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But his bosses were commies who thought it was moral to pay for health care for the children of their workers, so you see it was noble to steal the invention he made on company time with company capital.
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Oct 21, 2015 00:07
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Wait if we have infinite electricity, wouldn't that mean that in Galt's world, he had eliminated scarcity in every form and gotten rid of the need for property rights and Libertarianism? In Jrod's OP he specifically said that Libertarianism was justified by scarcity, but if you have infinite energy then you've already violated the laws on conservation of mass and energy; you can make more energy without trading any mass, and thus have ended scarcity even if you didn't accept that we already don't have a scarcity problem but a distribution one.
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Oct 21, 2015 00:09
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DrProsek posted:Wait if we have infinite electricity, wouldn't that mean that in Galt's world, he had eliminated scarcity in every form and gotten rid of the need for property rights and Libertarianism? In Jrod's OP he specifically said that Libertarianism was justified by scarcity, but if you have infinite energy then you've already violated the laws on conservation of mass and energy; you can make more energy without trading any mass, and thus have ended scarcity even if you didn't accept that we already don't have a scarcity problem but a distribution one. I haven't read it but I would guess given the theme of Rand, he probably took it to bits when people suggested that he shouldn't charge money for it.
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Oct 21, 2015 00:16
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DrProsek posted:Wait if we have infinite electricity, wouldn't that mean that in Galt's world, he had eliminated scarcity in every form and gotten rid of the need for property rights and Libertarianism? In Jrod's OP he specifically said that Libertarianism was justified by scarcity, but if you have infinite energy then you've already violated the laws on conservation of mass and energy; you can make more energy without trading any mass, and thus have ended scarcity even if you didn't accept that we already don't have a scarcity problem but a distribution one. IIRC the device works by "drawing static electricity from the atmosphere" or some poo poo. So I think libertarians already have a position in this: https://mises.org/library/spectrum-should-be-private-property-economics-history-and-future-wireless-technology
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Oct 21, 2015 00:19
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Personally I think it's strangely appropriate that the liberitarian magnum opus literally relies on a magic machine to paper over the blatant impossibility of its plot.
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Oct 21, 2015 00:28
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GunnerJ posted:IIRC the device works by "drawing static electricity from the atmosphere" or some poo poo. So I think libertarians already have a position in this: https://mises.org/library/spectrum-should-be-private-property-economics-history-and-future-wireless-technology If memory serves it was not explicitly an infinite energy engine but effectively was. It was an engine that ran off of "static energy." It was effectively an infinite energy device because it basically ran off of no input. It gets referred to as a "literally magic infinite energy engine" because it just kind of sucked energy out of its surroundings and then behaved better than an internal combustion engine. Which is, to anybody who actually knows anything about physics, loving absurd.
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Oct 21, 2015 02:25
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I think a machine that apparently operates in precise opposition to entropy is an infinite energy source.
