Twerkteam Pizza posted:

Maybe it's because the U.S. has a horrible habit of pumping a poo poo-TON of unnecessary drugs into mothers giving births so that insurance companies can make bank, or that Doctors often elect to do C-sections because insurance companies won't cover child-birth if it lasts more than 12 hours? Just wondering your response to this you piece of garbage.

Grand Theft Autobot posted:

Looks like you just proved jrod's point! You clearly took the multitude of skills developed as a dishwasher and leveraged them into a more prestigious job selling comics and comic accessories, which I can only assume are polymer vaginas and suspenders.

jrodefeld posted:

Egalitarianism is not an animating principle of libertarians, which should come as no surprise to you.

quote:

If we had never abandoned the Gold Standard but instead Nixon vowed to cut government spending and resume the link between the dollar and gold, we would have seen far less income inequality, less corporate greed, fewer (or none at all) speculative bubbles and Wall Street gambling.

quote:

But, for the libertarian, the problem with this entire situation is not that income inequality is an inherent concern, but that the money that has accrued to the politically-connected rich has been stolen from the middle class through debasement of the currency, through taxation and through subsidy. Thus, justice would require us to redistribute stolen loot to the rightful owners, not out of a desire for greater "equality" but out of a desire for restitution.

quote:

Like I said earlier though, it is true that market economies closer to libertarianism have less general income inequality than do more Statist societies.

quote:

The inequality that we would see in a free society would be that which came about "naturally", through our inherent difference in ability while respecting private property and contract.

paragon1 posted:

From what I've seen of other nerd stores comic accessories means poo poo loads of the Magic: The Gathering Trading Card Game^TM trading cards.

jrodefeld posted:

Egalitarianism is not an animating principle of libertarians, which should come as no surprise to you. However, there is a problem in the United States (and presumably in other countries as well) with undeserved wealth accruing to the top 1%, the politically connected and large corporations. In that case, there is indeed income inequality in excess of what would exist in a genuine free market and this phenomenon should be addressed.

The Progressive narrative runs like this: In the middle of the 20th century, we had a strong middle class, tough regulations on Wall Street and a high marginal income tax on the wealthy. We had more upward mobility and much less inequality. Then we elected Ronald Reagan, he slashed taxes on the wealthy, cut regulations and ushered in an era of unbridled greed and cronyism. Over the next three or four decades, the Corporate class grew increasingly wealthy while the middle class struggled. Now we have a situation of obscene wealth disparity and it was all caused by Republicans and their deregulation and tax cutting.


This is mostly wrong, or at least misleading. Libertarians ask you to focus your attention on the role of the Federal Reserve and the growth of the State in general. The dollar was tied in some capacity to gold for all of United States history, with a few notable periods where we went off the standard for a short time (i.e. during the Civil War) until Nixon closed the Gold Window in 1971. This ushered in the era of total fiat currency with no remaining restraint on the expansion of the money supply.

When the currency can be expanded at will, two things can be expected to happen. "Public" spending will skyrocket as politicians use their new-found power to fund politically motivated programs, subsidies and benefits to interest groups. The business-class will flock in greater numbers to Washington D.C. in order to lobby for special benefits for their industry. The banks will lobby for bailouts and protection, while all manner of industry will seek low-interest (below market-rate) loans for their projects.

There was a famous economist called Richard Cantillon, who in the 18th century wrote his contributions to economic understanding, including "An Essay on Economic Theory". One of his most famous contributions has come to be called "The Cantillon Effect". This described the insidious process by which wealth in transferred through monetary policy from the hands of the middle class and poor to the politically connected rich.

This "Cantillon Effect" probably has more to do with the recent rise in inequality in the United States than any other single factor. When the Fed expands the monetary supply, rising prices are the result if and when that money circulates throughout the economy.

Now, libertarian and Austrian thinkers are quick to note that the word "inflation" used to mean an expansion of the monetary supply, i.e. more physical units of a currency brought into circulation. The phenomenon of rising prices was seen as an effect of inflation but distinct from inflation itself. And even before prices rise, there are negative effects of expansionary monetary policy. These include misleading market signals brought about by artificially low interest rates, and the enrichment of those who get to use the new money first at the expense of everyone else.

