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Rush Limbaugh, Allen West, Sean Hannity, hell Fox News in general: paragons of civility
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Jan 23, 2015 05:33
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I but see when I say call you a thief and a murderer for supporting taxation and regulation, I'm saying it in a nice way! Not like when left-progressives say supporting segregation is racist, that's so mean of them!
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Jan 23, 2015 05:33
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Found it
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Jan 23, 2015 05:35
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That is a good point, a lot of Libertarian rhetoric is rather inflammatory by design. So I don't think you have much of a high ground here. Is it better because it isn't vulgar?
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Jan 23, 2015 05:35
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jrodefeld posted:I just want to make note of the difference in tone between us. You may argue that I come off as condescending and arrogant at times, but I never just throw around vitriol like this. As I mentioned in a post nearly a month ago, we are anonymous internet users who are debating complex political and economic issues in a forum where people cavalierly spew obscenities and hatred that they wouldn't dare use in a face to face encounter. I calls it like I sees it, and you tying the war on drugs to progressive politics is disingenuous garbage worthy of Rove. Don't use me as a way of dismissing the rest of the thread, btw. I admire them for their ability to tolerate the disingenuous bullshit you vomit as you twist reality to fit your naive world view. I don't have that kind of patience, nor do I give a poo poo if I upset you since you regularly say things that offend me but you are too up your own rear end to detect why. Just ignore me if you feel my tone is inappropriate! But of course you will focus on it because it offers you an easy out to the discussion once you've been shown to be straight up fabricating poo poo yet again.
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Jan 23, 2015 05:36
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CharlestheHammer posted:That is a good point, a lot of Libertarian rhetoric is rather inflammatory by design. You see, he is not calling you garbage, just a thief, rapist, murderer, parasite, etc. etc. All of those are good things, and today is opposite day.
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Jan 23, 2015 05:36
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Caros posted:Always wondered how Ancaps resolve their love of Mises with this... You raise a good point. Mises was not an anarchist but a minimal government advocate. Mises however was the MOST minimal of minarchists, favoring a voluntary Republic that protects property, liberty and peace and nothing else. His leading student Murray Rothbard expanded upon Mises and coined the phrase anarcho-capitalism. Everything Mises said in the paragraph you cited is correct. The resort to compulsion is necessary to protect a free society and enforce the rules of conduct. The only error made is the assumption that this task can only be accomplished by the State. I would take the minarchism of Mises in a heartbeat. I would argue though that the provision of security services and law could be provided better through the market than through even the most limited State. Finally, Mises was known primarily as an economist. Mises is praised for his contributions to economic understanding and his critiques of socialism and central planning. He was not the sort of philosopher, historian and political theorist that Rothbard turned out to be. Rothbard was concerned much more with the strategy of the burgeoning libertarian movement. He did far more work in history and political theory than Mises ever did. Economics is descriptive not prescriptive. In economics you provide cause and effect explanations of economic phenomenon. Economics by itself doesn't tell you what sort of government or society you SHOULD have. Rather it tells you that if you do this, this will happen. If the central bank lowers interest rates, this will be the result and so forth. Therefore the fact that Mises was a minarchist and not an anarchist has little bearing on his pioneering work as an economists and thus serves as no issue for the anarchist libertarian. Every great thinker is eventually superseded by his successors.
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Jan 23, 2015 05:39
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archangelwar posted:Found it Also 
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Jan 23, 2015 05:41
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jrodefeld posted:You raise a good point. Mises was not an anarchist but a minimal government advocate. Mises however was the MOST minimal of minarchists, favoring a voluntary Republic that protects property, liberty and peace and nothing else. His leading student Murray Rothbard expanded upon Mises and coined the phrase anarcho-capitalism. Everything Mises said in the paragraph you cited is correct. The resort to compulsion is necessary to protect a free society and enforce the rules of conduct. The only error made is the assumption that this task can only be accomplished by the State. So what you are saying is, you can't actually derive unambiguous true facts about the world beginning from von Mises' axiom "Humans Act". Is that right?
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Jan 23, 2015 05:43
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Why won't you look at me when we debate?!
