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DeusExMachinima posted:OK, what'd you have in mind? How will you enforce your idea in someone else's country and how will you guarantee any resulting punishment or embargo won't primarily fall on the average Joe over there? I mean, if only we had a policy that was already taking names. http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-billion-people-have-been-taken-out-extreme-poverty-20-years-world-should-aim Like I said, if you can lay out some hard proof your idea will work better, faster, that'd be interesting. A billion is a lot of people. Funny, libertarians had these same complaints when you could be charged in the US for loving children in foreign countries. "hey it's not our fault that these foreign countries have lax child prostitution enforcement, what do you want us to do, occupy them? Anything you do just punishes the people there!" There are a million ways to improve the situation without straight up invading or embargoing foreign nations. The businesses that benefit from dangerous working conditions can be punished, or you can reward the businesses who can prove that their supply chain achieves a minimum level of safety, humane work conditions, and worker benefits. To do nothing (the libertarian answer to literally all of the world's biggest problems) is the same as saying that you're OK with horrible labor abuse so long as you have cheaper products. Instead, let's agree that horrible labor abuses are actually horrible and then do something about them
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May 21, 2016 05:26
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>is being murdered >pulls out phone "Help I never figured out preventive security and someone broke into my house by opening the door and pointed a gun at me before I could open my Responsible Gun Owner safe" "Help someone stabbed me from behind which isn't fair because he didn't challenge me to a duel and I'm totally a better shot than him" Curvature of Earth posted:There are people smarter than either of us who've put thought into this, so I'm terribly unimpressed with "lol, you wanna bomb them?" I know it's hard for you to believe this as a libertarian, but there are means of coercion outside of violence. Thanks, I've been looking for a new podcast and this'll be my next book after People's History Wait, why is their podcast about TV shows? Stinky_Pete fucked around with this message at 13:54 on May 21, 2016 |
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May 21, 2016 13:37
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quote:Yes, I do believe that we should not have child labor laws in place. Again, we have to separate ourselves from thinking that it will be our own children. This is really exceptional, I love moments like this.
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May 21, 2016 15:08
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QuarkJets posted:Funny, libertarians had these same complaints when you could be charged in the US for loving children in foreign countries. "hey it's not our fault that these foreign countries have lax child prostitution enforcement, what do you want us to do, occupy them? Anything you do just punishes the people there!" To paraphrase one of the funniest things I ever saw (seriously wish I'd saved who actually posted), from the YOSPOS bitcoin thread circa Valentine's Day: Roses are red, Fiat's for fool. It's such loving bullshit, I can't live near schools.
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May 21, 2016 16:56
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 random person: Obamacare? libertarian: Everything... That being said, what's the Libertarianwiki again? I want to dig up some juicy Heinlein quotes since said libertarian actually said "I love Heinlein". Unfortunately I don't keep up enough with which libertarian rear end in a top hat said which utterly racist/sexist/etc. thing.
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May 22, 2016 04:38
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I mean, I can think of lots of worse forms of tyranny just off the top of my head. Attributions don't make dumb things less dumb.
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May 22, 2016 05:29
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Yeah it's really not too hard to imagine forms of tyranny that are worse than public roads
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May 22, 2016 06:22
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Hmm, which is worse, labour camps and secret police, or taxes?
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May 22, 2016 13:05
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What's worse, forcing people to work for the government if they want citizenship, or taxes?
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May 22, 2016 13:11
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Dr. Stab posted:Hmm, which is worse, labour camps and secret police, or taxes? Trick question! The IRS is the secret police that will send you to labor camps if you don't pay your taxes!
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May 22, 2016 13:12
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Obviously the greater tyranny is the cops being able to arrest and punish you for drunk driving on a PUBLIC ROAD. What's the crime? I haven't hurt anyone! Cops shouldn't be able to stop you at all until you've hurt someone! I once worked with a guy who sincerely made that exact argument. Emphasis on public road and all. I even managed to pin him down into admitting that even if his proposed system ultimately resulted in more injuries and fatalities as a result of people feeling free to drive drunk (as long as they ~accepted the consequences~), he would still insist that THE GOV'T doesn't have any right or place in stopping you from driving just because you might be at a greater risk of hitting and killing someone. He also once, completely out of nowhere, went off on a rant about how he felt no sympathy for the family of the IRS worker who got killed when some nutjob rammed a prop plane into an office building, because the IRS guy was complicit in tyranny or something.
