Scott Adams Blog: Great Budget Debate

Feb 11, 2011 General Nonsense | Notify

In a recent post I asked for a worthy volunteer to be interviewed on the topic of balancing the U.S. budget by expense cuts alone, without making things worse. (Full disclosure: I believe this to be impossible.) The most qualified volunteer, and the person with the most votes from readers of this blog, is Phil Maymin.

Borrowing from the bio on Phil's website at http://philmaymin.com/about-phil...

Dr. Phil Maymin is Assistant Professor of Finance and Risk Engineering at NYU-Polytechnic Institute. He is also the founding managing editor of Algorithmic Finance.

He holds a Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Chicago, a Master's in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University, and a Bachelor's in Computer Science from Harvard University. He also holds a J.D. from Northwestern California University School of Law and is an attorney at law admitted to practice in California.

He has been a portfolio manager at Long-Term Capital Management, Ellington Management Group, and his own hedge fund, Maymin Capital Management.

He is also an award-winning journalist, a policy scholar for a free market think tank, a Justice of the Peace, a former Congressional candidate, a columnist for the Fairfield County Weekly and LewRockwell.com, and the author of Yankee Wake Up and Free Your Inner Yankee. He was a finalist for the 2010 Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism.

His popular writings have been published in dozens of media outlets ranging from Forbes to the New York Post to American Banker to regional newspapers, and his research has been profiled in dozens more, including USA Today, Boston Globe, NPR, BBC, Guardian (UK), CNBC, Newsweek Poland, Financial Times Deutschland, and others.

His research on behavioral and algorithmic finance has appeared in Quantitative Finance, Journal of Wealth Management, and Risk and Decision Analysis, among others, and his textbook Financial Hacking is due to be released by World Scientific in 2011.

I should disclose my own biases on this topic. I have described my philosophy as "Libertarian, but without the crazy stuff." Libertarians are for personal freedom, small government, and a defensive-sized military. That sounds good to me. But I think a better objective is something along the lines of maximizing the public's long term happiness. So while a libertarian might favor allowing his suburban neighbor to operate a bazooka firing range in his back yard, I'd be against that, even if it required a slightly larger government to prevent it.

Furthermore, I believe that if you identify with any political group or philosophy that has a name, you are far more susceptible to confirmation bias than someone who doesn't. And as a general rule, I don't trust anyone with a strong opinion on a complicated topic.

On the topic of the U.S. budget, my current suspicion is that the problem has grown so large that there is no practical way to eliminate the deficit by cuts alone, without making things worse. But I assure you that I want to be wrong because being right means my taxes will go up substantially.

Let's begin our interview.

Adams: Phil, thanks for agreeing to an interview with a professional humorist who holds an opposing viewpoint. I don't see how this could possibly go wrong for you. Let's start by setting the stage. In round numbers, what is the size of the total U.S. budget, and how large is the gap?

Maymin: The federal government spent $3.5 trillion of our money last year.

That's about the same as the total value of all the stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In other words, if we liquidated thirty of the largest American companies, including Home Depot, Microsoft, Intel, Coke, McDonald's, Kraft, and Disney, that would barely cover just one year of federal spending.

That's some budget.

Where did the feds get all that money? They took $2 trillion from us through taxes last year and they took another $1.5 trillion from us by borrowing on our good names. The "budget gap" is the $1.5 trillion that the government borrowed, adding to its $14 trillion debt. But in terms of the effect on the average person, borrowing money is the same as taxing.

Adams: Okay, so just to be clear, you're saying we need to find $1.5 trillion to cut from a budget of $3.5 trillion, for a 43% reduction. And that's just this year. Would it be fair to say government expenses will double in about twenty years as the baby boomers retire and healthcare costs continue their upward march?

Maymin: Government expenditures are not ruled by a fixed formula. You're tacitly assuming that the government is morally obligated to pay when people live too long or get too sick. But it's actually immoral to take money by force from innocent people to pay for someone else's retirement or someone else's sickness. Given your tacit assumption, then yes: government expenditures will continue to climb so long as people continue to vote for such immoral redistribution. But I don't agree with that assumption and, now that it is no longer tacit, I hope that neither do you.

