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Double-Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, May 30th, 2011 12:41am PDT - doublepromote requested by blankfist.

... and this is why the US Postal Service is on the verge of complete collapse.

To stay in business they have to maintain a monopoly on first class mail. Even then, they're on the verge of bankruptcy.

FedEx is doing very well.

Is there ever a time where Newman isn't sweating?

Too bad it's too expensive for international shipping.>> ^blankfist:

To stay in business they have to maintain a monopoly on first class mail. Even then, they're on the verge of bankruptcy.
FedEx is doing very well.

Government can't efficiently deliver a letter but you want it to perform your "free" brain surgery.

Heh.

>> ^blankfist:

To stay in business they have to maintain a monopoly on first class mail. Even then, they're on the verge of bankruptcy.
FedEx is doing very well.


>> ^quantumushroom:

Government can't efficiently deliver a letter but you want it to perform your "free" brain surgery.
Heh.


Except FedEx gets to pick and choose what they want to do. For example if you're in a rural area, you'll have more issues with companies like FedEx in their service and price. Whereas USPS always delivers. Next time, see the cost of delivery of a simple letter to middle of nowhere, USA (by FedEx compared to the few cents from USPS).

>> ^osama1234:

Except FedEx gets to pick and choose what they want to do. For example if you're in a rural area, you'll have more issues with companies like FedEx in their service and price. Whereas USPS always delivers. Next time, see the cost of delivery of a simple letter to middle of nowhere, USA (by FedEx compared to the few cents from USPS).


That's because the US Postal Service has a monopoly on first class mail.

@osama1234

That's a good point, but I think it supports the argument that the USPS is highly inefficient. If services are genuinely more expensive out in rural areas, why should other people be subsidizing the price?

Bubbajoe in Redneckville can move closer to town if cheap mail is so important to him, and his decisions should have nothing to do with your and my paycheck.

I bet if they opened the market up to first class mail, you'd see some rather great options being created. Maybe not all at once, but over time.

But as it is now it's illegal to offer first class mail services in the US unless you're the US Government. What kind of bum deal is that?

>> ^blankfist:

I bet if they opened the market up to first class mail, you'd see some rather great options being created. Maybe not all at once, but over time.
But as it is now it's illegal to offer first class mail services in the US unless you're the US Government. What kind of bum deal is that?


Ya, a relic of eras gone by. Perhaps a good idea when you needed a central network of ponies to run a country. Not so necessary nowadays. I think the Mayan's had a foot version of the pony express. But it really has outlived it usefulness. I remember some other stories of kids starting a local mailing route to be faster than snail mail for in city deliveries. They were subsequently shut down because it is a legal monopoly. If you want to stifle things, get government involved, it works! Speaking of, lets get the government to do the internet, that should work well.

>> ^chilaxe:

That's a good point, but I think it supports the argument that the USPS is highly inefficient. If services are genuinely more expensive out in rural areas, why should other people be subsidizing the price?
Bubbajoe in Redneckville can move closer to town if cheap mail is so important to him, and his decisions should have nothing to do with your and my paycheck.


First, the Post Office has been self-sufficient since the 80's. Your paycheck has nothing to do with it, unless you buy postage from the USPS.

Second, there's a difference between "inefficiency", and mandated universal service. What you describe is the latter.

And a third point to @blankfist's gung-ho praise of private carriers, all the packages I've gotten this year from Fedex were sent by Fedex's SmartPost, where they hire the USPS to do terminal delivery for them, because they can do it more efficiently.

Ditto for DHL and UPS. It's been a while since someone other than a USPS mail carrier brought me a package.

As confrontational as all that sounds, I don't really have any particular attachment to seeing government be in the mail delivery business. I don't really see any point in the universal service requirement on snail mail anymore, either.

I'm game for upgrading to something like Finland's universal service for broadband internet, since keeping us all connected via an information network is why we had a government-subsidized post office in the first place.

If you guys sign on for that, I'm all for cutting the Post Office loose.

>> ^NetRunner:

And a third point to @blankfist's gung-ho praise of private carriers, all the packages I've gotten this year from Fedex were sent by Fedex's SmartPost, where they hire the USPS to do terminal delivery for them, because they can do it more efficiently.
Ditto for DHL and UPS. It's been a while since someone other than a USPS mail carrier brought me a package.


