Dictionary of Arguments


Philosophical and Scientific Issues in Dispute
 
[german]

Screenshot Tabelle Begriffes

 

Find counter arguments by entering NameVs… or …VsName.

Enhanced Search:
Search term 1: Author or Term Search term 2: Author or Term


together with


The author or concept searched is found in the following 6 entries.
Disputed term/author/ism Author
Entry
Reference
Collective Goods Economic Theories Rothbard III 1030
Collective goods/Economic theories/Rothbard: Many attempts have been made (…), to salvage the concept of the "collective" good, to provide a seemingly ironclad, scientific justification for government operations. Molinari: Molinari, for example, trying to establish defense as a collective good, asserted: "A police force serves every inhabitant of the district in which it acts, but the mere establishment of a bakery does not appease their hunger."
RothbardVsMolinari: But, on the contrary, there is no absolute necessity for a police force to defend every inhabitant of an area or, still more, to give each one the same degree of protection. Furthermore, an absolute pacifist, a believer in total nonviolence, living in the area, would not consider himself protected by, or receiving defense service from, the police. On the contrary, he would consider any police in his area a detriment to him. Hence, defense cannot be considered a "collective good" or "collective want." Similarly for such projects as dams, which cannot be simply assumed to benefit everyone in the area.(1)
De Viti De Marco: Antonio De Viti De Marco defined "collective wants" as consisting of two categories:
a) wants arising when an individual is not in isolation and
b) wants connected with a conflict of interest.
RothbardVsDe Viti De Marco:
Vs a) The first category, however, is so broad as to encompass most market products. There would be no point, for example, in putting on plays unless a certain number went to see them or in publishing newspapers without a certain wide market. Must all these industries therefore be nationalized and monopolized by the government?
Vs b) The second category is presumably meant to apply to defense. This, however, is incorrect. Defense, itself, does not reflect a conflict of interest, but a threat of invasion, against which defense is needed. Furthermore, it is hardly sensible to call "collective" that want which is precisely the least likely to be unanimous, since robbers will hardly desire it!(2)
Immaterial goods/service: Other economists write as if defense is necessarily collective because it is an immaterial service, whereas bread, autos, etc., are materially divisible and salable to individuals.
RothbardVs: But "immaterial" services to individuals abound in the market. Must concert-giving be monopolized by the state because its services are immaterial?
Rothbard III 1031
Samuelson: In recent years, Professor Samuelson has offered his own definition of "collective consumption goods," in a so-called "pure" theory of government expenditures. Def Collective consumption goods/Samuelson: Collective consumption goodss according to Samuelson, are those "which all enjoy in common in the sense that each individual's consumption of such a good leads to no subtraction from any other individual's consumption of that good." For some reason, these are supposed to be the proper goods (or at least these) for government, rather than the free market, to provide.(3)
VsSamuelson: Samuelson's category has been attacked with due severity. Professor Enke(4), for example, pointed out that most governmental services simply do not fit Samuelson's classification - including highways, libraries, judicial services, police, fire, hospitals, and military protection. In fact, we may go further and state that no goods would ever fit into Samuelson's category of "collective consumption goods."
Margolis: [Julius] Margolis(4), for example, while critical of Samuelson, concedes the inclusion of national defense and lighthouses in this category. But "national defense" is surely not an absolute good with only one unit of supply. It consists of specific resources committed in certain definite and concrete ways - and these resources are necessarily scarce. A ring of defense bases around New York, for example, cuts down the amount possibly available around San Francisco. Furthermore, a lighthouse shines over a certain fixed area only. Not only does a ship within the area prevent others from entering the area at the same time, but also the construction of a lighthouse in one Place limits its construction elsewhere. In fact, if a good is really technologically "collective" in Samuelson's sense, it is not a good at all, but a natural condition of human welfare, like air - superabundant to all, and therefore unowned by anyone. Indeed, it is not the lighthouse, but the ocean itself—when the Ianes are not crowded - which is the "collective consumption good," and which therefore remains unowned. Obviously, neither government nor anyone else is normally needed to produce or allocate the ocean.(4)
Rothbard III 1032
Tiebout: Charles M. Tiebout(5), conceding that there is no "pure" way to establish an optimum level for government expenditures, tries to salvage such a theory specifically for local government. Realizing that the taxing, and even voting, process precludes voluntary demonstration of consumer choice in the governmental field, he argues that decentralization and freedom of internal migration renders local government expenditures more or less optimal - as we can say that free market expenditures by firms are "optimal"—since the residents can move in and out as they please. Certainly, it is true that the consumer will be better off if he can move readily out of a high-tax, and into a Iow tax, community. But this helps the consumer only to a degree; it does not solve the problem of government expenditures, which remains otherwise the same. There are, indeed, other factors than government entering into a man's choice of residence, and enough People may be attached to a certain geographical area, for one reason or another, to permit a great deal of government depredation before they move. Furthermore, a major problem is that the world's total land area is fixed, and that governments have universally pre-empted all the land and thus universally burden consumers.(5) >Collective goods/Rothbard, >Social goods.

