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Captain Planet as the head of Precrime. "Stop right there, Hoggish Greedly! By mandate of the District of Columbia Precrime Division, I am placing you under arrest for littering. Alright boys, let's get a halo on him." EvanSchenck posted:Like I said, one of the key roles of the regulatory body is prevention through site inspection and pollution monitoring. If you get rid of the regulatory body, how does anybody know that the pollution is occurring until it becomes obvious, usually in the form of a giant lovely mess? For example, the victims of the Bhopal disaster discovered the extent of the problem there when a cloud of toxic gas floated through the city, killing thousands and injuring hundreds of thousands. I also have a hard time understanding how anyone can read poo poo like that and still think that de-regulating all business is a Good Idea. That poo poo horrifies me. Rhjamiz fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 23:01
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I am originally from Finland, now in SC, and thus the color of my libertarianism and right-wingery needs to be put into perspective. For example, our main-stream right wing party is for things that come off as Communist Manifesto when looked at from the US. And they are certainly not libertarian, either. Anyway, I thought that they were not enough and I was among some of the small minority, yet vocal, defenders of job creators, private enterprise, competition as the arbitrator and the usual hoopla. Besides that, my grandfather, my dad and that whole side were fire red marxist with my Grandfather being a major entrepreneur who believed in strong worker protection, never ever fired a single employee, always lived modestly and drove a modest car, ensuring that his pay, or his successor's pay could not be more than three times what the lowest employee got paid. My father was, and is, an airline and private jet pilot, making more than 10,000 euros month and staunch marxist, very similar to my grandfather in his views of the necessity of nationalizing everything and the usual 2down with capitalism"-attitude. For me, they seemed like wasted potential. I thought that they are just held back and if they'd "realize their potential", they'd make more money. I saw the same thing in my mom, a Nurse and a Firefighter and a life-long public employee, enjoying 71 vacation days plus 16 public holidays, infinite sick leave, PTO and double-pay overtime in her profession as a Fire Nurse. I thought that she was a waste for the society, not making her work hard enough and for giving her so many lawfully guaranteed benefits that it was just "wasteful" and once again, the government not realizing the full potential, surely seeing that a fire department with less vacation and benefits would be more efficient and save more money. My mom was not and still is not quite as fire red as my dad, but still a solid socialist, albeit voting for the "right wing" party of Finland, The National Coalition. [That is only right wing in some distant alternate reality]. When I'd be an adult, I'd be a hard worker and I'd forge my own fortune and blah blah blah blah. What even more, I'd have my own companies and the goddamn state would not hold me back that much, making me give all those freebies to workers! I don't fully remember where it started cracking. Slowly my resentment and distaste towards the "wasted potential" the state had towards my parents started turning around, making me see a pair of very effective, happy and motivated workers. The private company employing my dad was not only content in paying him a generous salary, but encouraged moving flights around to attend kid's school events or my mom taking a sick leave with full pay for almost four months due to an injury, or my step-dad [sorry for not introducing earlier] being out of work as a Fire Nurse for almost four years due to an injury. Not only did he enjoy his pay during the injury he gained from horse back riding, but he returned to his profession and retained all this accrued benefits. I guess I started to realize that my grandfather was a successful businessman because his employees loved him and were willing to do almost anything to help him out because he treated them well with obscenely generous benefits. My mother became a solid servant of the government because of the public education, the motivating benefits and salaries she received and because she did not burn out in her profession. My dad is a successful pilot because of the generous treatment he received in terms of regulation and laws that his employer has to abide by. Certainly not in any way the most unfortunate members of the society or people with no say, yet they all both benefit immensely from the environment the Nordic Welfare Capitalist State has created, legislated and most importantly, enforced. Sorry I came off as rambling, I did not have a coherent thought when I begun writing, but my point is that things that I saw as waste and oppression became things that I saw as not only more moral, ethical and caring, but also things that made these systems more effective and profitable in the long run. Are many businesses ran by people who genuinely would be benevolent without regulation like my grandfather's