Again, because they've monopolized first class mail they probably offer the cheapest mail delivery in certain areas that're typically too expensive to deliver to normally (without adjusting the fair to make it profitable - profitable meaning able to pay the staff and make a reasonable return). But because the USPS is a government monopoly it must subsidize the areas that're not as profitable and yet still offer a carrier service.

I actually don't have a problem with the USPS, because it's a user fee based service, but they should lift the monopoly. Do you disagree?

Your link is busted...>> ^NetRunner

>> ^blankfist:

Again, because they've monopolized first class mail they probably offer the cheapest mail delivery in certain areas that're typically too expensive to deliver to normally (without adjusting the fair to make it profitable - profitable meaning able to pay the staff and make a reasonable return).

Maybe that's true someplace, but it's certainly not true for where I live. I'm in Columbus, OH and pretty close to the airport, and the local Fedex hub. I think the explanation is that the USPS already has a truck coming by my house every weekday anyways, and the marginal cost of adding a small package to their delivery is going to be way less than Fedex sending out a truck just to drop off a package for me.

Oh, and I think you want to be careful about implying that profit-seeking is putting some sort of competitive disadvantage on commercial carriers. That almost sounds like a Marxist argument.

>> ^blankfist:
But because the USPS is a government monopoly it must subsidize the areas that're not as profitable and yet still offer a carrier service.
I actually don't have a problem with the USPS, because it's a user fee based service, but they should lift the monopoly. Do you disagree?


To be honest, I've got no complaints about the USPS at all, so I haven't really spent much time thinking of ways to reform it. Personally, I don't see why we'd change it. It's not like Fedex is being strangled, and it's not like there's some widespread, intense dissatisfaction with the postal service.

If anything, my biggest reasons for tinkering with the postal system would be environmental (stop driving trucks all over the city every day to deliver junk mail made out of trees!), or to revisit the original intent of the post office, and realize that its real mandate was universal data service. This whole thing with delivery of physical pieces of paper was just the only data network available in 1789.

Outside that, I don't see the point.

>> ^MarineGunrock:

Your link is busted...>> ^NetRunner


Fixed.

@NetRunner I think the point is that if you want to not exist on tax dollars, you don't also get to legislate out competitors. They aren't exactly private or public either, one of those strange quazi-thingies. They still have to do things for the gubment like voter registration, carry certain forms. As such, they get certain government allowances that neither party uses to say they are "supported" by gubment money.

They loose money as well, perhaps it is time to let someone else take a stab at it? I deal with USPS nearly everyday, so there is a certain legacy attachment I feel for them. But in the end, it hardly seems fair to call yourself private and deny access to a job that other people could reasonably do. It is like Pan Am all over again. And if you can't turn a profit doing something no one else can do, something is amiss! Some things just don't have the right stuff, sad to say, USPS might be one of those.

I have tried to counter this argument with "Well maybe it is like utilities", but it really isn't...no amount of finite space or pipe clutter to worry about. And it would be nice to have options as well. As a reseller of cards, the post office is the ONLY option for me. I can find deals on envelopes, paper, boxes, ect. But I can't call around and find a bunch of kids to go "Mail" stuff over town for me at a discount rate to the post. In a world made of horses, maybe it made more sense. Otherwise, I think this exclusive privilege is just grasping at straws for needing to exist. If I could choose, maybe I would still choose them, hell, they are right next door. But if I could choose some silly kids on bikes to deliver my local stuff at a discount rate, maybe I would do that too. I would like the options. And I don't see any compelling reason to deny that option...stay roughing up the status quo.

Post office visits this year > 122

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

@NetRunner I think the point is that if you want to not exist on tax dollars, you don't also get to legislate out competitors.

Big shrug here. I don't really see a problem with that. Maybe if I thought the service we were getting was a bad deal I'd feel differently, but I think we're getting a pretty good deal.

I'm a lot more worried about the near-monopolies we've got in broadband internet and mobile phone service than I am about the USPS's monopoly on 1st class mail service.
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
They loose money as well, perhaps it is time to let someone else take a stab at it?

Ahh, do they? Or is their financial situation being weighed down by a requirement Congress saddled them with to pre-fund health benefits?

Again, I just don't see the point in messing with how the Post Office works. It seems like the (half-hearted) efforts from the right to destroy it have more to do with long-term political strategy than an actual effort to make someone's life better.

