Also, full kudos to you, LC, for talking about buses that are "free at point of use" rather than "free". We all know that everything has to be paid for somehow. And I'd suggest that one of the characteristics of socialism is a tendency to sweep under the carpet the issue of who pays for all the goodies. Or pretend that the super-rich can easily spare enough to fund them.
Well, as a socialist hanging out with socialists a lot, if there's any "sweeping under the carpet", it's a transparent carpet. Because, how to pay for services offered free at the point of use is a big part of discussions between socialists Generally, most things turn out to be affordable through moderate taxation which doesn't significantly alter the costs to the average person. Classic examples are health care and education. You could have economic models where individuals/families pay their own costs for these services, and compare those with models where these services are free at the point of use with the costs shared across society. Health care tends to favour an insurance system (because most people need little health care, but those few who do face massive bills), to pay insurance premiums people need a higher income as this is an additional cost (or, their employer pays that - both result in greater costs to employers). Nationalised health care is demonstrably more efficient, so paying for that out of general taxation requires a smaller overall cost to employers, and provides for those who still fail to earn enough to buy insurance. If everyone pays for the education of their children then, again, people need more income to pay with added costs ultimately for employers. Paying for schooling from general taxation is, again, more efficient reducing the overall costs and also (if properly implemented) ensuring that everyone has access to education because an un-educated underclass is of benefit to no one, whereas if everyone has access to quality education this provides a higher skilled workforce of benefit to employers and society everywhere.
If we come back to the public transport example for a moment. If we have quality (ie: frequency service, number of routes that serve everyone) public transport that's free at the point of use then we make some savings in running the service (we don't have all those people involved in collecting fares and checking tickets) but we also give benefits to society - we don't need to spend as much on new roads, we have employees able to get to their place of work without the expense of driving (which also includes stress of sitting in traffic etc as well as financial costs of petrol and parking etc), getting into work having had coffee on the bus rather than spending the first quarter hour of the day having a coffee, which can increase productivity and create new jobs as businesses don't need to spend as much on provision of car parking spaces or paying employees enough to cover commuting costs. It will also lift many out of poverty, because there are lots of jobs out there which don't actually pay enough to cover commuting costs and removing those costs means they can spend money on food or other goods (boosting the economy more generally). Increases in economic activity and a bit of extra taxation (in most cases less than the gains from reduced commuting costs) can cover the costs of running the 'free' buses.
Of course, it would be right for the rich and super rich to pay their fair share to support society through taxation. But, the amount raised is not going to be that significant. This is a matter of justice rather than an un-exploited cash cow.
I feel the same way about much of Socialism in general. Too often it seeks to merely drag the top down rather than lift the bottom up, because when equality is the goal in and of itself it’s much quicker and easier to just make everybody equally poor.
I feel the same way about much of Socialism in general. Too often it seeks to merely drag the top down rather than lift the bottom up, because when equality is the goal in and of itself it’s much quicker and easier to just make everybody equally poor.
You're happy with more public transport, and I know you're happy with segregated bike lanes and pedestrianisation. But all of these come with the understanding that that's for other people to use. You're just going to drive your car.
Seems like your problem is not the quality of the services on offer, but that some people will still choose better options if they can. Why is that?
I feel the same way about much of Socialism in general. Too often it seeks to merely drag the top down rather than lift the bottom up, because when equality is the goal in and of itself it’s much quicker and easier to just make everybody equally poor.
Aaaaaaaand we're back to conflating the democratic socialism advocated by most Western socialists with totalitarian communist regimes.
Bored now.
"Socialism" includes its more extreme versions, and I said "too often" rather than "always".
Besides, it's not like you guys are always completely scrupulous about the fact that most Western capitalists advocate mixed economies rather than winner-takes-all Ayn Rand libertarianism. Sauce for the goose, and all that - if you get to attack capitalism on the basis of its most extreme expressions then we get to attack socialism on the same basis.
On another thread we've been discussing the doughnut approach to economics, which puts a successful society somewhere between an absolute minimum standard and sustainability across a range of social indicators.
Socialism has also traditionally operated on a similar sort of model. Standard of living (and, the income and other resources to support that) should fall within a band between the lowest acceptable and whatever is judged to be excess - of course, both "lowest acceptable" and "excessive" are generally quite subjective in implementation. Socialism would recognise that the best for society is to lift those below the lowest acceptable up to at least that minimum, and that that would require redistribution from the richest in most situations where the poor exist because the rich have exploited them. Universal provision of the necessities for a decent level of living is an efficient means of levelling up the poor - health care, schooling, housing, transport to work/school, etc. Some of that can be direct through free at the point of use services, or less directly through a universal basic income.
Socialism has also traditionally operated on a similar sort of model. Standard of living (and, the income and other resources to support that) should fall within a band between the lowest acceptable and whatever is judged to be excess - of course, both "lowest acceptable" and "excessive" are generally quite subjective in implementation.
I have no problem with setting a lower bound for standard of living below which nobody should be allowed to fall. None whatsoever. My problem is with setting an upper limit above which nobody is allowed to rise.
Socialism has also traditionally operated on a similar sort of model. Standard of living (and, the income and other resources to support that) should fall within a band between the lowest acceptable and whatever is judged to be excess - of course, both "lowest acceptable" and "excessive" are generally quite subjective in implementation.
I have no problem with setting a lower bound for standard of living below which nobody should be allowed to fall. None whatsoever. My problem is with setting an upper limit above which nobody is allowed to rise.
