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I think, if the purpose of this thread is still, as purported, to argue about libertarianism, then some clearer lines are in order. Namely, what would it take to refute Libertarianism? For instance, if it turned out that, in fact, 2+2 did not equal exactly four, or that there were in fact a finite quantity of numbers, modern mathematics would be overturned. Of course, these things aren't going to happen, but that's not the point. As far as I can tell, your conception of libertarianism is built on one of two foundations: either the Action Axiom or the Non-Aggression Principle (still can't tell who thinks these are connected or when or why). We've made many points against these two concepts, foremost in my mind being that humans do not act rationally or with perfect information and therefore the Action Axiom, as formulated, is at worst meaningless and at best woefully misinterpreted. How do you reconcile libertarianism with a world in which there exist wildly successful payday loan operations, anti-vaxxers, Gamergate, BenghaziGate, and millions of people who virulently disagree about what is best in the world? It seems to me that if: 1. All people always rationally act in their own best interest, and 2. Libertarianism can be logically deduced to be the best system for everyone, that we wouldn't be having this discussion because all us Rational Actors had a priori deduced that the NAP was the way to go. So, why isn't that the case? Is it an insidious globabl conspiracy by a tiny minority of broken people? Or is it just that the fundamental undergirdings of Libertarianism are made of moist cotton candy and tissue paper?
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Nov 17, 2014 21:33
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jrodefeld posted:I don't think I am overly relying on links or quotes at all. Now, if YOU wanted to quote an article that was a reasonable length that was relevant, I'd be more than happy to look over it. In what universe is left-libertarianism about strong individual property rights? We literally explicitly argue for collective ownership of land and other means of production.
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Nov 17, 2014 22:27
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Heavy neutrino posted:In what universe is left-libertarianism about strong individual property rights? We literally explicitly argue for collective ownership of land and other means of production. The same universe where any of Jrod's feverish delusions about history, economics, human rationality, race relations, and pretty much everything else hold even a drop of water.
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Nov 17, 2014 23:15
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SedanChair posted:It actually is. "Force prevails. Are you gonna call the state thugs about it?" Isn't this what literally happened in that Libertopisn Chile adventure posted earlier in the thread.  Buy a plot of land in a stateless paradise in Chile. I already got the government to agree not to tax us. Oh btw, don't want the US government finding out, pay in cash up front, money orders only please, no written agreements. You can trust me because I hate judges and the justice system just like you. Okay! Aw drat it I got scammed who could have ever predicted that. Well it would be wrong to ask state thugs for help. Ohhhhh well vv
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Nov 18, 2014 01:17
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I want to speak about the minimum wage issue a bit more, but first I have a real simple question I'd like you all to answer. Where does "economic power" come from in the absence of the State? The reason I want to ask this is that one of the major justifications for the State and democracy to most left progressives is that we need some collective entity to provide a bulwark against private "economic power" that, absent such intervention, will abuse people and cause great harm. When pressed, most left liberals will gladly concede that private economic power has always colluded with State power and either established or created some sort of government which it then uses to its advantage. But there is still this notion that in a freed market, as described by libertarians and laissez faire liberals, would "empower" private economic interests and they would somehow take advantage of everyone else, that they could or would maintain huge amounts of private wealth while allowing little to nothing for everyone else. This makes no sense for a few reasons. Let us first stipulate that we had either a night watchman State that protected private property and arbitrated disputes but little else or a decentralized confederacy of local authorities that did the same thing. Basically a radical separation of business and State. What I don't understand is how you think that a private businessman has "economic power"? In the voluntary market economy, aren't the relative wealth and profits of the businessman tied to the value they provide for others? Isn't that necessarily implied by the fact that transactions must be made without coercion? You could retort that businessmen will voluntarily collude to keep prices high, to monopolize markets and leave people no other choice but to trade with them. "A necessitous man is not free" kind of an argument, where you claim that decisions made under conditions of desperation are not truly "free", non-coercive decisions. But in any society, won't the poor and middle classes vastly outnumber the very wealthy? Since a "free" market necessarily means that there is free entry into any market, the middle classes and poor will simply start trading with each other and cut out the very wealthy. What happens to the top 1% of the "rich" if they don't have a State to rely on for subsidies and monopoly privilege? Under the stated conditions of private property freed markets, I cannot see how I could ever be made to trade with a business if I didn't want to. Where exactly does "economic power" come into the equation? With multitudes of choices available to the consumer, why would they voluntarily be taken advantage of by a 1% that is unable to use coercion against them?
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Nov 19, 2014 00:45
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jrodefeld posted:But in any society, won't the poor and middle classes vastly outnumber the very wealthy? Since a "free" market necessarily means that there is free entry into any market, the middle classes and poor will simply start trading with each other and cut out the very wealthy. What happens to the top 1% of the "rich" if they don't have a State to rely on for subsidies and monopoly privilege? I don't think you know how multinational corporations work. Or Free Markets. Or Markets for that matter. Oh, bonus you are taking advice from a group that thinks Somalia is a free market paradise. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 00:48
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jrodefeld posted:But in any society, won't the poor and middle classes vastly outnumber the very wealthy? No. This is a really easy one, because among other things whole hunter gatherer societies are still in existence.
