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YF19pilot posted:While we're being chummy and expressing our beliefs, I suppose I can post mine (while I'm cooking dinner). If we're applying U.S. political labels, welcome to liberalism. I'd even say you're a socialist, though I'm not sure what a socialist take on foreign policy is, if there even is a generally unified view. I'm guessing you don't want to call yourself a socialist. Have you considered that this might be because socialist/socialism/et. al has become a villified term in U.S. discourse?
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Jan 24, 2016 17:44
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I guess... if we're doing ideological introductions, I'd say that the most relevant was to describe my politics for this thread is that I'm an anti-capitalist. I have to put it in the negative because I am not certain about any particular proposed alternative, but I am convinced that capitalism is overall an oppressive and exploitative system that needs to be replaced by something better. I focus my efforts on what is bad about capitalism mostly because I don't think I can come up with a solution all on my own, but I think that the more people who see a problem, the more likely a solution can be found. American-style libertarianism is interesting to me because it argues for the most ideologically pure form of capitalism and so is a good case study in its excesses and the horrible implications of its logic and thus makes a case for why capitalism needs to be opposed. I also take a historically informed view that capitalism has been a progressive force and there are many good aspects of it which need to be preserved so long as they do not require exploitation and oppression to function. In the meantime I argue for the most "benign" form of capitalist political-economy I know, social democracy, mostly because that seems like the most plausible improvement in peoples' welfare available. I'm also not opposed in principle to revolutionary change and I think a lot of the stigma or fear of revolution is basically a tool to suppress any meaningful change, but I do acknowledge that revolution is risky and destructive and so it really, really needs to be worthwhile, to be against a truly awful and oppressive power with which no negotiation or peaceful compromise is possible. It needs to be on the table, at least, as a standing threat to force concessions from power.
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Jan 24, 2016 17:50
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GunnerJ posted:I guess... if we're doing ideological introductions Above everything else I consider myself an environmentalist. More specifically I'm a conservationist always striving for greater sustainability while keeping as many people alive and living well as possible. From that I have concluded that most political ideals people consider Left-wing such as equality for all, strong safety nets, public education, and strong regulation of businesses have a proven track record while political ideals people consider Right-wing have led to gilded age nightmares. That's not to say certain left wing governments haven't hosed the earth pretty hard but that's why free expression is so important. People need to be able to say "This is bad, stop it" and be listened to without being told "Well just move somewhere else weaklings  "So to put it in less abstract terms... I... Uh... guess I'm a socialist. Maybe.
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Jan 24, 2016 19:26
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Just to add a few things about anarchism and its potential downsides. For fairness sake as others like Karia have done. Most of this is on the practical side, but there are theiry problems. 1. There is no unified vision of what Anar chism is. There are many strains and not all of the strains even see themselves as anarchist. Environmental Communitarians for example are usually classified as anarchists, but some don't like that clasification at all. The difference between eco-anarchists and eco-communitariand isn't very clear and its a big mess sometimes. 2. Its heavily micro politically based and thus takes quite a bit of time to have change occur. Even local, large scale revolutions, would not necessarily cause overall social or super community change(like I suppose the US would be under this conception). 3. Rival factions and what constitutes the borders of suoer-communities and how to determine representation and more overaching policy that would govern inter-community relations would be difficult and potentially fracturous. Such examples of this already already happened, confederate states, right to work laws causing regional unions to lose power, EU economic policy, gun laws in wisconsin and indiana undemining Chicago/Illinois attempts to curtail gun saturation 4. It would have a weakening effect on military power of nation-states as nation-states would become more difficult to wield and result in power vaccums if the change from nation state to municipalism wasn't handled very cautiously (see Arab spring, Syria, Kurdistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistani tribal regions, Poland when its state failed both at the end of the 18th century and at the outset of WWII) 5. How to cause a mindframe shift from capitalism and market based life to one that is based on local diversity and sustainability. At the very best case maybe this takes a decade and that's with everything going smoothly. BaurusJA fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Jan 24, 2016 |
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Jan 24, 2016 21:10
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YF19pilot posted:While we're being chummy and expressing our beliefs, I suppose I can post mine (while I'm cooking dinner). So yeah, I've never been able to figure out an exact label for me (if one even exists). Pro-intervention socialist or pro-intervention social democrat maybe? 
