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!

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Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Personally I think the watermelon should be topping. :mmmhmm:

# ¿ Nov 20, 2016 06:10

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 13:32

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

JustJeff88 posted:

Among so many, here is a question that I've been wondering about for a long time... why is the US in so much debt? The country is not even in the top 20 in the world in social/"entitlement" spending and has gently caress all infrastructure apart from roads, by which I mean public transport infrastructure, so I honestly do not understand why the country moreso than basically any other is so indebted. I always want to slap someone with their own severed arm when they say "The US can't afford it" when far poorer countries manage to have thing X, Y or Z, and given the fact that the US is the wealthiest nation in the world I have no idea how it's in so much debt despite spending gently caress all on anything useful.

The other part of 'the US can't afford it' is that a lot of programs are vastly more expensive to run here due to a combination of our absurd physical size and the inefficiencies of state/federal jurisdiction slapfights.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2016 02:37

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Captain_Maclaine posted:

Yes. The supposed point is that ~~Jesus is a dick who demands his arbitrary uses of power be retroactive justified regardless of what he does~~ some things are so important you can't just wait for them to come into season, but like many biblical metaphors it's confusing and mangled to the point of near incoherence.

Being translated through several languages as oral history before being written down and translated several more times over two thousand years will do this. It's why I can't understand anyone claiming the literal wording of the Bible to justify anything.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2016 21:14

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

I have it on good authority that only Correct Wizards are properly libertarian, but loyalty to them will save you from communist mind control.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2017 01:51

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Avenging_Mikon posted:

"More people should be miserable, and working poo poo, rather than move nearly 1 million people to a good situation, and half a million to a slightly worse position." Because be loving honest, people below the poverty level aren't much less hosed than the unemployed.

Generally they're more hosed, as their income counts directly against any benefits they would receive in most states, and they are stuck in one or more dead end jobs rather than anything with a path to advancement.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 08:29

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Babylon Astronaut posted:

Rothbard would have ~~sold~~ rented her instead.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2017 06:29

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Why did you just post two pages of lovely star wars fanfic.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2017 18:08

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Avenging_Mikon posted:

Chill, it's not like this thread moves quickly, and Yud is at least libertarian adjacent.

The only thing Yud is adjacent to is his own rear end in a top hat.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2017 08:59

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

mojo1701a posted:

Is she the one that started vampires as homoerotic? I've never seen it before then, based on the amount of times that they're shown as trying to chow down on a young maiden and make her his eternal bride/slave. The fact that they're usually effeminate or whatever is probably a holdover from the stereotype of the frilly nobleman who is physically weak and pale from not having to work outdoors.

No. Carmilla, the very first vampire novel back in the 1870's was about a lesbian vampire.

it's been a thing since the start.

GunnerJ posted:

It's not so much that she stated anything like that, but iirc the major vampire protagonists in her books are dudes and all tend to have really loving strong erotic subtexts to their interactions. So it was homoerotic by default?

There are other kinds of threatening sexuality to be sure. Like my knowledge of the whole Twilight thing is second hand but its vampirism, as it confronts the main character, seems to be a metaphor for anxiety about losing one's virginity? (eta: Also I'm pretty sure Edward acts like a mega creeplord stalker/super possessive boyfriend so there's that.)

Supposedly Edward acts like the Ideal Mormon Boyfriend.

That idea kinda creeps me out.

Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Mar 14, 2017

# ¿ Mar 14, 2017 20:34

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

NikkolasKing posted:

I thought Iron Man was a pretty standard typically authoritarian sleezebag. That's what both Civil Wars were about.

SHIELD is pretty loving evil, too.

Both Civil Wars were about the writers ham-handedly trying to turn the MU into the post-911 US, and forgetting that people read their poo poo for escapism.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2017 03:59

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Once again we run into the inability of the Libertarian mind to grasp the the nature and implications of the state monopoly on force.

# ¿ Jul 12, 2017 09:29

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Goon Danton posted:

A lot of people associate "anarchist" with century-old terrorists and/or the black bloc, so it's a loaded term. Not that "libertarian" isn't loaded either, but

Also, they aren't anarchists. They just want the state to be corporate.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2017 10:17

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

TLM3101 posted:

And now, in "why libertarianism will not work" example 10037898^2:

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Rich-SF-residents-get-a-shock-Someone-bought-11738236.php

It's literally that goddamn mock-fic that comes up every so often.

