Libertarians: You fire fighter lovers sure are good at debate!

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Goon Danton: May 24, 2012; Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

Nitrousoxide posted:

Because the goods and services being provided are complex enough to require a great deal of team work to deliver.

How does this square with the efficiency argument? Are centrally planned systems more efficient at providing complex goods and services? If they are, why doesn't this apply on a societal level?

Nitrousoxide posted:

Like the body of an animal requires a great deal of synergy to work correctly, but ecologies don't thrive by mutual symbiosis, but on competition.

...You sure about that? Hobbes' "state of nature" was a political metaphor, not an ecological study. Mutually beneficial symbiosis happens all the damned time in nature.

At any rate, we're debating the merits of central planning, not cooperation versus competition. For the ecology metaphor to work, you'd need a centrally planned state of nature to compare with, and I think arguing for the existence of god is outside of the scope of this thread.

Nitrousoxide posted:

Individual actors might be made up of non competing parts, but to keep them lean and efficient they need to be challenged by their environment.

Are you assuming that market forces are the only things that are able to challenge the function of a firm?

There are a few underlying themes in the libertarian material we see here, and one of them is the assumption that government agencies can only grow. They assume there's no reason to get more lean or efficient, because you won't be driven out of business by other firms, and there's no impetus to lower taxes or spending for the same reason. The problem with that idea is that elections provide that pressure. Look at elections in the US: worries about wasteful spending and high taxes dominate the conversation far out of proportion to the problems they actually cause.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 15:31

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# ? May 28, 2024 11:34

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

happyhippy posted:

Would Libertarians agree, to make it fair for everyone when everything is deregulated and no law barriers to a market X, all traces that exist already to that market will have to be destroyed and dismantled.

For example pharmacy. To make it a true libertarian free market, you would have to destroy Pfizer, Novartis, etc as they would have an unfair advantage to everyone else wanting to sell in it.

Probably not. See for example Walter Block's revolutionary tribunal proposals:

quote:

Professor Walter Block has proposed using revolutionary tribunals to hold trials[16] for former Statists in a free society � which would likely have restitution, and possibly retribution-based elements.

In Professor Block's view, it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for guilt (e.g., a violation of libertarian principles) and thus justification for punishment by the libertarian Nuremberg trials, that a person be a state official.[17] For instance, people, who have used eminent domain to help enrich themselves, ought not to be allowed to keep their ill-gotten gains.

Serious attempts to trace property back to original owners would not normally be made. However, in cases where proof could be provided and this could be done, claimants would come forth to state their cases. Most likely, these trials would work via the homesteading of claims by first-comers, perhaps by insurance companies providing private dispute resolution services.

These trials would not be arbitrary, but would be brought by specific claimants, either specific victims, or defense insurance companies trying to improve market standing, and indirectly acting on behalf of many victims. The benefits might be seen in terms of lower premiums, which insurance companies homesteading claims against Statists could afford to offer to gain more customers. Another way that this might work is through outlawry trials. Offering insurance for private protection is a business, and companies cannot afford to insure individuals who are incredibly high risks. Individuals who might be the recipients of much hostility and attempted repossession in a free market � i.e., prominent Statists � would likely have difficulty finding protection agencies willing to protect them. Evidence-based trials could be held at the request of these individuals, in which case their guilt may or may not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Basically you would have to prove that someone (person or legal entity) actually stole something (either through its own actions or by leveraging state power) to demand some form of restitution. So imagine the civil suit as an engine of revolutionary justice and you just about have the kind of playing field they imagine as fair: one heavily biased towards entrenched wealth, which can most easily document its losses and defend itself from accusations. About the only way ordinary people could effect something like the kind of claim needed to bring about what you propose would be to secure representation by an insurance company making a claim for damages, and it would only work if Pfizer, et al actually deprived you personally of something, and the company could only cut them down by the provable amount of unjustly earned wealth taken from you and your co-claimants acting through your insurer.

This is how the minds of certain people work.

It's even more stark just what the agenda is when you consider, say, reparations for systemic racist exploitation and dispossession, as Triple-H muses about in his attack on any kind of libertarian who would support your idea:

quote:

Left-libertarians, bleeding heart libertarians and humanitarian-cosmopolitan libertarians are not simply leftists. They know of the central importance of private property. Yet how can they seemingly logically reconcile the notion of private property with their promotion of anti-discrimination policies and in particular their propagation of a policy of discrimination-free immigration?

The short answer is: in placing all current private property and its distribution among distinct people under moral suspicion. With this claim, the left-libertarians fall into the opposite error from that committed by the non-libertarian Right. As indicated, the non-libertarian Right commits the error of regarding all (or at least almost all) current property holdings, including in particular also the property holdings of the State, as natural and just. In distinct opposition, a libertarian would recognize and insist that some present property holdings, and all (or at least most) State-holdings, are demonstrably unnatural and unjust and as such require restitution or compensation. In reverse, the left-libertarians claim that not only all or most State-holdings are unnatural und unjust (from this admission they derive their title �libertarian�), but that also all or most private property holdings are unnatural and unjust. And in support for this latter claim, they point to the fact that all current private property holdings and their distribution among various people have been affected, altered and distorted by prior State action and legislation and that everything would be different and no one would be in the same place and position he currently is had it not been for such prior State-interferences.

