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JustJeff88
Jan 15, 2008

I AM
CONSISTENTLY
ANNOYING
...
JUST TERRIBLE


THIS BADGE OF SHAME IS WORTH 0.45 DOUBLE DRAGON ADVANCES

:dogout:
of SA-Mart forever

Mr Interweb posted:

I may have asked this before, but I don't recall ever having a sufficient answer. I never understood how libertarians justify letting entities like say, coal power plants being allowed to pollute a community's air and water. You would think that having mercury in your tap water would be one of the top instances of violating the NAP.

There is no sufficient answer because you made the mistake of assuming that libertarians think. This isn't meant to denigrate you, it's simply an assumption made by intelligent people who are assuming logic from illogical people. One thing I've learned quite a bit from having read this thread from start to present is the difference between consequential and deontological thinking, and libertarians end up firmly in the latter camp. Every libertarian, whether they be of the Market Worshipper or Sociopath type, start from the premise that "All Government is Bad" and everything flows from there. Basically, you have to look at libertarianism as a religion that worships self-interest, but whether a person's adoration of selfishness comes from blind faith or a simple lack of consideration for human decency, they all run from the inviolable principle that "Government is evil" (because it makes me not do things that I want to do that would hurt others) and weave the rest of the narrative around that.

I actually have a request, because I heard someone I normally like lend some credence to this and it offends me. I did not see the Penn & Teller episode about gun control (or the lack thereof) because I find both men to be both horrible people and not the least bit entertaining, but I wanted to know if anyone else saw it and can tell me what (probably horribly flawed) arguments they put forth against gun control, what fallacious reasoning they used and what "data" they cherry picked and used out of context. I understand that one of their... anecdotes involved a case where a gun tragedy could have been stopped if someone was armed, which of course makes a huge amount of very ambitious assumptions, but that's the type of thing that I would like to rip to shreds. I could probably find the episode somewhere, but I refuse to torture myself by either watching terrible television or being further presented with human excrement.

JustJeff88 fucked around with this message at 00:19 on May 30, 2019

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Goon Danton
May 24, 2012

Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

Mr Interweb posted:

I may have asked this before, but I don't recall ever having a sufficient answer. I never understood how libertarians justify letting entities like say, coal power plants being allowed to pollute a community's air and water. You would think that having mercury in your tap water would be one of the top instances of violating the NAP.

The JRod answer was "just go to an unbiased private court that the coal company will definitely recognize and agree to, and then prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they put the specific mercury in the water you drank and that your poisoning was caused by that specific mercury and and and"

Captain_Maclaine
Sep 30, 2001

Every moment that I'm alive, I pray for death!

JustJeff88 posted:

I actually have a request, because I heard someone I normally like lend some credence to this and it offends me. I did not see the Penn & Teller episode about gun control (or the lack thereof) because I find both men to be both horrible people and not the least bit entertaining, but I wanted to know if anyone else saw it and can tell me what (probably horribly flawed) arguments they put forth against gun control, what fallacious reasoning they used and what "data" they cherry picked and used out of context. I understand that one of their... anecdotes involved a case where a gun tragedy could have been stopped if someone was armed, which of course makes a huge amount of very ambitious assumptions, but that's the type of thing that I would like to rip to shreds. I could probably find the episode somewhere, but I refuse to torture myself by either watching terrible television or being further presented with human excrement.

It's bad even by the standards of that show (which was decent-ish for the first several episodes, then they ran out of actual pseudoscience and just started proselytizing libertarianism). They use a confusing mishmash of half-arguments, ranging from Revolutionary War minuteman mythology to emotional appeals about how downtrodden minorities need to be able to defend themselves (because the state won't protect them) to straight up Jeffersonian "tree of liberty needs occasional watering" fantasizing.

Even if you did like them, or the show, I would not recommend watching that episode.

paragon1
Nov 22, 2010

FULL COMMUNISM NOW

Goon Danton posted:

The JRod answer was "just go to an unbiased private court that the coal company will definitely recognize and agree to, and then prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they put the specific mercury in the water you drank and that your poisoning was caused by that specific mercury and and and"

And then just get your DRO to enforce the decision by destroying the coal plant's security forces on the open field of battle, clogging the smokestacks with their dead! Then then your reign as king-CEO of the private natural gas generator manufacturer can begin! Other DROs won't be able to interfere because their spymasters won't have had time to manufacture claims against you yet!

