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Nintendo Kid posted:Anthem is the bargain basement version of the classic pre-1950 dystopia novel. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that her first novel, We the Living about Russia just after the collapse of the White forces is pretty good. The characters are actually complex and interesting, because it's before she got completely up her own rear end about Gorgeous Angular-Faced Superman and the pudgy, slouching, jealosy-eaten villains who want to burn it all down out of spite. One of the heroes is actually an honest-to-god true-blue (red?) Communist. Disclaimer: I am an engineer, I know gently caress-all about good literature, and I once fell on love with Atlas Shrugged so my taste is clearly suspect. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Jun 2, 2014 |
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Jun 2, 2014 17:40
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VitalSigns posted:Plus the horror of able-bodied people having to look at the handicapped and even tolerate being in close proximity to them It seems to be a worryingly common sentiment among the libertarians. Several years ago, a politician from my country known from advocating unfettered free market and criticism of democracy wrote on his blog that paraolympics shouldn't be shown on TV, because: Janusz Korwin-Mikke posted:If we want humanity to progress, on TV we should watch people who are healthy, beautiful, strong, honest and wise - not deviants, murderers, weaklings, losers, mediocre ones, idiots - or, unfortunately, handicapped. He is in European Parliament now. 
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Jun 2, 2014 17:47
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The "Seasteading" crap always irritates me. Mostly it's because it's very obvious that they haven't done even the most basic thought necessary for the whole thing. Look at an image like this one:  Ok you got a gear less multipurpose vessel delivering supplies. How's that going to work. Do you have container cranes? (No) Do you have a safe port / safe berth? (No, how exactly is that multipurpose vessel going to tie up) Who would issue warranties for those things you need to get? (Marine Insurers) What are they going to require for those things? (you're probably going to have to talk to a classification society) What types of things are you going to need to do that? (probably going to have to pick a flag state). Welp now the whole premise is hosed. Even better they know this already, they've already picked which Flags of Convenience they want to use, which means governments and annual flag state inspections. If you're flagged you're part of a country. They've also thought about port states, thus another government involved. If they go "we are our flag" well then they are the same as unflagged. Which is to say any state can just do whatever the gently caress they want to them, it's as if they were pirates. http://cimsec.org/sea-based-nations-and-sovereignty-what-makes-a-nation-state/ And what's the design life of comparable vessel? (say an oil rig) 25-ish years. Most vessels that age have corrosion issues (even if they have impressed current systems and good coatings), ships and other floating structures basically need to go to shipyards eventually to renew steel and to get repainted. Seawater is really hard on steel, well not just steel everything, it eats poo poo up. And how much money is all this going to take? An oil rig costs what? 600-650 million. A panamax (new) was in the neighborhood of 180 million, last time I checked. That's a large amount of capital. What about crewing and maintenance? (Those costs are really going to poo poo in their mouths too). So between the initial cost (which will come years to a decades before the thing is built) and maintenance and fuel (and bunkering operations costs) and crewing, and all the logistics needed for a city of people and shipyard visits how much money will this thing need to make just to stay afloat (rather literally) over it's probably 25 year lifespan just to get the initial capital back and to keep running? And even if one looks at their internal (very generous) estimates on these costs it's still bat poo poo. http://www.seasteading.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Floating-City-Project-Report-4_25_2014.pdf Their estimates for an oil rig type platform are in the 225 million upfront capital costs range and 8.35 million annual operating cost range. These are lovely estimates too, when one starts picking at the details you see things like only 8 deck crew and no engineers. I wonder how those generators, HVAC, waste treatment plant will do without engineers. And only two 1000 KW generators? gently caress most vessels I board have three 1000 KW generator, usually one of those is running at a time, two when deck machinery (like cranes) is working. That's with a crew of 10-25 and systems designed to support a crew of 10-25. They are assuming 500 Kw average power usage, this is a low, low, assumption for 360 people (frankly it's a poo poo assumption). Fuel costs will be much higher. When one starts looking at systems cost estimates, things look wonky too. Why do all these systems (in the Texas shipyard quote) each cost a round million dollars? Did no one bother to look at SNAME (Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers) publications? There are equations where one puts in basic information about the systems size, type, industrial inflation rate, etc, and it spits out a cost estimate, too me this looks like somebody just went, meh a million bucks is a nice estimate, lets go with that. It's indicative of that even the most basic system level design questions weren't asked. And their internal estimates are: 500-2500$ (or more and just upfront to buy in) a square foot with 56% of the people interested making less than 50,000 USD a year and 96% percent making less than 250,000 USD a year. And the Delta-sync modular 50m X 50m platforms secured together? What happens when weather hits. How that going to work when you see your first force 10? That type of weather looks like