Libertarians: You fire fighter lovers sure are good at debate!

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I Am The Scum: May 8, 2007; The devil made me do it

Richard Feynmann lays down the law.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL6-x0modwY

It's really funny seeing Jrod's posts in comparison.

# ? Oct 27, 2014 17:35

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# ? May 13, 2024 21:44

Who What Now: Sep 10, 2006; by Azathoth

drat, Caros, that was a good beatdown. I'm impressed. :golfclap:

# ? Oct 27, 2014 17:43

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

jrodefeld" posted:

Central planners of all stripes have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the social sciences. They suffer from physics envy. Economists want to consider their discipline a part of the "hard" sciences where empirical research and perpetually falsifiable hypotheses are put forward as the correct method for that line of inquiry.

I like how he says that modern economists suffer from physics envy because they go collect facts to make sure their predictions agree with the real world, but then he has the biggest math envy ever even though the pure math that he's pointing to makes absolutely no claims about the real world at all and is only used in situations where we have empirical support for its applicability there.

It's actually kind of a funny parallel to Ayn Rand, who regularly castigated physicists for using probabilistic models.

Ayn Rand posted:

The disintegration of philosophy in the nineteenth century and its collapse in the twentieth have led to a similar, though much slower and less obvious, process in the course of modern science.

Today�s frantic development in the field of technology has a quality reminiscent of the days preceding the economic crash of 1929: riding on the momentum of the past, on the unacknowledged remnants of an Aristotelian epistemology, it is a hectic, feverish expansion, heedless of the fact that its theoretical account is long since overdrawn�that in the field of scientific theory, unable to integrate or interpret their own data, scientists are abetting the resurgence of a primitive mysticism.

The nuclear bomb was a lucky guess everyone. Oppenheimer was just a primitive mystic who got lucky because he was coasting on unacknowledged remnants of classical physics. The Standard Model may look like it's been empirically verified to greater precision than any other theory in history, but it's obviously just demon worship.

# ? Oct 27, 2014 18:01

woke wedding drone: Jun 1, 2003; by exmarx; Fun Shoe

Don't put too much thought into what he's saying here. All of Mises' bullshit is at its core no more than jrodefeld has managed to distill. In a haze of delusion, Mises thought "humans act! Disagree? DISAGREEING IS ITSELF AN ACTION" and there you are, the irrefutable shahada of libertarianism, the "logic bomb" that only faith will allow us to perceive.

# ? Oct 27, 2014 18:32

Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 227 days!

Caros posted:

And I for one will absolutely say that the rigorous application of logic and reason is inherently inferior to empirical testing in all cases. Go take a look at the Social Networking thread and you'll find a kindred spirit who has logically proven that networks are the source of everything. He is just as wrong as you are, because A Priori works as a starting point for a hypothesis, but it is no substitute for testing to see if your insanity matches reality. Which it does not.

Eh, let's give Eripsa due credit: he probably understands logic reasonably well, if only because he has to teach it. Also, his lovely ideas are his own and he put actual thought into them. That much of that thought is delusion, wishful thinking, and self-deception is unfortunate

jrodfeld does understand the ideas he espouses well enough to phrase them in his own words, while Eripsa isn't so hot in that department. But again, Mr. Network also draws from far more varied and complicated sources and attempts to put them together in order to arrive at original insights.

e: we call them shitposters, but they're so entertaining that I have nuanced opinions on their relative merit. There is probably some genuine insight into social networks to be derived from that.

Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Oct 27, 2014

# ? Oct 27, 2014 18:52

sudo rm -rf: Aug 2, 2011; $ mv fullcommunism.sh /america $ cd /america $ ./fullcommunism.sh

I still can't get over the fact that the dude admitted his ideology wasn't falsifiable, gently caress the evidence. That's some young-earth creationism levels of deluded.

# ? Oct 27, 2014 18:53

Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 227 days!

sudo rm -rf posted:

I still can't get over the fact that the dude admitted his ideology wasn't falsifiable, gently caress the evidence. That's some young-earth creationism levels of deluded.

Nah, Young Earth Creationists believe that the evidence is being hidden. Even the ones who literally think Satan is responsible at least admit that, in principle, empirical observation should be reliable enough to challenge their ideas.

e: likewise, Scientologists have to be tricked into thinking there is an empirical basis to Dianetics until they are so far into crazyland that they are inducing out-of-body experieces on a regular basis. This poo poo is quite literally crazier than anything short of Time Cube.

Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Oct 27, 2014

# ? Oct 27, 2014 18:57

Who What Now: Sep 10, 2006; by Azathoth

sudo rm -rf posted:

I still can't get over the fact that the dude admitted his ideology wasn't falsifiable, gently caress the evidence. That's some young-earth creationism levels of deluded.

There are a lot of similarities between Libertarians and YECs, rejection of the scientific method and the belief in an all powerful invisible force that guides humanity are just a few of them.

# ? Oct 27, 2014 18:58

I Am The Scum: May 8, 2007; The devil made me do it

Hodgepodge posted:

Nah, Young Earth Creationists believe that the evidence is being hidden. Even the ones who literally think Satan is responsible at least admit that, in principle, empirical observation should be reliable enough to challenge their ideas.

e: likewise, Scientologists have to be tricked into thinking there is an empirical basis to Dianetics until they are so far into crazyland that they are inducing out-of-body experieces on a regular basis. This poo poo is quite literally crazier than anything short of Time Cube.

Well, Jrod did dip his toe in the conspiracy theorist pool by insisting that science can be bought to bring about any result.

# ? Oct 27, 2014 19:01

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

I Am The Scum posted:

Well, Jrod did dip his toe in the conspiracy theorist pool by insisting that science can be bought to bring about any result.

But only when those results support a minimum wage or theories about anthropogenic climate change or tobacco's link to cancer are they obviously bought. Economic and scientific studies funded by Koch industries or Exxon or Marlboro are would never be biased, oh no. In the free market only truthfulness is rewarded economically, unlike in universities where the only criterion for advancement is conformity.

sudo rm -rf posted:

I still can't get over the fact that the dude admitted his ideology wasn't falsifiable, gently caress the evidence. That's some young-earth creationism levels of deluded.

To be fair, he's taking the Rothbardian approach of accepting evidence which supports praxeology. It's just that, well there's a lot of people out there who claim to have empirical evidence, so the axioms of praxeology are a good guide for determining what to keep (eg, evidence for meritocracy) and what to throw out (eg any research suggesting black poverty is due to racism and not any inherent inferiority of the darker races). You can't just look at things and draw conclusions without some philosophy to inform you when the things you're seeing are real and when the evidence is a trick by Satan to test your faith.

