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jrodefeld posted:I'm not forgetting anything. I was objecting to the language that was used. It was said that Progressives gave money to this group or to this cause, when what was really meant was that Progressives supported the State in its use of force to expropriate people against their will to fund policies that they support. This isn't true. For more information go read my post about how the idea that conservatives give more money is provably false. quote:Reading what you wrote, I am not really sure you understand anything about economics. Who are you to say "what's needed" to help the poor? How could you even know what the economy would look like without the State, how much more prosperous we might be? "What's needed" to help the poor is always a relative concept. I assume he is a person with a brain. I for example, with my brain, know that the poor 'need' things like food, and housing, and medical care. I am in no position to talk about what they want, but anyone past about third grade could tell you the needs of the poor. quote:Do you understand that the State doesn't actually produce anything? What are the poor lacking that we need to redress? They lack stuff. They might lack a home, a car, enough to eat, decent clothes and things that need to first be produced on the market before they could be redistributed to them by some well meaning progressive politicians. Okay, this really bothered me the whole way I was driving my wife to work. Are you really this naive that you're going to argue that the State doesn't produce anything? I suppose they didn't produce the roads I drove on then? I'll agree that the government is largely in the service industry more than they are in the business of making houses, but that doesn't mean they don't make things. "But but... they didn't make the roads! The private contractors did!" You might say. Yeah, but by that logic Walmart doesn't produce poo poo. Walmart doesn't build their own stores, or make most of their own products. They subcontract out pretty much everything but the actual physical running of their stores, which (surprise) is largely a service industry. The government produces shittons of stuff, they just typically do so by means of paying someone else to do it. While I have no doubt we could easily have a government housing division dedicated to building government housing, its typically easier and less invasive to simply hire an existing company, since that company can then go on to do other things once the job is done. quote:People were poor in 1900 primarily because the economy was physically unproductive compared to today. You could have redistributed every cent from the Rockafellers and the so-called "robber barons" and the masses would have hardly been better off at all. The thing that improved their situation was the market economy investing in capital equipment which improved and increased production of vital goods and services, lowering their price and making necessary goods, the aforementioned "stuff" available in great quantities to the masses. "So called 'robber barons'" That's cute. I mean its not like those guys actually deserved the title because they literally bought up towns so that they could keep their workers in perpetual, slavelike debt. Its not like they literally had their employees shot because said employees wanted to... you know, not be constantly robbed of every dime they made and forced to work in hellish conditions. quote:Think of the contribution of someone like Henry Ford, who improved the manufacturing process of the automobile and made it available to the masses for the first time. How much better were peoples lives when they could own a car to travel in? How much more productive did the economy become with the proliferation of the automobile? I've said it before, I'll say it again. No one thinks that the market is useless at refining ideas. The free market can make a better iPhone than the government, just like the government can fund the research of everything that goes into an iPhone far better than apple ever could. quote:These are the sorts of things that improve the general prosperity and reduce poverty. The State can restrict this process through extracting huge amounts of money out of the private economy. But this is not productive. The State is not producing cars or food or anything else. It can shuffle existing resources around and that is it. Doubling the money supply doesn't double the amount of resources in the economy. It just creates a situation where more money is chase the same amount of goods which causes price inflation. Except there were large chunks of time where the resources were there and the private market was doing poo poo all with them. When the market poo poo itself in the 30's it took the government to bring it back up to speed. We needed Social Security because while there existed enough resources for the elderly to live with dignity, they were not being devoted to... you know, keeping the elderly out of dignity. Beyond all of that it is worth pointing out that industrialization is not the same as capitalism. You keep equating them and going "Well we industrialized and standards of life improved, therefore capitalism" while ignoring the fact that nations like Russia industrialized in a totally socialist fashion and saw the same massive improvements in their quality of living. Its not capitalism that makes that improvement, its industrialization. quote:You have to ask yourself "what would the economy look like if the State didn't confiscate all that wealth out of the private economy and instead that money was invested into new capital equipment to increase production of needed goods and services for the masses? How much more prosperous would we be? First the state doesn't confiscate wealth. Secondly, I imagine it'd be quite a bit shittier. We'd be pretty low on healthcare treatments for example, since over 50% of all medical development funds come from the NIH. We probably wouldn't have the internet, our roads would be patchwork as poo poo, we would have non-functional police. I'd say it'd be a pretty lovely place to live. quote:If you understand that the State makes our economy less prosperous and less productive than it otherwise would be and simultaneously produces nothing, it becomes quite absurd to assert that private charity would "fall short of what's needed" to help the poor. I might think that what the poor need is a yacht each and a Bentley but these goods are not produced in quantities sufficient to give out. What the poor need must be created in the private economy. If we accept your premise of a magical economy things would be better! If we accept that the state produces nothing despite all reason and common sense then yeah, it makes sense that private charity is the way to do. I mean, its not like 50% of all medical research comes from one government department. Its not like the US government accounts for 32% of all investment on R&D in the US, after all, how could they. THEY DON'T MAKE ANYTHING!?! Also if you think the poor need is a yacht and a bentley you're a loving idiot. quote:Furthermore, for ever $5 the