However, any exchange where a coercive entity dictates a winner and a looser is evil. But to imply from this that all profits are evil is wrong. Free exchange benefits all and is therefore a good thing.
Friday, September 27, 2019
Fallacy - Profits are Evil
When we profit from something, we are better off than we were. That's all it means, and there is nothing evil in this. Nor is a free exchange of goods and services ever evil, because a free exchange cannot happen unless both sides are better off. If one side of a proposed trade does not profit from the exchange, it simply does not happen.
However, any exchange where a coercive entity dictates a winner and a looser is evil. But to imply from this that all profits are evil is wrong. Free exchange benefits all and is therefore a good thing.
However, any exchange where a coercive entity dictates a winner and a looser is evil. But to imply from this that all profits are evil is wrong. Free exchange benefits all and is therefore a good thing.
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
Fallacy - Healthcare is a Right
The difference between a right and a privilege is that a right requires no-one to provide labor or resources without compensation, while a privilege does. Our right to privacy requires nothing of anybody else. Our rights to self-defense, property and free trade are equally non-demanding on others.
However, the word right is often used to mean a privilege received in return for loyalty, and it is in this context that the concept of human rights has its origin. Human rights are constructs of the state, enumerating the sort of privileges that loyal subjects are entitled to. Most, if not all the provisions enumerated under the concept of human rights require someone to provide labor or resources without compensation.
When people claim that health care is a human right, they're implying that this type of service should be provided free of charge to the recipient. However. health care is not free. Someone has to pay. Someone has to give up labor and/or resources in order to provide the service. Since the state itself is nothing but a bureaucracy, it cannot provide the service itself. Hence, it must tax someone.
The argument that health care is a right is in other words a variation on the argument that water should be free. It is simply not true nor possible. If health care is provided to someone free of charge, that someone is a privileged individual, receiving something at the expense of somebody else.
However, the word right is often used to mean a privilege received in return for loyalty, and it is in this context that the concept of human rights has its origin. Human rights are constructs of the state, enumerating the sort of privileges that loyal subjects are entitled to. Most, if not all the provisions enumerated under the concept of human rights require someone to provide labor or resources without compensation.
When people claim that health care is a human right, they're implying that this type of service should be provided free of charge to the recipient. However. health care is not free. Someone has to pay. Someone has to give up labor and/or resources in order to provide the service. Since the state itself is nothing but a bureaucracy, it cannot provide the service itself. Hence, it must tax someone.
The argument that health care is a right is in other words a variation on the argument that water should be free. It is simply not true nor possible. If health care is provided to someone free of charge, that someone is a privileged individual, receiving something at the expense of somebody else.
By Robert Kaufmann - This image is from the FEMA Photo Library., Public Domain, Link
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Fallacy - Water Should be Free
There is water everywhere, and some conclude from this that water should be free. However, there is a great difference between clean water and untreated water.
Untreated water is everywhere, and is in most cases free for all. No-one prevents us from taking as much sea-water as we please. Unless we plan to irrigate an entire field with lake or river water, no-one stops us from taking that either. It is only clean water that demands a price, and the reason for this is that clean water requires filtration and transportation. There is a cost associated with clean water, and somebody somewhere has to pay that cost.
Clean water is not free. Wishing it so does not alter this fact. The only question is whether clean water should be paid for through taxation or through voluntary agreements. Either way, someone has to pay.
Untreated water is everywhere, and is in most cases free for all. No-one prevents us from taking as much sea-water as we please. Unless we plan to irrigate an entire field with lake or river water, no-one stops us from taking that either. It is only clean water that demands a price, and the reason for this is that clean water requires filtration and transportation. There is a cost associated with clean water, and somebody somewhere has to pay that cost.
Clean water is not free. Wishing it so does not alter this fact. The only question is whether clean water should be paid for through taxation or through voluntary agreements. Either way, someone has to pay.
Monday, September 23, 2019
Fallacy - The State is Us
The state is not us, at least not in an all-inclusive way. Rather, it is a subset of us.
This can be easily demonstrated by first considering society at large, which is us, and then consider the state. For society at large to stop existing, we would have to remove all people who are willing to cooperate in their daily lives. However, for the state to stop existing, we only need to remove the state apparatus, commonly referred to as the bureaucracy.
If the bureaucracy of the stat was removed from society, society as such would continue to exist. The only difference would be that tax-funded services would have to be paid directly. Public schools would go private. The same would happen to state run hospitals and homes for the elderly. The police and the army would have to find private sponsors. Law enforcement would have to be done privately, and tax collectors would have to find other things to do.
Conversely, we can see that the state will continue to exist as long as its bureaucracy exists. The state can divest everything but its bureaucracy and still exist. However, the moment the bureaucracy is terminated, the state disappears with it.
This means that the state and its bureaucracy are in fact one and the same. Whatever the state has usurped beyond its bureaucracy is merely captive elements of the state. Public schools and hospitals are not the state, nor is any other service provided by the state. Anything that can be done privately is not the state itself, but extensions that can be removed without the state being terminated.
