The Court in Utah can't have jurisdiction over a theft that took place in Colorado, and can't force a Colorado rancher to appear. The Judge in Colorado is subject to retention elections. He isn't gonna rule farmer Bob is evil for taking his full allocation.
And that is as it should be: the Colorado rancher who took too much water didn't violate the property rights of the Utah rancher, he violated the property rights of the owner of the body of water.
Under current private property law you do not have the right to sue. So no, under state private property law you cannot deal with water rights on the Colorado River.
You aren't listening; as I was saying, to resolve this with private property rights, there ought to be three private parties. The problem we currently have is that there are only two private parties, while the water itself is "owned" by the federal government and managed subject to massive lobbying and crony capitalism.
I said nothing about how the Feds manage the water. It could be a bureaucratic process. It could be private property rights.
If it's private property rights, then it's not "the feds managing the water". The feds may (or may not) be involved in enforcing those private property rights, but the management decisions are taken out of their hands.
That's important because it is the management, i.e., decisions about who may pollute and who may use the resources, that is subject to massive lobbying and crony capitalism and that government is incapable of performing well.
If it's private property rights that means a Court. The only Court that can adjudicate when a rancher from Colorado is screwing as rancher from Utah by taking too much water is the 10th Circuit.
No, it actually means two courts and three private parties: the party taking the water, the party who bought the water, and the party who owns the water. The owner of the water is in breach of contract with the rancher in Utah, and the victim of theft at the hands of the rancher from Colorado. All of this can be handled with simple property law in state courts.
The only reason this is a problem right now is because there is no private property owner for the water, and instead governments are managing water rights in response to lobbying and political pressures, and trampling all over other people's rights in the process.
There have been common areas as far back as anyone can tell, and rivers and lakes are typically not private property.
There have also been slavery and totalitarianism as far back as anyone can tell; that doesn't mean that we need to continue engaging in such idiotic practices.
The reason a factory owner gets away with pollution is that no individual has the incentive or means to stop him.
Private property rights doesn't mean "individuals".
How do you think a private property owner is supposed to defend against pollution? Are you proposing a cheap and painless court system that can do its own investigation, in other words one far more expensive and intrusive than we've got now?
No, far simpler: shared private ownership, the way a lot of shared property is already aministered. It's far less expensive than what we have got now. And it is exactly as intrusive as the participating owners want it to be.
- Greece has been dealt an extremely raw deal and the EU knows they have Greece over a barrel.
No, the Greeks have been borrowing money from others on the good credit of the EU, pretending that they were using the money for infrastructure and development. Instead, they were simply out having a party with the money, and now that the creditors want to be paid back, they can't because the money is gone. Of course, painful as it is for the Greeks to hit the credit limit on their credit card, ultimately the people who are actually going to lose tons money on it are the lenders.
I'm on the fence on whether on the whole the EU has been a net positive or negative,
The EU broke down internal trade barriers, which is a good thing. But it was a Faustian bargain, as the result was a great loss of individual liberty and government accountability.
In the end, though, the simple fact is that European national governments could sell their people down the river because the national systems of government in Europe were broken to begin with: Europeans had entrusted too much of their power to ruling elites, and those ruling elites did whatever was in their own interest, which was usually rooted in obtaining sinecures in the EU and engaging in massive crony capitalism.
Except it won't affect the price of domestic products, which typically includes everyday necessities like staple foods and rent
Food depends on lots of imported inputs: fertilizer, machinery, energy, probably water in the case of Greece.
And of course exports also become more profitable, giving economy a further boost. So it's almost completely different.
Exports only become "more profitable" because workers got a pay cut. And that only "boosts" the economy if the workers are overpaid in the first place (which, however, in the case of Greece they probably are).
In fact, since imports go up in price, domestic production gets de facto protective tolls to help boost it across the board.
Devaluation just means a cut in the cost of domestic inputs to production (labor, land, etc.). But that cut is only temporary, since workers and land owners are soon going to raise their rates, since most of the stuff they need to buy depends on imports and goes up in price.
