Nature seems rather inventive in the creation of parasites. Virtually every species on the planet has several and they can be specialized to the point where a single species is almost an eco-system unto itself.
Life requires energy and there are quite a number of ways to get it. There are primary producers that take solar or chemical energy and use it to create biomass; there are species which eat the primary producers and others which in turn eat them. The most common terms for these are plants, herbivores and carnivores. There are animals which feed on dead plants or animals and there are animals which have discovered the trick of extracting energy from their host without quite killing it.
Parasitism has a number of advantages to a species. The host does all the work. Since the parasite does not kill the host like a carnivore it can continue feeding for so long as the host lives. It is clear the host would be better off without the parasite in the vast majority of cases, but since all of its neighbors are also hosts, it has no particular relative disadvantage to them.
As in any other biological niche, there will be competition. If a parasite extracts too little from its host, another which takes more will produce more offspring and take over. On the other hand, if it extracts too much, the host will weaken and a competitor who takes just a little bit less will again be able to extract more energy and produce more offspring.
In economics we call this the Laffer curve.
As yopu say, the parasite must evolve if it is in danger of obliterating its host.. hence New Labour?
dearieme,
You are such a “Samizdata-Quote-of-The-Day”-whore.
;-P
PG
Dale, I have only one thing to say: OWWW!
I’ve been considering for a while that money should be considered as energy. A pound can be regarded, in the same way as a Joule as a unit capable of work. rules of physics and energy flow diagrams can then be applied (in a loose sense). Efficiencies can be calculated and we can abandon the notion that capital is a fixed sum going around and around and see that value is created and then consumed. All value is ultimately consumed as waste heat, government tax and spend is the equivalent of burning a barrel of oil to make a slice of toast.
There’s a lot of gaps but I reckon the concept is basically sound.
Rich
This analogy also allows us to draw comparisons such as putting huge sums of money in the form of aid to corrupt governments to putting the accelerator down in a car where the engine is malfunctioning. Overall, more likely to break things than to help.
Rich
What puzzles me is, with so many lessons from biology, why is Richard Dawkins a socialist?
Nature has lessons for us all.
An organism that has a parasite should be entitled to destroy it unless both can establish and agree to a symbiotic relationship. New Labour and Statists have NOT been granted symbiotic status as far as I am concerned! The EU is the pinacle of that presumption!
As for New Labour, Sociofascists and those on the Welfare State, I see them more as a tumourous growth, a cancer. The cancer tricks the body into building more and more bloodvessels to feed it ever more resources and clear away ever more of the toxins it produces. Soon the body is just able to function under great duress while the cancer grows happily. Later, it is in terminal decline and eventually dies a slow lingering and painful death.
It is a shame spoony Sociofascists§ seem to think they can buck the entire 4 billion years of nature and have humankind and economies work/live/interact in ‘modern’/dysfunctional ways.
§ I know, ‘spoony’ is rather redundant.
That is, however, a digression. There has been much made recently of increased tax revenues created by decreasing taxes, all due to the Laffer curve. I simply wished to put it into perspective exactly what the Laffer curve *means*.
The posting assumed that the parasite (government) dies if it takes more from civil society that a rival parasite takes from another society.
For example, if United States government continues to take (in terms not just of taxes, but of borrowing, printing and regulations) as much as does from the United States the Chinese government (which, at the monent, takes less from Chinese society) will eventually become more powerful (as it will control a more powerful economy) and the U.S. government will find itself crushed.
I suppose it depends on how government people choose to act – after all the Chinese government in 2050 (or whenever) may not choose to make Americans their slaves (they may be busy doing other things or just may not be interested).
Also (or course) government people may not actually care if they are taken over by another government.
After all the House of Commons and the House of Lords have handed over most of their powers to the E.U. – the armed forces remain (for now) under national control (although military supplies are going under E.U. control – due to the agreement in 2000) but most laws are directly or indirectly decided by the E.U.
Most British government people either do not know, or do not care.
As long as they have the prestige of titles (such as “Prime Minsiter”) and have lots of people crawling to them, they do not really care if this or that government power is really under their control.
Also (of course) many government people believe that such things as higher government spending or regulations are GOOD things that HELP most people.