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Oct 21, 2015 02:28
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Obdicut posted:This hasn't been true until the past thirty years or so. If you make this claim, you have to explain why it wasn't so before. It's an over-simplification, because nothing is so simple. But if I were to argue why the polarization has occurred now and not before, I would say it's the addition of several factors, including an after-effect of the Cold War (the polarizing of Us vs. the Commies), the proliferation of media and mass media such as the cable networks, ending of the Fairness Doctrine and the rise of talk radio, and the introduction of the internet which allows people to communicate in echo chambers without having to deal with the opposition. Our world is becoming "smaller" thanks to communication, but it allows us selective communication - so we are able to go about our daily lives without having our ideas challenged or debated. Also, more and more, we're becoming walled off from our neighbors, so there's less community and that leads to insularity and distrust, and we become more and more jealous about who we associate with. Also, I would argue there was polarization of the parties before hand, it just wasn't as pronounced, or even a topic discussed or studied. Ideologically speaking, the Democrat and Republican parties have never been too far off from each other. But there are many issues that have always seen the two parties as polar opposites. Abolition, Civil Rights, Jim Crow, McCarthyism, Isolationism (iirc, the Republicans were historically deep Isolationists up until WWII, whereas the Democrats were more limited in their isolationism, they wanted to do business with Europe, but stay out of their affairs -- the 1940 presidential election was painted as two very polar opposites, the Republicans who wanted to cut off all support to Europe, because this would lead to war; and the Roosevelt Democrats who wanted to keep helping England, and thought they could do so without going to war, although FDR was secretly committed to the idea that the US would go to war, just not when.) OwlFancier posted:I think a machine that apparently operates in precise opposition to entropy is an infinite energy source. And AC said, "LET THERE BE LIGHT!" And there was light... CovfefeCatCafe fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Oct 21, 2015 |
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Oct 21, 2015 02:46
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YF19pilot posted:Also, I would argue there was polarization of the parties before hand, it just wasn't as pronounced, or even a topic discussed or studied. Ideologically speaking, the Democrat and Republican parties have never been too far off from each other. But there are many issues that have always seen the two parties as polar opposites. Abolition, Civil Rights, Jim Crow, McCarthyism, Isolationism (iirc, the Republicans were historically deep Isolationists up until WWII, whereas the Democrats were more limited in their isolationism, they wanted to do business with Europe, but stay out of their affairs -- the 1940 presidential election was painted as two very polar opposites, the Republicans who wanted to cut off all support to Europe, because this would lead to war; and the Roosevelt Democrats who wanted to keep helping England, and thought they could do so without going to war, although FDR was secretly committed to the idea that the US would go to war, just not when.) This is some...not exactly historically accurate thinking. The reason the politicians on both sides were pretty isolationist and publicly anti-war was because the American people were incredibly isolationist at the time. Until Pearl Harbor happened the American view was "meh, whatever let Europe sort that poo poo out. Not our problem." Behind the scenes those in power in America knew full well that WW2 was eventually going to become our problem one way or another so they did whatever they could get away with. Helping England was just one thing but behind the scenes they were also forcing the military budget upwards and prepping for a fight. Publicly they were saying "we won't go to war, ever, end of story." But really, political powers knew America was going to get drug into it whether it liked it or not. I think a lot of it was sold as jobs "well hey we're just selling poo poo to England and you're getting paid to make said poo poo so it's cool." That and more military means more soldiers which means more people being paid. The American people generally thought we could stay out of it by just staying neutral. Then Pearl Harbor happened and overnight the public's view switched. Part of the reason America mobilized so drat fast after Pearl Harbor is that we were ready for a fight. What politicians were saying and what politicians were doing were quite different.
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Oct 21, 2015 03:28