Furthermore, the state is not owned by us. Very few of us have any real control of the state. The fact that we are allowed to vote does not alter this. The most obvious reason being that we never have the option to terminate the state. True ownership would imply an option to terminate it, but this option is never given. Hence, we are not the owners of the state. Rather, the state is owned by a group of private individuals in cooperation with a few elected officials.
The state is not us. It is a bureaucracy, owned by a small political elite.
This can be easily demonstrated by first considering society at large, which is us, and then consider the state. For society at large to stop existing, we would have to remove all people who are willing to cooperate in their daily lives. However, for the state to stop existing, we only need to remove the state apparatus, commonly referred to as the bureaucracy.
If the bureaucracy of the stat was removed from society, society as such would continue to exist. The only difference would be that tax-funded services would have to be paid directly. Public schools would go private. The same would happen to state run hospitals and homes for the elderly. The police and the army would have to find private sponsors. Law enforcement would have to be done privately, and tax collectors would have to find other things to do.
Conversely, we can see that the state will continue to exist as long as its bureaucracy exists. The state can divest everything but its bureaucracy and still exist. However, the moment the bureaucracy is terminated, the state disappears with it.
This means that the state and its bureaucracy are in fact one and the same. Whatever the state has usurped beyond its bureaucracy is merely captive elements of the state. Public schools and hospitals are not the state, nor is any other service provided by the state. Anything that can be done privately is not the state itself, but extensions that can be removed without the state being terminated.
Furthermore, the state is not owned by us. Very few of us have any real control of the state. The fact that we are allowed to vote does not alter this. The most obvious reason being that we never have the option to terminate the state. True ownership would imply an option to terminate it, but this option is never given. Hence, we are not the owners of the state. Rather, the state is owned by a group of private individuals in cooperation with a few elected officials.
The state is not us. It is a bureaucracy, owned by a small political elite.
Sunday, September 22, 2019
Fallacy - No-one Can Own Land
Earth has existed for about 4 billion years, while humankind have existed for no more than a few hundred thousand years. From this it may seem strange that land can be owned by people. How can anyone claim ownership of something that preexists themselves by billion of years?
Many have concluded from this that land simply cannot be owned. However, a quick analysis of this position reveals it to be logically flawed.
Let's take our uncle Joe, the potato farmer, as an example. He has spent his whole life tilling the earth. He has provided potatoes to people for decades. He has invested countless hours of hard work into taking care of the land, yet he does not own it? How can this be?
Uncle Joe owns the potatoes that he grows, but not the land he maintained to do so. The land, according to the above logic, is owned by nobody.
Does this mean that anyone can take uncle Joe's fields and use them for their own purpose? Not really. That would simply transfer ownership from uncle Joe to somebody else. The land would still be owned, just not by Joe.
On the other hand, if uncle Joe is allowed to continue growing potatoes in the fields, he would by definition be the custodian of the land. He would still own it.
Thirdly, we may conclude that no-one can grow potatoes in uncle Joe's fields. However, such a rule can only be enforced by somebody with a higher claim to the land than uncle Joe. That somebody would presumably be a government bureaucrat, a flesh and blood person like everybody else.
One way or another, someone must be in charge of the land. There is no way that land in use can have no custodian. The custodian is either the one working the land, or somebody else.
Unused land, on the other hand, needs no custody. Claiming ownership of such lands is legally dubious. But this does nothing to save the original position. All we can say for sure is that land in use must have a custodian of some sort. It must be controlled by somebody. It is only unused land that can be logically deemed impossible to own.
Many have concluded from this that land simply cannot be owned. However, a quick analysis of this position reveals it to be logically flawed.
Let's take our uncle Joe, the potato farmer, as an example. He has spent his whole life tilling the earth. He has provided potatoes to people for decades. He has invested countless hours of hard work into taking care of the land, yet he does not own it? How can this be?
Uncle Joe owns the potatoes that he grows, but not the land he maintained to do so. The land, according to the above logic, is owned by nobody.
Does this mean that anyone can take uncle Joe's fields and use them for their own purpose? Not really. That would simply transfer ownership from uncle Joe to somebody else. The land would still be owned, just not by Joe.
On the other hand, if uncle Joe is allowed to continue growing potatoes in the fields, he would by definition be the custodian of the land. He would still own it.
Thirdly, we may conclude that no-one can grow potatoes in uncle Joe's fields. However, such a rule can only be enforced by somebody with a higher claim to the land than uncle Joe. That somebody would presumably be a government bureaucrat, a flesh and blood person like everybody else.
One way or another, someone must be in charge of the land. There is no way that land in use can have no custodian. The custodian is either the one working the land, or somebody else.
Unused land, on the other hand, needs no custody. Claiming ownership of such lands is legally dubious. But this does nothing to save the original position. All we can say for sure is that land in use must have a custodian of some sort. It must be controlled by somebody. It is only unused land that can be logically deemed impossible to own.
