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Libertopia, bringing ethnic/ideological/religions cleansing to your neighborhood....again and again. "We are happy to inform you that Nauvoo DRO has attained a majority stake in your community! We look forward to a wonderful, Mormon experience working and living together, both here and when we finally get to Kolob. Please bring all your coffee, alcoholic beverages, and immodest clothing to out community center for burning, as defined on our charter. Failing to do so will be considered initiation of violence toward our peaceful community due to breach of contract. And do not lose the receipt scrolls from our religious services, as an attendance record inferior to 95% will incur our Heresy surcharge of 20% of your property." *One cross-country move later* "Welcome to the Galt DRO! We are pleased to have you join our society of achievement, effort, and idealism. We hope you enjoyed the complimentary ebook edition of Atlas Shrugged; it's our way of showing our regard and our hopes of many fully-voluntary monetary/industrial/coital transactions in the future! We also bring you the good news that the Aryan Individuality has won the recent bidding contest to write new laws into our Covenant, so please supply a copy of your family tree (EasyAncestry (tm) offers a discount for family deals! EasyAncestry, keeping you in touch with your roots.) and genetic profile so we can determine if you will need to be fitted into our new, special color-coded jumpsuits to denote your access to venues, health facilities, and potential mates." *Vroooom....* "This notice is an official Expulsion order by Megafreedom Inc. It has been brought to our attention that you have refused to perform fellatio for your employer, Mr. Andrew, when prompted to do so. Your contract does not specifically forbid any such requests, so he was entirely within his rights. We feel very strongly about liberty in our community: you are allowed to use any sort of contraception you prefer when your employer mounts you, and Mr. Andrew can demand any service he feels is justified by the amount he pays you. It's a two-way street. Your properties are now forfeit to Mr. Andrew as reparations for your unlawful breach of contract, after the fees for the work of our relocation squad and legal teams have been deducted. You have 48 (forty-eight) hours to leave our borders, after which any Megafree membership holder in good standing can claim you as personal property under statute 43.119." *Later still...* "There has been too much violence, too much pain. None here are without sin. But I have an honorable compromise. Just walk away. Give me the pump, the oil, the gasoline, and the whole compound, and I’ll spare your lives. Just walk away; I will give you safe passage in the wasteland. Just walk away and there will be an end to the horror." Ahh, who are we kidding. Lord Humongous could never be a libertarian. He understand at least one person's pain.
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Oct 4, 2014 01:57
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asdf32 posted:A few people have implied that libertarianism might be good for the rich - it's not. Don't give it that. It would be a disaster for everyone. The current rich are only that way because they've had the state protecting them. You think the existing crop of billionaires have what it takes to be a warlord in an anarchist wasteland? I don't (the American ones anyway). The Koch's would be first on the chopping block. I think China Mieville wrote an article some years ago (on floating libertarian cities?) that described libertarians as the losers of capitalism. Big-time industrialists and entrepreneurs are quite comfortable with having a government to influence that can open markets for them, make sea lanes safe, regulate demand and infrastructure...not to mention that when push comes to shove, it's a lot easier to bribe a single authority than a bunch of smaller warlords/kings/militias/microstates. They'll piss and moan about how much they have to pay to get their benefits, but the Waltons would likely poo poo their pants collectively if the Interstate highway system that makes their whole chain of supply possible was discontinued...or owned by a private rival.
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Oct 7, 2014 02:48
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Can't believe I read the whole thread. Caros, guys, you all deserve props for the endurance and the patience to deal with Jrod. I'd have given up after maybe the 60th time he completely neglected to answer why the brisitsh and canadian healthcare system deliver better overall resultas than the (far more private) US model. Since trying to pin him down to one point does not really help and he'd just equivotace of spew some lunacy as if it was divine revelation he just translated using a magical stone an angel totally gave him, I have a real-world question: Jrod, what country (or countries) in the world do you think is closer to your libertarian model, and why? What are they doing right and what could they improve? Enough talking about your make-believe assumptions of aid societies and charities that would bloom across the land to take care of everything that is worth addressing, if only the State wasn't around to actually insist that antibiotics contain, you know, antibiotics. People here have been arguing based on real examples they think deliver good results: Canada, Denmark, the UK. So who is prospering right now, on planet loving Earth, using ideas you approve and subscribe to?
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Nov 14, 2014 04:37
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This is approaching homeschooled creationist levels of cognitive dissonance. No one is a racist or a bigot until they don a white hood, apparently. And even then hey could just be doing it out of overweening love for their heritago, so how DARE you slander their intentions! So Jrod, you didn't answer my earlier question (I didn't really expect you, to), even though it was a softball to try and get you to engage with something real. So here's another one for you to ignore because it messes up your worldview? What would prevent a thousand thousand Congo Free States appearing in an anarchist/libertarian world? Precious little state presence there: a private entrepreneur paying private people to ransack a country and kill people by the millions, with none of that pesky democracy or the Fed to justify its viciousness, a bit of a feat since this was before actual industrial death factories showed up in human history. Explain to us how King Leopold was one of those noble genetic elites HHH loves so much, and why we need more CEOs and DRO managers like him, not less.
