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I have a bit of a question. Why is it that Libertarians so often seem to overlap with obnoxious internet atheists?
Tiberius Thyben fucked around with this message at 13:09 on Aug 14, 2014 |
# ? Aug 14, 2014 08:32 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 11:42 |
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I dunno, maybe vocal libertarians are obnoxious people in general.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 09:05 |
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Cercadelmar posted:If JR doesn't come back can I be the new JRod? I feel like I'm ready to move on to the big leagues Jrodes are born, not made
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 09:25 |
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Caros posted:Hey Xylo, any chance of a funny mod challenge for Jrod? Are mod challenges still a thing that happens? I've never watched one go down in real time, a challenge for jrod sounds like it could be glorious.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 12:16 |
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I used to be libertarian in my youth, but then I spent 5 minutes on the lowest rung of a corrupt corporate ladder and was cured of it right quick.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 12:47 |
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Tiberius Thyben posted:I have a bit of a question. Why is it that Libertarians so often seem to overlap with obnoxious internet atheists? Rich libertarians fund publications popular in that community. Also Aristotle.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 14:14 |
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Krampus Grewcock posted:I used to be libertarian in my youth, but then I spent 5 minutes on the lowest rung of a corrupt corporate ladder and was cured of it right quick. I used to call myself "Socially Liberal but Fiscally conservative" but this is what happened to me. The place I work now pays well but it's really hosed up how much poo poo they get away with here.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 14:16 |
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BrandorKP posted:Rich libertarians fund publications popular in that community. Also Aristotle. I really should know better by now, but I suppose I'm a bit of a masochist. What could Aristotle possibly have to do with it?
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 14:19 |
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For anyone else keeping score, the rest of our dear OP's posts in the Mike Brown thread:jrodefeld posted:I think that is a pretty unfair blanket statement to make. "White people dislike black people". I'm not denying that real, systemic racism exists but I don't believe that most average white people dislike black people and they certainly wouldn't go out of their way to hurt them the way these out of control skinhead State-employed thugs do. Race is certainly a part of the motivation for why these majority white police terrorize certain communities but I think the larger reason is the lack of power that these people have. They are easy victims. The Drug War has a lot to do with creating this mentality. jrodefeld posted:I understand the anger. Anyone would feel the same in a situation where innocents are being prayed upon by predatory thugs dressed in military armor. However I think it will prove to be counterproductive for the cause of reform if the looting gets out of hand. The protesters need to remain non violent as much as possible. If the police are literally assaulting you, you have every right to fight back. Don't tolerate that. But stand your ground, articulate your concerns in an intelligent way and remain peaceful. It is important for the people watching from afar to know who the real aggressors are. jrodefeld posted:There is a big difference between Corporate Fascism and a free market. But seriously, take a good look at what socialized police services has produced! An emerging police state, a war on drugs, entire communities that fear being murdered by an occupying force, and escalating incidents of abuse and racism. And no real accountability or productive change for the better. jrodefeld posted:You are absolutely right. The State and private sector are more and more indistinguishable due to State privilege and corporate special interest lobbying. But small businesses still exist in this country. Entrepreneurs still make a go of it despite the legal obstacles placed in their path. jrodefeld posted:Wait, so I'm not supposed to start up a thread just for myself AND I'm not supposed to contribute to existing threads? I had some things to say about this incident in particular. I'm not taking over the thread, I just posted a couple of times. Believe me, I'll go back to the libertarian thread and continue that discussion.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 14:29 |
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I sincerely believe that J-Rod isn't a racist in the traditional sense, nor does he believe Libertarianism is a racist ideology and its proponents virulent racists. It's actually sort of tragic, when you think about it, because his observations are mostly correct but his solutions are just so wildly detached from logic or precedent there's little recourse but to go