If the Federal Reserve prints a billion dollars tomorrow, will prices immediately rise throughout the economy? No. Once the money starts circulating throughout the economy, it will take months or even years for general rising prices to come into effect.

But what does that mean for the people who get to spend that billion dollars right away? It means that the land or resources that they purchase are bought at a lower price. As the money circulates, the last people to get a hold of these new dollars will be faced with higher prices.

What this means is that real wealth has been transferred from the common man to the politically well connected rich.


If we had never abandoned the Gold Standard but instead Nixon vowed to cut government spending and resume the link between the dollar and gold, we would have seen far less income inequality, less corporate greed, fewer (or none at all) speculative bubbles and Wall Street gambling.


But, for the libertarian, the problem with this entire situation is not that income inequality is an inherent concern, but that the money that has accrued to the politically-connected rich has been stolen from the middle class through debasement of the currency, through taxation and through subsidy. Thus, justice would require us to redistribute stolen loot to the rightful owners, not out of a desire for greater "equality" but out of a desire for restitution.

Like I said earlier though, it is true that market economies closer to libertarianism have less general income inequality than do more Statist societies.


The inequality that we would see in a free society would be that which came about "naturally", through our inherent difference in ability while respecting private property and contract.

BUG JUG posted:

I am a real life historian and I had never heard of Theoretical History until today. I now want to hate assign it to graduate students and watch them rip it apart.

1000101 posted:

None of these words really explain how a minimum wage job prepares you for anything more than more minimum wage jobs. Also, what makes you think you'd be anything other than impoverished in your ideal society? You've got the business sense of a houseplant and appear to be naive as all hell in believing that people won't try to pull a fast one on you to relieve you of your hard earned gold pieces in a law-free/regulation free society.

spoon0042 posted:

Without Statist interference the market for pirated blu-rays would explode.

I assume here that jrod is somehow better at copying other people's work than competitors. Somehow.

VitalSigns posted:

It's the amazing self-owns that keep me coming back to this thread.

Racism is impossible in a truly free market, and the minimum wage is bad for blacks because in a truly free market they'd do equal work for less pay than whites!

It's not anyone's business what free people choose to put in their bodies, but if I think Skittles are drug paraphernalia and they're found on your corpse then you probably deserved to be killed!

Libertarians are a priori incapable of racism because that's a collectivist ideology incompatible with a belief in individual autonomy free of group associations, but it just makes sense to assume anyone who has the same skin color as a Crip is one too!

The state is the biggest threat to minority rights, but you gotta love the way they racially profile Arabs it makes me feel safe!

I hate the state, gee I wish the cops and the FBI wouldn't let the first and fourteenth amendments get in the way of enforcing law and order!

Freedom and liberty are the most important values, but if we have to have a state better an absolute monarchy than a constitutional democracy!

The constitution is an illegitimate contract with no authority, but when it comes to slavery, segregation, and women's rights it's better to respect the text than to uphold individual rights by executive order or judicial fiat!

jrodefeld posted:

But what if I was concerned about an ISIS attack on Los Angeles? Would I be unreasonable in being extra cautious about Middle Eastern men who were also Muslims? Would that make me a bigot, even though the clear evidence shows that nearly all ISIS members are Muslims who are of Middle Eastern descent?

jrodefeld posted:

I worded that imprecisely. What I meant was if you were a member of the police or homeland security who was investigating a purported plot by ISIS to attack Los Angeles, would you make the assumption based on the statistics that the attacker would be of Middle Eastern descent and also a Muslim? Or would you really think it is reasonable that you'd suspect the elderly Jewish grandmother just as much as the twenty-something guy who just flew in from Syria?

This would not be about impugning an entire race or religion but would be about looking at the facts regarding terrorism and ISIS membership in order to thwart a planned attack.

I didn't mean to imply it would be reasonable for average people simply to be nervous and uncomfortable around Muslims because of the existence of ISIS in the world. That would be prejudiced and probably bigoted.