business? Absolutely. However, it would be a small minority. The solution and the way to a better society does not come with wishing everybody just runs their business in the kindest of way, but actively enforcing and regulating laws that protect the weaker members of the society, the employees. By treating my mom and my step dad well, the Fire Department gets amazing firefighters and can also demand a lot from them, such as extremely rigorous fitness standards and continuing education. And the airline company and the private jet business gets a motivated pilot who will work for them out of loyalty and cooperation and not for necessity. They were not lazier because of these, they worked harder because of this. Agh, I tried to clarify this but I failed. Short story: I was a libertarian but now I am at the "down with capitalism, nationalize and regulate the poo poo out of everything for the benefit of the poors"-stage. The same spot that my parent's arrived a long time ago to. It just is hard to pinpoint my transformation. I also became a public employee myself and when learning leadership and management in the fire service, I also learned that what is the cheapest and fiscally sound solution was not the best solution for fire inspection, rescue operations and personnel handling. A private company with profit in mind could never, ever, be as effective as the Department I worked in was. What was yelled as "waste" were things that gave other results not measurable in money. Now in South Carolina, when I tell of these things, I might as well be talking about some fantasy land. I am an immigrant too. Vahakyla fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 23:11
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LolitaSama posted:I'm an immigrant, and during 2013 and 2014, as debate over immigration reformed raged on in the US, I saw how extremely anti-immigrant the Republican Party was. It was so extreme I could only imagine intense racist fervor could inspire such zeal. I reluctantly switched over to being a single issue Democrat at first, but started to see everything from a more leftist viewpoint over time. Now I see the same racist fervor of the anti-immigrant right also underlying libertarian ideology. I realized libertarian dislike for welfare was actually driven by the fact that it was viewed as a transfer of wealth from rich whites to poor blacks. The people on Stormfront (the white supremacist forum) spouted the same nonsense conspiracy theories about the federal reserve system as the libertarians, but they colorfully included heavy anti-Semitic arguments that libertarians omitted. Let me say that I am proud to see you say this, LS. It takes a lot to acknowledge the mistakes of the past, and it takes even more to realize how important it is to learn from and move away from them. If you ever decide to trust us with a mailing address I believe this sort of personal growth is deserving of rewards- perhaps in the form of my great great gramma's succulent golden chocolate chip cookies, rich fudge brownies, or blueberry muffins. (disclaimer: could take a month or two to send them out due to current levels of poor)
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Sep 30, 2014 23:20
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Rhjamiz posted:Well, for starters, you cannot pre-emptively sue a company for dumping chemicals in a nebulous future. I can't believe I didn't think of this myself, but yes, to file suit you have to demonstrate to the court that damages occurred. This means that even if you somehow detected a problem early (through magic, maybe), before it caused damages, you couldn't do anything about it except to tell the company you noticed the issue and hope that they act to fix it. Which they might not do. Union Carbide had plenty of warning before the Bhopal disaster!
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Sep 30, 2014 23:20
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Vahakyla posted:Now in South Carolina, when I tell of these things, I might as well be talking about some fantasy land. To me as an American, that does basically sound like some wish-fulfillment fantasy. In that vein, I want my post-scarcity Star Trek communism already. I know it's a fool's dream, but I can dream, drat you. 
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Sep 30, 2014 23:21
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Rhjamiz posted:To me as an American, that does basically sound like some wish-fulfillment fantasy. In that vein, I want my post-scarcity Star Trek communism already. I know it's a fool's dream, but I can dream, drat you. Hardly my dear, it's entirely reasonable to wish and dream for such a world- especially as we continue developing ever increasingly better means of supporting ourselves without the disgusting artificial scarcity economy of today. We do all sorts of horribly stupid things in the name of Stupid loving Bullshit That Rubs Our Manly Genitals So That We Feel Like Big Important People. Anyone who says that wanting a world that is not this is a piece of poo poo who needs to be shot in the face with unripened hakarl. That said Star Trek's not really even communism, it's more post-scarcity bureaucratic democracy. Whether that's better or worse is up for discussion but y'know.
