How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West

Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by holri on Friday December 30, 2016 @09:49AM (#13284601)

There is no spending but investing. In schools, public transport, social peace. Those investments of the last 80 years come to fruition today for the advantage of everyone.

Before Red Vienna was not huge free market period but a huge lost war, pervasive destruction and a dramatically shrunk country, cut off of his industry (Czech) and agriculture (Hungary).

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by sebastianconcpt on Friday December 30, 2016 @01:53PM (#13286292)

Before "investing" it got collected by coercion which is immoral. But to follow your hypothesis, can you demonstrate that the output of that "investing" turns out to be ROI positive?

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by holri on Friday December 30, 2016 @02:03PM (#13286395)

Taxing is not coercion, but a democratic decision to distribute wealth. The return on investment in Vienna's commonwealth is the best quality of living in the world (quality of live is a lot more than private money)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Surve...

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by sebastianconcpt on Friday December 30, 2016 @02:10PM (#13286480)

Taxing is not coercion Explain how is not coercion that a majority decide democratically to take all your money, leave you absolutely nothing, in the street, send SWAT to your house if you resist and shoot you if you offer any active resistance? PS: also you didn't demonstrate your previous claim has any chance to be ROI positive. Can you do that?

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by holri on Friday December 30, 2016 @03:00PM (#13286945)

They do not take all of the circulating money (That would be nonsense because the circle would stop) but in Austria approx. 42%. Since national economy is a circle that money is not lost as an expense but is again invested in the economy and is coming back. ROI is a term of business administration and not national economy and therefore not applicable to the economies of Cities.

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by sebastianconcpt on Saturday December 31, 2016 @07:37AM (#13290778)

They don't take all the money, I'm showing you the absurd case so you can explain why would be moral any sub case of it. Can you explain that? So you first start talking that "spending other people's money" is not spending but "investing", I think spending is spending and not "investing" but trying to follow your reasoning I ask for its ROI, then you fail to show that its ROI is positive and then, "because is a city" not show any other alternative that shows that your "investing" has any chance to provide a positive ROI to the people you've taken that money from (at gunpoint). Explain how your immoral "investing" is "good"?

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by holri on Sunday January 01, 2017 @02:30AM (#13294995)

The world is not binary. Between 0 Tax and 100% Tax is a lot. National economy is something completely different than business economy. The main difference is the tax cycle in national economy. A simplified example: If the city of Vienna spends 1 Euro in buying trams, this Euro goes to the company Siemens in Vienna building those. Siemens employs a Viennese worker getting this money. 42 Cent of this invested Euro comes back to the city as tax. And a small part of the new tram. And a better public transport because of this new tram. And a new company settling in Vienna because of it's superior transport system. And another part of the 1 EUR comes back again as tax of this new company. If clever done this cycle does not stop.

Asking for ROI of Vienna's infrastructure investments is as absurd as asking how much tax did a business get back from his investments.

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by sebastianconcpt on Monday January 02, 2017 @05:19AM (#13300299)

That does not answer my specific questions

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by holri on Monday January 02, 2017 @05:50AM (#13300405)

As I explained your question is absurd.

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by tonyedgecombe on Friday December 30, 2016 @09:25AM (#13284485)

The "pre-condition" for Austria was being on the loosing side of WW2, after that the economy was only 60% of it's pre-war size.

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by Avshalom on Friday December 30, 2016 @09:29AM (#13284495)

free markets also require huge amounts of other people's money while they waste resources in competition before a solution is found.

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by hueving on Friday December 30, 2016 @09:33AM (#13284513)

And centrally planned systems don't find a solution to many problems at all (e.g. new low cost innovations). Without competition, there is no incentive to improve the efficiency of anything that meets the bare minimum requirements.

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by sebastianconcpt on Friday December 30, 2016 @09:49AM (#13284599)

Planned systems are doomed by design. They destroy the information that prices carry and end in self-destruction/collapse. Even communist China knows better than that.

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by sebastianconcpt on Friday December 30, 2016 @09:48AM (#13284589)

You seem to be confused about the meaning of "other people's money". You see, in a free market, you have voluntary contracts and transactions like in people deciding on how their money is used, put a risk, etc. which is ethically perfect. Progressivists societies, on the contrary, can do nothing without the use of coercion. Then they put their bunch of bureaucrats to vote on how to use the money that they have taken from you at gunpoint.

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by fauigerzigerk on Friday December 30, 2016 @11:59AM (#13285394)

>ethically perfect

Being a proponent of free markets I would love to see them as not just necessary and useful for some purposes but also as "ethically perfect".

But I can not.

Free markets, based exclusively on voluntary agreements, lack a crucial element to be fair: Equal opportunity.