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Nov 19, 2014 00:49
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"You're free to go grow and mill wheat to bake bread if the bread cartel offers serfdom in exchange for food" 
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Nov 19, 2014 00:50
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Jrod, how do you deal with the idea that Mises and most other Austrian School guys pull this poo poo out of their rear endquote:The Austrians seem to follow the maxim "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit." If you couldn't wade through all their econo-speak and arbitrary redefinitions of commonly used terms, however, they literally do the work for you and come straight out and say they just made everything up. Ludwig von Mises himself wrote of his theory:
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Nov 19, 2014 00:53
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ok you get on with that "abolishing the state" thing meanwhile here in the real world we'll work on things like the minimum wage.
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Nov 19, 2014 00:53
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In a truly free market the rich would simply hire people with guns to come and force people to do business with them on pain of death. We know this would happen because the greatest example of a free market is the illegal drug trade and it is filled with gangs and mafias. How can you ignore reality like this?
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Nov 19, 2014 01:00
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jrodefeld posted:What I don't understand is how you think that a private businessman has "economic power"? In the voluntary market economy, aren't the relative wealth and profits of the businessman tied to the value they provide for others? Isn't that necessarily implied by the fact that transactions must be made without coercion? Is medical care transacted without coercion? Is water in disaster areas transacted without coercion? Would auto or home repair be non-coercive if you can't function without it? If the fire service turns up and says "Oh boy that fire is not covered, we're going to need an extra $1000 or your house burns down" are you being coerced? What if the telecompany decides to cut you off, you going to crowdsource your own global communications network? You've got the hotline to farmers and food processors and carpenters, electricians, machine smiths and don't be loving stupid you need large companies to organize all of this poo poo to live the life you do and banks to finance new ventures. We're not all going to go Amish just to spit in the large companies eyes. While we're on flaws in this grand plan are businesses obligated to be completely honest and open about their products? I can sell you my wonder drug with all sorts of wonderful claims and without government regulating what medicine is and isn't, there's really no way you'd have any clue if it was working or not. Or if it'd just outright kill you. Lying my rear end off or withholding products key to your survival isn't coercion is it? If I'm selling you bottled water at $20 a bottle because a hurricane blew through that's just the market at work right? So what if a few poor people die of thirst and the water was mixed with bleach to fill out more bottles. What's to stop Cartel and Monopolies in a world where there's absolutely no control on business and violence isn't allowed to lynch the fuckers who try to drive up the price of food and starve a city out of all its money?
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Nov 19, 2014 01:10
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jrodefeld posted:In the voluntary market economy, aren't the relative wealth and profits of the businessman tied to the value they provide for others? No. Unquestionably not. If we lived in a world where every person could accurately and immediately assess the value of a given good or bad, service or disservice, then this could be true. But even then, it assumes that it's possible for me to get redress for my ills. But instead, we live in a world where we can only judge by perceived value. Let's say you and I both sell dog biscuits in Oregon, and they're identical in every way (dogs love them!) except that I'm able to make mine ten cents a pound cheaper than yours, by a process that requires me to dump millions of gallons of toxic waste into an aquifer (on land that I own) in Kentucky. I'm killing thousands of people, but because it's cheaper for me to do that than for you to do it humanely, I'm the one who's going to end up doing better because people want my cheaper dog biscuits. "Oh, but people will know about your pollution and choose not to do business with you!" Why not? Everybody in America still buys sweatshop clothes and food picked by exploited immigrant labor, despite the relatively wide availability of fair-trade goods. Why would that be any different? Let's say I've got a rich buddy who gave me enough money to make my biscuits in a factory that can produce fifty thousand a day, while you're hand-mixing yours in a bowl in your kitchen and are lucky to push out one thousand. Which of us has more market power, even though our products are still identical? Let's say the dog from AirBud is in all my advertisements and packaging, and you don't have any advertising at all and brown burlap sacks. Which of us is more likely to sell? If you think they're equally likely, we can add "marketing and advertising" to the growing list of things on which you are wholly ignorant, and if you think that pretty packaging constitutes "value" in the context of dog biscuits, you're also still phenomenally wrong. This is not to mention the fact that markets are VASTLY more complicated than this extremely simplistic supply-demand view you are espousing, and anything from geography, local politics, religion, media, employee relations, and corruption or coercion, in addition to branding and production practices, can make all the difference.