How do you propose to do that without some form of wealth redistribution from the rich to the poor?
We could, say, raise minimum wages so that they're genuinely living wages, with no one working 30h+ weeks needing benefit. If you owned a business with 100 employees and made £100,000 per year and average wage rise of £250 would cut your income to £75,000 - some of the money you would have made is now made by employees. If instead we introduce a UBI, and/or other universal provision such as free buses, that will be funded by taxation and higher earners will be paying more of that additional tax, more of what that £100,000 per year business owner earns will be support society through taxation. Both of those, and any other means of lifting the poor out of poverty that I've heard of, redistribute wealth from the top to the bottom. That is, it limits (but doesn't prevent) the ability of anyone to raise themselves a long way above the rest of society.
You're happy with more public transport, and I know you're happy with segregated bike lanes and pedestrianisation. But all of these come with the understanding that that's for other people to use. You're just going to drive your car.
Seems like your problem is not the quality of the services on offer, but that some people will still choose better options if they can. Why is that?
Because they're not 'better options', they're polluting, noisy, congesting options that still involve you inflicting cost on other people who don't want it and don't need it.
There is necessarily a limited amount of space in a town or city. If I'm going to take some of that space for bus only lanes, bike lanes, wider pavements and pedestrianised precincts, then space for cars will have to decrease.
If I'm going to free up the existing heavily congested road network that is mainly clogged (80%) by private cars in order to get the public transport running reliably, then I'm going to have to use both stick and carrot to do that (because some people absolutely won't stop driving their cars everywhere).
If I'm going to improve air quality enough that it stops killing and maiming people - and it's not just tailpipe emissions, it's also brake and tyre particulates - then I'm going to have to take traffic management seriously and not leave it as a free-for-all.
So, yes. In the real world where unicorns don't exist, the idea that good mass public transport can co-exist with unfettered car use is a fantasy. You might hate the idea of being even slightly fettered, but I don't care about that.
I feel the same way about much of Socialism in general. Too often it seeks to merely drag the top down rather than lift the bottom up, because when equality is the goal in and of itself it’s much quicker and easier to just make everybody equally poor.
Aaaaaaaand we're back to conflating the democratic socialism advocated by most Western socialists with totalitarian communist regimes.
Bored now.
"Socialism" includes its more extreme versions, and I said "too often" rather than "always".
Besides, it's not like you guys are always completely scrupulous about the fact that most Western capitalists advocate mixed economies rather than winner-takes-all Ayn Rand libertarianism. Sauce for the goose, and all that - if you get to attack capitalism on the basis of its most extreme expressions then we get to attack socialism on the same basis.
Point is though we criticise Capitalism for the effects it is having on the most vulnerable in Capitalism-based mixed economies which are actually advocated by a significant proportion of people in those countries since these economies are implemented by governments elected by a significant proportion of their electorates.
On the other hand, absolutely no-one here is advocating emulating either the Soviet Union or the Cuba. You might whine that from your somewhat skewed viewpoint you think it's "fair", but it's still bleedin' irrelevant.
They're selfish options that offload the cost on to non-consenting individuals. Again, I don't think you care about that, but I can't explain to you why you should.
I think it resembles the prisoner's dilemma. Everyone is better off if everybody who can use public transport does. But many people individually may be better off using a car as long as other people don't change their mode of transport.
The problem with not setting a cap on how rich people can get is that high inequality is both intrinsically stressful for everybody, is self-reinforcing, and enables abuses.
The abuses are the most obvious point: money is power. If a lot of the wealth in a society is concentrated in a few hands markets become much more responsive to the interests of people with lots of money and less responsive to the interests of people with little money.
(For example, if a few people have a lot of money to invest that favours risky investment strategies with high payoffs, such as in companies with strategies of undercutting rivals to gain a monopoly, rather than investing across a range of competitive businesses.)
In a democratic and liberal society people with money are much more able to get access to (or own) the media, to fund research that they like the sound of, to fund politicians whose programs try agree with, and so on.
Besides that, high levels of inequality drive down social cohesion, create feelings of envy and inadequacy in people in the low to middle part of the distribution and feelings of insecurity in the higher part of the distribution and impedes social mobility.
I feel the same way about much of Socialism in general. Too often it seeks to merely drag the top down rather than lift the bottom up, because when equality is the goal in and of itself it’s much quicker and easier to just make everybody equally poor.
I think Karl covered this well but really? Democratic Socialism = Communism? That's the best you can do?
It is a major fallacy of so much of the political discourse that unfettered predatory capitalism is given a free-pass because the only alternative is the evils of communism. It is very tedious and not remotely constructive. It's also I think it's a bit of an historical accident as well. The similarities between fascism and communisms are obvious such that it's hardly an original observation to say that the political spectrum is really a ring. In many ways, fascism disappeared as a threat from the public's consciousness (in the West) since WWII, whilst right up to 1990 it was seen as a real danger in Europe. Thus the strawman of Communism has remained a really useful rhetorical trick when you want to attack anyone who is remotely left of centre. This is especially true on the Left side of the Atlantic.
To counter your original point, about levelling down... how's that looking from a health and education point of view? Have rich people become less healthy and less well off because of providing health and education to all?
