[ExI] Who are the people? Who suffers?/was Re: Privatization and so called public "ownership"

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2009/7/16 Dan <dan_ust at yahoo.com>:

>> I don't think it's the default case that people will want
>> to manage
>> everything communally, but they do as a matter of fact
>> decide to
>> manage some things at least semi-communally, in that they
>> decide to have public services.
>
> Uh, no. The state or a group of people who petition the state to do this does exist, but this is not all people. If you agree, then how is this different than saying, "people" "do as a matter of fact decide to manage some things at least semi-" criminally, "in that they decide to have" criminal syndicates run some things?  :)

The criminals impose their will on others. The voluntary communal
organisations do not, except on their own members, who agree in being
part of the organisation that they will go along with the majority
decision even if they don't agree with every decision. This can happen
whenever two or more people get together and decide to do something. I
agree that as a strong principle it is best *not* to coerce people, as
far as possible. But sometimes people agree to be coerced. We might
all agree that project X which will cost each of us $Y is worth
pursuing, but it won't happen if we are able to make our contribution
voluntary; many of us will not contribute and the rest, if they even
have enough money, would have to contribute multiples of $Y, while not
receiving back multiples of utility from X as a result. Therefore, the
choice is between X with everyone agreeing to contribute (and to be
held to that agreement) or no X at all.

>> Rarely is the property so managed directly
>> "stolen"; that usually happens in revolutions, and the
>> revolutionaries
>> generally argue in their turn that they are taking the
>> property back
>> from thieves and returning it to its rightful owners.
>
> It is directly stolen in the form of taxes, eminent domain, and other means of coercive transfer. That such transfers require coercion -- e.g., the people whose wealth is being taken can't decide they don't want to transfer it -- is enough to describe them as not the product of their choice and deliberation, but of someone else forcing them to do something or to give up something. Anyone can, of course, claim people want to do something some way because some of them do it that way or because there's a coercive apparatus in place and they are forced to do it that way. But one can't really tell how they would do something until they are free to choose.

Are they really free to choose if they have to work and have to accept
the wage they are given, even though large profits are made off their
labour? This is something communists and anarchists call "theft", but
which is legal in capitalists societies.

>> As I have explained, allowed the freedom to choose people
>> often decide
>> that restaurants, shoe factories and farms are better
>> managed
>> privately and hospitals, schools and prisons are best
>> managed publicly.
>
> At best, some people have decided this. The rest did not. So there was no free choice -- such as taking a vote that is only binding if all parties consent -- but merely some people enforcing their policies (tax funding for hospitals, prisons, and compulsory schools) on others. The very fact that schooling is compulsory as well as tax funded, too, shows that some people must disagree with these things. If not, why are they forced to pay for or attend?

We get back to the problem of nothing being possible without unanimous decision.

>> The Soviets decreed that *everything* is best
>> managed
>> publicly, and the extreme capitalists decree that
>> *everything* is best managed privately.
>
> This is not my point. My point is that initiating coercion should be banned in society. That means that the notion of coercing people in the name of the majority, the people, the race, the nation, the proletariat, social efficiency, future generations, God, etc. is ruled out. If people then want to voluntarily manage some or all things communally, fine. But this would not give any more rights or powers to the people who decide on this than they formerly had -- in other words, Rafal and I can take a vote on how to communally manage your labor.

You would stick with this even if the end result was *more* violence
and coercion, due to untrammelled capitalism leading to an underclass
of near-slaves who have to work for a pittance or die, on the grounds
that this would not technically be violence or coercion?

>> Is it in general a better idea to base your
>> decision on how things are best run on experience and
>> observation of
>> how the different systems work, rather than blind ideology?
>
> I've nothing against observation. My point, though, has been that if you already start with false notions baked in, your observations are likely to go awry. Think of the case where people here have voiced the opinion that a free market in healthcare has failed and use as evidence of this failure the US healthcare system -- the very system where the government actually spends more perecentage-wise and in terms of absolute amount on healthcare and where regulation is extremely high. I.e., the very case where we're very far from a free market or any sort of voluntary system (free markets aren't the form of voluntary interaction). In that case, what does observation tell one? (This is leaving alone the difficulties of generalizing with data on societies and which data anyone will accept.)

You keep claiming this as evidence that public health care doesn't
work. But that is like claiming that private car companies don't work
because general Motors went bankrupt. Obviously, there are more
efficient and less efficient ways to spend money for a particular
purpose. The US spends public health money far less efficiently than
any other country does. The main point of difference seems to be that
the US system is not universal. There may be other differences leading
to inefficiency, and these need to be worked out, just as a private
company needs to observe their competitors and work out why they are
making more money than they are.

