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jrodefeld posted:There are very few people today who actually advocate State ownership over the means of production. Anyone who has studied the matter for five minutes could tell you about the disaster of communism. Can you stop with the "left-Progressives" talk. It makes you sound like a loving idiot. I have no idea who the left-Progressives are, or where the right-Progressives live, or what ideology you are discussing. How about just saying "people who advocate for social democracy." Seriously. Reading your posts is like reading a bad student paper. There's a reason why I didn't become a teacher over being a retail manager. If I had to deal with teenagers, I at least didn't want to read their work! quote:My point is that the wealth enjoyed in such oft cited countries came into existence almost entirely due to lengthy periods of laissez-faire. No welfare States, only property rights and a market economy. People who fail to credit the market economy for the wealth generated in places like Sweden are the people I am concerned with. And you do nothing to support this claim. I have no idea how to argue with this claim since it's just there. Like, I don't know what you're seeing that leads you to believe that, so I don't know how to effectively make you see otherwise. quote:Second, and this should be quite obvious, having a legal right to property which you appropriated first from the state of nature of course does not keep any decent person from sharing the property which they have acquired. Writing tip: Get rid of phases like "and this should be quite obvious" unless you are trying to emphasize how someone missed something that was very obvious. It just adds to your wordcount without saying something, and frankly, if it's obvious, why do you need to say it and why do you need to tell me that it's obvious? It should be obvious to a good writer that they don't need to talk down to their readers and tell them what's obvious and what's not. Now, onto what you actually have to say here. Nobody here is arguing that there is some weird force keeping us from sharing our wealth. You're making a non-controversial statement, and trying to argue it like it's some profound rebuttal to what we've been saying all along. Also, it's amazing that you don't see the immediate problem. It should be obvious to you that if people who had enough were going to share it with people who didn't, we wouldn't have the vast poverty that we have in America. Seriously. Go to Madison, WI and hang around the square. You're in a well-to-do area with a lot of bars and tourists spot. And what will you always see? A gently caress ton of homeless people. Even in the winter, and it gets pretty loving cold out there. So right next to all these luxury apartments and the beautiful lakefront, you have a strong homeless presence. So yeah. If you're suggestion was a solution, THEN WE WOULDN'T BE HAVING THIS loving CONVERSATION. So clearly, something is breaking down. Something isn't working. When you look at how income is distributed in America, we have an obscene disparity between the top 1% of the country and the bottom 99%. So, what's your solution to Madison's homeless problem. Expecting people to be nice and share their money isn't working. quote:It is entirely reasonable and moral for the person who finds an apple, and already has sufficient nutrition to sustain his own life, to share the food with a person who is starving. Such an act would be virtuous and worthy of praise. See, JRod, you're confusing "rights" with "abilities." In the scenario you listed, I have the ability not to share my apple with him. There's nothing stopping me. It should be obvious to someone who wants to talk about political philosophy as much you do that rights are not just things you can choose to do, but rather, a series of privileges that people are assumed to have. So, in America, it is assumed that I can express whatever opinion I want without fear of government reprisal. It is my right. However, I can't think of any reason why my ability to not give up an apple to a starving person when I still would have plenty of apples left over would be something that someone would say that I can't have taken away from me under any circumstances. Now, even if he has the right, we also recognize that not all rights are equal. We find very often that rights are in conflict with each other, and some rights are more important than others. So for example, I may be firing a gun off into the air as an expression against gun control, however, other peoples right to life (in this case, by not being killed by random bullets raining down on them) would be seen as more valuable than my choice of expression, so the state, and others, would have a compelling reason to abridge my right to freedom of speech in that case. This also brings up another element about rights - they are rarely absolute. Many rights we have can be suspended or taken away based on certain factors. So, for example, if I commit a felony and am sent to federal prison, I lose a lot of rights. Now, back to what I was saying. In this case, the starving man has a right to life. And if he were to get one of your apples, he would no longer be starving, and you would still have plenty of apples to survive. So, why shouldn't you be compelled to give him one of your apples. Why does your right to your apples supersede his right to life? Do you see how hosed up your philosophy is? You are literally arguing "Hey, these apples are more important than preventing a slow, painful death." This is why people are brutal towards you. Now, we can discuss how we can best balance these rights. By the way, did you ever admit to being completely wrong about vaccines before?
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Oct 10, 2015 21:43
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Popular Thug Drink posted:there's not much point to giving jrod writing tips, he thinks arguments are more convincing by the pound and he copy pastes most of them anyway But I think by telling Jrod what he's doing wrong, I can improve the writing of other people. They can use JRod as an example of what not to do. Plus, it helps me find ways to make fun of him.
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Oct 10, 2015 23:14
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The libertarian would day that those people did have their property rights violated because their bodies are their property. I'm sorry for the stroke you're having trying to understand that.
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Oct 11, 2015 00:32
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jrodefeld posted:You are stipulating that the settlers don't have any friends or family that would notice that they never made contact again and would want to know what happened to them? So what mechanism would exist to adjudicate this claim? I mean, I know we're talking hypotheticals and all that, but you are arguing for angry mobs to dole out justice. If lynch mobs have shown us anything, mob justice never has any serious issues. Also, at what point does it stop. Let's say my dad killed the current home owners and took the home from them, then I was born, and 25 years later, he gives the house to me. Now, the previous owner's brother comes back (he was in a coma due to my daddy's raid on the house and just woke up) and exposes the crime. Do I lose the house? Should I be made to pay because of something that happened before I was born that I didn't even do? This is why we have rules and regulations to account for these circumstances, since an angry mob would not likely know what to do here. quote:I'm sure you're thinking "what is the difference between abandoned property which can be homesteaded by others and absentee property where the owner is simply not present at the moment but retains rights over its use? This is a good question and there is no exact perfect answer. But that's not a safe assumption. I could be a fan of the dilapidated look, I could be crippled and unable to tend to my property. Who knows. But that's why we have laws. They cover this stuff. So if my dad stopped mowing his lawn, he could be fined by the town he lives in. If he let's his house become a safety hazard, it can be condemned. You're over simplifying the world and ignoring all the little complications that can come up.
