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Something about Jfofelds claims about the 1930s seems troubling to me, because was not LVM the chief economic adviser to Engelbert Dolfuss for some time, and didn't Austria have some of the worse economic performance as a result of their reaction to the great depression? Because if Misses could have ended the great depression with his policy suggestions why didn't Austria turn its ecconomy around?
Crowsbeak fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Nov 1, 2014 |
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Nov 1, 2014 20:55
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jrodefeld posted:This is such a tragedy since if Mises' arguments could have been comprehended earlier by Western audiences, then we could have averted both the Great Depression (it could have been a short, sharp recession that lasted a year or two like the forgotten Depression of 1920-21) Ah yes, the policies of 1920-21, which famously set the stage for the Roaring Twenties, also known as the Party That Never Ended.
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Nov 1, 2014 21:08
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Oh good, you're back! I was worried that you weren't going to contribute to the thread anymore and I felt a tear fall from my eye. Lets dig in shall we.jrodefeld posted:Rather than continue to go over the merits of praxeology and the Austrian method of deducing economic laws, based as it is on a logical deductive method from the Action axiom, I would prefer to ask rather about what your view is on the state on modern "mainstream" economics as a discipline. Frankly, I think that the subject of epistemology and the validity of praxeology and the limits of empiricism is far to complex a subject to fully hash out in the limited format of an internet message board. Most people in the thread have got this, but let me translate: "I am incapable of defending praxeology and the Austrian method in any real fashion. I have no argument against the myriad number of serious criticisms that have been levied against me since the last time I posted here and I'd rather come and drop some knowledge and then retreat back into the ether before I actually have to engage on any of the points levied against me." Now it is possible that this is not what you are saying, but it is absolutely what we are hearing. Multiple posters, including myself, leveled substantive criticisms against your arguments, but you are coming back into the thread and at best claiming that it was a wash, or that we don't understand. We understand, believe me, we just think you are wrong. As to your inability to convey these concepts on a message board, I'll reiterate my offer to debate you verbally at a time of your convenience.  quote:What would you say about the state of the economics profession by and large in 2014? Do you all subscribe to variations on Keynesian interventionist economics? Are you therefore in favor of central banks setting interest rates? Must modern nation States "fight" recessions with inflation and credit expansion? Yes. For the most part. I'm not super keen on capitalism in general, but given the choice I'd rather use the sort of economics that has a solid footing and was ascendant during the great economic booms of the last century. Modern states do not fight recession with inflation, they fight it with direct stimulus. This distinction is important because Quantitative Easing for example, did not directly add to inflation due to how lovely the economy was doing. quote:Regardless of your opinion on the Austrian alternative, it would seem clear to me that the last half century of our economic history has been full of economic bubbles and subsequent recessions, a depreciating value of the dollar, price inflation leading to steadily eroding living standards and, indeed, a growing class of parasitic crony capitalists who gain wealth through expropriation and State privilege. While the beginning of this statement, that the last half century of our economic history has been full of economic bubbles and subsequent recessions is factually true, it completely lacks historical context. I've linked you to this list of US recessions a number of times before, but I'd encourage you to read it even as I explain while you are wrong. 1964-2014 - The US had seven recessions between 1964 and 2014. These recessions totalled 72 total months of economic recession and accounted for a total of -14.7% GDP growth. 1913-1963 - The US had twelve recessions between 1913 and 1963. These recessions totalled 178 (135 if we ignore the great depression) total months of economic recession and account for a total of -67.2% (-40.5% if we ignore the great depression) GDP growth. Note that the negative GDP growth figures only exist to 1933, so the number is actually low. 1862-1912 - The US had twelve recessions between 1862 and 1912. These recessions totaled 286 total months of economic recession. I do not have negative GDP growth figures going this far back unfortunately. 1811-1861 - The US had thirteen recessions between 1811 and 1861. These recessions totalled about 260 total months of economic recession, though the number is difficult to fully determine due to lack of historical data. Likewise GDP is right out the loving window. So with historical context in mind we can clearly see that the US has actually done historically well during the last fifty years compared to any period before it. We've had nearly half the typical number of recessions for a fifty year period, and the recessions that we have had have been rather light by historical standards. Moreover, because you keep bringing up the fed... 1814-1914 - The US had twenty four recessions between 1814 and 1914. These recessions totalled 534 months of economic recession. 1917-2014 - The US had nineteen recessions between 1914 and 2014. These recessions totalled 261 months of economic recession. Tell me again how the federal reserve is the cause of all economic recessions and the boom bust cycle. quote:In contrast to other sciences like medicine, physics and chemistry it would seem that instead of progressively moving humanity towards greater knowledge and understanding of the world around us, economics has led us astray. The Ivy league economists who have been advising the political elites for several generations have seemed to promote policies that have caused economic instability, a worsening standard of living for the middle class and massive dislocations and recessions like the one we are still living through. First off, you aren't winning anyone over by sneering at the Ivy League and politicians. Most people here would agree that having someone educated in a respected school is actually a good thing, especially when we're looking to them for economic advice. As for the latter half, I've already shown you why you are wrong about this supposed economic instability. I'd actually agree that there are economists who have contributed to bad policy, such as supply-side economics which have been detrimental over the course of the last few decades, but I don't think you and I are talking about the same economists. quote:Indeed there could scarcely be anything like a "consensus" even among the mainstream economics profession, whose adherents seem to be flailing in the wind without rhyme or reason, taking whatever position permit their position of privilege as official State-sanctioned opinion molder to continue unabated. Quite true! Economics is a discipline in which there are still a variety of different opinions on the mechanics involved. For instance we still have people in TYOOL 2014 who believe in outdated and unproven economic systems such as Austrian economics! I'm glad we covered this. As to the latter half, your persecution complex is getting old. No one is shouting down economic rulings from on high. Keynesian economics became ascendant for many years because they were the field that was best able to model reality. They fell out of favor because of ideologically driven idiots like yourself who wanted to believe in stupidity such as supply side voodoo economics. quote:Economics is unique among the sciences since every participant in the study of economics has a great incentive to pervert the data to their own advantage. Economics, from the very outset, is a discipline that is rife for conflicts of interest. All of us have our own economic interests and some of us stand to gain a great deal from having a scientific gloss to justify some extortion racket or another. You think Goldman Saches don't contribute some of their lobbying money towards think tanks and public advocacy organizations filled with "economists" who promote the view that it is sound economic policy to subsidize the big banks and bail them out in times of recession? You think that Koch industries does not contribute tens of