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YF19pilot posted:It's an over-simplification, because nothing is so simple. But if I were to argue why the polarization has occurred now and not before, I would say it's the addition of several factors, including an after-effect of the Cold War (the polarizing of Us vs. the Commies) This should have happened during the Cold War, not decades later. Or are you saying that it's the lack of a clear enemy like the communists that has resulted in increased polarization? That's still wrong, because you have other decades throughout the 20th and 19th century where there was no sign of the crazy polarization that we have today quote:, the proliferation of media and mass media such as the cable networks, ending of the Fairness Doctrine and the rise of talk radio, and the introduction of the internet which allows people to communicate in echo chambers without having to deal with the opposition. Our world is becoming "smaller" thanks to communication, but it allows us selective communication - so we are able to go about our daily lives without having our ideas challenged or debated. Also, more and more, we're becoming walled off from our neighbors, so there's less community and that leads to insularity and distrust, and we become more and more jealous about who we associate with. These three I can get behind. And they all lead to a similar observation: it's a lot easier to put yourself in an echo chamber today than it was 30 years ago, a point that the last half of your paragraph describes well. quote:Also, I would argue there was polarization of the parties before hand, it just wasn't as pronounced, or even a topic discussed or studied. Ideologically speaking, the Democrat and Republican parties have never been too far off from each other. But there are many issues that have always seen the two parties as polar opposites. Abolition, Civil Rights, Jim Crow, McCarthyism, Isolationism (iirc, the Republicans were historically deep Isolationists up until WWII, whereas the Democrats were more limited in their isolationism, they wanted to do business with Europe, but stay out of their affairs -- the 1940 presidential election was painted as two very polar opposites, the Republicans who wanted to cut off all support to Europe, because this would lead to war; and the Roosevelt Democrats who wanted to keep helping England, and thought they could do so without going to war, although FDR was secretly committed to the idea that the US would go to war, just not when.) These are all types of polarization that did not quite manifest into the extreme types of polarization that we see today. Civil Rights was a very polarizing issue in its day, but you didn't see an entire political party mobilized against it with the kind of vitriolic rhetoric that we have today. Back then, the crazies who were extremist enough to filibuster against civil rights didn't hold the reigns of an entire political party like the crazies today do. McCarthyism is an interesting example, but not really representative of polarization between the parties. That was less a polarizing issue that the parties could debate about and more of a systemic issue invading all spheres of the political arena And as ToxicSlurpee pointed out already, both parties were extremely isolationist in the decades before WW2. I'm beginning to suspect that you don't quite know what you're talking about
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Oct 21, 2015 04:52
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GunnerJ posted:Since Galt is such a champion for the sanctity of the contract, I can only assume that the 20th Century Auto Company (iirc) did not have the foresight to include a standard "employee cedes all copyright and patent right to employer for inventions made on the job" clause. No, this is literally why he left. It had this in their contract, but he decided that since they were going to use their power of contract to give it to the government for public use, he decided to gently caress off until he could make a profit off of it.
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Oct 21, 2015 04:54
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QuarkJets posted:This should have happened during the Cold War, not decades later. More that the art of polarizing people against an "enemy" was learned by the dominant parties during the Cold War and those tactics are being employed today. quote:I'm beginning to suspect that you don't quite know what you're talking about I'll admit that I haven't studied the political histories of the time as thoroughly as other aspects, and may be relying on lay-person fallacies. Form what I do know off hand, the US was very isolationist. In the 1940 elections, the Republican opposition tried to paint the two parties as being polar opposites, voting for the Rs would guarantee peace and we would stop sending aid to Britain and Russia - but voting for FDR would be voting for war. FDR's platform was also peace, but that we should help the European Allies, because they were standing up for freedom against fascism. Or something like that. I could be off base, and I'll admit my knowledge of the subject area isn't that great and I might actually be talking out of my rear end.
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Oct 21, 2015 05:17
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ToxicSlurpee posted:This is some...not exactly historically accurate thinking. The reason the politicians on both sides were pretty isolationist and publicly anti-war was because the American people were incredibly isolationist at the time. Until Pearl Harbor happened the American view was "meh, whatever let Europe sort that poo poo out. Not our problem." Behind the scenes those in power in America knew full well that WW2 was eventually going to become our problem one way or another so they did whatever they could get away with. Helping England was just one thing but behind the scenes they were also forcing the military budget upwards and prepping for a fight. Publicly they were saying "we won't go to war, ever, end of story." But really, political powers knew America was going to get drug into it whether it liked it or not. I think a lot of it was sold as jobs "well hey we're just selling poo poo to England and you're getting paid to make said poo poo so it's cool." That and more military means more soldiers which means more people being paid. I'm still amazed America's 20th century tragedy is nothing more than that a military base was attacked. What a pathetic people.
