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Golbez posted:I found this:
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May 18, 2016 21:33
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Golbez posted: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.
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May 18, 2016 21:35
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Golbez posted:3) individual ruggedness is objectively better than any kind of banding together or collectivism. This has to be the weirdest part of libertarianism to me. It seems to revolve around the idealization of the individual Great Man and I just... don't get how you look at the world and come to that conclusion. Halloween Jack posted:So the free market is bad, because Libertarians are like communists in that their preferred mode of societal organization is hilariously unstable, but most communists understand this and consider it a problem with an otherwise nice idea. Libertarians don't believe it exists in the first place.
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May 18, 2016 21:37
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theshim posted:I made the horrible mistake of looking at the site and aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrggghhhhhhhh https://thejewishlibertarian.com/2016/01/21/a-new-jewish-look-at-us-skinheads-and-neo-nazis-are-they-reasonable-people/ posted:No, I am not a fan of Skinheads, Aryan Nation people, Neo Nazis etc. Let’s just get that out of the way. However,
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May 18, 2016 21:39
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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? True, but I think one's goal should be less to try and sway libertarians, and more to poison the well so their "just so" story nonsense can't take root. Golbez posted: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. The funny thing is that, absent a government, business isn't exactly going to thrive. I know everyone brings up the notion of corporations assembling private armies and making everyone else their slaves forever and a day, but one could argue the reverse, too - absent any sort of overarching authority that will try to track you down and prosecute you even if you aren't caught in the act of committing a crime, why wouldn't people begin to just loot, steal, pillage, and destroy as they pleased? Coca-Cola might be a global company, but even here in the US it relies on local bottlers and distributors, and if that supply chain is disrupted things go to hell. Basically, anarcho-capitalism supposes an orderly world without order. And even libertarian tenets of minimal government are just an argument for teetering on the brink towards collapse, in my view. This is probably why libertarians veer towards fear of minorities and hatred of the poor, and desire to hold them down, because I suspect in their heart of hearts that they don't actually see a utopian promise of people rationally engaging with each other with the best outcomes percolating out from that. They see barbarian hordes, angry and jealous and looking to plunder. This also coincides nicely with white supremacy, in that keeping the feared horde weak and the righteous whiteous strong means that once everything goes to hell, they'll still be in the strong position to deal with the hordes. OwlFancier posted:This has to be the weirdest part of libertarianism to me. It seems to revolve around the idealization of the individual Great Man and I just... don't get how you look at the world and come to that conclusion. I suspect most libertarians believe they're great through their own merits (never mind all the background stuff, good and bad, that helped them) and don't need anyone (and in turn, no one else should need anything from anyone else), or they believe they could be greater than they are now if everyone else wasn't dogpiling on them and constraining their innate greatness.
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May 18, 2016 21:51
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Kthulhu5000 posted:I suspect most libertarians believe they're great through their own merits (never mind all the background stuff, good and bad, that helped them) and don't need anyone (and in turn, no one else should need anything from anyone else), or they believe they could be greater than they are now if everyone else wasn't dogpiling on them and constraining their innate greatness.
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May 18, 2016 22:03
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Halloween Jack posted:A former boss went from restaurant management back into construction for this very reason. The hours were insane, and besides doing the same work his employees were doing, his bonus structure was essentially based on precisely controlling portions so customers didn't get too much food, and the company never paid said bonuses until they lost a class action suit. Generally speaking they justify their hatred by pointing out that it isn't an individual negotiating pay for their labor with another individual anymore. They want everything to be as individual as possible; the employee and the boss negotiate in a vacuum. Which is, of course, not how the real world works and they just magically forget that in their fantasy libertopia the man with money has control over the man without given that he can withhold the poor man's ability to survive. They don't have good answers for that other than "well then obviously the poor man's labor isn't valuable enough for a living wage and he should starve." The claim is that a labor union unfairly takes the worker's rights to negotiate away and serves to unfairly inflate workers' wages and benefits. They're assuming that the boss and the worker are negotiating on even terms; that the playing field is level. It isn't, especially when you realize how much corruption, collusion, and price fixing has gone on in business for pretty much ever. Hell even for people that did manage to have a good time preference, study hard, and develop in demand skills (i.e., programmers) it turned out that major players in that industry got together and colluded to stomp salaries down as far as they could. Granted competent programmers were still being buried in piles of cash but it turned out they were worth even bigger piles of cash than they were getting.