Without any doubt, this observation is correct. The State in its long history has made some people richer and others poorer than they would have been otherwise. It killed some people and let others survive. It moved people around from one place to another. It promoted some professions, industries or regions and prevented or delayed and changed the development of others. It awarded some people with privileges and monopolies and legally discriminated against and disadvantaged others, and on and on. The list of past injustices, of winners and losers, perpetrators and victims, is endless.

But from this indisputable fact it does not follow that all or most current property holdings are morally suspect and in need of rectification. To be sure, State-property must be restituted, because it has been unjustly acquired. It should be returned to its natural owners, i.e., the people (or their heirs) who were coerced to �fund� such �public� property by surrendering parts of their own private property to the State. However, I will not concern myself with this particular �privatization� issue here.[5] Rather, it is the further-reaching claim that past injustices also render all current private property holdings morally suspect, which does not follow and which is certainly not true. As a matter of fact, most private holdings are likely just, irrespective of their history � unless and except in such cases in which a specific claimant can prove that they are not. The burden of proof, however, is on whoever challenges the current property holdings and distribution. He must show that he is in possession of an older title to the property in question than its current owner. Otherwise, if a claimant cannot prove this, everything is to remain as it currently is.

Or: To be more specific and realistic: From the fact that Peter or Paul or their parents, as members of any conceivable group of people, had been murdered, displaced, robbed, assaulted, or legally discriminated against in the past and their current property holdings and social positions would have been different if it had not been for such past injustices, it does not follow that any present member of this group has a just claim (for compensation) against the current property of anyone else (neither from within nor from outside his group). Rather, in each case, Peter or Paul would have to show, in one case after another, that he personally has a better because older title to some specified piece of property than some current, named and identified owner and alleged perpetrator. Certainly, a considerable number of cases exists where this can be done and restitution or compensation is owed. But just as certainly, with this burden of proof on any challenger of any current property distribution, not much mileage can be gained for any non-discriminatory-egalitarian agenda. To the contrary, in the contemporary Western world, replete with �affirmative action� laws that award legal privileges to various �protected groups� at the expense of various other correspondingly un-protected and discriminated groups, more � not less � discrimination and inequalities would result if, as justice would require, everyone who in fact could provide such individualized proof of his victimization was actually permitted to do so by the State and bring suit and seek redress from his victimizer.

But left-libertarians � the bleeding-heart and humanitarian-cosmopolitan libertarians � are not exactly known as �fighters� against �affirmative action.� Rather, and quite to the contrary, in order to reach the conclusion that they want to reach, they relax or dispense altogether with the requirement for someone claiming victimhood of offering individualized proof of victimization. Typically, in order to maintain their intellectual status as libertarians, the left-libertarians do so quietly, surreptitiously or even unknowingly, but in effect, in giving up this fundamental requirement of justice, they replace private property and property rights and rights violations with the muddled notion of �civil rights� and �civil rights violations� and individual rights with �group rights� and thus become closet-socialists. Given that the State has disturbed and distorted all private property holdings and distributions, yet without the requirement of individualized proof of victimization, everyone and every imaginable group can easily and without too much intellectual effort claim somehow �victimhood� vis-�-vis anyone else or any other group.[6]

Relieved of the burden of individualized proof of victimhood, the left-libertarians are essentially unrestricted in their �discovery� of new �victims� and �victimizers� in accordance with their own presupposed egalitarian assumptions. To their credit, they recognize the State as an institutional victimizer and invader of private property rights (again, from this derives their claim to be �libertarians�). But they see far more institutional and structural injustices and social distortions, far more victims and victimizers, and far more need for restitution, compensation and attendant property redistribution in the current world than only those injustices and distortions committed and caused by the State and to be resolved and rectified by shrinking and ultimately dismantling and privatizing all State holdings and functions. Even if the State were dismantled, they hold, as late and lasting effects of its long prior existence or of certain pre-State conditions, other institutional distortions would remain in place that required rectification to create a just society.

The views held by left-libertarians in this regard are not entirely uniform, but they typically differ little from those promoted by cultural Marxists. They assume as �natural,� without much if any empirical support and indeed against overwhelming evidence to the contrary, a largely �flat� and �horizontal� society of �equals,� i.e., of essentially universally and world-wide homogeneous, like-minded and -talented people of more or less similar social and economic status and standing, and they regard all systematic deviations from this model as the result of discrimination and grounds for some form of compensation and restitution. Accordingly, the hierarchical structure of traditional families, of sex roles and of the partition of labor between males and females, is considered unnatural. Indeed, all social hierarchies and vertical rank orders of authority, of headsmen and clan-chiefs, of patrons, nobles, aristocrats and kings, of bishops and cardinals, of �bosses� generally, and of their respective underlings or subordinates, are viewed with suspicion. Similarly, all great or �excessive� disparities of income and wealth � of so-called �economic power� � and the existence of both a downtrodden under-class as well as of an upper class of super-wealthy people and families are deemed unnatural. As well, large industrial and financial corporations and conglomerates are considered artificial creatures of the State. And also suspect, unnatural and in need of repair are all exclusive associations, societies, congregations, churches and clubs, and all territorial segregation, separation and secession, whether based on class, gender, race, ethnicity, lineage, language, religion, profession, interests, customs or tradition.

