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Mr Interweb posted:That comment about washing hands from that idiot Thom Tillis is the kind of thing that I occasionally see that makes me wonder who the hell poo poo like that is supposed to appeal to. I mean, I can see the appeal of supporting something like low taxes, but who the gently caress is out there clamoring for people to not be as hygienic as possible when it comes to handling your food? It's how you tell that someone is a true believer in the libertarian religion. They no longer consider deregulation as a means to an end, but rather instinctively treat it as a goal in and of itself.
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Feb 5, 2015 09:19
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Is there a gigantic, untapped demographic of coprophagiacs or something I'm not aware of?
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I have a few points I'd like to raise. I few days ago I asked what the political views were of the majority of posters. It comes as no surprise to me that most seemed to be entirely Marxist or mostly Marxist. In other words, most of you think that Capitalism is inherently immoral and flawed and in a perfect world it would be replaced with some socialist or egalitarian variant. This puts you in a very tiny minority of Americans who think this way. I also subscribe to a school of thought that is in the distinct minority. However, it should be said that libertarianism is considerably more popular than Marxism, at least in the United States. As I've said before, the popularity of an idea has little bearing on its merits. The vast majority of people will merely end up as products of the propaganda and messaging that they are surrounded with. I'd argue that the general ignorance of any given population is one of the best arguments against democracy as a form of government. The truth is that both myself and you all have thought about these issues in a deeper way than most and we've come to the conclusion that the best and most moral system of political organization is one that is not supported by the majority. We in essence favor radical change to the status quo, albeit in very different directions. But how do we get there? How can we practically achieve the sort of working prototype of either libertarian free market anarchism or Marxist or anarcho-syndicalist (or whatever socialist variant) that would bring more people to our respective sides? The major problem is that you envision a whole host of terrible consequences to implementing a libertarian society. The claim is that the poor will die in the streets, the elderly will suffer without medical care, wealth disparity will be worse, and society will crumble into violent chaos. Now, this is merely a speculation on your part. You cannot point to a very recent society that was governed by ideological libertarians with a non-interventionist foreign policy, a gold standard or commodity money, law based on the non-aggression principle and a night-watchman State or no State at all. What you are left with is to argue about how terrible things were in the late 19th century. Depending on the specifics, I might agree with you on those criticisms. But it is hard or impossible to adequately compare a society more than a century old that merely approximated SOME of the libertarian policies contemporary thinkers espouse with any future libertarian society that would emerge with the benefit of a century of progress in libertarian theory, free market economics and technological progress. Just imagine how the internet has and could aid in consumer decision making and worker solidarity and organization. It would be far more difficult in today's age for an economic organization to take advantage of consumers or workers when the free flow of information and competition gives us the tools to both make informed decisions and grants us far more options. I'm sure it it similar for Marxists who are constantly criticized. I have openly asked on this very thread how someone could support Marxism when worldwide Communism has proven itself to be a total failure. The Soviet Union didn't fall because the United States beat them with our military might. They fell due to their own internal economic and social problems. Now the predictable response that I received was essentially that these weren't true examples of Marxism but were perversions run by authoritarian dictators. For most of you, it won't matter one bit whether or not the theory of libertarianism is correct, moral, consistent or logical. You, and many others, will never be convinced unless and until you see a reasonable sized society based on these principles that is successful on utilitarian grounds. You would be persuaded if all the horrors you speculate will happen if State monopolized functions are privatized prove to NOT happen. The problem remains. How do we do this? Suppose I wanted to create a libertarian society on a reasonably large scale without outside interference or you wanted to create a socialist egalitarian society? This is where I must return to my point about the absolute need for decentralization of political power not just in the United States but around the world. Most people have fallen prey to The Broken Window Fallacy. Currently governments monopolize a great number of functions. Governments confiscate a great deal of wealth from private production and redirect it. They build bridges and roads. They (supposedly) inspect our food and water. They (supposedly) protect us from foreign enemies. We SEE this. The unseen is what that money might have been spent on had the State not confiscated it? What alternatives could potentially exist to protecting the environment, providing security services and all these other sorts of problems? People are terrified to find out or explore alternatives. Mythology is spread about the horrendous consequences of removing the State from private life and people believe it without a second thought. For society to progress, it is not just libertarianism which deserves a chance, but Marxism, anarcho syndicalism, Georgism and other notions of political organization. How else can this be accomplished but through decentralization? I recognize that most people have to be convinced of the utilitarian merits, not to mention the feasibility, of radical ideologies and new ideas before they are more broadly adopted. People in my view should be able to be convinced of the moral correctness of the Non Aggression Principle simply as a matter of logic and consistency of ethical principle but I am resigned to the fact that that is insufficient to persuade most people. I adamantly support Secession as a principle, the breaking away of various communities from the central State not just in the United States but around the world. I want smaller, competing States instead of large centralized States. From these small States, we can then have different experiments in political organization. You could experiment with anarcho syndicalism if you like, and I could enact libertarian free market anarchism with a gold standard and private property rights. From such a decentralized world, social change could accelerate as smaller, nimbler and more accountable political units could be reformed to resemble the more prosperous and successful societies and once fringe and unproven ideologies could be fully vetted and proven. The discussion on secession a while back was confusing and ridiculous. You are so adamant that libertarianism is racist to the core that you cite any defense of the principle of secession as Exhibit A of said bigotry. Yet, as I routinely mentioned, if a group in South African or Northern Europe wanted to secede and break free of a large State, not only would that probably not be racist but I'd suspect you might even cheer on the foreign secessionists. Yet in the United States, to contemplate secession is a defacto proof of bigotry or malicious intent. Yet you have already conceded that the principle in and of itself is clearly not racist. Yet you adamantly maintain that if you happen to reside in a certain geographic location (and especially if you happen to be from the (gasp) South) this otherwise innocuous or praiseworthy principle of decentralization becomes insidious and suspect. Yet for a group of people like yourselves who similarly hold unpopular beliefs, you should be joining me and cheering on decentralization and secession so genuine radical leftist policies can be enacted and proven in the court of public opinion. In fact, it was leftist Kirkpatrick Sale who wrote about the virtue of keeping social life smaller in scale and more local. In his book "Human Scale", Sale speaks about the dehumanizing effect of centralization across the board, of political life, of economic transactions and corporations. Urban sprawl, congestion and depersonalization are effects that he attributes to an abandonment of such a human scale to life and social organization. This was once a common leftist view. I share it wholeheartedly. Yet if I suggest secession as a reasonable means to return to such a human scale in political life, I am accused of having sinister motives. Finally, I'll make this one point. I am frequently chided with this remark, "If libertarianism is so great, why aren't there any contemporary examples of a libertarian society?" One of the biggest problems is that, since at least World War II, the United States has maintained a world military empire. What are the chances that any moderately sized and prosperous libertarian society could remain independent of the military empire of the United States? Who is to say a fledgling libertarian society or Marxist society wouldn't be the recipient of blockades, sanctions, threats or outright military aggression if we go it alone, opt out of the United Nations and don't behave as the powerful nations would have us behave? This is one of the major reasons to promote secession and decentralization of all major nations throughout the world. We need to get rid of the military empire and permit existing nation States to have independence and autonomy. Then at least the internal problems of nations will remain internal. A few days ago, some posters complained that the reason for the worldwide failure of Marxism was due to interference by the Capitalist nations (the United States in particular) who waged a Cold War and thus Communist Nations were not allowed to have a fair shot at success. Communism ultimately failed due to its own internal problems and contradictions. Mises wrote about the problem of economic calculation under socialism, there is the problem of incentivizing hard work and we have plenty of examples of misallocated capital manifesting in bread lines and other shortages in comparison to capitalist nations. However, I agree that these countries should have been allowed to fail on their own. Our opposition to Communism should have been intellectually. We should have explained its failures and opposed its spread within our own country, but there was absolutely no reason to think that Communism was a military threat. It was Murray Rothbard and the libertarians of that era who argued over and over that Bill Buckley and his ilk were using the threat of communism as an excuse to build up the military industrial complex and create a worldwide empire that "projects strength". The Cold War is over yet the empire remains. Libertarians were quite convinced that Communism would fail on its own due to its own internal problems. We have two choices. We can continue to support centralized political power and military empire or we can expand our horizons, decentralize and permit trials of radical political ideologies. Why not accept the arguments of Kirkpatrick Sale and support decentralization and secession? Why not break up the world into smaller, autonomous societies where the people have a closer relationship to their governments? A "human scale" of political life you might say. jrodefeld fucked around with this message at 10:31 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 10:24
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Jrod I'm going to assume you are an incredibly dense idiot and not a liar for a moment. The reason people who talk about secession in the US are auto assumed to be racists is because 99.9999999% of the time they are racists who want to bring back the CSA. Which was a slave empire. Pretty much every "major" secessionist movement came about because jackasses want to bring back Jim Crow (and/or slavery) without the Feds intervening. As to decentralization, gently caress no that's a terrible idea for reasons that are far too numerous for me to write right now. I'll come back to this tomorrow.
