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How is it even possible to say that you're an environmentalist with a straight face and then immediately turn around and say that a company can spew as much vile poo poo into the air, ground, and water so long as they pay a fine for it? How is it possible not to see the hypocrisy there?
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Dec 20, 2014 15:46
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Who What Now posted:How is it even possible to say that you're an environmentalist with a straight face and then immediately turn around and say that a company can spew as much vile poo poo into the air, ground, and water so long as they pay a fine for it? How is it possible not to see the hypocrisy there? Because Libertarianism is fundamentally a cult. For all the prominent 'atheist' libertarians, they operate on exactly the same MO; a set of rules and strictures for the proper organization of society, and rejection of empirical facts that oppose those rules. So reality is not what governs their understanding, only their adherence to their code. The code I've extrapolated from libertarian dogma says this is how we deal with pollution, so I am an environmentalist for saying we should follow the code. The mistake jrod is making here is arguing facts at all. He's said before, Libertarianism wouldn't be so vile as to really on 'empiricism' to guide itself, all that matters is the moral doctrine of non-agression and homesteading etc. This is him evangelizing to us, hoping we will see his moral code as superior and convert. "social spending made the depression worse" = "abortions caused hurricane Katrina"
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Dec 20, 2014 17:37
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Oddly enough, pro-freedom economics hasn't turned Kansas into job creation utopia:quote:The new Kansas jobs numbers were released Friday morning, bringing horrible news to state taxpayers and Gov. Sam Brownback. Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/yael-t-abouhalkah/article4668108.html#storylink=cpy What went wrong? I know JRode has said he's not a fan of Reagan since he increased spending and the fed reserve artificially meddled with interest rates at the time, so I'm curious to see what he thinks of Brownback's regime since he didn't have to deal with such things.
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Dec 21, 2014 00:05
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Who What Now posted:How is it even possible to say that you're an environmentalist with a straight face and then immediately turn around and say that a company can spew as much vile poo poo into the air, ground, and water so long as they pay a fine for it? How is it possible not to see the hypocrisy there? I think you don't really appreciate the brilliance of Jrodefeld's logic. In simple terms: 1. Human beings are rational. They will properly weight the pros and cons of a decision before acting, and choose only the ones that benefit them ultimately. Ignore the heroin addicts, please. 2. The free market will reward rational acts and will punish irrational acts by making it cheaper or more profitable to act rationally and more expensive or less profitable to act irrationally. Really. Ignore the heroin addicts. 3. The free market will perfect itself since flawed things are unprofitable, and it doesn't make sense for flawed products and services to continue a real free market. Seriously. I mean it. Just ignore the heroin addicts. 4. The state is only capable of corruption because there is not competition, and if there was competition for things like the police and the courts, society would be so much better. I understand. The heroin addicts are in your house and trying to take your TV, but you just need to ignore them. 5. It is wrong to force people to do anything, unless they are violating your property rights. However, since you didn't sign up for my DRO, I can't help you with the heroin addicts stealing your TV. 6. State regulations will only create more of what it is regulating against. This is why deaths due to not wearing a seatbelt went up astronomically when the government made wearing a seatbelt a requirement. See, by making heroin illegal, we created more heroin addicts. Since you're a statist, you gave them heroin. So, in his mind, pollution is overall, a BAD thing. And if we lived in an An-Cap society, the free market would create a way to make it unprofitable. So, by not allowing people to pollute as much as they want, we are making them pollute even more? Remember, his whole philosophy is "You can't make me do this thing." It's like a new-age cult. In order for this vision to become a reality, people have to stop behaving like people.
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Dec 21, 2014 00:20
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Mr Interweb posted:Oddly enough, pro-freedom economics hasn't turned Kansas into job creation utopia: Jrod has already explained that any time a study shows that jobs are lost because of libertarian legislation the study didn't look at long enough span of time. You see you have to look until there is in an increase of even one job over the previous year and then BAM! Libertarianism proven!
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Dec 21, 2014 02:08
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Mr Interweb posted:What went wrong? I know JRode has said he's not a fan of Reagan since he increased spending and the fed reserve artificially meddled with interest rates at the time, so I'm curious to see what he thinks of Brownback's regime since he didn't have to deal with such things. True economic freedom can't exist within statist encirclement.
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Dec 21, 2014 02:40
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Mr Interweb posted:Oddly enough, pro-freedom economics hasn't turned Kansas into job creation utopia: Oh noes an opinion column said 4,000 jobs out of 2.9m people crippled Kansas. Oops, they're back to pre-recession levels of unemployment, given or take a few tenths of a percent. For fun I added TX and CA. DeusExMachinima fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Dec 22, 2014 |
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Dec 22, 2014 00:46
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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DeusExMachinima posted:Oh noes an opinion column said 4,000 jobs out of 2.9m people crippled Kansas. Actually I think the point was to raise how is it even possible to have job losses in a state that loves FREEDOM llike Kansas does. And yeah, nice comparison with Cali there. It's not like its UE rate was much higher at its peak and thus would take a bit longer to go down or anything.
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Dec 22, 2014 01:50
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DeusExMachinima posted:Oh noes an opinion column said 4,000 jobs out of 2.9m people crippled Kansas. It's almost as if there is a general trend nationwide that job numbers have been recovering overall, and that it simply takes longer for the places that were harder hit by the recession due to their more direct connection to the housing crisis to recover. Brownback's recovery from the recession follows the same pattern as pretty much every other state out there. If you follow the libertarian logic then there should be a massive explosion of jobs in Kansas when you eliminate income taxes for 200,000 businesses and brutally cut them to the bone for pretty much everyone else. Instead what you get is the same sort of growth as other places, with the possibility of a recession in the not too distant future. Kansas' budget is hosed to the tune of $280 million for the last six months of this year alone. $100 million in closed roads. $41 million in reduced pensions for public workers. The Brownback government is literally plugging holes in this year's budget with money from tobacco settlement funds that were supposed to go toward early childhood education. The budget deficit for next year was projected to be $469 million, and has now jumped to $689 million. Given the fact that every previous year's budget shortfall has increased upwards during the year I'd be surprised if the budget deficit wasn't closer to $800 million or more by the end of 2015. And its important to remember that these ridiculous shortfalls are after the savage cuts that have already been made. 16.5% across the board since 2008, the fourth worst in the nation. Cuts in Kansas are so bad that high school seniors are (in some places) having to take an extra year or half year of school because they physically cannot earn enough credit in their normal high school career because there are not enough class openings for them to take every course they need. These are cuts so bad that the Kansas Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional as the state was not providing a "suitable" education for their students. Honestly these job losses are just the beginning. The damage caused by the Brownback government isn't something that is going to make the state implode by itself, though it certainly won't help. The damage caused is going to linger over decades as infrastructure goes to poo poo and schools suffer lower graduation rates and far lower scores. And at the end of the day the Laffer curve benefits that Brownback expected simply aren't going to materialize. He is going to do generational harm to his state just to reassert something we've known is total bullshit since the early nineties.
