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

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

«‹›4 »

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Cemetry Gator posted:

Yes. I am going to ignore what you have to say.

I'm curious what you have to say about this article written by some guy you never heard of instead.

[Long article from a Mises.org link.]

See, obviously, in a Libertarian society, this would never happen!

You forgot to throw in "I would appreciate your comments." at the end

# ¿ Nov 22, 2014 20:06

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 21, 2024 14:58

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Nolanar posted:

Does anyone else have Libertarian friends they're willing to throw into the thread? I figure we'll either get a larger variety of arguments (ha), more frequent updates of the same arguments, or another meltdown like that Finnish dude. I'm okay with all of these possibilities.

I can honestly say that I'm not friends with any libertarians. I mean, I know people who are libertarians, but as soon as I hear them talking about how Wal-Mart's entry-level employees should be grateful they were hired at all I mentally file them away as human garbage and move on.

Anyway, since the whole thread seems to be taking a break, I don't think anything in this thread has made me laugh harder than jrode's bit "by posting on the internet instead of using violence, you have embraced the concepts of libertarianism without even knowing it!" I mean, the rest of it is dumb and bad, but that's like the crown jewel of dumb and bad.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2014 19:10

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

I love that even the avowed white supremacist puts "racist" in scare quotes. It really has just become some kind liberal attack word with no actual definition beyond 'bad guy' to conservatives, hasn't it?

# ¿ Nov 24, 2014 21:14

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

LuftWaffle posted:

What I am saying is that with good people (and by good I mean fair, honest, intelligent, well-meaning), you will at least get a good effort towards maximizing the possibilities of some structure.

But what if the best people in a certain situation happen to be black? Surely even a race realist such as yourself might account for that scenario, as unlikely as it may be :ohdear:

# ¿ Nov 24, 2014 23:44

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

LuftWaffle posted:

There are situations where the best people would be black. Picking cotton or playing cornerback for example.

*Drops mic*

bye

Lazy joke aside, I thought modern day racists were more advocates of "we should never have brought them over to begin with, thereby maintaining glorious racial purity" instead because that at least made it sound like they just wanted the black people to go away, not be enslaved :raise:

You seem like you're really half-assing this whole race realist thing, man.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2014 01:21

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

jrodefeld posted:

I don't know what this means. If property was acquired illegitimately and this can be proven, then the current occupant should forfeit the right to that property or give it to those it was stolen from.

Unless you have some foolproof method of redressing every past atrocity, then we have to move forward with the unfortunate fact that some of us have certain disadvantages due to past injustices.

I am open to hearing how you would suggest we go about redressing past injustices without causing further injustice in the present.

Hahaha, of course anything that might allow minority groups some recompense for the atrocities visited upon them throughout all of American history would need to be completely foolproof or it's just not fair, but don't worry guys, I totally have this hunch that eliminating all taxation and privatizing the police will make society be better despite the whole of human history repeatedly showing otherwise.

Could you at least pretend to be arguing in good faith, jrodefeld?

# ¿ Dec 2, 2014 11:05

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

jrodefeld posted:

Yes because of course the State monopolized courts and criminal "justice" system have no problems at all, right?

Go ahead and apply this defense of monopoly argument to any other private enterprise and see how it would sound. "I much prefer having Comcast be the monopolist of cable and tv service in my area. It is so much better not having to deal with the hassle of choice and competition." No chance of abuse and worse service by a private monopolist right?

There is no chance in hell that any progressive would ever defend a private monopoly like this. Naturally, the cost would increase and the quality of service would decrease if you had no choice but to sign up with Comcast for your internet and/or TV.

Why does this not equally apply to State monopolized courts?

One big problem with the State is that they have a monopoly on final decision making power and arbitration between conflicts including conflicts that involve themselves. Since the people have no choice, the State monopolized courts and criminal justice system can get away with enforcing clearly unjust laws and verdicts year after year with no repercussions.