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Feb 5, 2015 10:45
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Did JRode just bring up the subject of race yet AGAIN? 
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Feb 5, 2015 10:50
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Mr Interweb posted:Did JRode just bring up the subject of race yet AGAIN? Yup. Unsolicited, warned against, encouraged to ignore, jrod posts on. Always more, always sadder.
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Feb 5, 2015 10:57
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Jrod, given you love libertarianism so much, it's inconceivable to me that you love the gold standard. The gold standard is almost the biggest point of agreement across ideologies in economics. Milton Friedman and Keynes will both split their differences for the gold standard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvBCDS-y8vc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1S9F3agsUA It is a 'barbarous relic'. Signing up for the gold standard is signing up for basically what the European Union is today; a monetary union you can in no way control.
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Feb 5, 2015 11:06
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paragon1 posted:Jrod I'm going to assume you are an incredibly dense idiot and not a liar for a moment. The reason people who talk about secession in the US are auto assumed to be racists is because 99.9999999% of the time they are racists who want to bring back the CSA. Which was a slave empire. Pretty much every "major" secessionist movement came about because jackasses want to bring back Jim Crow (and/or slavery) without the Feds intervening. Yes I understand the implications and associations the idea of secession has in the United States for some people due to our unfortunate history of slavery and the Civil War. But an honest person doesn't "auto assume" things about people, especially serious accusations of racism. This holds especially true when you are talking to an ideological libertarian whose primary ethical principle they subscribe to is called "the non-aggression principle". If I spend pages upon pages explaining my moral objections to the State and why I believe in self-ownership and non-aggression and THEN I bring up the principle of secession, you have NO basis for assuming that my belief in that principle is informed by bigotry. If I came up to you on the street as a stranger and said "Hi, I'm a secessionist" you MIGHT be excused for assuming certain motives about me. But to continue to claim that the principled libertarian belief in secession from the central State is motivated by bigotry after the principles of non-aggression are explained to you, is intellectually dishonest. You make it out like sinister libertarians are sitting around having the following conversation. "You know what I really can't stand about the government? It's not the wars of aggression in Iraq and Vietnam, it's not the War on Drugs, it's not the Income Tax, or the Federal Reserve debasing the currency. It's not the Crony Capitalism, subsidies and Wall Street speculation on derivatives and fiat money. Nope. The real thing that keeps me up at night is the fact that the State won't let me have slaves! I'd really like to start oppressing some brown people and, darn it, the loving government won't let me do it!" This is an argumento ad absurdum. If there are advocates of secession who are doing it because they are terrible people who just want to start oppressing people, I'll join right in with you in denouncing those people. However, for the current discussion, kindly give me the benefit of the doubt and assume I am a principled decentralist and not a monstrous bigot, okay? That kind of makes it possible to have a productive discussion. I am opposed to centralized States because of the power they have to use aggression, to start wars and to rob the people. I have little faith in being able to change these States democratically towards a libertarian direction. One method that is better is for people to peacefully withdraw and assert autonomy and independence. There is no good reason why you should think that a nation State governing 320 million people should be better than two separate nations governing 160 million people each. Or six autonomous nations governing 53 million people each. There is every reason to believe that political authority that is closer to the people is more easily influenced by those people.
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Feb 5, 2015 11:10
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Also, Jrod, we actually did handle the ethics and politics of secession pages ago, but for some reason you always tunnel vision on the vaguer and less specific arguments people make against you.
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Feb 5, 2015 11:16
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Mr Interweb posted:Did JRode just bring up the subject of race yet AGAIN? No, its NOT about race. It's about being able to prove the efficacy of libertarian governance in the real world. Or, for that matter, you being able to demonstrate the efficacy of Socialism or anarcho syndicalism, in the real world. I can't see this happening without the ability for us to break free of centralized political units and be assured of non-interference from outsiders. I spoke about secession and decentralization. YOU bring up race. Stick to the issues at hand.
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Feb 5, 2015 11:17
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Why are we bringing up secession? Yes yes, wouldn't it be great if the supreme authority in every town and hamlet is the racist county sheriff and his crew. Yay. I want to talk about health care. Specifically, the total lack of Free Market Rating Agencies before the Pure Food and Drug Act to inform people that Dr Berk's Wondermous Cough Syrup And Colic Cure was just opium for babies, and why I shouldn't care whether people with blood pressure problems die from unknowingly taking depressants marketed as headache powder.
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Feb 5, 2015 11:22
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You really, really, really can't stay off the race-issue, can you, sweetie? For gently caress's sakes, Caros pretty much straight out said that if you dropped it, we would drop it... And yet, in you first loving post after your question about our ideological/political Allegiances - to which you received fairly substantial answers, I think - you, JRodefeld, bring up race and racism yet a-loving-gain.
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Feb 5, 2015 11:24
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A Rambling Vagrant posted:Yup. Unsolicited, warned against, encouraged to ignore, jrod posts on. Always more, always sadder. I'm speaking about secession and decentralization. Race was only tangentially brought up and only to deflect the assumed and inaccurate claims that my advocacy was motivated by race. If you actually read what I wrote, you would understand that a lot of what I said I haven't discussed much before. I don't recall referencing Kirkpatrick Sale before. I am trying to speak about the practicality of attempting a libertarian society in the real world and how that could be accomplished. This hasn't been talked much about either. If you want to post, why don't you respond to the main argument I was making? There is a reasonable discussion to be had here. It's almost as if you are using whatever excuse you can muster to ignore what I am saying and dismiss my arguments without refuting them. I am not going to refrain from speaking about decentralization and the "human scale" as Sale would call it.
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Feb 5, 2015 11:26
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Actually wait wait wait hold up. So now you're saying that secession is necessary for free societies to exist because the awesome military might of the USA will crush Libertopia. Right?jrodefeld posted:One of the biggest problems is that, since at least World War II, the United States has maintained a world military empire. What are the chances that any moderately sized and prosperous libertarian society could remain independent of the military empire of the United States? Who is to say a fledgling libertarian society or Marxist society wouldn't be the recipient of blockades, sanctions, threats or outright military aggression if we go it alone, opt out of the United Nations and don't behave as the powerful nations would have us behave? Right. Okay. But...but I thought: jrodefeld posted:Now defensive war is another matter entirely. If a foreign nation State was foolish enough to try and conquer a State less territory, a free people who all stand to lose their independence, their prosperity and their way of life will have a great incentive to work together to repel the invading force. Defense agencies will most likely have contracts between them that stipulate a cooperative arrangement should a large foreign Nation State threaten the territory with war. The incentive for an invading State to conquer a Stateless territory would be far less because there is no tax base to take over and profit from, no formal army to surrender and less profit in the exercise. A free people working to defend their own property, as history has shown, are capable of repelling far more powerful armies at a drastically lower cost. Why wouldn't the free yeoman farmers have Libertopia have great incentive to repel any hostile force to preserve their independence, prosperity, and their way of life? Is Libertopia not capable of repelling far more armies at a drastically lower cost? And why would America even bother to attack Libertopia since there's no tax base to profit from or army to surrender? It kind of seems like when we ask you how Libertopia will fend off the fascists or colonialists next door you go "oh well small decentralized freedom-loving individuals will always prevail" but then later when someone asks why those free societies don't exist suddenly "oh well freedom-loving individuals have no chance against the American military empire." Which is it?