VitalSigns posted:

Short answer to the problem of tracing property rights to ensure the prevailing allocation is just: you don't. You pick right now as the starting point (conveniently right after you conquer all you want/are able to grasp, and enrich yourself as much as you can with centuries of expropriation and slavery) and from now on taking is wrong and you have to deal with me peacefully if you want any of the land or resources I somehow control.

GunnerJ posted:

Hoppe has a rather more elaborate and revealing answer here: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/09/hans-hermann-hoppe/smack-down/

GunnerJ posted:

Incidentally, jrod has attempted to address this himself and then gave up on addressing rebuttals: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3745862&pagenumber=36&perpage=40#post452903373

quickly posted:

As far as I can tell, this actually isn't an answer to my question: my question was about the fact that applying a rectification principle is intractable, so that the more just option would be redistribution towards groups likely to be victims of past injustices (he just begs that question). He argues that this would be unjust, but my contention was that it would be the most just of the options available to a libertarian (perhaps whenever historical chains and counterfactuals could be worked out, transfers could be modified on a per-individual basis to satisfy the libertarian - it's not really important).

jrodefeld posted:

Like I said earlier though, it is true that market economies closer to libertarianism have less general income inequality than do more Statist societies.

Nessus posted:

I actually think that if you take it honestly, libertarian perspectives have a really brutal fundament. I think that the argument would be that it would be better to have perfect liberty (by their standards) and vast misery and destruction, than our current system, because misery, suffering, etc. are meaningless in the face of the inherent "morality" of so on and so forth.

GunnerJ posted:

Same, except I have heard of it but not by this name; it's usually called "historical fiction."

Kthulhu5000 posted:

jrodefeld posted:

Like I said earlier though, it is true that market economies closer to libertarianism have less general income inequality than do more Statist societies.

Karia posted:

Wait, you've refused in the past to consider the USA's health care inefficiency as proof that free market health care is worse because even though the USA's is worse than single-payer socialist systems it's still really far from libertarian and thus can't be used as evidence. Which states do you consider libertarian enough to serve as good representations for income inequality, exactly?

jrodefeld posted:

The problems that exist in the United States today have to do with State policy that has largely undone the great prosperity and productive capacity of our once great free market economy. The growing gap between rich and poor has nothing to do with the free market and everything to do with our abandonment of a sound currency and our embrace of reckless fiat monetary policy which has empowered the parasitic and unproductive rich while punishing the poor, the savers, and the productive entrepreneur who bears the brunt of the regulations heaped onto the economy. It is indeed a rigged game but don't blame this on the free market or libertarian ideology!

Cato puts out a yearly report where they rank the countries of the world according to their "economic freedom", i.e. correlation of policies with libertarian ideology. This year, the United States ranks 16th.

These are the top countries ranked by their adherence to policies that promote economic freedom:

1. Hong Kong
2. Singapore
3. New Zealand
4. Switzerland
5. United Arab Emirates
6. Mauritius
7. Jordan
8. Ireland
9. Canada
10. United Kingdom
11. Chile
12. Australia
13. Georgia
14. Qatar
15. Taiwan

All these nations are deemed to be more economically free and thus closer to libertarianism than the United States. Interestingly, both Canada and the United Kingdom are ranked higher than the United States. But Progressives frequently cite those countries as the sort of "socialist" nations the "free market" United States ought to emulate.

Let's focus our analysis on the top four most libertarian economies according to Cato. Do you suppose they have widespread starvation in Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand or Switzerland? Obviously not. If one looks at this list, it becomes clear that the more economically free nations have greater general prosperity which doesn't just accrue to the rich, but benefits everyone.

Here is the full report:

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

What this should tell you is that we don't need to invalidate private property rights or embrace so-called "positive" rights (the right to healthcare, the right to a house) to create a prosperous society with a vibrant middle class and very few poor. If we embark down the path of fiat money, growing State debt and redistributive welfare, society will become much poorer in the long run. This is what the United States is teaching us, and Sweden as well. Both were vibrant and prosperous free market economies earlier in their history but later they became mired in repeating economic bubbles, increasing public debt and stagnating or declining growth. Then there is the insidious damage done by inflation which hurts the poorest while incentivising a parasitic class to mooch off the State rather than earn a living off honest, productive labor.

jrodefeld posted:

Like I said earlier though, it is true that market economies closer to libertarianism have less general income inequality than do more Statist societies.