If private arbitrators or private courts competed for public trust and patronage, they would be judged both for their cost and a history of just rulings and decisions. Unjust rulings and decisions would be punished in the marketplace just as poor service and high cost is punished for the provision of any other good or service on the market.

I don't blame you for not quite understanding how this could work in practice, but you can't forget the record of the State-monopolized court and justice system that you are defending. With a record that abysmal, I would hope you would be open to alternatives.

In your mind, how much more effective is a system where, instead of a judge possibly being illegally bribed by a company, the company just directly pays his salary instead? If I seek to sue said company for willingly selling me a faulty product, why would the judge have any reason to rule in my favor? What if I try to sue the company using a different judge and they refuse? Is there some kind of higher authority to appeal to, aside from public opinion and bad word of mouth?

If one justice service had a reputation for being fair and just and another had a reputation for protecting their clients at all costs, guilty or no, why wouldn't I just use them instead? Assuming I care more about protecting my interests than doing the right thing.

If I rob a person but I also make a significant contribution to my private police service, would they arrest me if doing so would mean they're no longer getting paid? What if the person I robbed uses a different private police service, can they arrest me? Can my police service stop them? It's my word against his, after all.

What if a homeless man is found dead? Would the police still conduct a full investigation for free? If so, why?

Can you actually answer any of these questions?

Wolfsheim fucked around with this message at 11:24 on Dec 2, 2014

# ¿ Dec 2, 2014 11:15

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

bokkibear posted:

You continue to switch between deontological arguments and consequential arguments. As soon as we demonstrate that the consequences of a minimum wage are positive for a society, you'll immediately claim that it doesn't matter (because you're not a consequentialist), so what's the point in arguing consequences at all? As long as you continue to deny the ethical relevance of consequences, there's no reason here why anyone should bother discussing the finer points of how the minimum wage affects society in practice.

This is actually a good point and it really does encompass the cyclical nature of this thread regardless of whatever is currently being discussed.

"Government-run healthcare is more expensive, less efficient and of lesser quality."
"Actually all this data shows the opposite is true."
"That doesn't matter because all taxation is theft."

I wish I could just take the moral high ground mid-argument and declare myself the winner for doing so. Being a libertarian must be really, really easy.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2014 00:12

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Bob James posted:

True justice will only be served when the privatized police force, the privatized prison system, and the privatized courts are all be owned by the same billionaire.

The same benevolent billionaire, mind you.

Also, since when did I agree that my DRO fees would pay the cost of investigating a homeless man's murder? He was probably a criminal anyway. What other benefits are non-members enjoying on my dime for the 'good of society'? That sounds like socialism to me.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2014 05:43

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

The Mutato posted:

Because people want a DRO that does investigate that. People want to live in a nice society that doesn't have homeless people being slaughtered and cats being tortured in back alleys. You clearly place some value on this type of society, since you are so averse to it being created, and if you value something you are willing to pay for it.

You've just made a pretty strong case for the necessity of taxes. So...I agree, I guess?

# ¿ Dec 4, 2014 09:45

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

I'm always so excited to see a new jrod post in this thread. Who will he respond to, and who will he ignore? What argument will he willfully misinterpret as an excuse to post a slew of mises links? Which post will he pretend to take offense at, and when will he leave for another few weeks?

I can hardly wait :allears:

# ¿ Dec 18, 2014 18:56

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Captain_Maclaine posted:

Nah, it's because your "solutions" are fuckin' bullshit dude.

Remove all environmental regulations and regulatory agencies -> most people would rationally never pollute the earth over decades for short-term gain, so in a free market without state intervention they would stop doing that immediately, and any companies that didn't would be run out of business by bad online reviews -> no more climate change, you're welcome

# ¿ Dec 19, 2014 05:09

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Political Whores posted:

For someone who claims to understand economics, you sure don't understand the concept of non-excludable goods, jrod. Unless you could exclude polluters from the atmosphere, any sort of system to control emissions would require the ability to forcibly shut down polluters. Unless you think ethical consumerism is a solution, in which case I invite you too review the research on it yourself instead of relying on bullshit experts, since it all points to ethical consumerism not working.