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Jan 25, 2016 01:18
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I've posted this before. The first time in 2012. Things have gotten even rosier for me, as I said they would: I was born into a middle class family, I'm inexplicably naturally talented in a few relevant fields, devoted almost 0 time to studying in high school and gave absolutely minimal effort to my jobs. I got into a very good public university where again I gave minimal effort and got great grades. I used my family and friends connections to secure lucrative student employment. I went to a top graduate school in my field and secured a prestigious internship that eventually landed me after graduation in a lucrative position. At this stage of my life, I can say with confidence that I make more money than 90% of my friends, but I work less hard than probably 95% of them. I've never had to try and I probably never will have to. In my experience, hard work is clearly not the determining factor for success. The things that mattered most to my success were: my family is modestly successful and not-crazy, I have natural talent in luckily relevant areas, I utilized connections and nepotism, and I've been in the right places at the right times. I know it is still early in the game, but at this point my resume and credentials form a firewall which make it almost inconceivable that I will lose my advantages. I'm also a tall white male with a full head of hair and a winning smile. Basically none of the things which set me up for success and "lock in" my future success have anything to do with my own actions, effort, or decisions. In recognition of the absurdity of my steady advance through life I have consistently supported an active government, wealth and income redistribution, universal healthcare, public pensions, welfare spending, labor unionism, financial regulation, consumer protection, and equality under the law for minority groups of all kinds. I have opposed restrictions on the suffrage, growth in military spending, and the imposition of religious values on secular institutions. My policy stance is a recognition that most of what happens to people is a random walk of luck and chaos, and that ultimately the privilege and advantage of a few can become "locked in." This arbitrary distribution of wealth and suffering, to me, is a moral problem and one that society has an interest in eliminating. It isn't reasonable to think we can fully correct it, but we can attempt to mitigate it. I see most of the broad stances of American Conservatism as attempts to secure advantages for privileged people, to restrict the radical tendencies of democracy, and to entrench classes according to traditional roles. "Property Rights" as jrod and other Libertarians want to frame them are essentially aimed at securing wealth and advantage for a lucky few. Property Rights should not be left to natural law theorists. They should be determined democratically, because the vast bulk of useful property is created by the mass of society, working collectively. It should be apparent to even the most solipsistic Libertarian that we can produce more by working together than we can by working independently. And what is to be done with the excess property we create from our joint endeavors? We ought to distribute it democratically, because that's how it was made.
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Jan 25, 2016 03:05
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Promontorium posted:Everyone is born without any money at all. New nations are formed without any money at all. Take 10, 100, 1000 people with absolutely no money or possessions and drop them into a jungle or something, do they all just Would a society with only charity do worse in helping people out than a society that taxes and prints money? That's a good question that you didn't ask, but I'll assume it's what you were getting at. I would point to our actual great depression. What did the government do for the people in the dust bowl? They had to abandon their homes and give up everything to work their asses off elsewhere. And that was under the most progressive government expansionist president we've had. Don't go acting like taxes and government spending is so neato. I live in California. The most taxed and regulated state in America. We've been this way for decades. I don't see the utopia they keep spending on. Wait wait wait. What do you mean we're "quick to abandon free will"? Aren't you? Do you leave all the operations of the state up to charity and mutual goodwill? Promontorium posted:For the record I am opposed to both slavery and the Confederacy. Though not the abstract confederacy, as it fits in with minarchism. How does your minarchist state keep ahold of its monopoly on force, bar other legal systems, and finance the operations of its police, courts, and armies? Does it send bell-ringing Santas to collect donations outside of supermarkets, and ask everyone to pretty please not use alternative legal systems that protect planters' property rights in slaves and pretty pretty please use our courts and don't take justice into your own hands? Or does it say gently caress your free will, arrest vigilantes, compel obedience to its court orders, and finance its operations with mandatory taxation? Does it institute conscription, raise taxes, and claim right-of-way on strategic waterways and railroads in order to defeat a slavers' rebellion? If the latter is what you support, then how do you decide when it is best to abandon free will, and demand taxes and obedience?