Adams: We can get back to your hallucinations about my tacit assumptions later. For now I'm just trying to size the budget hole. Readers can't judge your recommended solution unless they have a sense of how big the problem is. Can we agree that balancing the budget would require cutting something like $1.5 trillion per year in the near term, while the demand for social services could double in twenty years, primarily because of an aging population, whether the government attempts to meet those needs or not?

Maymin: Your question about the "demand" for the future only makes sense if you view the federal government as a special charitable trust whose purpose is to pay a certain clearly defined group of people an amount of money based on its available funds.

But the federal government is not a charity. The main difference is that charities are funded by voluntary contributions, and the government is funded by forceful expropriation. So the self-regulating mechanism of a charity on the amount to pay out is broken. Indeed, instead of asking how much money we actually have, the government (and you) asks how much money we need to pay out. Aside from the immorality, the problem with that question is that the "demand" for free stuff is practically limitless. People could "demand" twice their benefits today. They don't necessarily have to wait for more people to retire or get sick.

But those "demands" aren't always met. There are forces resisting government redistribution. Will those forces be stronger or weaker in 20 years? Who knows? They will certainly need to become even stronger today if we want to not just freeze spending but actually cut it.

Adams: I'm using "demand" in the economic sense, i.e. hungry people have a demand for food. Demand doesn't imply that the government is the supplier.

I learned in business that unless you can describe what the business-as-usual scenario looks like, you have no way to compare your new and brilliant plan. I've asked you twice how large the future budget hole would get if left unaddressed and twice you have drifted into speeches about morality, complete with hallucinated assumptions about the question itself. So let's back up a step.

In general, do you think it's important to describe the economic impact of the "do nothing" or business-as-usual scenario so that one can judge the advantage of a new plan in comparison?

Maymin: Economic demand typically depends on price and assumes voluntary exchange. And of course your question implies the government is the supplier. That's the point of this discussion -- how to cut government spending. You're not asking about the demand for iPhones in 20 years.

For a legitimate business, sure, evaluating business-as-usual can be important, more important than some things, less important than others. But if your business is just going around breaking people's kneecaps, then no, you don't need to evaluate the economic impact of continuing. And what's the right response of the victim? To say, "Why don't you beat up this guy instead?" Or to say, "Stop."

I don't know how much politicians will redistribute income to retirees and sick people instead of wars and bailout in 20 years. But I know Americans would be better off if each of those four items were zero.

Adams: To borrow your analogy, if the only choices available are breaking your kneecaps or cutting off your head, it seems entirely legitimate to consider the kneecap option. Correct me if I'm misinterpreting your point, but you seem to believe the choices are something along the lines of the government breaking our kneecaps (the current approach) versus a world where the unemployable and sick eat carbon dioxide and poop hundred dollar bills.

Maybe I shouldn't put words in your mouth.

Perhaps we can get at this from another direction. In a world in which the budget is cut to your moral satisfaction, what becomes of the people who currently receive food, shelter and healthcare from the government?

Maymin: What happened to the East Germans who relied on the government when the wall fell? What would happen to North Koreans if that country becomes free? Ultimately voluntary help is always better than forced redistribution, but if we wait too long, the transition may be more abrupt than necessary. My suggestion would be to phase it out gradually while we still can.

Adams: I'm no historian, but I'm pretty sure the impoverished people from East Germany got help from the government of West Germany. And I'm pretty sure the poor in Germany still get help from the government.

So if I understand your concept, as the U.S. Government phases out social services, the government of Germany would pick up the slack.

I'm going to end the interview here. And I'll surprise you by showing some respect for your viewpoint. I wasn't expecting you to be such an absolutist on eliminating government spending for social services. It's entirely possible that private citizens would step up to take care of the needy, and perhaps do a better job of it than the government. And I can imagine a world in which I pay a little extra, voluntarily, to provide healthcare for my neighbor who is too sick to work. It might be a lot cheaper than paying taxes, while feeling less coercive and more meaningful. The Internet makes this sort of person-to-person helping possible whereas only the government could have done it fifty years ago.

We didn't discuss military spending, but I would respect any argument that ranges from a purely defensive military budget to something more aggressive "just in case." No one is smart enough to make that call.