Coming back to the car issue; It is a very narrow perspective that says a city not allowing (or discouraging) me from driving my car into the city is unfair to me because it is an unwarrented restriction on my freedom. That's the key there. If I am free to drive my car into a city, then I am free to pollute the air of said city. It is not remotely unreasonable for the people who live there to consider that their freedom to breath clean air is also important.
No one here is trying to argue that cars are evil and must be stopped. However on a planet that we share, surely we can have a rational discussion about various policies and their implications. For me, the issue with cars is that far too often there are not practical or useful alternatives. I want the freedom of such alternatives.
No one here is trying to argue that cars are evil and must be stopped. However on a planet that we share, surely we can have a rational discussion about various policies and their implications. For me, the issue with cars is that far too often there are not practical or useful alternatives. I want the freedom of such alternatives.
AFZ
I would add the addendum that some existing options will have to be curtailed in order to provide the space to make the alternative options practical. We accept such curtailments as normal in almost every other aspect of our lives, and so should we here, for the greater good.
They're selfish options that offload the cost on to non-consenting individuals. Again, I don't think you care about that, but I can't explain to you why you should.
Do you think imposing costs on non-consenting individuals is always a bad thing? If not, how do you decide when it's OK and when it's not?
I think it resembles the prisoner's dilemma. Everyone is better off if everybody who can use public transport does. But many people individually may be better off using a car as long as other people don't change their mode of transport.
Yes, and in the Prisoner's Dilemma the only logical move for any individual to make is to defect, that is to take the selfish option.
I think it resembles the prisoner's dilemma. Everyone is better off if everybody who can use public transport does. But many people individually may be better off using a car as long as other people don't change their mode of transport.
Yes, and in the Prisoner's Dilemma the only logical move for any individual to make is to defect, that is to take the selfish option.
Isn't that one reason why we have politics, policies and legislation? To constrain actions rather than leaving everyone to selfish PD options?
The Prisoner's Dilemma involves the prisoners being in isolation and making a decision without any information about what the other prisoner will do (even information like the prisoners, or one of them, having a reputation for talking or keeping quiet will change the outcome). But, we're not in that situation - we can find out how others will respond to our decisions before we get to make them.
But it's not obvious that a park-and-ride system is a moral right... If you're planning a transport improvement, then a utilitarian metric - does this make things better on balance for everybody - seems appropriate. And the status quo is the do-nothing baseline against which the pros and cons of any proposal should be measured. What other would you use ?
Your claim was that your proposal should improve things for everyone, which I think is too high a bar, and not at all necessary for a utility-maximizing metric. If some proposed change makes things a lot better for one group of people, and very slightly worse for another group of people, that's probably a win over all.
It certainly makes sense to compare to the status quo, but there's no particular reason to favour the current distribution of benefit among the different groups. For example, planning over the last several decades has tended to favour the car user over other users of urban spaces (pedestrians, cyclists, public transport users, ...). That bias is the status quo, but there's no a priori reason to want to continue that bias.
Various posters on this thread have, in fact, made the case for not continuing that bias. So if a change to make public transport much better also makes car use a little worse (such as, for example, the construction of dedicated bus lanes, which make buses mostly immune to congestion, but make congestion worse for cars), we shouldn't rule it out just because the car user's life will get a little worse.
They're selfish options that offload the cost on to non-consenting individuals. Again, I don't think you care about that, but I can't explain to you why you should.
Do you think imposing costs on non-consenting individuals is always a bad thing? If not, how do you decide when it's OK and when it's not?
If, by this argument, you're suggesting that your non-consent extends to things like laws and taxes, then this isn't a road I'm going down, using any form of transport.
Your liberty to swing your fist ends at my nose. That's the principle.
But it's not obvious that a park-and-ride system is a moral right... If you're planning a transport improvement, then a utilitarian metric - does this make things better on balance for everybody - seems appropriate. And the status quo is the do-nothing baseline against which the pros and cons of any proposal should be measured. What other would you use ?
Your claim was that your proposal should improve things for everyone, which I think is too high a bar, and not at all necessary for a utility-maximizing metric. If some proposed change makes things a lot better for one group of people, and very slightly worse for another group of people, that's probably a win over all.
To take an historical example, abolishing slavery in the U.S. made things better for the 12.7% of the population that was enslaved (1860 census) but worse for the 1.7% of the population that owned slaves (ibid.) Thus because it didn't "make things better on balance for everybody" abolishing American slavery was wrong according to @Russ.
Of course, this may be an under-estimate. Something like 9.8% of American households owned slaves in 1860, so a person might not own any slaves themselves but have use of slaves legally owned by their [ spouse / parent / sibling / child / whatever ]. Does this higher percentage of those disadvantaged by the abolition of American slavery alter the moral calculus of abolition?
I'm not sure Pareto optimality is the right standard for questions like this.
... My problem is with setting an upper limit above which nobody is allowed to rise.
Serious question: WHY? Why do you want your society to have kajillionaires? What purpose do they serve? Why do you want a tiny group of people to control practically all your society's wealth? How does their existence make life better for your fellow citizens? Heck, how do they make your life better?
I seem to recall a character in Downton Abbey claiming that aristocrats were essential to society because they employed large numbers of servants. We know "trickle-down economics" is bullshit. Puh-lease don't say you want to give hope to the poor that anyone can be a kajillionaire, because we know it just ain't so.
All that mega-wealth isn't created from nothing; it's taken from the millions of people who have much, much less. So what's your reason for wanting to impoverish the rest of us for the benefit of the gold-toilet club?