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Oct 11, 2015 18:20
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Alhazred posted:Really? That seems kinda harsh. I also didn't expect to see jrodefeld, a strong defender of property rights, defend squatting. Yeah, some cities have ordinances. It's not "Oh, hey, your lawn is looking a little shaggy today," it's more like "the grass is over 12" high, maybe you should mow the lawn." Sadly, doing further research on this matter takes you into a really dark and racist corner of the internet. The far right really has a problem with mowing their lawn, for some reason.
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Oct 11, 2015 21:31
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When you say I can do what I want to my own body as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else, what does that mean? Let's take heroin, for example. Have you've seen what opioid addiction can do to a person. It's terrible. Their get skinny, short term memory is shot to hell, and they become a shell of themselves. It really hurt me to see my friend turn that way. We live in a world of balance. I can say that yeah, heroin is bad and should be illegal but I also recognize that I can't stop every self destructive behavior that's out there. You're the one pushing for a world of extremes. Either heroin is legal, or we make fast food illegal. It doesn't work like that. We can draw reasonable lines and boundaries.
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Oct 12, 2015 17:37
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All this talk about homesteading Ayn Rand is nice and all...
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Oct 15, 2015 02:15
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Sex and property rights just makes things so unsexy, and opens up some very strange doors. Let us never walk through those doors. Because basically, sex gets reduced down to fluid exchange between two adult humans who are looking to exchange fluids, and trust me, nobody will go to bed with you if you ask them to exchange fluids with you.
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Oct 15, 2015 05:09
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jrodefeld posted:I'm not talking about vaccines other than to say that I stand by my view that I oppose the State forcing people to take them against their will. I never said vaccines are "bad", or that people shouldn't take them. I stated something that is true, namely that there is a real danger to granting pharmaceutical companies carte blanche to produce vaccines that the State then MANDATES the public to take. The incentive structure is such that it encourages an overproduction of vaccines and pressure to give more and more vaccines at younger and younger ages, beyond the reasonable demands of public safety. Where's your skepticism of big money and distrust of corporate greed when it comes to vaccine production, Progressives? Can you stop with the "I'm not going to talk about it" bit, and then continue to talk about it. You know why these threads go off the rails? Well, one, you're a loving moron with the intelligence of an anencephalic infant, but two, you don't control the conversation. You have to post about EVERY THING, and suddenly, you say something really stupid, and we're going to jump on you. So once again, shut up with the loving progressives talk. Who are you addressing here? Secondly, vaccines are good. Have you ever seen an iron lung? Have your friends ever had to go into an iron lung? No? I wonder why? Oh, because of a loving vaccine for a loving disease called polio. Like, I know what vaccines I have to have, and they are all perfectly sane. Can you please pinpoint a specific vaccine that doesn't make sense for people to have? All you're doing here is arguing from paranoia. You're not actually presenting any reasons or facts. Frankly, I have to question why you want children to die from easily preventable diseases. There was a story this summer about a child with loving leukemia who got sick with measles because of some anti-vaxx parents who visited Disney Land. That's why vaccines are important, you loving heartless cad who can't take five loving minutes to look poo poo up online that isn't some masturbatory slop from some dumbass libertarian who lives some semi-charmed life and pretends that he's being oppressed. Measles is an entirely preventable disease. And had the anti-vaxx crowd not been so loving stupid, that girl would have been protected by herd immunity. Because you see, you loving watermelon fucker, some diseases make you severely immuno-compromised for a variety of reasons. And so these people, like children with leukemia, rely on herd immunity. It wasn't a problem until idiots with your mindset started spouting off without doing the bare minimum of research. If I sound pissed, I am. I have a thing about not seeing sick children get sicker because of some rear end in a top hat ideology driven by nothing more than pure paranoia. quote:You've been involved in these debates with me for a while now, Cemetary Gator. Why do you keep conflating the libertarian policies I endorse with the sort of policies the United States is now living under? Well, if you had any reading comprehension and possess any ability to think, you would understand that I am not conflating the policies of modern day USA with libertarian politics. Instead, I am pointing out that in modern day America, these problems are rampant despite the fact that if people were to behave the way you say they would, they should not exist, or should be much more manageable. So bringing up the homeless on the streets of Madison, WI is relevant to this conversation. After all, if charity would take care of the homeless, then why do we have so many of them on the street? You can't just create a fantasy world, create a set of rules, and then insist that everything will play by those rules when we can look at the current system and see that in fact, the rules aren't being followed. quote:I can practically guarantee that the United States is currently farther away from the sort of policies I'd like that the sort that you'd recommend. What the gently caress does this even mean? This is pure gibberish. quote:Before I delve into that, let me back up my claims about Sweden. Everyone and their grandmother use Sweden as the sort of model social democracy that the United States ought to emulate. Bernie Sanders is doing so right now on the campaign trail. But the truth is that the wealth that Sweden has was created largely during the eighty to one hundred years before the social democratic reforms championed by progressives. Why do you need to talk about Sweden. God, reading your posts is painful since you have to go all over the place. quote:The problems that exist in the United States today have to do with State policy that has largely undone the great prosperity and productive capacity of our once great free market economy. The growing gap between rich and poor has nothing to do with the free market and everything to do with our abandonment of a sound currency and our embrace of reckless fiat monetary policy which has empowered the parasitic and unproductive rich while punishing the poor, the savers, and the productive entrepreneur who bears the brunt of the regulations heaped onto the economy. It is indeed a rigged game but don't blame this on the free market or libertarian ideology! Oh my. You can't be serious. First off, all of these are just unfounded statements. Secondly, the parasitic rich comment is a "No true Scotsman fallacy" if I ever heard one. And please, explain to me about the burdensome regulations I face on a daily basis. I'm really confused. I rarely deal with government nonsense that gets in the way of my day-to-day life. By the way, I'll touch on this: jrodefeld posted:The writing tips seem like an evasion. You can avoid the issue we are discussing and be condescending at the same time! It's a win-win. The writing tips are not an evasion, because I mock your writing and then mock your points, and then use your rhetorical errors to mock you even further. So, yes, I'm being condescending, but I'm not being evasive. I'm trying to point out how you can communicate with us better, since you vomit a lot of words and still manage to say nothing.