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

Goon Danton posted:

The JRod answer was "just go to an unbiased private court that the coal company will definitely recognize and agree to, and then prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they put the specific mercury in the water you drank and that your poisoning was caused by that specific mercury and and and"

And that's for an easy case.

If you wanted to sue, say, gasoline companies poisoning you with lead, well they aren't responsible for the actions of the individual motorists spraying lead fumes from their tailpipes in front of your house. That would be like holding firearms manufacturers responsible for school shootings!

So once you get sick you just prove which specific triethyl lead molecules were the immediate cause then track them all back to the tailpipes of each individual motorist for the past thirty years. Because it would be a grave injustice if I had to pay for your health problems if my lead only landed in your yard and was harmlessly washed off into the water supply, and the lead you breathed in to make you sick was somebody else's.

Pembroke Fuse
Dec 29, 2008

Mr Interweb posted:

I may have asked this before, but I don't recall ever having a sufficient answer. I never understood how libertarians justify letting entities like say, coal power plants being allowed to pollute a community's air and water. You would think that having mercury in your tap water would be one of the top instances of violating the NAP.

One libertarian deflection I've seen about the environment is the idea that pollution is caused by the "tragedy of the commons". If airspace and water weren't commons, private ownership would resolve these issues (i.e. one private owner would sue another for the pollution infringing on their airspace). No mention of how this works when the coal plant also owns all the land, water and airspace around you... or have simply bought off everyone who does.

Goon Danton
May 24, 2012

Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

VitalSigns posted:

And that's for an easy case.

If you wanted to sue, say, gasoline companies poisoning you with lead, well they aren't responsible for the actions of the individual motorists spraying lead fumes from their tailpipes in front of your house. That would be like holding firearms manufacturers responsible for school shootings!

So once you get sick you just prove which specific triethyl lead molecules were the immediate cause then track them all back to the tailpipes of each individual motorist for the past thirty years. Because it would be a grave injustice if I had to pay for your health problems if my lead only landed in your yard and was harmlessly washed off into the water supply, and the lead you breathed in to make you sick was somebody else's.

Defendant John Chevron Jr.: "objection, your honor, it's actually tetraethyl lead!"

Objective Judge John Chevron Sr.: "Sustained, case dismissed!"

Headline in the Chevron Times: "local business leader DESTROYS cancer patient with facts, logic"

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

Pembroke Fuse posted:

One libertarian deflection I've seen about the environment is the idea that pollution is caused by the "tragedy of the commons". If airspace and water weren't commons, private ownership would resolve these issues (i.e. one private owner would sue another for the pollution infringing on their airspace). No mention of how this works when the coal plant also owns all the land, water and airspace around you... or have simply bought off everyone who does.

Yeah I've seen this viewpoint too, it's actually more consistent because it takes property rights to their logical conclusion: the air above your yard is part of your private property and anyone emitting anything into the air that wafts over to your yard is aggressing against your property and you have the right to force him to stop regardless of whether his bbq smoke or farting is harming you or not, just as it's your right to kick him off your land whether his presence harms you or not.

Of course due to the nature of physical reality it's completely unworkable (unlike jrod's system of making people somehow prove whose mercury molecules they were beyond a reasonable doubt, which is merely a miserable dystopia but not an impossibility), and of course it doesn't give coal companies an effectively unlimited license to pollute all they want so it remains a minority position without any support from Libertarian thought-leaders.

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

Goon Danton posted:

The JRod answer was "just go to an unbiased private court that the coal company will definitely recognize and agree to, and then prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they put the specific mercury in the water you drank and that your poisoning was caused by that specific mercury and and and"

Should mention that jrod's big issue was the immorality of prior restraint, so even if your neighbor somehow prevails against the coal company in a privately-owned court and receives a settlement, that doesn't mean the company has to stop polluting. It just means they do a cost-benefit analysis comparing the potential profits of continuing to pollute versus the probability that they'll lose more court cases against you or your other neighbors. And you can't just use that judgment to sue either, and you can't use statistical evidence about the link between coal exhaust and cancer either, you have to wait until you personally get sick and then start from square one tracking down the specific molecules that made you sick back to the specific plants that emitted them. You can't stop the company from giving you cancer, you have to wait until you get cancer and then maybe you get money.

