Caros posted:

I called dibs you son of a bitch. I will fight you IRL.

Alhazred posted:

Please explain to me how a country with slavery is economically free.

GunnerJ posted:

Think you might be waiting a while for an answer here, buddy.

Twerkteam Pizza posted:

I AM SO EXCITED FOR THIS

Captain_Maclaine posted:

It's been a while, remind me: Were you among the handful of goons who did that google hangout session with Eripsa last year or whenever about marbles and whatnot? If so, I'm beginning to worry you're addicted to arguing with the mentally ill.

theshim posted:

All I can think of with all the "fite me irl" posting is this

Caros posted:

Nah I missed that one. I know SedanChair was on that one and it was hilarious watching him kick the poo poo out of Eripsa.

I did spend an unhealthy amount of time arguing with Eripsa the last time he came around but the amount of laughter I get from that sustained me through the jrod dryspell.

Incidentally if you want to have a laugh, google Synereo. It was Eripsa's last crazy project and several months out from its first crowd funding drive it has produced... Nothing. Color me loving shocked.

Who What Now posted:

I would sell myself into slavery to watch Obama in an MMA match with any of his political opponents.

Captain_Maclaine posted:

Ah, gotcha. I had mixed you up. Yeah, I follow Eripsa's threads as they appear much like this one (watching Synereo fail to even live up to the worst-case predictions everyone made is pretty hilarious), but I do get a little worried about you guys who really engage earnestly so often. I mean yeah, it's admirable that you make such an effort confronting such stupid (Eripsa) and hateful (Jrod) bullshit, but I gotta wonder just how healthy that much Abyss-staring is.

Then again, I post in the freep thread.

Captain_Maclaine posted:

Ah, gotcha. I had mixed you up. Yeah, I follow Eripsa's threads as they appear much like this one (watching Synereo fail to even live up to the worst-case predictions everyone made is pretty hilarious), but I do get a little worried about you guys who really engage earnestly so often. I mean yeah, it's admirable that you make such an effort confronting such stupid (Eripsa) and hateful (Jrod) bullshit, but I gotta wonder just how healthy that much Abyss-staring is.

Then again, I post in the freep thread.

TLM3101 posted:

It's always good to be reminded that people like JRod exist. Frankly, I'm not even really angry at him. He's to be pitied more than raged at, because the very worst thing that could ever happen to him is that he gets to live in exactly the kind of society he argues for. His constant attempts at trying to pretend he didn't say what he clearly an provably did say get annoying, of course, but at the end of the day, I do my best to keep in mind that he's as much a victim as a perpetrator.

Not that that's going to make me take down that image.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

I'd talk to Jrod and ask him questions and debate him but he has literally never responded to a single one of my posts. Ever.

Captain_Maclaine posted:

Much, though not all of his unwillingness to respond come from him not posting here to actually debate. Like most libertarian posters, he's here to proselytize and proclaim the Good Word to us unwashed heathens.

The rest of his unwillingness derives from his deep-rooted cowardice, inadequacy, lack of bladder control, and manifold other personal failings.

Literally The Worst posted:

What do you expect from a watermelon fucker

Captain_Maclaine posted:

He actually finally denied being a watermelon fucker during his last bout of posting!

ToxicSlurpee posted:

And at this point Jrod will disappear into the ether until the day he randomly decides to come reward us with is presence by telling us how smart and handsome he is once again.

I'd talk to Jrod and ask him questions and debate him but he has literally never responded to a single one of my posts. Ever.

Captain_Maclaine posted:

He actually finally denied being a watermelon fucker during his last bout of posting!

Nolanar posted:

Everything else he's ever posted has been wrong. Why would this time be any different?

VitalSigns posted:

Despite the lip service to liberty and freedom, it seems like the most prominent Libertarians are perfectly happy to let bigots punch down at minorities or countenance horrific abuses by industry (like forced labor!) in exchange for a few percent lower taxes on the super-rich.

TLM3101 posted:

That said, don't you loving dare aggress against me by trying to limit my freedom to post, you goddamn crypto-fascistic marionette. PUT DOWN THE GUN!

Halloween Jack posted:

You call off your dogs, I'll call off my dogs!

Captain_Maclaine posted:

*does not actually call off own dogs, and indeed actively unleashes them at the sign of slightest vulnerability.

Who What Now posted:

Jrod has gone on record that there's no way the native Americans were using that much land. I mean, let she serious here, most of them didn't even have fences! And it doesn't count if you don't have a fence.

jrodefeld posted:

To state the obvious, it is not only libertarians who value private property rights. All political ideologies have a strong conviction on private property. Marxists have a deeply felt conviction that the product of the worker's labor is their property and therefore the Capitalist is a thief by pocketing a profit from the product manufactured by the worker. That is why they feel it is justified for the workers to rise up and take control of the factories, taking them away from the Capitalist. It is not a random whim that is used to justify re-appropriation of property from the perceived thief to the "rightful" owner, but a consistent if mistaken concept of just property rights.

Who What Now posted:

Jrod has gone on record that there's no way the native Americans were using that much land. I mean, let she serious here, most of them didn't even have fences! And it doesn't count if you don't have a fence.

Captain_Maclaine posted:

If anything that's one of the most bankrupt elements* of his whole fetishization of homesteading: how he pretends the frontier was somehow virgin, untouched territory for hearty whites yeomen farmers to go into and improve, thus mixing their labor with the land and improving it blah blah blah. The land belonged to other people first, jackass, until they got turfed out by either armed white settlers or state/national troops acting on their behalf, but lord no let's just pretend his warped variant on Frederick Jackson Turner is the end all be all of things.