# ? Oct 27, 2014 19:08

Talmonis: Jun 24, 2012; The fairy of forgiveness has removed your red text.

I Am The Scum posted:

Well, Jrod did dip his toe in the conspiracy theorist pool by insisting that science can be bought to bring about any result.

Which is an adorable sentiment, considering the "think tanks" that Libertarians run.

# ? Oct 27, 2014 19:08

Babylon Astronaut: Apr 19, 2012

People did predict the mortgage backed securities crisis, they were just shouted down by Ayn Rand fanboys. The market is not prepared to hear that maybe we should put the brakes on something wildly profitable. It's the nature of the beast. It is the entire reason that Keynes proscribes government intervention.

quote:

I'll end with a question about where Keynesianism and the empirical approach to economic analysis has lead us. I don't think I have to remind everyone that the "empirical" mainstream economics profession failed spectacularly to warn us about the impending crash of the housing market in 2008.

See, this is really loving stupid. I can find you thousands of pages of keynesians and neo-keynesians warning about the dangers of unregulated derivatives. Meanwhile, the "mainsteam economists" in charge were on a 30 year run of supply-side bullshit. That is the opposite of the point you are trying to make.

# ? Oct 27, 2014 19:19

wateroverfire: Jul 3, 2010

Hodgepodge posted:

In standard economics, this is an a posteriori claim based on the observation that when free to do so, humans tend to choose which actions to perform based on how they evaluate the consequences for things they value.

It's not a claim based on observation. It's a simplifying assumption about why people make decisions that permits economists to model behavior in a way that produces results. The argument is some formulation of this:

1) If people do stuff it's because it seems worthwhile, to them, to do that stuff for some reason.
2) Furthermore, if a person does a thing it's because it seems like the most worthwhile thing to do for whatever reason, out of the set of things they believe they could be doing.
3) Therefore if a person is observed doing a thing, we can infer that what they chose to do was the most worthwhile thing of all the things they thought they could be doing.

And it motivates the utility maximization framework from which we derive a bunch of microeconomic models. Those are assumptions rather than claims based on observation.

Bonerslam could probably explain this way better than I can, if he's reading.

# ? Oct 27, 2014 19:26

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

wateroverfire posted:

It's not a claim based on observation. It's a simplifying assumption about why people make decisions that permits economists to model behavior in a way that produces results. The argument is some formulation of this:

1) If people do stuff it's because it seems worthwhile, to them, to do that stuff for some reason.
2) Furthermore, if a person does a thing it's because it seems like the most worthwhile thing to do for whatever reason, out of the set of things they believe they could be doing.
3) Therefore if a person is observed doing a thing, we can infer that what they chose to do was the most worthwhile thing of all the things they thought they could be doing.

Yeah we've been over this. The thing is, your formulation, let's call it the Weak Action Axiom, is a tautology which is all fine and well (although it of course has no predictive value then). Libertarians are making a strong formulation, the Strong Action Axiom so to speak, as a basis to conclude that therefore coercion is always a net negative to the well-being of society. A conclusion that the Weak Action Axiom doesn't allow.

For example, take the gender pay gap. The Weak Action Axiom has no problem explaining in its tautological way how this could happen without women's work being inferior. Most of the people in charge could just be overtly or unconsciously sexist and think that paying a woman less is the most worthwhile thing of all the things they could be doing. Supporting Equal Pay legislation wouldn't run afoul of your formulation because we could just decide that what those people think is worthwhile (basing career opportunities on sexism) is not actually best for society.

But ask a Libertarian about that. He can never support equal pay legislation because it's coercive and by the Strong Action Axiom coercion always leads to suboptimal outcomes. So if you ask someone at the Ludwig von Mises institute, you'll get.

mises.org posted:

Now it obviously cannot be the case that women are paid 72 percent of what men are for doing the same work, not only because that violates the Equal Pay Act of 1963, but also because in that case any employer in his right mind would simply fire all his male employees and hire women at the lower wage rate.

If businesses could really pay women less for equal work, then by the Strong Action Axiom they'd only hire women, so women must get less money because of their silly ovaries hurting their productivity, QED :pseudo:

Get what I'm saying, my man?

VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Oct 27, 2014

# ? Oct 27, 2014 20:34

Caros: May 14, 2008

Who What Now posted:

drat, Caros, that was a good beatdown. I'm impressed.

Dawws, thanks. I do hope he comes back tonight, but considering he has a full page of well reasoned responses to his stuff instead of the typical :fuckoff:

replies that he gets when he starts up a thread, I'm not sure if he will. Can't exactly argue about tone.

# ? Oct 27, 2014 22:49

Who What Now: Sep 10, 2006; by Azathoth

Caros posted:

Dawws, thanks. I do hope he comes back tonight, but considering he has a full page of well reasoned responses to his stuff instead of the typical replies that he gets when he starts up a thread, I'm not sure if he will. Can't exactly argue about tone.

Even if it was nothing but :fuckoff:

he, as being a superior logical capabilities, should be above even noticing it and have no problem actually divorcing the message from the medium. People who argue over tone often don't have arguments.

# ? Oct 27, 2014 23:02

jrodefeld: Sep 22, 2012; by Shine

Strawman posted:

If they did measure real triangles to see if they conformed to Pythagorean Theorem, what do you think they'd find?

Can you give an example of an economist who agrees with your views and successfully predicted a 2008 housing market crash caused by deregulation allowing fraud on a massive scale to occur?

Easily done. All these economists are Austrians and they predicted and warned about the impending crash caused by an unsustainable housing bubble:

Mark Thornton: "Housing: Too Good to be True" http://mises.org/daily/1533

Frank Shostak: http://mises.org/daily/1882

Stefan Karlsson: "America's Unsustainable Boom" http://mises.org/daily/1670

Peter Schiff on business news networks (CNBC, Fox Business, etc): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgRGBNekFIw

Robert Wenzel: http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2008/07/government-isnt-god-fdic-sticks-banks.html

Hanz Sennsholz: "The Fed is Culpable" http://mises.org/daily/1089

Of course Ron Paul, who is not a professional economist but is nonetheless well read on the subject, also loudly and publicly predicted and warned of the housing bubble and impending crash on the House floor and on television.

By contrast, here are some select articles by Paul Krugman during the same time span. Not only is he not warning about an unsustainable boom and impending crash, he is calling for ever lower interest rates, as well as explicitly advocating for a housing bubble:

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/02/opinion/reckonings-dodging-the-bullet.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/14/opinion/reckonings-delusions-of-prosperity.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/07/opinion/reckonings-fuzzy-math-returns.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/28/opinion/could-ve-been-worse.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip.html

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/hair-of-the-dog

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/10/opinion/spin-the-payrolls.html

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/bush-is-right-about-something

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/27/opinion/27krugman.html

# ? Oct 28, 2014 00:43

Goon Danton: May 24, 2012; Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

jrodefeld posted:

By contrast, here are some select articles by Paul Krugman during the same time span. Not only is he not warning about an unsustainable boom and impending crash, he is calling for ever lower interest rates, as well as explicitly advocating for a housing bubble:

[...]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/27/opinion/27krugman.html

I just picked one of these at random.