1. Gustave de Molinari, The Society of Tomorrow. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1904. Reprinted by Taylor & Francis, 1972. p. 63. On the fallacy of collective goods, see S.R., Ibid., p. 63. On the fallacy of collective goods, see S.R., "Spencer As His Own Critic," Liberty, June, 1904, and Merlin H. Hunter and Harry K. Allen, Principles of Public Finance (New York: Harpers, 1940), p. 22. Molinari had not always believed in the existence of "collective goods," as can be seen from his remarkable "De la production de la sécurité," Journal des Economistes, February 15, 1849 , and Molinari, "Onziéme soirée" in Les soirées de la Rue Saint Lazare (Paris, 1849).
2. Antonio De Viti De Marco, First Principles of Public Finance (London: Jonathan Cape, 1936), pp. 37-41. Similar to De Viti's first category is Baumol's attempted criterion of "jointly" financed goods, for a critique of which see Rothbard, "Toward A Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics," pp. 255-60.
3. Paul A. Samuelson, "The Pure Theory of Public Expenditures," Review ofEconomics and statistics, November, 1954, pp. 387-89.
4. Stephen Enke, "More on the Misuse of Mathematics in Economics: A Rejoinder," Review of Economics and statistics, May, 1955, pp. 131-33 ; Julius Margolis, "A Comment On the Pure Theory of Public Expenditures," Review of Economics and statistics, November, 19 5 5, pp. 347-49. In his reply to critics, Samuelson, after hastening to deny any possible implication that he wished to confine the sphere of government to collective goods alone, asserts that his category is really a "polar" concept. Goods in the real world are supposed to be only blends of the "polar extremes" of public and private goods. But these concepts, even in Samuelson's own erms, are decidedly not polar, but exhaustive. Either A's consumption of a good diminishes B's possible consumption, or it does not: these two alternatives are mutually exclusive and exhaust the possibilities. In effect, Samuelson has abandoned his category either as a theoretical or as a practical device. Paul A. Samuelson, "Diagrammatic Exposition of a Theory of Public Expenditure," Review of Economics and statistics, November, 1955, pp. 350-56.
5. Charles M. Tiebout, "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy, October, 1956, pp. 416 - 24. At one point, Tiebout seems to admit that his theory would be valid only if each person could somehow be "his own municipal government." Ibid., p. 421.
In the course of an acute critique of the idea of competition in government, the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph wrote as follows: „Were the taxpayer free to act as a customer, buying only those services he deemed useful to himself and which were priced within his reach, then this competition between governments would be a wonderful thing. But because the taxpayer is not a customer, but only the governed, he is not free to choose. He is only compelled to pay.... With government there is no producer-customer relationship. There is only the relation that always exists between those who rule and those who are ruled. The ruled are never free to refuse the services of the products of the ruler.... Instead of trying to see which government could best serve the governed, each government began to vie with every other government on the basis of its tax collections.... The victim of this competition is always the taxpayer.... The taxpayer is now set upon by the federal, state, school board, county and City governments. Each of these is competing for the last dollar he has.“ (Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, July 16, 1958)


Rothbard II
Murray N. Rothbard
Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995

Rothbard III
Murray N. Rothbard
Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009

Rothbard IV
Murray N. Rothbard
The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988

Rothbard V
Murray N. Rothbard
Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977
Collective Goods Samuelson Rothbard III 1031
Collective goods/Samuelson/Rothbard: Many attempts have been made (…), to salvage the concept of the "collective" good, to provide a seemingly ironclad, scientific justification for government operations. Samuelson: In recent years, Professor Samuelson has offered his own definition of "collective consumption goods," in a so-called "pure" theory of government expenditures.
Def Collective consumption goods/Samuelson: Collective consumption goodss according to Samuelson, are those "which all enjoy in common in the sense that each individual's consumption of such a good leads to no subtraction from any other individual's consumption of that good." For some reason, these are supposed to be the proper goods (or at least these) for government, rather than the free market, to provide.(1)
VsSamuelson: Samuelson's category has been attacked with due severity. St. Enke(2), for example, pointed out that most governmental services simply do not fit Samuelson's classification - including highways, libraries, judicial services, police, fire, hospitals, and military protection. In fact, we may go further and state that no goods would ever fit into Samuelson's category of "collective consumption goods."
>Collective goods/Rothbard, >Social goods.

1. Paul A. Samuelson, "The Pure Theory of Public Expenditures," Review ofEconomics and statistics, November, 1954, pp. 387-89.
2. Stephen Enke, "More on the Misuse of Mathematics in Economics: A Rejoinder," Review of Economics and statistics, May, 1955, pp. 131-33 ; Julius Margolis, "A Comment On the Pure Theory of Public Expenditures," Review of Economics and statistics, November, 19 5 5, pp. 347-49. In his reply to critics, Samuelson, after hastening to deny any possible implication that he wished to confine the sphere of government to collective goods alone, asserts that his category is really a "polar" concept. Goods in the real world are supposed to be only blends of the "polar extremes" of public and private goods. But these concepts, even in Samuelson's own erms, are decidedly not polar, but exhaustive. Either A's consumption of a good diminishes B's possible consumption, or it does not: these two alternatives are mutually exclusive and exhaust the possibilities. In effect, Samuelson has abandoned his category either as a theoretical or as a practical device. Paul A. Samuelson, "Diagrammatic Exposition of a Theory of Public Expenditure," Review of Economics and statistics, November, 1955, pp. 350-56.