The worst thing ever is stopping someone from doing what they want to do if it hasn't hurt anyone (yet) (provably). It's far far better that people get hurt than that someone not be allowed to do what they want to do. Remember in first grade when that ogre Ms. Wizzenburger made you stop swinging a stick around like a lightsabre even though you hadn't hit anyone, just because Brian hit someone in the face 5 minutes ago while doing the exact same thing. But you're not clumsy like him, and now your fun has to stop because Brian is clumsy.
Imagine you never grew out of that feeling, that's what being a Libertarian is like.

Goon Danton
May 24, 2012

Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

I love the Tragedy of the Commons because the actual historical Commons never showed the kind of problem it says they would, while post-enclosure farms under capitalism run themselves into the ground constantly.

It's the old "counterpoint: observable reality" but for actual economics that gets taken seriously. Basically just about everything we get taught about medieval life is as fake as the Right of Prima Noctae, with the exception of hygiene (note: exception applies to Christians only).

Pembroke Fuse
Dec 29, 2008

VitalSigns posted:

Should mention that jrod's big issue was the immorality of prior restraint, so even if your neighbor somehow prevails against the coal company in a privately-owned court and receives a settlement, that doesn't mean the company has to stop polluting. It just means they do a cost-benefit analysis comparing the potential profits of continuing to pollute versus the probability that they'll lose more court cases against you or your other neighbors. And you can't just use that judgment to sue either, and you can't use statistical evidence about the link between coal exhaust and cancer either, you have to wait until you personally get sick and then start from square one tracking down the specific molecules that made you sick back to the specific plants that emitted them. You can't stop the company from giving you cancer, you have to wait until you get cancer and then maybe you get money.

The worst thing ever is stopping someone from doing what they want to do if it hasn't hurt anyone (yet) (provably). It's far far better that people get hurt than that someone not be allowed to do what they want to do. Remember in first grade when that ogre Ms. Wizzenburger made you stop swinging a stick around like a lightsabre even though you hadn't hit anyone, just because Brian hit someone in the face 5 minutes ago while doing the exact same thing. But you're not clumsy like him, and now your fun has to stop because Brian is clumsy.
Imagine you never grew out of that feeling, that's what being a Libertarian is like.

I've seen this argument before as well... its hilariously unworkable, but god forbid someone imposed some basic rules of behavior and prevented someone from dying.

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

Pembroke Fuse posted:

No mention of how this works when the coal plant also owns all the land, water and airspace around you... or have simply bought off everyone who does.

Also ignoring how this is impractical in reality, keep in mind how this is supposed to work in theory combined with landlordism.

If you're an affluent suburbanite with a deed congratulations you can sue a refinery for aggressing against your property with smokestack exhaust.

But if you're a tenant, welp your landlord lives in a gated neighborhood so they don't care about cancer smog in their tenements, and the refinery owner pays an attractive fee for permission to pollute those tenements, sure you could look for a lease that bars the landlord from selling permission to pollute but of course those come with a hefty premium to offset the opportunity cost...


Goon Danton posted:

I love the Tragedy of the Commons because the actual historical Commons never showed the kind of problem it says they would, while post-enclosure farms under capitalism run themselves into the ground constantly.

Yeah turns out when everyone is farming for the community they take care of their land or they starve next year, if everyone is privately farming for market you might starve next year if you create a Dust Bowl but you'll definitely starve this year if you don't create a Dust Bowl also your neighbors are already creating one regardless of your individual action so

Pembroke Fuse
Dec 29, 2008

Goon Danton posted:

I love the Tragedy of the Commons because the actual historical Commons never showed the kind of problem it says they would, while post-enclosure farms under capitalism run themselves into the ground constantly.

It's the old "counterpoint: observable reality" but for actual economics that gets taken seriously. Basically just about everything we get taught about medieval life is as fake as the Right of Prima Noctae, with the exception of hygiene (note: exception applies to Christians only).

Yeah, Tragedy of the Commons was yet another thought experiment that had nothing to do with actual history.