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Nov 14, 2014 12:57
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jrodefeld posted:
Newsflash: people's deed are often, nearly always, informed by their private thoughts. So yes, what they think matters. But it's not the ONLY thing tht matters. It doesn't matter that Hugo Black had a -hideously- racist past, because when the time came for him to do his job and make a lawful institutional choice, he defended principles that were fairer and truer to the spirit of the Constitution and modern values than the alternative, and faced substantial outcry in doing so. Meanwhile, the theories and dream-societies spoused by Hayek, HHH, molyneuax, Ron Paul and many of your pet thinkers are custom-made to foster discrimination wholesale. Instead of a giant totalitarian state, they would breed a patchwork continent of micro-tyrannies, until a stronger one rolled over the rest and brought things back to, say, the 1700s. They are precisely the laws and systems one would advocate to make it possible to discriminate, subjugate and censor anyone in a weaker position. Your ideals would make it possible (and common) for a black or hispanic person to get shot over going into a store to buy a meal: Didn't see the "we don't serve minorities" sign outside, got pissed at being told to leave, was shot by a business-owner in 'self defense'. It would make possible for someone in an accident to be denied medical care and die, because the nearest hospital doesn't treat jews, or gays, or unmarried women. It would make sexual harassment routine: why would a captain of industry not demand blowjobs from his comelier employees, and threatening to fire them if they refused? Who are you to tell him how to run his business? It would -routinely- initiate force against the weak, despite your claims of adherence to this holy ideal. Through pollution, through adding new 'unwanted' minorities to their covenants and resulting in displaced/dispossessed people. "So Jaime, last meeting in our covenant shareholder's assembly we decided that hispanics have to relinquish all their possessions and leave the compound by noon. Don't initiate force against us by staying or trying to take your car or cash with you" It would murder research and long-term entrepreneurial planning: why waste decades testing molecule variants when you can just repackage your colloidal silver in a blue bottle, call it CureAll Plus ("Twice as awesome as the previous CureAll!"), and keep making money? It would set professional standards back centuries, making things far more 'savage' than any culture Reisman and Hoppe despise, but equating snake-oil salesmen and first-year medical student screw-ups with skilled professionals in the eyes of law and regulation. In weden and Canada a poor person can expect to be treated by a proper oncologist if things go south. In your world, they can buy Dr. Abogardo's Panegyric Emulsion (tm)for ).20 bitcoin and hope it's not chalk dust diluted in motor oil, or pray that some rich guy is feeling guilty/charitable enough to run Galt's Freee Oncology Wing within 200 miles. You can be the black enough to make Wesley Snipes look like Brad Pitt, and married to a latina bisexual, and still spouse for beliefs that are objectively racist, because they foster abuse, inequality and greatly expand others' ability to discriminate in harmful ways. Likewise, you can hold despicable beliefs, and yet not have an overt racist/bigoted impact on society. It doesn't matter if the only gas station owner I find in my road trip hates latinos and posts on Stormfront every night; he is mandated by law to sell me gas if I have the money to pay for it and don't o about trashing his place.
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Nov 17, 2014 00:12
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I know three libertarians personally. One is a punkish girl currently being charged for murder (she used to hand with a skinhead gang that killed a gay dog-walker some years back and claims she wasn't involved, but who knows), one is a lawyer who was born in a ridiculously rich family and is quite good-natured, if a bit dense about others not having the same opportunities and advantages as him, and one is a nursing student from Georgia whose family suffered terribly under communism. So in my personal anecdote, libertarians are 66% female and 33% murderers (and 100% white). I always find that amusing. I was talking online to the nursing student this afternoon and she sent me a link about the LA Times now demanding workers to seek authorization from the management on each and every instance of vacations, sick days, etc (I am a journalist, though back in college to escape that morass of a profession, so she wanted my opinion about how things are going in my country). That started a conversation about wages, work relations (she's been harassed by bosses in the past, so she's under no delusions that private work relations can't be abusive) and such, and I linked her that article about MacDonalds wages being $21 in Sweden, and joked that maybe they have some extra socialism gene that makes things work better there. She went nuclear at once, saying the article was unsourced and obviously a lie. I sent a few more links to confirm it, and she argued that it didn't matter and oh look, she had to go veg out in front of a show and relax. That made me curious if here's some official Rothbard-devised procedure for shutting out stuff that doesn't gel with libertarian principles. I've talked with 9/11 truthers, hardcore trotskyist and even creationists, but I've never seen people just pull the Eject lever on a conversation as quickly and readily as libertarians once there's a non-zero chance of them having to recognize something else works better...or at all.