Only because it's never been tried in a market free of state coercion, obv :rolleyes:

EDIT: This sounds like I'm trolling but if you edit out the redundancies and mises links this is pretty much jrod's exact response to any argument thus far, in the rare situations he actually does respond instead of loving off for weeks and making GBS threads out an unrelated wall of text upon his return.

Wolfsheim fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Dec 19, 2014

# ¿ Dec 19, 2014 05:54

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

jrodefeld posted:

Let us suppose that a libertarian society were to be tried as a social experiment on a relatively large scale and, after twenty or thirty years, it was found that the poor and needy are NOT worse off than in social welfare States. Let us stipulate that society as a whole is more prosperous, lifespans are higher and all the social indicators reflect well of the libertarian society even to the poorest of the citizens. Or we could even stipulate that the poor and needy are only slightly better off than in your model social democracy.

What level of libertarian experiment would be sufficient for you to concede that such a society could be a success?

This is the core problem. You only have what-if scenarios, and they're never supported by actual evidence. You only speak of solutions in the most vague, general terms, there's never any real data and anytime you're given data that essentially shows "yeah, here's where they tried this whole no regulations, no taxes thing and the rich got richer and the poor got poorer" you immediately dismiss it as not being a real example of a free market.

The thing is. I would love for you to be right, and I think the other posters here would too. I would love it if unfettered capitalism not only allowed me to continue living a life of hedonistic indulgence but also just happened to be the most moral way to live. That would be wonderful, and as soon as you provide actual evidence that it is possible and not just "hey, maybe let's try it and see if it works" I will personally reconsider my stance. Unfortunately, thus far all you've done is call taxes 'violence', discuss how empirical evidence isn't as important as your gut-feelings, and dodge anything approaching a hard question (the inelasticity of healthcare, the long-term legal issues with pollution, the inherent issues in making all law enforcement privatized, etc).

# ¿ Dec 23, 2014 21:15

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

This thread has ruined me. I was reading some random article about a non-scandal involving Rand Paul's webmaster who is a late-twenties "self-described anarcho-capitalist" and immediately laughed out loud. After pages upon pages of jrod ignoring empirical evidence and misunderstanding the basic definitions of words like 'violence' and 'coercion' just seeing the word 'an-cap' a punchline to me. I'm still not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2015 21:30

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

jrodefeld posted:

It is clear to me that people who think of free market capitalism as a sort of neo-feudalism are very confused and misguided. The businessman does not "rule" over us but rather must serve us as a producer. There is no similarity between an oppressive ruler of a State that gets its funding from coercive taxation and wields a monopoly on the use of force in a given geographical area, and a market entrepreneur whose great wealth is predicated only on the degree to which he serves consumers. Great gains of wealth are almost always transitory. People have a very productive few years, earn a lot of money in a short period and then fall down to middle class once more. The great wealth accumulated by the most shrewd of businessmen are usually frittered away by an idle progeny who lack the entrepreneurial skills of their parent(s).

You heard it here first; a wealthy individual who owns the majority of the businesses in a given area, including the privately-funded police and court system, is nothing like a feudal king. No one would ever be coerced against opposing him for any reason, because everyone in the town will just move away if he does anything bad.

No, I haven't heard of company towns. Why do you ask?

Wolfsheim fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Jan 23, 2015

# ¿ Jan 23, 2015 07:38

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

The owner of the steel mill that employs half the town is polluting on my land, but for some reason the privately-owned court system ruled in his favor! I would work for his competitors, but all of their businesses were either bought out by him or burned down in unrelated incidents (the privately-funded police investigated and found no evidence of arson, thankfully). I guess I'll just move my family to the next town fifty miles over and write a bad review of him online :shrug:

# ¿ Jan 23, 2015 08:06

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

QuarkJets posted:

Hah, you really do have an extremely naive view of the world, and you have almost no understanding of history at all. Oh man, if only you would branch out to non-libertarian authors and start reading about what the world is really like. You have so, so much to learn.