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May 18, 2016 22:17
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Generally speaking they justify their hatred by pointing out that it isn't an individual negotiating pay for their labor with another individual anymore. They want everything to be as individual as possible Individualism may be the ideal, but property and contracts are the principle. Unions are perfectly compatible with a anarcho-capitalist society (in the sense that anything can be compatible with a political ideology that isn't even compatible with itself). Libertarians don't actually care about their much-vaunted principles, that's just a smokescreen for their prejudices.
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May 18, 2016 22:34
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Halloween Jack posted:A former boss went from restaurant management back into construction for this very reason. The hours were insane, and besides doing the same work his employees were doing, his bonus structure was essentially based on precisely controlling portions so customers didn't get too much food, and the company never paid said bonuses until they lost a class action suit. They take refuge under complaints about laws that allow unions to work (i.e. collect dues from would-be free riders) claiming it hurts all these people that totally exist and hate their union for real reasons that aren't "ah gosh I can't believe seven of my hard-earned dollars each week go to the union, and it has done zero things for me of that I am certain because this kind libertarian informed me as such. this is very clearly not a net gain for me, i wish i worked at wal-mart"
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May 18, 2016 22:40
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Curvature of Earth posted:Libertarians don't actually care about their much-vaunted principles, that's just a smokescreen for their prejudices. That's unfair and simplistic. There are a lot of libertarians who do care about the principles, and think they're the best method to a prosperous and free society.
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May 18, 2016 22:47
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Golbez posted:That's unfair and simplistic. There are a lot of libertarians who do care about the principles, and think they're the best method to a prosperous and free society. In which case I ruthlessly mock their policies until they recant their road to serfdom. Unfair and simplistic is thinking you deserve at a voice at the table with "I think the government should be smaller" as if that was any sort of meaningful policy statement and not some sort of these state fair pumpkins are out of control histrionic bullshit.
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May 18, 2016 23:31
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Golbez posted:That's unfair and simplistic. There are a lot of libertarians who do care about the principles, and think they're the best method to a prosperous and free society. True. That was a rhetorical flourish more than anything else. There aren't literally no principled libertarians. I will quibble with "a lot", however. Sure, you got your big-name liberts like Mises and Hoppe, but outside of that it's a desert void of principles. Labor unions are a handy make-or-break litmus test. Either libertarians believe in their own principles, even for things they personally oppose, or those principles are revealed as cover for something else. The only non-big-name libertarians I've ever read who faithfully apply their principles are urbanist libertarians, because they actually stop to think how massively the government distorts land use and transit (which have major trickle-down consequences for how communities and the economy itself is shaped). Literally every other libertarian I've ever read has a shitload of assumptions about what society will look like if their ideals are implemented, and it almost always looks like... post-1970s American suburbia, using a precious metals-based standard for a single near-universal currency, cars effectively monopolizing transit use, and no labor unions. You know, the sort of post-revolution society you'd imagine if you had a crippling lack of imagination and your sole operating principle was "like what I have right now, but FREER and CHEAPER (for me)". That's what I mean by unprincipled. Their self-professed principles collapse as soon as they're tested, or forced to imagine an outcome they personally don't like. If pressed, they might waffle endlessly how about the market would never produce that sort of outcome, of course that would never happen—it isn't efficient (or whatever buzzword they prefer)—and of course a libertarian society will look exactly the same as now, except better, because by sheer coincidence the free market hates the same things they do! Outside of the big-name libertarian philosophers, the number of libertarians who grapple honestly with their principles is tiny and they have no meaningful influence over the discourse. (The effect of this tension between big name philosophers and the common libertarian is that the former end up giving cover to the latter. Hence JRod citing Mises and Rothbard even while waffling or avoiding any hard questions.)
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May 18, 2016 23:37
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RuanGacho posted:In which case I ruthlessly mock their policies until they recant their road to serfdom. Something something free speech
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May 19, 2016 00:57
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Generally speaking they justify their hatred by pointing out that it isn't an individual negotiating pay for their labor with another individual anymore. They want everything to be as individual as possible; the employee and the boss negotiate in a vacuum. Which is, of course, not how the real world works and they just magically forget that in their fantasy libertopia the man with money has control over the man without given that he can withhold the poor man's ability to survive. They don't have good answers for that other than "well then obviously the poor man's labor isn't valuable enough for a living wage and he should starve."