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Nov 19, 2014 01:33
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I know three libertarians personally. One is a punkish girl currently being charged for murder (she used to hand with a skinhead gang that killed a gay dog-walker some years back and claims she wasn't involved, but who knows), one is a lawyer who was born in a ridiculously rich family and is quite good-natured, if a bit dense about others not having the same opportunities and advantages as him, and one is a nursing student from Georgia whose family suffered terribly under communism. So in my personal anecdote, libertarians are 66% female and 33% murderers (and 100% white). I always find that amusing. I was talking online to the nursing student this afternoon and she sent me a link about the LA Times now demanding workers to seek authorization from the management on each and every instance of vacations, sick days, etc (I am a journalist, though back in college to escape that morass of a profession, so she wanted my opinion about how things are going in my country). That started a conversation about wages, work relations (she's been harassed by bosses in the past, so she's under no delusions that private work relations can't be abusive) and such, and I linked her that article about MacDonalds wages being $21 in Sweden, and joked that maybe they have some extra socialism gene that makes things work better there. She went nuclear at once, saying the article was unsourced and obviously a lie. I sent a few more links to confirm it, and she argued that it didn't matter and oh look, she had to go veg out in front of a show and relax. That made me curious if here's some official Rothbard-devised procedure for shutting out stuff that doesn't gel with libertarian principles. I've talked with 9/11 truthers, hardcore trotskyist and even creationists, but I've never seen people just pull the Eject lever on a conversation as quickly and readily as libertarians once there's a non-zero chance of them having to recognize something else works better...or at all.
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Nov 19, 2014 01:41
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To put matters a little differently, JRod, you have the same relationship to supply and demand as creationists do the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
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Nov 19, 2014 01:42
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There is another thing I'd like to say about deontological ethics versus utilitarianism and consequentialism. You have claimed to be utilitarians who focus not on the actions themselves but the end result of those actions. So you believe that the use of coercion against peaceful people is valid in some circumstances because you are pleased with the resulting society. You like the cumulative results that you see in a society, you may enjoy "free" healthcare and social programs so you are fine with the violence that had to be perpetrated to yield such a society. In contrast the deontologist judges an action based on its adherence to a logical and universal moral standard. The action is either said to be moral or immoral based on the merits of the action itself, not any consequence down the road. Most libertarians are deontologists but some are utilitarians. I should point out that just because one is a deontologist that doesn't mean that they can't employ secondary utilitarian arguments to bolster their position. For example, I would choose to live in a free society even if it was less prosperous than a statist society, because I believe that it is immoral to initiate violence against the innocent. But the truth is that a free society yields greater prosperity than competing alternatives. It is quite right for a deontologist to point out the consequentialist benefits to living in a free society. But consequentialism should never be valued ahead of deontology is determining the rightness or wrongness of an action. There are MANY problems with consequentialism. For example, if you are considering using coercion against someone, your action only becomes morally justified if it yields a positive outcome for society. But how on earth can you predict the future outcomes of an action today? Because surely if an action yields a lessening of happiness for society, that early action must be seen as immoral in accordance with utilitarianism. You are using a utilitarian post facto justification for State violence. If you live in Canada and are happy with your single payer healthcare system, you view that outcome as legitimizing the previous actions your government has committed. But which ones in particular are responsible for the "positive" outcomes you see in society? Granting legitimacy to a central authority to commit coercion and redistribute wealth necessarily means that the State will use that authority for ulterior motives that you do not particularly approve of. The State coercively expropriates its citizens. SOME of that money might go to pay for a healthcare program but much of that money might go to incarcerating people for using marijuana. How do you say that the act of redistribution of wealth is justified on utilitarian grounds if much of the expropriated money goes to things that make society as a whole worse off? There are a great many disparate factors that have gone into creating the society that we now live in. I may enjoy privileges in my life due to violence that was initiated against others in the past. Most of us "benefited", in a utilitarian sense, from our ancestors denying Native Americans any right to private property and simply stealing all the land from them. It is virtually impossible to know what the long term consequentialist effects of an action will be. And it is equally difficult to look back and determine which particular previous actions resulted in the currently observed societal levels of happiness and satisfaction versus which have detracted from the satisfaction that people would otherwise be enjoying. There is a reason why utilitarianism is frequently used as a post facto justification for some previous atrocity committed by a tyrant. There is a reason why "the ends justify the means" is usually the mark of a very immoral person. Deontology is concerned with determining "right action" through logic and reason, as well as empathy towards others. Then each individual action is judged by its adherence to that universal standard of morality. Now, a person may be wrong in his determination of what "moral rules" he feels must be applied, but in such a case he has made an error in reason and must be challenged on those grounds, not on a rejection of deontology. Every single religious and spiritually teaching is, by definition, deontological. The Ten Commandments is deontological. "Do unto others" is deontological. Now, a fact that backs up the libertarian deontology is the fact that nearly everyone already accepts libertarian ethics of non aggression, cooperation and respect for private property rights in every aspect of their private lives. It is only when it comes to the State that people begin to make exceptions. However, how can exceptions to morality be anything less than the rejection of morality itself? Deontology does not permit exceptions. If an action contradicts the moral "rules" that are established through use of ones reason, then that action is immoral for everyone. If you are a utilitarian, why shouldn't private individuals be permitted to use aggressive force if the consequentialist effects are positive? Why must the State have a monopoly on the use of excusable force? If you are at all serious about what you believe in, you will have to answer these questions. How on earth can the utilitarian effects of an action be determined with any degree of accuracy at the time of the act itself? You may think that the society you happen to be living under today is one that you prefer, i.e. it has had positive consequentialist effects for you or your friends, but you CANNOT determine with any degree of certainty which of the many previous actions by State officials yielded positive outcomes for you. Post hoc ergo propter hoc, as I keep saying. A constellation of different events conspired to bring you to this point in society. It would be hard or impossible for you to determine which past actions caused benefit to your life and which caused you to be worse off than you otherwise would have been. Furthermore it is nearly impossible for you to know that the actions your government takes today will yield consequentialist benefits in the future. In light of this, you should either reject utilitarianism in favor of consistent, universal deontology or admit that your proposed system has no moral compass and is entirely unconcerned with ethics. I'd love to hear a comprehensive rebuttal to the points offered here. jrodefeld fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 01:42
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jrodefeld posted:For example, I would choose to live in a free society even if it was less prosperous than a statist society, because I believe that it is immoral to initiate violence against the innocent. But the truth is that a free society yields greater prosperity than competing alternatives. It is quite right for a deontologist to point out the consequentialist benefits to living in a free society. But consequentialism should never be valued ahead of deontology is determining the rightness or wrongness of an action. Stop posting until you prove that you're in Somalia or somewhere similar. I just don't believe you for a second.
