NationStates Jolt Archive

Mmmmh, pretentious thread titles...

Anyways, I was thinking whether the right and wrong of just public policy depends on the state of development of the society. The goal would be to allow each individual the maximum chance of achieving happiness, but the methods would change.

So, if there's civil war, the goal would be to have peace. A policy that wants to be "just" by giving each party a fair chance or seeks to involve everyone would most likely not lead to peace, and therefore be bad. The best policy might be to pick a side and support it in its effort to destroy the other and win sole control of the government.

So there is now one government, but everyone is poor. There are no schools, no established system of property rights, no proper legal system. So in this case the government might be the only party that can make something happen. In a poor 3rd World country, relying on private industry to do anything is probably a bad idea - the economic, legal and ethical frameworks required are just not there. So the government should seek to build infrastructure and schools and so on, probably with an eye toward the utilitarian effects of them. This may well include foreign investment though, if the local situation is such that a foreign MNC can actually operate without simply being a giant corruption machine.

As the country gets richer, private enterprises become more and more capable of doing their jobs. Eventually they will be able to do it better than the government, and the economy should be privatised to a much greater extent. However, this also brings with it more income and wealth inequality, meaning that there will still be many children who without outside help would not be able to go to school and reach their goals in life based solely on their own effort and ability.

Ultimately the country reaches our standard of living, where most things are handled better by private enterprise. The economy is very complex; planning it is impossible. The more advanced, the less chance a government policy has the desired effect, and the more chance of significant dead weight losses. Government support for the disadvantaged also begins to look silly, as the disadvantaged aren't actually all that disadvantaged at all anymore - they have access to schools, employment and other opportunities they could take advantage of, so spending tax money on them is less and less justifiable.

And perhaps at some even higher level of development, there is equality in necessary opportunity. Some may still be born to rich parents, but poor kids no longer suffer from objectively bad schools or bad neighbourhoods and have every opportunity to get into the career they want based on merit and hard work.

If you think this sounds reasonable, it has a few implications: Firstly, condemning every "socialist" program in a poor country is silly. There are some which are objectively stupid (price controls, etc), but some which are simply better than the status quo or anything the free market would have provided.

Secondly, the more developed a country, the sillier talk about the disadvantaged poor gets. Being poor in Sudan is a lot worse in terms of positive (and negative) freedom than being poor in the US or being poor in Luxembourg. The more advanced the country, the greater the opportunties open to the poor, and the larger the effect of personal effort on the outcome.

Thoughts?

I agree completely. There is a book which I keep talking about, The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith which makes the case that the US is in the final stage of development, and thus there should be greater public improvement, since the private is already pretty well taken care of.

EDIT: Maybe not completely. Is Luxembourg really so badly off?

I agree completely. There is a book which I keep talking about, The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith which makes the case that the US is in the final stage of development, and thus there should be greater public improvement, since the private is already pretty well taken care of.
I don't see how that follows. Might just be that you didn't define "private" and "public".

EDIT: Maybe not completely. Is Luxembourg really so badly off?
Huh? No, I just added it to counter the point people would make about poor people in the US being badly off, despite its relatively high stage of development. But that's not due to the development itself, but to the incompetence of politicians and a history of racism.

Mmmmh, pretentious thread titles...

Anyways, I was thinking whether the right and wrong of just public policy depends on the state of development of the society. The goal would be to allow each individual the maximum chance of achieving happiness, but the methods would change.

<sip for length>

If you think this sounds reasonable, it has a few implications: Firstly, condemning every "socialist" program in a poor country is silly. There are some which are objectively stupid (price controls, etc), but some which are simply better than the status quo or anything the free market would have provided.

Secondly, the more developed a country, the sillier talk about the disadvantaged poor gets. Being poor in Sudan is a lot worse in terms of positive (and negative) freedom than being poor in the US or being poor in Luxembourg. The more advanced the country, the greater the opportunties open to the poor, and the larger the effect of personal effort on the outcome.

Thoughts?

I've been thinking along similar lines for years.

You're apparently like me in some way. My sincere condolences.

I don't see how that follows. Might just be that you didn't define "private" and "public".
Sorry, I might have added some of my own beliefs. What I meant by "private" and "public" was that a country will privatize more the more developed it gets. Eventually, it reaches a point where it can do no more. This is when public works (probably controlled by the government, but not necessarily) can do more. By now, the private sector is strong enough that it doesn't need to worry about being put out of business, and the country is stable enough the government doesn't have to worry about preventing civil war. It can instead improve infrastructure, provide education, and if still necessary, help the poor. Galbraith argued we had reached this point.

It can instead improve infrastructure, provide education, and if still necessary, help the poor. Galbraith argued we had reached this point.
Galbraith argued for whatever would keep the free market away from him. He convinced himself that state control of the economy was a good thing (unless it benefitted corporations, of course).

Anyways, my point was that a developed economy is so complex that the government cannot improve infrastructure, since it cannot foresee where it is needed and what it will be used for, and because it is too slow and inflexible. Government-provided education is no longer necessary (government-subsidised education could be a different argument) as private schools can in fact produce much superior results (both in terms of cost and quality) to that bureaucratic behemoth that they call the public school system. And as for helping the poor, that just seems nonsensical. The more advanced the economy, the better life is for the poor and the less help they need.

It's almost like Galbraith just couldn't fathom the idea of actually cutting down on government involvement, so he needed something he could spend all that money on (remember, he presided over top marginal tax rates of 80+%).

Fairly well done job there NL.

It makes a lot of sense.

I don't know enough about economics to really formulate an opinion, or to provide any counter-argument, but yeah, you make some good points.