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Literally The Worst posted:toot toot i do not create a friendship joinder! The boat noises at the beginning made me spit up my coffee. You have ruined my keyboard and I will be sending my mongol hordes to collect recompense in due time.
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Oct 15, 2015 21:31
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Grognan posted:Sorry for being mean. I really enjoy the watermelon loving because it shows just how humorless and far up his own rear end Jrod is. I mean if you asked any goon they might be confused at first, but after about five or six times? Eventually they'd just roll with it, make a crack and it would go away. But he is so self important that he can't address it, and so the joke just gets progressively more and more ridiculous.
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Oct 15, 2015 23:08
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Hey you're back! And when I'm awake!jrodefeld posted:Let's talk about something else for a bit. There is a reason why I keep coming back here and posting. Most political internet forums are populated by people who don't know anything. They frankly aren't any fun to participate in. But on the other hand, this is not a way to have a debate. I'd be happy to debate just one of you or a small number of those who are serious, but taking on thirty at once is unwieldy at best. Must... refrain... from gangbang jokes. quote:I'd like to take a break from this for a moment and just ask an open ended question. What are you guys into besides politics and posting on the internet? Do any of you have degrees? What are your hobbies? Gangbangs. Damnit! Jokes aside I'm a writer with a hobby of making fun libertarians on the internet. Also video games. Also I love me some Gundam. Also... well honestly just check my posting history. While you're at it maybe you could stop by some of the other forums here instead of solely coming to SA to proselytize about libertarianism. A big part of the reason you get poo poo on so heavily when you post here is that you know nothing about goon culture. I was quite serious in my first post of this thread that it baffled me that after what... two, three years, you still don't understand that you should put a tag on your posts before you post them (or that you shouldn't post them at all and should instead go to the designated thread for the subject or make a thread solely for your brand of crazy). I don't mean this to be mean by the way, I'm trying to be honest with you. In the cinema thread we have a poster called Supermechagodzilla. He is the most insufferable rear end I've ever encountered, and nearly two hundred posters have him on ignore, but he is still around and posting because he gets the culture and pokes around in other places from time to time relevant to his interests. quote:Speaking for myself, I'm a young guy who likes exercising, playing basketball, listening to music, watching movies, going to parties, and being creative. I run a couple part-time internet businesses, and my dream in the future is to grow them into being able to sustain a full income so I can quit my day job. Check out You look like poo poo, the goon exercise thread. They helped me lose a lot of weight before my wedding. Check out Creative Convention or the techie nerd threads and I bet you'd learn a thing or two that might help your businesses. I got my start as a writer based off a discussion I had in a thread a couple of years back. This can indeed be a place where you do other things than argue about An-capism. You might even mellow a tad. Goons are cool! quote:Contrary to what many of you have insinuated, I was not born of privilege. My parents were working class. I was raised in a 1200 square foot 1960s-era house in a not particularly great neighborhood. Luckily my parents valued my education, so I was fortunate enough to attend a private school for most of my formal education. My parents went into debt to send me there and I was on a scholarship that helped pay for my education. You were doing so well. Don't get snippy now.  When you post things like this consider your readership. Many of the people who get annoyed about that loan from grandma thing are annoyed because the context of that was you arguing a position they feel would be taking away healthcare from the poorest amongst us. You were arguing that people could just accept charity, as you did, without realizing that many people do not have the same sort of support structure you grew up in. That many people come from a broken home with a single mother who can barely feed them. I'm not trying to argue with you here, just provide you context for why people get annoyed at you. From the sounds of things you're pretty solidly middle class, same as I was. And that is fine, people just want you to understand that no one is an island, and that even the middle class are wildly successful compared to the very poor who they believe your policies would hurt the most. Edit: As an aside... have you hosed a watermelon. Inquiring minds want to know and you'd seem a hell of a lot more relatable if you could get out of your own rear end and answer the question.
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Oct 16, 2015 04:03
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Cemetry Gator posted: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. The aliens in Space Jam did nothing wrong, they were merely attempting to enforce contract rights over the looney toons... or something. I don't know anything about basketball.
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Oct 16, 2015 04:10
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jrodefeld posted:
THANK YOU! And yes! All the loving time! I screw them in the morning, in the evening, they're just so ripe and fresh. Our long national nightmare is finally over. quote:All right, I'll mellow out and check out some of the rest of the forum. By the way, who do you write for? I'm a self publisher of sci-fi and a ghost writer for some garbage fantasy books that have sold alarmingly (annoyingly because I have to write more) well. quote:I play some video games myself, not as much as I used to. I think I recall from a previous post, you mentioned you play some World of Warcraft? Am I remembering that correctly? I could never get into those sorts of games personally, but I'll play an RPG or two once in a while. I play wow for about a month every expansion. Mostly its strategy games and RPGs for me but I've run the gamut.
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Oct 16, 2015 04:22
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DrProsek posted:Breaking gimmick for a second: most of us act like assholes here because D&D's posting culture generally encourages that kind of posting, for better or worse. Here I'm an rear end in a top hat harping on you for whatever strikes me as your worst post of that day. Hop over to Batman's Shameful Secret on the other hand, and I'm explaining that I don't like posting about "thread opinion" on comic books because it alienates posters, and even if 99% of us dislike the new Uncanny Avengers, we shouldn't say stuff like "I'm glad we all agree Uncanny Avengers was terrible" because it spoils the thread for the few people that did like it. Not that BSS is totally devoid of assholery (people have very strong feelings on their Batmans), but you don't see the kind of constant mockery like in your threads because even if you had bizarre and terrible opinions there's just nothing fun about posting "Jrod likes Red Hood, what a weirdo," over and over again. Politics in general is a touchy subject. Vaccination talk for example will bring me into a near blinding rage because I've seen my young niece hacking her lungs up in agony because she couldn't be vaccinated and other people were too irresponsible to keep up their end of the social contract. Its simply hard to get as consistently angry about things that don't matter, such as Batmans compared to things that do like lifesaving healthcare and the distribution thereof.
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Oct 16, 2015 04:31
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Literally The Worst posted:"i'm getting dogpiled on, so let's stop talking about that, because i don't have an answer" Oh come on, basic bitch? You gotta go full masculine and call him a beta. I just find it hilarious when people use that insult.
