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jrodefeld posted:I have to single out this post because of how un-self aware it is.  quote:In 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed and libertarians were vindicated. No they loving weren't, maybe crack a history book or even read some primary sources sometime instead of accepting all of your history lessons from mises.org exclusively quote:Actual Marxists and radical socialists became discredited among the mainstream, as people generally understood that their views had been discredited. That happened long before the fall of the Soviet Union, primarily as a result of US propaganda, but also because Stalin was a pretty brutal guy and welp anyone who isn't a total capitalist must also be Stalin. Were you home schooled? Serious question because only someone who was home schooled or who just didn't go to school at all could possibly be this ignorant of history. Literally every post that you make more than a few sentences long has at least one major historical inaccuracy in it, sometimes several. I assume all of these events you'd simply never heard of until you read about the revised version of them on mises.org quote:And proponents of the free market did a victory lap of sorts. Bill Clinton claimed "The Era of Big Government is Over" and everyone at least tacitly acknowledged the superiority of the free economy over central planning. You can only claim that as a libertarian victory if you completely misrepresent what libertarianism stands for and if you have literally no awareness of what was happening at that time. The 1980s-1990s were not a point of unbridled laissez-faire libertarian capitalism you loving dimwit. quote:So, according to people who have studied the issue, the nations which adhere closest to the libertarian ideal of economic liberty are also the most prosperous. Explain again how there is zero evidence of libertarian ideas leading to better outcomes? Yes, I recognize these countries are not perfectly libertarian, many have social welfare states of one form or another, but they are MORE libertarian than the others. As I've explained previously, the extent of economic liberty is what generates the prosperity that generates high living standards and allows the poor to be taken care of. You're using The Heritage Foundation, world-famous for their failure to satisfy even a minimum threshold of intellectual honesty. You're acting as though this is some loving group of scientists when it's really a bunch of talking heads who try to mold the data to fit a conclusion. loving Canada has universal healthcare and pretty strict regulation you dumbfuck, anyone who ranks these countries as more "economically free" than the US is a real grasping-at-straws dipshit. Out of morbid curiosity, just to see how profoundly stupid The Heritage Foundation's scholars could be, I decided to look into The Heritage Foundation's 2016 Index of Economic Freedom. How is economic freedom measured? They say: The Heritage Foundation posted:Q.3. How do you measure economic freedom? They expound on this at length, but basically they rank countries based on some number of subjective criteria. Coincidentally, the Heritage Foundation gave Qatar a 99.7 on "Fiscal Freedom". These scores are out of 100, so the Heritage Foundation has reported that Qatar has PERFECT "Fiscal Freedom" despite being a slave state. They gave UAE a 95.0. They gave the United States a 65.6. Why is the US ranked so much lower on "Fiscal Freedom" than actual real-life slave states? Interestingly, they've written a blurb for every category for every country, so we can actually interrogate their explanation as to why Qatar has nearly a perfect Fiscal Freedom score. Unfortunately, the situation here really is what everyone accused the Cato Institute of doing earlier: their "Fiscal Freedom" score is literally just based on the tax rate and nothing else, so no consideration for whether or not a sizable portion of the population are actually slaves: The Heritage Foundation explains Qatar's Fiscal Freedom ranking posted:There is no income tax or domestic corporate tax. Foreign corporations operating in Qatar are subject to a flat 10 percent corporate tax rate. Aside from customs duties, there are no other major taxes. The tax burden equals 5.2 percent of GDP, and government spending amounts to 31.4 percent of GDP. Jrod I know that you're going to complain that I'm nitpicking, but this serves to bring up a very important point that I think you need to consider: The Cato Institute and The Heritage Foundation are staffed by a bunch of dumbfucks and you shouldn't take anything that they say as being accurate or informative. These are the kinds of people who see slavery and say "ah yes, but those slaves don't have to pay income taxes, so they're more free than me". These people are dipshits and if you keep referring to their rankings then you're a dipshit, too
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Feb 16, 2016 08:09
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Like I'm sure that Qatar is real loving great if you're a slaveowner but holy gently caress how do you rank an entire country on the basis of the experience of its 1%? No surprise that this is what The Heritage Foundation is doing, but gently caress
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Feb 16, 2016 08:11
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QuarkJets posted:These are the kinds of people who see slavery and say "ah yes, but those slaves don't have to pay income taxes, so they're more free than me". This is literally jrod's position though. Slavery isn't a word that should be thrown around willy-nilly when discussing forced labor, but by god the income tax has made slaves of us all.
