Why Should We Care About Property Rights?

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Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

Hi OP, I've studied libertarianism for five minutes and declared it a disaster. Rebuttal?

# ¿ Oct 10, 2015 14:37

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:19

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

jrodefeld posted:

Define "oppression". There's no reason to respond to a post like this but it makes a clear point nonetheless. You know the libertarian ideology fairly well by now after all that I've posted. You obviously cannot think that any libertarian would support a fascist police state. Remember the loving non-aggression principle I remind you of every other post?! It is literally the starting point of libertarian ethics. Have you ever heard of a fascist police state that doesn't aggress against people?

A discussion in a waste of time if you are not arguing in good faith. You state something you know is not true because you are hell bent on impugning the character of libertarians. You think we all just have a secret desire to oppress people and are using this high-minded rhetoric as a license to do it.

This is not a good faith debate tactic.

oh yeah, you're the expert on bad faith debate

# ¿ Oct 11, 2015 08:11

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

jrodefeld posted:

You know, I could say the exact same thing about any one of you. "you will absolutely refuse to retain any facts about history, economics, ethics, or reality in general that isn't convenient for you and your perpetual state of delusional idiocy".

I mean, I've spoken with you a whole lot and you STILL don't agree with me? The reality is that smart people have lengthy discussions and debates with each other for literally DECADES without either party changing his or her mind on their core ideology. So, you just come off as obnoxious with this type of post.

I'm going to have to assume that's a "yes" on the watermelon loving issue.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2015 08:42

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

oh yeah, I want my refrigerator to verify my voice print before giving me access to my brita pitcher, this is totally rational

# ¿ Oct 11, 2015 08:49

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

I'm sure all the cool kid libertarians are flocking to Mauritius.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2015 18:26

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

Hey you're back rear end in a top hat. So when will you be "voting with your feet" and setting off for a bright future of indentured servitude in Dubai?

# ¿ Oct 16, 2015 04:07

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

gently caress, my major hobby still involves shitposting on the forums while drinking and watching anime.

I am basically crazy though if that helps.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2015 04:49

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

I'm all for an entirely different perspective on why jrod is wrong about everything.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2015 15:26

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

Captain_Maclaine posted:

Didn't one of them get "conquered" when a nearby African nation, off who's shore they were squatting on a sandbar, sent it's Army's marching band to roust them out, or something similar?

Pretty sure that was the "Republic of Minerva" built up on a reef between Tonga and Fiji before being ousted by the mighty Tongan military (and marching band).

edit: http://www.queenoftheisles.com/HTML/Republic%20of%20Minerva.html

quote:

"On 21 June 1972, the worlds heaviest monarch, King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV of Tonga accompanied by members of the Tongan Defence Force, a convict work detail and a four piece brass band, set sail from his kingdom aboard the royal yacht Olovaha. On the king's stately mind was one thought, the invasion of the Republic of Minerva".

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 17:05

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

cheese posted:

Wrong, we live in a world of abundance where we have the technology to meet the reasonable needs of every human. We do not because humans are greedy creatures. Thanks for trying though.

Yes but have you considered that if jrod had a trillion dollars he would buy all the food and burn it out of spite?

# ¿ Oct 20, 2015 01:19

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

OwlFancier posted:

So what's their supposed distinction between economic coercion in the form of taxes and economic coercion in the form of "pay the army their dane-geld if you don't want to get your literal rear end repossessed"?

Well it's (technically) not a :siren:

GOVERNMENT MONOPOLY ON FORCE :siren:

and you could (theoretically) take your "business" elsewhere.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2015 01:24

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

cheese posted:

That it doesn't survive even 30 seconds of deeper examination (how loving terrifying would it be to live in a world where private armies wandered around and demanded payment to "keep you safe"?) is a reflection of the general quality of the reasoning.

At this point they can try to argue that nobody would actually do that because of the sacred Non-Aggression Principle, but anyone sane is already ignoring them.

edit: And then it all circles around to "government is bad because MEN WITH GUNS can shoot you just because they can, if we got rid of the government MEN WITH GUNS wouldn't shoot you just because they can because ~farts~".