US government spends on social welfare programs, only $1 actually makes it to the intended recipient. So why on earth would you ever imagine that charitable giving would ever need to match State social welfare spending dollar for dollar? This is a lie. This is an outright, abject, balls to the walls loving lie. Social Security has administrative overhead of 1%. One Percent! For the record, that is 1/80th of what you are saying. Medicare clocks in at a staggering 1-3% depending on where you're taking the figure from. SNAP is probably the worst program, with a whopping 5% of its costs (Only if you include pensions for some bizarre reason) going to administrative costs. For the record, Similar private investment programs have an overhead of 12-15% for SS, or roughly 20% for medicare/caid. Even private charities are typically around 10-15% for healthcare. So government programs a multiple times more efficient per dollar than the private programs you would have us switch to. You are wrong. So I'm going to call you out here. You, Jrodefeld, are either an intentional liar or staggeringly ignorant of the topics you are talking about. quote:Lastly you have to understand the perverse incentive structure for State social welfare as opposed to private charity. Politicians brag about the number of people they sign up for welfare instead of how many people they help off of the dole and into a productive job with upward mobility. The incentive for politicians is to use social welfare as a bribe for votes. If people become dependent on State power they become fearful and ever protective of what they now feel "entitled" to. They frequently become single issue voters who vote for the candidate who will best protect or increase their benefits rather than that candidate which will best protect their liberties and leave them alone. Yeah, drat those politicians signing people up to get... food. Or heating assistance. drat you Obama, being proud of allowing millions of americans to gain access to healthcare where they would otherwise not. The idea that someone is less likely to succeed because they aren't starving, or suffering from a disease, or freezing in the night is loving absurd. I hope you realize that one day. quote:In contrast, private charity and mutual aid is concerned with getting people off of assistance and into a position of self sufficiency. The beneficiary needs to be "nice" to his donors since the arrangement is voluntary. Voluntary donors are better able to determine who needs help and who doesn't. Welfare cheats and abuse would be virtually non existent. No one would tolerate an able bodied person refusing to work and getting perpetual benefits. Are you ever going to address the fact that Mutual Aid societies collapse the moment they are needed? I've seen it posted a dozen times, and you're actually responding to a post containing it. Mutual Aid societies do not work, because they fail when times get tough. A Mutual Aid society is nothing more than a poorly capitalized, unregulated insurance network. Please address this point Jrod. Also welfare cheats are pretty much non-existent. They account for a tiny fraction and would exist in any private system that attempted to do the same thing.
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Dec 2, 2014 16:53
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StandardVC10 posted:See that's one answer but I feel like a libertarian society on the side of the Nazis would have basically been like turbo-Mussolini and constantly require the Germans to bail them out. More like the turbo-Austrians  Praise fascists as the saviors of Western Civilization, Von Mises style. Bonus: the glorious armies of the Fatherland are clearing all that unowned land in Eastern Europe, readying it for self-made settlers to go in and start homesteading.
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Dec 2, 2014 16:59
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jrodefeld posted:I would appreciate if someone could respond to this post I made. You posted this complaint less than three hours after the post in question. When we do this, it's days or weeks after the post you haven't responded to, because you immediately drop almost any topic like a statist hot potato the moment you get any kind of substantial pushback on it. At least wait long enough for someone getting a decent night's sleep to read the post before you start crying about it and try to establish some kind of false equivalence. Though while we're on the topic of calling people out for not responding to arguments, would you care to respond to this post I made or the countless posts on healthcare you've been fervently ignoring? How about dropping those truth bombs about utilitarianism that you totally have and aren't bluffing about? Or do you only revisit arguments when it's people impugning the honor of your idols?
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Dec 2, 2014 17:03
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Nolanar posted:You posted this complaint less than three hours after the post in question. When we do this, it's days or weeks after the post you haven't responded to, because you immediately drop almost any topic like a statist hot potato the moment you get any kind of substantial pushback on it. At least wait long enough for someone getting a decent night's sleep to read the post before you start crying about it and try to establish some kind of false equivalence. I'm more amused at the fact that he complained about it at 6:00 in the morning. Some of us do have to sleep after all.
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Dec 2, 2014 17:05
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jrodefeld posted:I don't know why you would expect me to comment on the postings of some random person on an internet message board. If he or she comments on this thread and says something I strongly agree with or disagree with, I'll gladly comment. Well, a large part of the reason is because I would personally find it hilarious. Shiranaihito was kind of a high point in this thread for me, and I'd love to relive it. I'm also just very confused as to what you believe in. You don't commit to any of the things that you post, and often get annoyed at us when we assume you agree with the people and statements you quote. I was hoping that you'd be a little bit more inclined to respond to someone who made a specific point of coming in here, posting ad hominems while getting annoyed at us for posting ad hominems, getting pissed off at us, running away, coming back to tell us how he doesn't care about us, came back again to inform you that we were trolling you and that he still didn't care, and generally just being a frankly adorable little special snowflake, all while posting views that you ostensibly agree with and regularly cite yourself. He didn't post a single thing that you haven't, he was just far more overtly offensive and even less nuanced. I kind of thought that you might be willing to take five minutes to read through his posts (it's less than one page. I linked it for you) and state whether you think he's a reasonable libertarian or not. Evidently I thought wrong.
