|
QuarkJets posted:I know that a lot of people think that The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a pro-libertarian novel. Your post helps to illustrate that. If anything, this book is about the glorious communist revolution and the disadvantages of laissez-faire economics.
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2015 20:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 02:36 |
|
|
Ravenfood posted:One of the moments where the main characters directly talk about their society is the trial scene with the tourist Stu, talking about their legal system, which is libertarian as gently caress. Agreed, but that's the trial system that the main characters overthrow with a glorious People's Revolution. The novel is portraying all of these libertarian systems as lovely and awful
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2015 21:00
|
|
|
QuarkJets posted:I know that a lot of people think that The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a pro-libertarian novel. Your post helps to illustrate that. If anything, this book is about the glorious communist revolution and the disadvantages of laissez-faire economics. I don't entirely agree with your reading, but yeah, the book is fairly subtle (while appearing didactic) and open to numerous interpretations. Heinlein was super libertarian in real life, but the crisis precipitating the revolution in the novel was a tragedy of the commons-type ecological disaster, necessitating a revolutionary vanguard to take charge. (Also, the omniscient AI masterminding everything was named Mycroft, who was Sherlock Holmes's..big brother.) By the end of the book he's acknowledged that his preferred form of social organization can't exist under representative government; it had previously existed under an indifferent tyranny which would have led to mass famine. The fact that people can write off Starship Troopers as fascist drivel and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as libertarian drivel is a sign that Heinlein is more complicated than you might think from all of his no-nonsense good-at-everything self-insert characters.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2015 21:03
|
|
|
QuarkJets posted:Agreed, but that's the trial system that the main characters overthrow with a glorious People's Revolution. The novel is portraying all of these libertarian systems as lovely and awful And it's not strictly a commune so much as a family farm, which again, kind of lets you "cheat" in a libertarian system because its a (libertarian) socially acceptable way to cooperate and coordinate with people.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2015 22:09
|
|
|
Ravenfood posted:What? No, that legal system is the one created by the Loonies in the absence of anything from the Authority. There is nothing to suggest that the post-revolution society would do anything different legally that I recall. Really that shows one of the inherent flaws of libertarianism. If somebody owns a significant chunk of land then they have the right to choose who does and does not prosper by choosing who gets to live/work on it. If your only choice to survive is "sell my time to the rich guy that owns everything" than he owns you via wage slavery. The libertarian view is "well if he owns all that land he can do whatever he wants with it." But the problem, as South Americans have repeatedly seen, is that sometimes that guy goes "gently caress you, this land I own is used to not feed you locals." There were massive tracts of land owned by companies that would just not use it. Of course more socialist regimes would come up that would kick the company off the land and tell the people to knock themselves out and farm away on the newly available, totally useful land which would get...well...attention... from the U.S. Which is really going directly against libertarianisms supposed core tenet of meritocracy. If the guy that owns everything doesn't like you then it's highly likely it doesn't matter how smart you are. If you win the family lottery you get a massive advantage over others that makes your life way easier. I've actually had to point out to numerous people that "I have a warm place to sleep and food waiting for me at my parents' house if I don't get a job after I graduate" makes it significantly less risky to go to college when compared to people who don't have that. That's especially true of people from families that can afford to foot the bill, especially if they can afford good college prep and more prestigious schools.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2015 00:21
|
|
|
Pener Kropoopkin posted:IIRC in Asimov's Caves of Steel off-world colonists were ludicrously wealthy because they had no taboos regarding robots, access to near limitless resources in outer space, and more "room" than they could ever possibly know what to do with. A single person could develop a private fiefdom populated by nobody but himself and a private army of robots to cater to their every eccentric tastes. That's the closest thing to an actual factual libertarianism I can think of in Sci-Fi, but even in the fiction those colonists were antisocial weirdos. The one you're thinking of is The Naked Sun, which came after The Caves of Steel. Caves Of Steel focuses on the domed cities of the earth (which is, incidentally, described as dangerously overcrowded at 8 billion people in the year of about 5000 AD. Today's population is 7.125 billion, which kinda goes to show how predicitons about overcrowding can be wildly off). In The Naked Sun the residents of the planet Solaria have developed into hermaphroditic derivatives of humans who self fertilize and have their single child (raised elsewhere on the roughly like Pennslyvania size estates that each of the planet's 20,000 adults occupies otherwise by themselves) all on their own.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2015 01:51
