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SlothfulCobra posted:Honestly my only worry about UBI is that if you do it without trying to tackle issues of affordability from other angles, it may just lead to price inflation so that the standard of living on the bottom rung stays about the same. UBI lends itself to privatisation of government services. No need to work on universal health care when everyone has the money sufficient for private health care (hint, it will be "tight"). No need to work on low income housing and refuge centers because everyone has the money sufficient for housing (hint, it will be "tight"), etc. The benefit or at least effect I see for UBI is that it means people don't have the "shame" of having to apply for unemployment benefits. Surely UBI will be set at a level sufficient for a reasonably healthy and educated person to live on. It will not be possible to set it at a level to be sufficient to take care of high needs individuals without also putting significant and inefficient clawback systems. UBI is therefore likely to mean that if you are fit and healthy you don't have to apply for help but if you aren't "average" - you do. The reality is that (and I am talking Australia or Europe centric - way more government support than the US) money is not the issue for the bulk of the people that are doing it extra tough. Those people by and large need support beyond money in the bank account each week. It takes more than just throwing people at the problem because people without guidance but pressure to solve problems come up with stuff like stolen generations. UBI does not address in any significant fashion how to provide appropriate support to vulnerable people and because UBI likely means that the only people that have to ask for help are vulnerable (because UBI is sufficient for average) it drives the vulnerable even further away from help. UBI comes from good intentions but is trying to solve the problem of having to ask for support for the wrong people.
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Aug 26, 2020 19:11
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It’s a lot simpler than you think. The scale of the problem determines the size of the needed organisation. Sorting out who is breeding chickens and who is planting beans is a local problem that doesn’t need much government. Design, construction and commissioning a mine requires hundreds of people but not 10s of thousands. Putting together the infrastructure to place space based navigation aids into commission needs a organization that can coordinate thousands of people on the back of an industry that requires 10’s of thousands . World climate change probably needs almost the entire world to be coordinated and that’s not going to happen with billy bob and Svetlana having a chat and informal agreement. Saying that, generally an organization performs best when focusing on as few things as possible. successfulll big mining companies don’t own as many more mines as they own much bigger and more complex mines. Lots of little mines generally run better after being divested by the big boy (or government) that would alternate between crazy over capitalisation or complete neglect of its otherwise easily profitable operation. Pushing down accountability and decision making is a thing that works within reason and capitalism for me is mostly a system to drive towards matching the size of organization with the size of task. The profit itself is an efficiency loss but just one amongst many for the big jobs. After all mining companies themselves pay a lot of profit to other vendors instead of trying to save that cost and doing everything themselves. Anarchists are like libertarians in that it’s wishful thinking that an unorganized rabble can feed itself let alone defend itself or their contracts.
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Sep 29, 2020 22:33
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OwlFancier posted:I think there are more people who just look at the reality of the world and correctly discern that nothing they do within the system matters and just check out, become antisocial because they know society doesn't give a poo poo about them. You just asked for a system which has mechanisms to require people to be involved to the extent of their ability and resources, to make decisions in their own interest (ie, no one else will do it for you) but through vague means, is tangentially also encourages actions to the benefit of others even if that person does not care, generally without having to be accused by your community of not doing enough. I think you just asked for capitalism. To your comments that asking for organisation is asking for hierarchy is simply a strawman to allow you to wax lyrical about how good it would be if you didn't have less money than someone else assuming that money alone is what confers influence over others. Crew resource management (CRM) in cockpits is a good example where hierarchal control is demonstrably inferior to distributed consensus control, yet it is still highly organised. Countless lives have been saved by structuring cockpits to mitigate the errors that come from one person with all the decision making power and responsibility. Saying that, it is not like three rando's turn up in a cockpit and just know what to do by God's Will. It takes organisational structure to select, train and empower crew members to utilise CRM. Anarchy dreams of a world working like cockpit crew resource management but by God's will (everyone just wants to do the exact thing that's required for success) rather than training, structure and yes, hierarchal requirement to be proficient at CRM to be qualified as a professional pilot. Libertarians want the anarchist way but with bespoke contracts (ignoring that most contracts are simple copy/paste templates with roughly in general the same practical outcome as government legislation). This is not to say that some structures don't deserve being dismantled - Burkina Faso went from net importer to net exporter of food within a decade by upending traditional hierarchal structures. Organisational structures calcify readily and non-genuine actors are always META'ing how to become deadwood in the system. Capitalism cleans out deadwood by paupering companies that don't actively clean it out, the militaries of the world have up or out policies for the same reason. Electoral systems attempt to do that by otherwise arbitrarily changing out leadership just by popular opinion. It turns out none of the systems are perfect and indeed once you settle on a system, that META'ing deadwood is looking for its in and that's where revolution comes in. Before revolution (which is always heinously more expensive than proponents ever dream), a lot of the world has a combination of those systems working to greater or lessor success. If we had anarchy tomorrow, we would have billions less people within a few years and an even more stuffed up environment.