Polygynous fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Oct 20, 2015

# ¿ Oct 20, 2015 01:36

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

The federal government is completely gridlocked, doesn't get much more stable than that.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2015 03:21

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

VitalSigns posted:

Bu..but the income tax is the real slavery system

Also does the government force owners to vaccinate their slaves, this is important.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2015 18:07

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

My ancestors ~~stole this land from the natives~~ homesteaded this plot of land 200 years ago so they fully own whatever's buried a mile below it that people only found and realized was valuable a decade ago - a sensible theory of property rights

# ¿ Nov 20, 2015 04:20

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

Top 2 are Hong Kong and Singapore again, which is still hilarious albeit for non-slavery related reasons.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2015 04:45

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

Serrath posted:

So (some) libertarians are against slavery but in support of removing all government laws and safeguards that protect people from companies that might seek to establish slavery.

Company script, workhouses, child labour, all fair game, eliminate the 40 hour work week, eliminate minimum wage and all safety and environmental obligations, allow people to starve in the street and deny them basic health care, all acceptable prepositions but we draw the line at slavery because that's a bridge too far!

So free! Such economic freedom!

You see, slavery is not a problem. But if the government tries to regulate it, then that... is the real... sla- hm. :ohdear:

# ¿ Nov 20, 2015 04:50

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

Caros posted:

Do they not get to drive on the roads to their new house? Well that isn't very loving voluntary is it, its coercive because they can either sign your contract or not. If they don't then what about other people who want to drive into your neighborhood? If i drive down to visit a friend do I have to pay a toll when I enter Jrodefeldville? Do you have any idea how incredibly inconvenient and impractical this starts getting once you realize that every single road system has to be paid for this way?

Every road down to the roughest dirt track will now be equipped with E-ZPass. Easy! *

I am 99% certain some libertarians have written jrod-length essays about how this is a good idea.

* As a side effect a benevolent corporation is now tracking your every move. Economic freedom!

# ¿ Nov 20, 2015 05:32

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

jrodefeld posted:

Current blacks deserve reparations not because they aren't doing well now (which is true but besides the point)

Oh my God.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2015 05:35

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

GulMadred posted:

Libertarians DO sometimes acknowledge that newly-discovered resources may be "homesteadable" - rather than automatically assigning them to current landowners. Example.

Walter Block (Water Capitalism: The Case for Privatizing Oceans, Rivers, Lakes, and Aquifers) rejects the ad coelum theory of land ownership (in which a farmer owns a "pizza slice" of land extending down the core of the Earth, and a similar chunk of sky). If you discover an oil reservoir under your turnip farm, someone else could fairly extract all of the oil by slant-drilling without paying you a dime ... so long as their wellhead begins pumping before you can build one of your own. If they gently caress up the technical details and create a bunch of sinkholes (or poison the groundwater, or create minor earthquakes) then they're liable for any damages to your farm - assuming that you can prove it (at your own expense, of course).

In typical libertarian fashion that's at once slightly reasonable and completely insane.

And I was actually thinking of the slant-drilling example and might have said as much if I wasn't in a hurry to get in a snarky one-liner. Because that actually happens. Like an extraction company will show up and offer to buy your mineral rights for pennies on the dollar. Or they can go to your neighbor and get it anyway if you refuse. But it's totally voluntary and all that. And another thing that actually happens is people having to prove drilling caused water contamination / earthquakes / whatever else.

Really what I should have also said was how everyone was trying to get jrod to actually define "property" for forever and he finally threw out "control of scarce resources", and "scarce resources" now isn't any more well defined. My mind went to like mineral rights because nothing else really makes sense. Land isn't all that scarce, particularly not when a few thousand colonists show up and declare ownership of an entire continent. (Unless by "scarce" he just means he can't do the same himself today, which is just pathetic.)

e: And good God he's still at the "slavery isn't that bad guys, now X is the real slavery" thing.

Polygynous fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Nov 20, 2015

# ¿ Nov 20, 2015 15:46

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

Captain_Maclaine posted:

In those cases, suddenly the greater utility of UHC suddenly doesn't matter anymore and Jrod switches over to his morality argument where, regardless of how much better UHC (or anything else) is for society, it's intolerably immoral because he didn't consent ~~to joinder~~ to be taxed to pay for it, which when you think about it is 100 times worse than the Holocaust and plantation slavery combined. He's a slippery little fucker like that.