Paul Krugman, Housing Bubble Cheerleader posted:

Nobody thought the economy could rely forever on home buying and refinancing. But the hope was that by the time the housing boom petered out, it would no longer be needed.

But although the housing boom has lasted longer than anyone could have imagined, the economy would still be in big trouble if it came to an end. That is, if the hectic pace of home construction were to cool, and consumers were to stop borrowing against their houses, the economy would slow down sharply. If housing prices actually started falling, we'd be looking at a very nasty scene, in which both construction and consumer spending would plunge, pushing the economy right back into recession.

That's why it's so ominous to see signs that America's housing market, like the stock market at the end of the last decade, is approaching the final, feverish stages of a speculative bubble.

Some analysts still insist that housing prices aren't out of line. But someone will always come up with reasons why seemingly absurd asset prices make sense. Remember "Dow 36,000"? Robert Shiller, who argued against such rationalizations and correctly called the stock bubble in his book "Irrational Exuberance," has added an ominous analysis of the housing market to the new edition, and says the housing bubble "may be the biggest bubble in U.S. history"

I think we have different definitions of "not warning about an unsustainable boom and impending crash."

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:02

Babylon Astronaut: Apr 19, 2012

Hey guys, there's going to be a boom and bust cycle. Call me the loving oracle.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:05

jrodefeld: Sep 22, 2012; by Shine

sudo rm -rf posted:

Is it just me or did jrodefeld just come out and admit that austrian economics isn't falsifiable?

Your reading comprehension isn't very good. Did you watch the youtube video I linked to? Austrian economists use empiricism quite often in their research but they know where it is appropriate to use it and where it is inappropriate.

Empirical studies can and do support the a priori economic laws regarding human action that the Austrians assert but these laws are still NOT hypotheses.

Let us take the first law of economics. Humans act. Now, do we need to do an empirical study to determine whether humans act or not? Obviously everything we do is an action. The fact of human action must be logically assumed because it cannot be denied without engaging in a performative contradiction.

There are logical implications of the fact of human action that can be deduced that don't require constant testing to verify or falsify. A hypothesis in the Natural sciences is merely a tentative "law" that is established because we haven't YET seen any evidence that contradicts it. Yet we assume that at any time we might find new information that invalidates our previous hypothesis.

This is how science evolves in the hard sciences, through continuous testing. This is how Physics work. The social sciences, among which includes economics, are decidedly different and require different approaches.

Now, once certain economic laws that can be deduced from the fact of human action are established, THEN Austrians use empiricism to evaluate many different kinds of economic phenomenon. Empirical testing can, and has repeatedly, validated and supported the Austrian view on the effects of minimum wage laws, the causes of economic recessions and depressions and many other things. The difference is that the economic laws that are established at the outside are not reliant upon empirical validation, but rather are established through a rigorous logical deductive method.

Central planners rail against economic laws and would love to convince you that they can raise living standards through hikes in the minimum wage, for example. Or they want to convince you that wage and price controls don't have deleterious effects on the economy at large. To assume that ALL of economics merely consists of tentative hypotheses based on the latest round of State-funded empirical testing means that the discipline is merely flailing about, without any direction.

We are merely subject to the whims of the technocrats who happen to be in charge at that particular point in time. We hear endless pronouncements from these "experts" such as "we now understand what caused the Great Depression and it will never happen again" to "we have cured the boom and bust cycle by finding the perfect centrally planned interest rate". Keynesian theory was blown out of the water in the 1970s when we had stagflation, which was not supposed to be possible according to Keynesian theory. Again and again we are assured that the central planners have solved the boom and bust cycle and we are due for perpetual economic growth. Then inevitably in a few years we suffer through a major recession.

This is because these economists are ignoring economic laws. Through their hubris they think they can subvert objective reality through legislation.

The Austrians have a much better record because they use a priorism based upon reason, logic and argumentation, coupled with empiricism to bolster their economic and historical analysis.

Certain predictions of the Austrians have in fact been invalidated and rejected or modified by subsequent Austrian economists due to observable reality. Like any other science, economics relies upon subsequent generations improving upon the theories and arguments of their predecessors.

What is baffling is the insistence by some that the rigorous use of reason and logic, the law of non contradiction and the necessary implications of human action are "unscientific" or un-serious or indicative of a cult.

You just don't understand the difference between social sciences and hard sciences.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:06

McAlister: Nov 3, 2002; by exmarx

JRod.

You and your idols don't understand what a voluntary transaction is. Your ideals only work if you first make sure that every person is provided with all they need and lack only wants. Only then can transactions be truly voluntary.

And you need a state or some kind of central planning to do this. Socialism for needs, capitalism for wants. That's the way to do it. It maximizes individual liberty far beyond any of the dross you are peddling.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:06

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

Babylon Astronaut posted:

Hey guys, there's going to be a boom and bust cycle. Call me the loving oracle.

Actually the crash that will make 2008 look like a light sneeze will be here by the end of this year

Peter Schiff posted:

Two-thousand and eight was just an overture. The opera is coming. The real financial crisis is coming in 2013, 2014. And so, we�ll get a real choice, a fork in the road. One way is going to lead toward complete authoritarianism, complete totalitarian government, and the other way is going to lead back to freedom.

Get ready!!

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:07

Babylon Astronaut: Apr 19, 2012

I called it. If it isn't this one, it's the next one. I promise.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:09

CharlestheHammer: Jun 26, 2011; YOU SAY MY POSTS ARE THE RAVINGS OF THE DUMBEST PERSON ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH BUT YOU YOURSELF ARE READING THEM. CURIOUS!

jrodefeld posted:

Your reading comprehension isn't very good. Did you watch the youtube video I linked to? Austrian economists use empiricism quite often in their research but they know where it is appropriate to use it and where it is inappropriate.

It is a coincidence that the correct times to use empiricism is when it happens to back the Austrian position.

