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

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Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Grading on a curve is stupid because the entire purpose of testing and grades is to assess mastery of the subject area. Like, this is often overlooked because testing and grading is portrayed to nearly everyone as a good in itself, but if you're creating a system where a collective agreement to not give a poo poo about the topic is the best route towards spreading out grades - and possibly threatening the bright young people who are working hard and cracking the books... well, you're certainly teaching skills relevant to modern life and the workplace but not the topic the class is about, I'm pretty sure.

"Nerd" is folk-etymologied to come from "Knurd," which is what they called the sober students (the reverse of drunk, you see).

Now that's for overall class grades, doing something like 'here's a hard test but you'll be curved' makes sense, although if you do get some rare bird who scores 97% when you expected a top score of 80% or so, it is merciful to use the second highest score for this purpose and note that rare bird as exceptional.

# ¿ May 3, 2016 23:41

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 18:55

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

QuarkJets posted:

And of course restitution can only ever be some loving parcel of land somewhere

I'm told that when there were border conflicts between white settlers and natives in what's now Ohio and Pennsylvania, the natives would at times take captives and satisfy their constant hunger for land by cramming it down their throats until they strangled.

I can see where they were coming from.

# ¿ May 5, 2016 00:58

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Sedge and Bee posted:

Yeah I'm sure Africa was always destined for failed states and Europeans had/have nothing to do with it. What do you mean France still takes the Lion's share of it's former colonies tax revenues for its central bank???? That can't be right

If this is for real, that doesn't seem like it's really a "former" colony. :stare:

# ¿ May 17, 2016 04:21

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

I remember several years ago talking with a friend's brother who argued that elementary school children should help pay for their education by working in hamburger assembly lines for fast food restaurants.

How niche is it for libertarians to sincerely argue against child labor laws? Is it relatively fringe, is it something that most libertarians don't spend much time thinking about, or is it pretty common for libertarians to think we ought to be putting children to work?

I believe that most libertarians would unironically agree with Mugatu's argument in Zoolander regarding child labor laws. In fact I could see a libertarian "in defense of Mugatu" article.

# ¿ May 20, 2016 21:02

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

I'm pretty sure child labor laws don't mean you can't give Skyler across the street twenty bucks to fix your computer, just like you could give him twenty bucks to mow your lawn.

# ¿ May 20, 2016 21:33

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

paragon1 posted:

"I want the Mad Max movies to be real."

These motherfuckers all think they'll be Immortan Joe, or Master Blaster at worst, but they'd probably be Decorative Skull #4

# ¿ May 25, 2016 07:08

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

jrodefeld posted:

Here's the deal with my participation on this website going forward. I have now been banned twice for no apparent reason. The first time I was banned, the reason stated was because I was "arguing in bad faith". Now, I recall vividly the particular posts I had made which got me banned and I was being as genuine in my beliefs as I could be. I looked through the rules, and there is no rule pertaining to the entirely subjective charge of bad-faith arguing. I emailed the moderator who banned me and he flatly refused to give me any explanation for why I was banned.

Okay, so I didn't post immediately after the three weeks or so of the ban was up because I frankly had more productive and important things to do. A week or two ago I posted a SINGLE reply to the Climate Change thread which violated no rule, was entirely in line with the purpose of that thread, contained no foul language and I was almost immediately banned and no explanation was given. No reason was stated in the so-called "Leper's Colony". I emailed the moderator and was ignored. Furthermore, I was required to pay a $10 charge for un-banning my account. The only reason I paid this fee was because I make a good living and basically had money to burn. I wanted to vent my anger and address this perversion of justice. But, if anyone bans me again for an illegitimate reason and wants me to pay for the privilege of posting again, I won't do so. I will decide that this forum is absolutely inhospitable to non-leftist and libertarian opinions. I hope you are better than that.

The only conceivable reason for such a ban was that moderators don't want me posting in any other threads. Okay, come out and explicitly tell me that. Don't ban me for no stated reason and refuse to respond to emails.

The most frustrating thing about this recent episode was that I only said a very small fraction of what I had intended to say, dozens of people got to respond to my post with some surprisingly intelligent thoughts (in some cases) and I wasn't allowed to develop the conversion.

I will post in this thread and restrict my posting to only this thread if I get an agreement from the moderators to back off and allow me to state my opinions provided I don't break any stated rules. If there are any additional rules just especially for me, then explicitly tell me what you expect of me and I'll comply.