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Feb 5, 2015 11:31
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Disinterested posted:Jrod, given you love libertarianism so much, it's inconceivable to me that you love the gold standard. The gold standard is almost the biggest point of agreement across ideologies in economics. Milton Friedman and Keynes will both split their differences for the gold standard. I don't want to get into a discussion of monetary policy right now. I've talked about it quite a bit before. But I'll just say two things. First, I don't love the gold standard. What I support is a commodity money, or what the market chooses as money. The reason for a commodity standard vis a vis States is that it provides a break on State expansion and spending. Before we even touch upon economic theory, that is a critical point to make. Adhering to a commodity standard has a greater effect on limiting State power than any written Constitution. Milton Friedman, while admired by some libertarians, is out of step with most libertarians on monetary policy. Hayek is a much better libertarian on monetary policy. In the 1970s, he wrote quite a bit about competing currencies as a feasible alternative to a State monopoly. I don't know what you mean at the end there. "Signing up for the gold standard is signing up for basically what the European Union is today; a monetary union you can in no way control"?
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Feb 5, 2015 11:36
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Disinterested posted:Also, Jrod, we actually did handle the ethics and politics of secession pages ago, but for some reason you always tunnel vision on the vaguer and less specific arguments people make against you. Well, for a thread that is 181 pages long, I no doubt miss certain things and the discussion circles back on things that have been discussed previously. Nevertheless, I still think that the points I raised here are somewhat unique. I was talking about secession as a means to allow the vetting of radical ideologies in the real world. I am aware that there is a ceiling to the amount of adherents that libertarianism can attract unless and until we start to implement these more radical reforms in the real world. The problem is that central States will likely be hostile and interfere with any such efforts. Plus most of the desired land is claimed by some existing State so unless we all move to Antarctica or some remote location, being free from State control and interference will prove impossible. I thought many of you would appreciate the chance to prove the validity of radical leftist ideologies on a smaller scale. We are terrified of trying new and novel methods of social and political organization. People are convinced that without the current State institutions civilization will descend into chaos. Unless we can get people to think outside the box and explore new ideas, human progress will stagnate. Technological progress moves on by leaps and bounds, yet our social and political institutions are old and outdated.
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Feb 5, 2015 11:45
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jrodefeld posted:Milton Friedman, while admired by some libertarians, is out of step with most libertarians on monetary policy. Hayek is a much better libertarian on monetary policy. In the 1970s, he wrote quite a bit about competing currencies as a feasible alternative to a State monopoly. Well the point about the Euro is that it's a gold standard that you can't get out of even if you want to. In gold buggism, the value of your currency is totally beyond your control, tied to the amount of gold you hold. In the Euro the value of your currency is determined by the ECB. But with the gold standard, you can just de-peg and do QE to arrest deflation, or simply to allow your currency to find its natural market value, thereby permitting you to trade favourably in a depression at a reduced rate of exchange, increasing exports and tourism. In the Euro you have the events of this week instead. A gold standard is effectively almost a price control for money, in a sense. I didn't think you people liked price controls. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 11:53 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 11:50
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jrodefeld posted:Well, for a thread that is 181 pages long, I no doubt miss certain things and the discussion circles back on things that have been discussed previously. Well I'll just re-post the quote I gave of the noted libertarian Herbert Spencer: Spencer, Reviewing himself posted:Unquestionably Mr. Spencer has the courage of his opinions; for in a chapter entitled The Right to Ignore the State he actually contends that the citizen may properly refuse to pay taxes, if at the same time he surrenders the advantages which State aid and State protection yield him! But how can he surrender them? In whatever way he maintains himself, he must make use of sundry appliances which are indirectly due to governmental organization; and he cannot avoid benefiting by the social order which government maintains. Even if he lives on a moor and makes shoes, he cannot sell his goods or buy the things he wants without using the road to the neighboring town, and profiting by the paving and perhaps the lighting when he gets there. And, though he may say he does not want police guardianship, yet, in keeping down footpads and burglars, the police necessarily protect him, whether he asks them or not. Surely it is manifest—as indeed Mr. Spencer himself elsewhere implies—that the citizen is so entangled in the organization of his society that he can neither escape the evils nor relinquish the benefits which come to him from it. Here you see an argument against the right of an individual to excise himself from the state - he cannot do so without continuing to benefit by the state from which he liberates himself. He would therefore always be in a condition of possessing rights without corresponding responsibilities. This also squares a big circle in contractarian thinking, because children are massive beneficiaries of the existence of the state without any reciprocal effort or understanding on their part. The next question then becomes - on what basis can you attempt any sort of organisation of persons if people can withdraw from it willy-nilly, even assuming it is right?
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Feb 5, 2015 11:57
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VitalSigns posted:Actually wait wait wait hold up. So now you're saying that secession is necessary for free societies to exist because the awesome military might of the USA will crush Libertopia. Right? You have to compare like with like. I am talking about a very small scale experiment in libertarian social order and political organization NOT a fully developed prosperous society of millions of people. If there is an existing nation that maintains a trillion dollar a year military empire with bases in 150 countries, the issue is whether any group could be left alone long enough to develop enough prosperity to deter any foreign aggressors. When comparing the ability for self defense of a libertarian society, the comparison is whether a given society is better able, equally able, or less able to defend itself as a Stateless libertarian society or a State-monopolized society. What I am saying is only that it would be hard to even get any sort of libertarian society off the ground without first seceding from an existing political authority. It is not entirely impossible for a bunch of libertarians to go off on some foreign, unclaimed territory and successfully wage a guerrilla war against the American Empire and eventually succeed. What I am saying is that it is an impediment. Instead of saying "why don't all you libertarians move to Somalia, or some remote land in the middle of nowhere and create a libertarian society" we should opt for decentralization.
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Feb 5, 2015 12:05
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Disinterested posted:Well I'll just re-post the quote I gave of the noted libertarian Herbert Spencer: If a State secedes, the roads, schools, infrastructure, courts and everything else merely become controlled by the State legislature and laws rather than the Federal State. For this argument, I am not saying that I personally will secede immediately from all other political authorities and continue to live in the United States. I am speaking about a deliberate process of decentralization that may eventually lead to complete individual autonomy. I don't think your criticism or Spencer's applies to this sort of gradual and deliberate decentralization of large groups of people, then smaller groups of people later.
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Feb 5, 2015 12:16
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Why do you assume decentralization leads to more liberty? Quite a few state laws are only inoperable today because of liberty-affirming Supreme Court decisions. The second Texas becomes independent, the sodomy laws, abortion laws, hell maybe even the contraceptive bans go back into effect and you know Greg Abbot and Dan Patrick and co love that kind of Big Government. And what happens to the black people in Vidor, TX when we decentralize more and it becomes cool to lynch any blacks found in town after sundown? As a gay man, why the gently caress would I want the federal government to stop protecting my rights and turn it over to a bunch of interventionist bigots?
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Feb 5, 2015 12:31
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jrodefeld posted:If a State secedes, the roads, schools, infrastructure, courts and everything else merely become controlled by the State legislature and laws rather than the Federal State. For this argument, I am not saying that I personally will secede immediately from all other political authorities and continue to live in the United States. I am speaking about a deliberate process of decentralization that may eventually lead to complete individual autonomy. In the case of a great many states, they will secede with the profits of participation in a larger state. There are accompanying problems, a kind of moral hazard. Imagine your seceding state was in the middle of the country. You could simply disband your military and refuse to pay for amenities that are necessary for the remaining state to perform its functions, obliging the state either to (a) pay for you or (b) coerce you by threats or force in to continuing to perform some of your previous functions, or some other similar problem. Small states are routinely forced to adopt laws they do not necessarily will for this reason: non-EU members in Europe voluntarily comply with large bodies of EU regulations they wouldn't otherwise have passed simply as a requirement for trade. In this respect the people of those states are in many respects less, and not more enfranchised, since they are bound by regulations they don't have a role in creating. Sure, they retain the option of not implementing these regulations, but in reality that choice is ineligible, because it is so disadvantageous. Also, it is inherent in any reduction of the size of your state that you are making sacrifices as well as gains. You are losing some types of security, some benefits that accrue with economies of scale, and so on. In return, you gain in the manner in which the state is geared more personally towards you. The problem with talking with you about this is that you basically see secession and decentralisations as mere preludes to total state abolition. And while decentralisation of some things has merit, it's in some ways unpleasant for me to concede those merits too forcefully, lest you interpret that as strengthening the argument for the abolition of states (it doesn't - the argument is just about how the state can most effectively serve the interests of citizens. VitalSigns posted:Why do you assume decentralization leads to more liberty? There is a danger here of making arguments too geographically and historically specific. In some places decentralisation is beneficial to liberty. It just so happens that hasn't been the case in America.