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Sep 30, 2014 23:30
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AlternateAccount posted:One of the best roles of government is to enforce private property rights. This would include issues regarding pollution. Uh, what? How can you say this as a minarchist?! It's already been tried. Jrodefeld as a right-anarchist can at least can make the argument that statist courts are too easily bought off by industry, which could never happen in a free market where the court's very existence depends on the subscription fees paid by the petitioners (I'm sure that won't affect the court's judgment though). It's dumb, but at least he has the advantage of arguing for something imaginary that doesn't have real life counterexamples. What you're suggesting has already been tried and failed here in America under a limited small 'l' libertarian government. To wit, Huckenstine's Appeal, Pennsylvania Supreme Court 1872 posted:Brickmaking is a useful and necessary employment, and must be pursued near to towns and cities where bricks arc chiefiy used. Brickburning, an essential part of the business, is not a nuisance per se. It, as many other useful employments do, may produce some discomfort and even some injury to those near by. But it does not follow that a chancellor would enjoin therefor. The heat, smoke and vapor of a brick kiln cannot compare with those of many manufactories carried on in the very heart of such busy cities as Pittsburg and Allegheny. A court exercising the power of a chancellor, whose arm may fall with crushing force upon the every day business of men, destroying lawful means of support, and diverting property from legitimate uses, cannot approach such cases as this with too much caution. It's got the libertarian  trifecta: (1)Restraining pollution would hurt business profits  , (2)Well those people chose to live there so they're voluntarily breathing it; if they don't want to breathe soot they'd move somewhere else so they must benefit overall  , (3)Hmmmm can you prove that it was the smoke from this particular factory that killed your crops/damaged your property/gave you cancer, or could it have been anything else in the universe  Got any ideas that haven't failed miserably? Because here are the results of individual citizens trying to sue huge industrial pollutors like US Steel  It's going to be a beautiful day if the smog clears and we can turn out these streetlamps that we still need to keep lit at 9:30 in the morning to see through the heavy black clouds! VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 23:47
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VitalSigns posted:Got any ideas that haven't failed miserably? Because here are the results of individual citizens trying to sue huge industrial pollutors like US Steel Wow, never saw that picture before. Doesn't surprise me though, my mom's side of the family was from Donora, outside Pittsburgh, where smog killed 20 and sickened thousands.* drat that EPA for infringing my rights to develop black lung! edit: * of course the survivors found remedy in the courts, quoting wikipedia: quote:Lawsuits were filed against U.S. Steel, which never acknowledged responsibility for the incident, calling it "an act of God". While the steel company did not accept blame, it reached a settlement in 1951 in which it paid about $235,000, which was stretched over the 80 victims who had participated in the lawsuit, leaving them little after legal expenses were factored in. Representatives of American Steel and Wire settled the more than $4.6 million claimed in 130 damage suits at about 5% of what had been sought, noting that the company was prepared to show at trial that the smog had been caused by a "freak weather condition" that trapped over Donora "all of the smog coming from the homes, railroads, the steamboats, and the exhaust from automobiles, as well as the effluents from its plants." U.S. Steel closed both plants by 1966. Polygynous fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Oct 1, 2014 00:02
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LolitaSama posted:I'm an immigrant, and during 2013 and 2014, as debate over immigration reformed raged on in the US, I saw how extremely anti-immigrant the Republican Party was. It was so extreme I could only imagine intense racist fervor could inspire such zeal. I reluctantly switched over to being a single issue Democrat at first, but started to see everything from a more leftist viewpoint over time. Now I see the same racist fervor of the anti-immigrant right also underlying libertarian ideology. I realized libertarian dislike for welfare was actually driven by the fact that it was viewed as a transfer of wealth from rich whites to poor blacks. The people on Stormfront (the white supremacist forum) spouted the same nonsense conspiracy theories about the federal reserve system as the libertarians, but they colorfully included heavy anti-Semitic arguments that libertarians omitted. You and I had a lot of disagreement (in fact I think it was a thread where a friend of yours was posting your positions and I, among others, encouraged him to have you join for the purpose of debate), but now I think I love you.  Edit: For a little more content, my growth pattern was essentially the same. I encourage you to keep growing and searching and not being satisfied by easy answers. archangelwar fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Oct 1, 2014 00:08
