Spangly A posted:

I've heard this in real life from minorities.

There will always be class traitors and thus all minorities who are just better than equally paid white people must be hired. When pressed on "what about poor education standards already existing", there is no answer. Once I had someone say "it's a small price to pay".

TheRamblingSoul posted:

It's amazing how an ideology can pick up on all the right messages and facts but still come to such an utterly wrong interpretation and conclusion.

Gantolandon posted:

Libertarians also redefine threat - unless they literally point a gun into your head, it doesn't qualify as such. Hoppe proposed, for example, exiling criminals into Sahara or polar regions. Hey, it's not that libertarians are going to kill those people, it's heat or cold!

Also, in their ideology, inaction in cases where they could prevent someone from harm, even with a small cost on their part, is perfectly OK. That's why Rothbard maintained that the parent can't hurt his child, but he is in no way obligated to take care of them or even feed them.

spoon0042 posted:

Isn't "coercion" also somehow by definition only when the government does it?

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Rowling's a big supporter of the welfare state and says without it she couldn't have written Harry Potter. She's also happy to pay taxes back to support the system.

She's a fairly bad example for them to pick.

spoon0042 posted:

... hell on earth, maybe?

VitalSigns posted:

Don't they have to get an all-new cast for each one because the previous cast bail from the sinking ship to salvage their careers?

Mavric posted:

Re: Anti-war

One thing I see libertarians echo constantly is that going back to a commodity based currency (bitcoin ) will somehow prevent governments from engaging in wars because they can't print money to afford it or something something.

Does this have any kind of basis in reality? Because it seems rather absurd and of course they never go into details on what they mean.

BrandorKP posted:

NPR had a story on Asa Earl Carter this weekend.

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/20/151037079/the-artful-reinvention-of-klansman-asa-earl-carter

Asa Carter is the guy who wrote many of the speeches of the segregation movement, most importantly the speech. He's the guy who wrote "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" for George Wallace. A really awful person, so extreme right that often the extreme right groups weren't radical enough and he'd break off and form his own. The show is about a book he wrote later (apparently he felt betrayed by Wallace and dropped off the map) while pretending to be a Native American storyteller.

So why is this person relevant to a thread about Libertarians. Well he used to host a radio show. The title floored me. "On Liberty"

The intersection of some of the roots of talk radio, the hate of the segregationists, and Libertarianism all expressed in one person.

BrandorKP posted:

I'm inclined to think the friends interpretation, that he had not changed, was correct. There were a bunch of dog whistle words in the discussion of The Education of Little Tree that most people would miss. A big one would be "The Way". So these Cherokee grandparents instill "The Way" in little tree's soul.

It's not just government vs free individuals. It's rejection of "meddling government", to be a "Independent Free Men on the Land" is to follow "The Way" and to have "The Way" in ones soul. So it's clear, "The Way" is an early Christian term for Jesus. I look at that and then I look at that Brat guy that just knocked out Cantor and what he has to say about libertarianism, economics, and Jesus and I get more worried.

In other-words I think it is genuine, in so far as this really is Asa Carter speaking authentically about what he believes. But that what he believes, that Liberty (as defined by Libertarianism) is The Way is a very long con. One still very present in the Tea Party. I really need to read the book.

quote:

It's not just government vs free individuals. It's rejection of "meddling government", to be a "Independent Free Men on the Land" is to follow "The Way" and to have "The Way" in ones soul. So it's clear, "The Way" is an early Christian term for Jesus. I look at that and then I look at that Brat guy that just knocked out Cantor and what he has to say about libertarianism, economics, and Jesus and I get more worried

Absurd Alhazred posted:

You can basically get the book itself for the price of shipping from Amazon in used condition. It seems counter-productive to me to put so much effort into the interpretation of a work before at least having a glance at the original.

SedanChair posted:

Not only can I not think of a politician more arrogant and supercilious than Ted Cruz, I can't think of a historical figure who was.

Pththya-lyi posted:

As you may recall, I'm on the Ayn Rand Institute's email list. Yesterday they sent me an email with this completely unironic title:


Edit: Horseshoetheory.jpg

Filippo Corridoni posted:

so I can easily assume you aren't amongst the legion of ordinary Chilean people who got dicked so hard that even today Chile is one of the most unequal nations in south america.

I really love how libertarians can only propagate the great leap forwards caused by the free-market in the world by ignoring the fact that the vast majority end up getting hosed in the rear end. They talk about how during Thatcher's reign the GDP went up by x% while ignoring that the livelihoods of the working-class faced a dramatic decline. They talk about New Zealand while ignoring the decline of wages for most workers. They talk about Hong Kong while ignoring the life of the average person living there. If it was good for the rich, then its automatically considered to be good for everybody. Then they can argue that libertarian policies just magically work despite common sense dictating otherwise.

isildur posted:

The realization that the guys at Reason were more than happy to make common cause with admitted theocrats was probably the moment of cognitive dissonance that caused me to start re-evaluating why I thought of myself as a libertarian. I remember posting something about the libertarian/dominionist alliance on a Reason comment thread, and getting a response that was basically 'we don't care if they're dominionists as long as they lower taxes.' I never posted there again.