Guavanaut
Nov 27, 2009

Looking At Them Tittys
1969 - 1998



Toilet Rascal

VitalSigns posted:

Also ignoring how this is impractical in reality, keep in mind how this is supposed to work in theory combined with landlordism.

If you're an affluent suburbanite with a deed congratulations you can sue a refinery for aggressing against your property with smokestack exhaust.

But if you're a tenant, welp your landlord lives in a gated neighborhood so they don't care about cancer smog in their tenements, and the refinery owner pays an attractive fee for permission to pollute those tenements, sure you could look for a lease that bars the landlord from selling permission to pollute but of course those come with a hefty premium to offset the opportunity cost...
You can see this with the alkali works along the Mersey in the mid-19th century. Nobody gave a poo poo when it was the people in the immediate area dying, but when the huge clouds of muriatic acid gas started affecting the fields of downwind farms there started to be lawsuits. So the alkali works just bought out the farms and left them to rot, until later legislation was passed protecting air quality (so they started dumping into the water instead).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lljCTw35e30&t=770s

Captain_Maclaine
Sep 30, 2001

Every moment that I'm alive, I pray for death!

Goon Danton posted:

It's the old "counterpoint: observable reality" but for actual economics that gets taken seriously. Basically just about everything we get taught about medieval life is as fake as the Right of Prima Noctae, with the exception of hygiene (note: exception applies to Christians only).

Even then, public bathing tended to still be practiced in medieval Europe, particularly in places where Roman bathing infrastructure survived, though the Church did frown on it as being indecent and too enjoyable to not be a sin of some kind. It's only when the black death sweeps through the continent that the practice entirely died off (as sick people often sought relief in the baths and thus spread the disease further).

CountFosco
Jan 9, 2012

Welcome back to the Liturgigoon thread, friend.

Captain_Maclaine posted:

Even then, public bathing tended to still be practiced in medieval Europe, particularly in places where Roman bathing infrastructure survived, though the Church did frown on it as being indecent and too enjoyable to not be a sin of some kind. It's only when the black death sweeps through the continent that the practice entirely died off (as sick people often sought relief in the baths and thus spread the disease further).

Certainly in a lot of places in Europe people would get clean using saunas.

Buried alive
Jun 8, 2009

Goon Danton posted:

I love the Tragedy of the Commons because the actual historical Commons never showed the kind of problem it says they would, while post-enclosure farms under capitalism run themselves into the ground constantly.

It's the old "counterpoint: observable reality" but for actual economics that gets taken seriously. Basically just about everything we get taught about medieval life is as fake as the Right of Prima Noctae, with the exception of hygiene (note: exception applies to Christians only).

I thought the whole point of the Tragedy of the Commons thought experiment was to show that rational self-interest is self-defeating for publicly held resources because if everyone is only interested in themselves they would run themselves into the ground vying for every last scrap of profit. Like.. the tragedy is when you take a Commons and privatize it, so observable reality pretty clearly supports the whole thing?

Or is there some weird libertarian version of the Tragedy that I"m not aware of? Or am I just being dumb?

Anubis
Oct 9, 2003

It's hard to keep sand out of ears this big.
Fun Shoe

Buried alive posted:

I thought the whole point of the Tragedy of the Commons thought experiment was to show that rational self-interest is self-defeating for publicly held resources because if everyone is only interested in themselves they would run themselves into the ground vying for every last scrap of profit. Like.. the tragedy is when you take a Commons and privatize it, so observable reality pretty clearly supports the whole thing?

Or is there some weird libertarian version of the Tragedy that I"m not aware of? Or am I just being dumb?

The libertarian solution is, of course, no commons. Privatize everything and the smart people will properly manage their grounds and never overgraze because that would be stupid. And then even if they do, they deserve to starve and be forced to sell their land to survive because of their stupidity and this is just the free market at work making sure that only smart people have access to resources. And please don't try to apply this to water, rivers and air pollution because they don't have an easy answer for that.

Panfilo
Aug 27, 2011
Probation
Can't post for 8 days!

Anubis posted:

The libertarian solution is, of course, no commons. Privatize everything and the smart people will properly manage their grounds and never overgraze because that would be stupid. And then even if they do, they deserve to starve and be forced to sell their land to survive because of their stupidity and this is just the free market at work making sure that only smart people have access to resources. And please don't try to apply this to water, rivers and air pollution because they don't have an easy answer for that.