Overall, I don't think Dr. Maymin's philosophy for government spending can be called a plan until someone can describe how the transition away from government social services is accomplished without clogging our streets with the corpses of the starved. But if I am fair about this, our government currently has a spending plan that guarantees doom. Advantage: Maymin.

Thanks for being a good sport, Dr. Maymin. And thanks for some ideas that add a lot to the discussion.

Votes: +28

Comments

attila_the_hungry

Mar 11, 2011

It sounds like Grover Norquist would be a good person to talk to, although I don't know if you'd be able to snag him.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/03/grover_norquist_the_goal_is_to.html#more

tkwelge

Feb 16, 2011

"it is irrelevant how past wealth was acquired" - you're kidding right?

Me:

Wow, your argument is basically that if any wrongdoing has occurred at any time, that gives your kind the right to start robbing innocent people. "Hey if you don't like it, maybe you shouldn't have similar chromosomes to the people who did bad things years before you were even born!" Considering that we come from a world of chaos and violence, it is a given that most property was expropriated wrongly at one point or another by multiple groups of people. Yes, I believe that it is much much much much MUCH more important how we behave moving forward than how we behaved in the past. Mainly because it wasn't "we" who were doing things back then anyway.

Plus, we've made a substantial attempt to provide reparations to disaffected communities. Sadly, government solutions can hurt as much as they can help. SOmetimes, you can hurt people by trying to help them as much as you can by trying to hurt them. Case in point: Welfare before welfare reform. God, I want to help some people, but government solutions are a false idol that make you feel cleansed while not really solving the problem.

The problem with Kataku is that he sees every single issue as relating to the distribution resources and as if the distribution of resources is the driving force behind human action.

tkwelge

Feb 16, 2011

@Skeptical

Way to dodge the actual philosophical issue. Nobody benefits from taxes. They may benefit from government spending, but that is a whole different thing. Taxes simply hurt and destroy. The fact that the government MIGHT balance its taxes against you with spending in your favor, but that doesn't mean that it isn't wrong to take money from one person to give to another.

Maybe nobody is pointing a gun at my head to prevent me from leaving the country, but just about every other country has guns pointed at the heads of people who try to enter without jumping through a lot of hoops. You aren't making a good argument that coercion isn't occurring. Plus, this is basically the left wing version of the "America, love it or leave it," argument.

Skeptical

-3

Feb 16, 2011

"But it's actually immoral to take money by force from innocent people to pay for someone else's retirement or someone else's sickness."

Yes, since a gun is held to our head to prevent us from leaving the country, and no on benefits from taxation.

kataku

-1

Feb 16, 2011

@tkwelge - Markets by themselves lead to bad outcomes, which is why they must be corrected / managed. There has never been a market that wasn't managed externally. Governments may not do a perfect job of regulating markets but a) someone has to and b) they've been at it a while, give them time they'll figure it out. You won't agree, i no longer care.

"it is irrelevant how past wealth was acquired" - you're kidding right?

We can agree on this much, there will always be people who need help. I'm not a communist, i don't think its governments responsiblity to create a totally equal society. I'm just pretty confident that a fair society is probably a lot more equal than the one we have now. When you look at why generation after generation things are pretty unequal it becomes clear that not everyone gets the same oppertunities. A government of the people, for the people has a responsiblity to help those people have the same oppertunies. Its not a complicated arguement, you either think people all deserve the same chances or you don't. You clearly don't.

I won't be checking this thread again.

tkwelge

Feb 15, 2011

I also agree that my statistical analysis proves nothing. Statistical analysis is mostly useless since correlation does not equal causation, and we are comparing two things that are different in an almost infinite number of ways. However, the lack of any obvious evidence that progressivism has made society better off is telling....

tkwelge

Feb 15, 2011

"but a market gives outcomes that are undesireable for most people morally which was my broader point."

I have a really hard time believing that markets create outcomes that are undesirable for most people. A relatively laissez faire economy in Britain produced the industrial revolution that lifted humanity out of the malthusian era. The vast majority of market oriented nations are doing better than non market oriented nations. And remember that China's 30 year period of exponential growth occurred after they allowed markets to function more freely.

"Telling me that, currently, governments do a bad job of regulating markets has no impact on the discussion of what it ought to do."