After all the media and academia constantly tell them to “spend more on X” or “pass a new law to deal with Y”.
And most voters support this.
Of course a parasite does not know it is a parasite (they do not tend to be sentient) – but even though the government people are sentient things are not simple.
After all (as I say above) most people attack them for not being statist enough.
Even President Bush (the biggest increaser of government spending since L.B.J.) is attacked for (nonexistant) cuts in “poverty programs”, for not spending enough on new health care and education programs, and for not spending enough on (for example) flood defences.
We must not assume that what WE attack people like Bush and Blair for is what most people attack them for.
Most people follow the media (which, in turn, follows academia) – to them Bush is a hard core free market man, a tool of big business (etc, etc).
Most people (at least in Britain) do not see N.H.S. Doctors and nurses and state school teachers (and so on) as “parasites” (even though, techically, they are).
Most people see “the rich” as parasites.
Remember Mrs Thatcher’s Conservatives even in 1979 only got 43% of the vote – most people in Britian have been deeply statist for a very long time.
People who voted Labour, or Liberal in 1979 (or later) certainly did not think the government was too big.
This is the one grain of truth in the line of “Dave” Cameron.
As most people are either evil or ignorant (or both) why not pander to them?
Of course there are problems with this line.
Even quite stupid people smell a rat when a Conservative says (for example) how much they love the N.H.S. – the dishonesty is obvious.
Also if (by some dark miracle) people come to power on platform of sillyness (“we will expand the public services, we will…….”) it is rather hard to do anything else in office.
Again Mr Bush.
“Why has he not tried to cut government spending” – because he did not campaign on this. No mandate.
Often the, much attacked, “negative campaign” is the most honest.
Attack the existing government over everything it does wrong and over the activites of the members of the government (say a minister is a child abuser or other such).
In this way getting involved in a “bidding war” over new government spending and regulations can be avoided.
And, if one comes to power, it may be possible to actually cut government spending and regulations – after all (by “going negative”) one has avoiding promises NOT to do this.
If one’s policy is successful the voters may come round – after most people opposed every one of Mrs Thatcher’s denationalizations and most people do not want these industries renationalized.
Of course, in an ideal world, it would be possible to convince the voters of the truth and to win elections – but I do not know how we could reach that ideal world.
After all the last major party candidate for the office of the President of the United States who both knew the truth and tried to tell it was Barry Goldwater (40% of the vote in 1964 – my guess is that he would have got less these days).
Going round telling farmers that you will end their subsidies, the welfare dependents that you will cut their welfare (and so on) is not an easy way to win votes.
“But taxes will be lower”.
As public choice teaches us, each group values their specific subsidy from government more than they do a general tax cut.
So people will only support tax cuts if the cuts in government spending are going to be vague ones in “waste” (Reagan style talk).
So not a matter of nasty politician parasites at all Dale.
It is the voters who are the parasites (as well as being the tax payers).
And the politicians (or rather those few of them who understand the truth) can not tell the voters the truth – or they would not elected.
Again I hope things will change – but I do not know how to change them.
As I believe I have said before on this website, the Public Sector will continue to aggrandize itself until the economy collapses. The reluctance of socialists to acknowledge the existance of Laffer Curves (I have tired to convince them of this) should prove it.
The public sector is not a parasite; the public sector is a cancer.
Nope, nothing intended about international poltics. This is more an issue of Dems v Reps or Cons v NuLab, or perhaps even more so of the bureaucrats representing them inside the government apparatus. The party which hits the sweet spot for parasites adds the most baby tapeworms to the nation.
But the most important point, which a few seem to not have gotten, is that the Laffer curve is supposed to be a ‘good thing’ and that ‘good govenrment’ knows it can do the ‘most good’ by sitting at just the right spot.
All the Laffer curve actually says is that there is an optimal level of theft for the State; the curve does not say this is the best point for society, for growth, for the indivdiual…. it only says it is the best point for the *government*.
“When metaphors go wrong….”
Anyway, I think government is more like an auto-immune disease.
Comment deleted as completely off-topic. Feel free to try again however.
This is true, but the effect of the curve at present is probably good for both the individual and society insofar as taxes are generally still higher than the curve would have them be (more accurately, people still tend to invoke the Laffer Curve as a reason for cutting taxes).