Funny, I was just sitting in traffic half an hour ago and jrod's MEN WITH GUNS fixation popped into my head. Since it's not just taxes, the paranoid schizophrenic sees statist tyranny everywhere.

e.g. Why does the government think it knows better than me when I should turn left ? If I run a red light then MEN WITH GUNS etc etc

# ¿ Nov 21, 2015 00:44

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

All that's important is that the state doesn't have a monopoly on force. Yeah, you have to not think about it too hard and ignore how it's never worked out in human history. (oh right, and throw in some handwaving about free markets.) ((Libertarianism in short right there.))

Polygynous fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Nov 29, 2015

# ¿ Nov 29, 2015 18:23

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

Not that I can think of anything specific but that sounds like one of the less objectionable things happyelf would be known for. Dude was king of the ignore list for a reason.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2015 19:00

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

jrod what are your thoughts on bartering for healthcare with livestock

# ¿ Jan 17, 2016 22:26

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

paragon1 posted:

You wouldn't even be asking this question if you bothered to actually look into what getting treatment is like in these systems for 30 minutes instead of just assuming its some kind of Orwellian hellscape.

Reminds me of that amazing "Stephen Hawking would be dead under the NHS" thing.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2016 23:52

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

jrodefeld posted:

You must not be arguing in good faith.

forever

e: also update for page 58: There is still no reason to care about property rights.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2016 20:28

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

jrodefeld posted:

I know it flew right over your head, but what am I here for other than to educate?

you think that's what you're doing

holy lol

# ¿ Jan 18, 2016 23:19

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

jrodefeld posted:

We can debate issues without resorting to impugning the motives of our opposition.

Like every time you scream PUT DOWN THE GUNS?

# ¿ Jan 18, 2016 23:21

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

jrodefeld posted:

I'm sure you're aware, but Mises.org has an explicit mission to literally collect and distribute ALL the major historical libertarian, anarchist and classical liberal books, essays and articles that have ever been published. Criticizing me for using their site for libertarian sources is like criticizing someone for using the library. The "library" is not a person or even a small group of people. Similarly, the Mises Institute website has an online library of hundreds of different authors, both contemporary and modern, who hold often very different views and many issues while still being roughly in the liberty tradition.

I am arguing for the libertarian position. So, shouldn't it be reasonable that I cite libertarians, anarchists and classical liberals in my defense of that position?

You could say the same thing for, I don't know, Scientology.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2016 03:31

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

I guess that's an answer to the thread title. You should care about the property rights (of slaveowners) if you want to be considered an economically free country.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2016 04:40

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

YF19pilot posted:

So, I've got pneumonia, no rich family members, no charities to get money from, nobody willing to help me unconditionally. Should I go door to door? Would you give money freely to a complete stranger who needs medical care? Or should this stranger be left to die because the free market decided he wasn't worth it to anyone?

Just put out tip jars at each of your three ~~minimum wage~~ jobs. Separate tip jars for yourself and each family member you care for. Simple!

# ¿ Jan 19, 2016 07:41

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

Kthulhu5000 posted:

A lot of people say that the societal Jrod espouses is Mad Max-like, but I honestly think it would be more like the America in Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower". And that, frankly, is somewhat more terrifying to consider, because in the former case maybe you can still be a V8-powered road warrior, while in the latter, the gated communities you live in, surrounded by a crumbling society and uncontrolled chaos, just make you a sitting duck in denial. It's both the radical survivalist's fear and yet should also be one of the pragmatic progressive, since it's a potentially plausible nightmare.

Which, I think, makes anarcho-capitalism and the like so ridiculous. So you have a gated community, or a defensible suburb, or a rural safehold. What's your job? How are you going to resupply yourself with food, fuel, spare parts for your machines and devices, ammunition (or components thereof) to keep away the angry and desperate hordes? When utility poles and pipes are obvious targets for theft, vandalism, or a siege (so if your at-home business relies on those, say goodbye to it), when businesses have to maintain the added expense of heavy security forces, when transport is potentially hazardous and drivers are faced with the prospect of ambushes, sniper attacks, roadblocks, and so on? When the factories that make goods and components can't get their raw materials or make anything because of the aforementioned factors, then what?

A highway gas station works because there is plenty of peaceful traffic safely going by it, because towns, counties, and states maintain law enforcement services to patrol and respond to incidents, because most people have a strong enough social stake to not risk it all for the couple hundred bucks in the till. Take that away, and why shouldn't Crazy Jim's Buckwild Naked Boyz take it all over if the have the firepower and manpower to do it? Crazy Jim's a crazy psychopath, of course, so good luck explaining to him that he's transgressing on your right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, when ending your life with a trigger pull and $0.50 of lead and powder is all that stands between him and everything that isn't nailed down.