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And of course, a brickmaker right next door killing your crops is environmental lawsuit: easy mode. What do you do when a weather phenomenon traps all of the smog in the city like in London 1953 or New York in 1966 and it kills hundreds or thousands of people? Good luck proving specific damages and tracing the path of the specific particles that got in your dead kid's lungs back to the individual factories, automobiles, furnaces, and coal stoves that emitted them! I guess you could do a big class action lawsuit of Everybody v Every-loving-body, but any defendant could argue that since the wind normally takes their auto exhaust or chimney smoke harmlessly out to sea, there's no way to prove that this weather event trapped their specific smoke in the city. And even if you just assume everyone bore some responsibility, how do you measure the amount of pollution each person emitted in the past? Can you prove that John drives his car twice as often as Jim and owes twice the damages? Is Mary in the clear because although she normally burns her coal stove every day, she was on holiday the past month and couldn't have contributed? Edit: haha nice, spoon0042 already posted an example of US Steel stonewalling with "well you can't prove it was definitely our smokestacks when it could have been those other ones maybe, good luck getting the money together to outlast us in court!" In reality, of course, except for a few isolated events where these once-common killer smog clouds could be definitely traced to a few factories, there were no lawsuits as a result of general non-point-source smog events because it's impossible to prove damages, so we reacted to this by passing clean air legislation. I don't know, maybe you could work this all out with a court case if you're willing to make a bunch of assumptions to assign generalized responsibility and issue injunctions barring future polluting with exhaust cleanliness requirements and metering of pollution levels or face fines for violating those injunctions regardless of whether damage is proven or not...but now I don't see the difference between that and just passing a law. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Oct 1, 2014 00:27
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Surely the Cuyahoga would have burned itself out eventually. Alternatively Lake Erie could have been a literal lake of fire. 
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Oct 1, 2014 00:32
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Heh, you people with your empirical evidence and clear chain of past incidents, didn't you learn the first time? Jrod isn't interested in such petty, irrelevant bullshit. He's here for logical arguments and rational reasons why a totally unhindered market wouldn't be the most perfectest society ever and never once would result in companies dumping carcinogen-laden waste into the water table and furthermore-*prolonged, squeaky fart*
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Oct 1, 2014 00:33
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Thieeeef, thief! Curse the Hayek, it stole Mises' Nobel Prize, we hates it forever!!!
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Oct 1, 2014 00:45
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Even theoretically I don't understand how lawsuits are a remedy against air pollution though. If someone's car or lawn mower exhaust or bbq grill smoke wafts over to my yard, is he aggressing against me or do I have to prove quantifiable damages from the trespass? If I need damages to sue him, then okay life goes on until a freak weather event traps everyone's smoke, exhaust, etc in the city and it kills or sickens thousands upon thousands of people, but now how does a court determine each person's individual contribution in order to assign damages? What about residents who were gone? What about travelers who passed through the city and may have contributed to the cloud? Or we could go the zero-tolerance route and say any smoke that drifts onto my property is aggression and I'm justified in using retaliatory force to stop it. Sure, we have to give up all industry plus the taming of fire and return to a paleolithic existence, but at least we didn't compromise our principles!
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Oct 1, 2014 00:55
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I'd like to explanation jrodefield's explanation for why Sam Brownback's massive tax cut policies over the past two years have not led to Kansas being a nationwide economic powerhouse.
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Oct 1, 2014 00:56
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VitalSigns posted:at least we didn't compromise our principles! This is pretty much the entirety of the argument.
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Oct 1, 2014 00:56
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Mr Interweb posted:I'd like to explanation jrodefield's explanation for why Sam Brownback's massive tax cut policies over the past two years have not led to Kansas being a nationwide economic powerhouse. Brownbackistan still has a government, therefore crippling business. 
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Oct 1, 2014 01:12
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SedanChair posted:This is pretty much the entirety of the argument. Such principles, being logically derived, cannot fail of course. They can, however, be failed.