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Nov 19, 2014 01:41
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So Jrod, please elaborate more on how private entities would never back the use of force or get their own little armies if it proved convenient. https://www.propublica.org/article/firestone-and-the-warlord-intro Real Life posted:Firestone served as a source of food, fuel, trucks and cash used by Taylor’s ragtag rebel army, according to interviews, internal corporate documents and declassified diplomatic cables. Bolding mine. "We abhor violence and would never initiate force...unless we got a sweet deal out of it!" I guess it encapsulates libertarian ethics quite well, though. Between paying a higher tax or tariff to someone else or setting a few vilalges on fire and hacking limbs off, you go with the option that makes best ROI! Do you work for Firestone, perchance?
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Nov 21, 2014 16:20
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LuftWaffle posted:
Just when I was feeling that followig this thread was losing its spark because I couldn't in good conscience claim to appreciate Jrod, as the title says, along comes someone that makes him look like a paragon of honesty and erudition. I guess this is one of those teachable moments I heard about.
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Nov 24, 2014 20:22
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asdf32 posted:Ok great. Aggregate purchasing power measured in goods and supply are essentially the same thing. The deviation between the only being a small percentage of unsold goods that actually go to waste. This is my point...hence the primary way purchasing power increases over time is via supply side improvements that allow production of more goods. This keeps popping up in your posts. Recessions are "just a few percentage points" of negative growth, or just a tiny blip of a few years in a country's GDP curve, and other such statements to minimize everyone else's points. It sounds like the talks I had with my pothead friends ("Dude, mankind's collective consciousness is soooo big. It's infinity cubed. So vast that it doubled right over to being tiny, and then big again"), but far less entertaining. As someone who graduated college during one of such tiny 'blips', I can tell you that they can spell doom for a whole generation and have profound effects for decades to come. We're talking millions of man-hours of underpaid work, degradation of worker and personal rights, less research and general welfare, just because some brainiacs decided to let the captains of industry create their own demand. Not all percentage points are born equal
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Jan 16, 2015 23:38
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jrodefeld posted:Your not going to like what I am about to say, and I am sure you are a perfectly nice and well meaning person. But I think you have chosen an immoral career path. Can your skills and ability not help you to find a job in the private economy? Your salary is directly funded by taxpayers and there is no price mechanism to determine if what you do is actually needed or desired by consumers. I would feel very uncomfortable if my salary was paid by using force to expropriate people against their will. A person's salary should be determined through free negotiation between employer and employee and the wages should come from customer sales that are made voluntarily. So Jrod, how come Hoppe doesn't quit his imorally-funded public university job? Does making a living by draining the sweat of the taxpayer make him a hideous hypocrite? Should Hayek be reviled for immigrating to the US to take advantage of Medicare in his later years, a boon he never paid for? Likewise, is Glenn 'Instapundit" Reynolds, libertarian blogger and radio personality, a vile leech for keeping his job at the University of Tenesse? How come he is not walking the walk and letting the market decide what his labor is worth? Your whole philosophy is steeped in so much hypocrisy as to be rank. Heaps of tolerance and excuses for aparatheid, corruption, coercion, callousness and even slavery for the select few, pious finger-wagging and self-rightousness directed at the moochers. Also, regarding the whole racial segregation as a 'function of the state" jazz, that is a ridiculous belief that certainly lets you sleep better at night, but has no place in actual reality. Private citizens were (and are) the full muscle of racial animus; had a civil-rights proponent somehow lucked into a southern mayor or governor office in the south in the 1950s (Say, a segregation-friendly mayor died and his vice-mayor os a stealth liberal), he would have been cast out and vilified so far your head would spin, 'power of the state' be damned. In fact, here's my question: What would be wrong with Jim Crow and segregation, had those same measures been taken by a private covemant community?
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Jan 23, 2015 15:22
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Caros posted:Trigger Warning - Jared Taylor excuses slavery in this video. I'm posting it only because I think its worth people seeing how hosed up it is to be giving this piece of human garbage a platform to speak, and how no sensible person would think it is a good idea to give him a platform to spew this in the face of "fairness". Oh, and he excuses lynching. You don't get it, Caros. Hoppe was just giving that guy a platform out of his overweening love for free speech and the open exchange of ideas. Which is why he also had stalinists, franciscan monks advocating universal vows of poverty, and Farrakhan-style african supremacists all sharing the same stage, right? ...right? Libertarianism: Where having a guest speaker for lynching is alright, but having a single-payer healthcare advocate is tolerating the unconscionable initiation of force!