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Oct 21, 2015 09:57
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YF19pilot posted:It's an over-simplification, because nothing is so simple. But if I were to argue why the polarization has occurred now and not before, I would say it's the addition of several factors, including an after-effect of the Cold War (the polarizing of Us vs. the Commies), the proliferation of media and mass media such as the cable networks, ending of the Fairness Doctrine and the rise of talk radio, and the introduction of the internet which allows people to communicate in echo chambers without having to deal with the opposition. Our world is becoming "smaller" thanks to communication, but it allows us selective communication - so we are able to go about our daily lives without having our ideas challenged or debated. Also, more and more, we're becoming walled off from our neighbors, so there's less community and that leads to insularity and distrust, and we become more and more jealous about who we associate with. So basically, it's not that there are two parties that creates polarization, as you originally claimed, there's a lot of other factors you're now saying are also causative.
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Oct 21, 2015 10:28
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Jrod, I've never been nasty to you, so please take this as seriously and politely as it is intended: You claim you leave threads because of other life things which I totally get, but you probably shouldn't start a new thread on anything if you can't spend a little time on it every day or two for a little while. This was almost a driveby proselytization. HorseLord posted:I'm still amazed America's 20th century tragedy is nothing more than that a military base was attacked. What a pathetic people. 3/10. I actually considered replying substantively or you'd get nothing at all. Troll harder.
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Oct 21, 2015 10:28
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QuarkJets posted:This should have happened during the Cold War, not decades later. Pretty much. I'd say that the polarisation has been happening, but was at a slower pace until the things he mentions allowed an acceleration of the process. I'd say the end of the Cold War certainly added another speed boost, and I suppose that the baby boomers coming of age in the Reagan Era led to a generation who didn't have pre-New Deal knowledge of the world, and so were more open to corporatist / neo-liberal theory as the solution to their ills as the previous problems of deep poverty no longer affected a much larger middle class. Of course, this is me spitballin' as I am not a US historian so feel free to correct me if I'm off here.
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Oct 21, 2015 12:47
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HorseLord posted:I'm still amazed America's 20th century tragedy is nothing more than that a military base was attacked. What a pathetic people. Vietnam?
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Oct 21, 2015 12:58
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QuarkJets posted:These three I can get behind. And they all lead to a similar observation: it's a lot easier to put yourself in an echo chamber today than it was 30 years ago, a point that the last half of your paragraph describes well. This observation runs into the small problem that the polarization of the past 30 years has been overwhelmingly strong for the party of the right, while over the same period the party of the left has moved to occupy the center. The far left wing exists but it is kept far from the levers of power. People like to laugh about lefty anti-vaxers, but when it had to the completely D-controlled government of California dropped the hammer on them. It may be true that it is now easier for voters to close their minds to information that challenges their worldview, but it doesn't explain the disproportionate political influence of the extreme right as opposed to the extreme left. And this is actually closely related to your next point: quote:These are all types of polarization that did not quite manifest into the extreme types of polarization that we see today. Civil Rights was a very polarizing issue in its day, but you didn't see an entire political party mobilized against it with the kind of vitriolic rhetoric that we have today. Back then, the crazies who were extremist enough to filibuster against civil rights didn't hold the reigns of an entire political party like the crazies today do. In fact you can draw a clear line between those crazies and our current ones. The Democratic Party dropped those votes, and the Republican Party made a long-term strategic effort to pick them up, a process that was completed in the mid-1990s. I would say that a lot of the current polarization comes down to unanticipated consequences of that choice, in the context of structural problems with American democracy. i.e., jerrymandering; abysmal turnout in primary, local, state, and off-year federal elections; voter apathy and the related tendency to vote straight ticket regardless of the merits of the candidate; the use of outdated narrative by political media to describe the political situation; and of course declining social and economic well-being resulting from inequality, which makes a lot of people anxious and unhappy about the state of the world.
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Oct 21, 2015 13:38
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Tesseraction posted:Pretty much. I'd say that the polarisation has been happening, but was at a slower pace until the things he mentions allowed an acceleration of the process. I'd say the end of the Cold War certainly added another speed boost, and I suppose that the baby boomers coming of age in the Reagan Era led to a generation who didn't have pre-New Deal knowledge of the world, and so were more open to corporatist / neo-liberal theory as the solution to their ills as the previous problems of deep poverty no longer affected a much larger middle class. Just because a narrative explanation is plausible doesn't mean it's true, or even likely to be true. We can come up with an endless series of plausible reasons that led to the hyperpartisan split. What matters is having some sort of evidence for your causal pathway.