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Feb 5, 2015 12:33
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Like 1 person responded as full on Marxist, out of 5 or 6 that bothered to answer your irrelevant question of ideology. You then generalize to assume that we are largely Marxists, and proceed to once again use the term like this is a McCarthy hearing. And then you defend secessionists again.
Political Whores fucked around with this message at 12:49 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 12:37
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Disinterested posted:There is a danger here of making arguments too geographically and historically specific. In some places decentralisation is beneficial to liberty. It just so happens that hasn't been the case in America. I recognize that, that's why I'm making the argument that you can't assume decentralization will mean more liberty. In the case of Scotland say, sure, if they'd voted for it I would have been cool with it. But jrod is talking about America and assuming that somehow state governments will be more liberty-friendly, when we can look at places like Texas and Ohio (who are right now passing unconstitutional laws restricting women's rights) and see that no, state governments in America definitely won't be.
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Feb 5, 2015 12:40
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Re: Marxistchat. I am in some ways methodologically Marxist. Politically, I am fairly radical left, but regard myself as more of a realist than most SA people, and certainly more distrustful of the state than a lot of them. Probably closer to anarcho-syndicalist (but then again, arguably so was Marx in many respects - Marx certainly looked forward to the day the state would no longer be required). But there's definitely no discrete ideology that fits me well.VitalSigns posted:I recognize that, that's why I'm making the argument that you can't assume decentralization will mean more liberty. I do think he intends for his arguments to be taken more in the abstract, but of course it's worth reminding him of what the practical outcomes will be in his specific location - particularly since jrod now wants to talk practicalities. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 12:47 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 12:40
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jrodefeld posted:What I am saying is only that it would be hard to even get any sort of libertarian society off the ground without first seceding from an existing political authority. America isn't the only nation state out there. Once you've gotten your sovereignty and America agreed to leave you alone, what stops Mexico or Russia or China or whoever is your neighbor from rolling up and getting some free land? Or does your plan start with "first convince every other state on the planet to voluntarily break up into tiny harmless principalities"? Keep in mind that the Libertarians the Great Republic of MInerva surrendered to less than a dozen Tongan soldiers and a brass band without firing a shot.
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Feb 5, 2015 12:45
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Political Whores posted:Like 1 person responded as full on Marxist, out of 5 or 6 that bothered to answer your irrelevant question of ideology. You then generalize to assume that we are largely Marxists, and priced to once again use the term like this is a McCarthy hearing. And then you defend secessionists again. Disinterested posted:Re: Marxistchat. I am in some ways methodologically Marxist. Politically, I am fairly radical left, but regard myself as more of a realist than most SA people, and certainly more distrustful of the state than a lot of them. Probably closer to anarcho-syndicalist (but then again, arguably so was Marx in many respects - Marx certainly looked forward to the day the state would no longer be required). I should probably clarify my position somewhat on this point: I think a state will, more likely than not, always be required. While the idea of a true communist, stateless society is a wonderful ideal, I don't believe it can ever be achieved, due to basic human nature. What we can do, however, is make sure that if there must be a state, it is on the side of those who need it the most; workers, poor, the sick and injured, etc. And if you have to tax the wealthy some 90 % of their income in a given year, even if I should happen to fall into that bracket by some weird confluence of events, then so loving be it.
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Feb 5, 2015 12:52
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Example of a basic Marxist argument against Jrod's hopes for doing away with the state - that is highly unlikely without a very fundamental change in social relations and modes of production. The modern state is bodied forth by the system that underlies it, not the other way around; I think it's there, in seeing the cart before the horse, that Jrod makes one of his most basic mistakes. Without a basic fundamental change, I think we're more or less stuck where we are, which is why I care a lot about education and technology.
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Feb 5, 2015 13:02
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What's it called where we cede economic and policy decisions to computers? I don't trust people to be able to act in their own self interests, let alone the interests of others.
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Feb 5, 2015 13:11
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The Allied Mastercomputer. AM isn't too fond of humans, but I can't blame him for that.
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Feb 5, 2015 13:17
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Can't wait for Libertopia, gonna shoot people in the face all day long.
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Feb 5, 2015 13:19
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VitalSigns posted:Why do you assume decentralization leads to more liberty? I don't assume that decentralization leads to more liberty. There are times when a larger political unit can enforce rights on smaller units that would like to oppress people. Any level of government can be oppressive. However, a large central government has a greater ability to violate rights because people don't have as much recourse. If your local government is oppressive because it bans abortion or outlaws gay marriage, you can move to the next town to get an abortion or get married. But what if the United States federal government outlaws abortion and gay marriage? Are you really prepared to move across the globe to search for more liberty? Your question might as well be "why would you assume a monopoly would lead to greater abuse of customers?" If Wal-Mart is the only store in your town, do you think they would have a greater or lesser incentive to treat their customers well, lower prices and pay workers a decent wage than if there were five smaller competing companies that provided goods and services in that town? As a libertarian, I would oppose any entity that would violate your rights. But I would choose to live in a community that respected my rights and I'm sure you would as well. For those political jurisdictions that still sought to oppress people, I'd wage a propaganda campaign to get people to either change their oppressive laws or move to a more liberal political jurisdiction where rights are better protected. "Voting with your feet" can be effective in getting smaller, competing political jurisdictions to be responsive to the rights of the people. If oppressive laws lead to people fleeing their community, the economy suffers and people become poorer, leading to more people moving.
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Feb 5, 2015 14:09
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jrodefeld posted:However, a large central government has a greater ability to violate rights because people don't have as much recourse. If your local government is oppressive because it bans abortion or outlaws gay marriage, you can move to the next town to get an abortion or get married. But what if the United States federal government outlaws abortion and gay marriage? Are you really prepared to move across the globe to search for more liberty? Are you? The Somalia example is overused, so here's another choice: Move to Cambodia and see how much you like a country where the government doesn't set rules and business interests hold the real power. Hope you don't like drinkable running water, public transport, functioning roads, or enforcement of the law. Enjoy the drug trade, the prostitutes, the women and children forced into begging by local gangs, the weekly murders ordered by rich Khmers against people who rub them the wrong way. I mean, it's super easy to blame the corrupt government for all of these things, but the matter of fact is that even as incompetent as the Cambodian government is, it's better than no government at all would be. How is the Cambodian government at fault for the illegal drug trade taking place inside and through its borders? What's the Cambodia government doing that makes prostitution more tenable than it would be in a stateless society? What's it doing that is encouraging gangs to send women and children to beg from foreigners? What does it do that makes rich Khmers with blank checks sign the death warrant for people who sit in their seat? Give me some straight answers, Jrodefeld.
