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HUGE PUBES A PLUS posted:Long time lurker, first time poster, but this article gave me so many warm, fuzzy feelings I had to share. Chile has a long history of being a testing facility for free-market shitheels.
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Sep 17, 2014 17:11
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Hodgepodge posted:If only it were possible to form a legal body capable of holding people accountable for fraud. Oh well! And give up the honor of being scammed alongside the best businessmen in the world?! quote:I suppose there is some comfort in being fleeced in good company, in being in the company of some of the smartest businessmen in the movement. Being a good libertarian is proof of being the smartest and bestest at business, so if libertarian businessmen were scammed then the fraud was so good, nobody could have seen it coming. Oh, literally everyone did? Well that's just coincidence because those statists weren't smart enough to believe that Chile is totally down to sell off its sovereign territory to a few hundred white people wanting to start a new country.
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Sep 17, 2014 19:33
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Toasticle posted:That Galts Gulch fiasco was posted a few weeks ago, went to the website of one of the ultra libertarian supporters and she refuses to seek legal action to get her money back because that would be going against her "principles" using the evil government agencies that she so despises. I actually do not believe her. They are driven by greed. She is surely trying to get it back, but she is just keeping a front.
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Sep 18, 2014 02:16
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Clearly they should have started by purchasing a DRO/paying off a local mob before doing anything else. I like to imagine a real-life DRO would look similar to a Mexican drug cartel, enforcing your
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Sep 18, 2014 08:33
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VitalSigns posted:Oh, literally everyone did? Well that's just coincidence because those statists weren't smart enough to believe that Chile is totally down to sell off its sovereign territory to a few hundred white people wanting to start a new country. Yeah, the idea that someone would want a colony of entitled, rich white people in their country is like thinking that people love cancer and want a form that will metastasize as quickly as possible.
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Sep 18, 2014 08:45
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TYT posted a vid earlier today about the Chile thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=didxMSkqLrs I like the title and vid description. 
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Sep 18, 2014 09:11
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Hodgepodge posted:Yeah, the idea that someone would want a colony of entitled, rich white people in their country is like thinking that people love cancer and want a form that will metastasize as quickly as possible. There are plenty of entitled rich brown people here already. I doubt anyone would notice the difference. VitalSigns posted:Oh, literally everyone did? Well that's just coincidence because those statists weren't smart enough to believe that Chile is totally down to sell off its sovereign territory to a few hundred white people wanting to start a new country. The idea of people coming to Chile to avoid government interference is hilarious on so many levels.
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Sep 18, 2014 16:45
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Don't the Galt's Gult people realize that because of this scam they will get a bad reputation and lose market share? Pretty soon they are going to be out competed by a libertarian
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Sep 18, 2014 16:50
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Helsing posted:Don't the Galt's Gult people realize that because of this scam they will get a bad reputation and lose market share? Pretty soon they are going to be out competed by a libertarian They're not the only such community out here, either. This is Freedom Orchard.
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Sep 18, 2014 17:14
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TheRamblingSoul posted:I like to imagine a real-life DRO would look similar to a Mexican drug cartel, enforcing your The Sicilian Mafia is the best example of a DRO. Not in the "this is somewhat similar" sense, either; the history of the organization played out almost exactly the way supporters describe DROs. But, even though they managed to suss out omerta from first principles, they still manage to miss that when a completely unregulated profit-seeking organization advertises protection from criminals, their optimum strategy is probably "partner with criminals so they go after non-members."
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Sep 19, 2014 05:36
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wateroverfire posted:There are plenty of entitled rich brown people here already. I doubt anyone would notice the difference. Generally you notice a colony of white people at the point where they decide they want the rest of your land because they're whiter than you.
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Sep 19, 2014 06:21
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What is the libertarian explanation for how removing min wage laws will lead to higher wages?