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Jan 25, 2016 04:12
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Buried alive posted:If we're applying U.S. political labels, welcome to liberalism. I'd even say you're a socialist, though I'm not sure what a socialist take on foreign policy is, if there even is a generally unified view. I'm guessing you don't want to call yourself a socialist. Have you considered that this might be because socialist/socialism/et. al has become a villified term in U.S. discourse? I recognize that I have jumped the aisle. I think in US terms (since I'm American) I'd probably be considered moderate-liberal, as my views on the military and military spending are hawkish. I'm going to vote for Bernie in the primary, but yeah, I do have a bit of a hard time saying "I'm a socialist" because I grew up in such a conservative environment. Telling my family I'm voting Democrat this year would probably be just as bad as telling them I was gay. My dad wouldn't care, my mom might be a bit disappointed but understanding considering the Republican line up this year; but I'd catch hell from my grandparents who are loyal Rush Limbaugh listening, Sean Hannity watching (use to watch Glenn Beck as well until Fox yanked him) ultra conservatives. My grandmother (and Uncle, too) is very controlling and manipulative, so I try to tell her as little information as possible about what's going on in my life. To put it simply, she was the one person who was actually actively against me moving to Taiwan for work and tried everything in her power to dissuade me from it. Otherwise, growing up, I was always fed my political views from my grandparents. My father is and always has been very apolitical - he was in the Air Force and his view is always "I don't agree with everything [president] says, but I agree with some things." So, having followed the stripe of conservatism from my grandparents, which I have now abandoned, I do still feel like you couldn't pay me to vote for Hillary Clinton, so I'm going to vote for Bernie Sanders despite his socialist label because he's not someone who I've heard a lot of negative about. I also don't like dynastic presidencies and politics.
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Jan 25, 2016 04:25
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The problem a lot of people have is that they want a just world but we don't live in one. Most conservative people I know either think we have one, by God or have some level of cognitive dissonance on how the economics of government works. They will get tied up in minutiae about how how dare the government spend money like 1% of a government project being spent on public art as demanded by state law while failing to show up to any of the commissions on how that money will be spent. For a long while I have been contemplating what I as a government worker am working toward and I realized that ultimately, as described in Taoism, the best government, like leadership is one that is so ubiquitous that people just take it in stride and say " we did it ourselves". There is a subtle nuance here that libertarians miss, and a libertarian friend of mine inspired the concept. Government is the technological infrastructure that should enable free society, to allow us to cooperate, participate in markets without fear of reprisal or suffering, to go forth and do good things. When you visit foreign countries it is not hamburgers, muscle cars or wall street that makes America exceptional, its the infrastructure that allows prosperity. Once you get past the layers of justification socialism isn't even really a political philosophy so much as a baseline desire to spend resources and opportunity efficiently.
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Jan 25, 2016 16:49
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RaunGacho, I have found your posts on the (for lack of a better word) nobility of public service in refutation of the stereotypes of government waste and overreach some of the most informative and interesting in these threads. Nothing else of substance to add, just want you to know they're appreciated and I hope you'll keep them coming and maybe try to publish them more widely.
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Jan 25, 2016 16:59
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RuanGacho posted:The problem a lot of people have is that they want a just world but we don't live in one. Most conservative people I know either think we have one, by God or have some level of cognitive dissonance on how the economics of government works. They will get tied up in minutiae about how how dare the government spend money like 1% of a government project being spent on public art as demanded by state law while failing to show up to any of the commissions on how that money will be spent. This is a beautiful post
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Jan 25, 2016 19:44
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So do you think the new guy is gonna come back?
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Jan 25, 2016 19:45
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Who What Now posted:So do you think the new guy is gonna come back? I hope so. He seems to have ideas that go beyond "I read this mises article," so he could be an interesting debate partner if he gets over his "stop being so mean to JRod" kick. If you do come back, Promontorium, I'd be interested in hearing more about your ideas. Are there any thinkers that particularly influenced you? Political theorists, philosophers, etc. It might give us a better idea of where you're coming from. Full disclosure: we have spent a long time attacking JRod for his answers on this exact question, but that's because his favored thinkers were utterly horrific bastards to a man. A dude who hosts an annual conference for white nationalists, an unhinged youtube misogynist, an Actual Literal Fascist, whatever the gently caress Walter Block is, etc. People won't give you much of a hard time for citing Locke or Nozick or Montesquieu or whoever. As a show of good faith, I'll show you mine if you show me yours: I'm a fan of John Rawls and Karl Popper, and I'm reading up on Isaiah Berlin and Bertrand Russell but don't know much about them yet.
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Jan 25, 2016 20:05
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Who What Now posted:So do you think the new guy is gonna come back? Probably, but at this point I wouldn't care if he never came back. His entire posting history is basically bitching about poor jrod's mistreatment and bitching about personal attacks while ignoring anyone who was actually interested in having a discussion.
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Jan 25, 2016 20:10
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QuarkJets posted:Probably, but at this point I wouldn't care if he never came back. His entire posting history is basically bitching about poor jrod's mistreatment and bitching about personal attacks while ignoring anyone who was actually interested in having a discussion. Do you suppose he's a sock puppet? I get a weird feeling Jrod just realized he can create sock puppets and is assuming he's a brilliant person who thought of it first.