In reality, though, I”m not sure anyone ever took the time to do a rigorous crunching of the numbers on it in the first place, so in effect it’s just junk science that politicians use to lend legitimacy to their programs.
All the same, I’m glad it entered the public discourse. It at least plants the seed of an idea in the socialist’s mind that ever-higher taxes and ever-greater spending are not necessarily good things. Of course, they only “get” this on the utilitarian level at the moment, but it’s at least a start.
If one wishes to accept that taxes are ‘good’ then one may wish to accept the idea of the Laffer curve.
Since I consider taxation as just another form of stealing, I obviously do not buy the idea that maximizing state income is good. The best possible tax rate is… zero.
I’ve been considering for a while that money should be considered as energy
Absolutely, you are correct. I came to near that conclusion many years ago.
In fact, money, ultimately, is a measure of your ability to manipulate energy. Everything comes back to that one point.
why is Richard Dawkins a socialist?
Because Dawkins is one of those people who do not even know what economics is, who do not realise that the rules of ecology and economics are basically the same rules.
It is all about resource (energy) flows, however they are managed.
Since I consider taxation as just another form of stealing, I obviously do not buy the idea that maximizing state income is good. The best possible tax rate is… zero.
Do you recognize that zero taxes means zero law enforcement (and the other useful [and not-so-useful]) things that governments do?
Are you 1) libertarian, 2) anarchist, or 3) other?
Well, libertarian anarchist is a perfectly acceptable viewpoint within our circles. On the practical side, I would be a minarchist who would like to get there first and then see if we can push it the rest of the way. In the mean time, we could get by with a flat rate import duty. Read Rothbard for the full libertarian anarchist position.
I am a pragmatist in the short term and an idealist in the long term is perhaps the best way to describe it. Start from where you are; deal with the world as you find it; but keep your eye on where you want to go.
Although I wrote the article with a bit of humour, I believe there is a great deal of truth to the idea. The form and reasoning behind the Laffer curve is *exactly* the form and logic behind parasitism. There is an optimum amount of blood a blood-sucking bat can take from a herbivore every day; suck too little and the bat doesn’t get enough to raise more young; suck too much and the herbivore sickens and falls prey to carnivores or disease, or at the very least produces less food for the blood sucker.
The same is true of an intestinal worm. If it takes too little, the worm cannot grow and produce as many eggs as it could; if it takes too much the host sickens and there is less food.
So if you really want to know… yes, I *DO* consider government workers as parasites living under the same biological rules as other parasites.
Yes, I think this is right. The form and reasoning behind taxation in general, however, is not necessarily the form and logic behind parasitism. As long as taxes are not “progressive” (i.e. not meant to punish the rich or redistribute wealth) and as long as they fund only the police, the military, and the court system, then I think taxes are more “symbiotic” than “parasitic.” I also consider myself a minarchist, and as such I recognize that certain governmental institutions are indispensible to the functioning of society. Paying to support these institutions cannot be voluntary for residents – hence the need for taxation. I don’t see how the rule of law can be maintained without some very basic form of taxation – though I agree that the current system is both excessive and immoral.
So if you really want to know… yes, I *DO* consider government workers as parasites living under the same biological rules as other parasites.
I am one of these parasites. Reading your blog during working hours is just one way that I squander your money (although my management are far more gifted at creating money wasting schemes!).
The laffer curve is a typical economic
income/substitution effect model (one of hundreds). Its shows the marginal propensity to work or not work at any given tax rate. Although its been used to cut taxes, it does not explicitly suggest tax cuts, just illustrates that there is a point where taxes can be so high that people would rather forgo more income from working longer for extra leisure time, this is quite a intuitive idea that most would agree with.
But its been extrapolated to also say that, if you cut taxes people will get more of their income to “take home” and so will work longer for more reward (income effect or extracting too much). But it also argued that people only want a certain level of lifestyle, and if you cut taxes then someone can work less and get the same amount of money to take home, so people will actually work less hours (substitution effect or extracting too little). So cutting taxes maybe a bad thing.
I think your analogy is good but is unclear about the real issues and the use of the word “parasite” show a certain slant to this issue.
cal economic model.
