Truss is, of course wrong. People are undoubtedly best placed to spend their money on some things. It would be ridiculous to pretend otherwise.
But people are not best placed to spend their money on health, education, tackling crime, defence, providing a social safety net, delivering environmental protection, and so much else. These things are public goods.
A public good is something non-rivalrous and non-excludable.
We can exclude people from health care, from the social safety net, from education. It is also true that at least two of those are rivalrous. You cannot have the kidney I’ve just had implanted, Jimmy cannot have the classroom seat already occupied by Jenny.
This doesn’t mean that they’re not goods for the public to have, nor good for the public to have. Even, it leaves open whether government should provide them or not. But the one thing they’re not is public goods.
Which makes Spud provably ignorant. Once again.
They can only be supplied at all if they are widely, and most likely universally, available.
Bandaging an arm, gaining a classics degree, these can only happen if all get them, eh? Twatto.
in fairness to him Tim think of his perspective:
The ideal state is one where the state has complete control over all aspects of production and all activity by individuals. There’s no space there for private goods. That’s why in some ways he’s even more moronic than the leaders of North Korea. At least they occasionally allow private goods. That’s why the logical corollary of his position is that the first part of his statement is inconsistent with the second. Why should any goods be excluded from his public definition. Theoretically me having a TV (for example) is unfair to those not able to have one.
You are of course absolutely correct that his definition of a ‘public good’ isn’t the conventional one most ‘economists’ recognize but he rejected all mainstream economics after walking out of his first term. Forget Ricardo, Smith, Pareto, Schumpeter and others. What are they next to a ‘Lowland fens grifter’ who holds three esteeemed academic positions?
Some things make sense to be socialised – defence of the realm for example as we don’t want each sea side town to have it’s own navy. Most of the Mad Taters list doesn’t need to be however – bins might be less costly to have fewer bin collections and competing peelers might also be a problem. These don’t need to be done at a national level however.
Even the old argument that surely lighthouses are a public good, to be paid for from taxation, took a bit of a blow when someone explained how some lighthouses had been paid for historically.
“competing peelers might also be a problem.”
I wonder who would get a better service, someone who paid a private police force to investigate burglary of their house, or a person relying on the current arrangements?
There could also be an advantage to competing police forces, you might be able to get one of them to enforce the law as written by Parliament, something the current police force often seem unwilling to do.
There are indeed families and entire neighborhoods where all of those things are paid for privately. And it all ends up better, cheaper and more efficient. The schools tend not to have any antiracist math, or tampons in the boys’ room, but they manage.
dearieme
I remember the Ship Tax. Being inland I couldn’t see why I should pay to protect some people stupid enough to live by the seaside.
《A public good is something non-rivalrous and non-excludable.》
Like a money-printed, inflation-proofed, generous, and universal basic income?
《You cannot have the kidney I’ve just had implanted, Jimmy cannot have the classroom seat already occupied by Jenny.》
Can I get legal morphine though (or grow opium legally myself)? Do virtual classrooms have any physical seats that run out?
rsm
I’d be entertained if you could explain how the Zimbos, or the Weimar Republic, could have printed all that money but avoided inflation?
@Jez, I always assumed the main argument for council bin collection is it’s easier than dealing with rampant fly-tipping and/or trying to enforce mandatory use of commercial services?
“money-printed, inflation-proofed”
I am reminded of this: https://www.yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth
“With the power of this bucket, you could keep in tossing pebbles, and the sheep would keep returning from the fields. You could start with just a few sheep, let them leave, then fill the bucket to the brim before they returned. And if tending so many sheep grew tedious, you could let them all leave, then empty almost all the pebbles from the bucket, so that only a few returned… increasing the flocks again when it came time for shearing… dear heavens, man! Do you realize the sheer power of this ritual you’ve discovered? I can only imagine the implications; humankind might leap ahead a decade – no, a century!”
@dearieme, lighthouses are still a public good, non-excludable (you can’t stop Captain Pugwash seeing the lighthouse you’ve built) and non-rivalrous (there’s no point me competing with your lighhouse to keep Captain Pugwash off the rocks). They don’t, indeed, have to be paid for from taxation, but that doesn’t alter the above.
My golden rules for not reading further: if the writer spells “Israeli” “Isreali;” spells Gandhi “Ghandi;” thinks a public good is something good for the public; and is Spud.
People like spud seem to exhibit traits seen in 16th century religious zealots, except they’ve replaced god for the state. The good omnipresent, omniscient state that can cure all ills, only if you fund it enough.