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May 19, 2016 17:07
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Libertarianism is not an intellectually honest ideology, it is and always has been an attempt to retroactively justify support for reactionary politics.
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May 19, 2016 18:00
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Mornacale posted:Libertarianism is not an intellectually honest ideology, it is and always has been an attempt to retroactively justify support for reactionary politics. No, some of us truly believed it was the most logical and just system. That of course came from a place of simplistic notions and echo chamber ignorance, but my motives were not at all reactionary. Now, the philosophy as a whole, devised and spread by people like Lew Rockwell, Ayn Rand and Ron Paul? Yes, reactionaries. But that doesn't mean every individual is dishonest about it. (Then again, maybe this is why I'm an ex-lib'n, I had no interest in that aspect of it)
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May 19, 2016 18:07
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Mornacale posted:Libertarianism is not an intellectually honest ideology, it is and always has been an attempt to retroactively justify support for reactionary politics. Libertarianism is a very, very odd duck. I got suckered into it while younger and stupider because they were saying things I believed. The issue is what they were doing. See, the big problem was that libertarians say they love freedom and want to see a world where nobody can control another unfairly but don't look at the end results of their policies. The great irony of a truly free market is that you have to regulate the ever loving hell out of it to keep it fair. The hands-off, let's just allow monopolies and collusion attitude they have does not end in what they say they want. The core of my beliefs hasn't changed but, after having lived in poverty and becoming better informed and educated (and, for that matter, also less crazy) I've realized that the libertarian party will never, and can't ever, accomplish what it says it wants to with what it supports. My core belief is that people should be free to do as they please as far as possible. What I came to realize was that socialism was the system that would actually lead to that. What libertarians want, if you look at the end results of their policy, is straight up economic imperialism and a caste society. This is, perhaps, the hardest part of dealing with hardcore lolberts; explaining that by supporting a policy you by default are supporting the end results and the end results of libertarianism are loving ugly.
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May 19, 2016 19:15
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I suppose they are at least consistent in applying praxeology in that respect. The ideology makes more sense if we assume libertarianism is not a worldview, but instead a sort of expanded universe canon for the real world, created by the work of numerous slightly insane authors and filled to the brim with self-insert mary sues. And libertarians are LARPers with a somewhat detached sense of reality.
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May 19, 2016 19:52
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The core of my beliefs hasn't changed but, after having lived in poverty and becoming better informed and educated (and, for that matter, also less crazy) I've realized that the libertarian party will never, and can't ever, accomplish what it says it wants to with what it supports. My core belief is that people should be free to do as they please as far as possible. What I came to realize was that socialism was the system that would actually lead to that. What libertarians want, if you look at the end results of their policy, is straight up economic imperialism and a caste society. Bingo. With me, it started when I was refused health insurance. It slowly began to turn over in my brain - if one company can refuse me, they all can, and by what right do they have such control over my health? And then the health insurance thread here educated me on the fact that universal systems are better, in every objective measure, than whatever it is in the U.S. And, finally, was the realization that libertarianism requires and enforces a two-class system, owners and renters, and that gives immeasurable power of the former over the latter without any recourse (nothing as basic as property taxes, even). That was when I realized it was internally contradictory and escaped. Once I was out, I realized how... I won't say "brainwashed", but spending a decade inside the echo chamber really messes with you. I now look back on sites I would read daily, like Neal Boortz and LRC, and shudder, both at what they're saying and that I ever agreed with them.
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May 19, 2016 20:24
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Golbez posted:Bingo. With me, it started when I was refused health insurance. It slowly began to turn over in my brain - if one company can refuse me, they all can, and by what right do they have such control over my health? And then the health insurance thread here educated me on the fact that universal systems are better, in every objective measure, than whatever it is in the U.S. And, finally, was the realization that libertarianism requires and enforces a two-class system, owners and renters, and that gives immeasurable power of the former over the latter without any recourse (nothing as basic as property taxes, even). That was when I realized it was internally contradictory and escaped. Once I was out, I realized how... I won't say "brainwashed", but spending a decade inside the echo chamber really messes with you. I now look back on sites I would read daily, like Neal Boortz and LRC, and shudder, both at what they're saying and that I ever agreed with them. Not to be overly personal but... Were you born into a quite wealthy family? It's strange to me that someone could not be aware of tje realities of class from the minute they were born, which I suppose is why I have trouble identifying with libertarians. Or does America have a more pronounced working-but-believe-they-are-middle class divide?