Even if it were a "toll", tolls are not "protective" of anything other than the financial interests of inefficient, badly run industries.
US has the second highest incarceration rate in the world [wikipedia.org]. So please explain exactly what liberty are you talking about?
You generally expect incarceration rates to go up the more liberties citizens have, since the only way to restrain criminals in such a society is to incarcerate them. On the other hand, the more you run your country like a jail house, the less need there is to incarcerate people, since government supervises the day-to-day activities of all citizens closely. Clear enough?
In economics the problem is that so many states really aren't viable economic units. You can't have anybody but the Feds decide how to divide up the Colorado River.
Sure you can: through private property rights. In fact, mismanagement by the Federal Government is primarily responsible for the sorry state the Colorado River is in. The air is similarly mismanaged by the Federal Government.
Militarily there's no way Kansas could have a well-armed militia. They'd need an Air Force, and they can't afford it.
I don't see what exactly you think Kansas needs an air force for. Almost all of our military throughout the past hundred years has been defending the ill gotten gains or cleaning up the messes created by our colonialist, imperialist "allies", with the result that we now have a big target painted on our backs.
Life happened, and a lot of the Founders limits on Federal power (and Presidential power) just stopped being particularly meaningful.
Those limits are as meaningful today as when the US was founded. Unfortunately, European-style worship of totalitarianism and government-by-elites has infected the thinking of many Americans.
A liquidity problem is when you have money available in principle but it's not liquid. The Greek government doesn't have a liquidity problem, it has a massive debt problem, about 170% of GDP. The causes are massive deficit spending, corruption, and tax evasion.
It's the Greeks are blaming the Germans for pressing the Greek Goverment to bailout Greek PRIVATE Banks which owed money to German Banks.
Did Merkel threaten to whip the Greek prime minister with a wet noodle or what? The reason Germany has power over Greece is because Greece wants to continue borrowing money. If Greece didn't want to borrow more money, it could tell Germany and the rest of Europe to go f*ck themselves.
The only way this could work, is if Greece had their own currency to devalue.
If a country devalues its currency, it's no different from a massive tax on savings and a massive cut in wages. It's politically easier to deal with problems that way, but economically, it makes no difference what currency Greeks use.
Greece is an example of a country which gave up its own currency (and with it the power to play certain tricks to nudge the economy) without having the productivity to make it work without those tricks
There are no "tricks" you can play to actually make people wealthier. All governments can do is redistribute money to gain some political advantage for themselves. Even that runs into natural limits as people simply pack up and leave sooner or later.
he item you've quoted specifies States may not, meaning the Congress may.
Not at all. The federal government was supposed to have only enumerated powers. If the states may not do it and it's not an enumerated power of the federal government, then only the people (individuals and businesses) may do it.
Everybody knows that the areas of the world with the least government are utopian paradises whose citizens enjoy more wealth and liberty than all the other nations combined!!!
Liberty has been working very well for Americans, compared to Europe and the rest of the world. That's why we should continue in the direction of more individual liberties and less government intervention.
The solutions are worse according to you. According to the people who actually study this, they are not
Solutions to global warming and their tradeoffs are a political and moral decision, not a scientific one. Yes, that is something you need to get off your lazy ass and think about for yourself.
Not engaging in a discussion and closing your ears is what you have done. And it's not weird at all: your kind of apathy and lack of intellectual curiosity is widespread.
You are right insofar that if there were no government
Where did I advocate "no government"? What I pointed out is that government policies, not markets, create the problem of externalities. Different government policies can avoid the problem of externalities.
No, his advice has been to lower taxes and lower government spending. Increasing debt is not something he advises per se, it's simply a mechanisms by which the former eventually achieves the latter.
Note that in terms of cynical political manipulation of the public through economics, programs like social security and ACA really take the cake, because they are expressly intended to make people dependent on them. That's what you should worry about.