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Dec 2, 2014 17:11
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If y'all just want to sit around arguing with libertarians you should go to reddit, which is lousy with them. All that's happening here is a bunch of dudes masturbating over a couple of incompetent libertarians flailing around their stupid beliefs. It would be more entertaining if there were a couple more libertarians and an-caps at least.
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Dec 2, 2014 17:29
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Mineaiki posted:If y'all just want to sit around arguing with libertarians you should go to reddit, which is lousy with them. I've already spent enough time online being called a pansy-rear end human being race-traitor, I don't really see any reason to seek that experience out again.
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Dec 2, 2014 17:30
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Caros posted:I assume he is a person with a brain. I for example, with my brain, know that the poor 'need' things like food, and housing, and medical care. I am in no position to talk about what they want, but anyone past about third grade could tell you the needs of the poor. No, I've been corrupted Caros. All this time working with homeless and foster youth has given me tunnel vision.
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Dec 2, 2014 17:40
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Muscle Tracer posted:I've already spent enough time online being called a pansy-rear end human being race-traitor, I don't really see any reason to seek that experience out again. Well then you probably shouldn't be talking to libertarians anywhere because that's just gonna come out when you talk to them long enough.
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Dec 2, 2014 17:42
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Mineaiki posted:Well then you probably shouldn't be talking to libertarians anywhere because that's just gonna come out when you talk to them long enough. I don't think you understand the purpose of Debate and Discussion...
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Dec 2, 2014 17:44
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Mineaiki posted:Well then you probably shouldn't be talking to libertarians anywhere because that's just gonna come out when you talk to them long enough. No, that's just reddit and freep, both terrible places. Even the racist that came in here not long ago didn't accuse anyone in here of being any of that.
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Dec 2, 2014 18:54
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Mineaiki posted:If y'all just want to sit around arguing with libertarians you should go to reddit, which is lousy with them. I'd rather smash my hand with a hammer than spend any significant time on Reddit. I frequently debate libertarians in places other than SA, but trying to debate anything on redit is an exercise in frustration because reddit is not set up for discussion, but for echo chambers.
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Dec 2, 2014 19:08
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Caros posted:I'd rather smash my hand with a hammer than spend any significant time on Reddit. I frequently debate libertarians in places other than SA, but trying to debate anything on redit is an exercise in frustration because reddit is not set up for discussion, but for echo chambers. It's pretty remarkable to watch true, cited, verifiable information literally sink and vanish when redditors don't like it. It's perfect for cults.
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Dec 2, 2014 19:21
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SedanChair posted:It's pretty remarkable to watch true, cited, verifiable information literally sink and vanish when redditors don't like it. It's perfect for cults. It really, really is. The funny thing is that I had a huge hardon for a vote based forum the style of Reddit since I was a teenager. It'd be so cool, the ideas that are correct would naturally float to the top and it could be used as a decision making engine to take down the state and... oh.. oh, its got pedophiles on it. Oh, and it split off into a thousand different groups that instantly solidified into their own fiefdoms where opposing viewpoints are gone in an instant. Oh hey MRA's... oh.  Yeah, I see the problem with it now.
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Dec 2, 2014 19:25
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jrodefeld posted:What right should politicians have to make certain voluntary economic transactions illegal thus artificially reducing the choices available to people? quote:And what right do YOU have to introduce violence into a peaceful economic transaction? quote:What right do you have to use violence against people who are engaged in a voluntary trade on the market? This looks like a sad regression, since a few pages ago you had grasped the fact that many of us are not deontologists, but typically consequentialists of one sort or another. That is, we believe in judging the morality of actions by their outcomes, or reasonably-supposed-to-be-likely outcomes. If you really must use the language of 'rights', the moral 'right' we have to act in these ways is the same moral right everyone always has: the right to act for the best.
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Dec 2, 2014 20:00
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So this got posted in the 2016 thread, and I think its worth a laugh.quote:For now, Rand Paul is running for U.S. Senate in 2016. If he decides to run for president, too, his top political aide says he's confident they can navigate a Kentucky law that prohibits someone from running for two offices on the same ballot. Why yes, that is Rand Paul's campaign talking about how the State can't overrule the federal government when it comes to running for office. Mmm, smell the hypocrisy of a man who really, really wants to run for president.
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Dec 2, 2014 20:08
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Mineaiki posted:All that's happening here is a bunch of dudes masturbating over a couple of incompetent libertarians flailing around their stupid beliefs. It would be more entertaining if there were a couple more libertarians and an-caps at least. Having read the whole thread from the start, I think it would be more interesting if there was someone better at arguing libertarian beliefs than jrodefeld. However, given that there have been other posters and they were far less competent, I have pretty much concluded that jrodefeld and the great libertarian minds/unrepentant sociopaths he keeps quoting are the top of the heap. Part of the remarkable thing to me is how the thread jumps between topics. There are derails in every thread, but here you basically have one guy who responds to everything that comes at him with either: -a pack of lies ("80% of government spending doesn't reach the intended recipient") -a totally unsupported and possibly contradicted by evidence claim ("Naturally, a free market in healthcare would have lower prices than an oppressive statist system.") -a wall of text or rambling diatribe from a great libertarian mind that has nothing to do with Jrod's previous post -lots of indignation about people calling racist statements racist The first two quickly get shot down from all angles and are abandoned and the third is already trying to change the topic, so really the fourth is the only one that has held the thread still for any length of time. It's quite interesting to watch, really.
