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RuanGacho posted:This is really all need be said on the subject. Trying to take government out of existence is trying to pretend life exists in amber.  Oxyrrhis marina: "Let me get at the nutrition inside of you"  Emiliania huxleyi: "H-how can I" O. marina: "do it, you're most flavorful to me" E. huxleyi: "this...this is aggression!"
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Oct 8, 2014 21:23
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BrandorKP posted:Oh for fucks sake. If you exist you coerce. gently caress, I'm in complete agreement with BrandorKP. I don't know what's real anymore.
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Oct 8, 2014 21:27
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You know, the abusive-police chat earlier made me think of something: what would stop a DRO from mandating in its standard contract for its customers that its enforcement officers can't be sued or prosecuted for their actions on the job?
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Oct 9, 2014 00:01
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BrandorKP posted:Oh for fucks sake. If you exist you coerce. Got it. Economic coercion - no big deal.
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Oct 9, 2014 00:19
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StandardVC10 posted:You know, the abusive-police chat earlier made me think of something: what would stop a DRO from mandating in its standard contract for its customers that its enforcement officers can't be sued or prosecuted for their actions on the job? I assume the same thing that would stop them from mandating a clause that members must serve as an enforcement officer for the DRO for at least four years before receiving full benefits. Would you like to know more?
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Oct 9, 2014 00:26
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I don't see what's so controversial about what asdf said. He's right. If people actually made ideal decisions with complete long-term knowledge government would be unnecessary, but that's a complete fantasy world, much like the one libertarians inhabit.
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Oct 9, 2014 00:31
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Waaaah the Christians are out to get me
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The Libertarian Communist explanation was cool. Not sure if I could agree with it, but it was a headscratcher of a term. In maybe Libertarian terms, are there people who's rational self interest would make them prefer Stateistan over Libertopia? Or more broadly, the use of agression over the NAP? There probably are, since there's something like that for just about every change, but I guess it depends on proportions and vehemence. What do you say to them, what do you do about them, especially when their rational action is to tell you to get hosed. Like, the Authoritarian Communist solution is straightforward, just shoot them in the face, but what is the NAP action? I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be able to accept an argument that it's a Pareto efficient change unless you're making some horrible joke about parrots. Maybe the Legalist urge comes from misinterpreting that old saw about trading a little liberty for a little security and losing both as meaning "Go big or go home." It's been a few pages, but I still want to know about the feudal thing.
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Oct 9, 2014 01:00
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Libertarian Communism is completely a real thing, completely a legitimate thing, and has nothing to do with the thought of American libertarians. Because, as I mentioned, it is legitimate.
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Oct 9, 2014 01:18
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Quantum Mechanic posted:I don't see what's so controversial about what asdf said. He's right. If people actually made ideal decisions with complete long-term knowledge government would be unnecessary, but that's a complete fantasy world, much like the one libertarians inhabit. Even if we completely define humanity out of existence and into omnicient relentlessly rational daemons with perfect time preference that can and do flawlessly maximise utility across their entire lifetimes, there's still a conflict between individual and collective interests. With my daemon omniscience, I know that the disastrous effects of global warming won't arise until 50 years after my death. Thus, it's in my self-interest to, along with the rest of my age cohort, enjoy the benefits of polluting industry. Since we currently own all industry and control the justice system, our children and grandchildren can't affect this until too late. Sucks for them, but I'll be dead so I won't even experience the sadness of watching them suffer. Hell, even if I did want to stop global warming, it's not in my self-interest to go green, because I'm an infinitesimal part of the problem. Solving it depends on what everyone else does, classic Prisoner's Dilemma. If we can't get together and make a law to penalize noncooperation, it's always in my self-interest to defect no matter what the other 7 billion daemons on the planet do. Libertarianism is irredeemable poo poo, don't give them the moral high ground of being too good for this fallen world. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Oct 9, 2014 |
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Oct 9, 2014 02:02
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Quantum Mechanic posted:I don't see what's so controversial about what asdf said. He's right. If people actually made ideal decisions with complete long-term knowledge government would be unnecessary, but that's a complete fantasy world, much like the one libertarians inhabit. It's not controversial at all. It's about as meaningful as talking about a world where humans never existed in the first place, or a world where all of the water was actually whiskey, but it's not controversial
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Oct 9, 2014 02:13
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Who What Now posted:gently caress, I'm in complete agreement with BrandorKP. I don't know what's real anymore. Think of it as the Americans, Iranians, and the Kurds all fighting ISIS.
