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Article: Nationalisation: Look at what works
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Those debating the nationalisation of mines need to look at how well government-controlled entities function, before deciding "what works", SA Reserve Bank governor Gill Marcus said in Soweto on Tuesday.
"We need to look at this not from an ideological point of view, but from the point of view of what works," Marcus said in a lecture at the University of Johannesburg.
"We need to look at this not from an ideological point of view, but from the point of view of what works," Marcus said in a lecture at the University of Johannesburg.
killadoob
Honorary Master
I think we know how government controlled entities function and i think it's fair to say they run pretty fking poorly.
Fraud and the basic mentality of rip it bare and forget about the future, we want now!!!!!!
Cannot see it working.
Fraud and the basic mentality of rip it bare and forget about the future, we want now!!!!!!
Cannot see it working.
alloytoo
Honorary Master
In principle I agree with you.
However I think it's important that one differentiates between State-owned assets and State controlled assets.
Typically a State Controlled asset operates in a state sanctioned monoply, and as a result is beholden to the government of the day, inefficent and generally corrupt.
It is possible for State owned assets to function and compete in the market place like any other company, while the state collects dividends. Air New Zealand is a good example.
Your example describes a situation that is ideal for the State and the firm in question (this is called fascism, btw), not necessarily the consumer or anyone else. I'd also love to run a business where I needn't be concerned with appeasing my customers, being competitive or even being profitable. Big Brother will be there to bail me out, hooray!
In any case, as much as I hate central banks and the apparatchiks behind them, I will concede that Marcus is correct on this issue, although I suspect for ulterior reasons.
alloytoo
Honorary Master
Air New Zealand is a publically traded share, the company is competative, competing in the same airspace as Qantas, Emerites, Pacific Blue etc. It's also regarded as a highly innovative company. Unlike SAA it turns a profit. The crown just happens to own a tidy chunk.
Likewise the City of Auckland happens to own a tidy chunk of Auckland Airport, likewise a publically traded company that turns a profit.
There are two classes of assets a city or government can own. The first are assets which serve the public but even if they earn revenue ultimately cost money to run. Public parks, Libraries, swimming pools, roads, bridges, public transport etc. The second are strategic investments which once paid off can ultimately be used to subsidize the former.
Geriatrix
Executive Member
BBSA
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South African airways is also a state controlled assets, and is poorly managed.
alloytoo
Honorary Master
Can you buy SAA on the JSE? I can buy ANZ on the NZX.
How did the company start-up? If the company started by using labour (Personnel) that were paid for by the state, or it obtained it's capital from the state then your example is moot, as they funding for all of that is obtained through taxation and not voluntarily.
Regular businesses don't get to threaten people to pay them "taxes" in order to get their start-up funding or pay salaries if need be. That's not saying the business might not be profitable, but if I was in it for the money and got essentially "free" funding then I would also do well I'm sure.
If the entity obtained its funding privately and the government "acquired shares" in the entity, (thereby taking "share control" or partial onwership) then I also foresee a problem. As the entity is a private run business, it can be profitable and the state sees a % of those profits (kinda similar to Telkom). However, the state came to me, threatened me with imprisonment if I don't give it money, then has used MY money to invest and get dividends...
It's easy to tell if something smells wrong, can you as an ordinary citizen do that? No. Hence it cannot be considered to be legitimate or successful.
It's like calling a thiefs entreprenurial venture with his stolen money proof that thieves can be "successful" and "contribute" to society.
Doesn't matter if the New Zealand government owns a % interest in a private firm.
1) The firm is private, the state acts as a private shareholder without any special powers so it cannot demonstrate that nationlisation is efficient or can turn a profit.
2) The government interest in said firm is acquired through first taxing people. In which case, it is MY money and legitimately MY profits that go into government coffers in the form of dividends and MY money is then used to subsidize other government entities such as libraries. The government cannot create something from nothing. It must first take.
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BBSA
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Kosmik
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alloytoo
Honorary Master
As I've said before, if you don't won't to contribute to the communal assets of society, kindly leave our society.
alloytoo
Honorary Master
I wouldn't, the ANC cadre's are running it into the ground.
alloytoo
Honorary Master
SARS.
Rofl. Its the mugger telling his victims if they don't like it "they" must go. When all the victims leave then what
BBSA
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Exactly!
Murray Rothbard
"The first great lesson to learn about taxation is that taxation is simply robbery. No more and no less. For what is "robbery"? Robbery is the taking of a man’s property by the use of violence or the threat thereof, and therefore without the victim’s consent. And yet what else is taxation?
Those who claim that taxation is, in some mystical sense, really "voluntary" should then have no qualms about getting rid of that vital feature of the law which says that failure to pay one’s taxes is criminal and subject to appropriate penalty. But does anyone seriously believe that if the payment of taxation were really made voluntary, say in the sense of contributing to the American Cancer Society, that any appreciable revenue would find itself into the coffers of government? Then why don’t we try it as an experiment for a few years, or a few decades, and find out?
But if taxation is robbery, then it follows as the night the day that those people who engage in, and live off, robbery are a gang of thieves. Hence the government is a group of thieves, and deserves, morally, aesthetically, and philosophically, to be treated exactly as a group of less socially respectable ruffians would be treated."
Murray Rothbard on what levels of taxation is justified, or the "just tax"
If the search for the just price has virtually ended in the pages of economic works, why does the quest for a "just tax" continue with unabated vigor? Why do economists, severely scientific in their volumes, suddenly become ad hoc ethicists when the question of taxation is raised? In no other area of his subject does the economist become more grandiosely ethical.