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Feb 16, 2016 08:15
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QuarkJets posted:You're acting as though this is some loving group of scientists when it's really a bunch of talking heads who try to mold the data to fit a conclusion. At least fundamentalists have to be fundamentalists about books which say to be charitable to the poor.
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Feb 16, 2016 08:18
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VitalSigns posted:And I guess let only the richest executives of the biggest corporations choose the president so we can be number 1 like Hong Kong. This is actually in the pro column for libertarians
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Feb 16, 2016 08:20
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Breaking my five year lurk to say it's been real. Hours of entertainment. Jrod will be missed. Reminds me why I no longer talk to a friend who works at the Cato Institute. Some days I think Jrod and said friend may be the same person. The pseudo-intellectual petulance may be just a universal personality trait of all libertarians.
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Feb 16, 2016 08:24
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VitalSigns posted:Okay Switzerland has mandatory health insurance, not UHC. But many of their health insurance plans are actually run by the government (public options), private plans are regulated as all-hell, and everything's subsidized as gently caress for citizens who don't make tons and tons of money, so it's basically less efficient UHC designed to gently caress over immigrants. Why does it gently caress over immigrants, you ask? The Swiss only provide healthcare subsidies and public options to citizens, everyone else has to get a more expensive private plan. Citizenship takes a very long time unless you basically have a Swiss parent, and it's also notoriously difficult for minorities to become citizens. There are three paths to Swiss citizenship: 1) Mother is Swiss 2) Father is Swiss, but this only counts if he's married to your mother, I guess this is to prevent a bunch of "thin-blooded" bastard children from applying for citizenship 3) "Regular nationalization", by which the country has to be your sole residence for 12 years, you have to not have a criminal record, you must satisfy whatever additional requirements are required by the canton where you're applying (which can be literally anything), and then you have to be voted in by your neighbors, like you're running for loving office. That last step is a real trick if you have unpopular beliefs (Muslim) or if your skin is too dark. And this isn't hyperbole, these are real, documented issues that some people in Switzerland are trying to fix (mostly through public awareness, "hey stop voting against the black guy just because he's black you racist fucks"). Note how this is basically a libertarian wet dream
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Feb 16, 2016 08:36
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TLM3101 posted:As has been pointed out already, but it bears repeating, all of those countries have social welfare states in one form or another. So, perhaps, jrode, just perhaps it's not that they're more Libertarian that is the reason why they're doing so well, but the fact that they are social welfare states? If a social welfare state with free healthcare, education, public housing and the like is Socialist and thus evil, why is it, then, that the US which has only a vestigial welfare system at best is not top of the list? But The Heritage Foundation said that they're more economically free, and libertarianism represents economic freedom, so surely a place like Canada isn't actually a social democracy with a strong safety net?!
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Feb 16, 2016 08:38
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Jrode, without government aid or rich parents, there's no way you would have been able to support yourself through work and college education until you got that job at age 21, you immense moron. It's just not born out in fact that any person without qualifications can get a high-paying job, as evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of people don't have them. I'm supporting myself through college thanks to a position gained through minimum wage experience, but I have a minimum wage, public healthcare, low-income tax credits, and manageable government-subsidized student loans to support me, and I acknowledge that. And my current job still doesn't pay >$20 an hour, because part-time jobs that pay rent, lack formal qualifications, and allow you to set your own schedule are actually rare and sought-after! Who'd've thunk! JRode, you are immensely awful. You are absolutely the worst.