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Jan 23, 2015 16:36
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Self-selected Natural Elite King Abdullah of House Saudpassed away at 90. All those free-thinkers who see the folly of democracy and admire his commitment to the ability to discriminate are sure to mourn him greatly. I'm curious if Jrod will just lump him in as anoither filthy statist, despite the whole country being basically a private feud. Old Man Saud mixed his labor with it nice and good, so now it belongs to his offsprings in perpetuity, and anyone who disagress can just keep walking and found their own covenant community. Ready to defend someone who really wore the 80-20% shirt, as you understand it, J?
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Jan 23, 2015 20:42
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Did I read that correctly? Human trouser-stain Max Boot took a look at Jrod's little dream team and their speeches and went "Nope, screw you guys, this is ridiculous"? I honestly never thought I'd meet a more closed, leashed, cognitively dissonant person than the time i interviewed a north korean diplomat, but there you go, Jrod. Scary that both systems managed to achieve the same results, huh? You should be proud.
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Jan 28, 2015 13:52
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Have to say I have a grudging 'respect' (lord, there aren't enough quote marks in the word) for Jrod in that he could have switched to less controversial libertarian thinkers to make his points, but he always goes full retard and minces nothing. If he'd quoted, say, Radley Balko, he'd likely have earned some agreement and accord on a few subjects. But no, he goes the full Molyneaux and Hoppe every single time, and will defend their ideas (and their names) tooth and nail every single time, all while wondering why people are picking on him.
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Jan 29, 2015 15:20
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Who What Now posted:In libertopia it's just plain opium that is the opiate of the masses. Libertarians loathe metaphors, after all. And every discerning rational actor knows that Opi-8* is the best brand of opium the free market can bring to your appreciation! Also, rub Opi-8 Kids on your children's gums for guaranteed improvements in behavior and school achievements! * May or may not contain actual opium. May or may not contain talcum powder. Caveat Emptor.
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Feb 4, 2015 15:09
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Mornacale posted:But that means considering libertarians as a group! Are you saying that jrod is--*shudders*--a collectivist? Cue the old joke about the big anarchist summit where all the people who showed up were promptly disowned by the anarchist movement, because what -real- anarchist attends summits? But yeah, libertarians are unique, special moral snowflakes. I once pointed out to my libertarian friend the bit about Ron Paul's weeping pork habit, and she basically said "Well, the bill was going to be passed anyway, so he had to do it to bring stolen money back to his constituents". I replied that if I'm at a party and there's a woman being gang-raped in a room, it's not moral to think "well, she's going to be raped no matter what, so I might as well get in line for a turn". You call the police, and if you think that for some reason the police won't show or are tolerant of it you do something yourself, and if you are badly outnumbered enough that it is futile, you leave and have no part in it. I think we spent a week without talking after that. Truth to be told, though....she is getting better. Rand Paul being visibly more sleazy than his father, and particularly her getting into her college's libertarian student group and being exposed to tons of social misfits and Molyneaux-worshippers got her quite a reality shock. She even supports mandatory vaccinations now.
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Feb 10, 2015 14:27
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You can't win in Libertopia, ever. "Hello boss, I'm calling because I'm feeling really bad and puking all over the place. I'm staying at home to quarentine myself." "Very considerate of you, man. Also, you're fired, you lazy bum. There's work here that needs doing." -versus- "Howdy boss, I'm coughing blood and really dizzy, but instead of staying at home like a lazy moocher, I took every pill I could find and came to work like a good drone!" "Holy poo poo! how DARE you initiate aggression against me by bringing in your filthy germs? You're fired, and you'll be hearing from my lawyer! You're lucky I don't just hire Valhalla DRO to murder your tocix rear end." Though I have to say I like the idea of old folks going around pointing shotguns at anyone who coughs, as they are directly threatening their health. And I just paid myself ten bucks for betting rightly that Jrod would clearly toss Rand Paul's remark down the memory hole, like he did with Molyneuax and Hoppe. In fact, it was the reporter's fault for not chasing Paul down and actively seeking the most harmless, benevolent construction of eveyr sentence that comes out of Paul's holy lips. Also, is anyone else amused at libertarians&conservatives claiming that litigation is the end-all-be-all of regulations, then turn on a dime and bat for tort reform and other measures to remove all teeth from bigshots caught in the wrong? Why would anyone above middle class fear being sued if there's a very low cap on damages and class actions are verboten? Assuming Jrod's fever-dream theories could support a mildly working legal system, mind.
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Feb 11, 2015 15:18
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Hell, if you need a break I can tag in with my bizarrely goofy brazilian accent. I like to think old Ayn would be extra miffed at a collaborative, free reading of her work by a filthy latino attending med school for free thanks to soshulism.
