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Humans act Many humans act in a way that is counter to their wellbeing (e.g. engaging in discourse with one of the lesser races) Therefore, humans cannot be trusted to act in their own best interest Only I can be trusted to act in the best interest of mankind Heil HHH
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Dec 22, 2015 19:49
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Muscle Tracer posted:Humans act I knew there was a reason he was in charge of The Authority.
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Dec 22, 2015 20:12
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Captain_Maclaine posted:I considered posting about starting a gofundme to crowdsource a bounty for someone else to put it in the wiki, does that count? Considering but not doing is consistent with being an "ideas guy," so I guess it counts.
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Dec 22, 2015 20:13
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Muscle Tracer posted:Humans act I can. I will. Belee dat.
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Dec 23, 2015 04:41
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Enjoy! https://youtu.be/wXPaYyi18_g
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Dec 24, 2015 04:59
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GunnerJ posted:The thing that is super disturbing is that they don't really consider these things problems. At times they may claim to, but this is connected by the pretense of "such is the unavoidable price of freedom, unfortunately..." to the reality of "well, the immiseration of inferiors for the benefit of superiors is the actual point, duh." I think this is what makes arguing with Libertarians so frustrating to me: The elevation of principles to the same moral level as observed historical realities. Take the Libertarian objections to the articles of the CRA dealing with desegregating private businesses. Rand Paul et al argue strenuously that the violation of a business' Freedom of Association is just as morally devastating as a person being denied goods and services on the basis of their skin color. Let's take housing as an example. Without regulation, mortgage lenders could deny a loan or offer a higher rate or adjustable rate, on the basis of race. Further, the company could restrict the areas in which it is willing to finance mortgages for certain skin colors, enacting a de facto racial segregation. This has the observable effect of impoverishing people relative to others on the basis of skin color, because 1) they pay more money for the same or inferior products, 2) their properties will necessarily be worth less money because the market for their sale has a hidden racial covenant, 3) their labor mobility is restricted, 4) their access to social goods is restricted, and so on. The obvious policy response is to make it illegal to discriminate in the provision of mortgages on the basis of race, and to erect an audit and enforcement regulatory regime. The Libertarian will say that our response is as bad or worse than the problem we're trying to solve. He does this by abstracting from an actual situation with quantifiable damages to a plane of philosophical principle, where damages are incalculable and catastrophic; how can you put a number on the loss of the Freedom of Association?? The Libertarian solution, of course, is that discriminatory businesses will be pressured by the profit motive to serve everyone equitably. Eventually, the businessman realizes he could increase his marketshare (ignoring the loss of racist patrons, who won't shop at a place that serves Negroes), or enlightened customers boycott the business and force a change (again, ignoring racist patrons who may overcompensate for the owner's losses). The problem is that this situation is not an anachronism of the Jim Crow South. Mortgage Redlining is the academic term, and it is found in cities all across America even today. I'll edit in a study of the MSP metro area when I'm not phoneposting. In fact, I guarantee that absent the CRA, plenty of people would operate perfectly successful businesses that explicitly refused to serve non-whites. Plenty of places likely do operate this way, even with laws against it. edit: This study by the University of Minnesota Law School shows some pretty strong evidence of redlining in the Twin Cities region. Basically, non-whites are much more likely to be given subprime mortgage terms than whites, even when controlling for income. In fact, very high income blacks are 4 times more likely to receive subprime rates than even low income whites. The same is true of loan origination denial: very high income blacks are substantially more likely to be denied a loan compared to low income whites. There is also evidence that living in a predominantly non-white area is detrimental to the fortunes of white loan applicants, relative to their statistical counterparts in predominantly white areas. The cost of this discrimination is quantified as well. When the housing market melted down in the Twin Cities, black homeowners suffered losses disproportionate to their statistical white counterparts, an average of $3,800 for black households vs $1,500 for white households. Grand Theft Autobot fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Jan 7, 2016 |
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Jan 7, 2016 01:50
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Even if you strip out the racism there's just plan rampant nepotism as well. White people are overall just plain wealthier and more powerful. This gives white people better access to the people who can give business loans or hook you up with a good job. Same goes for stuff like home loans; if you live two blocks from the white bank owner and graduated with his son you can be all like "hello person I have known forever, give me a loan please!" and have an easier time of it. Libertarian thought refuses to correct for that or even acknowledge that it exists. The theory is that a business will hire whichever person is the most profitable but that assumes perfect knowledge. If you have an rear end load of unknown candidates but your drinking buddy's kid needs a job and you know he isn't a slacker well...who do you hire? Hell sometimes you don't even need competence. "Hey I'm a high ranking executive and I say my son gets a job here so gently caress you if you disagree. Also, nobody ever criticize or fire him."