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Dec 22, 2014 03:41
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Mr Interweb posted:And yeah, nice comparison with Cali there. It's not like its UE rate was much higher at its peak and thus would take a bit longer to go down or anything. "The state more like my ideals was hurt harder!" isn't a great defense. TX is probably as close as you'll get to CA in terms of landmass and populace and it was hurt less at the peak as well, b-b-b-ut those are two different states and drawing any conclusions is totes different you guys when it's not a state I'm trying to poo poo on.  e: ofc CA's job loss started before the recession so you can't blame it all on something national DeusExMachinima fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Dec 22, 2014 |
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Dec 22, 2014 03:49
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Irritatingly, according to Google, Kansas is at full employment, while California is a couple of unemployment points above that. California's unemployment remains extremely manageable, but one can see why conservatives don't acknowledge fault for Kansas (aside from the fact that conservatives are constitutionally incapable of introspection).
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Dec 22, 2014 04:06
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Jack of Hearts posted:Irritatingly, according to Google, Kansas is at full employment, while California is a couple of unemployment points above that. California's unemployment remains extremely manageable, but one can see why conservatives don't acknowledge fault for Kansas (aside from the fact that conservatives are constitutionally incapable of introspection). As someone who attended high school in Kansas I can attest that the dream of every child in Kansas is to get out of Kansas. So the general lack of interest in educating their children makes a certain amount of economic sense, the kids who actually learn stuff sure as hell aren't going to stay in Kansas so the state gets little ROI. Which circles me back to my still unanswered question about how libertopia ensures every child gets enough education to be competitive in this glorious free market JRod keeps yapping about. I know I know. It doesn't. But I'd like him to at least try to explain how it would work.
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Dec 22, 2014 04:49
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DeusExMachinima posted:Oh noes an opinion column said 4,000 jobs out of 2.9m people crippled Kansas. To back up what others have said, try adding the liberal stronghold of Arizona to the chart. The conclusion that you can draw is that employment recovery has been unrelated to local politics, but it does correlate well with housing market growth pre-recession; those places that built relatively few houses during the boom (Kansas, Texas) suffered relatively less than those places where there are still huge communities full of empty homes (Arizona, California). But don't let that change your mind, I know conservatism and libertarianism are logically deduced from first principles and undeterred by things like counterfactual evidence QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Dec 22, 2014 |
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Dec 22, 2014 04:55
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McAlister posted:As someone who attended high school in Kansas I can attest that the dream of every child in Kansas is to get out of Kansas. The cleverer children will seek out wealthy businessmen and gain access to their vast libraries of knowledge in exchange for basic housework and sexual services
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Dec 22, 2014 05:00
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DeusExMachinima posted:"The state more like my ideals was hurt harder!" isn't a great defense. TX is probably as close as you'll get to CA in terms of landmass and populace and it was hurt less at the peak as well, b-b-b-ut those are two different states and drawing any conclusions is totes different you guys when it's not a state I'm trying to poo poo on. As Caros mentioned, certain states were far more directly effected by the housing crisis. California being on of them. As far as Texas goes, funny thing... Some dumb socialist posted:It’s true that Texas entered recession a bit later than the rest of America, mainly because the state’s still energy-heavy economy was buoyed by high oil prices through the first half of 2008. Also, Texas was spared the worst of the housing crisis, partly because it turns out to have surprisingly strict regulation of mortgage lending. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/the-texas-unmiracle.html?_r=0 Funny how that works out. And since you're here, would you like to explain why Kansas isn't currently swimming in a sea of revenues and jobs? Both of those things should have soared after Brownback enacted his brilliant economic plan, no?
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Dec 22, 2014 05:49
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QuarkJets posted:The cleverer children will seek out wealthy businessmen and gain access to their vast libraries of knowledge in exchange for basic housework and sexual services You can make them clean and screw them in return for food in libertopia. Why give them education that would allow them to compete somewhat with your own offspring? Does not compute.
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Dec 22, 2014 06:33
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McAlister posted:You can make them clean and screw them in return for food in libertopia. Why give them education that would allow them to compete somewhat with your own offspring? Well of course you wouldn't give them books, that wouldn't be in your rational self-interest, But the children being clever as they are would find time to read the books while you're in one of the million other rooms in your bitcoin palace
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Dec 22, 2014 09:08
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Caros posted:These are cuts so bad that the Kansas Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional as the state was not providing a "suitable" education for their students.
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Dec 22, 2014 09:49
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Mr Interweb posted:As Caros mentioned, certain states were far more directly effected by the housing crisis. California being on of them. As far as Texas goes, funny thing... If nigh full employment isn't good enough what will be? Like, you're moving the goalposts from "they're losing jobs!" to "they're not experiencing the biggest population influx ever!" or some poo poo, what will be good enough? QuarkJets posted:To back up what others have said, try adding the liberal stronghold of Arizona to the chart. The conclusion that you can daw is that employment recovery has been unrelated to local politics, but it does correlate well with housing market growth pre-recession; those places that built relatively few houses during the boom (Kansas, Texas) suffered relatively less than those places where there are still huge communities full of empty homes (Arizona, California). Fair enough. But remember the chart shows California got worse before the recession. Now add Florida which was hit hardest by housing and is still significantly better than CA while governed by Rick Scott (not tha I like his civil rights stuff).
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Dec 22, 2014 17:28
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QuarkJets posted:Well of course you wouldn't give them books, that wouldn't be in your rational self-interest, But the children being clever as they are would find time to read the books while you're in one of the million other rooms in your bitcoin palace See, a Ferengi would give you a copy of the Rules of Acquisition because he could use your interest to sell you a nicer bound copy later. But we already knew Ferengi are smarter than Libertarians.
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Dec 22, 2014 17:34
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SedanChair posted:See, a Ferengi would give you a copy of the Rules of Acquisition because he could use your interest to sell you a nicer bound copy later. The irony of the Ferengi was that they were intended to be villains but the writers realized there just wasn't much threatening about them. They were also ironically one of the most trustworthy races in that yeah they'd try to dick you over but you know they're guaranteed to do that but at the same time the rules of acquisition basically said that a regular customer is the best thing over so keep him happy. Caros posted:Honestly these job losses are just the beginning. The damage caused by the Brownback government isn't something that is going to make the state implode by itself, though it certainly won't help. The damage caused is going to linger over decades as infrastructure goes to poo poo and schools suffer lower graduation rates and far lower scores. And at the end of the day the Laffer curve benefits that Brownback expected simply aren't going to materialize. He is going to do generational harm to his state just to reassert something we've known is total bullshit since the early nineties. The Laffer curve crap always amuses me because the right assumes that any amount of taxation is on the right side of the curve. Theoretically the Laffer curve makes sense but in practice it's used as an excuse to cut taxes to the bone. This is also a case where it becomes extremely apparent that lolbertarianism just isn't interested in any sense of morality. It's just "less laws, all the time." We've seen that it doesn't work but all told they just don't care. They won't be happy until Mad Max World is real. But all you're going to hear is "well we obviously didn't cut taxes enough." The really stupid thing is that the massive cuts to U.S. education overall that are happening are going to very seriously gently caress over America in the long run. The world is getting to the point where you need a highly education population to accomplish much of anything. The days of learning to farm on the family farm and being a farmer or starting in the mail room during high school and working your way up the chain are long gone. The other massive snag is that this sort of crap leads to massively increased social unrest as the wealthy can afford to just buy their children whatever education and privilege they need to be successful while the poor get left with the scraps, if there even are any. When public schools can't even afford to teach kids basic requirements something has gone horrifically wrong.
