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jrodefeld posted:The State provides an easy way out. Just buy off some politicians, pass some regulations, and grant yourself monopoly privilege through law. I know this is from the beginning of a fast-moving thread but: it is irrepressibly adorable that you fully recognize the problem of the superrich using their wealth to coöpt the state's police power to extract rents and entrench their position against the rest of society...and propose we solve this by abolishing all democratic controls on the use of force and instead allow the superrich to purchase private armies directly  Awwww, you're just so cute. I'm going to stick this manifesto right here up on the fridge
VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Aug 12, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 15:57
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Quarantining you against your will would be an initiation of force, and you would be within your rights to demand that your DRO totally waste anyone who tries it. Only once you give someone Ebola are they allowed to use retaliatory force against you to quarantine you and extract compensatory damages. Once they have proven to your contractually-agreed arbitrator beyond a reasonable doubt that their Ebola was a result of a rights-violating trespass of their bodily integrity by your infected fluids then the arbitrator will direct your DRO to quarantine you until restitution is made. Obviously, anyone else you infect with Ebola during the time it takes for your case to be heard would be able to join the plaintiff. And it will take some time of course as the infection spreads, because the arbitrator will need to hire disease specialists to perform genetic testing to track back each infection to the appropriate transmitter in order to dispense proper Libertarian justice (it would be immoral to quarantine me at the request of someone I did not personally infect after all!), but since the sudden tremendous demand for disease specialists will raise salaries and thus incentivize the next generation of college students to select that field, eventually the market will sort things out and everyone wins! e: Damnit, DrProsek's was better  e2: Oh wait, I just realized that Ebola is never a problem, because if you have Ebola there's a 99% chance you are black and thus will be machine-gunned on sight should you approach Hoppe's convenant community, as mentioned by the paper-bag-brown signs at the edge of covenant property reading "By crossing onto Hoppeville Territory, you hereby voluntarily contractually agree to be riddled with bullets if you are darker than this sign". VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Aug 13, 2014 |
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Aug 13, 2014 00:52
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No, the HRO's other customers would voluntarily cast-out and shun the coverage-dropper from society and commerce because the alternative is losing their own coverage and facing a slow death by starvation. See how easily voluntary associations can arise in the absence of a state? When the alternative is death, you'll voluntarily agree to just about anything a megacorp with enough market power demands, ushering in a utopia where no one is ever forced to do anything against their will. 
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Aug 13, 2014 01:54
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platedlizard posted:That reminds me, jhoder, how would a libertarian society deal with organized crime? You know, extortion, theft, kidnapping, human trafficking etc would all still exist probably. These organizations are called DRO's, and as has already been explained to you, such activities would be unprofitable because in a free market, the
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Aug 13, 2014 04:46
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Typical Pubbie posted:Wait, I thought the DROs were the good guys in libertarian society? Oh they are. They're so good they won't let you sign up with one of those other rinky-dink outfits, see?
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Aug 13, 2014 13:36
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Any minute now another DRO is going to arise in the free marketplace of force in Northern Iraq, promising not to loot banks, extort money from towns, or behead Shias, and their superior customer service will lure away customers and bankrupt ISIS
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Aug 13, 2014 14:30
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Who What Now posted:That will never happen. Jeez, haven't you read anything from Libertarian scholars? They all agree that libertarian principles only apply to whites. Oh God right, I forgot. Iraq is terra nullius because those benighted savages in the cradle of civilization aren't really mixing their labor with the land. platedlizard posted:I don't see how a libertarian society will make, say , organized retail crime go away. Those guys steal things for a living and unless each business runs background checks at the door (an expensive and time consuming process that would annoy legitimate customers) there's no way to prevent them from entering. I guess in a libertarian society you can hire guards to physically stop suspected thieves but I'm not sure how that's different than calling the police other than possibly more violence & shootings. The problem is that today's police are ostensibly bound by degenerate liberal concepts like "probable cause" and "due process". In Libertopia where there are competing systems of law, you're free to hire a security company that has a contract with courts who will protect every property owner's right to gun down undesireables at the door.