Exactly. They think there's some kind of darwinism at play. The polluting companies will inevitably fail because people won't do business with them and talented workers will shirk unethical companies.

Libertarians don't seem to grasp the concept of privilege or failing upwards. Existence is some black box where effort tokens are inserted and success gets spit out.

Goon Danton
May 24, 2012

Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

Buried alive posted:

I thought the whole point of the Tragedy of the Commons thought experiment was to show that rational self-interest is self-defeating for publicly held resources because if everyone is only interested in themselves they would run themselves into the ground vying for every last scrap of profit. Like.. the tragedy is when you take a Commons and privatize it, so observable reality pretty clearly supports the whole thing?

Or is there some weird libertarian version of the Tragedy that I"m not aware of? Or am I just being dumb?

My understanding was that rational self interest was simply assumed as "human nature" and the Tragedy was meant to show that resources need to be privately owned. This is the quote from the original pamphlet as per Wikipedia:

William Forster Lloyd posted:

If a person puts more cattle into his own field, the amount of the subsistence which they consume is all deducted from that which was at the command, of his original stock ; and if, before,there was no more than a sufficiency of pasture, he reaps no benefit from the additional cattle,what is gained in one way being lost in another. But if he puts more cattle on a common, the food which they consume forms a deduction which is shared between all the cattle, as well that of others as his own, in proportion to their number, and only a small part of it is taken from his own cattle. In an inclosed pasture, there is a point of saturation, if I may so call it, (by which, I mean a barrier depending on considerations of interest,) beyond which no prudent man will add to his stock. In a common, also, there is in like manner a point of saturation. But the position of the point in the two cases is obviously different. Were a number of adjoining pastures, already fully stocked, to be at once thrown open, and converted into one vast common, the position of the point of saturation would immediately be changed.

Anubis
Oct 9, 2003

It's hard to keep sand out of ears this big.
Fun Shoe

Panfilo posted:

Existence is some black box where effort tokens are inserted and success gets spit out.

There's a very strong draw, that is in the true heart of Libertarian thinking, for people to desperately want to justify their successes and other's failures as a result of morality or lacking that they tend to run to divine provenance, if they're at all religious. It's often referred to as the "Just-World" fallacy, which libertarians truly only slightly modify to hoist the divine powers onto the mystical "free market." It's almost like reasonable people have been fighting this bizarre human impulse for for 3000 years....

Ecclesiastes 9:11-12
I have seen something else under the sun:
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.

Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come:
As fish are caught in a cruel net,
or birds are taken in a snare,
so people are trapped by evil times
that fall unexpectedly upon them.

Anubis fucked around with this message at 13:58 on May 31, 2019

JustJeff88
Jan 15, 2008

I AM
CONSISTENTLY
ANNOYING
...
JUST TERRIBLE


THIS BADGE OF SHAME IS WORTH 0.45 DOUBLE DRAGON ADVANCES

:dogout:
of SA-Mart forever

Anubis posted:

There's a very strong draw, that is in the true heart of Libertarian thinking, for people to desperately want to justify their successes and other's failures as a result of morality or lacking that they tend to run to divine provenance, if they're at all religious. It's often referred to as the "Just-World" fallacy, which libertarians truly only slightly modify to hoist the divine powers onto the mystical "free market." It's almost like reasonable people have been fighting this bizarre human impulse for for 3000 years....

Ecclesiastes 9:11-12
I have seen something else under the sun:
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.

Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come:
As fish are caught in a cruel net,
or birds are taken in a snare,
so people are trapped by evil times
that fall unexpectedly upon them.

I was literally just thinking about the Just World Fallacy and its non-secular cousin the Prosperity Gospel as well as this very biblical passage, and I know very few biblical passages.

To add a bit, all libertarians, at least the Sociopathic ones, think that they are inherently great and that great things will naturally happen to them. If they don't, then it's someone perverting real freedom and it couldn't possibly be bad luck, a corrupt system or personal failure.... that's why bad things happen to other people, because they are inherently weak, lazy and stupid.

