The 2020 summit: views, stray, considered and otherwise

When the day arrives when I no longer have to read about the ‘latte left’ and ‘luvvies’, my enjoyment of this blog, and blogging in general, will increase immeasurably. What a bloody bore.

Why don’t we break Australia up into regions and then let people in those regions appoint representatives to go to Canberra to debate the future role of the government? You could do this every 3-4 years so that the representatives stay in touch with their communities concerns.

Oh yes. We already do this. It is called federal parliament.

If the Labor Party want assistance with policy formation, they should get their supporters to pay for think tanks, not use the public purse to subsidise such self-agrandising public relations activities.

From the bottom up, I don’t know what luvvies are either, so I can’t help you there!

I do admit that the imprecision of ‘latte lefty’ is a major weakness and probably why I don’t use it very much.

Given my views of language, I shall try and explain it by example.

1) Some years ago the Age published an incredibly defamatory story about a large private girl’s school in Victoria. It was the largest item on the front page for two days. On the third day a small second-page correction admitted that once they had spoken to the school, it appeared that the article was almost wholly wrong. The people who wrote that article without even thinking to call the school ‘because it just sounded so right’ would fall within my definition.

2) Traceeeee and Terry Lane and Tim Palmer.

3) anyone who thinks that vegetarianism is morally superior.

4) anyone who thinks that free trade is inherently bad for poor people.

Broadly, I guess you could reduce that to/

– people who adopt perverse ‘comfortable’ leftist positions because they ‘feel’ good to adopt and all their friends do so but don’t actually stop to think whether their position actually makes things worse or is at least vaguely rational.

So I guess you wouldn’t be one. If this blog has one it is probably Rex.

Maybe you should focus on thinking of the right-wing equivalent. Bear in mind that a large amount of lefties actually do> drink lattes in inner-city cafes.

Jacques,

That’s how I understand latte left, too. The problem is, unless the policies is question are actually prejudicial to the working class, I don’t see why there should be anything wrong with, or comical about, middle class people having leftwing views. If some yuppy opposes university fees without realising that subsidised tertiatry education redistributes income from the working to the middle class, or opposes land release on the urban fringe on the grounds that it will spoil his picnics, I can see why you would look for a label that captures this hypocrisy. But if an educated, middle class person opposes whaling, capital punishment, the Iraq war, and the incarceration of child refugees, or wants to decriminalise marijuana and permit gay marriage, why is it relevant, one way or the other, that he is middle class and educated? Would these views be somehow more authentic or noble if they were held by working class people or self-employed tradesmen?

As for luvvie, yes I understand the actor connection. But what’s that got to do with left wing views? If someone is a luvvy, does that mean his views are fake and inauthentic? That he is sentimental if not histrionic in advocating them? That he he is a bit of a pansy, and therefore not worthy of respect? Or what?

James,

I hope we can avoid shouting! I’ve seen you make great efforts not to shout previously, so I’m quite hopeful.

why is it relevant, one way or the other, that he is middle class and educated?

It probably is, because in my experience, which is far greater than I would like, they have no inkling of how someone with different experiences could feel differently, and indeed assume that only mental deficiency or lack of ‘caring’ could explain it.

Which is quite ironic given their professed beliefs in understanding and tolerance and what have you. That irony (ok, unintended hypocrisy) merits the contemptuous label, in my opinion.

Also, ultra-topically since I think this summit almost epitomises latte-lefty wanking, what do you think of this summit?

My local town had an event like this and I imagine this is a scaled up version or ours was a scaled down version.

It was all about the plan for the future 2030 I think in our case.

There was a week or a weekend of meetings I forget exactly and all that came out of it was “objectives”. No plan to meet said objectives. Just the targets themselves. I was disappointed. I was looking forward to see some of the plans so I could critique them. My town allegedly is going to have other meetings like this in the future to come up with the “plans” but thats what I thought the first, one and only conference was to be about.

So if this 2020 thing turns out the same it’ll be an absolute waste of time. It’ll collect a bunch of people who will then have a self important sense of worth and then nothing. I can’t recall them right now but even a couple of the “objectives” were silly.

I long to be wrong. I wish to see comprehensive plans come out from this event.

NPOV

If humans are not to be trusted, those who govern will exploit the rest of us so the fewer of them the better. This is the standard libertarian position and is a very widespread logic in the US.