From that vantage point, the �victim� groups and their �victimizers� are easily identified. As it turns out, �victims� make up the vast majority of mankind. Everyone and every conceivable group is a �victim,� except that small part of mankind composed of white (including northern Asian) heterosexual males, living traditional, bourgeois family lives. They, and especially the most creative and successful ones among them, (excluding interestingly only rich sports or entertainment celebrities) are the �victimizers� of everyone else.

While this view of human history strikes one as bizarre in light of the amazing civilizational achievements originating from precisely this minority group of �victimizers,� it coincides almost completely with the victimology also propagated by cultural Marxists. Both groups only differ on the cause of this similarly identified, described and deplored �structural state of victimization.� For the cultural Marxists, the cause for this state of affairs is private property and unbridled capitalism based on private property rights. For them, the answer how to repair the damage done is clear and easy. All necessary restitution, compensation and redistribution are to be done by the State, which they presumably control.

Yikes!

GunnerJ fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Sep 4, 2016

# ? Sep 4, 2016 15:55

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Interesting little insight from the Cerebral Assassin* given the previous discussion of libertarianism's appeal to kidfuckers:

quote:

Psychologically or sociologically, the attraction of non-discrimination policies to libertarians can be explained by the fact that an over-proportionally large number of libertarians are misfits or simply odd � or to use Rothbard�s description, �hedonists, libertines, immoralists, militant enemies of religion �., moochers, scamsters, and petty crooks and racketeers� � who became attracted to libertarianism because of its alleged �tolerance� toward misfits and outliers, and who now want to use it as a vehicle to free themselves from all discrimination typically, in everyday life, dished out to their likes.

*I'd dial back the pro-wrestler name jokes except that the article I posted above seems to fly under the title "Smack Down" in the URL at least.

GunnerJ fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Sep 4, 2016

# ? Sep 4, 2016 15:59

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Goon Danton posted:

There are a few underlying themes in the libertarian material we see here, and one of them is the assumption that government agencies can only grow. They assume there's no reason to get more lean or efficient, because you won't be driven out of business by other firms, and there's no impetus to lower taxes or spending for the same reason. The problem with that idea is that elections provide that pressure. Look at elections in the US: worries about wasteful spending and high taxes dominate the conversation far out of proportion to the problems they actually cause.

Let's not forget that worries about the "growth of government" are rarely if ever contextualized with the coinciding growth in various other social indices (population, economic production, etc.). It's as if they are accounting for return on investment without looking at inflation.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 16:02

Ormi: Feb 7, 2005; B-E-H-A-V-E
Arrest us!

Murray Rothbard posted:

But if Columbia University, what of General Dynamics? What of the myriad of corporations which are integral parts of the military-industrial complex, which not only get over half or sometimes virtually all their revenue from the government but also participate in mass murder? What are their credentials to �private� property? Surely less than zero. As eager lobbyists for these contracts and subsidies, as co-founders of the garrison stare, they deserve confiscation and reversion of their property to the genuine private sector as rapidly as possible. To say that their �private� property must be respected is to say that the property stolen by the horsethief and the murderer must be �respected.�

C4SS, The Left-Rothbardians, Part I: Rothbard posted:

Such factories should be taken over by �homesteading workers,� he said. But he went further, and suggested that a libertarian movement, having captured the commanding heights of the state and proceeding to dismantle the apparatus of state capitalism, might actually nationalize such state-subsidized industry as the immediate prelude to handing it over to the workers. He went so far as to say that even if a non-libertarian regime nationalized state capitalist industry with the intention of hanging onto it, it wasn�t anything for libertarians to get particularly bent out of shape about. The subsidized industry was no more the �good guys,� and no less a part of the state, as the formal state apparatus itself. ��[I]t would only mean that one gang of thieves�the government�would be confiscating property from another previously cooperating gang, the corporation that has lived off the government.�

The sentiment certainly exists. This is a large part of the foundation of "Left"-Rothbardianism.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 16:06

Doc Hawkins: Jun 15, 2010; Dashing? But I'm not even moving!

GunnerJ posted:

Interesting little insight from the Cerebral Assassin* given the previous discussion of libertarianism's appeal to kidfuckers:

quote:
Psychologically or sociologically, the attraction of non-discrimination policies to libertarians can be explained by the fact that an over-proportionally large number of libertarians are misfits or simply odd � or to use Rothbard�s description, �hedonists, libertines, immoralists, militant enemies of religion �., moochers, scamsters, and petty crooks and racketeers� � who became attracted to libertarianism because of its alleged �tolerance� toward misfits and outliers, and who now want to use it as a vehicle to free themselves from all discrimination typically, in everyday life, dished out to their likes.

*I'd dial back the pro-wrestler name jokes except that the article I posted above seems to fly under the title "Smack Down" in the URL at least.

This could be a more general explanation of all nerd groups in which awful opinions about consent happen to grow.

Also furries.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 17:15

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Well, I'm 100% OK with classifying libertarianism as a nerd group with terrible ideas about consent tbh.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 17:26

xtal: Jan 9, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

I have a question for the libertarian-haters. Are you also anarchist-haters, and how/why does the reasoning differ?