Thankfully we aren't a Libertopia., so those street owners have chosen poorly. All they've really got ownership of is the common spaces that came with the property, as the road itself being the only way into a decades old neighborhood means that the residents will effectively be granted easements to traverse it despite the ownership change.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2017 19:56

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

In a startling reminder that if you scratch a Libertarian you find a pedophile, we have this wonderful human being.

quote:

Nathan Larson, a 37-year-old accountant from Charlottesville, Virginia, is running for Congress as an independent candidate in his native state. He is also a pedophile, as he admitted to HuffPost on Thursday, who has bragged in website posts about raping his late ex-wife.

In a phone call, Larson confirmed that he created the now-defunct websites suiped.org and incelocalypse.today ― chat rooms that served as gathering places for pedophiles and violence-minded misogynists like himself. HuffPost contacted Larson after confirming that his campaign website shared an IP address with these forums, among others. His sites were terminated by their domain host on Tuesday.

quote:

According to Larson�s campaign manifesto, his platform as a �quasi-neoreactionary libertarian� candidate includes protecting gun ownership rights, establishing free trade and protecting �benevolent white supremacy,� as well as legalizing incestuous marriage and child pornography.

In the manifesto, Larson called Nazi leader Adolf Hitler a �white supremacist hero.� He urged Congress to repeal the Violence Against Women Act, adding, �We need to switch to a system that classifies women as property, initially of their fathers and later of their husbands.� He also showed sympathy for men who identify as involuntary celibates, or incels, suggesting it is unfair that they �are forced to pay taxes for schools, welfare, and other support for other men�s children.�

From that Manifesto:

quote:

Boylovers claim in "The Parable of the Automobile" that man-boy sex is only harmful because society prohibits it. This is a hypothesis that perhaps should be tested in one of our laboratories of democracy.
The issues of pedophilia and adult-child sex may or may not be very important in and of themselves, but once stance on those issues is symbolic of one's approach toward difficult issues in general, where there is a mainstream narrative that can't be challenged without going outside the Overton window. A lot of people probably would say that there should be no Overton window, and that we should approach all issues with an open mind, until someone asks whether they would take that open-mindedness so far as to look at the idea of sex with children with the same kind of logical and evidence-based approach that, say, atheists pride themselves on using when they're considering the likelihood that the Christian God exists. Maybe it's no coincidence, then, that Richard Dawkins ended up being the one who got in trouble for saying not all those who sexually touch children do lasting harm. It's not just that he lacks the Christian moral compass; he may also look at issues with a skeptical mind even when the dogma being presented is secular.
It's also symbolic of one's willingness to say that maybe some transvaluation has taken place, with those who are claiming to be victims actually being the oppressors. If one can accept that Kylie Freeman has behaved badly toward Kenneth Freeman and other child pornography offenders, then maybe one can also accept that Jews have victimized some of those whom they have extorted for Holocaust reparations. As the feminists inform us, adult-child sex is a feminist issue, so our views on that topic may reflect our views on feminism as a whole. The most radical patriarchists will tend to favor letting men have sex with the little girls they own. What I have in common with most of society, including my political opponents, is that I consider these issues a litmus test.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2018 04:53

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

RealTalk posted:

I clicked on that link and I regret that I did. Jesus Christ that guy's a psychopath.

But let's not play this game where you find the most degenerate person imaginable and then insinuate that they are reflective of an entire political movement.

Really, this guy is "a startling reminder that if you scratch a Libertarian you find a pedophile"?

Try this one on for size:

Anthony Weiner is a startling reminder that if you scratch a Democrat you find a pedophile.

I'd never make this argument because I don't think Weiner's sex addiction problem, including sexting with a 15 year old girl, had anything whatsoever to do with the Democratic Party or it's platform. It's equally disingenuous to use this guy to implicate libertarianism as a philosophy.

I didn't even go looking, that was front page news this morning. I mean, if you want me to go looking, I can.