After all, it's pretty hard to tell people scare stories about how socialism leads to death camps, when one can just point at the postman and say "oh really?"

>> ^NetRunner:

Maybe that's true someplace, but it's certainly not true for where I live. I'm in Columbus, OH and pretty close to the airport, and the local Fedex hub. I think the explanation is that the USPS already has a truck coming by my house every weekday anyways, and the marginal cost of adding a small package to their delivery is going to be way less than Fedex sending out a truck just to drop off a package for me.
Oh, and I think you want to be careful about implying that profit-seeking is putting some sort of competitive disadvantage on commercial carriers. That almost sounds like a Marxist argument.


You confused me a bit here. You're repeating my sentiment on this.

Certainly it's a smart business move to use the post office in less accessible/less populated areas, because it's cheaper than paying a driver and buying a truck to do it. Again, this has something to do with the USPS having a monopoly on first class mail, because they're the only show in town for first class mail they have to offer their service nearly everywhere in the US - even to rural areas where they're probably losing money to operate there.

I think that's what @chilaxe meant by subsidizing. He didn't mean tax dollars, he meant the cost of postage on first class mail is subsidizing those drivers and stations in less profitable areas (though tax dollars did subsidize the post office for years). So, because the USPS already has trucks going out to those areas, companies like FedEx use that to their benefit where it would normally be unprofitable for them. Would you disagree with this assertion?

By the way, I think highly of Marxist philosophy. Marxists and little 'l' libertarians (think anarchist leaning) have more in common than Marxists and Social Democrats & Progressives. But that's a whole other conversation.

>> ^blankfist:

You confused me a bit here. You're repeating my sentiment on this.
Certainly it's a smart business move to use the post office in less accessible/less populated areas, because it's cheaper than paying a driver and buying a truck to do it. Again, this has something to do with the USPS having a monopoly on first class mail, because they're the only show in town for first class mail they have to offer their service nearly everywhere in the US - even to rural areas where they're probably losing money to operate there.

And again, I think that's probably true for some set of examples that don't involve deliveries to the NetRunner household. I don't live in a rural area. I live in an urban area, and even more specifically I'm quite near a FedEx delivery hub.

Still, they think it's cheaper to pay the USPS to deliver the package than use one of their own delivery trucks. I think they're right. It's far more efficient to use the USPS because they already have the infrastructure in place to deliver mail to my doorstep, and will be delivering mail to my neighborhood every day already. No point in inefficiently duplicating effort.
>> ^blankfist:
I think that's what @chilaxe meant by subsidizing. He didn't mean tax dollars,

I read the phrase "your and my paycheck" as an allusion to taxation. I also said as part of my rejoinder that it won't be affected, "unless you buy postage".

>> ^blankfist:
[T]he cost of postage on first class mail is subsidizing those drivers and stations in less profitable areas (though tax dollars did subsidize the post office for years). So, because the USPS already has trucks going out to those areas, companies like FedEx use that to their benefit where it would normally be unprofitable for them. Would you disagree with this assertion?

No, I agree with that assertion. Do you think there's something wrong with that kind of subsidization?

>> ^blankfist:
By the way, I think highly of Marxist philosophy. Marxists and little 'l' libertarians (think anarchist leaning) have more in common than Marxists and Social Democrats & Progressives. But that's a whole other conversation.


And one I'd like to have sometime. I personally think it's pretty strange for you to claim to respect Marxist philosophy, while decrying everything liberals do.

But in @NetRunner's household you are affected by it. For some reason, FedEx, UPS and DHL have decided your neighborhood isn't cost effective to deliver to. However, the USPS must deliver to it, so they leverage their services. Otherwise, the private carriers would probably charge a premium to deliver there.

The private carriers do "duplicate effort", that's the whole point of competition. They do it, but they improve on the service or do it cheaper. One of the two. For FedEx, it's probably less to do with cost than improving the service. When I can afford to ship FedEx, I do. Especially if I want it to get there without fretting over whether or not it gets lost or delivered to the wrong house (which happens with the USPS on occasion).

Finally, I think you're mistakenly conflating modern liberalism with Marxism here. They're incompatible. Like I said, if you speak to a real Marxist they won't say they have much if anything in common with Social Democrats. They don't consider SDs leftist and think they muddy the socialist philosophy. And Marxists are also anti-statist and anti-capitalist, and most SDs are pro state controlled capitalism.