# ? Sep 4, 2016 18:21

fishmech: Jul 16, 2006; by VideoGames; Salad Prong

Anarchism is an inherently impractical "system" as well, yes.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 18:36

Jizz Festival: Oct 30, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Nitrousoxide posted:

Because the market weeds out those who are inefficient. You don't just have one firm providing phones, you have dozens. If one is hot garbage it'll get bought or go under. Obviously it's not gonna be the ideal market with thousands of producers all making identical widgets but it's close enough to get a much more efficient outcome that a state driven approach.

The market weeds out those that are inefficient at making money. The way to make money with phones is to sell lots of them at the highest margin possible, and so we get the current situation where new models come out constantly and the phones are made in places where workers can be paid poo poo and the company doesn't have to spend any money on controlling pollution.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 18:38

Goon Danton: May 24, 2012; Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

xtal posted:

I have a question for the libertarian-haters. Are you also anarchist-haters, and how/why does the reasoning differ?

If you're referring to non-ancap anarchists like anarcho-communists/anarcho-syndicalists/etc, I don't hate them. In my opinion, anarchists generally identify actual problems with society, like state power being used for personal enrichment, but I think the solutions they suggest are not feasible. I'm also skeptical of political philosophies with an "end state," where society reaches the point they want and then stops changing.

Meanwhile, libertarians make most of the same mistakes that the anarchists do, but their "end state" is also morally repugnant. Anarchists generally would not think child labor and slavery and DROs have a place in their ideal society, while libertarians seem incapable of imagining anything else.

Note that my hatred for libertarians extends to the kind we usually talk about here: people who quote Rothbard and Mises and call people statists. If it's just someone who doesn't like central planning and argues in favor of slow gradual reform, then it's back to just plain old disagreement. NitrousOxide seems to be in the latter camp, so I have no real beef with them.

Jizz Festival posted:

The market weeds out those that are inefficient at making money. The way to make money with phones is to sell lots of them at the highest margin possible, and so we get the current situation where new models come out constantly and the phones are made in places where workers can be paid poo poo and the company doesn't have to spend any money on controlling pollution.

This is a key point. The free market might be an efficient mechanism (though again, that is not a given), but what it's efficient at doing is even more important. If a company is acting according to something immoral like Shareholder Value Theory, then it being efficient would actually be worse than it being barely functional.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 18:46

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

In fairness, moving onto discussing the ethics of what market competition is efficient at is getting away from the original point, which is why corporations can be centrally planned but not states. That's not really an ethical question.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 18:58

xtal: Jan 9, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

fishmech posted:

Anarchism is an inherently impractical "system" as well, yes.

What about the second question?

# ? Sep 4, 2016 19:14

Nitrousoxide: May 30, 2011; do not buy a oneplus phone

Goon Danton posted:

How does this square with the efficiency argument? Are centrally planned systems more efficient at providing complex goods and services? If they are, why doesn't this apply on a societal level?

Because we have evidence that central planning at the state level leads to profound shortages, stagnant growth and little innovation.

Every communist government has provided a perfect case study and all have failed.

Just because a tool is used in part of the economic system doesn't mean that the same tool should be used at every point. You don't try to turn a bolt with a hammer just like you don't have lean, efficient, and innovative producers without competition.

Goon Danton posted:

At any rate, we're debating the merits of central planning, not cooperation versus competition. For the ecology metaphor to work, you'd need a centrally planned state of nature to compare with, and I think arguing for the existence of god is outside of the scope of this thread.

A creature's body is centrally planned from the blueprints of its DNA, but it competes with other centrally planned creatures for scarce resources in a battle of survival of the fittest. Nature is an analogue for the market, and a fine one.

Goon Danton posted:

There are a few underlying themes in the libertarian material we see here, and one of them is the assumption that government agencies can only grow. They assume there's no reason to get more lean or efficient, because you won't be driven out of business by other firms, and there's no impetus to lower taxes or spending for the same reason. The problem with that idea is that elections provide that pressure. Look at elections in the US: worries about wasteful spending and high taxes dominate the conversation far out of proportion to the problems they actually cause.

Central planning will fail at a societal level because the planner cannot have all of the information that a market system contains in it.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 19:23

Who What Now: Sep 10, 2006; by Azathoth

Nitrousoxide posted:

Because we have evidence that central planning at the state level leads to profound shortages, stagnant growth and little innovation.

Every communist government has provided a perfect case study and all have failed.

We have company towns as case studies on why the free market fails every time, too.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 19:27

CharlestheHammer: Jun 26, 2011; YOU SAY MY POSTS ARE THE RAVINGS OF THE DUMBEST PERSON ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH BUT YOU YOURSELF ARE READING THEM. CURIOUS!

The problem being a Market economy doesn't use that info very well, though that is by design.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 19:28

Nitrousoxide: May 30, 2011; do not buy a oneplus phone

Who What Now posted:

We have company towns as case studies on why the free market fails every time, too.

Company towns are more or less central planning at a societal level via a corporation rather than a government.

I don't see how that undermines how central planning at the societal level doesn't work. Please explain.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 19:29

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

The Market is a god of chaos that must be appeased. Planning? What are you, crazy?