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Oct 16, 2015 00:49
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If you want to talk about other things, there's a ton of sub forums for you to peruse. Hell, you can look at our post history and see what some of us are into. Seriously, you'll get a lot farther in life if you take time to learn your audience. It's like you put no effort into learning the culture, start inserting yourself into the dynamic by making an rear end of yourself, and then getting upset that people are treating you harshly. I'm not trying to rail on you. It seems like you have no awareness of how you come across. Like, go into the other forums. See what interests you. Post in there like a normal person. You might see some drama follow you, but they'll stamp it out, unless you talk about basketball like you talk about politics.
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Oct 16, 2015 04:04
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RuanGacho posted:Okay. No, that's "ineffective." To say something is "corrupt," you're stating that immoral action happened under the guise of achieving another end. So for example, if I set up a charity, but due to the lovely way I run things, only 10% of the money goes to the cause, it's ineffective. But, if part of the reason why 10% goes to the cause is because 50% goes into my pocket, that's corruption. It's important to use the right word, because it changes the argument greatly. Corruption has a very negative connotation. If you tell me something is corrupt, I'm going to deal with it in a different way than if it was just ineffective, or misguided. It's also important to understand the root of the problem. If a law doesn't achieve it's intended outcome, in order to prevent future mistakes, I need to know why we failed in the past.
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Oct 19, 2015 02:04
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jrodefeld posted:It's hard to believe this is even a serious question, but I'll answer nonetheless. Slavery is one of the most egregious violations of the non-aggression principle possible and is indeed a worse act than a property tax. Many, many times worse. However, both exist on a continuum and are not completely unrelated. Do you realize how you sound to most people when you say "Slavery is worse than property tax?" Right away, I disagree with you main thesis, on many levels. First, I don't agree that they exist on a continuum. Secondly, even if they did, that doesn't make being on the continuum wrong. It's not an all or nothing game. quote:There was a notable political theorist whose name escapes me at the moment. Nonetheless he posed the question "when does a slave cease being a slave?" Let's suppose a person owns a person and forces him to work in the cotton fields seven days a week and whips and beats him daily. Clearly the person is a slave. But let's suppose he stops beating him every day and only beats him on the weekends. Not only that, but he doesn't make him work seven days a week but only makes him work five days a week. Is he still a slave? Obviously he is. The problem with slavery is that the person being enslaved is being forced by threat of violence to associate with his or her "master" against his or her will. If the slave master reduces the slaves work output to only three days a week and gives the slave four days off, is he still a slave? The answer of course is yes. Here's where your logic breaks down. You don't substantiate anything you say. You're not defining slavery in a meaningful way. All I get is that even if I give my slaves 4 day weekends every week, it's still slavery. quote:Now, suppose the slave master says "okay, you will not be forced to work on my plantation at all, but I will allow you to move out into the world and do what you wish. However, you will be forced through threat of violence to send me half of everything you earn as a tribute." While this is no doubt preferable to being forced to work in the cotton fields seven days a week and beaten every day, the real fundamental issue is being avoided. The fundamental issue which separates a slave from a non-slave is that a free person is one who has total self-ownership and whose associations with others are entirely voluntary. While every move towards being less of a slave is preferable, the fundamental issue is being avoided. No, Jrod. It is not clear. Your logic takes a huge leap between the classic example of slavery to income tax. It makes sense to you because you agree with the proposition, but you haven't built it up. You haven't lead us to it. The biggest problem with your argument is that you fail to define your terms in a meaningful way, and if you don't do that, it's impossible to effectively get across what you mean. See, language can be horribly imprecise, because words have two different meanings. The first meaning is the pure factual "this is what it says in the dictionary," and the second is the connotative and emotional meaning. We use certain words because of their power to strike an emotional chord. For example, take the word adequate. Just watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOxpuKXhlss So, the word "slave" has an emotional meaning. It brings up terrible images for us from our history, and we see it as something shameful. But here's the thing - "slave" isn't just a word you can throw around and expect people to fall in line with. You still need to explain how you're using it. You also fall into the trap of saying "THREATS OF VIOLENCE" without defining what that means. Most of us don't agree with your world-view that throwing someone in jail for not paying their taxes is kidnapping or committing an act of violence against them, or that people are only paying taxes because there is that threat of violence. Because let's be honest, for most of us, the "violence" is so far removed, that it's not meaningful. So, let's go back and look at slavery. The problem with your definition of slavery is that you define it by the presence of violence. One can be a slave and never be beaten. There were slave-holders who were not violent, and treated their slaves in as humanely as you could treat someone while still thinking of them as a slave. The defining characteristic of slavery is the idea of people as property. Which ironically, is a defining characteristic of YOUR world view. The only difference is you feel that people own themselves. See, when it comes to income tax, there's no way you can reasonably say that I'm being treated as property. If I don't want to pay income tax, I can choose not to work! There's no negative repercussions for me not working. At least from the government. Before you read more books on governmental theory, I recommend you read a dictionary. Because you do this a lot. You use a lot of neologisms and misuse words left and right. And it makes having an honest discussion with you hard. If I can't agree with you on what you're saying, how are we supposed to get to the meat of what you're saying.