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Jan 25, 2016 20:26
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Do you suppose he's a sock puppet? I get a weird feeling Jrod just realized he can create sock puppets and is assuming he's a brilliant person who thought of it first. It is eerie how similar their approaches are in some ways, but the writing style is totally different. Whatever else you can say about Promontorium's prissy condescension, his writing style is nowhere near as stilted, is not the same tryhard Serious Academic routine.
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Jan 25, 2016 20:32
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Do you suppose he's a sock puppet? I get a weird feeling Jrod just realized he can create sock puppets and is assuming he's a brilliant person who thought of it first. I did, and still kind of do. Him calling Caros "Mr. New York Times Bestseller" was such a weirdly specific insult. Especially since he claimed not to have really read the thread at all and I don't believe Caros exactly announces that fact prior to every post.
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Jan 25, 2016 20:32
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I strongly doubt he's a sock puppet. There's more than one libertarian in the world, he probably just saw us calling JRod a melon-loving shitlord and didn't have the context to know why. Plus, no matter how hard JRod tried to disguise his faux-scholarly ramblings, I doubt he'd even try to pretend to say things like "I'm in favor of states" or "I would have fought for the North because of slavery." I think we should give him the benefit of the doubt and engage honestly unless he shows that to not be worthwhile. Granted, the last time I wrote that in one of these threads, the guy I was advocating for outed himself as a white nationalist while I was posting, so 
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Jan 25, 2016 20:39
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Do you suppose he's a sock puppet? I get a weird feeling Jrod just realized he can create sock puppets and is assuming he's a brilliant person who thought of it first. Jrode is not the sock puppet type. He's rereged the same account over and over again for years, and although he's not quite as self-referential as Eripsa his idea of his relationship with this forum is strong. I don't think he'd want to divorce himself from his current identity, especially because he has no qualms making those sorts of petty complaints already. It's not like he has a reputation to defend...
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Jan 25, 2016 21:05
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Muscle Tracer posted:Jrode is not the sock puppet type. He's rereged the same account over and over again for years, and although he's not quite as self-referential as Eripsa his idea of his relationship with this forum is strong. I don't think he'd want to divorce himself from his current identity, especially because he has no qualms making those sorts of petty complaints already. It's not like he has a reputation to defend... I just figured maybe he came up with a new tactic? Like maybe he assumed if some dissenting opinion said "hey quit being mean to Jrod" we'd realize we were being huge, mean jerks and stop dogpiling him, let him speak his mind, and see that he's right. Which is...not likely.
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Jan 25, 2016 21:11
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Who What Now posted:I did, and still kind of do. Him calling Caros "Mr. New York Times Bestseller" was such a weirdly specific insult. Especially since he claimed not to have really read the thread at all and I don't believe Caros exactly announces that fact prior to every post. To my recollection I have mentioned that precisely once on this entire forum, and that was only in response to jrod being a fuckhead and trying to throw  words at me as if I was some illiterate slob.Edit: Oh, and I mentioned it once to you in a pm when you asked me.
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Jan 25, 2016 21:33
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Definitely a sock puppet account. Even has Jrods habit of "oh i just post a bit and disappear and come back without replying to anyone. WHATS THE BIG DEAL"
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Jan 25, 2016 21:40
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The guy's position does seem almost exactly like what Jrod imagines a more platable version of libertarianism would be. But I'm gonna say he's not without more evidence.
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Jan 25, 2016 21:42
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Nevvy Z posted:Definitely a sock puppet account. Even has Jrods habit of "oh i just post a bit and disappear and come back without replying to anyone. WHATS THE BIG DEAL" I disagree. New guy strikes me as just another thin-skinned libertarian dumbass, and as Caros has noted it's not like Jrod has been slow to post/rereg when he's felt like it. Also, he's not nearly verbose enough to be Jrod, grudgingly admitted the Confederacy was evil and deserved the curbstomping it got, and didn't once tell us to PUT THE GUNS DOWN!!!
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Jan 25, 2016 21:44
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I genuinely do not believe JRod could write posts that short.
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Jan 25, 2016 21:44
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There's a pretentiousness to Promontorium's posts but it's very different from jrod's style. The former's is more, eh, "literary," like I get the impression that his mental self-conception of his participation here is knightly in some sense, whereas jrod has a 19th century scholar vibe.
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Jan 25, 2016 21:48
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GunnerJ posted:whereas jrod has a 19th century scholar vibe. Look, all I'm saying is put photos of Alexander Stephens and Jrod next to each other and I have a hard time telling which is which.