this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX3kFCgvKp4 But, but, but, we'll start in sheltered waters, good luck when whatever nations coast guard tells you it's time to get the gently caress out because a hurricane is coming. That video is an ~12000 NRT ship with a propulsion plant (it's a small bulker probably can go 10-15 knots). None of those seasteading platforms are going to have propulsion plants (because that costs money a lot of money). They're going to need tugs to move. Tugs aint cheap either. A rear end load of tugs all at once will be necessary "Integrated propulsion is probably too expensive, so we would need to have tugboats ready at a moments notice to mobilize the whole city". Read, we'll probably be hosed and unable to get out of the storm. There is a Hemingway quote: "He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride". Anyone who has been to sea, really been to sea, can recognize that the ocean can force humility on us. Vessels are essentially floating skyscrapers subjected to constant dynamic force of unknown highest potential magnitude. Casting all my doubts aside as to plausibility for a moment what I don't doubt is that the ocean would eventually humble a project like this. I've personally been in 50ft seas. I know people who claim to have been in 100ft (!) seas. poo poo can get like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24OlTL10ObU Seasteading would end up like that train in that Rand book. Except everybody who dies would there because of their libertarian ideals. "And they will not actually try to stop us until it’s too late.” - Peter Thiele. Best part, Maritime disasters almost always end up resulting in life saving regulation (and there is very long history of this). So at least there would be a good eulogy for selfish pride. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Jun 2, 2014 |
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Jun 2, 2014 17:48
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:Wouldn't literally the entire movie be just the speech, then? To be accurate to the book, it also needs to be presented on small TVs with people gathered around it, for the full 3 hours. Also if I remember right, the TV broadcast starts with a blank screen in the book and doesn't even show anything until half an hour in.
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Jun 2, 2014 17:49
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VitalSigns posted:I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that her first novel, We the Living about Russia just after the collapse of the White forces is pretty good. The characters are actually complex and interesting, because it's before she got completely up her own rear end about Gorgeous Angular-Faced Superman and the pudgy, slouching, jealosy-eaten villains who want to burn it all down out of spite. One of the heroes is actually an honest-to-god true-blue (red?) Communist. To this day We the Living is the only Rand I've read, and I'll probably keep it that way. The characters seem like they could be real people, and it lacks the distinctive "supermen" that seem to be the theme of later books. Granted, from a D&D standpoint it still probably sucks as the main characters are offspring of either aristocrats or moderately wealthy entrepreneurs. However, even the passionate Communist revolutionaries are portrayed in somewhat sympathetic, although largely negative, light.
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Jun 2, 2014 17:53
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BrandorKP posted:And even if one looks at their internal (very generous) estimates on these costs it's still bat poo poo. Holy poo poo, this document is a goldmine. quote:Q: Can you foresee what kind of "deal breakers" would prevent you from purchasing/leasing units on a seastead? It's good they are getting their priorities straight.
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Jun 2, 2014 18:42
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What? You think a True Libertarian has time to deal with petty trivialities such as realistic expectations and rational decision-making? No wonder you don't want to join our Eden, your little brain cannot even comprehend the way we do things around here, pleb. 
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Jun 2, 2014 18:46
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Why do I feel like I gave/continue to give more thought to my pet dream designing a habitable space station and surrounding infrastructure than these people have to something they are infinitely more likely to actually attempt?
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Jun 2, 2014 18:48
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AVeryLargeRadish posted:Yeah, no, I can't do it. I got a used copy of the fountainhead once and tried to read it, eventually I chucked it across the room because it made me so angry. Then I tore it up and burned it. It was pretty cathartic. One day, my mom discovered how to download books for her iPad. So she went around, browsed a little, noticed the fountainhead and told me: Hey, that's the first book I ever read, I really liked it. Well, that was a long time ago so whatever, I told myself. Then, a few day later she was all "yup, it is as good as I remembered it". Mom, why? 
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Jun 2, 2014 18:49
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ProfessorCurly posted:Why do I feel like I gave/continue to give more thought to my pet dream designing a habitable space station and surrounding infrastructure than these people have to something they are infinitely more likely to actually attempt? Probably because to you, the space station is just a cool thing on its own and not a vehicle to allow you to live out your bizarre fantasies about attaining true freedom by being able to buy other people as slaves in exchange for paying their spouse's medical bills (and of course in their fantasy they are always the Captain of Industry who invested well and is smart and is the one buying a slave, never the one who struck out, invested poorly and now is being sold into slavery to prolong their spouse's life by a few years).