To bad, it would bring your country nicely forward:D
Forward to what? Slow growth? Lack of innovation? Massive social, demographic, and fiscal problems? The US needs to avoid going down the same, failed path that Europe is heading down.
Would BP have paid anything for the Gulf of Mexico if there was no government?
What is this "no government" bs? I'm not arguing against government in general, I'm pointing out that governments create the problem of externalities through their policies.
BP paid nowhere near enough for their oil spill precisely because governments allowed them to get away with paying nowhere near enough. In fact, the reason that BP can drill in a valuable and sensitive area in the first place is because governments gave them license to do so.
if you can't see this from real world examples that abound right now you are too blinded by your ideology to think clearly and should really try an open your eyes
The BP oil spill did happen, and the people harmed by it didn't get properly compensated, and the reason for that is that our benighted government valued the environment and their suffering so little that BP got away with it. And you weren't so blinded by your ideology, you would see that.
Slashdot Mirror
And that is as it should be: the Colorado rancher who took too much water didn't violate the property rights of the Utah rancher, he violated the property rights of the owner of the body of water.
You aren't listening; as I was saying, to resolve this with private property rights, there ought to be three private parties. The problem we currently have is that there are only two private parties, while the water itself is "owned" by the federal government and managed subject to massive lobbying and crony capitalism.
If it's private property rights, then it's not "the feds managing the water". The feds may (or may not) be involved in enforcing those private property rights, but the management decisions are taken out of their hands.
That's important because it is the management, i.e., decisions about who may pollute and who may use the resources, that is subject to massive lobbying and crony capitalism and that government is incapable of performing well.
No, it actually means two courts and three private parties: the party taking the water, the party who bought the water, and the party who owns the water. The owner of the water is in breach of contract with the rancher in Utah, and the victim of theft at the hands of the rancher from Colorado. All of this can be handled with simple property law in state courts.
The only reason this is a problem right now is because there is no private property owner for the water, and instead governments are managing water rights in response to lobbying and political pressures, and trampling all over other people's rights in the process.
And we should again.
There have also been slavery and totalitarianism as far back as anyone can tell; that doesn't mean that we need to continue engaging in such idiotic practices.
Private property rights doesn't mean "individuals".
No, far simpler: shared private ownership, the way a lot of shared property is already aministered. It's far less expensive than what we have got now. And it is exactly as intrusive as the participating owners want it to be.
No, the Greeks have been borrowing money from others on the good credit of the EU, pretending that they were using the money for infrastructure and development. Instead, they were simply out having a party with the money, and now that the creditors want to be paid back, they can't because the money is gone. Of course, painful as it is for the Greeks to hit the credit limit on their credit card, ultimately the people who are actually going to lose tons money on it are the lenders.
The EU broke down internal trade barriers, which is a good thing. But it was a Faustian bargain, as the result was a great loss of individual liberty and government accountability.
In the end, though, the simple fact is that European national governments could sell their people down the river because the national systems of government in Europe were broken to begin with: Europeans had entrusted too much of their power to ruling elites, and those ruling elites did whatever was in their own interest, which was usually rooted in obtaining sinecures in the EU and engaging in massive crony capitalism.
Food depends on lots of imported inputs: fertilizer, machinery, energy, probably water in the case of Greece.
Exports only become "more profitable" because workers got a pay cut. And that only "boosts" the economy if the workers are overpaid in the first place (which, however, in the case of Greece they probably are).
Devaluation just means a cut in the cost of domestic inputs to production (labor, land, etc.). But that cut is only temporary, since workers and land owners are soon going to raise their rates, since most of the stuff they need to buy depends on imports and goes up in price.
Even if it were a "toll", tolls are not "protective" of anything other than the financial interests of inefficient, badly run industries.
Relatively speaking, the US is still doing a lot better than Europe.
America has been deteriorating, in large part because of an influx of bad European ideas about government and society. It's a trend we can reverse.