I mean, it's not like the vice-chair of the LNC got called out over it this spring, or that this has been an ongoing theme in the party.

I'm certainly not going to assume all Libertarians are kiddie-fiddlers, but there are provably a number among them who advocate for the removal of the age of consent as a platform piece with the goal of legalizing sexual relationships between adults and children.

Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Jun 2, 2018

# ¿ Jun 2, 2018 06:08

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Jazerus posted:

my point was that it's just one more way that DROs are not actually an untested type of societal organization; they're just feudalism in a suit.

The important part to the Libertarians is that the suit matches theirs. Feudalism is the explicit end-state of their desired society.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2018 23:55

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

JustJeff88 posted:

Another one of my favourite libertarian lines is how taxation is theft. I find this hilarious for two reasons: Firstly, your employer steals more from you than the government ever will, they just aren't polite enough to write it down for you or give you anything in return for taking from your labour. Also, if you don't like the tax in a country, YOU CAN LEAVE. Unless you are a felon/tax evader, you can pack up your poo poo, renounce your citizenship (which was given to you for free) and gently caress off somewhere else. Rich people have been hiding their ill-gotten gains in tax shelters for years, and we know that they are all great!

Here's what else is fun... if you don't make any money, you don't have to pay any taxes and the government will steal send police to protect you, fireman to put out your blazing house, educate your children and, in countries that aren't poo poo, look after your health. You can be born in a country, grow up to be the age of adulthood without ever having had a job and never having paid tuppence in tax and gently caress off somewhere else... and they won't ask a thin dime of you. I know that a libertard would say that it's very hard to emigrate and that the government of, let's choose a somewhat less dumb country, Canada will aggress upon you if you try to live there without permission. I, of course, would respond that they have invested their time and labour in the land and you can't just use it without their say-so.

My point is, despite making fun of the incredibly stupid for my own giggles, is that you cannot convince people of anything if they disagree with you on principle. It doesn't matter if it's a fiscal issue or a social issue, a secular issue or a religious issue.... if people dislike something because it suspends their sensibilities, you can't win because any attempt to reason with them will just make them dig their heels in harder. This isn't a conservative/liberal thing or a capitalist/communist thing; when someone holds an idea up as sacred, nothing is going to shift it apart from a blow to the head. This may be interpreted in either the metaphoric or literal sense.

Yeah, the hard part that stops most of the lolbertarian whiners is that nobody else wants them either. They could renounce their citizenship in the US... but to a man, none of them are rich enough for the other western states to accept them despite their utter lack of desirable credentials.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2018 05:14

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

JustJeff88 posted:

I actually understand in part the Just World Fallacy, because without it humans lose all sense of hope, which is the basis for what pathetic morality people still have. Nevertheless, it's poison to a society because it makes victims out of the victimised and casts the exploited (the poor) as the victims while turning the real leeches in society (entrepreneurs) into heroes. A lot of countries are bad about this, but it's one of the things I hate... especially about the US where it's the worst. A combination of religious ideals and "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" is a horrible cocktail, and if there is a culture that despises the poor and worships celebrities and the wealthy even more than the USA, I don't want to see it.

I think that people discount the role that Christianity in the west has played in the vilification of the underclass, though this hatred of the oppressed seems to be much stronger among Protestants than Catholics in my experience. I was raised both Protestant by my mother's family and Jewish by my father's; I was both baptised and underwent a brit milah (bris) as well as having a bar mitzvah. Believe it or not, I actually had a pretty positive experience with Christianity as I was exposed to it. There were no "fire and brimstone" speeches where you were threatened with hell for every supposed fault, nobody told me to set fire to homosexuals and it was mostly about being nice to people, not stealing and learning lessons from Jesus. My Jewish grandfather even told me that while he didn't believe in the divinity of Jesus, he always said that he was a mensch and a pretty good role model in some ways. Nevertheless, as I grew older I could no longer reconcile the Prosperity Gospel myth that is inherent to Christianity and I drifted away from it. I don't know if there are any other Jews in this thread (possibly WrenP?), but Judaism has always had this underpinning of "Life sucks, make the best of it" that I can accept. It's most likely a result of all of the horrible things that have been done to the Jewish people over the centuries for no reason while Christians have almost always been the oppressors, but it's a culture that clearly recognizes that one can do everything "right" in life and still get hosed over hard. Capitalist disillusionment and personal struggle made me realise that if there even is a god then he either doesn't care, can't get involved or chooses not to, so there's no point in assuming that one reaps what one sows.