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Sep 27, 2014 21:00
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Mr Interweb posted:What is the libertarian explanation for how removing min wage laws will lead to higher wages? Depends on who you talk to. In my experience most don't believe it will necessarily lead to higher wages on the aggregate, just that it will offer more 'choice' and open up jobs that are being crushed out of existence by the minimum wage. Most libertarians believe that the minimum wage kills jobs. They suffer under the delusion that businesses actually pay workers what they are worth, that if you make $9.00 for the business and the minimum wage is increased to $9.25 you will lose your job because you are no longer profitable. This is of course, untrue since most workers earn far more for the business than their wage, and/or are required for the business to be functional. A business that has only a single cashier working the till is going to need that cashier there whether his wage is $7.25 or $15.00 since otherwise their profits would be exactly $0. They also ignore the fact that a job at $5 an hour is more or less worthless. Walter Block did an interview with Sam Seder where they discussed the minimum wage, and he tried to use the argument that since 6 as a number is greater than 0, a job at $6 an hour is better than no job at all, so the minimum wage should be removed. This of course ignores the facts that a job at $6 has no real value if you are not capable of living on the wage provided. Or that the minimum wage provides a floor, any many people who currently have $7.25 an hour would see their wages drop over time to $6. A second, sometimes overlapping subset believe that individuals who are currently working at minimum wage jobs are poorly served by the minimum wage because the wage prices out 'better' jobs that might only be offered at $5. The typical example is that if the minimum wage were $5, or $3 or not existent at all then people might offer jobs that offer the potential for growth. You might be able to get work as a carpenter's assistant at $4 an hour where you pick up the skills that will get you a job worth $20. This of course is without any factual evidence to support it, but they don't let that stop them. The TLDR version is that they don't necessarily think it WILL lead to higher wages for everyone. A thing to remember is that most libertarians are more concerned with the rights of the individual than with society. Sure a bunch of people might receive starvation level wages, but having a minimum wage impacts on the FREEDOM of employers to offer poverty level jobs, and that isn't right.
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Sep 27, 2014 21:46
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Mr Interweb posted:What is the libertarian explanation for how removing min wage laws will lead to higher wages? Higher for job creators, not job takers.
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Sep 27, 2014 22:07
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Mr Interweb posted:What is the libertarian explanation for how removing min wage laws will lead to higher wages? It will not. It will reduce unemployment because all those teenagers and women and minorities who could never, ever do anything worth $6 an hour will be able to work. (This is now a mainstream neoliberal position.) e: b
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Sep 27, 2014 23:34
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Caros posted:Depends on who you talk to. In my experience most don't believe it will necessarily lead to higher wages on the aggregate, just that it will offer more 'choice' and open up jobs that are being crushed out of existence by the minimum wage. Maybe not all of them, but I've definitely heard a good number of libertarians argue that removing the minimum wages solves multiple problems at once. It's like how they argue for tax cuts in that it doesn't just empower the individual to keep more of their money, but it will also lead to more revenue and more jobs!
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Sep 27, 2014 23:45
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SedanChair posted:It will not. It will reduce unemployment because all those teenagers and women and minorities who could never, ever do anything worth $6 an hour will be able to work. (This is now a mainstream neoliberal position.) This is what is most alien about this thinking to me; how they believe that any person's labor can be worth so very little. A person's time and effort is worth whatever a living wage is. regardless of how menial or easy it is.
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Sep 28, 2014 01:27
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Oh, that's what the insane arguments my dad was going at me with yesterday came from. "If they raise the minimum wage they can't hire more people! Because the minimum wage is so high businesses like McDonalds can't hire kids like you for job training! Your uncle worked for $3.85 an hour in the 1980s in a butcher shop! Businesses aren't charity (but yes they will hire more people out of the goodness of their hearts if you just cut the minimum wage)!" 
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Sep 28, 2014 01:29
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When you have enough faith in the free market, anything is possible. "Why would eliminating the minimum wage result in increased wages for all workers? Free market" If your opposition persists, then you can make the free market more effective by invoking "Ron Paul" or "End the Fed". "Why is Bitcoin going to replace fiat currencies? Free Market, Ron Paul, End the Fed, that's why"
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Sep 28, 2014 01:36
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That's the thing though, my dad isn't even a libertarian; he's the type of centrist who likes to jerk off about how awesome and unbiased he is for "listening to both sides" and how nothing gets done because "both sides won't listen to each other". When the center espouses so many right-wing ideas like that, you know we're right hosed as a country.
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Sep 28, 2014 01:43
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:That's the thing though, my dad isn't even a libertarian; he's the type of centrist who likes to jerk off about how awesome and unbiased he is for "listening to both sides" and how nothing gets done because "both sides won't listen to each other". When the center espouses so many right-wing ideas like that, you know we're right hosed as a country. I don't think your dad is a centrist. He may claim to be, but if all he talks about and agrees with are Right-Wing talking points, then he's Right-Wing.