# ? Sep 4, 2016 19:30

fishmech: Jul 16, 2006; by VideoGames; Salad Prong

xtal posted:

What about the second question?

What are you actually asking? The biggest problem with both is they can only "work" for a very limited set of people, while all but guaranteeing that the majority of people are hosed over.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 19:30

CharlestheHammer: Jun 26, 2011; YOU SAY MY POSTS ARE THE RAVINGS OF THE DUMBEST PERSON ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH BUT YOU YOURSELF ARE READING THEM. CURIOUS!

Systems fail all the time because change is hard and there are always variables. Trying to simplify it down to one singular reason without concrete examples is pointless.

It's just lazy.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 19:31

CharlestheHammer: Jun 26, 2011; YOU SAY MY POSTS ARE THE RAVINGS OF THE DUMBEST PERSON ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH BUT YOU YOURSELF ARE READING THEM. CURIOUS!

Like tell me why central planning failed, give me solid reasoning why it was at fault.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 19:35

Who What Now: Sep 10, 2006; by Azathoth

Nitrousoxide posted:

Company towns are more or less central planning at a societal level via a corporation rather than a government.

I don't see how that undermines how central planning at the societal level doesn't work. Please explain.

Because a single, government-like corporation is the only logical conclusion of the kind of capitalism Libertarianism advocates for.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 19:40

WrenP-Complete: Jul 27, 2012

xtal posted:

I have a question for the libertarian-haters. Are you also anarchist-haters, and how/why does the reasoning differ?

I don't hate anyone.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 19:42

StandardVC10: Feb 6, 2007; This avatar now 50% more dark mode compliant

Honestly I've never really engaged with a left anarchist. Libertarians are a lot easier to find on the internet.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 19:44

Ormi: Feb 7, 2005; B-E-H-A-V-E
Arrest us!

xtal posted:

I have a question for the libertarian-haters. Are you also anarchist-haters, and how/why does the reasoning differ?

Anarchism is very good and cool. The distinction for me is that right-libertarians don't believe in abolishing hierarchies and think that inequality in everything other than the law is inherently just

# ? Sep 4, 2016 19:46

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

Nitrousoxide posted:

A creature's body is centrally planned from the blueprints of its DNA, but it competes with other centrally planned creatures for scarce resources in a battle of survival of the fittest. Nature is an analogue for the market, and a fine one.

From my experience in the construction industry and the study of history, the competition has far less to do with efficient delivery of goods for the lowest price than one might think. There's a lot that goes into who wins and loses the competition, but the winner is often not the one who 'should' in any optimization puzzle. This would happen even if you SMASHED DA STATE because there's a lot more to business than economics.

Politics and economics are mixed, fluid things and trying to analyze one without understanding its impact on the other is one of those Libertarian things. The notion that if Big Bad Politics goes away somehow that Economics will rise and win is a great fantasy, I suppose.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 19:49

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

Nitrousoxide posted:

Nature is an analogue for the market, and a fine one.

Couldn't agree more:

# ? Sep 4, 2016 19:59

Who What Now: Sep 10, 2006; by Azathoth

"Nature, well known for being uncaring at best and cruel at worst, is a great metaphors for why the market will take care of the weakest members of society!"- :downs:

# ? Sep 4, 2016 20:02

Dirk the Average: Feb 7, 2012; "This may have been a mistake."

Who What Now posted:

"Nature, well known for being uncaring at best and cruel at worst, is a great metaphors for why the market will take care of the weakest members of society!"-

As shown above, nature is excellent at taking care of the weakest members of society!

# ? Sep 4, 2016 20:05

Goon Danton: May 24, 2012; Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

Nitrousoxide posted:

Because we have evidence that central planning at the state level leads to profound shortages, stagnant growth and little innovation.

Every communist government has provided a perfect case study and all have failed.

Just because a tool is used in part of the economic system doesn't mean that the same tool should be used at every point. You don't try to turn a bolt with a hammer just like you don't have lean, efficient, and innovative producers without competition.

I think we're arguing for the same goals, but our differences lie in what evidence we think is valid. Because there are actually multiple examples of centrally planned societies doing well. We can start all the way back at the mesopotamian temple-cities and the Spartans in ancient history. More recently we have Revolutionary France in the form of the Levee en Masse, and (to open a can of worms) the incredibly fast industrialization of the Soviet Union before WWII. Interestingly, three out of those four examples involve a state that is itself in fierce military competition with other states, but that's like a fourth degree derail and I don't know enough anthropology to do it justice anyway.

Levee en Masse posted:

Henceforth, until the enemies have been driven from the territory of the republic, the French people are in permanent requisition for army service. The young men shall go to battle; the married men shall forge arms and transport provision; the women shall make tents and clothes, and shall serve in the hospitals; the children shall turn old linen into lint; the old men shall repair to the public places, to stimulate the courage of the warriors and preach the unity of the Republic and hatred of kings. National buildings shall be converted into barracks; public places into armament workshops; the soil of cellars shall be washed in lye to extract saltpeter therefrom. Arms of the caliber shall be turned over exclusively to those who march against the enemy; the service of the interior shall be carried on with fowling pieces and sabers. Saddle horses are called for to complete the cavalry corps; draught horses, other than those employed in agriculture, shall haul artillery and provisions. The Committee of Public Safety is charged for taking all measures necessary for establishing, without delay, a special manufacture of arms of all kinds, in harmony with the �lan and the energy of the French people. Accordingly, it is authorized to constitute all establishments, manufactories, workshops, and factories deemed necessary for the execution of such works, as well as the requisition for such purpose, throughout the entire extent of the Republic, the artists and workmen who may contribute to their success. For such purpose a sum of 30,000,000 taken from the 498,200,000 livres in assignats in reserve in the �Fund of the Three Keys,� shall be placed at the disposal of the Minister of War (Carnot). The central establishment of said special manufacture shall be established at Paris.