You generally expect incarceration rates to go up the more liberties citizens have, since the only way to restrain criminals in such a society is to incarcerate them. On the other hand, the more you run your country like a jail house, the less need there is to incarcerate people, since government supervises the day-to-day activities of all citizens closely. Clear enough?
(The US should decriminalize drugs, however.)
Sure you can: through private property rights. In fact, mismanagement by the Federal Government is primarily responsible for the sorry state the Colorado River is in. The air is similarly mismanaged by the Federal Government.
I don't see what exactly you think Kansas needs an air force for. Almost all of our military throughout the past hundred years has been defending the ill gotten gains or cleaning up the messes created by our colonialist, imperialist "allies", with the result that we now have a big target painted on our backs.
Those limits are as meaningful today as when the US was founded. Unfortunately, European-style worship of totalitarianism and government-by-elites has infected the thinking of many Americans.
A liquidity problem is when you have money available in principle but it's not liquid. The Greek government doesn't have a liquidity problem, it has a massive debt problem, about 170% of GDP. The causes are massive deficit spending, corruption, and tax evasion.
I objected to the reasoning, not the conclusion.
Note also that I said "supposed to"; the Constitution and its limits on federal power have become so weakened that they are pretty much meaningless.
Yes, the US is not a civilized country, and it's not like Europe or Russia. We like it that way. Congratulations for realizing that.
Did Merkel threaten to whip the Greek prime minister with a wet noodle or what? The reason Germany has power over Greece is because Greece wants to continue borrowing money. If Greece didn't want to borrow more money, it could tell Germany and the rest of Europe to go f*ck themselves.
If a country devalues its currency, it's no different from a massive tax on savings and a massive cut in wages. It's politically easier to deal with problems that way, but economically, it makes no difference what currency Greeks use.
There are no "tricks" you can play to actually make people wealthier. All governments can do is redistribute money to gain some political advantage for themselves. Even that runs into natural limits as people simply pack up and leave sooner or later.
Not at all. The federal government was supposed to have only enumerated powers. If the states may not do it and it's not an enumerated power of the federal government, then only the people (individuals and businesses) may do it.
Liberty has been working very well for Americans, compared to Europe and the rest of the world. That's why we should continue in the direction of more individual liberties and less government intervention.
Solutions to global warming and their tradeoffs are a political and moral decision, not a scientific one. Yes, that is something you need to get off your lazy ass and think about for yourself.
Not engaging in a discussion and closing your ears is what you have done. And it's not weird at all: your kind of apathy and lack of intellectual curiosity is widespread.
What does Norquist or his ideas on taxes have to do with PNAC?
Neither my parents nor my grandparents had it, and I don't expect I will have it either. Neither will you: it's not sustainable.
Well, you better figure out how to make due without it.
Where did I advocate "no government"? What I pointed out is that government policies, not markets, create the problem of externalities. Different government policies can avoid the problem of externalities.
our new titanium-jawed turtle overlords. Ruuuuuuuun... very slooooowly.
I never have presented such evidence because there is none. AGW activism is an army of fools, not a conspiracy.
No, his advice has been to lower taxes and lower government spending. Increasing debt is not something he advises per se, it's simply a mechanisms by which the former eventually achieves the latter.
Note that in terms of cynical political manipulation of the public through economics, programs like social security and ACA really take the cake, because they are expressly intended to make people dependent on them. That's what you should worry about.
"All those other times"? Like which?
Forward to what? Slow growth? Lack of innovation? Massive social, demographic, and fiscal problems? The US needs to avoid going down the same, failed path that Europe is heading down.
What is this "no government" bs? I'm not arguing against government in general, I'm pointing out that governments create the problem of externalities through their policies.
BP paid nowhere near enough for their oil spill precisely because governments allowed them to get away with paying nowhere near enough. In fact, the reason that BP can drill in a valuable and sensitive area in the first place is because governments gave them license to do so.
The BP oil spill did happen, and the people harmed by it didn't get properly compensated, and the reason for that is that our benighted government valued the environment and their suffering so little that BP got away with it. And you weren't so blinded by your ideology, you would see that.