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Nov 21, 2015 06:48
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I know I was invited for a written debate, and frankly, I'm not too interested. JRod's philosophy is, to put it nicely, total nonsense. It requires you to accept a few a priori truths, and if you don't agree that "taxation is theft" or that "I pay taxes under the threat of violence," there's no way to have a meaningful conversation about the two worldviews. If we can't even agree on the color of the sky, then how are we supposed to talk about more complicated matters, such as property rights. Also, JRod has shown himself to be pretty bad at expressing his views in an intelligent manner. There's a lot of leaps that he makes, and there's a lot of times where I come across something that I can't effectively argue with him about because I really have no clue how he's trying to use a certain term or something. Finally, I don't know what the point of a debate would be. JRod has shown time and time again he is not going to change his worldview, and he may very well feel the same about me. The audience is not likely to change their mind. The audience here would likely agree with me, even if my arguments were just me smearing feces on a whiteboard and saying "That's libertarianism!" It wouldn't be a fun intellectual exercise for me, since I'd be debating with a brick wall.
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Nov 21, 2015 14:45
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say no to scurvy posted:Libertarianism just always comes off as such a useless philosophy. I mean, I guess it might sound alright for some fantasy-land, but there is no real way to apply it earth in this modern era. It only works in a world without any scarcity of resources, because the minute where you have one group who needs something (like water) to survive, and you have another group who has plenty of that thing, you're going to have issues. And there's a lot of things that can be scarce, and can create scarcity. I lived through Hurricane Sandy, and that was a great example about how libertarianism would just break down. So, in Hurricane Sandy, you had massive blackouts and you had issues with the roads. For a week after the storm, it was very difficult to get around, if not downright impossible. Because the power was out in so much of the area, supplies were hard to come across, so if you needed gas, you were hosed, which meant the few gas stations that were open had massive lines, which made the travel difficulties even worse because those roads would get backed up like nothing. Then you had massive damage caused by the storm. The weakest link for many people was the power company. Let me tell you about JCP&L, or the most incompetent power company to walk this earth. They are owned by First Energy, a loving incompetent power company. Even before Sandy, they were notorious for their incompetency. The summer before, Jersey kept having a ton of power outages for no apparent reasons. Well, what happened was the year before, there was a fire in the power station in Morristown, and that damaged their capabilities. Well, in the summer, when there was more demand for power, we would keep losing electricity on hot days or during thunderstorms. Now the thing about power companies is that there can only be one really servicing an area (it gets a little weird because you do have 'choice' but not really). After all, only so much electricity can be flowing through the lines, and the way our power grid works, you can't have 20,000 lines from 20,000 different plants trying to service the same area. It's a grid of power. Frankly, JRod, I'd love to hear you explain how electricity would work in a libertarian environment, because as I said, you can't have individualized power grids for each company. There can really only be one. Well, anyway, back to the point. You have a poorly maintained power grid, you have a private company in charge of that grid, and then you have a massive hurricane hit, and you see how quickly things fell apart. The roads were clear within a week. Some people were without power for 2 or 3 weeks. JCP&L was the weak point. Many towns were actually petitioning Chirs Christie to do something. Yeah. So the private company who has a reason to keep the power grid well maintained and to be prepared for massive hurricanes completely dropped the loving ball. Meanwhile, the roads and poo poo that the government was responsible for was handled pretty well.
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Nov 22, 2015 16:43
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Caros posted:And while I'm on a libertarian kick today I had a thought occur to me. What is the libertarian take on Involuntary Russian Roulette? Libertarianism works as long as you don't need specifics. Then everything falls apart. The problem with the NAP is that it is a philosophy that sounds nice, until you come to question what it means to initiate aggression against another person. After all, what is aggression? A miserable little pile of secrets? See, one of the reasons why our laws end up being so complex is that our laws have to be very specific and need to explain how we should handle various scenarios. We need to define our terms very narrowly, or else the law gets thrown away as being overly broad. So, we need to think about what is an aggressive action. And then we need to think about actions that aren't aggressive, per se, but could have serious and negative impacts on others. For example, I would argue that driving my car while intoxicated is not an aggressive action. A key element of aggression is that I'm intending to hurt someone, and I'm not trying to hurt anyone! I'm just trying to get home while drunk as gently caress. Well, we would want to ban that behavior because IT'S REALLY loving DANGEROUS AND IT IS A TERRIBLE IDEA AND IT COULD KILL PEOPLE! But... it's not aggressive. Which means we now have rules beyond the NAP, which means the NAP is not a sufficient guiding principal. Or else, you would have to expand aggression to such an absurd degree that it basically becomes meaningless, and I could have you busted for violating the NAP because you made me consider my mortality.
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Nov 28, 2015 06:44
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:I've never understood the Libertarian obsession in pretending their hypocrisy isn't hypocritical, rather than simply acknowledging their preferred system hasn't been implemented and they still need to function within the current system. These are people who have bought into a political ideology that's so defective from the base that they exist in a world of pure cognitive dissonance. I mean, look at Jrod and the arguments people have with him. He has no real understanding of what he's arguing for, so he's just spinning everything together to try and defend it against attacks. Well, what's the best way to build a strong wall? Do you have an idea of where you're going to put a wall and start trying to build it wherever people try to break on through, or do you build a good wall to begin with and then reinforce the areas where people try to break on through?
