Sweden is Not a Socialist Success

Discussion in 'Budget & Taxes' started by Hoosier8, Mar 7, 2019.

  1. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    Not only by me but by most economists. Georgism is an unworkable hippy fantasy.
     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2019
  2. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Nope. Never happened. Wise economists won't even debate geoists, because they know they will lose and be humiliated for their dishonesty.
    <yawn> That must be why Hong Kong was long the freest and most prosperous society on earth while only going halfway to a Georgist system, why Singapore is rich with almost all land owned by the government despite having no natural resources, and why China is well on the way to outstripping the USA economically under a land tenure system modeled on HK's...

    How about thinking before posting?
     
  3. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    Yep, repeatedly happened. Wise economists have routinely trounced georgists.

    Hong Kong is not a georgist system, and is nowhere near outstripping the US, lol
     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2019
  4. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Nope. Not once. Never.
    Then you should be able to point to a source where such a trouncing is recounted.

    Thought not.
    But it's closer than almost anywhere else.
    China is. And China is also using a system closer to the Georgist model than almost any other country. That is exactly what has enabled them to grow so explosively for the last 40 years.
     
  5. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    1) You are the one asking for Justice! Liberty! etc, and yet here you are praising a totalitarian state (China). At this point I can't reasonably believe any of your claims about your beliefs.

    2) The point made was that families should not opt out of mutual obligation. The intact and mutually interdependent small collective is a bastion against external control and insult. Those who actively enable diminished responsibility and the destruction of the family should be regarded with suspicion. They are literally the enemies of Justice! Liberty! Freedom!, seeking control.

    3) Statistics prove nothing in relation to HOW the capacity to learn is established. You should know this, if you have any skin in the game of academics. Excellence is a function of early highly supportive parenting and hard work .. it is NOT an accident of birth. Not even remotely. And FTR, my kids are in the hardest sciences, and they are nowhere near as 'intellectual' as some of their peers. The difference between my kids and those others is that mine know how to work and have parents who value education. Those intellectual kids weren't taught a work ethic, and have parents who think 'happiness' is more important than earning your keep. Why do you think Asian kids do so well academically? It's not genetic, though no doubt many would love that to be true (the great absolver of personal responsibility .. call it genetic. 'not my fault', etc). It's a function of their phenomenal work ethic, and the focus their parents give to education. Any neurologically normal kid will do well under those conditions, and can achieve whatever they want in terms of 'difficult' degrees etc.

    Go spend some time around medical/math/physics students at your nearest elite university and you'll quickly realise it has NOTHING to do with talent. Half of those kids are stupider than house plants, in the usual sense of intellect. Some can barely string a sentence together. Now go to the Arts/Humanities campus and listen to those kids. The majority will be articulate, quick thinking, and have a sense of humour - all of which are functions of intellect. Yet few would qualify for the hard sciences, much less be able to complete such courses.

    I suspect that you and I have very different ideas on what constitutes brain power. If your IQ is 150 but you're an unemployed writer living in shared rental accommodation in your thirties, you may be intellectual but you are clearly not intelligent. If your IQ is bog average but you can work hard and relentlessly, you may not be an intellectual but you are intelligent.

    4) So I'm an 'apologist for evil' now? Because I don't care for totalitarianism or the enabling of dissolution?
     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2019
  6. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    Yep, repeatedly. Every time.

    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1536-7150.00232
    No, you just don’t think.

    .
    No it isn’t. Land is privately owned in Hong Kong.
    China is not, and never has been a georgist economy. It’s economic rose in the last 40 years is due entirely to their embrace of capitalism, and their industrial revolution to become a manufacturing powerhouse.
     
