineptitude. Australia does not have a public debt problem, it has a private debt problem.

"Truth number two: the Australian social economy is not sustainable as it is. At the moment, if you look at the current account deficit, Australia lives beyond its means and when I say Australia, I mean upper-middle-class people. The luxurious lifestyle is not supported by the Australian economy. It's supported by a bubble, and it is never a good idea to rely on the proposition that a bubble will always be there to support you.

"So private debt is the problem. And secondly, because of this private debt, you have a bubble, which is constantly inflated through money coming into this country for speculative purposes."

Varoufakis is unequivocal in his conviction that current growth which he likens to a Ponzi scheme needs to be replaced with growth that comes from producing goods.

"Australia is switching away from producing stuff. Even good companies like Cochlear, who have been very innovative in the past, have been financialised. They're moving away from doing stuff to shuffling paper around. That would be my first priority [if I were Australian treasurer]: how to go back to actually doing things."

Julie. You post the most interesting topics on here which makes be question if you really are a woman.

 

[smk762]

Libertarians always say "freedom" the freedom to polute the enviroment, the freedom to make and sell dangerous consumer goods, the freedom to run through a school shooting kids, the freedom to rip off the vulnerable, the frredom to eliminate competition, the freedom to intimidate and bully suppliers, the freedom to work for $2 an hour or starve.

This is as far as I got before realizing you are talking out of your ar$e and haven't done your research.

Go and watch the libertarian debates for the 2016 US election. These guys are the highest profile libertarians in the world right now and they discussed the role of the EPA - which is an issue obviously needing debate. Another was gun control and what sort of checks/licenses should be applied (eg, mental illness). These issues are NOT considered carte blanche in a pragmatic implementation of libertarian policy as far as I am concerned.

One fundamental philosophy of libertarianism is that you can do what you like as long as you're not hurting anyone. If you are polluting the environment you are hurting people. If you are selling goods that harm people then you are hurting people. Maybe there might not be explicit regulations against some of these things but I think you'd certainly be liable and you'd be put out of business or thrown in jail if you're hurting people. Libertarians believe in the rule of law and that everyone is equal before the law. That does NOT mean there are no laws and it does NOT mean there is anarchy.

Please do some research before you start sprouting off about what libertarianism is and isn't next time.

Libertarians only eat free range liberals who were not hurt in the making of the meal. Does the libertarian ideal of non-violence extend to other species, and is it only ok if the animal identifies as a liberal and has been humanely slaughtered?

Are libertarians bound by a strict and rigid code, or is some freedom in interpretation and level of piety allowed?

 

[JulieW]

Bastiat. Look down at the thin ice!

 

[JulieW]

Well for anyone interested, going back to the OP, I think it was erroneous to suggest funding the paddle. I think the gist of Yanis' views was the involvement of government in promoting and facilitating industry and manufacturing.

I should have thought at the start, perhaps the solution for government to just get out of the way. Would we be looking at the collapse of an unviable car industry if that car industry's profits were taxed at, say, 5%. Say it was exempt from the depredations of red tape and tax regulations: payroll taxes etc etc. Would it be able to pull that 20,000 off its production costs to sell at a price that competes with the duty free imports from elsewhere.

 

[mmm....shiney!]

Well for anyone interested, going back to the OP, I think it was erroneous to suggest funding the paddle.

Except you did argue:

being save in the good times of markets for public expenditure in the inevitable downturn of markets, and smooth out those depression/bubble curves.

So you are very much in favour of government funding.

think the gist of Yanis' views was the involvement of government in promoting and facilitating industry and manufacturing.

I should have thought at the start, perhaps the solution for government to just get out of the way. Would we be looking at the collapse of an unviable car industry if that car industry's profits were taxed at, say, 5%. Say it was exempt from the depredations of red tape and tax regulations: payroll taxes etc etc. Would it be able to pull that 20,000 off its production costs to sell at a price that competes with the duty free imports from elsewhere.

Don't forget eliminating the minimum wage as well.

 

[JulieW]

I'm willing to modify my views when others throw light on the issues. Otherwise I wouldn't post and discuss things here. I'd just sit back and yell at the telly.