Kthulhu5000 posted:

Grand Theft Autobot posted:

Absolutely, Libertarianism does indeed have a long history. The problem is that has become inextricably tied to White Supremacy because Libertarian language and argumentation gave segregationists excellent cover for pursuing their true goals. Phillips explains, long before Atwater expressed it, that you can't go to Eden Prairie, MN and say "Niggers in your businesses! Niggers in your schools!" and expect to be taken seriously, but you can say poo poo like "Business owners have the right to do business with whomever they choose! The government shouldn't tell you what to do with your property!" or "You should be able to manage your own schools in your own neighborhoods, and you shouldn't have to accept busloads of children from Minneapolis or anywhere else!" and everyone nods in agreement.

As a historical example, In Atlanta, black residents steadily moved from "black areas" of the city into "white areas" as they gained greater political power, wealth, and education. White residents of "white areas" turned at first to organizations like the Columbians and the KKK who said "friend of the family friend of the family friend of the family" and assaulted people or firebombed their homes if they broke the color boundaries of the city. Because that poo poo made the city seem ungovernable, those organizations were eventually shut down by the police, federal courts, or, in the case of the KKK, Superman.

Even after the death knell of the overtly racist organizations, residential racial transition was still seen as a crisis for working class and middle class whites. They discovered that forming so-called "Homeowners Associations" or "Community Stability Organizations" and so forth, they could achieve the same goals as the KKK- the "preservation" of all-white neighborhoods- while avoiding the scrutiny of the courts. They did this by framing their segregationist positions in Libertarian terminology: homeowners had the "freedom of association" so they could bar blacks from purchasing homes in their neighborhoods; homeowners had a right to the property they purchased and its market value, which would be destroyed by allowing negroes to move into the neighborhood. These groups survived much longer because those lines of argumentation were much more socially acceptable.

It should be no surprise, either, that a ton of modern Taxpayers Leagues and other anti-tax groups were formed as a reaction to desegregation. Taxpayers Leagues in Atlanta were originally explicitly racist in nature, arguing that while Whites paid all the taxes, Blacks got all the government benefits. This is basically still what Taxpayers Leagues argue. But, Taxpayers Leagues were able to frame their policy proposals in Libertarian terms: taxation is theft from productive people, and the benefits go to parasites; taxation is a burden on the free enterprise system and punishes successful or entrepreneurial people; welfare creates a class that is dependent on the government and productive people.

So, in its modern form- which is really the only relevant incarnation of Libertarianism because nobody gave a single poo poo about it before the 1950s- Libertarianism is impossible to disentangle from segregationism and white supremacy.

Alhazred posted:

And yet my country (Norway) which is pretty loving far from being libertarian have less income inequality than yours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_..._World_Bank.svg

TLM3101 posted:

Let me see if I can't anticipate jrode's rebuttal here...

First off, that list if from the World Bank, which is run by the money-grubbing je- uhmmmm, international bankers - there we go - so it's not an unbiased source.

Second, even if it were unbiased, Norway is a state, therefore, ergo, concomitantly, ipso dolor, hasta lumbago, it is only achieving this through theft from the productive members of society and transferring that stolen wealth to worthless parasites and it is thus immoral.

Third, Mises.

Fourth, it doesn't count because Norway is using dirty fiat currency instead of pure, unadulterated, lovely gold.

Fifth, *Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrt*

... Let's see if I'm right!

VitalSigns posted:

If you subsidize long birthing labor, you're just going to get more of it, that's economics.

If socialized health care is going force others to pay for your childbirth no matter the duration, what's to stop women from flippantly running up astronomical tabs on the taxpayers' dime with leisurely 80-hour labor? And where's the incentive to avoid costly complications when the financial cost is shifted to someone else?

Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:

Reduce the cost of birth and the laws of supply and demand indicate there will be infinite births.

Constant tidal waves of infants, dripping and crying, destroying the world.

Is this what you want, statists?

Maybe if we prevent the minorities from having babies...

Your Dunkle Sans posted:

If Laissez Faire was still around, I'd love a thread dedicated to simply parodying and mocking Libertarian talking points like this.

Grand Theft Autobot posted:

Also, whites used to consume a lot more public goods in the cities until those services were desegregated. Whites in Atlanta basically abandoned public transit entirely after bus service was desegregated. Whites joined tax revolt movements because their taxes paid for public goods that they had ceded entirely to blacks. So, in effect, privatization efforts received an enormous boost from desegregation. The Georgia Legislature adopted a change to the state constitution that would have allowed the state to eliminate public schools and replace all the funding with vouchers so that white parents could send their kids to all-white private schools. The purposes of voucher programs have really not changed all that much since then.

Obviously, the most prominent example of the privatization movement is suburbanization. I say that because suburbanization implies (generally) lower taxes and less public services, the use of private automobiles instead of public transit, private clubs and private schools, and a greater de facto control of residency by socioeconomic class. After all, the burbs are the home of HOAs, and if a developer wants to create de facto segregated housing they just exclude low cost designs, and because there aren't any services or public places you end up with far smaller indigent populations. Minnetonka, a wealthy suburb west of Minneapolis, had a huge public outcry when Goodwill tried to open a store there. Nearly all of the outrage centered on the fact that "Those type of people don't live in Minnetonka, and we don't want them coming here to shop at Goodwill."

Ask your family and friends from the 'burbs to list their top reasons for living there. I bet it goes something like this:

1. Better Schools
2. Less Crime
3. Lower Cost Housing by size
4. More land/living space

There are more than this, but most people I talk to mention these. Well, the first two things on this list are basically a coded way of saying, "No Black People." White Flight from the cities following Brown v Board and other decisions is being mirrored in the suburbs currently. When I was born, my suburb was overwhelmingly white. Over the course of my childhood and teenage years, the southern half of my suburb grew increasingly black, and white families that lived around me gradually sold and moved north. A large county road running through the middle of the suburb became both a geographic and racial boundary line. When I was younger I was sent to public school, because it was a "good school." All of a sudden, though, it became a "bad school" and I was sent to private school. Eventually, we packed up and headed north like our neighbors, and I was back in public school.

I haven't lived in that suburb since 2004, and I moved to the city after college. Every now and again I run into someone from there, or I see someone from high school on facebook, and if they are white they have now moved even farther north, and if they are black, chances are they have moved into previously white northern areas. And all the whites keep saying poo poo like, " So happy we made the move to Ham Lake! The school system is so great!"

edit: I should add, another aspect of Suburbanization as Privatization is that suburbanites by and large still commute to work in the central city. So, they pay no property taxes to support the city, they actively vote in state and national politics for anti-city legislation, but then turn around and leech off the city every day at work. They consume fire, police, streets, water/sewer, etc. plus they have jobs that wouldn't exist without the city, while giving back only a small amount in sales taxes on lunches or happy hours. Then, they leave the city and completely distance themselves from all the problems of the city.

Nolanar posted:

Is there a legend on what the different colors mean there? I'm guessing they correspond to different racial demographics.

Jerry Manderbilt posted:

red = asian
blue = white
green = black
orange = latino

...to add onto what i posted, there's only one white family on my entire block left that has school-age children, and they elect to homeschool them instead of sending them to the 95% asian elementary school, which also regularly contends for having the best test scores in the entire state and is the reason real estate here is so expensive. like, why the gently caress would you live here and pay a million dollars for your house when you're not even going to send your kids to the school that makes your house so goddamn expensive.

Grand Theft Autobot posted:

I'm beginning to think jrod isn't going to discuss Tom Woods' call for school resegregation with me.

Grand Theft Autobot posted:

I'm beginning to think jrod isn't going to discuss Tom Woods' call for school resegregation with me.