Libertarians: You fire fighter lovers sure are good at debate!

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ToxicSlurpee: Nov 5, 2003; -=SEND HELP=-; Pillbug

Rockopolis posted:

Really? I would have thought demand for holes was finite. After all each person has only one hole that was made for them.

yeah but humans always want to reproduce so there is infinite demand for people so there is obviously an infinite supply of people and infinite people means infinite holes dddrrrrrrrrr

# ? Apr 8, 2015 06:53

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# ? May 20, 2024 12:32

The Bloop: Jul 5, 2004; by Fluffdaddy

QuarkJets posted:

I fundamentally disagree with this statement. It's true in many scenarios, but it isn't always true.

OK, reading it out of its context I do too. That was an oversimplification. "The Market" will not necessarily be able to correct. It is possible, for example, that we could wipe out all the tea on the planet and the market would not be able to give us real tea ever again. Also, the inevitable heat death of the universe, etc.

The idea underlying The Market is that complex systems adjust and react to disruptions and imbalances, which, largely, is true. If we watched human history as any sort of graph of population, death, disease, poverty, wealth, lifespan, religion, or any other thing, ignoring that they were humans (relabel them quatloos) you would see quatloo imbalances all over the place, in a dynamic system of excesses and rebounds, rise and fall.

As I said in the other post (JROD REPLY TO MY POST) it's almost tautologically true that "things will work out" in some way, barring nuclear annihilation etc.

My thesis, though, isn't that markets always work, it's that even granting that markets work as intended, ~~quatloos~~ people will suffer needlessly.

In order to convince me that Libertarianism is the way to go, Jrod or whoever else would have to convince me that:

There is a value more important than reducing human suffering that libertarianism holds to that other systems do not
OR
That lacking the choice between buying governmentally regulated safe milk and milk contaminated with heavy metals and anthrax is a higher form of suffering than not having that choice but also not having to worry overmuch about my milk being contaminated with heavy metals and anthrax

I get the desire for FREEDOM :911:

that libertarians value. I just disagree that freedom means "I get to do whatever whenever with no authority over me that I didn't explicitly agree to"
I believe that I have more freedom in my life to do the things I want to do in my life when there are rules I didn't explicitly agree to. If there weren't traffic laws that everyone more or less follows pretty much all the time, getting from place to place would be a nightmare of constant near-death experiences and gridlock. If there weren't food safety regulations I would have to spend many hours vetting milk companies just to be able to make an educated guess about which bottle is least likely to contain ebola and lead, because I could never have all the information even if I researched every decision forever, which is both impossible and leaves little time for hobbies. The reason that I accept that these rules aren't something I'm explicitly agreeing to is that aint nobody got time for that. If I had to vote on or sign off on every piece of legal minutiae necessary to be safe enough not to live in a constant state of panic in the modern world, if there were enough hours in the day at all, I would never get anything else done ever, which is completely self-defeating. So I accept that representatives get informed and make these decisions as their job ,while bakers bake and policemen police and [workers] [work]. This system is far from perfect, but it is immensely freeing over having to spend every waking moment on mere survival rather than the things I want to be doing.

TL/DR: We have more autonomy and actual freedom when we have less of the technical freedom libertarians claim to crave.

# ? Apr 8, 2015 14:15

Disinterested: Jun 29, 2011; You look like you're still raking it in. Still killing 'em?

Yeah, libertarians are definitely stuck with a very narrowly defined negative conception of liberty. A reminder to anyone that never studied politics, positive and negative concepts of liberty were coined by Isiah Berlin in a lecture called Two Concepts of Liberty.

Berlin here defines 'negative liberty':

quote:

"liberty in the negative sense involves an answer to the question: 'What is the area within which the subject � a person or group of persons � is or should be left to do or be what he is able to do or be, without interference by other persons'."

In other words, a version of liberty that in some sense concerns the non-interference of agents on your ability to act (balanced against the rights of others to the same).

This he differentiates from what you could call the continental school of liberty, the positive school, which expounds liberty through the actualisation of goals (such as the actualisation of one's nature) or the achievement of things.