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Aug 13, 2014 15:13
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YourHealthyColon posted:Actually is there any standard ancap response to the problem of predatory lending? It's hard to imagine that it won't be even more astoundingly profitable in libertopia than it is in real life. Predatory lending only exists because the government forced banks to make loans to In a free market, predatory lending would never happen because a rational, profit-seeking bank would never risk insolvency by making loans without vetting people for ability to pay. VVVVVVV Oh, that kind of predatory lending. Uh, well in that case the government is actually hurting people with usury laws and disclosure laws, because those absurdly high rates and dishonest business practices are the only way some people with bad credit scores can get access to loans. In a truly free market, Payday Loans would be even more widespread at even higher rates, giving everyone the tools to get a loan and bootstrap themselves up. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Aug 13, 2014 |
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Aug 13, 2014 18:24
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twodot posted:(I contend such lenders would be better off just enslaving/robbing/murdering people without entrapping them into contracts). They would do this too, of course. The mafia would extort money through protection rackets, would burn down competing businesses, run competitors out of town, etc. But loan-sharking would still happen because putting someone in a position where they feel they have an obligation to you is a pretty good way to induce them to pay up to discharge the obligation. Their family will likely help them raise assets to pay back their loan. And they're less likely to find support from their community because pampered middle-class white men will shrug and say the borrower must be irresponsible or he wouldn't be in debt and that dead-beat should pay (and after all, I would never get into such a situation. Until I do, of course, when I get hit with unexpected medical expenses or something, end up in debt to a loan shark myself...) Capitalist propaganda about the solemn duty of everyone except the elites to pay their debts is so strong that in 2008 when we just handed trillions to crooked, incompetent bankers, the right manufactured a populist backlash against a bailout of loser homeowners that never even happened. People were so angry at even the thought that someone else might get a break on a mortgage that the Tea Party was able to hold protests against imaginary debt relief. It's pretty much a given that if a big enough majority became libertarian such that we could actually establish libertopia, the victims of loan sharks would be universally shunned as disgusting contract-breakers who deserve to have their kneecaps smashed, because that is what libertarians actually believe. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Aug 14, 2014 |
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Aug 13, 2014 23:56
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RuanGacho posted:The things you suggest will kill people. They will kill people. Oh come now, don't be so hysterical. When you think about it, are poor people really people? Libertarian answer: no, of course not, personhood and human rights follow from land ownership, as only landowners may make the laws on their land, and tenants and squatters are subject to the absolute dictates of their lords.
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Aug 14, 2014 17:44
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Babylon Astronaut posted:In libertopia, people could freely associate into corporations and then forge contracts that gave them limited liability. You wouldn't even need to do that. Since there's no legal system to appeal the decision of the corporation's handpicked arbitrators, you either accept the arbitration contract as a condition of doing business, or you don't get access to the road/medical treatment/subprime credit/what-have-you that you need. Socrates16 posted:Every single corporation is chartered by the state. And in libertopia their charters will be enforced by DRO's instead under one of the many competing systems of law. But hey, good luck using the economic power of the $500 you need to buy cancer medicine to convince Pfizer to agree to use a legal system that will impose full liability on them! VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Aug 15, 2014 |
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Aug 15, 2014 05:35
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Socrates16 posted:You're right. The state is just and pure. Ferguson has shown us the way. Yeah the police suck, let's fix it by letting Wal-Mart hire Blackwater to keep the peace.
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Aug 15, 2014 05:41
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Augustin Iturbide posted:Is every action by a government body at any level the actions of 'The State' or just the bad ones? Trick question, everything the government does is by definition bad. Socrates16 posted:Walmart is so scary they've murdered more people than the police in the US by far. Maybe you should look up Wal-Mart's human rights record in countries where the awful state isn't enforcing labor laws. But hey, you didn't mention Blackwater so I guess you're cool with factory owners hiring them for security then?
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Aug 15, 2014 05:47
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Socrates16 posted:Every single fear of the privatized police force is entirely conjectural. The reality of the horror that is the state police force is factual and observable. The Pinkertons: totally conjectural made-up organization. Ditto ISIS.
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Aug 15, 2014 05:50
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Socrates16 posted:You're right. That's why we're all dead. Foodborne illness didn't kill literally everyone in America, therefore health standards are useless. Checkmate, statists. Oh wait, we live in a police state but we're not all dead so I guess that's not actually a problem either, cool!
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Aug 15, 2014 05:53
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Socrates16 posted:You're right. The state exists for us. Ferguson is a prime example. This is why Libertarians are adorable. They recognize some abuses of state power, but instead of agitating for greater accountability to the people and empowerment of oppressed communities, they just jump to "let's abolish all oversight and let the rich white men employ private armies directly  " Awwwww it's like watching a puppy figure out how to fit his bone through a doggy door. He's just trying stuff until he figures out how the world works!
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Aug 15, 2014 05:58
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Somfin posted:Go on, tell me how the Free Market would help minorities. Well for example, it cures the negro of his idleness, civilizes him, and gives him gainful employment under a kindly owner.