I totally missed this last bit. Wow. Add "actual wealth disparity" to the long list of things jrode knows nothing about.

I don't know, something tells me that the people who've inherited 4/5th of the wealth in the country are safe from pissing it all away on sports cars and caviar, regardless of whether or not they lack the entrepreneurial spirit of their parents.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2015 09:37

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

jrodefeld posted:

I've answered this question many times but I'll do so again. A crony capitalist is someone who uses the political means, either entirely or partially, to acquire wealth and market share. They use the State and the law to create an artificial advantage for themselves such that consumers have less influence on their success or failure.

A market entrepreneur is someone who starts a business, risks their own capital and is dependent on consumer demand and preference for their profits or losses. Their economic associations with both workers and customers are voluntary and not coercive.

Why would any capitalist, crony or otherwise, not use any available advantage? Isn't the end-goal of your philosophy to create wealth for yourself? If they're already willing to lobby the State to operate in their favor, why would they play by the rules when it's gone? Is your entire worldview predicated upon the honor system?

# ¿ Jan 23, 2015 10:04

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

jrodefeld posted:

Have you ever actually listened to any libertarian commentary?! Prison reform and drug reform are two of the absolute highest priorities. You can't hardly get a libertarian to shut up about those subjects. In fact, to me, those two issues are FAR more important to fix as a priority than food stamps or welfare benefits.

Go listen to the Scott Horton Show or read some commentary by Will Grigg. If you actually expose yourself to libertarian commentary you would see how seriously we take those issues, because you clearly have no loving idea what you are talking about.

It's good to know that while you ultimately believe the starving poor should be subject to the whims and capabilities of local charity, you also totally care about legalizing weed first.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2015 10:16

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

*starts an organization that caters to and promotes white supremacists*

He never literally said "I am a racist, specifically against black people." so I guess we can never know how Hoppe really felt :downs:

You're such a disingenuous piece of poo poo jrode

# ¿ Jan 23, 2015 10:27

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Baronjutter posted:

Here's a hint. When libertarians rant on and on about "personal liberty" they aren't thinking about everyone's liberty, in their hearts they are only thinking of their own personal liberty. They want the freedom to scam, blackmail, bribe, and cheat, and everyone else to have the freedom to be scammed, blacmailed, bribed, and cheated without a state to get in the way of these consensual agreement between informed rational adults.

Man, how fast would those payday loan businesses become as prolific as Starbucks in Libertopia? Talk about your booming industries.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2015 18:45

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

jrodefeld posted:

I don't give a gently caress about "income inequality" in the abstract. What concerns me is whether someone earned their wealth through voluntary trade on the market or through coercion. The implication of the income inequality argument is that there is some ideal equality of material possessions that is just and desirable and they way to get there from here is to use coercive means to take property from those who have more and give it to those who have less.

For a libertarian, it is correct and proper to take property from someone and give it to another if and only if that property was stolen and the recipient of that redistributed property is the rightful owner.

Have you heard of Pareto's Law? This was discovered by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. He did exhaustive studies of all the other European countries and found roughly the same thing. This is known as the 80/20 rule. Throughout recorded history the distribution of wealth among a society never seems to deviate much from this principle. And this is regardless of what sort of political and economic systems are in place.

But is such an unequal distribution of wealth just and fair? Pareto also found that for any given population of people, 20% contribute 80% of the productivity and output of the group. If people contribute more output than others, any rational concept of justice implies that they deserve a larger portion of the resultant wealth than those who contribute less.

