More recently, a similar argument was made twice in this thread... Slavery is ok when... regarding Germany after WWI...
Imperializt Russia wrote:The German people were, as a whole, hugely supportive of Hitler and his actions until late in the war. So I don't think "allocative efficiency" applies, because until 1943, the German forces were steamrolling Europe into the dirt and providing some great strategic victories. The actions were, at that time, in line with the wishes of the German people.
Galloism wrote:In any case, your plan would do not good even in 1930s Germany, as the people of Germany were largely supportive of the war and its efforts until late 1943. They would no doubt have, by and large, allocated their funds to Germany's war machine.
What is the demand for defense/offense? We don't know. We've never known. If you think that this isn't true then you probably think that demand is the same thing as people shouting/voting/wishing. But it really isn't. From the Wikipedia entry on demand...
Demand is a buyer's willingness and ability to pay a price for a specific quantity of a good or service.
People have never had the option not to spend their own tax dollars on defense. We've never been free to boycott a war. Right now congress/parliament decides how much money is spent on defense... and before that kings/emperors made the decision. Therefore, people's willingness to pay (WTP) for defense has never been known. Which means that the demand for defense has never been known.
Personally, I'm under the impression that, in most cases, the demand for defense has usually been less than the supply of defense. According to my inexpert calculations... after 9/11... in order for more money to have been spent on the war on terror... taxpayers would have had to spend, on average, more than half of their taxes on defense...
Does it sound plausible to you that people would have allocated more than half of their taxes to defense? It doesn't to me. We learned from 9/11 that our defense was defective. What do you do when you buy a defective product? Most people ask for a refund. And they make a mental note to avoid buying from that same vendor in the future. Generally people don't give more money to the same vendor. Can you imagine what would happen if vendors were rewarded for supplying defective products? The market would be flooded with defective products.
With the current system, taxpayers can't punish departments that supply defective public goods. The absence of consumer choice in the public sector guarantees that many/most public goods are defective and expensive. This would quickly change with the addition of consumer choice.
So what do you think? Do you agree with Lucas Dailey, Imperializt Russia and Galloism? Has the demand for defense been greater than or equal to the supply? Or do you agree with me? Actually... it seems that Galloism might disagree with himself because in the same thread on slavery he also argued that consumer choice in the public sector would result in defense being undersupplied.
If we did add consumer choice to the public sector... would I be happy with the demand for defense? If I wasn't, then it would be because of asymmetrical information. In terms of defense... there would be a disparity between my information and the crowd's information. The more unhappy I was with the demand for defense... the more incentive I would have to try and eliminate this information disparity. It should be readily apparent that consumer choice facilitates the flow/exchange of information. This is why the absence of consumer choice is the cause of rational ignorance.