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Oct 16, 2015 04:37
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DarklyDreaming posted:Hiking, TV, paddleboarding, video games, huge tea snob. I was working on a marine bio degree ages ago but dropped out and plan to come back to that, more on that later. Marine biology and a tea fetish? You're a worse loving person than Jro- quote:Ok so here's the thing. I'm not going to mince words here I was too crazy for university. Had a series of breakdowns under pressure and a couple suicide attempts and I've spent the past 9 years working on my mental health and keeping myself sustained with poo poo jobs. If my family wasn't as rich as they are I would not have the luxury of living like this to deal with my issues. If there was significant debt attached to my education I would have kept on regardless and cracked for good, either killing myself or showing up to class with a rifle or something like that. So my hat's off to you Jrod, my time preference is poo poo compared to yours. That said, this is also why I'm so diametrically opposed to your vision of a perfect society, I know there are millions out there dealing with what I have to deal with without the support network I got, and I'd like to fix that. Oh... I'm glad you didn't do anything bad DD, you're good people.
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Oct 16, 2015 04:45
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paragon1 posted:Have you checked out any of Iron Blooded Orphans yet? So far it seems like a reasonable prediction of how DRO's would act in the Space Robot Future. IBO is the poo poo. I've been keeping out of the Gundam threads because I've gotten sick of arguing with some people, but thus far the agreement seems to be that IBO is amazing.
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Oct 16, 2015 04:48
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VitalSigns posted:Also this, you don't get to hold up theocratic slave states as paragons of liberty to which the USA and Europe should aspire and then go "so, what's your favorite food guys, I like a good Chicago deep dish who prefers New York Style?" Of course he'd like deep dish. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrqSizC-T-4
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Oct 16, 2015 06:51
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VitalSigns posted:"People" is like three letters longer than "men" though, got to save ink. It's also possible that he could have just said "Men" and left it as that because anyone who is so up their own rear end about pronoun usage that they'd take offense to non-gender neutral pronouns in a random discussion on an internet comedy forum is a sad individual.
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Oct 18, 2015 07:00
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Pigbog posted:I think Caros is wrong here, but I usually agree with her. I see what you did there, but you're wrong. If we were talking about someone writing a scholarly piece, or a book, or basically anything with serious merit you'd absolutely have a point that using either gender neutral pro-nouns or leaving some sort of disclaimer might be in order. This is a casual discussion on an internet forum and unless it is a discussion about gender roles (which it wasn't) being angry that a person uses gender nouns they are comfortable with is something that only a pedant would do. Someone whining about Cisgendered privilege is awful, but they are about as awful as someone who looks at an unrelated post and starts bitching "He and his?! What about she and hers?"
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Oct 18, 2015 20:55
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:yeah, but it's still pretty dumb to go "sorry if my cis-male white privilege offends you Oh I agree with you. My whole point is that it was entirely unnecessary because no one here is going to call him out for saying "He" instead of "They" and that is just makes him look like a creepy gently caress. Pigbog posted:I understand the distinction and would love to explain myself further but I don't want to derail the thread, so I'll do what jrod should do and stop talking about this even though I think you are wicked wrong. The level of pedantry required to get upset about the selection of personal pronouns on an internet comedy board is frankly astounding and does whatever group you're fighting for a disservice. Getting pissed off because someone says "he" instead of "they" makes you look like an enormous loving baby with no sense of scale. I don't even necessarily disagree with you that the usage of "He" as the default gender for most people is problematic, just that anyone dying on that hill in an unrelated discussion is a sad, sad individual who needs to pick their battles. Likewise intentionally using the incorrect gender when speaking about someone just makes you look like an idiot. hth.
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Oct 18, 2015 21:57
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" as if to try and go out of one's way to swing at the tumblrite strawman of d&d
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 Homesteading is the only legitimate form of property rights.
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Oct 19, 2015 21:48
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EndOfTheWorld posted:Hey Caros, you mentioned this a while ago, but I'd be totally down for a Let's Read of Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead if you were seriously considering subjecting yourself to that. I won't do the fountainhead because I never read it before so I can't rely on memory to recall what parts of it are worth skipping entirely. That said the atlas shrugged on is on my plate. It is a monster of a book and I'm still debating just how much depth I want to go into. Too much and I worry that I'll just end up posting updates that are just "gently caress you ayn rand" over and over again by the middle of the book.
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Oct 21, 2015 23:45
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HorseLord posted:i like how the yank constitution has basically no human rights provisions but people say poo poo like this Still stinging about the colonial revolution huh?
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Oct 22, 2015 19:26
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QuarkJets posted:For some (caros) it's more of a compulsion than a choice Why you gotta kink shame? That aside this came up in the USpol thread and I think it's worth making fun of here, behold the logical endpoint of self ownership. Fetal Eviction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4VJ3JuJaig&t=170s 
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Oct 24, 2015 01:49
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E-Tank posted:Is it too much to hope he's actually doing what he said, lurking, and actually trying to understand the community? I'm personally hoping he got embarrassed at the whole "I will fight you irl" thing but I'm an optimist at heart.
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Oct 28, 2015 06:30
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theshim posted:
5. Always 5. Also the best post in this whole thread.
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Oct 28, 2015 22:38
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YF19pilot posted:From: http://archive.lewrockwell.com/orig6/molyneux1.html But it wouldn't be replacing a political state because there wouldn't be a state?  I mean no poo poo blackwater or McDonalds don't rise up and replace the US when the US is king poo poo of the mountain. In the absence of the US government however, why is it so hard for this moron to believe that a private company might beat up (or buy out) all the other DRO's and thus gain a monopoly of force, at which point it gives precisely zero fucks whether you want to deal with them or not.
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Oct 30, 2015 08:00
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VitalSigns posted:Libertarians gushing about the wonderful surveillance This is a combination of actual Murray Rothbard quotes by the way.
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Oct 30, 2015 19:17
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VitalSigns posted:That would make sense, and that's undoubtedly how it would actually work (well no not really, the way it would actually work is you pay the DRO to protect you, your family, and your business from getting smashed up by your own DRO), but that's not what Molyneaux proposed because then it just looks like the government: men with guns can come imprison you even if you don't agree. I do love how the DRO solution is literally an annoying child jamming their hand inches from your face and going "I'm not touching you! I'm not touching you!"
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Nov 3, 2015 16:51
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Of course it is important to remember that their version of force doesn't necessarily reflect the usage of the word amongst normal folks. Or their use of initiation for that matter.
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Nov 10, 2015 02:08
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Who What Now posted:loving lol at Jrod trying to pretend Hong King doesn't have massive poverty problems. Nearly 20% of all people there live below the poverty line. But they aren't literally starving to death in the streets, so they can conveniently be ignored. The government owns almost all the housing too. Truly a free market when the basics of life such as food, water, medical care and housing are all heavily managed by the government.