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Sep 30, 2020 19:05
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Anarchy for me means the opposition to formal organisation. Regarding how capitalism is not a panacea... no poo poo. Capitalism not kept on a tight leash and modified as possible and required to achieve broad societal goals is just anarchy with dollars.
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Sep 30, 2020 20:58
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Somfin posted:This is not the definition actual anarchists use, so, you're probably going to find yourself shouting at the void if you keep using it. Noted, will read up/refresh my understanding. Honestly, about 20 years ago I used to chat Anarchy with my old man but I had not heard anything in about that long so sort of thought it died a natural death as thoughts have moved on. Saying that, for me formal organisation includes central organisation/consistent systems for tasks that involve the entire organisation and OwlFancier seemed to be arguing from the standpoint that collective organisation is not required to achieve collective goals.
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Sep 30, 2020 21:16
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OwlFancier posted:I am arguing literally the opposite, that collective organization, as opposed to dictatorial organization, is the only way you can achieve collective goals, rather than the goals set by whoever is in charge. ok, but collective organisation includes things such as a adversarial court, which specifically has someone in charge even as specific decisions are dispersed (to the defense and prosecuting teams for how to demonstrate a case, the jury to decide upon contested matters of fact, etc), include public listed corporations which depending on the country, has specific roles for management, shareholders and the board, to unions which have organisers, stewards and reps as well as line members. Being opposed to dicatorships, authoritism, royalty or some wanker that was born with a billion dollars (but is otherwise irrelevant to our life say as compared to a student from Hamilton State School) is hardly reason to start a revolution in the US or New Zealand.
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Sep 30, 2020 21:40
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OwlFancier posted:And what I am suggesting is that if those structures lead to negative outcomes, such as when unions sell out their members because of their focus on the decisions of the leadership group and centralization of their decisions in that group, as well as the desire to be seen as "legitimate" within a heavily restricted legal framework for permissible union activity, perhaps we should consider that a structural failing of that mode of organization and investigate whether we could transfer power back towards the members directly. Agreed that there are negative outcomes (but also positive ones but put that aside), which is why sometimes just working within the rules set by parliament is not enough, sometimes (all the time) it is important for your union to provide direction and organisational support to the best path available electorally. This is to change the rules that your union works within so that the consistent message to your fellow members is to work within the rules even as you work on changing the rules. The Australian Public Service itself was as conservative as liberal national during Hawke/Keating but with Union support, a big chunk of Australian companies are now owned by workers (through mandatory super and industry funds that are hilariously better performers than for profit funds - so much so that the conservatives want to reduce it) and that is driving decisions such as the sacking of old boys club mining (Rio Tinto) or wealth management (AMP) corporate leadership for not keeping up with societal expectations on indigenous or harassment matters respectively. The Australian populace going on a revolution in the eighties would have just had the US do a United Fruit Co on them so probably better Australia moved the needle instead of more strident action. Going anarchy throws away the intent to move the needle. A vote for Trump over Biden (or a vote for Biden without following up with more local elections such as senate, governer, mayoral, internal Democrat structural change agitation, etc) while saying you are progressive is throwing the toys out of the cot (admittedly maybe just laziness if you only vote progressive at federal level).