Rothbard wrote that egalitarianism is a revolt against nature. People ARE unequal and there is nothing explicitly wrong with that. As I have said, it is HOW a person attains his wealth that is the critical point, not what the income "distribution" happens to be. If a person uses coercion and theft to attain wealth, then I agree that they don't deserve it and should be punished and their wealth confiscated and redistributed to those whom they stole from.

But the fact remains that the Pareto Distribution of wealth is almost like an iron law of nature, one that is observed in nearly every society even studied. No society has ever existed where there was anything close to total equality of income.

If 20% of a population are far more productive than 80%, it is natural that they will accumulate more wealth than the others. But in a market economy this extra productivity will uplift the group as a whole. The pie itself will grow and even the most idle and lazy among the population will reap the benefits to the total output and increased living standards that come from Capital accumulation and industrial progress.

You're wrong, but I'm afraid you've also missed the point. I wasn't specifically talking about the injustice of wealth inequality here, I was talking about how the wealthy literally own so much that your belief that the majority of wealth is transitory is transparently false just by looking at the numbers. If you're born a multimillionaire, you're almost certainly not going to lose it anytime soon because the system was designed to allow you to continue easily hoarding wealth. You don't have to be the brilliant inventor your grandfather was when you own half the country and all the laws are on your side.

CommieGIR posted:

He hangs out and HOSTS white supremacists. You dense mutherfucker.

Look, he would've been just as happy to associate with and promote Black Panthers in the interests of open debate, it's just a coincidence that he didn't invite any and that only white supremacists seem to feature heavily in events he sponsors. It's also a coincidence that he only either discusses his philosophy in the abstract or applies it to keeping out undesirable minorities.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2015 21:04

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

A man chooses to live and work in the United States and pays taxes - violent coercion

A man signs a contract agreeing to work seven days a week for $3/hr in a smoky factory without ventilation to avoid starvation in Libertopia - a voluntary transaction and a good example of the free market working correctly

Wolfsheim fucked around with this message at 11:21 on Jan 25, 2015

# ¿ Jan 25, 2015 11:18

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Caros et al your attempts to debate jrode on healthcare are admirable but we've all been in this circular argument before; if he hasn't completely hosed off again and actually responds to you, he's going to 'forget' that he was arguing how much lower prices would be in a free market and say that it doesn't matter that healthcare is much cheaper and more readily available in countries with UHC because the point he was actually trying to make is that it's immoral either way because it was paid for by theft.

Aside from this possible acknowledgment, he will also continue believing and arguing that less government involvement means cheaper and higher quality healthcare despite all evidence, of course.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2015 00:16

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Okay, I loving lost it when he said that Ron Paul was edged out of the Republican primary for having moral convictions that were just too pure.

This is where the mask comes off and he reveals himself to be pulling the longest troll in SA's history, right?

# ¿ Jan 28, 2015 00:03

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Jerry Manderbilt posted:

Google "jrodefeld posted". He's been doing this across multiple sites (some of which have banned him) since 2010.

I'd rather believe he's sincerely sheltered and naive, because the alternative is much more depressing to me.

I don't know, the idea that he's doubled over with laughter as he posts about how neo-confederates shouldn't be assumed to be racist is much less depressing to me than him typing the same thing in complete earnest.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2015 00:28

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

CommieGIR posted:

Considering the people that want to secede are the same people that long for a return to the 'Good Ol' Days'

Yeah, its overwhelmingly racists and white supremacists. That include Ron Paul, who LOVES speaking at Neo-Confederate meetings.

What's great about this is how poorly Ron Paul fits into jrode's black and white worldview. I mean, let's think about this, keeping in mind he specifically said Paul was just too moral to survive a GOP primary.

At worst, Ron Paul associates with neo-Confederates so frequently because he believes in their incredibly racist cause.

At best, he associates with neo-Confederates because he'll do absolutely anything to get ahead in politics, up to and including courting to white supremacy groups despite not personally holding similar beliefs.