No offense intended to any particular person, yourself included. I have quite a few friends who make very nice livings off of ‘the system’ (some in rather high positions in DC). It still is the case that the resources used to fund those jobs are taken from the general economy where they would be far more productive if left in the hands of those who generated the wealth in the first place. Government can only expand jobs in bureaucracies by taking resources generated by its ‘host’, the national economy.
So if you want to feel better, some of my best friends are parasites 😉
What? A libertarian have a negative slant about taxes? Tell me it isn’t so!!! 🙂
You are absolutely correct. We are against taxation other than a very small and irreducible amount (as one nit picker pointed out) that is required to supply courts, police and defense of the borders. And a libertarian idea of the role of police and courts is one that is far, far less extensive than that extant today. We do not believe there should be any crimes other than those in which there is theft or destruction of private property; initiation of force; fraud or breach of contract. That sort of cuts down what the cops have to do and the case load of the courts which have to deal with it.
So the buying into the Laffer curve is a bad thing. It encourages one to settle for an ‘optimal’ tax rate. Our idea of optimum is, as I have said, ZERO. It’s just that in the real world we cannot quite get to the optimum. A Libertarian tax rate would be a small fraction of the Laffer rate.
Just to make a point, let us say that we abolished all federal taxes and fees of all sorts and replaced it with a flat import duty of 5%.
According to the CIA Fact Book (which would then have advertisements on it), the US imports $1,476,000,000,000 per year. At 5% that gives $73.8B for the federal government to play with. Since we’d only be running defense, a few courts and such at that level, this is effectively the defense budget in our minarchist state. That would still give us one of the largest defense budgets around.
Everything else the government does can either be sold off or is probably better off not done at all.
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2087rank.html
Dale is quite right about the Laffer curve – the best point on it is not where government maximises revenue (which is how it is presented), the best point for the economy is where tax rates are zero and government revenue is zero.
Of course that would lead us into debates into whether civil (voluntary) interaction can really deal with such problems as national defence – and most people (rightly or wrongly) say “no”.
Running the Federal government’s defence budget on quite small taxes is indeed quite possible.
I believe that even in 2000 defence spending was only about 3 or 4 per cent of G.D.P. – total Federal government spending is (these days) somewhere over 25% of the entire economy.
No need for a new Constitution – two hundred years of experience have shown which words in the existing Constitution the statists have learnt to twist out of their context.
“general welfare” (out of the “common defence and general welfare” – the PURPOSE of the powers granted to Congress, not a power in-its-self).
And “regulate interstate commerce” (those words have been twisted to mean things they were never supposed to mean).
So the solution (in theory) is simple – do not write a whole new Constitution (as libertarians sometimes want to) – just eliminate those words from the Constitution (by Amendment of Convention).
A new Constitution would just mean new words for the statists to twist.
So what that the Congress would still have the power to “build post roads” or have a post office – such things (although I do not support them) can be lived with.
Of course, in practice, the real problem is that the majority of Americans do not support the principles of limited government – so any project of reform is still born.
As P.J. O’Rourke (and many others before him) have pointed out – the enemy of strictly limited government is the voters themselves.
And (of course) politicians (such as Mr Gordon Brown in Britain) do not see themselves as giving money to “parasites”.
And people who get the money (whether it be farm subsidies, government medical money, government old age pensions and so on) do not see themselves as “parasites” either.
So as the Irish side of my family would have said “I would not start from here”.
It makes me laugh how certain socialist types get worked up about the Laffer Curve argument, which at base says there are two tax rates that will produce zero income: 100 and 0. So the trick is to find the optimum one in between, and that requires one to accept that incentives matter, that tax rates affect the relative price of labour vs leisure. I think that Ronald Reagan pretty much won this argument and none but the most blockheaded socialist tax-and-spender now contests that.
George Gilder is always worth reading on this.
As for Richard Dawkins, he appears to be quite a lefty, which is kind of odd given that evolution lends itself to conservativism. Maybe he is so revolted by the antics of Intelligent Design folks that he has taken against th Religious Right and hence the right more generally.
Shame. Dawkins on science issues is always a compelling read.
Re Dale, I completely agree with you. As it turns out though the vast governmental system in this country has so long been entrenched that it will continue to employ millions. No doubt there will always be jobs like mine because there will always be council tenants to “look after”. You mentioned parasites?