millions to think tanks and public advocacy organization filled with "climate scientists" who promote the view that it is sound environmental policy to drill baby drill? How is this aspect of economics unique to any form of controversial science? I'd argue that it is not, which is why I support economic positions that I myself understand, and which best fit observable reality. It is also worth mentioning that Austrian economics is in no way immune to the complaints that you have posed here. In fact they are even more susceptible because they do not need to provide evidence to back up their ludicrous claims. quote:A few years back a story was run on The Huffington Post entitled "Priceless: How the Federal Reserve Bought the Economics Profession". Oh look, its written by Libertarian author Ryan Grim. To some extent I'd actually agree that some of the control they exert on the economics profession is excessive. I do not however, think that it warps all discussion to the level that is being presented. The question is very apropos, just how independent and scientific is the field of economics anyway? quote:It is not as if the physicist has a perverse incentive to argue that the rate of gravity or the speed of a comet is something other than what it empirically is. The same is not true of the field of economics. Except that we have plenty of examples, from vaccinations, to climate change, safety testing and so on than this is not at all unique to the field of economics. Yes, people can be bought, that does not discredit the field anymore than Andrew Wakefield discredits the entire field of medicine. quote:It should be noted that when Keynesian economics swept Academia and became a new phenomenon in the mid 1930s, they didn't ever refute the older classical economists nor the Austrian economic viewpoints. The new paradigm swept the profession and the older knowledge was merely forgotten about. Like I said above, Keynesian economics had the distinct advantage of telling State officials what they already wanted to hear, that they needed to print money and intervene into the economy. The Austrians were telling the powerful, the ruling class and bankers, precisely the opposite of what they wanted to hear. Keynesian economics refuted old theories by presenting new ones that are more accurate or more plausible. In science you don't have to prove the other guy wrong, you just have to be able to produce better results and prove that you are right, or at least 'more' right. Austrian economics is in the trash bin of history because it fails to produce results and pretends that it is above scientific rigor, not because it stands up to the man. It is worth remembering that your typical libertarian is 68% male and 90% non-hispanic white. Your ideology only appeals to people in power. You are not the plucky underdog hero. quote:Are you so naive that you think that this perverse economic incentive had NOTHING to do with why Keynesian economics was embraced by the establishment while classical economics and the Austrian school were rejected? I must be, because I think the fact that austrian economics is a lovely economic system based on made up ideas is why it was rejected. quote:Do you really believe that there were really a bunch of careful, methodical economic scientists in labcoats studying empirical economic data and tirelessly trying to determine the best explanation for complex human behavior, adhering to the scientific method without prejudice and conflict of interest? How could they have even rejected the Austrian School economics at the time when hardly a single economists at the time even understood those arguments? Not lab coats, no. But only because economists typically don't work in labs. Do you by contrast believe that Austrian economics is some shining beacon up on the mountain immune to any outside influence or corruption? Do you really believe that a system of economics which is largely adopted by people with property, which puts property above pretty much everything else, does not have some bias? quote:You might ask "how do you know that?" I know that because Mises' pioneering work on the business cycle, The Theory of Money and Credit was not available in an English translation until the late 1930s and so unfortunately the arguments offered as to the cause of the Great Depression and the economic problems of the 1930s never got a fair hearing in the United States until well after Keynesian economics swept the profession. Others have pointed this out, but I want to reiterate it in case you only see my effortpost. Mises' work was released in english in 1934, a full two years before Keynes' The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Why on earth should we trust anything you say when you either are attempting to lie about publishing dates, or fail to even bother to look up two easily accessible facts before making your case. quote:This is such a tragedy since if Mises' arguments could have been comprehended earlier by Western audiences, then we could have averted both the Great Depression (it could have been a short, sharp recession that lasted a year or two like the forgotten Depression of 1920-21) AND the unfortunate detour of economics down the path of intervention and inflation. Ugh. Every. loving. Thread. You bring this up, and every loving thread you are wrong about it. Even if you could just directly compare two separate recessions that happened over a decade apart for different reasons, you would still be wrong because you are making assumptions about them that are flat out wrong. I had to explain this to you about three or four threads ago, but I hope you are still aware that FDR did not actually enter office until 1933, and that Hoover lost his loving job for doing the exact thing that you suggested doing, which was largely sitting on his hands and doing nothing for years while the economy cratered. Jrodefeld, you do not understand the great depression. I am confident that you have not read a single non-austrian source on the subject. I have read both and I can tell you with abject certainty that you are being lied to. The data does not back up your interpretation of what happened during the great depression, just like you have been proven wrong numerous times just in this loving reply alone. quote:Because, lets be honest, nearly ALL of the continued justification for interventionist economics stems from a certain account of the history of The Great Depression. We are told that the market failed due to the stock market crash of 1929. We are told that the Gold Standard caused the crisis and prevented recovery. We are told that the boom and bust cycle is just an inherent feature of capitalism and the market economy and they use the 1930s as "proof" of that supposed fact. Yeah, the market failed due to the stock market crash of 1929. Do you have any evidence that it didn't? Because I can point to loving mountains of evidence that it did. Likewise I can point to study after study after study from all manner of economists who go into detail about why leaving the gold standard was the correct decision, not the least of which was the fact that when the US left the gold standard, the economy improved. Funny that! Yes, the boom bust cycle is an inherent feature of capitalism. This is why we can see booms and busts going back two hundred years, when according to your ideology they should only exist from the creation of the federal reserve to present day. Do you have any ability to refute the fact that we have had recessions going back two centuries, or that they have visibly gotten less numerous and severe since? Because I have plenty of evidence to back me up! quote:Exactly how scientific and empirical is it to simply assume that the business cycle is merely an inherent and inescapable fact of the market economy? Exactly how empirical and scientific is an explanation like "animal spirits" to describe how irrational human behavior somehow causes economic instability? The truth is that Keynesian economic theory has never even bothered to search for an actual explanation for the boom and bust cycle. ... Really? Have you read The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money? Because Keynes spells out pretty clearly why he believes we have a business cycle, and no it isn't "animal spirits" nor does he believe that it is a consistent thing. The short version is that fluctuations in aggregate demand cause the boom bust cycle. People want more things, so they buy more things, so we produce more things, typically using credit to do so. Eventually the credit or the demand dry up and the economy contracts, causing a bust. See, not magic. The fact that you don't bother to look up an actual explanation for the boom busty cycle does not mean there isn't one. Economics isn't peek-a-boo, if you cover your eyes the reason is still there, and you stubbornly pretending