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Jan 23, 2015 05:58
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jrodefeld posted:One of the reasons that I react so strongly against the insinuation that I am a racist (which I acknowledge that you are NOT doing) is that the plight of black Americans and minorities in general has been a major concern for me, it is something that I care deeply about. I was as angry and outraged at the events in Ferguson and the murder of Eric Garner as anyone else, I feel like it demonstrates how little the lives of poor blacks seem to matter to police. I don't even necessarily think that the motivations for these cops were racial, but rather I think that it becomes policy to target any vulnerable community with harsher punishment than they would afford a more affluent community. I'm glad you aren't racist and actually give a gently caress about racism in general! But... quote:Black illegitimacy was actually lower than white illegitimacy in the 1940s and early 1950s. Vicious white racism did not destroy the black family. Something changed in the last forty years that has had an adverse effect on black progress. I don't need to go into this here as I have done so in a previous post, but this concerns me a great deal. And the majority of the libertarian and anarchist commentators that I listen to spend a large amount of time speaking about the injustice of the criminal justice system in its treatment of blacks and many of these same issues. Welfare is not the cause of this. Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc. The availability of welfare has not destroyed the black family. It can certainly be argued that there are things in the state that have severely hosed over the african american community, and I agree with you that we should change many of these, such as our prison culture. The idea that keeping black people from starving to death by giving them a small stipend on which they can loving survive causes them to break up their familes and refuse to seek out work is offensive as gently caress. Where is this same behavior in white people, or hispanic, or asian? Why is it only black people whose culture has collapsed because Uncle Sam is now the father in the relationship. quote:That is why it is so frustrating when I hear the insinuation that libertarians advocate for the free market "just so we can tell black people to get out of our neighborhoods". This is honest to loving god what Hans Hermann Hoppe is saying. I'm not trying to be 'gotcha' with this, I am trying to make you understand that this is what Hans Hermann Hoppe means when he says forced integration is a bad thing. The forced integration he is talking about is the inability of whites to physically remove those who they do not like from their neighborhoods. quote:With that said, you clearly misunderstood what I was saying. But let me ask you a question first: Do you think that all opposition to free and open immigration is motivated by racism? Most if not all, yes. There are some issues with security and economics, but by and large the opposition in the united states to a more open immigration policy is essentially indivisible from a discussion about race due to decades of focus on that issue. Moreover that is the only issue I think HHH cares about. quote:Mass immigration can and does cause a lot of problems for infrastructure, social services, communities and the logistics of it can be complex depending on the volume of the immigration. Absolutely! There are real discussions to be had about immigration, but pretending that race isn't the driving factor of the person who's ideas you have appropriated as a primary basis of your own is being deluded at best. quote:All I am saying is that if you have a welfare State and public infrastructure that is overused and people are hugely inconvenienced, job opportunities are lost and State budgets are strained due to massive new immigration, this can be seen as a rights violation against private property owners whose tax dollars are being redistributed to benefit the newcomers into the community. I agree, now that you state it this way you are making a point. My point was that the talking points you used before are ones that are specifically used as dog whistle racism and I think you need to understand that. There are genuine concerns to be had about people coming across the border and taking advantage of certain social services. But when you phrase this as "hardship for private property owners whose tax money is stressed on social services provided to new immigrants" that reads as boilerplate conservitive ranting about how the immigrants are coming to leach off society, which is so factually untrue it is laughable. Moreover the solution to these problems is not to demonize the immigrants, or to kick them out or to cut social services. None of these things are viable and we know this from decades of trying. Bringing people into the fold via amnesty and reformed immigration is a solution that will allow these immigrant workers to actually contribute to their local areas, and is pretty much the only real and functional solution on the table. quote:This is not a racial thing. It is merely a logistics issue related to the volume of people moving through an area. I like to think that you are the unironic Stephen Colbert of libertarians. You don't 'see' racism when people talk, or see how race could impact a discussion. As far as I can tell it is the only way that you can read someone like Hoppe and not be disgusted at what is pretty close to naked fascism, or how you can read Molyneux talking about women hoovering up coins with her vagina and not see misogyny. Its an interesting skill to have, but it makes you seem dangerously naive, and leads you to using phrases like forced integration without seeing what is wrong with them. quote:I have no idea why you jumped to the conclusion that this is racial. If people are just moving and they are getting jobs and working on improving their own lives, there is no problem whatsoever. But you cannot be forced to invite these people over to your house for dinner, or have your money taken to benefit others, and so forth. Just as with anyone else. Maybe some people are xenophobic and really don't want to associate with a different race. As vile as that might be, they have the right not to associate with them on their own property. Its called context. Read below to find out more. quote:I don't speak for Hoppe or anyone else. But to be fair, people don't have the right to expel people from "towns, cities or states". They have the right to not allow people on their personal property. That is it. They have no right to throw someone out of their home who lives next door. They can move if they want but they have no jurisdiction over another person's property. quote:The means to achieve this goal are decentralization and secession (both inherently un-democratic, and un-majoritarian). One would be well on the way toward a restoration of the freedom of association and exclusion as it is implied in the idea and institution of private property, and much of the social strife currently caused by forced integration would disappear, if only towns and villages could and would do what they did as a matter of course until well into the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States: to post signs regarding entrance requirements to the town, and once in town for entering specific pieces of property (no beggars or bums or homeless, but also no Moslems, Hindus, Jews, Catholics, etc.); to kick out those who do not fulfill these requirements as trespassers; and to solve the "naturalization" question somewhat along the Swiss model, where local assemblies, not the central government, determine who can and who cannot become a Swiss citizen. I don't speak for Hans Hermann Hoppe either, I let that racist gently caress do it for himself. Hans Hermann Hoppe believes that Cities and towns should seceed from the US, and should in turn kick out anyone of a persuasion that they do not like. In practice this would be his covenant communities, where a township is akin to a HOA or a condo board, setting rules regarding racial, cultural or other qualities that are or are not allowed to reside or visit. This is segregation in its purest form, the sort of segregation that was legal and widespread prior to the Fair Housing Act. I honestly don't think HHH would be too broken up about people using force to set up the conditions for their neighborhoods, but even if they didn't I think it would be a relatively easy thing to kick out the blacks if they wanted to. If your city agrees not to sell anything to black people, then your property rights don't account for much when you have to drive forty miles for food and water, or when the local power grid won't supply you. quote:The segregation of the South, Jim Crow and other vile racist institutions have nothing to do with the right to free association. This was a situation of State-sanctioned and enforced segregation, not just on private businesses but in public places, schools, and places like that. The Civil Rights movement rightly overturned this State enforced segregation. Be honest, did you read the quotes I posted from HHH? The relevent point was in the second quote where he said "mandated inter-national desegregagtion (forced integration)." So when I say that if you are against forced integration (like Hoppe) then you are pro-segregation, because Hoppe believes that they are two sides of the same coin, that desegregation by law necessarily equates to forced integration. Which makes sense, you are 'forced' to integrate with people since you can't legally deny them the right to enter your public business, or rent in a 'whites