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Nov 19, 2014 01:48
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jrodefeld posted:Where does "economic power" come from in the absence of the State? It's abundantly clear here, if it wasn't before, that you're not talking about a philosophy, but rather, you're talking about a way of life. Much like a new-age mystic talks about mass awakenings, the world you are describing is a world that simply would require massive changes in how people deal and interact with each other. You're asking us how things will work, and ultimately, the only answer I can give you is that I might as well get into a serious argument about the manners of dwarfs and elves, because it's just talking about fiction and wish fulfillment. Yes. In a world without coercion, maybe libertarianism can work, but that's a massive change from the way things really are. See, even if you got rid of "coercion" from the Government level, you couldn't and wouldn't get rid of it from a personal level. You can't stop me from coercing you or other individuals. Power comes from inequality and imbalance. Take a boss. There is an inequality between them and their employees. They have more authority. They have more ability to determine how things should work and how things should operate. My boss can ultimately decide tomorrow that I don't work for her anymore, but I can't decide that she isn't the boss of me while I keep my position in the company. There will always be inequality and imbalance. At some point, I will have something you need, and you will have to do things for it. For example, I hate getting up early in the morning. I hate being out the door before 7 o'clock. But when I need to be on a customer site, or we're having our big meeting, guess what, I get up and I do it without complaint. Because I hate unemployment more than I hate getting up early. So, let's say I am a food merchant. And there is a famine happening right now, and I happen to have a supply of food. You have two choices. You can either buy my food at whatever price I say, or you can starve. I have something you need. Without me, you can't get by. This applies to any resource. Land, housing, clothing. Anything people need. Now, you might say, well, hey, won't there be competition? And my response: Have you ever heard of price fixing? Watch the Informant. See, here's how it works. You and I both own a power company. Now, I could make plays into your territory and try to get your customers, and you could do the same. But we both realize that competition is actually pretty bad for business. SO, we make a deal. We agree to not go into each other's territory, and to make sure our prices are comparable and we'll do fine. And hey, if some young upstart tries to break into our game, we'll both crush him. Why wouldn't that happen? It happens today. So my question to you is, how the hell do you possibly imagine a world without coercion? As I said, it's really trying to discuss a fictional world where humans cease to act like humans. It's great, until you have to face the reality of what that means. quote:You could retort that businessmen will voluntarily collude to keep prices high, to monopolize markets and leave people no other choice but to trade with them. "A necessitous man is not free" kind of an argument, where you claim that decisions made under conditions of desperation are not truly "free", non-coercive decisions. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. HAHAHA... Oh poo poo, you're serious. It's completely insane to say that a free market means "that there is free entry into any market." It shows me how little you understand about reality, or how little your world conforms to rules and laws of economics. It cannot be free to enter any market. Take the internet, for example. I need a building. I need servers. I need people who can maintain the servers. I need miles of wiring. I need people to lay the wires. I need to have customers. I need people who can install the wires at a customer site. I need tech support. A lot of businesses require you to have a variety and abundance of different resources to even get them off the ground. It's just not free. And the fact is, any complex business that requires some initial ground to be successful will be very difficult, if not impossible, for a poor or middle class person to just start up. Also, there are things like the economy of scale. Why is Wal-Mart the most successful retail store out there? It's not because they provide a superior product, or they provide great service, or anything like that. It's because they are so large, they can dictate the rules of the game. Hey. You want your product on shelves in Wal-Mart? Well, you can say no, but then you lose this huge market. quote:Under the stated conditions of private property freed markets, I cannot see how I could ever be made to trade with a business if I didn't want to. Where exactly does "economic power" come into the equation? With multitudes of choices available to the consumer, why would they voluntarily be taken advantage of by a 1% that is unable to use coercion against them? Why would there be a multitude of choices? If we're talking about a serious proposal, you can't make these huge leaps in logic. You can't go from "No state" to "Multitude of choices!" As I said, it's a fictional world. I can't argue against it effectively because the world you propose requires people to be totally different. This is the third time I've said it in this post, but that's because I'm trying to drive home just how bizarre and nonsensical your vision is. People would suddenly become rational people with a long-term view, they wouldn't take advantage of people, nor would they be taken advantage of. If you can't see how ridiculous that sounds, then arguing with you is like trying to explain the theory of relativity to a brick wall and hoping it understands.