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Feb 16, 2016 08:42
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I'm insulted personally, and on the behalf of every other unskilled worker, and every other student with a part-time job, by the statements: "Any idiot could have quickly gotten the skills necessary to do that $23 an hour job. You don't need a college degree or substantial technical training in order to get any decent paying job." I mean, those things clearly aren't necessary, because you got one without them, but the vast majority of people can't get a decent-paying job and attend school at the same time. I don't know any other full-time students currently who can get flex hours plus living wages. I very rarely see positions like that advertised or mentioned. Jrodefeld, you're calling everyone who isn't you mentally deficient rather than admit that you got lucky so you can look better. You're scum.
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Feb 16, 2016 08:49
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Saeku posted:I'm insulted personally, and on the behalf of every other unskilled worker, and every other student with a part-time job, by the statements: "Any idiot could have quickly gotten the skills necessary to do that $23 an hour job. You don't need a college degree or substantial technical training in order to get any decent paying job."
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Feb 16, 2016 08:56
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QuarkJets posted:Switzerland has mandatory health insurance, not UHC.... How interesting, thanks. I expect libertarian opposition to UHC, Stafford loans, social security, SNAP, etc would vanish pretty quickly if we let local voters vet each resident's citizenship by referendum. For simplicity we'll start by great-grandfathering in anyone who can prove unbroken matrilineal descent through American citizens back to, oh I don't know just picking a date that establishes firm constitutional American heritage, let's say 1850 why not. That small cadre of citizens with cultural American heritage can convene local elections boards to determine the rules for the referenda on everyone else's citizenship.
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Feb 16, 2016 09:07
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jrodefeld posted:there will be far fewer hungry people in a free society There will still be some hungry people. Even if we take you at your word, in the best-case scenario you present, some people will loving starve to death. This is OK with you and an acceptable feature of your perfect world. I've said this to you before: the market does work, it will correct for all sorts of bad actions eventually, but what you see as statistical market corrections, people with compassion see as human lives needlessly suffering and ending. It's not that the market won't correct, it's that the process of it doing so, a necessary step to doing things the libertarian way, is readily preventable human suffering. The fuel that powers the engine of natural market correction is avoidable human misery. I understand that this is not the goal of libertarianism, but it is a necessary and completely foreseeable byproduct of enacting the policies you support. Other systems might fail to do everything for every person, and some individuals will almost certainly slip through the cracks in even the most utopian progressive system enactable, but it would merely be an unfortunate failure of humans in complex systems rather than a required, unavoidable part of the process. This is what makes libertarianism evil. People will definitely suffer in easily preventable ways and libertarians must be perfectly OK, with this continuing indefinitely, because it is absolutely necessary that people suffer in horrific but readily avoidable ways in order for a reactive system like you propose to work at all. Edited for grammar and poo poo The Bloop fucked around with this message at 10:20 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Feb 16, 2016 10:09
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Trent posted:clipped because the rest is unimportant. Some libertarian fuckwit is going to say "but people starve in today's society too". But what we're really talking about are utopian ideals. Libertarian utopia includes people up getting poisoned and starving to death because that's the free market bitch, poo poo happens. Everyone else would think that any utopia that has these issues isn't really a utopia at all, or is possibly the worst possible utopia imaginable
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Feb 16, 2016 10:14
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QuarkJets posted:Some libertarian fuckwit is going to say "but people starve in today's society too". But what we're really talking about are utopian ideals. Libertarian utopia includes people up getting poisoned and starving to death because that's the free market bitch, poo poo happens. Everyone else would think that any utopia that has these issues isn't really a utopia at all, or is possibly the worst possible utopia imaginable I thought of preemptively addressing this objection in my post, but didn't want to dilute the point. The thing is that no progressive is (by definition) endorsing or defending the status quo, except perhaps in comparison to even worse things. The progressive ideal prevents all preventable suffering by design, and while it will certainly be imperfect as all human constructs are, libertarianism actually requires a great deal of preventable misery to work at all, in the best case scenario. When it also inevitably fails to live perfectly up to its ideal promise, this will be magnified exponentially since there is no guaranteed safety net, but the worst thing is that foreseeable, preventable human suffering is absolutely intrinsic to the design.