>> If your computer breaks and the insurance company buys you
>> another one
>> then who really owns the new computer: You? The insurance
>> company? All
>> the people who have paid premiums for longer than you have
>> and never
>> claimed, and whose premiums will now be increased by the
>> insurer to pay for your carelessness?
>
> We've been over this sort of example before. In this case, assuming no one is coerced, there's no problem. I'm not forced to buy computer insurance. No insurance company is forced to insure me. No one else is forced to buy insurance. All these are voluntary interactions. You can't generalize from the voluntary case -- one where someone agrees to buy me a new computer and however she or he got the money to pay for it was also voluntarily gotten -- to a coerce one -- one where someone is forced to buy me a new computer either directly (where the insurer is forced) or indirectly (where the insurers other customers are forced).

I'm forced to insure my apartment. As an apartment owner, I am happy
that I and everyone else is forced to do this. If I don't like it, I
can sell it. If I don't like paying taxes, I can choose not to work,
not to move to the tax-paying country, leave if I was born there, or
not work. These aren't ideal choices - I'd rather have it all my own
way.

>>> I grant that in might be tough to figure out who owns
>>> what if many are taxed, it's all put into one fund and the
>>> government doles it out for this or that item.  (And most
>>> government spending is pure consumption anyhow -- and almost
>>> all of this will never be recovered.  This is little
>>> different than the guy who robs your dinner and then eats
>>> it.  Yes, he owes you dinner, but the original property has
>>> been consumed.  One can imagine an extreme case of the guy
>>> robbing your dinner every night for years and not being able
>>> to compensate you -- maybe because he just can't afford to
>>> pay you back.  This is, sadly, the case with a lot of theft
>>> by government.)  But this doesn't change the principle.
>>
>> We could start a whole debate about the morality of
>> taxation again.
>> You think that taxation is immoral; I think that a refusal
>> to tax or pay tax is immoral. We're not going to agree.
>
> Taxation is unjust because it coerces people. It does so in a clearly observable way: they pay taxes because they fear the penalties of not paying taxes. This is no different than it's clearly observable that if an old lady is being mugged, she's not giving up her purse of her own volition.
>
> Now, you might believe, say, someone is getting services, so he or she should pay. That argument would be flawed because people cannot opt out of these services -- which would be like a restaurant charging me for a dinner I never wanted or agreed to have.
>
> Or you might believe that people should just be coerced because this serves some higher purpose. If that's the case, then any arguments about human suffering fall by the wayside and in a practical sense might makes right. After all, real human suffering will happen under coercion -- to be coerced is to suffer -- and it's anyone's guess if anyone is better off in the long-run from this.
>
> (To my knowledge, no one here has addressed the problem of how to measure suffering -- much less addressed my earlier use of pareto optimality and subjectivism here. Let me repeat this point: there seems no objective way of making such interpersonal comparisons. So, the best "meta-policy," from the perspective of not wanting to increase suffering, is to not to adopt policies that entail any more suffering. To wit, there's no way to tell if a policy that makes some people suffer while benefiting others really balances out, so pareto optimality forces out to seek policies where, at least, suffering is not increased. Put another way, pareto optimality counsels one not rob Peter to pay Paul because one can never tell if Peter's suffering is balanced out by Paul's gain. This is so even if Paul is suffering: one can't tell if Paul's suffer is worse than Peter's will be. To wit, policies that reckon these things in terms of social cost or other supposedly
>  objective measures are merely some person or group pretending, wittingly or not, that his/her/its subjective evaluation is objective -- that it knows who suffers, by how much, and can actually make valid decisions based on this.*)

I avoid measuring suffering by discussing only what people want;
presumably, they want that which they believe will cause them less
suffering. They vote to be taxed, so they believe, whether rightly or
wrongly, that taxation will cause them less suffering than the
alternative. Some would prefer not to be taxed, but a voluntary tax
won't work since no-one would pay it (not even those who want to be
taxed). So the alternative is to allow a policy which most people,
perhaps even all the people, believe will cause them more suffering on
the grounds that implementing the policy will be coercive and that
coercion is bad because it causes suffering.

Another question to ask is, Where does your non-coercion principle
come from and why is it invulnerable to criticism while you can easily
dismiss other ethical principles that many people hold dear, such as
the right of the weak to be cared for by their society or the right of
a worker to get the full value of his labour?



-- 
Stathis Papaioannou