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Nov 19, 2014 01:54
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Nintendo Kid posted:No. This is a really easy one, because among other things whole hunter gatherer societies are still in existence. Okay. I should have been more specific. Yes, you can have societies where everyone is poor. Or where people are completely non materialistic or a primitive hunter gatherer society where money doesn't even exist. All true. What I meant to say was in a free market society where income inequality exists, won't the poor and middle class vastly outnumber the very rich? The answer of course is yes. Terms like "rich" or "poor" are relative obviously. But the leftist argument I am critiquing states that the problem with the market economy is "income inequality" and exploitation of the masses by the super rich. But, if the poor and middle classes vastly outnumber the very wealthy, why wouldn't they simply cease trading with a 1% who were treating them poorly? The libertarian system means that all initiatory violence is illegal and immoral, so the "rich" will have to earn their wealth and sustain their wealth through voluntary trade. It is under these circumstances that I cannot see where this nebulous concept of "economic power" comes from? If this term is used to describe State privilege, then leftists and libertarians agree completely. But it is asserted that under a freed market with laws protecting private property and outlawing aggressive force that "economic power" will be able to abuse and take advantage of everyone else, even though the "everyone else" in this situation outnumber the very wealthy 100 to 1. I don't see this being logical. The only reasonable conclusion would be that many left liberals and socialists don't have a clue about how markets work.
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Nov 19, 2014 02:00
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Like Cemetry Gator stated, the reason why the working people would keep "trading" with the wealthy is that essential services controlled by the wealthy can't be reproduced without immense resources. The wealthy are in a position of extreme (insurmountable) advantage against working people by the fact of their wealth itself.
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Nov 19, 2014 02:04
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jrodefeld posted:You have claimed to be utilitarians who focus not on the actions themselves but the end result of those actions. First find one person who has claimed what you say we have claimed.
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Nov 19, 2014 02:06
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jrodefeld posted:I don't see this being logical. The only reasonable conclusion would be that many left liberals and socialists don't have a clue about how markets work. Or that you, singularly, are an idiot. Occam's Razor, dude.
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Nov 19, 2014 02:11
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jrodefeld posted:Why must the State have a monopoly on the use of excusable force? Well there's this thing that happens when two or more organizations with excusable force are in competition. (War. It's called war.) Also, I'm pretty sure over half this thread has been about finding exceptions to your deontological ethics? 
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Nov 19, 2014 02:11
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jrodefeld posted:I don't see this being logical. The only reasonable conclusion would be that many left liberals and socialists don't have a clue about how markets work. Neither do you since the people you praise as being Free Market wizards have admitted they MAKE IT ALL UP.
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Nov 19, 2014 02:11
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jrodefeld posted:What I meant to say was in a free market society where income inequality exists, won't the poor and middle class vastly outnumber the very rich? True but irrelevant, Karl Marx proved this centuries ago.
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Nov 19, 2014 02:13
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Nintendo Kid posted:True but irrelevant, Karl Marx proved this centuries ago. KARL MARX?  COLLECTIVISM!
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Nov 19, 2014 02:15
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StandardVC10 posted:KARL MARX? I couldn't stop laughing at this. STATIST SPOTTED!
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Nov 19, 2014 02:19
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Sephyr posted:That made me curious if here's some official Rothbard-devised procedure for shutting out stuff that doesn't gel with libertarian principles. I've talked with 9/11 truthers, hardcore trotskyist and even creationists, but I've never seen people just pull the Eject lever on a conversation as quickly and readily as libertarians once there's a non-zero chance of them having to recognize something else works better...or at all. HHH-devised but yes, in a way. Argumentative Ethics states that since you aren't beating me to death right this second, Non-Aggression Principle as described by Libertarians is correct and you must argue everything from it. Note that one of the assertions of the NAP according to Libertarianism is that Libertarianism is correct. Bigger than that though is Praxeology by Mises. It says that we can ignore all evidence and arguments (empirical, logical, ethical, etc) that say that Libertarianism is not the poo poo because we know a priori it is so if you're saying "Medical costs per person are always cheaper in nations with more government involvement than in ones with less", we know you're wrong regardless of how many studies you find because I would rather that not be true, and oh look, now it's not! 