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Feb 5, 2015 14:35
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jrodefeld posted:The major problem is that you envision a whole host of terrible consequences to implementing a libertarian society. The claim is that the poor will die in the streets, the elderly will suffer without medical care, wealth disparity will be worse, and society will crumble into violent chaos. Now, this is merely a speculation on your part. You cannot point to a very recent society that was governed by ideological libertarians with a non-interventionist foreign policy, a gold standard or commodity money, law based on the non-aggression principle and a night-watchman State or no State at all. You are mistaken about the standpoint from which we criticize libertarianism. Our objections are not, and never have been, limited purely to a demand for empirical proof. Instead, libertarianism is absolutely rife with errors in correctness, morality, consistency, and logic. We see the logical axioms of the ideology and reject them as ridiculous. We see the context from which it originated and in which its most prominent supporters exist, and recognize that its purpose is to entrench and justify oligarchy and white supremacy. We read about its tenets and look at the state of the modern world and make reasoned deductions about the results of the ideology--namely, that it would fail to address some problems and make many much worse. We also take note of historical examples of libertarianism and see that it generally resulted in negative outcomes, and use these historical examples to support our other claims. Those of us who are Marxists make inverse judgements of Marxism. We believe the axioms are reasonable and consistent with the real world. We believe the ideology to be a good-faith effort to bring about a more moral society. We deduce from the stated goals and methods of Marxism that adopting it would solve many of the problems we see in modern society, and believe we can mitigate problems that it might create enough to make the tradeoff worthwhile. We look at historical examples of Marxist politics and see support for some of these claims and--since we, unlike libertarians, believe in empiricism and utilitarianism--adjust our theories to work better in the future. Ultimately, we come to the hypothesis that some variant of Marxism is currently the best way to organize society. Could we be convinced if you were able to offer a legitimate empirical example of libertarianism working? Yes. But the reason that's necessary is because you have failed to offer a convincing case on any other grounds. quote:For society to progress, it is not just libertarianism which deserves a chance, but Marxism, anarcho syndicalism, Georgism and other notions of political organization. How else can this be accomplished but through decentralization? This is ridiculous. Tests of political ideologies have very real cost in human suffering. Testing an ideology will affect even those people who don't take part in it, even if just by claiming access to some set of resources. I personally am all for decentralization and free association (I think that empathy is both necessary for functioning society and impossible on the scale of a modern nation), so I'm fairly sympathetic if a group of nuts want to run their commune according to your religion, but the idea that believing in one radical political position necessitates acceptance of any radical politics is absurd. (Most obviously, Naziism can't "deserve a chance" because an intrinsic aspect of that ideology is violent expansion.) Since I am convinced that Libertopia will be a nightmare society, I consider any resources you control to be wasted and any harmful byproducts you produce (pollution, evangelism, rapacious neofeudal armies, etc) to be pure downside; not everyone is going to agree that the abstract good of self-determination is worth these costs. quote:I adamantly support Secession as a principle, the breaking away of various communities from the central State not just in the United States but around the world. I want smaller, competing States instead of large centralized States. From these small States, we can then have different experiments in political organization. You could experiment with anarcho syndicalism if you like, and I could enact libertarian free market anarchism with a gold standard and private property rights. Once again, you are showing yourself to be much more concerned with defending your ideology from being called racist than making your ideology anti-racist. But even then, you fail. I absolutely accept your premise that secession is a major option for anyone who wants to live under your ideology. After all, as a Marxist I am stuck in the same space: it's either revolution or some form of secession, and it's pretty clear that revolution isn't happening anytime soon. But I don't know of any prominent Marxists that spend a lot of time talking about secession in the abstract as opposed to as part of a specific part of a plan to advance their goals. But the people we are calling racists are not analogous: they are not making an argument for libertarian praxis that happens to involve secession as a necessary step, they are making an argument for secession that happens to use the language of liberalism for justification. And it's extremely obvious, from a variety of ideological and contextual factors, that their desire for secession is intimately and inextricably tied in to racism. It is simply impossible to divorce the League of the South from racism, and there is absolutely no reason to focus on the abstract benefits of secession except to justify an alliance with open, unapologetic white supremacists. If you do not want to appear racist, do not ally with white supremacists. quote:Communism ultimately failed due to its own internal problems and contradictions. Mises wrote about the problem of economic calculation under socialism, there is the problem of incentivizing hard work and we have plenty of examples of misallocated capital manifesting in bread lines and other shortages in comparison to capitalist nations. I don't want to let this get lost in your secession apologia, so I'm highlighting Babby's First Anti-Soviet Propaganda here for a bonus laugh.
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Feb 5, 2015 15:06
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Moranacle is correct, I don't advocate against libertarianism because it hasn't been proven to function, I advocate against it because your ideology is illogical and more importantly grossly immoral and rife with potential for abuses that far exceed the potential of our current government. And so many people here have exhaustively explained to you time and time again how this is the case and every single time you ignore them without fail, because deep down you know as well as the rest of us that libertarianism is immoral garbage. You talk a big game about morality but you have roundly refused to actually step up and debate it either here in thread or in a podcast debate.
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Feb 5, 2015 15:23
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@politiktalk I am a socialist but not a Marxist. JRod, what are your feelings on that?
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Feb 5, 2015 16:24
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jrodefeld posted:Now, this is merely a speculation on your part. You cannot point to a very recent society that was governed by ideological libertarians with a non-interventionist foreign policy, a gold standard or commodity money, law based on the non-aggression principle and a night-watchman State or no State at all. Whoa, you're right, it's never happened. Guess we, its detractors, can't make any comments about it, might as well close the thread. You know what else has never happened? Socialism. Actual Marxism. A global fascist state. 1984. A world ruled by malevolent cyborgs that use blood for fuel. And yet, because we aren't small-minded intellectually bankrupt cowards, we feel completely fine discussing these subjects without resorting to the most basic logical fallacies in an attempt to ensorcel our opponents by uttering the correct magic words. 
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Feb 5, 2015 16:29
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I'm actually mildly distrustful of marxism, and I used to be moreso. It largely has to do with the fact that Marxism, being what is still a modernist ideology and believing in the idea of reforming (or awakening) people as an essential component of revolutionary efforts, has a system built in for people to vomit their biases all over in the name of a truly good/just society and truly right-thinking citizens of society. If you don't believe me just go look for Marxists thoughts on homosexuality in journal articles from like 2000 and before. There are quite a few decrying it as bourgeois decadence and they aren't all Stalin apologists. And I've met a few Marxists who were pretty blazé about "identity politics", and yet couldn't see how maybe being a straight white man might have any bias on their outlook. But modern Marxist scholarship has in many cases backed away from that particular cliff as far as I've seen, because unlike libertarians, marxist scholars are adults that are open to the possibility of change, rather than petulant children doubling down on their petty hatreds. However, I don't really believe we will ever reach a point where society can transition to model that is stable and not prone to abuse by those in charge, whether by revolution or otherwise. I count among the works that influence me the most Rawls's A Theory of Justice, which is about as detailed as I like to get in discussing what I believe a truly just society looks like. I'm sorta fine with people muddling through as they always have, and align myself first and foremost with those groups fighting to ensure the people they represent have a chance for a fully realized human existence, even if I think this essentially will be an endless process. Ultimately I think there is a bit of hubris in any ideology, left or right, that seeks to put out a specific vision of social organization for the entirety of the planet. A just soceity for me is just by virtue of basically passsing Rawls veil of ignorance test, which I'm not going to belabor here cause I'm pretty sure most people know it already. What specific structures they use matter a lot less to me. I'm leary of any project that seeks to export a specific notion of social organization as just or good because even with the best intentions well meaning privileged people have managed to gently caress poo poo up over and over again. However, despite these facts, I literally always end up aligning myself with socialist causes, and I've found that I can certainly converse more and have much more in common with a marxist thinker than a libertarian one, because marxism isn't a tissue-thin smokescreen for the right to enact violence on any person you don't like. Libertarianism is fundamentally hypocritical to its core because the catechism it preaches on violence and the definition thereof patently exist only to justify exclusion and bigotry, and violent oppression of others. I do believe that Jrod is probably just naive and indoctrinated, but I'm sorry there's literally no way to read like 90 percent of libertarian thought as anything other than "I get to do what I want, even if that means bringing society down around us, especailly if it means I get to hurt fags