I know that I use the term "socipathy" quite a bit, but that's because A) there is a scientifically proven link between right-wing economic beliefs and sociopathy and B) I have genuinely met very well-meaning Market Worship libertarians. The latter group can be redeemed just like anyone who has blind faith in bad ideas, but the Sociopath never really can be as he (it's much more prevalent in men), whether he realises it or not, is only in it for himself and is not interested in the good of others.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!

Anubis posted:

It's often referred to as the "Just-World" fallacy, which libertarians truly only slightly modify to hoist the divine powers onto the mystical "free market." It's almost like reasonable people have been fighting this bizarre human impulse for for 3000 years....
I read a good article recently wherein the author described how the uniquely American brand of Christianity he grew up in pushed him toward free-market conservatism. There's this paradox of believing in "traditional values" and America as a Christian nation, but not really acknowledging a community of believers beyond the particular paranoiacally independent church you attend.

ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug

Buried alive posted:

I thought the whole point of the Tragedy of the Commons thought experiment was to show that rational self-interest is self-defeating for publicly held resources because if everyone is only interested in themselves they would run themselves into the ground vying for every last scrap of profit. Like.. the tragedy is when you take a Commons and privatize it, so observable reality pretty clearly supports the whole thing?

Or is there some weird libertarian version of the Tragedy that I"m not aware of? Or am I just being dumb?

The point of the Tragedy of the Commons is that maximum short term gains have a tendency to gently caress up long term gains. You need to carefully manage things so you don't overconsume in the short term. This is why there's a difference between seed crop and the crop you eat; if you eat your seed crop you can't plant anything next year which is a pretty bad thing. If you over farm and over graze then the land gets damaged and might never recover in your life.

If you take your hands off completely then people tend to end up in a "no drop of rain believes itself responsible for the flood" scenario. It isn't that big of a deal if I take a little bit extra now becomes disastrous when you have too many people doing it. That little bit extra now multiplies massively if everybody is doing it. This is why total deregulation is completely impossible if you want to have any sort of a functional system. Once you quit planning long term the entire thing collapses in pretty short order.

Incidentally this is why libertarians will point out that they aren't interested in total anarchy and understand that from purely practical terms a certain level of regulation is ultimately necessary. It's actually the weird fringe that went for "all government and all regulations are inherently bad." The typical belief is that the government should be as small as possible. However the fringe not only started taking over the party but the crazies started dressing up "all government and all regulations are inherently bad" with "hey let's privatize literally everything including the government."

JustJeff88
Jan 15, 2008

I AM
CONSISTENTLY
ANNOYING
...
JUST TERRIBLE


THIS BADGE OF SHAME IS WORTH 0.45 DOUBLE DRAGON ADVANCES

:dogout:
of SA-Mart forever
I realise that this is a topic shift of sorts, but can anyone give me or refer me to some good information about the problems in Venezuela? I haven't been taking a particular interest in it lately, but by coincidence I keep seeing obnoxious people online with the classic "Everything is the fault of socialism!" bollocks and I'm getting sick of it. I also realise that the established world order has every interest in sabotaging and slandering every possible attempt at an alternative economic system, so I don't trust anything that I hear given that basically all media is owned by megacorporations that are terrified of any threat to the status quo.

Soviet Space Dog
May 7, 2009
Unicum Space Dog
May 6, 2009

NOBODY WILL REALIZE MY POSTS ARE SHIT NOW THAT MY NAME IS PURPLE :smug:

Buried alive posted:

I thought the whole point of the Tragedy of the Commons thought experiment was to show that rational self-interest is self-defeating for publicly held resources because if everyone is only interested in themselves they would run themselves into the ground vying for every last scrap of profit. Like.. the tragedy is when you take a Commons and privatize it, so observable reality pretty clearly supports the whole thing?

Or is there some weird libertarian version of the Tragedy that I"m not aware of? Or am I just being dumb?

the Tragedy of the Commons popularization comes from an explicitly neo-malthusian gently caress the poor essay about how national parks will soon be full of undesirables and has a section titled "Freedom to Breed Is Intolerable"

it even has " If we love the truth we must openly deny the validity of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, even though it is promoted by the United Nations."

Soviet Space Dog fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Jun 2, 2019

Ormi
Feb 7, 2005

B-E-H-A-V-E
Arrest us!
Reminder that Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom thoroughly debunked the Tragedy of the Commons using exhaustive empirical evidence. In the absence of state-directed force, commoners tend to self-regulate. Open-access resources may or may not succumb to a similar depletion in the absence of self-management, but it's the lack of any kind of organization at all that is the problem, not its specific form.