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Sep 30, 2020 22:26
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Cpt_Obvious posted:What? Why? Why do we need an adversarial court system? Sorry turned up while I was typing. You don't need it, the inquisitorial system seems to work fine for France et al but on first blush seems to be even more hierarchical than the adversarial system. You don't agree with how the judge is working through the case, sorry Amanda Knox.
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Sep 30, 2020 22:32
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Why do all justice systems have to be hierarchical? Can't we have a democratic justice system where everyone gets an equal say? Well, vigilantism is maybe the colour of justice you were looking for? If there is no scarcity, there is no need for an engineer because why build a bridge when you could just dig a diversion around whatever city you didn't want to cross a river for? The bulk of the point of an engineer is to do the mostest with the leastest and specifying minimum factors of safety is not an engineering problem but a statistical, demographic and political one (albeit, getting over FoS = 1.0 is an engineering one). Engineers work to hierarchical limits while solving problems of physics. ANCOLD for large dams has slowly gotten more conservative over time not because the physics has changed but because of things like Brumadinho and the appetite for risk or collateral costs have changed. Agreed that an element of the hierarchical control is to hold back the different needs or desires of stakeholders such as cost, overabundance of safety, looks, jobs for life, sitting on top of the esteemed mantle of engineering association etc.
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Sep 30, 2020 23:59
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Somfin posted:Can you try thinking of a third thing? Well between vigilantism, adversial and inquisitorial that is three so I guess you mean more than third. There is also royal court, various trials (fire, water, combat etc), eclectic divination, mediation, village communion and others. Maybe you can tell me which system of justice or dispute resolution that you are thinking of that does not rely upon authority, mutual violence or third party enforcement of finding or outcome?
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Oct 1, 2020 00:27
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The Oldest Man posted:If you want to pretend that "determining which problems need to be solved and solving those problems both by community consensus" is impossible short of post-scarcity then that's on you. Your friends must have a good time figuring out where to get takeout when one person suggests pizza, another suggests curry, and you pull out your gun on the basis that resolving such a dispute without mutual violence is impossible in a world of finite possibility. I was more referring to your comments which seemed to suggest that if it was not for other people getting in the road, engineers would make everything super safe and never be at risk of failing when the reality is, engineers love being cute and generally need people in the road just so they DO put in more effort than the engineer thinks is required to make things safe enough. But in any event, our friends are China, Russia, India, Africa and the EU amongst others, one wants to eat coal, another wants to do nuclear, one is opposed to the other doing nuclear and one can't afford to eat but everyone has an opinion on how they should eat with the general consensus of those with plenty to eat is that last one should eat less. It absolutely requires consensus because no-one has a gun that can shoot someone else and then pretend the gun misfired - some are holding grenades though and hopefully the world does not rely upon anarchy to decide how we move forward. To Somfin's post, I think you must be from the US where policing has taken a weird creepy uncle turn for the worse. Way too much authority that has gone to their heads which attracts school yard bullies and predictable outcomes. Police were originally envisioned as a big tall calm dude from that community that would walk around, be helpful and mediate disputes through power of calm discussion, example and a professional uninvested third party view. Now it is dickheads roaming in gangs with guns and body armour afraid of the people they are meant to be helping but imagining themselves as soldiers. Incidentally, my old man believes a lot of the best coppers were returned servicemen that had seen too much bad juju during war (WWII, Vietnam, Korea, etc) to glorify force as a desirable outcome, yet calm in stressful situations. Long story short, London became a better place to live after the introduction of police so I think there is a place, just not what the US has now for police. Saying that I need to read up that thread on this topic as it is interesting if dry thought exercise.