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 14:38 |
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It's the "Science" business. Science as identical with philosophy and identical with reasoning, and not the science as just the scientific method. Science in the way the Austrians call praxeology a "science". Where does definition/understanding of "science" come from? Many of them will tell you straight up: Aristotle. See D. Brat, Ayn Rand, bunches of the Austrians, etc. Think that ridiculous cave man -> fire -> stone tools -> writing -> Aristotle - Rand image. That same way of thinking is also in the skeptic community. Have you ever looked at the ads for some thing like ffrf in Scientific American, giant REASON in big bold letters. More Reason identical with philosophy and with science. It's all very enlightenment and a lot of it is very "natural philosophy" or "natural law", again that is very much originating in the thought of Aristotle. The ones who think the scientific method can give us Truth, and not just it's a method for testing hypothesis. People that think we can use testing to determine and really know the highest level abstractions that are fundamental to the universe. These days I'm thinking this is because of the libertarians putting money into science publications for decades now. The rich libertarians do this because they think the natural laws of science lead to the natural laws of economics (freedom, praxeology, etc). That's not conjecture either, they say they explicitly and give it as a reason for funding science programs (like NOVA). I think this is also why there is the overlap with the ultra conservative Catholics who have a boner for Aquinas, because Aquinas is looking back to Aristotle. The commonality that comes from Aristotle is having a highest level abstractions that is fundamental to the universe that drives all things towards itself. Initially my impulse when I figured this out was "well gently caress Aristotle then!" So I went back and started reading Nicomachean Ethics, commentary of Aristotle, etc. What I found was that Aristotle put love there. "In Aristotle another element is added to the Platonic tradition: the Divine is a form without matter, perfect in itself and - what is the profoundest idea in Aristotle - this highest form, called God, is moving the world, not causally, not by pushing it from outside, but by driving everything finite towards Him in terms of love. Aristotle developed, in spite of his seeming merely scientific attitude towards reality, one of the greatest systems of love, where he says that God, the highest form - or pure actuality, as he calls it--moves everything by being loved by everything" The skeptic crowd (edit: not all of them just the ones that overlap with libertarians) has the laws of science as that as that highest form that driving everything finite towards itself The libertarian crowd has freedom or liberty or self as that highest form that driving everything finite towards itself. The Catholics have love as that highest form that driving everything finite towards itself. But the conservative Catholics have dropped that love, for strictly legalistic rules and libertarianism. Anyway that's why I think these things overlap so much. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Aug 14, 2014 |
# ? Aug 14, 2014 15:05 |
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What do you mean when you say "as that as that highest form that driving everything finite towards itself"? As it reads you're saying that the laws of science are driving things towards the laws of science. Or freedom driving things to freedom. Whatever word your plugging in doesn't matter, because it's a nonsensical sentence or at best is possibly a tautology.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 15:15 |
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Who What Now posted:What do you mean when you say "as that as that highest form that driving everything finite towards itself"? As it reads you're saying that the laws of science are driving things towards the laws of science. Or freedom driving things to freedom. Whatever word your plugging in doesn't matter, because it's a nonsensical sentence or at best is possibly a tautology. I think I get what he's saying. It's basically teleology, which is in itself a pretty circular and tautological form of reasoning. But the point is is that there is some core abstract truth everything is reaching towards, and learning and affirming that allows for the creation of a good society. It's in appealing to these fudamental truths that peopel like libertarians fidnm support from their arguments absent actual historical experience.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 15:23 |
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Little Blackfly posted:I think I get what he's saying. So it's like saying "[Freedom] leads to a good society by promoting [Freedom] which leads to a good society." And just replace Freedom with whatever. If that's the case then yeah, I think that's a fair an accurate representation of what some, but not all, people in those groups believe and how they think. See, Brandor, why can't you be clear like that?
