Dear god, I hope it is.

I have a modern version of the original, called “Anti-Monopoly” based on those original rules, but have never played it! We had intended to bring it to conference and play it on the ALTER stand…:-)

But I don’t think it has ever been computerised. I suppose you could add something into Sim City, or even into SecondLife that could do the same (though the concept of teleporting in SecondLife rather destroys the notion of “marginal production”).

Tony Vickers worked on a project to produce “Land Vale Maps” which convert an area into peaks and troughs and which I think was supposed to be adapted to include some ability to model the future likely effects of developing some new infrastructure or something like that i an area.

I’ve not seen this website previously, but searching for “Land Value Maps” I found this one.

Is that the most geekish thing I’ve ever said?

I can’t remember if this example was in the book, but others have posited the scenario where a dictator redistributes all property to himself, then abolishes the redistributive facilities of the state.

That wold be interesting. It is exactly the scenario posited by the Tannehills in their work as a reason for a new distribution being necessary. I think their book was 1962 so possibly a decade or so before ASU, so Nozick may well have been familiar with it even if he doesn’t spell it out.

Jock, it’s possible that I’ve mischaracterised the US Libertarian Party and the likes of Robert Nozick. I can’t remember them ever arguing that property needs to be redistributed before we can arrive at a nightwatchman state.

I’m at work so don’t have my copy of Anarchy, State and Utopia to hand, but I’m fairly sure that Nozick did argue that redistribution of property would be a pre-condition to a fair nightwatchman state. I can’t remember if this example was in the book, but others have posited the scenario where a dictator redistributes all property to himself, then abolishes the redistributive facilities of the state. This would be patently unfair and differs from the idea of declaring a nightwatchman state from our present situation only in the degree of unfairness. Personally I’d consider the risks inherent in such a ‘great redistribution’ to far outweigh the benefits. Gradual redistribution based on land value tax and basic income seems like a fairer and much less risky approach.

Charlotte Gore wrote:

The minimum wage is completely pointless. The only reason it didn’t have the devastating impact on employment that the Tories predicted was because we already had an effective minimum wage: The welfare state.

This isn’t entirely true. Working at minimum wage is still, just about, worth it for a 25-60 year old with no children or other dependents. I used to do it and would do so again if I had to. I probably would have worked for very slightly under the minimum wage if that had been my only choice, even at the current level of benefits, if only to avoid the hassle of being entangled in the benefit system (however, I did receive housing benefit, so it would be false to argue that I supported myself fully on minimum wage alone). As you say, the minimum wage doesn’t really make much difference as it’s set so low that very few employers would be able to attract workers at sub-min-wage levels given the alternative of benefits.

The minimum wage does, however, make things a bit more straightforward for the benefits system. If a significant number of people were earning less in work than they would on JSA, there’d be a whole new bureaucratic nightmare in trying to top their salaries up every week. I suspect that the minimum wage exists largely to ensure that people on low wages don’t ever end up in that situation, rather than as a measure to alleviate poverty or exploitation. It ensures that you fit either into the ‘working and thus able to support yourself’ or ‘not working at all’ boxes.

Personally I’d be happy to get rid of the minimum wage if we had a basic income – a guaranteed minimum income for all, provided via redistributive taxation – which ensured that even if people were working for a pittance, they’d still be able to feed, clothe and house themselves, have access to healthcare, education and the opportunities afforded by society generally. Unlike benefits, it wouldn’t reduce in amount if your salary or hours increase. But getting rid of the minimum wage in the present situation would be very hard to justify on any grounds other than “but it’s illogical!”, an argument that voters are largely immune to.

You are confusing “mutualism” (small “m”) and “Mutualism” (big “M”) and sure, it is yet another issue of naming conventions where something clashes, at least this time with an idea slightly outside the same domain (although related to it). Mutualism (big “M”) *is* anarchism. From the preface to “Studies in Mutualist Political Economy”, Kevin A Carson, available in full at his website:

But this ties into the mainstream “co-operative and mutualist”, if you will, movement, and was the central argument I made in the recent thread on the Co-operative party – that mutualism, even with a small “m” is inherently anti-state. Nothing that subscribes to the agreed statement of Co-operative Principles can be happy with any form of coercive state in reality – it is anathema to the very first of those Principles.

The idea that risky institutions can be chopped up to improve matters makes me think of the Sorcerer’s apprentice who had one dancing broom. He cut it in half and then had two dancing brooms.