I am sure.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:09

Babylon Astronaut: Apr 19, 2012

Ok I tried to read the doomsaying article, and I got to "the government had inflated Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae far beyond their natural size." and started laughing. I got one, "the dollar is overvalued" and "inflation is coming, any day now, just wait for it." China calling in our gold, bubble commodities invest in precious metals Ron Paul chaos reigns.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:12

Caros: May 14, 2008

jrodefeld posted:

Easily done. All these economists are Austrians and they predicted and warned about the impending crash caused by an unsustainable housing bubble:

Mark Thornton: "Housing: Too Good to be True" http://mises.org/daily/1533

Frank Shostak: http://mises.org/daily/1882

Stefan Karlsson: "America's Unsustainable Boom" http://mises.org/daily/1670

Peter Schiff on business news networks (CNBC, Fox Business, etc): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgRGBNekFIw

Robert Wenzel: http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2008/07/government-isnt-god-fdic-sticks-banks.html

Hanz Sennsholz: "The Fed is Culpable" http://mises.org/daily/1089

Of course Ron Paul, who is not a professional economist but is nonetheless well read on the subject, also loudly and publicly predicted and warned of the housing bubble and impending crash on the House floor and on television.

By contrast, here are some select articles by Paul Krugman during the same time span. Not only is he not warning about an unsustainable boom and impending crash, he is calling for ever lower interest rates, as well as explicitly advocating for a housing bubble:

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/02/opinion/reckonings-dodging-the-bullet.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/14/opinion/reckonings-delusions-of-prosperity.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/07/opinion/reckonings-fuzzy-math-returns.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/28/opinion/could-ve-been-worse.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip.html

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/hair-of-the-dog

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/10/opinion/spin-the-payrolls.html

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/bush-is-right-about-something

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/27/opinion/27krugman.html

Christ Jrod, do we really have to do this every loving thread?

Low hanging fruit first, and then I'll go into some of the lesser known ones.

Peter Schiff - Peter Schiff is a a doomsayer. He has an austrian belief that government will eventually cause the US economy to collapse, so what he does is he constantly declares that the US economy will collapse. His entire buisness practice is based around this, with Euro-Pacific capital designed to get people to move their money overseas or into gold because the US economy is going to collapse. Here he is predicting a collapse in 2013. Here he is predicting a 2014 economic collapse. Here is a youtube video of him predicting collapses between 2009-2012[/url].

Pick a year, and I can guarantee you I can find an example of Peter Schiff predicting an economic collapse in that year. That does not require grand prognostication ability, it requires a small grasp of the english language and people stupid enough to listen. What is worth noting is that Peter "Predicted the crash" Schiff lost tons of customer money during the crash, which he shouldn't have since he predicted it.

Mark Thornton - He predicted a housing bubble in 2004. Whupty loving do. I predicted a housing bubble in 2004 by virtue of going "But housing prices can't increase forever." There are tons of economists who understood this basic fact, that wasn't the question you were asked. You were asked if you could find economists who agreed with your views and predicted a 2008 housing market crash caused by deregulation allowing fraud on a massive scale to occur. Mark Thornton recognized a bubble, a properly trained monkey could do that.

Frank Shostak - You might want to suggest this link instead, because your link barely mentions the housing bubble. He is actually the closest of any of them to getting things right, incidentally.

Stefan Karlsson - Again, nothing about when the bubble would pop, or about the specifics of what would happen. When people say 'predicted the crash' they mean both in timing and in effect. There is nothing here talking about seized credit lines, derivatives or anything else. This is boilerplate prognostication that could be done by anyone.

Robert Wenzel - You copied these right from the mises links didn't you, complete with not realizing you are linking to a $9 paid journal source. That is funny.

Hanz Sennsholz - See the above.

Now on top of all of that, the key defining difference between the prediction of people like Dean Baker, who predicted the collapse with startling clarity, and people like Ron Paul or Peter Schiff, is in the details. For example, Ron Paul predicted:

quote:

�Refinancing especially helped the consumers to continue spending even in a slowing economy. It isn�t surprising for high credit-card debt to be frequently rolled into second mortgages, since interest on mortgage debt has the additional advantage of being tax-deductible. When financial conditions warrant it, leaving financial instruments (such as paper assets), and looking for hard assets (such as houses), is commonplace and is not a new phenomenon. Instead of the newly inflated money being directed toward the stock market, it now finds its way into the rapidly expanding real-estate bubble. This, too, will burst as all bubbles do. The Fed, the Congress, or even foreign investors can�t prevent the collapse of this bubble, any more than the incestuous Japanese banks were able to keep the Japanese �miracle� of the 1980s going forever �. With the current direction of the dollar certainly downward, the day of reckoning is fast approaching. A weak dollar will prompt dumping of GSE securities before treasuries, despite the Treasury�s and the Fed's attempt to equate them with government securities. This will threaten the whole GSE system of finance, because the challenge to the dollar and the GSEs will hit just when the housing market turns down and defaults rise. Also a major accident can occur in the derivatives markets where Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are deeply involved in hedging their interest-rate bets. Rising interest rates that are inherent with a weak currency will worsen the crisis.�

Now read that really quickly. Ron Paul predicted an economic collapse back in 2001, I'll give you that. The problem? His reasoning for expecting that collapse had nothing to do with reality. The US financial collapse of 2008 had nothing to do with a weak dollar or GSE (government sponsored Enterprise) securities being dumped.

This is the important part that you fail to realize Jrod. Just because they said "Hey guys, this ongoing bubble we're in, yeah, its a bubble" doesn't mean they predicted anything beyond even the skill of a layman. To a man the austrians failed to recognize anything more than the baseline obvious causes, or in some cases, merely shrieked like harpies about how the sky was falling.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:14

woke wedding drone: Jun 1, 2003; by exmarx; Fun Shoe

Other analysts who predicted the crash:

-Lyndon LaRouche

-Sylvia Browne

-a street preacher in front of the Seattle Art Museum with a huge beard

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:16

jrodefeld: Sep 22, 2012; by Shine

An article by Mark Thornton:

quote:

What Empiricism Can't Tell Us, and Rationalism Can

It is no longer fashionable in political science to refer to "self-evident principles." Indeed, any reference to self-evident or axiomatic propositions is taken to be evidence that a scholar is leaving the realm of science and entering a mysterious netherworld consisting of tautologies, definitions, and metaphysical statements.

[1]
Thus, the great methodological debates within political science from early in the twentieth century to the present day represent what might best be described as "in-house" debates between scholars who take as given that political science must be an inductive and empirical discipline.

For example, the overthrow of the then dominant behaviorist/positivist epistemology and methodology in the middle third of the twentieth century was not precipitated by a debate about whether man should be studied empirically. Instead, the overthrow of behaviorism and positivism was precipitated by criticisms of the behaviorist epistemology and methodology from other empirically-minded scholars.