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Dec 2, 2014 22:31
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jrodefeld posted:What I fail to understand is how any rational person could ever think that raising the minimum wage could actually uplift anyone. The worker who is making more money for the company than they are paid in wages will remain employed after the minimum wage is raised and the people who are now costing the company more in wages than they are making for the company will now be consigned to unemployment. The reason that people think the minimum wage has positive consequences is that evidence and experience shows it to have positive consequences. Part of the reason you're unable to see this is because you have a very simplistic model of employment. People who take very low wage jobs don't do it because of their preferences, they do it because they have no alternative. The relationship between employer and employee is not a relationship between equals because in most cases, the employer need another worker to increase productivity, whereas the employee needs a job to survive. Once an employee has a low-paid job they will often find themselves doing extraordinary long hours just to stay afloat, which not only reduces their quality of life but also their ability to improve their earning potential by improving their skills or even looking for other work. Their mental and physical health may suffer, and the employers profits come at the expense of society at large. This isn't really a "choice" by the employee, because the alternative is basically destitution. What we end up with is a tragedy of the commons - employers as a whole have a strong interest in a healthy, educated, productive workforce, but it's in every individual employer's interest to suck employees dry and throw them away when they're done. How could any rational person ever think that an employer will work against their own interests to promote the long-term welfare of employees? quote:And what right do YOU have to introduce violence into a peaceful economic transaction? You continue to switch between deontological arguments and consequential arguments. As soon as we demonstrate that the consequences of a minimum wage are positive for a society, you'll immediately claim that it doesn't matter (because you're not a consequentialist), so what's the point in arguing consequences at all? As long as you continue to deny the ethical relevance of consequences, there's no reason here why anyone should bother discussing the finer points of how the minimum wage affects society in practice.
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Dec 2, 2014 23:41
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Heavy neutrino posted:I'm a bit late for this quote, but do you present the same evaluation for all artificial collective entities, like corporations for example? Should all the holdings of artificial entities be dissolved amongst those who are mixing their labor with it, including not only land but means of production operated by workers and owned by artificial entities, which can never legitimately own anything? The "corporation" as it currently exists is the product of legislation and monopoly privilege and would not exist in this form in a libertarian society. A corporation or business would merely be the product of voluntary contract in a free market. Corporations are indeed artificial entities, they don't have rights. Individuals have rights. The reason your comparison is not legitimate is that workers who voluntarily choose to seek employment as a wage earner are choosing to trade their labor for wages. They are using the capital equipment that the business owner has a property right in which allows that worker to be much more productive that they could be without access to that capital equipment. The wage rate is agreed upon by contract. The capital equipment is not unowned natural resources that can be homesteaded. It is already owned property. If you mix your labor with land that is already legitimately owned, you don't get the right to it. The "corporation" doesn't own property, the CEO, the shareholders etc own the property as individuals. The "corporation" is just a contract between individuals.
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Dec 3, 2014 00:01
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So when libertopia is achieved and corporations dissolved do all the shareholders get an a fraction of every piece of equipment and supplies or a pile of stuff roughly equivalent to the value of their shares?
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Dec 3, 2014 00:05
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Raskolnikov38 posted:So when libertopia is achieved and corporations dissolved do all the shareholders get an a fraction of every piece of equipment and supplies or a pile of stuff roughly equivalent to the value of their shares? Silly worker, you are not part of the contract. Only the property owner is entitled to the hurf of his durf.
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Dec 3, 2014 00:06
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bokkibear posted:You continue to switch between deontological arguments and consequential arguments. As soon as we demonstrate that the consequences of a minimum wage are positive for a society, you'll immediately claim that it doesn't matter (because you're not a consequentialist), so what's the point in arguing consequences at all? As long as you continue to deny the ethical relevance of consequences, there's no reason here why anyone should bother discussing the finer points of how the minimum wage affects society in practice. This is actually a good point and it really does encompass the cyclical nature of this thread regardless of whatever is currently being discussed. "Government-run healthcare is more expensive, less efficient and of lesser quality." "Actually all this data shows the opposite is true." "That doesn't matter because all taxation is theft." I wish I could just take the moral high ground mid-argument and declare myself the winner for doing so. Being a libertarian must be really, really easy.
