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Mises.org posted:Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute. Even Mises wants to distance itself from what Mises says
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May 16, 2016 21:01
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Vulture Culture posted:"Some Cultural Marxists insist that slavery was universally abhorrent. Of course, once you get past the political correctness problems of eugenics, there's an important question. Independent farmers had powerful financial incentives to ensure their workers were made of good stock and never got sick enough to die. Couldn't it surely be said that descendants of former slaves are stronger, fitter, and healthier than they would have otherwise been?" Let's also not forget that some folks have unironically argued that slavery was good because it got people out of Africa and let their descendants grow up in the first world. Because, of course, as we all know black people have had absolutely no trouble in America since the
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May 16, 2016 21:19
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Let's also not forget that some folks have unironically argued that slavery was good because it got people out of Africa and let their descendants grow up in the first world. Because, of course, as we all know black people have had absolutely no trouble in America since the And to the extent that America is a great place to live, it's for reasons that have nothing to do with slavery! People will argue that imperialism was good because it brought the concepts of political rights and self-determination to peoples who hadn't had them before. Which are a neat things to get I guess, but what was the application of these concepts by colonized peoples? Towards whom? There's a real, widespread lack of broad-based causal thinking on these things. Like, the British Empire brought the benefits of the English language to so many, allowing them to participate in an international economic and political order... that exists due to the British Empire.
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May 16, 2016 21:24
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GunnerJ posted:And to the extent that America is a great place to live, it's for reasons that have nothing to do with slavery! There's also the whole issue that people in the west by and large are not taught much about indigenous empires and cultures that existed before the arrival of colonial forces, so there's kind of a 'blank slate' until then. I think a lot of people would have been surprised if they knew about the extent of things like the Mali empire in Africa.
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May 16, 2016 22:38
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Yeah I'm sure Africa was always destined for failed states and Europeans had/have nothing to do with it. What do you mean France still takes the Lion's share of it's former colonies tax revenues for its central bank???? That can't be right
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May 17, 2016 02:10
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Sedge and Bee posted:Yeah I'm sure Africa was always destined for failed states and Europeans had/have nothing to do with it. What do you mean France still takes the Lion's share of it's former colonies tax revenues for its central bank???? That can't be right 
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May 17, 2016 04:21
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Nessus posted:If this is for real, that doesn't seem like it's really a "former" colony. I was not joking. A true understanding of colonialism today is that it definitely didn't end in the 1960s. But don't worry! They don't spend the money, they just invest it and pocket the profits! E: I misremembered, its 85% of their foreign currency reserves Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 22:28 on May 17, 2016 |
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May 17, 2016 04:42
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I don't know if this is relevant to your interests, libertarian thread, but I saw it and immediately thought of you:
Vindicator fucked around with this message at 08:39 on May 17, 2016 |
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May 17, 2016 08:23
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Vindicator posted:I don't know if this is relevant to your interests, libertarian thread, but I saw it and immediately thought of you: He doesn't look like Prince Harry. 0/5. Would not gently caress.
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May 17, 2016 08:36
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I like how it was the Climate Change thread of all things he decided to slink back on here to poo poo up.
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May 17, 2016 10:51
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Tesseraction posted:I like how it was the Climate Change thread of all things he decided to slink back on here to poo poo up. He thought we wouldn't notice.
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May 17, 2016 13:13
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Welp, jrod is already banned. So how long until he reregs and vomits another wall of word salad on the forums?
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May 17, 2016 16:43
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Welp, jrod is already banned. Awws. That was over far too quickly. What am I going to do this afternoon? Actually work?!
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May 17, 2016 19:26
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It's good to remind him not to poo poo up other people's threads, even if it's amusing for followers of this thread.
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May 17, 2016 19:33
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And I was looking forward to his next magnum opus, too.  Edit: ^^^^^^^^ That's totally true and fair, though.
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May 17, 2016 19:35
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I'm just glad AA finally came around to the "No really just ban this guy." side of things.