BrandorKP posted:

I love the: these institutions I fund directly provide evidence that my opinions are correct

VitalSigns posted:

He was definitely being altruistic:
"Personal hygiene wasn’t her strong suit. In fact, during the years of his mandated bi-weekly Rand-banging, Nathaniel Branden pleaded with his wife Barbara to discreetly ask Rand to bathe more frequently."

Miss Rand, a rational integration of the evidence of my senses has produced the objective conclusion that you have rank pussy. And as every is implies an ought, I ask that you reach your full potential as woman qua woman by obtaining the rational life-affirming value of a loving shower.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

I am more than 900 posts behind in JRod's new thread. Is it worth the slog? I mean, it's hilarious that he is basically advocating revolutionary socialism (the workers seizing the means of production and the destitute expropriating unused real-estate) as the only way out of the inhuman bind that the non-aggression* principle put him, but is there any punchline I should be looking forward to? NO SPOILERS!

Caros posted:

It really doesn't matter if DRO's suck to many of them. I poo poo you not, I had a libertarian defend the idea that DRO's would have access to nuclear weapons. I've had one defend he idea that contract killings were morally okay so long as you pay someone to do them, since the person who does the actual killing is the only one morally responsible. Many an-caps are not utilitarian, they don't care if it results in a freakish totalitarian state, so long as it is a 'free' totalitarian state.

Helsing posted:

Without taxes or red tape there will be more economic growth so no one will actually be poor any more. Also there will be firms who will cater to all income levels because that's just how an unfettered free market works.

Just remember that anything bad right now is because of government, anything good right now is because of the market.

GROVER CURES HOUSE posted:

Trotsky more authoritarian than Lenin? Debs a straight up centrist?

jrodefeld posted:

SedanChair posted:

This is pretty much the entirety of the argument.

wateroverfire posted:

Third, if you want my lazy man's interpretation of libertarianism here it is:

The appropriate size and scope of government is whatever is required to have well functioning markets, protect property rights, and carry out functions only a government can do efficiently like national defense, maintaining order, providing health care insurance, enforcing some environmental regulations, etc. I'm not committed to being super doctrinaire about it but the principle would be "enough to get it done, but no more, and when there isn't a clear public interest hands off my vices".

wateroverfire posted:

Except in the most contrived of cases this is not a thing that employers can do, though. Employers offer as much money as it takes to get acceptable people. That is pretty much the end of it at the low end of the wage distribution. There are too many employers with too many positions for them to be leveraging much of anything and a worker's risk of starvation or whatever is both 100% unknown to the potential employer and 100% out of his or her control.

wateroverfire posted:

How's that?

What is "social progress" the way you're using it?

Grand Theft Autobot posted:

They would replace it with Forward Thinking about your old age.

QuarkJets posted:

e: Oh gently caress a jrod post showed up while I was typing this, I'm so excited

Raskolnikov38 posted:

Hell we need tell everyone who ever fought before the crimean war.

Jack of Hearts posted:

Seattle actually has free wifi now.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

Oh man that would be great proof if the AEF didn't arrive in France until very early 1918.

Grand Theft Autobot posted:

If you want a nuanced, critical, and often negative view of FDR and the New Deal you don't need to read charlatans. You can read real scholars like David M. Kennedy, Robert S. McElvaine, Edward Bernstein, and Arthur M. Schlesinger. Clowns like Stockman, Schlaes, and that Lincoln = Hitler idiot DiLorenzen are universally derided by everyone in the profession. They are basically the Conservapedia of history: navel-gazing bufoons, arguing with noone but themselves because nobody else takes them seriously.

spoon0042 posted:

jr wasn't the one who claimed everyone then was middle class, that was some other nutbar, right?

StandardVC10 posted:

During the Civil War would be a prominent example, I don't think it was the first usage of paper currency in the country though.

Caros posted:

I assure you that the mid 1800's were not before industrialization.

Who What Now posted:

The whole libertarian ideal of the NAP is completely unworkable because human nature is a thing that exists. If we were all enlightened pacifists or beep-boop robots then that'd be a completely different story, but we aren't.

Even if only 1 out of 10 people is a violent person, those people are going to band together and run roughshod over the rest. To avoid this more people who wouldn't normally be violent will join them and then you begin having in-group and out-group mentalities which makes it trivially easy to convince people to commit violence on the outgroup. You don't need brainwashing or cult indoctrination, all you need to do is convince people that this other group is not as good and deserving of what they have as our group. And that's a thing all humans do all the time.

VitalSigns posted:

Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy spotted.

Obviously, theory tells us that if Obama had abolished taxes, ended social security, and deregulated everything the economy would have rebounded even faster. The sluggish recovery we're seeing is happening in spite of Obama.

ThirdPartyView posted:

Praxeology is the best ideology: "Everything I say is true because it is true!"

jrodefeld posted:

I find it hard to believe that in this age of information, with smartphones and the internet constantly evolving, that a lack of information would be a major problem.