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Nov 17, 2015 22:51
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You guys have all the fun while I'm at work. I'll be going into depth on jrodefeld's recent rants once I get home from work but in the meantime I will say two things. First and foremost. Challenge accepted jrod. I'm certainly willing to engage you in a written debate where you actually have to engage with the specific issue that are being thrown your way. Do you have a topic in mind? That said I will invoke my debate instructor when I say "a written debate isn't really a debate." He was never really a fan of them because it didn't allow for people to interact organically which he considered somewhat crucial to the process. I know you are super handsome and think that your good looks will shut down my ability to think, but have you considered an audio only debate? I mean it'd be in my favor too since I'd look like Nixon across from jfk, but it is a thought. If money is an issue then set up an Amazon account and I will anonymously purchase you a drat microphone. If you are still set on a written debate however, then pick a topic and I'll be happy to take you out back behind the woodshed in textual form instead.
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Nov 19, 2015 17:56
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Who What Now posted:If we're seriously considering debates I still want my debate on the topic of morality and ethics with Jrod. Audio-only via Google Hangouts is actually preferable, but if he wants it done written that's fine too, I'm guessing by way of some sort of editable Google doc or pastebin. I'm willing to work around you, Jrod, to make this happen, so whatever that takes I'll do it. Morality and ethics should supposedly be your strongest suit and I'm objectively one of the dumber posters in this thread, so if you have even the slightest bit of confidence in the validity of your position this should be a no-brainer for you. I called dibs you son of a bitch. I will fight you IRL. 
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Nov 19, 2015 18:29
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Twerkteam Pizza posted:I AM SO EXCITED FOR THIS More or less excited than you are for Jeb!
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Nov 19, 2015 18:53
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Captain_Maclaine posted:It's been a while, remind me: Were you among the handful of goons who did that google hangout session with Eripsa last year or whenever about marbles and whatnot? If so, I'm beginning to worry you're addicted to arguing with the mentally ill. Nah I missed that one. I know SedanChair was on that one and it was hilarious watching him kick the poo poo out of Eripsa. I did spend an unhealthy amount of time arguing with Eripsa the last time he came around but the amount of laughter I get from that sustained me through the jrod dryspell. Incidentally if you want to have a laugh, google Synereo. It was Eripsa's last crazy project and several months out from its first crowd funding drive it has produced... Nothing. Color me loving shocked.
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Nov 19, 2015 18:55
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Captain_Maclaine posted:Ah, gotcha. I had mixed you up. Yeah, I follow Eripsa's threads as they appear much like this one (watching Synereo fail to even live up to the worst-case predictions everyone made is pretty hilarious), but I do get a little worried about you guys who really engage earnestly so often. I mean yeah, it's admirable that you make such an effort confronting such stupid (Eripsa) and hateful (Jrod) bullshit, but I gotta wonder just how healthy that much Abyss-staring is. If it makes you feel better just keep in mind that I just really like arguing. I was on the Canadian world high school debate team for three years running solely because I really like winning arguments, even though I was actually diametrically opposed to many of the things I argued in favor of (the death penalty for example). For me it really is just a fun past time to debate things, though I have a particular loathing for libertarianism that makes me waste more time than I ought.
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Nov 19, 2015 19:03
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Okay bitches. I've got some nice rum to make this bearable... but before I start I'd like to give you guys an appropriate soundtrack for the effortpost. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9FImc2LOr8 Truly the debate music of our time. jrodefeld posted:While I wait for a response to my previous post, I'd like to again return to the subject of this thread. Frankly I'm not prepared to spend my time reading through all 35 pages of replies to take a tally of how many of you responded with substance about what constitutes just private property rights in your view, but from what I have read, I'd wager the number is small indeed. I hate to start off with a nitpick, but don't you think it is a little insulting to make your thread, lob a few grenades and then ignore every response (many of which were serious effort posts)? I mean I can accept you not having enough time to want to read over everything, but you don't get to come back and in essence say "I didn't read anything you guys posted while I was gone, but I'm guessing most of it was garbage that didn't address my point"? Just a thought about tone.  quote:To state the obvious, it is not only libertarians who value private property rights. All political ideologies have a strong conviction on private property. Marxists have a deeply felt conviction that the product of the worker's labor is their property and therefore the Capitalist is a thief by pocketing a profit from the product manufactured by the worker. That is why they feel it is justified for the workers to rise up and take control of the factories, taking them away from the Capitalist. It is not a random whim that is used to justify re-appropriation of property from the perceived thief to the "rightful" owner, but a consistent if mistaken concept of just property rights. If you have to state that it is obvious then it probably isn't. If it is then you wouldn't need to state it. Just saying. Also, as other posters have pointed out, no. Marxism didn't believe that the worker owned their labor, it was a theory that ownership by individuals was largely immoral. It is frankly very telling that you can't tell or don't know the difference. While I'm on the subject I will ask my first question of the effortpost: Why is is 'mistaken'? quote:Several posters on this very site accused me and fellow libertarians of committing "theft" if we were a tax protester to refused to pay taxes to the State. Therefore the principle is that the State, or "society", has a property right in the fruits of my labor. That is your property rights belief. I did! I did do that! And for the record that is the de facto property rights system of the vast majority of people in the country in which you reside. Even if people don't necessisarily agree with it in those terms provided, ninety five percent of americans believe paying taxes to be a civic duty and believe that people who cheat on their taxes are guilty of a crime. Since there isn't really any alternative crime I can think that would work, it stands to reason that they believe evading taxes is effectively theft. Just wanted to reiterate it because you are treating this as just another theory rather than the practical reality in which you live. quote:Yet when pressed for elaboration, Caros in particular retreated into abstraction. "We're just a bunch of hairless apes who do whatever 'works'. There are no property rights but only utilitarian in-the-moment value-judgments on whose control of scarce resources are to be respected and whose are not." This is obviously a paraphrase but it comes pretty close to the argument offered. Yet if one is concerned at all with justice, as so many progressives claim to be, then a very clear ethical standard which informs us who has rightful control of what scarce resource must be clearly established. You may not agree with the libertarian standard, but an equally clear definition of just property must be offered in its place. I in no way retreated into abstraction. I have happily spelled out the specifics of my argument on multiple occasions. The mere fact that you refuse to acknowledge the arguments presented before you (how many times have I asked you to actually address this now?) does not negate the existence of that argument. Moreover you are incorrectly characterizing my