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Aug 15, 2014 06:01
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Socrates16 posted:You're right. Free markets must be perfect. Our gods in government can be as obviously flawed as they want to be! If you're proposing the free market as a superior alternative to what we have now, it's not unreasonable to ask that you demonstrate that it's actually superior. No one is demanding perfection, and pointing out flaws in the state doesn't make Libertarianism right by default. You kind of have to show how Libertarianism would solve these flaws or at least not be horrific in every way.
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Aug 15, 2014 06:07
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Socrates16 posted:Gotta love the bootlickers thinking that corporations actually are restrained by the state that creates them. Absolutely adorable! Well the corporations sure seem to think labor laws and safety regulations are a horrible burden considering how much they bitch about them. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Aug 15, 2014 |
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Aug 15, 2014 06:15
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CrazyTolradi posted:So is your entire philosophy. It's nevr been tried, tested nor does it have any empirical evidence that it could work at all. It makes many assumptions on human behaviour, completely ignores known psychology and literally rests on a single axiom, "The free market will decide.". Added bonus: when they try a Libertarian society and it collapses into gang warfare and feudal estates, they get to say it wasn't "true" Libertarianism because the gangs and private armies were acting like states instead of observing the holy Non-Aggression Principle.
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Aug 15, 2014 06:17
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Socrates16 posted:Corporations write most of the laws, pleb. And yet you propose we eliminate all democratic check on those laws and allow corporations to purchase law courts and private army enforcement directly? Why? If rich people writing the laws is bad, then why do you want to cede to them total control over the law?
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Aug 15, 2014 06:20
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Socrates16 posted:They already have total control, pleb. Then why do labor laws, health inspections, environmental laws, minimum wage laws, and every other regulation that capitalists bitch about exist? And how does giving them a green light to buy private armies improve this situation?
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Aug 15, 2014 06:24
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CrazyTolradi posted:One interesting concept, on a more human level, is how hosed up dating would be in a libertarian society. Imagine having to do background checks and make sure any prospective girlfriend/boyfriend had DRO/health/et al coverage before you went on a date or had sex. Yeah but on the bright side, your DRO would keep you safe from rape with the always-monitored cameras in your bedroom that you voluntarily agreed to install as a condition of their crime liability coverage. As a bonus, it's an incentive for you to police your sex life, since your DRO will undoubtedly raise your rates or drop you as a bad risk if they determine that the number/quality of guys you bring home makes you a slut and thus a bad risk for rape liability 
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Aug 15, 2014 06:34
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Augustin Iturbide posted:It was a clever move of Libertarians to base a theory off of 'well because we said so' and not tell anyone that until they've already been heavily indoctrinated into libertarianism. Well that's how the kookier religions work, right? You don't begin right off telling people about Xenu imprisoning thetans in a volcano or whatever, you just tell people they've got emotional damage but you can help them get Clear. With Libertarianism it's the same: start people out slow with legalizing weed, ending wars, abolishing corporate welfare, etc, then you can move on to removing job-killing regulations, lowering taxes, and trimming the safety net to get people working again. Once they accept all that bullshit, you can pull out the good stuff about turning over all policing to the mafia, making a market to buy child slave laborers, and abolishing the Civil Rights Act because the only thing more evil than state-enforced apartheid is state-banned apartheid!
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Aug 15, 2014 06:42
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SedanChair posted:Socrates16 is the palest of imitations This is true. Socrates16's sarcastic one-liners give away the game of libertarian doublethink too easily. Socrates16 posted:You're right. Restaurants would just be randomly murdering people if not for our benevolent god, the state. Socrates16 posted:You're right. As we all know, foodborne illnesses are now a thing of the past. Thanks, our god, government! Obviously being a Libertarian requires subscribing simultaneously to contradicting ideas: in this case a derisive disbelief in the possibility of foodborne illnesses based on restaurants' rational self-interest in not poisoning their customers, followed immediately (once someone points out that food poisoning actually exists) by a scornful denunciation of government inspections for their inefficacy as proof that the state is incompetent and should be abolished. Jrodefeld would bury this contradiction in multiple paragraphs across different posts so he could deflect anyone who points it out with accusations of poor reading comprehension. This guy just throws it out there like he doesn't even notice that he claimed food poisoning can't happen and also that the state has failed to end it. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 08:34 on Aug 15, 2014 |
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Aug 15, 2014 08:31
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Travic posted:Here's a start Socrates16. Look up screwworms. Careful readers will note that screwworms have been completely 100% removed from the US, and are kept from resurfacing by government import laws and outbreak protocols (yes there have been outbreaks where someone snuck an infected animal across the border). I loving DARE a private industry to do that. 100% success. Is that perfect enough for you? Do I need more examples? Cause I've got them. Oooh ooh, I want to tackle this one. Okay, ready?  How glorious that our divine State deigns to remove a bothersome little pest after robbing us blind and pressing us into police state slavery.  Everyone knows we'd be able to drive out screw worms and fix all our other problems too if we weren't burdened by taxes.