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Nov 19, 2014 02:25
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jrodefeld posted:I don't understand I honestly think this would have been a more apt post, but I suppose you want details don't you? quote:I want to speak about the minimum wage issue a bit more, but first I have a real simple question I'd like you all to answer. The ability to make bulk purchases and marginal utility of money. Basically. quote:The reason I want to ask this is that one of the major justifications for the State and democracy to most left progressives is that we need some collective entity to provide a bulwark against private "economic power" that, absent such intervention, will abuse people and cause great harm. When pressed, most left liberals will gladly concede that private economic power has always colluded with State power and either established or created some sort of government which it then uses to its advantage. But there is still this notion that in a freed market, as described by libertarians and laissez faire liberals, would "empower" private economic interests and they would somehow take advantage of everyone else, that they could or would maintain huge amounts of private wealth while allowing little to nothing for everyone else. Are we in the wizard of oz? Because that is a mighty fine strawman. No, we would not concede that private economic power has established or created the government. While I will admit that economic power is used to corrupt the current system, I don't really believe that it is the genesis of most states. quote:This makes no sense for a few reasons. Let us first stipulate that we had either a night watchman State that protected private property and arbitrated disputes but little else or a decentralized confederacy of local authorities that did the same thing. Basically a radical separation of business and State. What is how you think that a private businessman has "economic power"? In the voluntary market economy, aren't the relative wealth and profits of the businessman tied to the value they provide for others? Isn't that necessarily implied by the fact that transactions must be made without coercion? Begging your question sir, but I do believe you are begging the question. Transactions aren't necessarily made without coercion, as proven by the dozens upon dozens of examples of coercive behavior posted in this thread, or the millions upon millions of examples posted elsewhere. To give you just one example I can remind you of the argument regarding inelastic demand that you ignored, wherein you can be coerced to buy something at an inflated price because it is necessary for survival. Note that this is just one of many, many examples. More to the point, the economic power that a business has is a function of the marginal utility of money. Ever heard the phrase "You've got to have money to make money?" quote:You could retort that businessmen will voluntarily collude to keep prices high, to monopolize markets and leave people no other choice but to trade with them. "A necessitous man is not free" kind of an argument, where you claim that decisions made under conditions of desperation are not truly "free", non-coercive decisions. I could retort that way, yes! In fact it is an example of one of the variety of ways that economic activity benefits from a strong central state. So far I haven't actually read everyone else's reply, so this is probably beating a dead horse, but the the starting point I've use to argue against that is that the top 400 americans hold more wealth than the bottom one hundred and fifty million americans. So while it might be possible for us to say... kill and eat them, it is unlikely that we could simply let our dollars speak for us in a non-aggressive fashion. As to your example of everyone simply 'cutting out the wealthy' the real problem with that is that it would require hundreds of millions of people to instantly make the 'rational' decision to stop doing business with the people who have the most money. Individuals would certainly do it, but there are plenty of individuals who are not being hosed by them, or who otherwise don't have a strong social conscience. quote:Under the stated conditions of private property freed markets, I cannot see how I could ever be made to trade with a business if I didn't want to. Where exactly does "economic power" come into the equation? With multitudes of choices available to the consumer, why would they voluntarily be taken advantage of by a 1% that is unable to use coercion against them? Do you deal with comcast? Are they your only provider in the area? In large chunks of the US you have one option for cable or internet because the companies comprising those natural monopolies have made the concerted decision not to compete with one another. If you want to have internet, you have to trade with them. So while you are not 'forced' (I'm talking the real definition of force btw) of dealing with them, you also don't have any option if you want to live in a modern society.
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Nov 19, 2014 02:32
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jrodefeld posted:There is another thing I'd like to say about deontological ethics versus utilitarianism and consequentialism. These are seriously like the most naive possible responses to consequentialism. I mean seriously? "You don't REALLY know what consequences your action will have" is the sort of bullshit my students come up with when they clearly haven't done the reading. You have no familiarity with contemporary metaethics; I recommend you do not center your arguments on that field.
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Nov 19, 2014 02:40
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jrodefeld posted:Okay. I should have been more specific. Yes, you can have societies where everyone is poor. Or where people are completely non materialistic or a primitive hunter gatherer society where money doesn't even exist. All true. I am a homesteader with a yurt. But I need a new head for my rake! There are two vendors in the area: -a hardware store owner who yells at me "get out, get out, run, they're coming" -a squad of paratoopers (no insignia visible) Who should get my business?
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Nov 19, 2014 02:48
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SedanChair posted:I am a homesteader with a yurt. But I need a new head for my rake! Either way you end up with dysentery and die
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Nov 19, 2014 02:49
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SedanChair posted:I am a homesteader with a yurt. But I need a new head for my rake! Ah! I didn't realize Valhalla DRO had added an airborne detachment!
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Nov 19, 2014 02:51
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CommieGIR posted:Either way you end up with dysentery and die Don't worry there's plenty of clever entrepreneurs who will be very happy to treat you for free if you agree to swallow some pills and let the nice men in lab coats observe you for a month maybe you can do some labor while you're there, no coercion
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Nov 19, 2014 02:51
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Heavy neutrino posted:Don't worry there's plenty of clever entrepreneurs who will be very happy to treat you for free if you agree to swallow some pills and let the nice men in lab coats observe you for a month The doors WILL be locked behind you, for your protection.