>> ^blankfist:

But in @NetRunner's household you are affected by it. For some reason, FedEx, UPS and DHL have decided your neighborhood isn't cost effective to deliver to. However, the USPS must deliver to it, so they leverage their services. Otherwise, the private carriers would probably charge a premium to deliver there.

And my point is, it's not that my neighborhood is prohibitively expensive to deliver to, it's that using USPS deliver is more efficient generally (or as FedEx puts it, "cost effective"). That's why the whole product is being offered as a lower-cost alternative to traditional shipping to all US destinations for packages below a certain weight.

Like I said earlier, it makes sense. It costs money to own/operate a delivery truck, and doing a one-off delivery of a package to a residential area has to cost more than the additional cost of putting that package onto a mail truck that's going through my neighborhood anyways...

>> ^blankfist:
Finally, I think you're mistakenly conflating modern liberalism with Marxism here. They're incompatible. Like I said, if you speak to a real Marxist they won't say they have much if anything in common with Social Democrats. They don't consider SDs leftist and think they muddy the socialist philosophy. And Marxists are also anti-statist and anti-capitalist, and most SDs are pro state controlled capitalism.


I'm not conflating anything. It's the right that loves to conflate everything on the liberal agenda with Stalinist Communism.

I'm curious though, can you be specific? What philosophical position do Marxists take that would align with your position, but not mine?

On the topic of statism for example, I think I'm with the Marxists -- I think in a perfect world, it wouldn't be necessary, but until we achieve heaven on Earth, it's necessary.

@NetRunner"I read the phrase "your and my paycheck" as an allusion to taxation. I also said as part of my rejoinder that it won't be affected, "unless you buy postage".

As long as urban society pays more in order to subsidize rural society, whether through taxation or mailing costs, I think the point still applies... that the government arbitrarily giving rural society a "free" discount is a bug, not a feature.

>> ^NetRunner:

And my point is, it's not that my neighborhood is prohibitively expensive to deliver to, it's that using USPS deliver is more efficient generally (or as FedEx puts it, "cost effective"). That's why the whole product is being offered as a lower-cost alternative to traditional shipping to all US destinations for packages below a certain weight.


That wasn't my point? When did I say anything about something being "prohibitively expensive"?

"Cost effective" is right. At some point all three of those private carriers made a decision that delivery to your area wasn't worth it. The reason why is up for debate, but I'd suspect they evaluated the return they'd yield doing it themselves versus the return using the public option and chose the latter.

Not sure why you keep repeating back to me my points as if they're your own and then putting words in my mouth. Ha. You trolling?

>> ^NetRunner:

First, the Post Office has been self-sufficient since the 80's. Your paycheck has nothing to do with it, unless you buy postage from the USPS.
Second, there's a difference between "inefficiency", and mandated universal service. What you describe is the latter.
And a third point to @blankfist's gung-ho praise of private carriers, all the packages I've gotten this year from Fedex were sent by Fedex's SmartPost, where they hire the USPS to do terminal delivery for them, because they can do it more efficiently.
Ditto for DHL and UPS. It's been a while since someone other than a USPS mail carrier brought me a package.
As confrontational as all that sounds, I don't really have any particular attachment to seeing government be in the mail delivery business. I don't really see any point in the universal service requirement on snail mail anymore, either.
I'm game for upgrading to something like Finland's universal service for broadband internet, since keeping us all connected via an information network is why we had a government-subsidized post office in the first place.
If you guys sign on for that, I'm all for cutting the Post Office loose.


FedEx and UPS will fly USPS mail from point A to point B. USPS will deliver the last leg of Fedex and UPS parcels in certain areas. It works both ways. They all touch each other's junk.
But the enforced monopoly on private mail creates an oligopoly in the package delivery market. This is the greater evil of government enforced monopolies. Monopolies don't lead to ingenuity, resourcefulness, or efficiency. So markets, that are seemingly free, will emerge around the government controlled one. And since companies can gain a market advantage by piggybacking on government infrastructure and making political deals, then it leads to oligopolies where the consumers are given false choices at inflated prices in their goods and services. Think Verizon/AT&T, Comcast/Time Warner, Energy providers, etc.

