Conservative-liberalism (Laissez-faire liberalism), another utopia for Poland?

Sorry, Mises, can't you speak in practical terms?

Nowadays, roads are constructed and maintained in Poland from these funds:
1. Local and borough roads: from local taxes
2. County, regional and nation-wide roads: From excise tax included in the fuel price. The more you drive, the more you pay. Also, from a fraction of VAT that businesses can deduct in quite great deal. All consumers pay VAT.

Now, could you explain not by text-book but in plain English:
There is a small workshop producing something next door. What they should do and which way they should pay and to whom and how much to secure: local street in front of them; borough street leading to borough road; the multi-county road 719; the regional route 70; the national route 8?

Because highways are indeed to be toll-roads.

One interesting point: Couple years ago, Norway decided to slightly decrease VAT on food to "help poor citizens". As the effect, the prices of food significantly rose, because that meant businesses had to bear cost of the new tax systems. The population of Oslo got into their cars and went to neighboring Sweden for shopping, enjoying low Swedish prices of food. We are talking on micro-intervention in economy. What would happen if you tried to implement major changes, required to implement classical liberal system? A new Chile?

Any "perfect" system is by its very nature a pipedream. Humans are imperfect, period. I will say though that a modified socialized capitalism as existed for almost fourty years during the middle of FDR's administration and lasting until the start of the 80's with the dismantling of the New Deal under Reagan, was as close to ideal, paradise on earth etc.. as anybody's come thus far.

The demise of this structure really stems from the post-War 1950's American dream of more and more personal space, culminating in that Frankenstein's monster we now call 'suburbia'. Young families were permanently isolated from older relatives too poor to move out of the inner cities and into the expensive and exclusive suburbs. The result? Kids grew up with parents who themselves were scarcely out of their mid-twenties typically, everyone was homogeniously whitebread, WASP and these youths were inculcated with the pernicious philosophy that young is cool and old is weird, stale and worthless!

Poor parenting by moms and dads far too keen on being their children's pals than their parents merely lead to the drug culture of rebellion which infested our nation like a cancer from around 1962, post-Kennedy assassination up through the 70's.

Oh, I forgot to mention the other villains in this scenario: Madison Avenue advertising selling America on the wonders of TV dinners, processed sugar plus a host of other evils. Bogeyman Bob Moses' in there someplace, but then, gimme a chance here, I'm on a roll-:))

the large percentage of them are parasites. Why would be they be frustrate if they have freedom of sucking state dry?
The others are just full and want time to digest in peace.
:)
AS to OP question:
I think that such system as any system made up by the theoreticians will not work, although some of the elements of this program could be implemented.

Nice to find out you're not the UPR follower, Ironside ;-)

(In my opinion PO and its predecessors implement classical liberalism, slowly but distinctly since the times of Prof. Balcerowicz. The changes are not revolutionary but evolutionary. Those people have been trying to implement flat tax system for years with total opposition from other political parties).

Ironside
Given that election results show that there are more 'followers of PO' than any other party here, you've just described quite a lot of people as parasites.

Define a lot!


Implemented thieving. The same body cannot set rules to a state economy and at the same time use it to better themselves on the expense of those less connected.

Did that guy not tell horrible things about (mentally) handicapped people? I cannot place it but....

Ever heard about the notion of "populist"?

Sobieski, talking on JKM? I wouldn't be surprised. JKM has gone banana for a long time.

There'll always be those who abuse a good thing. Unions, for example. Basically, a sound idea as stop-gap measure against unfair, bullying employers. Then again, there are the proverbial "union bums" who sit on their dump all day and collect a sizeable salary (..not to mention a handsome pension). Does this mean we get rid of unions?? Of course not. It means they have to be modified so that the distribution is both more equitable as well as realistic. But NO unions AT ALL as in Indiana or Wisconsin???!!! Why not set the clock back to pre-1939 when deserving Americans died on the street, merely because they were unlucky!

It depends on what inspires people.For example the scandinavian model would hardly inspire Americans.On the other hand the german model is applicable only in Germany and there are historical,cultural,genetic reasons for this.