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Sep 28, 2014 02:08
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Who What Now posted:I don't think your dad is a centrist. He may claim to be, but if all he talks about and agrees with are Right-Wing talking points, then he's Right-Wing. But centrists are right wing.I mean if you are in the center of the political spectrum as it is perceived in this country, you are right wing. That's what I meant about the libertarian perspective on minimum-wage becoming a mainstream neoliberal position.if you listen to NPR almost any economist they interview will take it as a given that a higher minimum wage will price unskilled workers right out of the job market. woke wedding drone fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Sep 28, 2014 |
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Sep 28, 2014 02:30
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SedanChair posted:But centrists are right wing.I mean if you are in the center of the political spectrum as it is perceived in this country, you are right wing. Yeah, NPR and CNN and the New York Times and WSJ (which he reads for his "balanced" credentials) are his preferred media outlets. No use trying to tell him that NPR often has a right-leaning tilt, because then he'll just dismiss it as "internet propaganda". Also, Rush Limbaugh doesn't count as a major influential media figure on the right "because he's not civil". Basically, a long entry into "baby_boomers.txt". Jerry Manderbilt fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Sep 28, 2014 |
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Sep 28, 2014 02:35
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:Oh, that's what the insane arguments my dad was going at me with yesterday came from. "If they raise the minimum wage they can't hire more people! Because the minimum wage is so high businesses like McDonalds can't hire kids like you for job training! Your uncle worked for $3.85 an hour in the 1980s in a butcher shop! Businesses aren't charity (but yes they will hire more people out of the goodness of their hearts if you just cut the minimum wage)!"  won't someone think of the job creators!!! if only it weren't for _____ (anything but the decisions of the business owner)
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Sep 28, 2014 04:28
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Who What Now posted:This is what is most alien about this thinking to me; how they believe that any person's labor can be worth so very little. A person's time and effort is worth whatever a living wage is. regardless of how menial or easy it is. This is sort of an alien concept itself to me, that someone's labor is inherently worth a living wage. Now, you can say that in our world of relatively abundant food and goods, we should provide a basic living to all, and I would not immediately disagree. But having that income tied to and provided by a specific job is just...completely arbitrary and causes all sorts of issues. Dump minimum wage and institute a basic income. Consider it this way: Would you think it would be reasonable for you to be expected to pay me $40,000 a year to come over and clean your bathroom three times a week? You really shouldn't because that's kind of absurd at least at today's market prices, and I would probably bet that you wouldn't be able to personally sustain paying that wage for very long. There's no reason to lay the basic living expenses of the employee directly on the employer. It makes about as much sense as tying healthcare insurance to your specific place of employment. Mr Interweb posted:What is the libertarian explanation for how removing min wage laws will lead to higher wages? The short explanation is typically that the minimum wage, in combination with a fair number of other state interventions, keeps a huge amount of people out of the workforce and desperate, thus ensuring there's always the the classic reserve army of unskilled labor ready to fill in if low-wage workers attempt to improve their lot. If wages were allowed to "naturally" float, then you'd probably have far more people employed with a work history, skills (even if it's only basic skills), and personally earned income rather than state-derived income. Of course, this doesn't mean that any one job would be able to sustain an individual, but as above there is no reason why one should assume that the job itself has to be the source of one's own subsistence. That said, the "just remove minimum wage laws and workers will benefit" line is textbook vulgar libertarianism, as there are a number of both state-imposed and structural disadvantages and outright prohibitions that a low-skill worker has to deal with. It's entirely the case that, all else remaining status-quo, dropping the minimum wage may result in a lower standard of living for the poorer classes, or that raising it may extract a bit more from corporations.