Saturday, September 21, 2019
Fallacy - Only Government Keeps the Environment Clean
Capitalism may not be inherently wasteful, but whatever waste is produced is often dumped into rivers, lakes and marshland. Big government is therefore needed in order to protect the environment. So goes the argument of a typical left leaning environmentalist. To back up their claims, they will show before and after pictures of rivers, lakes and city air. Clearly, things have gotten better after the introduction of environmental laws and agencies.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that it fails to say anything about why certain areas got polluted in the first place. What is omitted is the fact that the polluted areas were all publicly owned. No one was dumping trash in uncle Joe's potato field, or on people's doorsteps. That would have been illegal. But, for some reason, land, rivers and air under political stewardship were free for all to dump their trash.
What this illustrates is that politicians are terrible stewards of the environment, and that it is not before things get terribly out of hand that anything gets done. Politicians will then pass a bunch of laws, establish a bureaucracy, and generally grow the government in order to fix the situation. However, had the land and air in question been privately owned, things would not have gotten out of hand in the first place. The rivers, lakes and land would have been as clean as uncle Joe's farm, and the air would have been substantially less polluted.
Anyone trying to dump waste into such privately owned properties would at the very least have had to pay a hefty fee. This would have produced an incentive for all polluters to clean up their acts. Without anywhere to dump their waste for free, polluters would have had to think about waste and waste-management.
This logic holds for air pollution as well. Large polluters would soon have been sued for damages by people living in affected neighborhoods. Owners of roads and factories would have had to pay damages, or clean up. Road owners would have demanded a certain minimum standard from cars driving on their roads. Factory owners would have installed equipment to reduce pollution.
The only reason this did not happen was that government prohibited such class action lawsuits from happening, claiming that the air was publicly owned and therefore exempt from private property laws.
The history of pollution is just as much about government mismanagement of public property as it is a story of government saving the environment by growing larger. Had private property been better protected, a great deal of pollution would never have happened.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that it fails to say anything about why certain areas got polluted in the first place. What is omitted is the fact that the polluted areas were all publicly owned. No one was dumping trash in uncle Joe's potato field, or on people's doorsteps. That would have been illegal. But, for some reason, land, rivers and air under political stewardship were free for all to dump their trash.
What this illustrates is that politicians are terrible stewards of the environment, and that it is not before things get terribly out of hand that anything gets done. Politicians will then pass a bunch of laws, establish a bureaucracy, and generally grow the government in order to fix the situation. However, had the land and air in question been privately owned, things would not have gotten out of hand in the first place. The rivers, lakes and land would have been as clean as uncle Joe's farm, and the air would have been substantially less polluted.
Anyone trying to dump waste into such privately owned properties would at the very least have had to pay a hefty fee. This would have produced an incentive for all polluters to clean up their acts. Without anywhere to dump their waste for free, polluters would have had to think about waste and waste-management.
This logic holds for air pollution as well. Large polluters would soon have been sued for damages by people living in affected neighborhoods. Owners of roads and factories would have had to pay damages, or clean up. Road owners would have demanded a certain minimum standard from cars driving on their roads. Factory owners would have installed equipment to reduce pollution.
The only reason this did not happen was that government prohibited such class action lawsuits from happening, claiming that the air was publicly owned and therefore exempt from private property laws.
The history of pollution is just as much about government mismanagement of public property as it is a story of government saving the environment by growing larger. Had private property been better protected, a great deal of pollution would never have happened.
By Frank J. (Frank John) Aleksandrowicz, 1921-, Photographer (NARA record: 8452210) - U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, Link
Friday, September 20, 2019
Fallacy - Capitalism is Inherently Wasteful
The abundance of choice and offer available in capitalist societies has some people conclude that capitalism is wasteful. From this they go on to suggest that choice and offer should be reduce in order to save the planet from waste, making everyone better off in the process.
However, any waste that there may be cannot possibly come from capitalism. Giving bureaucrats the power to regulate it will therefore do nothing to reduce waste.
This is self evident from the fact that capitalists seek profit in all that they do. Producing a lot of stuff simply to dump it in a landfill makes no-one richer, and is therefore not the action of a capitalist. This will not happen unless some external entity provides a perverse incentive to do so.
Under free market capitalism, every entrepreneur will seek to reduce their waste as much as possible. The only external entity that could possibly convince the capitalist to produce stuff for no other purpose than to bury it is the state.
However, any waste that there may be cannot possibly come from capitalism. Giving bureaucrats the power to regulate it will therefore do nothing to reduce waste.
This is self evident from the fact that capitalists seek profit in all that they do. Producing a lot of stuff simply to dump it in a landfill makes no-one richer, and is therefore not the action of a capitalist. This will not happen unless some external entity provides a perverse incentive to do so.
Under free market capitalism, every entrepreneur will seek to reduce their waste as much as possible. The only external entity that could possibly convince the capitalist to produce stuff for no other purpose than to bury it is the state.
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