The usual proposal is that when someone gets to be a billionaire, they get a trophy with their name on it, and a badge they can wear with "I won at capitalism!" on it.
... My problem is with setting an upper limit above which nobody is allowed to rise.
Serious question: WHY?
So that it’s possible, however remotely, for me to become one of them. To escape the endless drudgery of having to work for a living. To be able to do what I want, when I want. Something to aspire to, to aim for, to hope for.
Hope is important. If nobody is allowed to get rich enough to never have to work again then it means there’s no escape, no way out, no hope. Nobody wins, everybody loses.
... My problem is with setting an upper limit above which nobody is allowed to rise.
Serious question: WHY?
So that it’s possible, however remotely, for me to become one of them. To escape the endless drudgery of having to work for a living. To be able to do what I want, when I want.
It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces but let us judge not that we be not judged.
... My problem is with setting an upper limit above which nobody is allowed to rise.
Serious question: WHY?
So that it’s possible, however remotely, for me to become one of them. To escape the endless drudgery of having to work for a living. To be able to do what I want, when I want. Something to aspire to, to aim for, to hope for.
How much would that need? Assuming you don't want to do something like buy a small nation you're not going to need an income of millions of quid. A one off lump sum to pay off the mortgage, and you'd be able to go part time and have income and time or take a lower paid job that you'd enjoy doing getting paid for doing something you enjoy.
Can you remind us of your opinions of a universal basic income.
Even if you wanted enough money never to have to worry about it again, you wouldn't need a billion pounds to achieve that - let alone multiple billions.
Also you may have noticed most billionaires work in some way shape or form. This is not an accident. People without and structure or purpose in their lives tend to be very unhappy - you have to get it from somewhere.
... My problem is with setting an upper limit above which nobody is allowed to rise.
Serious question: WHY?
So that it’s possible, however remotely, for me to become one of them. To escape the endless drudgery of having to work for a living. To be able to do what I want, when I want. Something to aspire to, to aim for, to hope for.
How much would that need? Assuming you don't want to do something like buy a small nation you're not going to need an income of millions of quid.
With my current expectations it's probably about £100k a year (after tax), although it would depend on how big a house I got and how many people I'd need to employ to do all the cleaning, gardening and cooking. Assuming another 40 years of life that works out to about £4 million in total if I don't want to have anything left at the end to leave to my kids.
More than that would enable me to go on more foreign trips (and boy would I love to be able to spend most of the winter on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean rather than in dark, damp, freezing cold Britain) or fund more of the charities I support.
A one off lump sum to pay off the mortgage, and you'd be able to go part time and have income and time or take a lower paid job that you'd enjoy doing getting paid for doing something you enjoy.
Part time work is still work. It's still something you have to turn up to whether you feel like it or not. And I'm not convinced that even my favourite thing in the world would be much fun if I had to do it all the time.
Can you remind us of your opinions of a universal basic income.
Also you may have noticed most billionaires work in some way shape or form. This is not an accident. People without and structure or purpose in their lives tend to be very unhappy - you have to get it from somewhere.
Work is not the only possible source of structure and purpose. Not unless you redefine the word to mean literally anything someone chooses to do.
With my current expectations it's probably about £100k a year (after tax), although it would depend on how big a house I got and how many people I'd need to employ to do all the cleaning, gardening and cooking.
With my current expectations it's probably about £100k a year (after tax), although it would depend on how big a house I got and how many people I'd need to employ to do all the cleaning, gardening and cooking.
Really, the absolute state of this.
So you're fine with the idea of me having to work for other people, but not other people having to work for me?
With my current expectations it's probably about £100k a year (after tax), although it would depend on how big a house I got and how many people I'd need to employ to do all the cleaning, gardening and cooking.
Really, the absolute state of this.
So you're fine with the idea of me having to work for other people, but not other people having to work for me?
Which part of "collective ownership of the means of production" did you not understand?
because it didn't "make things better on balance for everybody" abolishing American slavery was wrong according to @Russ.
No, I made the distinction between an argument from rights and an argument from increase in overall welfare. If you have a right to do something, you may do it even when it would in utilitarian terms be better if you didn't.
The case against slavery is an issue of rights. Someone who's against it only where it's not the best system in utilitarian terms isn't really against it.
Your claim was that your proposal should improve things for everyone, which I think is too high a bar, and not at all necessary for a utility-maximizing metric. If some proposed change makes things a lot better for one group of people, and very slightly worse for another group of people, that's probably a win over all.
If a proposal genuinely makes things a lot better for some and only a little worse for others why can't the winners compensate the losers so that it's better for everyone ?
Maybe it's not a higher bar, just a different way of looking at the same bar ?
In general it may be that the cost of administering such compensation makes it impractical or inefficient to do so in practice.
That's not the case here - if you've a transit system that's part-funded by user charges and part-funded by taxation on those who as a group experience the decongestion and air quality benefits, you've an obvious mechanism for setting the relative contributions so that everybody gains.
If you had a system of decision-making that required universal consensus then only such projects would be implemented. (Which is not to say that there may be problems with such a system).
If a scheme you favour doesn't meet the better-for-everyone test even in theory, what does that mean ?
I suspect it means that people in general don't actually value some things (? marginal gains in air quality?) as much as you think they ought to, and actually value some other things (?not having to wait in line for a bus on a cold day?) more than you think they ought to. So that when you talk about something being "a lot better" or "slightly worse" you're referring to your value system rather than theirs.