As another example we might cite the current quantitative/qualitative debate in political science. This debate is completely "in-house," in that all of the parties represented in the debate take as given that man must be studied empirically.[2] The debate is only about which empirical methods are best suited to political science.[3]

Given this broad consensus about the ultimate empiricist foundations of political science, it is perhaps appropriate to characterize the discipline as possessing a dominant "research tradition" in the sense that Larry Laudan employs the phrase.[4] In this sense we can describe the empiricist research tradition in political science as constraining virtually all of the debate about the proper questions to be asked in political science and the methods appropriate to the discipline.[5]

Even though the specific questions asked and methodologies employed within the discipline have evolved over time (such as the evolution from behaviorism to post-behaviorism and the eventual evolution from pluralism to rational choice theory, etc.) there has been no alteration in the basic underlying epistemological assumption that political science must be an empirical discipline. If this characterization of political science possessing a dominant research tradition is accepted, then an obvious question presents itself: Is the empiricist research tradition the one we ought to adopt?

I want to suggest that the empiricist epistemological position is not the one that we ought to accept, and that this epistemological position will make it literally impossible for political science to progress.

THE EMPIRICIST CONCEPT OF PROGRESS

According to the empiricist, nothing about the social world can be known with apodictic certainty. Instead, social phenomena can only be tentatively known to be true after examining the social world. If you think you know something to be true about the social world you have to test your theory against real experience. While there are obvious differences between the methodological schools within political science in the way in which they apply this empiricist epistemological position to concrete problems, virtually every modern methodological school assumes that you have to observe empirical phenomena before you can draw any conclusions about the social world. In sum, the scientific enterprise looks something like this for empiricists for both natural and social science:

HYPOTHESIS → SOME SPECIES OF EMPIRICAL TEST → TENTATIVE "KNOWLEDGE"

?

(Or, for pragmatists, a more "useful" theory)

Quite obviously, then, progress occurs in the social sciences in a manner exactly analogous to progress in the natural sciences.[6] Hypotheses are continually tested against new empirical data and are tentatively accepted as "true," or are rejected based upon the "evidence."

The cumulative sum of all of this empirical research gives us a certain amount of confidence in the theories that survive, although we are constantly attempting to formulate ever more precise empirically testable hypotheses.[7] One version of the empiricist epistemological position in particular took this idea of testing and empirical progress through accumulation to its logical end point.

This is, of course, the logical positivist epistemological position. The logical positivists claim that all non-testable propositions are either definitions, tautologies, or altogether meaningless.[8] If a proposition cannot be "verified" it is, ipso facto, meaningless according to the traditional logical positivists.

Prediction is thus an integral, if not the integral, part of the empiricist's idea of progress, (particularly for the logical positivists). For if it is true that we have to test our hypotheses against empirical evidence, the predictive ability of an hypothesis or theory quite literally determines its tentative acceptability.[9] If a theory or an hypothesis is incapable of predicting certain observable events that it purports to explain, then it is clear that even if the theory or hypothesis survives today it is destined to be at least partially refuted by future events.

We can see the unrivaled importance of prediction for the empiricist epitomized in the pragmatist philosophy of science. Although it may not be immediately obvious that pragmatists are empiricists, this fact emerges quite clearly once we recall that a pragmatist evaluates the utility of a theory only a posteriori; that is, there is for the pragmatist no way to establish the usefulness of a theory prior to its employment for some definite task.[10] While the pragmatist need not, and indeed rarely does, hold that a theory which predicts better than a rival theory is ipso facto "better," he does hold that a theory which better predicts those things which are immediately relevant to a specific problem is superior to a rival. The importance of prediction to the empirical political scientist can also be observed in the many critiques of the Rational Choice School. For the Rational Choice School is frequently berated for its inability to predict even general events, which is interpreted as evidence that the Rational Choice School is observably deficient in some respect.[11]

THE RATIONALIST EPISTEMOLOGY AND THE SYNTHETIC A PRIORI

To claim that the discipline of political science is dominated by the empiricist epistemology and methodology is to state nothing revolutionary. Indeed, this fact would appear completely unremarkable were it not for the fact that there still exists an alternative epistemology and methodology; namely, Rationalism. The rationalist epistemology starts from the assumption that man can know at least some things about his world with absolute certainty, and without "testing" to see if they are true through experience.[12] Some of this knowledge can be acquired through mere ratiocination alone (the analytic a priori), while other knowledge must be acquired with a certain admixture of experience (the synthetic a priori).

For the social sciences, the rationalists claim, the synthetic a priori is vital. Because man can reason, choose, and act, it is imperative that we acquire knowledge about human action that is, while synthetic, necessarily true.[13] We must begin our study of the social world with this a priori foundation because man is not governed by time-invariant laws in the same way that we presume natural phenomena are.[14] Man, in short, can choose to act in one way today, but he may choose to act in the opposite way tomorrow. This epistemological position implies, quite obviously, that the methods to be employed in the study of man must be of a radically different nature than those employed in the natural sciences.

The primary reason we must rely upon the synthetic a priori in the social sciences, so the rationalist contend, is that without some sort of irrefutable axiomatic foundation for social science we have absolutely no way to know whether or not we are falling prey to the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. In other words, there is no way to tell whether or not the "causal-nomological" patterns we empirically observe in the social world are "caused" by the things we think they are, or whether they just coincidentally related and have no necessary connection.[15]

There is, however, an even more powerful rationalist criticism of the empiricist epistemology. This is, quite simply, that every formulation of the empiricist epistemological and methodological position itself must be formulated in synthetic a priori terms.[16] For instance, the pragmatist epistemology, (as developed, for example, by Laudan), must be formulated in terms that are unmistakably a priori. To state that "science is problem solving" is to state a synthetic a priori proposition which purports to be true![17] Or again, to state that "thinking is an instrument of action" (as Dewey has done) is to state a synthetic a priori proposition. There is obviously no way to demonstrate the pragmatic utility of these propositions utilizing the pragmatic method itself.

As yet another example, from the pluralist/relativist camp, take Feyerabend's pronouncement that "[A]narchism, while perhaps not the most attractive political philosophy, is certainly excellent medicine for epistemology, and for the philosophy of science."[18] Would it be impertinent for us to inquire of Feyerabend whether he intends for us to assume that this proposition is necessarily and universally true? If he doesn't think this proposition is necessarily true then why should anyone read his book? Of course all of these propositions claim universal validity;[19] and if they claim universal validity then they are synthetic a priori propositions.

As yet another example, the hermeneutical epistemological position can similarly only be formulated solely in synthetic a priori terms. Hermeneuticians need not deny the existence of synthetic a priori knowledge,[20] but if they do, then they would have to state something to the effect that "social science can only proceed through the exegesis of written or acted texts." In that case, they would be stating a synthetic a priori proposition that claims universal validity. More frequently, the hermeneutician argues something to the effect that there are "multiple complimentary truths about a complex practice or text," and thus, "we never arrive at one absolute truth."[21] It hardly even need be said that these propositions are synthetic a priori propositions as well, which makes the content of the propositions baldly self-contradictory.