Admittedly, these are rather out-there scenarios, but for an "out there" belief system (I won't credit A-C as a philosophy), they're still valid. When there is no common social interest, just individuals and groups pursuing their own goals, it seems ridiculous to think any of it will work out in a stable manner. Either one group prevails and we have autocratic tyranny forming and spreading, or we end up with a loss of any sort of traction for economic development and progress, as people try to tread water and hold on. No "non-aggression principle" (a deus ex machina solution) is going to hold or make people behave when they're desperate, or greedy, or have become jaded, cynical, and angry. Not in an anarcho-capitalist world of little state interference and easy access to powerful weaponry.

So, Jrod - maybe in your society, I would be a "Crazy Jim". It's not that the presence of the state right now is keeping me from that state of being; I'm a pretty laid back guy who isn't big on violence or avarice and would prefer orderly, peaceful reforms and progress. But everyone is potentially dishonest, potentially willing to break laws solely for their personal gain (look at drug use statistics, and also consider how much violence that use funds), and plenty capable of lashing out or snapping. Break the social trust, break the faith in social stability respective of one's overt participation of such, throw in material stresses (such as climate change affecting crop production, drought, social breakdown and violence, economic collapse, and so on), and neither your bleating about non-aggression or your DRO membership card will save you. You dead, son, so dead.

In short, Jrod, you espouse a worldview fit for a corpse.

Maybe that is why you can continue to obnoxiously hold on to this nonsense you believe - you are a corpse. After all, a corpse cannot suffer, cannot foresee a future (it's time is over), and if myth and literature are any indication, it either resents its loss of place among the living or does not envision itself as belonging to them any longer. You're a corpse, that's all, incapable of creating new thoughts, because your world (and your mind) is just like the grave - a dark box, buried under six feet of dirt, containing nothing but gross and rotten contents that 99.9% of people find vile and foul to behold. The substance, such as it was, is still there. But now it's just residues and mold, only ever decaying into dust.

So I guess, Jrod, that you are indeed unique - a typing corpse, dead meat just regurgitating the same nonsense it had in its actual life. Your absences are due to your loss of energy and motor function due to decay. Your incessant harping on certain topics and meaningless quibbles are just those parts of your brain that haven't yet rotted and fallen out of your skull. I guess the only real question I have is this: Does it hurt to earn your living whoring yourself out to necrophiliac libertarians?

Nice, this is a much more eloquent version of how I've been wanting to ask him how much shouting "But the NAP!" will help someone being strung up in a tree for being the wrong race/religion/etc in his brave new libertarian future.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2016 15:38

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

GunnerJ posted:

A dedicated investigation into why an ideology that calls itself "libertarian" always seems to end up defending outright tyranny and promoting policies that would reduce the degree of freedom people actually experience would probably be pretty fruitful as a discussion topic.

Wasn't it hijacked by hard right assholes in the '50s or so? I swear there's even a quote from one of their heroes that makes this explicit. More detail would be interesting, if there's more detail than that, anyway.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2016 17:16

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

aw hell, I missed the "thousands die; market correction; repeat ad infinitum" part of the thread, that's always fun.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2016 01:39

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

Gangs are just seizing the monopoly on force from the government, you'd think he'd be all over that.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2016 02:36

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

ok, so you're not even reading your own posts at this point. gently caress you.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 08:30

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

Right, primarily low income minorities should be coerced into taking poo poo wage jobs instead of focusing on education, I can think of no adverse effects of this policy.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 08:58

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

Well obviously libertarians would invent a super alloy that wouldn't have that problem and

# ¿ Feb 7, 2016 06:12

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:19

Polygynous: Dec 13, 2006; welp

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Sort of. John Galt invents an engine while ignoring his regular job duties and still getting paid for them that runs on background static energy. It doesn't need any input and gives off mechanical energy...somehow. I think she describes it as consuming "ambient energy" or some such bullshit but the short of it is that he literally invented an infinite energy engine easily and then refused to share it with the rest of the world because he was a selfish, petulant baby.

In the first episode of the new X-Files season some conspiracy theorists built an "alien" craft running on zero point energy or some poo poo.

Then the government blew it up. STATISTS! :argh:

So watch The X-Files, it makes more sense than libertarians at least.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2016 09:53

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