If someone shortly bans my account for no stated or rational reason, and furthermore asks me to pay AGAIN $10 for un-banning my account, I will go to my credit card company with a fraud charge and re-coup the $10 I just spent for the privilege of telling you how I feel about unfair moderating practices.

I'd like to get some resolution to this issue before I make any effort to debate political ideas.

You were banned for being a pompous shithead who argues in the mathematical definition of bad faith. Why don't you write it off as a missionary expense?

# ¿ May 26, 2016 21:08

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

He died as he lived, intending to use regulations against people who were not as anti-regulation as he.

# ¿ May 26, 2016 23:39

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

archangelwar posted:

LeJackel LeJackel LeJackel

It's showtime!

You have to spell it right and add the incantations. Here let's try it:

LeJackal: I believe that there may be net benefits to society from some hypothetical forms of regulations on the ownership of firearms!

# ¿ May 31, 2016 01:53

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Zoos also frequently practice segregation, another plus in the libertopian dream

# ¿ Jun 2, 2016 07:54

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

archangelwar posted:

It is his actual name, forgot what the j stands for. He signs up for forums all over the Internet with his real name and evangelizes. He is totally dedicated to the cause.

For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is jrodefeld? This is jrodefeld speaking. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values. I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world, and if you wish to know why you are perishing-you who dread knowledge-I am the man who will now tell you." The chief engineer was the only one able to move; he ran to a television set and struggled frantically with its dials. But the screen remained empty; the speaker had not chosen to be seen. Only his voice filled the airways of the country-of the world, thought the chief engineer-sounding as if he were speaking here, in this room, not to a group, but to one man; it was not the tone of addressing a meeting, but the tone of addressing a melonfucker.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2016 06:33

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

OwlFancier posted:

I've found you'll get a surprising amount of leeway so long as you argue in good faith in DnD, if people think you're not you'll get buried under a mountain of poo poo, but just being wrong will get you, at worst, corrected quickly and sharply. Being wrong persistently and not engaging with it will get you shat on.

I imagine what would also help is if you address "here is a plausible but nasty side effect of your ideology" in a manner other than "That's what you'd think, if you were stupid, but we can all agree that A = A and therefore there would not be a thriving free market in children." The problem in many cases, I think, is not that libertarians are insufferable, but that insufferable people are drawn to yelling about libertarianism online.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2016 20:27

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

On the other hand, Weimar Germany. Anything other than an iron grip on preventing any inflation whatsoever will immediately lead to Weimar Germany and therefore Hitler. Why do you want to support Hitler, libs? :hitler:

e: what's that? economic desperation leads to hitlers? Well, I'm sure we'll be able to control any wild men who come up.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2016 10:19

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Who What Now posted:

So why is a company town good but a state bad, again?

A company town hails the Owner, while a state might possibly at some future point upend the natural system of aristocracy that happens to benefit me personally, duh.

Stinky_Pete posted:

Should the economy exist to serve people, or machines?

If they were really people, wouldn't they be rich?

# ¿ Jun 7, 2016 21:48

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

CommieGIR posted:

Take it another way: Most major R&D advances largely benefit from Government Grants or Tax Payer based incentives. Most companies outside of the Pharmaceutical industry tend to have little reason to invest in intense R&D projects especially in the 2000s as R&D is seen as a net profit loss.

Didn't companies spend a lot more on R&D when their tax rate was higher? Or was there something else going on there?

# ¿ Jun 7, 2016 23:11

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Mr Interweb posted:

De...mand? Wait, are you telling me that you and other job creators like yourself wouldn't just mindlessly hire people just because you happened to have some extra cash laying around?

Haven't we just spent the last... "my entire lifetime," really, pretending that demand just kind of magically happens and all that matters is helping out suppliers? Supply side economics, if you will?

# ¿ Jun 8, 2016 06:01

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

thrakkorzog posted:

Don't put words in my mouth you motherfucker.

I'm sure that by legalizing racial harmony, nobody's pissed in soup, the corn or potatoes.

With respect, I feel that if you're presenting a theory that ignores recorded history, it's on you to provide some kind of evidence that recorded history does not apply. Otherwise you come off as "Well yeah, discrimination would be legal, but that is, somehow, good!" Perhaps you could give us a tedious dictionary definition of "discrimination."

# ¿ Jun 12, 2016 22:04

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Nitrousoxide posted:

Like the only reason to have hairdressers require a liscense is rent seeking in order to limit competition.

I imagine that's not literally the only reason, because you are operating sharp objects near someone's head and making significant aesthetic changes to their bodies, albeit ones which can be relatively easily "fixed" or "neutralized." That said, I don't know the details of the industry in fine, and it is quite possible that it isn't "take a safety course, meet these minimum requirements if you're opening a shop" but instead some lengthy rigamarole.

