Talk:Malibu surfer problem

I removed the last paragraph, which is indeed biased, and categorised the article as a poli-stub. I also rephrased some colloquialisms. --Thorsen 07:19, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

This article is flawed. It states that guaranteed income systems give money to unemployed members of society whereas they actually give money to all members of society, employed and unemployed, rich and poor alike. It also makes little reference to the area of society where the surfer problem is most evident -- those who inherit a source of income (as opposed to those who earn one) despite the fact that most of what it says applies as much to inheritors as to the unemployed on which it concentrates. The combination makes the article distinctly unbalanced. -- Derek Ross | Talk 22:05, 2004 Oct 30 (UTC)


 * I agree with your concerns. I've edited the article slightly, in the hope of achieving balance. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 15:06, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Objection to the sentence: "Often, the idle rich will not be criticized even though each of them consumes much more of society's produce than any particular poor person." The sentence is biased and unfounded.

"Even people who do not work are still contributing to the economy by spending money"

This is certainly not true. That money was stolen (err, taxed) from people who earned the money and who would have spent it anyway (or invested, or lent it). The putative benefits of using the money still exist, and likely would have been _greater_ since people who earn their money are more responsible with it than people who stole (I mean "taxed") it.
 * Which kind of true do you mean? If you think of economy as the study of "the production, distribution, trade and consumption of goods and services", these people surely are contributing to economy since they are consuming. If you believe either that economy reduces to the volume of production, or that it is immoral to live without adding to some measurable "global benefit", then your views are highly POV-centric. Diego Moya 17:59, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Look at the Broken_window_fallacy; just because something seems to provide an economic benefit, doesn't mean that it actually does. --71.112.120.10 03:11, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I thought "economic benefit" was defined in term of human perceptions and preferences - particularly in Austrian school. So if something is a perceived benefit, isn't it a real benefit *by definition*? Diego Moya 11:05, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
 * It might not increase GDP overall but it would bring this economic benefit to regions or communities that are less well off, eg. rural areas Nick.annejohn 02:03, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * What you say?!!1! Diego 19:23, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I think that the whole bit in between "In general the political right..." and the related section should be removed. It seems like this is there to turn an otherwise informative article into a political battleground, and adds bias to the article. This is only increased since one point of view is given a majority of the space. 69.174.69.0 01:13, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

NPOV
An anonymous editer removed a large piece of text, citing NPOV, although I agree that the text is somewhat POV, removing entire paragraphs is not constructive. I propose the editor tries to make the text less pov instead of blanking it. C mon 08:17, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

CrimethInc. as a see also link
I've commented out CrimethInc. as a "related" article, because it seems to be pejorative to accuse a group of advocating this lifestyle; as CrimethInc. have denied advocating lifestylism, it does not seem in good faith to say they advocate living as Malibu surfers without a reference. Crimethinc. publications do at times discuss this problem, so I would welcome re-adding the link with a more NPOV description and a specific source. скоморохъ 18:53, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

What a Crock!
I've been to Malibu several times, and I can assure you that this kind of person does NOT represent the town! This is just as stereotypical as labeling a Mexican as an "illegal alien" or a black person as a "gangbanger." I think this so-called "article" should be deleted! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 15.251.169.69 (talk) 16:19, 20 August 2008 (UTC)


 * See the first paragraph "In political theory, the Malibu surfer problem is the prospect of an individual who can work but chooses not to do so, and instead leads a life of self-indulgence funded through some other available means of support. The phrase refers to an imagined resident of Malibu, California who chooses to surf rather than work." --Kovar (talk) 21:43, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Bias
Unfortunately the article is still biased in that it presents the arguments from the political left but not the political right. In addition, "The Political Right tends to . . . the Political Left may counter . . ." sets the article up as a vague statement of what the political right does and what one can say in response. I considered changing "may" to "tends" so the statements matched but that switched the balance from the political left to the political right. There are numerous other examples of bias, some subtle and some not. There's a somewhat more balanced view There is on BambooWeb Dictionary; I'm uncertain as to the relationship between BambooWeb and Wikipedia.

Both sides of the argument are valid and need to be addressed. Please watch the article since I hope to have time to make some changes and would like people to discuss them. In the interim, I've never had to flag an article so don't know how to state on the article itself that it's biased and needs more work. --Kovar (talk) 21:43, 25 January 2009 (UTC)