only' building etc. quote:A principled libertarian could offer the case that the pendulum swung too far in the other direction, such that affirmative action mandates, racial set asides and special treatment, racial quotas for hiring and things like that have been ill advised and counterproductive. Hoppe does. I think you really need to come to terms with this Jrodefeld. Hans Hermann Hoppe wants the right to segregate because he wants to only associate with people who are like him. Hans Hermann Hoppe is a racist who thinks it is forced integration that black people can live in his neighborhood. I firmly believe that you don't think this is the case, but when you use terms like forced integration, a term that is only used by HHH and by people explaining how schools were integrated in the antebellum south, you are using language that suggests that blacks and whites living together is a bad thing. quote:If we concede that the State can force a person to associate with someone on his private property for the "common good" then you have conceded the entire principle and now the State can use this as a precedent for future property rights violations. And you should. Because it is in the common good that the state desegregated the south since that was one of the most despicable human rights abuses in US history. quote:I think you are confused if you think libertarian property rights have anything to do with a "return" to segregation of the 1960s. The fact that this was State MANDATED segregation is kind of critical. As is the fact that some private business entrepreneurs had wanted to open up stores and businesses that served black people for decades prior but were prevented from doing so by law. The market has a way of breaking up segregation. The State had to enforce slavery, Jim Crow and segregation because it is not economically viable in the long run to rely on slave labor or to refuse black paying customers while your competitor serves all comers. I was quoting Hans Hermann Hoppe who believes that forced integration is bad, and that government efforts towards it (desegregation) were good. I can't stress this enough Jrodefeld, he thinks that desegregation was bad because it forced the integration of various races. As for the rest of this post. No, that is not true at all. We can go back and look at the rate at which states desegregated and see that segregation in businesses ended long after Jim Crowe laws were repealed. quote:But do me a favor in the future. Be real careful about when you use the label "racist" to describe somebody. Don't be so hypersensitive to supposed "code" language and interpret racial intent into an argument that may or may not exist. It isn't code language you obnoxious gently caress. Sorry, but I'm trying to be pretty loving tactful to you here after you just went ahead and said, in effect, that desegregation was a bad thing. You are loving incapable of realizing when someone is saying something racist unless, and possibly even if someone is shouting friend of the family at a black person at the top of their lungs. We have presented you time after time with evidence that HHH is a racist, and now I am telling you that you are using a phrase that is pro-segregation, and that you should seriously reconsider its use before you throw it around willy nilly. CharlestheHammer posted:I assume if someone on Mises knew who Caros was then you would have. 
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Jan 23, 2015 05:59
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Political Whores posted:Maybe if you weren't such a disingenuous shithead with horribly racist opinions, we would be more willing to extend you conversational goodwill. At this point I think I would find it easier to talk civilly with fascists than I would with you. I would like to note that nazi and SA poster poster Emden was orders of magnitude easier to talk to about how stupid national socialism is than it is to talk to jrod about libertarianism.
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Jan 23, 2015 06:06
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QuarkJets posted:Dude, you're seriously back to the idea that war is never waged for profit? We already crushed that argument. You had no retort against the dozens of historical examples of private groups waging war for profit. Why are you bringing out this dead horse? With regards to that claim of plagiarism, I think I have gone over this but if not I'll do it again. Back when we were debating medical care, I had read an article that I thought made some good points and I wanted to add them to this discussion. I was answering a number of posts quickly and I forgot to properly cite the source of that information. Although my post consisted mainly of a list of historical dates and facts rather than a complex argument, I should have cited the source but I didn't. Yes I hosed up in that instance. It was not intentional nor was I trying to deceive you all in any way. Other than that error, I have never once used anyone elses words without correctly attributing them. I have written at length many times without even the slightest resort to any other link or source. This is the vast majority of my posts. If you want to go back to discussing healthcare we can, but I'm not about to go back through this thread to track down every single post about the subject. The issue about war and its profitability has been discussed before. We are arguing over definitions. Yes, people will fight and criminals will engage in violence in order to profit from it. This is not what I am talking about. I am talking about whether or not established businesses or security firms in a free market economy will choose to wage open war on other businesses. I am saying that they will not because the incentives and cost would be too great. It is not that it is impossible per se, but that economic incentives and the desire for profits would make it unlikely. I cannot understand why you can't concede at least that the existence of a State and a fiat currency makes it easier and more likely that a nation will go to war. This is fairly elementary. There may be a lot of gang warfare and small time criminal behavior, but waging a modern war effort using a modern military would be extremely difficult if you couldn't outsource the cost of that effort to taxpayers or monetize the cost through money printing.
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Jan 23, 2015 06:10
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VitalSigns posted:Is everyone just waiting until the State withers away to begin their well-informed rationally self-interested boycotts? Of course, the Libertopian alternative isn't going to be much better:
jrodefeld posted:If you want to go back to discussing healthcare we can, but I'm not about to go back through this thread to track down every single post about the subject. GulMadred fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Jan 23, 2015 |
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Jan 23, 2015 06:11
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Raskolnikov38 posted:I would like to note that nazi and SA poster poster Emden was orders of magnitude easier to talk to about how stupid national socialism is than it is to talk to jrod about libertarianism. These are the things I notice with Jrod that makes him hard to talk to. 1. He likes to go on meaningless tangents about how great Libertarian thinkers are. Notice how he'll often post about some dude's philosophy or something that isn't really related to the conversation? 2. He likes to be long-winded as gently caress. Dude never met a sentence he couldn't turn into a paragraph. And the thing is that it's not because he's speaking about this stuff on a higher level. Most of my posts aimed at him have been of the "I'm a dickbag and I'm going to pick apart your two hour argument in five minutes" variety. He's just using lots of purple prose and flowery language that he thinks makes him look more advanced, but it just makes him look like a pretentious twat. 3. He likes to propose solutions that miss the entire point. His whole philosophy is built on logical leaps and assumptions. 4. Instead of engaging with people who meaningfully engage with him, he instead focuses on the posts that are attacking him, digging himself deeper into holes that he doesn't want to go. For someone who hates talking about racism so much, he's spent a lot of time trying to show how he is not a racist. So instead of focusing on the meaningful posts with lots of content, he tends to focus on the low content posts. 5. He likes to paint people he doesn't like as leftist progressives, like that's a terrible thing. And then he says poo poo like htis: jrodefeld posted:But I wouldn't use language like that but so many of you feel comfortable expressing yourself in vitriol and hate. As an aside, I've noticed such outbursts far more commonly among left progressives than among right conservatives who, despite their many flaws, tend to keep things more civil. Excuse me, but Mr. Jrodefeld, what loving planet are you from? People on the right are full of piss, vinegar, and vitriol. Have you heard Sarah Palin speak? Did you read this article? http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...MP=share_btn_fb Do you read comments on news websites? Have you ever read WND? Have you heard of Debbie Schlussel? Michelle Malkin? These are not people who are kind and courteous and polite. They are on the right, and they are not keeping things more civil. Do you pay any attention to politics? This is why we respond with vitriol to you! Because you say stupid poo poo like this that just doesn't reflect reality and makes us wonder what planet you are really from.