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Dec 3, 2014 00:12
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Wolfsheim posted:This is actually a good point and it really does encompass the cyclical nature of this thread regardless of whatever is currently being discussed. Yeah, I've brought it up before, but it seems like there isn't anything he's actually willing to discuss. Consequences are irrelevant because his philosophy is deontological, thought experiments are a waste of time on hypotheticals that will never happen, the logical backing of Libertarianism is too complex for this thread, etc. Incidentally, the reason I focus on hypotheticals and thought experiments so much is that it's a really good way of doing moral reasoning. Rawls called it Reflective Equilibrium, and the way it works is you take your deontological basis or your utilitarian principle or whatever, actively seek out scenarios where that rule conflicts with "common sense" morality, and then either reject the "common sense" answer or modify the rule so that they agree. As an example, let's say I base my utilitarianism on the idea that we should maximize the amount of pleasure people experience overall. Then someone proposes the Utility Monster to me: someone who gains so much more pleasure from everything that the optimal solution is to force everyone into crushing despair if it means making that one person happier. Clearly this is monstrous, so I modify my rule: we should maximize the amount of pleasure the average person experiences. Then I get faced with something like Omelas, where the pleasure of many people rides on the suffering of a single innocent. The specific situation in that short story is completely unrealistic, but using that as your answer is just dodging the point. Once again, my rule says such a situation is fine, but my conscience disagrees, so I rewrite my rule again: we should maximize the well-being of the worst off among us. This is also one of Rawls's conclusions if I'm remembering right. So then I'm confronted with another contradiction in the form of progressive taxation: is it moral to take a bunch of money from the richest in order to improve the lives of the worst off? After reflecting on this, I reach my conclusion and this time I reject the ad-hoc principle; it's completely moral to do the Robin Hood thing. This is where jrod runs into trouble: it needs to be two positions that the person actually holds to be reflective equilibrium. When he points out the glaring contradiction between one of our ad-hoc principles (hey, the minimum wage is pretty helpful to poor people) with his own moral principle that we haven't endorsed (government regulation is always immoral), it's actually super easy for us to just reject his principle. In fact, it entrenches us further in our own position! That's why I at least have been trying to focus on finding two things he believes in and juxtaposing them, so that it isn't just a simple matter of rejecting the idea you haven't bought into. Weirdly though, he just declares that there's no contradiction, and that "It would be totally moral for a shop owner to refuse to give food to a starving child for free, but he should be universally condemned for doing it" is a coherent statement. It's a bit difficult to wrap the mind around sometimes.
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Dec 3, 2014 01:14
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jrodefeld posted:Providing that it can be irrefutably proven that your grandparents murdered the former property owners and stole that property, then I think the descendant should be entitled to the property that was stolen. It has to be proven incontrovertibly that the ancestors who were murdered had a legitimate claim to the property, or at least a superior claim to your grandparents. This is something that stuck out at me upon reviewing the thread. I'm going to try and run with your set of rules, and I'd like to ask you to look at it from a similar but slightly different angle. On principle, there is property upon which there are not only no valid claims, but it is impossible for a valid claim to be made. Let us say that property in question is stolen from its original, rightful owners, and the original owners, their descendents, relatives, and other heirs are all...unable to present a claim. This is therefore property that cannot be properly bought, because it's not the holder's property to sell, cannot be returned to resolve the issue. It is effectively in limbo. I'm also going to ask, what does this mean for any profits made off of property that's in such a state? The holder doesn't have the rights to those, or certainly not the full proportion. And for additional property bought with these profits? They'd also be contaminated, unclean, polluted, for lack of better terms. I could go so far as to call it a veritable "Ice-9" of property. I'm going to go a bit farther, and ask you to imagine a world in which a non-negligible amount of all property is in such a state. What's the right thing to do in this situation? Would this undermine property claims in this hypothetical world? Not the validity of the concept of property, we're still wedded to that concept, but the validity of claims to property, if you take my meaning.
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Dec 3, 2014 01:24
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jrodefeld posted:The "corporation" as it currently exists is the product of legislation and monopoly privilege and would not exist in this form in a libertarian society. A corporation or business would merely be the product of voluntary contract in a free market. Corporations are indeed artificial entities, they don't have rights. Individuals have rights. Excellent. And surely we weren't planning on letting individuals keep their ill-gotten corporate gains? We'll break up their investments and distribute it to people with better claims (for example, descendants of indigenous peoples chased off the land that now serves as means of production for corporations). No problem, right? We're starting over so let's take back the stolen corporate wealth.
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Dec 3, 2014 01:28
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SedanChair posted:Excellent. And surely we weren't planning on letting individuals keep their ill-gotten corporate gains? We'll break up their investments and distribute it to people with better claims (for example, descendants of indigenous peoples chased off the land that now serves as means of production for corporations).  Why must you commit such naked aggression against the innocent?!
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Dec 3, 2014 01:43
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jrodefeld posted:The "corporation" doesn't own property, the CEO, the shareholders etc own the property as individuals. The "corporation" is just a contract between individuals. Currently, this is the opposite of reality. How do libertarians envision the dissolution of the corporation as a "person"?
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Dec 3, 2014 02:14
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SedanChair posted:Excellent. And surely we weren't planning on letting individuals keep their ill-gotten corporate gains? We'll break up their investments and distribute it to people with better claims (for example, descendants of indigenous peoples chased off the land that now serves as means of production for corporations). Yeah, given that the corporation is an unjust initiation of force as Jrodefeld has proven, created and maintained by the State, then just like the ex-slaves should have gotten ownership of the plantations with which they mixed their labor, surely these bloody State-enforced monopolies on resources and capital goods should pass to the workers who have labored with them and not be retained by the capitalist who used hired government thugs to acquire and maintain control of them while extracting rents from society at the point of a gun, right? These things can all be governed by councils made up of the workers and the descendants of the indigenous peoples who lived on the land before it was conquered, with the profits from the resulting production accruing to the new shareholders.
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Dec 3, 2014 02:22
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Rockopolis posted:This is something that stuck out at me upon reviewing the thread. That's an easy one. If nobody is left to present an untainted claim to the land, then there's no court challenge to the status quo, and the current users can continue their pseudo-ownership indefinitely. If you think that would create a perverse incentive for genocide, I would agree.
