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jrodefeld posted:Yeah, I didn't think it would be in any way out of bounds for me to mention the death of your friend since you volunteered that information and you mentioned that it was the major catalyst that caused you to abandon libertarian thought, which makes it pretty relevant to the discussion we are having about the merits of libertarianism. Attacking me on this is just a cheap way for other posters to act indignant and oh-so offended. Actually it is substantial proof. People who travel to the us are the wealthy who want to skip any sort of treatment delay no matter how small, deal with unapproved and quack treatments and so forth. The US has 45,000 people die annually due to issues as small as dental abscess that can be solved with a two dollar bottle of pills. Comparing medical tourism to your countries blatant failure to provide medical care us dishonest. Furthermore I have to ask... Why the gently caress are you about socialized medicine if even you agree you have no idea of a concept as basic as "do cancer patients get treatment in canada"? The answer is yes by the way.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:46
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jrodefeld posted:To be clear, I don't think I can argue the fact that your friend would have been able to receive some sort of treatment in Canada. I'll have to trust you, considering that you have looked into this specific fact a lot more than I have. But I do think this is a poor argument in comparing two systems by using a single anecdote. I could pull up anecdotes about people in Canada who had to come down here to get any sort of decent medical treatment, depending on the specific problem they were having. It doesn't prove very much. Alright, let's skip the anecdotes: Are you denying the fact that people in america die of treatable illnesses more than other industrialized nations?
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Jan 18, 2016 23:49
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jrodefeld posted:Never heard that expression? The joke is that there is no beachfront property in North Dakota, but if you are gullible enough to believe the poo poo you believe, then you might be gullible enough to think that there is. Another variation is "if you believe that, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you". "If you believe that, I've got some land in Chile to sell you."
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Jan 18, 2016 23:52
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spoon0042 posted:
Property rights are necessary because we live in a world of scarcity. Human needs are essentially infinite and the resources needed to satisfy those needs are scarce. Therefore, conflict is inevitable. Conflict arises when two or more people want to use a scarce resource for achieving different goals. Thus, rules dictating which person has the better claim to determine the use of which scarce resources become necessary. Property rights are what has emerged out of this observable reality of scarcity and the desire to reduce and resolve conflict so human civilization can be possible You should care about property rights if you care about human civilization and social welfare on any level whatsoever. The point of this particular thread is to highlight the fact that it is not some irrational fetish that libertarians have for property rights, but rather a desire to best deal with the reality of scarcity and try our best to solve the problem of scarcity in the interest of best satisfying our human needs. If we conquered scarcity (which will likely never be possible), the price of everything would drop to $0 and private property rights outside of our physical bodies would be meaningless and we'd live in essentially a garden of eden where all human wants can be simultaneously satisfied. Money and prices measure scarcity. The more scarce a good is, the higher its price generally speaking. The more abundant something is, the lower its price. So if you say that governments can magically decree that healthcare is now "free", what you are saying is that healthcare can become superabundant and post-scarce merely by official decree, because that is the only way anything ever truly becomes free. But to the contrary, since healthcare services must still be produced in a costly way, the true price to consumers is merely disguised and unnecessary inefficiencies and limitation on supply are introduced into the system. Thus healthcare actually becomes MORE expensive as national debts pile up and up, more taxes are levied on the consumer and the currency is ever devalued to monetize the debt. To conquer scarcity, we need the production side of the equation to become less costly and more efficient. The cheaper and more abundant a consumer good can be produced, the cheaper the price will be to the consumer. This is what we should be encouraging. Capital accumulation and reinvestment into improvements in capital equipment, new factories and manufacturing methods are the way in which prices are reduced. By taxing away profits from companies, States only retard this process and make consumer goods and services more expensive than they otherwise would be. Capital accumulation, commonly known as "savings", only occur when the saver has a legally recognized right to that property. Otherwise he wouldn't bother to save. The only rational system of property rights acquisition that exists is to show deference to the first owner of a scarce resource as having the better claim than a latter user unless or until he voluntarily parts with it through transaction, gift or abandonment. If the first user didn't have the right to use any scarce resources plucked out of nature, we would have all died out because we wouldn't have been able to act. In short, property rights are essential for dealing with the fact of scarcity and allowing for the accumulation of capital and the division of labor which is precisely the reason why humanity was able to rise above a subsistence level and produce modern civilization. So it's pretty loving important.