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Jan 23, 2015 06:15
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Cemetry Gator posted:This is why we respond with vitriol to you! Because you say stupid poo poo like this that just doesn't reflect reality and makes us wonder what planet you are really from. A planet where the statist is invisible. I'd search his posts just to prove he's never acknowledge that there are people who are antithesis to his position, just misguided dullards who don't understand the beauty of his philosophy through his use of 18th and 19th century english, but I don't want to crash my browser.
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Jan 23, 2015 06:27
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Also, surprise surprise that right-wingers are polite to libertarians. You're their pets, of course they are nice to you.
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Jan 23, 2015 06:28
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Caros posted:Actually... Well here, I'll let the quotes speak for themselves: I'm sure you could anticipate my response, but how many of those surveyed are genuine free market entrepreneurs rather than crony capitalists? I would wage the answer is close to zero. People who trade derivatives on Wall Street are, I agree, by and large sociopathic and less moral than the average person. But these people are not indicative of the "wealthy" as a whole, obviously. It also depends on how you classify "wealthy" people. If I make $500000 a year, am I wealthy? Compared to the vast majority of people on the planet, I am extremely wealthy. But I don't think people with a six figure income are any less moral than a person with a five figure income on average. And furthermore we are talking about a comparison. Suppose they surveyed politicians and bureaucrats and regulators? Do you really think these people would do any better than the Wall Street fat cats? I seriously doubt it. Having "wealth" doesn't indicate anything as to your moral character. But acting as a politician does. If you are a politician, it necessarily means that you are participating in a system that initiates force against the innocent. And your statements come very close to arguing that it is de facto "bad" to be wealthy or to seek wealth. This is an incredibly dangerous idea to perpetuate as it consigns people to not seeking to improve their living standards or increase their productivity lest they become an immoral sociopath through excessive wealth acquisition. Like I've said elsewhere, we should focus on how people attain their wealth not how much wealth they have in judging their character. After all the wealthy entrepreneur who invents the next computer chip, the next 3d printer, or the next electric car, as added immensely to the wealth of society as a whole. And this is to be encouraged. Whether this person is more or less empathetic than others is hard to say. Maybe his motivation was his own selfish desires and it is merely a side effect that he improved the lives of millions. Or perhaps the opposite is true. What we should oppose is Crony Capitalism and the political means to wealth acquisition. The economic means is what civilized people use to improve their living standards and push civilization and the human species forward.
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Jan 23, 2015 06:29
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jrodefeld posted:I'm sure you could anticipate my response, but how many of those surveyed are genuine free market entrepreneurs rather than crony capitalists? I would wage the answer is close to zero. People who trade derivatives on Wall Street are, I agree, by and large sociopathic and less moral than the average person. But these people are not indicative of the "wealthy" as a whole, obviously. It also depends on how you classify "wealthy" people. If I make $500000 a year, am I wealthy? Compared to the vast majority of people on the planet, I am extremely wealthy. But I don't think people with a six figure income are any less moral than a person with a five figure income on average. Who are these wonderful non-predatory capitalists you are alluding to?
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Jan 23, 2015 06:30
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jrodefeld posted:With regards to that claim of plagiarism, I think I have gone over this but if not I'll do it again. Back when we were debating medical care, I had read an article that I thought made some good points and I wanted to add them to this discussion. I was answering a number of posts quickly and I forgot to properly cite the source of that information. Although my post consisted mainly of a list of historical dates and facts rather than a complex argument, I should have cited the source but I didn't. People give you poo poo because it took two days of myself and others calling you out on it, with you posting over a dozen times including to posts that called you out on it before you actually admitted that you did it. And when you did you got all high on your horse saying "I hope this is sufficient to move on and debate the substance of the issues at hand." You didn't loving apologize, and you know what, I think the people who argue in good faith with you deserved that, but I didn't press you on it. You really have no leg to stand on after plagiarizing something and not even having the deceny to say you did something wrong until three months later. That said, I hope people drop it after this because you are honest here, you don't often plagiarize as far as I can tell and there are better arguments to have. quote:If you want to go back to discussing healthcare we can, but I'm not about to go back through this thread to track down every single post about the subject. I do! I can quote them for you if you'd like.
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Jan 23, 2015 06:37
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The fabled "true entrepreneur" is so moral that he would not take advantage of situations that might harm others to his benefit. Any capitalist who does so is a crony capitalist. But, we can't have free health care because that encourages people not to take care of themselves, because people just respond to incentives, like deciding to get cancer.