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Oct 1, 2020 18:34
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For desperate crime, the courts, legislation, etc spend a great deal of resources and consideration on assessing the desperation factor - As a simple example - that a reasonable person would do the same thing if given the same set of circumstances generally exonerates you from the crime. For reality disconnect - the reasonable test kicks in against. Except this time, if it was unreasonable but if you are seen as loopy, mentally diminished, etc, then you will have a diminished sentence or the sentence is generally more about protecting society via exclusion (which is still a punishment but the focus is on removing that person from society more than deterrence, for instance). Some of the anti-terrorist stuff goes against this line of thinking but I honestly think this is a bad move and more would be achieved by treating the offenders like common criminals without martyrdom hysterics, etc. Completely agree that the US especially has gotten drawn into justice as a cops and robbers rather than than the societal problem solution of last resort that it should be. It is not only the US mind you, in Aus, Aboriginals are completely over-represented in the justice system which tells you the systems supporting society have not solved the inequities that are facing aboriginal communities. As a digression; a thought experiment, you are in a line of traffic awaiting to turn left in the only turning lane and a car drives up the side using the straight through lane as another turning lane and awaits the left turn green in the straight through lane. It is very common where I live so everyone just merges with the people that drive to the front of the line and you have to make space for them (the receiving street was only designed to accept one lane of traffic of course). Generally taxis and large SUVs. As an Aussie, it done my head in for ages that SUVs and taxis just pushed into/ahead of traffic as they liked. However, I have become accustomed to it and it is a part of life. Old mate wants to the front of the queue like usual and as a go along to get along guy, you go along with it (even if I notice it every time). That is what proponents of anarchy/libertarism don't want to come at - they either are thinking they are going to be the SUV or they think no-one is going to cut in line. Except it is not traffic which doesn't matter a poo poo at the end of the day but many other societal decisions where pushy people willing to be unreasonable will leg-up themselves relentlessly.
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Oct 5, 2020 23:27
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Somfin posted:This line right here kind of suggests you missed the point of my post. I think you misunderstood. Cpt_Obvious posted:None of this has ever happened perhaps in the history of mankind. Nobody has ever been exonerated from accusations of theft because they pled "I was hungry". The only relief they can ever truly be assured of is the 3 square meals they receive in prison. That's our most coherent welfare system: jail. Rubbish arguing a specific irrelevant edge case to refute a generalised argument. Battered wife, self-defense, an emergency situation, force majeure are all well established means for mitigating or exonerating a party from paying damages or serving justice despite that it being clear that damage was done by the defendant against the plaintiff*. Ok, I am not going to go and try and find the one white crow that one person was steeling a sandwich when he could not otherwise get food or money for a length of time such that stealing the sandwich was his action of last resort, it actually going to court and at the last, the judge not taking such a pitiful situation into account at all. Maybe in the US there is no charities or other means of finding enough food to feed yourself without resorting to theft - in Australia, there is no excuse because between unemployment benefits, charities, etc you will be able to feed yourself (not saying you wont be in poverty because you quite likely will be but you wont be desperate for food unless you are unwilling or unable to take the action a reasonable person would take. If unable, that sounds like a medical issue and whilst much room for improvement in Aus, there are mechanisms for that as well. When you talk about not being sure what to do about the cases where people let their frustrations of the moment (red light, attractive girl turns old mate down, idiot in a BMW refuses to park in one bay only, it's the fifth beggar/scammer that has hassled you today) overwhelm themselves, there is this thing called deterrence/education. That it is what the deterrence part of the system (ie, not that protective part of getting Ted Bundy off the street) is for. Not for solving drug addiction, solving poverty, gay people, outlet for bullies or other misappropriated reasons that have stigmatized the system. Someone that gets caught for repeatedly running a red light would argue that it is a victimless crime if no crash happened but old mate will be educated via a ramping punishment system. I don't think it is a coincidence that millionaires don't run too many lights despite being able to afford the 350 easily. Anyway, I think saying that there is no need for police is a copout for being unwilling to face up to the need to hold the police accountable. They need to be given the tools to do their job and they need to be given the oversight to not get carried away with themselves. *As an aside, someone posted talking about special cases (I don't know shirley references) but the whole point of the complexity of legal systems is that they are dealing with countless permutations of themes. Large number of cases ARE unique special snowflakes. The systems are trying to simplify without being reductive.
