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Doesn't Atlas Shrugged revolve around a perpetual motion machine?
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Feb 7, 2016 08:44
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Yes, that and the elusive "Rearden Metal"
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Feb 7, 2016 08:56
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There is also a cloaking device.
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Feb 7, 2016 09:39
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Nessus posted:Doesn't Atlas Shrugged revolve around a perpetual motion machine? Sort of. John Galt invents an engine while ignoring his regular job duties and still getting paid for them that runs on background static energy. It doesn't need any input and gives off mechanical energy...somehow. I think she describes it as consuming "ambient energy" or some such bullshit but the short of it is that he literally invented an infinite energy engine easily and then refused to share it with the rest of the world because he was a selfish, petulant baby.
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Feb 7, 2016 09:40
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Sort of. John Galt invents an engine while ignoring his regular job duties and still getting paid for them that runs on background static energy. It doesn't need any input and gives off mechanical energy...somehow. I think she describes it as consuming "ambient energy" or some such bullshit but the short of it is that he literally invented an infinite energy engine easily and then refused to share it with the rest of the world because he was a selfish, petulant baby. In the first episode of the new X-Files season some conspiracy theorists built an "alien" craft running on zero point energy or some poo poo. Then the government blew it up. STATISTS!  So watch The X-Files, it makes more sense than libertarians at least.
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Feb 7, 2016 09:53
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Sort of. John Galt invents an engine while ignoring his regular job duties and still getting paid for them that runs on background static energy. It doesn't need any input and gives off mechanical energy...somehow. I think she describes it as consuming "ambient energy" or some such bullshit but the short of it is that he literally invented an infinite energy engine easily and then refused to share it with the rest of the world because he was a selfish, petulant baby. It's kinda worse than that because I think it was related to his job, in as much as he worked for a car company and I think the original idea was for it to power a car (with numerous other applications). And I guess his employers never had him sign a contract ceding patent and copyright for anything he makes on the job to them because he just fucks off with it to do whatever he wants (alternately sanctity of the contract does not apply to superior beings like him). Honestly Atlas Shrugged isn't even the weirdest or dumbest example of libertarians believing in the magic of the market to make sci-fi real: http://www.bigheadpress.com/tpbtgn?page=1
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Feb 7, 2016 14:21
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GunnerJ posted:And I guess his employers never had him sign a contract ceding patent and copyright for anything he makes on the job to them because he just fucks off with it to do whatever he wants (alternately sanctity of the contract does not apply to superior beings like him). I'm 90% sure they did actually make them sign one of these contracts. He took his What parasites. Only Ubermensch should be able to have it
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Feb 7, 2016 14:31
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Yeah, I was being sarcastic, the idea was that this is another example of the rules not applying to everyone equally. Thinking about the book in hindsight, I get the impression that Rand actually kinda hated capitalism, that it was only desirable to her as a vehicle for empowering her aristocracy of wealth while she tacitly (and approvingly) understood that they could easily break capitalism's own rules. This secret loathing is even more apparent when you consider her endless contempt for the paying customers that the captains of industry must debase themselves by trading with to get money. This is where it's most apparent that she is a lovely ripoff of Nietzsche: he at least realized that capitalism's need for mass consumption enabled and uplifted the masses he hated so much.
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Feb 7, 2016 15:11
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Also the fact that she lived off welfare for her American life.
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Feb 7, 2016 15:13
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GunnerJ posted:Honestly Atlas Shrugged isn't even the weirdest or dumbest example of libertarians believing in the magic of the market to make sci-fi real: http://www.bigheadpress.com/tpbtgn?page=1 I had completely forgotten about this, it's just as insane and bizarre as I remember. 
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Feb 7, 2016 15:44
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Tesseraction posted:Also the fact that she lived off welfare for her American life. This isn't true. She was on welfare at the end of her life. She made a perfectly good living in Hollywood for awhile, and obviously made money from her books too. She also had to be argued into using it. I'd rather pick on young, awful Ayn Rand than Ayn Rand as a suffering old woman.