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Jan 25, 2016 21:50
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Captain_Maclaine posted:Look, all I'm saying is put photos of Alexander Stephens and Jrod next to each other and I have a hard time telling which is which. Jrod is way more handsome than that, come on guy. Edit: actually I wonder what the new guy's opinion on Jrod is. I mean he gave me a hit for bragging about work, I wonder if he cares about Jrod saying that he is the most handsome motherfucker on the planet. Fake edit: would it be more or less funny if jrodefeld actually was a drop dead gorgeous guy and no one believed him? I think it would make it more funny.
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Jan 25, 2016 21:52
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Why should we care about property rights? Because if we don't I will end up as someone's sex slave because I'm so loving handsome.
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Jan 25, 2016 21:55
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Caros posted:Jrod is way more handsome than that, come on guy. Humorous in the same way that I find it likely Jrod doesn't have a federal tax liability and yet is so deeply concerned about it. Thanks for the kind words goons, I'd like to think I'm saying something novel but I'm pretty sure everything sounds better in my head than it usually comes out.
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Jan 25, 2016 21:57
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Caros posted:Why should we care about property rights? Because if we don't I will end up as someone's sex slave because I'm so loving handsome. "Welcome... to a world called Mises! *whipcrack*
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Jan 25, 2016 22:00
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Nolanar posted:I genuinely do not believe JRod could write posts that short. And he actually acknowledge criticism about his writing style. If it is a sock puppet, I think we should keep it rather than the original.
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Jan 25, 2016 23:04
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Caros posted:To my recollection I have mentioned that precisely once on this entire forum, and that was only in response to jrod being a fuckhead and trying to throw Yeah but that was pretty recent. I just don't want to believe. Jrode's absolute toddler-like lack of guile and cunning is one of the reasons it's possible to find him endearing instead of just repugnant. If he's graduating into My First Puppetmaster malarky then I might finally have to unsubscribe from these threads forever 
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Jan 26, 2016 01:01
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Caros posted:To my recollection I have mentioned that precisely once on this entire forum, and that was only in response to jrod being a fuckhead and trying to throw You mentioned it a page or so before he started posting, in one of your posts to jrode - I only know because I went "oh yeah Caros did that" because, as you say, you don't mention it much and so I'd forgotten.
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Jan 26, 2016 01:07
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Muscle Tracer posted:Yeah but that was pretty recent. For what it's worth I don't think he is a sock puppet. Jrodefeld's absurd writing style is unique enough that I was able to tell at a glance when he had copy pasted from mises.org, so I am pretty sure I'd be able recognize him playing at being someone else. Besides, it isn't like it'd actually get him anywhere.
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Jan 26, 2016 01:19
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Caros posted:For what it's worth I don't think he is a sock puppet. Jrodefeld's absurd writing style is unique enough that I was able to tell at a glance when he had copy pasted from mises.org, so I am pretty sure I'd be able recognize him playing at being someone else. Nobody writes like jrode if they have a choice not to - it seems very unlikely to me that jrode could adopt a style more befitting a human being.
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Jan 26, 2016 01:21
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Do you suppose he's a sock puppet? I get a weird feeling Jrod just realized he can create sock puppets and is assuming he's a brilliant person who thought of it first. If anything he's probably just some dude that jrod met somewhere else on the Internet. The libertarian threads usually only see new faces while jrod is posting or shortly after jrod stops posting. jrod takes an evangelist approach to all of his posting, so it wouldn't surprise me if he tried to recruit help We'll know immediately that it's jrod if he starts talking about his good looks or if he challenges someone to fisticuffs ToxicSlurpee posted:I just figured maybe he came up with a new tactic? Like maybe he assumed if some dissenting opinion said "hey quit being mean to Jrod" we'd realize we were being huge, mean jerks and stop dogpiling him, let him speak his mind, and see that he's right. That's actually happened a few times already over the last couple of years, IIRC
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Jan 26, 2016 01:44
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Putting in my two cents that Prom. is a sock puppet account of Jrod's. The reg date is too close to Jrod's reappearance and disappearance for it to be a coincidence and it wouldn't be hard for someone like Jrod to forcefully put on a fake posting style to make his alt. account defending himself seem distinct enough to be legitimate. I don't think it's a tactic outside of possibility, especially after his recent growing saltiness.
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Jan 26, 2016 01:59
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Also the pissy condescension is just barely removed from his usual poo poo
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Jan 26, 2016 02:00
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This "Is Promontorium a sock puppet?" controversy is going to tear the thread apart.
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Jan 26, 2016 02:00
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