misallocation

there follows a classic case study of misallocated capital through taxation funded ‘investment’. the story is to be found in Bill Bryson’s account of New York State's canal west. He explains that it ‘made’ new york the industrial capital of the then united states and that in turn the industrial capital of the northern hemisphere.

But Bryson also states that Canada was better positioned to take that position and it had a huge river going deep into its heartlands of natural and agricultural resources.

So, would it not have been better, ignoring the artificial boundaries of states, for the capital that was taxed to fund the NY state canal to have been naturally invested into more promising opportunities in Canada where a pre-existing water bourne transport route was?

Or to put it another way – if you had a million dollars ot invest in the north American continent – would you;

A – build a massive and expensive canal across NY state and then put a factory at the end of it with what meagre funds remained? Or…

B – invest the whole 1 million dollars into a massive factory or number of factories at any number of points along this canadian river?

It’s not a question that needs definitively answering. It’s not a question of which should the gov have spent the cash on. It doesn’t even matter what everyone’s personal opinion is. The only thing that matters is what the aggregate outcome of the free market would be. That is to say what would have been the overall result of the many decisions by countless entrepreneurs as to where to invest. Indeed it may have been the case that the NY canal would have been built perhaps bigger better and faster. Or perhaps both Canada and NY. No one can know and that is the point. No single agency can possibly pick a winner. No hyper computer, or learned council exists or has existed that could consider all the infinite information that is collated and transmitted by the price mechanism and acted on by individuals motived by their own self interest and acting upon their own specialist knowledge.

Government can never pick a winner and it should not be in the business of doing so

why a healthy economy cannot exhibit total employment

unemployment through developments in efficiency frees up individuals to take on new previously impossible jobs. Thus the economy expands as a robot takes over what was previously manual labour for ten men. Now those ten men are available for jobs that previously could not have existed due to the workforce being occupied in manual labour. in other words, prior to the robot there was no supply of labour available to fulfill a demand. following the introduction of the robot, the manual labour is still getting done, now by the robot, but now there are also ten extra jobs made possible by the newly increased supply of labour. everyone’s real wealth increases.

The corollary is the traditional socialist position. 19th century Fabians were concerned with full employment and were opposed to technological development and industrial progress as it ‘threatened’ the full employment of their trade union clients. Thus their conception of economics could not permit expansion as it was based in stasis. Everyone had to have a job and no job could be automated or removed through efficiencies. Thus there were never any excess workers available to make new jobs, services and products possible. The fabians must have realised this as I believe it was the basis of their eugenicist focus on population growth. Like other collectivists awarding medals for mothers who added their burgeoning offspring to the peoples’ workforce, the fabians needed population growth to provide the extra workers required for economic growth. Their social policies were opposed to the capitalist mechanism of doing more with less and so their economic policies became dependent upon ever increasing birthrates.

This of course was to be achieved through tax funded incentives and subsidies (todays ‘nudges’). Obviously they completely missed the Misesian observation that you cannot tax an economy into growth

Methodological Individualism

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodological_individualism

Methodological individualism is the theory that social phenomena can only be accurately explained by showing how they result from the intentional states that motivate the individual actors.[1] The idea has been used to criticize historicism, structural functionalism, and the roles of social class, gender roles, or ethnicity as determinants of individual behavior.[citation needed] It is promoted by the Austrian School of economics in interpreting economic developments.

Mark Blaug, known for his work on the history of economic thought, has criticized over-reliance on methodological individualism, "it is helpful to note what methodological individualism strictly interpreted ... would imply for economics. In effect, it would rule out all macroeconomic propositions that cannot be reduced to microeconomic ones, ... this amounts to saying goodbye to almost the whole of received macroeconomics. There must be something wrong with a methodological principle that has such devastating implications."[2]

OH THE HORROR! I cannot imagine how unsettling Mr Blaug must find such a dangerous notion.
I do feel sorry for such academic statist macro economists. Pity them as they whinge that the logical result of methodological individualism is the complete negation of any and all macro economic tampering. As if it were a bad thing! The presumption being that macro economic thought and state manipulation exist and therefore must be unquestionably both necessary and desirable. His other implication being that both him and the rest of em would be out of a job and out of their comfy world of power, influence and privilege. mind boggling.