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Dec 22, 2014 17:48
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The irony of the Ferengi was that they were intended to be villains but the writers realized there just wasn't much threatening about them. They were also ironically one of the most trustworthy races in that yeah they'd try to dick you over but you know they're guaranteed to do that but at the same time the rules of acquisition basically said that a regular customer is the best thing over so keep him happy. The nice thing about the Kansas experiment is it should, in theory, give us final definative evidence to point to when people bring up the laffer curve in serious conversation. Right now people are able to argue that taxes didn't get reduced enough, or the time scale wasn't long enough, but if Brownback actually does keep going full retard he plans to cut the income tax entirely by 2016, and at that point it'll be pretty easy to point out that when you eliminate most taxes, you actually end up, shockingly, collecting far less taxes.
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Dec 22, 2014 18:00
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Caros posted:The nice thing about the Kansas experiment is it should, in theory, give us final definative evidence to point to when people bring up the laffer curve in serious conversation. Right now people are able to argue that taxes didn't get reduced enough, or the time scale wasn't long enough, but if Brownback actually does keep going full retard he plans to cut the income tax entirely by 2016, and at that point it'll be pretty easy to point out that when you eliminate most taxes, you actually end up, shockingly, collecting far less taxes. Could Kansas go Bankrupt from all the lost revenue?
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Dec 22, 2014 18:20
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DeusExMachinima posted:Fair enough. But remember the chart shows California got worse before the recession. Yup, and that happened in Arizona, too. This continues reinforcing the idea that the recession and the speed of recovery in each state was more closely related to housing growth than it was to politics quote:Now add Florida which was hit hardest by housing *** *** Citation needed Seriously, why would you suggest that? Real estate prices grew far faster in California, and so did inventories, than in Florida. And the real estate market grew far faster, and then crashed far harder, in Nevada than in either of these states. You have no idea what you're talking about, go do some actual research and stop pulling claims out of your rear end like an intellectually bankrupt fuckwit. *adds the liberal state of Hawaii to the chart* I FOUND A STATE WITH EVEN LOWER UNEMPLOYMENT, THIS IS PROOF THAT CONSERVATIVE POLICIES ARE INFERIOR *shits paints* quote:and is still significantly better than CA while governed by Rick Scott (not tha I like his civil rights stuff). Now add Nevada, which fared worse than all of those states despite a conservative governor and a conservative-held legislature. Then add Hawaii, a liberal stronghold that fared better than everyone, even Kansas. Note how I'm not claiming that this proves that conservative politicians resulted in a worse recession, as you are with liberal politicians; it doesn't prove anything at all except that the crash in employment correlated better with the housing boom and pop than with any politics. Hawaii is the exception that proves the rule; the fact that it was best off before, during, and after the recession despite being heavily involved in the housing boom has nothing to do with its extremely liberal politics, but it does have everything to do with the fact that land there continued to be in high demand even after prices crashed, unlike everywhere else. Even if you're not very good at understanding statistics, you must realize by now that you're grasping at straws when you try to link liberal politicians to a longer recession. There's no correlation there. The recession was caused by a housing crash, so it's not surprising that the places with the greatest real estate market growth fared the worst. Hawaii is an outlier, but real estate there is such a special case that I'm willing to throw out that data point. QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Dec 22, 2014 |
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Dec 22, 2014 19:12
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nm QJ and Caros have got a better handle on this
Ron Paul Atreides fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Dec 22, 2014 |
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Dec 22, 2014 20:30
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Crowsbeak posted:Could Kansas go Bankrupt from all the lost revenue? Absolutely. Kansas had $800 million in reserves in 2012. They are expected to have less than $80 million in their reserve fund as of next summer. Assuming you follow the general trend of Kansas state budgets since Brownback took office you can expect them to be roughly $800 million in the hole by 2019 when Brownback's second term is finished. And that is after all of the various slashes to education, healthcare, roads, childcare and whatever the gently caress else you want to consider. These are the optimistic numbers by the way. Next year's Kansas state budget works on an assumption of six billion dollars in revenue with a 6.3 billion dollar budget, which means they anticipate being 300 million in the hole even after raiding the highway fund and early childhood education. To reach that six billion dollar revenue number they assumed growth of 0.5% over 2014's numbers. Unfortunately for them 2014's number was a little under $5.7 billion. For those of you (deus ex) who are undoubtedly not so good at math, that means that the expected income at their projected growth rate is roughly 5.725 billion. To hit their goal of six billion they'd need to have growth of roughly six percent, which no one thinks is going to happen. So the pessimistic view of next year's Kansas budget is that they will be between 5-600 million dollars below the state spending for the year. This would mean that in three years Brownback has not only massively cut all manner of government spending, but that he has also dug a billion dollar hole in the state's finances because supply side laffer curve economics simply don't work. It is only going to get worse, and considering Kansas has had its debt rating downgraded once in 2014 alone over their tax policies it isn't hard to believe that they are going to take another hit when Kansas continues to prove that they have no sane policy regarding taxation. These policies simply don't work. One example I heard just recently was a small Kansas town that had its single school close because of the Kansas budget cuts. Sure local businesses got a bit of a bump because they don't have to pay taxes, but that was heavily outweighed by the fact that all the teachers moved out of town and the various personal problems that result from having to send their children thirty miles to the next town over for school every day.
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Dec 22, 2014 21:31
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Caros posted:Absolutely. Kansas had $800 million in reserves in 2012. They are expected to have less than $80 million in their reserve fund as of next summer. Assuming you follow the general trend of Kansas state budgets since Brownback took office you can expect them to be roughly $800 million in the hole by 2019 when Brownback's second term is finished. And that is after all of the various slashes to education, healthcare, roads, childcare and whatever the gently caress else you want to consider. These are the optimistic numbers by the way. Honestly I hope they do suffer the effects, and that the Federal Government ignores all but humanitarian requests for aid. Make sure nobody starves, but absolutely let them live in the bed they made. You want no taxes and no services? Here you go. Enjoy.
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Dec 22, 2014 21:36
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Talmonis posted:Honestly I hope they do suffer the effects, and that the Federal Government ignores all but humanitarian requests for aid. Make sure nobody starves, but absolutely let them live in the bed they made. You want no taxes and no services? Here you go. Enjoy. It really is a hosed up situation and I feel for every single person who voted for someone other than Brownback.
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Dec 22, 2014 21:43
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Caros posted:It really is a hosed up situation and I feel for every single person who voted for someone other than Brownback. Absolutely. But their neighbors hosed them good and proper. Edit: The reason I've taken the stance I have; is that if the Federal government bails them out at all, it just masks the pain from the policies that the majority of Kansans enacted. They have to deal with the consequences, so they can actually realize what they did to themselves. Hell, even Bush Sr. had to go back and fix some of Reagan's fuckups. Talmonis fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Dec 22, 2014 |
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Dec 22, 2014 22:13
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Caros posted:laffer curve
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Dec 22, 2014 22:34
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Talmonis posted:Honestly I hope they do suffer the effects, and that the Federal Government ignores all but humanitarian requests for aid. Make sure nobody starves, but absolutely let them live in the bed they made. You want no taxes and no services? Here you go. Enjoy. I feel like this just sums up a lot of the current state of America's politics in general, thanks to how much power the right wing is still throwing around all over. Who needs a stable, well-fed, educated work force, anyway? Rampant poverty and massive social unrest sure are amazing. Mmhm. eNeMeE posted:That anyone takes that thing seriously enough to even consider it is laughable, but even if it was true there's no evidence that anyone is currently on the right hand slope instead of the left hand slope. That's the short of the problem, really, and especially when you look at trickle-down economics. Sorry but the rich don't exactly have a history of letting their money trickle anywhere. More often they just sit on it or buy politicians to get them even more money.