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Jan 23, 2015 06:38
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SedanChair posted:Who are these wonderful non-predatory capitalists you are alluding to? Everyone who inherited their wealth obviously.
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Jan 23, 2015 06:38
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jrodefeld posted:I'm sure you could anticipate my response, but how many of those surveyed are genuine free market entrepreneurs rather than crony capitalists? I would wage the answer is close to zero. People who trade derivatives on Wall Street are, I agree, by and large sociopathic and less moral than the average person. But these people are not indicative of the "wealthy" as a whole, obviously. It also depends on how you classify "wealthy" people. If I make $500000 a year, am I wealthy? Compared to the vast majority of people on the planet, I am extremely wealthy. But I don't think people with a six figure income are any less moral than a person with a five figure income on average. No true scotsman. Clearly none of them are, because I mean... sure a survey of the top 3400 businesses in america and their CEO's will only be a list of crony capitalists, right? When we talk about 'the wealthy', particularly when talking about who would rule in a libertarian society we are talking about the super rich. The ultra rich. The people who buy companies for breakfast. That said, I think $500,000 a year is actually probably pretty close to that number, because there are scant few places where someone can earn $500,000 a year, and most of the ones I can think of are not flattering. More to the point, a big part of the lack of empathy appears to have to do with the disconnect that immense wealth buys, where you have servants who do the basics for you. quote:And furthermore we are talking about a comparison. Suppose they surveyed politicians and bureaucrats and regulators? Do you really think these people would do any better than the Wall Street fat cats? I seriously doubt it. On the average? I'd probably say yes but I'd be interested to see the study. quote:Having "wealth" doesn't indicate anything as to your moral character. But acting as a politician does. If you are a politician, it necessarily means that you are participating in a system that initiates force against the innocent. gently caress you and your bullshit arguments about the initiation of violence. Bernie Sanders is not immoral because he wants children to be able to eat and go to school. quote:And your statements come very close to arguing that it is de facto "bad" to be wealthy or to seek wealth. This is an incredibly dangerous idea to perpetuate as it consigns people to not seeking to improve their living standards or increase their productivity lest they become an immoral sociopath through excessive wealth acquisition. I do think it is defacto bad to be ultra wealthy to be honest. I think our society creates a wealthy uberclass that is ultimately pointless for the vast majority of us. Then again I'm an out and out socialist. Oh and all of those things that you talked about being invented, they were developed at publicly funded universities by people making a fraction of what the 'wealthy' entrepreneurs make. Most entrepreneurs don't actually innovate all that much as they do combine ideas from public institutions, like the PC or the iPhone. I'll be the first to say there is value in marketing a new product, but that we ought to be careful putting them on a pedestal, and that I'd drat well never want Bill Gates to run our country. quote:What we should oppose is Crony Capitalism and the political means to wealth acquisition. The economic means is what civilized people use to improve their living standards and push civilization and the human species forward. Blah blah blah, markets are the best, lets ignore the fact that industrialization and other innovation could be done completely separately from capitalism. Bah, I'm bored with this.. can't even be assed now. Time for some league.
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Jan 23, 2015 06:47
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jrodefeld posted:And furthermore we are talking about a comparison. Suppose they surveyed politicians and bureaucrats and regulators? Do you really think these people would do any better than the Wall Street fat cats? I seriously doubt it. Will you stop lumping government staff in with politicians
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Jan 23, 2015 06:56
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RuanGacho posted:Will you stop lumping government staff in with politicians The fact he lumps them together basically means he hasn't the faintest clue what goes on in the public sector.
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Jan 23, 2015 07:04
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QuarkJets posted:Your system, the ancap libertarian system, converts wealthy people into politicians with lifetime appointments. I don't know why you have so much trouble grasping this concept, but it's the reason why your entire ancap libertarian philosophy is a failure. No it doesn't. Politicians have the legal authority to use initiatory force while businessmen do not. People who work for a business or buy products from one do so by choice, voluntarily. The difference is literally the difference between rape and making love. The difference of course is the consent or lack thereof. I want to quote Mises in his brilliant work "The Anti-Capitalist Mentality" which I strongly urge you to read. Why do some people loathe capitalism (and we mean it as the system advocated by laissez faire liberals)? Envy is a very strong motivating influence of course. It might even lead people to make broad sweeping statements to the effect that the "wealthy" are in fact morally inferior to "regular" people as has been asserted here. Mises says: "“Capitalism grants to each the opportunity to attain the most desirable positions which, of course, can only be attained by the few … Whatever a man may have gained for himself, there are always before his eyes people who have outstripped him … Such is the attitude of the tramp against the man with the regular job, the factory hand against the foreman, the executive against the vice-president, the vice-president against the president, the man who is worth three hundred thousand dollars against the millionaire, and so on.” Free market critics never cease telling the same old story. They say, per Mises, that "capitalism is a system to make the masses suffer terribly and that the more capitalism progresses and approaches its full maturity, the more the immense majority becomes impoverished.” Under the free market system advocated by libertarians it is not the rich investor or the industrialist calling the shots. It is ordinary people who act as consumers. Per Mises, it is their "buying or not buying" where they provide "a daily referendum on what is to be produced and who is to produce it." In other words, they have the power to "make poor suppliers rich and rich suppliers poor". MIses further states that "Nobody is needy in the market economy because of the fact that some people are rich. The riches of the rich are not the cause of the poverty of anybody." Another point of refutation to your absurd assertion that the "wealthy" are like politicians with lifetime appointments is the observable fact that those who make up the wealthy change very quickly. People who become wealthy lose their wealth and status over a generation typically and many peoples income levels fluctuate much more than that. Look at