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Jan 7, 2016 05:12
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I worked at a bank 2009-2010 that had got into a mess of subprime loans because the previous CEO would hand out loans on the back of napkins at his favorite bar in Fargo. He got sacked and a new CEO was put in place. He hired his son, who was a classmate of mine in college, and I got brought in to handle collections and repossessions. They were both from the twin cities, and held that fact over the heads of the other employees as a sign of being enlightened and cultured compared to these ignorant country folk. They loathed making loans to anyone actually from the town we were in (even the well to do, because, eww, farmers); but we had to because we were an Ag Bank. I'm pretty sure we were all but officially red-lining whole swathes of Fargo, and Moorehead was basically off limits. I think the only Minnesota residents we ever gave a loan to, were rick folks taking a loan out against some very expensive jewelry (which I'm pretty sure the boss and his son "borrowed" a few times). If you lived within 5 miles of a mobile home or a field, you weren't getting a loan with us, basically. I have to get to work right now, but maybe later I'll recant my favorite story of casual racism from the CEO and his son.
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Jan 7, 2016 05:50
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Grand Theft Autobot posted:I think this is what makes arguing with Libertarians so frustrating to me: The elevation of principles to the same moral level as observed historical realities. This exact thing came up in an argument I had a long rear end time ago with one of them. He cited the right to freedom of association to excuse businessmen turning away black customers, and I asked, what about the right to participate in the economy? "There IS NO SUCH RIGHT." Like Jesus the dude went off. Then a few weeks later he posted some pissbaby quote from Bastiat or some other 19th century sage they love about how "right to access" is just the entitlement of parasites or some poo poo. It's actually better that blacks might end up in a situation where they are immiserated by society-wide prejudice than for a single property owner to be FORCED at GUNPOINT to take black peoples' money. This is just jrod's style of hard deontology in action. Abstract principles trumping observed reality is the name of the game. GunnerJ fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Jan 7, 2016 |
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Jan 7, 2016 06:00
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Hans Hermann Hoppe is a racist goat fucker. Molyneux is a misogynist. Murray Rothbard probably hosed children that he purchased. Jrodefeld should be along sometime soon. You can thank me later.
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Jan 7, 2016 06:04
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Even if you strip out the racism there's just plan rampant nepotism as well. White people are overall just plain wealthier and more powerful. This gives white people better access to the people who can give business loans or hook you up with a good job. Same goes for stuff like home loans; if you live two blocks from the white bank owner and graduated with his son you can be all like "hello person I have known forever, give me a loan please!" and have an easier time of it. This is technically not always true though. The point you're raising, about the structural economic benefits white people have due to historical racial injustice, came up earlier in the thread. jrod did acknowledge that this was a problem but he also refused to do anything about it because it would be too hard and would violate his abstract principles to try. I mean you're right overall, it's just interesting to observe all the revealing things they cook up as excuses to not do anything about the problems they acknowledge but refuse to address, while simultaneously making it out like the failure of any proposed solutions to meet their standard of morality is everyone's failure but theirs.
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Jan 7, 2016 06:08
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GunnerJ posted:This is technically not always true though. The point you're raising, about the structural economic benefits white people have due to historical racial injustice, came up earlier in the thread. jrod did acknowledge that this was a problem but he also refused to do anything about it because it would be too hard and would violate his abstract principles to try. I mean you're right overall, it's just interesting to observe all the revealing things they cook up as excuses to not do anything about the problems they acknowledge but refuse to address, while simultaneously making it out like the failure of any proposed solutions to meet their standard of morality is everyone's failure but theirs. He also talked about bullshit like "poor time preference" or the like to excuse blacks being poor. As in if blacks were more motivated they'd work harder than whites to compensate for their lack of resources but they don't so it's proof that they're inferior and lazy. It seriously read like that "If I Was a Poor Black Kid..." article from a few years back. Even if they acknowledge systemic racism the response is "well that's not the white man's mess to clean up now is it?" Well yeah it is because they loving made it in the first place.
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Jan 7, 2016 06:13
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The "higher time preference" thing is kinda complex honestly. Veiled racism is one aspect of it, justification for the right of capitalists to make a profit in general is another. Profiting off the work of employees is the reward for taking more time and risk to develop a business, while employees "trade" this profit margin for job security and more free time. There's a lot of reasons why this is dumb but thinking about it, large swaths of pro-capitalist discourse seem to rely on treating everything as a "preference," i.e., as optional in the way that employment really isn't.
