Category Archives: Quora

Quora: I’m sick of paying for everyone else’s kids to go to school. Why can’t people without children pay smaller amounts of school tax than people with children?

Why? Because we live in a world populated by morons that can’t seem to comprehend the idea that just because an investment (yes, education is an investment) benefits other people indirectly doesn’t therefore require all of “society” pay for said investment through a progressive theft (taxation) scheme

My God people. So a factory is built and it employs people and produces goods we all enjoy, does that mean “society” should pay to have all factories built? To subsidize all business creation? I invest in a car so I can get to work and I’m a heart surgeon. Guess without that car I couldn’t operate on people. I guess “society” has to buy me a car otherwise you have no right to think I should ever operate on you if you need my services.

“Society” benefits from everything everyone does (other than crimes of course). Does that mean every dang thing anyone does should be bought and paid for by some kid of tax?

The idea that without government schools throngs of children would be neglected and uneducated is absurd. So I guess all these same non-school inclined parents are now also neglecting to feed, clothe and provide shelter for their children too? Oh no you say of course they would do those things. All except for education. Right. Nope just sit at home and watch TV son. It’s alright

Government schools helping the least advantaged? Right! Where are the most common complaints about schooling levied? At the poorly run schools from poor districts. And that’s the outcome right now with government in charge. That’s your system folks. If the same occurred right now under a non government school environment you’d never hear the end of the screaming for the government to step in. But it happens on their watch and those of us insisting on a free market in education as the solution (and only moral system as it involves no theft) are called the crazy ones.

But I’m not surprised. What would you expect to come out of government indoctrination centers err I mean public schools but mindless brainwashed apologists for the very system that produced them. The lesson there is theft is perfectly fine as long as I can come up with an ex post facto reason why I think you might have indirectly benefited from the tax money I stole from you.

Quora: Social Contract question

Someone asked this question below, you can see it on Quora here

My reply is below

According to some libertarians, the idea of a social contract is invalid. If so, on what basis do they argue that I can’t steal, as I have never explicitly committed myself to respect their property?

The social contract is a cudgel that says one MUST act i.e. forcing one to engage in an activity one would otherwise avoid (eg taxation toward some putative communal good).

Not stealing compels no action. Not stealing is inaction. Not acting costs nothing. Acting carries a cost (opportunity cost e.g. I want to do x but the social contract forced me to do y). So forced or required action not explicitly agreed to carries with it an outside imposed burden.

The social contract is invalid not because it is imaginary but because it imposes costs not agreed to. So even if you believe basic tenets of morality (such as theft is wrong or murder and rape are wrong) are imaginary, it costs nothing to not engage in those activities. Indeed it is advantageous to not do so insofar as it creates additional opportunity to engage in other more productive activities.

Social contract limits choices. Morality expands them. Perhaps both are imaginary constructs but positive obligations are inherently more limiting than negative obligations.

Quora post: What are libertarian solutions to market failure in emergency healthcare?

My reply here:

There is no such thing as “market failure”. That’s just a term for “outcome I don’t like”

maybe if government got out of the way we’d see these solutions. People are quite innovative and I’m sure solutions I can’t fathom would crop up.

But lets take one example I presume is meant here. Someone needs emergency care and has no insurance or means to pay. Well we already had a solution for that but government killed it. We used to have numerous charitable church run hospitals that would supply such care at no or little cost. But then government got involved with Medicaid and Medicare and started paying everyone so why do stuff for free? Now everyone expects a hand out expecting to be paid by government and the church run hospitals lost their reason to exist and went away (there are only a handful left now).

Government distorts the market and creates the very failures that are so often pointed to.

The fallacy here is believing that 51% of the populations deems policy x so important that they elect people to carry out policy x but absent government somehow those same 51% would just shrug their shoulders and do nothing? No. They would support anyone trying to achieve end they desire

 

 

And then a good exchange below fleshing out the details a bit:

 

 

Qurora user

 

Greg Morin

Well you’ve got several scenarios mixed in here which are all quite dissimilar. If as you claim there is no market for some scenario how can that be a market failure? That’s like saying Christianity failed as a religion because it didn’t aid in maintaining societal cohesion in 12th century Mayan society. If something isn’t present how can its absence be blamed on it. Anyway.