It's hard to emphasize how much that document turned the War of the First Coalition around. If we still deified successful leaders, Carnot would be the God of Technocrats.

Nitrousoxide posted:

A creature's body is centrally planned from the blueprints of its DNA, but it competes with other centrally planned creatures for scarce resources in a battle of survival of the fittest. Nature is an analogue for the market, and a fine one.

You're giving way too much credit to DNA here I think, but whatever who cares. Nature is an amoral nightmare that doesn't give a crap about utility. It's efficient at choosing winners and losers, sure, but those are chosen based on their ability to propagate themselves, not on any kind of betterment of nature as a whole. Also, side note, but nature produces a bunch of different animals that gently caress with and kill other animals for fun. Humans obviously, but corvids, dolphins, and most (all?) species of cat come to mind.

poo poo, actually, you know what a good metaphor for centrally planned nature is? Animal husbandry. We took the mechanisms of free market nature and bent them towards human utility. We unleashed an accelerated natural selection with a drive and purpose behind it, turning wolves into man's best friend and angry wild sheep into wool-and-milk machines.

Nitrousoxide posted:

Central planning will fail at a societal level because the planner cannot have all of the information that a market system contains in it.

How do corporations gain that information then?

# ? Sep 4, 2016 20:05

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

Goon Danton posted:

I think we're arguing for the same goals, but our differences lie in what evidence we think is valid. Because there are actually multiple examples of centrally planned societies doing well. We can start all the way back at the mesopotamian temple-cities and the Spartans in ancient history.

The helots would probably disagree with that.

Goon Danton posted:

poo poo, actually, you know what a good metaphor for centrally planned nature is? Animal husbandry. We took the mechanisms of free market nature and bent them towards human utility. We unleashed an accelerated natural selection with a drive and purpose behind it, turning wolves into man's best friend

And then we turned them into inbred nightmares that lives short and painful lives.

Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Sep 4, 2016

# ? Sep 4, 2016 20:12

Curvature of Earth: Sep 9, 2011; Projected cost of
invading Canada:
$900

Ormi posted:

I would argue that large firms are also inefficient because of their central planning, and plagued by Sloanist MBA irrationality like the extreme overvaluation of administrative overhead and fixed capital costs at the expense of labor. :mutualism101:

Time to repost my MBA rant:

Despite what even SA's own MBA megathread would have you believe, MBA's are overpaid spreadsheet jockey's who are taught to believe they are superheroes possessing perfect knowledge of any business situation, able to fly in and fix anything with their genius business plans, while also believing that the plan itself is all that matters and execution is for plebs. I'm going to go ahead and pitch Henry Mintzberg's Managers, Not MBAs, a substantial portion of which you can read for free on Google Books in case you want further details on how awful MBA education generally is.

An MBA functions sort of like an anti-degree. You don't learn management. None of the actual duties and skills of a good manager�coordinating people, managing all the moving parts needed for a successful project or department, handling complete shitstorms with relative grace, etc�are actually taught. Nor, for that matter, are they even good "idea people". Note that the vast majority of successful entrepreneurs don't have MBAs, while you'd be hard-pressed to name a large company in the shitter that wasn't run into the ground in the first place, or made into a much worse disaster than it needed to be, by MBAs. Carly Fiorina was not uniquely incompetent�she's a product of business school and came out of her graduate program believing exactly the things she was taught.

Business education, in general, is deeply amoral. I remember the final project for my operations management class, which required us to plot the optimal rate for hiring and firing working workers in a seasonal business. You could keep a steady amount of workers on hand all year round, which meant paying to store your products in the off-seasons and also paying for some combination of full-time employees or part-time employees. Or, you could hire a shitload of workers at the start of busy season, work them to the bone, then fire every drat one of them when it ended. The optimal choice, of course, was somewhere in the middle�there were several costs to track�but at no point was there any discussion that we were talking about people, that we were being taught to gently caress with people�s livelihoods, judging their precise value to the company with an Excel file. This viewpoint permeated every business course I ever took. (Also, the ever-hostile tone every business textbook I ever read took towards government regulation.)

# ? Sep 4, 2016 20:22

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

Nitrousoxide posted:

Because we have evidence that central planning at the state level leads to profound shortages, stagnant growth and little innovation.