loving Calvinism, man. The concept that poverty is inevitably the result of moral deficiency comes straight from Calvin's obsession with predestination. It's heavily ingrained in many of the mainline protestant faiths, and especially embraced by the same evangelicals who also lean towards prosperity gospel in the US. The Catholics never really bought into it.

Horseshoe theory posted:

Even if this is true, the fact of the matter is that the usurious interest rates is the compensation for the risk of default, so unless the lenders don't want to charge interest (or maybe only have a TIPS-style note that charges interest to cover inflation), I don't feel bad at all for them.

Well, yeah, but if they can get both the usury -and- inability to discharge the debt, why wouldn't they lobby for that? It's like free profit!

Babylon Astronaut posted:

Ok. All your property becomes part of the bankruptcy estate, and your non-exempt assets are sold to pay your creditors.

You really think people in law school have no collectibles, cars with equity, investments, musical instruments, or drat near anything that can be sold for money? OK. No, that totally sounds like a process people would go through to save a couple thousand dollars, and demolish their credit and financial standing.

If you're a new college graduate, say one from a wealthy family (or poor one) who doesn't actually own anything yet, what do you imagine the drawback is? 'Your credit will be ruined for seven years!' doesn't matter if you can borrow from family or inherit, or are from a background where your parents are just as strapped as you are so being unable to borrow large sums of money is called 'business as usual'.

Credit checks as a condition of employment are a post-2000 thing.

Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Jun 26, 2018

# ¿ Jun 26, 2018 08:49

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Goon Danton posted:

"According to the College Board, the average cost of tuition and fees for the 2017�2018 school year was $34,740 at private colleges, $9,970 for state residents at public colleges, and $25,620 for out-of-state residents attending public universities."

So our cheapest option is around... (does googling, math) 43 times as expensive as yours.

Remember also, that's just tuition and fees. Not room and board.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2018 19:33

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

JustJeff88 posted:

It is, and it's something that nobody ever talks about, conveniently. The Cold War was two superpowers being equally large dicks for decades; there was no "good guy" there like in WW2. Massively harming weaker countries to fulfill profit motives is at the heart of global capitalism, but the US has done everything they can to make life miserable for every former Soviet bloc country seemingly out of spite. Cuba is no threat to the US economically, militarily or diplomatically, but the US has loved to be horrid to it for decades out of what I can only call ideological reasons. Kudos to Cuba for managing to do fairly well despite all of that, and thanks for all of the fine baseballers.

I'm not sure who you're preaching to, because I'm pretty certain the thread is in agreement that McCarthyism is bad?

# ¿ Jul 12, 2018 11:41

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Goon Danton posted:

Crime goes up when you make more things crimes

Also when you knowingly carve out an exception to the abolition of all slavery for prisoners.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2019 09:37

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

VitalSigns posted:

No they don't, Ayn Rand invented Objectivism and she believed force was both necessary and moral to exterminate the Native Americans because they were an inferior race who weren't even strip mining the land they lived on

E: who is a particularly "good" Libertarian, because every last one of their intellectual leaders supported apartheid (and the ones that are still alive still do)

Rand also died on welfare from cancer brought about by her years of freely choosing to smoke. She was in no way above hypocrisy.

# ¿ May 28, 2019 09:36

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Panfilo posted:

Also I've mentioned this before but Libertarians almost always walk back some of the more egregious contradictions when pressed. For instance, Redheaded Libertarian distinguishes herself by considering herself to be a "constitutional libertarian" which suggests a flavor of libertarianism she assumes is derived from the framers of the constitution. While some of these types will have some law or history education under their belt, those of the ginger variety dispense with such arbitrary backgrounds. L

I've found it useful when discussing with friends who fell down that hole to ask if the people they've been listening to are against the state, or just upset that they're not the ones best positioned to exploit it.

