21–30 of 160 posts
This raises an interesting follow up question. Do those surveyed consider themselves to be the wealthy? Or do they expect someone else to be making do with less to make the redistributive policies work?
Which is in fact the most likely outcome.
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This is not a problem of regulation, but a problem of law enforcement; there is no need or regulation "don't sell horse meat as beef", but to remove the US legal system plague of settlements where companies pay money to get rid of investigations and claim "they have no fault". I know a real case of horse meat sold as beef in UK and they have lots of regulations (including the EU on top of local). You can put all the…
Um, you can't have law enforcement without laws to enforce...
> So their overall approach is unique: Let the markets operate how they should and redistribute income after the fact. Some people have called this new type of political animal the “liberaltarian.” That is, of course, the model that Nordic social democracies have followed for many years now. Denmark is by many measures significantly more free-market than the US; note their absence of minimum wage, mostly privatised f…
Not really. We still believe in market regulation like any sane approach to market does. Well functioning markets are made, they don't just emerge if you remove regulation (except when conditions are just right by accident). Liberaltarian approach is ideological approach to markets that ignores all research into markets.
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> Denmark is by many measures significantly more free-market than the US; note their absence of minimum wage, mostly privatised fire and ambulance services I’ve heard many US Libertarians say that they want the US Fire services completely privatized. We would stop paying taxes for this services and instead private services would spring up that we could chose to pay monthly for. The competition would drive down prices…
> We would stop paying taxes for this services and instead private services would spring up that we could chose to pay monthly for I don't think this would work very well, because I do want my neighbors to pay for fire-fighting services in case their house is set on fire. Moreover, to a proportionally lesser extent, I want their neighbors to pay for the same thing, and so on. There are a whole lot of cross-externalit…
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Redistribution is about giving everyone a stake in upholding a free society for everyone else. That's what actually makes for "freedom, as much as possible". The point is that we're doing it in almost the worst possible way; putting a lot of undue and costly burden on those who work, while not doing all that much for those whom we might want to benefit. UBI or NIT would be a vast improvement on what most developed co…
> putting a lot of undue and costly burden on those who work, while not doing all that much for those whom we might want to benefit I suppose "all that much" is the key term. Is European style redistribution (aka a nice flat, utilities, TV and smartphone, clothing, health insurance, food and cash money to spend on whatever you please) not all that much? It's not like we're wasting 90% of taxes on administrative overh…
> So their overall approach is unique: Let the markets operate how they should and redistribute income after the fact. Some people have called this new type of political animal the “liberaltarian.” That is, of course, the model that Nordic social democracies have followed for many years now. Denmark is by many measures significantly more free-market than the US; note their absence of minimum wage, mostly privatised f…
> Denmark is by many measures significantly more free-market than the US; note their absence of minimum wage, mostly privatised fire and ambulance services I’ve heard many US Libertarians say that they want the US Fire services completely privatized. We would stop paying taxes for this services and instead private services would spring up that we could chose to pay monthly for. The competition would drive down prices…
In order to remedy this, the insurance companies formed a collective fire department that we all pay for via a fire service levy that is part of our house insurance.
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Libertarian and redistribution have an obvious logic conflict, so you may be right about very weird friends. Libertarian base idea is freedom, as much as possible; redistribution is the opposite of freedom because you work, earn money and someone comes and takes it from you. Makes sense?
Redistribution is about giving everyone a stake in upholding a free society for everyone else. That's what actually makes for "freedom, as much as possible". The point is that we're doing it in almost the worst possible way; putting a lot of undue and costly burden on those who work, while not doing all that much for those whom we might want to benefit. UBI or NIT would be a vast improvement on what most developed co…
I think it's arguments like these (going back to conflict with socialists over such definitions) which lead to libertarians claiming they do not base their philosophy on "freedom" but rather "liberty". Which they more narrowly define as something like the freedom specifically from external force. Not the freedom to do whatever the hell you want no matter who it hurts etc.
> So their overall approach is unique: Let the markets operate how they should and redistribute income after the fact. Some people have called this new type of political animal the “liberaltarian.” That is, of course, the model that Nordic social democracies have followed for many years now. Denmark is by many measures significantly more free-market than the US; note their absence of minimum wage, mostly privatised f…
> That is, of course, the model that Nordic social democracies have followed for many years now. Not really. We still believe in market regulation like any sane approach to market does. Well functioning markets are made, they don't just emerge if you remove regulation (except when conditions are just right by accident). Liberaltarian approach is ideological approach to markets that ignores all research into markets.
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> We would stop paying taxes for this services and instead private services would spring up that we could chose to pay monthly for I don't think this would work very well, because I do want my neighbors to pay for fire-fighting services in case their house is set on fire. Moreover, to a proportionally lesser extent, I want their neighbors to pay for the same thing, and so on. There are a whole lot of cross-externalit…
It does sound horribly risky. I suppose in theory you could mandate basic levels of insurance, a bit like mandatory car insurance, but you'd probably end up with a costly, patchy mess like the US health system.
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Denmark has no minimum wage because it has a very strong union sector. So collective bargaining ensures there's an effective minimum wage equivalent. Which is why Denmark is also much less free market than the US. Businesses operate under strong social constraints, and power structures aren't one-sidedly pro-business/pro-corporate.
> very strong union sector Why is this not free market? Employees are part of the market as well. At some point you may argue that the unions form a cartel maybe. But that is another sign of a free (from state) market
Who cares if it's free market or not? A strong union presence is significantly more effective than a minimum wage. One amounts to a voice and the other amounts to table scraps. We typically associate unions as anti-free market, because the Right is pro free market and anti union, and the Left is pro regulation and pro union. I'm not talking Republicans and Democrats but Right and Left, to be clear.
I have some hope that people are tired of boxing themselves in, that they're realizing we need real solutions to real problems. It doesn't help when we gotcha each other with different political ideologies when they step outside of their boxes. If someone on the Right wants to argue that unions are Free Market, and that makes it palatable to them, high fives all around.