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Oct 1, 2014 01:14
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Mr Interweb posted:I'd like to explanation jrodefield's explanation for why Sam Brownback's massive tax cut policies over the past two years have not led to Kansas being a nationwide economic powerhouse. Taxes are too high, discouraging entrepreneurs and driving businesses out of the state. Babylon Astronaut posted:Here's a good one about how a new disease was invented in the US by speeding up an assembly line to the detriment of the workers: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/hormel-spam-pig-brains-disease That's only proof that the workers have different time preferences, because why else would they rationally trade up-front payment today for debilitating illness a decade from now. You're forgetting that the entrepreneur is taking the risk of forgoing today's payday* in the hope that it will pay off in the future with huge profits oh and also a life free of catastrophic nerve damage. *Or giving himself a giant raise in executive pay in the midst of a strike over pay cuts for the workers, or whatever and whatnot VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Oct 1, 2014 01:18
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Mr Interweb posted:why Sam Brownback's massive tax cut policies over the past two years have not led to Kansas being a nationwide economic powerhouse. Obama. On a more serious note, Governor Brownback has been arguing that he inherited Kansas budgetary woes from the previous Democrat-run administration, and that the economy is doing better than his opponents will make you believe. That's the impression I gathered from his debate with Paul Davis at the Kansas State Fair.
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Oct 1, 2014 01:27
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I'm cracking up that he's going to send the most conservative state right back into the loving arms of a democratic governor. I was super pissed off at Obama for stealing Kathleen Sebelius with Brownback waiting in the wings, but it will be more funny this way.
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Oct 1, 2014 01:35
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LolitaSama posted:Obama. I always loved that euphamism. "So and so has argued that x is y. It isn't true, but that is his argument."
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Oct 1, 2014 01:36
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LolitaSama posted:I'm an immigrant, and during 2013 and 2014, as debate over immigration reformed raged on in the US, I saw how extremely anti-immigrant the Republican Party was. It was so extreme I could only imagine intense racist fervor could inspire such zeal. I reluctantly switched over to being a single issue Democrat at first, but started to see everything from a more leftist viewpoint over time. Now I see the same racist fervor of the anti-immigrant right also underlying libertarian ideology. I realized libertarian dislike for welfare was actually driven by the fact that it was viewed as a transfer of wealth from rich whites to poor blacks. The people on Stormfront (the white supremacist forum) spouted the same nonsense conspiracy theories about the federal reserve system as the libertarians, but they colorfully included heavy anti-Semitic arguments that libertarians omitted. Holy poo poo, I remember you posting a while back and it's really neat that you changed your mind like this. Honestly, I find that stuff like this proves that tone arguments are dumb. I was influenced a lot more by people making me feel ashamed of having dumb/bad opinions than I was people being super polite. If someone acts like your viewpoints are totally reasonable and respectable, you're not going to be as motivated to change them.
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Oct 1, 2014 01:48
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Also too, why do libertarians assume that everyone, particularly businesses owners/job creators always make rational decisions and thus, unless compromised by government in some way, will always make the right decisions every time? I mean, we have thousands (if not more) of people every year who decide to start a business of some kind. And yet, many of them, quite possibly the vast majority, will go under at some point because of incompetence or cause they just can't compete against bigger companies. The point being is that there's nothing magical about job creators. If they were as amazing and as brilliant as libertarians think they are then every single company would be as big and powerful as a Google or Microsoft. Hell, look at what happened with the financial crisis. Whether libertarians want to blame the fed or Fannie/Freddie, whoever was at fault, you would think the masters of the universe would have the knowledge and the foresight to see what was going on and try to change course. Yet pretty much none of these fucks saw it coming and insisted that the government get off their backs unless it came to bailing them out.
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Oct 1, 2014 02:00
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Any stripe of libertarian feel free to reply. Without a state to protect the rights of children how will female children of adherents of various religious orders gain access to education? http://www.fixthefamily.com/blog/6-reasons-to-not-send-your-daughter-to-college I, for example, was told that I would not be given college money by my father. I was told this while sitting on an antique rug that cost more than 4 years of in state tuition at Colorado school of mines. The money was a rounding error in his bank account. Not sending me was a matter of principle for him as women just get married and "waste it" so any education of women beyond a bare minimum needed to grocery shop etc was deemed an inefficient use of resources by him. In libertarian speak, he viewed female education as an inefficiency forced on the market by government regulation. If you lifted the tyrannical yoke of government from him and men like him tomorrow then my youngest half sisters from his latest wife will grow up functionally illiterate. If you don't give a poo poo then have the balls to say so.