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Feb 16, 2016 10:19
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I don't know why you people are acting iike that rear end in a top hat is gone forever and not just until he feels like proselytizing again
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Feb 16, 2016 11:47
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He's probably not even reading the thread anymore, he's busy looking for mises articles to copy & paste next time. Oh, heh, oops. I meant he's busy having an active social life.
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Feb 16, 2016 13:08
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Having read all of Jrod's posts, his suggested reforms will logically lead to turbomegadeath forever. This is a logictruth that you must all accept. Only the emancipatory science of Marxist-Leninism can save us from the turbomegadeath, speaking logically.
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Feb 16, 2016 15:03
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DrProsek posted:Having read all of Jrod's posts, his suggested reforms will logically lead to turbomegadeath forever. This is a logictruth that you must all accept. Only the emancipatory science of Marxist-Leninism can save us from the turbomegadeath, speaking logically. Only the dead are truly free. 
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Feb 16, 2016 15:28
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I like the assertion that the fall of the Soviet Union Vindicates Libertarians and the market yet the US is itself not an example of free market economics because it is still controlled by government and therefore terrible and crony capitalist. Also that ivory tower academics have all been super socialist Marxist traitors since ww2, anti-intellectual agitating straight out of the Reagan and Nixon campaigns, and before them McCarthy. In closing, Jrod, you revise history more than a Holocaust denier and are totally intellectually bankrupt. I would say I hope you enjoy watching your crazy philosophy continue to be totally ignored as you grow older, but I suspect that like many libertarians you are really just conservative/racist but self conscious about it and would feel totally vindicated by the election of a shitheel like Rubio or Cruz. So I guess I'll just leave it to  .
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Feb 16, 2016 15:36
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Bueno Papi posted:Breaking my five year lurk to say it's been real. Hours of entertainment. Jrod will be missed. Reminds me why I no longer talk to a friend who works at the Cato Institute. Some days I think Jrod and said friend may be the same person. The pseudo-intellectual petulance may be just a universal personality trait of all libertarians. Please tell us your war stories. Please, I love making internet friends
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Feb 16, 2016 15:43
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Caros, sorry to hear about your divorce. I hope things work out well for you.  JRod, you should use your forums vacation to read up on other theories of ethics. You might notice that most people in the field try to answer tough questions about the implications of their beliefs rather than having a tantrum!
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Feb 16, 2016 15:45
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Oh, poo poo, I only have until Sunday to slander Jrod? gently caress, I have to go to an open mic run by my socialist foundation and oops I just invited anyone in this thread to come! Feel free to come out if you're in the Central Ohio area. I feel like posting this in Jrod's "Libertarianism ams the best" thread is the ultimate slander against Jrod. Poetry and music being used in an effort for the common man goes against the very core of his being. Up yours Jrod.
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Feb 16, 2016 15:52
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Nolanar posted:Caros, sorry to hear about your divorce. I hope things work out well for you. 
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Feb 16, 2016 15:54
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Jokes aside, it is kind of eerie that jrodefeld's registration date was my wedding day. Never noticed that before today.
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Feb 16, 2016 16:59
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Caros posted:Jokes aside, it is kind of eerie that jrodefeld's registration date was my wedding day. Never noticed that before today. 
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Feb 16, 2016 17:10
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Caros posted:Jokes aside, it is kind of eerie that jrodefeld's registration date was my wedding day. Never noticed that before today. the lolbert is coming from inside the house run
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Feb 16, 2016 17:19
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With Jrode being probated, that means he can still read the thread but just not post? I still have an effortpost roast of Jrode in mind to type out when I get home later regardless.
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Feb 16, 2016 17:19
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was it this thread that got him or did we lose containment? I'm phone posting so I can't check records
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Feb 16, 2016 17:45
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Ron Paul Atreides posted:was it this thread that got him or did we lose containment? I'm phone posting so I can't check records It was this one. This is the post that got flagged, but I think it was more on general principle. 