The fact of the matter is that there is no way the government can really do a good job of regulating markets (in the authoritarian sense). Under certain conditions, government planners can achieve their goals, but if you look at the general trend, government planning doesn't really accomplish the goals it sets out to achieve in the long term. I'm not even trying to nit pick either. Private organizations make mistakes all of the time too, but their mistakes are generally their own, and they can only hurt those who voluntarily exposed themselves to the organization. When government makes mistakes, they tend to be quite tragic, especially for individuals who were opposed to the government's actions.

"Not correcting for the fact that some people's family give them more to begin with would result in the disparity of wealth getting larger and larger (which it is... which, i hope i don't need to explain why, is bad)"

First of all, the disparity of wealth is not simply getting larger and larger. Such things tend to fluctuate over time for a number of reasons. And yes, you do need to explain why inequality is bad. We're discussing INEQUALITY here, not poverty. By saying that inequality is inherently bad, you are essentially arguing that if I have an Aspire and another person has a BMW, something terrible has occurred. If everyone has food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare, then no amount of inequality is ever bad. I don't care if someone is a trillion times wealthier than everyone else. If somebody NEEDS help, we can talk about it, but inequality in and of itself is not "bad."

Furthermore, it is irrelevant how past wealth was acquired (assuming that there is no way to make up for past wrongs, as in the case if everyone involved were to pass away). It only matters how we behave moving forward. Even if current voluntary actions are affected by past coerced actions, it is the here and now where we must place our focus.

"As far as your last post goes I found your highlighting of the post WW1 / great depression, a time when welfare became important because things were so bad for so many folk, to be a curious reversal of cause and effect. "

Uh, check my dates, I also included the post WW2 period when the economy was long recovered from any malady such as the Great Depression.

"You said you're in favour of welfare which means apparently we agree and you just don't like my methods"

It isn't so much that I disagree with your methods, but your goal. I assume that you want the government to "correct inequality," but time and time again, the government has encouraged inequality. My support for "welfare" is based on the idea that there will always be people who NEED help. I don't give two !$%*! about inequality. I believe in helping people, not making them equal. I believe, from what you've posted, that you want the government to take a more active role in people's destinies. I disagree. You also accuse markets of creating monopolies while prescribing government as the cure, even though, historically, the market has destroyed monopolies and the government has largely propped them up.

I agree that the government might be able to do thing better than it does now, but there are some serious philosophical issues that still come into play.

snowboarding

-1

Feb 15, 2011

This used to be a good blog - but is trashed now - too bad...

kataku

Feb 15, 2011

I don't normally come back to the scene of the crime... typically no matter what you say gets savaged by the next guy...

@tkwelge - My arguement for redistribution, for welfare, does rely on an appeal to morals, you're quite right. I was making that exact point. A market does indeed reward value and not merit, but a market gives outcomes that are undesireable for most people morally which was my broader point. I was asking if society was just, giving a quick explanation of why i don't think it is, then asking if we ought to do something about that. Morality is the study of what ought to be, not what is. Telling me that, currently, governments do a bad job of regulating markets has no impact on the discussion of what it ought to do.

Telling me that the hilton family name relates to the work of her ancestors is both true and not terribly relevant. Not correcting for the fact that some people's family give them more to begin with would result in the disparity of wealth getting larger and larger (which it is... which, i hope i don't need to explain why, is bad) and totally ignore the question of whether that pre-existing wealth was its self acquired through fair dealings.

I don't know much about miss hilton or her history but i imagine that the families of most children worked really hard to build something for their kids as well and on a level playing field you'd expect a lot of them to be doing quite well also. However, with a history of unequal practices you'd expect some massively rich families and most comparitvely poor, like now.

You mention i missed out some causes of inequality. I wasn't going for a full and complete list, i just wanted some examples to show first inequality, then suggest corrections to it, to show thats the sort of thing we should be doing. Again, an appeal to people's moral sensibilities.

You said you're in favour of welfare which means apparently we agree and you just don't like my methods, you said your reasons are too long for this message board but if you have an essay to link to or the like i'd genuinely be interested. I got my degree in philosophy a long time ago and when i post on a cartoonists forum my intellectual rigour maybe lax but i genuinely do think a government is responsible, morally, for that which the market neglects. Responsible for limiting some market effects, like monopolies and trying to correct the initial conditions to give everyone the same oppertunities (although, crucially, not the same outcomes). I also believe a fairer market works better but that too is a whole other discussion.