this graph that charts the number of years that millionaires file as millionaires: http://mises.org/sites/default/files/styles/full_width/public/23176_pp16.png?itok=b3Z3B-vU Half of millionaires are millionaires for a single year only and a shockingly small percentage are able to maintain this level of wealth for five years or more. This doesn't seam to be representative of people you claim would have all this power over the poor or would rule us like overlords. In his "Economic Policy, Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow", Mises explains the categorical difference between free market capitalism and the feudal system of ages past: "Descriptive terms which people use are often quite misleading. In talking about modern captains of industry and leaders of big business, for instance, they call a man a "chocolate king" or a "cotton king" or an "automobile king." Their use of such terminology implies that they see practically no difference between the modern heads of industry and those feudal kings, dukes or lords of earlier days. But the difference is in fact very great, for a chocolate king does not rule at all; he serves. He does not reign over conquered territory, independent of the market, independent of his customers. The chocolate king — or the steel king or the automobile king or any other king of modern industry — depends on the industry he operates and on the customers he serves. This "king" must stay in the good graces of his subjects, the consumers; he loses his "kingdom" as soon as he is no longer in a position to give his customers better service and provide it at lower cost than others with whom he must compete. Two hundred years ago, before the advent of capitalism, a man's social status was fixed from the beginning to the end of his life; he inherited it from his ancestors, and it never changed. If he was born poor, he always remained poor, and if he was born rich — a lord or a duke — he kept his dukedom and the property that went with it for the rest of his life. As for manufacturing, the primitive processing industries of those days existed almost exclusively for the benefit of the wealthy. Most of the people (90 percent or more of the European population) worked the land and did not come in contact with the city-oriented processing industries. This rigid system of feudal society prevailed in the most developed areas of Europe for many hundreds of years. However, as the rural population expanded, there developed a surplus of people on the land. For this surplus of population without inherited land or estates, there was not enough to do, nor was it possible for them to work in the processing industries; the kings of the cities denied them access. The numbers of these "outcasts" continued to grow, and still no one knew what to do with them. They were, in the full sense of the word, "proletarians," outcasts whom the government could only put into the workhouse or the poorhouse. In some sections of Europe, especially in the Netherlands and in England, they became so numerous that, by the 18th century, they were a real menace to the preservation of the prevailing social system. Today, in discussing similar conditions in places like India or other developing countries, we must not forget that, in 18th-century England, conditions were much worse. At that time, England had a population of 6 or 7 million people, but of those 6 or 7 million people, more than 1 million, probably 2 million, were simply poor outcasts for whom the existing social system made no provision. What to do with these outcasts was one of the great problems of 18th-century England. Another great problem was the lack of raw materials. The British, very seriously, had to ask themselves this question: What are we going to do in the future, when our forests will no longer give us the wood we need for our industries and for heating our houses? For the ruling classes it was a desperate situation. The statesmen did not know what to do, and the ruling gentry were absolutely without any ideas on how to improve conditions. Out of this serious social situation emerged the beginnings of modern capitalism. There were some persons among those outcasts, among those poor people, who tried to organize others to set up small shops which could produce something. This was an innovation. These innovators did not produce expensive goods suitable only for the upper classes; they produced cheaper products for everyone's needs. And this was the origin of capitalism as it operates today. It was the beginning of mass production, the fundamental principle of capitalistic industry. Whereas the old processing industries serving the rich people in the cities had existed almost exclusively for the demands of the upper classes, the new capitalist industries began to produce things that could be purchased by the general population. It was mass production to satisfy the needs of the masses. This is the fundamental principle of capitalism as it exists today in all of those countries in which there is a highly developed system of mass production: Big business, the target of the most fanatic attacks by the so-called leftists, produces almost exclusively to satisfy the wants of the masses. Enterprises producing luxury goods solely for the well-to-do can never attain the magnitude of big businesses. And today, it is the people who work in large factories who are the main consumers of the products made in those factories. This is the fundamental difference between the capitalistic principles of production and the feudalistic principles of the preceding ages. When people assume, or claim, that there is a difference between the producers and the consumers of the products of big businesses, they are badly mistaken. In American department stores you hear the slogan, "the customer is always right." And this customer is the same man who produces in the factory those things which are sold in the department stores. The people who think that the power of big business is enormous are mistaken also, since big business depends entirely on the patronage of those who buy its products: the biggest enterprise loses its power and its influence when it loses its customers." http://mises.org/library/economic-policy-thoughts-today-and-tomorrow It is clear to me that people who think of free market capitalism as a sort of neo-feudalism are very confused and misguided. The businessman does not "rule" over us but rather must serve us as a producer. There is no similarity between an oppressive ruler of a State that gets its funding from coercive taxation and wields a monopoly on the use of force in a given geographical area, and a market entrepreneur whose great wealth is predicated only on the degree to which he serves consumers. Great gains of wealth are almost always transitory. People have a very productive few years, earn a lot of money in a short period and then fall down to middle class once more. The great wealth accumulated by the most shrewd of businessmen are usually frittered away by an idle progeny who lack the entrepreneurial skills of their parent(s). Again, comparing the State or feudalism to free market capitalism is exactly analogous to comparing rape and love making. Let's make this real. The State is Bill Cosby and the free market is Leonardo DiCaprio. Both had or have sex with a lot of women. But the difference is critical. Bill Cosby used his power and influence to drug and rape tons of women while Leonardo DiCaprio woos and seduces lots of women with his charm, good looks or whatever else he has to offer. It is the use of violence and coercion that makes Bill Cosby a vile racist and DiCaprio just an innocent charmer and playboy.