that it does not doesn't make you right, it makes you look like an idiot. If you want to try and debunk the reason go nuts, I've debunked the austrian business cycle plenty of times. In fact, I did it just upthread. The austrian business cycle makes no sense because it is based around the boogyman of the central bank and fractional reserve, and yet we know that there was no such bank in 1873. quote:Which seems odd, since the entire rationale for both central banking price fixing of interest rates and the court historian justification in the form of Keynesian economic theory is justified through the supposed need to regulate the business cycle and fight economic instability. They are trying to fight and contain an economic phenomenon they don't understand and haven't even made an effort to understand. Again, just because you pretend something is there does not mean it is not there. Do you really expect that anyone will believe in this bullshit? Like we're just going to go "hurr, you know he is right, I don't think they ever did explain it" quote:This ignorance of the business cycle has caused the Federal Reserve to utterly fail in its mandate to supposedly lessen the economic instability we experienced before. Contrary to popular mythology, we have NOT experienced fewer recessions or more economic stability in the one hundred years since the Fed was established compared to the one hundred years prior. Generation after generation, Fed chairmen have claimed that they had figured out how to manage the economic and set interest rates correctly. Quote after quote can be produced of them saying that they "cured" the problem of the business cycle and we shouldn't have to worry about such pesky recessions and depressions in the future. And, inevitably, every time such a claim was made the economic bubble they were helping to create burst and we suffered a major recession. I don't have a lot to say about this one other than to say 'look up'. You are factually wrong about this. We can look at historical data and know with 100% absolute certainty that there have been five less recessions in the last hundred years than the preceding century, and that the recessions lasted half as long as the ones from the 19th century. At this point I think you are just outright lying. As for the latter half of this, can you produce even one example of a Fed Chairman that has claimed that they cured the problem of the business cycle. Seriously Jrodefeld, produce me one loving quote with a sitting, or even former Federal reserve chairman saying that, because based on empirical data in this thread, you tend to either lie a lot, or say things that simply hold no relation to reality. quote:During the 1970s Keynesian economic theory was supposed to have been empirically invalidated through the two facts of the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system and the stagflation that was not supposed to be possible according to Keynesian theory. Yet in recent years, like a zombie who just won't die, Keynesian theory has been resurrected as a justification for economic intervention by the State once more. It is a sad fact that the Republicans under Ronald Reagan, instead of supporting sound money and criticizing price fixing of interest rates, they instead endorsed a "Keynesianism of the Right", a type of intervention that favored supply instead of demand. Yup, traditional Keynesian economic theory took a bump on the head through stagflation. The economics profession has spent the last four decades revising the system to account for the errors because shockingly, science is not an absolute. No one here is saying that Keynesian economics is the perfect, one size fits all unifying theory of economics. We are saying that it is the theory that thus far has produced the best results that mirror reality and produce results that we want. quote:While you may dispute my assertion that the Austrians were unique in their ability to criticize, in real time, the policies of the Fed that were causing first the unsustainable Tech bubble of the 1990s and then the unsustainable housing bubble of the 2000s, the fact remains that the vast majority of those that could be considered inside the mainstream of the economics profession were blindsided by the crash of 2008 and failed to comprehend the causation factors that permitted it to occur. We don't merely dispute it, I'd argue that we've refuted it in this thread considering your inability to grapple with our critiques. Austrians were not 'unique' in their ability to do anything, and at this point I'm beginning to wonder if you understand what that word means considering that you have used it incorrectly about five times in this post alone. Some Austrians showed an ability to recognize a bubble in progress, whupty-loving-do. Doing so does not require a level of economic skill beyond that of a small child. A bubble is a form of economic activity that is visible to even a layman, as I've mentioned multiple times I personally predicted a housing bubble as early as 2004. I do not believe this makes me a qualified economist so much as it acknowledges that I have basic pattern recognition skills. I also recognized and predicted a bubble in bitcoin, so what? You're at the point here where you are making argumentum ad nauseam discussion with the forums. I posted perhaps two pages back debunking the fact that austrians were at all special in their ability to recognize the bubble. You made no effort to refute my point and are instead just repeating it here again as if we'd never seen it. quote:It doesn't look like mainstream economics profession has such a great record in recent decades. Austrian economics is a neglected school of thought that has not had much influence in recent years. There is no possible economic incentive one could have to favor Austrianism over Keynesianism, while on the flip side, it can be very personally lucrative to tell the political elite what they want to hear and provide legitimacy to State power. Phrenology is a neglected field of medical science, should we dig that up as well? What does this have to do with anything? quote:I would like you to explain the recent failings of Keynesian economic theory and all other branches of interventionist economics and explain why that wouldn't compel a rational mind to consider the alternatives of a neglected school of thought like the Austrian school, especially given the proven predictive ability that has been demonstrated time and again? When an economic theory fails or has errors that does not mean the correct situation is to discard it wholesale. Austrian economics is a flawed system.
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Nov 1, 2014 21:54
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Yeah, what Caros said. Seriously though Jrod what bizarro loony-toons dimension do you live in where a German speaking Austrian publishing his works in German is not considered "Western"?
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Nov 1, 2014 22:16
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paragon1 posted:Yeah, what Caros said. Well even in 1912 German wasn't the real Lingua Franca of the world, so its kind of understandable. The fact that it was published in english two years before Keynes however just goes to show how up his own rear end Jrodefled is. I honestly can't tell if he's just misinformed or whether he is actively attempting to lie.
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Nov 1, 2014 22:24
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It's amusing to me that people would reject empiricism when multiple ideologies have demonstrated that you can (claim to) embrace it while still using illegitimate tactics to believe whatever the hell you want.
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Nov 1, 2014 22:40
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jrodefeld posted:Frankly, I think that the subject of epistemology and the validity of praxeology and the limits of empiricism is far to complex a subject to fully hash out in the limited format of an internet message board. No, no, it's not that complex. I can summarize the validity of praxeology in a single sentence. "Praxeology's rejection of empiricism and history makes it useless for producing wise policy decisions."
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Nov 1, 2014 23:09
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Rhjamiz posted:Why should we read this when it is clear you have not been reading people's replies to your massive walls of text? I read them. But it becomes clear that responding to each reply is impractical and I get heavily criticized for even attempting to do so. So I pick my spots, I respond to the posts that I can and I make my arguments when I can. That is the only possible thing to do when I am outnumbered 100 to 1 on a website like this.