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Oct 9, 2014 02:27
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paragon1 posted:Think of it as the Americans, Iranians, and the Kurds all fighting ISIS. So in this metaphor if I'm America and Brandor is Iran, who represents the Kurds and ISIS?
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Oct 9, 2014 02:54
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Who What Now posted:So in this metaphor if I'm America and Brandor is Iran, who represents the Kurds and ISIS? I'm the EU, in that I too find common cause with Brandon uncomfortable and limit my involvement in the larger matter to occasional, feckless sniping.
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Oct 9, 2014 03:19
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QuarkJets posted:It's not controversial at all. It's about as meaningful as talking about a world where humans never existed in the first place, or a world where all of the water was actually whiskey, but it's not controversial Yep. So the argument is that yes, government can be considered coercive and yes we recognize this but we're ok with it because of the practical and/or moral tradeoffs involved. The deeper point here is that these tradeoffs underlie basically every political conclusion. The libertarian position here is extreme, but mirrors analogous judgement calls made by other ideologies - the left's opinion on coercion and exploitation for example (both exist, how important they are is similarly debatable). Neither is based in some logical absolute - they're both the result of varying judgement calls combined with different values.
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Oct 9, 2014 04:00
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Who What Now posted:So in this metaphor if I'm America and Brandor is Iran, who represents the Kurds and ISIS? ISIS is the libertarians. I guess the Kurds are whatever communists are posting ITT?
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Oct 9, 2014 06:15
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I think we broke The Mutato. He promised to answer me about my economic coercion / labor supply question and has never returned. Maybe he's busy redefining his world views?
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Oct 9, 2014 06:21
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asdf32 posted:Yep. Lemon, wet, good. In security you're taught that you must think as if you're evil and then take that knowledge to do good by protecting against what evil you can conceive. This doesn't give being a regressive evangelist unable to understand causation permission to poo poo up the world with bad policy on some sort of everyone is special, every opinion is worth valuing idiocy doesn't make them of the same ideological value. I'm quite sure at this point you're saying these things out of some desire to show how gosh darn pragmatic you are. Nevermind the two things you're trying to conflate together, the entirety of "leftist" ideology and libertarianism of one or two societal destroying flavors is an idiotic framing game at best. Leftist ideology exists and functions in the real world while libertarianism's power is restricted to getting people like me with too much time to engage, which I'm able to do because of my bourgeoisie lifestyle, at the purely facile level of pissing me off enough to go from apathy to pointing out how stupid every little thing conceived by the philosophy is stupid. RuanGacho fucked around with this message at 07:22 on Oct 9, 2014 |
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Oct 9, 2014 06:39
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asdf32 posted:Yep. That's a bit deceptive; even in the absence of government, if a community raised funds to build a road or something you can be drat sure that the community would be "coercive" in demanding that everyone who uses the road pays for a share of it. So it's not really "the government" that's coercive, it's society. If people were already inclined to believe in the libertarian worldview, then the government wouldn't really be considered coercive at all: it would essentially be a giant DRO, and people would argue that if you don't like it then you could just leave and go to some other DRO/nation (nevermind that you can already do this, right now, without libertopia) This is why the whole ancap libertarian thing of saying that the government is "the men with guns" doesn't really make sense; it's way more civil than that, and in the absence of a government the alternative really would be men with guns. QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Oct 9, 2014 |
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Oct 9, 2014 07:40
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Ugh, if only the government would get out of the market AT&T wouldn't have to charge customers for services they didn't consent to. It isn't like AT&T has a history of rent-seeking.
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Oct 9, 2014 13:13
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RuanGacho posted:Leftist ideology exists and functions in the real world Not really, no. Unless you're willing to be fuzzy about what exactly that means in a way you're not willing to be when talking about libertarianism. Everything real is a pragmatic compromise.