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Feb 7, 2016 15:50
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Soviet Commubot posted:I had completely forgotten about this, it's just as insane and bizarre as I remember. If only Washington had been executed after a successful Whiskey Rebellion, we'd all be driving pollution-free hovercars on parkways that are literally grass parkland. Instead we're trapped in a nightmare dystopia where people have to ride bicycles.
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Feb 7, 2016 15:53
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Galt's Gulch also had a force-field which protected it from nuclear weapons. Ayn Rand was a perma-child.
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Feb 7, 2016 16:05
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GunnerJ posted:Honestly Atlas Shrugged isn't even the weirdest or dumbest example of libertarians believing in the magic of the market to make sci-fi real: http://www.bigheadpress.com/tpbtgn?page=1  I love the petulance dripping off of every centimeter of this. The milk from Orwell Farms (presumably because it isn't raw milk?), the idea that anyone outside of electronics manufacturers actually gives a gently caress about goldbugs hoarding precious metals, the self-explanatory horror of bicycles. Doc Hawkins posted:Galt's Gulch also had a force-field which protected it from nuclear weapons. And my fort will have infinite 'lectricity and an invisibility cloak and an anti-nuke shield and only cool people will be allowed in! Anyway, you statists need to grow up.
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Feb 7, 2016 16:53
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Obdicut posted:This isn't true. She was on welfare at the end of her life. She made a perfectly good living in Hollywood for awhile, and obviously made money from her books too. She also had to be argued into using it. I'd rather pick on young, awful Ayn Rand than Ayn Rand as a suffering old woman. I'm not picking on her for it, necessarily. I believe even the biggest shitbag alive should be carried by society. My point was that for a laissez-faire capitalist she did plenty of things that were counter to that doctrine. Whether it's fair or not, she did make use of welfare.
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Feb 7, 2016 16:56
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Nolanar posted:
I think my favorite page is when it is revealed that the FCC has helicopter gunships that they use to shoot up pirate broadcasts. Also is it ever explained what the gently caress happened to the FBI dude's face? That thing's more pockmarked than the moon, jesus christ.
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Feb 7, 2016 17:10
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Rhjamiz posted:Also is it ever explained what the gently caress happened to the FBI dude's face? That thing's more pockmarked than the moon, jesus christ. On a similar note, can we all just take a moment to appreciate this awesome logo for ProbBroachVerse Homeland Security?  "We're so crazy and evil we represent ourselves with a picture of a mailed fist grabbing a knife by the blade and being cut by it! We don't give a gently caress, come at me bro!!"
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Feb 7, 2016 17:14
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The quotes on Ayn Rand section on wiki quote is maybe the funniest page on the Internet. The right wingers arguably got the best burns on her.
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Feb 7, 2016 17:17
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Rhjamiz posted:Also is it ever explained what the gently caress happened to the FBI dude's face? That thing's more pockmarked than the moon, jesus christ. Looks like mostly sweat to me.
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Feb 7, 2016 17:20
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Disinterested posted:The quotes on Ayn Rand section on wiki quote is maybe the funniest page on the Internet. The right wingers arguably got the best burns on her. Whittaker Chambers posted:Something of this implication is fixed in the book’s dictatorial tone, which is much its most striking feature. Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal. In addition, the mind which finds this tone natural to it shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: “To a gas chamber — go!” 
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Feb 7, 2016 17:23
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Another good one for the "Rand is a reverse Marxist" pile:Johann Hari posted:Rand was broken by the Bolsheviks as a girl, and she never left their bootprint behind. She believed her philosophy was Bolshevism's opposite, when in reality it was its twin. Both she and the Soviets insisted a small revolutionary elite in possession of absolute rationality must seize power and impose its vision on a malleable, imbecilic mass. The only difference was that Lenin thought the parasites to be stomped on were the rich, while Rand thought they were the poor.
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Feb 7, 2016 17:25
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Doc Hawkins posted:Looks like mostly sweat to me.  Are... are you sure?
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Feb 7, 2016 17:38
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Rhjamiz posted:
His soul is so tainted by statism that his outward appearance has changed to reflect his inner corruption. It doesn't make any less sense than all the other crazy poo poo in that story.