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Dec 22, 2014 23:51
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I wanted to share one small thing about the global warming debate. For the record I have made an honest attempt to try to ascertain the truth, reading all sorts of different arguments and trying to understand the science outside of the political debate. That doesn't make me anything close to an expert or even someone moderately well versed on the subject. I have no quarrel with any scientists who are independent and honest, no matter their opinion on this subject. However, when proposals are laid out which grant the State an excuse to use violence against me, my friends or my family, I pay attention. If someone wants to lay claim to my property or to threaten me or restrict my natural rights, I had better be given a darn good reason. I live fairly consciously. My carbon footprint is very low. I make an effort not to pollute or otherwise negatively affect the people around me. If I am charged with the act of pollution, I need it to be demonstrated conclusively how I polluted, who has suffered damages from my pollution and I should be made to pay restitution to them. Just saying "well, there is this problem over here and we are just going to take your property to deal with it" is not sufficient for me. There are many brilliant scientists who are doing complex research that I couldn't begin to comprehend. The only thing I ask is: raise your own loving money to do your research. Don't use violence against me or other peaceful citizens. Don't be a loving thug. Don't be a moocher. If your research is valuable you should have no problem getting donations and grants from private sources. Most scientists are not claiming the right to do violence against the innocent because their research is so important and we peons are not capable of understanding it. Do your research, present your ideas to the public and use persuasion, use the free market to compel positive behavioral change. If there is a solution to this problem it WILL come from the free market, not because the State threatened a bunch of people and stole their property. I want to return to that 97% statistic because it is illustrative of the dishonesty with which this debate is being framed. I will use a quote this time. This is from economist Robert Murphy's webpage. Murphy is no "climate denier", he just monitors some of these debates (he closely watches Krugman and dissects his commentary) and he calls out dishonesty wherever it exists. Anyway, quote:If you have the temerity to challenge calls for the government to take aggressive action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, you will probably have someone call you a “climate science denier.” You will further be lectured that “97% of climate scientists agree” on this consensus. Here is the mentioned David Freedman commentary on the subject: http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-climate-falsehood-you-can-check-for.html This is just an example. And what is "proven" by stating this consensus? Only that nearly everyone with a brain agrees that the Earth has warmed over the last century and a half and that human activity has some effect on that warming. This point has been conceded by everyone anyway. That is not what the disagreement is about anyway. The disagreement has to do with whether States should do anything about it, whether the effects of the warming will be minor or catastrophic, etc. Given that we concede that neither of us know enough about the actual climate models and hard data to discuss it with any depth, it shouldn't be too much to ask that you don't use these disingenuous tactics like citing this statistic of a consensus to supposedly bolster your argument.
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Dec 23, 2014 08:17
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First I want to apologize for not being around more to actually have a discussion. This has been a crazy time of year for me. I usually don't intend to come by and write a short post and then disappear for a week. I'm sure a lot of you are probably wondering why I put in the effort to post as much as I do. The chances of actually converting any of you are very small indeed no matter how persuasive the arguments. That is just the nature of internet debates. And I am reminded that anonymous internet exchanges tend to let people use language that they would never dare in a face to face meeting. I am well aware that I come into these discussions making certain unfounded assumptions about you all as you probably do to me. I have in my head some concept of a left wing ideologue that I am going to refute while you no doubt imagine some stereotype about a sort of libertarian caricature and these illusions permit us to hurl ad hominems, insults and otherwise engage in a more hostile exchange than would happen in a face to face discussion. I think I would actually get along with many of you great if we were to see each other in real life. I’ve had friends whose views are very close to those I hear from Caros and others. The social circles I travel in tend to be much more left wing than right wing so I am perfectly comfortable having a great time discussing things I agree with and those things that I disagree with. In the spirit of the season, I just thought we should keep this in mind. There are limits to what can be accomplished on an internet message board after all. I haven't read all of the last few pages of this thread but I recall Caros asking about how we could peacefully coexist in a society when we have such different views about how society should be organized. You all want a system of single payer to provide "free" healthcare coverage to people while I don't want you to initiate force against me to force me to pay for a system that I morally object to. So could we have a system where our two diverse ideological groups could coexist? The answer is...possibly. I think they key word here is "consent". I have said elsewhere that my personal beliefs about social values and economics leads me to favor certain types of social structures, communities and values. However, as I have said many times, I don't want to force my personal values and preferences on anyone else through force. I would expect that generally superior and empirically more beneficial sorts of economic arrangement and social values would lead others to emulate the successful models and discard the deficient ones. The example I've given before is that of the "voluntary" ideological Marxist. The Marxist is free to preach to the workers that exchanging their labor for wages to a capitalist is exploitative and they should never accept such an arrangement. Instead a community predicated on worker owned and run mutualist, non-hierarchical communes and businesses could form with like-minded individuals. My personal belief is that such an economic arrangement, while modestly successful on a small scale in certain circumstances, would be a failure if an economy was supported by worker run businesses without the division between entrepreneur and wage earner. My personal belief is that most people would not want to participate in such a society when the lower standard of living and relative lack of innovation and progress are evident. But this is my personal belief and I would never try to forcefully stop anyone from attempting to prove me wrong and trying out the social experiment. The key again, is "consent". Caros you, and other members here on this forum, would be quite free to organize in such a community as I have described. And of course you would be free to evangelize and tout the benefits of joining such a community. I have always said that a superior idea doesn't need the threat of force to be adopted by a free people. The only thing that I would ask of you is that the people who participate in your society do so with consent. The people who would join your society should have to peacefully agree to pay a regular fee to fund a centrally organized healthcare system. The very concept of consent necessarily implies that there can be no retaliatory force used against a person who decides to not participate at any point. If a person decides to stop paying taxes or "dues" in your society, of course you are free to withold the social services that are funded by these contributions, but you should never be permitted to send armed men to use violence against that person who, through their actions, has removed their consent. It is this putting of the gun down that many of you have a problem with. You don't like to talk about it but every law that you pass in a Statist paradigm is an excuse for armed thugs to murder someone based only on their level of non-compliance. Failure to pay a parking ticket could escalate into a situation where you can be murdered by a policeman if you sufficiently resist. Police are taught to escalate. They will never say "well this infraction was minor and he is peacefully resisting so we won't push it any further". They will harass you, they will threaten you, they will fine you, then they will try to haul you off to jail and finally they will murder you, if you fail to sufficiently comply. So this is how we could peacefully coexist in a society while we have differing preferences and social values. You have to refrain from initiatory violence and every person who participates in your society must have consent. If you agree to that then we could get along famously in our imagined society. Now to change the subject, I have a few other questions I would like to propose. Please bear with me. 1. I have known for a long time that the two biggest hurdles for the leftist in coming to libertarianism are: healthcare and the environment. No doubt there are many others but these two seem to be the major sticking points. I have heard it asserted here again and again that you cannot accept libertarianism because you are convinced that the poor and needy will be destitute and much worse off than in contemporary Statist regimes where the poor have access to food stamps, Medicare, and other wealth transfer programs. Let us suppose that a libertarian society were to be tried as a social experiment on a relatively large scale and, after twenty or thirty years, it was found that the poor and needy are NOT worse off than in social welfare States. Let us stipulate that society as a whole is more prosperous, lifespans are higher and all the social indicators reflect well of the libertarian society even to the poorest of the citizens. Or we could even stipulate that the poor and needy are only slightly better off than in your model social democracy. What level of libertarian experiment would be sufficient for you to concede that such a society could be a success? From my viewpoint I would assume you would take this news with great rejoicing. It would mean that you don't have to rely on the regrettable use of violent coercion just to make sure the poor don't starve in the streets. It should be reason for celebration. It seems that your entire argument for why the poor would all starve and perish under a libertarian regime comes from what has been told about the late 19th century in the United States. Since the mid to late 20th century has indeed been the era of expansive government, democracy and socialism (including socialism for the rich, or corporatism) we don't have any good contemporary examples of a purely libertarian society. I've already gone into the problems of retroactively looking back at 19th century United States through contemporary eyes and regretting the relative poverty that existed. Sure we have become much more wealthy since then, but the fallacy is post hoc ergo propter hoc as I have been saying. You seem to act as if a robust and