Is this the end of the Reagan/Rove right?

[crackerjack]

At the risk of encouraging resident paranoiacs, Peter Tatchell is on the Palast tip here

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/20/republicans-voting

The Guardian have closed comments early adn the US edition didn;t run it at all, which is odd. Surely if there was something libelous they'd take it down?

 

[hucks]

Maybe there was something libelous in the comments, or at least a load of claims they couldn't substantiate. Better to shut it down than moderate out a load of comments, or leave a few potentially dangerous ones in.

Edit: reading it, though, there aren't many deletions. Odd.

 

[vimothy]

I knew you would say that, but why exactly?

Because if you don't know if an asset is really yours, why bother investing any time or money into it? How can you build a house with no title to the land you're building on? (Do it quick!) Furthermore, how can you get a loan to build your house with no legal status? And abolishing law for all might equalise the playing field in a sense, but really it extends marginalisation to the whole of society. Abolishing private property would instantly make everyone's life hugely difficult.

I really recommend The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto. De Soto is a Peruvian economist, at one point targeted for assassination by The Shining Path, who in his work tries to understand what keeps the poor poor, based on the probably not unrealistic assumption that it is not laziness or lack of natural entrepreneurship, but rather reflects the quality of the institutions they deal with. In fact, de Soto shows that the poor are kept out of the formal economy by the high bureaucratic barriers to entry, and so reside, literally as well as technically, in an informal economy. No recourse to legal support. No one to impartially arbitrate disputes. No enforcement of contract law. Who do you deal with in that situation? You deal only with those you know you can trust. Institutions matter.

 

[IdleRich]

"Because if you don't know if an asset is really yours, why bother investing any time or money into it? How can you build a house with no title to the land you're building on? (Do it quick!) Furthermore, how can you get a loan to build your house with no legal status? And abolishing law for all might equalise the playing field in a sense, but really it extends marginalisation to the whole of society. Abolishing private property would instantly make everyone's life hugely difficult."

Of course this is true (unless there is some crazy way for everyone to have a stake in the asset in question) but to me there is a problem with the way that ownership is passed on. Once ownership is established and allowed to be inherited doesn't that mean that there is always a high entry level for those who don't have and don't inherit? Obviously we've argued before about the (anti)egalitarian nature of inheritance but it still seems, for want of a better word... unfair. I just think there are things pulling in two directions with regard to ownership. I can see the pros and I can see the cons is what I mean.
Also, even supposing one accepts that ownership of land is a good thing, there is the always weird question of actually what it means to own land.

 

[vimothy]

Maybe, but I think that is a different question to whether or not private property is a 'good' thing.

It's important to have a commonly agreed set of rules.

And what you say about inheritance of assets is valid (of course I'm not saying the system is perfect), but it must be remembered that in terms of private property vs no private property, this is still more optimal than no one having legal rights to anything (even if they've always lived on the land and invested years in its development). And I'm not sure that even in "natural states", where there is no universal private property law, you would avoid the problem of inherited wealth. In fact, I think it would be more prevalent.

 

[IdleRich]

I'm not disagreeing. And it's not even a human thing, the first thing animals do is stake their claim to territory, it's just that maybe as we're not animals we ought to wonder how something that was always there gets to be ours.

 

[vimothy]

And to me rich your criticism also falls under the sphere of creating the best institutions: if there is a better way of organising the market (in institutional terms), let's do it. [Though I think generally the issue relative wealth is less important than absolute wealth.]

But imagine that after death, your assets revert to state ownership -- would your counter parties accept them as collateral? I think that although there is a case for redistributive policies, policies that interfere directly with ownership risk creating costly uncertainties, making the cost of participating in the formal economy prohibitively high. Basically, naming your heirs equals having some control over what happens to your assets when you try to trade them or give them away (not just after you die, but whenever they're involved in a transaction -- if they're ultimately not yours to give away, they're not yours at all). I can't imagine a system that works without being able to do that.