argument, either intentionally or through ignorance so allow me to restate it for you yet again: Property rights are a fiction. They are not some universal force like gravity, but instead a social fiction created between humans in the exact same fashion as money. Property rights are nothing more than the societal agreement that you are allowed to use force (or to have others do so on your behalf) to defend or retrieve property that the social group in question agrees belongs to you. That is it. They are simply a method of determining who has access to what in a social group because the alternative is might makes right. To date you have made no counter argument against this description, and I really don't believe you can. I absolutely agree that we must have a workable societally agreed upon system to determine who has access to what. That does not presuppose that I must agree with your hugely flawed and impractical system, just as I don't have to agree that Genghis Khan had it right. quote:As I previously stated, libertarians believe that the original way that just property is acquired is through original appropriation i.e homesteading. I was challenged with a good question, which I will try to answer here. "Since all land in 2015, or at least all desirable land where humans congregate is owned by somebody, or at least some property right is asserted, why does it matter how property was originally acquired? We don't live on the frontier where original appropriation of unowned natural resources is possible for almost anyone, so of what practical use is this abstract concept?" You called it a good question twice. That is weird. You are weird. As I have previously stated, very few people here give a single gently caress about the fact that libertarians believe homesteading is the 'one true property rights system'. Your argument that you have formulated a coherent logical theory is meaningless because you are starting from a series of presuppositions that are not universally agreed upon. This harkens back to the point many people have made that I can make a perfectly logical and coherent argument about how black people should be slaves or pedophillia is okay. If you start from certain principles you can logically prove just about anything, so saying "Well we've proven this logically" is nothing more than a flashy smoke screen to confuse the fact that your system of property rights is no more or less arbitrary than that of 12th century mongols. Moreover, every single bit of that logical facade falls completely away the moment it is put into any sort of practical effect. What do I mean? Well here is an example: "A new island is discovered in international waters. No government has any claim over it, nor has any government expressed any interest. Following your homesteading principles I go to this island and jam my dick into the soil until completion. How much of the island do I own." Now before you laugh off the hypothetical, please stop and think. There is now a twelve inch hole in the island (  ) so clearly I have transformed the dirt through my labor. Moreover the hole has at least one practical application, even if it is a sort of unpleasant and scratchy one. So how much of the island do I own? Do I own just the hole? Enough to lay on top of the hole? Do i get a few feet to each side so that I can roll over after I'm finished? Does that change if my body had compressed some tall grass down the first time I'd done so? Where do my property rights vis-à-vis my new ground fuckhole begin and end? If I don't get the whole island and a group of holefuckers decide to take the rest of it and prevent me from getting to my hole, do I have the authority to use violence to access my hole in the island?It is an absurd argument... except that it isn't. Walter Block has stated in numerous interviews and essays that he believes that Native Americans would only be entitled to between 1-2% of the current United States based on Lockean homesteading: "Second, it is by no means clear that the Indians are the rightful owners of anything like the entire United States. Under libertarian law, they could justly claim only those parts of the land that they homesteaded, or occupied, not hunted over. They owned those paths that they used to get from their winter to their summer places. This is based on the Lockean-Rothbardian-Hoppean homesteading theory. I estimate that they owned, in this way, at most 1 percent of the land in the United States." Where is he getting that number. His argument, as I understand it, is based around population figures and known tribal locations, but I think niggling on the details misses the forest for the trees. How did he come up with that number? At what point does he define "Well they owned this land, but not this land"? The answer is honestly really simple and it is the problem with your 'logically constructed system of property rights'. He guesses. There isn't any scientific way to determine who owns what based on a homesteading theory. To go back to my holefucking theory, there simply isn't any way to definitively determine what belongs to me as a result of vigorously humping the ground. And the moment you get rid of that certainty is the moment homesteading falls completely apart. Block was on the Sam Seder show and he was pressed on this issue. One of his weirder argument was that if we said "A tree planted every meter" would be homesteading, that it would need to be twice that on the western side of the Mississippi river because the land there is less valuable. To me that speaks volumes because not only is the geographic division pointless, but the tree every meter is arbitrary. And that is what people have more succinctly pointed out to you while I was at work today. Homesteading in practice is completely arbitrary, and that arbitrary nature effectively neuters any claim you put forth to say that it is some logical or moral system. Homesteading was a system designed to justify taking land away from native americans, and perpetuated today by libertarians who really, really want it to be something that it is not. Amusingly enough I actually think Mongol Based Economics wins in this sense at least. In MBE everything on earth belongs to the Khan and he gives it out as he sees fit, which does away with the awkwardness of your gently caress hole being too close to mine. All fuckholes belong to the Great Khan and he is generous enough to divide his bounty as he sees fit. quote:Through this theory, we can clear up the historical record about which currently existing property titles are justified and which are not. And there can or should be no statute of limitations on justice. If past theft can be proven, even hundreds of years in the past, and a descendant of a previous victim of the theft can be identified then the stolen property ought to be returned to the living descendant. This has profound implications for the descendants of black slaves and Native Americans as I have already stated. Reparations are owned to victims of past theft, but proof must be offered that the person to receive the redistributed property has a better claim to it than the current owner. According to libertarian property theory, a prior owner has a better claim than a later owner unless the prior owner voluntarily parted with the property through gift or contractual exchange. It doesn't matter if the current user of the property is not aware that they are in possession of stolen property, the rightful owner is the victim of the theft or the direct descendant. Amusingly enough Walter Block actually disagrees with you in his view of why we can't give native americans back their land. In his opinion posession is 9/10ths of the law, putting the significant burden of proof on the people least likely to be able to prove their case. Now I'm not saying that libertarianism would involve groups of violent thugs murdering others and killing every member of their extended family in an attempt to leave no one to come after them after the fact but... uh... yeah. Also does anyone else sort of find it creepy that Jrodefeld's argument here is almost verbatim Walter Block's argument as to why we should say gently caress slaves/indians/anyonewhocan'tprovideawrittencertificatethatsaystheywererobbed? quote:Now, imagine a case where the descendant of a black slave can prove that a plot of land in Louisiana is rightfully his since his ancestor was forced to toil on a plantation, and thus homesteaded that land. Justice, as Murray Rothbard has said, would have compelled the plantation owner to part with all his property and grant it to the freed slaves after emancipation. Since this didn't happen, the descendants of those slaves have a