The USPS is self-sufficient? The USPS has several billion dollar deficits every year. To stay in business it has to "borrow" money from the US Treasury each year. ("Borrow" because it'll get paid back right?) So... where does the Treasury get it's money from? *cough* ... Taxes?!?! Ok, so technically it isn't using tax money because really that money was spent a looong time ago with how the government has it's own deficits (in the trillions!).
Basically when the USPS brags that they don't get tax payer money, it's at best a misnomer. It's actually far worse. The USPS has to "borrow" money from the US treasury, who has to "borrow" money from the Federal Reserve. And since the Federal Reserve doesn't actually have any "reserves", it magically creates the money, which debases the currency, which causes inflation. So everyone does end up paying for the deficit, only it's with an invisible tax of lost purchasing power of their money, i.e. prices go up. Yet the "debt" holder still collects interest from the tax payers and can even demand payment in full which would probably lead to confiscation of public assets and/or selling of public assets to private companies. So the reality is the USPS does cost the tax payer. The tax payer pays the deficit. Twice. Plus interest. That's why public debt is such a dangerous matter. And also why most of the debt in the world is illegitimate.

>> ^chilaxe:

As long as urban society pays more in order to subsidize rural society, whether through taxation or mailing costs, I think the point still applies... that the government arbitrarily giving rural society a "free" discount is a bug, not a feature.


I suspect it was a feature, not a bug, but intentional or not I agree that kind of subsidy is happening with flat postage rates.

I'll ask you what I asked blankfist, is there something wrong with that?

>> ^blankfist:

That wasn't my point? When did I say anything about something being "prohibitively expensive"?
"Cost effective" is right. At some point all three of those private carriers made a decision that delivery to your area wasn't worth it. The reason why is up for debate, but I'd suspect they evaluated the return they'd yield doing it themselves versus the return using the public option and chose the latter.

The highlighted part is what I'm taking issue with.

Do you think that the arrangement between FedEx and USPS is win-win, or do you imagine that USPS is losing money every time FedEx gives them a package?

Do you think that before FedEx arrived at this arrangement with the USPS, they didn't deliver to my house because it was prohibitively expensive not "worth it"?

What? You're equating something that's "not worth it" to being "prohibitively expensive"?

It's not "worth it" if I make thirty bucks profit from an eight hour day selling shoes. It's "prohibitively expensive" for me to open up a hundred shoe companies by myself.

Dead horse.

>> ^marbles:

[S]ince companies can gain a market advantage by piggybacking on government infrastructure and making political deals, then it leads to oligopolies where the consumers are given false choices at inflated prices in their goods and services.
I'm not sure why the words "government" or "political" are in there. Companies can gain advantage by piggybacking on some other company's infrastructure, and the infrastructure's owner can make exclusivity agreements, which then lead to oligopolies where the customers are given false choices at inflated prices.

You even provided some non-governmental examples:
>> ^marbles:
Think Verizon/AT&T, Comcast/Time Warner, Energy providers, etc.

I suppose there are public electricity generation companies, but I don't remember the US government ever having a cable TV or wireless phone company.
>> ^marbles:
The USPS is self-sufficient? The USPS has several billion dollar deficits every year. To stay in business it has to "borrow" money from the US Treasury each year.

Two things. One, it's hard to find companies who didn't have losses in the last few years, and two the USPS's finances are being artificially deflated by a policy foisted on them by Congress.

That aside, self-sufficiency in this case means that nobody's taxes go to the post office. They're getting unusually cheap debt because they can borrow money using the US government's credit rating, but that doesn't cost anyone in higher taxes.

Keep in mind, this is the USPS borrowing from the Treasury. In terms of the national debt, it's an asset, not a liability. Maybe you're right, and the USPS will run up a huge debt, and then default, but I don't think so.

As for the big rant about debt and inflation, I'm too tired to run through the economics right now, but this whole story about debt & inflation is vastly, vastly overblown. Yeah, it could be a problem, maybe in 2030, and only then if we never end the Bush tax cuts, but otherwise it's just another scare tactic to make you do something that's against your own interests.

@NetRunner

The idea is that systems can function more efficiently when the costs of different choices are transparent. So if people choose to live in inefficient locations because the inefficiency will be subsidized by others, the overall wealth of the society decreases from that inefficiency.