wealthy middle class just sprang up from nowhere after FDR passed some legislation in the thirties. The more plausible and supported answer is that the middle class and poor had been becoming more wealthy and had experienced rising living standards at a tremendous rate for decades prior. There were problems with social policy for sure but clearly the tenets of free markets, sound money, and a relatively restrained State are, at the very least, heavily correlated with the emergence of a robust middle class and the industrial revolution which permitted such unprecedented wealth creation. It's funny the way the left caricature libertarians as if we are pinning for the good old days of the “gilded age”. In fact historically the classical liberals, individualist anarchists and the other intellectual forebears of modern libertarianism were some of the most vocal in opposition to the atrocities of the day. Classical liberals were some of the most outspoken abolitionists throughout the 20th century. Individualist anarchists were among those who rightly criticized the mercantilist and corporatist collusion between the State and the capitalist class that became more apparent at the turn of the 20th century. Classical liberals were proudly apart of the workers rights movement pushing for better working conditions, the women's rights movement and the civil rights movement. So we have never wished to regress to the social climate of a rather barbaric era. Our intellectual tradition has only ever sought to extend these natural individual rights to all people, regardless of their race, sex, religion or sexual orientation. What we oppose and strenuously so, is the trick that State apologists in academia are trying to pull which is to erroneously credit political action and State intervention with all social progress when it was State intervention and legislation which had been the cause of centuries of oppression and subjugation of these vulnerable minorities that the Democrats currently pander to. 2. If your primary concern are those who are destitute and need assistance, would you support a reform of the entire social welfare system such that benefits are means tested and reserved for those who truly need it? If I am wealthy enough to purchase good medical care on the market, why should I be entitled to redistributed wealth from someone else? If you are elderly and wealthy, which is far more common in the current era why shouldn't you be asked to forgo Medicare and pay for your own medical care? It would seem to me that the only conceivable justification for wealth transfers is that the very vulnerable in society would truly be destitute without it. I can't see any reason to provide perverse incentives such that people who could easily pay their own way are allowed to benefit from State largess. And many of these wealth transfers are actually regressive. Social Security has become regressive. Medicare has become regressive in many cases. A significant portion of the elderly account for one of the most wealthy segments of society. I would assume that you would want to think long and hard about the excesses and incentives of a welfare State. So which is it? Are these programs really for those who would be destitute without it, a real social safety net, or do you think that everyone, regardless of their income should have equal access to money forcefully taken from others? 3. Finally, would you support the disillusion of the European Union and the reemergence of sovereign, independent European States with their own currencies? Are you or would you favor, as a general rule, breaking up larger unwieldy political units into smaller, more local and potentially accountable political units? If you honestly looked at the relative prosperity and standard of living in that part of the world, you would see quite clearly the success of very small and independent countries like Monaco, Andorra, Liechtenstein, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bermuda, and even Switzerland. Compared to the morass of dysfunction and bureaucratic excess that comprises the EU, these smaller, independent nation states compare quite favorably. I'm going to follow up with this discussion as much as I can over the next couple of days.
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Dec 23, 2014 08:24
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I'd like to share one small thing, here's a bunch of crazy bullshit.
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Dec 23, 2014 08:54
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Its late, so you'll have to forgive me if I'm a little short on the responses. My wife will probably beat me if I take the due time I normally would.jrodefeld posted:I wanted to share one small thing about the global warming debate. For the record I have made an honest attempt to try to ascertain the truth, reading all sorts of different arguments and trying to understand the science outside of the political debate. That doesn't make me anything close to an expert or even someone moderately well versed on the subject. Congrats on admitting this. Seriously, its not at all something to be ashamed of to admit you simply do not know enough to make an informed decision all on your lonesome. quote:I have no quarrel with any scientists who are independent and honest, no matter their opinion on this subject. However, when proposals are laid out which grant the State an excuse to use violence against me, my friends or my family, I pay attention. You're begging the question pretty hard here. Also, go gently caress yourself on the whole using violence bullshit. quote:If someone wants to lay claim to my property or to threaten me or restrict my natural rights, I had better be given a darn good reason. I live fairly consciously. My carbon footprint is very low. I make an effort not to pollute or otherwise negatively affect the people around me. If I am charged with the act of pollution, I need it to be demonstrated conclusively how I polluted, who has suffered damages from my pollution and I should be made to pay restitution to them. Just saying "well, there is this problem over here and we are just going to take your property to deal with it" is not sufficient for me. The possible extinction of the human species is not a 'good reason'? What about the deaths or displacement of millions of the world's most impoverished people? At what point do we get to say "Hey, we need to change the way we are behaving because we are loving this planet to the core." Now other people have pointed this out, but the problem with pollution is that you cannot point to an act of pollution and see measurable harm. The harm caused by your personal CO2 emissions cannot be directly linked to an specific increase in sea levels, but we know for a fact that the CO2 levels of our current societies are causing the sea levels to rise. Your method of determining when we should act makes it impossible for anyone to act, and that is on something like CO2. If I pour heavy metals into the water and you get sick two decades later I might not even be alive to be sued, my company might be bankrupt and I might have shot myself. I might have better lawyers and simply be able to wait you out since you are sick. Even if you win, then so what, you still have loving cancer. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Your system does not allow for prevention and it is fundamentally broken because of it. quote:There are many brilliant scientists who are doing complex research that I couldn't begin to comprehend. The only thing I ask is: raise your own loving money to do your research. Don't use violence against me or other peaceful citizens. Don't be a loving thug. Don't be a moocher. If your research is valuable you should have no problem getting donations and grants from private sources. Who is going to pay for research on climate change? Seriously, in a private market please explain to me who is going to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for research that is at once absolutely essential to the survival of our loving species, but not at all monetizable? Because that is the reason Government spending is so successful at actual large scale innovation when private industry is not. The government can and does fund a lot of things that can ultimately go nowhere or produce nothing of real tangible value on a marketplace. At the same time many of these things can ultimately be incredibly useful and/or a huge boon to society. The internet you are typing this on is a result of the government spending public money on innovation in the realm of electronic communication. If it had been left to the private market even people in the private sector such as Xerox who were responsible for ethernet will tell you that we'd be two decades behind or more because there was no way to monetize the invention. Without massive government infrastructure spending the internet would be decades behind and a confused myriad patchwork of systems because no one would be fronting the bill for all these connections. quote:Most scientists are not claiming the right to do violence against the innocent because their research is so important and we peons are not capable of understanding it. Most scientists (or people) do not think taxation is morally wrong. That is just your personal hangup. quote:Do your research, present your ideas to the public and use persuasion, use the free market to compel positive behavioral change. If there is a solution to this problem it WILL come from the free market, not because the State threatened a bunch of people and stole their property. And how shall they pay for it dear liza dear liza? The only private groups paying for research into climate change are oil companies, and you can be drat sure that they'd squash that poo poo like a bug if it was just individuals trying to figure things out. Good luck with that market worship. quote:I want to return to that 97% statistic because it is illustrative of the dishonesty with which this debate is being framed. What did you just call that kettle? quote:I will use a quote this time. This is from economist Robert Murphy's webpage. Murphy is no "climate denier", he just monitors some of these debates (he closely watches Krugman and dissects his commentary) and he calls out dishonesty wherever it exists. I'd actually argue that Murphy is an idiot rather than a climate denier. If anything he reminds me of me circa 2006 in that his opinion on global warming seems to be "I'll be dead so who loving cares, don't tax ME for them." quote:This is just an example. And what is "proven" by stating this consensus? Only that nearly everyone with a brain agrees that the Earth has warmed over the last century and a half and that human activity has some effect on that warming. This point has been conceded by everyone anyway. That is not what the disagreement is about anyway. The disagreement has to do with whether States should do anything about it, whether the effects of the warming will be minor or catastrophic, etc. This statement isn't true. Public perception on global warming suggests that most people believed (as of 2012 which is the most recent I could find) that the scientific consensus is actually closer to 59%. That is to say your average American believes that scientists are divided on global climate change. Only 60% believe climate change is a serious issue, which should loving concern anyone who knows anything about the issue. There are plenty of people who don't believe in climate change. Yes, you and I probably disagree in that you think that K'ashe the market god will solve global warming while I think you are crazy, but don't misrepresent the fact that there is a real problem with people not knowing or understanding basic facts about climate change.