As far as your last post goes I found your highlighting of the post WW1 / great depression, a time when welfare became important because things were so bad for so many folk, to be a curious reversal of cause and effect. Also, as a huge number of factors affect the figures you gave they can't really be used to prove anything about welfare spending specifically. Mostly though it fails to address the idea that unjust inequality should be corrected. As stated before, that people have failed to do this before has no bearing on what we should try to do now. Just as other peoples failure to make aircraft should not have stopped the development of the first airplane.

tkwelge

Feb 14, 2011

"It could also be argued that redistribution saves society money by solving social problems that would otherwise degenerate into rioting and looting at one end of the spectrum and an insufficent, non-competitive work force at the other."

It could be, but let's compare per capita income growth to the period before the progressive era to the periods when the government spent the most money on "helping people."

From Measuring worth:

US
1830 to 1913
1913 to 1939
1943 to 1975
Consumer Price Index 0.09% 1.43% 3.61%
Unskilled Wage 1.19% 4.24% 5.62%
Real GDP per capita 1.55% 1.10% 1.56%
Population (millions) 2.46% 1.15% 1.44%

Sorry, it's hard to read, but basically the percentages are annualized growth rates. The numbers on the left are the rates from 1830 to 1913 and the later periods follow in order. If you separate out the GDP growth from 1939 to 1943, the progressive era and the and federal reserve had added nothing to anybody's quality of life. Notice how the population grew dramatically faster between 1830 to 1913. The unskilled wage exploded during the progressive and post war eras, but I think that explains why wage growth is so slow today. The US worker earns far more than anybody else on the planet (especially in terms of salary), which makes US workers uncompetitive. We got around that before thanks to the Bretton Woods gold standard that basically made the world one giant colony of the USA and the fact that other countries couldn't manipulate their currency in opposition to the US until the Bretton Woods gold standard started to break down. Once the Bretton Woods gold standard was booted out the door, the US had to choose between constant stagflation or lower incomes with real economic growth. The situation will not improve until the global wage rate approaches the US wage rate.

tkwelge

Feb 14, 2011

@Kataku

You also seem to ignore some actual causes of inequality, such as credentialism and credit expansion. Even if you agree with the Federal Reserve expanding credit, you should be against the fact that bankers and the wealthiest corporations are the first recipients of new money. They get to spend it (or invest it) before the new money jacks up prices (including asset prices as shown in the stock market). It shouldn't surprise you that the distribution of wealth is unequal considering those !$%*!$%*!$%*!$ True, there are countries with central banks expanding credit that have a better equality score than we do, but that is only because they have additional regulation that cancels out a certain amount of the inequality, but they incur economic damages due to those regulation too. Basically, the act of government "regulating" the economy is akin to a dog chasing its own tail.

tkwelge

Feb 14, 2011

@ Kataku

I'm sorry, but you still aren't approaching the philosophical first principles. Personally, I believe that free markets often do not reward merit, but that's okay, because they don't have to. It is hard to get into any discussion of "merit" without talking about morals. Markets reward VALUE not merit. Value is something that is as subjective as merit, but with any subjective valuation, we have to look at who is judging the value or the merit at any given time. Sure, Paris Hilton does not earn her wealth through merit, once again depending on your personal definition, but she sure does create a lot of value. How? It's that Hilton name. It's valuable in and of itself. Is this situation unfair? Probably, but people who lived earlier in her family worked hard to give their descendants such advantages. Any wealth that they bestow upon her is a voluntary transaction.

There is actually a really good article on Reason that went into detail discussing the merit-value debate.

Also, your argument for redistribution comes entirely from your own moral viewpoint. There is a lot of economic debate as to whether or not redistribution will actually achieve the desired results, and even if it did, whether or not the means to achieve those results are worth it. The ends never justify the means according to any non-hypocritical view of morality. Personally, I am pro welfare state all in all, but that is a separate discussion that would take too long to get into.