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Feb 19, 2015 21:12
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Jrod, please elaborate on how corporations in a free market would never buy/endorse fake science for their own benefit. Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher New York Times posted:
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Feb 22, 2015 16:52
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You need a PhD in something technical-sounding first. Then just scope out what industry needs a fig leaf to keep profits high/regulations away and adjust your line of bullshit. Of course, in Libertopia actually investigating anyone's ties to industries and interest groups would be a grave breach of privacy and violate the NAP coming and going, so you don't even need to worry about being exposed. Then again, in Libertopia any bozo with a diploma from HailMary Bible College can claim to be as much of an expert as you, so it'll be a fiercely competitive market in bullshit-slinging, so bring your A game and expect low pay.
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Feb 22, 2015 18:21
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Caros posted:And then he stopped posting. Presumably because he got 'busy' and not at all because he just got loving embarassed at being caught quoting that list verbatim from Mises.org as if he'd actually read anything in it. I've noticed you taking a more upset/aggressive tone with Jrod lately, Caors, but you still give him so, so much more credit than he deserves simply by assuming he's capable of feeling embarrassed.
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Mar 23, 2015 23:41
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I love how Jrod just assumes that freeing people from a decent minimum wage will just meant that they'll be able to get a second part-time job in addition to their amazingly well-paif first job, instead of a race to the bottom that would see hordes of people having to work several crappy 2-bucks-an-hour jobs and still not meet their basic living expenses, and of course they would totally not be hosed over by multiple commutes, insane working hours, being estranged from their families, etc. We actually saw that here in Brazil, in the late 70s and most of the 80s. When the minimum wages was purposefully allowed to lag and reach pitiable lows, the quality of live in ours shantytowns (favelas)was thoroughly destroyed: you had people waking up at 3AM to take 2-hour-long bus rides to their first crappy job that started at 5, then left 15 to reach yet another miserable job, and got home perhaps by 10, worn to the bone and having pretty much entirely abandoned their children, who went into crime in record numbers because if that was what honest work was like, they were better off delivering cocaine or stealing watches. Our middle class here is infinitely nostalgic for that time, because basically anyone barely into the middle class could afford to hire help, often just for food. The wife of an auto chop manager could have two maids for just the cost of bus fare and some leftovers, because it at least meant that their mother wouldn't have to deal with the expense of feeding them. Indentured servitude without all that ugly social stigma. And we all know that unemployment in feudal Provence was 0%! Ironically, we saw a recent law that put housekeeping work squarely into minimum wage boundaries recently (it was nebulously defined before to keep it 'flexible') and the number of housemaids barely quivered. People who really needed them had to pay for the proper, adjusted minimum wage, and people that didn't often had already stopped hiring them due to automation. But you'll still catch some bigshots sighing for when you could have a live-in servant to clean up your messes and for your teenage son to grope without consequences, for less money than they spent on the family pet's rations.
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Mar 29, 2015 17:45
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So, I recently got in touch again with an old friend from Texas. She was never that political, but mostly went along with her husband's libertarianism. Life happened and we spent 3 years or so without contact. Turns out her husband dumped her (and their two kids), and she then had a bad staph infection. She had just started a new job, o she was not covered by their insurance yet. Three visits to the hospital, but without coverage they could not do exams and just sent her home and told her to take some steroids and painkillers. Steroids shot her immune system and she developed necrotizing fasciitis. Lost her leg above the knee and is now suing the hospital, but apparently tort reform in Texas severely limits what she can get. I wonder if there's a book or a comprehensive study of the toll of misery, pain, wasted potential and abbreviated lives the US healthcare system causes. Michael Moore's 'Sicko' barely scratched the surface, I think.
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May 26, 2015 01:44
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Truly odd how Jrod dropped he whole "Sweden was a Free Market Bastion until the late 20th Century!!!" point as if it never existed, once presented with actual data from firsthand sources. He clearly just googled "Sweden Prosperity Free Market Counterpoint" or somesuch and tossed the resulting link at us without even checking if it was ludicrous or not. And crediting South Korea and New Zealand as 'freer' markets is another laugh in itself, seeing how much they publicly invest in education, how they used protectionism to develop their national industries, and ho they conduct their healthcare. To be fair, that particular inane derangement in not all his fault. I remember a libertarian friend sending me some CATO lists of countries indexed by economic freedom, and i was amazed at the contortionisms they had to pull off to claim any country with a high standard of living was also a free market, no matter how high their taxes were, how socialist their health care or how subsidized their education. Give them 10 years, and they'll be singing about how Iceland's recovery from the 2008 crash was all due to their fierce libertarian ideals. TL,DR: Even your bad-faith dumbness is unoriginal, Jrod.