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Jan 23, 2015 07:19
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archangelwar posted:If I can find two people with PhD's that disagree with Williams does that mean I win the argument and you will change your mind? It's not about credentials, or not ONLY about credentials I should say. But someone had made the ridiculous assertion that Williams a "fake" intellectual. The insinuation was that people like him don't deserve serious consideration for their ideas because they are not "eminent" enough or don't have the credentials to be taken seriously. He didn't go to Harvard, Princeton or Yale for fucks sake! How could anyone take someone seriously if they were educated outside of the holy trinity of "respectable opinion"? If I disagree with an economist or public intellectual, I don't claim they are uneducated or don't deserve a voice in the arena of ideas as you do towards any libertarian I cite or mention. You are trying to artificially limit the debate by excluding worthwhile and educated voices because you don't like their political beliefs. This has been a pattern and it needs to stop. There are serious libertarians who have attended the most prestigious schools in the country and now teach at many of them. It is not just some "bible" schools (whatever that means). Why not cease with this childishness. You've got some educated people on your side and I've got some very educated people on my side. Both deserve a voice in our public discourse. I would never dream of silencing a Keynesian but rather I think they should be made to defend their positions in a public debate.
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Jan 23, 2015 07:38
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jrodefeld posted:It is clear to me that people who think of free market capitalism as a sort of neo-feudalism are very confused and misguided. The businessman does not "rule" over us but rather must serve us as a producer. There is no similarity between an oppressive ruler of a State that gets its funding from coercive taxation and wields a monopoly on the use of force in a given geographical area, and a market entrepreneur whose great wealth is predicated only on the degree to which he serves consumers. Great gains of wealth are almost always transitory. People have a very productive few years, earn a lot of money in a short period and then fall down to middle class once more. The great wealth accumulated by the most shrewd of businessmen are usually frittered away by an idle progeny who lack the entrepreneurial skills of their parent(s). You heard it here first; a wealthy individual who owns the majority of the businesses in a given area, including the privately-funded police and court system, is nothing like a feudal king. No one would ever be coerced against opposing him for any reason, because everyone in the town will just move away if he does anything bad. No, I haven't heard of company towns. Why do you ask? Wolfsheim fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Jan 23, 2015 |
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Jan 23, 2015 07:38
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jrodefeld posted:It's not about credentials, or not ONLY about credentials I should say. But someone had made the ridiculous assertion that Williams a "fake" intellectual. The insinuation was that people like him don't deserve serious consideration for their ideas because they are not "eminent" enough or don't have the credentials to be taken seriously. He didn't go to Harvard, Princeton or Yale for fucks sake! How could anyone take someone seriously if they were educated outside of the holy trinity of "respectable opinion"? I already told you, the economics program at George Mason has no credibility. You can choose to believe your incestuous inner circle that this is not true, but it is.
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Jan 23, 2015 07:40
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jrodefeld posted:No it doesn't. Politicians have the legal authority to use initiatory force while businessmen do not. This was your post's first assertion to be completely opposite of reality.
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Jan 23, 2015 07:44
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RuanGacho posted:Jrod don't talk about tone when you denigrate me and my profession in almost every post you make. I endure it quietly while you say highly offensive things and pretend that I selected the evil alignment class at character creation. You're very violent in you rhetoric toward people like me saying we must be destroyed in order for humanity to be free. Your not going to like what I am about to say, and I am sure you are a perfectly nice and well meaning person. But I think you have chosen an immoral career path. Can your skills and ability not help you to find a job in the private economy? Your salary is directly funded by taxpayers and there is no price mechanism to determine if what you do is actually needed or desired by consumers. I would feel very uncomfortable if my salary was paid by using force to expropriate people against their will. A person's salary should be determined through free negotiation between employer and employee and the wages should come from customer sales that are made voluntarily. I hope you would be able to eventually find work in the private sector and leave behind government work.
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Jan 23, 2015 08:01
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The owner of the steel mill that employs half the town is polluting on my land, but for some reason the privately-owned court system ruled in his favor! I would work for his competitors, but all of their businesses were either bought out by him or burned down in unrelated incidents (the privately-funded police investigated and found no evidence of arson, thankfully). I guess I'll just move my family to the next town fifty miles over and write a bad review of him online 
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Jan 23, 2015 08:06
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archangelwar posted:Haha, what? I have lost count the number of times I have been told that I deserve theft, rape, or death for my opposition to right wing positions. Where is that image of guy screaming at Hitler for wanting to kill all the Jews while he mildly responds with a tone argument? Okay, I admit my experience was limited and I may be mistaken. Right wingers can be total assholes also. In fact, I withdraw that unnecessary side remark. I think you might be correct actually. In my head just flashed the image of the average Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh listener and I know the sort of vitriol and hatred these conservatives go through their life with. You might be completely correct. I spend much more time around left wingers than right wingers so my comments are obviously biased. I just think such hateful vitriol is not helpful no matter who says it.
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Jan 23, 2015 08:07
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jrodefeld posted:Your not going to like what I am about to say, and I am sure you are a perfectly nice and well meaning person. But I think you have chosen an immoral career path. Can your skills and ability not help you to find a job in the private economy? Your salary is directly funded by taxpayers and there is no price mechanism to determine if what you do is actually needed or desired by consumers. I would feel very uncomfortable if my salary was paid by using force to expropriate people against their will. A person's salary should be determined through free negotiation between employer and employee and the wages should come from customer sales that are made voluntarily. Among bureaucrats we do cross over quite a bit in either direction, but I found public sector work to be decidedly less lovely in spite of its occasional frustrations. I'm sure Ruan has a similar position. Also, taxation is not theft you idiot and I think everyone has demonstrated that pretty well. I hate doing this, but do you work in the private sector in any meaningful capacity? AstheWorldWorlds fucked around with this message at 08:38 on Jan 23, 2015 |
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Jan 23, 2015 08:14
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Good thing taxes aren't force then, you mealy mouthed gently caress! Also established businesses in the private sector actually have waged war successfully in the the past. One of the main activities of Dutch captains in the 16th century was raiding Spanish shipping! These men weren't considered criminals in the Netherlands by the way, quite the opposite. They had public investors and everything. Also the British East India company conquered like half of India. Now I know you are going to ignore all of this like the intellectual coward that you are, but I would like you to answer a question, since no one else of your political persuasion has done so for me. Please define two terms: 1. crony capitalist 2. capitalist entrepreneur.