claim to a portion of that same property. If they can provide proof that their ancestor worked on a specific plantation, then they are owed a portion of land consistent with the labor their enslaved ancestors were forced to work on the land specified. But suppose that the black ancestor is now a rich actor and doesn't really need the land. And suppose that the current residents of the land are poor whites. Should this matter? Is the ancestor of the enslaved African man or woman less entitled to the property because of their current income vis a vis the holder of the property? Not in the least. The property is still more justly the black actor's than it is the poor white family who currently resides there. However, the black actor is absolutely at liberty to waive his rights to that property on account of his current fortune and the condition of the well-meaning people who unknowingly are in possession of stolen property. Or a deal could be worked out with the current occupants such that they pay a direct payment in reparations equal or less than the value of the land in question determined by negotiation between the two parties. I'm not actually going to address this stuff because other people have done a way better job on the topic than I could hope to, but the segue here is really weird in my opinion. I mean a couple of paragraphs up we were talking about why libertarian property rights are correct and now we're on about how they give reperations to former slaves except that lets be perfectly honest no former slave or their children would ever be able to satisfy the burden of proof required by a libertarian society. It really does amuse me how deep block (and jrod as a result) jump through the hoops of trying to say they'd be fair to the formerly exploited people while simultaneously positing a system where no one could possibly succeed at getting reperations. Very doublethink. quote:Now complicated problems like this and past grave injustices can only be remedied with reference to a sound theory over what constitutes just property rights. Some modern advocates of reparations for slavery would have it that the State tax all white inhabitants and distribute that money to all black inhabitants. But this would clearly be unjust. Many whites never had ancestors who had a thing to do with slavery and many blacks never had ancestors who were enslaved. Such a reckless politically-motivated redistribution would exacerbate injustice by depriving some people of just property and redistributing it to undeserving recipients. Other posters have pointed out that the advantages of slavery were so enormous that paying back african americans with a small stipend of land is frankly insulting, but I'm going to go one further and argue that in this case, people who benefit from modern american society should absolutely be giving reparations to the families of the victims, even if they were not themselves responsible. If you live in a society built on the corpses of an oppressed people you can't argue that because your grandpappy didn't own a slave you have no horse there. You benefit from their historic slavery even if you were never involved. The US likely would not be the world superpower it is today without having been a slave state, and the people who live here benefit from that. If we are accepting the argument (and we are) that the descendants of oppressed people can obtain reparations from the descendents of their oppressors it hardly seems difficult to accept that the state that supported that trade could be on the hook as well. Of course it is also worth mentioning that simply taxing everyone is more pragmatic. It is something that would have an actual positive effect on lives and serve as a good symbolic gesture. But Beep Boop My grandpa didn't own no slaves. quote:There must be a coherent and consistent theory of who has just claim over what scarce resource in order to sort out these complicated matters. That is why the theory of original appropriation is so important. Wait.. what!? Did we just come out of the history of slavery time warp back to the original train of thought? Where have I been for the last thirty six hours? Why am I covered in blood? Counterpoint: The original theory of appropriation is not important. Walter Block, the guy you are all but plagurizing agrees that this system has a basically zero percent chance of granting reparations to the people who were affected. In theory it might be great (its not) but in practice even libertarians admit that it will do essentially nothing. If it does nothing, then it is not important. Furthermore modern people are more than capable of making abstract if imperfect decisions on this issue. We could for example, determine that any person of slave descent is entitled to "whatever" and simply pass a law paying for "whatever" out of the public coffers. We can do that because property is a fiction that is determined by society, and as such society can distribute property as it wishes. The fact that we haven't is rather shameful, but it isn't impossible or immoral like you suggest. quote:So I'd like to ask again what is your theory of property rights? By what standard do you decide that a person or group of persons has rightful discretion and decision-making authority over a scarce resource? Like most people I don't think too much about it because I'm not autistic. That said... uh.. look at Bernie Sanders and its basically that. Maybe a slight bit more to the left on some issues. BONUS WALTER BLOCK AWFULNESS ROUND quote:The antidote to land theft, and some land was indeed stolen from the Indians, is reparations, or, better yet, return of the stolen land. Yes, indeed, "we" the current owners of this land must give it back when and where an heir to the original owners can be found. But possession is properly 9/10ths of the law. The present owner is always presumed to be the rightful owner. The burden of proof to the contrary falls upon he who would overturn such property titles. This applies to all claimants, throughout history, without exception. There is no statute of limitation on justice for the libertarian. However, the further back in time you go, especially if there was no written language, the harder it is to meet this burden of proof. In the case of the Indians, lacking a written language, and the theft having taken place so many years ago, there is little hope for much in the way of justified land reparations. In Canada, the courts have allowed the testimony of tribal elders to be determinative in such matters. But a proper court would dismiss this as mere hearsay.
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Nov 20, 2015 03:27
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jrodefeld posted:Finally, a tiring aspect of debating with leftists is the unfounded assumption that defenders of the market economy or opponents of the State are not merely mistaken, but are fundamentally immoral people. Your assumption that I lack any empathy is entirely illustrative of that. I assume that most of you are generally good people who care about others but are merely mistaken and choose the wrong means to achieve the desired ends. The goal for the libertarian is a prosperous society where the poor are taken care of, humans can achieve their fullest potential, conflict is minimized, injustice is limited to the greatest possible extent, and peaceful productivity and cooperation replace politics and conflict. We may be wrong about this, but don't baselessly assert that we lack empathy, or have bad intent. The goals we seek are similar in the sense that we want to best outcomes for our neighbor, for the disadvantaged, and for society in general. We have different ideas about how to best achieve such outcomes. Now, if you are sincere in your desire for the best outcomes, then you would be open to changing your beliefs if it were to be demonstrated to you that, say, free market libertarianism lifted far more people out of poverty and created general prosperity far better than socialism and central-planning, correct? Don't you routinely claim your political opponents to be thugs with guns who will come and violently oppress you? I mean I know I can go into the last thread if not this very thread and find an instance of you saying something along the lines of "Put down the gun" with which you portray every single 'statist' as a person actively assaulting you by wanting universal medical care. You do not have a high horse to sit upon here my friend. As for the second bolded sentence, just imagine I posted the expanding ironicat.gif. I don't think I've ever seen you change an opinion even in the face of overwhelming evidence that you are wrong.