A person extolling a strict negative concept of liberty would therefore regard a homeless person who was starving to death as free, while a person who extolled a positive conception can quite clearly argue that the freedom to starve to death doesn't add up to much at all - it's the opposite irony to George Bernard Shaw's 'pretty coffin for a dead dog'.

Of course, it's not intended that you commit fully one way or another. This was just intended as a means of analysis for how we look at the world. Berlin wants to say that the problem with positive concepts is that they are more capable of being manipulated by malevolent elites (given when he was writing, understandable) to achieve disastrous ends.

--

The Shaw quotation I cite above is actually quite relevant to our question here, coming as it does from an essay on Fabian socialism. A longer version reads:

quote:

A New York lady, for instance, having a nature of exquisite sensibility, orders an elegant rosewood and silver coffin, upholstered in pink satin, for her dead dog. It is made: and meanwhile a live child is prowling barefooted and hunger-stunted in the frozen gutter outside. The exchange-value of the coffin is counted as part of the national wealth; but a nation which cannot afford food and clothing for its children cannot be allowed to pass as wealthy because it has provided a pretty coffin for a dead dog.

Disinterested fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Apr 8, 2015

# ? Apr 8, 2015 14:34

Cognac McCarthy: Oct 5, 2008; It's a man's game, but boys will play

While we're talking definitions, I'd still love to hear a response to my post earlier which brings up the definition of violence:

Cognac McCarthy posted:

Also, Jrod I'm genuinely curious because I've never heard a libertarian answer it (I think I asked it in another thread but don't remember if I got an answer, or if any answers came from anyone actually familiar with libertarianism):

How does libertarianism in your mind explain racism and bigotry? I know you've said you oppose racism because you see it as a form of collectivism, but where does it come from in your view, and how is it reproduced (that is, passed down from generation to generation, enforced, etc.)? How and why is it so persistent if it's so clearly against everyone's economic best interests, according to you? More broadly, how does libertarianism explain seemingly arbitrary cultural values and practices? Does libertarianism recognize the existence of a fixed and identifiable "human nature"?

These are all question Marxists and Marxist-influenced thinkers have grappled with since the mid-19th century, and thankfully a leftist critic's understanding of racism, culture, or power now wouldn't really resemble Marx's own views beyond some shared epistemological frameworks. I think the (far) left has a very comprehensive, robust intellectual understanding of how power operates in the modern world that looks beyond force and the state to accurately articulate how amorphous social and cultural forces drive human behavior. As far as I can tell, libertarianism lacks an equivalent intellectual or philosophical explanation for non-economic activity and behavior. Do you really believe that your decisions are not affected by the culture or social pressures that surround you? If you do concede that social forces drive your thinking, does true individualism and self-determination exist? And are certain cultures more capable of statelessness and libertopianism than others?

Also, how familiar are you with leftist/poststructuralist understandings of power in modern society? Have you read, say, Discipline and Punish or other similar works? If you're familiar with poststructuralist thought, why have you chosen libertarianism instead?

# ? Apr 8, 2015 16:09

BENGHAZI 2: Oct 13, 2007; by Cyrano4747

Rockopolis posted:

Really? I would have thought demand for holes was finite. After all each person has only one hole that was made for them.

Drrr drrr drrr

# ? Apr 8, 2015 16:26

asdf32: May 15, 2010; I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

yeah but humans always want to reproduce so there is infinite demand for people so there is obviously an infinite supply of people and infinite people means infinite holes dddrrrrrrrrr

The funny thing to me is that the idea that people typically want more stuff than will ever realistically be produced has no idiolpgical consequences whatsoever. It's completely consistent with leftism. Poor people need more stuff and rich people are greedy and want more stuff too.

So watching people's reaction is like watching baboons throw poop at a TV because they don't understand it.

# ? Apr 8, 2015 17:36

Ron Paul Atreides: Apr 19, 2012; Uyghurs situation in Xinjiang? Just a police action, do not fret. Not ongoing genocide like in EVIL Canada.

I am definitely not a tankie.

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