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Nov 19, 2014 02:54
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This probably won't be as deep as you want since I've got other stuff I'm doing, but since no one else has bitten...jrodefeld posted:There is another thing I'd like to say about deontological ethics versus utilitarianism and consequentialism. First off some of us are utilitarians, but I'd point out that those of us who use that label tend to do it in a general fashion rather than having some sort of overarching fetishism for it like you do with deontology. I consider myself a utilitarian, because I lack a better term to describe my moral viewpoint rather than because I've spent half a decade jerking off onto pictures of mises while screaming about the free market. For most people who consider themselves utilitarian the view is that we go after what causes the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Its worth pointing out that most people who are utilitarians hold deontological positions in some instances as well. The typical example of this being the man at the gatehouse: "A man is being chased into the city by an army. If you drop the gate before he enters the gatehouse he will be caught and murdered. If you choose not to do so, it will certainly lead to the deaths of himself and several others before they are driven off. Is it moral to drop the gate." Its actually a very tough moral question. Someone who was as rabidly utilitarian as you are libertarian would probably argue that yes, the gate must be dropped. For someone like me? I'm honestly not sure there is an appropriate answer, because I don't believe that human morality can be objectively, universally determined. I believe it is subjective. I believe that both are bad options, with bad outcomes and that it would depend on any number of circumstances well beyond the scope of such a simple argument. quote:For example, I would choose to live in a free society even if it was less prosperous than a statist society, because I believe that it is immoral to initiate violence against the innocent. But the truth is that a free society yields greater prosperity than competing alternatives. It is quite right for a deontologist to point out the consequentialist benefits to living in a free society. But consequentialism should never be valued ahead of deontology is determining the rightness or wrongness of an action. You are lying, or at least equivocating. If it was such a concern to you, there are places on earth where you could go to be free of a state. Clearly you value security to some degree, or you would have tried to found some libertarian Sealand or moved to the wilds of Somalia where the government would not interfere with you. Also stating something is not a fact, and declaring yourself to be telling the truth is a lazy debate tactic that I really wish you'd grow out of. quote:There are MANY problems with consequentialism. For example, if you are considering using coercion against someone, your action only becomes morally justified if it yields a positive outcome for society. But how on earth can you predict the future outcomes of an action today? Because surely if an action yields a lessening of happiness for society, that early action must be seen as immoral in accordance with utilitarianism. There are indeed many problems with consequentialism, but the inability of people to predict the future is not really one of them. quote:You are using a utilitarian post facto justification for State violence. If you live in Canada and are happy with your single payer healthcare system, you view that outcome as legitimizing the previous actions your government has committed. But which ones in particular are responsible for the "positive" outcomes you see in society? I would assume the actions taken by Tommy Douglas that founded our healthcare system would be examples of actions that had positive outcomes based on the fact that they did in fact have positive outcomes. Also you are an idiot who has been duped into believing that universal healthcare is bad when it has massive approval in every country it is used. Please go read about healthcare somewhere other than Mises.org, I beg of you. quote:Granting legitimacy to a central authority to commit coercion and redistribute wealth necessarily means that the State will use that authority for ulterior motives that you do not particularly approve of. The State coercively expropriates its citizens. SOME of that money might go to pay for a healthcare program but much of that money might go to incarcerating people for using marijuana. How do you say that the act of redistribution of wealth is justified on utilitarian grounds if much of the expropriated money goes to things that make society as a whole worse off? Taxation is not coercion by any definition except your extremely warped one. Also stop using expropriates like that because it makes you look like a tool who doesn't want to say theft since we give you poo poo every time you say a factual lie. Moreover, from this I see that you fail to understand how governmental budgets work. My tax money isn't earmarked for everything. I know exactly how much money my government spends on healthcare, and if I find that they are spending more on things that I find abhorrent I can lobby to try and have those things weakened or removed. You know, that whole democracy thing that you hate in favor of benevolent monarchy or natural social elites. quote:There are a great many disparate factors that have gone into creating the society that we now live in. I may enjoy privileges in my life due to violence that was initiated against others in the past. Most of us "benefited", in a utilitarian sense, from our ancestors denying Native Americans any right to private property and simply stealing all the land from them. It is virtually impossible to know what the long term consequentialist effects of an action will be. And it is equally difficult to look back and determine which particular previous actions resulted in the currently observed societal levels of happiness and satisfaction versus which have detracted from the satisfaction that people would otherwise be enjoying. There is no 'may' about it Jrod, as you point out in your very next paragraph. That aside, your entire view in this piece seems to be "We can't look back at history and discover what worked and what didn't." While this is the basis for Reflexology, the rest of the world will happily tell your anti-science viewpoint to calmly gently caress right off. quote:There is a reason why utilitarianism is frequently used as a post facto justification for some previous atrocity committed by a tyrant. There is a reason why "the ends justify the means" is usually the mark of a very immoral person. I don't know about you, but I very rarely see justification for atrocities after the fact. You usually see the justifications before someone does something bad as a method of actually getting people to go along with