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Dec 23, 2014 08:58
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jrodefeld posted:If someone wants to lay claim to my property or to threaten me or restrict my natural rights, I had better be given a darn good reason. Other way around bro, you have to give us a pretty darn good reason to remove regulations that help prevent organizations/individuals from doing excessive damage to the environment. I kinda like breathing so you've got quite the uphill battle to argue why I should be cool with my neighbor starting a coal power plant right next door to my house.
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Dec 23, 2014 09:32
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Everyone including and especially jrod is a statist, they just want to quibble about the nature of the oppression they will turn a blind eye to. Personally I love robbing the Rich and my happiness from doing so hasnt been nearly fufilled yet.
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Dec 23, 2014 09:51
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jrodefeld posted:First I want to apologize for not being around more to actually have a discussion. This has been a crazy time of year for me. I usually don't intend to come by and write a short post and then disappear for a week. I'm sure a lot of you are probably wondering why I put in the effort to post as much as I do. The chances of actually converting any of you are very small indeed no matter how persuasive the arguments. That is just the nature of internet debates. And I am reminded that anonymous internet exchanges tend to let people use language that they would never dare in a face to face meeting. I am well aware that I come into these discussions making certain unfounded assumptions about you all as you probably do to me. I have in my head some concept of a left wing ideologue that I am going to refute while you no doubt imagine some stereotype about a sort of libertarian caricature and these illusions permit us to hurl ad hominems, insults and otherwise engage in a more hostile exchange than would happen in a face to face discussion. Post when you can post. I work from home so I have metric fucktons of free time to waste arguing with people. I'll occasionally get annoyed when you refuse to answer questions, but I hold you no ill will and genuinely hope you eventually come around as other posters and indeed I myself have. quote:I think I would actually get along with many of you great if we were to see each other in real life. I’ve had friends whose views are very close to those I hear from Caros and others. The social circles I travel in tend to be much more left wing than right wing so I am perfectly comfortable having a great time discussing things I agree with and those things that I disagree with. In the spirit of the season, I just thought we should keep this in mind. There are limits to what can be accomplished on an internet message board after all. I still talk with my former libertarian friends on a pretty consistent basis. Well, the ones who haven't declared me anathema for thinking that people shouldn't die of a toothache. That said since you're on the topic of civility, might I request for the upteenth time you stop accusing all of us of being violent against you? It gets old really quickly and I don't think there are many things you do that set me off more than that. It really should be white noise by this point, but it really bothers me because it shows that you have no intent of listening to me or even really discussing anything when you keep throwing that insult out again and again. quote:I haven't read all of the last few pages of this thread but I recall Caros asking about how we could peacefully coexist in a society when we have such different views about how society should be organized. You all want a system of single payer to provide "free" healthcare coverage to people while I don't want you to initiate force against me to force me to pay for a system that I morally object to. So could we have a system where our two diverse ideological groups could coexist? The answer is...possibly. I think I asked you this in my response to your last round of posts, so yay! quote:I think they key word here is "consent". I have said elsewhere that my personal beliefs about social values and economics leads me to favor certain types of social structures, communities and values. However, as I have said many times, I don't want to force my personal values and preferences on anyone else through force. I would expect that generally superior and empirically more beneficial sorts of economic arrangement and social values would lead others to emulate the successful models and discard the deficient ones. Are you aware that generally superior and empirically beneficial products and ideas frequently fail for a variety of factors? People are not robots and they will do stupid things for stupid reasons. One example is the 'stickyness' of jobs. Part of the reason that the libertarian view of the labor market is wrong is that people don't change jobs all that frequently, even when it would be beneficial to do so. This is irrational behavior, and behavior like it can cause beneficial behaviors and products to flounder when they should succeed. quote:The example I've given before is that of the "voluntary" ideological Marxist. The Marxist is free to preach to the workers that exchanging their labor for wages to a capitalist is exploitative and they should never accept such an arrangement. Instead a community predicated on worker owned and run mutualist, non-hierarchical communes and businesses could form with like-minded individuals. My personal belief is that such an economic arrangement, while modestly successful on a small scale in certain circumstances, would be a failure if an economy was supported by worker run businesses without the division between entrepreneur and wage earner. My personal belief is that most people would not want to participate in such a society when the lower standard of living and relative lack of innovation and progress are evident. But why would there be a lower standard of living when history has pretty much proved otherwise?  quote:But this is my personal belief and I would never try to forcefully stop anyone from attempting to prove me wrong and trying out the social experiment. And no one here is attempting to stop you. I really wish you would get this through your head. The problem is, as I brought up in my last post, that we don't have any impetus or desire to break up our existing social structures to cater to a very small minority of people who don't agree with how they work. If it were a perfect world, and I was president with a ton of support I would happily pass the libertarian act of 2015 giving you and every libertarian out there enough money to move anywhere in the world and settle there to your hearts content. I would free you from the bonds of citizenship and then kindly ask you to get the gently caress out of our society. The key word for me is practicality. You keep talking in these sweeping overarching discussions but I can't think of a way where out two worlds can coexist unless we are working under the assumption that we completely obliterate our existing system and then people can pick up the pieces if they want a government. I don't know how to give you what you want without ruining what millions upon millions of people love, like or at least would prefer. And I have to stress that, mainstream libertarians account for 1% of the voting population in the US, and An Caps an even smaller number than that. quote:The key again, is "consent". Caros you, and other members here on this forum, would be quite free to organize in such a community as I have described. And of course you would be free to evangelize and tout the benefits of joining such a community. There isn't a threat of force that is keeping you here. There are a few places on earth you could go if your freedom was so important but you are making the conscious decision to take comfort over freedom. quote:The only thing that I would ask of you is that the people who participate in your society do so with consent. The people who would join your society should have to peacefully agree to pay a regular fee to fund a centrally organized healthcare system. The very concept of consent necessarily implies that there can be no retaliatory force used against a person who decides to not participate at any point. If a person decides to stop paying taxes or "dues" in your society, of course you are free to withold the social services that are funded by these contributions, but you should never be permitted to send armed men to use violence against that person who, through their actions, has removed their consent. Believe me if I could write a 'social contract' into law that everyone had to sign at 18 or be given a ticket to a place of their choice I'd be a happy duckling. That said, I want you to think about what you're saying here. Because your suggestion, if I'm reading it right, is that you believe that you should be able to simply opt out of paying taxes but remain within the United States, that this is your compromise. Well to that I point to unions and the Free Rider problem. Lets say that we go your way. You can opt out of taxes but you