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Oct 6, 2020 21:20
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Somfin posted:If I have a big block in my post where I talk about why I think people shouldn't use the word "criminal" and your response uses the phrase "like common criminals" as a throwaway line it really suggests you didn't engage with it. I'm going to ask you, directly, to please not use the word "criminal" to refer to a human being again. It's a thought-terminating word. I still think you didn't understand what you read and just threw in a moral high ground to cover your lack of understanding. Somfin posted:
Again, you don't understand, I specifically cited numerous systems where the law itself provides for exemptions and how to utilise them within the rules as specifically written down or precedented, not the system of blind eye policing/ friendly judge, neighbor not dobbing in a mate or whatever. Somfin posted:
I did not argue for stronger sentences than what are already there, my example was specifically that an inconsequential (for the millionaires) fine is sufficient to prevent them from running red lights for the most part (with ramping to help those rich people/companies that done calculus and are happy to pay the fine each time not profit from deliberate rule breaking - say such as Ford with the Pinto). And I am specifically arguing that society is better off with effective police because there is not a just world. How we achieve effective police for me is the challenge. Somfin posted:
Tools such as front facing crises management (panicking police is probably the biggest killer of police in the US, let alone innocent bystanders), effective cultural and diversity training (to elliminate us and them), effective support programs for handoff of non-police appropriate problems (drugs, poverty, mental illness which police get called to all of these), advanced de-escalation techniques (that is not simply escalate to de-escalate), data driven police policy creation (for instance QLD police banned vehicle pursuit altogether to nearly unmitigated success) the list goes on. What tools did you think I was talking about? Cpt_Obvious posted:You do realize that being homeless is actually illegal, right? It’s called loitering, or trespassing, or whatever. The act of sleeping in a place you do not own is punished by the justice system if not by actual prison time, then by police harassment and a night or two in jail. Please explain why, if the justice system is actually lenient on the desperate, the actual state of desperation is illegal. Sleeping rough/in the street is not a crime in Aus (although variations on a theme will make it so a cop can hassle people anyway). Ideally the police will be given the tools to help sort out the issue with a fellow sleeping rough. For now the police point new in the area rough sleepers in the direction of the Salvation Army/women's refuge which is a bit of a government dodge but hopefully we can work towards something better.
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Oct 6, 2020 22:46
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Cpt_Obvious posted:I think what makes this transition from libertarian ==> leftist is the common thread of antiauthoritarianism. Say what you will about libertarians, they don't trust people in positions of power over them. The problem is, many don't realize that capitalist is also a man with authority over them, and when they realize that their boss always will gently caress them as hard as possible they can make the jump. And this gap is bridged by the fact that libertarianism isn't really a mainstream political ideology, so many are all already primed to consider more radical politics. One thing about Libertarians is that they have no problem asking for their worth. They nearly always are on better pay and conditions than their peers simply because they asked forcefully.
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Dec 12, 2020 21:44
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A lot of commentary equates consumption linearly with environmental damage but the bigger and more sophisticated the economy, generally the less damage for a given quality of life. A good example is China, it is lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty and yet are making huge inroads into air pollution, world leading investment in nuclear, wind, solar etc as its economy becomes more sophisticated. Burkina Faso or Mali, with high rates of birth (and I leave it to someone else to tell them they need birth control, most kids are born within wedlock and are wanted, thank you very much) have locally devastating economic effects if their local economy does not adjust to the changing population. e) typo Electric Wrigglies fucked around with this message at 11:44 on Dec 22, 2022 |
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Dec 22, 2022 09:34
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Victar posted:Last I checked, breast *augmentation* surgery (saline implants) is still legal to do on girls as young as 16 in the US. This is literally the first I have heard of breast augmentation surgery for under 18 year olds and the link says that saline is approved for 18 and over and gels for 22 and older so as I read it, breast augmentation for an under 18 year old would have to use some other technique which is approved (but not mentioned). I think you are inventing something to be offended at. Even if there is a few cases of it actually happening, it is just seems too niche a topic to have much of an opinion on and most likely mostly involves those with birth abnormalities. Anyway. considering a lot of libertarians seem to be oddly conservative for people that are all about avowed individualism, I doubt you are going to find too many making a public stand in support for children to get breast augmentation without parental consent. On piercings, I don't support kids getting pierced just because the parents like the look. My partner was keen on piercing the ears of our daughter within a week of birth but for me it is something the kids can decide when they are 13 or something. Partner comes from a culture where circumcision is foisted upon boys at around 10 years old and I am not keen on that either.