and darkies". I don't even disagree that the state is often the tool of oppression! But some mode of collective organization will literally always exist and the insane hyper-individualism/solipsism meshed with barely concealed contempt for undesirable classes that infuses libertarian though, especially American libertarian though, is not actually a philosophical outlook concerned with addressing that oppression. An ideology that starts with an argument like homesteading, a thought experiment literally conceived to justify inequality in Britain and the dispossession of native people's in the Americas (but then hilariously dropped the part Locke had about leaving "enough and as good" for everyone else, once that became inconvenient), is as toxic as any argument derived from eugenics. It exists to justify suffering and unfettered greed. It is literally antethetical to things like the idea of the common good or collective action of any kind. It's not just the absence of society, it's anti-society and the hellish worlds it posits (like DROs), even without actually deviating too far from the descripstions of it by libertarians themselves, are a testament to this. I don't mind calling myself a socialist, even if I don't always find it accurate, because ultimately socialism and marxism are interested in trying to make it so that people can live happy lives. There have certianly been failures along the way, but like I said above Marxism doesn't try to axiomatically assume it is always correct and explain away contradictory information, and there is actually plenty of Marxist thought critically self-analyzing itself, for example on things like why a revolutionary apparatus like the Soviet system was open to being captured by people like Stalin. Libertarianism is philosophically and intelelctually bankrupt, both because of the bigotry enmeshed with it, the obvious and observable practical outcomes of it policies, and the fact that it operates on the logic of a millenial cult. So nah, my opposition to libertarianism doens't stem either from its untested nature or from the fact that I have a crush on Marx or the "state". Jrod, you only force us into a defense of the state because you literally seek to destroy any good parts of it and accentuate and expand the terrible parts. That you continue to doggedly defend racists and bigots is a testament to how far up libertarianism's rear end in a top hat you are. I've sort of come around on the whole "Jrod is a racist" thing. I think Jrod is rather a perfect demonstration of how, as an ideology, libertarianism exists to normalize bigotry. Even someone who has no particular racial animus and who's racism is probably largely the kind of banal, passive racism of most of society, ends up defending hardcore white supremacists and neoconfederates because the logic of his ideology requires him to. That was a lot of words. As a final thought though, while I appreciate people like Caros systematically going through Jrods posts line by line to refute his stupid bullshit, I do think that at some point treating Jrod like he's arguing in good faith (ie. from a position that can be changed) gives too much legitimacy to him and his ideas. It treats libertasinism like the problems with it exist in the details, rather than the obvious massive structural flaws that permeate the entire body of thought and engender all the little problems people argue against. Why continually try to refute the idea that a libertarian society would have better outcomes for the poor when libertarisnism explicitly hates the poor and accuses them of creating their own suffering? Jrod disappeared before really addressing it last time we were talking about healthcare, and people now seem content to not bring up the fact that Jrod himself said that healthcare prices act as a disincentive for getting sick. You cannot think that and then argue about lowering healthcare costs or pretend to give a poo poo about the health outcomes of anybody but the rich. Like literally why bother arguing about that since Jrod himself has made clear the only reason he's talking about it is because his actual position is so monstrously unpalatable? Political Whores fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 17:15
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Honest question Jrodefeld, are you spying on me? Because it seems that every time I have a big backlog of work there is a new post from you in the morning that is especially crazy and demands my attention even though I really, really need to focus. I'm going to try to keep this brief.jrodefeld posted:I have a few points I'd like to raise. I few days ago I asked what the political views were of the majority of posters. It comes as no surprise to me that most seemed to be entirely Marxist or mostly Marxist. In other words, most of you think that Capitalism is inherently immoral and flawed and in a perfect world it would be replaced with some socialist or egalitarian variant. Yup! Because it is! quote:This puts you in a very tiny minority of Americans who think this way. I also subscribe to a school of thought that is in the distinct minority. However, it should be said that libertarianism is considerably more popular than Marxism, at least in the United States. As I've said before, the popularity of an idea has little bearing on its merits. The vast majority of people will merely end up as products of the propaganda and messaging that they are surrounded with. I'd argue that the general ignorance of any given population is one of the best arguments against democracy as a form of government. Indeed, Marxism and socialism in general are very, very unpopular in the United States, though it is worth mentioning that goons from other places, such as Canada, don't necessarily have the same problems as our idiot cousins to the south (no offence). When I have previously pointed out the problem demographics with libertarianism (re:White Middle Class Men) it hasn't been to discredit you, but merely to point out that your ideology really only appeals to a very small subset of people because the actual downtrodden can recognize bullshit for what it is since they do not have delusions of ubermench. quote:The truth is that both myself and you all have thought about these issues in a deeper way than most and we've come to the conclusion that the best and most moral system of political organization is one that is not supported by the majority. We in essence favor radical change to the status quo, albeit in very different directions. Speaking of Ubermench. Jrodefeld, you are not a special snowflake for having sucked on the cock of libertarianism. I guarantee you that you have not 'thought about these issues deeper than most' when there are literally millions of americans who donate their time and effort to the political process. Moreover I don't think I am anything special either. My personal view is that yeah, socialism would probably be great if we could get it working, but for now how about we just work towards improving the lives of people. Incidently that is the big difference between you and I. The end goal of my ideology is improving the standard of living for everyone in my society as much as possible while the end goal for you is "Freedom" with the assumption that this will probably improve lives but if it doesn't then that doesn't matter because freedom is more ethical than quality of life. quote:But how do we get there? How can we practically achieve the sort of working prototype of either libertarian free market anarchism or Marxist or anarcho-syndicalist (or whatever socialist variant) that would bring more people to our respective sides? Slow incremental change through the democratic process. The institution of social programs that help people in such a way that it reduces the western stigma of the word socialism. It is slow but unlike your ridiculous beliefs about secession it is not a fever dream. quote:The major problem is that you envision a whole host of terrible consequences to implementing a libertarian society. The claim is that the poor will die in the streets, the elderly will suffer without medical care, wealth disparity will be worse, and society will crumble into violent chaos. Now, this is merely a speculation on your part. You cannot point to a very recent society that was governed by ideological libertarians with a non-interventionist foreign policy, a gold standard or commodity money, law based on the non-aggression principle and a night-watchman State or no State at all. As a reminder, poverty amongst the elderly would be roughly 67% rather than 12% without Social Security, and most elderly would be unable to afford medical care, just like they were prior to medicare. This is not speculation on my part, because we know from historical data that without social programs to support them the elderly were among the most abused section of our society. Hell it isn't even a hypothetical for me because I know that without such social programs I personally would be struggling to care for my wife's parents due to their poverty. Your whole argument seems to rest on the idea that your libertopia would somehow solve these massive social issues, but you have yet to provide an ounce of data to support or even suggest that it possibly could. Who the gently caress takes care of the elderly in libertopia Jrodefeld? quote:What you are left with is to argue about how terrible things were in the late 19th century. Depending on the specifics, I might agree with you on those criticisms. But it is hard or impossible to adequately compare a society more than a century old that merely approximated SOME of the libertarian policies contemporary thinkers espouse with any future libertarian society that would emerge with the benefit of a century of progress in libertarian theory, free market economics and technological progress. No, I'm arguing about how terrible things were in 1965! You know, when over 1/3rd of the US elderly could not afford medical care. 1965, when the average cost for medical care for someone over the age of 65 was three times the average, and the only reason most people could afford it was social security. I've brought poo poo like this up to you multiple times, because programs like Social Security are the backbone of human dignity. We are talking fifty years, not a hundred and fifty. quote:Just imagine how the internet has and could aid in consumer decision making and worker solidarity and organization. It would be far more difficult in today's age for an economic organization to take advantage of consumers or workers when the free flow of information and competition gives us the tools to both make informed decisions and grants us far more options. Except that the internet also allows for plenty of misinformation, such as anti-vaxx bullshit. In addition if these benefits were as pronounced as you suggest they are, one would argue that we would have seen their effects by now. Where are the pronounced beneficial effects in worker solidarity and organization, because I really haven't seen them. quote:I'm sure it it similar for Marxists who are constantly criticized. I have openly asked on this very thread how someone could support Marxism when worldwide Communism has proven itself to be a total failure. The Soviet Union didn't fall because the United States beat them with our military might. They fell due to their own internal economic and social problems. Actually US military might had a lot to do with the fall of the Soviet Union, as the continued arms race in a totalitarian state that had to look strong sapped huge amounts of productive