Yes, if men were angels we wouldn’t need governing and the general will would prevail. But the left knows that some people are not quite perfect. The reason is they had deprived childhoods so the govt should therefore be large and redistribute resources to help the underprivileged. (Then when everyone is equal the state can wither away.)

Saving whales, vegetarianism, protectionism, and income redistribution are logically connected too, via the left’s basic theme of egalitarianism, meaning equal outcomes.

Mike, humans aren’t to be trusted – the only reason government works is because of the checks and balances (including democracy) that we’ve invented to make it work.

And BTW, very few on the “left” still believe in equal outcomes. Equal opportunities, definitely, and to some degree that requires a certain amount of income redistribution to avoid significant wealth disparities.

“…humans arent to be trusted…” Well, NPOV, we know where you stand.

Few still believe in equal outcomes? Tell that to the people chasing the Japanese whalers. But I gave the logic, not an empirical survey. They won’t really change their spots. For instance the educated left might intellectually accept that trade protection is bad but they do it with reluctance. For example they support “Fair trade” which is anti-free market.

“Equal opportunities, definitely…” Definitely not. This is pure right; the left must object. Equal opportunity is good for just one thing: to compete. The right insists upon it as it is a pre-requisite for genuine competition. Competition is something awful to the left which wants us to live in harmony.

Trust is a prerequisite for an open society and a capitalist economy. Libertarians don’t mistrust people, but understand that people do have frailties and will act on the incentives placed before them. Big government gives some individuals big incentives to use the state towards their own ends, enforcing trade restrictions on competitors through licensing, building regulations, environmental requirements, planning laws, which secure markets for established players, restrict access to new players, and leads to a slowing of innovation and productivity improvements. To claim that libertarians have an ungenerous image of their fellow man is disingeneous. Just as we see the welfare state as being a disncetive for people to benevolence, an absence of the welfare state will prompt people into more charitable works, the higher percentage of income given to charity of the United States.

“Libertarians dont mistrust people, but understand that people do have frailties and will act on the incentives placed before them.”

Well… What does “trust” mean?

“Big government gives some individuals big incentives to use the state towards their own ends”

Well now… What would be an “ungenerous image” of one’s fellow man?

Mike,

Trust means entering into contracts or agreements openly and freely with the expectation that the person you are cooperating with will reciprocate in meeting your expectations. If you don’t trust someone to do as they say, then free trade between individuals isn’t possible.

It is not ungenerous to recognise that individuals will act in their own self-interest, which if they have the ability to will include acting contrary to their fellow man’s self-interest. It simply means that libertarians recognise that in any situation where compulsion can be used through legal means, those with greater access to the tools of state will use them. They may not be doing it maliciously, like the advocates of minimum wage trying to promote low paid worker welfare, but failing to recognise the unintended consequence of pricing unskilled workers out of the employment market. and restricting their ability to gain skills and experience.

The number of true sadists and pyschopaths in the community is small, but through acting in your rational self-interest, you may unintentionally do harm to others. The state facilitates legal and defacto-legitimate compulsion, in a truly free market, malefactors would lose reputation and find the currency of their fraud diminished as their reputation precedes them and individuals learn to recognise fraud. Even if this doesn’t perfectly eliminate acts of bad faith, the cost of regulation to the majority can exceed the benefits of preventing fraud to the minority. Crime doesn’t pay (unless you can convince the state to endorse it).

“Trust means entering into contracts or agreements openly and freely with the expectation that the person you are cooperating with will reciprocate in meeting your expectations.”

But supposing they betray that trust? It sounds unlikely but humans have been known to not keep agreements. Okay, you won’t do business with those pricks again. But what happens if that betrayal completely wrecks your means of livelihood at best and at worst literally poisons you and your family.

I agree with you Brendan about big business as I have already pointed out.

“Small government would mean that big business would find it more difficult to become the dominant player in any industry.”

Umm…no. Quite the opposite. In the absence of a vigorous, engaged and reasonably mutually appointed commonweal, who is gonna stop the biggest gang on the block from fucking you over if you threaten their turf? From the Magna Carta to patent laws, the history of Western prosperity has hinged on collective initiatives to reign in the bullies and give everyone a fair shot.

The trick is not to go too far the other way and end up with the kind of sclerotic command economy that turned the USSR into the idiot son of modern civilisation.