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Jan 18, 2016 23:59
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jrodefeld posted:Property rights are necessary because we live in a world of scarcity. Human needs are essentially infinite and the resources needed to satisfy those needs are scarce. Therefore, conflict is inevitable. Conflict arises when two or more people want to use a scarce resource for achieving different goals. Thus, rules dictating which person has the better claim to determine the use of which scarce resources become necessary. Property rights are what has emerged out of this observable reality of scarcity and the desire to reduce and resolve conflict so human civilization can be possible HI! I'm jrodefeld! I am here to debate with people! This is why I skip all substantive replies and questions and instead respond to posts that consist of "lol and property rights are dumb. I'm glad to see you admitting that property rights dont just naturally exist but are the result of people attempting to stave off might makes right. I am however sad that you still think the only 'rational' view that people can use to determine who owns what is based entirely on who called 'dibs' and that the same people who agreed in the first place that 'dibs' allowed one person to claim something can't later collectively decide that system is flawed in the modern age. Your thinking is literally childlike on this issue.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:05
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SedanChair posted:Because their surgeons have to be certified by THE STATE just like everybody else. This is no argument against what I was saying whatsoever! Yes, and the doctors had to drive on government roads to get to the hospital too. The State exists and we all have to deal with it. But in most respects, the people in charge of the Oklahoma Surgery Center have been able to eschew most third party involvement in their practice and market directly to consumers. They are the MOST free market oriented surgery center that I am aware of in the United States and the result of their efforts is tremendous cost savings over State and Insurance funded hospitals. Are you disputing this evident fact? We can have a separate argument over whether the State ought to be certified by the State, or whether a private institution could do the licensing but that is a separate issue.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:08
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jrodefeld posted:This is no argument against what I was saying whatsoever! Yes, and the doctors had to drive on government roads to get to the hospital too. The State exists and we all have to deal with it. But in most respects, the people in charge of the Oklahoma Surgery Center have been able to eschew most third party involvement in their practice and market directly to consumers. They are the MOST free market oriented surgery center that I am aware of in the United States and the result of their efforts is tremendous cost savings over State and Insurance funded hospitals. A state-regulated instrument of the state being more efficient (for a given argument of efficiency) than some other state-regulated instrument of the state is not an argument for any product of the free market.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:10
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jrodefeld posted:This is no argument against what I was saying whatsoever! Yes, and the doctors had to drive on government roads to get to the hospital too. The State exists and we all have to deal with it. But in most respects, the people in charge of the Oklahoma Surgery Center have been able to eschew most third party involvement in their practice and market directly to consumers. They are the MOST free market oriented surgery center that I am aware of in the United States and the result of their efforts is tremendous cost savings over State and Insurance funded hospitals. They don't eschew it, they love it. They love paying taxes, driving on roads and having state standards for certification. Libertarians don't have any solutions for how to provide these essential services because if they did, they'd have done it by now. Libertarians are airy, abstruse theoreticians who lose to statists every time. Then they release audiobooks that are 12 straight hours of crying about it. Libertarians prefer to live in a world of dreams, rather than the real world. In the real world, the state is king and the best solution. Have a better idea? Do it, don't cry about it.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:19
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We make fun of jrodefeld for mentioning the Oklahoma Surgery but his elective lobotomy has been a fantastic success and clearly hasn't bankrupted him.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:23
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Tesseraction posted:We make fun of jrodefeld for mentioning the Oklahoma Surgery but his elective lobotomy has been a fantastic success and clearly hasn't bankrupted him. His pirated bluray business did fold, so maybe not.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:30
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To be honest if he gets bankrupted by an intellectual property lawsuit I think many of us would be injured for weeks if not months from the laughter. Luckily most of us have UHC to help us cope with the broken ribs / low blood oxygen from shallow breaths.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:32
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Tesseraction posted:We make fun of jrodefeld for mentioning the Oklahoma Surgery but his elective lobotomy has been a fantastic success and clearly hasn't bankrupted him. If intellectual deficits were monetary debt, the US' affluence would have caused it to implode in on itself due to the vast ignorance libertarian ideology permits. When government is functioning perfectly, no one notices its there, it is libertarian utopia, every notch of regulation created thereafter is more oppressive to freedom of action. Ergo, the state is a creation of the free market, has nothing to do with rationality and should be treated accordingly.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:32
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The concept of anarcho-capitalist systems is just the tyranny of the state under the disguise of the free market.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:33