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Feb 7, 2016 17:42
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It definitely occurred to me, reading the glowing descriptions of Roark's architecture in The Fountainhead, that it sounded literally exactly like the Soviet Brutalist/Heroic style complete with statues of strapping workers and spirits of enlightenment and poo poo. (And then those statist bastards make it a home for orphans with mental disabilities  )Rhjamiz posted:
Woah! Okay, my mistake, I was just looking at the first page, just, gently caress if I'm reading the thing.
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Feb 7, 2016 17:47
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Doc Hawkins posted:Woah! Okay, my mistake, I was just looking at the first page, just, gently caress if I'm reading the thing. No you really should. It is very entertaining if nothing else (although not in the way the author probably intended). What's been posted so far is really only the tip of the whole crazy purestrain moon gold iceberg.
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Feb 7, 2016 17:59
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YF19pilot posted:Or will the rail barons reign supreme as the safety of those crazy flying contraptions plummets. After all, "if God had intended man to fly, he would've given us wings!" Hah! We know the railways would be no safer because of actual history - the railways were developed at the prime period for hands-off, unregulated, free-market, 'let the customers choose' capitalism that libertarians love so much. And guess what? Loads of people died in accidents caused by cost-cutting and exploited, overworked staff! In the UK there was a succession of railway accidents from the 1850s to the 1880s and the recurring cause(s) were poor to non-existent signalling, especially the 'time interval' system, by which trains were despatched at certain intervals from each other on the assumption that the line was clear. Unsurprisingly it led to a lot of accidents but it was cheap to implement and allowed railway companies to shift blame to individual staff 'on the ground' rather than their failure to make safety a priority by providing actual signalling systems. There was also the failure to adopt automatic brakes - systems which 'fail safe' by applying the brakes if a vehicle breaks loose from the train or there is a leakage or other fault. British railways were overseen by the government's Board of Trade and inspected by the Army's Royal Engineers. After years of fierce lobbying by the railway companies (many members of parliament were major shareholders in or directors of railway companies - often more than one) both these bodies had been rendered pretty toothless, being able to advise and recommend but not enforce - only parliament could introduce actual regulations and, since there were plenty of MPs who had a strong financial interest in keeping railway profits as high as possible, that was never going to happen. The BoT and the RE, with tedious regularity, published report after report into accident after accident which all had the same basic causes - poor signalling and poor brakes. Each report 'strongly recommended' the adoption of telegraph-controlled and interlocked 'block signalling' (which divided the track into sections which only one train could enter at a time, enforced by the actual mechanics of the system rather than the people operating it) and automatic brakes. Railway companies were 'emphatically urged' to voluntarily adopt these systems, all of which were proven to be reliable, effective and safe. Most dragged their heels on every count. Why didn't the *free-market* intervene, with passengers flocking to the railway with the best safety record? Such statistics were actually available as the BoT collected and published data about how much of each's company's network was fitted with block signalling and what percentage of its rolling stock had automatic brakes. Unsurprisingly the information clearly showed that these had a massive positive effect on safety. So why didn't the few conciencous operators clean up? When each company has carved out its own geographical territory where it has a virtual monopoly on railway traffic, and the railway industry as a whole has a virtual monopoly on long-distance travel in the entire country, people need to use the trains to live their lives and do business - they don't have a choice to go "I consider this train to be dangerous, so I won't use it!" And when that industry has stuffed parliament with MPs who are also directors, chairmen and shareholders, what's the incentive to improve? It wasn't until 1888, after a good 30 years of easily-preventable deaths on the rails, that things finally came to a head. The Armagh Disaster saw two trains, one an excursion train packed with schoolchildren, collide on a hill due to (surprise!) use of the time interval system and non-automatic brakes. It led to an unignorable outcry and the 1889 Regulation of Railways Act which mandated block signalling, continuous automatic brakes and other safety improvements on all passenger trains in the UK. The parliamentary debate includes some arguments regulars to this thread will probably find eerily familiar. Here's Sir John Brunner (Liberal MP, industrial chemical magnate and railway company board member): Sir John