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Oct 1, 2014 02:36
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One thing I've just fully realized about libertarianism, that I've always known in a way but now realize how to articulate, is that it promotes an entirely reactive type of society. It almost goes out of its way to cut out any way to proactively protect oneself from dangers. The obvious things like fires and protection against crime have been brought up time and time again, and the answer most consistent with libertarian ideals is that you wouldn't be charged until you need it, because why would you pay to protect yourself against something so statistically insignificant? That these charges would be exorbitant is simply fair market value, to ask for less would be immoral. But the recent discussion about environmental hazards is what made it click for me. In libertopia if you had a happy cottage in an idealistically beautiful field of grass and flowers and one day woke up to see a coal burning plant laying a foundation not 100' from your front door, there is absolutely nothing you could do about it. You would have to wait until after obvious harm was caused to you to try and bring up a grievance, and really the only way to show that to a degree acceptable in a libertarian court is if someone in your house dies and when you cut open the victim's lungs the tumors spell out "Coal Burners Inc. did this". But until that happens you can't do poo poo, and it's cold comfort to the deceased in any case. The most proactive thing you can do in a libertarian society is contract with a DRO, but even the most revered of Libertarian scholars admit that DROs are mediators, only stepping in after a dispute erupts, almost never before. And even though they say otherwise, businesses too could only exist reactively in libertarian-land. While on paper he who can correctly predict a new need will be the most successful, in reality it's whoever can spot a new need after it has a grown to have sufficient demand to support the economic risk of providing the wanted good or service will be the one that does best. Prediction carries immense risk, while retrodiction carries almost none. It's obvious which choice everyone would take. It's an ideology made by and for people who are missing the part of their brains responsible for long-term planning.
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Oct 1, 2014 02:38
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Who What Now posted:
Or the ones who know or think that they will have the power to command these things.
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Oct 1, 2014 02:41
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McAlister posted:Without a state to protect the rights of children how will female children of adherents of various religious orders gain access to education? What are you talking about, children are property, which is why Murray Rothbard posted:we must face the fact that the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children. However, if your sisters object to the actions of your Murray Rothbard posted:But when are we to say that this parental trustee jurisdiction over children shall come to an end? Surely any particular age (21,18, or whatever) can only be completely arbitrary. The clue to the solution of this thorny question lies in the parental property rights in their home. For the child has his full rights of self-ownership when he demonstrates that he has them in nature—in short, when he leaves or “runs away” from home. Regardless of his age, we must grant to every child the absolute right to runaway and to find new foster parents who will voluntarily adopt him, or to try to exist on his own. Parents may try to persuade the runaway child to return, but it is totally impermissible enslavement and an aggression upon his right of self-ownership for them to use force to compel him to return. The absolute right to run away is the child’s ultimate expression of his right of self-ownership, regardless of age. So there you go, your younger assets-in-trust are deemed capable to make their own education decisions the second they demonstrate self-ownership by running away from home and taking up a lucrative career in begging, prostitution, coal-mining, &c and so forth to put themselves through kindergarten. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Oct 1, 2014 02:47
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Who What Now posted:It's an ideology made by and for people who are missing the part of their brains responsible for long-term planning. I would say the opposite, libertarianism depends on preparing for every conceivable eventuality and being able to survive it, with those that can't prepare being left in the dust for lacking "Time-preference" Of course the problem arises when the utterly inconceivable happens. Things like a resource drying up in a region, a viable career is rendered obsolete by new technology or a new disease shows up to ruin either your crops or your workforce. These things happen, no one is responsible for them happening, and more often then not they're impossible to plan for.
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Oct 1, 2014 03:26
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McAlister posted:Any stripe of libertarian feel free to reply. Clearly it was time for you to "depart family of origin" and become a strong independent woman who ain't need no dad.
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Oct 1, 2014 03:35
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DarklyDreaming posted:I would say the opposite, libertarianism depends on preparing for every conceivable eventuality and being able to survive it, with those that can't prepare being left in the dust for lacking "Time-preference" Somehow "preparing for everything" always boils down to "have enough cash on hand to fix it", though.