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Jun 2, 2014 19:03
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As this is the Libertarianism thread, I figure that this is the best place to ask for some resources to cite/provide a colleague who is being drawn in by an An-Cap huckster's vague promises. This came to my attention today, as we were discussing loaning money freely to loved ones. He has a desire to rebuild a community in a bad part of Baltimore around helping one another out. He wants to give back to the city where he and his family live. All good things and nice ideas. And then he let it slip; "And then we wouldn't even need the government. We could even start investing in a more stable currency, like Gold!" I tried my best in the short time I had to talk to warn him of the path he's heading down, and he seems receptive of the warnings against libertarianism I've given him, but I want to provide more concrete material that he could take a look at before he's drawn in further. Any suggestions on articles or talking points that I could bring up? Thanks.
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Jun 2, 2014 21:42
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From the way you're describing it, he sounds like more of an anarcho-syndicalist than an ancap.
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Jun 2, 2014 22:09
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From what you've said, his only real problem is an obsession with gold. Just point out the role the gold standard played in lengthening the Great Depression (basically, the order countries left the gold standard is the same order they came out of depression), and how volatile gold's market price actually is. Ask what is inherently wrong with paper money other than the fact that it just doesn't 'seem' right. Obviously, if he's a syndicalist he might be against money full stop. But better paper money than metal money.
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Jun 2, 2014 22:18
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Unlearning posted:From what you've said, his only real problem is an obsession with gold. Just point out the role the gold standard played in lengthening the Great Depression (basically, the order countries left the gold standard is the same order they came out of depression), and how volatile gold's market price actually is. Ask what is inherently wrong with paper money other than the fact that it just doesn't 'seem' right. Luckily this is exactly where I went with it, thanks. It is good to hear that it sounds like syndicalism, as he's a really standup guy who isn't terribly keen on the "ubermench" concept.
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Jun 2, 2014 23:01
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Talmonis posted:Luckily this is exactly where I went with it, thanks. It is good to hear that it sounds like syndicalism, as he's a really standup guy who isn't terribly keen on the "ubermench" concept. If your city is lucky enough to have an anarchist bookstore, send him there 
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Jun 3, 2014 00:33
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I think libertarians deserve credit for being the world's best anti-war advocates, it's probably the most honorable thing they do. Virtually every other school of thought makes excuses when it comes to war and its atrocities, but libertarians are the only ones who are consistent about it.
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Jun 3, 2014 08:43
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DigitalDud posted:I think libertarians deserve credit for being the world's best anti-war advocates, it's probably the most honorable thing they do. Virtually every other school of thought makes excuses when it comes to war and its atrocities, but libertarians are the only ones who are consistent about it. Eh, not all of them: my libertarian dad's a huge war apologist. He believes that a strong military that enforces our country's will overseas helps secure our rights AND our commercial interests (the latter is important because more commerce means more liberty for everyone). He supported in the war in Iraq from the start - and I think he still does - because he believed that imposing a
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Jun 3, 2014 09:14
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DigitalDud posted:I think libertarians deserve credit for being the world's best anti-war advocates, it's probably the most honorable thing they do. Virtually every other school of thought makes excuses when it comes to war and its atrocities, but libertarians are the only ones who are consistent about it. Yes but this comes with a complete failure to contextualise violence and understand why wars actually happen. Often it goes as far as 'war is done by government, like all bad things, so...cut government spending!' There's a real refusal to try and link capitalism to violence, or to accept that 'rejecting' violence in a system built on violence is, well, impossible. I do agree with you partially, though. Libertarians are also good on drugs, immigration and sometimes on police violence/the prison system.
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Jun 3, 2014 09:15
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The CATO Institute runs policemisconduct.net.
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Jun 3, 2014 09:56
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Pththya-lyi posted:Eh, not all of them: my libertarian dad's a huge war apologist. He believes that a strong military that enforces our country's will overseas helps secure our rights AND our commercial interests (the latter is important because more commerce means more liberty for everyone). He supported in the war in Iraq from the start - and I think he still does - because he believed that imposing a Your libertarian dad sounds very much like a neocon...
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Jun 3, 2014 13:31
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Bel Shazar posted:Your libertarian dad sounds very much like a neocon... I never made much of a study of political science, so I didn't actually know the distinction between neocons and libertarians. Going by Wikipedia's description of neoconservatism, I can see that my dad's beliefs hew very closely to it. He identifies as a libertarian (or at least more of a libertarian than anything else), though. Thanks for letting me know!
