Fed, clothed, sheltered, and bathed.

...I guess no other term really works, because without this they would die.

Why do you assume that this only happens if the government does it?

If it doesn't, then why enforce it with laws?

Because governments tend to grow without limit. It's a matter of incentives. They ant more power; bureaucracies want more staff and budget; and any additional captive constituency = more votes. Hence, the endless expansion of government programs.

That's the mechanism. But that's not what we're talking about. Do you remember the original question? It was: why do you assume that things only happen if the government does them? Why is there no room in your solution space for anything else?

I don't assume that.

My question is: Why do children need government protection and not disabled people?

I never said children needed "protection" using your definition (i.e., protection = welfare). When I speak of "protection," I mean police, courts, etc. What I did say is you cannot validly infer laws for adults from laws for children.

So what exactly are you proposing then Dogg9 ?
Are you leaning towards a 'Corporatised' society, or exactly what kind of a model are you proposing ?

Utter, utter crap. Booms and busts were around long before governments even had a co-ordinated macro-economic policy. Macro-economics has only properly matured since Keynes in the 20th century. Micro-economics wasn't even studied properly until after Smith in the 18th century, but there have been booms and busts, such as the South Sea Bubble, ever since the rise of commercial society in the 17th century. Even in the middle ages there were periods of growth and depression.

There is a difference between charging prices that the market will bear and charging what you are forced to charge by the presence of serious competitors. I doubt Microsoft products would be as expensive as they are if they weren't so ubiquitous. Their pricing is determined what people will pay rather than what their competitors are charging. People could be getting the same for less. You're being ripped off, even if you don't know it.

You're right, but I would rather pay for welfare scroungers than leave people living on the streets or in squalid shacks. Modern societies don't need to do that. We're beyond it. Welfare is flawed, and is bad for the economy, but it is better than the alternative.

It seems to me that you've formed an opinion and you're now trying to post-rationalise it. You've found a nice idea, that of the free market, and latched onto it like some sort of religious acolyte. You seem blind to its flaws. I don't understand why you expect it to be a system incapable of improvement. I doubt any economic system is.

As far as welfare is concerned, because they don't happen much without government. Before welfare the gaps were plugged by charities, but they were far from adequate. If they had worked properly there would have been no need for welfare.

Did I not answer your question already by referring to the LP platform, which is close enough to ideal for me?

I have no idea what you mean by "corporatized." That's actually a word with a real meaning, but I doubt you're aware of it. I'm guessing you think it means "limited government, laissez faire capitalism," which is exactly what it doesn't mean/

Really? And how would you support that statement?

Welfare, like any government program, is not put in place to address a need. Rather it is there to buy votes, and to act as a palliative. Even if its origins were in fact condign, good intentions hardly matter. Welfare destroyed the inner city black middle class (which was well established by the early 60s, just prior to welfare's explosion), and lowered the standard of living for tens of millions. It created, as these programs always do via perverse incentives, a captive constituency who forever vote to stay on the plantation.

Charities and short term unemployment insurance (which the recipient has already paid for) would cover most exigencies. Getting the poor and lower middle class off their debilitating dependency on government handouts would do the rest. One huge step is social security reform, ASAP. SS essentially steals your retirement money, eliminates the ability of most people to create self-sustaining estates for themselves and their survivors, beggars them, and then keeps them at subsistence levels on the government dole.

Heck, simply reducing the size of the Leviathan state alone would go a long way towards creating an economy where your worries would not exist.

Why's that?

We are not talking about the same thing, then. Normal changes in economic growth happen. Disasters require government policy. Notice that the South Sea Bubble was a criminal enterprise, which the English government was complicit with.

Re: the business cycle:

http://www.mises.org/StudyGuideDisplay.asp?SubjID=12

Again, history simply does not agree with you.

Incomplete. They cannot raise pricing arbitrarily, lest other competitors enter the field. The only way to keep competitors away, over the long haul, is competitive pricing.

Try:

http://reason.com/0111/fe.dk.antitrusts.shtml

I'm afraid you don't know me well enough to make these claims.

Changes are not necessarily improvements. The vast majority of "improvements" have been failures or counter-productive.

Because adults are not children.

No, but disabled adults are like children in that they can't survive without help from others.

No, disabled adults are disabled ADULTS. Because they share exactly one attribute with children does not make them the same, legally or philosophically. One does not legislate from exception, or from microscopic overlap between entities.

I can't guide you through this. I don't have the time or energy. I'm afraid you're on your own.

They share a second attribute; they're both human beings. I wouldn't call either of those overlaps 'microscopic,' i'd say they were pretty damn big.

So, they're both human beings, and they're both unable to survive on their own.

Any disagreement so far?

'Normal changes in economic growth' in this case mean depression, poverty and, in the past, starvation. These all happened quite frequently with no government intevention whatsoever.


No, because a large corporation can lower its prices to damage competitors with less financial clout. The Times used to sell here for 10p, an unsustainable price, but it did it in order to win sales, and could only do it because it was bought by Rupert Murdoch. There are other tactics monopolies can use. In Microsoft's case this essentially means making other programmes obselete on its new systems - a recent version of hotmail was made incompatible with old versions of Netscape Navigator, in order to prompt people to switch to MIE. In such a situation they are dliberstely degrading their product in order to win competitive advantage, which is bad for everyone else.


Hello? My claims are that you seem blind to the flaws of the free market. And you do. I don't need to justify that in any way.

Vast majority? That's some claim. I doubt you have any idea of proportions. I don't claim to. However, improvements can be made, and if they can then they should. Mistakes can be ditched and improvements kept. This is the way the world works.

It didn't work before. Small government didn't leave people any better off. Proportionally the poor were worse off. These worries existed worse than they do now in the days when the state was minimal. Charities did not fill the gap. I don't know where you get your information from, but if it's the same place that told you that literacy rates had fallen since the introduction of public schools (Pat Robertson?) then I suggest you try somewhere else.

I think you're right to point out some large flaws in the welfare system, many of which are brought on by its bad management. I just think your solution is ideological nonsense.