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Sep 28, 2014 05:07
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Mr Interweb posted:What is the libertarian explanation for how removing min wage laws will lead to higher wages? A total lack of knowledge in how businesses actually works. When I was in management at Walgreens (I bet nobody could guess I worked at Walgreens), if your staff costs were more than 10% of your gross income, you were spending too much money. For a lot of businesses that minimum wage jobs are going to be in, your cost of staff is going to be really low compared to everything else you need, such as product. So for example, there's a video called Edgar, The Exploiter. And it defends getting rid of the minimum wage by demonstrating how much an employee gets paid versus how much they make for the company. The problem is all the amounts are just pulled out of their rear end and aren't based on real research. Just think about that 10% number. Chances are, if an employee is getting paid 9 dollars an hour, he or she should be bringing in at least 90 dollars of income into the store. They also wrongly believe it's going to create jobs. gently caress no! My job was do as much as I can with as little as possible. If I could get away with having two people in the store, I'm going to do that as long as possible. My libertarian friend actually started grilling me once on what I would do if the minimum wage was cut in half and I were paying my workers half as much. He literally couldn't believe me when I said that I would hire the same number of workers that I currently have. He seriously thought I would hire twice as many employees. I explained to him that since my job was to maximize profits, I needed to keep things as lean as possible. If I could do things with 5 people today, I would keep doing things with 5 people if I could. I'm not going to run things with 10 people just because the costs of having employees was halved. And also, as other people have mentioned, many minimum wage jobs are things not easily replaced or offsourced. Take cashiers. Even if you had an automatic cash register, you still need someone to man the area to assist customers when things go wrong. Oh, and customers don't like them. And they're terrible at upselling. And they're not good for large purchases. And if they were, I'd use them instead of people no matter what the minimum wage was. If we had no minimum wage, I'd still use them. I'm not going to employ people when a machine can do the work just as well. gently caress that noise. In case you're wondering, I left Walgreens because I couldn't stand how they were treating the people. Cutting their hours (basically, cutting their pay) one week and then buying Boots/Alliance the next. Yeah. I couldn't sleep at night.
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Sep 28, 2014 05:09
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Economists have been moving away from the consensus that minimum wage leads to unemployment for a while now. The classic line of reasoning for the "minimum wage=unemployment" thing is that setting a price floor will lead to less demand in an idealized view of markets. However, there's all kinds of things that can mess up this simple model, things like the huge bargaining power of corporations or the possibility of higher wages increasing efficiency, and several studies by economists have observed that minimum wage increases do not lead to unemployment. A lot of the economists quoted from right wing sources are chosen more for their political views than for their actual expertise.
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Sep 28, 2014 05:13
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First keep in mind that libertarians typically assume that a perfectly free market would be the most economically efficient arrangement for society. Different libertarians have different definitions of what a perfectly free market would actually look like - some of them would go as far as having privatized police and courts, others want to retain a "night watchman" state that provides some basic services - but that doesn't matter for our purposes. The point is that they believe that in their perfect society the economy will operate at maximum efficiency, which will be better for everyone (note that most liberals, conservatives, social democrats and socialists also tend to believe this about their own preferred economic system). Now the libertarian realizes that in the short term they will not achieve their ideal society. However, they make an important assumption: since their perfect society will be efficient, any reform that takes us one step closer to that ideal society will increase efficiency (again, this is not unique to libertarians). Since eliminating the minimum wage brings us one step to the most economically efficient arrangement possible (libertopia) that means it will also increase economic efficiency in the short term (the specific reason libertarians believe this is pretty much for the reasons people have outlined in this thread: they think increasing the cost of labour will price people out of the market or reduce profits, which will in turn reduce investment, which will reduce economic growth and employment). It's actually very questionable whether eliminating individual market inefficiencies will always increase efficiency, even operating under the assumptions of standard neoclassical economics. However, that tends to be the basic assumption: that eliminating any market imperfection at any time will always make society better off. Note this also helps explain why libertarians are often in favour of getting rid of rent control or product safety standards even if they know that they aren't going to be able to implement the rest of their reforms. Sure, some might say that those kinds of half measures are absurdly cruel and will make the life of the poor much worse, but all they see is another step on the road of libertopia. (The other, uglier, reasons is that many libertarians hate the poor and their ideology is really just a justification for spitting on their lessers. However, you can't really argue with people like that so it's better to focus on the libertarians who are misguided but who still have a soul.)
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Sep 28, 2014 05:53
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Aerial Tollhouse posted:Economists have been moving away from the consensus that minimum wage leads to unemployment for a while now. The classic line of reasoning for the "minimum wage=unemployment" thing is that setting a price floor will lead to less demand in an idealized view of markets. However, there's all kinds of things that can mess up this simple model, things like the huge bargaining power of corporations or the possibility of higher wages increasing efficiency, and several studies by economists have observed that minimum wage increases do not lead to unemployment. A lot of the economists quoted from right wing sources are chosen more for their political views than for their actual expertise. It seems like economists who understand the effects of "things that can mess up the simple model," while well-represented in academia outside of intro classrooms, are not so common in the media.
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Sep 28, 2014 06:01
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Helsing posted:it's better to focus on the libertarians who are misguided but who still have a soul. Always good to keep in mind, since so many younger libertarians got into it as a way of expressing themselves politically in stiflingly right-leaning environments, often as a way of presenting ideas like "maybe we should treat gay people like human beings" without being disowned.