With my current expectations it's probably about £100k a year (after tax), although it would depend on how big a house I got and how many people I'd need to employ to do all the cleaning, gardening and cooking.
Really, the absolute state of this.
So you're fine with the idea of me having to work for other people, but not other people having to work for me?
Which part of "collective ownership of the means of production" did you not understand?
The part where it's at all relevant to what I just said, apparently.
If a proposal genuinely makes things a lot better for some and only a little worse for others why can't the winners compensate the losers so that it's better for everyone ?
Why are you privileging the status quo? Suppose that a town has a football pitch, paid for out of public funds, and used by various football teams in the town to play matches. Suppose the town also has several hockey clubs, who would also like to use the pitch to play their matches.
It seems reasonable on the face of it that this common resource should be available to those who want to play hockey on it, as well as those who want to play football on it. There's no reason why the state should privilege football over hockey.
So the town says "fine. one weekend a month, hockey matches will be played on the pitch. (that roughly matching the relative numbers of football and hockey players)".
The football players are worse off, because they only get the pitch three weeks out of four. You'd like the hockey players to compensate the football players in some way for their loss. I'd say that the status quo ante unjustly favoured the football players, and there's no reason whatsoever for them to be compensated for having to share the space.
I suspect it means that people in general don't actually value some things (? marginal gains in air quality?) as much as you think they ought to, and actually value some other things (?not having to wait in line for a bus on a cold day?) more than you think they ought to. So that when you talk about something being "a lot better" or "slightly worse" you're referring to your value system rather than theirs.
I suspect that it means that the chief beneficiaries of improved public transport are the people who use public transport anyway, even though it's bad, because they haven't got any choice. Poor people who can't afford to buy and operate a car. Children and old people who can't safely drive a car.
People who currently use cars, but would use public transport if it was better, are by construction marginal users. They're not going to be personally much different if public transport were improved.
So tell me, Russ. If I improve public transport, so that a bunch of poor people spend less long waiting at bus stops, how would you like them to compensate the middle manager who spends an extra five or ten minutes sitting in his car? Perhaps they should use the shinier bus service to pop round to his house of an evening, and use some of their extra time to clean his car?
It's like nobody on this thread has mentioned the need for technological change to reduce or eliminate the pollution generated by motor vehicles.
I'm glad to know that will also stop them from running over and killing people.
The point is the current level, and projected increase if policies do not change, of motor vehicles in urban areas is unsustainable. It has to decrease. It's not a mere matter of taste and preference as Russ would have it; there are objective problems which have to be resolved. And resolving it may involve some people not being able to do exactly what they like with their cars any more.
Is there not a danger that the discussion is failing to distinguish between individual and collective choice on the one hand and capitalism and socialism on the other. The resolution of the traffic problem to all but the most ideological individualist requires a decision and the societal level, but that does mean it will be socialist in character. A socialist solution would be one that promotes a bias towards greater social and economic equality, a capitalist solution would, presumably, be governed by a different set of priorities.
Is there not a danger that the discussion is failing to distinguish between individual and collective choice on the one hand and capitalism and socialism on the other. The resolution of the traffic problem to all but the most ideological individualist requires a decision and the societal level, but that does mean it will be socialist in character. A socialist solution would be one that promotes a bias towards greater social and economic equality, a capitalist solution would, presumably, be governed by a different set of priorities.
I think that's what we've been trying to tell Russ for several pages now.
because it didn't "make things better on balance for everybody" abolishing American slavery was wrong according to @Russ.
No, I made the distinction between an argument from rights and an argument from increase in overall welfare. If you have a right to do something, you may do it even when it would in utilitarian terms be better if you didn't.
The case against slavery is an issue of rights. Someone who's against it only where it's not the best system in utilitarian terms isn't really against it.
That's always been the case, there's just some disagreement about the rights in question. Those against slavery argue that it violates the right of personal liberty. Those in favor argue that its abolition is a violation of property rights. After all, if the state can come in and "set an upper limit above which nobody is allowed to rise", like the ownership of other human beings, isn't that "removing options from everyone else"? Something which other posters have posited as self-evidently a Bad Thing.
If a proposal genuinely makes things a lot better for some and only a little worse for others why can't the winners compensate the losers so that it's better for everyone ?
Given that the British Empire paid former slave owners compensation (which, as government debt, they've only just finished paying interest on), that's exactly what happened.
Of course, it depends on your definition of 'winners' and 'losers', given that not a penny was offered to the former slaves in restitution for their enforced kidnap, imprisonment and labour, and all the horrors thereof.
Is there not a danger that the discussion is failing to distinguish between individual and collective choice on the one hand and capitalism and socialism on the other. The resolution of the traffic problem to all but the most ideological individualist requires a decision and the societal level, but that does mean it will be socialist in character. A socialist solution would be one that promotes a bias towards greater social and economic equality, a capitalist solution would, presumably, be governed by a different set of priorities.
Point of order: the capitalist solution is what we have now. And it's not really a solution.
I'm glad to know that will also stop them from running over and killing people.
This is actually one of the things that the proponents of the technological change known as "self-driving cars" hope for, and also a somewhat familiar theme in SF: it being illegal to operate a private vehicle in an urban area under human control, because the computer is significantly less dangerous to pedestrians.
But that doesn't solve the congestion issue, of course, and the simple fact is exactly as you stated. Densely-occupied urban areas aren't compatible with widespread private car use - some form of mass transit supports significantly denser occupancy.