So he's either completely morally bankrupt or just doesn't see a return to Jim Crow as actually being immoral (because he's a racist piece of poo poo). Which is it, jrode? :allears:

# ¿ Jan 28, 2015 02:16

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

CommieGIR posted:

Well, you see, the legal right to discriminate will keep the undesirable _{blacks, jews, and Catholics} out! Problems solved!

Don't forget the poor!

This could just as easily apply to a group of Hindus wanting to keep Christians out, though! I mean, it didn't and literally any specific example I could find is about white people wanting minorities to be expelled from their communities, but in theory it could!

# ¿ Jan 28, 2015 04:47

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Who What Now posted:

This is from a little while back, and a few people already commented on this it I want to go a little deeper. You seem to be laboring under the assumption that rights are inherent and fundamental, that you get them simply by dint of existing. But you don't. You and every other human being on earth only have rights because society, and more specifically governments, say that you do. Society as a whole agrees which exact rights you have and then tasks the government with protecting, enforcing, adjudicating those rights. And you're absolutely correct that those rights can be taken away at any time because of this.

In a completely anarchistic world you have no rights at all. You don't have a right to property, because anyone can just shoot you in the face and take all your poo poo with no repercussions. You don't even have a right to self-ownership because someone bigger and stronger than you could come up and beat the poo poo out of you and enslave you and you couldn't do poo poo about it. Rights aren't magical, they won't protect you in those situations no matter how much you assert that they will. You might have the moral high ground but that'll be of little comfort when you're robbed, enslaved, or dead. Might makes right, and those with the most power decide who has what rights. It's been like that since the dawn of time.

Now I know that you believe that your world would have DROs to protect your rights for you, but your rights are no more secure in this system and in fact would be ten times more tenuous than they are in what you believe to be our state led hellhole. How can you claim to have inviolable rights when simply missing a single payment with your DRO can strip them all away from you? Or being dropped because you become too expensive of a liability? Or hell, dropped for no reason at all.

Furthermore when your rights are directly tied to how much you're willing to pay to have them protected all you're doing is creating a system where only the rich have any rights at all, or at best where the rich can violate the rights of the poor with impunity. People who can only afford 10 copper pieces a month for Cut-Throat DRO aren't going to be winning any cases against people in the Triple-Star-Platinum plans from Blue Blood DRO. Let me reiterate to be clear: in your world rights and justice aren't inherent, they simply bought. Our current system is riddled with issues, no argument here, but how the hell can you pretend that yours is superior?

I'm starting to think that the reason jrode breezes past any questions of the practical applications of an-cap but gets really, really fixated on accusations of racism is because he doesn't really care about practicality. The moral high ground is the only thing that matters. It doesn't matter that life would be objectively worse for the majority of the population almost immediately, because morally it would be a better society. Notice he has no real answer for how a stateless society would handle a dispute between DROs that couldn't be resolved peacefully. It doesn't matter and he doesn't care, because no taxes were paid at any point and that's the important thing.

Accusations of racism, however, attack that moral high ground, which is why it riles him up so much. If every other prominent figure of the movement he's spent the last several years believing in is racist that might suggest that racism informs their philosophy. But because libertarianism is perfect that cannot be true, so it's all just race-baiting progressives and a string of coincidental ties to neo-Confederate groups that are in no way relevant.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2015 23:48

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Guys I'm just here to talk about issues and policy

*ignores several pages of questions about healthcare, argumentation ethics, the NAP and DROs yet zeroes in on every racism accusation like a hawk*

gently caress off jrode, you couldn't be more transparent about your unwillingness to actually debate anything if you tried. Half your posts in this thread are you acting offended about racism or making GBS threads out mises links.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2015 05:04

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

How could I possibly take the time to explain how privately-funded mercenary groups being the highest possible authority will improve society when I know that someone is besmirching the name of the honorable Dr. Ronald Ernest Paul*?