The liberal model clearly failed in Russia and was succeeded by a far more succesful mild authoritarian model under Putin which is closer to russian mentality.As an Ukrainian told me once if you don't beat the Russian he will not work.

very true.

ironically, successive governments in Poland have been introducing more and more laissez-faire policies, to the point that Poland today is much more neo-liberal than many countries in the West, even those that that have been notoriously accused in the popular wisdom of being dog-eat-dog capitalist. what is also ironic, talking about unions, that the lifeblood behind abolishing the socialist system, Solidarity, ended up undermining not only its own organizational backbone but also its ideology that the function of a labor union is to represent the economic interests of its members. perhaps it's because the changes after the rejection of socialism did not bring the affluence that people had expected, and that the capitalism that came afterwards was of the crude, laissez-faire type, that people haven't yet discovered the true potential of competition

A good point. Odd isn't it that other countries, like Poland, adopt all the bad aspects about US culture; the vulgarity rather than the niceties of our tongue, the ineffective instead of the effective elements of capitalism, as though they're being almost cued in by some higher ups that they ought to think Republican. Funny, huh?

Is that the word which a guilty party use when is unable to hide its deeds?

puzzled

A populist is typically a loser who believes that change in power would let such loser get a government post, so such loser could finally steal himself.

There's no other explanation to that, since the only people who constantly talk on theft of public money are the populist losers.

Yeah, along with self-righteous pseudo-philosophical gibberish as you kindly provided above.

Looks awesome. On paper.
What you described is wishful thinking while the true nature of business is totally different. Given full deregulation of business the supply and demand scheme just doesn't work.

This is how the real, deregulated world works:

A business buys another business. Makes more money, so it buys yet another business so it can make even more money so it can buy yet another business and so on until one company owns it all. And then the demand and supply is immaterial The business charges whatever it wants.

Haven't you heard about Standard Oil (now Esso)? American Telephone & Telegraph?
Neither was good for the US and neither operated on your supply/demand principle. Hence, government regulation is not necessarily a bad thing.

Further to your roads proposition - are you drunk?

At a certain level, free market and minimal government are mutually exclusive. To have private property, you need a governing body that establishes rules of what private property is and how one can defend it. You also need an organized body to take care of things that do not bring profit in themselves, like education, infrastructure (as Z pointed out, roads, e.g.; also, which private business would build a thing like the Hoover Dam?), and basic healthcare. You do need government regulation to defend competition every now and then (AT&T, another of Z's examples), just like you need other forms of organizations that may be coercive and restrictive from the standpoint of free market but in reality promote a much healthier form of capitalism, like shareholder votes or labor unions. All in all, free market is in the same category of purely theoretical constructs as planned economy. It assumes that everyone plays by the same rules out the goodness of their heart but in practice, there are always people who will see themselves above the rules, and you get nothing but corruption and speculative bubbles.

Rebuttal to Milky:

From who,the Native Americans.

Because the native Americans never fought over land before we took it? Some transactions were fair, the Dutch did buy Manhattan. However, no liberal supports war and thievery regardless.

Mises:
because none of us can secure all our needs on our own,

I thought it was all about the individual and that there is no such thing as society anymore.

You are completely misguided. Free markets depend upon the division of labor in which we are free to pursue our own interests. In order to be successful, we must pursue what society desires.

Mises:
The market itself is governed by nature's laws through a price mechanism.

LOl , this invisible hand nonsense,,Tell that to the people who died in the Irish(genocide) famine.

Has society grown at levels of innovation never seen before since Adam Smith so famously labeled capitalism as having an invisible hand? Do we not see innovation after innovation and prices dropping because of the invisible hand? Your arguments have no intellectual backings. Where has the history of man shown that a society, that removes invisible hand economics, has a better standard of living than one that does? I would rather be a poor man today than a Pharaoh in Ancient Greece.

Mises:
This makes it so it becomes very hard for any one company to make economic profits in the long run because of the increased competition.

nonsense

It is easier to say nonsense to defend your opinion. Economic profits and monetary profits are two different things. Economic profits involve the opportunity cost of time, land, and other inputs into production. In perfect competition, economic profit=0.

Mises:
I certainly enjoyed the opportunity to write this, sorry for it being long, and I hope for some insightful discussion concerning the information put forth in my defense of liberalism.

text book waffle, how was the teaparty with Sarah Palin. Get more insight in an episiod of Barney.
where you forced to watch cartoons like this as a kid??