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Nov 1, 2014 23:28
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jrodefeld posted:I read them. But it becomes clear that responding to each reply is impractical and I get heavily criticized for even attempting to do so. So I pick my spots, I respond to the posts that I can and I make my arguments when I can. That is the only possible thing to do when I am outnumbered 100 to 1 on a website like this. That is absolutely fair and understandable. However, if you are going to skip over posts for brevity's sake then at the very least don't continue on as if you'd answered the question or as if it were not asked. You repeated multiple times in this last post about the prognostication ability of austrians, despite the fact that I called this very fact into question in a post that you did in fact quote (though not reply to substantively.). If you are going to continue on a specific train of thought, you need to show some effort to actually address the criticism directed at those specific claims. If you talk about the great depression and then someone points out fifteen things you were factually wrong about, you can't then go on in your next post with something like "As we have already agreed" or "As I have already shown" while at the same time ignoring that people neither agree with you nor think you've adequately shown anything. Well... you can, but it makes you seem dishonest when you claim false consensus and it pisses people the gently caress off.
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Nov 1, 2014 23:37
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jrodefeld posted:I read them. But it becomes clear that responding to each reply is impractical and I get heavily criticized for even attempting to do so. So I pick my spots, I respond to the posts that I can and I make my arguments when I can. That is the only possible thing to do when I am outnumbered 100 to 1 on a website like this. It's maybe a dozen to one at worst. But even if there were 100 of us you'd still be able to find the most commonly repeated criticisms, quote a few examples, and the rephrase it before responding. Or you could admit that you were wrong before moving on. Either way there are ways of doing it, so don't make excuses.
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Nov 1, 2014 23:39
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TLM3101 posted:Okay. There's far to much bullshit in this gish-gallop screed to pick it apart piece by piece but Jesus Christ you do not get to be this factually wrong. You are missing the forest for the trees. Yes I was imprecise when I said Mises' Theory of Money and Credit came out in the "late 1930s" when in reality it came out in the mid 1930s. So I was wrong about that. However, the reality remains that the English translation of The Theory of Money and Credit still came out too late to be properly absorbed and comprehended by Western intellectuals before the Keynesian revolution swept all that aside. Remember, in Austrian, Mises' arguments had been comprehended all throughout the nineteen teens and the 20s, he correctly observed the dislocations and bubbles caused by World War 1 and warned about the unsustainable bubble that was generated during the 1920s. During the bubble formation, Mises was able to put his argument out and people could see his track record one the economic crisis occured. In contrast, by the early 1930s, Keynesian style interventions had already become policy by the intellectual class and policy makers. Keynes was a well known economic figure before the General Theory was released. In a speech Rothbard gave about Mises' legacy, he goes over this exact point about how Mises' arguments were not well known in the United States until the Keynesian revolution was already underway. Look at the 8 minute mark or so. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1T6WMerD9g
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Nov 1, 2014 23:41
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I'm not sure how Keynesian was disproven by stagflation, yet Austrian monetary theory survives the failures of central bank monetary targeting or the lack of hyperinflation (that many people predicted) due to quantitative easing?
Soviet Space Dog fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Nov 1, 2014 |
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Nov 1, 2014 23:43
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Cemetry Gator posted:You are aware that the argument against X isn't an argument for Y, or A, or B? So just because Keynesian economics has failed doesn't mean that Austrian economics is the correct answer. I know that. However, it seems like many of you think that economics is the sort of science that is moving progressively towards greater and greater clarity and understanding of economic phenomenon through an adherence to the scientific method. Yet if it can be determined that the economics profession has had a dismal record in the past half century in predicting economic phenomenon and offering explanations and policy suggestions that have been beneficial to general prosperity and averting economic crises then at the very least it should cause you to reassess the priorities of economics. You might come to the conclusion, as I have, that the profession was led astray with Keynes's theories. That doesn't mean you have to embrace the Austrian explanation but at the very least it should make you reassess long neglected explanations of economic phenomenon.
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Nov 1, 2014 23:48
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jrodefeld posted:You are missing the forest for the trees. Yes I was imprecise when I said Mises' Theory of Money and Credit came out in the "late 1930s" when in reality it came out in the mid 1930s. So I was wrong about that. Pointing out that you are factually incorrect about something as simple as dates of publication is not missing the forest for the trees. Theory of Money and Credit was published two decades earlier, and published in english a full two years before Keynes seminal work. quote:However, the reality remains that the English translation of The Theory of Money and Credit still came out too late to be properly absorbed and comprehended by Western intellectuals before the Keynesian revolution swept all that aside. If Mises' work was as good as you seem to think, why was it incapable of 'sweeping all of that aside?' Keynesian economics became ascendant in the same time period that Mises was active, and it pushed aside decades of classical economics. If Austrian economics was so capable, why was it unable to push aside the relatively new economic theory of Keynesianism (ignoring the fact that it actually arrived first. Also, Austria is part of the 'west' by pretty much any imaginable description. quote:Remember, in Austrian, Mises' arguments had been comprehended all throughout the nineteen teens and the 20s, he correctly observed the dislocations and bubbles caused by World War 1 and warned about the unsustainable bubble that was generated during the 1920s. During the bubble formation, Mises was able to put his argument out and people could see his track record one the economic crisis occured. Austria. Austrian is not a place. If Mises' work was so well understood and utilized in Austria in the 1930's, why was Austria just as much a victim of the great depression as every other country in the world? More to the point, please provide proof that Mises predicted the great depression. I assume you are using the famous Skosen quote? quote:“As his assistant in the university seminar which met every Wednesday afternoon, I [i.e., Fritz Machlup] usually accompanied him home. On these walks we would pass through a passage of the Kreditanstalt in Vienna [one of the largest banks in Europe]. From 1924, every Wednesday afternoon as we walked through the passage for pedestrians he said: ‘That will be a big smash.’ Mind you, this was from 1924 onwards; yet in 1931, when the crash finally came, I still held some shares of the Kreditanstalt, which of course had become completely worthless” … In the summer of 1929, Mises was offered a high position at the Kreditanstalt bank. His future wife, Margit, was ecstatic, but Lu surprised her when he decided against it. ‘Why not’ she asked. His response shocked her: ‘A great crash is coming, and I don’t want my name in any way connected with it’ … (Skousen 2009: 295–296). If so, that was talking about the possible failure of Austria's central bank, which does not mean he predicted the great depression. It is also anecdotal and relies on you believing second hand information about Mises predicting the crash that was only published well after the crash had occurred. quote:In contrast, by the early 1930s, Keynesian style interventions had already become policy by the intellectual class and policy makers. Keynes was a well known economic figure before the General Theory was released. Keynes was indeed a well known figure before the general theory was released. So was Mises. Keynes sent a book to the president and other heads of state called The Means to Prosperity but it wasn't adopted as government policy in 1933 when it was offered. Keynesian thinking didn't become ascendent until the post war period despite what you'd like us to believe. Caros fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Nov 2, 2014 |
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Nov 1, 2014 23:55
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jrodefeld posted:I know that. However, it seems like many of you think that economics is the sort of science that is moving progressively towards greater and greater clarity and understanding of economic phenomenon through an adherence to the scientific method. Yet if it can be determined that the economics profession has had a dismal record in the past half century in predicting economic phenomenon and offering explanations and policy suggestions that have been beneficial to general prosperity and averting economic crises then at the very least it should cause you to reassess the priorities of economics. You might come to the conclusion, as I have, that the profession was led astray with Keynes's theories. Except that as I've proposed, we have seen a stunning decrease in the number and severity of boom's and busts over the past several decades. Science is an inherently iterative process. You make a guess, and you test to see how it works, then you redefine it, and redefine it again and again. Each time you get a little bit closer and closer into finding out how things work. It is entirely possible that we will never be able to fully understand economics due to it being based around humans who are inherently irrational, but we've made great strides that allow for great things. Your suggested method is to go back to the dark ages. You're suggesting we say 'gently caress science, I think I've got this whole thing figured out because humans act'. It is absurd to think that we should reject evidence in favor of 'logic' when evidence based economics has given us a much more solid grasp on human economic activity.
