I did links for up through part 6. Will try to do the rest later.
Thanks for the post, interesting discussion.
Social democracies suffer from many internal contradictions. But the most obvious, the most glaring internal contradiction, is that on the one hand, the welfare programs and government expenditures are financed by the private sector, i.e., through taxes; and on the other hand, the majority will never accept the level of taxation required to finance the leviathan government. This is why the government resorts to theft via inflation–an anti-democratic process which forcefully redistributes wealth from the majority, to a minority. This contradiction is inescapable.
Of course, in a debate, I would also raise the calculation/coordination argument, as well as public choice theory. All in all, from what I saw, the debate was weak. The anarcho-capitalist position was once again defended by amateurs, and the social democrats continuously appeal to emotion (the whole thing isn’t available on youtube yet).
I stopped watching after Part 6. It was too frustrating. How can they let these guys get away with justifying everything by tyranny of the majority?
lmao!!!
I know. He said ever since Reagan came into office there have been no regulations in the market and I believe he said the last regulations that the market had were Keynesian but were rid of in the 1970’s.
Seriously, these guys seem to have the worldly perceptions of a four-year-old child.
I would love to produce a reality TV show where the two of them have to start a Jamba Juice business or something together from scratch. I’ll give them the capital and they’d need to do the rest. We’ll see how quickly they continue believing there’s no regulations and totally free enterprise.
What would be a good voluntaryist reply to the “one dollar, one vote” statement?
I haven’t heard the debate yet (so not entirely sure what they mean by it), but a start would be to point out that this would mean that Bernanke has all the votes.
That the vote counts?
I don’t understand what “one dollar, one vote” is even supposed to mean really. I was surprised how weak the voluntarists were once I got around to watching most of the videos. They really need to learn how to handle some of those objections better. Is #17 missing?
That’s a good answer. Thank you.
The voluntaryists often say that marked anarchy would mean that you vote with every purchase you make. Which is true in a sense. This is compared with the democracy in which you have only one vote every 4 or 5 years.
The standard reply of the statists is: This is not fair since the rich people have more votes than the poor. My question ist: What would be a good voluntaryist reply on that.
Heh.
Actually, these guys have probably been net tax consumers their whole adult life. They are living like a four-year-old child who hasn’t had to provide goods and services that other people voluntarily choose to trade for.
I thought they did okay, considering they kept their arguments simple and stuck to their strengths. It would have been nice to discuss a little more economics, but only if they could do so cogently, like pointing out Sweden actually has a higher tax rate for poorer people, since this actually hampers capital investment less and allows it’s unsustainable system to do comparitvely well.
Well, the economic arguments (from what I saw anyhow) were extremely lacking. A voluntary transaction satisfies both parties. A vote is an entirely different thing, so it really is a false analogy right from the start. I thought that socialists were bigger on direct democracy usually, but these guys retreated to mixed economy and democratic republicanism. They could have made the point that “representative elected officials”, do not truly represent the ruled in the same way that you represent me when I give you a dollar to run to the corner shop to get a soda for me.
In the sense that a dollar has “market influence”, sure it is true that the rich have more. In the US/Swedish system the elected officials are often rich and obviously have the influence of corporations. I don’t see how they are free from their own criticism.
In a democracy, people vote on how to control other people’s lives. Don’t like women? Ok, let’s mandate burkas and ban them from driving a car. That’s democracy.
In the market, you willingly trade with other willing participants. That means it’s a crime to try to control other people’s lives. Don’t like women? Ok, you can damage your own business and drive all the profits to your competitors.
Secondly, in the market the existence of people who are richer than you (who have capital and capital investments) are absolutely beneficial to you. They offer jobs, they offer cheaper and better products than otherwise would be the case. Where would you rather be as poor as only having one set of clothes and nothing else* (assuming a free market with no job regulations): in the bronze age or today?
(* that means having 0 dollars)
That is definitely important to point out as well. The socialists pounded them on the emotional appeals to poverty and such. The voluntarists needed to better show how government is destructive economically. It’s been a while since I skimmed this paper by Ayau, but it seems devoted to this specific subject.
I don’t have a good quote or response for that, but I’m pretty sure that a solid understanding of catallactics (market forces and how they affect prices and such) would be very beneficial here.
If we’re looking at dollars as votes… we should take notice that most dollars and most needs are in the hands of most people. Business compete (instead of monopolize like government) to get these votes. And the only way to get these votes is by pleasing the consumer.
The old lady, audience member, gave me a chuckle. She wondered about owning part of a river. When somebody up river doesn’t respect the property rights of somebody downriver (the example was a dam), the process goes through a dispute resolution firm, and she says what if the person doesn’t listen to the the resolution. The voluntaryist stated then it now comes down to self-defense since all peaceful negotiations had failed so he would go up and tear down the dam. The lady said, ‘But no you can’t.’ And the voluntaryist said, ‘Tell me why I can’t, you can’t just say ‘no I can’t’’. She negated his property rights and his capability of defending himself. The s.d. way is the dog-eat-dog world. The voluntaryist’s are advocating a just society.
All excellent points.
in their defense, its probably much easier to play office chair debater, and I think even a ‘neutral’ would probably give the debating edge to the Voluntaryists, even though they could have scored better.