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May 22, 2016 18:13
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Obviously the greater tyranny is the cops being able to arrest and punish you for drunk driving on a PUBLIC ROAD. What's the crime? I haven't hurt anyone! Cops shouldn't be able to stop you at all until you've hurt someone! 
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May 22, 2016 18:49
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I agree, lets defund the military. Or like, at least the Air Force and Marines.
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May 22, 2016 18:54
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Also oil subsidies.
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May 22, 2016 18:57
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YF19pilot posted:
A $50 increase in my property taxes?! Having your kids taken away and sold pales in comparison.
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May 22, 2016 18:58
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I would rather have all my stuff stolen and my home burned by the local jarl's men than pay this horrible assessment for fixing the local water mains.
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May 22, 2016 19:03
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"No officer, you can't stop me pointing this gun at you and pulling the trigger, you can only arrest me once the bullet has damaged your head."
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May 22, 2016 19:18
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YF19pilot posted:That being said, what's the Libertarianwiki again? I want to dig up some juicy Heinlein quotes since said libertarian actually said "I love Heinlein". Unfortunately I don't keep up enough with which libertarian rear end in a top hat said which utterly racist/sexist/etc. thing. libertarians.wikia.com/ I don't think we have a Heinlein page though.
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May 22, 2016 20:05
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Opps wrong thread
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May 22, 2016 21:04
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Mises Roundup time! Not much interesting this week. A lot of complaining about fiat currency (like, more than usual), but no standouts there. There's an article titled "When You Have Property Rights, You Don’t Need Religious Freedom," which is boring, but man that title. And then there's this:WATCH LIVE! Mises Circle in Seattle posted:Join Walter Block, Tom Woods, Bob Murphy, Ryan McMaken, and Jeff Deist at the Mises Circle, Town Hall Seattle, as they demolish the economic myths of the 2016 election. No recordings of it yet though.
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May 22, 2016 22:15
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I wonder how much money they get for that 20 minutes of material
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May 22, 2016 23:47
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paragon1 posted:I agree, lets defund the military. The character in question also recommending constitutionally prohibiting conscription so I don't think he would complain. Its difficult to tell what exactly Heinlein agrees with in that book, though in some ways it can be viewed as a tragedy about the impossibility of libertarianism? In the end the people creating the new government don't listen to him and the moon pretty much becomes a standard state, which is viewed as a shame, but also not actually particularly demonstrably bad. (A Heinlein page on the wiki probably isn't actually a particularly bad idea, though I think he was simultaneously much more principled but more realistic than most libertarians.)
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May 23, 2016 02:44
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reignonyourparade posted:The character in question also recommending constitutionally prohibiting conscription so I don't think he would complain. Its difficult to tell what exactly Heinlein agrees with in that book, though in some ways it can be viewed as a tragedy about the impossibility of libertarianism? In the end the people creating the new government don't listen to him and the moon pretty much becomes a standard state, which is viewed as a shame, but also not actually particularly demonstrably bad. Pretty much the central theme of the governments in Heinlein's books is "hey this government works so we just kind of stick with it." I get the feeling that his political opinions in life where slightly confused and highly pragmatic, which might also explain why he flopped around a bit. One of the biggest issues with political discussion in the world is that there just isn't one singular, one-size-fits-all government system that can handle absolutely everything. Social democracy does pretty good but it isn't perfect either so we just kind of tinker with it over time.
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May 23, 2016 02:46
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I said it in another thread but heinlein had three basic principles. 1)Personal Freedom Rules, absolutely nothing should get in the way of personal freedom 2)The military owns, everyone should be made to join the military. 3)I want to be naked all the time. Reconciling 1 and 2 is basically 90% of his world building, but he would have joined the communist party if they did away with laws requiring people to wear clothes in public.