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QuarkJets posted:We, society, ask that you pay your taxes so that we can give medical care to everyone who needs it. There, that wasn't so hard. No "society" doesn't "ask" me to pay my taxes to give medical care to others. I don't understand why clear language is so hard for some of you to grasp. If I don't have the option of saying "no" without being forcefully thrown in a cage, you are not "asking" me anything. You are threatening me and using violence to fund your idea of social welfare. Even if ALL the taxes expropriated by the State went to social welfare for the poor it wouldn't justify the use of aggression in order to get the funding. The ends don't justify the means. But, considering that most of the tax revenue goes not towards social welfare services, but towards all kinds of moral enormities with no redeeming value, you have even less of a leg to stand on. My tax dollars go towards overthrowing and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade, to subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Pharma and bailing out the banks on Wall Street. It goes towards drone bombing third world nations, inciting hatred and blowback which results in a rise in terrorism against us. It goes towards military industrial complex boondoggles like building unneeded and unused fighter jets, bombs and artillery. These State actions that I am forced to help fund are deeply offensive to me. Can I respectfully decline to participate in supporting these atrocities? Absolutely not. I can expect a gun in the ribs and a one way trip to a jail cell. So don't give me your loving bullshit about "society" "asking" me to help poor people get medical care. I, like most people I know, already give a portion of my earnings to charity so I have nothing to do with denying anyone access to medical care. What if my local soup kitchen or the Red Cross just happened to be murdering innocent people, occupying and overthrowing democratically elected regimes around the world, and kidnapping thousands of Americans during the hours they weren't providing food to the hungry and medical care to the sick? You'd probably say "you know what? This isn't a very good charity. I think I'll stop funding these guys and give my money to a group that is more morally consistent in their approach to charity." That is how I look at the State. If were I too concede that the State does provide good social welfare services to the poor, the very fact that they also commit these inexcusable atrocities would give me every incentive to find another charity to help the poor, one that doesn't commit such egregious acts. By supporting the State, especially the United States government, because you think it should provide welfare for the needed you are indirectly bolstering it's ability and legitimacy in committing war crimes and truly evil violations of human rights. This is what tends to happen when you think a moral good can come from an immoral principle.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:33
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Being fair America's overthrowing those democratic governments to make sure your oil, bling and food stays cheap. They're doing you a favour, really.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:36
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jrodefeld posted:No "society" doesn't "ask" me to pay my taxes to give medical care to others. I don't understand why clear language is so hard for some of you to grasp. If I don't have the option of saying "no" without being forcefully thrown in a cage, you are not "asking" me anything. You are threatening me and using violence to fund your idea of social welfare. Exactly! So because that won't happen, you are being asked voluntarily by society. You would only be thrown in jail for pretending that you paid all the taxes you owe (such as falsely filing a tax return that states you owe $0) when you in fact owe a different amount. You would never be imprisoned simply for not paying what you owe. burnishedfume fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Jan 19, 2016 |
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Jan 19, 2016 00:37
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Wait, why should you give a poo poo if the government overthrows a democratic regime in order to provide cheaper goods and services to its citizens? Surely if people dying from lack of healthcare is the (lack of) price you're willing to pay for cheaper healthcare then foreigners dying to make your popped collar shirt under a totalitarian regime shouldn't matter so long as your personal NAP isn't violated?
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Jan 19, 2016 00:39
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jrodefeld posted:No "society" doesn't "ask" me to pay my taxes to give medical care to others. I don't understand why clear language is so hard for some of you to grasp. If I don't have the option of saying "no" without being forcefully thrown in a cage, you are not "asking" me anything. You are threatening me and using violence to fund your idea of social welfare. This is the statist police, you're utilization of state resources while absolving yourself of social responsibility has been found damaging to the commons. As the state is generally fair and reasonable, you will be merely asked to disclose your total tax expenditure to the federal government. Wait... Have you ever actually paid federal taxes?
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Jan 19, 2016 00:40
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Isn't the libertarian argument for an area having laws you don't like usually "you can just leave if you don't like it"? Why doesn't that apply to leaving a state?
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Jan 19, 2016 00:41
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Andrast posted:Isn't the libertarian argument for an area having laws you don't like usually "you can just leave if you don't like it"? Because it's a bit trickier to do that and he just got a couch that feels good to sit in and really it'd be easier on all of us if you fled your home instead of him.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:42
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Andrast posted:Isn't the libertarian argument for an area having laws you don't like usually "you can just leave if you don't like it"? if he actually took the options available to him to do something about the thing he likes to whine about then he wouldn't be able to whine about it any more
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Jan 19, 2016 00:43
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Libertarians who actually go galt tend to give up rather quickly when they realise they have to actually grow their own food. The ones who succeed tend to be in communes (as in communist  ).