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Jan 23, 2015 08:26
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jrodefeld posted:No it doesn't. Politicians have the legal authority to use initiatory force while businessmen do not. People who work for a business or buy products from one do so by choice, voluntarily. Boy howdy this is amassive wall of text that spends a paragraph on each sentence of a real response and includes links to other people's thoughts because God forbide you come up with your own. The best part is I could quote 90% of your posts and this sentence would still apply.
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Jan 23, 2015 08:29
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jrodefeld posted:Okay, I admit my experience was limited and I may be mistaken. Right wingers can be total assholes also. In fact, I withdraw that unnecessary side remark. I think you might be correct actually. In my head just flashed the image of the average Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh listener and I know the sort of vitriol and hatred these conservatives go through their life with. It's probably easy for you to forget about right-wing media, because forgetting helps you feel like you're not a pet that right-wingers take for a walk around the block to attract
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Jan 23, 2015 08:30
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Something I wanted to touch on:Caros posted:I like to think that you are the unironic Stephen Colbert of libertarians. You don't 'see' racism when people talk, or see how race could impact a discussion. As far as I can tell it is the only way that you can read someone like Hoppe and not be disgusted at what is pretty close to naked fascism, or how you can read Molyneux talking about women hoovering up coins with her vagina and not see misogyny. Its an interesting skill to have, but it makes you seem dangerously naive, and leads you to using phrases like forced integration without seeing what is wrong with them. Plenty of racists claim not to see race. Plenty of racists claim to be concerned with "true discrimination". Jrod has repeatedly outed himself in this thread as racist. Remember the "innate superiority of the west" discussion we had? Not to mention his weaselly justifications for accepting things like Hoppe and his ideas of natural variance between the races. The idiotic doublethink he engages in to convince himself that he is the one who really cares is why he seems naïve. People claiming "not to see race" are as a group are idiot privileged children, but Jrod has defended blatantly racist statements. He is 100% a terrible human being, as bad as any freeper spouting off about urban ferals.
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Jan 23, 2015 08:34
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jrodefeld posted:Your not going to like what I am about to say, and I am sure you are a perfectly nice and well meaning person. But I think you have chosen an immoral career path. Can your skills and ability not help you to find a job in the private economy? Your salary is directly funded by taxpayers and there is no price mechanism to determine if what you do is actually needed or desired by consumers. I would feel very uncomfortable if my salary was paid by using force to expropriate people against their will. A person's salary should be determined through free negotiation between employer and employee and the wages should come from customer sales that are made voluntarily. I find it satisfying to know that if I put in extra hours in our capitalist system, my extra labor and productivity extracted is not going to enrich someone 10 tiers above me in a corporate structure but be a bonus for the tax payers. I'm government IT, my mission in life is to improve process, make the government more efficient and less political. To increase transparency and reduce costs to the tax payer for services. To make sure that when there is a crisis that we're not dependent on high forms of government because we have disaster recovery and emergency communication systems. My value for the work I do has a direct private sector analog and as a result, unlike many jobs like building inspectors and permit technicians and other, public sector only jobs my pay grade is directly determined by what it costs to hire someone do my job in the private sector. So your assumption that there are no price mechanisms to "determine if what I do is actually needed by the consumers" is completely false. The taxes, I, living within my place of employment and other citizens pay is such a small fraction of overall expenses, I am basically a rounding error compared to the millions it costs to hire secondary contractors (see the private sector) to do the work that as has been gone over a dozen times in this thread, impossible for libertarians to apparently plan, let alone offer alternative funding for. I HAPPILY pay my taxes because I see that almost 50% of what I pay as a citizen goes to funding a really good school system and those students are going on to be productive members of society, which is the whole point. My boss and myself both went through hiring negotiations when we started our work, more negotiations and back and forth than I was ever given in my five previous private sector jobs. I work as a public employee because it is my civic duty to try to make the government better. We don't even proceed with projects that aren't approved by public oversight. Thanks for replying, it was very satisfying to categorically list how all your assumptions are incorrect. I hope I can continue to serve tax payers to make a better world for the rest of my life, they are really are the most satisfying customers I have ever had the pleasure of delivering a quality product for that I will make sure exceeds their expectations every, single, time. Immoral is enriching people who don't do any work for it or others and cast aside those who can't manage better as soon as they stop meeting your performance metrics - see: most blue collar workers. AstheWorldWorlds posted:Among bureaucrats we do cross over quite a bit in either direction, but I found public sector work to be decidedly less lovely in spite of its occasional frustrations. I'm sure Ruan has a similar position. I am paid more fairly, given better benefits and more respect than all my other jobs put together. Since I've started in this position not only has my employer been happy with the results, they've on average saved 20% per IT project thanks to aggressive cost versus performance private sector educated research. RuanGacho fucked around with this message at 08:39 on Jan 23, 2015 |
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Jan 23, 2015 08:34
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The dude has Murray loving Rothbard as his avatar of course he's a racist.
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Jan 23, 2015 08:43
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