^{^{*by listing facts about him}}

# ¿ Jan 29, 2015 05:16

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Caros posted:

Why yes, that is a Confederate Soldier looking smug on the cover.

Holy poo poo, those bullet points :psyduck:

# ¿ Jan 29, 2015 06:15

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Caros posted:

Yeah, wish I had a bigger photo version so people could read it in all of its glory.

How viciously racist are the Native American parts of that book, do you think? On a scale of basic "we had a mutual agreement until they broke their promises, shame on them" revisionism to full-on Ayn Rand "those savage mudbloods deserved to be genocided for being too stupid to industrialize"?

# ¿ Jan 29, 2015 06:22

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

1000101 posted:

If your philosophy and world view can't take a pounding from anonymous internet strangers how the gently caress do you expect the world to run on it?

He doesn't, really.

Libertarians are perfectly content to enjoy the material comfort and security the state provides knowing that it will never really go away, so they'll always have something to blame this or that on without ever actually acting on their beliefs.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2015 09:49

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Ron Paul Atreides posted:

Did he ever respond to the reparations discussion after it got pointed out that 9/10ths of North America was explicitly stolen from the Natives through aggression, because I remember him being all shifty about how 'you can't really know which plantation should belong to which black family so I guess we won't bother addressing it at all'

It is pretty telling that a libertarian would advocate for the complete eradication of the government (causing untold massive financial and social upheaval) for no better reason than arguable moral grounds, but you can point to literal atrocities committed against entire groups of people and suddenly figuring out who got hosed the worst is just too much work :shrug:

# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 02:26

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

VitalSigns posted:

Yeah I pointed that out before, because whenever jrod is told to leave America if he doesn't like democracy, we get "oh would you tell a business getting shaken down by the mafia that it's actually fine because they can just move? Of course not, that's grossly immoral, I have a right to stay here and live my life without being aggressed" but when it's pointed out that the federal government is only barely restraining Texas and Ohio and Alabama from gaybashing and disenfranchising minorities suddenly "oh well that's not a problem because they should just move away".

The only moral exile is MY...well, you get the idea.

Honestly at this point it's not even really jrode arguing about how his ideas would be beneficial to society, it's literally just "if every country began to decentralize at once we would live in a wonderful Candyland utopia :angel:

" magical thinking. Which isn't surprising at all, really, as I pointed out a few pages back that he has very little interest in how his ideas would actually be implemented, and wistfully talking about how great it would be if every state abolished itself at once is the logical end-point of that.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2015 00:11

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Antares posted:

All of libertarian thinking ("thinking") fits neatly in a Venn diagram of "magical thinking" and "secret knowledge."

Right, but it's not even at the level of "if we just keep reducing taxes and decentralizing the state slowly Libertopia will form" anymore, it's "all governments globally need to both immediately decentralize and agree not to attack any other Libertopias or it's just not fair." It's gone from unlikely to literally impossible, and then even if you're a libertarian true believer what's the point? We're more likely to invent the replicators from Star Trek and move into a post-scarcity socialist utopia before every country on earth simultaneously agrees to the NAP.

On a related note, how ironic is it that every Libertopian scenario relies on society collectively agreeing to abide by certain laws and moral imperatives :v:

# ¿ Feb 6, 2015 02:15

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Since I never responded to the question before, I will admit that I am not a Marxist, but for some reason I still consider privatizing the police and eliminating all food and drug regulations bad ideas :iiam:

# ¿ Feb 6, 2015 04:56

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 21, 2024 14:58

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Muscle Tracer posted:

Yeah 1 million is whatever but i think you'll find if RON PAUL END THE FED we would have added one BILLION jobs

This is actually true though, when you consider the fact that after the tyranny of the minimum wage is abolished the working poor will likely take on three or four jobs each, all paying around $2/hr, just to avoid starvation.

EDIT: Caros :argh:

Wolfsheim fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Feb 6, 2015

# ¿ Feb 6, 2015 20:59

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

«‹›4 »