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Nov 28, 2015 16:59
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Oh joy! JRod returned and I stopped paying attention to this thread. Well, I love heart attacks more than anything, and it's a little too late to call him a poo poo for his first post on healthcare (yes, the no-true scotsman fallacy or the 'you are an emotional being incapable of logical thought' fallacy). But I'm more than happy to get into a talk about wages.jrodefeld posted:Approximately 4% of the US domestic working force earns the current minimum wage. I don't at all mean to demean this group of people because I want everyone, including those with the least working experience and productivity to have the maximum opportunity to move up to a comfortable middle class existence. But I can't help them by destroying the first rung on the ladder. That hurts the most vulnerable people disproportionately. Hey fuckface, what percentage of people would be helped by an increase in the minimum wage. If the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and I raise it to $8.00, it doesn't mean that people making $7.50 an hour are grandfathered in and don't get a raise. THEY GET PAID AT $8.00 AN HOUR TOO. For all the time you spent writing this, you couldn't think about that? quote:Earning a very low wage is obviously not desirable, but if it allows you to become more productive, demonstrate traits that employers will find valuable such as reliability, honesty, hard work and so forth you have a viable path to earning higher and higher incomes and moving up towards a more and more comfortable standard of living. Hey shitheel, didn't I go over this already in some other thread? Look, here's the thing - a lot of those jobs are meaningless. I work in software. I never go to someone and say "Hey, all those years of stocking shelves really are helping me do this job right now. I remember how I would open the box and put the cans on the shelf... that's really coming in useful." Stuff like reliability, honesty, and hard work, while valuable, are not unique, nor are they as valuable as you can imagine. If that were true, people working at the supermarket would be using it as a stepping stone onto more interesting and rewarding careers. And yet they aren't. Here's the biggest problem with your worldview Jrod - you keep saying that you have the answers and yet you keep ignoring that it's not happening that way today. And while we don't live in a libertarian utopia, it does stand to reason that we would be seeing evidence of this happening. State Intervention can't keep blocking all progress. You are also treating the job ladder like it's an infinite ladder. Most jobs, the ladder only goes up so far, and you have to either be happy with your lot, or move to a different career. Like the stockboy at a grocery store. The ladder ends at stockboy. Maybe they make a transition to management, but nowadays, without a college degree, that's very difficult. And if you can't afford to get a college degree, which you wouldn't if you were making stockboy wages and trying to fend for yourself, it's a downright rigged game. And not everybody is cut out for management. So what does the stockboy do? How do they leverage being a stockboy in the real working world? quote:The ONLY way to actually raise wages is to increase the productivity of the labor of the worker. When entrepreneurs start a business, their goal is to be profitable which make the capital investment and risk worthwhile. To be profitable, their incoming earnings must exceed their outgoing expenditures. To that end, the businessman prices the cost of capital goods, of office space and every other commodity that is needed to produce the good or service that he or she is selling. This is done VERY carefully to stay within budget and maximize profits. Hey dumbass, haven't you noticed that the productivity of the worker has gone up. You know what else also goes up - the ratio of pay that a CEO gets compared to their lowest earning worker. Basically, if minimum wage workers pay went up with productivity, they would be making something like 20 dollars an hour now. quote:Why would the cost of labor be exempt from these economic calculations? The entrepreneur very carefully determines what the value of individual capital goods is with very scientific specificity. He determines if they add more value than they detract from the efficient enterprise. EXCEPT THIS IS NOT HOW IT WORKS. I've explained this before, but people are not paid on that scale. I don't say "Well Joe makes me 7 dollars an hour, which means I'll pay him 7." It's even harder when you get to office workers and other people. I don't know why you insist on viewing the world through this simplistic and, frankly, childish lens. I know it's satisfying in a way that more complex calculations done by people who have actually worked in the real world can't offer. But it's not reality. First off, saying "Person X will make us Y dollars" is a ridiculous way of looking at things because there's plenty of jobs where it is very difficult to assign a direct value or there are jobs that don't actually make the company money. So, take a software tester. How can you determine how much money a software tester honestly made you? It's very difficult. Some issues wouldn't be encountered, some issues don't matter that much. What about HR? The place I work has a cafeteria. How much money do you think the people running the cafeteria make the company? What about the janitorial staff and the people who maintain the buildings? Here's what determines your pay. 1. How difficult is it to hire for this position? Do I need someone with specialized knowledge or can I take anyone off the street and expect competence from them? 2. What are the job conditions? Jobs that are naturally worse can increase compensation. For example, there are people who travel a lot. Part of their pay reflects that they are traveling a lot and that it is a bit of a strain on their lives, so they get compensated for that. 3. What area of the country are you in? 4. What do people perceive the work being worth? 5. What is the industry standard? One of the big things that keeps the wage of a retail worker down is #1. It's really easy to hire someone, and people always need money. It's like the guy who wrote Iko Iko. Basically, the song was stolen from him by the Dixie Cups and they claimed authorship. He settled for a small percentage of the royalties. When asked why he took a horrible deal like that, he said "10% of something is better than all of nothing." There's a lot of people who will work for low pay because it is better than nothing. But that creates downward pressure on those jobs, since if I wanted to, I could easily get a retail job. So if I won't do it for $7.50 an hour, somebody else might. It gets a little more complicated than that, but there's a lot that impacts that stuff. See, you over simplify everything. And that means most of our time is spent telling you "This is not how the world works." But you still are able to cling to your fallacious view of the world because it makes sense. Your fictional world has some logical consistency. But when you apply that to reality, and insist on doing that, then I have to assume that you are either six years old, or you have the intellect of a six-year-old. quote:Ceterus paribus (all things being equal), if the price of something is raised people will buy less