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Oct 21, 2015 13:38
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Obdicut posted:Just because a narrative explanation is plausible doesn't mean it's true, or even likely to be true. We can come up with an endless series of plausible reasons that led to the hyperpartisan split. What matters is having some sort of evidence for your causal pathway. Well yes, I never said it was empirical fact. I'd love to investigate and produce empirical evidence to prove or disprove my theory, but I have Very Important shitposts to make.
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Oct 21, 2015 13:42
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HorseLord posted:I'm still amazed America's 20th century tragedy is nothing more than that a military base was attacked. What a pathetic people. No, Stalin was not a great leader.
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Oct 21, 2015 15:51
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Just as a reminder: It has been six (6) days since JRodefeld held up literal slave-states as examples of countries with more economic freedom than the USA and thus something the USA should aspire to. It has been five (5) days since JRodefeld last posted in this thread. I can only imagine that he's furiously searching Mises.org or whatever other libertarian site he's found in the meantime so that he can copy/paste a sufficiently wordy response that will make it plain that Qatar and the UAE are totally more free and/or don't actually count, even if they do because reasons.
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Oct 21, 2015 19:33
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EvanSchenck posted:This observation runs into the small problem that the polarization of the past 30 years has been overwhelmingly strong for the party of the right, while over the same period the party of the left has moved to occupy the center. The far left wing exists but it is kept far from the levers of power. People like to laugh about lefty anti-vaxers, but when it had to the completely D-controlled government of California dropped the hammer on them. Democrat politicians were smart enough to not cater to crazy people. Republican politicians were not. That's the difference. (also almost half of anti-vaxxers are conservatives, it's not just a leftist thing like people sometimes believe) quote:It may be true that it is now easier for voters to close their minds to information that challenges their worldview, but it doesn't explain the disproportionate political influence of the extreme right as opposed to the extreme left. And this is actually closely related to your next point: I agree with this.
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Oct 21, 2015 19:41
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TLM3101 posted:Just as a reminder: It has been six (6) days since JRodefeld held up literal slave-states as examples of countries with more economic freedom than the USA and thus something the USA should aspire to. "Economic freedom" being a euphemism for "employer freedom to gently caress over employees," the only surprising thing is that they weren't higher on the list.
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Oct 21, 2015 19:46
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TLM3101 posted:Just as a reminder: It has been six (6) days since JRodefeld held up literal slave-states as examples of countries with more economic freedom than the USA and thus something the USA should aspire to. It has been five (5) days since JRodefeld last posted in this thread. Well sure they use slave labour but they don't mean it.
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Oct 21, 2015 19:55
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If the non-aggression principle applied to non-whites then Murray Rothbard is wrong. Are you trying to tell me Rothbard is wrong? 
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Oct 21, 2015 19:57
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TLM3101 posted:Just as a reminder: It has been six (6) days since JRodefeld held up literal slave-states as examples of countries with more economic freedom than the USA and thus something the USA should aspire to. It has been five (5) days since JRodefeld last posted in this thread. At best, we'll get a dismissal where he doesn't necessarily support everything the Cato Institute releases (apparently including the stuff he actually quotes in support of his arguments) and it is silly for us to harp on side issues like "slavery" and "human rights violations" instead of the central point (which is a secret). More likely, he'll Want to Talk About Something Else, or he'll be gone long enough to get banned. Tesseraction posted:If the non-aggression principle applied to non-whites then Murray Rothbard is wrong. Not totally related, but you mentioned Rothbard and I don't think anyone's linked the whole thing in this thread yet: Well, they finally got David Duke. But he sure scared the bejesus out of them. 