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Jun 5, 2015 17:47
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Corporations don't need or want a total absence of the State. Hell, early business was the main backer of Absolutism, because having a centralized tax, measure, law and such made commerce easier, allowed for better infrastructure that expanded possibilities, meant you only had to bribe one guy instead of every petty lord along the way, etc. So yes, it's a lot more reasonable to just buy mainstream politicians and inject choice bits of laissez-faire stuff into their agendas. That way they get low taxes but keep a FDIC to help stabilize their messes, can offshore the lion's share of their loot and still get juicy government contracts, Pollute away with little repercussion and still benefit from a literate population that can consume their products, get away with paying poverty wages like Walmart knowing their workers can get welfare, and even have their entire activity made viable by public projects (Interstate Highway system)and so on. Why just have your cake when you can eat it too? Libertarianism in its current form is just a fig's leaf for that process. Why would Walmart chance some loony libertarian coming to power and privatizing the Interstates, having to pay 12 different tolls, losing trucks to poorly-maintained roads or getting raided by Lord Humongous? They don't want to pay for that privilege, mind, but they'll do their utmost to keep it. Under one system, both Walmart and millions of other businesses and people get to benefit from such a project, provided they pay their fair share, defined by upkeep, relative use and the context of the historical moment. Under yours, it would either not exist, or be cornholed into uselessness by local conflicts, petty greed, irresponsibility and bad faith.
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Jun 5, 2015 19:02
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Bit of a derail here but still on theme. I'm a brazilian guy who moved to Argentina to study medicine. Their public med school, UBA, is free if you can get in, and -everyone- can take the first year of any course. It's hard, but if you pass, you're in for good. If you fail, you get to try again. You can try for 3 years before you can no longer register. It's also a rather renowned school for LA , having two Nobel prizes to its name. So a few weeks back we second-years attended the Locovigilia, or Madman's Watch, which is basically an overnight series of lectures meant to prepare students for the midterm exams. Several bigshot teachers and doctors show up to present reviews, classes and such. On of them, the star of the evening so to speak, ended his lecture with a bit that was basically a condensed refutation of social libertarianism, despite not mentioning politics even once. It was basically about channeling your passion for your profession through the free education offered by the uni, as a tool for bettering yourself and your society, making it about a vocation for service and general well-being rather than money, and that a good doctor that is not also decent human being may do a lot of good for his heir but will amount to little in the end. He got an ovation that lasted several minutes. What shocked me was the contrast to Brazil's perspective on the issue. Higher education in Brazil is acessed through national college entrance exams that place where you can go, which usually means that only rich kids that attended the best colleges and took extra classes get into the good positions...including the public ones. So basically you need to be wealthy to get a free education most of the time. For med school, tuition usually costs 7k reais (about 3 thousand USD) per month at the very least, if you can get in at all. The national medical association (a private entity) makes opening any new med schools a bureaucratic nightmare, as a way of limiting the influx of new professionals and keeping salaries and demand up. There is such a personnel shortage that the government studied drafting new graduates for a year of paid public service (which was shot show under accusation of communism and tyranny), and finally resorted to calling doctors from Cuba for exchange internships here (which is being hailed as communist plots and flamed in the media 24/7). Here they actually consider churning out a buttload of new doctors a point of pride. If you can hack it, they -want- you out there wearing white and caring for people. It doesn't feel fake in the least; veteran doctors and lecturers call freshmen students 'doctor' in the hallways and are always glad to answer questions, even the stupid ones.
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Jun 16, 2015 23:50
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Political Whores posted:Plastics, I'm not even joking when I say this, but if you or people like you ever get even a sliver of social power, like even a bad tv show, I'm calling for purges. We will wipe you fuckers out. Bash the fash, but also bash libertarians. My moral precepts says that you should be killed as a vile weed in human society. Jesus Christ, even schizophrenia or whatever the hell is wrong with that makes you write so weird isn't an excuse for this. Libertarians do strike me as the "Bolsheviks in 1915" of our century. Already radicalized, gung-ho about a system they do not fully understand but full of fire and vim to bring it about, and just one bad national fuckup away from getting into a position to cause massive damage. Except the Bolshies, for all their flaws, were actually rebelling against a callous, outdated tyranny that was starving people en masse. Libertarians are quite cool with that; it's the whole vaccines, 40-hour work weeks and mercury-free water that will make them set the system on fire.
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Aug 13, 2015 05:31
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Happy_Misanthrope posted:I am legit worried for asdf's kid I can see so many arguments worthy of South Park in his future. "Throwing pillows around and throwing lawn darts around is basically the same thing. In both cases it's just kids tossing stuff around. In fact, the pillow might not be anti-allergenic, so it's actually MORE dangerous. Have you ever seen anyone with an allergy to steel, you totalitarian twit? Thought not."
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Sep 14, 2015 14:59
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This having become the general libertarian watch thread until the prophesied return of Jrod (or a similarly entertaining/infuriating alternative), has anyone seen any interesting libertarian justifications/excuses for the whole "finance wiz kids jacking drug prices 5000%" thing? I brought it up with my own ancap friend and she basically shifted it all onto he evil of copyright law, then dodged when asked how creators could hope to profit from their creations without it. At least she didn't say "sell t-shirts online or something", as I've actually seen at Reason.com.