My point is who do you trust to be the honest brokers and enforcers of explicit and implicit contracts between business, consumers, suppliers and third parties, often found in million plus groupings?

Human nature?

But what happens if that betrayal completely wrecks your means of livelihood at best and at worst literally poisons you and your family.

There is not a lot of profit in killing people or robbing them unless you can be sure that you can’t be caught. The only way to ensure you can’t get hurt is to hide behind the government.

If it happens to you, it is a tragedy, but if it only happens to you and the perpetrators go out of business and get prosecuted for criminal negligence, then that is a demonstration that markets and the courts work.

Using individual instances of tragedy to determine policy is to assume that government policy can eliminate fraud without causing unintended consequences or excessive bureaucracy that outweigh the benefits.

In the absence of a vigorous, engaged and reasonably mutually appointed commonweal, who is gonna stop the biggest gang on the block from fucking you over if you threaten their turf?

I don’t advocate an absence of civil institutions to reign in violent thugs, nor do I rule out individual self-defence against criminals. The rule of law and strong property rights prevent bullies from illegally “fucking you over”. A business run along mafioso lines can only occur when legitimate trade is restricted, see prostitution, tobacco smuggling to avoid duty, illicit drugs, medical drugs (approved in one constituency, but restricted in another, or subsidised in one, not subsidised in another), guns, incandescent globes, in fact anything that is restricted will continue to be traded illegally and without the protection of contract law. Where products and services are restricted to either protect favoured individuals and groups or protect consumers, black market trade will establish itself. When the activity is illegal, stand-over tactics will be used to ensure contracts are upheld and property rights observed, and associated violent crime will increase.

Tight building codes don’t prevent people using cheaper illegal contractors, but it does prevent them from having legal protection of contract law.

JC,

Fair point, but that is a break down of law and order where by the police are either unwilling or unable to uphold the law or complicit in the operation. I could argue that failure of the local police is a market failure induced by enforced monopoly in law enforcement and the closed shop transportation industries whereby union members cooperate with the mafia.

Is racketeering and theft organised crime expanding out of the control of prostitution and gambling? Did these restricted activites enable criminals to corrupt the local law enforcement and lead to other crimes, and thus place the criminal networks in prime position to take advantage of new opportunities, some already illegal, some newly illegal, such as prohibition in the US during the 20s, followed by drug prohibition later on? Racketeering and truck jacking don’t generally operate in isolation to any great extent without corresponding drug and prostitution crime.

So who sets the laws, runs the courts and enforces their decisions? With as mimimal fear and favour as possible?

Why, you’d have to organise large groups of people into choosing representatives and raising funds in order to deliver such a scenario. For which you’d need formal structures based on somewhat more resonant and community-binding authority than just the anything goes marketplace. Esepcially when this shit has to go international and deal with billions of people.

So now then who sets the laws, runs the courts and enforces their decisions? I’m fairly certain that even you guys don’t want to privatise that tried and tested engine of Western civilisation.

So then we’re all agreed on such basic principles right? That there are certain inalienable factors that go into building a modern and prosperous community. And that now what’s we’re fencing over is just a matter of degree and process.

For example JC’s one real job, as a Forex bookie, would not have been possible without kilos worth of printouts of national, international and industry sector laws, regulations and protocals both governing and opening up his business opportunities.

And I don’t know what you do for a crust Brendan, but I’m willing to bet you can’t make a living out of it without heaps of both immediately visible and apparently invisible structures supporting it, made workable, transparent and challengeable by Government regulation.

Really you libertarians are just like classical Marxists. You all believe in one central pure ideology that will deliver the promised world if only executed right at last. Unlike real life which is an ongoing and messy series of compromises to just make things work day to day while casting an occasional eye over the shoulder to the future.

Basically, libertarianism and communism (as are most other isms) are built on the same fallacy. That it would be a perfect world if only everyone else thought just like the true believers.

Nabakov,

The growth of the state has coincided with huge leaps in standards of living. It seems that socialists and conservatives believe that their is a causal relationship between growth of the state and the growth in GDP per capita and the improvement in living conditions, however no proof is tendered that the government is responsible for the improvement of living conditions. In Australia, the lving conditions of those who rely almost entirely on the state for their welfare have not improved to the same extent as those who rely on private enterprise to earn their living. Does this tell you a story on the success of the state to delivery improvements in people’s circumstances?