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Sep 28, 2014 06:03
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Cemetry Gator posted:A total lack of knowledge in how businesses actually works. Thanks for the story, I'll remember this next time some baby boomer rear end in a top hat tries telling me "they would hire more kids like you for job training and to give you job experience if the minimum wage was lowered!" Also  at people like my dad who use the "businesses aren't charity" line and then spew the "they're chomping at the bit to hire more kids like you for job training if only they didn't have to pay as much" as if businesses were charity 
Jerry Manderbilt fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Sep 28, 2014 |
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Sep 28, 2014 06:17
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I have no idea what the "experience" is that some menial labor to make someone else rich teaches me. Any actual skilled labor that I have done I was trained to do, and did not use skillpoints to learn them that were awarded by some entry level unskilled job. It is just codeword for "you piece of poo poo work for a master so he benefits". You know, like mopping up orphans to clean houses of the elite. Or putting them to work in the factories.
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Sep 28, 2014 06:46
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LogisticEarth posted:Consider it this way: Would you think it would be reasonable for you to be expected to pay me $40,000 a year to come over and clean your bathroom three times a week? Quick question: Do you actually believe that any person in the entire world expects that level of pay to clean a single bathroom three times a week (e.g. maybe 3 hours of work a week), or are you deliberately bullshitting?
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Sep 28, 2014 07:01
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Vahakyla posted:I have no idea what the "experience" is that some menial labor to make someone else rich teaches me. Any actual skilled labor that I have done I was trained to do, and did not use skillpoints to learn them that were awarded by some entry level unskilled job. It's your chance to shine, to step and fetch avidly. And sell out your pals! "Notice me! Promote me! I'll help you crack the whip on my former compatriots! I'll be a wal-mart sonderkommando, I'm ruthless and desperate! I'm worth at least 11.50 an hour to you."
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Sep 28, 2014 07:08
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It is all about the kapos.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:15
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:That's the thing though, my dad isn't even a libertarian; he's the type of centrist who likes to jerk off about how awesome and unbiased he is for "listening to both sides" and how nothing gets done because "both sides won't listen to each other". When the center espouses so many right-wing ideas like that, you know we're right hosed as a country. A lot of libertarians and conservatives like to claim that they're centrists. This comes out of the last several decades of conservatives applying the No True Scotsman fallacy to many of their arguments (which culminated with the rise of the Tea Party), causing many conservatives to label themselves centrists because they disagree with the Republican party line on one or two issues
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Sep 28, 2014 07:18
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LogisticEarth posted:Consider it this way: Would you think it would be reasonable for you to be expected to pay me $40,000 a year to come over and clean your bathroom three times a week? You really shouldn't because that's kind of absurd at least at today's market prices, and I would probably bet that you wouldn't be able to personally sustain paying that wage for very long. There's no reason to lay the basic living expenses of the employee directly on the employer. It makes about as much sense as tying healthcare insurance to your specific place of employment. You must take the largest and most disgusting dumps ever if it really takes 13 hours to clean your bathroom. But yeah, if you're paying someone to clean your bathroom for 40 hours every week then that person really deserves a living wage
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Sep 28, 2014 07:22
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If he is in good faith, I can see his point. Right to a livable living and quality of life should be a state ensured and provided right, just like health care. The employer, the private side, should not. We should ensure that no matter what happens between people in the private sector, everybody can afford a decent life. This way the need for many worker and employment regulations goes down since the choice of a job is not a hidden "do or die" slavery but an actual choice of preference.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:28
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Helsing posted:(The other, uglier, reasons is that many libertarians hate the poor and their ideology is really just a justification for spitting on their lessers. However, you can't really argue with people like that so it's better to focus on the libertarians who are misguided but who still have a soul.) I would be really interested in finding out how common each of these reasons are among self-professed libertarians. Like, are most of them just misguided? Or are the majority really just selfish, poor-hating assholes?
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Sep 28, 2014 09:13
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QuarkJets posted:A lot of libertarians and conservatives like to claim that they're centrists. This comes out of the last several decades of conservatives applying the No True Scotsman fallacy to many of their arguments (which culminated with the rise of the Tea Party), causing many conservatives to label themselves centrists because they disagree with the Republican party line on one or two issues Keep in mind that lots of libertarian types are against discrimination, but are also against many of the proactive measures that government takes to stop it or mitigate its effects (because they restrict the right to free association, cost tax money, etc.). This means that they're functionally little different from Republicans.
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Sep 28, 2014 09:25
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