As for local administrations being lovely and petty, this is why I am always incredibly skeptical of claims that just because something is local or smaller or otherwise nearer to the purported persons being served, it is necessarily better... this is often treated as a kind of axiom, and I don't think it's necessarily so. It isn't necessarily not so either, but it isn't an axiomatic good.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2016 22:35

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Nitrousoxide posted:

The idea that you need a certification for basic cleanliness training is pretty dubious.

Your pizza chef could get e-coli in your food by not washing his hands but he or she doesn't need a license to make a pizza.

Oh, well, now that you've made an open ended assertion, I guess that settles the matter. On the other hand: HUMANS ACT.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2016 04:21

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

"The employer" presupposes an employer. What about the brave small businessperson just trying to open their own shop, eh? You're moving the target!

# ¿ Jul 4, 2016 04:23

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Play posted:

I lost a job about a year ago for getting sick a few times during a really cold winter (the first winter I'd experienced in 4 years or so). I worked at a SCHOOL. A school for DEVELOPMENTALLY DISABLED STUDENTS.

Let that sink in for a moment. I was let go because I didn't come to work sick where I almost assuredly would have infected young children who are doubly vulnerable, being developmentally disabled.

Clearly this was just the free market judging you on your genes. By allowing only those immune to diseases to receive "regular employment," we ensure that future generations of serfs will be tough and sturdy.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2016 02:50

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

I decline to create joinder with the dog/urine metaphors for jrod, melon fucker though he may be

# ¿ Jul 15, 2016 09:33

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Liquid Communism posted:

Hell, I'll suggest it. Let's do it. Federal minimum wage to $15 starting 21 January 2017.

I'll give you a hint, Walmart's still going to need people to stock their shelves, McDonald's will still be open, and there will still be waitresses at your local Chili's.

Small businesses that do less than $500k a year (The usual target of the 'BUT THINK OF THE EMPLOYEES" crowd) and are not engaged in interstate commerce, as well as small farms, are already exempt from the federal minimums anyway. Their only worry is losing their staff to better paying offers...

Sounds like you're reducing the power of Wealth, buddy. Speaking as a Wealth, or an aspiring Wealth, why would I ever permit this?

# ¿ Aug 20, 2016 04:12

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Literally The Worst posted:

so what shoudl the minimum wage be, what's the Safe Level

Sounded like $10.90/hour, which we could perhaps round up to $11/hr in order to completely enslave the Makers to the Takers

# ¿ Aug 20, 2016 04:31

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Liquid Communism posted:

At which point you need to taunt Big Yud with having produced a more workable AI than he ever has.

The horrible thing is that if you did develop an AI that could get a regular article-writing seat with some outlet like that, it's not impossible that you could wrap some "cut all taxes and execute the minorities" hamburger around actual policy ideas and see Republicans start advocating them.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2016 23:10

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Discendo Vox posted:

Maybe you can convince the Yuddites that Jrodimus is the AI they fear!

The Singularity... Til All Are One

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A52--FKUQgU

# ¿ Oct 7, 2016 07:42

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

ToxicSlurpee posted:

A lot of it also come from how it conflicts with itself in regards to ownership, especially self-ownership; they say "you always own yourself" but then sometimes argue that it's acceptable for a person to sell themselves into slavery if that's what they want. Ignoring that economic inequality will mean that people will sell themselves into slavery just to survive if they suffer enough random misfortune.

Which is really another problem they never seem to have an answer before beyond "but charity!!!" The thought is that people have complete, 100% total control of themselves and their lives while ignoring that reality will sometimes blindside you with awful tragedies that you can't control. I tend to use the example of somebody that steps off the curb and gets hit by a runaway bus and is crippled for life. What do you do for them?

Buses are inherently collectivist anyway.

Also, "you always own yourself" is a pretty good summary of libertarians in general if you think about it.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2016 12:34

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

divabot posted:

As I posted in the PYF Dark Enlightenment Thinker thread:

Also "futarchy" is nowhere near as cool as you might think from the name.

I believe the general opinion is that rule by anime women with big dicks would be greatly preferable to rule by libertarians

# ¿ Oct 18, 2016 12:19

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

polymathy posted:

Hell, it's not like socialist societies ever produced rapacious oligarchs who manipulated State power for their own benefit at the expense of the common man. Oh wait...

Would you say that real capitalism has never been tried, and therefore, cannot be judged?