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Jun 3, 2014 13:42
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Nessus posted:More like Atlas Sucked Why is this the case? Who is requiring the whole speech since Rand is dead? I would assume whoever has the rights to the book now but I'd think any publisher would be smart enough to know a three hour speech isn't going to work.
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Jun 3, 2014 13:44
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^^^Randians worship copyright and intellectual property. I wouldn't be surprised if the copyright holder (Lenord Peikoff?) Required that something like the speech be kept largely intactPththya-lyi posted:I never made much of a study of political science, so I didn't actually know the distinction between neocons and libertarians. Going by Wikipedia's description of neoconservatism, I can see that my dad's beliefs hew very closely to it. He identifies as a libertarian (or at least more of a libertarian than anything else), though. Thanks for letting me know! I think one of the biggest PR problems for libertarianism right now (along with the echos of paleolibertarianism in the likes of Hoppe) is that a good deal of vocal self-identifying libertarians are actually neo-cons or general Republicans who have their first introductions to anti-state or anti-central banking ideologies. You end up with these weird concoctions where people try and rationalize the Fox News patriotism and love for the status quo while at the same time advocating against institutions that prop all that up. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 13:58
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Nessus posted:I think the third film has a major problem that they are required to include, without abridgement, that humdinger of a speech from the end of the book. Reminder that in Atlas Shrugged the only way Galt gets people to listen to his speech is to give them no other option.
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Jun 3, 2014 14:03
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Eric Dondero and the Ayn Rand Institute are very pro-war.
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Jun 3, 2014 14:04
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Wile we're distinguishing between libertarians and neo-cons, it's worth pointing out that Rand & Objectivism are not libertarian, either:Ayn Rand posted:All kinds of people today call themselves “libertarians,” especially something calling itself the New Right, which consists of hippies, except that they’re anarchists instead of collectivists. But of course, anarchists are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that requires absolute objective law, yet they want to combine capitalism and anarchism. That is worse than anything the New Left has proposed. It’s a mockery of philosophy and ideology. They sling slogans and try to ride on two bandwagons. They want to be hippies, but don’t want to preach collectivism, because those jobs are already taken. But anarchism is a logical outgrowth of the anti-intellectual side of collectivism. I could deal with a Marxist with a greater chance of reaching some kind of understanding, and with much greater respect. The anarchist is the scum of the intellectual world of the left, which has given them up. So the right picks up another leftist discard. That’s the Libertarian movement... In other words, most libertarians actually do care about freedom, even if they can seem dogmatic/misguided. Rand was just an authoritarian shitbag.
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Jun 3, 2014 18:34
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Re: Anti-war One thing I see libertarians echo constantly is that going back to a commodity based currency (bitcoin  ) will somehow prevent governments from engaging in wars because they can't print money to afford it or something something. Does this have any kind of basis in reality? Because it seems rather absurd and of course they never go into details on what they mean.
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Jun 3, 2014 21:10
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Mavric posted:Re: Anti-war Its basis is the same as all goldbug reasoning: wishful thinking, feverish delusion, and willful misunderstanding of history. The US was firmly on the gold standard throughout the Civil War, which stopped neither US nor rebel governments from prosecuting their war efforts (the former obviously with much greater ease than the latter).
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Jun 3, 2014 21:15
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It's also just really trendy for mainstream conservatives to run away from the word, especially after Dubya squatted down and took a huge poo poo all over everything, by calling themselves Libertarians. Of course, Libertarianism and conservatism are close enough ideologies to begin with, which only muddies the water further.
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Jun 3, 2014 21:16
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Which is why no wars happened ever before the Nixon Shock of 1971 when the US finally stopped pegging the dollar to gold in international exchange.
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Jun 3, 2014 21:17
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There's definitely a strain of strong opposition to war and neocon ideology in the movement. Antiwar.com, the Randolph Bourne Institute, Justin Raimondo and his paleo-conservative strain of Buchananite isolationism etc. They're not even completely wrong in their assessment of why war is propagated, just like Ron Paul wasn't wrong. I'd argue that being anti-war doesn't really have to follow from libertarian ideology--it's just as easy, as shown above, to come up with justifications for war--but neither is it contradictory.
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Jun 3, 2014 22:25
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Mavric posted:Re: Anti-war Well, David Graeber argues in Debt: The First 5000 Years that the concept of money itself was invented by early states for the purpose of developing/provisioning standing armies and that the fluidity of precious metals made this much easier. He makes a decent case that gold as currency is actually more of a product and facilitator of warfare than something that would limit it.