 

[vimothy]

I'm not disagreeing. And it's not even a human thing, the first thing animals do is stake their claim to territory, it's just that maybe as we're not animals we ought to wonder how something that was always there gets to be ours.

No, I quite agree. Private property obviously doesn't exist in the sense that this steak and kidney pie does, or this table does, or war does, or music. It's an agreement, but an 'agreement' that is enforced in a variety of ways.

 

[crackerjack]

Guradian says GOP has thrown in the towel in Colorado, Iowa and New Mexico - presumably this means McCain now has to win states off the Dems.

 

[IdleRich]

"But imagine that after death, your assets revert to state ownership -- would your counter parties accept them as collateral? I think that although there is a case for redistributive policies, policies that interfere directly with ownership risk creating costly uncertainties, and raising the cost of participating in the formal economy prohibitively high. Basically, naming your heirs equals having some control over what happens to your assets when you try to trade them or give them away (not just after you die, but whenever they're involved in a transaction -- if they're ultimately not yours to give away, they're not yours at all). I can't imagine a system that works without being able to do that."

Yeah, again, I feel the force of these arguments. With politics I can see problems but not solutions, that's why I always seem negative in these kind of debates I guess.

 

[nomadthethird]

What about the idea that if everyone co-owned property (i.e. that all land/space was publicly owned and cared for) there'd be much more incentive on everyone's part to make sure this property was well-taken-care-of and much more capital and political manpower backing standard of living for *everyone*, not just the select few that were lucky enough to be born with parents who went to college and who therefore can count on trustfunds/inheritances. There have already been many civilizations who believed no one could ever "own" land (Native Americans, who I think are just the awesomest in so many ways, for one) and this belief in turn led to a broader respect for ecosystems and commitment to our shared responsibility for the earth's or our ecosystems' well-being.

I personally think we could do much much more to ensure that no one goes homeless and no one becomes a total loser in the "marketplace" and that everyone's standard of living and gains therein happens at a steadier pace. Of course the way I think this can happen has nothing to do with cutting taxes for mega corporations and businesses and expecting their gains to somehow trickle down on everyone else (mostly in the form of minimum wage slavery)...

 

[vimothy]

If everyone co-owned property there would be no incentive for anyone to take care -- because dominant strategy would be to slack and let 'the group' (an abstract entity in any case) make up the difference: all losses are shared, so any personal losses caused by shirking would be equally distributed through the group, but at the same time, so would all gains. It follows that for the individual there are no costs to under-performing and no benefits to performing, hence no incentive.

 

[nomadthethird]

If everyone co-owned property there would be no incentive for anyone to take care -- because dominant strategy would be to slack and let 'the group' (an abstract entity in any case) make up the difference: all losses are shared, so any personal losses caused by shirking would be equally distributed through the group, but at the same time, so would all gains. It follows that for the individual there are no costs to under-performing and no benefits to performing, hence no incentive.

Is money the only incentive people could possibly have for doing anything? A quick assesment of the human impulse to care about others and even to give up some of their own money to help others would suggest that this is not the case, or at very least it's not the whole story.

There would likely be no choice but to participate (financially and otherwise) because if you didn't, your own life and standard of living would suffer. The costs of underperforming in this situation are MUCH higher than they are for your average legacy admission to Yale (GW Bush anyone) who gets by on gentlemen's Cs and then daddy's oil money. Also, in the current situation under capitalism, there is very little "incentive" for someone who's grown up in a ghetto or in poverty of any sort to achieve anything, because even if they did perform their best they simply can't afford higher education and can never get ahead. Because of this they tend to stagnate at the bottom, and often engage in blackmarket trafficing in order to "get ahead" and end up costing the rest of us all sorts of money when they go to jail on the taxpayer's dime.

 

[nomadthethird]

http://www.newsweek.com/id/160080/page/1

Eek is right, even most repugs are terrified of Palin getting into office, especially after she made her claim that "the VP is in charge of the senate"???