*there are many others.

Infinite Karma posted:

Actually, this philosophy supports seizing property from current owners and giving it to people who will use it better. I'm changing my mind, libertarian ethics sound pretty alright to me.

Nessus posted:

More like "people who are whiter" Wasn't there some movement which actually argued that all land should be nationally held, and instead of an income tax, everyone would pay basically some rental tax because they didn't make that planet they were using, but they DID make/buy/whatever their various improvements?

Infinite Karma posted:

It's all pretty stupid to talk about in the modern day anyways. There isn't "virgin territory" anywhere on the planet anymore, even if there once was. A political philosophy based on gaining ownership of property by improving it is prima facie worthless - all the real property is already owned.

Wanamingo posted:

VitalSigns posted:

Drop the personal liberty vs economic liberty angle, we're only talking about economic liberty (unless you'd like to argue that slavery isn't a question of economic liberty?)

The thing I'm getting at, is that despite the lip service Libertarianism gives to personal liberty and economic freedom, when you look at what they actually value, low taxes is much more important than slavery. And it's not just the Cato list either, this came up in the discussion of Libertarian support for secessionists and the Southern Lost Cause from the last thread as well. Yeah Confederate slavery wasn't exactly good, but it's somehow a lesser evil compared to the Federal Reserve and the EPA and the 16th Amendment.

That's just slavery. That's not even getting into the personal liberty problems of modern-day secessionists, who believe Republic of Texas' lack of an income tax the most important thing, and sure we're jettisoning the US constitution's equal protection guarantee and the Supreme Court will no longer enjoin Texas from enforcing its horrible anti-gay and anti-woman laws but that's well worth it.

These are the kinds of things that drew me away from Libertarianism and toward progressivism. Despite the lip service to liberty and freedom, it seems like the most prominent Libertarians are perfectly happy to let bigots punch down at minorities or countenance horrific abuses by industry (like forced labor!) in exchange for a few percent lower taxes on the super-rich.

Don't just wave away Cato's rankings as bullshit, take a minute to think them over: what do they say about the real values of the Cato Institute if they make income taxes a higher priority than forced labor when talking about economic freedom?

jrodefeld posted:

What you are doing is spreading a gross caricature of libertarianism that says more about your own prejudices than it does about actual libertarian thought.

jrodefeld posted:

What you are doing is spreading a gross caricature of libertarianism that says more about your own prejudices than it does about actual libertarian thought. Libertarians care more about low taxes than slavery? Really? I guess we can forget about all the classical liberal abolitionist writings and the statements that repeatedly say that slavery is the most egregious violation of human liberty. This sounds like something progressives make up about libertarians while snuggled in their own tight-knit bubble of self-reinforcing ideologies. The sort of thing people who have never even spoken to a libertarian, let alone having read a single influential libertarian treatise, would make up. You HAVE been speaking to a libertarian and I can assume you've read a few things about libertarianism so you don't have the excuse of ignorance to fall back on.

It is grossly irresponsible to make a statement like "despite the lip service Libertarianism gives to personal liberty and economic freedom, when you look at what they actually value, low taxes are much more important than slavery." What are you basing this on? You already acknowledge that all libertarians say they strongly oppose slavery since it is a violation of the non-aggression principle and self ownership. Every decent person opposes slavery, it hardly need be said. The reason why some libertarians focus on economics is that most people are not very economically literate and much more work needs to be done to educate the masses about the value of economic liberty.

Now, regarding the Cato study. I've already written down the criteria they used in the rankings of economic liberty. If you want to learn more, here is the full PDF file of the report that goes into much greater detail:

http://www.freetheworld.com/2015/economic-freedom-of-the-world-2015.pdf


If there was a methodological error in the way the list was compiled, then you are more than willing to point it out. You ought to direct your critique to the authors at Cato. But at least you should be clear about the method used and scope of the study in question. None of these countries adhere to libertarianism all that closely. In ranking a list of non-libertarian countries, we can only cite countries that have specific policies that are libertarian and look at the effect of those policies in particular. Switzerland, for example, has a very libertarian foreign policy of neutrality, non-intervention and the lack of a standing army and military industrial complex. The Netherlands have fairly libertarian and tolerant drug and prostitution policies. And various nations like New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore have economic policies that are much closer to laissez-faire than most other nations. Conclusions can be drawn from singling out particular policies that are closer to libertarianism and looking at their effects. The fact that other policies in all these nations deviate from libertarianism doesn't impugn the character of the libertarian analyst who is trying to make sense of an un-free world. Just as the Marxist who ranked the worlds countries in accordance with their adherence to Marxists principles could hardly be brought to task for the various betrayals of Marxism that different nations had given that no currently existing nations align very well with those values.

For the record, the Cato Institute is far from my favorite libertarian think tank. Citing this study doesn't amount to a ringing endorsement of Cato or all of the writers there. But I think this list is pretty accurate judged on the whole. Look at the top 20 countries listed and compare them to the bottom 20 and you'd be hard pressed to argue that the top 20 are not much more economically free and prosperous than the bottom 20. Other libertarian organizations have released similar lists that rank different nations according to different libertarian criteria.

I'm trying to get off of this subject and speak about the libertarian principles I articulate. Fair enough? This is absolutely NOT worth the time you are investing in it.