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Nov 20, 2015 03:31
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Okay. Into the second glass of rum so I'm probably going to be getting a little meaner. Bear with me guys. Also I think I need to up my slams for the upcoming post. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0Y0hCjQX_M Good. jrodefeld posted:It's funny what you guys grasp onto and hammer away at me about. By citing in passing the Cato study on economic freedom in different nations throughout the world, you choose to pick out a couple entries on the the list and cite the various ways in which those nations are NOT free and demand that I answer for their failings and further assert that somehow I am claiming that the United States ought to emulate the policies of the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Okay I'm going to touch on the metrics of your list down below, but I really need to touch on this first. In what loving bizzaro world is being property not something that impacts your economic freedom? I'm trying not to parse too much because I know what you are getting at. This is a 'study' that 'measures' economic freedom for society as a whole. As such it doesn't look at individual liberties or the effects thereof. And I get that. Apart from some (relative) niche issues, your decision to bang or not bang other guys doesn't really factor into your ability to start a business, or buy a house etc. I get that. But slavery? According to Walter Block the only problem with slavery was the lack of ability to choose who you interact with, specifically the lack of ability to choose not to 'transact' with your owner. Other than that it was picking cotton. Slavery is the total ownership of your person and lack of freedom which by necessity means a total loss of economic freedom as well. And you don't think that even merits a spot on this 'study'? The total lack of economic freedom of a huge fraction of the population of the country in question doesn't merit anything? Qatar is one of the two countries we are giving you poo poo about. They have 1.2 million foreign workers which is 94% of their labor force. There are about four foreign workers for every actual citizen of Qatar and the Human Rights Watch says they live in "Near-feudal conditions that are effectively forced labor". You cannot leave Qatar without your sponsor's (owner's) permission. Employer consent is required to change jobs, get a licence, rent a home, open a bank account you name it. Companies will frequently simply refuse to release you once your work period is over, leaving you with the choice of starving to death or working for them. Qatar's population is only 2.16 million. Over half their population is living in what is described as "Forced Labor" "Modern day slavery" or "Fundamentally a slave state" by various groups. Over half their population is comprised of slaves and that doesn't even count as a demerit on the subject of economic freedom? Are you seriously going to keep defending this Jrodefeld? I know other posters have mentioned that you should just admit you were wrong and shuffle along, and I really hope after reading my post you do so. I mean I know what happened, you got linked to the 'study' from somewhere else, you gave it a cursory look and you posted it here. You've admitted you knew nothing of Qatar or the UAE so it is a forgivable mistake. But doubling down on it and trying to act like there is nothing dishonest about a study that measures economic freedom rating Qatar and the UAE above the US is absurd. They are literal slave states where half their population can't open a bank account without their owner's permission and you think that is just a social issue and not an economic one? Come the gently caress on Jrod, just own up. jrodefeld posted:Okay, let's suppose you are a Marxist. I give you a list of the following countries: United States, Singapore, Switzerland, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Estonia, Mauritius, . You provided the list. No one gave it to you. You provided it and said "Look at how great economic freedom is" without doing a cursory examination of the study. Might I recommend in the future you google the goddamn study before you link it, because I'm actually embarrassed for you. quote:These are the metrics used to judge the various countries: This is going to take a while but I want to point out precisely what the problem with your study is. I mean we've talked about how retarded it is that it doesn't even acknowledge massive systemic labor abuse as something that affects economic freedom, but I want to dig deeper than that and show you why using a study like this is loving idiotic. The short answer I suppose, would simply be to say that it is as useful as a ranking of the top ten best robot anime from Japan (Gundam for life bitches). That is to say, the study, while presented in a quasi-data form is absolutely meaningless. To start with, Economic Freedom. What is that? What even IS that? No, really. What is it? Economic freedom is a totally nebulous concept, much like a lot of the things you treat as though they are solid as stone. As i'm going through this list I'm going to be more specific, but looking at it in full view you have to really ask the question of what it even is. Cato certainly has a view on what it is, but I feel it needs to be pointed out that Cato is a think tank founded by Charles Koch for the purpose of espousing libertarian ideas. Any objective list like this is going to be biased, but frankly it really shows in this one more than many others. The slave thing is just one example, and what I feel needs to be remembered when you look at a document like this is that it is propaganda rather than fact. There is no science here, just a bunch of countries ranked in an order that happens to go "Hey look, the countries we wanted to put at the top of the list to make our point ended up at the top of the list. Lets begin. The 'study' is divided into five sections. Each of those five sections is divided into components which have sub-components at times. Countries are rated (arbitrarily) 0-10 on each component which goes to the main section which goes to the overall score. Max score is 50, minimal score is zero. quote:1. Size of Government Government Consumption is apparently something that makes people less free. Also transfers and subsudies. Also Government enterprises. What this means in essence is that the more government spending you have then the less economically free by Cato's standards your country is. Thus if your government spends money on Social Security that keeps millions out of poverty your country is less economically free (to die I guess?) The big winner here is the Top marginal tax rate. I know at least one person commented on how stupid this was but I want to anyways. In the US the top marginal rate affects about 5% of the population. Now stop and think about that for a second. In a study that claims to talk about the economic freedom of a country the only tax rate they look at is the tax rate of the richest 5% of people in that country. Sure there is some carryover since the lower brackets have to be... well... lower, but tax law is very complicated and a country with a 40% top rate might have a bottom rate of 30 or it might have one of 10. These are huge differences that affect the majority of people but the only ones they care about are the top earners. Interesting no? quote:2. Legal System and Property Rights So there is a lot here. Some of these actually make sense, some don't. I'd like to point out that having your military interfering with your rule of law and politics is less impactful on the Economic Freedom of your country than having a high top marginal tax rate. Priorities! I think my favorite here is "Business costs of crime" because it encapsulates a lot of what I'm going to point out later. Hold that thought. quote:3. Sound Money Again as another poster mentioned, they look here at both standard deviation and current deviation for inflation. One of these is important, the other... a lot less so to be honest. Also Freedom to own foreign currency is more important than living in a military Junta when it comes to economic freedom. I also think it is pretty telling that an entire section of this is dedicated to 'Sound Money'. While there is something to be said for hyperinflation wrecking economic freedom I don't think typical inflation really affects it at all. This category, of all the others seems the most arbitrary to me. quote:4. Freedom to Trade Internationally The Black Market exchange rate is more important than living in a Military Junta. The rest of this, again, is things that don't matter particularly to the average citizen, but we will get to that. quote:5. Regulation REGULATION BAD! HULK SMASH! Having hours regulations, mandated severance pay, minimum wage, child labor laws etc all impact economic freedom poorly. Yeah... I'm gonna go to closing since you get the point. Frankly I think I've figured out why they don't care about slavery. When Cato talks about 'Economic Freedom' they aren't talking about people. This isn't a study that determines that the economic freedom for your average person in the US is this high, and this high in sweden. No, this is a study that just looks at business as an amorphous blob. Your country allows slavery? Great you'd actually score higher on the 5th section because that means you have no labor laws to speak of. The Qatar doesn't rank high on the list in spite of slavery, they rank that high because of it, or rather because they have followed the dictates of Cato and eliminated everything that would get in the way of said slavery. I do hope you see why people are disgusted at your source material. I just want to point out that the fraser institute is a national joke in Canada. They are a wholly owned subsidiary of big business masquerading as a think tank. The fact that you take anything they say at face value says volumes. quote:I personally don't know a thing about the United Arab Emirates. Maybe the methodology was flawed and even when restricting the parameters to simply economic freedom, the United Arab Emirates don't deserve to be anywhere near the top 10. I can't tell you that. But if you think that ANY libertarian anywhere supports slavery in any form, you are either a fool or a malevolent and dishonest person who prefers character assassination to thoughtful critiques. The problem is that there isn't any methodology. Also what you are doing here is no true libertarianism. Walter Block supports slavery. The Cato institute supports slavery. The particular sect you ascribe to might not, but you are not all libertarians.