Sarah Palin? That is funny. Ms. Palin is not a leader of free markets or even remotely close. She is a nut. I wish you would present your rebuttals proving that the removal of free enterprise is more superior, but you and I know both that that is not possible. Rather you just quote and put your opinion in with no theoretical, historical, or empirical backing. You must be an interventionist because those who hold such a position have no backing.

Barney:

If I own a business and hire based on who I am related to or who is the most attractive, how can I remain successful in the long run? I do not because another competitor would not commit the same flaws as I have done. People hire who is best, and those that do choose to hire on a different criteria, will not remain in business.

You will remain because you will hire competent people who will do the actual job as well.But you will also hire one for connections one for promotion etc.

Private enterprise and the people will own the roads. They will charge per usage much like a tax, but the bureaucracy is gone and resources go to those most profitable.

Your small workshop would pay each individual owner of the road for usage if they did not, themselves, own it. They could cut a long term contract due to the over usage of the road that they may do, but they would pay per usage regardless.

You bring up how people pay for usage in Poland through a fuel tax. But what if you live on a road that you use everyday but society does not repair, are you actually paying for usage and it being maintained? Let us discern what I am trying to put forth. So say I live on Borough Rd and my work is also on Borough Rd. However, Borough Rd has potholes and needs repairing, but some government official has family that lives on "Poland St" and they decide to use the fuel tax to fix that road. Why am I paying taxes to fix some bureaucrats family's road? If we paid per usage on roads, the amount we spend would be poured back into the maintenance of that road (less a small profit, of course). I know here in America, certain roads get more attention than others, but it is not based on who pays the most for those roads (which would be the amount of taxpayers).


Was it due to the socialized capitalism? Or was it a result of a shortage of supply due to a tragedy overseas that spurred American growth? America made substantial investments overseas and became the only Western country that could produce at very high levels. You and I both know that War is not the answer for economic growth and American economic success should be viewed as an outcome of a grave tragedy that happened to our European friends.

Antek_Stalich


You know nothing because you read GieWu.


and such an old crumpet is able to remember only recent articles.

Drunk, no. Asking me such would be the same as me asking if you are blind? Incoherent to the amount of taxes for the little amount of road maintenance that we actually currently receive. Nevertheless, slander and using such language does not seem reasonable to the discourse of this conversation on whether Poland (even though I do not know much about Poland) should pursue liberal economic policies.

All liberals are against cartels, monopolies, and such of that sort. Let me have Milton Friedman defend "life under Standard Oil and such":

voteformyself.com/libertarian-party/milton-friedman-the-robber-baron-m yth/

Mises, your faith in this ideology is remarkable.


This is "build it and they will come" economics.

Perhaps someone can give an example where or when a completely free market worked out, actually, before pushing their utopian ideas. Which country has no government regulation? Which country let's private businesses take care of the infrastructure, like roads? People thought it was up to private enterprise to build roads, until Abraham Lincoln decided that the federal government should do it. It was quite a while ago, and we never looked back.

Somalia.

Uh, plenty of countries do.

Schemes such as "shadow tolling" are very popular.

Shadow tolling involves the government, too, it's not a purely private undertaking. But this was a side question, dope. Do you know any country without government involvement in the market?

A new survey by the Warsaw School of Economics and consulting firm Deloitte reveals that six out of ten graduates would leap at the chance to pursue studies or a career in the West.

The fear comes after the opening of the labour market in Germany and Austria for Poles,

Freedom and liberty go hand in hand with respect and equality, which is *exactly* what most people who are sympathetic to the whole concept of Liberalism fail to understand. (I'm not talking about equality in the Marxist sense either.) You can check all the scientific sources for yourself, because it *has* been established, without doubt, that societies in which there is more equality between people, show more self-development, more creativity, more productivity and development, increased technological advancement and more progression, and that societies in which there is more equality between people, suffer from far less crime and less aggression.


Often at the expense of someone else, because all that property you're talking about usually *already* belongs to those who had the opportunity to acquire it, which means that the ones *after* them, who might want to try to acquire an equal amount of property, will just have to keep drooling over what they can't possibly ever have. (Because whoever owns the most money dictates the whole game.) To simplify: It's like playing a boardgame of Monopoly with nine people, but one player *already* owns half of that board, which basically means that the chances of surviving the first round are slim for the rest of the players.