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Jan 7, 2016 06:22
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GunnerJ posted:The "higher time preference" thing is kinda complex honestly. Veiled racism is one aspect of it, justification for the right of capitalists to make a profit in general is another. Profiting off the work of employees is the reward for taking more time and risk to develop a business, while employees "trade" this profit margin for job security and more free time. There's a lot of reasons why this is dumb but thinking about it, large swaths of pro-capitalist discourse seem to rely on treating everything as a "preference," i.e., as optional in the way that employment really isn't. They also fail to ignore the fact that some people just flat out don't have the same opportunities. Oh yes I'd much prefer to be able to start my dream business but I don't have the money to do so. My options right now are "sell my time to somebody else" or "probably become homeless and die of exposure." Time preference has nothing to do with it; I can't easily earn money until somebody offers me a job.
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Jan 7, 2016 06:27
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YF19pilot posted:I worked at a bank 2009-2010 that had got into a mess of subprime loans because the previous CEO would hand out loans on the back of napkins at his favorite bar in Fargo. He got sacked and a new CEO was put in place. He hired his son, who was a classmate of mine in college, and I got brought in to handle collections and repossessions. They were both from the twin cities, and held that fact over the heads of the other employees as a sign of being enlightened and cultured compared to these ignorant country folk. Yes, please do. Your job experience sounds awful and hilarious. edit: Also sounds like liberal lies! How could your bank possibly have stayed in business with such discriminatory practices?? Surely the free market would have shut you down. Grand Theft Autobot fucked around with this message at 14:06 on Jan 7, 2016 |
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Jan 7, 2016 13:22
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YF19pilot posted:I worked at a bank 2009-2010 that had got into a mess of subprime loans because the previous CEO would hand out loans on the back of napkins at his favorite bar in Fargo. He got sacked and a new CEO was put in place. He hired his son, who was a classmate of mine in college, and I got brought in to handle collections and repossessions. They were both from the twin cities, and held that fact over the heads of the other employees as a sign of being enlightened and cultured compared to these ignorant country folk. I live for this voyeuristic look at the acts of horrible people so please do
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Jan 7, 2016 13:23
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Caros posted:Hans Hermann Hoppe is a racist goat fucker. Molyneux is a misogynist. Murray Rothbard probably hosed children that he purchased. Is there even one single leading libertarian "thinker" who isn't a piece of bigoted poo poo?
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Jan 7, 2016 14:13
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Who What Now posted:Is there even one single leading libertarian "thinker" who isn't a piece of bigoted poo poo? I'm sure there is one. I don't know who that would be but there has to be. Right?
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Jan 7, 2016 14:53
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Who What Now posted:Is there even one single leading libertarian "thinker" who isn't a piece of bigoted poo poo? Even if there were, it is incredibly hard to divorce the true believers from those exploiting the language and arguments for the sake of a segregationist agenda. For example, in the former CSA, there is a clear line moving from neo-Nazi organizations like the Columbians and the revived KKK using violence to prevent blacks from moving to "white" neighborhoods, to the more respectable Neighborhood Preservation Organizations trying to prevent white-to-black residential transition through buybacks, racial covenants, gentleman's agreements with black realtists (only whites could be Realtors, lol), and political pressure, using arguments about "Freedom of Association" (and the occasional firebomb, naturally). Neighborhood groups often had the exact same membership as the KKK, and the same goals. The only difference was they learned how to phrase the tenets of White Supremacy in a socially acceptable way. That's why you see tons of bigots show up to libertarian rallies about Freedom of Association and other bullshit. They hear the dogwhistle white supremacy loud and clear. Frankly, the association makes it almost impossible to distinguish the bigots from the abstract moralists.