As a final example, let us examine the pronouncements of the logical positivists against the existence of true a priori propositions � or any metaphysical statements at all.[22] What has been said above equally applies to the logical positivists; namely, the anti-metaphysical, anti-a priori pronouncements of Carnap, G�del, Neurath, Karl Menger, and the other Viennese positivists categorically denying the existence of synthetic a priori truths were all themselves synthetic a priori propositions.[23]

In sum, then, it is simply impossible to formulate a proposition concerning the existence of the synthetic a priori that is not itself a synthetic a priori statement.[24] As we shall now see, this truth has radically important implications for the related concept of progress in the social sciences.

RATIONALIST PROGRESS IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

The previous section of this paper attempted to demonstrate some of the inherent inner contradictions of the empiricist epistemological position in political science in all its various modern manifestations. It was argued that (1) it is impossible to determine solely on empirical grounds whether or not empirically-derived propositions are "true" or whether they are instantiations of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, and (2) that, as Johnson has argued, it is logically impossible to formulate a denial of the existence of synthetic a priori propositions that is not in itself a synthetic a priori proposition. What implications does this have for the idea of progress in political science?

In the first place, recognition of the fact that synthetic a priori propositions do indeed exist should spur the political scientist to go out and find some of them! What possible reason could there be for a political scientist to remain in the necessarily hypothetical realm of empirical research if there is a method through which we can acquire necessary knowledge about human action? For political scientists to remain solely in the empiricists' hypothetical realm is to act very much like geometricians would if they refused to utilize any geometric axioms. Can anyone possibly believe that any sort of progress could be made in geometry if every axiom was subject to empirical testing?

In such a situation, where no axioms were regarded as universally true, at least some geometricians might even be running around "testing" to see if every point on a circle was the same distance from the center! And why shouldn't they, if nothing can be known to be true a priori? The obvious reason that geometry can progress is that practitioners are able to deduce necessarily true propositions from the synthetic a priori axioms that form geometry's foundation. If such an axiomatic-deductive procedure were available for political scientists, wouldn't this methodology be superior to the empiricist's aimless and literally boundless search for what the empiricist himself admits to be only hypothetically true theories?

Of course, this defense of the synthetic a priori could be considered just so much empty verbiage if no axioms have yet been discovered that hold true with regard to all human action. Indeed, some empiricists might want to insist that they are open to the possibility of discovering such propositions, but until any have been found we must rely upon the only thing left to us � empirical investigation.

For the benefit of these potential converts to rationalism, let me advance some of the axioms of social science that have already been discovered, axioms that afford the political scientist an apodictically true foundation for erecting a deductive science of politics.[25] The essential axiom for social science, and the one upon which the entire superstructure of each of the social science disciplines rests, is Ludwig von Mises's "Man acts." This proposition cannot even be thought to be false, since any attempt to disprove it (even solely in one's head) would constitute an action in itself. The axiom itself is apodictically true, and it implies other axiomatic propositions about human action such as:

"Human action is an actor's purposeful pursuit of valued ends with scarce means. No one can purposefully not act. Every action is aimed at improving the actor's subjective well-being above what it otherwise would have been� Interpersonal conflict is possible only if and insofar as things are scarce� No form of taxation can be uniform (equal), but every taxation involves the creation of two distinct and unequal classes of taxpayers versus taxreceivers-consumers."[26]

Bastiat makes sense: $30 These propositions are ultimately derived from the axiom of action, and are thus irrefutable without self-contradiction in the same way as the axiom of action. Recognizing that these propositions are axiomatically true, we can immediately see that progress for the rationalist means continually attempting to deduce propositions such as these from other prior axioms already known to be irrefutably true. There is no obsession with prediction or testing. The propositions are necessarily true � no testing is needed or is even possible.[27] The goal for the rationalist is to understand human action, not to predict something that is by its very nature unpredictable.
But then we come to the vital truth about political science once we come to recognize that progress in the discipline means improving our understanding of human action rather than improving our predictive ability as the empiricist claims. This is, quite simply, that the proposition "understanding human action is the goal of social science" is itself a synthetic a priori proposition that cannot be refuted without self-contradiction as well!

For any attempted refutation of this proposition would itself be a synthetic a priori proposition that purported to clarify our understanding of human action (specifically, our understanding of human action as it is manifested in social science itself); and the attempted refutation could not, and never could be, an empirical statement whose goal was to better predict human action.

The rationalist idea that man's goal in political science (like every science of human action) is to better understand human action thus cannot be refuted without self-contradiction! In this way, the rationalist epistemological position with regard to political science is totally vindicated. It is about time these irrefutable epistemological truths came to be accepted within the discipline, and the empiricist epistemological and methodological position rejected as offering no hope for political scientists.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:19

Who What Now: Sep 10, 2006; by Azathoth

SedanChair posted:

Other analysts who predicted the crash:

-Lyndon LaRouche

-Sylvia Browne

-a street preacher in front of the Seattle Art Museum with a huge beard

My dog took an unusually large dump once and it was easily more meaningful than anything that came out of Mises, but you don't see me bragging that my dog's bowels predicted the 2008 collapse.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:21

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

jrodefeld posted:

What is baffling is the insistence by some that the rigorous use of reason and logic, the law of non contradiction and the necessary implications of human action are "unscientific" or un-serious or indicative of a cult.

Ahhhh no stop it stop it stop it. No one is claiming that the law of non-contradiction is cultish. The problem is you take tautologies like

jrodefeld posted:

Let us take the first law of economics. Humans act.

And use it to derive a bunch of bullshit that doesn't logically follow like

jrodefeld posted:

If you accept that human's act, there are certain truths that are necessary implications of that fact. There are other things that can be established. If two people engage in a voluntary transaction, it must mean that both parties have reverse preference orders, meaning they both expect to be made better off, for example.

Even though I have already listed plenty of examples where people take voluntary actions that don't make them better off like

VitalSigns posted:

Refusing to sell a wedding cake to a gay couple. A proprieter is undoubtedly better off making a sale than not. The kind of sex the patrons have shouldn't matter, and in 2014 there's no risk of losing business by quietly selling a gay wedding cake (in fact the opposite; in liberal areas bigots whine about getting boycotted by the community for it).
Hate crimes without economic motiviation like the murder of Brandon Tina. There is no rational way to believe that agreeing to be an accessory to an unprofitable murder is going to make you better off. There is zero benefit and a huge risk of getting caught and jailed (like actually happened).
Giving to street beggars. I've given money to a child on the street before, I don't know that kid from Adam, there's no rational reason to expect I will ever benefit thereby. It's objectively a loss for me.
Giving to charity in general. From the point of view of a rational self-interested agent, it's always to my advantage to keep that money and spend it on myself.
Voting in federal elections. My vote has never made a difference. Literally anything else I could do with my time and gas money would provide more of a direct benefit to me.