of it. Maybe the customers would prefer three cashiers at the local grocery store and perhaps it would thus add additional profits if they were hired at $8 an hour. But at $15 (which is what Bernie Sanders and most Progressives are advocating we raise the minimum wage to) they simply cannot justify the expense in light of the marginally increased productivity and additional consumer satisfaction they would receive. Actually, we stick with one cashier because that's what we need to do the job. If I had demand for two cashiers, I would have two cashiers. But I'm running a business, not a charity, so one cashier it is. quote:At the same time, there are 16-21 year old young adults in the neighborhood who are unemployed. They may want to be employed and earn a few bucks to go out to eat, go on a date, see a movie or just create a small savings so that when they move out of their parents house they've got a leg up on everyone else. Most importantly they would have developed a work history and track record of employment that will help them when they apply for higher paying jobs in the future. What bizarre fantasy world are you living in? Do you understand why people join gangs and get involved in crime? What hosed up world do you live in where someone will say "Yeah, I could make 2 bucks an hour stocking shelves at the supermarket, or I can run drugs for the Crips and make significantly more. Well, tell the Crips they'll have to settle their feud with the Bloods some other way, because I'm going to stock shelves!" Life isn't that simple. In the area I grew up in, people who didn't have jobs didn't turn to crime. You know why? Because I grew up in a middle class area where people had the illusion of hope for a better future. They had college to look forward to and possibly long lucrative careers. It's asinine to think that the minimum wage does anything to create new crime. quote:This is just one example but you have to realize the type of detrimental effect these policies are having on society's most vulnerable. That's not an example, but rather conjecture. An example is something concrete you can point to. It's something that actually happened with a clear cause and effect. And given that when I hear drug dealers talk about why they started, it almost always includes "I could make poo poo money working some lovely job, or I could make real money dealing drugs." It seems like minimum wage policies have little to do here. quote:And what the hell is "suitable to sustain a minimal standard of living"? This varies State by State. It varies by age group. It varies between single and married people. It varies based on if you have children and how many children you have. The idea you can determine what a minimum "living wage" is for all of society is absolutely ludicrous. Hey dickwad, do you have any idea how we can utilize math? So, we say "The average cost of living in this area is 'x,' the cost of food in this area is 'y,' the cost of clothes are 'z.'" You put that together, and you can figure out what it takes for the average person or family to live for a month. Yes, there will always be outliers. But our society is structured to offer them additional assistance, like more tax breaks for the dude with 7 kids. But we know what it takes to survive. Maybe it's a little fuzzy, but because we're human beings, we don't need to have 100% precision to take an action. Also, you know what else hurts people without college degrees? That there aren't a lot of jobs out there for them. It is much harder to find gainful employment when you don't have a skillset that makes you qualified for your positions. quote:And yes, I recognize that for whatever reason there are adults out there who have very low skills and low productivity. The answer in that case is to assist in them gaining more skills to become more productive and more desirable to employers. One of the best ways to do that is for them to take a job at the best wage they can get on the market (which may be lower than the current minimum wage) and prove themselves to be worth more, and ever more. DO YOU EVER loving LISTEN TO SOMEONE WHO DISAGREES WITH YOU? We've told you 20 times before - life doesn't work that way. The skills you gain stocking shelves are so generic and useless outside of a situation where I have a box and an empty shelf that needs to be stocked that it doesn't lead to gainful employment. Nobody says "Look at the way that man stocks shelves, I see a future surgeon in that boy!" That's because it's menial labor. It's something a loving monkey can do, and for peanuts. It's not difficult. You're really romanticizing these low-skill and low-wage jobs into something they will never be. People deserved to be treated with dignity, but you're delusional if you believe that working at Target will somehow lead to better careers without college or some sort of job training. quote:If you raise the minimum wage, you are literally dooming these people to a life of welfare dependency, frequent substance abuse problems, crime and even imprisonment. Most of us aren't just pushing for a minimum wage increase, but also job training programs that will get people where they need to be.
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Feb 7, 2016 19:08
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jrodefeld posted:You, frankly, don't have a clue what you are talking about. I want to caution people that somehow think that I am somehow obsessing about race, that you all do fine obsessing about race without me. The reason I react so strongly to this character assassination attack against me, is that I personally focus a great deal on the systemic racism and discrimination that the State and private citizens inflict upon minority communities in the United States. This is a passion of mine. I love black culture, black music, black comedy and so forth. And I'm not just saying that. Since middle school, I've idolized black role models and I've identified with civil rights causes as long as I was ever politically aware. Here's some advice. When someone calls you a racist, don't argue with them. It's very hard to argue with that because nine times out of ten, you end up saying something that digs you deeper into the hole. And then more people pounce on you and you start digging deeper, and next thing you know, you're in the molten core of the Earth. You don't have to defend every claim made against you. You'll get a lot farther if you pick your battles. Also, saying that you like black culture is not an argument against racism. Being a racist doesn't mean you're in the KKK or you hate them. It just means you have some level of prejudice against them. quote:The idea that I am even bothering to defend multiple year old posts about a long resolved criminal trial is absurd. But what if I was concerned about an ISIS attack on Los Angeles? Would I be unreasonable in being extra cautious about Middle Eastern men who were also Muslims? Would that make me a bigot, even though the clear evidence shows that nearly all ISIS members are Muslims who are of Middle Eastern descent? See what I mean. We're smart people. We know that there are other signs we can look at that would be more accurate. The problem is that statements like these are to inelegant to come off as anything but racist. I assume that's not your intention, but you're hurting yourself because you need to try and prove everybody wrong on every point, and so you say stuff like this.