Some individual vehicle use will always be necessary - moving around large objects (whether it's shopping, or you're moving home, or you've just built a table and are delivering it to your Aunt May), some people with mobility issues (wheelchair users with adapted vehicles, for example).
In the UK, Motability (grants for adapted cars for the disabled) has been running since 1977. The Equalities Act (2010) finally forced public transport operators to be 'accessible'.
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If we come back to the public transport example for a moment. If we have quality (ie: frequency service, number of routes that serve everyone) public transport that's free at the point of use then we make some savings in running the service (we don't have all those people involved in collecting fares and checking tickets) but we also give benefits to society - we don't need to spend as much on new roads, we have employees able to get to their place of work without the expense of driving (which also includes stress of sitting in traffic etc as well as financial costs of petrol and parking etc), getting into work having had coffee on the bus rather than spending the first quarter hour of the day having a coffee, which can increase productivity and create new jobs as businesses don't need to spend as much on provision of car parking spaces or paying employees enough to cover commuting costs. It will also lift many out of poverty, because there are lots of jobs out there which don't actually pay enough to cover commuting costs and removing those costs means they can spend money on food or other goods (boosting the economy more generally). Increases in economic activity and a bit of extra taxation (in most cases less than the gains from reduced commuting costs) can cover the costs of running the 'free' buses.
Of course, it would be right for the rich and super rich to pay their fair share to support society through taxation. But, the amount raised is not going to be that significant. This is a matter of justice rather than an un-exploited cash cow.
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Aaaaaaaand we're back to conflating the democratic socialism advocated by most Western socialists with totalitarian communist regimes.
Bored now.
No it sodding isn't. My problem is with saying that providing good services for the poor necessarily means removing options from everyone else.
And you know that. I know you do, because of this post:
Seems like your problem is not the quality of the services on offer, but that some people will still choose better options if they can. Why is that?
"Socialism" includes its more extreme versions, and I said "too often" rather than "always".
Besides, it's not like you guys are always completely scrupulous about the fact that most Western capitalists advocate mixed economies rather than winner-takes-all Ayn Rand libertarianism. Sauce for the goose, and all that - if you get to attack capitalism on the basis of its most extreme expressions then we get to attack socialism on the same basis.
Socialism has also traditionally operated on a similar sort of model. Standard of living (and, the income and other resources to support that) should fall within a band between the lowest acceptable and whatever is judged to be excess - of course, both "lowest acceptable" and "excessive" are generally quite subjective in implementation. Socialism would recognise that the best for society is to lift those below the lowest acceptable up to at least that minimum, and that that would require redistribution from the richest in most situations where the poor exist because the rich have exploited them. Universal provision of the necessities for a decent level of living is an efficient means of levelling up the poor - health care, schooling, housing, transport to work/school, etc. Some of that can be direct through free at the point of use services, or less directly through a universal basic income.
I have no problem with setting a lower bound for standard of living below which nobody should be allowed to fall. None whatsoever. My problem is with setting an upper limit above which nobody is allowed to rise.
We could, say, raise minimum wages so that they're genuinely living wages, with no one working 30h+ weeks needing benefit. If you owned a business with 100 employees and made £100,000 per year and average wage rise of £250 would cut your income to £75,000 - some of the money you would have made is now made by employees. If instead we introduce a UBI, and/or other universal provision such as free buses, that will be funded by taxation and higher earners will be paying more of that additional tax, more of what that £100,000 per year business owner earns will be support society through taxation. Both of those, and any other means of lifting the poor out of poverty that I've heard of, redistribute wealth from the top to the bottom. That is, it limits (but doesn't prevent) the ability of anyone to raise themselves a long way above the rest of society.
Making it slightly harder is miles away from making it impossible.
Because they're not 'better options', they're polluting, noisy, congesting options that still involve you inflicting cost on other people who don't want it and don't need it.
There is necessarily a limited amount of space in a town or city. If I'm going to take some of that space for bus only lanes, bike lanes, wider pavements and pedestrianised precincts, then space for cars will have to decrease.
If I'm going to free up the existing heavily congested road network that is mainly clogged (80%) by private cars in order to get the public transport running reliably, then I'm going to have to use both stick and carrot to do that (because some people absolutely won't stop driving their cars everywhere).
If I'm going to improve air quality enough that it stops killing and maiming people - and it's not just tailpipe emissions, it's also brake and tyre particulates - then I'm going to have to take traffic management seriously and not leave it as a free-for-all.
So, yes. In the real world where unicorns don't exist, the idea that good mass public transport can co-exist with unfettered car use is a fantasy. You might hate the idea of being even slightly fettered, but I don't care about that.
If that were true, people wouldn't choose them.
Point is though we criticise Capitalism for the effects it is having on the most vulnerable in Capitalism-based mixed economies which are actually advocated by a significant proportion of people in those countries since these economies are implemented by governments elected by a significant proportion of their electorates.
On the other hand, absolutely no-one here is advocating emulating either the Soviet Union or the Cuba. You might whine that from your somewhat skewed viewpoint you think it's "fair", but it's still bleedin' irrelevant.
They're selfish options that offload the cost on to non-consenting individuals. Again, I don't think you care about that, but I can't explain to you why you should.
The abuses are the most obvious point: money is power. If a lot of the wealth in a society is concentrated in a few hands markets become much more responsive to the interests of people with lots of money and less responsive to the interests of people with little money.
