Thursday, October 26, 2006

The Social Welfare State, beyond Ideology

Newly added:

Jeffry Sachs' Scientific American article on how social welfare states do as well as or better than low-tax, high-income countries. The punch line is that Friedrich Von Hayek was wrong.

7 comments:

Mike said...

I saw that, it would have been nice to have some links to the sources. Then again, it's not as if the Libertarians care about reality anyway.

Anonymous said...

In support of the SciAm article's claims, several social-democratic countries score above the U.S. in the latest Human Development Index.

Anonymous said...

Some people, many of them libertarians even, care so much about reality that they find it hard to be persuaded by a comparison of group means without consideration for variation within groups or controls for other variables.

Mike said...

Meaning, of course, that the scientifically illiterate will continue to think what they want to, thank you very much...

Paul Bramscher said...

I like to pose this question to Libertarians: If they don't believe in democracy or socialized aspects in the economy, then would be they willing to likewise strip it out of the judicial/legal/enforcement systems as well? So, for instance, if some ueber-elite landlord A wants to evict renter B, then person B could perhaps take up arms, kill the landlord, and take it over for himself. Lacking a socialized judicial/legal/enforcement system, it would be a matter to be handled from one private party to another, and there would be no wider social context/backdrop against which one could claim ownership of anything.

It turns out, when you phrase it this way, that Libertarians expose themselves as socialization for the wealthy, capitalism on the poor sort of people. Anarchists they are not.

Coryan said...

Wow Paul, if you knew anything about Libertarian ideology, you would understand why you little "gotcha" test is ridiculous. I challenge you to actually read up on WHY Libertarian believe as they do before you continue practicing your silly little test to expose their evil nature. BTW, I am a Libertarian of moderate means who knows of only a couple rich Libertarians. Most Libertarians I know are middle class. So to accuse me of just wanting a system that supports the rich at the expense of the poor is simply a joke.

Mike Huben said...

Wow, Coryan, if you knew anything about Libertarian ideology you'd know that anarcho-capitalist libertarians (such as David Friedman) propose something very much like Paul's suggestion. Why not read "The Machinery Of Freedom" to see what it's like to drink ALL of the koolade.

As for your personal position, middle and lower class sycophancy for the rich has a long and pathetic tradition of begging for the trickle down.