EconSamu I
Paul A. Samuelson
The foundations of economic analysis Cambridge 1947


Rothbard II
Murray N. Rothbard
Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995

Rothbard III
Murray N. Rothbard
Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009

Rothbard IV
Murray N. Rothbard
The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988

Rothbard V
Murray N. Rothbard
Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977
Social Goods Buchanan Mause I 2767259
Social Goods/Tullock/Buchanan: Background problem: because of the unidentifiable number of free riders who do not pay anything for the benefit of the social good, its value cannot be determined. (See also VsSmauelson). Solution/Tullock/Buchanan: the ability to approve should not be applied to individual expenditure items but to the constitutional level. Question: how to design decision rules at the political level in such a way that undesirable and unfavourable results are largely excluded. (1)
Buchanan: from this, a constitutional economics based on contract theory is developed.(2)
>Constitutional economics as author, >About Constitutional Economics.

1. James M. Buchanan & Gordon Tullock. The calculus of consent. Logical foundations of constitutional democracy. Ann Arbor 1962.
2. James M. Buchanan. 1990. The domain of constitutional economics. Constitutional Political Economy 1 (1): 1– 18.

EconBuchan I
James M. Buchanan
Politics as Public Choice Carmel, IN 2000


Mause I
Karsten Mause
Christian Müller
Klaus Schubert,
Politik und Wirtschaft: Ein integratives Kompendium Wiesbaden 2018
Social Goods Lindahl Mause I 276
Social Goods/Taxes/Lindahl: because of the principle of equivalence (which requires that every tax be legitimized by a benefit for the citizens on the expenditure side), Lindahl proposed individualized taxes as early as 1919, which are oriented towards the individual marginal benefit from the consumption of public goods. VsLindahl: Problem: then one comes back to the Samuelson condition and the problem that the value of the public property cannot be determined because of the undetermined number of free riders. See Social Goods/Samuelson. (See also VsSamuelson).
Solutions: See Social Goods/Tullock, Social Goods/Buchanan.

EconLind I
Erik Lindahl
Just Taxation - A Positive Solution in: R. A. Musgrave et al. (eds.), Classics in the Theory of Public Finance, International Economic Association 1958
German Edition:
Die Gerechtigkeit der Besteuerung Lund 1919


Mause I
Karsten Mause
Christian Müller
Klaus Schubert,
Politik und Wirtschaft: Ein integratives Kompendium Wiesbaden 2018
Social Goods Samuelson Mause I 274f
Social Goods/Samuelson: Social Goods are Characterized 1. By non-rivalry: e.g. national defence: its quality is independent of how many individuals it benefits. Unlike on the market for private goods (see Markets/Economic Theories) the sum of all individuals with a marginal willingness to pay, who consume the nonrival goods together must be added up in the case of nonrivalising goods.
2. By non-exclusion: even non-paying members can consume public goods. (free rider problem).
Solution/Samuelson: Assuming there were only two goods (a social and a private one); if now the appreciation for the jointly consumed good is equated with the marginal social costs of providing this good, the Samuelson condition is obtained.
VsSamuelson: Problem: the Samuelson condition is virtually useless because the concrete values it should be fed with cannot be determined. ((s) Reason: the number of free riders is undetermined). See also Social Goods/Economic Theories.

EconSamu I
Paul A. Samuelson
The foundations of economic analysis Cambridge 1947


Mause I
Karsten Mause
Christian Müller
Klaus Schubert,
Politik und Wirtschaft: Ein integratives Kompendium Wiesbaden 2018
Social Goods Tullock Mause I 276
Social Goods/Tullock/Buchanan: Background problem: because of the unidentifiable number of free riders who do not pay anything for the benefit of the social good, its value cannot be determined. (See also VsSmauelson). Solution/Tullock/Buchanan: the ability to approve should not be applied to individual expenditure items but to the constitutional level. Question: how to design decision rules at the political level in such a way that undesirable and unfavourable results are largely excluded. (1)
Buchanan: from this, a constitutional economics based on contract theory is developed. (2)

1. James M. Buchanan & Gordon Tullock. The calculus of consent. Logical foundations of constitutional democracy. Ann Arbor 1962.
2. James M. Buchanan. 1990. The domain of constitutional economics. Constitutional Political Economy 1 (1): 1– 18.

EconTull I
Gordon Tullock
Arthur Seldon
Gordon L. Brady,
Government failure: A primer in public choice Washington 2002


Mause I
Karsten Mause
Christian Müller
Klaus Schubert,
Politik und Wirtschaft: Ein integratives Kompendium Wiesbaden 2018


No results. Please choose an author or concept or try a different keyword-search.