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Oct 7, 2015 17:51
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On a related but personal note: Since Jrod is still a human punchline, I wanted to talk about a friend of mine. Very old friend, from way back in grade school, been together through tons of poo poo. He was accepted into a prestigious public engineering college here in Brazil, got lousy grade halfway through, quit, got accepted into an equally good Law college and graduated with honors. Said friend was always a history buff but never big on politics. Until a year and change ago, he was rather socially liberal in an unengaged way. He landed a very good public job, the kind you have to compete for and take tons of entrance exams, but has security, good benefits, the works. Recently he started changing, and not for the better. Arguing a lot with his family, coming to the point of physically striking his father once. Pushings friends away by being rude and argumentative. Becoming REALLY loving racist (sending lots of -those- links, bitching about dumb blacks at every excuse and creating excuses when none appeared. turning regresspive and repressive to cartoonish degrees (such as arguing that any and all public protesters should be tried as terrorists and killed, and scoffing at the idea of democracy, votes, etc as putting retards in power). Basically, he now believes that only the USA and Germany are civilized, and no other country/race will ever amount to anything due to genetic/cultural reasons. I've spent the last two year in a different country for studies, spending vacations here, so I get all of this in episodes, messages, hearsay from other friends, etc. He's also become, for obvious reasons, really lonely. In my last weeks away, he'd message me several times a day asking when I was going to be back in the country, at what time, that we should do something. At first I thought he was pulling my leg, but he wasn't; his loneliness is just that radioactive. I've visited him a few times since, and he can talk normally for a while...and then the crap comes pouring out, looking for validation. I tried to counter-argue, but whenever a point was shot down, he shifted to another without acknowledging anything, like someone we can all name. At some points, he even starts saying stuff like 'I'm part of the problem', since he studied at a public college and has a public job, or 'Working hard at a public job is wrong. I've started doing a poo poo job on purpose now', for...well beats me for what reason. Now, until recently, I thought he was just depressed, or maybe, since he wanted to join the police at some point, maybe hanging out at military police forums and being exposed to raw reactionary talking points. But just tonight I went to his place to return some stuff, and saw a book on his nighstand, by one Jim Rickards. It was called 'The Great Crash' (likely has a different title in english), and while he was in the bathroom I leafed through it. Tons of goldbuggery, warnings of hyperinflation around the corner, hissing at all central banks and the Fed, weird conspiracy poo poo about China...and the last chapter, I swear, was a sloppy blowjob to Bitcoin. So he comes back, we have some coffee, and he says he's going to take english classes in order to move to the US or, failing that, Australia to ride out the coming poo poo years. I am in too much of a daze to comment. He adds that his girlfriend, a very cool girl who has her own career and helped him a fair bit, isn't keen on the idea but he's made up his mind. I ask what he's going to do overseas, since Law degrees tend to be very local. He says he'll find something to do. So that's where we are. He's about to throw away a career and a relationship, not to mention family and friends, to go wait tables in the Us or Australia in hopes of avoiding some coming economic collapse brought about by the sheeple and their evil government minders. Now, did he become an rear end in a top hat and libertarianism was just the final step, the cherry on the poo poo sundae, or did libertarianism ruin his life? It's the question I'm pondering here while feeling really lousy. BONUS ISSUE for Jrod: Are you familiar with this Jim Rickards guy? Is he among your stable of ideologically correct cranks? Have you ever drawn his likeness on a watermelon you were about to make sweet squishy love to?
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Jan 20, 2016 05:46
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Every citizen of the UK has built a second summer home made of tongue depressors forcibly taken from the UHC, at ruinous cost to the taxpayer. It is known, khaleesi.
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Jan 21, 2016 13:30
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EvanSchenck posted:It kind of sounds like the first one because you're describing the sudden onset of many unusual behaviors that have nothing to do with ideology. e.g. pushing away friends and family, violent or antisocial behavior, poorly-thought-out grandiose plans. Do you have any reason to suspect substance abuse or mental illness? He may be latching onto extremist ideology because he's spinning out of control for unrelated reasons. No substance abuse. Pretty sure about that. Mental illness is harder to define; could be manic-depression i guess, but...well. He's always been a person of intense opinions, and changeable, too. All the way behind one party this year, backing someone else the next. But never enough to lash out at people or write off entire groups. I think maybe he reach a sort of early mid-life crisis, comparing where he is compared to where he wanted to be, just as he got in contact with an ideology not short on boogeymen to blame for it. I'm torn between trying to engage him when he is in a more amenable mood (always a tricky deal) or just letting distance do its thing and let the friendship die. as much as I'd like to, it's not up to me to somehow try and restore his mental stability, especially when he'd likely recoil at any overture.