They have a hard time rebutting that thought when their policy planks can generally be followed with 'and who, precisely, enforces that contract?' as a rebuttal, because invariably they treat contract law as sacrosanct despite it relying entirely on the state monopoly on force.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2023 07:12

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Panfilo posted:

You're on to something with the whole wanting to be the ones best positioned to exploit it, because I mean cmon why would they project like this otherwise?

I'll be honest, what most of the American libertarians I've talked to have been really into is neo-feudalism. They want regulation gone so capitalism can produce winners who pile up material wealth until they are effectively their own governments, and we lapse back into warlords enforcing their own laws and debt slavery that becomes chattel slavery.

VitalSigns posted:

Oh ok.

I tried to read it to see why it's bad but aaaaa so boring.

I can definitely see hiding eugenics in that excruciating style.

I only read a little bit of the FAQ and now I'm surprised it wasn't dense or annoying to read (well at least as far in as I got anyway), maybe he got more pretentious over time.

Exposure to Yudkowsky will do that. The man is Dunning-Kruger personified, with a belief that if he just dresses up his language enough people will accept his bullshit assertions as fact.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2023 22:58

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Gotta remember, the whole of American libertarian thought revolves around property law being sacrosanct, and cops are the primary enforcers of that, so of course they use boot polish for lipstick.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2023 01:57

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

VitalSigns posted:

There are no Libertarians in uncertified unregulated submersibles trapped at the bottom of the ocean

https://twitter.com/evefairbanks/status/1671503279333810177

What exactly do they expect the US to be responsible for? They're deep in international waters and intentionally flagged to ensure they could use their underwater death trap without certification.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2023 00:42

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

VitalSigns posted:

Yeah sure but PR rear end covering is also behaving like humans and I definitely think there's some of that going on here.

And not everyone demands impossible heroics in a crisis either. No one has ever been rescued at these depths before and no craft exists that could pull this sub up and thanks to cost cutting design there's no way to get these people out even if they did find the sub. You can find interviews with widows of climbers who died on Everest where they understand a rescue would have been impossible and dangerous and they're like "my husband understood the risks and wouldn't have wanted anyone to die trying to rescue him"

I want to also note these were the first civilian deepwater submarine deaths. Ever. James Cameron himself got on CNN to talk about how this is explicitly the result of not following well-developed best practices and certification to operate in the most lethal marine environment on the planet.

Panfilo posted:

Libertarian Tim Pool recently had a debate with Emma Vigeland (of the Majority Report)
Tim runs the podcast that the Redheaded Libertarian is on, and their rhetoric is similar aside from a lack of stuck up WASP energy. It gave some insight into the pretzel logic they have about liberty and government.

Emma took the preemptive stance by saying she is anti censorship. This is clever because it gets ahead of libertarian gotchas like claiming censorship for getting deplatformed over pushing their reactionary woo. But then Tim throws another gotcha question in response-if censorship is bad should kids be allowed to look at pornography in school? He had the book 'gender queer' in his hands and reminded listeners his video would be blocked on YouTube if he showed the contents because it would violate the terms of service-so why let kids see something that even YouTube considers inappropriate? From this I surmise a Libertarian concept of ethics and morality is like a twisty water slide that loops and doubles back on itself, forming a convoluted path they consider good governance I suppose.

The second thing I observed was the libertarian obsession with trans youth. Tim pops out all the anti trans arguments-supposedly trans people desist 95% of the time so why are we pushing all these puberty blockers and hormones? Of course his citation had been debunked on Twitter months ago but frustratingly Emma didn't call him out on the study itself nor even question it, which lets him use it as a springboard for all his other anti trans arguments in the discussion. He seems to equivocate gender affirming care with female circumcision-something he insists was happening in Dearborn Michigan. We could argue that logically a Libertarian should morally support transitioning, after all the only true minority is the individual, and there are no such things as 'groups' or 'races', only individuals. But here he argues it is harmful for the same reason it is harmful to perform female genital mutilation-regardless of the fact that the individual consents, the family consents, and the doctor consents it is "immoral". If you get into the weeds of ethics and morality he'll loop it back to vaccine mandates-why should it be OK for the government to inject the "clot shot" but not regulate gender affirming care?