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Dec 3, 2014 02:23
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Nolanar posted:That's an easy one. If nobody is left to present an untainted claim to the land, then there's no court challenge to the status quo, and the current users can continue their pseudo-ownership indefinitely. If you think that would create a perverse incentive for genocide, I would agree. Oh your culture didn't have deeds or we destroyed them all in the invasion? Welp, sorry then can't justify kicking the occupiers out now that we know that initiating force is wrong, for what if we accidentally committed an injustice by trying?
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Dec 3, 2014 02:28
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VitalSigns posted:Yeah, given that the corporation is an unjust initiation of force as Jrodefeld has proven, created and maintained by the State, then just like the ex-slaves should have gotten ownership of the plantations with which they mixed their labor, surely these bloody State-enforced monopolies on resources and capital goods should pass to the workers who have labored with them and not be retained by the capitalist who used hired government thugs to acquire and maintain control of them while extracting rents from society at the point of a gun, right? Well not quite, it shouldn't be an equal share because why should a lazy warehouse worker get as much a share in the new worker-owned business as the hard working manager? If only there was some totally fair way to gauge how much work and talent someone put into an organization... I know we'll do it by their wage. And to keep things simple, I mean do we really want to give 0.0000001% ownership to a guy who washes the windows twice a year, we'll have a minimum earnings cut-off where you don't qualify for a share. Let's also throw in current stock values and percentages. Oh hey it looks like the majority of the workers weren't influential in the success of the company enough to earn a share and in fact the current corporate hierarchy is absolutely unchanged!! A fair meritocracy at work.
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Dec 3, 2014 03:02
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jrodefeld posted:I'm going to talk about minimum wage for a minute. I am opposed to minimum wage requirements while you all support them. I contend the following things: Oh good. I can tell that this is going to be fun one. You know that normal people don't say "I contend." Look, when you write like that, you just sound really loving pretentious. Now before I begin, this argument is grossly unfair because I have to argue against your assumptions about how the world works. Frankly, I don't know which is greater. Your economic inexperience, or your rhetorical ineptitude. But I'll be sporting, and show you were you're wrong. quote:1. An employer will not pay a worker more than the productivity they provide them. In other words, they won't take a loss for every hour the employee works. Therefore there is a hard upper limit for what a given worker will ever be paid until or unless their productivity and skills improve so that they are more valuable to their employer. That's not true. That is not true at all. If that were true, businesses would never go under. But even when we ignore my glibness, that's not true. People are paid on a variety of factors. The cost of living, the general value and rarity of the work, the competitiveness of wages to other companies, and a whole slew of other things. Heck, people start of getting paid with the presumption that they'll get better. I mean, when I started my last job, I was paid the same from training until I got my raise a year later. I wasn't that productive during my training period. I was still learning my job. But they pay me because they were making an investment. The other thing is that in a lot of jobs, especially in the service industries, like consulting, development, and other things, it's very difficult to really calculate how much money an employee produces, if you even can. For example, in my job, there's no real way to measure my productivity with any accuracy. Yes, there are objective figures and deliverables, but if the project turned out well, then I was productive. If not, then I guess I wasn't. I'm not paid for my productivity, instead, I'm paid for my knowledge and my skills. A lot of jobs are like this. Management, CEOs, reception. All things that can't easily be quantified in terms of productivity, and yet, they still get paid! It's like a producing an album. A band pays for the tape, they pay for the studio, and then they pay the producer. But how productive is the record producer? Why does someone hire Rick Rubin or Steve Albini or Phil Specter over Joe down the street? Because they all have knowledge and skill. They know how to make records with killer sound. But at the end of the day, they can produce an album that sells millions, or they can produce an album that sells hundreds of copies. They get paid because they know how to make records sound good. But you still need to have good songs and a good artist behind it, otherwise, it's just well produced crap. quote:2. Furthermore there is a lower limit to what the employer will pay in wages. The lower limit is set by the other employment opportunities that are available to every worker. Since each of us is seeking to improve our situation in life through economic transactions, we choose that transaction which we value most and leave aside those that we value less. This is what the Austrians call the "Preference Order". If a worker agrees to accept a job opportunity it necessarily must mean that the worker evaluated his economic options and determined that that job provided more value than any other options available. Employers need good workers and offering wages that are too low will only caused workers to seek other employment. If only it was that simple. The problem with describing human behavior in perfectly rational ideas is that human behavior is not perfect rational. Also, you make a lot of assumptions that don't hold up. I assume that's why we love you. If I run a business, as long as I can keep the positions filled, I can afford to pay as little as I possibly can. Because you know what? In a lot of minimum wage jobs, turn over isn't that big of a deal. Let's be honest, how hard is it to push carts inside? How much specialized knowledge and training do you need? Most of the training at Walgreens was really culture and things like don't sexually harass people. Do you know that Costco constantly has investors begging them to pay their employees less? See, that's a real world (non-Austrian) example, and you don't know poo poo about the real world. There's outside pressure to keep costs down, and so if you pay your employees 6 bucks an hour, and I'm a competitor, and I pay them 4, your investors will say "Hey, this guy can pay his people 4 an hour. Can't you pay your people 5?" And you'd be going on about Time Preference, and everyone would think you're a lunatic. quote:3. There is no such thing as a "living wage" and it is ridiculous for politicians or technocrats to arbitrarily determine the wage that is required to "live" in every State, for every age group, in every city. Everyone's situation is different. One