Jock's Place - protectionism - Comments

iain - you know I was

Jock — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:32:37 +0100

iain - you know I was thinking about your comment a bit more about in-groups and out-groups. It seems to me that whilst it may be moderated slightly by "democracy" the state also does this and we do vote for it. We vote to be hard on immigrants, say, or hard on gay people depending who we vote for and occasionally we get our way.

Would it not be better for me as a gay man to live in a free society where I can find somewhere to fit in, than to live under a Tory government, say, in the age of Section 28, where nationwide legislation does me over even though a minoiryt of all people voted for a party of which that was part of their platform?

And, as i say, I think the difference between the intolerance of one self-governing community and another would nowadays be lessened because we are all living in a market and can see what our neighbour, near and far, are doing and face pressure to do likewise if it works for others.

Thanks for that

Jock — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:39:24 +0100

Thanks for that sanbikinoraion. So DWP is quite efficient (though I suspect if I paid a 6% management fee for indpenedent management of my finances I would be appalled). Which is something. My 40% however does not all go into this does it. Overall we know there are billions spent on QUANGOS and all sorts of government waste which is not only above and beyond what we should be looking to the state to do, but keeping real people, often useful intelligent people, out of productive employment!

Besides, however efficient DWP might be, I do not know for myself that my money is being wisely spent supporting people who need it, people who only need it because of the benefits trap, or people who don't really need permanent support and would find some way of earning a part of their keep in a more local, individualistic, welfare system.

Sorry

sanbikinoraion — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:07:29 +0100

Hi, sorry, the anonymous comment was from me.

There's a *thrilling* 244 page document here - http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/E/B/pesa07_complete.pdf - that has a lot of numbers on government expenditure. DWP spends £6bn out of its ~£120bn budget on administration (table 1.9 on p32).

Now, I don't know whether that's Whitehall admin or admin total - and I sure as hell can't be bothered to find out! - but even adding an extra six billions on to account for running the courts and so on would give the 10% figure.

Hmm - I do refer to LVT as

Jock — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:20:40 +0100

Hmm - I do refer to LVT as part of my solution of course.

In my move to my new blog layout I hope I will get the time to redo categories a bit

Land Value Tax tag

Tom Papworth — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 23:31:32 +0100

Jock,

I notice that this item is tagged with "Land Value Tax".

Do you think this is a helpful tag that will assist one in sorting postings from within your blog? ;o)

Given that we have a

Paul Lockett — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:11:31 +0100

Given that we have a lifeboat sevice funded entirely by private donation, I'd say that the idea that state-intervention is the only way to provide a safety net is dubious to say the least.

If you go with the state-interventionist belief, lifeboats would be one of the areas where you would expect people to be saying "it's their own fault for going out to sea," or "if they need a lifeboat, they should pay for it themselves or take out insurance," but people freely support the RNLI with millions of pounds of donations.

Iain, point taken. I do

Jock — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:02:49 +0100

Iain, point taken. I do think, however, that nowadays with mass communications and so on, these issues could be dealt with. "Parishes" (I'll continue to call them that though it's not necessarily what I mean - communities, neighbourhoods, individuals even are more like it) are not so isolated as they perhaps once were. If one community is failing its people and another next door is doing the right thing I think there would be pressure sufficient to make some changes. Second I also think about non-geographic communities. Minority groups are particularly good at establishing these in any case. I for example have helped out people on a gay social networking site whom I have never met in person.

Anon - thanks for the figures - I am very surprised that it is so "efficient" though I'll bet that 10% is only calculated as a proportion of what they actually receive - so there's the treasury's costs of collecting tax, the cost of evading tax (I'll best most people who really object to contributing something towards their fellows are already the one who evade as much tax as they can anyway). And I was also including stuff like health and education where it seems to me that the non-teaching and non-clinical budgets are enormous. There is debate of course about how necessary non-delivery departments are but I suspect they could be more efficient with local "competition" too.

Also, I am not in any way suggesting the basic income funded from land fees should not happen - that to me is a touchstone of equity. So we are "only" talking about those who actually need more than this subsistence level. I suspect that takes much of the sting out of arguments against.

Two things on this -

Anonymous — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:47:35 +0100

Two things on this - firstly, a couple of years' back I delved into the figures and IIRC the govt spends about 10% of the total welfare budget on administration costs.

Second: I when welfare payments are devolved to such a low level whether it really is the "deserving" poor that get the money or "the friends of the parish councillors", which is something different. Surely one can see the scope for pillorying a cheating husband or whatever by denying benefits payments? In that sense, I would rather have a large impersonal organization figuring out how much I'm worth. Of course, I would much rather there was no "figuring out" at all and everyone just got paid a basic income...

Human beings are very good

Iain Coleman — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:11:46 +0100

Human beings are very good at defining in-groups and out-groups. We are considerate and generous to those in the in-group, and riuthless towards those in the outgroup. Voluntary charity works fine for the in-group, but does nothing for the out-group. Which is a long-winded way of saying your proposals are fine, unless you are gay, or black, or female, or otherwise excluded from the group of Most Privileged People.

Comments

Jock — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 17:23:09 +0100

On second thoughts, I have decided to delete someone called Geoffrey Brooking's comment. Some may think me a bit illiberal. However I since noticed that his utterly unrelated comment was a complete reporting of a blog post of his from last week.

My blog is not the place to pursue your rather potty anti-Lib Dem agenda by reposting your own blog when it is completely unrelated to the subject of my posting. Thanks for trying. I do welcome commenters and am happy to debate at length and you are welcome to return with something more appropriate.

I didn't blog on this one

Auberius — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 22:22:17 +0100

I didn't blog on this one (because let's face it, in matters of Lib Dem energy policy I'm something of a heathen) but I quite agree, it's an terrible verdict and one that will invite even more dangerous acts.

It could be worse ...

David Gerard — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:33:26 +0100

... maybe. http://notnews.today.com/?p=36

Thanks for all that...

Jock — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:16:57 +0100

...if you don't mind I'll have a think about your comments - I've actually just got stuck into rebuilding a server onto which I need to move this blog before next weekend so my head is in Linux virtualization land!

My first *impression* though is that you are being unduly pessimistic about the ingenuity of innovations and overly protective of the need for the state to mandate things "by force of law" so to speak.

You are right that there is a tension between liberalism and democracy. Personally I don't like being ruled by the "tyranny of the 22%" if that's what we are calling democracy - I realise of course there are routes to reform to make that less of a problem, but whilst there seems no appetite to change a very broken system I'd rather see how much we can do outside that system.

I am a mutualist. Monopoly is anathema to me too. And what you seem to be describing is how monopolies are enabled and protected by the state mandating things.

But let me get back to you on the specific issues you raised with my two examples.

Than the former, even.

Miller 2.0 — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 23:04:38 +0100

Than the former, even.

My view, I suppose, is that

Miller 2.0 — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 23:03:51 +0100

My view, I suppose, is that liberalism often conflicts with democracy, and that I find the latter, despite its many failures, to be less flawed than the latter.