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 15:33 |
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quote:I don't understand why you wouldn't expect that if the community had choices about who they feel comfortable protecting them that would lead to the same level of brutality. If for no other reason that a narrow interest in seeking profits, a private defense agency who is representing a community would want to keep their customers reasonably happy. If you have the choice to simply refuse to pay a defense agency who is providing nothing of value to you, then that automatically compels more discipline on the part of the defense agencies that are seeking your business.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 15:38 |
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Serrath posted:I do appreciate the direct answer to my question... is this all? To elaborate, does the libertarian answer to the cost of living associated with disability begin and end with a guaranteed wage floor? Thanks for the reply. I'll freely admit that if you were to keep one welfare program in the brave new negative tax world, it should be Medicare/Medicaid but that's also a relatively smaller program ($700b versus the entire federal welfare/social security budget at around $2.3 trillion). The U.S. prints more than that amount of money a year and so there's no reason why it should have to be funded by taxation through theft at which point I have no objection at all. Currently that printed money is just being handed straight to big private banks in the country, presumably with the purpose of stimulating the economy. Of course, people in need spending money at the doctor's office would also stimulate the economy so it's just a thin excuse for corporate welfare. Even in Milton Friedman's world, when you have a central reserve he believed you should print money every year to counter deflation (through population growth, if nothing else) and provide a stable safe place for value. That printed money has to be given to someone, so by all means if we've got a little bit of post-scarcity kicking, give it to those who need it most. It neither harms me nor picks my pocket. I don't have a problem with governments having a currency of their own. Not even Ron Paul does, although some libertarians certainly do. Currently we're printing about $1T a year, so it's not a tall order to cut down on printing and still fund Medicaid this way. I'd like you to address the majority of people who would benefit more from having more cash to spend. Do you think the current welfare system in Australia and the U.S. can do it better? If mostly white guys administering life for mostly black guys is a good idea, why has poverty persisted since America's Great Society in the 60's whereas the cash-based social security of the 30's vastly reduced senior homelessness? If you take Friedman's negative tax number in that video as a guide, $3,000 in 1964 translates to about $20,300 today in America. IIRC that's like $1k/yr below the federal poverty line for one person with three dependents, and about $9,000-10,000 higher than poverty line for someone without dependents. For the sake of making a quick point with a laughably broad brush, take that $2.3 trillion welfare budget number from above. I think roughly 14% of Americans live at or below poverty line. 320M x .14 = 44.8M. Split that $2.3T budget between them evenly and you get around $51,000 per year per person. That's straight middle class, and yet there's still 40+ million in literal poverty. Why aren't we getting bang for our buck? Helsing posted:People across the political spectrum support a minimum income or negative income tax of some kind. I don't think its in any way a distinguishing feature of libertarianism, especially given that many libertarians would be completely against it. By no means am I saying it's an idea only libertarians have. In the sense of libertarianism as an adjective, it is an idea that is comparatively more libertarian than what we currently have in America. For a general sum, I'm not an expert. $20,000 a year x 44.8M poors is $896B/year. A less than a trillion a year budget sounds pretty cost efficient, especially when mostly poverty and desperation motivated crime cost us over that amount every year. We could scale it so that you would make no less than $35,000 a year if you had a full-time job paying min wage, $15k + $20k. Make more than that and the taxpayer contributes less, but you're still at the minimum floor of $35k through job wages + tax rebate. People will still be proud (and/or petty) of having a higher wage than someone else so I don't buy the idea that it'll destroy incentive to work. Employees will be freer to pursue their own business ideas or trash an abusive boss and walk away, something that civil rights legislation has never accomplished. Explain why social security was so successful at vastly reducing senior poverty in the 30's. You get a check, and that's the end of Uncle Sam's involvement. He doesn't need to micromanage you after that point. And it worked. I'm not going to go into the idea that you're denying someone agency in their life with how rules-heavy these programs are today, because it seems like you may not share that concern in the way I do. But understand that does greatly inform my disapproval of these programs versus no-strings cash.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 16:06 |
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DeusExMachinima posted:The U.S. prints more than that amount of money a year and so there's no reason why it should have to be funded by taxation through theft at which point I have no objection at all You do realize that the amount of printed money in circulation at any one time does not actually reflect the entire US GDP, right? And that every year millions of bills of all denominations are removed from circulation. Not to mention that the US government doesn't pay using cash in almost any circumstance. It's not like pallets of $100 bills are being sent to fund Social Security.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 16:23 |