it. quote:Deontology is concerned with determining "right action" through logic and reason, as well as empathy towards others. Then each individual action is judged by its adherence to that universal standard of morality. Now, a person may be wrong in his determination of what "moral rules" he feels must be applied, but in such a case he has made an error in reason and must be challenged on those grounds, not on a rejection of deontology. Empathy. Uh huh.... right. You do realize that describing it again for the fiftieth time isn't fixing anything. It isn't the messenger that is the problem Jrodefeld, its the message. Most of us believe in subjective morality rather than morality handed down from on high or via your warped logic. quote:Every single religious and spiritually teaching is, by definition, deontological. The Ten Commandments is deontological. "Do unto others" is deontological. Now, a fact that backs up the libertarian deontology is the fact that nearly everyone already accepts libertarian ethics of non aggression, cooperation and respect for private property rights in every aspect of their private lives. It is only when it comes to the State that people begin to make exceptions. Comparing yourself to religion is probably not the best idea. They at least get to say their commandments are the word of god. Its worth pointing out that you are lying or simply incorrect here. Almost no one agrees with the libertarian view of the non-aggression principle. We agree that using force against each other is bad, but that taxation, or policing etc are a'okay. We agree with private property rights but no one else agrees with you that drilling a hole in the ground makes you that ground's rightful owner. quote:However, how can exceptions to morality be anything less than the rejection of morality itself? Deontology does not permit exceptions. If an action contradicts the moral "rules" that are established through use of ones reason, then that action is immoral for everyone. How can begging the question be any less than a question itself? You have previously accepted the idea of exceptions to your morality in this very thread, just cloaked in the mist of "No that totally isn't an exception" when asked about stealing for survival. You declare it immoral even though you would totally do it and you think everyone would and should dogpile on anyone who tried to prosecute it. We get that you don't permit exceptions because your whole moral system would collapse, its just funny watch you twist yourself into knots trying to dodge it. I'll ask again, if it is okay for an individual to steal to eat, why is it wrong for a society to steal to pay for healthcare for the poor? As to the utilitarian argument for private use of force, the simple answer is that we believe that any positive effects caused by private use of aggressive force would be outweighed by the breakup of society it would cause. quote:If you are at all serious about what you believe in, you will have to answer these questions. How on earth can the utilitarian effects of an action be determined with any degree of accuracy at the time of the act itself? By looking at historical examples of similar circumstances, as well as using scientific data to support or refute historical conclusions. Could you post a concrete example of something you think would be a problem for us? quote:You may think that the society you happen to be living under today is one that you prefer, i.e. it has had positive consequentialist effects for you or your friends, but you CANNOT determine with any degree of certainty which of the many previous actions by State officials yielded positive outcomes for you. Post hoc ergo propter hoc, as I keep saying. A constellation of different events conspired to bring you to this point in society. It would be hard or impossible for you to determine which past actions caused benefit to your life and which caused you to be worse off than you otherwise would have been. Yes I can. I can look back and go, Hey Tommy Douglas, your fight for universal healthcare means that I have universal healthcare! Hey guy who built that bridge that now shortened my commute by twenty minutes, thanks! Seriously, your argument here is incredibly weak even by your standards, to the point that I don't even know what to say because it fails to rise up to the point to need to be smacked down. Your whole basis seems to be "We can't tell exactly what will happen, therefore Utilitarianism is invalid, MUHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!" quote:Furthermore it is nearly impossible for you to know that the actions your government takes today will yield consequentialist benefits in the future. In light of this, you should either reject utilitarianism in favor of consistent, universal deontology or admit that your proposed system has no moral compass and is entirely unconcerned with ethics. Or, alternately, we could admit that we are humans doing the best we can. We could admit that while it is possible that providing universal healthcare to all might have unintended or unforeseen consequences in stardate 74161.8 that does not mean we shouldn't make the attempt.
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Nov 19, 2014 03:11
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Caros posted:This probably won't be as deep as you want since I've got other stuff I'm doing, but since no one else has bitten... Caros do you realize that at this moment, jrodefeld is reading your post and clucking to himself saying "these wrong arguments sure are persuasive! Or they would be to somebody who didn't know the truth."
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Nov 19, 2014 03:19
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SedanChair posted:Caros do you realize that at this moment, jrodefeld is reading your post and clucking to himself saying "these wrong arguments sure are persuasive! Or they would be to somebody who didn't know the truth." Yeah. 
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Nov 19, 2014 03:20
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jrodefeld posted:I'd love to hear a comprehensive rebuttal to the points offered here. Or, instead of arguing about the relative merits of utilitarianism vs. deontology, which are actually totally irrelevant to the relative merits of Libertarianism as a political and economic system, we could address, oh, I don't know, any of the dozen things that you've bailed out on in the past. Maybe you'd like to start with the tragedy of the commons, or price inelasticity in healthcare.
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Nov 19, 2014 03:27
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He doesn't have time to think about Caros, he's too busy thinking of the 20 paragraphs he'll write about a completely different topic instead of responding to Caros' post.
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Nov 19, 2014 03:33
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