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Nov 20, 2015 04:30
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jrodefeld posted:I don't know how I could be any more loving clear. Libertarians absolutely, positively and without any reservations oppose all forms of coercive associations of which slavery is the most egregious. I did. They were in the thirty five pages you skipped over. For further information go up one post where you will see how I point out that talking at all about that list is utterly pointless because it is a made up thing. Also the reason that North Korea is in abysmal poverty is that they are an international pariah state ruled by a series of mad dictators. You can't seriously be arguing that the only thing wrong with them is bad economic policy.
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Nov 20, 2015 04:33
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quote:I don't know what this is supposed to mean. If I feel that coercive taxation is immoral and I peacefully choose to not pay the extortion fee to the State, violence will be used against me. I will be thrown into a cage for a long time. This is okay with all of you because you have a concept of property rights which is that agents of the State own the product of my labor and permit me to keep whatever portion of my income that they legislate. It is not at all "unambiguous" that public goods such as roads and streetlights are owned by "society". Who is "society"? Do you own a portion of the road and streetlight in front of my house? You don't benefit from it. Your taxes didn't go to fund it either. More reasonably, it could be said that the property right of the road and streetlights in my neighborhood can and should be considered jointly "owned" by the people who live in that neighborhood but not anyone else. And I would argue that such ownership should be set up through contract on the free market without any coercive taxation or State involvement whatsoever. A neighborhood association can form voluntarily and people who move in to a neighborhood can be asked to sign a contract which obligates them to pay a small fee to maintain the roads, streetlights and basic services. This is not a State, since all contracts are voluntary. Hey remember when you said not long ago that you were pissed off at people mischaracterizing libertarians as villains? That said your argument is faulty. Take your 'jointly owned' road for example, that doesn't work because your jointly owned road paid for by your local taxes is still a publicly owned road. I can drive all the way across country, down into your neighborhood and drive up and down that road to my hearts content and you can't tell me to stop because the road belongs to everyone and everyone agrees on its usage. Moreover the latter part of the paragraph points out the big blinking glaring flaw with your argument. You ask them to help pay for the roads via contract. So what happens when they say no? 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? quote:You can't simply assert that. You have to defend these assertions. In what ways are private property rights based on original appropriation the "worst", least efficient and most inequitable? In the first place, there is no "distribution" of scarce resources. That is an incorrect, imprecise term. People ought to own what they pluck out of nature and transform with their labor and they are free to exchange what they homestead with the property homesteaded from others. This system provides the most clear rules for who has the right to determine the use of what scarce resource. All competing systems are subject to imprecision, arbitrariness, political whim, democratic deliberation which causes inefficiency in the use of scarce resources and many other problems besides. Because you never simply assert things without backing them up.  As I've pointed out your system stops providing clear rules the moment it actually gets into practice with homesteading. Yes it is very practical when you're talking about people buying and selling things everyone already agrees they own, but that system you are describing isn't any different from the one we have now. The only part of your system that is at all different is homesteading, and homesteading is a chaotic mess that essentially boils down to "I own this because I said so and I have enough people to back up my agreement." Incidentally this is actually not at all dissimilar from how actual property rights developed in the real world, which is to say that the guy with the biggest stick said "Fight me IRL if you want this land" and no one argued, at which point he (the government) started giving it away. Your system is subject to imprecision, arbitrariness, social whim and democratic deliberation. If you want a real system that gets rid of this you want Mongol Based Economics. The only imprecision there is whether or not there is a force that can stand against the Khan and deny his right to take what is already his. quote:The problem of how to defend those property rights and arbitrate disputes is not different from any competing system. You have a police force, either voluntarily funded or provided by a minimal State, and a court system. There is no unique problem in enforcing the libertarian concept of private property rights. In fact, the laws are made all the more clear and policing of crime would be much more efficient since the property rights violator would be much more clearly identified given the clarity of libertarian law. So your point that it would be "inefficient" does not stand up to scrutiny. Yeah because nothing could go wrong with voluntary policing. That said... how exactly would policing be made clear. Because I'm honestly drawing a blank. You've already admitted previously in this post that homesteading is basically a non-starter at this point. There isn't any homesteading going on anymore because everything is already owned, so the only difference between your system and the current system is that if you can point to theft generations ago you can argue for reappropriation in the current day. I mean, if you steal my bike in liberland its no different from if you steal my bike in the current US. Everyone already knows who owns what in our current system, that isn't going to change and I'm really curious why you think it would. quote:The only way that homesteading was NOT the original way that property was acquired is if you assume that there was never an original user of scare resources, which is of course ludicrous. Of course the academic concept of homesteading was not understood but original appropriation obviously DID occur. In early human civilization as hunter gatherers living at a subsistence level, humans had no real concept of private property nor was one needed since people never produced enough to have any goods long enough to need protection. However, when primitive civilizations began to form, a division of labor became necessary for humans to produce more. This allowed for capital to begin to form, a surplus in excess of the consumptive needs to those people. Thus property rights were needed. Primitive tribes would usually look to a respected elder to adjudicate disputes that arose. These were the first "courts" and early law came into existence simply by discovering the norms that were needed for human development and flourishing. For example, surplus capital needed to be protected in some way from theft or else the incentive to produce it would be gone and the entire tribe would suffer. Early money came into existence when barter became impractical and a medium of exchange was needed to facilitate a growing economy. In those 35 pages you skipped you'll find a bunch of people debunking this as a fairy tale. The short version is that primitive tribes were largely communal and private property as a concept didn't develop until far, far later. Now if you can homestead as a group then... great I guess, you just described the taking of the united states where a bunch of groups moved over together and laid claim to America, but that has little or nothing to do with your argument where everything must be owned by an individual. quote:Notice that nothing like a "State" came into existence until later in human society. The primitive tribe was not at all akin to a primitive State since the rule-setters and arbitrators were usually voluntarily agreed upon by the others. On the other hand, there were indeed violent people who rose to prominence simply due to their superior physical strength and others were simply afraid or them. But such early tribes had trouble making any sort of development because they were engaged in violence which precluded the peaceful production and division of labor, not to mention the establishment of fair laws or norms. Thus a general preference for voluntarism was required for the primitive hunter gatherer tribe to develop. :shhh: Modern states are agreed upon by the people who live in them too by a social contract. Also no. There are TONS of examples of early human civilizations that basically worked at the whim of a strongman or small group of strongmen. We can see this behavior in primates as well. But at this point I'm getting bored of arguing with you. quote:States, by definition, require a productive economy to fund itself off of. Coercive taxation is a feature of a State which cannot exist without a previously existing market economy and division of labor, no matter how primitive. Capitalism couldn't have existed without the communal living of early humans. Your point?