There is no objection at all to discussion of ethical concepts when they are needed, provided that the economist realizes always (a) that economics can establish no ethical principles by itself – that it can only furnish existential laws to the ethicist or citizen as data; and (b) that any importation of ethics must be grounded on a consistent, coherent set of ethical principles, and not simply be slipped in ad hoc in the spirit of "well, everyone must agree to this...." Bland assumptions of universal agreement are one of the most irritating bad habits of the economist-turned-ethicist. (*Cough, *splutter Mr alleytoo)
Rothbard on the issue of the distribution of the tax burden
Uniformity of treatment has been upheld as an ideal by almost all writers. This ideal is supposed to be implicit in the concept of "equality before the law," which is best expressed in the phrase, "Like to be treated alike." To most economists this ideal has seemed self-evident, and the only problems considered have been the practical ones of defining exactly when one person is "like" someone else (problems that, we shall see below, are insuperable).
All these economists adopt the goal of uniformity regardless of what principle of "likeness" they may hold. Thus, the man who believes that everyone should be taxed in accordance with his "ability to pay" also believes that everyone with the same ability should be taxed equally; he who believes that each should be taxed proportionately to his income also holds that everyone with the same income should pay the same tax; etc. In this way, the ideal of uniformity pervades the literature on taxation.
Yet this canon is by no means obvious, for it seems clear that the justice of equality of treatment depends first of all on the justice of the treatment itself. Suppose, for example, that Jones, with his retinue, proposes to enslave a group of people. Are we to maintain that "justice" requires that each be enslaved equally? And suppose that someone has the good fortune to escape. Are we to condemn him for evading the equality of justice meted out to his fellows? It is obvious that equality of treatment is no canon of justice whatever. If a measure is unjust, then it is just that it have as little general effect as possible. Equality of unjust treatment can never be upheld as an ideal of justice. Therefore, he who maintains that a tax be imposed equally on all must first establish the justice of the tax itself.
Step 1: Justify that taxation is just. Not done by anyone, thus argument is irrelevant. You can request I leave all you wish, it doesn't make your argument valid.
"The first great lesson to learn about taxation is that taxation is simply robbery. No more and no less. For what is "robbery"? Robbery is the taking of a man’s property by the use of violence or the threat thereof, and therefore without the victim’s consent. And yet what else is taxation?
Those who claim that taxation is, in some mystical sense, really "voluntary" should then have no qualms about getting rid of that vital feature of the law which says that failure to pay one’s taxes is criminal and subject to appropriate penalty. But does anyone seriously believe that if the payment of taxation were really made voluntary, say in the sense of contributing to the American Cancer Society, that any appreciable revenue would find itself into the coffers of government? Then why don’t we try it as an experiment for a few years, or a few decades, and find out?
But if taxation is robbery, then it follows as the night the day that those people who engage in, and live off, robbery are a gang of thieves. Hence the government is a group of thieves, and deserves, morally, aesthetically, and philosophically, to be treated exactly as a group of less socially respectable ruffians would be treated."
Murray Rothbard on what levels of taxation is justified, or the "just tax"
If the search for the just price has virtually ended in the pages of economic works, why does the quest for a "just tax" continue with unabated vigor? Why do economists, severely scientific in their volumes, suddenly become ad hoc ethicists when the question of taxation is raised? In no other area of his subject does the economist become more grandiosely ethical.
There is no objection at all to discussion of ethical concepts when they are needed, provided that the economist realizes always (a) that economics can establish no ethical principles by itself – that it can only furnish existential laws to the ethicist or citizen as data; and (b) that any importation of ethics must be grounded on a consistent, coherent set of ethical principles, and not simply be slipped in ad hoc in the spirit of "well, everyone must agree to this...." Bland assumptions of universal agreement are one of the most irritating bad habits of the economist-turned-ethicist. (*Cough, *splutter Mr alleytoo)
Rothbard on the issue of the distribution of the tax burden
Uniformity of treatment has been upheld as an ideal by almost all writers. This ideal is supposed to be implicit in the concept of "equality before the law," which is best expressed in the phrase, "Like to be treated alike." To most economists this ideal has seemed self-evident, and the only problems considered have been the practical ones of defining exactly when one person is "like" someone else (problems that, we shall see below, are insuperable).
All these economists adopt the goal of uniformity regardless of what principle of "likeness" they may hold. Thus, the man who believes that everyone should be taxed in accordance with his "ability to pay" also believes that everyone with the same ability should be taxed equally; he who believes that each should be taxed proportionately to his income also holds that everyone with the same income should pay the same tax; etc. In this way, the ideal of uniformity pervades the literature on taxation.
Yet this canon is by no means obvious, for it seems clear that the justice of equality of treatment depends first of all on the justice of the treatment itself. Suppose, for example, that Jones, with his retinue, proposes to enslave a group of people. Are we to maintain that "justice" requires that each be enslaved equally? And suppose that someone has the good fortune to escape. Are we to condemn him for evading the equality of justice meted out to his fellows? It is obvious that equality of treatment is no canon of justice whatever. If a measure is unjust, then it is just that it have as little general effect as possible. Equality of unjust treatment can never be upheld as an ideal of justice. Therefore, he who maintains that a tax be imposed equally on all must first establish the justice of the tax itself.
Step 1: Justify that taxation is just. Not done by anyone, thus argument is irrelevant. You can request I leave all you wish, it doesn't make your argument valid.
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That's a sick joke, right?
And here I thought government derived its authority and legitimacy from the consent of the governed? Would you kindly admit, then, that the particular model of government is irrelevant (be it democracy, monarchy, dictatorship etc.) and that it's really just about the power and coercion of those in charge?