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May 23, 2016 03:29
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Bushiz posted:I said it in another thread but heinlein had three basic principles. Well, everyone *should* rather than *must* join the military (he was against conscription) but yeah in essence you're right. I'd also add "with as many different people as possible" to maxim #3 there. The other key to unlocking Heinlein is to remember that all his books were young adult fiction; he wrote his first twelve novels as YA fiction explicitly aimed at 13 year old boys, only changed publishers when he lost the contract because his publisher wasn't down with all the Free Love stuff in a YA novel, and never really wrote anything that wasn't aimed squarely at that same demographic. None of it is meant to be taken seriously or as serious literature; at best, he's tossing deliberately provocative ideas out there in the hope it would challenge some assumptions, that's all. For me personally he falls into the "briefly tempting" category of libertarian. reignonyourparade posted:The character in question also recommending constitutionally prohibiting conscription so I don't think he would complain. Its difficult to tell what exactly Heinlein agrees with in that book, though in some ways it can be viewed as a tragedy about the impossibility of libertarianism? In the end the people creating the new government don't listen to him and the moon pretty much becomes a standard state, which is viewed as a shame, but also not actually particularly demonstrably bad. Yeah, I think most analysis of MIAHM misses the fact that Heinlein's implicitly admitting that 1) Libertopia is only possible in an incredibly artificial situation (government prison wardens preventing rule of law) AND with the support of a godlike AI philospher-king managing everything nonintrusively, and 2) Libertopia would at best collapse into a standard state fairly rapidly. While Heinlein himself was pretty explicitly libertarian in his public non-fiction writing, it's dangerous to assume too much from any one piece of his fiction because a lot of it was written more to be provocative than as a thesis statement. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 03:53 on May 23, 2016 |
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May 23, 2016 03:48
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reignonyourparade posted:The character in question also recommending constitutionally prohibiting conscription so I don't think he would complain. A bit funny that the libertarian friend who posted that is an Air Force vet, now working as a property manager in the south. Doubly so, because he and a bunch of my libertarian leaning friends (some of who are in the military) posted some rhetoric about how we should have mandatory service (at least two years) for kids turning 18 and graduating high school. As in, before you can even go to college you have to spend 2 years in the military or some other government job (with the emphasis being on joining the military, of course) so that you can "learn real skills" and "give back to your country". Which is another thing that bothers me about the Libertarian-Conservative types. They say we all need to "give back to our country", to show gratitude for the freedoms we have and getting a public education. But paying taxes isn't "giving back to our country"; no, no, that's tyranny of the state. "Giving back" means either joining the military, or "honoring our vets and police officers" even if it's something lame like wrapping yourself in the American flag and playing the National Anthem every day at 12:00 at your overpriced BBQ shack (and no we don't give discounts to vets). CovfefeCatCafe fucked around with this message at 03:58 on May 23, 2016 |
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May 23, 2016 03:56
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I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Starship Troopers was originally supposed to be YA and also was written in a white hot rage at the foolishness of a nuclear test ban treaty. Personally I always figured his politics as revealed through his fiction were 1 part trolling to 1 part just bullshitting without any real attachment to the ideology being explored. I mean the same guy who wrote Starship Troopers (fascism loving owns!) also wrote The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (too bad that libertopia won't work out given time, because it would loving own!) and also goddamn Stranger in a Strange Land (free love crystal magic hippie alien religions loving own!). Though I guess that hits all three of Bushiz's points. If you want a real face-full of his most regressive political ideas though, I think you have to go with "The Roads Must Roll," which I can only imagine someone writing after a trucker in the Teamsters Union killed his dog and hosed his wife: All roads have been replaced with giant conveyor belts between cities on which whole businesses set up mobile shop. The apparatus is maintained through strict military discipline of the workforce running it until an effete, simpering sissyboy of a labor organizer gathers all the more unstable elements of the workforce to his side and threatens to stop the whole thing suddenly, killing millions, if his demands for higher wages are not met, requiring him to be put in his place by the manly rational individualist protagonist.
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May 23, 2016 04:47
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YF19pilot posted:A bit funny that the libertarian friend who posted that is an Air Force vet, now working as a property manager in the south. Doubly so, because he and a bunch of my libertarian leaning friends (some of who are in the military) posted some rhetoric about how we should have mandatory service (at least two years) for kids turning 18 and graduating high school. As in, before you can even go to college you have to spend 2 years in the military or some other government job (with the emphasis being on joining the military, of course) so that you can "learn real skills" and "give back to your country". poo poo, what is it about the Air Force that produces pro-military "anti-statists"? I know one too!