# ¿ Sep 11, 2020 04:30

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

The idea, I think, is that you make the appeal to moral nature, shake your head sadly, and grimly accept that since Humanity is Fallen, it will be important to continue having the police keep the riff raff off your estate. But if only we could all agree to respect the non-aggression principle...

# ¿ Sep 11, 2020 09:18

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

polymathy posted:

So what incentive would I have for trying to make my dream a reality? What incentive would anyone have for accumulating capital in the first place?

Do you believe that there are human incentives other than making money? If not, can you explain how you are generating funds from posting here on our necro-homoerotic Internet Forums?

# ¿ Sep 13, 2020 08:24

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Cpt_Obvious posted:

The hilarious part is that within capitalism the least knowledgeable person in a business has final say on every practice. Stock holders and board executives have 0 factory experience, so why should they decide the safety protocols, wages, and general floor management that the workers must abide? They have no loving idea how the workplace functions because they�ve only been on a few loving tours.

Because they are the masters. Even if they magnaminously decide to let all but the most general operational matters be handled by actual experienced experts, they are deciding that - it's like the people who go to restaurants for the purpose of being able to tip servers for their service and who get pissed off when they cannot do so.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2020 08:40

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

OwlFancier posted:

It's almost like that... is the point?

Perhaps instead you could find some people who would like to also make new computer monitors and work with them to set up a factory and you could all work there and divide the results equally, rather than you owning everything and telling everyone else what to do. That way nobody has to go without for years to "save up capital" and also the factory can be set up faster.

Perhaps even during this process you might find that the other people have good ideas about how to improve the design you put forward and collectively you can make an even better kind of computer monitor. Seems to me like everybody benefits.

If the idea here is that, for instance, you would probably need a considerable amount of capital in the form of equipment, land, etc. to set up this factory, and where is that going to come from exactly? Central Planning? is a question that makes sense... however I suspect there are a number of answers bouncing about

# ¿ Sep 13, 2020 09:19

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

OwlFancier posted:

I mean if you've abolished private property presumably you could approach an existing worker owned factory and ask if they want to consider producing your new widget in exchange for a share of the profit commensurate to your contribution. Or you could see if there are some communal 3d printers or other tools you could use to fabricate your widget and sell it until you can afford to fund some dedicated ones.

The whole point of communism is that the means of production is not supposed to be privately owned so having free access to it is kind of... the whole point? This also assumes, of course, that we're still operating on some kind of market based economy where people have to buy things rather than them just being produced as people want them.

Right, it's a hypothetical operational challenge, not some kind of theological statement about the fundamentals of human nature. There are probably solutions which would be reached by people living under such conditions, which are hard for us to envision now and also kind of pointless unless we're writing science fiction.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2020 09:29

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Panfilo posted:

Why do Libertarians have a hate-on for Alexander Hamilton?

~~Because they think he was Puerto Rican now~~ probably the central bank thing

# ¿ Sep 13, 2020 22:38

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

SpaceSDoorGunner posted:

Man if only most countries had a massive program that occupied a significant fraction of almost every countries budget and was typically corrupt, bloated and often several times larger than it needs to be to serve its intended purpose. It�d be great to cut that if that existed. I bet libertarian icons would pay more than lip service to cutting that. You know if it existed.

But you need that, to keep both the poors AND the Reds from taking your lawn.

# ¿ Sep 21, 2020 22:02

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

I think that the libertarian streak in SF authors has more to do with the ancillary traits than the topic itself. Any decent writer of course will at least end up exploring other perspectives outside of their own.

It is pretty loving weird that Heinlein gets quoted like gospel by the libertarians, at least online. I don't know if that's still a thing or not. Nobody quotes Asimov but he had his poo poo together way more.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2020 08:22

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Who What Now posted:

And applauded Israel for bombing a nuclear power plant in 1981.

So much peace!

I assume it's like how the only election in human history was in 2016.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2020 23:00

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Enigma89 posted:

I am not saying the entire effort there was good. There was an attack and a response. War should have been declared.

That's pretty war-like. If we had to do military action at all, some kind of commando raid in coordination with the local government, however despicable, was probably the way to go. Ideally we would have also put OBL on trial somewhere but I remember all the paranoia about the very idea of giving alleged terrorists a day in court, as if they radiated a Terrorism Field or something.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2020 21:54

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 18:55

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

VitalSigns posted:

When I read the first post I didn't realize the article was talking about literal actual bears, the hibernating animal, moving in.

lives free

# ¿ Oct 15, 2020 22:57

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

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