 

[nomadthethird]

At the risk of encouraging resident paranoiacs, Peter Tatchell is on the Palast tip here

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/20/republicans-voting

The Guardian have closed comments early adn the US edition didn;t run it at all, which is odd. Surely if there was something libelous they'd take it down?

Well here's the thing--most polls are not even in synch with Obama's obvious edge in popularity over McCain in terms of turn-out at their rallies. The polls seem to vastly underestimate Obama backers when you compare them to the huge edge Obama has over McCain in this respect. See: Missouri.

In fact, if you look closely at the wording in most of the polls, they're usually only polling "registered and/or LIKELY voters", which often means 30-50 year-old whites. Historically people younger than 30 that are eligible to vote don't, but new registrations of that 18-30 year-old group this year are in the multiple millions. This doesn't even count the increase in minority registration.

 

[Slothrop]

Also, in the current situation under capitalism, there is very little "incentive" for someone who's grown up in a ghetto or in poverty of any sort to achieve anything, because even if they did perform their best they simply can't afford higher education and can never get ahead. Because of this they tend to stagnate at the bottom, and often engage in blackmarket trafficing in order to "get ahead" and end up costing the rest of us all sorts of money when they go to jail on the taxpayer's dime.

That is only true (as far as we know) in the current situation (and various previous situations) under capitalism, though. Is it obviously a neccessary consequence of the very existence of some form of private property?

 

[nomadthethird]

That is only true (as far as we know) in the current situation (and various previous situations) under capitalism, though. Is it obviously a neccessary consequence of the very existence of some form of private property?

I think it is obviously the consequence of the existence of private property paired with capitalism, yes. The quickest, easiest way to reverse the damage done by capitalism might be to start with property ownership and suchlike reforms. Or do you think capitalism might suddenly change in the absence of such reforms? I wish I thought so...

 

[Slothrop]

I think it is obviously the consequence of the existence of private property paired with capitalism, yes. The quickest, easiest way to reverse the damage done by capitalism might be to start with property ownership and suchlike reforms. Or do you think capitalism might suddenly change in the absence of such reforms?

Well, boring 'centrist' that I am, I haven't seen enough evidence yet to entirely discredit the concept of some sort of democratic market / socialism mix in which (for instance) inner city schools are properly funded and higher education is free but people making shoes or chutney are still deciding what sort of shoes or chutney to make via some sort of market.

Edit: I'm not saying we should all sit back and accept capitalism without looking for alternatives, by the way, just that I don't buy the argument that any possible system based on private property is so inherently and self evidently flawed that the only option is to do away with private property via bringing about the catastrophic collapse of capitalism (sorry if I'm putting Gek's words into your mouth) first and then worry about whether we're going to end up with Mad Max 2 later. I still hold out some hopes for increasing engagement with politics and a top down / bottom up evolution out of the form of capitalism we've got at the moment.

 

[droid]

In fact, if you look closely at the wording in most of the polls, they're usually only polling "registered and/or LIKELY voters", which often means 30-50 year-old whites. Historically people younger than 30 that are eligible to vote don't, but new registrations of that 18-30 year-old group this year are in the multiple millions. This doesn't even count the increase in minority registration.

Hold your horses there - new registrations don't mean shit if they are refused... as Tatchell says in his article:

The NYT found that in some states for every new voter registered in the last couple of months, two voters have been removed – negating Obama's massive voter registration drive. This voter purging could mean fewer people voting next month than voted in 2004.

Where did you get your figures on new voter registrations? Are the increases you mention in swing states? Does it take into account the anti-registration drive?

 

[3 Body No Problem]

If everyone co-owned property there would be no incentive for anyone to take care -- because dominant strategy would be to slack and let 'the group' (an abstract entity in any case) make up the difference: all losses are shared, so any personal losses caused by shirking would be equally distributed through the group, but at the same time, so would all gains. It follows that for the individual there are no costs to under-performing and no benefits to performing, hence no incentive.

This broad-brush argument holds for any ownership group with more than one member.

In particular, it holds for the group of owners w.r.t the social costs of private ownership.