(For example, if a few people have a lot of money to invest that favours risky investment strategies with high payoffs, such as in companies with strategies of undercutting rivals to gain a monopoly, rather than investing across a range of competitive businesses.)
In a democratic and liberal society people with money are much more able to get access to (or own) the media, to fund research that they like the sound of, to fund politicians whose programs try agree with, and so on.
Besides that, high levels of inequality drive down social cohesion, create feelings of envy and inadequacy in people in the low to middle part of the distribution and feelings of insecurity in the higher part of the distribution and impedes social mobility.
I think Karl covered this well but really? Democratic Socialism = Communism? That's the best you can do?
It is a major fallacy of so much of the political discourse that unfettered predatory capitalism is given a free-pass because the only alternative is the evils of communism. It is very tedious and not remotely constructive. It's also I think it's a bit of an historical accident as well. The similarities between fascism and communisms are obvious such that it's hardly an original observation to say that the political spectrum is really a ring. In many ways, fascism disappeared as a threat from the public's consciousness (in the West) since WWII, whilst right up to 1990 it was seen as a real danger in Europe. Thus the strawman of Communism has remained a really useful rhetorical trick when you want to attack anyone who is remotely left of centre. This is especially true on the Left side of the Atlantic.
To counter your original point, about levelling down... how's that looking from a health and education point of view? Have rich people become less healthy and less well off because of providing health and education to all?
Coming back to the car issue; It is a very narrow perspective that says a city not allowing (or discouraging) me from driving my car into the city is unfair to me because it is an unwarrented restriction on my freedom. That's the key there. If I am free to drive my car into a city, then I am free to pollute the air of said city. It is not remotely unreasonable for the people who live there to consider that their freedom to breath clean air is also important.
No one here is trying to argue that cars are evil and must be stopped. However on a planet that we share, surely we can have a rational discussion about various policies and their implications. For me, the issue with cars is that far too often there are not practical or useful alternatives. I want the freedom of such alternatives.
AFZ
I would add the addendum that some existing options will have to be curtailed in order to provide the space to make the alternative options practical. We accept such curtailments as normal in almost every other aspect of our lives, and so should we here, for the greater good.
Do you think imposing costs on non-consenting individuals is always a bad thing? If not, how do you decide when it's OK and when it's not?
Yes, and in the Prisoner's Dilemma the only logical move for any individual to make is to defect, that is to take the selfish option.
Isn't that one reason why we have politics, policies and legislation? To constrain actions rather than leaving everyone to selfish PD options?
Your claim was that your proposal should improve things for everyone, which I think is too high a bar, and not at all necessary for a utility-maximizing metric. If some proposed change makes things a lot better for one group of people, and very slightly worse for another group of people, that's probably a win over all.
It certainly makes sense to compare to the status quo, but there's no particular reason to favour the current distribution of benefit among the different groups. For example, planning over the last several decades has tended to favour the car user over other users of urban spaces (pedestrians, cyclists, public transport users, ...). That bias is the status quo, but there's no a priori reason to want to continue that bias.
Various posters on this thread have, in fact, made the case for not continuing that bias. So if a change to make public transport much better also makes car use a little worse (such as, for example, the construction of dedicated bus lanes, which make buses mostly immune to congestion, but make congestion worse for cars), we shouldn't rule it out just because the car user's life will get a little worse.
If, by this argument, you're suggesting that your non-consent extends to things like laws and taxes, then this isn't a road I'm going down, using any form of transport.
Your liberty to swing your fist ends at my nose. That's the principle.
To take an historical example, abolishing slavery in the U.S. made things better for the 12.7% of the population that was enslaved (1860 census) but worse for the 1.7% of the population that owned slaves (ibid.) Thus because it didn't "make things better on balance for everybody" abolishing American slavery was wrong according to @Russ.
Of course, this may be an under-estimate. Something like 9.8% of American households owned slaves in 1860, so a person might not own any slaves themselves but have use of slaves legally owned by their [ spouse / parent / sibling / child / whatever ]. Does this higher percentage of those disadvantaged by the abolition of American slavery alter the moral calculus of abolition?
I'm not sure Pareto optimality is the right standard for questions like this.
Serious question: WHY? Why do you want your society to have kajillionaires? What purpose do they serve? Why do you want a tiny group of people to control practically all your society's wealth? How does their existence make life better for your fellow citizens? Heck, how do they make your life better?
I seem to recall a character in Downton Abbey claiming that aristocrats were essential to society because they employed large numbers of servants. We know "trickle-down economics" is bullshit. Puh-lease don't say you want to give hope to the poor that anyone can be a kajillionaire, because we know it just ain't so.
All that mega-wealth isn't created from nothing; it's taken from the millions of people who have much, much less. So what's your reason for wanting to impoverish the rest of us for the benefit of the gold-toilet club?
And we tax all future wealth at 100%
So that it’s possible, however remotely, for me to become one of them. To escape the endless drudgery of having to work for a living. To be able to do what I want, when I want. Something to aspire to, to aim for, to hope for.
Hope is important. If nobody is allowed to get rich enough to never have to work again then it means there’s no escape, no way out, no hope. Nobody wins, everybody loses.
Counterpoint:
Can you remind us of your opinions of a universal basic income.
Also you may have noticed most billionaires work in some way shape or form. This is not an accident. People without and structure or purpose in their lives tend to be very unhappy - you have to get it from somewhere.