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Feb 9, 2016 18:34
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jrodefeld posted:No, I don't care about people who VOLUNTARILY choose to live in a socialist society. What I am opposed to, as I've said so many times, is using aggression against people. Let's suppose that a voluntary socialist was able to convince all workers in a free society to quit their jobs at the same time, pool their resources, buy land on the market and open mutualist cooperatives where they would share all their resources and all profits they make on the market. What the gently caress does aggression mean and why is it wrong? That's a big problem with your argument - a lot of what you say are just words that we have to interpret the same way you do, or else all is lost. But this is also an incredibly naive worldview. Let's deal with babies. Most of us were born into a preexisting state. The place that we live likely existed and likely had a similar political structure established before we were born. Growing up, I had no more choice to be an American citizen than I did being a man or having the most gorgeous eyes you've ever laid... um... eyes... upon. So what happens when a baby is born into this world? Do we kick them out of society until they are old enough to chose to live in a society? Well, that's just loving stupid. Of course you wouldn't support something like that. Society would crumble as soon as people started having sex, meaning the only civilizations left would be either exclusively homosexual or obsessively into Star Trek. And in that land, the exclusively homosexual society filled with Star Trek nerds would have near unlimited power. I assume the more rational decision would be make them live in that society until they can choose to move elsewhere. Ah, but wait, we have a problem. A 13-year-old does not agree with the socialist principals we've established in our society. He does not want to abide by our egalitarian rules! Okay, we can banish him from the land. But then he would likely die and the parents wouldn't be cool with us. Alright, we will try to force him to comply. Wait, you have an 18-year-old who hates our society and wants to live in the Capitalist society. But he can't afford to move to the Capitalist society. What do we do? Do we force him to live like a socialist? What are his options? Does he try to behave like a capitalist in a socialist society? Then what do we do? It seems like the solution to a libertarian's conundrums are almost always banishment. The purely voluntary society just wouldn't last more than maybe a generation, tops. Because here's the thing - we can't have social upheaval every time a new generation comes of age and decides they want to live under a different set of rules but also want to stay close to their parents. It all sounds very nice until you start to deal with practical questions like having sex that leads to reproduction, and then you run into problems. Eventually, people will want to live their way and they will run into a problem - there's no more land to buy. But that's okay. You probably weren't planning on having sex anyway. quote:There are very few socialists who are willing to maintain peace in their efforts to create their "worker's paradise". Can you please provide evidence for this? I'm not the one who basically wants to wipe out the entire human race and stop all procreation. Although, if you did sell your worldview as a never-ending homosexual orgy, I think you might get a lot more support. quote:If you ARE willing to keep the peace and work towards your socialist goals by respecting homesteaded legitimately acquired private property and using persuasion rather than aggression to get compliance with your values, then you will be entirely welcome in a libertarian free society. The reason why we don't reciprocate this courtesy to the libertarian is that what they want is contrary to how we feel society must function. It's like going into a vegetarian restaurant and getting upset that they don't have moo-cow burgers but only tofu burgers. We believe that society functions by a rule of law and that people can choose to live as they please within reason, but as members of our society, they have to fulfill certain requirements. If they don't like it, they can leave. And if they can't leave, then they can not like it but abide by it until they either can leave or get enough people together to enact a change. And what are you going to do if we choose to use aggression to get our way? Like, think for more than 5 seconds about what you're going to say. You're so dense you don't hear what other people are saying. Yeah, it sounds nice. But it also doesn't stand up once you start poking holes at it. Edit: Oh God-damnit jrodefeld posted:I worded that imprecisely. What I meant was if you were a member of the police or homeland security who was investigating a purported plot by ISIS to attack Los Angeles, would you make the assumption based on the statistics that the attacker would be of Middle Eastern descent and also a Muslim? Or would you really think it is reasonable that you'd suspect the elderly Jewish grandmother just as much as the twenty-something guy who just flew in from Syria? Look, I was trying to help you before. But you just couldn't resist, and you had to dig in. So, here's how we go about things in the real world. An attack happens. If we had reason to believe it's from ISIS, we can probably identify the people by seeing who has traveled to the region, or who has had contact with that region. Or look for people who have been spreading speech similar to that of ISIS. You're not going to look at every Muslim, because for the most part, you're going to uncover NOTHING. It's a waste of time. And you might miss the perp. There are white boys who want to join ISIS. It could be someone trying to make the attack look like it came from ISIS. Who knows? You better learn Chinese at the rate you're digging that hole. Cemetry Gator fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Feb 10, 2016 |
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Feb 10, 2016 01:54
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Buried alive posted:I kind of think we should gold mine the thread just so any time someone shows up and goes "Man, ya'll sure are mean to that JRod guy," we can go "Let me educate you," and then post the link. I can't recall anyone saying that, and I assume if they said that, they'd probably be a pretty big troll too. Most of my posts towards JRod tend to be "You already said this and this is what I said last time" or me trying to help him not say racist things. And I'm pissed off about his recent racist spat. I was proud of how I showed that a lbertarian society could not tolerate babies, but no, that line of argument had to be overlooked because he proposed racial profiling as a reasonable solution to some of life's problems.