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Nov 2, 2014 00:00
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jrodefeld posted:You are missing the forest for the trees. Yes I was imprecise when I said Mises' Theory of Money and Credit came out in the "late 1930s" when in reality it came out in the mid 1930s. So I was wrong about that. Jrofeld please then explain why then Austria was one of the worse performers in regard to the great depression. Remember he was one of the main economic advisers of the leader of Austria.
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Nov 2, 2014 00:02
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DrProsek posted:loving crony capitalists and their immoral shady tactics to gain wealth at the expense of others! "Gives them free reign"? What are you talking about? Businessmen cannot, under libertarian law and ethics, commit aggression against the person or property of another. The same as everyone else. Pollution is an act of aggression. We regulate business behavior through the market, though private property rights and the non aggression principle. The point is to answer the central question "when is it appropriate to use force to compel people to behave as we would want them to behave?" We can use force against the businessman only when they use aggression. To merely compel economic actors to comply with our demands at the point of gun when they haven't committed any act of aggression and are merely peaceful economic actors is itself an immoral act. You would have a central authority force compliance with thousands of prior restraint restrictions and mandates on businessmen regardless of whether or not they ever used aggression. Not only is the act of aggression and the introduction of force into peaceful economic trade an indefensible act, it provides an easy way for special interests to game the system by controlling all or some of these regulations, or the application of those regulations. The nature of bureaucracy is such that the interest of the common man will soon be replaced with the interests of those who control the mechanisms for implementing these mandates. What we need instead is simply, universal language which instructs us on which actions are permissible vis a vis other human beings and which are impermissible. For the libertarian, each person owns himself or herself and acts of aggression and acts of fraud are what is to be considered impermissible. And these laws are universal to all.
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Nov 2, 2014 00:06
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Crowsbeak posted:Jrofeld please then explain why then Austria was one of the worse performers in regard to the great depression. Remember he was one of the main economic advisers of the leader of Austria. Yeah, I covered it above, but just to reiterate: quote:Mises was chief economist for the Austrian Chamber of Commerce and was an economic adviser of Engelbert Dollfuss, the austrofascist but strongly anti-Nazi Austrian Chancellor,[7] and later to Otto von Habsburg, the Christian democratic politician and claimant to the throne of Austria (which had been legally abolished in 1918).[8] In 1934, Mises left Austria for Geneva, Switzerland, where he was a professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies until 1940. Mises was the chief economist for the Austrian Chamber of Commerce and was a lead advisor for both governments that were in power in Austria during their great depression, only leaving when the Nazis came to power in Austria. Hell, while I'm at it, here is a quote from Mises.Org quote:Then after the Great Depression hit, he wrote again in 1931. His essay was called: "The Causes of the Economic Crisis." And the essays kept coming, in 1933 and 1946, each explaining that the business cycle results from central-bank generated loose money and cheap credit, and that the cycle can only be made worse by intervention. So... yeah. Despite being in a position of power and influence in Austria he did exactly gently caress and all to curb their great depression. So why exactly should we listen to him? Especially when Keynesian style policies were what proved effective at curbing the great depression.
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Nov 2, 2014 00:09
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jrodefeld posted:Businessmen cannot, under libertarian law and ethics, commit aggression against the person or property of another. And there is the fundamental issue. It's not like self-ownership is much of a controversial thing, but we don't accept that you try to bootstrap it into including property as well. Economic schools are just dancing around that difference of opinion.