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  7. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    No, that's just another objectively false claim from you. While it is not a democracy, China is not totalitarian, as the contrast between China and a neighboring genuinely totalitarian state -- North Korea -- proves. And I didn't praise it, I just pointed out that it has been enjoying great economic success because its land tenure system is more just than the capitalist one.
    Maybe it would help if you didn't make so many clearly false claims.
    But in fact, they should opt out when the obligation becomes so onerous that other family members also start to need help.
    But can't be the basis of an advanced civilization.
    "Destruction of the family"? It is the onerous burden of care that destroys the family. Google "supererogation" and start reading.
    Wrong. Almost all psychometrics research is based on statistics.
    <yawn> Unlike you, I have actually conducted original statistical research in psychometrics.
    Wrong. While a bad environment can permanently impair intellectual function, a good one cannot make up for lack of native cognitive capacity.
    The research just flat-out proves you wrong, sorry.
    Being "intellectual" is not at all the same thing as being intelligent. There are extremely intelligent people who are not at all intellectual. We find them in the business world, engineering, etc. And there are deeply unintelligent "intellectuals" like the purveyors of critical theory, post-modernism, and deconstructionism.
    I.e., parents who are intelligent enough to value education.
    Maybe they are not as intelligent as you assume, but merely impractical.
    It is definitely mostly genetic, as cross-culture adoption studies have demonstrated so very conclusively.
    Sorry, that's just not borne out by research.
    The research shows you are incorrect.
    I have actually taken a number of undergraduate courses in the math and physics departments of an internationally respected university, and I do not recognize the phenomenon you claim to have witnessed.
    Though they are certainly correlated, verbal intelligence is somewhat unrelated to quantitative intelligence.
    No. Intelligence is the ability to understand. Unlike you, I have actually spent a considerable amount of time with people whose IQs were 150+ -- in fact, I am one of them -- and you are simply wrong. Some of them are maladjusted because of emotionally traumatic experiences in childhood related to their intellectual superiority over their peers (or their parents or teachers). It is characteristic of highly intellectually gifted children that they have a keen sense of justice, and are deeply troubled by conditions they consider unjust. Many never grow out of their passionate commitment to justice. Others simply have different priorities from yours. Intelligence varies INDEPENDENTLY of the "Big Five" personality characteristics, so there are substantial numbers of highly intelligent people who are virtually unemployable because of their trait neuroticism, disagreeableness, and/or lack of conscientiousness. These personality characteristics aren't a matter of choice. They are largely genetic.
    No, because you rationalize privilege and try to justify massive, systematic, institutionalized injustice.
     
    Last edited: Aug 16, 2019
  8. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Nope. Never happened. Not once.

    Nope. Wrong again. That's about failures of political strategy, organization, etc., and does not even attempt to refute any of George's actual economic analysis.
    This, from you???
    No, it most definitely is not. There is no privately owned land in HK, and hasn't been for over 160 years. Your claim is just objectively false. Moreover, HK recovers more location value for public purposes than any other country in the world.
    Not purely. But it is neither capitalist (because land is all publicly owned) nor socialist (because producer goods are largely privately owned), and is therefore closer to being Georgist than to being either capitalist or socialist.
    They haven't embraced capitalism. They abandoned socialism for something closer to Georgism, keeping land under public ownership, like HK.
    Based on retaining land in public ownership while embracing private ownership of producer goods: the near-Georgist model that HK has used so successfully for 160 years.
     
    Last edited: Aug 16, 2019
  9. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    All this has been proven wrong
     
  10. gottzilla

    gottzilla Banned

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    Where is the trouncing in that link? There is no disagreement with the core idea in that abstract. If you look up "Mark Sullivan" on google you'll see that the author is a Georgist himself.
    .
    All it takes is a quick google search and a look at the HK government's own website to find out that you are wrong.
     
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  11. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    So you didn’t read it. Ok.
    .


    Nope

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.sc...ong-developers-shrug-resume-adding-china-land
     
  12. gottzilla

    gottzilla Banned

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    Quote me the part in the link that disagrees with the core idea of Georgism.

    The land is leased. The buildings can be privately owned. The information in that link is not accurate.

    "Virtually all land in Hong Kong is leased or otherwise held from the Government of the HKSAR."
    https://www.landsd.gov.hk/en/service/landpolicy.htm
     
  13. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    Read the link.



    Is it that you don't know what virtually means?
     
  14. gottzilla

    gottzilla Banned

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    I have. There is no part in that abstract that suggests that the Georgist author disagrees with the core ideas of Georgism.

    The land under St. John's Cathedral is not owned by the government. That's seems to be the sole exception.
     
  15. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    This shows you didn’t read it.



    Or the other link I gave you.
     