I really hate the way that statists hide behind a shield of "redistribution" when most statists today are generally technocrats. The vast majority of our budget does not go towards redistribution from the rich to the poor, but from the poor to the rich, the middle to the middle, the rich to the middle, and from the poor to the middle, with crumbs falling to the poor. What percentage of government spending is a true redistribution from the wealth to the poor? 10%, maybe more?

Technocracy is not redistributive by nature, so even if you are pro redistribution, most of the statists today should make you vomit. Although, I am pretty sure that most leftists actually do agree with my last sentence. The true liberal left is individuality loving (liberal used to mean "individualist" and I'm taking it back!) and should buck these technocrats and credentialists wherever they can. I really wish that the next election was between a non technocratic redistributionist and somebody like Ron Paul, but with a greater appreciation of open borders and the right to choose.

I'm really not trying to take up the entire message board. It surprises me that more people don't join the discussion. Why does ever comment page on the dilbert blogs have to read like:

Poster:

I like cheese.

Poster #2:

I don't.

Poster #3:

I love cheese!

This isn't a blog comment section, it's a freakin survey.

kataku

Feb 14, 2011

Correction -

"I realise if i do literally nothing and you staple one document techinically you work infinitely harder and that the brain dead probably have an IQ less than a third of the smartest man, but i'm talking broadly about people, the kind with jobs who can feed themselves."

- This is what happens when you type stuff out at work with you boss running behind you periodically and you tab away half way through a scentence then tab back and forget where you were :(

kataku

Feb 14, 2011

Is america unequal?

So american society is pretty unequal https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States and it started off with poor immigrants on the one hand and rich land owners at the other end of the spectrum. So pretty much you start off in a country where your oppertunities and advantages are not equal, where the distribution of pay will magnify that unequal beginning. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gini_coefficient#US_income_Gini_indices_over_time - The figures backup the idea that things are now less equal than they were in 1929.

Is this wrong?

Depends on how you think wealth should be distributed, what you think makes someone deserving. I like to think your income should depend on how much work you do, this could be a function of how creative or intelligent you are and of how hard you work. If you're a brilliant doctor and your hard work makes you a lot of money, i figure morally thats your money and you owe it to no-one. However, that clearly isn't how we distribute wealth currently.

Firstly, if your daddy is rich then your income may well involve you never having to work and so have nothing to do with your merit. It will almost certainly lead to you getting a better paid job if you do have to work when compared with an identical person from lesser means.

Secondly, looking purely at income and imagining that, somehow, we all start from zero, it still isn't based on the merit of our actions. CEO's earn 100's of times more than most of their employees... but do we think they are such a large multiple smarter, more creative or harder working? On almost any reasonable measure of any of those one person can, at most, be 3 times the better of another. I realise if i do literally nothing and you staple one document techinically you work infinitely harder and that the brain dead are probably have an IQ more than a third of the smartest man, but i'm talking broadly about people, the kind with jobs who can feed themselves.

Should we redistribute wealth?

Currently we start with unequal advantages, so we tax the wealthy to give the poor a chance and pay for schools, for instance. Currently the market results in a range of incomes that couldn't possibly match the difference of the work being done so we tax higher earners to put food in the mouths of those whose efforts don't result in a living wage.

These redistributions don't really get alot done in terms of justice but they move us a little closer to what society would look like if it were meritocratic, the adjustments required to make things truly meritocratic would be terrifying to most. It could also be argued that redistribution saves society money by solving social problems that would otherwise degenerate into rioting and looting at one end of the spectrum and an insufficent, non-competitive work force at the other.

So is redistribution right? Currently yes. Is it in everyones interest? Probably.

rbgos

Feb 14, 2011

With respect to Dr. Maymin, I don't believe the generous public are capable and competant to replace the government by supporting the needy through charity. There are many reasons for this; just one of them is that the public at large are no good at being aware of all the different needs that are out there, and allocating resources appropriately. All charities will yell that their work is the most important and/or underfunded; the ones with the best adverts with the most photogenic needy people will get the money, while other needs which may be much more dire, or require much more money to make happen, are overlooked.

How else can you explain the existance of Donkey Santuaries and the Cats Protection League (a UK charity for cats) while human beings are going to bed hungry, in cardboard boxes in dark alleyways? Cats are cuter than hobos.