don't get the services of the government. Except you do. You clearly still have to be able to walk places even if we don't allow you to drive on public roads, meaning you benefit from sidewalks. You benefit from public education if you have a business. You benefit from police unless you are crammed into a ghetto with others of your kind, because even if it is legal to rob you its not like it would be easy to tell who had opted out. You benefit from government public health services because you are protected by herd immunity as a result of government vaccination programs. You are protected from poisoning if you use municipal water or breath air covered by regulations etc. The problem is that if we let people opt out it is the most logical decision. Let the suckers pay taxes, while you reap all the benefits. Except... poo poo, everyone else had the same idea and now we are in prisoner's dilemma hell. quote:It is this putting of the gun down that many of you have a problem with. You don't like to talk about it but every law that you pass in a Statist paradigm is an excuse for armed thugs to murder someone based only on their level of non-compliance. Failure to pay a parking ticket could escalate into a situation where you can be murdered by a policeman if you sufficiently resist. Police are taught to escalate. They will never say "well this infraction was minor and he is peacefully resisting so we won't push it any further". They will harass you, they will threaten you, they will fine you, then they will try to haul you off to jail and finally they will murder you, if you fail to sufficiently comply. No, it is the idea of giving a sloppy blowjob to a small fragment of a fragment of the population that I have a problem with. It is giving up universal healthcare as a possibility because a small minority disagrees with it that I have a problem with. And for the record, if you fail to pay a parking ticket you are stealing. You have parked on government property while fully aware of the restrictions and obligations placed on you by doing so. If it then escalates to a police officer murdering you then you are entirely to blame. Even in your proposed society if you were to park on someone's land they'd fine you. Then if you don't pay the fine they'd serve you. Then if you don't go to court they'd try and garnish your wages and so on and so forth exactly as it is now. If you pulled a gun on DRO valhalla I am willing to bet they'd shoot you just like a cop, whether it was over parking tickets or not. Also, police are not taught to escalate. While there are certainly bad cops and even cities with bad departments, de escalation is the name of the game for police nationwide. Believe it or not police are not balaclava hooded secret police from a vague yet menacing government agency. They aren't out to get you Jrodefeld. quote:So this is how we could peacefully coexist in a society while we have differing preferences and social values. You have to refrain from initiatory violence and every person who participates in your society must have consent. If you agree to that then we could get along famously in our imagined society. But you haven't really answered anything, you've just proposed a world where everyone happily sits alongside one another may the best man win. How the gently caress do you suggest getting from where we are now to where we want to be? That is the part that is difficult, that is the actual part I care about, not your perfect civilization 5 world where we are starting from scratch and seeing what happens. quote:Now to change the subject, I have a few other questions I would like to propose. Please bear with me. Let us suppose that unicorns were made of cotton candy, would they be delicious? Probably, yes. So what? I'll do you one better. If we created a libertarian social experiment on a relatively large scale (that could be scaled up further) and it showed that the poor and needy did no worse than they currently do, and that all social indicators reflect well and so forth I would probably be interested in switching back to libertarianism. If you could do that over a city of say... 1,000,000 I'd probably sit up take notice and seriously re-evaluate my beliefs because clearly I'm missing something. But if wishes were horses then beggars would ride. quote:From my viewpoint I would assume you would take this news with great rejoicing. It would mean that you don't have to rely on the regrettable use of violent coercion just to make sure the poor don't starve in the streets. It should be reason for celebration. We don't believe it is violent or coercive, but if we follow your logic and its shown that libertarian policies make people happier, healthier and wealthier I'd reconsider my beliefs because I'm not a sociopath who wants people to suffer simply to cling to an ideology. quote:It seems that your entire argument for why the poor would all starve and perish under a libertarian regime comes from what has been told about the late 19th century in the United States. Since the mid to late 20th century has indeed been the era of expansive government, democracy and socialism (including socialism for the rich, or corporatism) we don't have any good contemporary examples of a purely libertarian society. And also from logic, personal experience and reams of economic data, but yeah the robber barons are a good cautionary tale. quote:I've already gone into the problems of retroactively looking back at 19th century United States through contemporary eyes and regretting the relative poverty that existed. Sure we have become much more wealthy since then, but the fallacy is post hoc ergo propter hoc as I have been saying. You seem to act as if a robust and wealthy middle class just sprang up from nowhere after FDR passed some legislation in the thirties. The more plausible and supported answer is that the middle class and poor had been becoming more wealthy and had experienced rising living standards at a tremendous rate for decades prior. There were problems with social policy for sure but clearly the tenets of free markets, sound money, and a relatively restrained State are, at the very least, heavily correlated with the emergence of a robust middle class and the industrial revolution which permitted such unprecedented wealth creation. This isn't really true because it was industrialization that correlates best with improved standards of living. This is why soviet standard of living shot through the loving roof as they underwent rapid industrialization, though they did it in a way I wouldn't exactly recommend what with the crash course in poverty, purges and famine. You do understand that industrialization can happen without capitalism right? quote:It's funny the way the left caricature libertarians as if we are pinning for the good old days of the “gilded age”. In fact historically the classical liberals, individualist anarchists and the other intellectual forebears of modern libertarianism were some of the most vocal in opposition to the atrocities of the day. Classical liberals were some of the most outspoken abolitionists throughout the 20th century. Individualist anarchists were among those who rightly criticized the mercantilist and corporatist collusion between the State and the capitalist class that became more apparent at the turn of the 20th century. Classical liberals were proudly apart of the workers rights movement pushing for better working conditions, the women's rights movement and the civil rights movement. I think you have aptly shown in this thread that just because you claim that someone is your ideological predecessor does not mean they would have agreed with you on the color of the sky if pressed. That said, you kind of do pine for the good old days. You pine for the free banking era, for the age before anti-trust and for marketplaces that most resemble 19th century USA. I'm sorry if that is problematic for you but it is pretty factually true. quote:So we have never wished to regress to the social climate of a rather barbaric era. Our intellectual tradition has only ever sought to extend these natural individual rights to all people, regardless of their race, sex, religion or sexual orientation. What we oppose and strenuously so, is the trick that State apologists in academia are trying to pull which is to erroneously credit political action and State intervention with all social progress when it was State intervention and legislation which had been the cause of centuries of oppression and subjugation of these vulnerable minorities that the Democrats currently pander to. No one is accusing you personally of wanting to return to slavery or end women's suffrage. Support for equality before the law is typically one thing libertarians and leftists continue to agree on. As for the rest of this... I have to say, the democrats 'pander' to vulnerable minorities by trying to treat them like human beings and give recompense for centuries of injustice? Also, slavery is straight up capitalism in action my friend. On that note, can you please do a natural rights post so I can hulk hogan slam the poo poo out of it? quote:2. If your primary concern are those who are destitute and need assistance, would you support a reform of the entire social welfare system such that benefits are means tested and reserved for those who truly need it? If I am