energy that might have otherwise led to a more balanced economy. I could go on, but frankly I'm not here to re-litigate Marxism with you. quote:Now the predictable response that I received was essentially that these weren't true examples of Marxism but were perversions run by authoritarian dictators. Yeah, that is exactly my argument. Do you have one? Because as far as I can tell you're just repeating my argument and assuming that this refutes it. It doesn't. People say that Stalinism wasn't a true example of marxism because of course it loving wasn't. It certainly had elements of it, but to pretend that a totalitarian state is somehow reflective of an ideology where workers control their own means of production is sort of loving absurd Jrod, even for you. quote:For most of you, it won't matter one bit whether or not the theory of libertarianism is correct, moral, consistent or logical. You, and many others, will never be convinced unless and until you see a reasonable sized society based on these principles that is successful on utilitarian grounds. You would be persuaded if all the horrors you speculate will happen if State monopolized functions are privatized prove to NOT happen. So are you just lying now? Most of the posters in this thread have agreed that if libertarianism was proven to be correct about its assumptions that we would support it. Your problem is that we realize that libertarianism is neither correct, consistent or logical and that it doesn't at all mesh with the system of morals we personally agree with, since we don't believe in your hosed up universal system of 'logically' derived morals. quote:The problem remains. How do we do this? Suppose I wanted to create a libertarian society on a reasonably large scale without outside interference or you wanted to create a socialist egalitarian society? I hear the Empty Quarter is quite nice these days. Also the answer you your question is that it is impossible. There simply isn't anywhere on earth to start up a new ideology like that without the consensus of the people which is why small incremental change is the only way to achieve political objectives barring some form of unforeseen massive social upheaval. quote:This is where I must return to my point about the absolute need for decentralization of political power not just in the United States but around the world. Most people have fallen prey to The Broken Window Fallacy. Currently governments monopolize a great number of functions. Governments confiscate a great deal of wealth from private production and redirect it. They build bridges and roads. They (supposedly) inspect our food and water. They (supposedly) protect us from foreign enemies. Okay, lets take a moment here and just say gently caress You. Seriously. Do you think people are going to just gloss over that? Are you really trying to argue that the government doesn't inspect our food and water? Do you think these companies would just do it in absence of government intervention despite real, modern day examples of companies refusing to do so? I ask because in 2013 the FDA had a pilot program in six states where they allowed individual meat companies to inspect themselves. The study found a greatly increased rate of food borne illnesses as a result, and upon resuming proper inspections the FDA found that on average companies had cut their inspection times by roughly 2/3rds. One company was most noted for having no inspections at all, as well as having an area of their factory where meat (later to be sold) was left in two inches of fetid water with rats. So don't give us this (supposedly) bullshit. You have nothing to back up your argument here and you know it, but you're trying to cast doubt and it is loving pathetic. quote:We SEE this. The unseen is what that money might have been spent on had the State not confiscated it? What alternatives could potentially exist to protecting the environment, providing security services and all these other sorts of problems? What you fail to realize is that so many of these services are loving essential. You can't go without police, or food inspections, or water inspections, or roads, or schools etc. Giving that money back to people means that they are just going to spend it on the same things over again, but much like the US health insurance market they are going to do so in ways that are drastically inefficient because they lack the advantages of a single payer. quote:People are terrified to find out or explore alternatives. Mythology is spread about the horrendous consequences of removing the State from private life and people believe it without a second thought. And rightly so. I don't know about other posters in this thread, but I am loving terrified of the idea of my local police being replaced by Valhalla DRO. Or of my water inspections being handled by "Totally not a crook development" or any number of other colossal loving failures of governance that would result from your bullshit. quote:For society to progress, it is not just libertarianism which deserves a chance, but Marxism, anarcho syndicalism, Georgism and other notions of political organization. How else can this be accomplished but through decentralization? Incremental change over a long period of time. More to the point this seems to be the only way that such change can be accomplished. I have to ask, do you really drink your own kool-aid here? Because I want to remind you that libertarian voters account for roughly 1.5% of all US voters. I'd argue that Anarcho-Capitalists such as yourself are probably a fraction of a fraction but lets be generous and say .5% of the US population. How the gently caress do you think you are going to accomplish your decentralization? At best, and I mean at best because I personally think the number is maybe a tenth of this, your numbers run at about two million people split across the entire continental united states. How are you going to decentralize anything when literally no one agrees with you? Do you think that your state is going to let your little township secede from both it and the federal government? Do you think that the federal government is just going to shrug and put up its hands when a state wants to secede? I mean, yeah, I could actually see a secession of some US state in the distant future, maybe, after decades of political posturing and probably violence, but to suggest that 'decentralization' is somehow going to solve anything is sort of a sad joke. People aren't going to 'wake up' and come around to your point of view anytime soon Jrodefeld, because your point of view is morally disgusting to most people, and rightly so. quote:I recognize that most people have to be convinced of the utilitarian merits, not to mention the feasibility, of radical ideologies and new ideas before they are more broadly adopted. Good luck with that! quote:People in my view should be able to be convinced of the moral correctness of the Non Aggression Principle simply as a matter of logic and consistency of ethical principle but I am resigned to the fact that that is insufficient to persuade most people. I can't decide if this is sad or funny. Both? I know this may shock you Jrodefeld, but roughly half your fellow citizens are religious people who believe that morality comes from god. Good luck convincing them that it in fact comes from a logical understanding of property rights. I mean even if you were right, which you are not, it would be a hard sell. quote:I adamantly support Secession as a principle, the breaking away of various communities from the central State not just in the United States but around the world. I want smaller, competing States instead of large centralized States. From these small States, we can then have different experiments in political organization. You could experiment with anarcho syndicalism if you like, and I could enact libertarian free market anarchism with a gold standard and private property rights. I'd like this too! Because eventually your state would collapse amidst its own hilarious failures and maybe I wouldn't have to deal with this idiocy again in my lifetime! That said, it isn't going to happen because you really fail to understand how big of a loving deal secession actually is, which... I mean its shocking to me every time you fail to understand something. quote:From such a decentralized world, social change could accelerate as smaller, nimbler and more accountable political units could be reformed to resemble the more prosperous and successful societies and once fringe and unproven ideologies could be fully vetted and proven. This is starting to read like Eripsa's network fanfiction. Jrodefeld you know what would be great, if a Unicorn rode up to my house and poo poo out a wonderful rainbow that amazed the neighborhood children and led me to a pot of gold. This is also just as lightly as the scenario you are proposing, and you have to realize that, so why the gently caress are you wasting our time talking about it? quote:The discussion on secession a while back was confusing and ridiculous. You are so adamant that libertarianism is racist to the core that you cite any defense of the principle of secession as Exhibit A of said bigotry. Yet, as I routinely mentioned, if a group in South African or Northern Europe wanted to secede and break free of a large State, not only would that probably not be racist but I'd suspect you might even cheer on the foreign secessionists. And there is the racetalk again. Jrodefeld, shut the gently caress up about race if you don't want people talking about racism. quote:Yet in the United States, to contemplate secession is a defacto proof of bigotry or malicious intent. Yet you have already conceded that the principle in and of itself is clearly not racist. Yet you adamantly maintain that if you happen to reside in a certain geographic location (and especially if you happen to be from the (gasp) South) this otherwise innocuous or praiseworthy principle of decentralization becomes insidious and suspect. I want to remind you that the group of people taking about secession was 3/5 racist. Tom Woods, Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell are all people who have ties to white supremacy groups and/or have history of making some pretty racially charged statements. Yes people can talk about secession without it being racist, but no I do not think that five racists talking about secession in texas are doing it in anything even remotely resembling the fashion that you think they are. quote:Yet for a group of people like yourselves who similarly hold unpopular beliefs, you should be joining me and cheering on decentralization and secession so genuine radical leftist policies can be enacted and proven in the court of public opinion. Wait.. are you comparing marxism to racism? Oh wait no, you're still talking about secession. Whew. And no, we shouldn't be cheering on secession because it is a loving pipe dream that actively distracts from our real efforts to improve the lives of ourselves and others. Oh, and also the actual places that would end up 'decentralizing' under your suggestion would be places like Texas which would then restrict a woman's right to chose, and go back half a century in terms of civil rights. See, that is the thing you don't understand. You are talking about this like it is some sort of hypothetical. Like one day we are going to wake up and half the US is going to have just somehow seceded from the US and that rather than rejoin it or otherwise restablishing government people are just going to form all of these fun little social experiments about different systems of