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May 17, 2016 22:51
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Pretty sure that the general attitude of the mods was that if he stayed in his little quarantine he was fine to vomit walls of text as often as he wanted. I'm also pretty sure that part of it was because there are, in fact, a bunch of us that like to watch him be stupid. Thing of it is we here in these parts already know what a colossal dumbass he is and he knows he'll never convince us. So instead he had to work around that and vomit walls of text at other people. This isn't the first time he's done that and is probably part of why they just brought the banhammer down on him so fast. It doesn't matter what thread he posts in he tries to turn that into a libertarian thread as well. To him libertarianism is the solution to absolutely everything and he needs to warp his arguments to fit that. Granted that's also kind of the lolbertarian tactic in general; turn everything into a freedom issue then explain how deregulating everything would automatically lead to less pollution because reasons. Now let me quote the Cato Institute which is by no means in the pocket of some obscenely rich people who would just like to become even more obscenely rich, thanks.
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May 17, 2016 22:57
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Granted that's also kind of the lolbertarian tactic in general; turn everything into a freedom issue then explain how deregulating everything would automatically lead to less pollution because reasons. Now let me quote the Cato Institute which is by no means in the pocket of some obscenely rich people who would just like to become even more obscenely rich, thanks. That reminds me, I play TF2 with a guy who's going to some Cato Institute summer program for a week. Someone in the server asked what that was and I said, "it means he's going to learn how to be a libertarian shill for the Koch brothers." He agreed that that's what he's doing.
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May 18, 2016 04:34
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John Stossel recently recovered from lung cancer. Why do I bring that up? Because Stossel is a libertarian, and quite the dumbass, and apparently, he believes that the solution to healthcare is the free market! He's also against the FDA, but that's another argument for another time. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/04/20/stossel-have-lung-cancer-medical-care-ive-received-is-excellent-but-customer-service-stinks.html quote:But as a consumer reporter, I have to say, the hospital's customer service stinks. Doctors keep me waiting for hours, and no one bothers to call or email to say, "I'm running late." Few doctors give out their email address. Patients can't communicate using modern technology. First off, what's important is to know whether or not John is inpatient or outpatient, which he doesn't tell us. Based on the opening line, I assume he's inpatient, but who knows! Clearly, the free market does not value quality writers. Why is this important? Well, if he's inpatient, the fact that he's waiting for hours could come down to a lot of things. Doctors are waiting on the results of tests to come back, they're doing their rounds, they have other, more urgent things to do. As far as communication technology, that varies from hospital to hospital. I mean, I have access to a patient portal that allows me to send emails to my doctor on my smartphone. quote:I get X-rays, EKG tests, echocardiograms, blood tests. Are all needed? I doubt it. But no one discusses that with me or mentions the cost. Why would they? The patient rarely pays directly. Government or insurance companies pay. Well, did you ever ask? Part of being a patient is discussing your care and your options with your doctors. And yes, I think a lot of times these things come down as decisions that aren't open for discussion, but you'd be surprised by asking "Hey, why do you need this test." Now, here's where a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. First off, the trend is away from ordering a lot of tests since each test has a certain amount of risk associated with it. That next X-Ray could be the one that gives you cancer, after all. But doctors started ordering more tests partly as a result of lawsuits, so they could say that they ran the tests and didn't find anything. But those tests started adding noise. Also, another reason why doctors were doing tests was that medicare reimbursments. More tests equals more money for you, as a doctor. But now that there's a push away from fee-per-service healthcare and outcome based payments, doctors have less reason to order tests that didn't really need to be done. Also, this may be the one article I've ever read that implies that private insurance companies are just willing to pay for things willy-nilly. quote:I fill out long medical history forms by hand and, in the next office, do it again. Same wording: name, address, insurance, etc. Doesn't the hospital he goes to have an EHR? Mine does. I haven't had to fill out these forms in a long time. They just have it. Maybe his hospital isn't so great after all. quote:I shouldn't be surprised that hospitals are lousy at customer service. The Detroit Medical Center once bragged that it was one of America's first hospitals to track medication with barcodes. Good! But wait -- ordinary supermarkets did that decades before. This is where Stossel's idiocy comes out in full force. This is the idiocy of "Hey, this idea is really simple, why couldn't they do it sooner if somebody else could do something similar?" Well, that's because barcoding for medications and barcoding in a supermarket are two very different ideas. In a supermarket, all you need to do is scan a barcode and pull up the database item for that barcode. You grab the name of the item, the price, and you decrease the stock by 1. In terms of functionality, it's pretty simple. In a hospital, you have to scan the barcode for the medication. But you also need to know the patient, because you need to know if there's an order for that medication. You also need to see if it's the right time to give that medication. You also need to make sure that the order is still active and hasn't been discontinued or replace with another order. You also need to see what you're giving to the patient at the same time in case it might interact. You also need to see what side-effects might come from taking the medication and display any appropriate warning. You might need to document how much is being given to the patient. And I'm sure I might be missing something. The point is that it's relatively complex, and there's a lot on the line. Give the wrong drug to the right patient, and you could kill them. Give the right drug to the wrong patient, and you also could kill them. Give the right drug to the right patient but after someone else has already administered that drug and you could kill them. There's a lot of ways to kill a patient with medication. It's really surprising. To be clear, I find it surprising that he's against the FDA, but what can I say? I'm not an idiot. quote:Customer service is sclerotic because hospitals are largely socialist bureaucracies. Instead of answering to consumers, which forces businesses to be nimble, hospitals report to government, lawyers and insurance companies. loving HIPAA! Now doctors can't just give my information out to anyone! And patient rights regulations. God drat them. I mean, how dare we say things like "I have the right to pain relief and to not be restrained against my will." quote:I'm as happy as the next guy to have government or my insurance company pay, but the result is that there's practically no free market. Markets work when buyer and seller deal directly with each other. That doesn't happen in hospitals. Oh Lord. First off, insurance companies don't want to spend money. That's their whole deal. They make money by not spending it and negotiating on better costs for healthcare. Did he do any loving research? Does his editor know that pulling an article from your rear end does not constitute writing a quality article? Next, the "cars, computers, and planes are complex" argument is something that I find very tired and trite. There's a difference. In a hospital, I'm essentially a captive audience. I mean, after surgery is the wrong time for me to decide I don't like my service and go elsewhere. Sometimes, I might be too sick to go elsewhere. In a lot of places, there isn't room for competition. Like, there's 20 car dealerships or so within 10 miles of me. There's 3 hospitals. And I live in a middle-sized city. And one of those hospitals is aimed at people giving birth. There's only a finite number of hospitals that can go up in an area or a region, and the fact is, if you're having a heart attack, you're not in a space to consider your options. If there's a hospital five minutes away and there's another 2 hours away, you're not going to the one that's two hours away.Also, there's only so much demand for so many beds. If two hospitals open up in a small town, both of them will close because they don't make money. A lot of areas just don't have the multitude of options that would allow for real competition. These guys can operate a virtual monopoly because when you need a hospital, you ain't going doctor shopping. Depending on your care, you might not even have options, since some equipment is so specialized that only a handful of hospitals can really afford to have them. This is JRod in a more readable fashion. This is a guy talking about things he doesn't understand, and he's too stupid to realize what he doesn't know. Anyone who spent five minutes talking about healthcare could find out about these realities.
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May 18, 2016 04:54
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^sweet breakdown, thanks! John Stossel hates the hospital, like the DMV or any other universally-used public service, because that's where he's treated the same as everyone else. All the private services he uses are segregated by class so he's basically accustomed to special treatment and he thinks that's because of some vague notion of "efficiency." 
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May 18, 2016 05:00
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As a journalist who knows fuckall about medicine, if I don't know why a doctor is doing a test it must be useless obviously.
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May 18, 2016 05:02
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Stinky_Pete posted:^sweet breakdown, thanks! Behold, the subtext of every "But you have to wait in line!" argument against UHC. (As if you don't ever have to wait in line at an American hospital if you have a non-life-threatening-issue.)