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Jan 7, 2016 15:09
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Grand Theft Autobot posted:Yes, please do. Your job experience sounds awful and hilarious. Ron Paul Atreides posted:I live for this voyeuristic look at the acts of horrible people so please do Since you asked twice, I'll give you two stories. First one I knew at the time was loving terrible. Second one I only realized in hindsight how bad it was. First... We had repossessed a Chevy Suburban and it had passed the 10 business days/14 calendar days the debtor had to pay off the loan and get the car back. Which means we can flip it. Everyone working the fields magically know when the bank is getting ready to sell a truck, so they usually sell the first day we have them up. This time it's two Hispanic men. There aren't a ton of Hispanic folk up this neck of the woods, so they're likely migrant workers here for the season. I get the task of writing them up and taking their money, making sure everyone signs on the line and dots their t's and cross their i's and the such. Naturally, I start chit chatting with the guy giving me the cash, and he tells me he's from Comanche or Goldthwaite; I forget which but it's a small rear end town in the middle of Texas, spitting distance from where my dad grew up. Small world. He tells me he's got the same model-year suburban back home that was in a wreck, but 100,000 less miles on it, engine swap, I mention my uncle is a welder and to look him up, general small town bullshit like we were loving neighbors and poo poo. Wrap things up, he gets the keys and he's off. My day is made, because how cool is it to meet a random stranger from the same neck of the woods as my old man. Boss's son comes out of his dad's office looking smug as hell, and says, "You'll never see that truck again." Me: How do you mean?  Heh, it's going to go to a Mexican chop shop and get parted out. Me: Uh, that guy's from the same area of Texas as my dad. Hell, he probably played football against my dad's high school. Yeah, whatever. It's going to Mexico and getting tore apart and the parts sold on the black market. He says in the most condescending "you, poor naive fool" voice.I'm more or less speechless and bewildered, because it was such a brazenly racist thing to say, from a friend of mine who knows that my dad is Hispanic (and I have a Hispanic family name, too). His dad comes out of his office not a moment later, and I swear it was the same loving conversation word-for-word except he added "or he's smuggling cocaine from Columbia". Number two... Another repossession, this time a Pontiac Grand Am (or Grand Prix, it was a 4 door), the debtor being described to me by the father as "some kind of foreign exchange student, probably from Kenya or whatever." Debtors are always angry when you take their stuff (understandably), guy calls us up, I chat with him on the phone, because the boss's son had already talked to the guy once before (and is completely incapable of not turning a phone conversation into a shouting match). He had left something very important in the car, and that's what's causing him to get ticked off about having his car (legally) stolen. Conversation is heated and tense (because Customer Service is not in our nature) then he says something stupid like "what if there was a bomb in the car?!" I know he's being rhetorical, so I don't really give two shits except to tell him that if he wants the stuff in his car he needs to come to the bank and our hours are 9am-5pm. (The bank was situated an hour outside of Fargo/about a 60 mile drive one way, so it's not a small matter of having a friend run you by). I let boss and son know about the arrangements to come by and pick up personal items, and boss and son start going in on about "these loving rich kids from Kenya or Somalia, children of warlords, think they can get away with anything because they have daddy's money, loving Obama letting his relatives in, probably has drugs in the car and that's why he's so desperate to get his stuff, probably needs to make a delivery/owes a debt to a dealer." I mention the bomb comment and...I don't know the word for it. Like a mixture of disappointment that I wasn't recording the conversation and like relishing in the excitement of turning this guy over to Homeland Security and being deported and how "that'll sure teach him!" Next day, guy came in with three of his buddies, and they paid off the loan, got the car back. Bossman and son making more jokes about how the guys this kid brought with him were probably drug dealers who were needing their stash car back and were going to whack the kid for getting the car repossessed or some dumb poo poo like that, and how it's too bad we couldn't get him deported over his comment to me on the phone. Anyways, probably a month later I learned about the Lost Boys of Sudan and the fact that a few of them live and go to college in Fargo (I think there's a sizable community in the twin cities, too, if I'm not mistaken). Basically, there was a real chance that this kid and his friends were part of the Lost Boys. I still feel loving dirty thinking that the whole situation was a hair trigger away from sending some poor kid back to a hell that he escaped from and I would've played no small part in making it happen. And the lack of logic of some "rich spoiled kid" barely able to keep up payments on a loan for a loving Pontiac Grand Am. Definitely a lesson learned in "you don't know who you know," in more ways than one. Thankfully my time working with the bank came to an abrupt end about a month or two after that incident. Actually looking back and thinking about half the poo poo we did, I can start to see the subtle things I didn't see at the time. Connecting things together paints a certain picture, it's just unfortunate I couldn't see it while I was actually working there. First job out of college, and I was naive enough to think everything we did was justified and above board.
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Jan 7, 2016 17:24
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gently caress. Yeah, there are a ton of refugees in the Twin Cities from all over the place. My family took in Hmong refugees when I was small. My wife teaches a lot of immigrants from Somalia. One kid's dad lives and works in Somalia and sends money to the family living here. Of course, everyone who hears that says "I bet it's blood money he earns as a terrorist!" or poo poo about being a warlord. Turns out the guy is some kind of banker. Imagine that, international banker sends family to live in a quiet afluent neighborhood in a city historically known for its acceptance of refugees and immigrants. Nope, he must be a terrorist because he's black/foreign.
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Jan 7, 2016 17:34
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For these two, everyone not rich, white, and from the Twin Cities were doing some kind of drug smuggling.
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Jan 7, 2016 17:43
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Who What Now posted:Is there even one single leading libertarian "thinker" who isn't a piece of bigoted poo poo?