|
|
|
Ravenfood posted:What? No, that legal system is the one created by the Loonies in the absence of anything from the Authority. There is nothing to suggest that the post-revolution society would do anything different legally that I recall. It's portrayed as a lovely ad hoc system from which a character needs to be rescued. And at the end of the book the Loonies are basically setting up a representative government with presumably a new court system to go along with that, because if you're creating a new government, why wouldn't you also create a new court system? Admittedly, the book speaks very little about the new system other than the main character going "Hmm I would rather become a hermit on an asteroid than have to deal with representative government", with the connotation that libertarians should take their lovely anti-social views and go live in isolation. This is a tacit admission that libertarians have no place in society, and any society built upon libertarian values is doomed to failure. quote:
The book takes a very liberal definition of "family", though. All wives share communal ownership of "the farm" even if they married into the family, and genetic inheritance isn't really a thing because children usually marry into a different line family than the one they were born into regardless of gender. New "spouses" are voted in at regular intervals, and joining a line marriage in the book has more to do with asking to become part of a community and less to do with choosing a romantic partner (although this is still a component). This more closely resembles a real life commune than a family farm
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2015 02:28
|
|
|
Nintendo Kid posted:The one you're thinking of is The Naked Sun, which came after The Caves of Steel. You're right, thanks. I never did finish Caves of Steel because of a publishing error that caused my copy to miss 20 pages, so they're mixed in my brain somehow.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2015 02:32
|
|
|
Nintendo Kid posted:The one you're thinking of is The Naked Sun, which came after The Caves of Steel. Caves Of Steel focuses on the domed cities of the earth (which is, incidentally, described as dangerously overcrowded at 8 billion people in the year of about 5000 AD. Today's population is 7.125 billion, which kinda goes to show how predicitons about overcrowding can be wildly off). "Dangerously overcrowded" doesn't necessarily mean pure land area or even relate to how many people there are now. If the Earth gets much hotter there is going to be less arable land which means less food and thus fewer people. The other thing is that not all the land on Earth is even habitable. Even with 7 billion we're having crowding issues. Saying 8 billion is "dangerously overcrowded" isn't that much of a stretch, depending on how poo poo pans out. If this rock gets to "ice caps literally melting" levels of hot the number of humans it can support is going to take a nosedive.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2015 04:44
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:"Dangerously overcrowded" doesn't necessarily mean pure land area or even relate to how many people there are now. If the Earth gets much hotter there is going to be less arable land which means less food and thus fewer people. The other thing is that not all the land on Earth is even habitable. Even with 7 billion we're having crowding issues. Saying 8 billion is "dangerously overcrowded" isn't that much of a stretch, depending on how poo poo pans out. If this rock gets to "ice caps literally melting" levels of hot the number of humans it can support is going to take a nosedive. The thing is that when the book was written the population of earth was like 2 billion, so of course they'd think 8 was hellishly unlivable. There are other novels out there that hold 5 or 6 or 7 billion as the point where earth is way too overcrowded, or where most of the earth is covered with cities to fit everyone. It should be obvious that that hasn't happened.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2015 15:08
|
|
|
Nintendo Kid posted:The thing is that when the book was written the population of earth was like 2 billion, so of course they'd think 8 was hellishly unlivable. There are other novels out there that hold 5 or 6 or 7 billion as the point where earth is way too overcrowded, or where most of the earth is covered with cities to fit everyone. It should be obvious that that hasn't happened. I was pretty sure there was also some unspoken natural disaster (probably nuclear winter) that made most of the planet uninhabitable, but it's been a while since I read it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2015 15:38
|
|
|
Nintendo Kid posted:The thing is that when the book was written the population of earth was like 2 billion, so of course they'd think 8 was hellishly unlivable. There are other novels out there that hold 5 or 6 or 7 billion as the point where earth is way too overcrowded, or where most of the earth is covered with cities to fit everyone. It should be obvious that that hasn't happened. I'm pretty sure at that time they also thought that buildings the size that we're putting up now were literally impossible. If you went back that far and told them about the Burj Dubai they'd probably think you were insane. Of course massive, packed cities have their own issues. Granted they also may have assumed that ecological catastrophes the likes of which we're currently causing would also happen if there were too many people.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2015 18:29
|
|
|
When Libertarianism meets Florida, the crazy really happens: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-senate-candidate-drank-goats-blood-20151005-story.html Oh my.