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Feb 16, 2016 18:20
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Nolanar posted:It was this one. This is the post that got flagged, but I think it was more on general principle. haha wow that was a good one. He does know Ronald Reagan brought about California's gun control specifically when blacks began arming themselves right. Reagan is a liberal now? Haha sorry man I found it funny that Caros played it so straight someone took it as real
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Feb 16, 2016 18:43
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That's kind of a dickish thing to laugh at.
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Feb 16, 2016 18:44
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jrodefeld posted:So I'll just ask this question because I am genuinely curious. Forgetting the historical gold standard, why don't the left support a mechanism which limits the expansion of the money supply in order to limit inflation and curtail the enrichment of the corporate class and the endless expansion of the State? This, to me, seems like a very Progressive cause since this is one of the biggest drivers of inequality and corporate privilege. Didn't see anyone else mention this so I figured I'd point out the obvious— Inflation is great for poor people, because the poorest Americans are so loving poor they are actually hugely in debt. Inflation causes their debt to be worth less and less over time. The only people it harms is people with significant savings, which is to say, people who can handle it.
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Feb 16, 2016 18:55
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Muscle Tracer posted:Didn't see anyone else mention this so I figured I'd point out the obvious— we've gone over the uses of inflation, the advantages it has to debters and the poor compared to the rich, and how the real problem is stagnating wages that have not kept pace like they were supposed to (related to issues like the push back on minimum wage increases and letting Walmart and McDonald's get away with paying their people so little they need food stamps to survive and so forth and he has not once read or acknowledged any of those posts nor ever acknowledged the counter to his bullshit.
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Feb 16, 2016 19:01
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I just have point this out:jrodefeld posted:Here is the new top 10 from the Heritage Institute. No UAE or Qatar in the top 10 so maybe you'll look at the substance of the ranking this time. He's not dealing with the actual issue (a Libertarian think thank ranked literal slave states highly on their freedom list), he's trying to find another list to try to avoid addressing the issue entirely. fade5 fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Feb 16, 2016 19:01
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fade5 posted:I just have point this out: Lol Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the UK are all on that list and despite the conservative agitating in the Anglosphere countries All have a far far more robust safety net and social infrastructure than the US and higher taxes and gently caress how can they be so bad at make their points and yet not realize it
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Feb 16, 2016 19:04
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fade5 posted:I just have point this out: I think that's one of the best summations of how jrod and most other libertarian thinkers get it wrong. The most important part of thinking and theorizing is self-criticism. It's looking at your argument and saying "Well, my princples seemed sound but then when I looked at critically I noticed logical leaps"or even "I looked at the real world and it didn't behave like my theory, need to change it". Jrod doesn't do that. He's not interested in self-criticism (or criticism from others). He is backwards reasoning: he has faith that he's right, combined with a clear emotional need to believe libertarianism, and so he isn't capable of accepting information that'd cause him to have to actually do the work of reevaluation. Which means he's not, at any point, even doing any real thinking. Ron Paul Atreides posted:Lol Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the UK are all on that list and despite the conservative agitating in the Anglosphere countries All have a far far more robust safety net and social infrastructure than the US and higher taxes and Because their fans don't care if the facts are true, they probably know a lot aren't,but don't care because they already know they're right and just see facts and figures as tools in an argument, not things that should guide your thinking.
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Feb 16, 2016 19:05
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I don't know what he thinks the objections to the inclusion of Qatar and the UAE on a list of "free" states were based on if not "the substance of the ranking". "But there are slaves in those countries dude" is just about the most substantial objection to "here are countries I think are free" I can think of.
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Feb 16, 2016 19:20
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Ron Paul Atreides posted:Lol Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the UK are all on that list and despite the conservative agitating in the Anglosphere countries All have a far far more robust safety net and social infrastructure than the US and higher taxes and
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Feb 16, 2016 19:26
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Bryter posted:I don't know what he thinks the objections to the inclusion of Qatar and the UAE on a list of "free" states were based on if not "the substance of the ranking". He sees it as nitpicking. Praxeology doesn't believe in falsifying its theories via evidence, so there's no reason to criticize a model for something silly like its results. He instead asked us to criticize it for its methodology. And then we did, and he ignored those posts in favor of complaining about us complaining about Arab slave states.
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Feb 16, 2016 19:29
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