Brunner posted:It would be a very serious thing if the government, in its attempt to protect the lives of passengers by rail and the lives of working men, should take on itself to decide what form of carriage and what form of coupling and brake, is the proper form for railway companies to use. I am of opinion that the lives of passengers and railway men will be safer in the long run, if these matters are left in the hands of those who understand them best. I cordially approve of the pressure of public opinion being applied, through this house or through the press, to railway managers to compel them to consider both the safety of the public and the safety of their men; but if we endeavour in this matter—as we have, in my opinion, sadly too often endeavoured in the past—to give Government officials the power to decide what is the precise form of appliances which shall be used in connection with railways, we shall not be providing for the safety of the public or the safety of railway servant." Other Acts followed over the next few years stipulating things such as maximum working hours and basic crash safety for passenger cars. And what happened to the British railway system once the state muscled in? Within five years annual passenger deaths on the system had fallen to single figures and by the 1900s there were often years without a single passenger accident fatality (a state of affairs which many in the industry had stated was simply impossible to acheive back in the 1860s). It's ironic that a strand of libertarians love Atlas Shrugged and its railway motif so much because the history of rail transport (be it in the UK or America) just provides case study after case study proving what the outcome would be. Like all the other industrial accidents that led to much-needed regulation and legislation, it just shows that libertarianism can, even when it works as perfectly as its adherents want it to, only be an entirely reactive ideology - people have to die to prove what does and doesn't work and to help guide the survivors in their future 'choices'. And it's a system hilariously open to corruption by powerful interests, essentially by design. So, actually yes, the rail barons would rule supreme but lots of people would die. The system works!
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Feb 7, 2016 18:47
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To be fair to Rand she was probably intensely traumatized by the Soviets putting the boot in on her family's stuff. I forget if they were just kulaks or something or actually owners of an orphan-refining plant; either way of course this would not be the fault of the infant Rand. I don't think Rand much liked actual capitalism; she liked the idea of capitalism, sort of like a steampunk fan. e: Also, I think the idea is that you will inevitably be a powerful interest, rather than a shopkeeper/prole/peasant/man-pig Nessus fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Feb 7, 2016 |
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Feb 7, 2016 18:56
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Oh joy! JRod returned and I stopped paying attention to this thread. Well, I love heart attacks more than anything, and it's a little too late to call him a poo poo for his first post on healthcare (yes, the no-true scotsman fallacy or the 'you are an emotional being incapable of logical thought' fallacy). But I'm more than happy to get into a talk about wages.jrodefeld posted:Approximately 4% of the US domestic working force earns the current minimum wage. I don't at all mean to demean this group of people because I want everyone, including those with the least working experience and productivity to have the maximum opportunity to move up to a comfortable middle class existence. But I can't help them by destroying the first rung on the ladder. That hurts the most vulnerable people disproportionately. Hey fuckface, what percentage of people would be helped by an increase in the minimum wage. If the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and I raise it to $8.00, it doesn't mean that people making $7.50 an hour are grandfathered in and don't get a raise. THEY GET PAID AT $8.00 AN HOUR TOO. For all the time you spent writing this, you couldn't think about that? quote:Earning a very low wage is obviously not desirable, but if it allows you to become more productive, demonstrate traits that employers will find valuable such as reliability, honesty, hard work and so forth you have a viable path to earning higher and higher incomes and moving up towards a more and more comfortable standard of living. Hey shitheel, didn't I go over this already in some other thread? Look, here's the thing - a lot of those jobs are meaningless. I work in software. I never go to someone and say "Hey, all those years of stocking shelves really are helping me do this job right now. I remember how I would open the box and put the cans on the shelf... that's really coming in useful." Stuff like reliability, honesty, and hard work, while valuable, are not unique, nor are they as valuable as you can imagine. If that were true, people working at the supermarket would be using it as a stepping stone onto more interesting and rewarding careers. And yet they aren't. Here's the biggest problem with your worldview Jrod - you keep saying that you have the answers and yet you keep