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jrodefeld posted:I don't understand why you wouldn't expect that if the community had choices about who they feel comfortable protecting them that would lead to the same level of brutality. If for no other reason that a narrow interest in seeking profits, a private defense agency who is representing a community would want to keep their customers reasonably happy. If you have the choice to simply refuse to pay a defense agency who is providing nothing of value to you, then that automatically compels more discipline on the part of the defense agencies that are seeking your business. There is a very real cost to abusing your customers in a market with multiple competing firms whereas with a State monopoly people have absolutely no choice. The salary of the police are paid through tax dollars. And you have no choice but to pay those taxes because their collection is backed up by force. This is a real nice post. Shame if anything were to happen to it.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 16:40 |
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Who What Now posted:See, Brandor, why can't you be clear like that? Because when I think about it internally that whole post I made (and basically all my posts on libertarianism) the thought in my head that says all that is "It's an idol". The circular nature, the tautologies, the placing of the abstract idea (freedom) above all other ideas and things. "It's an idol" says all that. The error of a highest infinite form (God) driving everything towards itself being defined by an constructed abstraction. "It's an idol" says all that. The they're going to systematize methodically from the foundational idea and make some of those systematized ideas into dogma. "It's an idol" says all that. The legalistic way the whole thing develops, "It's an idol" implies all that. The whole they're going to believe things that are detached from reality, "It's an idol" says all that. There's still a problem when I'm clear and straightforward.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 16:48 |
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First Bass posted:I sincerely believe that J-Rod isn't a racist in the traditional sense, nor does he believe Libertarianism is a racist ideology and its proponents virulent racists. It's actually sort of tragic, when you think about it, because his observations are mostly correct but his solutions are just so wildly detached from logic or precedent there's little recourse but to go When you hear a guy like Hoppe or Molyneux talk sooner or later you'll hear "And then the strong will devour the weak and we will all be more powerful for it" but guys like Jrod go on about how private charities will provide a better social safety net and racism only happens because of state intervention. It's like listening to a third world dictator talk about how God put him there, vs listening to a 12 year old who lives under that regime, he's been brainwashed and it's just sad
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 16:54 |
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BrandorKP posted:There's still a problem when I'm clear and straightforward. If you had just said "It's an idol for them" there would have been no problem.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 16:57 |
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I'm a social libertarian.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 17:04 |
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BrandorKP posted:There's still a problem when I'm clear and straightforward. Well it's never happened, so don't worry about it too much
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 17:27 |
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So he's apparently in the other thread going on about how the state should get out of public saftey. You know when the entire fundemental purpose of society is to promote general welfare and create infrastructure. As someone who spends over 200 hours a year exclusively in training to deal with emergency management I can assure you there is no way to get your precious private entities to do it. It will never ever make money and you have to spend to prepare for it years in advance for something that may never happen at all. If you're not entirely idiotic at it even private individuals wanting to volunteer are background checked beforehand and registered with what skills and education they have so you dont have child molesters looking for lost kids or unskilled people getting themselves dropped into a sinkhole and killed, further stretching the limited resources emergency responders have, but that doesn't stop people from trying to blame the government for not letting volunteers help with dangerous things like in the Oso landslide in the past year. Thank you jrod for reminding me why I do what I do. Everyday I work to make the world less unpredictable, the goverment a little more agile and the citizens a little more safe and economically free to do as they wish. Thank you for reminding me why your philosophy is an intellectual ebola that God and country willing we can eliminate in our lifetimes. Don't bother coming back to the thread you cowardly blight on humanity, we dont need you here to know you and all you stand for is intellectually bankrupt. The things you suggest will kill people. They will kill people. People like myself are going to fully use the You're welcome rear end in a top hat. RuanGacho fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Aug 14, 2014 |
# ? Aug 14, 2014 17:32 |
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RuanGacho posted:The things you suggest will kill people. They will kill people. Oh come now, don't be so hysterical. When you think about it, are poor people really people? Libertarian answer: no, of course not, personhood and human rights follow from land ownership, as only landowners may make the laws on their land, and tenants and squatters are subject to the absolute dictates of their lords.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 17:44 |