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Oct 9, 2014 13:34
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QuarkJets posted:That's a bit deceptive; even in the absence of government, if a community raised funds to build a road or something you can be drat sure that the community would be "coercive" in demanding that everyone who uses the road pays for a share of it. So it's not really "the government" that's coercive, it's society. If people were already inclined to believe in the libertarian worldview, then the government wouldn't really be considered coercive at all: it would essentially be a giant DRO, and people would argue that if you don't like it then you could just leave and go to some other DRO/nation (nevermind that you can already do this, right now, without libertopia) Yes coercion exists in a million forms. But it's worth being able to see each of them. The government really does have guns and men willing to use them for a whole range of infractions. So it's really a pretty good candidate for the label "coersion". Oh your last point is exactly right and one I made earlier. We don't have a choice as to whether we have a state or not. The choice is whether we make a state for ourselves, or get taken over by some other state. States are too powerful to be resisted by unorganized societies. Look at what ISIS has been able to do to weak states, or Russia to it's neighboring state. These are both examples from 2014. asdf32 fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Oct 9, 2014 |
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Oct 9, 2014 13:36
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asdf32 posted:Yes coercion exists in a million forms. But it's worth being able to see each of them. The government really does have guns and men willing to use them for a whole range of infractions. So it's really a pretty good candidate for the label "coersion". I think a pure an cap world would end up improvising institutions that would come to look a lot like governments. Governments are pretty useful.
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Oct 9, 2014 13:42
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wateroverfire posted:I think a pure an cap world would end up improvising institutions that would come to look a lot like governments. Governments are pretty useful. Fear does it pretty quick. One rampaging ISIS like state pops up on one side of libertopia and suddenly the idea of a government with a defensive force looks a whole lot better to people on the other side.
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Oct 9, 2014 13:46
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wateroverfire posted:I think a pure an cap world would end up improvising institutions that would come to look a lot like governments. Governments are pretty useful. Of course, the issue is that they wouldn't resemble democratic governments.
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Oct 9, 2014 13:51
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asdf32 posted:Fear does it pretty quick. One rampaging ISIS like state pops up on one side of libertopia and suddenly the idea of a government with a defensive force looks a whole lot better to people on the other side. Nothing that dramatic, even. Imagine the streets in your an cap town need repaving. A whole bunch of residents are going to have to put up some cash (roads are expensive), and an RFP will have to go out to contractors, right of way will have to be negotiated, etc. All that is a pain in the rear end to do individually so you (the community) appoint a committee to work out the details. There's your proto government. As more issues like that come up it might be useful to have people whose job it is to do it all the time. And then those people might need some explicit authority or a mechanism to convince hold-outs, etc...
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Oct 9, 2014 13:55
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Strawman posted:Of course, the issue is that they wouldn't resemble democratic governments. I guess they might not, but why is it obvious that they wouldn't? Pure An-Cap ideology is sort of incompatible with democracy but unless we stipulate that it can't happen it seems like people might decide they don't want to be doctrinaire An-Caps anymore.
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Oct 9, 2014 14:01
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Letting the poors have a say? That's communism!
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Oct 9, 2014 14:02
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wateroverfire posted:I guess they might not, but why is it obvious that they wouldn't? Pure An-Cap ideology is sort of incompatible with democracy but unless we stipulate that it can't happen it seems like people might decide they don't want to be doctrinaire An-Caps anymore. It's only obvious, as the An-Caps I've encountered online have been very derisive of the concept of democracy. The people having a voice is anathema to their aims.
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Oct 9, 2014 14:03
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wateroverfire posted:I guess they might not, but why is it obvious that they wouldn't? Before we get any further, ain't you the guy who is like "Pinochet wasn't all bad"?
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Oct 9, 2014 14:06
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wateroverfire posted:I guess they might not, but why is it obvious that they wouldn't? Pure An-Cap ideology is sort of incompatible with democracy but unless we stipulate that it can't happen it seems like people might decide they don't want to be doctrinaire An-Caps anymore. An ancap world basically involves pressing the reset button on human history. I wouldn't expect democracy to be the next step.
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Oct 9, 2014 14:10
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SedanChair posted:Before we get any further, ain't you the guy who is like "Pinochet wasn't all bad"? Like a lot of historical figures (Stalin, Mao, etc), he did some horrible things that no sane person would condone and some things that kind of worked out and also some things that were necessary because of the circumstances but painful or distasteful. Mostly I get annoyed when people are like "CHILE WAS A LEFTIST PARADISE WE WERE GOING TO MAKE IT HAPPEN THIS TIME AND THEN PINOCHET *rabble rabble*".