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May 23, 2016 04:48
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YF19pilot posted:Which is another thing that bothers me about the Libertarian-Conservative types. They say we all need to "give back to our country", to show gratitude for the freedoms we have and getting a public education. But paying taxes isn't "giving back to our country"; no, no, that's tyranny of the state. "Giving back" means either joining the military, or "honoring our vets and police officers" even if it's something lame like wrapping yourself in the American flag and playing the National Anthem every day at 12:00 at your overpriced BBQ shack (and no we don't give discounts to vets). Seems like typical "Well of course there's an overtone of slavery, coercion, and an unnecessary risk of death to it, BUT THINK OF THE BENEFITS!" libertarian thinking to me?
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May 23, 2016 04:50
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GunnerJ posted:poo poo, what is it about the Air Force that produces pro-military "anti-statists"? I know one too! Somehow despite having one of the two highest ASVAB requirements it attracts a whole other level of stupid compared to the army And that's before you get into how evangelical it is
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May 23, 2016 05:58
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I worked for his estate for a bit, and the other thing to realize is that heinlein never gave to much thought to his own poo poo further than it needed to go to be in his books, and his later poo poo is barely not fanfiction.
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May 23, 2016 06:11
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The only Heinlein I ever read was I Will Fear No Evil, which was pretty cringey.
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May 23, 2016 06:14
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If nothing else, Heinlein did inspire a decent quote from his peer, Isaac Asimov, about libertarianism:I. Asimov posted:He always pictured himself a libertarian, which to my way of thinking means "I want the liberty to grow rich and you can have the liberty to starve". It's easy to believe that no one should depend on society for help when you yourself happen not to need such help.
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May 23, 2016 06:34
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OwlFancier posted:"No officer, you can't stop me pointing this gun at you and pulling the trigger, you can only arrest me once the bullet has damaged your head." *Freedom warranty may be void if black
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May 23, 2016 06:47
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OwlFancier posted:"No officer, you can't stop me pointing this gun at you and pulling the trigger, you can only arrest me once the bullet has damaged your head." On a related note, regarding "you can't preemptively restrict a choice until that choice has actually caused harm": vaccination. Plenty of libertarians are okay with government-mandated vaccination (here's one for reference), but the few who do oppose it reveal some interesting breaking points in the philosophy. (I'm going to politely ignore the poo poo-tier libertarians who don't know what herd immunity is.) Vaccination is mandated mostly to maintain herd immunity, but herd immunity is effectively about statistics. The worst libertarians have trouble grappling with this, since their philosophy is entirely built around understanding people as individuals, with harm and fault being caused by and assignable to a single discrete person. Choosing to not vaccinate yourself can never be proven to harm an individual person, it merely boosts the statistical likelihood of diseases spreading in a group. (This is the same argument against smoking restrictions based on secondhand smoke—you can't prove my cigarette smoke is what gave you cancer, after all.) It's a pretty fundamental limitation of the philosophy. And as with literacy, it's possible to find libertarians willing to claim government policies had nothing to do with it: Evidence based policy is a filthy lie posted:...mortality from almost all infectious disease was in steep decline well before the introduction of vaccination or antibiotics. Diphtheria mortality had fallen 60 percent by the time vaccination was introduced in the 1920s, deaths from pertussis/whooping cough had declined by 98 percent before vaccination was introduced in the late 1940s, measles mortality had dropped 98 percent from its peak in the U.S. by the time measles inoculation was introduced in 1963-and by an impressive 99.96 percent in England when measles vaccination was introduced in 1968. In 1960 there were 380 deaths from measles among a U.S. population of 180,671,000, a rate of 0.24 deaths per 100,000. Who do you think. Regulated. Those improved conditions. Into standard practice? 
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May 23, 2016 08:28
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Also polio isn't on that list I notice.
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May 23, 2016 14:40
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I like that they cite clean water and sanitation systems as reasons for declining mortality to prove that the government did nothing to reduce the spread of infectious diseases.
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May 23, 2016 15:14
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I was wondering that, yes public health improved for reasons other than vaccinations, chief among them the construction of massive amounts of state funded and designed cities with public amenities and the resulting exodus of people from living in loving hillbilly shacks in the middle of nowhere and making GBS threads in a hole in the ground.
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May 23, 2016 15:16
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Herd immunity is an inherently collectivist idea, so it cannot be trusted.
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May 23, 2016 15:16
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GunnerJ posted:poo poo, what is it about the Air Force that produces pro-military "anti-statists"? I know one too! It attracts those with the highest sense of self-importance (I deserve my own jet) looking for the lowest risk of actually being put in harm's way, or prolonged discomfort. At least that's my guess.
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May 23, 2016 15:26
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