ignoring that it's not happening that way today. And while we don't live in a libertarian utopia, it does stand to reason that we would be seeing evidence of this happening. State Intervention can't keep blocking all progress. You are also treating the job ladder like it's an infinite ladder. Most jobs, the ladder only goes up so far, and you have to either be happy with your lot, or move to a different career. Like the stockboy at a grocery store. The ladder ends at stockboy. Maybe they make a transition to management, but nowadays, without a college degree, that's very difficult. And if you can't afford to get a college degree, which you wouldn't if you were making stockboy wages and trying to fend for yourself, it's a downright rigged game. And not everybody is cut out for management. So what does the stockboy do? How do they leverage being a stockboy in the real working world? quote:The ONLY way to actually raise wages is to increase the productivity of the labor of the worker. When entrepreneurs start a business, their goal is to be profitable which make the capital investment and risk worthwhile. To be profitable, their incoming earnings must exceed their outgoing expenditures. To that end, the businessman prices the cost of capital goods, of office space and every other commodity that is needed to produce the good or service that he or she is selling. This is done VERY carefully to stay within budget and maximize profits. Hey dumbass, haven't you noticed that the productivity of the worker has gone up. You know what else also goes up - the ratio of pay that a CEO gets compared to their lowest earning worker. Basically, if minimum wage workers pay went up with productivity, they would be making something like 20 dollars an hour now. quote:Why would the cost of labor be exempt from these economic calculations? The entrepreneur very carefully determines what the value of individual capital goods is with very scientific specificity. He determines if they add more value than they detract from the efficient enterprise. EXCEPT THIS IS NOT HOW IT WORKS. I've explained this before, but people are not paid on that scale. I don't say "Well Joe makes me 7 dollars an hour, which means I'll pay him 7." It's even harder when you get to office workers and other people. I don't know why you insist on viewing the world through this simplistic and, frankly, childish lens. I know it's satisfying in a way that more complex calculations done by people who have actually worked in the real world can't offer. But it's not reality. First off, saying "Person X will make us Y dollars" is a ridiculous way of looking at things because there's plenty of jobs where it is very difficult to assign a direct value or there are jobs that don't actually make the company money. So, take a software tester. How can you determine how much money a software tester honestly made you? It's very difficult. Some issues wouldn't be encountered, some issues don't matter that much. What about HR? The place I work has a cafeteria. How much money do you think the people running the cafeteria make the company? What about the janitorial staff and the people who maintain the buildings? Here's what determines your pay. 1. How difficult is it to hire for this position? Do I need someone with specialized knowledge or can I take anyone off the street and expect competence from them? 2. What are the job conditions? Jobs that are naturally worse can increase compensation. For example, there are people who travel a lot. Part of their pay reflects that they are traveling a lot and that it is a bit of a strain on their lives, so they get compensated for that. 3. What area of the country are you in? 4. What do people perceive the work being worth? 5. What is the industry standard? One of the big things that keeps the wage of a retail worker down is #1. It's really easy to hire someone, and people always need money. It's like the guy who wrote Iko Iko. Basically, the song was stolen from him by the Dixie Cups and they claimed authorship. He settled for a small percentage of the royalties. When asked why he took a horrible deal like that, he said "10% of something is better than all of nothing." There's a lot of people who will work for low pay because it is better than nothing. But that creates downward pressure on those jobs, since if I wanted to, I could easily get a retail job. So if I won't do it for $7.50 an hour, somebody else might. It gets a little more complicated than that, but there's a lot that impacts that stuff. See, you over simplify everything. And that means most of our time is spent telling you "This is not how the world works." But you still are able to cling to your fallacious view of the world because it makes sense. Your fictional world has some logical consistency. But when you apply that to reality, and insist on doing that, then I have to assume that you are either six years old, or you have the intellect of a six-year-old. quote:Ceterus paribus (all things being equal), if the price of something is raised people will buy less of it. Maybe the customers would prefer three cashiers at the local grocery store and perhaps it would thus add additional profits if they were hired at $8 an hour. But at $15 (which is what Bernie Sanders and most Progressives are advocating we raise the minimum wage to) they simply cannot justify the expense in