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Nov 2, 2014 00:09
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jrodefeld posted:"Gives them free reign"? What are you talking about? Businessmen cannot, under libertarian law and ethics, commit aggression against the person or property of another. The same as everyone else. Pollution is an act of aggression. We regulate business behavior through the market, though private property rights and the non aggression principle. Pollution is an act of aggression. But in the words of the great Lucille Bluth: "Prove it." If I'm dumping truck loads of mercury into your well? Yeah you could sue me over that. If you get heavy metal poisoning thirty or fourty years down the road because I have been keeping materials in unsafe storage containers that have been slowly leaking? Good luck. You have no way of inspecting the containers, and even if you do there are so many confounding factors as to make any attempt at legal action without some sort of monopoly that would be able to investigate independently, moot. quote:The point is to answer the central question "when is it appropriate to use force to compel people to behave as we would want them to behave?" Yeah, I'll agree that this is the point. And the answer in my opinion, is when the public good vastly overshadows the force used. The good example to this is one I believe you already conceeded, the water experiment: One hundred people are on an island with only a single well. The well is owned by Steve the capitalist. One day Steve decides that he doesn't want to let anyone else use his water, he wants to keep it for himself, even though there is more than enough for everyone to drink for years to come. Is it right for the other 99 people to take the water by force even though it is Steve's property. You've already agreed up thread or in a previous thread that you think stealing to protect life is okay. I can go and get the quotes if you want. If using force in this instance is the choice you'd make, even if it is an immoral one, then why is taxation illegal? Because we've already shown that there are instances that you would break the non-aggression principle and use force. Why is the above example okay, but taxation is not? What if that taxation is used to pay for hospitals that save lives, or food stamps that keep people from starving? Its the old "Would you sleep with me for a trillion dollars?" question. You say yes, so I ask "Well how about one dollar?" You say no and I simply reply "We've already established you are a whore, we're just haggling about the price." We have already established that you think there are appropriate times to use aggressive force, we're just haggling. quote:We can use force against the businessman only when they use aggression. To merely compel economic actors to comply with our demands at the point of gun when they haven't committed any act of aggression and are merely peaceful economic actors is itself an immoral act. But you agree that stealing to feed yourself is something you would do. I will happily bring up the post. So you agree that even if it is an immoral act, which I don't believe it is, you agree that the mere fact that it is immoral does not mean that you shouldn't do it. quote:You would have a central authority force compliance with thousands of prior restraint restrictions and mandates on businessmen regardless of whether or not they ever used aggression. Not only is the act of aggression and the introduction of force into peaceful economic trade an indefensible act, it provides an easy way for special interests to game the system by controlling all or some of these regulations, or the application of those regulations. Yup, when those regulations are things like "Don't market throwing knives to children" (Lawn darts), or "Don't dump so many toxins in this river that it loving sets on fire" (Cuyahoga River) I'm happy to initiate what you believe is an act of aggression to prevent awful behaviors, because many of these awful behaviors cost human lives, something that can't be fixed retroactively. I'm proactive, your society is by necessity always reactive. quote:The nature of bureaucracy is such that the interest of the common man will soon be replaced with the interests of those who control the mechanisms for implementing these mandates. To the regards that this is true, it is true as much of private business as public enterprise, except that public enterprise is easier to enact change as it can be done by people who don't have money. quote:What we need instead is simply, universal language which instructs us on which actions are permissible vis a vis other human beings and which are impermissible. For the libertarian, each person owns himself or herself and acts of aggression and acts of fraud are what is to be considered impermissible. And these laws are universal to all. I don't agree that self ownership is a thing. And you've already agreed that you don't believe these laws are universal because if push came to shove you would break them to survive and expect that you would receive a lighter punishment to boot.
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Nov 2, 2014 00:25
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jrodefeld posted:"Gives them free reign"? What are you talking about? Businessmen cannot, under libertarian law and ethics, commit aggression against the person or property of another. Can you please clarify this? Maybe I am mistaken, but it seems as though either you are lying or you are making an error because one of your heroes has repeatedly stated that people will be free to form "convents". Within these convents you are free to "physically remove" anyone who promotes ideas that disagree with the ideas held by the people who founded the convent. So does this not mean that you are actually wrong? If I form a convent where it is against the law for you to advocate for democracy, homosexuality or race mixing, and then you come into my convent and you say that those things are OK, then I now have a license to use force to "physically remove" you, correct? Can you explain how this works under "libertarian law"? It sounds like once I form a "convent" I can do literally anything I want within the context of the "convent". Also, even if I were technically violating the spirit or the letter of libertarianism, who is going to stop me? Does the person who was just "physically removed" have to go hire a DRO?
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Nov 2, 2014 00:35
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jrodefeld posted:"Gives them free reign"? What are you talking about? Businessmen cannot, under libertarian law and ethics, commit aggression against the person or property of another. The same as everyone else. Pollution is an act of aggression. We regulate business behavior through the market, though private property rights and the non aggression principle. That is tautological. The state does not prevent businessmen from acting morally under libertarian law and ethics. Businessmen today do not abide by libertarian law and ethics, and there's no reason to believe that they would begin to do that in the absence of a state. Removing the few state-enforced rules that businessmen must follow will not cause them to begin acting more morally than they do today.
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Nov 2, 2014 00:39
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Caros posted:Pollution is an act of aggression. But in the words of the great Lucille Bluth: "Prove it." I want to focus on this a little because it's part of an important environmental concern For about 50 years between the 1860's to the 1910's arsenic was the preferred method of embalming recently dead people so they'd look pretty for an open casket funeral. Nowadays the caskets have rotted, the bodies have completely decayed, but the arsenic eventually leaked into the groundwater and many people are currently suffering from arsenic poisoning right now as a result. Who gets sued in that situation? No one who decided to embalm with arsenic is even alive today, if the funeral homes they worked for even exist as companies anymore they have drastically different leadership in charge now, it's the same for the cemeteries that hold the arsenic corpses and the churches that held the services.
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Nov 2, 2014 00:43
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Seriously, jrodefeld, how do you deal with people who act in bad faith? If I start dumping mercury into the water table and you get sick, what do you do in an ancap society? How do you prove that it was me dumping the mercury? If I manufacture a bunch of homes with shoddy wiring that are all guaranteed to burn down in 5 years, and I only guarantee them for one, how do you prove that you deserve any compensation? "He signed a contract accepting the home as-is and where-is, it's not my fault that he didn't rip out all of the walls and thoroughly inspect every wire." It's not like this kind of thing is going to drive me out of business; I can build a fuckload of houses before the shoddy work begins to become apparent, and by that point I'm long gone with plenty of profit. Sure, my business is sunk, but I no longer give a poo poo. What happens in this scenario? e: Oh man DarklyDreaming has a really good post, answer his post
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Nov 2, 2014 00:49
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jrodefeld posted:"Gives them free reign"? What are you talking about? Businessmen cannot, under libertarian law and ethics, commit aggression against the person or property of another. The same as everyone else. Pollution is an act of aggression. We regulate business behavior through the market, though private property rights and the non aggression principle. I walked outside and could smell my neighbor's barbecue. What sort of retaliatory force can I morally use to make them stop aggressing against me by emitting irritating and carcinogenic compounds that are straying into my property? A well-placed RPG volley perhaps?
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Nov 2, 2014 01:07
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DarklyDreaming posted:I want to focus on this a little because it's part of an important environmental concern I tend to think that Environmental Issues are basically the silver bullet against many, if not all, forms of Libertarianism. Ancaps in particular are ideologically incapable of answering it.