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Oct 1, 2014 03:39
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Regarding the environmental regulations discussion a page or two back, I would honestly like to know how in the world that the removal of state forced regulation would lead to increased self regulation from businesses. We tend to come back to the idea that of course businesses will be responsible because it's in their best interest to be. But let's take for example, insurance. Libertarians would argue that all businesses would buy insurance because (as we said already) it's in their best interest to do so. But they seem to hate the idea of government forcing the business to buy insurance. But this is strange because if businesses were going to buy insurance anyway, then what is the issue with the state having a formal law guaranteeing them to do so? In fact, one could pretty much argue that nearly every regulation that's on the government's books are things that businesses would be doing of their own accord. I just don't see how that works. The whole point of these regulations in the first place is because these are things that most businesses don't want to incorporate them. LolitaSama posted:I'm an immigrant, and during 2013 and 2014, as debate over immigration reformed raged on in the US, I saw how extremely anti-immigrant the Republican Party was. It was so extreme I could only imagine intense racist fervor could inspire such zeal. I reluctantly switched over to being a single issue Democrat at first, but started to see everything from a more leftist viewpoint over time. Now I see the same racist fervor of the anti-immigrant right also underlying libertarian ideology. I realized libertarian dislike for welfare was actually driven by the fact that it was viewed as a transfer of wealth from rich whites to poor blacks. The people on Stormfront (the white supremacist forum) spouted the same nonsense conspiracy theories about the federal reserve system as the libertarians, but they colorfully included heavy anti-Semitic arguments that libertarians omitted. I was gonna call you out along with Jrode, but then I saw your posts and thought I was confusing you with someone else. Not to be all  or anything, but good to have you on the winning team. The first 3 abortions are on the house!However, I do have one question that I wanted to ask. You only recently realized that libertarians/Republicans are racist shitheels? I mean, they've been talking about shooting messicans via cannon back to Mexico and advocating giving internment camps another chance when talking about the muslins.
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Oct 1, 2014 04:22
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Mr Interweb posted:However, I do have one question that I wanted to ask. You only recently realized that libertarians/Republicans are racist shitheels? I mean, they've been talking about shooting messicans via cannon back to Mexico and advocating giving internment camps another chance when talking about the muslins. I suspect it is more of an awakening to the fact. It is really easy to dismiss such voices as 'not real' libertarians or republicans when you are in the deep end. Speaking from experience I actively railed against Universal Healthcare until I saw the direct effects of not having such healthcare first hand. Sure I was always aware that for profit healthcare had its bad sides, but for something like this sometimes it really takes a direct blow for it to 'stick'.
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Oct 1, 2014 04:30
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Who What Now posted:One thing I've just fully realized about libertarianism, that I've always known in a way but now realize how to articulate, is that it promotes an entirely reactive type of society. It almost goes out of its way to cut out any way to proactively protect oneself from dangers. The obvious things like fires and protection against crime have been brought up time and time again, and the answer most consistent with libertarian ideals is that you wouldn't be charged until you need it, because why would you pay to protect yourself against something so statistically insignificant? That these charges would be exorbitant is simply fair market value, to ask for less would be immoral. To add, a large part of what we do at the city level is emergency planning, and that does in fact take tax dollars to prepare for, it neatly dovetails in about how private charity is supposed to save us all in the event of disaster but I'll take my dedicated radio system preplanned and prepared by the FCC thank you very much. On that note, I noticed this thread was active much more than usual so I put on my statist gloves and now I wait in my libertarian blind composed of capitalism and stable society 
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Oct 1, 2014 05:14
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RuanGacho posted:On that note, I noticed this thread was active much more than usual so I put on my statist gloves and now I wait in my libertarian blind composed of capitalism and stable society *ahem* I believe you mean corporatism, or crony capitalism which is of course a misnomer
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Oct 1, 2014 05:21
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Oh hey there's a lot of new posts in this thread since I stopped following it...SedanChair posted:Thieeeef, thief! Curse the Hayek, it stole Mises' Nobel Prize, we hates it forever!!! 