light of the marginally increased productivity and additional consumer satisfaction they would receive. Actually, we stick with one cashier because that's what we need to do the job. If I had demand for two cashiers, I would have two cashiers. But I'm running a business, not a charity, so one cashier it is. quote:At the same time, there are 16-21 year old young adults in the neighborhood who are unemployed. They may want to be employed and earn a few bucks to go out to eat, go on a date, see a movie or just create a small savings so that when they move out of their parents house they've got a leg up on everyone else. Most importantly they would have developed a work history and track record of employment that will help them when they apply for higher paying jobs in the future. What bizarre fantasy world are you living in? Do you understand why people join gangs and get involved in crime? What hosed up world do you live in where someone will say "Yeah, I could make 2 bucks an hour stocking shelves at the supermarket, or I can run drugs for the Crips and make significantly more. Well, tell the Crips they'll have to settle their feud with the Bloods some other way, because I'm going to stock shelves!" Life isn't that simple. In the area I grew up in, people who didn't have jobs didn't turn to crime. You know why? Because I grew up in a middle class area where people had the illusion of hope for a better future. They had college to look forward to and possibly long lucrative careers. It's asinine to think that the minimum wage does anything to create new crime. quote:This is just one example but you have to realize the type of detrimental effect these policies are having on society's most vulnerable. That's not an example, but rather conjecture. An example is something concrete you can point to. It's something that actually happened with a clear cause and effect. And given that when I hear drug dealers talk about why they started, it almost always includes "I could make poo poo money working some lovely job, or I could make real money dealing drugs." It seems like minimum wage policies have little to do here. quote:And what the hell is "suitable to sustain a minimal standard of living"? This varies State by State. It varies by age group. It varies between single and married people. It varies based on if you have children and how many children you have. The idea you can determine what a minimum "living wage" is for all of society is absolutely ludicrous. Hey dickwad, do you have any idea how we can utilize math? So, we say "The average cost of living in this area is 'x,' the cost of food in this area is 'y,' the cost of clothes are 'z.'" You put that together, and you can figure out what it takes for the average person or family to live for a month. Yes, there will always be outliers. But our society is structured to offer them additional assistance, like more tax breaks for the dude with 7 kids. But we know what it takes to survive. Maybe it's a little fuzzy, but because we're human beings, we don't need to have 100% precision to take an action. Also, you know what else hurts people without college degrees? That there aren't a lot of jobs out there for them. It is much harder to find gainful employment when you don't have a skillset that makes you qualified for your positions. quote:And yes, I recognize that for whatever reason there are adults out there who have very low skills and low productivity. The answer in that case is to assist in them gaining more skills to become more productive and more desirable to employers. One of the best ways to do that is for them to take a job at the best wage they can get on the market (which may be lower than the current minimum wage) and prove themselves to be worth more, and ever more. DO YOU EVER loving LISTEN TO SOMEONE WHO DISAGREES WITH YOU? We've told you 20 times before - life doesn't work that way. The skills you gain stocking shelves are so generic and useless outside of a situation where I have a box and an empty shelf that needs to be stocked that it doesn't lead to gainful employment. Nobody says "Look at the way that man stocks shelves, I see a future surgeon in that boy!" That's because it's menial labor. It's something a loving monkey can do, and for peanuts. It's not difficult. You're really romanticizing these low-skill and low-wage jobs into something they will never be. People deserved to be treated with dignity, but you're delusional if you believe that working at Target will somehow lead to better careers without college or some sort of job training. quote:If you raise the minimum wage, you are literally dooming these people to a life of welfare dependency, frequent substance abuse problems, crime and even imprisonment. Most of us aren't just pushing for a minimum wage increase, but also job training programs that will get people where they need to be.
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Feb 7, 2016 19:08
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GunnerJ posted:No you really should. It is very entertaining if nothing else (although not in the way the author probably intended). What's been posted so far is really only the tip of the whole crazy purestrain moon gold iceberg. It was posted in the Bad Webcomics thread and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think it'd be cool to post it here or in the other thread.