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May 18, 2016 05:19
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Yes. In Canada, you have to wait three months to see a doctor. In America, I just made an appointment with my doctor. The earliest they have available is three months from now. Thank God I don't live in a country with UHC where I'd have to wait three months to see my doctor.
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May 18, 2016 17:28
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Are you talking about a family doctor? I don't think I've ever had to wait more than two or three days to see mine, I can even often call in the morning and get squeezed in at the end of the evening 
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May 18, 2016 17:43
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DeusExMachinima posted:Do you think the Koch brothers are libertarian?
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May 18, 2016 17:55
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Stinky_Pete posted:^sweet breakdown, thanks! I've known people who came to realize this and consequently abandoned right-wing economics. Would that more people could be so self-aware.
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May 18, 2016 17:57
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GunnerJ posted:Behold, the subtext of every "But you have to wait in line!" argument against UHC. (As if you don't ever have to wait in line at an American hospital if you have a non-life-threatening-issue.) There's a lot of "I am the most important person here" going on there as well. Your life-threatening issue can loving wait for my non-life-threatening issue because I'm better than you. I have more money ergo I deserve whatever I want first because gently caress you. I don't care if you're minutes away from death. I do not want to wait for my x-ray. Soviet Commubot posted:
Depends on where you live, I think; in some places in America it's gotten so god awful that "urgent care" places have been cropping up. Your family doctor isn't much good for you if you, say, get the flu if you have to wait a month for an appointment so these "we will see you immediately" places just cropped up everywhere. They might have a bit of a wait time depending on how busy they are that day but you don't even need to be a regular patient. Actually I have my primary doctor through one of these places now and it's amazing how different it is. I had a knee injury a while back that completely ruined my ability to do my job at the time properly but didn't manage to even get a doctor's visit let alone any tests done for six weeks. That was also before Obamacare. Granted the other side of it is that it's absurdly hard to become a doctor in the U.S. I get that it shouldn't exactly be easy but it's difficult and carries massive financial risks. I can't imagine that there are enough doctors because of that. Works out great for doctors that do exist because they can have hospitals vomit money into their bank accounts in huge piles but it kind of screws over literally everybody else. That's not an issue with Obamacare but that gets the blame anyway. It's kind of funny because despite what lolbertarians think a poo poo load of America's health care problems were directly caused by the free market, deregulated system we had before. The worst was insurance companies going "lolnope" whenever you needed them to actually pay for anything. But you know, freedom!
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May 18, 2016 18:50
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Oh man, Stossel. I remember him for starting up a "Stossel in the Classroom" series about economics for high school students. The very thought of it gave me chills, but I can't really stomach more than a few minutes of the videos there are -- the one that has the highest search return is just one that rants about how stupid millennials are for not liking capitalism enough. Not the best way to make a first impression on students by not-so-subtlety implying them to be idiots, but there is still a nonzero chance that this form of libertarianism will continue to at least one new generation. I asked about Stossel in the Classroom in the Right Wing Media thread ages ago, but nobody knew about it back then. I can't help but feel like it is going to indirectly cause plenty of problems sometime in the future... especially if "economics education" remains so one-sided as it is with libertarian thought.
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May 18, 2016 19:24
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Do we have any souls brave enough to wade into the morass in search of screeds against the new overtime laws? I'm sure it'll be more of the same, but 
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May 18, 2016 19:38
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I found this:quote:What happens is we go from a situation of relative equality, where say: Yes, because companies that used to require 100 hours of overtime now only require 90 hours. Those 10 hours? Well, that was just donated by the company to their employers out of the goodness of the boss's heart. They didn't really need that labor, it was just to help the little people. Or, what might actually happen, is that the company still requires that 100 hours of overtime, pays the higher price for it, and adjusts elsewhere, helped by the fact that laborers everywhere now have more money to spend on things like this company's products. It's confusing how many libertarians think economics is a zero-sum game.
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May 18, 2016 20:28
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How on earth do you arrive at the belief that wages are less elastic than labor capacity?