Presumably this plan also involves some changes to benefits too? Would you explain them? I mean rational economic man won’t work for sub minimum wage levels if he could just take benefits that pay more.

My problem with calling myself a mutualist is that it only represents part of what I believe in. What about social policies like ending drug prohibition? Or supporting open borders? Surely a mutualist (at least one who stops short of anarchism) could be socially conservative as well as liberal? Radical liberal is the best term, I think.

The problem was the risky speculation which should end.

Governments would stop guaranteeing high risk institutions

In which case they should stop guaranteeing the commodity in which they trade.

Now that we have lived through the history, I would like us to learn from it.

Citing people from the past does not address this. And if gravity stopped working suddenly, we would very quickly have to rewrite Newton. Newtonian physics continues to apply and we can still do physics experiments in the classroom.

Why can we not apply the same principles to economics? Do experiments and see what works. Instead of this, we seem to have people who seize hold of the current problems and attribute them to not enough competition (or whatever their favoured tool is) which conclusion seems to require a large amount of speculation.

Gordon Brown deliberately went for a light touch regulation approach and, according to my understanding, this led to banks and building societies getting involved in risky items like mortgage-backed securities or relying on the continued openness of the wholesale money market. RBS person Fred Goodwin admitted that he was just doing what everyone else was doing.

I cannot see how a pure market solution can prevent the problems. I suggest that all the elements which exist in a pure market solution also did not prevent problems with Northern Rock, RBS, Dumfermline. Yet there still seems to be a strong apetite for doing things which did not work in the past.

Santayana: Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it

If anarcholibertarians really believe that their solutions are good, let them put forward a precise theory and cite an article in a peer-reviewed journal which shows that the evidence does accord with it. Otherwise we are just left with an “instinct” that the market can curb human nature even though the market did not prevent Lehman.

Like Avon in Blake’s 7, I distrust instinct.

Alan Greenspan believed for years and years that self-interest would be sufficient to get companies to look after themselves. He was wrong.

I want to move to a more evidence-based approach where we take hypotheses (such as, can self-interest cause companies to act in a particular way) and see if they actually hold water. This is actually what the Lib Dem are leaning towards in other areas. Chris Huhne was on a television crime conference event and there they seemed to be using people’s actual experience in the relevant areas.

I do not want to have the government bail out more banks just because it continues to think that risk can be managed. My preferred solution (at present) would be to get the taxpayer out of the risk business. Governments would stop guaranteeing high risk institutions. Of course, confidence in the certain markets might collapse and investment banks could die, but I think this is a better way forward than to guarantee banks which are speculating.

In 1906 400 MPs – that’s every single Liberal Party MP plus a few in that parliament – called for LVT. 100 years later we remain endlessly prevaricating even about making it a central plank of party policy.

To be fair, that’s a guest from Centre for Cities and they seem to be a bit dozey.

Oh, okay. Nonetheless my comments, on there especially, but on here too on the subject still stand in spades. It would be quite difficult for them to be a bit behind our progress on LVT…

If we had a fairer distribution of property then a rigid defence of property rights might make sense, but at present I think redistribution is necessary.

As most people know I am a fan of the Georgist Single Tax. But I have read and listened to a lot of Austrian political-economists in the last year and do find the argument for a strong defense of “first appropriation” property quite compelling. The area of property is one which often confuses people about libertarianism – and even those “vulgar libertarians” who stereotypically think that property rights are all about them being allowed to stand on their drive way with their twelve-bore deterring all invaders with maximum force do not appreciate this.

In the book/audiobook by the Tannehills I referred to earlier (mainstream “anarcho-capitalist”) they would say that all existing titles would have to be annulled in an “anarchist” revolution and everyone have to stake claims again. That this would be the only just way of shaking out all the previous bad history of conquest, theft and patronage that has given rise to a lot of inequity in land distribution. Similarly, any sensible libertarian or anarchist wishing to defend private property without causing such confusion would always qualify it with “justly acquired…private property” and again, would expect to have to find a way of adjudicating on what was “justly acquired”. There are then lots of questions such as abandonment, and whether land merely being held for the purposes of renting it out, qua land, is ever “justly held”. So, whilst an apparently uncompromising stance on “property rights” seems like a bit of a “red rag” I have come to understand that there is a lot more to it than simplistic caricatures of “reight wing libertarianism” would have people believe.