Goon Danton
May 24, 2012

Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

JustJeff88 posted:

I realise that this is a topic shift of sorts, but can anyone give me or refer me to some good information about the problems in Venezuela? I haven't been taking a particular interest in it lately, but by coincidence I keep seeing obnoxious people online with the classic "Everything is the fault of socialism!" bollocks and I'm getting sick of it. I also realise that the established world order has every interest in sabotaging and slandering every possible attempt at an alternative economic system, so I don't trust anything that I hear given that basically all media is owned by megacorporations that are terrified of any threat to the status quo.

The cspam Venezuela thread is good. But basically their economy is based on oil, their attempts to diversify were unsuccessful, and then the price of oil collapsed and the US introduced a bunch of sanctions. So simultaneously the commodity they used to pay for everything else lost a lot of value, and the country that bought a lot of said commodity started explicitly trying to wreck their economy.

reignonyourparade
Nov 15, 2012

Goon Danton posted:

I love the Tragedy of the Commons because the actual historical Commons never showed the kind of problem it says they would, while post-enclosure farms under capitalism run themselves into the ground constantly.

It's the old "counterpoint: observable reality" but for actual economics that gets taken seriously. Basically just about everything we get taught about medieval life is as fake as the Right of Prima Noctae, with the exception of hygiene (note: exception applies to Christians only).

Even ignoring that, taking tragedy of the commons at full face value, it's explicitly a problem of public lands and private herds... which means it would actually be a tragedy of mixed economies if it was real, with an alternate solution of "okay, hold the herds in common too."

Captain_Maclaine
Sep 30, 2001

Every moment that I'm alive, I pray for death!

Ormi posted:

Reminder that Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom thoroughly debunked the Tragedy of the Commons using exhaustive empirical evidence. In the absence of state-directed force, commoners tend to self-regulate. Open-access resources may or may not succumb to a similar depletion in the absence of self-management, but it's the lack of any kind of organization at all that is the problem, not its specific form.

Heh, "empircal evidence"? *farts* Well sounds like someone hasn't heard of the immaculately unfalsifiable science of praexology which derives perfect conclusions from logically derived axioms about human action and furthermore- *rockets out of own rear end in a top hat to the chorus of a thousand Rothbard Institute voices chanting "age of consent laws are violence."*

Mr Interweb
Aug 25, 2004

Panfilo posted:

Exactly. They think there's some kind of darwinism at play. The polluting companies will inevitably fail because people won't do business with them and talented workers will shirk unethical companies.

Libertarians don't seem to grasp the concept of privilege or failing upwards. Existence is some black box where effort tokens are inserted and success gets spit out.

Of all the dumb things about libertarianism. I think this may be the one I have the biggest issue with. Like, it may be one thing to claim taxes are too high to the point that they might stymie economic growth. That by itself, is not necessarily a dumb thing.

But the idea that business owners will never do anything bad or harmful because doing so would cause them to lose business is so idiotic that it's stunning any human being who has ever enacted with another human being would claim such a thing. I know the "on the other hand, all of recorded history" meme is a bit cliche, but it's also ridiculously appropriate in this case. Acid rain in the 90s, the BP oil spill, Nike hiring child labor, Goldman Sachs repacking toxic mortgages, the tobacco companies trying to downplay lung cancer, even loving Chik-Fil-A being openly homophobic. The list goes on and on.

I mean, not only does this belief defy the historical record, it also defies common sense. If businessowners wouldn't do anything shady or immoral because they would be punished for it, wouldn't that mean we'd be in a loving utopia where nothing bad happens to anyone because everyone would be forced by rational self-interest to be on their best behavior? Even when I was a very short lived libertarian, I thought this mindset was loving stupid.