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Dec 23, 2022 11:43
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Victar posted:As the article I linked says, in the US saline implants are FDA approved for 18 and older, but "there is no legal age requirement for breast augmentation". Breast augmentation surgery for children under 18 is very rare in the US; it's still a real thing. I assume that man to woman transitions would generally include breast augmentation, so your argument is that libertarians don't see those as trans to be opposed but woman to man transitions are? I AM GRANDO posted:What culture is that? Mixed Muslim and Christian. I should correct myself; nephews on my partner's side had it accomplished a bit younger, under seven years old in line with Muslim practice the world over but they are Christian.
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Dec 24, 2022 09:22
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Thread title candidate right here.
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Sep 28, 2023 14:09
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Point remains that managers of Nestle deliberately and knowingly killed more babies in developing economies than old mate would have harmed across the globe in a lifetime, one gets multiple terms of prison and the other suffers no personal consequences. What old mate did wrong was not pay his taxes and (more importantly) not avail intelligence services of information contained within his sphere.
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Oct 3, 2023 15:33
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I forgot he was the contract killer guy, actually. The complaints in this thread weren't about what he had gotten up to personally (bad enough though and I'm not saying he should be free from sanction), it was that he was running a market attempting to be anonymous of the government and implying that he got his just deserts (notably you are very fair on this) because of that. Procures of contract killers may not be that common but they are common enough for me to say this guy wasn't being lorded and gloated over in this thread due to being uniquely violent.
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Oct 3, 2023 16:17
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Barrel Cactaur posted:Privatizing the air, if im remembering my It is literally what countries do with their airspace? If you aren't part of a reciprocal agreement, you wanna fly over it, you pay. If don't want to pay, go around. There is law specifically around how far up you can claim (a neighbour would have to negotiate with you to run a power line over your property, even if a pole didn't sit in it) and how far into the ground in most countries. Also, that Russia propaganda is Russian propaganda but Assange is essentially a whistleblower so defending the UK/AUS governments willingness to toss him to their lord and master the US; however much the intent was to poo poo on libertarians, is not great.
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Feb 27, 2024 16:49
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properly, refers to the old common law "from the depths of hell to the gates of heaven" of common law. Libertarians want to have the power to either stop aircraft from flying over their land or charge them rent to do so. This being obviously the least workable thing ever they love it as a concept.
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Weatherman posted:My dude, the context was entities smaller than nation states, such as individual landholders, privatising the little parcel of air above their land, not the well established system of national airspace. I covered where you can charge for use of space in my post. If some private business wants to put a wire over your land, they have to negotiate with you. Depending on country, they might be able to get government authority to not have to deal with you or you might be in a country where the government has to negotiate with you to put a wire over your land. How far that private ownership of airspace above your land extends depends on the country. Likewise, into the ground. For Australia and a lot of countries, you owning the land comes with being able to dig down to establish footings for your domicile or to farm the nutrients from but you don't own the mineral rights - they are retained by the crown and may be sold/leased separately. Historically you owned water that fell upon your land (never water that flowed through) but that is now being separated out in Australia as well. Mainly to buy back environmental flows from farmers but it is being used by commercial operations as well.
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Mar 1, 2024 11:57
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