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Nov 2, 2014 01:19
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Helsing posted:Can you please clarify this? Maybe I am mistaken, but it seems as though either you are lying or you are making an error because one of your heroes has repeatedly stated that people will be free to form "convents". Within these convents you are free to "physically remove" anyone who promotes ideas that disagree with the ideas held by the people who founded the convent. The important thing about private covenants (not convents incidentally) is that they are 'voluntary'. The idea is that when you move into a private covenant community, you agree to whatever rules that have been set by the oligarchy/democracy/natural social elites. Because you voluntarily agree to these rules, and everyone who formed the covenant agreed to these rules, they are binding to you. This means that if a covenant wants to tax its occupants (lets call them citizens), it is 100% within their rights to do so. If a covenant wants to physically remove homosexuals, or democratic organizers, or 'blacks' then they are well within their rights to do so provided that doing so falls within the rules set out when the covenant was formed. The real question is how these covenants vary from a government at all. For example, if you are born into a private covenant your parents agree on your behalf that you will follow the rules of the covenant. If you later break those rules, such as... say... not paying your taxes when you turn 18, then the covenant has the right to use force against you as specified in a document that might have been written centuries before your birth and agreed to by your parents', parents' parents. The hilarious thing is that by the way Hans Hermann hoppe describes them, we could essentially validate libertopia simply by making everyone sign an actual, physical social contract when they turn 18.
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Nov 2, 2014 01:27
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Jrodefeld please tell us what you mean by "libertarian law" (especially confusing coming from an avowed anarchist). It's rather hard to engage with a moving object that only you can see.
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Nov 2, 2014 01:40
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paragon1 posted:Jrodefeld please tell us what you mean by "libertarian law" (especially confusing coming from an avowed anarchist). It's rather hard to engage with a moving object that only you can see. I've got this one for you.  Pictured: Libertarian Law.
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Nov 2, 2014 02:06
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jrodefeld posted:"Gives them free reign"? What are you talking about? Businessmen cannot, under libertarian law and ethics, commit aggression against the person or property of another. The same as everyone else. Pollution is an act of aggression. We regulate business behavior through the market, though private property rights and the non aggression principle. But how does one define aggression? It's great to say "We should only use force when people use aggression," but it ends up being a meaningless statement, because determining "aggression" is incredibly difficult, if not impossible. First off, it requires you to know the intent of another person. Also, some of these actions can be incredibly complex with a large number of different actors, many of whom were capable of stopping an action, which makes it even harder to analyse in the simple form of "Was aggression used?" Is negligence aggression? What if I, an owner of a mining company, don't do the research of the impact of my mining operations. What if the research isn't conclusive? What if I don't pay enough attention to the effects of my mining operations after the research came out? What about the people under me? I mean, the miners, who actually were the people who directly caused the pollution of the town's water supply, they were just following orders? Yet, they did an incredibly aggressive act? Does aggression cover accidents? I mean, I could kill someone, if for example, I was driving distracted. But is that aggression? Would it be appropriate to use force against me? Not by your definition. I was just a hapless idiot. Our current system of laws do not require intent for you to be punished for your actions. Simply, you have to be responsible and fail to act in the manner that would be deemed reasonable. So yes, I may not mean to run down countless millions in my car because I want to find that one song on my iPod, but because I failed to drive in a reasonable manner, which is, not trying to operate my iPod while hurtling my car down the road at 60 MPH, I am able to be held culpable. In your society, I could get off free because I didn't use aggression! This next bit is real important. Read it, because this explains why your arguments are loving terrible, Jrodefeld! Here's the problem with your vision - you like to use big broad terms, and then talk about things incredibly broadly, and you're deluding yourself into thinking you have the answer for everything. Your vision has less definition than a 6th generation VHS tape. If you want us to take your world view more seriously, you have to be able to explain these complexities. Which you haven't, and as far as I can see, you are unable to. quote:You would have a central authority force compliance with thousands of prior restraint restrictions and mandates on businessmen regardless of whether or not they ever used aggression. Not only is the act of aggression and the introduction of force into peaceful economic trade an indefensible act, it provides an easy way for special interests to game the system by controlling all or some of these regulations, or the application of those regulations. This would be nice if it meant anything. Once again, you have to actually deal with reality. Not shiny happy people land where everybody gets along and there's no complexity to action. Once again. How do you tell what is aggressive and peaceful. How do you handle negligence. I can mean to be peaceful and kill a gently caress ton of people. quote:The nature of bureaucracy is such that the interest of the common man will soon be replaced with the interests of those who control the mechanisms for implementing these mandates. Bureaucracy can still exist in a stateless system. I don't know if you have ever held a job in a large company, but let me tell you, I have. And the number of meaningless forms I filled out just to fill out the forms so we can say we filled out the forms so that way we can get a light-bulb replaced was not something that any state implemented. quote:What we need instead is simply, universal language which instructs us on which actions are permissible vis a vis other human beings and which are impermissible. For the libertarian, each person owns himself or herself and acts of aggression and acts of fraud are what is to be considered impermissible. And these laws are universal to all. Congratulations, you have the worldview of a child. It all sounds so simple until suddenly... it gets complex, and your little view of aggression and fraud become absolutely meaningless because they cannot deal with complexity. I'm going to deconstruct this. A universal language implies that there is a universal experience. The problem is that language is hardly anything but universal, since so many things are in the eye of the beholder. Ever seen Rashomon? Well, it's a movie about this rape and murder, and you are given 4 or 5 different accounts of how the crime occurred. The problem is that none of the accounts match up in any meaningful way. Every detail that is given in one account will be contradicted by another account. The only thing we can agree upon was that the husband was killed, and the bandit raped the wife. But for example, the sword-fight in the bandit's tale is this glorious battle between two men at the peak of their form. And he felt honored to fight the husband. He felt that the husband was a worthy opponent. But when the wife tales the tell, both men are terrible, cowardly fighters. Neither one of them want to fight each other, and do so reluctantly. Neither one of them show any skill, and when the bandit kills the husband, it is mostly sheer luck and accidental. The problem with universal language is the details. It's something I, and others, have harped on you countlessly in this thread. You don't give the details. The only way you can have universal language is if you speak in a manner where there are no details. Because the details are where these judgement ultimately lie, and that's where there will ultimately be disagreements because everyone can't have the same understanding of the facts. Now, you say that the person owns himself or herself. Which is a false statement. People are not property. You can not own people. Because one element of ownership is my ability to transfer ownership to another person. So for example, I gave my friend my DVDs of the Indiana Jones movies. There were once mine, and now she owns them. I have given up my ownership of Indiana Jones on DVD. If I own myself, then, I should be able to give up ownership of myself. Would the libertarian system allow for that. Because that's what self-ownership implies. That I can willingly transfer my ownership of myself to another person. Well, let's say my friend is really great, and I feel she would do a better job taking care of me than I can take of myself. Can I transfer my ownership of myself to her? Why not? And if I can, what happens to the things I own. Can I own something if I don't own myself? What if I die? Can my current owner sue me or have me punished for damaging her property that she lawfully owns? Life is not property. It does not have a value. It cannot be transferred to someone else. You can't own it because in no way shape or form does your ownership of yourself match the ownership of anything else. So... that's out of the picture too. Act of aggression and fraud... I've already told you how that's loving meaningless. But here's a great example. Can I sell you heroin? You've come to me willingly to buy heroin with the intention of shooting it into your veins so you can get high. Is that an act of aggression. You could argue that it is, or you could argue that it isn't. I mean, it is because heroin is a highly addictive substance, and giving it to someone so that they can get high has the potential to do great harm to themselves (and in the Libertarian ideals, their property). However, I'm simply just doing a business transaction that you willingly chose to do. It's not my fault that you used this dangerous substance. After all, it was your choice. Once again, our current system of laws doesn't try to figure out if it was an act of fraud or aggression. It looks at culpability. I, the person selling the heroin, have a responsibility to handle the heroin in a safe manner. By giving it to a person seeking to get high, I put another person at great risk. I may be a loving idiot, or I may be a terrible person who wants someone to get addicted to my product, but either way, I'm culpable. It was on me to know better. In your system, we could never tell because once you get into more complicated cases where morality isn't quite so black and white, we can't deal with that because we don't have a universal language. So all we're left with is just you saying "What we need instead is simply." And frankly, you haven't really shown us why we need that instead. Cemetry Gator fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Nov 2, 2014 |
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Nov 2, 2014 04:50
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World's Greatest Secret: When "Libertarian Law" is able to advance beyond patrimonialism and tribal loyalties, it becomes a nation-state with developing institutions that attempts to move far beyond how it was founded.