wealthy enough to purchase good medical care on the market, why should I be entitled to redistributed wealth from someone else? If you are elderly and wealthy, which is far more common in the current era why shouldn't you be asked to forgo Medicare and pay for your own medical care? Because means testing saves little in the grand scheme of things and politically opens the programs to be targeted even further by the wealthy. The programs do benefit people of lower income more than they benefit people of higher income, but if you remove social security benefits for the wealthy you make them an even more appealing target. "Why should I be paying for that poor bum's retirement" etc. quote:It would seem to me that the only conceivable justification for wealth transfers is that the very vulnerable in society would truly be destitute without it. I can't see any reason to provide perverse incentives such that people who could easily pay their own way are allowed to benefit from State largess. And many of these wealth transfers are actually regressive. Social Security has become regressive. Medicare has become regressive in many cases. A significant portion of the elderly account for one of the most wealthy segments of society. Do remember that even the rich who collect social security have paid in over the course of their lifetimes and are recovering (in part) money that was intended to be reserved for them. Social Security and Medicare are not regressive in any meaningful sense of the word and it is frankly amusing that you would even suggest such a thing. I get you're trying to make the programs look bad, but you're really just showing that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of these programs. Also, while the elderly do typically have a significant amount of wealth, for the vast majority of them that wealth is their home. quote:I would assume that you would want to think long and hard about the excesses and incentives of a welfare State. So which is it? Are these programs really for those who would be destitute without it, a real social safety net, or do you think that everyone, regardless of their income should have equal access to money forcefully taken from others? You do understand that social security is paid for by the social security tax correct? I mean yes, technically its a pay-go system where current workers pay for future retirees and future workers will pay for current workers etc. But the point of social security is that you pay in and you get out, its basically forced savings. As for medicare and other programs, I think everyone should have access to universal healthcare. Absent that I think health care for the elderly is still a great idea. quote:3. Finally, would you support the disillusion of the European Union and the reemergence of sovereign, independent European States with their own currencies? Are you or would you favor, as a general rule, breaking up larger unwieldy political units into smaller, more local and potentially accountable political units? I... don't really care? I mean if the EU wants to break up go nuts. It'd be a pain on the world economy but that is their choice. As for shrinking things down to the state level, again, if people really wanted to I wouldn't stop them. People don't want to, so I fortunately do not have to. Quebec was given the option to leave in 1993(?) for example, and I was happy to see them go or happy to see them stay. quote:If you honestly looked at the relative prosperity and standard of living in that part of the world, you would see quite clearly the success of very small and independent countries like Monaco, Andorra, Liechtenstein, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bermuda, and even Switzerland. Compared to the morass of dysfunction and bureaucratic excess that comprises the EU, these smaller, independent nation states compare quite favorably. You really ought to read the previous pages where I point out the hilarity of Hong Kong. That said, you know what is so important about those states like Monaco, andorra, Liechtenstein, Bermuda that makes them look so fantastic from a wealth perspective? Its that they are either bank havens or tourist destinations for the rich. Sometimes both. Monaco looks great on paper, until you realize that they import poor workers from nearby to handle all of their menial work. I could go on but I'm tired. quote:I'm going to follow up with this discussion as much as I can over the next couple of days. Yay! Happy Holidays.
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Dec 23, 2014 09:53
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jrodefeld posted:There are many brilliant scientists who are doing complex research that I couldn't begin to comprehend. The only thing I ask is: raise your own loving money to do your research. Don't use violence against me or other peaceful citizens. Don't be a loving thug. Don't be a moocher. If your research is valuable you should have no problem getting donations and grants from private sources. Hi jrodefled. I'm a scientist, by which I mean that I get paid to do science. It's not a luxurious lifestyle; I would have made far more money going into patent law or accepting an offer that I received to go work on Wall Street (particle physicists are in high demand in the financial sector for their ability to analyze and extract results from large quantities of data), or any number of other things. But I really like research, so that's what I ended up doing. I have a lot of experience in many scientific circles, and I've known many scientists across a multitude of fields. What you've stated here indicates that you don't know much about scientific research or scientific research funding, but you seem to have very strong opinions on research funding despite having no knowledge on the subject. I'd like to address that. Which private sources should scientists be approaching for funding their research? Because in all honesty, nearly all scientific research is publicly funded. Even most private research is publicly funded. Even pharmaceutical research is primarily performed with public funding, despite public perception to the contrary. Why is this? Well, as you're probably already aware a successful entrepreneur has to weigh risk vs reward. Research can yield incredible rewards, but it's often a total crap shoot. And it's often true that research that produces something of use doesn't become valuable until long after the researcher is deceased. And even when research produces something useful, it then takes further time to monetize and profit from that research. Research is not an activity that people engage in for their own benefit, research is an activity that mankind engages in for all of humanity's benefit. This is not an activity that lends itself well to private investment because the timescale over which dividends are paid is often greater than a human lifetime, sometimes greater than several human lifetimes. quote:Most scientists are not claiming the right to do violence against the innocent because their research is so important and we peons are not capable of understanding it. First of all, you're equating taxation with violence, which is a false equivalence, as has been gone over again and again. Really, the insignificant fraction of your yearly income that goes towards scientific research is an investment in the perpetuation and future health and happiness of your entire species. You are paying dividends on investments that were made before your time, for your benefit, without you even needing to ask. Consider a world without scientific advancement and realize that the paltry sum that you pay toward science is an incredible bargain for all that it has provided you. Marvel at the countless technological innovations that science has brought you, be thankful that these investments were made on your behalf long before you were born, and continue supporting science so that future generations may receive the benefit of further advancement. To do otherwise is nothing more than shortsighted selfishness, it is accepting a benefit while refusing to pay for it. To sneer at public funding of scientific effort while enjoying the many boons that were brought about because of it is exactly the kind of "violence" that you claim to abhor. The comforts of the modern world are one of the greatest arguments against ancap libertarianism, especially when ancap libertarians employ a medium that would undoubtedly not exist without publicly funded scientific research. Second, a big part of securing scientific funding is in being able to explain the potential benefits to laypeople who might not understand it, so your sentence here is just 
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Dec 23, 2014 10:07
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Actually I'd like to assert as a statist liberal demonspawn that my primary concerns are neither the enviroment nor healthcare, but infrastructure and economic freedom, but that makes it a lot harder to make sweeping generalizations about what I want to do as the evil aggressor of taking your fair share of the states property back. The sooner you find your lord and savior is the common man jrod the happier you'll be.
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Dec 23, 2014 10:08
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