And you'll use it to make claims like this

jrodefeld posted:

Scientific law established by the Austrian method, for example, proves that, all things being equal, that if you raise the price of a good less of it will be sold. This is not a hypothesis that requires constant testing. It is a necessary and logical implication of the fundamental axioms of human action. Now, empirical testing can and does bolster this reality, but it cannot falsify it. For example, suppose someone ran a test on a group of people and found that, on one occasion, that raising the price of a good actually increased sales. Would this invalidate that law? Of course not. It would be clear that some other factor was not adequately accounted for and controlled in the study. Either some other factor had indeed changed, or the study was undertaken for too brief a time period.

Even though that's directly contradicted by examples of where higher prices have lead to more of it being sold
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016748709700038X

quote:

We investigate brand buying patterns among four cosmetics product, and find, as hypothesized, that visible status goods have a lower price-quality correlation (i.e., a higher status premium) and that the pattern of brand buying favors higher-priced (i.e., status) brands.

And examples of goods where a higher price affects perception of quality

quote:

According to researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the California Institute of Technology, if a person is told he or she is tasting two different wines�and that one costs $5 and the other $45 when they are, in fact, the same wine�the part of the brain that experiences pleasure will become more active when the drinker thinks he or she is enjoying the more expensive vintage.

You can't get out of proving how these conclusions follow from the premise that humans act by accusing anyone who disagrees with your conclusion of admitting they're a rock or possibly an interesting piece of motionless scenery.

VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Oct 28, 2014

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:22

Babylon Astronaut: Apr 19, 2012

Caros posted:

Mark Thornton - He predicted a housing bubble in 2004. Whupty loving do. I predicted a housing bubble in 2004 by virtue of going "But housing prices can't increase forever." There are tons of economists who understood this basic fact, that wasn't the question you were asked. You were asked if you could find economists who agreed with your views and predicted a 2008 housing market crash caused by deregulation allowing fraud on a massive scale to occur. Mark Thornton recognized a bubble, a properly trained monkey could do that.

"The housing bubble will collapse" isn't actionable information anyway. Tell someone making money hand over fist that, you know, you won't be making that kind of dosh forever and see what that changes. It would be like at the height of the gold rush telling a prospector "you know, eventually that mine will run out of gold." Whoopity loving do, you get to be smug after the well runs dry. What are you going to do, get people to quit doing something incredibly profitable because at some indeterminate time in the future you'll wish you were in something different? Instability is the market, it's all a loving bubble. You just want a chair when the music stops.

Babylon Astronaut fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Oct 28, 2014

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:23

jrodefeld: Sep 22, 2012; by Shine

Hans Hoppe on empiricism:

http://contrast2.wordpress.com/2008/07/12/hans-herman-hoppe-on-empiricism/

quote:

The Mises Institute has recorded audio books of several of it�s publications. They have been publishing some of them on their podcast. I listened to some of Murray Rothbard�s Conceived in Liberty (text version) and found his account of Purtian New England very interesting. The most recent book on the podcast is Hans Herman Hoppe�s Economic Science and the Austrian Method (text version).

Hoppe�s book is an explanation and defense of the Austrian method of economics, as opposed to all other methods. What distinguishes Austrianism is that it is not empirical. It is rational, or as Mises put it, a priori. Hoppe quotes Mises explanation:

Its statements and propositions are not derived from experience. They are, like those of logic and mathematics, a priori. They are not subject to verification and falsification on the ground of experience and facts. They are both logically and temporally antecedent to any comprehension of historical facts. They are a necessary requirement of any intellectual grasp of historical events.

Hoppe further explains the situation:

It is this assessment of economics as an a priori science, a science whose propositions can be given a rigorous logical justification, which distinguishes Austrians, or more precisely Misesians, from all other current economic schools. All the others conceive of economics as an empirical science, as a science like physics, which develops hypotheses that require continual empirical testing. And they all regard as dogmatic and unscientific Mises�s view that economic theorems?like the law of marginal utility, or the law of returns, or the time-preference theory of interest and the Austrian business cycle theory?can be given definite proof, such that it can be shown to be plainly contradictory to deny their validity.

Hoppe then begins a critique of empiricism, especially in regards to economics.

Moreover, even if we have observed some definite outcome, let�s say that mixing the two materials leads to an explosion, can we then be sure that such an outcome will invariably occur whenever we mix such materials? Again, the answer is no. Our predictions will still, and permanently, be hypothetical. It is possible that an explosion will only result if certain other conditions?A, B, and C?are fulfilled. We can only find out whether or not this is the case and what these other conditions are by engaging in a never-ending trial and error process. This enables us to improve our knowledge progressively about the range of application for our original hypothetical prediction.

�

�the Ricardian law of association�minimum wage� marginal utility�

Considering such propositions, is the validation process involved in establishing them as true or false of the same type as that involved in establishing a proposition in the natural sciences? Are these propositions hypothetical in the same sense as a proposition regarding the effects of mixing two types of natural materials? Do we have to test these economic propositions continuously against observations? And does it require a never-ending trial and error process in order to find out the range of application for these propositions and to gradually improve our knowledge, such as we have seen to be the case in the natural sciences?

�

To use an analogy, it is as if one wanted to establish the theorem of Pythagoras by actually measuring sides and angles of triangles. Just as anyone would have to comment on such an endeavor, mustn�t we say that to think economic propositions would have to be empirically tested is a sign of outright intellectual confusion?

He continues in part II:

According to empiricism, to explain causally or predict a real phenomenon is to formulate a statement of either the type �if A, then B� �

As a statement referring to reality (with A and B being real phenomena), its validity can never be established with certainty, that is, by examining the proposition alone, or of any other proposition from which the one in question could be logically deduced. The statement will always be and always remain hypothetical, its veracity depending on the outcome of future observational experiences which cannot be known in advance. Should experience confirm a hypothetical causal explanation, this would not prove that the hypothesis was true. Should one observe an instance where B indeed followed A as predicted, it verifies nothing. A and B are general, abstract terms, or in philosophical terminology, universals, which refer to events and processes of which there are (or might be, in principle) an indefinite number of instances. Later experiences could still possibly falsify it.