That's fine if most people live lives with a fraction of the efficiency of us, just so long as they bear the costs, not us.

>> ^chilaxe:

The idea is that systems can function more efficiently when the costs of different choices are transparent. So if people choose to live in inefficient locations because the inefficiency will be subsidized by others, the overall wealth of the society decreases from that inefficiency.
That's fine if most people live lives with a fraction of the efficiency of us, just so long as they bear the costs, not us.


I don't think that's an achievable goal though, not to the level you're talking about.

Think about all the flat rates out there. There's flat-rate phone service. Flat-rate broadband internet. Flat-rate video game services. Even flat-rate movie rentals (Netflix!)

@NetRunner

Yeah, it's not necessarily a very high priority to reduce subsidization of postal rates, but I think inefficiencies like the USPS' low rates in rural areas are an unavoidable negative, rather than a positive, as it was initially referred to in this thread.

However, there might be practical options like maintaining flat-rates, but passing on the increased costs to property taxes for those people, which would more accurately reflect the true cost of living there, rather than passing the increased costs on to other, more urban people.

>> ^chilaxe:

Yeah, it's not necessarily a very high priority to reduce subsidization of postal rates, but I think inefficiencies like the USPS' low rates in rural areas are an unavoidable negative, rather than a positive, as it was initially referred to in this thread.

Looking back through the conversation, I'd still say the universal service obligation part is a positive. This "inefficiency" critique is a pretty highly theoretical, and narrowly economic argument, and it's an attack leveled at flat rates, not the universal service obligation itself.

Besides, maximizing economic efficiency != maximizing human welfare.

We've reaped huge benefits from ensuring that everyone in the US could stay in touch with one another, even back in the 18th century, via a nationwide, federally subsidized, communication network.

I can't tally up the benefits in a ledger and prove the benefits were greater than the costs, but I think it was worth it, and was an overall positive.

@NetRunner

Yeah, it seems to me like rejecting the universal service obligation would be dogmatic. But if it costs $10 to deliver a letter to the middle of nowhere, why charge $.50?

Prosperity is a big part of human welfare, and if we take $10 from one person so another person can think it costs them $.50 to send a letter, many citizens will feel justified in reducing any further altruism on their part toward society.

Sending books by mail was probably important in the time of the founding fathers, but nowadays people have access to the sum total of human knowledge from their homes, or they can drive or bike to somewhere that does have internet. I'd imagine most of the mailed media that now takes advantage of the reduced media rates isn't very impressive.

.

>> ^chilaxe:

Prosperity is a big part of human welfare, and if we take $10 from one person so another person can think it costs them $.50 to send a letter, many citizens will feel justified in reducing any further altruism on their part toward society.


But that's the thing, we're not "taking $10 from one person so another can person think it costs them $.50 to send a letter." We're telling everyone it costs 50 cents to send a letter, regardless of whether the actual cost is 1/10th of a cent or $10, and making sure we set the flat rate so it covers the actual costs.

Which is to day, people don't think they're engaged in altruism when they're sending a letter, they think they're buying a service with a flat rate. Just like when I get RoadRunner from Time Warner and pay a flat rate for bandwidth, I'm buying a service, I'm not engaging in altruism towards other people on the service who might use more GB of bandwidth per month than me...

More generally, I think that people should understand that paying taxes is paying for services they've been rendered while living & working here (most of which resemble insurance), not engaging in "altruism," especially if they're in denial about the services they're benefiting from.

>> ^chilaxe:
Sending books by mail was probably important in the time of the founding fathers, but nowadays people have access to the sum total of human knowledge from their homes, or they can drive or bike to somewhere that does have internet. I'd imagine most of the mailed media that now takes advantage of the reduced media rates isn't very impressive.


Ah, but does everyone have that access? For example, do rural communities all have easy, free access to internet?

I'm definitely in agreement that mail delivery is no longer filling the role the founding fathers had in mind when they put it into the Constitution. The question is, what's the right change to make to the USPS? Dismantle it and abandon its objectives, or reinvent it so it uses modern technology like the Internet to achieve its original mission?

I say the latter makes more sense than the former.

@NetRunner

It seems reasonable to say people are engaged in 'involuntary altruism' when they pay someone else's share, even if they're not aware of what's going on behind the curtain.