JustJeff88
Jan 15, 2008

I AM
CONSISTENTLY
ANNOYING
...
JUST TERRIBLE


THIS BADGE OF SHAME IS WORTH 0.45 DOUBLE DRAGON ADVANCES

:dogout:
of SA-Mart forever
Companies doing heinous things to improve profit/avoid paying for mistakes/dodge any social responsibility is entirely one thing, but when people try to point out things like Walmart raising their wages (which are still terrible) without being forced per se and insist that that's a sign of the free market... no, you dribbling fuckwit, that's the sign of a ludicrously profitable company, like JPM Chase, doing something as a way of mitigating bad PR in order to avoid $15-$20 minimum wages and so on. They can easily afford more, but I'm sure that the hollow suits decided that they should give a little to hopefully save a lot. What people never mention is that, at the same time, Walmart closed a bunch of Sam's Club locations, but I'm sure that that was just a coincidence. Of course, immediately after one of Sam Walton's vile children bitched about their profits (which are still enormous).

It absolutely appals me that there are people that are fine with wages going up to due to public sentiment, but not due to regulation. There are legitimately no small number of people who think that hugely profitable companies raising wages is fine, but only so long as no law forces them to do it. If I burgled your bloody home and then gave back some of your poo poo in a fit of conscience, would you applaud me yet despise the policeman who caught me and made me give it back?

Panfilo
Aug 27, 2011
Probation
Can't post for 8 days!
They hate being forced to do anything. They were the kid that went nuclear over their parents making them put the cap back on the toothpaste tube. It's probably also why they are so laser focused on their pet issues (weed, guns, and sex with minors)

Captain_Maclaine
Sep 30, 2001

Every moment that I'm alive, I pray for death!

Panfilo posted:

They hate being forced to do anything. They were the kid that went nuclear over their parents making them put the cap back on the toothpaste tube. It's probably also why they are so laser focused on their pet issues (weed, guns, and sex with minors)

My favorite example of this is MRA forefather Paul Elam openly admitting, and with some sense of inexplicable pride, that he got interested in Men's Rights when he was 12 and his mother forced him to take medicine for his diarrhea.

Tubgoat
Jun 30, 2013

by sebmojo
And his last name is 'male' backward? :cripes: Lazy loving writers.

BENGHAZI 2
Oct 13, 2007

by Cyrano4747

Tubgoat posted:

And his last name is 'male' backward? :cripes: Lazy loving writers.

Pseudonym

Goatse James Bond
Mar 28, 2010

If you see me posting please remind me that I have Charlie Work in the reports forum to do instead

Goon Danton posted:

The cspam Venezuela thread is good. But basically their economy is based on oil, their attempts to diversify were unsuccessful, and then the price of oil collapsed and the US introduced a bunch of sanctions. So simultaneously the commodity they used to pay for everything else lost a lot of value, and the country that bought a lot of said commodity started explicitly trying to wreck their economy.

also the leadership were morons and thieves and assumed that there would forever be enough money for them to waste a ton of it and steal a ton of it, while still having a functioning country

edit: there's actually been some decent DnD venezuelathread discussion about Venezuela's economic woes in the last couple pages :toot:

Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Jun 4, 2019

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!

Captain_Maclaine posted:

unfalsifiable science
(gritting teeth audibly)

CountFosco
Jan 9, 2012

Welcome back to the Liturgigoon thread, friend.

Anubis posted:

There's a very strong draw, that is in the true heart of Libertarian thinking, for people to desperately want to justify their successes and other's failures as a result of morality or lacking that they tend to run to divine provenance, if they're at all religious. It's often referred to as the "Just-World" fallacy, which libertarians truly only slightly modify to hoist the divine powers onto the mystical "free market." It's almost like reasonable people have been fighting this bizarre human impulse for for 3000 years....

Ecclesiastes 9:11-12
I have seen something else under the sun:
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.

Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come:
As fish are caught in a cruel net,
or birds are taken in a snare,
so people are trapped by evil times
that fall unexpectedly upon them.

And yet, from that same book, we are advised to diversify our portfolios:

quote:

Invest in Many Ventures

11 Ship your grain across the sea;
after many days you may receive a return.
2 Invest in seven ventures, yes, in eight;
you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.

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Mr Interweb
Aug 25, 2004

Captain_Maclaine posted:

My favorite example of this is MRA forefather Paul Elam openly admitting, and with some sense of inexplicable pride, that he got interested in Men's Rights when he was 12 and his mother forced him to take medicine for his diarrhea.

Libertarians have the best origin stories. This definitely beats Grover Norquist bragging about how he came up with his lovely tax cut ideology when he was 12.

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