I think I mistook this post as a technical economic argument. I believe in the free market and to allow the individual to choose what they do with their money/time. Low tax is workable, but zero tax does not work and never will. I would be delighted to look at any models that can show me a way to achive zero tax and economic growth. Unless someone does this, this article is pointless.
I would then point you to Murray Rothbard and other writers of the Libertarian Anarchist persuasion. I do not agree with his historical revisionism, but as a writer friend noted, his views on that seemed much less unreasonable in 1970 before tons of documents from US and USSR archives were declassified.
His concepts of free market anarchy are still quite intriguing.
I am of course presuming that you believe the only reason a low tax is necessary is to support courts, police and defense of the border. If you believe taxes are needed for anything else, then we are in deep philosophical agreement on the role of the state in a free society.
Masum Ahmed says something about government being needed for “economic growth” – surely it is up to Mr Ahmed to present an argument to show why people can not do this “economic growth” for themselves, rather than for me (or anyone else) to show why people can do it.
The burden of proof must always be on the person who wishes to use aggressive force. That person must show (beyond all reasonable doubt) both that his objective (in this case “economic growth”) is one that is so important that it warrents the use of aggressive force and that the use of aggressive force is the only way this objective can be achieved.
On the matter of police and courts.
I find the idea that govenment is needed for such things very doubtful.
Indeed before Lord Mansfield reformed the courts in the late 18th century even the most important merchants avoided the government courts like the plague – due to their vast cost and endless delays (and often unjust judgements).
There have been many systems of courts (going into even the 19th century) where disputes between people (sometimes even disputes that had involved violent assault) were dealt with without going to government courts.
As for police – many counties did not have government police before the 1850’s. People in these counties were not eating each other.
A town near me (Peterborough) had hardly any government before the 20th century, this was because (like Kettering where I live) it had been under the control of the Church and Henry VIII had smashed up the Abbeys and other such.
Also (unlike Kettering which was and is part of Northamptonshire) Peterborough was not part of any particular country (although actual county councils are from the 1888 Act I seem to remember), it was the “Soke” of Peterborough.
If people wanted a fire service they had to set up one themselves (and so they did) ditto other vital “public goods”.
Of course such terrible “anarchy” (actually the place was rather quiet – other than for the railway line) could not be left alone in the 20th century but you go.
Where I have doubts about the Rothard line is defence.
A rural area or a town or a city (and even London had many voluntary institutions – libeled by Edwin Chadwick and others who used wrote the conclusions of their “research” before they had done any, and were careful never to mention the real propblems of London such as the fact that the river Thames was not privately owned) may not need much government (if any).
For if the people are so corrupt that they need a state the state will be controlled by corrupt people.
However, what of other states?
I rather doubt that the local militia could have held back the army of France (or anywhere else).
Even the Hez in Lebanon is both government financed (from Iran and so on) and violates the nonaggression principle locally as a matter of course – so it is not really an example of a Murry Rothbard style voluntary militia or a David Friendman style Protection Company.
I do not see such things standing up to (for example) the S.S.
One thing governments are very good at is killing.
“But to argue for government on the basis of the existance of other governments is not only a lesser evil argument (always dodgy) but opens the door to Hell”.
Of course it does.
He who uses the “Sword of State” is always going to kill the innocent – that is the nature of the beast. It is as if the sword is alive and forces one’s arm to mutilate and kill the most innocent people it can find. But the sword of state is the only defence against someone else who is using one.
If government is controlled by people who know that it (and they as long as they are part of it) is naturally evil (always seeking to destroy lives and drink the blood of the innocent) and should be controlled as much as possible (the use of government, in each case, having to be proved beyond all reasonable doubt) that is all that we can hope for – and, yes, that may not be enough.
Lord Acton was right – power does corrupt.
Of course a government that does not have the power to inflict horror is useless (for it can not defeat governments of other nations, or even would-be governments in its own nation) – not really a government at all.
When someone says “the government should do something” they are really saying “unleash the Hounds of Hell”.
They should be think carefully (very carefully) before they decide that this is the correct thing to do.
Sometimes it may (to combat other Hell Hounds) – but getting the leash back on afterwards can be difficult.