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Jan 19, 2016 00:45
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jrodefeld posted:Do you understand that governments can't conquer the reality of scarcity through official decree? The only things that actually cost zero dollars are those things that are available in superabundance and thus supply far outstrips human demand. For everything else, there is a price. Scarcity is relative. In terms of basic commodity goods, while the amount modern industrial economies can produce is not infinite, it is in excess of what's needed. This makes the idea that "scarcity" requires the application of free market principles to all questions of providing needed goods and services the "myth of scarcity." Since you like going on about bread lines in the USSR, we can look at food. In the US, 30% - 40% of the food supply is wasted while 14% of US households experience food insecurity. This suggests high productivity tied to inefficient provision. The inefficiency is not only due to the fact that not all those in need get what they need, but that much more is produced than is used, reflecting wasted raw materials, land, and labor. Before you start hopping up and down about how this isn't a ~true free market~ (I readily admit that it's very far from that), that isn't the point. The point is that there is not always actual scarcity in needed goods and services, sometimes there is overproduction combined with unmet need, which suggests that "official decrees" have a certain degree of latitude to provide things to those who cannot pay for them. See also: housing. quote:Medical services have to be produced in a costly way which means that the price for a surgery cannot be "zero". In State welfare systems, you are only given the impression that something is free because the bureaucracy is so convoluted and complex that the actual cost is not immediately apparent. You ARE paying a price for healthcare services in Great Brittain and in Canada, the laws of economics demand that this be so. Please stop ignoring that the critical issue is personal ability to pay at point of care. I know you and your ilk love dropping your TANSTAAFL "knowledge bombs" but everybody, including you, knows that this is what is meant by "free healthcare" or about whether someone can afford to pay nothing. This is tedious.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:49
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JRod, I have read your arguments and considered them closely but upon reflection I feel it is in my own rational self interest to continue taxing you. Thus you will be taxed to pay for food stamps.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:50
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jrodefeld posted:To again quote the great Frederick Bastiat: Anyone who doesn't realize the critical difference between support "in theory" and support "in effect" is an intellectual chump, not an intellectual great. In theory, you might support all sorts of things to a certain extent. In effect, you don't actually want to see the same outcomes as your "socialist" opponents, who want outcomes that non-state actors have never been able to deliver. So yes, opposing government-funded education and healthcare means "opposing education and healthcare" because these things, when provided only to those who can personally pay for them, become luxuries for the rich and burdens for everyone else. That is not what education and healthcare ought to be.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:55
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jrodefeld posted:Property rights are necessary because we live in a world of scarcity. Human needs are essentially infinite lol no they aren't, where do you learn this baby bullshit? Human needs are finite and quantifiable if variable from human to human. We know how many calories people need to obtain from food each day and how much water they need to drink. People do not need an endless wardrobe and a house of limitless space to protect them from the elements. The optimum temperature maximums and minimums for good health and the energy needed to condition building climates to ensure they are within this range are not theoretical figures beyond the asymptote. Nobody will ever use emergency services at such a rate that if they never died, their time on the operating table or on the phone with the police/fire department would be eternal. Jesus Christ. eta: quote:The only rational system of property rights acquisition that exists is to show deference to the first owner of a scarce resource as having the better claim than a latter user unless or until he voluntarily parts with it through transaction, gift or abandonment. If the first user didn't have the right to use any scarce resources plucked out of nature, we would have all died out because we wouldn't have been able to act. Uh oh, looks like you need to hop in a time machine and warp back to where you last brought this up and got owned about it without ever answering your critics! GunnerJ fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Jan 19, 2016 |
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Jan 19, 2016 01:04
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Caros posted:I just realized that you probably didn't see this while you were being too handsome and cool jrodefeld. I know it is a bit belated but we made this for you. Merry Christmas! poo poo, I'm flattered you guys think that much about me when I'm not around. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
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Jan 19, 2016 01:06
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GunnerJ posted:lol no they aren't, where do you learn this baby bullshit? Human needs are finite and quantifiable if variable from human to human. We know how many calories people need to obtain from food each day and how much water they need to drink. People do not need an endless wardrobe and a house of limitless space to protect them from the elements. The optimum temperature maximums and minimums for good health and the energy needed to condition building climates to ensure they are within this range are not theoretical figures beyond the asymptote. Nobody will ever use emergency services at such a rate that if they never died, their time on the operating table or on the phone with the police/fire department would be eternal. Jesus Christ. Ah, but did you consider human needs as a frictionless sphere in a vacuum?