Governments, of course, are equally liable to fund problems that they will get the most votes for being seen to fund. Still, they at least have the opportunity and resources to look at the various needs and make an informed, researched decision on which to fund and by how much. I might be naive, but I hope they will make a better decision than I could.

tkwelge

Feb 13, 2011

"If the system of [any] ownership begins with [the person who sold it to me], no-one can argue that he didn't have the right to do that." You're nominating an arbitrary starting point for your morality because it *just happens* to support an existing order in which you personally are doing well enough, thank you."

Why do people make assumptions about me when they don't even know me? How do you know that I'm not native? What makes you think that I am doing "well enough?" What makes you think that I own property? (I don't btw.) I don't see how it is an "arbitrary" starting point. Somebody has to make a claim to the land first. I agree that the land originally belonged to the native americans and it was wrongfully taken, so I don't see how I'm ignoring any important factor.

Personally, I do believe that even if the land was expropriated immorally, but the current owner was not responsible for that immorality, and me and him/her are entering into a voluntary agreement, I can't see how violent force has anything to do with our transaction. You are trying to connect me to events that I have nothing to do with. And don't make that "well isn't that convenient" argument, because no, you can't connect people to wrongdoings that they had nothing to with. Period. I'll also reiterate that I have not much of my own, and I am years away from owning property, so no, I'm not some cackling millionaire bathing in the blood of brown children.

tkwelge

-1

Feb 13, 2011

"What would happen to a person today who tried to squat on an unused slice of desert in, say, Texas, that just happened to belong to a millionnaire rancher, and fought off with lethal force all attempts to move them? That's how the homesteaders got their land. How exactly is that "non-violent"? Just because you've arbitrarily declared that, up til that moment, the land didn't "really" belong to anyone... "

I think that this is the second time that someone has made this argument on the dilbert blog. I completely agree that the original homesteaders were trampling over the land that had originally been homesteaded by the native americans. By the rules of the homestead act, the natives had every right to the land, but they weren't seen as equals. It is a tragedy upon history itself, but that doesn't mean that the homestead principle isn't sound. It just means that the original homesteaders were so racist that they didn't see natives as people. Also, much of the land that was homesteaded was completely unowned. The vast majority of Native Americans were killed by successive waves of the diseases that Europeans brought with them, and there were huge swaths of land that belonged to nobody at all by the time homesteaders showed up.

Just like I told the last person who made this argument, nobody is disagreeing that the removal of native lands was a travesty. I just fail to see how that has any impact on the spirit of the homestead principle itself. Don't try to turn the argument into a pissing match about how much I don't care about people who aren't white.

veti

-3

Feb 13, 2011

"If the system of land ownership begins with the homestead principle, and exists within the realm of voluntary exchange, then nobody can argue that the system of private property results from the initiation of force."

Or to look at it another way:

"If the system of [any] ownership begins with [the person who sold it to me], no-one can argue that he didn't have the right to do that." You're nominating an arbitrary starting point for your morality because it *just happens* to support an existing order in which you personally are doing well enough, thank you.

Why would you claim that, before the squatters came, the land belonged to "nobody"?

What would happen to a person today who tried to squat on an unused slice of desert in, say, Texas, that just happened to belong to a millionnaire rancher, and fought off with lethal force all attempts to move them? That's how the homesteaders got their land. How exactly is that "non-violent"? Just because you've arbitrarily declared that, up til that moment, the land didn't "really" belong to anyone...

rodent8t2

Feb 13, 2011

These budget discussions remind me of one of Scott's classics:
http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/20000/3000/600/23610/23610.strip.gif

ihateregistering

-5

Feb 13, 2011

What is the point of interviewing and obvious psychotic? And what's more, one close to your own views?

The kind of idiot who can say "well we can close down all the social support for those that need it" is exactly the kind of madman that ends up with his head in a guillotine. Not sure if this incompetent is actually employed in a university - but on the positive side, you know of at least one university to avoid if he is.

Maybe you shouldn't be able to pick the disputant, since you're obviously not doing a very good job at it. Could I suggest that if you actually consider doing it properly, you converse with someone from Europe? The solution to a problem isn't to be found within the context of the system that created it.

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