The PM just apologised for the Stolen Generation the other day, individuals who were removed by the state in order to improve their lives, even if there was in some cases a racist motivation for doing so, and malign intent. For those Aborginials that weren’t stolen and remained in their remote communities, has life improved in line with the rest of Australia? No. The state has taken responsibility for their welfare and failed them, and yet those that look to their own initiative and the private sector, have prospered.

The argument I make is that it is the private sector that have improved life in Australia, and the growth of the state is caused by the growth in prosperity, not the other way around. Prevent the state from growing, and prosperity would continue to rise, even if it does so unevenly. A trademan today is much better off than a tradesman 20 years ago, even if the ratio of his income to that of the top 5% income earners has decreased, his standard of living has improved absolutely.

So who sets the laws, runs the courts and enforces their decisions? With as mimimal fear and favour as possible?

The parliament, the courts, the police. Have I said any differently?

The need for new laws is questionable. Common law has a good record of adapting to technological changes and is much better at assessing individual circumstances than any legislation can.

If government stopped sitting in parliament so regularly, stopped passing any new laws except for budgets, what would happen? Would Australia stop working? Would lawlessness break out? If current government services only expanded with population growth and no new government services were introduced, just what would happen? Are there that many pressin gissues that we can’t work out our selves with the need for the state?

#31 Nabakov yet levelling the playing field from the abolition of slavery to extending the franchise to beyond white male property owners to anti-trust laws to regulating stock markets was furiously resisted by the conservatives (right wingers?) of the time.

Yes. The right has two forms. One is the hierarchical, right-chap-in-the-right-job conservatives, looking to custom and tradition. To them equal opportunity is absurd. The other is the go-getting, entrepreneurial, individual life-negotiator whom we were talking about. Using one word for two utterly different worldviews causes endless confusion. These two types make up a right party in every modern country (except Switzerland) and they are perennially squabbling. The only thing they have in common is their socialist (!) enemy. The modern form is as wets and dries. I think a fundamental reason the Liberal Party has collapsed in Australia is that it has too few communitarian traditionalists and too many opportunistic individualists.

#43 NPOV
Outdated? Possibly, but I was trying to be timeless. Saving whales is linked to equal outcomes by the left. If the same people (by and large) believe in both then either there is a link or people believe things arbitrarily which they dont. I am not talking nuances. (voguish social science weasel word) The equal outcome reasoning would be: whales have the same right to live as humans.

The reason the left are reluctant to relinquish trade protection comes from within them, from compatibility with their worldview. Your reason may be a good one, but it is not the lefts.

Children are a special circumstance. Not even the most extreme libertarian says a newborn child should independently negotiate its life. Everyone knows children are disadvantaged and the most dedicated individualists agree that children cannot be held entirely responsible for their actions. It is neither left nor right to look after children.

What the left I know tends to accept is that cooperation is just as important as competition in creating economic wealth.

Funny leftists you know. The left I know doesnt give creating economic wealth a thought.

I think a fundamental reason the Liberal Party has collapsed in Australia is that it has too few communitarian traditionalists and too many opportunistic individualists.

Really? I would have thought the opposite

You see more wets to eliminate? And this will help the party?

Mike, most of the cabinet didn’t understand workchoices according to the 4corners program (I dont mean the 600 pages of crap that went with it). They didn’t understand what it meant to move to a market based system. You could hardly accuse the Libs of having billions free markets types in there.
The media laws are basically a unchanged from Keatings reforms as we still have a protected spectrum.

Where are all these free markets types in the party? Theres quiite

It is neither left nor right to look after children.

My point was that it’s the level of state intervention that differentiates

So, Jc, you dont agree the wets are gone?

Not really, mike. In fact I think the opposite is the case.

The “trust” is there because the authorities are there.

Without the coercive civil infrastructure there will be no market. There will be a Hobbesian free for all, warlordism, like Somalia.

Commerce occurs to the extent there exists a structure of respect populated by people of the (non-luvvie, non-RWDB) hierarchical, order-and-propriety mentality. (The same mentality that, until recently, always made up a large proportion of the political right.)

There is a notion of a minimum two-person trading society. It is illusion. The minimum society is three: the two traders plus a man with a gun. And the man has to be paid, hence tax.