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Jan 7, 2016 17:48
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YF19pilot posted:For these two, everyone not rich, white, and from the Twin Cities were doing some kind of drug smuggling. Well, as bankers, how else do they think they get their coke?
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Jan 7, 2016 17:57
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Guilty Spork posted:I've noticed that while there are libertarians who are decent enough, every libertarian "thinker," everyone who espouses theories and publishes articles and such in the name of libertarianism or its many minor variants, is just awful and out of touch with reality. Pretty much. I always like to point back to jrod's list of thinkers from the previous thread for this. He throws out about 20 names and the vast majority are the well known racist poo poo bags. Then there are a handful who I genuinely don't know much about, and that is because jrod has never referenced their ideas or articles in the thread. I fully believe h just googled a list of libertarians so that he could put up names that he knew I wouldn't object to.
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Jan 7, 2016 18:11
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Who What Now posted:Is there even one single leading libertarian "thinker" who isn't a piece of bigoted poo poo? Kind of impossible, isn't it? You'd have to be a piece of poo poo, and already agree with the horrible outcomes, or* an idiot to spend a lot of your life thinking about libertarian ... philosophy (with apologies to philosophy) and not realize the massive problems; no one is going to reference the works of Hans "Stupid as the sun is big" Herman Hoppe as a leading libertarian thinker. *not an exclusive 'or'.
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Jan 7, 2016 19:50
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Caros posted:Pretty much. I always like to point back to jrod's list of thinkers from the previous thread for this. The year is 2062, the day is September 22. By the graces of the GoldmanSachsStandard(TM) INVISIBLE HAND OF THE FREE MARKET, the Illinois local magistrate, Ronwell Paulington Rand Rothbard IV, representing the "Northern Suburban, but Not So Far North as to Include Poor and/or Black People" community of the American Confederation of Independent, Loosely Aligned, Decentralized, Deregulated, FREE, AND PROSPEROUS Communities opens the remembrance ceremony for the day JRod, TRUE GOON HERO AND SAVIOR OF AMERICAN LIBERTARIANISM, showed all those silly SJWs, Leftists, and NAIVE SHEEPLE the error of their ways. He walks to the podium to begin his speech. He clears his throat and intones, "Who is John Galt? This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who loves his life...."   That is a completely overblown characterization, but it has similar features of a libertarian utopia. The notion of property rights, clearly maligned and thoroughly countered throughout this thread, carries the same hallmark issues and holes as the rest of libertarian ideology: unexamined starting points and first principles. Where do property rights come from, why should we believe they are necessary basis for society? That question is not ever really answered by libertarians and certainly not by JRod. Oh sure, they might tell us that the western property rights slowly evolved in Western Culture from Greece/Rome through the "Dark Ages" to the point in the 15-17th century where it became a central, thematic point of legal, economic, and political systems. But a genealogy of the rise of property rights and, in parallel fashion, that of contract and rights based sovereignty does not explain why it is valued or even necessary. And that's my main problem, a property rights/classical liberal system of economics and politics. It arose in different ways, through various contingent circumstances. That it arose this way, through these particular circumstances does not mean that it is good, justifiable, or even that it works. I'm a big reader of Foucault and a point he makes in an interview in 1981 about his approach history is this: “It was a question, then, of making things more fragile through this type of historical analysis, or rather showing at once why and how those things could be constituted in this way, but at the same time showing that they were constituted through a precise history. It is necessary to show at once the logic of things—or if you will, the logic of the strategies within which things were produced—and, at the same time, to show that they were only strategies and that, as a result, by changing a certain number of things, by changing strategy, by looking at things differently, what appeared evident is no longer so" (May 7, 1981) This poo poo didn't just pop up from nowhere. Property rights aren't just how the world works.  How the world works is constantly, and has constantly been, renegotiated and reconfigured over and over and over again.
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Jan 7, 2016 20:37
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Who What Now posted:Is there even one single leading libertarian "thinker" who isn't a piece of bigoted poo poo? I think we've mentioned Robert Nozick in these threads as being as close to a Good Libertarian as can be reasonably achieved, but nobody involved in any of these discussions is an actual follower. JRod doesn't like him because he explicitly attacks the AnCap style stuff on the same grounds that we do, and the rest of us don't like him because he still falls into stupid libertarian idea-traps like "voluntary slavery." Also he started backing off on his libertarianism later in life, but eh.
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Jan 8, 2016 00:20
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Nolanar posted:I think we've mentioned Robert Nozick in these threads as being as close to a Good Libertarian as can be reasonably achieved, but nobody involved in any of these discussions is an actual follower. JRod doesn't like him because he explicitly attacks the AnCap style stuff on the same grounds that we do, and the rest of us don't like him because he still falls into stupid libertarian idea-traps like "voluntary slavery." Also he started backing off on his libertarianism later in life, but eh. Nozick's other philosophy is also really interesting. Read some of his epistemology stuff sometime.