With my current expectations it's probably about £100k a year (after tax), although it would depend on how big a house I got and how many people I'd need to employ to do all the cleaning, gardening and cooking. Assuming another 40 years of life that works out to about £4 million in total if I don't want to have anything left at the end to leave to my kids.
More than that would enable me to go on more foreign trips (and boy would I love to be able to spend most of the winter on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean rather than in dark, damp, freezing cold Britain) or fund more of the charities I support.
Part time work is still work. It's still something you have to turn up to whether you feel like it or not. And I'm not convinced that even my favourite thing in the world would be much fun if I had to do it all the time.
In favour. I literally just said that.
Work is not the only possible source of structure and purpose. Not unless you redefine the word to mean literally anything someone chooses to do.
Really, the absolute state of this.
So you're fine with the idea of me having to work for other people, but not other people having to work for me?
Which part of "collective ownership of the means of production" did you not understand?
No, I made the distinction between an argument from rights and an argument from increase in overall welfare. If you have a right to do something, you may do it even when it would in utilitarian terms be better if you didn't.
The case against slavery is an issue of rights. Someone who's against it only where it's not the best system in utilitarian terms isn't really against it.
If a proposal genuinely makes things a lot better for some and only a little worse for others why can't the winners compensate the losers so that it's better for everyone ?
Maybe it's not a higher bar, just a different way of looking at the same bar ?
In general it may be that the cost of administering such compensation makes it impractical or inefficient to do so in practice.
That's not the case here - if you've a transit system that's part-funded by user charges and part-funded by taxation on those who as a group experience the decongestion and air quality benefits, you've an obvious mechanism for setting the relative contributions so that everybody gains.
If you had a system of decision-making that required universal consensus then only such projects would be implemented. (Which is not to say that there may be problems with such a system).
If a scheme you favour doesn't meet the better-for-everyone test even in theory, what does that mean ?
I suspect it means that people in general don't actually value some things (? marginal gains in air quality?) as much as you think they ought to, and actually value some other things (?not having to wait in line for a bus on a cold day?) more than you think they ought to. So that when you talk about something being "a lot better" or "slightly worse" you're referring to your value system rather than theirs.
The part where it's at all relevant to what I just said, apparently.
Why are you privileging the status quo? Suppose that a town has a football pitch, paid for out of public funds, and used by various football teams in the town to play matches. Suppose the town also has several hockey clubs, who would also like to use the pitch to play their matches.
It seems reasonable on the face of it that this common resource should be available to those who want to play hockey on it, as well as those who want to play football on it. There's no reason why the state should privilege football over hockey.
So the town says "fine. one weekend a month, hockey matches will be played on the pitch. (that roughly matching the relative numbers of football and hockey players)".
The football players are worse off, because they only get the pitch three weeks out of four. You'd like the hockey players to compensate the football players in some way for their loss. I'd say that the status quo ante unjustly favoured the football players, and there's no reason whatsoever for them to be compensated for having to share the space.
I suspect that it means that the chief beneficiaries of improved public transport are the people who use public transport anyway, even though it's bad, because they haven't got any choice. Poor people who can't afford to buy and operate a car. Children and old people who can't safely drive a car.
People who currently use cars, but would use public transport if it was better, are by construction marginal users. They're not going to be personally much different if public transport were improved.
So tell me, Russ. If I improve public transport, so that a bunch of poor people spend less long waiting at bus stops, how would you like them to compensate the middle manager who spends an extra five or ten minutes sitting in his car? Perhaps they should use the shinier bus service to pop round to his house of an evening, and use some of their extra time to clean his car?
It's like nobody on this thread has mentioned the need for technological change to reduce or eliminate the pollution generated by motor vehicles.
I'm glad to know that will also stop them from running over and killing people.
The point is the current level, and projected increase if policies do not change, of motor vehicles in urban areas is unsustainable. It has to decrease. It's not a mere matter of taste and preference as Russ would have it; there are objective problems which have to be resolved. And resolving it may involve some people not being able to do exactly what they like with their cars any more.
I think that's what we've been trying to tell Russ for several pages now.
That's always been the case, there's just some disagreement about the rights in question. Those against slavery argue that it violates the right of personal liberty. Those in favor argue that its abolition is a violation of property rights. After all, if the state can come in and "set an upper limit above which nobody is allowed to rise", like the ownership of other human beings, isn't that "removing options from everyone else"? Something which other posters have posited as self-evidently a Bad Thing.
Given that the British Empire paid former slave owners compensation (which, as government debt, they've only just finished paying interest on), that's exactly what happened.
Of course, it depends on your definition of 'winners' and 'losers', given that not a penny was offered to the former slaves in restitution for their enforced kidnap, imprisonment and labour, and all the horrors thereof.
Point of order: the capitalist solution is what we have now. And it's not really a solution.
This is actually one of the things that the proponents of the technological change known as "self-driving cars" hope for, and also a somewhat familiar theme in SF: it being illegal to operate a private vehicle in an urban area under human control, because the computer is significantly less dangerous to pedestrians.
But that doesn't solve the congestion issue, of course, and the simple fact is exactly as you stated. Densely-occupied urban areas aren't compatible with widespread private car use - some form of mass transit supports significantly denser occupancy.
Some individual vehicle use will always be necessary - moving around large objects (whether it's shopping, or you're moving home, or you've just built a table and are delivering it to your Aunt May), some people with mobility issues (wheelchair users with adapted vehicles, for example).