Most intelligent people pay far more into the government than they get back, so government is a form of 'intelligence redistribution' ... forcing people who make good decisions to subsidize the stupid decisions of others.

We know what this looks like in our own lives...
-Step 1. People we know in high school who start off in the same position as us have bad ideas about everything.
-Step 2. They reject our advice and generally can't be reasoned with.
-Step 3. We have to endlessly subsidize their bad ideas in a kind of perverse, reverse-Darwinian joke.


It's better for society to let people know the true costs of things and leave it at that, so for example someone living in the wilderness will naturally send less letters if he's the one who has to pay the $10 per letter.

@chilaxe I can appreciate why someone would have that view, but it's not one I share.

On the topic of "involuntary altruism", I think you're falling into the usual trap of thinking you aren't making a choice when it comes to paying taxes. There are regions of the world that don't levy taxes, and likewise don't provide any services. Places like rural Afghanistan, or Somalia for example.

The only people who're forced to be here against their will are people in our jails, and people who can't afford the travel expenses to reach another part of the world.

As for altruism, I don't think that's the right word either. I'd like to think that a lot of my political objectives are guided by altruistic intentions, but the truth is that most can just as easily be viewed as enlightened self-interest. I think the benefit of living in a society where everyone's kept healthy and well-educated far outweighs the costs. Hell, I even think there's a lot of economic efficiency to be picked up in areas where markets don't really work, like healthcare!

As for the rest, I guess what I heard in that was that you're a Social Darwinist. Is that so?

@NetRunner

Yes, if liberals want less military funding, they could move to Somalia, which has no military funding, but that doesn't mean if they stay in the US they're endorsing excessive military funding.

I'm an intellectual darwinist in the sense that I think good ideas/sub-cultures shouldn't subsidize bad ideas/sub-cultures.

@chilaxe, I'm just asking for some consistency from libertarians on their use of "voluntary" and "involuntary". Is asking Walmart to pay their workers better "involuntary altruism", since if they do it, it might mean prices might go up?

Also, where's the grand concern about "involuntary" participation in the market? I don't get to take a cruise in a Ferrari whenever I want. That's not because all Ferrari's near me are always in use by people with a more pressing need, but because we have this whole system in place where people can just hem them up in a garage most of the time because they "own" it. If I try to violate that system, I'll be subjected to state-based coercive violence!

Further, if your goal is to be altruistic, then be altruistic. Not having state-provided Ferrari service is a real downer, but it's nothing compared to how someone who has cancer and can't get treatment feels. If I'm altruistic, I'll set aside my Ferrari-related woes, and still try to help people who don't have health insurance. People who fixate on their own situation, and insist that it always take precedence over that of others aren't altruistic, they're selfish.

If your goal is to just be selfish, then a good way to go about it would be to complain about how unjust it is that you might be "subsidizing" someone who isn't you when you buy a 44 cent postage stamp, and use that unhappiness as a justification for why you oppose systemic measures to provide health care to the poor.

I suppose you could make the argument that this is about "tough love", that helping people just prevents them from learning important lessons about life. But the truth is crap like this isn't altruism, in either the literal or figurative case.

@NetRunner

Thank you for the comments.

1. Walmart wages: It seems like most reasonable libertarian positions are different from anarchic positions in that they support a basic platform for prosperity, including basic protections for workers. Altruism, however, is defined as an uneven (irrational) trade, so this wouldn't qualify as altruism. Also, the libertarian definition of basic protections certainly wouldn't include extras like, for example, subsidized housing intended to allow low-contribution workers to live in the center of San Francisco, instead of having to commute into the city like everybody else.

2a. If someone wants a Ferrari (I don't, but some people do), the basic economic system allows anyone who's smart to become a millionaire within around 5 years (ask me more), so there is a path toward that. I might be misunderstanding your point, though.

2b. I just like science, intelligence, and prosperity, so the commonplace objection among libertarians (and liberals) to the state's monopoly on violence just seems to me like people expressing their simplistic instincts.

3. I think developing our personal human capital in extraordinary ways is already altruistic... our permanently less reasonable friends and community benefit more from us than we benefit from them.

4. Reverse intellectual darwinism is already a huge drain on reasonable people, so it seems good to oppose it where we can. Small costs in shipping add up to large costs nationwide over time.