person might be quite happy to work for $7 an hour in an entry job, while another person may need to earn $15 an hour to live as well. The lower wage earner might value the experience and skills learned on the job at more than the difference in wage rates from some other job that pays more. What right should politicians have to make certain voluntary economic transactions illegal thus artificially reducing the choices available to people? Jesus loving Christ! Do you read anything that anybody says, or does it all go over your loving head. We've covered this. We covered this so much. Your whole argument is you going back to the beginning of the conversation and ignoring everything that people had to say so you can try to sound smart. Congratulations. You're not. You're stupider than a dog who eats his own vomit. See, there's this thing called the cost of living. It's based on this idea of what is a reasonable amount of money someone will need for things like food, clothing, shelter, medical care, transportation, and all the other things we can't live without. Yes, some people can do alright with less money, but the idea is that it's a base number to start with and say "At this level, most people should be able to live." quote:Do you dispute that there is an intrinsic upper and lower wage rate that an employer has when deciding on the wage he will offer to an applicant? Is it not self evident that an employer will not take a loss by paying a worker more per hour than the value of his work to the company? You could say "maybe he is crazy. Maybe he wants to go bankrupt". But as a general rule, the job of the entrepreneur is to seek a profit. So there is an intrinsic wage ceiling for a given worker in a given position. Do you dispute that you sound like an rear end in a top hat when you talk this way. Stop talking down to us. Yes, some of these things are kind of basic facts, but once again, you have to do more than just say "Hey, paying people more than they're worth is a bad idea." You have to show us that people are getting paid either more than they are worth already, or that people are getting paid the maximum amount of money that they can be paid. And you haven't. Where as, we have told you many times how businesses determine how much of their wages they should be paying. quote:Certainly this means that if the minimum wage rate is raised beyond that point people whose marginal productivity is below that level will face unemployment. Do you dispute this? Stop with the whole loving Socrates thing. You're not Socrates. It's condescending, that's what it is. You have to show us that we're proposing to raise the minimum wage beyond the point were people will be overpaid. quote:It is all fine and well to want people to earn more money and live better. I very much want this as well. What I fail to understand is how any rational person could ever think that raising the minimum wage could actually uplift anyone. The worker who is making more money for the company than they are paid in wages will remain employed after the minimum wage is raised and the people who are now costing the company more in wages than they are making for the company will now be consigned to unemployment. Show this please. quote:It won't cause anyone to be employed. It will not actually raise anyone's real wages. It only serves to artificially limit the economic opportunities available to a person. Evidence please. quote:And what right do YOU have to introduce violence into a peaceful economic transaction? If you REALLY wanted to help out workers why don't you become an entrepreneur and hire some of them, paying them a wage that YOU think is fair? What right do you have to use violence against people who are engaged in a voluntary trade on the market? Show me how the minimum wage is violence? First off, most of us are not engaged in a voluntary trade on the market. I work because I have to. If I don't work, I starve. So, no. I don't have a choice. I'm a captive audience. And since I don't have a choice, that makes me a prime victim to be exploited. You know why these get rich quick scams are so effective? Because people need money. And they are a captive audience, and so they get taken advantage of. So, please, tell me, how do I use violence? Because I'm preventing someone from exploiting a minimum wage employee and paying them comically small wages so they can try to scrape by. Because I'm saying that a civilized society pays their people decent wages, and if you want to run a business, you have to play by the rules. And guess what? There's a limited amount of positions for entrepreneurs. Not everybody can start a business! quote:If you trot out the claim that wise and prudent technocrats can determine a "reasonable" minimum wage that is raised slightly but causes no additional unemployment because of empirical studies that claim no negative employment effects of minimum wage hikes, I can only say that this is a very flawed argument. So that explains why most your post consists of you pulling poo poo out of your rear end and pretending it's an argument and not poop. You think showing studies makes a bad argument. quote:Raising the minimum wage necessarily must cause more jobs to be illegal than they were before. If the minimum wage increase is VERY small, the number of additional jobs that are now illegal will be very small as well but they will exist. Businesses use very careful accountants. They determine how much an employee can earn based on the economic value of their job. Their are many people who are on the margins at many businesses who whose productivity is barely above the minimum wage who would be fired out of necessity if a minimum wage hike occurs. Currently it makes sense to keep them around and train them to hopefully have more productivity in three to six months. It would cost more to have to find a new employer and train them even if their productivity was slightly higher. DO YOU READ OUR loving ARGUMENTS. You do this all the time. You ignore what people have to say to you if it doesn't work with your facts, and then you say this poo poo like you're bringing a new topic to the table. Your whole argument is based on a hosed up assumption. What you say is true IF businesses pay the most that they can afford to for a service. Which shows how little you know. Businesses try to spend as little as possible to get the job done. If I have an employee, and I can pay 40,000 a year for them, but I could afford to spend 50,000 a year, why on earth would I not spend 40,000? But once again. I already talked about this. Where are your masses of employees making minimum wage who are at the top end of their pay scales? quote:But once a minimum wage increase goes into effect, the decision is made much easier. Then show us. Where are your studies? quote:The ones that purport to prove differently are nearly universally bought off studies that are commissioned by some political interest group. Show me. Because what you are saying is "If the studies do not agree with my assumptions, then they must be wrong." Dude. Just stop. Stop talking about economics, race, healthcare. Everything. Because time and time again, we show you that you don't know the first thing you're talking about. You make assumptions, and then you ask us to argue against your assumptions. Well, I can't. It's impossible.