But we also have evidence that the opposite of all of those things is true: countless major scientific discoveries, all of space exploration up to this point, enormous infrastructure projects like the US highway system and the Hoover Dam, etc. were the result of centralized planning to one degree or another. There are countless examples of central planning by the state resulting in profound discoveries and achievements that might have taken decades, or possibly even centuries had the same tasks been left to chance

Coincidentally, the free market doesn't actually generate many scientific discoveries because the free market isn't optimized around innovation or efficiently allocating resources, rather it's optimized for putting the most money in the fewest hands as possible. So while it works (imperfectly) for reducing the cost of phones and televisions, it does not work at all for reducing the cost of healthcare or life-saving medical devices or important scientific discoveries.

quote:

Every communist government has provided a perfect case study and all have failed.

Those are case studies on command economies, but central planning encompasses a lot more activities than that. I'll also point out that the plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence". There are plenty of examples of a free market failing to work as a well-optimized system, but I wouldn't suggest that those are indicative of a total failure of all competitive systems everywhere.

quote:

Just because a tool is used in part of the economic system doesn't mean that the same tool should be used at every point. You don't try to turn a bolt with a hammer just like you don't have lean, efficient, and innovative producers without competition.

When you wrote this, were you trying to make an argument for centralization in some situations? Because that's how it reads.

QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Sep 4, 2016

# ? Sep 4, 2016 20:24

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

Alhazred posted:

And then we turned them into inbred nightmares that lives short and painful lives.

Bad, sick people, perhaps. Mutts are usually cool and healthy and it's why you should probably never buy a purebred or try and produce more purebreds

# ? Sep 4, 2016 20:27

Goon Danton: May 24, 2012; Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

Alhazred posted:

The helots would probably disagree with that.

And then we turned them into inbred nightmares that lives short and painful lives.

Again, those are questions of the morality of the planners' goals, rather than the efficiency of the process they use. Malign intentions are neither unique to nor universal among central planners.

It's worth noting here that I'm actually in agreement with the fundamental idea of "markets are useful for some applications, central planning for others." I just disagree with Nitrousoxide on what falls into which category.

Curvature of Earth posted:

Time to repost my MBA rant:

Never don't post your MBA rant. It is a good rant.

e: looks like my local public library has a copy of that book! It might make a good pairing with A Random Walk down Wall Street for an anti-Job-Creators tour de force.

QuarkJets posted:

Coincidentally, the free market doesn't actually generate many scientific discoveries because the free market isn't optimized around innovation or efficiently allocating resources, rather it's optimized for putting the most money in the fewest hands as possible. So while it works (imperfectly) for reducing the cost of phones and televisions, it does not work at all for reducing the cost of healthcare or life-saving medical devices or important scientific discoveries.

Yep. Private industry is actually really good at optimization when it has the incentive to be (the unbelievable strides in custom materials in the past few decades come to mind), while brand-new innovations have a tendency to come from public funding of fundamental research. The main exception to this is Bell Labs, which was part of a massive monopoly with no incentive to get "lean and efficient" anyway.

Goon Danton fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Sep 4, 2016

# ? Sep 4, 2016 20:34

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

As a lover of seafood, I'd also like to point to the world's collapsing fish stocks as evidence that the free market doesn't always allocate resources efficiently. Conservation often has to be done by governments telling fishermen that we are going to need fish in the future, and fishing entire regions to depletion is not a good idea! In regions with little or no regulation on overfishing, the local marine ecosystem often collapses due to overfishing and then the local economy collapses shortly afterward.

What does the free market do in this situation? You might think that fish simply become more and more expensive until no one can afford to eat fish, yet that didn't happen in countless cases. Instead, the fishermen took whatever they could get and wound up wiping out the local supply. It turns out that the tragedy of the commons is a real thing, and libertarianism doesn't address it.

And we're not talking about just a few random cases; overfishing is a global problem, whereas worldwide fish consumption has hit record highs, fish stocks are at record lows and we've never had so many simultaneously-collapsed marine habitats before.

QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Sep 4, 2016

# ? Sep 4, 2016 20:39

ToxicSlurpee: Nov 5, 2003; -=SEND HELP=-; Pillbug

QuarkJets posted:

Coincidentally, the free market doesn't actually generate many scientific discoveries because the free market isn't optimized around innovation or efficiently allocating resources, rather it's optimized for putting the most money in the fewest hands as possible. So while it works (imperfectly) for reducing the cost of phones and televisions, it does not work at all for reducing the cost of healthcare or life-saving medical devices or important scientific discoveries.

The biggest problem with innovation from a capitalist perspective is that nobody has any drat clue where the next Einstein is going to come from or where a specific set of research will lead. The CEO spending money on research is going to demand a return on that investment which may or may not materialize. Research just isn't predictable; that's why it's research. It's all about probing the unknown. Sometimes that apparently useless bit of information turns out to be god damned handy 50 years later. Other times the only thing researchers produce is "well we have a huge list of things we've proven are wrong and don't work." That sounds useless to a CEO but it's extremely useful from a scientific standpoint.

Other times incredibly useful stuff happens more or less randomly. Penicillin was discovered completely accidentally. Sir Alexander Fleming wasn't looking for something to revolutionize medicine at all and was known to be a bit of a slob. He went on vacation and went "oh hey that looks useful!" Next thing we know penicillin happened.

There's also not always a profit motive behind science either. Jonas Salk instead of profiting off of the polio vaccine basically went "nah, you guys can just have it. I'm going back to my lab. You're welcome." Imagine how differently that would have gone if that discovery was corporate rather than academic. Instead of polio vanishing from more and more parts of the world it'd become a poor man's disease. You can see that going on in America's pharmaceutical industry right now; it's profit before people.