And if an experience falsified a hypothesis, this would not be decisive either. For if it was observed that A was not followed by B, it would still be possible that the hypothetically related phenomena were causally linked. It could be that some other circumstance or variable, heretofore neglected and uncontrolled, had simply prevented the hypothesized relationship from actually being observed. At the most, falsification only proves that the particular hypothesis under investigation was not completely correct as it stood. It needs some refinement, some specification of additional variables which have to be watched for and controlled so that we might observe the hypothesized relationship between A and B. But, to be sure, a falsification would never prove once and for all that a relationship between some given phenomena did not exist, just as a confirmation would never definitively prove that it did exist.

He also notes:
[b]
However appropriate the empiricist ideas may be in dealing with the natural sciences (and I think they are inappropriate even there, but I cannot go into this here), [25] it is impossible to think that the methods of empiricism can be applicable in the social sciences.[b]

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:24

Caros: May 14, 2008

jrodefeld posted:

Hans Hoppe on empiricism:

http://contrast2.wordpress.com/2008/07/12/hans-herman-hoppe-on-empiricism/

We get your point, we think you are wrong. Express and defend it yourself or why are you here?

Edit: My point here is that no one wants to pick apart the work of Hans Hermann Hitler. There isn't any point because you can just go "I disagree with that" and then smugly end the conversation.

Caros fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Oct 28, 2014

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:26

CharlestheHammer: Jun 26, 2011; YOU SAY MY POSTS ARE THE RAVINGS OF THE DUMBEST PERSON ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH BUT YOU YOURSELF ARE READING THEM. CURIOUS!

Stop posting articles at us and argues something.

Anything really.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:29

Kiwi Ghost Chips: Feb 19, 2011; Start using the best desktop environment now!
Choose KDE!

jrodefeld posted:

Hans Hoppe on empiricism:

http://contrast2.wordpress.com/2008/07/12/hans-herman-hoppe-on-empiricism/

Has HHH proved these statements from his axioms or are they empirical:

quote:

if only towns and villages could and would do what they did as a matter of course until well into the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States: to post signs regarding entrance requirements to the town, and once in town for entering specific pieces of property (no beggars, bums, or homeless, but also no Moslems, Hindus, Jews, Catholics, etc.); to expel as trespassers those who do not fulfill these requirements

quote:

[T]rue libertarians cannot emphasize enough [...] that the restoration of private property rights and laissez-faire economics implies a sharp and drastic increase in social �discrimination� and will swiftly eliminate most if not all of the multi-cultural-egalitarian life style experiments so close to the heart of left libertarians.

quote:

vulgarity, obscenity, profanity, drug use, promiscuity, pornography, prostitution, homosexuality, polygamy, pedophilia or any other conceivable perversity or abnormality

quote:

They � the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism � will have to be physically removed from society too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.

quote:

Unlike states, [insurers] could and would not want to disregard the discriminating inclinations among the insured towards immigrants. To the contrary, even more so than any one of their clients, insurers would be interested in discrimination, i.e., in admitting only those immigrants whose presence adds to a lower crime risk and increased property values and in excluding those whose presence leads to a higher risk and lower property values. That is, rather than eliminating discrimination, insurers would rationalize and perfect its practice.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:30

Captain_Maclaine: Sep 30, 2001

CharlestheHammer posted:

Stop posting articles at us and argues something.

Anything really.

I assume you already know this but just in case: Jrod isn't here to argue; he's here to proselytize.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:33

woke wedding drone: Jun 1, 2003; by exmarx; Fun Shoe

Who What Now posted:

My dog took an unusually large dump once and it was easily more meaningful than anything that came out of Mises, but you don't see me bragging that my dog's bowels predicted the 2008 collapse.

If you return to the basic truth that A=A, you will see this was in fact the case.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:34

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

I'm not saying I reject empirical evidence if it contradicts my assumptions, that would be anti-science, but I am saying that my assumptions are an infallible guide for deciding which empirical evidence to reject as obviously flawed for contradicting my assumptions.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:34

Cemetry Gator: Apr 3, 2007; Do you find something comical about my appearance when I'm driving my automobile?

jrodefeld posted:

Let us take the first law of economics. Humans act. Now, do we need to do an empirical study to determine whether humans act or not? Obviously everything we do is an action. The fact of human action must be logically assumed because it cannot be denied without engaging in a performative contradiction.

What about humans in a vegetative state? Do they act? What about humans who are comatose? Do they act? What about sleeping humans? Are they acting? What about infants? Do they act? What about people who are not thespians? Do they act? In all of these cases, depending on the definition of the word "act" you use, we could say that these humans are not acting. Acting is an incredibly broad word, and so your statement is meaningless.

quote:

Now, once certain economic laws that can be deduced from the fact of human action are established, THEN Austrians use empiricism to evaluate many different kinds of economic phenomenon. Empirical testing can, and has repeatedly, validated and supported the Austrian view on the effects of minimum wage laws, the causes of economic recessions and depressions and many other things. The difference is that the economic laws that are established at the outside are not reliant upon empirical validation, but rather are established through a rigorous logical deductive method.

What is with you guys and your Vulcan like love of logic. Seriously. You bring it up, Molyneux talks about it, it's amazing. "Using logic and reason" is the go to response for Libertarians, which is a polite way of saying "You're pulling it out of your rear end." Logic and reasoning is actually pretty weak, especially without concrete observations. Because I can use logic to argue anything, even if it isn't wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrzMhU_4m-g

This video shows you how logic can be used to reach incorrect conclusions. If you watch the scene, the logic follows throughout the whole scene. Of course, you know it's wrong because you have other facts to follow it up, but that doesn't make the conclusions reached by the characters of this scene illogical.

That's the problem with logic and reason - it's entirely dependent on your experiences as a person. Someone who grew up in a different society could reach different logical conclusions based upon their experiences. It's only through further research and knowledge that we can actually best use logic and reasoning.

quote:

The Austrians have a much better record because they use a priorism based upon reason, logic and argumentation, coupled with empiricism to bolster their economic and historical analysis.

A record of 0 misses means nothing when you also have 0 hits. Can you back up this claim, or do I have to accept it a priori that Austrians have a much better record.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:34

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# ? May 13, 2024 21:44

CharlestheHammer: Jun 26, 2011; YOU SAY MY POSTS ARE THE RAVINGS OF THE DUMBEST PERSON ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH BUT YOU YOURSELF ARE READING THEM. CURIOUS!

Captain_Maclaine posted:

I assume you already know this but just in case: Jrod isn't here to argue; he's here to proselytize.

I know and I will accept anything at this point.

What is your favorite color?

Who is the best character on Dragon Ball Z.

Anything.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 01:34

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Libertarians: You fire fighter lovers sure are good at debate!

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