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Nov 2, 2014 04:59
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Caros posted:I've got this one for you. Von Mises sighed as he drew his katana. It was time for a little Human Action.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:14
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jrodefeld posted:"Gives them free reign"? What are you talking about? Businessmen cannot, under libertarian law and ethics, commit aggression against the person or property of another. The same as everyone else. Pollution is an act of aggression. We regulate business behavior through the market, though private property rights and the non aggression principle. As was covered very well by others, pollution is actually a pretty easy crime to get away with because of how indirect the damages are, how long you need to wait for the effects of the pollution to be noticeable, and how hard it would be to prove if the company doesn't do things as obvious as dump nuclear waste from dumptrucks with the company logo on them. quote:The point is to answer the central question "when is it appropriate to use force to compel people to behave as we would want them to behave?" Nah. First, violating environmental protection laws gets you fines, not prison time or death penalty. Second, Libertopia has everyone under the threat of the barrel to join a DRO so way to violate the NAP right out of the gate. Third, I assert that to compel economic actors to comply with our demands when they haven't committed any act of aggression is not only not immoral, but is a moral holy act we should all seek to make time for in our lives. Blind assertions are fun, give me a reason to agree with you that it's immoral or shut up. Or another route, withholding goods a person needs to live life, not just at a bare minimum level but with dignity, is an act of aggression by society against that individual, as it denies them their fundamental right to live and to live a life with a lack of dignity denies them the ability to exercise their will. Libertarianism is clearly a violation of my NAP because it would allow a person to starve to death if they were too poor to eat for whatever reason, or to live a life with no dignity, just living to work in the factories so they don't starve in the streets, thereby denying them any ability to exercise their will on the world.
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Nov 2, 2014 09:26
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So did he just abandon the whole Austrian economics thing? Because it seems to me that people in power are at best mixed on Keynesian economics, and many are blatantly pushing other economic schools for their own benefit. Every kind of science gets a bit muddied from that kind of thing, but economics seems to have more than most.
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Nov 2, 2014 09:51
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QuarkJets posted:Seriously, jrodefeld, how do you deal with people who act in bad faith? We've played this game enough in this thread alone to know how this would go: If you get any answer (you won't) it will be that it's in a company's best long-term interests to not harm consumers or damage their reputation. If you point out the several times in history this has happened anyway because making a bunch of cash quickly and using that to bankroll as much good press as you need is really easy, the reply will be that it's the crony capitalism of the state that shielded the company's from repercussion, and in a truly free market things would be different. When you ask how the exact same scenario wouldn't be even easier with no environmental regulations and in the extremely unlikely event you actually got a third response, he would pretend you were just generally asking about the definition of a free market and then link a wall of text or twenty minute youtube video.
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Nov 2, 2014 12:01
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jrodefeld, libertarianism seems to boil down to "vae victis". Does it?
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Nov 2, 2014 15:01
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Wolfsheim posted:When you ask how the exact same scenario wouldn't be even easier with no environmental regulations and in the extremely unlikely event you actually got a third response, he would pretend you were just generally asking about the definition of a free market and then link a wall of text or twenty minute youtube video. We've been over this. Humans Act, therefore: 
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Nov 2, 2014 17:33
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jrodefeld posted:"Gives them free reign"? What are you talking about? Businessmen cannot, under libertarian law and ethics, commit aggression against the person or property of another. The same as everyone else. Pollution is an act of aggression. We regulate business behavior through the market, though private property rights and the non aggression principle. So you recognize that pollution is an act of aggression which means that you must find a way to prevent it correct? So how are you going to enforce rules against pollution which is capable of traveling great distances and doing damage for years or decades without some sort of central authority? If I'm in Pennsylvania burning up coal that's causing asma (an act of aggression) 400 miles away how do the people there hold me accountable in your society? This dances right on the core of your problem. You have utter faith in your moral assumptions and logic. But even if all you want in the world is "non aggression" you have to make compromises to get it. The real world doesn't allow for purely logical solutions to human problems. Strict adherence to "non agression" leads to aggression - you can't prevent globe spanning pollution without organizations that have the power to commit acts of aggression themselves. There is no choice of aggression or not aggression, it's a choice of what kinds of aggression you're going to put up with.
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Nov 2, 2014 17:55
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jrodefeld posted:Pollution is an act of aggression. All pollution is an act of aggression? That means that virtually every person and business in existence is an aggressor, which means we can use retaliatory force whenever.... aaah you had me going there. Seriously, though, think about what you wrote. If pollution is an aggression, I hope you aren't driving a vehicle or burning literally anything or throwing things away or ever pooping or exhaling, because you've just thrown off the protection of the NAP.
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Nov 2, 2014 18:08
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asdf32 posted:If I'm in Pennsylvania burning up coal that's causing asthma (an act of aggression) 400 miles away how do the people there hold me accountable in your society? It's not in your rational self-interest to receive bad Yelp reviews for causing lung cancer 50 years from now, so you wouldn't pollute unless the State were there to protect you with a limited-liability corporation.
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Nov 2, 2014 18:08
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