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May 19, 2016 20:28
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Golbez posted:Bingo. With me, it started when I was refused health insurance. It slowly began to turn over in my brain - if one company can refuse me, they all can, and by what right do they have such control over my health? And then the health insurance thread here educated me on the fact that universal systems are better, in every objective measure, than whatever it is in the U.S. And, finally, was the realization that libertarianism requires and enforces a two-class system, owners and renters, and that gives immeasurable power of the former over the latter without any recourse (nothing as basic as property taxes, even). That was when I realized it was internally contradictory and escaped. Once I was out, I realized how... I won't say "brainwashed", but spending a decade inside the echo chamber really messes with you. I now look back on sites I would read daily, like Neal Boortz and LRC, and shudder, both at what they're saying and that I ever agreed with them. Yeah the health insurance debacle was pretty much my biggest turning point as well. Benefits got more expensive every year but also harder to use; I even had some top-notch benefits for a while that were supposed to cover everything. It was like...$500 deductible, $2,000 out of pocket max. Then I randomly had a seizure, spent a night int he hospital, and in the process of all the medical stuff relating to it racked up like $10,000 of medical bills. The insurance company's response was "lol nope." Meanwhile the lolberts were saying that it was totally fine they were doing that because obviously you'd just switch, right? Except loving all of them were doing that crap. If you were poor you just had to hope you never got sick because it could potentially ruin you forever. It completely derailed my life and the lack of a social safety net made surviving the situation drat near impossible. One of my thoughts was "why does this kind of suffering exist in the richest nation in the world?" There just wasn't justification for it. Thanks to desperate situations I realized I was ultimately selling my time to somebody who would turn it into far more profit than I was getting paid. I was like "enough."
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May 19, 2016 20:31
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OwlFancier posted:Not to be overly personal but... Were you born into a quite wealthy family? It's strange to me that someone could not be aware of tje realities of class from the minute they were born, which I suppose is why I have trouble identifying with libertarians. Ironically, though, I became my most libertarian when that was fading away. I was happy to not have health insurance until I got a girlfriend who insisted on it. quote:Or does America have a more pronounced working-but-believe-they-are-middle class divide? This too. Americans are never poor, they're "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
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May 19, 2016 20:52
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OwlFancier posted:Or does America have a more pronounced working-but-believe-they-are-middle class divide?  You could say that, yeah.
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May 19, 2016 21:55
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Strange. It's a thing in the UK too, everyone likes to think that because they're not on the breadline they're not working class, but I think even with that we retain in many ways an awareness of the structure of society. At least sufficient to make libertarianism seem immediately ridiculous. I can't really imagine a place where the view of the world that libertarianism requires could be that prevalent. It's like... all of society would need this... big facade that nobody wants to shatter. Even moreso than we have in the UK with regards to some things. Everyone would have to pretend to be much richer than they are while completely burying the underclass too poor to keep the facade up. Can't imagine how that would work. Maybe that is a thing in the UK but because of our regional differences I just live in a part that is overwhelmingly comprised of that underclass.
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May 19, 2016 22:04
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OwlFancier posted:Not to be overly personal but... Were you born into a quite wealthy family? It's strange to me that someone could not be aware of tje realities of class from the minute they were born, which I suppose is why I have trouble identifying with libertarians. I was born into a dirt poor farm family in the Midwest and we thought we were middle class. A fair bit of our food came from game we took out of season because we couldn't really afford meat otherwise. I realize now that the people were thought were filthy rich were probably making about 50k a year in family income in 2016 dollars. Note that my earlier surprise at wait times to see a doctor in the US was largely because in the 25 odd years I lived in the US I went to a civilian doctor only two or three times because my family couldn't afford it when I was a kid and I couldn't afford it when I was an adult. Almost all medical care I received in the US was through the Army during my enlistments.