To be clear, constrained or limited choices do not constitute “failure”. Just because options are limited doesn’t mean one is being “forced” into a choice. Force only applies if violence or the threat thereof is being employed to constrain ones choice (eg I choose to freely give my wallet to the mugger…my choice was constrained by the threat of violence so it’s not a real choice nor truly voluntary). But your example is no different than saying we are forced to work because Mother Nature threatens us with starvation if we don’t earn money to buy or grow our food. This fact of existence limits our choices in what we can do everyday of our lives. So if I break my leg and I end up in the hospital and my only option given there is amputation or death even though there actually does exist a better option at a different hospital two states over still doesn’t constitute failure. That’s just life. It’s no different then being in the wrong place at the wrong time…we don’t call that life failure. Sure it would be great if you could pull up an app on your phone that told you exactly where to go for the best care and you could teleport there in a second, but people who died before organ transplants existed weren’t sitting around discussing how the market had failed them because it had not invented a cure. Options in life are always constrained by the simple facts of our existence; who are parents are, where we live, where we go to school, who are neighbors are, what language(s) we speak etc. all of those factors can contribute to outcomes we deem positive or negative. Markets are no different because markets as a thing don’t exist…it’s just people doing stuff for other people. So going back to the hospital example and the broken leg, if you happen to end up in the best hospital in the country for that does that then “prove” markets work?

I think what you’re getting at is the classic “”information problem”. This is what the socialist believe, that a perfect market would be a socialist market because with perfect information the state could direct precisely the right amount of each good to produce just in time to satisfy all needs, and so all would be employed, with zero waste and maximum efficiency. And so anything that falls short of this utopian perfection is considered imperfect or a “failed” market. It’s an impossible standard as we are not omniscient beings, so perhaps it makes interfering intellectual fodder, but in the real world is of no real consequence.

its funny how markets are deemed to fail because one can come up with either real or hypothetical scenarios where some outcome was negative…yet such failures exist today under our state controlled markets and somehow that is never seen as a failure of state control. Indeed it just produces calls for more control. Indeed, if whipping the patient isn’t helping then surely the solution is to whip him even more.

Qurora user

 

Greg Morin

I think that this scenario would be such an extreme outlier (i.e. a person with no insurance, no identifying information, completely family-less and friendless, suffers a life threatening injury and is also unconcious) that indirect (outside groups) or direct (the hospital itself) would cover these 0.01% occurrences without a second thought.

It think the question to treat without explicit consent is a common libertarian debating point and there are differing opinions on it… but in my opinion you can call it implied consent or “when in doubt” principle or whatever, but I think it is entirely reasonable for people to assume that every person will always prefer any alternative to death and to then act on that assumption. Or to proceed on the course that reasonably seems it should produce the least amount of harm.

I just can’t see how anyone can argue with that position. To argue against it is to argue that you prefer to die over the notion of your right of consent being violated. Right. I don’t think you’ll find many takers on that one. 😉

Now maybe someone’s religion says they should not get medical treatment and they would prefer death, but doing so is not a rights violation per se as they are perfectly free to kill themselves later if they don’t like the outcome of being treated and the person doing the treating is acting in a reasonable and reciprocial way (that is they acted in a way they would wish to be acted upon were they in the same state).

And at the end of the day the whole notion of rights is about reciprocity… we cannot demand rights for ourselves that we are not ourselves willing to honor for others. If we say we have the right to kill other people and take their stuff then we have little cause to complain when someone does that to us. If we say we only have a right to our body and our property etc then we are obligated to respect those same rights in others. So acting on this unconcious injured victim comes down not to what version of rights that victim lives by (unless you happen to know what they are and thus are able to act according to them, but we’re assuming in this extreme example we have no idea what they are) but rather what version you live by (the one treating him/her). You must act in a way that is consistent with your views or how you would want to be acted upon (“do unto others…”)

So the libertarian position in my mind then is “do unto others” and I think 99.999% of people or institutions would treat them, but for the small minority that wouldn’t and let them die, that should be “legal” in the sense there is no legal obligation to act… of course the real world ramifications of not acting would probably be quite similar to it being illegal. pretty much everyone who thought that was a dick move would boycott the hospital or doctor or whatever and they would flush all value in their reputation down the toilet. So you don’t need a “state” to force these things on people… the morality of that society will most directly reflect what actions are approved and what are shunned and thus tend to eliminate those that are shunned… you’re free to do whatever you want, but you’re not free to avoid what others think about you for doing whatever you want.