The way I see it, the government protects the interests of the wealthy elite while it keeps the rest of the people small. (And wether it does that on purpose or not would be a different discussion.) Did you know that a group as large as 10% of the total population in America owns almost 80% of all property? Now, how fair is that? What on earth does this have to do with freedom in any way?


What a nice way to keep your own selfish butt safe while you're basically denying and depriving other people of their share of happiness by rendering them useless. Outsourcing, automatization, buying up the competition and firing its people, excluding people from the labour market by hiring illegals or temporary workers to work for less than minimum wage. I could go on for ages..


No man *ever* succeeded on his own, so no man can decide what his life will look like, but I've noticed that you've already acknowledged this simple fact of life yourself a few paragraphs further down, so I think we're able to understand one another.


Now you're talking. *Your* land. Not mine. *Your* property. Not mine. But of course, I should generate my own wealth. But how to do that when the market is completely saturated? I mean, how to obtain my own property and my own land when *all* of that property and *all* of that land is owned by someone else already? It's a nice theory on paper, but practically speaking it just doesn't make sense.


If only it worked that way, but I'm afraid it all boils down to one thing these days: Are you born rich, or are you born poor? So good luck with *your* liberty my man, because I see a small group of wealthy people who are stripping other people of their dignity and their liberty completely, and wether you realise it or not, they're using the power that money buys to do just that. I mean, you can tell me to educate myself when it's too expensive for me to educate myself, and you can tell me that I'm free to pursue my own interests when employers aren't willing to pay me *any* more than the absolute minimum or even less, not to forget about the automatization or outsourcing of a *lot* of jobs to cheaper countries out there. (Child labour, slave labour.) But of course you *already* know that I - and so many others like me - won't get very far on our own when certain uncrupulous employers aren't willing to generate a little less profit - but they would still generate profit - by keeping jobs in their own country.


Not really. Okay, person A who is the town's farmer probably has nothing to complain about, but person B who is the carpenter probably lost his job to big corporates because the people who own and control the whole wood business decided that it would generate even more profit to outsource his job.


Ideally, yes. Realistically speaking: No. (Just look *around* you?) I'd say that the core concept of Liberalism and the free market looks good, but I'm afraid there are too many people out there who abuse their power and monopolize everything, leaving little to no room for other people to pursue their own interests. I totally agree that some people might still manage to develop themselves in the right direction, but you simply can't deny that there *are* a lot of people out there who simply lack the money to improve their own situation, while they *do* have the intellect or the talents to be *much* more than they currently are. Just look at Spain for example. 40% of its youth is jobless. Now, you can blame that on Socialism or whatever, but the truth is that the Bankers are to blame for this crisis. Nothing and no one else.

What kind of world do you live in I wonder? Have you honestly never heard of companies like Microsoft, who basically have a world-wide monopoly on certain services and products?

Don't get me wrong, it would be *awesome* if Liberalism worked the way it works on paper, and it *could* work just fine, but we'll have to reintroduce a bit of respect and equality in our societies. Which means that employers should be willing to pay their employees a little more than minimum wage when they're doing a good job, and that employers *certainly* shouldn't be allowed to hire illegals or outsource jobs to cheaper countries where they use children to perform heavy-labour.

I'm sure my post will come across as a bit chaotic and uneducated, but this is my take on it in a nutshell. I believe in fair rewards for honest work, regardless of who's the smartest cat in town. (I don't believe in zero-hour contracts, temporary jobs or outsourcing everything until *everyone* has to work for a nickle and an apple just because that'll benefit only a handful of businessmen and women.)

I'm sure that deep down, many people can find themselves in that, eventhough they might not agree with *everything* I've written here.

:)

Most ideas of Janusz Korwin-Mikke looked good on paper. Sounded good when they were spoken in a huge crowd of young people. His target audiance are young people with no political backbone, who soak in these ideas with no hesitation. It's not that they are any different from people who follow the populism of some other late poiticians, The thing about JKM and UPR is, that most of their agenda is just that. Btw. what I mentioned is what I think about current JKM.