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RuanGacho posted:The things you suggest will kill people. They will kill people. People like myself are going to fully use the You're arguing with a guy who praised the state of healthcare in the 1950's.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 18:05 |
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To be fair the healthcare in the 1950's was pretty good... for the outrageously wealthy.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 18:21 |
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DeusExMachinima posted:By no means am I saying it's an idea only libertarians have. In the sense of libertarianism as an adjective, it is an idea that is comparatively more libertarian than what we currently have in America. For a general sum, I'm not an expert. $20,000 a year x 44.8M poors is $896B/year. A less than a trillion a year budget sounds pretty cost efficient, especially when mostly poverty and desperation motivated crime cost us over that amount every year. We could scale it so that you would make no less than $35,000 a year if you had a full-time job paying min wage, $15k + $20k. Make more than that and the taxpayer contributes less, but you're still at the minimum floor of $35k through job wages + tax rebate. People will still be proud (and/or petty) of having a higher wage than someone else so I don't buy the idea that it'll destroy incentive to work. Employees will be freer to pursue their own business ideas or trash an abusive boss and walk away, something that civil rights legislation has never accomplished. You seemed to be implying in your last post that you thought a minimum income would let lower income people live in New York (which, presumably, was a stand in for expensive cities all over the place). At $35,000 a year that would still be a struggle, especially if the minimum income triggers price increases. I think its a fine idea to give people a guaranteed income but I don't see how it would alleviate the need for better community planning or building more affordable housing. I don't think the plan you're outlining would actually make it any easier for low income people or racialized communities to move into neighbourhoods that are currently too expensive for them. quote:Explain why social security was so successful at vastly reducing senior poverty in the 30's. You get a check, and that's the end of Uncle Sam's involvement. He doesn't need to micromanage you after that point. And it worked. I'm not going to go into the idea that you're denying someone agency in their life with how rules-heavy these programs are today, because it seems like you may not share that concern in the way I do. But understand that does greatly inform my disapproval of these programs versus no-strings cash. Actually I agree that when possible we should let people decide how to take care of themselves without a lot of obtrusive oversight. Many welfare programs are seemingly designed to stigmatize people or make them feel like criminals and I think that's awful. I think our disagreement would be how a minimum income fits in with a larger economic program.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 18:40 |
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SedanChair posted:You're arguing with a guy who praised the state of healthcare in the 1950's. Point taken, but so far my theory that a "statist" posting is actually like a monster movie for him with it roaming up and down the hallways roaring about how it's going to get him has yet to be proven false. RuanGacho fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Aug 14, 2014 |
# ? Aug 14, 2014 18:52 |
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DeusExMachinima posted:Thanks for the reply. I'll freely admit that if you were to keep one welfare program in the brave new negative tax world, it should be Medicare/Medicaid but that's also a relatively smaller program ($700b versus the entire federal welfare/social security budget at around $2.3 trillion). The U.S. prints more than that amount of money a year and so there's no reason why it should have to be funded by taxation through theft at which point I have no objection at all. Currently that printed money is just being handed straight to big private banks in the country, presumably with the purpose of stimulating the economy. Of course, people in need spending money at the doctor's office would also stimulate the economy so it's just a thin excuse for corporate welfare. As a progressive, I'm generally supportive of a minimum income. But there are some questions to consider, and the answers to these will likely change depending on your political philosophy: To what value do you set the minimum income? How do you deal with shithead conservatives who would want to have the minimum income set way below the poverty line? Or even worse, a shithead Congress that takes a working minimum income and either eliminates it or cuts it such that it places people way below the poverty line? How do you deal with shithead conservatives who believe that people will simply choose not to work? Does the minimum income change based on how many kids you have? Does it change if you have a crippling disability? Is there a limit to these adjustments? You suggested keeping Medicare/Medicaid, but what about people who live in states where Medicaid is poo poo? Do we try to compensate for that? I think that an acceptable answer to these questions is "get rid of Medicare/Medicaid and create a national health service paid for by tax revenue". Do you agree or disagree? Does the minimum income change depending on where you live, due to cost of living differences around the country? How do you feel about the idea that Nixon only wanted a guaranteed minimum income so that it would be easier to eliminate or cut "the nanny state" in the future? A single plan is much easier to eliminate or cut, after all. And an unrelated question: do you believe that Ron Paul is a libertarian, like most do?