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May 18, 2016 20:34
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I'm not even getting the exact financial mechanics of that argument. As I see it, overtime in general isn't meant to be a good thing and shouldn't be seen as such (why else would it have a higher wage rate?). Like, yes, workaholics and the like might love it, but it shouldn't be expected or a regular thing. It suggests that a company is experiencing growing pains, or is too lovely to retain enough people, or is just poorly managed in general. All of those are indicative of a labor/work problem that should be resolved to (get this) stabilize and maybe even reduce labor costs over the long run. So these new regulations are basically a good thing. It means companies need to get off their duffs and sort out why they have so much overtime work going on (either because they're bloodsucking exploiters or their processes are poo poo), or pay the price for their complacency and lack of planning over the last eleven to twelve years. After all, don't people reap what they sow for not planning ahead and reap their just rewards as a result? And I think that seeming complacency and whining about changes deflates libertarian arguments about rational businesses and the like; if your business model is predicated on seemingly nothing ever changing and there being no storms on the horizon, then that's not exactly realistic or a sign of a steady hand on the steering wheel.
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May 18, 2016 20:49
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Wouldn't most libertarians agree with where you're coming from, then assert that the market, not the government, should sort out those inefficiencies?
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May 18, 2016 20:52
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Halloween Jack posted:Wouldn't most libertarians agree with where you're coming from, then assert that the market, not the government, should sort out those inefficiencies? Yes. They'll make that argument. The problem is that anti-labor lobbying has kept things as they are for a while and companies just adored the fact that they could force people to work 70 hours a week for $30,000 a year. You'd see this all the time in the restaurant world; if you wanted to escape the line or the dish room you'd have to go into management which would mean, of course, stupidly long hours. Your yearly salary would go up but some of the managers I've met wouldn't even be making an hourly wage over minimum anymore. I really expect to see more of this in the next few years; as it comes to light how badly businesses are exploiting everything they can shove a blood funnel in people are going to tell them to knock it the gently caress off. Like "let the market sort it out" was exactly how we got here in the first place. Wage stagnation and the destruction has led to people being willing to work more for less just to survive.
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May 18, 2016 20:56
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With the caveat that labor unions are an unnatural STATIST creation, no truly free market would ever allow for cooperation between workers, probably what happened is the US Government discreetly sent out men with guns to force people to make labor unions
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May 18, 2016 21:05
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I mean one might argue that unless governments were put here by God himself that they are, perhaps, the ultimate expression of the free market and respond to the whims of the customer, and what the customer wants, astonishingly, is better wages and go gently caress yourself business. A government monopoly on force being used to coerce others is only natural, really.
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May 18, 2016 21:07
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The problem is that anti-labor lobbying has kept things as they are for a while and companies just adored the fact that they could force people to work 70 hours a week for $30,000 a year. You'd see this all the time in the restaurant world; if you wanted to escape the line or the dish room you'd have to go into management which would mean, of course, stupidly long hours. Your yearly salary would go up but some of the managers I've met wouldn't even be making an hourly wage over minimum anymore. I'm sure there are ready answers for this: How do libertarians justify their hatred for labor unions? In a truly free market, workers have the right to bargain collectively and make service contracts between the union and the employing company; a labor union has the same rights and moral standing as any other corporation. If that means the employing company isn't free to hire and fire whoever it wants whenever it wants, that's something they voluntarily contracted to do.
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May 18, 2016 21:13
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm sure there are ready answers for this: How do libertarians justify their hatred for labor unions? The same way they justify everything else: dishonestly.
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May 18, 2016 21:16
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Beginning from the vague feeling that they don't like the sound of it and working backwards, wordily.
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May 18, 2016 21:18
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Because 1) they receive government assistance, in the form of helpful labor laws and dues; 2) anything against the Noble Businessman is usually frowned upon; and 3) individual ruggedness is objectively better than any kind of banding together or collectivism. Libertarians would say they distort the labor market, just as trusts and cartels distort the market, and while cartels should be legal, they would obviously fail the moment one of their member decided that they could make more money by splitting with the cartel. Because that is a thing that has happened ever. And because unions banding laborers together are exactly the same thing as cartels banding companies together.
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May 18, 2016 21:28
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