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Jan 8, 2016 21:16
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Who What Now posted:Is there even one single leading libertarian "thinker" who isn't a piece of bigoted poo poo? Milton Friedman? He's so kind heart.
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Jan 8, 2016 21:18
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Who What Now posted:Is there even one single leading libertarian "thinker" who isn't a piece of bigoted poo poo? No. The answer is no.
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Jan 10, 2016 10:25
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Hi y’all. Hope everyone had a good holiday season. Personally, I was quite busy and family obligations kept me away from things I otherwise would have been doing. The reason I sometimes post sporadically on here is that I have an active social and professional life and, as much as I might want to, posting on internet forums merely to satisfy my desire for intellectually stimulating debate simply has to be sacrificed when more pressing matters are at hand. With that said, let me reiterate my desire to have a written debate with one of you, one on one, where hopefully a more fully fleshed out discussion can take place. I have to find the time to dedicate to the exercise because I don’t want to short-change my positions. I can accept one poster at a time, with a clear topic and a defined time limit, which as I proposed, should be about three days. I think Caros had first dibs on a debate with me. In the meantime, however, I’d like to continue with a discussion I was having with Caros the last time I posted here. I was again pushing back against him for the narrative that he told whereby he abandoned libertarian ideas after the death of his friend due to her inability to pay for the healthcare that presumably would have cured the disease and allowed her to live a normal lifespan or at least many more years. This is a personal tragedy that I empathize with and I think that every well-meaning person wants a reasonable standard of medical care to be available to all people so premature deaths due to an inability to receive a medical intervention are either eliminated or reduced to the greatest possible degree. Where I sharply disagree is the baseless insinuation that the inability of the United States medical care system to adequately provide options for people like Caros’s friend implicates a rebuttal of libertarian ideology. This means one of two things. Either Caros never really understood libertarian ideology, or at least didn’t during the time when he identified as a libertarian, or the emotional trauma of losing a close friend was so great that a logical re-evaluation of his positions was not possible. I’m not saying that there are no good reasons for abandoning libertarianism. However, the reasons that Caros has thus far provided as to his initial abandonment of the ideology are absurd. Even a cursory examination of the literature would reveal that libertarian thinkers have been harshly critical of the United States healthcare system for decades. The United States has not had anything resembling a free market in medical care (with a few notable exceptions) for at least fifty to sixty years. Health care is one of the most heavily regulated and distorted markets in the US economy, with massive amounts of State expropriated and redistributed tax dollars flooding into subsidies, welfare programs, research projects, and crony capitalist coffers (pharmaceutical and insurance companies). In fact, the healthcare system in the United States is actually far closer to the Canadian or UK healthcare systems than it is to a libertarian-proposed alternative. I want to now state my understanding of the situation with Caros’s friend, why I believe she was unable to acquire the needed healthcare services at an affordable price, and why I am convinced that she would have been far better off with an actual libertarian free-market medical care system. As I understand it, Caros’s friend was young and previously relatively healthy. I am assuming under forty years of age with decades left to live. For whatever reason, she didn’t have health insurance before becoming ill and, once she became ill, she could not find insurance due to her pre-existing condition. If I recall correctly, I believe that the illness was some form or variety of cancer. Now, with being unable to get insurance, she could not find any way to pay the exorbitant costs of the medical care that was needed to beat the illness. I am assuming that the intervention involved surgery and/or chemo and prescription drugs. I will also make the reasonable assumption that she would have been willing to pay every cent she had to purchase the surgery and/or drugs that had a good chance of curing the illness. Yet, even with all that, including the help of family and good friends like Caros, the cost for the treatment was simply insurmountable. Many tens of thousands of dollars? Even into six figures? Do I have the essentials of this story correct? If not, please correct me. Now, to my mind, your friend died due to the lack of a free market in medical care not because we don’t have total healthcare socialism. The problems with the American medical care system have to do with a century of State interventions, artificial price inflation, regulatory restrictions that reduce the number and variety of medical care services on the market, patent laws on pharmaceutical drugs coupled with prohibitions on the free importation of drugs manufactured in other countries, a systematic crackdown on mutual aid societies and charity hospitals and a near-elimination on price competition that is inevitable when you have a third party payer system such that patients and doctors don’t negotiate on price and most doctors don’t have to compete with other doctors on price to entice consumers. For you, Caros, to believe that this extent of State intervention and distortion in the healthcare sector of the economy constitutes an approximation of libertarian policies can only mean that you don’t know much of anything about libertarianism. You’ve demonstrated that you know the names of major libertarian thinkers and have shown some familiarity with