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Aug 15, 2014 16:06
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A GIANT PARSNIP posted:The 2008 crash likely helped. I know I went from idiot libertarian to leftist real fast when I graduated and found out that the private sector cared a lot more about hooking their buddies up with jobs than they cared about my hard work or finding the right person. The 2008 crash did it for me too. Being gay, I rejected my conservative Christian upbringing early on because it was pretty obvious how bigotry and repression was destructive and horrible. Unfortunately, I naively concluded that the problem was religious people forcing their beliefs on others, but gosh here's Ayn Rand telling me that I don't have to listen to the mystics or deny who I am out of some sense of duty, and gosh there wouldn't be all these problems in the world if there weren't an oppressive state enforcing the whims of the mob on minorities. And all her no-taxes, no-welfare stuff meant I didn't have to challenge any of the other beliefs I grew up with, and anyway I'm a hard worker (no, the GI Bill isn't a social program: I earned that!) and I deserve to keep the fruits of my labor! Then 2008 happened, and all the wealthy Supermen Who Run the World ran crying to the government for taxpayer bailouts, because it turned out all their bullshit about freedom and ability just meant that they didn't want to pay taxes and they didn't want the government interfering with their swindles, but they did want endless taxpayer money because the whole philosophy is a cheap cover for redistributing wealth from the 99% to the top 1%. Seeing the people who got their massive debts paid off and their bonuses covered by taxpayer dollars turn around and blame everything on the poor and fight tooth and nail against any kind of mortgage adjustment for "losers" was the final straw.
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Aug 15, 2014 17:25
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tbp posted:If you rejected the private sector because they were bailed out by the government, why not reject the government? Because a banking system that collapses under fraud, greed, incompetence, and bad decisions every 20 years is not in my rational self-interest. On the other hand, proper banking regulation put in place after the great depression prevented meltowns for more than 50 years, until the elites succeeded in pushing a free-market fundamentalist religion and gutting regulation because "well of course it's not in a bank's self-interest to buy toxic loan products it doesn't understand, nor is it in an insurance company's interest to take on trillions in risk by insuring debt without setting any money aside to cover payouts, and obviously a major bank would never sell products designed to fail so it can secretly bet against them because that'd be bad for its reputation, so if we just get the government out of the way then fraud and incompetence will disappear from banking forever "Edit: There's also that I agree with Libertarians in their complaint that the weath disparity that arises under capitalism allows those with the most weath to coöpt the power of the state and extract rents from the rest of us with the police power backing them up, but I don't share their conclusion that if we renounce all democratic checks on the use of force and allow the superrich to buy private armies directly this problem of extortion by the elite will go away. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Aug 15, 2014 |
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Aug 15, 2014 17:55
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tbp posted:For that particular crisis, I think that the government is more to blame for the poor handling and prevention than the banks themselves as legal entities. You are quite correct that the government is to blame for accepting idiot libertarian free market ideology and refusing to regulate the derivatives market and the CDS market, and for gutting the regulations that prevented investment banks from gambling with depositors' money or turning the insurance market into a casino. Of course, it was bankers who are entirely to blame for the crimes they committed, and they bear a healthy share of blame for lobbying to roll back the aforementioned regulations too. So yes sure, I blame the government for the crisis in the same way that I blame the dikes that failed in New Orleans for the Katrina disaster. We should strengthen those protections so they don't fail next time, not say (as the Libertarians do) "welp, Katrina just shows dikes are completely useless so let's tear down every dike in the land to keep us safe from the next hurricane!" Edit: tbp posted:I think there should have been stricter policies in place and more active efforts to both prevent and punish transgressions of the laws, before during and after the crises of the late 2000s period. Uh, okay me too, so then what was the point of your original question to me about how I should "blame" the government? If you just meant I should blame free-market ideology and support strong government oversight then well yeah, that was whole drat point of my How-I-Stopped-Being-Libertarian story 
VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Aug 15, 2014 |
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Aug 15, 2014 20:06
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Oh you're doing that thing where you pretend to misunderstand a post, reply with some cryptic leading question to lure people into arguing, then go "huh no why are you jumping to conclusions, my opinion is <something completely identical to the original post you were arguing with>" Hm, okay, I hope that was as good for you as it was for me.
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Aug 15, 2014 20:14
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Mooching off of the taxpayer dime is only moral if you bitch and moan nonstop about how evil those who take government money are. This is actually the official Objectivist position as articulated by Ayn Rand herself.
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Aug 16, 2014 05:30
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