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Oct 9, 2014 14:27
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asdf32 posted:Got it. Economic coercion - no big deal. No, it is a massive huge, fuckoff big deal. Just one not fixed by smaller or eliminated governments. I'll say it another way. Reduction of the size of government does gently caress all towards reconciling sin. Lower taxes, doesn't make us free. Reducing regulation isn't going to stop groups or individuals from coercing each other. The most basic fundamental premise, the initial transcendental a priori axiom, the root, the foundation of the ideology is bullshit. It is a non-sequitor solution to the problem it tries to rectify. Saying this in no way asserts that the problem is "- no big deal."
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Oct 9, 2014 14:35
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BrandorKP posted:No, it is a massive huge, fuckoff big deal. Economic Coercion needs a new name that doesn't include the word "Coercion". EC just expresses the idea that if a person's array of money-acquisition options includes A, B and C, but not X, when they would prefer X, they are constrained to choosing a money-making activity that is sub-optimal for them because if they choose nothing they get no money. It's not a thing libertarianism is concerned about and doesn't factor into a libertarian conception of coercion.
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Oct 9, 2014 15:28
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I really wanted to work in a locked firetrap factory, but the state is forcing me to make the suboptimal choice of working in a safe building with fire suppression and emergency exits.
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Oct 9, 2014 15:32
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wateroverfire posted:Economic Coercion needs a new name that doesn't include the word "Coercion". Economic coercion isn't about what someone would "prefer", it's about controlling the means of survival of the individual and their family. In a libertarian setting, where there is no social safety net, a coercive employer can do what he or she pleases to and demand nearly anything from a worker who has no other choices but to work for them. Unpaid overtime and "picking up the boss's drycleaning" are examples of this in action even with a social net. The possiblities in the libertarian dystopia are as endless as they are terrifying.
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Oct 9, 2014 15:33
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Talmonis posted:Economic coercion isn't about what someone would "prefer", it's about controlling the means of survival of the individual and their family. In a libertarian setting, where there is no social safety net, a coercive employer can do what he or she pleases to and demand nearly anything from a worker who has no other choices but to work for them. That condition doesn't obtain unless that employer is the only employer and there are literally no other ways of making money and the worker somehow has no friends or family or etc. You have to artificially constrain the worker's options to "work for this employer" or "do nothing else to try to support themselves" to get to that result. edit: To step back a moment, if you enter with the premise that people lack all agency you're fundamentally at odds with the libertarian in a way that I don't think can be reconciled because you disagree on a really important level about how the world works. wateroverfire fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Oct 9, 2014 |
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Oct 9, 2014 15:42
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wateroverfire posted:That condition doesn't obtain unless that employer is the only employer and there are literally no other ways of making money and the worker somehow has no friends or family or etc. You have to artificially constrain the worker's options to "work for this employer" or "do nothing else to try to support themselves" to get to that result. And thus, unsafe working conditions never existed, QED
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Oct 9, 2014 15:47
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VitalSigns posted:And thus, unsafe working conditions never existed, QED That's a thing that you said, but not a thing that follows from what I said. So IDK, you explain the contradiction.
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Oct 9, 2014 15:49
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wateroverfire posted:That condition doesn't obtain unless that employer is the only employer and there are literally no other ways of making money and the worker somehow has no friends or family or etc. You have to artificially constrain the worker's options to "work for this employer" or "do nothing else to try to support themselves" to get to that result. Historically, employers will happily conspire to constrain worker options and lower wages. Yes, people do lack agency when they don't start out with the means of either production, or the means to aquire an education or skill. Labor is all a lot of folks have, and business is what controls their fate. Without societal intervention, they would obey their employer's every whim, or starve. This is to say nothing of the mentally ill, the sick or the disabled. Those folks are proper hosed. Better pray you don't suffer from severe depression, or worse.
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Oct 9, 2014 15:49
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http://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-fixing-cartel-involved-dozens-more-companies-over-one-million-employees/ Again, this is what businesses get away with at the high end of the wage scale / "skilled workers". Low-wage workers don't have a chance and to pretend otherwise, I don't even know.
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Oct 9, 2014 15:55
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