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Jan 22, 2016 00:48
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I think we can all agree that the massacred skeleton fossils found in Kenya prove that the State has existed as the cause of all evil and wars for far, far longer than even Jrod suspected. Older even than farming and taxes, go figure!
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Jan 26, 2016 16:38
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So, this is a thing.Ayn Rand's Firefly posted:DOCTOR CARON: “These are just a few of the images we’ve recorded. And you can see, it wasn’t what we thought. There’s been no war here and no terraforming event. The environment is stable. It’s the Pax. The G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air processors. It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression. Well, it works. The people here stopped fighting. And then they stopped everything else. They stopped going to work, they stopped breeding, talking, eating. There’s 30 million people here, and they all just let themselves die.” A bit more at http://the-toast.net/2016/02/01/ayn-rands-firefly/
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Feb 2, 2016 15:39
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OwlFancier posted:If you want to I guess you could view Sauron as being either a very good libertarian by taking his power as a Maiar (granted by the celestial state) and using it to attempt to destroy said state, or possibly as the agent of Morgoth he is perhaps the instrument of statist aggression being as Melkor was the most powerful Ainur. Sauron's attempt to subjugate the industry of Saruman by requiring him to be a servant despite Saruman clearly being the greater innovator, as well as his use of Celebrimbor's craftsmanship through deception to create the rings of power suggests that he is truly the embodiment of the parasitic andd oppressive State. Balderdash! Melkor was the true rugged individualist who refused the forced joinder of Eru the high god in order to make his own song and creation, rather than contribute to some communal, socialistic effort. And in typical statist manner, he was aggressed against by cronyist Valar and their pet parasites, the elves.
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Feb 5, 2016 04:54
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mojo1701a posted:Is it still considered libertarianism if one seeks freedom by forcing others to subjugate to his will and order? Melkor -literally- mingled his labor with the land at the start of all creation. Everyone else is a squatter and are free to move to anther universe if they cannot recognise his freedom/rights.
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Feb 5, 2016 17:13
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Nolanar posted:Always always browse libertarian stuff in private mode. One unprotected Molyneaux video will wreck your youtube recommendations for months. This. I also watched a Thunderf00t video to see what was going on during the whole gamergate shitstorm and now my Youtube is STILL flooding me with recommendations of Sargon of Akkad and other bipedal vermin.
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Feb 7, 2016 15:07
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Nolanar posted:I found a thing. Sheeeeeiiiiiit. I feel like Sam Neill at the end of In the Mouth of Madness, at the movie theater. Laughing and weeping and just losing it for good. Ths is "I reject your reality and subtitute my own" level of alienation. It should be in medical textbooks. And it doesn't even have the usual fig leaf of intellectual consistency that some libertarians will reach for. Hell, you could argue from a perfect libertarian point that the Corleones were aggressing agains the other families' free enterprise by being against the drug trade, which is just another legitimate moneymaking venue. The fact that he conveniently glosses over the very real thuggish and aggressive deeds by the Corleones to try and set them up as big-G Good entrepreneurs is baffling. Threatening a movie director and violating his property. Murdering two people in cold blood under a banner of truce. Mass-killing of rivals while publicly renouncing such things in a holy ritual of a faith one claims to follow. There is remarkably little difference between the mafia of Goodfellas and Godfather, once you scratch the paint. One is romanticized and better dressed (there was a great article I can't find anymore about how real life mafiosi started dressing and acting like the Godfather families, in a case of life imitating art), the other cuts to the underbelly of ambitious, disenfranchise-to-some-degree people looking out for number one and getting while the getting's good. In the time-horoned Jrod tradition, I can't help but bring race into it by noticing that the main difference between 'organized' crime and 'street' crime, as Rothbard describes them, is that one of them is perpetrated by black people more than the other.
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Feb 23, 2016 16:29
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So, my friend who has been going more and more radicalized, hostile and libertarian is leaving Brazil. Hes tired of the local socialist oppression, corruption and hostility to free enterprise, and its shameful assistencialism making poor people dependent and weak. Where he's moving to? Canada. He was all happy last night going on about how Quebec really welcome immigrants and offers rench language classes and he'll have amazing healthcare. I pointed but that the country is exactly the kind of place he professes to despise, with high taxes and subsidized healthcare/education, and he basically said "No it isn't." I actually played the jerk and called up a few facts on my cellphone, and he basically shrugged and admitted that they don't have brown people draining the assistance that should go to blue-eyed types like his fine self. So yeah, good riddance. It galls me that he'll go enjoy the socialism he claims to despise, but I'm done. Hopefully he'll bump into Caros and gain a clue via osmosis.
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Feb 26, 2016 17:09
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 12:52 |
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Hello bitcoin my old friend Gone down the toilet once again Because a frenchman softly creeping Left his seed while I was sleeping And the blockchain that was panted in my brain Still remains
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Feb 26, 2016 20:18
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