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Jun 3, 2014 23:07
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800peepee51doodoo posted:Well, David Graeber argues in Debt: The First 5000 Years that the concept of money itself was invented by early states for the purpose of developing/provisioning standing armies and that the fluidity of precious metals made this much easier. He makes a decent case that gold as currency is actually more of a product and facilitator of warfare than something that would limit it. It hardly matters if it's government fiat money or rich-man's golden sponsorship, there were wars in both systems. It's still the same dictatorship of wealth.
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Jun 4, 2014 01:49
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anonumos posted:It hardly matters if it's government fiat money or rich-man's golden sponsorship, there were wars in both systems. It's still the same dictatorship of wealth. This seems to fit with my basic understanding of history. It's either use of force in order to draft an army via conscription, political will to convince people that they're fighting in their own interest, or using currency to pay people in order to go to battle as kind of a last resort. Most wars have kind of been a mixture of all three at different points, but currency hasn't usually been a huge stumbling block for decisions to go to war. How much spending power currency or other benefits have in terms of paying for war has fluctuated over time. Soldiers being paid for their service was not an automatic thing, and only started to be done begrudgingly after modern armies had lots of headaches with deserters. The army would only provide soldiers necessities such as tainted rations while at war, and the money raised by the government to fight the war mostly went into the hands of the already-rich war profiteers. This was a pretty bad system. During the Spanish-American war more men died from food poisoning on the front lines than were actually killed by the enemy. In the modern day where we pay soldiers somewhat commensurate with their service and we don't have conscription that dollar doesn't go as far as when soldiers were basically slaves. Money wasn't usually as big of a concern as it is today. ErIog fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Jun 4, 2014 |
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Jun 4, 2014 02:06
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DrProsek posted:I had to read Anthem in high school once. It's one of her shorter books, but it packed a lot of crazy into a small space and I didn't even make it 5 pages in before it just became a surrealist comedy. I've seen car metaphors criticizing socialism/centralized planning/collectivism that made more sense and were more compelling than her book. The best thing about Anthem is that it is self-undermining. The hero character's discoveries are all based on the discoveries of past minds: without the millennia of scientific discoveries that led to the electrical wiring or whatever he reverse-engineers, he would have been an idiot shmuck just like the rest of them, yet he treats them as they were his own discoveries, the product of his own intelligence. Not to mention the fact that he lives with the support of State-supplied food, shelter, and protection the entire time. It's "You Didn't Build That" writ large.
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Jun 4, 2014 20:46
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BrandorKP posted:The "Seasteading" crap always irritates me. It's worth noting that exactly three seasteads have actually been built over the years and they were all hilarious disasters. One was literally a big pile of sand dumped on top of a coral reef in the 70s, and it has since eroded away to nothing. One was a casino/resort/brothel built on a disused oil platform in the Mediterranean, and it was seized by the Italian government after about two weeks. My absolute favorite will always be 'Operation Atlantis', though. Operation Atlantis was one of the most successful seasteading projects, relatively speaking, in that they actually planned something fairly complex (building a large ferro-concrete boat on which to start their new Objectivist paradise) and succeeded. They built their concrete boat and sailed it from New York to the Carribean, anchoring it in international waters...and then it promptly sank before anyone could move in, and the project fell apart after that.
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Jun 8, 2014 18:54
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Mister Bates posted:One was literally a big pile of sand dumped on top of a coral reef in the 70s, and it has since eroded away to nothing. Didn't a tiny country nearby invade it and take it over without any resistance?
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Jun 8, 2014 19:01
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Mister Bates posted:It's worth noting that exactly three seasteads have actually been built over the years and they were all hilarious disasters. One was literally a big pile of sand dumped on top of a coral reef in the 70s, and it has since eroded away to nothing. One was a casino/resort/brothel built on a disused oil platform in the Mediterranean, and it was seized by the Italian government after about two weeks. What are the technical details on how it sank? If they managed to set sail in the first place it seems like it has to be more complex than, 'lol, concrete boat.'
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Jun 8, 2014 19:03
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Mister Bates posted:It's worth noting that exactly three seasteads have actually been built over the years and they were all hilarious disasters.  No love for the glorious Principality of Sealand? I realize it was squatted rather than constructed and isn't a libertopia so much as an imaginary monarchy, but hey, it's a cool story.
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Jun 8, 2014 19:04
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Buried alive posted:What are the technical details on how it sank? If they managed to set sail in the first place it seems like it has to be more complex than, 'lol, concrete boat.' There's a reason that most of the concrete ships I've heard of have been for river traffic.
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Jun 8, 2014 19:25
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