I know debates are pointless and the sartre quote and blah blah blah but it is fascinating how behind a wall of what they consider Cold Hard Logic they have a moral core of pop tart jelly, capricious and wildly inconsistent.

The real deal here is that Pim Tool has no strongly held beliefs other than painfully smug assurance that he is always correct.

This is a guy who in the same breath claimed to be Irish-American and forgot the Troubles happened.

Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 10:00 on Jun 24, 2023

# ¿ Jun 24, 2023 09:58

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

A lot of his popularity, from what I've seen, comes from him starting out claiming he was a leftist who went far right after he made his name filming the Occupy protests.

# ¿ Jun 25, 2023 05:05

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

I AM GRANDO posted:

Wait, is she not pro-slavery? What kind of libertarian is she?

Libertarians don't call it slavery, they call it contract work. Because slavery implies responsibility for housing/feeding/maintaining your victims, as opposed to just grinding the work out of them via unfair contract terms and replacing them at no cost when they die.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2023 23:20

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

KozmoNaut posted:

In the game Hardspace Shipbreaker, you work for a massive interplanetary corporation, breaking apart old spaceships for salvage and scrap. This is dangerous work, so the company creates genetic backups of their workers, to spin up a new clone if they die.

And it says very clearly in section 19-C of your contract that everything produced by LYNX assets is 100% owned by LYNX. Including your genetic backups and any clones produced.

This being a libertarian wet dream, the first thing that happens after you sign that contract is the company killing you to upload your consciousness.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2023 13:43

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

disposablewords posted:

Yeah, true. Sorry for getting drawn in on it. gently caress's sake, I need an anger outlet other than stupid assholes online. Anyway.

The UBI/AI future discussion reminds me of a dude back in college who was all in on the idea of transhumanism via genetic enhancement. He was certain that nobody would or could keep it relatively contained. That even if such enhancement was possible there wouldn't be some super-rich enhanced overclass because it would breed out into the general population. Which. Okay, he wasn't stupid, per se, but he was definitely an idealist of the "reads techno-utopian blogs" sort more than someone aware of, like... the rich. And what fuckers they demonstrably are. Or even the more practical matter of how long it'd take for genetic enhancements to spread via reproduction from an elite cohort to the world, and how that kind of opportunity could be used against people. It's just another kind of technology that wouldn't fix this, or if it did it'd be at a rate even your standard Concerned Centrist would think was a mite slow.

I hate that my taste in media growing up was cyberpunk dystopias that exaggerated the rapacious greed and amorality of the rich and turned out to be underestimating it.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2023 01:50

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Caros posted:

'There was no proof that the cop intended to kill or injure weaver'. Because apparently cops are that one batman skit where they don't understand how death works and that shooting your firearm at someone can kill or injure them.

This one drives me up a loving wall. Pointing a firearm at someone is intent to kill or injure, and the cops routinely kill people for doing so on just that justification.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2023 10:14

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

SlothfulCobra posted:

When an unarmed person gets shot by the cops, it's a horrifying unjust tragedy, when an armed person gets shot, well that's guns. That's the reason why the police are armed and triggerhappy, because the US is full of random other jerks with guns. There's plenty of news stories of kids getting shot for just having overly realistic toy guns, and you're telling me to be shocked at the cops shooting back at a teenager with a real gun who was already shooting at them? This is the natural result of living in a heavily armed society. There's not going to be any room between angry misunderstanding and shootout.

It's not good for people to get shot, but that's what happens when you're yanking around the cops at length and talking about how you're gonna shoot them if they come near. This is what threats of violence lead to. This is what proliferation of firearms leads to. It creates a more violent world. And that's the world that pro-gun libertarians want.

Gonna stop you right there and point out that 1 in 20 of all homicides in the country in 2019 were police violence. The CDC and FBI have been soundly criticized for years for how they track police killings, with a study in 2021 finding that over 40 years 1980-2019 deaths from police violence were under-reported in the National Vital Statistics System, by and estimate of over 50%. Study info here, and the authors note that it didn't capture the full scope of police violence as it only accounted for deaths, not injuries caused by police violence.