  16. gottzilla

    gottzilla Banned

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    Last edited: Aug 18, 2019
  17. rahl

    rahl Banned

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  18. gottzilla

    gottzilla Banned

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    A link where the author doesn't express herself accurately and calls obtainment of a lease or temporary usage rights "purchasing land" doesn't negate the fact that all land in Hong Kong except for a small plot under St John's Cathedral is leashold. Plus the link talks about Hong Kong developers "purchasing land" in China, not Hong Kong. Assuming even an iota of self awareness, you should be embarrassed.
     
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  19. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    1) No, they should not opt out. It's an outrageous abrogation of your social responsibilities, and wholly selfish, to leave the keep of your own to your 'neighbours' - who themselves may be struggling. An equitable and harmonious society demands that we all take care of our own. If we do not care for such ordinary social responsibility, we have no business engaging in relationships or breeding.

    2) The attempt to shed mutual obligation was one of the worst things the human species has ever done. It's been an unmitigated disaster .. which is why the non-Western world still won't do it. In the dreamscape of perfect planetary equity (as dreamed by 99.9% of Progressive types), it would be even more crucial to foster solid families/collectives, since our socio-economic position would be much closer to Third World. There would far fewer resources per capita, so this (govt care of our unwanteds) and other luxuries would be the first things to go.

    3) What nonsense .. that mutual obligation 'destroys families'. Small groups living and working together for the greater survival odds of members, is the most successful mammalian model of existence on earth. There are 7+ billion of us proving it, FFS!

    4) Privilege? I'll take that as a joke. There is zero privilege in working hard to keep a family intact, sacrificing what needs to be sacrificed, and working towards the common good of the group and the individual welfare of members.
     
    Last edited: Aug 18, 2019
  20. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    There is only one measure of 'smart' in the cognitively normal. The ability to survive and thrive.

    Line up a dozen 25 year olds in any First World nation. Who has avoided drugs, alcohol, bad relationships, academic failure, unemployment, underemployment, troubles with the law, depression, sexual issues, social problems, etc etc etc? They're your smart kids.
     
  21. Chester_Murphy

    Chester_Murphy Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    competition
     
  22. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    No, it has all been proven objectively correct as a matter of indisputable physical fact.
     
  23. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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  24. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Yes, they should, because it's better to distribute necessary burdens that are too onerous for one person to bear. Think of a mother whose child is trapped under some fallen masonry. You say she should have to lift the concrete herself, permanently injuring her back. I say that a dozen bystanders can lift it, distributing the load, and none be injured. The total cost to the dozen helpers is much less than the cost to the permanently disabled woman. This is more efficient for society, which is why societies where such load distribution to avoid injury is common are more successful.
    I didn't propose leaving it to other people who are struggling, and it is certainly not wholly selfish when, as in the example above, society is made stronger by it.
    Garbage. An equitable and harmonious society demands that we all help take care of those who cannot care for themselves.
    Wrong. The most successful societies have all recognized that the burden of caring for those who cannot care for themselves is rightly redistributed to those best able to bear the burden more gracefully. Even the brutally cruel ancient Romans found it worthwhile to give bread to those who had none.
    But you're the one advocating it, by insisting that families alone bear the burden of caring for those unable to care for themselves.
    Thanks for demonstrating that you've never set foot in the non-western world.
    I don't buy into Malthusian claptrap, sorry.
    It is fact. You didn't Google "supererogation" when I told you to, so maybe you can Google "caregiver respite" and learn something.
    No, it is not. The large nation-state is. OBVIOUSLY.
    Huh? How many of the 7G live as you advocate, and how many live in large nation-states where they are expected to help support others outside of their immediate family, hmmmmm??
    It's no joke. Privilege (from the Latin for "private law") is a legal entitlement to benefit from the abrogation of others' rights without making just compensation.
    But that's not what you are defending. You are defending legal entitlements to benefit from the abrogation of others' rights without making just compensation.
     
  25. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Nonsense. Many factors go into survival and prosperity in addition to intelligence. You are literally claiming that a towering genius like Galois or Turing was not as smart as an illiterate peasant who survived to old age.
    Wrong, as already explained. There are five independent personality factors in addition to intelligence that affect such choices, and that's not even counting the effects of emotional trauma, mental illness, etc.
     

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