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Feb 11, 2016 06:14
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jrodefeld posted:So, to paraphrase Bastiat, if we don't support a thing being done by the State we don't support that thing being done at all? It's sad that Bastiat crushed this fallacy a century and a half ago, yet you keep parroting it without understanding how fallacious the argument really is. Somebody stole my argument, but why isn't this already happening? But this also raises other questions. What do you mean by peaceful assistance? How are we violently assisting the poor. I haven't received food stamps, but I doubt we're shooting them at poor people, or we're forcing poor people to fight for their food stamps. Nor are we killing people left and right as we hand out food stamps. It's a meaningless phrase that just raises further questions. quote:So the claim that libertarians have black hearts, and secretly chuckle about the prospect of mass starvation and widespread suffering is worse than dishonest, it is downright abhorrent. You know what might help? Explaining your position instead of just asserting that it's right and moving on to other assertions. Maybe you could talk about why we should reject Statism. quote:Let me cite another common "lifeboat" scenario that is thrown against the libertarian position. If a poor person is starving and steals a loaf of bread from a store, is he or she committing an act of unjustified aggression? Jesus Christ man. Listen to yourself talk. You sound like a bad student. "Unjustified aggression?" Most people would say "theft" or "criminal activity." You know, something that isn't just jargon. That's all it is. Just loving jargon. But here's the thing, you never answer the question. A normal human being would say "no, they didn't not commit an act of unjustified aggression," and then promptly throw up for saying something so ugly. Why? Simple. Somewhere, society has failed to allow someone to get to that point. We failed. Whether we didn't offer enough assistance or opportunity, at that point, what difference does it make. Their options are to either survive and break the law, or die but at least do so without violating some law. That's morality. Not your weird little "Hey, everything will take care of itself. BUT NO AGGRESSION PEOPLE!" You're not seeing the big picture. quote:For the libertarian, the store-owner would have the right to sue for restitution. If a store-owner was so petty as to make a Federal case about a starving person stealing a $3 loaf of bread to keep from starving, there are all sorts of social pressures that come to bear even where the law doesn't tread. How does that differ from the world where we live today? We're not going to arrest the store owner. And if somebody were to make a big deal, people would react. But you see, here's the problem - that's not a situation that the state needs to get involved in. But what about environmental matters where we can't count on the market to do what is best? What about something where you could be doing serious harm. But here's the thing, it would be almost impossible to prove that YOU'RE the one causing harm. After all, one coal burning power plant isn't going to cause significant problems. And I said it before - but lifeboat scenarios are the true test of a moral code. Nobody needs to be told what to do or how to handle simple day-to-day interactions with people. It's when poo poo hits the fan that we need something to guide us. Don't be dismissive.
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Feb 12, 2016 01:49
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I don't think this thread is going places. How about a page of closing statements followed by closure? There are no closing statements to make because ultimately, JRod failed to make any opening statement of value. He's a terrible debater who's style of discourse seems to be writing in a pseudo-intellectual style that's just dense enough to make the average person's eyes glazed over, as if the more he talks about something, the more he knows about it. He pushes an ideology that makes no sense, tries to find middle ground where it cannot exist, and doesn't want to accept that the world has rejected libertarianism. We don't want a Gangs of New York style of civilization going on. Perhaps JRod would be better suited to learn how life really worked, when there were essentially DROs, and what they served to do was keep the poor contained and away from the rich folk, but also make sure that they were supported whatever political machines existed. Because the reality is that rich people want to be protected, so they're going to create the means to do it. JRod dances from topic to topic before sticking with racism, despite protesting that he doesn't want to talk about it. I think he recognizes that people have eviscerated his arguments because many of us understand economics, health care, how companies work, and all that other jazz. He can only parrot what he's been told from Mises.org. So, of course, rather than attempt to have a meaningful conversation, he goes back to talking about how he's not a racist. Most of his arguments are just him restating his original point, just from different angles. He doesn't actually engage with how it works. And beyond that, he's a possible watermelon fucker. I think a thread on hard-right politics would be interesting, but it needs to be ran by someone who understands it and is willing to chum the waters. JRod doesn't understand it, and he's throwing himself into the shark tank. It's time to let Jaws finally have her meal.
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Feb 14, 2016 16:46
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Cnidaria posted:In fact you can look at basically every one of his arguments and see that he doesn't have anything past a high school understanding of what he's talking about. In many cases he probably doesn't even know what he is talking about and is just taking someone's arguments for granted because they are a libertarian and therefore must be correct. One of the big appeals of libertarianism is how simple it is. After all, when you can have a consistent answer to any problem that comes along, it's appealing. It makes it seem more complete. The problem, of course, is that life is complex and very quickly, the simple answers aren't so simple anymore. Take the idea that we should only intervene when someone is doing harm to another person. How do you describe harm? How do you determine who is harming whom? What about a situation where one person is harming a lot of people, but not directly, and could possibly not be aware of the harm they're committing. A perfect example would be pollution. What's frustrating about JRod is that he doesn't ever seek to understand why the world is organized the way we've organized it. Why did states rise up instead of libertarian communes? After all, the ideas that drive libertarianism are not new. And one just has to go back into history and see what happens when society is left to figure it out for themselves. Gangs of New York as not total fiction. I would argue that JRod really doesn't know what he's talking about, beyond maybe having some experience with it. Like, he's gone to the doctor and he's worked minimum wage jobs, so he thinks he really has some understanding of how the system actually works. What's frustrating is that he doesn't know when he doesn't know something. For example, I tend not to talk about economics in this thread. Why? Because my understanding of economics is very basic. I couldn't have an intelligent conversation on how it works. But he'll just talk about everything like he's an expert, and it really hurts the debate. How are you supposed to talk about healthcare with someone who doesn't understand why having licensed doctors is a good thing?
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Feb 20, 2016 17:04
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Goodbye Jrodefeld, although you never listen at all, you had the grace to stick to your guns, as your arguments would stall. You crawled out of the old thread, and you started your own under the pretense that you were focusing on only property rights. And it seems to me, you posted like a candle in the wind. Insisting that you were safe and fine when the rain set in. And I tried to convince you, but you were just an idiot. Your candle burned out long before your legend ever did. Dentistry was tough, those fillings had mercury, even though there were trace amounts, you removed them anyway. Although you would deny, we still would pounce on you, claiming that you were a racist, and you loved watermelons too. And it seems to me you posted like a candle in the wind. Only ever using Mises for evidence. And we tried to give you proof but you were just an idiot, your candle burned out long before your legend ever did. Goodbye JRodefeld, although you never listened at all, you would always repeat yourself, as your respect would start to fall. Goodbye Jrodefeld, from a Statist who relies on coercion, who demanded you lived like him, like a Leftist Progressive. And it seems to me you posted like a candle in the win. Claiming that all of this rain was just aggression. And we would have liked you more, but you were just an idiot. Your candle burned out long before your legend ever did.
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Feb 21, 2016 15:34
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