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Dec 3, 2014 03:14
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Cemetry Gator posted:Show me. Because what you are saying is "If the studies do not agree with my assumptions, then they must be wrong." Sadly I don't think he sees the problem with doing that because as he has very helpfully explained, through praxeology, he can bend reality to his will so that any study that doesn't support an assumption about the world that Libertarianism makes was done wrong because if it was done right it would agree with him. Statists can't tap into this well of power however, only Libertarians are capable of wielding it.
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Dec 3, 2014 03:25
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^I'm terrible at argument, I get that, but I'm trying to say that his principles should lead to different (and more depressing) conclusions.Nolanar posted:That's an easy one. If nobody is left to present an untainted claim to the land, then there's no court challenge to the status quo, and the current users can continue their pseudo-ownership indefinitely. If you think that would create a perverse incentive for genocide, I would agree.  , but it does draw a different conclusion. With no contestants to the property, the property for all practical purposes belongs to the invaders, but we're talking about principle.I say that by the above mentioned principles means that the property doesn't belong to the invader, that it can't belong to anyone, anymore, because the chain of legitimate succession is broken. It does bring up a new question, though; is it wrong to "rob" such a thief? Certainly, if you were returning property to its rightful owner, you'd say it would be acceptable, even laudable. But when there's no rightful owner, when there can be no more rightful owners, what then? Could they rightfully complain about having their pseudo-property taken? I mean, they'd actually complain, but their complaints would be lies, right?
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Dec 3, 2014 03:53
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Rockopolis posted:^I'm terrible at argument, I get that, but I'm trying to say that his principles should lead to different (and more depressing) conclusions. If there is one thing that I find hilarious about libertarian DRO society, its that anything is legal so long as there isn't anyone with standing left alive to sue you. Kill someone's wife? Well he could sick his DRO to put you in prison, but if you kill him and his extended family...?
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Dec 3, 2014 03:57
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Caros posted:If there is one thing that I find hilarious about libertarian DRO society, its that anything is legal so long as there isn't anyone with standing left alive to sue you. But we don't need a justice system! Everyone will know that this murderous psychopath must be avoided at all costs! When you grow a beard and show up in the grocery store eight counties away, they'll know immediately not to enter into joinder with such a disreputable citizen as yourself, and you will surely starve, as nobody in the world will ever do business with you ever again. Imperfect information? What's that? (More seriously though, I'd assume that the DRO itself would count as an interested party and hunt you down to flay you. And whatever DRO you're in, because you have to be in a DRO, has probably got a "commit a crime we'll give you over to the claimant" policy, so that every petty crime doesn't turn into an all-out war.)
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Dec 3, 2014 04:18
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Valhalla DRO has you covered, then!  Yeah, hilarious is a good way to describe it. Beats describing it as horrifying  I was going to say, he's proven to be an excessively able killer, how are you going to stop him, but I think a better question is to ask if a preemptive strike is acceptable? He hasn't aggressed against you or yours, so you'd be initiating force, but violence is one of those things where a successful first strike means there's no retaliation. Theres no mutual assured destruction, the winner can walk away unscathed and the loser is dead. Are you willing to risk your life, and the lives of your family, over that one little principle? What would you say to someone who is too afraid to stick to that principle?
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Dec 3, 2014 04:33
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Muscle Tracer posted:(More seriously though, I'd assume that the DRO itself would count as an interested party and hunt you down to flay you. And whatever DRO you're in, because you have to be in a DRO, has probably got a "commit a crime we'll give you over to the claimant" policy, so that every petty crime doesn't turn into an all-out war.) You'd think so, but its not like anyone is paying their bills anymore. So long as you promise to stop killing it would be in their financial interest not to chase you down.
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Dec 3, 2014 04:47
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Caros posted:If there is one thing that I find hilarious about libertarian DRO society, its that anything is legal so long as there isn't anyone with standing left alive to sue you. I have no idea why you assume this to be true. The discussion was not about violent crimes but about existing property rights claims. The burden of proof rests on those that want to overturn existing property rights. Have a property right in your home or in a business is obviously a lot different than someone being a violent criminal. People other that the family of the victim can press charges against a violent criminal. "Society" can charge someone with the murder of a homeless man because it is in everyone's interest to live in a society where violent criminals are identified and punished accordingly. No one ever said that justice in a libertarian society arises only when a victim sues the perpetrator. A community police force, voluntarily funded, can launch investigations and prosecute a violent criminal on behalf of the community at large even if there is no family member that can press charges.
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Dec 3, 2014 04:55
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It sounds like there is potential for many lucrative reality show franchises lurking withing the contract enforcement protocols of a DRO. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntz0_besT04
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Dec 3, 2014 05:01
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