politically correct transport

I will endevour to avoid the erroneous term 'public transport'. It is neither owned by nor operated for 'the public'. and neither can it be. once you understand the falsehood that is 'public ownership' and 'democratic control' then the mythological infantile propaganda that encourages us to believe we all somehow own a tiny share of everything called 'public' and that we somehow control this through the 'democratic process' will cease to hold you under its misleading thrall.
I would revert to a slightly more old fashioned term 'mass transit'. that is to say buses, trains, trams and planes. any transportational vehicle that can convey a number of unrelated individuals from point to point. notice that this appears to be broadly the same definition as that of the more current 'public transport' however there is a very important distinction between the two. Mass transit does not imply 'public ownership'. Mass transit comes from a time before the state siezed control of mass transit. private bus companies competed for custom offering cheaper fares and better service. one did not have to lobby for a route to be created in your area. if there was a demand then an entrepreneuring firm would emerge to supply that demand in the pursuit of profit. likewise for trains and trams and the exception that proves the rule - planes. How is a plane categorically different from a bus in this context? it is not and yet you will never hear the airline industry referred to under the umbrella term 'pulic transport'.
it was realising and accepting the implications of the above history that made me examine my previously unconsidered instinctual views of mass transit. coming from the place i do during the time we live in, my view of mass transit was coloured by the socialist outcomes of 'public transport' - that is to say its miserable and complete failure. upon discovering that mass transit had once been private, thriving and successful before its socialist takeover I realised it was not necessarily the actual idea of mass transit i hated but the reality of socialism-perverted 'public transport' that i had reacted against.
i no longer feel the need to defend the car against the bus or train. shorn of their political identities and associations their significance dissipates to a more natural level somewhere alongside the choice between white or brown bread. i do not particularly bother with such debates in favour of either 'side'. if only all such options were free to develop and propser in a natural economic environment users would be free to choose, their decision based on natural merit alone rather than which has been least politically molested.

now that the intro to this blog post has exceeded in length and possibly quality what i originally had in mind let me get on with it:

the reason i digressed into semantics is because I wanted to compare a form of public mass transport, a form of private individual transport and another form of transport that politically falls somewhere between the two. the first public form is a train, the second private form the car and the third the more problematic bicycle. the politcally favoured and promoted bicycle would not fit into the category 'public transport'. my politics hating mind could not compute. how could i refer to politically favoured forms of transport if they would not all fit the categorical umbrella 'public transport'? then i hit upon 'politically correct transport'. It covers the unjustifiable idollatory of collective solutions such as public transport but can also include the Gaia worshipping unpleasantness that is commuting by bicycle (I happen to love recreational bicycle use and abuse but hated having to go to work on the fucking thing)

finally to the point...

why not use a favourite emotive opinion twister of the statists against them next time the ole 'public transport' slanging match rears its ugly head. I refer to the big bad 'Think of The Children'!

present them with the aformentioned three options - train, bicycle and car.

now consider which you would rather put your child on...

how safe will they be on a bicycle in traffic?

how secure will they be trapped on a train full of unpredictable, unpoliced strangers?

and now consider whether they might wobble into a ditch or get mugged whilst safely ensconced within the comfy private confines of a car.

which two do the state endlessly promote and subsidise and which does the state endlessly persecute and charge?

now tell me who is genuinely concerned about the fucking cheedlren

how to defend from the goal line

In terms of national defense do compulsory team sports instil this mad idea that one cannot defend from the goal line? You often see rugby teams defending from their own try line. If they did nothing but defend in this way then they could not lose. However they would not gain anything over their opponents in order to win either. Thus they must stray from their own defences and open themselves to risk in a gamble. Because the whole point of team sports is to win, the team cannot remain the ever vigilant peaceful isolationists such as Switzerland. So when we come to debates regarding national defense I get told that it is impossible to defend from the goal line; that 'we' must 'defend' aggressively with overseas misadventure. The opportunity to externalise the cost of the sporting gamble enables monarchs, rulers and democracy voters to indulge in risky behaviour such as interventionism and invasion.

how to see past the nose on your face

what you will hear if you dare raise the possibility of roads without the state – 'but what if one company became a monopoly and charged sky high prices making huge levels of profit whilst offering terrible service?'

the gigantic and obvious truth this excuse for a challenge ignores is that the state currently has a just such a total monopoly. There is no point fearing a future possibility of monopoly when we currently suffer a present certainty of monopoly. The state (in the uk at least) makes more from road taxes and fuel duties than the roads cost them on maintenance and construction – this difference is their profit. Percentage-wise it is colossal. So the anti-anachists' fears regarding roads are in fact description of the status quo.

why the state?

In the same way that the onus is on monotheists to prove all other gods false and justify theirs as the one true god, the onus is on statists to explain not only why other nation states fail to conform to their own ideal but they must also explain the absence of world government.

If government is natural and necessary why is there no global government? If it is so preferable why does the world seem to overwhelmingly not prefer greater conglomeration of coercive power? why do nation states fight fiercely to defend their individual sovereign existence in an anarchic global order. why is this principle of individual sovereignty violently prohibited at any level other than the nation state?