Yes, the free market and competition works for some things. It is not the answer for everything; there are some things you don't put money into to get more money out of. In the case of medical research you put money in and healthier people come out. Research being unpredictable is exactly why you fund people that may not produce anything useful on their own; for every 1,000 scientists that methodically categorize things, do boilerplate research, and don't produce much amazing you'll get that one ridiculous breakthrough that revolutionizes something.

But here's the thing; that revolutionary breakthrough needs the boilerplate to happen and make it possible. Same goes for universal free access to education. For all we know our next revolutionary scientist might be born to poor migrants living in the desert. The Stirling Engine is possibly one of the most important mechanical discoveries ever and that came out of a priest who got sick of seeing exploding steam engines kill people. The businesses didn't give a poo poo because gently caress it whatever, profit it is still coming in. Because business has a tendency to be immoral.

ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Sep 4, 2016

# ? Sep 4, 2016 20:48

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

Goon Danton posted:

Again, those are questions of the morality of the planners' goals, rather than the efficiency of the process they use. Malign intentions are neither unique to nor universal among central planners.

You could question the efficiency of having to dedicate a lot of time and resources to ensure that a group of people who actively hate you doesn't murder you in your sleep.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 20:53

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Alhazred posted:

You could question the efficiency of having to dedicate a lot of time and resources to ensure that a group of people who actively hate you doesn't murder you in your sleep.

Slave societies did this and the math worked out in favor of slavery in the majority of cases, though. It was a very profitable institution even given the security overhead costs.

# ? Sep 4, 2016 21:06

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# ? May 28, 2024 11:34

Goon Danton: May 24, 2012; Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

The biggest problem with innovation from a capitalist perspective is that nobody has any drat clue where the next Einstein is going to come from or where a specific set of research will lead. The CEO spending money on research is going to demand a return on that investment which may or may not materialize. Research just isn't predictable; that's why it's research. It's all about probing the unknown. Sometimes that apparently useless bit of information turns out to be god damned handy 50 years later. Other times the only thing researchers produce is "well we have a huge list of things we've proven are wrong and don't work." That sounds useless to a CEO but it's extremely useful from a scientific standpoint.

Other times incredibly useful stuff happens more or less randomly. Penicillin was discovered completely accidentally. Sir Alexander Fleming wasn't looking for something to revolutionize medicine at all and was known to be a bit of a slob. He went on vacation and went "oh hey that looks useful!" Next thing we know penicillin happened.

There's also not always a profit motive behind science either. Jonas Salk instead of profiting off of the polio vaccine basically went "nah, you guys can just have it. I'm going back to my lab. You're welcome." Imagine how differently that would have gone if that discovery was corporate rather than academic. Instead of polio vanishing from more and more parts of the world it'd become a poor man's disease. You can see that going on in America's pharmaceutical industry right now; it's profit before people.

Yes, the free market and competition works for some things. It is not the answer for everything; there are some things you don't put money into to get more money out of. In the case of medical research you put money in and healthier people come out. Research being unpredictable is exactly why you fund people that may not produce anything useful on their own; for every 1,000 scientists that methodically categorize things, do boilerplate research, and don't produce much amazing you'll get that one ridiculous breakthrough that revolutionizes something.

But here's the thing; that revolutionary breakthrough needs the boilerplate to happen and make it possible.

And naturally, the push to make government more lean and efficient is slowly killing the ability to do that kind of boilerplate research. There's nothing small government advocates love more than screaming about a million dollar grant to study salamanders or something else silly-sounding. The result is an ever-increasing emphasis on "what are the immediate applications of your project" on grant and fellowship requests. So everyone narrows the scope of their research to subjects that will get them a shot at a slowly shrinking pool of research money, and the competitive nature of it all means that multiple labs work on very similar projects and "scoop" each other, wasting piles of time and effort. Basically modern research has piles of toxic elements to it, almost all of which are born out of forced competition.

And that's my experience in the relatively cash-rich field of alternative energy research! I can't even imagine what it's like to try to get money for those salamander projects.

Alhazred posted:

You could question the efficiency of having to dedicate a lot of time and resources to ensure that a group of people who actively hate you doesn't murder you in your sleep.

Honestly slavery isn't that inefficient, despite what CSA apologists would have people believe. There's a reason it stuck around so long as an institution, and there's a reason it pops back up every chance it gets: not paying people is way more lucrative than paying them, and the success rate for slave revolts is like one out of literally uncountable attempts. Anyway, I'm not trying to defend Sparta as a system we should emulate. I'm just saying that they're a data point against the "centrally planned societies are too inefficient to be effective" thesis.

e: this is actually a really good demonstration of why we can't just trust in the market, even if it is maximally efficient. Firms that pay their workers fairly will have a hard time competing with firms that pay them little to nothing. So if one firm goes that route, they all have to, out of the coercive laws of competition. And then we're in a prisoner's dilemma and wages collapse unless there's a shortage of workers.

Goon Danton fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Sep 4, 2016

# ? Sep 4, 2016 21:06

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Libertarians: You fire fighter lovers sure are good at debate!

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