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Feb 7, 2016 19:19
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Nessus posted:To be fair to Rand she was probably intensely traumatized by the Soviets putting the boot in on her family's stuff. I forget if they were just kulaks or something or actually owners of an orphan-refining plant; either way of course this would not be the fault of the infant Rand. Her father was a pharmacist in St Petersburg who owned his own shop, so more like marginal petit bourg than anything else.
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Feb 7, 2016 19:31
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Cemetry Gator posted:I've explained this before, but people are not paid on that scale. I don't say "Well Joe makes me 7 dollars an hour, which means I'll pay him 7." It's even harder when you get to office workers and other people. jrod's conviction in the match between productivity and wages is another interesting little libertarian/Marxism parallel, in as much as it represents theorizing about economic justice on the basis of calculating each worker's output compared to wages, the obvious model being a factory. And once again, libertarianism is the baby bullshit alternative because Marxism recognizes that there is a bit of a gap between the value of what industrial workers produce and what they are paid, and furthermore, from what I have seen of modern Marxist analysis, its theorists take seriously need to account for the differences between industrial production work and work in the service economy or producing intellectual property. Also lol @ "State by State," his fixation on capitalizing that word extents to its designation of the several states that compose the US instead of just the abstract institution of "the State."
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Feb 7, 2016 19:54
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Doc Hawkins posted:Galt's Gulch also had a force-field which protected it from nuclear weapons. Nolanar posted:And my fort will have infinite 'lectricity and an invisibility cloak and an anti-nuke shield and only cool people will be allowed in! Anyway, you statists need to grow up.  This is amazing, she really is the Ur-(wo)manchild who never grew up.This thread has done the opposite of what it was probably intended to do, it make me realize libertarianism is even dumber than I already thought it was. Congrats Jrod, you accomplished exactly the opposite of what you wanted 
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Feb 8, 2016 00:46
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The free-market of ideas works as intended.
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Feb 8, 2016 01:38
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GunnerJ posted:Also lol @ "State by State," his fixation on capitalizing that word extents to its designation of the several states that compose the US instead of just the abstract institution of "the State." It's almost like there's some kind of cause about capital-S States. Some kind of lost cause.
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Feb 8, 2016 04:39
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Nessus posted:It's funny, isn't it, how the people who are primarily focused on neutralizing or devolving governmental powers get so peculiarly hung up on the particular expression of what would be called "provinces" or "prefectures" or "departments" in most other nations - almost as if there was some historical incident that made a capital-S State, perhaps one with... unique rights, seem unusually important. Compare to various anarchists and greens who seem to just want to devolve poo poo. It's funny, isn't it, how stupid one post can be
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Feb 8, 2016 06:51
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E: Im a dumb retard!
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Feb 8, 2016 06:53
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If jrod is a troll, he's so dedicated to his gimmick that he'd be almost as insane as a true believer at this point.
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Feb 8, 2016 06:55
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Meg From Family Guy posted:E: Im a dumb retard! You're not wrong.
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Feb 8, 2016 06:56
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gently caress it, i dont give a gently caress. A gently caress
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Feb 8, 2016 07:34
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fade5 posted:This thread has done the opposite of what it was probably intended to do, it make me realize libertarianism is even dumber than I already thought it was. I keep wanting to give their ideology the benefit of the doubt. I just assumed JRod is well-meaning and that he didn't realize he's parroting white supremacist rhetoric; and then nope, he thinks Trayvon Martin deserved to die for having candy. I assume JRod is an outlier, picking the worst thinkers and making the worst arguments; and then the few other libertarians who have posted have been a dude with the quickest intro-to-meltdown turnaround I've ever seen, an avowed white nationalist, and a dude whose entire range of opinion appeared to be tone arguments. I occasionally check in on the repository of all libertarian knowledge to see if they have stronger arguments, and come up with pages and pages of them writing the past into their narrative like astrologers and inventing new economic indicators when the current ones don't say what they like. It's just, I really want to have an honest discussion with them, but there are no honest libertarians to talk to. Shitposting is a fun consolation prize, but it's a consolation prize nonetheless.
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Feb 8, 2016 16:13
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