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 20:42 |
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RuanGacho posted:So he's apparently in the other thread going on about how the state should get out of public saftey. Same. After getting my NHS stuff blown off, my next move was towards health and safety. Working in the railway industry it's a massive part of what we do and looking back at history it took a literal Act of Parliament to get the Victorian 'free market' to adopt the most rudimentary of safety procedures here in Britain. I don't think libertarians really exist here except in the most extreme minority. It's the most American of political philosophies.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 21:19 |
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J-Rod please define "force" thanks.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 21:53 |
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Tezzor posted:J-Rod please define "force" thanks. "Anything I don't like."
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 21:54 |
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Tezzor posted:J-Rod please define "force" thanks. We scared him off too completely. He ain't comin' back. He asked for a dogpile, received one, and then refused to ride it out. Frankly, as a patronage-dispensing goon, I'm highly disappointed by his service and his lack of courage.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 22:04 |
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Somfin posted:We scared him off too completely. He ain't comin' back. Normally this sort of hit to his reputation would ruin him, but due to State interference in the marketplace (ie: bannings) he's got an unnatural monopoly on libertarian shitposting these days. Slightly more seriously, I'd not write him off yet. In all previous iterations of this very thread (of which he's posted several over the years), he gets progressively inconsistent in his replies as the evidence of his own shitheadedness piles up, but rarely stops posting altogether until a mod finally steps on him.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 22:08 |
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FORCE: -Being on property longer than the owner desires NOT FORCE: -The agents of state violence physically removing, jailing and prosecuting stubborn person upon request It's just so simple!
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 22:09 |
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Caros posted:Hey Xylo, any chance of a funny mod challenge for Jrod? Create a DRO thread that decides the fate of Jrod for abandoning his thread. Allow posters to form blocs appealing for his subscription. Jrod must choose one or be subject to mob justice. His chosen DRO will then mete out justice according to the terms of the publicly posted contract.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 22:11 |
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I bet we as a collective could get enough bitcoins to buy a better assassin than J-Rod, as an individual, could obtain in physical security. Goon project. I'll make the website
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 22:18 |
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Captain_Maclaine posted:Normally this sort of hit to his reputation would ruin him, but due to State interference in the marketplace (ie: bannings) he's got an unnatural monopoly on libertarian shitposting these days. That has been his MO, yeah. Specifically when it got too much for him to handle he would disappear for a few days and then suddenly reappear for one or two days of constant insane ramblings, burning out like a poo poo-posting supernova. Usually it took a few weeks, though. He's barely been at this for six days before he slunk off.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 22:36 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 11:42 |
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Who What Now posted:That has been his MO, yeah. Specifically when it got too much for him to handle he would disappear for a few days and then suddenly reappear for one or two days of constant insane ramblings, burning out like a poo poo-posting supernova. Usually it took a few weeks, though. He's barely been at this for six days before he slunk off. I think the realisation that as soon as he came back we were gonna ask him why he was calling for nation-wide mob justice was too much for him. He can't lose the racism fight, because denial is still a functional defence, but he'll lose the "isn't that just a mob but with constant surveillance" argument. He also can't accuse us of strawmanning, ad hominemming or windmilling, because we're reading information that he provided and comprehending it. He'll lose the argument, so he chooses (as is his libertarian right) to no longer patronise our thread where he will lose and instead patronise another thread. Strange that he went and tried to sell libertarian anti-racism soothing cream. We might have hurt his feelings.
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# ? Aug 14, 2014 23:22 |