their work, yet perhaps you’ve been too busy trying to “out the racists” and find ways to classify libertarians as bigots, sexists, homophobes, or whatever than in comprehending the economic arguments on their own merits. Let me run down a few reasons why your friend would have been much better off in a libertarian society than in either a fascistic corporatist State-distorted healthcare system like in the United States or in a left-socialist healthcare system like in Canada. The primary reason your friend died was that prices were too high. Had market forces brought prices down such that medical treatment options were available to people who are middle or lower income, then your friend likely would have been able to get the drugs, the surgery and she would still be with us today. When I mentioned a while ago that State intervention had caused artificial and excessive price inflation in medical care, astoundingly I was met with incredulity. Even this elementary economics point that even the most mainstream of economists and political commentators concede was met with push back. “No, it’s all technological advance that has caused the skyrocketing price inflation” was the common retort. Yet I heard only crickets when I point out the obvious fact that technological progress has occurred in every major sector of the economy, yet prices for ever better and more advanced goods and services stay stable or even come down, at least in the most free sectors of the US economy. I had an MRI and a blood panel done about a year ago. I have insurance fortunately, but do you know how much those two diagnostic tests cost? The MRI was about $8000 and the blood work was about $800. Do you honestly believe these are market prices? That if insurance and State third party payers were not available that the hospitals and laboratories that administer these tests would continue to charge an exorbitant price that would severely limit the number of potential customers? If you believe that, I’ve got some beach front property in North Dakota I’d like to sell you. This is actually not just an abstract and speculative discussion. We have actual examples of areas of medicine that are still relatively free market. Lasik eye surgery is one example. Prices continue to decline while the effectiveness of the procedure continues to advance and improve. You can now cure many kinds of vision problems for under $2000. Cosmetic surgery is another example. Technology has similarly advanced in cosmetic surgery yet prices have fallen which is in stark contrast to much of insurance-covered, State-regulated and subsidized healthcare. There are even areas in medicine where maverick doctors have found ways to get out from the burden of insurance and State regulations to deal in a purely free market. I’ve mentioned it before, but the Oklahoma Surgery Center is a very good example of how many common surgical procedures could be made available to people as affordable, out-of-pocket expenditures in a free market. The cost savings in comparison to third party payer based hospitals are dramatic. I encourage you to look at their website and look at the price for various surgical procedures. Here is the website and I encourage you to peruse the prices charged for various surgical procedures: http://surgerycenterok.com/ The prices offered for the range of surgical procedures varies between $1500 for very simple operations to about $10,000 for the most complicated vascular/heart surgeries. For roughly the same price as a new OLED flat screen television, a consumer could get a complete repair of a torn rotator cuff or an anterior cruciate ligament repair. The prices charged at other hospitals that rely primarily on insurance and/or State payments is many, many times higher. The cost savings are quite evident and prices have thus far come down to where a regular middle class family could simply pay for a needed procedure out of pocket, eschewing any third party payer bureaucracy. If your friend had access to a free-market surgical center that provided procedures for cancer (tumor excision for one example) and the cost was less than $10,000 I feel fairly confident that she would have been able to get the money needed for such treatment even without access to insurance. Similarly, if there were no restrictions on the importation of cancer-treatment drugs, no monopoly patent grants to exclusive manufacture and sale by the US government and thus free price competition was available for drug and radiation treatments for various types of cancer treatments, then prices would similarly have fallen through the floor and been accessible to many more people in need. But it is not only surgical procedures that stand to see massive cost savings in a free market. Let me tell you about Dr Josh Umbehr, who runs a concierge family practice in Wichita, Kansas. A while ago, he was interviewed by Tom Woods on his podcast but I’d had heard of him before that. His story is yet another concrete example of the unbelievable cost savings that can be seen when people are able to escape the bureaucratic bondage of insurance companies and State regulations to operate in a mostly free market. Here is a link to the Tom Woods Show episode where he is interviewed: http://tomwoods.com/podcast/ep-481-how-capitalism-can-fix-health-care/ And here is the link to the website of Dr Umbehr: http://atlas.md/wichita/ Pay careful attention to the pricing system that is offered to patients. Here is an excerpt from that page: quote:Our Fees These prices are not for a single visit, mind you. This is a monthly fee whereby a patient has unlimited access to the doctor no matter what type of medical condition they might have. So if you become very ill and need to see the doctor a bunch of times in one month, you are not charged anything extra for the visits or for routine procedures. The monthly cost for unlimited medical care is less than most monthly cell phone bills. Are you starting to understand the sort of cost savings that can be realized in a free market? Now, if you dismiss these two dramatic examples of libertarian success in delivering healthcare much cheaper and more effectively as I am sure you will attempt to do, you had better have a very persuasive argument as to why such successes are to