governance. This isn't what is going to happen. If anywhere in the US secedes it is going to be the south. There is a reason that Mises.org didn't give this talk in New York, and that is because there is no simmering sentiment towards secession in New York like there is in the south. If secession became popular in the US it would be doing so in the exact places we are talking about. Hell I could basically name you the states most likely to secede (ha!) based entirely on looking at the pre-clearance section of the voting rights act. quote:In fact, it was leftist Kirkpatrick Sale who wrote about the virtue of keeping social life smaller in scale and more local. In his book "Human Scale", Sale speaks about the dehumanizing effect of centralization across the board, of political life, of economic transactions and corporations. Urban sprawl, congestion and depersonalization are effects that he attributes to an abandonment of such a human scale to life and social organization. Okay? quote:This was once a common leftist view. I share it wholeheartedly. Yet if I suggest secession as a reasonable means to return to such a human scale in political life, I am accused of having sinister motives. Actually we accused the people you support of having sinister motives. You have proven completely incapable of parsing any racist or misogynistic statement more complex that someone screaming racial epithets at a person of color, so it is no surprise to me that you fail to understand that the people you support herre have underlying motives inconsistent with your worldview, but they do. quote:Finally, I'll make this one point. I am frequently chided with this remark, "If libertarianism is so great, why aren't there any contemporary examples of a libertarian society?" Hey Jrod... pssst.... this is why global communism failed! Don't let anyone else in on the secret. More to the point, I'd have sympathy for your argument if a libertarian society had been crushed by the US, but we haven't even seen a burdgeoning one crushed under the weight of US military power. Your argument here is that the libertarians are essentially groundhogs who poke their head up and go "gently caress that poo poo we'll get wrecked" before ducking their heads back down into the hole. My argument is that there has never been anywhere in the world with a sufficient amount of libertarians for the US to bother. quote:This is one of the major reasons to promote secession and decentralization of all major nations throughout the world. We need to get rid of the military empire and permit existing nation States to have independence and autonomy. Then at least the internal problems of nations will remain internal. You really ought to promote your stupid ideas first. Promoting decentralization when everyone thinks you are a bunch of fringe lunatics means we'll just end up with marxism, which would be good by me I suppose. quote:A few days ago, some posters complained that the reason for the worldwide failure of Marxism was due to interference by the Capitalist nations (the United States in particular) who waged a Cold War and thus Communist Nations were not allowed to have a fair shot at success. Jrodefeld you don't loving know anything about communism in the 20th century do you? Like you trot out the breadlines argument without acknowledging the fact that the soviet union was a desperately loving poor agrarian society prior to the advent of communism. Or the fact that the Soviet Union bore the brunt of millions of deaths and catastrophic damage in the second world war. The fact that you can, with a straight face, try to argue "Well look at how good the US was doing compared to the Soviets" while failing to acknowledge that the US industrialized 3/4 of a century before the soviets and didn't have their entire economy burned to the ground in the largest war in human history shows that you simply do not understand basic loving historical facts. You don't get any of your information outside of mises.org style libertarian circles, so you have absolutely no nuanced version of events here. You have only mises bullshit "economic calculation problems hurrrrrr" to go on and it is really telling. quote:However, I agree that these countries should have been allowed to fail on their own. Our opposition to Communism should have been intellectually. We should have explained its failures and opposed its spread within our own country, but there was absolutely no reason to think that Communism was a military threat. Uhhh... dude, no offense but Communism was absolutely a military threat. Did you miss the part in WWII where the Soviets basically tore through Nazi Germany like a bunch of wet tissue paper, or that they were led by a socipathic madman? Stalin was not appreciably that much better than Hitler, and apart from the advent of the atomic bomb you'd probably have seen a third world war in the twentieth century based off of Soviet aggression. quote:It was Murray Rothbard and the libertarians of that era who argued over and over that Bill Buckley and his ilk were using the threat of communism as an excuse to build up the military industrial complex and create a worldwide empire that "projects strength". The Cold War is over yet the empire remains. Just a reminder that libertarians didn't actually exist until the 1950's as any sort of coherent ideology. quote:We have two choices. We can continue to support centralized political power and military empire or we can expand our horizons, decentralize and permit trials of radical political ideologies. Oooh, a pointlessly binary choice! I love these. There are plenty of options other than the two you provide, and those options actually have a chance of becoming reality, unlike the idiocy you espouse. quote:Why not accept the arguments of Kirkpatrick Sale and support decentralization and secession? Why not break up the world into smaller, autonomous societies where the people have a closer relationship to their governments? A "human scale" of political life you might say. Because it won't happen simply because a tiny fraction of the population want it to?
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Feb 5, 2015 17:22
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jrodefeld posted:I don't assume that decentralization leads to more liberty. There are times when a larger political unit can enforce rights on smaller units that would like to oppress people. Any level of government can be oppressive. What if your wife had a dick? Would that make you gay? The United States is not going to outlaw abortion or gay marriage, that's super unlikely. But Texas' anti-abortion and anti-gay laws coming into force the second it gets independence is guaranteed. jrodefeld posted:Your question might as well be "why would you assume a monopoly would lead to greater abuse of customers?" If Wal-Mart is the only store in your town, do you think they would have a greater or lesser incentive to treat their customers well, lower prices and pay workers a decent wage than if there were five smaller competing companies that provided goods and services in that town? This is a pretty bad comparison because the smaller competitors aren't permitted to use force, so yes they will probably be more responsive to customers than a monopoly with total market power would be. But breaking up a large state into five smaller states doesn't end monopolies. It just creates 5 little monopolies (who might go to war with each other, yay!). So when I look at the constitution and enfranchisement and respect for rights of Wal-Mart-America, although it doesn't look great, when I compare it to the kind of people who would be in charge of Texas and Arizona and Ohio and Florida, then yeah holy poo poo the American monopoly is better. Just because a group is smaller doesn't mean it's more responsive to my issues. It may not be easy to win over a group of 1000 reasonable people, but that's still easier than winning over group of 100 people that are 90% crazy-rear end bigots. jrodefeld posted:"Voting with your feet" can be effective in getting smaller, competing political jurisdictions to be responsive to the rights of the people. If oppressive laws lead to people fleeing their community, the economy suffers and people become poorer, leading to more people moving. More not-knowing-how-the-world-works. Most people can't just up and "vote with their feet" even in the federal system we have now where there are no legal obstacles to it. Most people have careers, family, obligations, schooling, large assets like a home, or are simply to poor to travel and are basically stuck where they are. Have you noticed there are still lots and lots of gay people all over the USA and they didn't all instantly abandon their lives and move to Massachusetts when marriage equality happened there? Lots of women who need abortions are poor and can't afford to take the time off work and pay the travel expenses and hotels and all the rest to go to Chicago and get it done. That's why people stayed home and fought these laws in the federal court system rather than moving. This is also pretty funny coming from you because when we tell you to move if you don't like taxes, you say that's mafia talk, but when I point out that an independent Texas is gonna start gay-bashing suddenly you're like "oh well if you don't want to be gay-bashed just quit your job, abandon everyone you know, surrender your home to the bigots, move somewhere else, and hope you're not run out of there too!" Why don't you vote with your feet if you hate America so much, jrod? Why should I accept an independent state of Texas that's going to start initiating force against me and my loved ones and locking us up, not for taxes or polluting too much or whatever you cry about the US doing, but for just being me? Not to mention, nation-states have things called "immigration laws" and "work visas". You can't just move to Mexico or Canada or the UK whenever you want and start working. We already see that people have a lot of reasons why they can't just move to New York for abortion access or marriage or liquor laws or whatever, and now you're telling me that this would be no problem if on top of that you had to get a passport, an entry visa, and a green card?!? And that's of course, assuming your new nation-state even lets you leave and doesn't pull a South Africa and revoke your citizenship, herd you into a bantustan, and require you to have a permit to go anywhere. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 17:23
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jrodefeld posted:No, its NOT about race. It's about being able to prove the efficacy of libertarian governance in the real world. Or, for that matter, you being able to demonstrate the efficacy of Socialism or anarcho syndicalism, in the real world. Secession in the United States of America is linked to racism. Don't bring poo poo up if you don't want people talking about the things that go into it. jrodefeld posted:If a State secedes, the roads, schools, infrastructure, courts and everything else merely become controlled by the State legislature and laws rather than the Federal State. For this argument, I am not saying that I personally will secede immediately from all other political authorities and continue to live in the United States. I am speaking about a deliberate process of decentralization that may eventually lead to complete individual autonomy. I know the Articles of Confederation will work thsi time guys for realsies.
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Feb 5, 2015 17:50
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