Extreme inequality of wealth causes extreme inequality of opportunity. This is the core dilemma of free market liberalism.

There is no plausible definition of meritocracy that has a place for inherited wealth. Place of birth isn't very meritocratic either.

We will also have to account for the possibility that luck may play a much bigger role in success than we like to think.

If we want to keep the good parts of free markets and voluntary agreements, we will have to do better than declaring every form of redistribution of wealth to be coercion at gunpoint.

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by sebastianconcpt on Friday December 30, 2016 @02:01PM (#13286380)

Any alternative to voluntary agreements would inject noise in the feedback that the humans involved can use to improve themselves and, ultimately, the species. You can't have equal opportunity. It's an impossible goal. It can't possibly exist. What should be possible is to have some kind of Fair Opportunity by optimizing it somehow but never equal. You need that constraint loose in the system so it can create wealth. Pursuing equality is only pre-authorize coercion and will converge in totalitarianism (because victimists will always bug you ad-infinitum to achieve their claims of lack of equality).

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by fauigerzigerk on Friday December 30, 2016 @04:03PM (#13287417)

>You can't have equal opportunity. It's an impossible goal.

I never said we could have completely equal opportunity. But by implication, the outcomes of our voluntary agreements are never perfectly ethical or completely justified.

Redistribution of wealth makes up for the fact that the playing field is never completely level. Rejecting all social processes that lead to peaceful redistribution of wealth or to more equal opportunity is both unpragmatic and unethical.

Also, extreme inequality distorts markets massively. It's much more than just noise. Markets break down completely if too many participants are forced to sell or buy at any price just to survive.

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by sebastianconcpt on Sunday January 08, 2017 @05:00PM (#13352304)

Voluntary agreements are ethical by definition and because they are voluntary.

Curious that you call unethical to voluntary agreements and simultaneously imply that peaceful redistribution of wealth is ethical when you can't do it without coercion which is exactly unethical. Explain how this peaceful redistribution of wealth is any good? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOjvJAfIMSI

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by holri on Friday December 30, 2016 @09:52AM (#13284606)

There is no coercion and no gunpoints because the government in Vienna is elected by the people.

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by maverick_iceman on Friday December 30, 2016 @01:17PM (#13286019)

You're comically unaware of the tyranny of the majority. Ever heard of Idi Amin?

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by dmichulke on Friday December 30, 2016 @11:03AM (#13284977)

So "elected by 50%+" means absence of coercion?

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by holri on Friday December 30, 2016 @11:14AM (#13285054)

yes that is how democracy works.

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by maverick_iceman on Friday December 30, 2016 @01:16PM (#13286007)

Ah, so minority rights don't matter any more? By your standards even Hitler was democratically elected. That doesn't make his actions moral.

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by holri on Friday December 30, 2016 @01:44PM (#13286213)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by IvarTheHomeless on Saturday December 31, 2016 @06:30PM (#13293761)

Hitler was appointed, not elected.

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by dmichulke on Saturday December 31, 2016 @02:16AM (#13289969)

Coercion is entirely orthogonal to any form of state.

In practice, all forms of state use coercion. Try resisting arrest by the police for a crime you are suspect but didn't commit.

There are much worse examples that polarize much more.

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by sangnoir on Saturday December 31, 2016 @03:29PM (#13292986)

How can individual's rights and possessions be protected without coercion? These are fundamental to any society.

Empirically, when the state is dissolved, it is quickly replaced by equally coercive (or worse) warlords.

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by mastazi on Saturday December 31, 2016 @10:43PM (#13294621)

> free market

> progressivist societies

Do you realize that in many countries free markets are a progressive thing, and that many right wing parties promote high public expenditure and extensive welfare?

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by sebastianconcpt on Tuesday January 03, 2017 @11:38AM (#13310344)

Depending on the semantic stretching yes, you are correct, there are many "right-wing" populist that also do that and use coercion in the same morally problematic way. The point I'm stressing is that some "right-wing" might be for a minimalistic state, while most of the left-wing is all for an all-powerful state

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Re:How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West by mastazi on Monday January 09, 2017 @07:25PM (#13361367)

Yes I agree with you that there is a semantic problem (e.g. in the US the adjective "liberal" means "leftie" whereas everywhere else means "in favour of free markets") but that's much less important than the substance so I don't want to focus on words and definitions.

It seems to me that as of 2017 the major threat to free markets comes from protectionism, not from socialism.

The new president of the USA, who is a Republican, has in numerous occasions pledged to follow protectionist policies, and many European right-wing parties, not only in UK, are against the EU single market.

So I would say that centre-right or right-wing politicians who are against free markets are not an edge case any more.

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