be discounted rather than emulated. There are dozens of similar success stories of doctors and hospitals that find pockets of economic freedom in the United States and are somehow able to get out from under the boot of State coercion and bureaucratic excess and provide a path forward in solving our medical care crisis. I want to keep this particular post brief, but I could go on and on about the history of fraternal orders and mutual aid societies that were able to effectively provide healthcare services for the poor and working class in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many doctors felt threatened by the mutual aid model of providing healthcare and lobbied the government to enact rules and regulations that would limit the ability of doctors to provide their services in such a way to the poor. By the mid 1920s, mutual aid societies were finding themselves unable to cope with ever increasing State regulatory burdens and other restrictions placed upon them by organized corporate medicine, who sought monopolistic privilege by lobbying the State. I recommend David Beito’s great book “From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967” http://www.amazon.com/From-Mutual-Aid-Welfare-State/dp/0807848417 Here is a summary of the book: quote:During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, more Americans belonged to fraternal societies than to any other kind of voluntary association, with the possible exception of churches. Despite the stereotypical image of the lodge as the exclusive domain of white men, fraternalism cut across race, class, and gender lines to include women, African Americans, and immigrants. Exploring the history and impact of fraternal societies in the United States, David Beito uncovers the vital importance they had in the social and fiscal lives of millions of American families. I already know what your response will be. Without actually reading this book or learning a bit about the history of such fraternal orders, you will nevertheless argue that such societies could never cover the needs of everyone in society and, thus, the welfare State is needed. Leaving aside the obvious fact that such a counter-factual history is hard to prove (what would have happened if social welfare programs had not crowded out private charity efforts during the progressive era and instead the mutual aid model had been allowed to expand and proliferate as the economy grew?), the indisputable fact is that fraternal orders were very successful for those that had access to them and such mutual aid societies are no longer with us. If this model were allowed to exist in contemporary America by eliminating licensing requirements, regulations, and other State restrictions, mutual aid societies could again be available and would, at the very least, alleviate SOME of the problem by providing needed social services to those who still could not afford the drastically lower free market prices that would certainly exist as the examples of the Oklahoma Surgery Center and Dr Umbehr’s family practice prove. So Caros, I’d ask you to now, in light of the overwhelming evidence that the healthcare system in the United States over the past fifty years has nothing to do with any proposed libertarian solution, to either admit to making a gross error in thinking that it did when you rejecting your previous libertarian beliefs. Or you are free to elaborate on your reasons for rejecting it but the experience with losing your friend, as emotionally distressing as that no doubt was, provides absolutely no argument against libertarianism whatsoever. Your concession to this fact would mean we are at least making progress.
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Jan 17, 2016 19:38
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gently caress you, Jrod, you loving slime. You ignorant piece of poo poo. gently caress you. Your callousness and sociopathic lack of empathy is appalling.
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Jan 17, 2016 19:50
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Who What Now posted:gently caress you, Jrod, you loving slime. You ignorant piece of poo poo. gently caress you. Your callousness and sociopathic lack of empathy is appalling.
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Jan 17, 2016 19:53
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Jrod, maybe your posts and opinions would be better if you regulated them.
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Jan 17, 2016 19:53
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Wait what, Jrod ignoring salient points in favor of paragraphs of things that only favor the just so? gently caress you Jrod.
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Jan 17, 2016 19:55
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Hey Jrod, go gently caress yourself
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Jan 17, 2016 19:56
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Wanamingo posted:Hey Jrod, go gently caress yourself No, no, no, it's watermelons. Get it right. Sheesh.
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Jan 17, 2016 19:57
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You know I had almost forgotten this side of you. I had almost put on the rose-colored glasses in my mind and saw you only as a clown to be laughed at. But here you come roaring back into our lives, all too willing to just poo poo all over the death of someone's friend. To use it as a loving nail in your pseudo-intellectual bat with which to beat someone over the head with like a loving uneducated barbarian. You little poo poo. You miserable loving pile of failed abortions. Thats you're idea of a thrilling intellectual debate? Using a person's tragic death as a rhetorical attack? You're a loving blight, a goddamn festering pus-filled boil on society's rear end. You give nothing of worth to humanity, and we would be a better world without you in it. You goddamn worthless waste of breath.
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Jan 17, 2016 20:06
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I'm not reading all that. 
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Jan 17, 2016 20:08
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