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May 19, 2016 23:05
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Businesses are rational entities. Abuse never happens, because it harms productivity. (And if abuse does happen, well, the workers chose to work there.)Unregulated global capitalism uplifts workers of every country posted:Nike is no longer allowing the Workers Rights Consortium to monitor its Vietnam factory... Yawning is irrational 
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May 19, 2016 23:40
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OwlFancier posted:I can't really imagine a place where the view of the world that libertarianism requires could be that prevalent. It's like... all of society would need this... big facade that nobody wants to shatter. Even moreso than we have in the UK with regards to some things. Everyone would have to pretend to be much richer than they are while completely burying the underclass too poor to keep the facade up. Can't imagine how that would work. I do recall a Vice UK article, rebutting some article from the Daily Mail that was basically "A guide for all you stupid millennials to be adults." Apparently, at 30 you should be buying a summer cottage and at 40 you should be buying a second home to rent out.
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May 19, 2016 23:58
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Oh god I remember that thing, it got the piss ripped out of it in the UKMT. I can't say I know anyone who would actually do that. I don't know if it's due to where I live or whether the daily mail is just living in some kind of bizzare alternate reality where the gilded age never ended. Or possibly a part of London, they may be the same place.
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May 19, 2016 23:59
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Halloween Jack posted:I do recall a Vice UK article, rebutting some article from the Daily Mail that was basically "A guide for all you stupid millennials to be adults." Apparently, at 30 you should be buying a summer cottage and at 40 you should be buying a second home to rent out. The funniest part of things like that is "renting out to...who, exactly?" If everybody owns three homes and rents one who are you renting to?
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May 20, 2016 01:02
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All the dumb millenials who did not heed the words of the prophet of prosperity, one would assume.
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May 20, 2016 01:09
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The funniest part of things like that is "renting out to...who, exactly?" Edit: I suppose in the minds of the most deluded of these people, low-wage jobs are only filled by young people on their way to their upper-middle-class lifestyles, or by people who deserve to be poor.
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May 20, 2016 01:11
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Halloween Jack posted:I never thought if in that specific way, but yeah...we can't all be upper-middle-class. Blasphemer!
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May 20, 2016 01:11
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The funniest part of things like that is "renting out to...who, exactly?" Infinite time share/subletting combo. Everybody buys a time share in the same house, then sublets the time share out to other people. Listen, it's not any weirder than mortgage-backed securities.
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May 20, 2016 01:12
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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? 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. To give you an actual, serious response to this: https://fee.org/articles/whats-wrong-with-right-to-work/ You've always seemed like a fair-minded guy Jack, so it's unfortunate the thread is mostly just "my political opponents are bad people unlike me ofc lol" DeusExMachinima fucked around with this message at 01:29 on May 20, 2016 |
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May 20, 2016 01:22
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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Halloween Jack posted:I never thought if in that specific way, but yeah...we can't all be upper-middle-class. Yup. That's a distressingly common belief. Granted part of it is just plain ignorance of how the world actually works. A great many people just kind of assume that there are both infinite jobs and infinite good jobs; as if anybody who can distinguish themselves enough will, because it's how the world works, automatically move up to bigger, better things. They're still living in a world where you could start out in the mail room as a high school dropout and become an executive some day if you worked hard enough. Plus, you know, Calvinism.
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May 20, 2016 03:10
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DeusExMachinima posted:To give you an actual, serious response to this: https://fee.org/articles/whats-wrong-with-right-to-work/ libertarians are actually morons tho
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May 20, 2016 03:13
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DeusExMachinima posted:To give you an actual, serious response to this: https://fee.org/articles/whats-wrong-with-right-to-work/ FEE has published or hosted lectures by some of the finest minds of the modern age, including Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, Vernon Smith, Israel Kirzner, Walter Williams, George Stigler, Frank Chodorov, John Chamberlain, F.A. “Baldy” Harper, and William F. Buckley, Jr., among many others. hmmm this is clearly an unbiased source
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May 20, 2016 03:14
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they have a quarterly mag called the Freeman for gently caress's sake
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May 20, 2016 03:14
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quote:Let’s put it another way: They violate freedom of contract. oh no they broke the *mumbles* amendment!
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May 20, 2016 03:16
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quote:Presumably the government could force lots of people to work for no wages at all. That would also do what right-to-work laws do, albeit much more dramatically: It would treat people as slaves. The same would be true if it mandated wages for everyone. MINIMUM WAGE IS
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May 20, 2016 03:17
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