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Oct 21, 2015 21:00
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Nolanar posted:Not totally related, but you mentioned Rothbard and I don't think anyone's linked the whole thing in this thread yet: Sweet houghmagandy, that's some purestrain unsane editorial diatribe. I keep forgetting about Lew's stuff too, since he represents the Right's dreams so completely. The '90s still have quite a lot to answer for.
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Oct 21, 2015 21:41
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Hey Caros, you mentioned this a while ago, but I'd be totally down for a Let's Read of Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead if you were seriously considering subjecting yourself to that.
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Oct 21, 2015 22:29
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EndOfTheWorld posted:Hey Caros, you mentioned this a while ago, but I'd be totally down for a Let's Read of Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead if you were seriously considering subjecting yourself to that. I won't do the fountainhead because I never read it before so I can't rely on memory to recall what parts of it are worth skipping entirely. That said the atlas shrugged on is on my plate. It is a monster of a book and I'm still debating just how much depth I want to go into. Too much and I worry that I'll just end up posting updates that are just "gently caress you ayn rand" over and over again by the middle of the book.
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Oct 21, 2015 23:45
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Caros posted:I won't do the fountainhead because I never read it before so I can't rely on memory to recall what parts of it are worth skipping entirely. Since this prime posting land is, arguably, abandoned, you should mix your labor with this thread and commandeer it as the Caros Book Reading Station. Don't worry, the natives won't be back.
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Oct 22, 2015 00:06
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Muscle Tracer posted:is this because of snow crash? Except all mine will be variations of "LEARN TO PARK". I'd like a libertarian to explain how the stateless underworld (literally) of Johannesburg's warren of gold mines meshes with their idea that a state is unneeded. For those who aren't aware, criminal gangs, freelancers and corporate security battle it out hundreds of meters underground for control of the mines. The state really plays no part - very rarely a few state security forces show up to remind people that yes, they do exist, but they don't go down into the shafts where the battles rage. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34589143 (Video, no transcript) Surely a rational actor wouldn't sneak into his neighbors capital investment, risk his life digging in closed and unventilated shafts for a few grams of soft metal, right? They'd be shunned by the community and ostracized.
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Oct 22, 2015 00:14
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Caros posted:That said the atlas shrugged on is on my plate. It is a monster of a book and I'm still debating just how much depth I want to go into. Too much and I worry that I'll just end up posting updates that are just "gently caress you ayn rand" over and over again by the middle of the book. I'd read that.
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Oct 22, 2015 00:37
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Caros posted:That said the atlas shrugged on is on my plate. It is a monster of a book and I'm still debating just how much depth I want to go into. Too much and I worry that I'll just end up posting updates that are just "gently caress you ayn rand" over and over again by the middle of the book. An LP idea: playing Bioshock to perfectly match the length of an audiobook of Atlas Shrugged, with a constant scream track by the player.
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Oct 22, 2015 00:41
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Caros posted:That said the atlas shrugged on is on my plate. It is a monster of a book and I'm still debating just how much depth I want to go into. Too much and I worry that I'll just end up posting updates that are just "gently caress you ayn rand" over and over again by the middle of the book.
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Oct 22, 2015 10:42
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StandardVC10 posted:No, Stalin was not a great leader. *a legitimate military target is attacked* americans: this is the worst thing to ever happen to us *america bombs four cities of no millitary value that are experiencing a winter famine, and aren't even in the right country* americans: i don't see why we should apologize
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Oct 22, 2015 11:45
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HorseLord posted:*a legitimate military target is attacked* Stalin butchered his own people. He's practically a case study in terrible leadership. What bombing is this?
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Oct 22, 2015 14:13
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Being fair at no point has HorseLord brought up Stalin in this thread.
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Oct 22, 2015 14:15
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I don't want to get dragged into a discussion about slavery in the UAE. You're the slave because you pay property taxes
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Oct 22, 2015 15:14
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Can't get taxed if you don't have income! Checkmate, statists.
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Oct 22, 2015 15:22
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