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2015 23:08
|
|
|
Etalommi posted:When Libertarianism meets Florida, the crazy really happens: Too bad he doesn't really have a chance to win. Now if he'd hosed the goat we'd have a presidential candidate on our hands.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 02:30
|
|
|
I'm sad in general that he seems to be such a terrible person, but especially because we'll never get to see "Senator Invictus" which sounds pretty awesome.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 04:42
|
|
|
Caros posted:Too bad he doesn't really have a chance to win. Now if he'd hosed the goat we'd have a presidential candidate on our hands. Don't be ridiculous. Goats are not pigs.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 05:01
|
|
|
GreyjoyBastard posted:Don't be ridiculous. Goats are not pigs. Yeah but this is the US not the UK so loving Thatcher will get you nowhere.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 05:06
|
|
|
Buried alive posted:I'm sad in general that he seems to be such a terrible person, but especially because we'll never get to see "Senator Invictus" which sounds pretty awesome. His whole name is actually p cool. Augustus Sol Invictus. His crazy got style.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 05:07
|
|
|
This having become the general libertarian watch thread until the prophesied return of Jrod (or a similarly entertaining/infuriating alternative), has anyone seen any interesting libertarian justifications/excuses for the whole "finance wiz kids jacking drug prices 5000%" thing? I brought it up with my own ancap friend and she basically shifted it all onto he evil of copyright law, then dodged when asked how creators could hope to profit from their creations without it. At least she didn't say "sell t-shirts online or something", as I've actually seen at Reason.com.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 17:51
|
|
|
The market will sort it out. If vital drugs are too expensive, cheaper alternatives will pop up and force competition for pricing. Let's ignore the questions of the costs of founding a new drug company and researching a competitor to a drug that already exists, or the efficacy of a hastily-developed drug being sold to desperate people, or the number who will die from lack of treatment (or quack treatments) before the price is brought back down, or the extra security measures pharmacies will need to prevent people from stealing $10k worth of easily-trafficked items that would fit in their pocket, or any other messy "realistic" concerns. The market will solve all, and who are you to question a Job Creator anyway? That is of course assuming you're talking to a Libertarian who believes in IP at all.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 18:01
|
|
|
Most libertarians would consider this cool and good and perfectly natural I would think.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2015 02:43
|
|
|
Nolanar posted:The market will sort it out. If vital drugs are too expensive, cheaper alternatives will pop up and force competition for pricing.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2015 09:32
|
|
|
Guess who's back
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 14:28
|
|
|
I have the most ridiculous grin on my face right now. Thank you.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 14:29
|
|
|
Unnnnnnnggghhhhhhh..... ....sooooo good.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 14:33
|
|
|
He has returned in his glory, to separate the high time-preferenced from the low, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. I guess I know what I'm doing on my break.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 14:35
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 15:50
|
|
|
I told you this day would come, if we all just believed. *gives a sixty page speech about how awesome being a greedy poo poo is* *traces a dollar sign in the air*
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 15:53
|
|
|
THE PROPHET WALKS AMONG US
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 18:39
|
|
|
GODDAMNIT! I have to visit my in laws all weekend. 😞
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 19:18
|
|
|
Caros posted:GODDAMNIT! I have to visit my in laws all weekend. 😞 Don't worry, we can just copy-paste your response from the last time he made this exact same argument. There's nothing new there, except maybe his weird charade where he acts like he has no idea how democracy (sorry, "democracy") works.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 19:29
|
|
|
The day of rapture is upon us. Our savior has returned and all the faithful shall be transported to his kingdom of the heavenly new thread, leaving only ASDF behind.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 22:59
|
|
|
Caros posted:GODDAMNIT! I have to visit my in laws all weekend. 😞 At least take heart that he's become so pathetic that he has stooped to attacking probably the most sympathetic non-Libertarian on the forums right off the bat.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 23:02
|
|
|
Caros posted:GODDAMNIT! I have to visit my in laws all weekend. 😞 All you're missing is multiple pages of multiple people making the same arguments, so really nothing outside of your normal forums experience.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 23:04
|
|
|
Pener Kropoopkin posted:All you're missing is multiple pages of multiple people making the same arguments, so really nothing outside of your normal forums experience. I'm a glutton for punishment, you all know this.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 23:07
|
|
|
Caros posted:GODDAMNIT! I have to visit my in laws all weekend. 😞 Don't worry you won't miss anything. His only post will be the only post he makes in that thread.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2015 02:06
|
|
|
I hope he doesn't get banned/probated for trying to escape the quarantine. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2015 05:42
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:Don't worry you won't miss anything. His only post will be the only post he makes in that thread. I hope not. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2015 05:58
|
|
|
Really diggin' your Mongol Based Economics thing, Caros. Hopefully it'll become a thread staple alongside our good friends at Valhalla DRO.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2015 14:00
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 02:36 |
|
|
Not sure if this is the right place for this or not. I'm posting it here because of the large degree of Neo-Confederate / Libertarian overlap. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/us/confederate-flag-supporters-georgia-indicted-clash-black-partygoers.html?_r=0 poo poo the Neo-Confederates think they can do publicly in the South is getting crazy.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2015 06:14
|
|