The existence of firearms (or dogs for that matter) is not license for cops to go buckwild and shoot up random people, no matter how hard they try to pretend it is and lean on passive voice in reporting and qualified immunity in the courts. Any one else legally in possession of a firearm who was 1/10th as fast to panic and start blasting as a cop would be rightly spending most of the rest of their life in jail.

Weaver was a white supremacist who allegedly committed a tax crime (creating or selling a short barreled shotgun without a tax stamp is, federally speaking, only a felony as a tax crime). He was also probably looking at a $10k fine and up to 10 years if just charged with violating the NFA, and/or up to $100k and 5 years as a felony count if they went for tax evasion in not filing the paperwork and buying the $200 tax stamps for creating and transferring the short barreled shotguns.

Note that execution is not a potential penalty for these crimes. Nor for associating with someone who has been charged with these crimes. I loving hate white supremacists, but it is generally a bad idea to let the uniformed agents of the government shoot people's loved ones, even if they are assholes.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2023 10:57

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Panfilo posted:

How do they even envision "National Divorce" even happening?
https://twitter.com/LPNational/status/1695788205826576518?t=od7np2ain8GJKivJi547UA&s=19

Galt's Gulch.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2023 10:00

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

I AM GRANDO posted:

The patent thing is weird because isn�t that part of enforcing contracts, the only thing libertarians think government should do?

The secret is that Libertarians are only in favor of contract law when it benefits them, same as any law.

I found out yesterday that apparently the libertarian response to the pandemic finally drove out their celebrity buddy Penn Jillette, because he couldn't find any reason to agree with their reaction to vaccine and mask issues.

Pantaloon Pontiff posted:

"Vagrancy" is an interesting choice of words, since it's fundamentally a statist crime in theory, and in practice even more so. I wonder how he can justify doing anything about 'vagrancy' under the non-aggression principle, is simply existing somehow initiation of force? (The actual answer is 'yes, if you're an undesirable type', but that kind of undermines the liberty).

Littering is also an interesting choice, since Libertarians are generally against taking any action against pollution. They normally oppose smoking and emissions restrictions and rules about dumping waste, so it's interesting to see that a low-level form of pollution makes his list.

Remember, in the Libertarian conception of how the world functions, there's no such thing as public property. Therefore vagrancy is the crime of existing on someone else's property, and they consider themselves within their rights to defend that property without it breaking the NAP.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2024 15:07

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Notably they also don't want to pay for a court system to adjudicate contracts, nor any enforcement arm.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2024 08:32

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Pantaloon Pontiff posted:

Libertarian stance on slavery was for me what the masks were for Penn. They claim to be opposed to use of force, in favor of money for damages, and in favor of lawsuits to right wrongs, but they don't treat slavery as abhorrent and consider people who profited from slavery having to pay damages to people who suffered from it as 'ultimate worst-case scenario' material. If you're going to name your philosophy or political affiliation after "Liberty", enslaving other people should be absolute anathema, as should letting someone keep the profits of such gross and blatant violation of the non-aggression principle.

Slavery is irreconcilable with the NAP, if you're being remotely intellectually honest. Slavery is at base using the threat of violence to force someone to obey and perform work for you.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2024 10:52

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Clarste posted:

Even assuming this works like they imagine and everyone plays ball, it's like they've never interacted with an insurance company. "We're sorry, but your policy doesn't cover that."

They want to pay the guy with the guns to protect them, but never consider that if they had the guns, they would absolutely not bother to protect weaker people even for pay.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2024 07:03

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

ContinuityNewTimes posted:

How does a budget surplus translate to prosperity?

Well, if you're a rich person, you lobby your state legislature to put in laws mandating that any budget surplus must be used to reduce taxes on businesses and the rich, rather than any other expense. Then generate a spurious surplus year after year buy not funding social services, education, or infrastructure.

https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2022/03/01/reynolds-signs-income-and-corporate-tax-cuts-into-law/

All on the Cato Institute libertarian theory of removing state income tax.

Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Feb 28, 2024

# ¿ Feb 28, 2024 01:52

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 13:32

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

I rarely have to give it to libertarians, but that's actually ideologically consistent of them.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2024 01:21

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

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