Virtual classrooms run out of seats, assuming that they are classrooms not lecture theatres.
Sure, you get the elements of something via videos and books. But they won’t mark your papers, help you through specific issues or direct your learning in a coherent way. That’s why even universities are not particularly threatened by online education learning.
I thought myself html and css from books and sites. The result is that while I can code a site, I do it very badly. Being properly taught by a person would have been much quicker and more effective.
taught myself!!
“council bin collection”: when we first went to Australia our neighbours found it hard to believe our tale that council employees emptied our bins in Britain.
We had two Aussie bin collections: one was for household rubbish, performed by contractors hired by the council. The other was collection of gum leaves, performed by a private firm who billed us. If you didn’t want to use them you could find some other way of disposing of your gum leaves. Surprisingly nobody offered a hire-a-koala service.
Chester – well done for avoiding the ridiculous expense of Uni (which merely teaches you how to research and learn – something you’ve done most effectively for yourself without paying £40000 to left-wing idiots).
Spud, however, fails at every step. Ignorant and only partly educated in financial matters, he unerringly picks the wrong end of the stick. He’s a bellwether for misdirection – if he says go left, go right.
I know some lefties who ‘think’ he knows stuff, but they’re all ignorant too, so their opinions are silly.
But I have some sympathy for the hapless fellow – it can’t be easy knowing the truth about oneself – in his case it’s ignorance, incompetence and stupidity.
For contra-Spud followers, I recommend a bet on England Ladies not to beat Spain tomorrow night as Spud has recently declaimed how well managed they are and put this shower of Conservatives to shame.
We can get about an 85% return if correct.
For further enjoyment look out for his Thursday morning switcheroo noting that so many of the England Ladies are white and that contributed to their failure. Ragging is fun.
Chester,
“Sure, you get the elements of something via videos and books. But they won’t mark your papers, help you through specific issues or direct your learning in a coherent way. That’s why even universities are not particularly threatened by online education learning.”
True, but there’s a load of stuff in teaching that you can save time on, like producing the notes, doing the lecture. Like I don’t understand all these teachers who moan about lesson prep, when there’s supposed to be a national curriculum. Why can’t teachers just buy a load of materials in whatever format for teaching the English Civil War? And even with the specific issues thing, some of that can be about improving the course to clarify things so that you spend less time doing it.
“I thought myself html and css from books and sites. The result is that while I can code a site, I do it very badly. Being properly taught by a person would have been much quicker and more effective.”
You won’t get a lot more from classroom learning than from books. There’s lots of companies that do courses in web design that have nice middle class women doing the teaching to a script, rather than practitioners.
If I wanted to learn those things I’d start with something like a Pluralsight course in the subject which is more structured video learning, and then when you get stuck, ask in the forums for it, or ask around. Find a mentor in it, someone who can answer the odd question on Twitter or email and pay them in bottles of wine.
Boganboy, can I easily spin a tale of a capriciously-imposed US dollar shortage being the final cause of Zimbabwe’s and Weimar’s hyperinflations (and deflations)?
Chester, is there any relevant physical limit to viewers of this (very educational) blog?
Van_patten, can I differ from Murphy’s policy prescriptions without automatically following your own?
So rsm, you’d argue that the Yanks can print as many dollars as they like without causing inflation?
It’s only the foul foreign freaks who can’t manage it!!!
@ Boganboy
By increasing real GDP at the same rate!
It continues to amaze me 54 years after I had to come south to get a job that all the southern and/or academic twits ignore the importance of real goods and services when they analyse the economy.
@rsm
I am beginning to wonder how your brain works.
is there any relevant physical limit to viewers of this (very educational) blog?
That is such a self-evidently stupid and irrelevant question (as are so many of your comments) it must take a stupendous lack of logical processing ability. The answer to the question is Yes, the physical limit is the number of people in the world.
Boganboy, is the US dollar still the world’s best money? Why is the international price of the dollar going up along with domestic inflation?
Boganboy, why should nominal inflation even matter when you can index the economy fully and maintain everyone’s real purchasing power stability rather than nominal price stability?
Asiaseen, was the point of my question that this blog is only rivalrous and exclusive if they wilfully start banning? Not due to any real physical scarcity?
Rsm
I welcome honest debate from any source. More than happy for you to disagree and I won’t ban you or label you ‘a troll’ for doing so (unlike Murphy) – was there a specific issue you had or just generally disliking my opening comment?
If the latter – apologies. Murphy is the closest thing to pure evil extant in the Blogosphere and his ideologies pose a mortal threat to my immediate family so I do have strong opinions on his beliefs, certainly…