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Jan 19, 2016 01:07
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GunnerJ posted:lol no they aren't, where do you learn this baby bullshit? Human needs are finite and quantifiable if variable from human to human. We know how many calories people need to obtain from food each day and how much water they need to drink. People do not need an endless wardrobe and a house of limitless space to protect them from the elements. The optimum temperature maximums and minimums for good health and the energy needed to condition building climates to ensure they are within this range are not theoretical figures beyond the asymptote. Nobody will ever use emergency services at such a rate that if they never died, their time on the operating table or on the phone with the police/fire department would be eternal. Jesus Christ. I think it's hard for jrod to understand because he's spent the last 10 years acting the missionary of privileged sociopathy so it probably does seem plausible to him that if it would sustain him he would collect infinite medical supplies and fire Marshall staff time to maximize his own profits.
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Jan 19, 2016 01:09
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Andrast posted:Isn't the libertarian argument for an area having laws you don't like usually "you can just leave if you don't like it"? It sure is gently caress is their argument about why labor regulations are unneeded.
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Jan 19, 2016 01:16
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wait does the OSC not take Medicare and insurance coverages?
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Jan 19, 2016 01:17
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Caros posted:I was always a fan of the Proudhon rebuttal: I've read my share of Proudhon and, honestly, if you'd be willing to adopt a Proudhon-style of Anarchism then I'd consider us close enough ideologically to be considered allies on most issues. But sadly, I guess you'll just settle with using him as a proxy to bash Bastiat with which is a shame. It would be interested to note for the readers who are not exactly familiar with the work of Proudhon and Bastiat, that they BOTH were considered part of the "left" as they sat on the left side of the French legislature, were both anarchists and opposed the "old order" that the conservatives defended. They had a great many debates, particularly in the area of interest, but had much in common on a great number of issues. I've tried to explain the historical origins of anarchism and libertarianism as being more properly and historically aligned with the "left" as it was originally conceived than the right and reading more about Bastiat and Proudhon would serve to hammer home that point further. That Proudhon quote, while colorful and fun in its own right, doesn't refute poo poo. It is amusing however how articulate past generations of thinkers were when insulting each other. Maybe we could learn a thing or two from their example?
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Jan 19, 2016 01:18
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Why should one intellectually engage Bastiat in claims like that when he was just being a man yelling at clouds? No-one has intellectually argued for the strawman that Bastiat imagines in the sky in your quote.
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Jan 19, 2016 01:25
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jrodefeld posted:I've read my share of Proudhon and, honestly, if you'd be willing to adopt a Proudhon-style of Anarchism then I'd consider us close enough ideologically to be considered allies on most issues. So you're down with a national bank that is funded by a high capital gains tax? With currency that is detached from the gold standard? Tom Clancy is Dead fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Jan 19, 2016 |
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Jan 19, 2016 01:32
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jrodefeld posted:I've read my share of Proudhon and, honestly, if you'd be willing to adopt a Proudhon-style of Anarchism then I'd consider us close enough ideologically to be considered allies on most issues. Wait are we talking about the same Proudhon who said "in the matter of taxation every pretension to justice is inevitably utopian"?
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Jan 19, 2016 01:43
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If you don't want to be forced to pay taxes that help depressed veterans get treatment and a place to call home who served so that, in some degree, you wouldn't have to dodge bombs on the way to school as a child or that medical regulations and standards and education networks were at a decent level so that your mother could give birth to you in a reasonably safe manner by trained professionals or provide roads and infrastructure that allow you to send out illegally pirates Blu-ray Discs of stupid HK action films mostly due to the state created Internet or pay neighbors' salaries who work to create a stable, sane place to live as diplomats, politicians, firefighters, contract negotiators, teachers, food inspectors, and law enforcement, then get out. Yes there are places to go where you won't have to pay taxes to your government to spend on poor, elderly, veterans, and mentally ill. Here's what your "education" is teaching me - libertarianism is heartless and brain dead. You have yet to type one post that gives a glimmer of anything else. RocketLunatic fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Jan 19, 2016 |
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Jan 19, 2016 01:46
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Never mind, I forgot that jrod pretends to love Lysander Spooner as well, even though he literally was a card-carrying member of the First International
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Jan 19, 2016 01:48
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(that's an example of me taking license for the sake of exposition; I didn't forget.)
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Jan 19, 2016 01:49
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Actually laughed out loud at him identifying his "allies on the left" according to who was sitting on the literal left side of the French legislature. Historical etymology is fun and all but haha wow.
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Jan 19, 2016 01:57
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Jrod, what is your opinion on the attention economy?
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Jan 19, 2016 02:03
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