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Oct 1, 2014 05:22
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SedanChair posted:Clearly it was time for you to "depart family of origin" and become a strong independent woman who ain't need no dad. I did. I ran away the rich girl way through legally emancipating myself and transferring assets that had been put in my name as a tax dodge into an account my parents didn't have access to. Bridge burned. Haven't spoken to my father in over two decades. I underestimated how much I would need but was able to win a scholarship and between my technically not stealing nest egg, summer jobs, and government assistance I put myself through school and got a degree in math&comp sci. In concerned for the girls who run away without tens of thousands of dollars in a bank account.
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Oct 1, 2014 05:41
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Who What Now posted:Somehow "preparing for everything" always boils down to "have enough cash on hand to fix it", though. Pretty much, yeah.
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Oct 1, 2014 05:43
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Mr Interweb posted:However, I do have one question that I wanted to ask. You only recently realized that libertarians/Republicans are racist shitheels? I mean, they've been talking about shooting messicans via cannon back to Mexico and advocating giving internment camps another chance when talking about the muslins. I apologize in advance for rambling on a bit, but this gets me worked up. I thought the racists/nativists/bigots/homophobes/misogynists were a vocal minority of right-wingers. Think of me like the Log Cabin Republicans. They are gay and Republican, they know their party sucks on that issue, but to them the best way to address it is changing the party from the inside. I thought if all immigrant/non-white Republicans fled at the first sighting of a racist Republican, who would fight the good fight within the Republican party? If people like me left the Republican party en-masse, the Tea Party extremists would run rough-shod over every primary election in the country. This thinking prevailed until early 2013. I have friends and family member whose lives are torn apart by the immigration system, so I was paying particularly close attention to the immigration debates, hearings, and developments post-2012. It became clear the nativists weren't just a minority. The loud and stupid ones were a minority, but they had a sea of "silent support" that cried out with screeching reactionary vitriol as prospects of relief for undocumented immigrants rose in Congress. It was stunning to me. I had always considered the massive immigration bureaucracy and restrictions a part of the  big government that Republicans claimed they hated, and I naively thought a majority of conservatives would side with immigrants and against the heavy handed mass-deportation policy favored by nativists. The opposite ended up happening.It became clear that the Republican/libertarian version of freedom didn't extend to immigrants. It was liberty for rich white straight Christian males only. It wasn't the kind of "freedom for all" that young, starry-eyed idealists like me had come to expect. Months later, I was encouraged by seeing reports of many other disillusioned people leaving the Republican party for being too extreme. The Log Cabin Republicans founder left. A Hispanic GOP operative quit. Followed by another one. I suspect these people too had always known they were at odds with some people in their party. But for many of them, like me, there came a breaking point in the last two years where we realized we were fooling ourselves and we would never really make the GOP any more inclusive or tolerant by remaining in it. It's a den of intolerance and they'd sooner lose every election from now to judgement day than renounce their bigotry. LolitaSama fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Oct 1, 2014 05:49
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McAlister posted:I did. I ran away the rich girl way through legally emancipating myself and transferring assets that had been put in my name as a tax dodge into an account my parents didn't have access to. Bridge burned. Haven't spoken to my father in over two decades. Err, to explain a little about that comment, Depart family of Origin is a term that originates from Libertarian philospher and in my opinion, cult leader, Stephan Molyneux. One of his things is that since all parents abuse their children, whether physically, emotionally or whatever, it is impossible to have a real relationship with them. Thus you should DeFOO and also you should send a lot of money to Molyneux. That said, the standard libertarian response to your argument would be one of two things. Both would probably argue that your situation is horrible, some might possibly suggest that it would never happen in a free market society because abusive religious/other practices would be discouraged. Because that somehow makes sense. Past that the groups would be divided in their reply between 'Charity' or simply giving no fucks, by way of saying that while it is bad it isn't someone else's problem and stealing from them to provide you with school is amoral. Now the Charity angle is enormous bullshit, as evidenced by the fact that the loving Miss America pageant is apparently the largest women dedicated scholarship fund in the US and that at perhaps 1/10th of the number they actually claim. It also has a ton of strings attached to boot. I personally think the 'giving no fucks' angle is more honest. It sucks, but it isn't their problem that your dad is an rear end in a top hat and they shouldn't have to pay for a rich girl's school because daddy didn't want to, just like they shouldn't have to pay for a poor person's medication because they are too poor.
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Oct 1, 2014 05:54
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