 

 

Qurora user

Greg Morin

Well I was assuming a “libertarian” society in which case nearly everyone would have insurance 😉 because it would be so cheap, like car insurance… because medical costs would be reasonably and low. Otherwise it’s an unfair question, like assume everything is exactly as it is today but you just removed all government force… how would you solve this the day after that? Well of course you wouldn’t have some perfect solution as the entire structure of society has been distorted by state force such that we end up with these scenarios where medical costs are sky high and insunrace is likewise expensive due to mandates. It’s kinda like saying well the government forced me to sit in a wheelchair my whole life and the liberatrian solution is to get out of the wheelchair, but look when you get out you can’t walk, so clearly the libertarian solution is the wrong one.

But I would concede your point it might be a bit more common than 0.01% 😉 as one can still have family etc and not be able to get in touch in time. But far more people would have insurance so the question then just becomes one of how do we insure we can be identified and our insurance status determined if we are unconscious.

But not sure why you say that doesn’t happen right now? It does. I don’t recall the law’s name off hand but there is a federal mandate that hospitals must treat patients to the point they stablize them so they don’t die. They don’t have to “fix” everything, but they do have a legal obligation to keep them from dying. That does create some moral hazard as those that choose to remain uninsured know this and may rely on this in some small part. Now not everyone will but on the margins it must be happening.

In a libertarian world there would be a mix of hospitals that will treat you in these situations and those that won’t and might let you die… and you’ll never know which you might get, so this creates a big incentive to get insurance and carry that fact with you at all times!

But if the original question is asking how can we implement libertarian solutions within the framework of a state run society, i.e. just have some “reforms” while keeping everything else in place (mandates, regulations, certificates of need, moral hazards,e tc) then I don’t think there is such a solution… everything is connected, you can’t just change one small part without needing to change other parts in order for it all to work properly.

Qurora user

Quora post: Libertarians, why should I lean libertarian?

Here’s my reply:

It comes down to one simple question: do you believe that sometimes it is ok to initiate (that is, you are not responding to violence initiated against you) or threaten to initiate violence against others in order to achieve some end? Or stated differently, do you believe that sometimes the ends justify the means?

if you answer “yes” then you are not a libertarian but in order to not also be a hypocrite you should also happily accept whatever is done to you by the state in order that the state may achieve its putatively meritorious ends. Any objection to any state action in this situation would be hypocritical.

On the other hand if you answer “no” to this question then you are a libertarian and following this one simple rule in life will yield the correct answer whenever it is asked “”should the state do X?”

A Quora response

A recent Quora post of mine answering a question:

Why don’t we call people who don’t believe in climate change ‘deniers’ instead of ‘skeptics’?

 

For one reason and one reason only: it is a passive-aggressive ad hominem attack on any one holding that position meant to denigrate the holder of that viewpoint by cleverly associating them in the mind of the listener with holocaust deniers. We all know holocaust deniers are truly nuts (no I’m not being sarcastic, they are) so all we have to do is pluck that “denier” word from that usage and stick it over here to the same effect. You see the term “denier” is not used _anywhere_ else until today except for holocaust denial. We don’t call creationists “evolution deniers”. We don’t call the anti-vaccine crowd “vaccine deniers”… they all get their own separate neutral term. But no, for climate skeptics its “denialism” for you.

Yes there are a handful of nutjobs that say there is no change in the climate or no evidence, but they are the tiny minority. But I suppose its like anything, the small vocal group (islamic terrorist) give a bad name to the whole rest of the group that are perfectly reasonable. The climate question is not monolithic. It’s not simply “climate change” and that’s it. It includes

  1. Is CO2 increasing? Yes
  2. Is the temperature rising? Yes
  3. What is man’s contribution to the increase in CO2?
  4. What is the contribution of CO2 to temperature change?
  5. Will the rise in temperature have overall negative, neutral or positive outcomes for humanity? for other species?
  6. Should humans try to combat the percieved causes of the temperature rise?
  7. If they do should they do so in an economicaly mindful way (ie spend more to mitigate than the estimated cost of the damage)?

The problem is, you can agree with the establishment viewpoint on 1–6 but disagree on 7, and that makes you a pariah, a denier (just ask Bjørn Lomborg if you don’t believe me)

That is just not helpful. There are a lot of people like me who have legitimate, genuine questions, but they don’t get answered by the climate folk. We’re just told to “shut up and trust us” No. I’m a scientist as well (chemist) and I’m no idiot, I can understand your answers if only you’d bother to engage us actual skeptics who have actual legitimate questions. All I see on TV are climate scientists refusing to even sit in the same room with a climate skeptic. Sad. Thats’ not science, that’s religion, that’s belief. That’s denialism.