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Nov 20, 2015 05:00
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jrodefeld posted:Your standard is absolutely absurd. Yes, I fully admit that the crime of slavery was monstrous and that my plan does not fully rectify the historical injustice. The problem is that no possible solution can rectify the historical injustice. We can't go back and un-kill hundreds of thousands of Native Americans. There is no monetary compensation or land grant that could fully compensate living Native Americans for the crimes of genocide against an entire people. Walter Block is a racist Jrodefeld. And like many racists before him you should probably stop parroting him before people start verbally kicking you in the head and you run off like a baby. Better yet stop talking about race. For a person who doesn't like talking about race that seems to be all you do these days.
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Nov 20, 2015 05:33
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jrodefeld posted:If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you a little more about your personal story regarding libertarianism. From what I have ascertained from our past discussions you were once a dedicated libertarian who was familiar with all the common literature and arguments. The evolution in your thinking started when your friend became very ill and was unable to afford the treatment that could have cured her (my recollection is that your friend was female). From this undoubtedly traumatic event, you reassessed your position and rejected libertarianism. But this really doesn't account for the vitriol and hatred you have of libertarianism. At most, this event might make you reconsider a specific aspect of your beliefs, in particular that there is indeed a role for government policy in establishing some sort of social safety net that could have effectively helped your friend get the health treatment she needed. But this does nothing to undermine the many other libertarian arguments with which you are no doubt familiar. There must be more to the story. Phone posting so I will keep this brief. Are you real? I mean I am going to go further into this once I get home but are you really incapable of believing that seeing the death of a good friend at the hand of an uncaring private medical establishment might get me to renounce my kooky cult beliefs? My decision to stop libertarianism come as a direct result of that issue. Libertarians were wrong about health care, and the more I looked at it the more I realized they were wrong about other things. The vitriol I gave for the ideology isn't at all reflected at all libertarians. I don't hate you jrod, I pity you. I feel for you the same as I do a Scientology cult member, I just hope one day you get better and realize that your fantasy world is just that. On the other hand I do hate a lot of the top libertarians. People like Walter block and Hans Hermann hoppe actively spread your foul ideology and do so in racist and insulting ways. While there are certainly libertarians like the antiwar ones you mentioned my take on them is very simple. They are wrong more than they are right. I can agree pot should be legal without going full pants on head retarded, and there are people on the left with the same ideas who wouldn't also destroy the public health care system. For me you can boil it down to public health care really. If you don't think people should be able to get medical care regardless of ability to pay then I have zero respect for you. Watch someone you care about deeply die of a treatable disease and then talk to me about how great the free market is.
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Nov 20, 2015 17:26
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jrodefeld posted:I am frankly astonished at the amount of time you all have spent focusing on this particular post and then inferring that it proves libertarians don't care about slavery. Caros was the only one that touched upon any actual substance regarding this claim, but even he didn't go into much substance. To be clear, we are speaking about immigrant workers who don't have enough rights vis a vis their employers (union leverage) which is being called "slavery". We are not, by and large, speaking about actual chattel slavery in which human beings are legally sold as physical property and cannot disassociate from their masters, correct? Did you somehow miss the point in my post where I talked about how workers who enter the country are not physically allowed to leave without the permission of their employers, permission those employers then frequently deny to keep them in country working under indentured conditions? Are you seriously going to be a pedantic little poo poo about this after I explicitly explained it to you? Slavery in Qatar and the UAE isn't a little issue about labor rights or unionization. Large, impartial, international organizations have all declared the conditions for these workers to be varying degress of "Modern slavery" "Neo-Feudalism" "Basically slavery" and so on. This is not in loving question by anyone except you because you are too loving childish to actually admit that you were wrong on an issue. Jesus loving Christ. These are people who can't leave the country without permission, can't move without permission, can't switch jobs without permission, can't open a loving bank account without permission. Do they need to be held in literal loving chains for you to acknowledge that this is something above just 'not having enough rights?' And don't even try to say "Well I didn't know that". You referenced my post, so one of two things happened. Either you skimmed it briefly and didn't realize your mistake before tripping over your own two feet in coming to post about how it isn't real slavery, or you are chosing to ignore the multitude of labor abuses that I described that make this slavery. For fucksake Jrodefeld your own retarded definition of slavery is "can't disassociate" and I explicitly provided a common problem that detailed how these people are unable to dissasociate from their owners. So which is it Jrodefeld? Did you just not read my post in your haste to talk about how it isn't real slavery? Or are you just being a disingenuous little poo poo who sees every single thing but is still going to try to argue against it without even doing the most cursory research to show that you are up your own rear end. Here is the a quote from the goddamned wikipedia article on the issue, which should at least be the most basic reading for anyone who wants to discuss something like this: quote:Most of these people voluntarily migrate to Qatar as low-skilled laborers or domestic servants, but are subsequently subjected to conditions indicative of involuntary servitude. Some of the more common labor rights violations include beatings, withholding of payment, charging workers for benefits which are nominally the responsibility of the amir, severe restrictions on freedom of movement (such as the confiscation of passports, travel documents, or exit permits), arbitrary detention, threats of legal action, and sexual assault.[28] Many migrant workers arriving for work in Qatar have paid exorbitant fees to recruiters in their home countries – a practice that makes workers highly vulnerable to forced labor once in Qatar. THAT IS NOT A loving LABOR DISPUTE YOU QUIBBLING PIECE OF poo poo. THAT IS SLAVERY UNDER YOUR OWN GODDAMNED DEFINITION! You want to be taken seriously when you come onto these forums but then you squat down and drop something like this and I don't even know what to say. The information that you are wrong has been provided to you in this thread and you say claim that I haven't gone into enough substance. Meanwhile you can't be bothered to do a basic loving google search to determine the conditions of the people you are talking about, but you are still more than willing to drop a very specific statement about how it isn't really slavery, and the 4,400 people expected to die working on the world cup stadium aren't really being worked to death with no pay and no ability to leave. I am very patient with you, but poo poo like this pushes the upper boundaries of my goodwill. You want to make an argument that it isn't really slavery, then make it. Make it with facts, make it with evidence. Don't come in and say "Oh you see it isn't slavery because they aren't literally shackled to the floor between shifts" (mind you some of them are). If you want to argue a point then argue it, but do not do this poo poo again. quote:That is not to say that workers rights are not important, but you've got to have a pretty clear definition of what we're talking about when referring to a term like "slavery". And I am open to being educated on this topic because I admit to not knowing a great deal about the internal policies of the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Yeah, the clear definition you provided was people who don't have the ability to disassociate from their employer, which is the condition that the vast majority of the workers under the Qatari Migrant Worker system find themselves in. Why the gently caress do you post things like this? quote:Also, how about you not "mock" anyone but instead try to have a good-faith discussion, okay? If you're only goal is to dig up the smallest detail to nitpick and criticize your opponent, it amounts to an admission that you are not debating in good faith. gently caress you. You are treating literal human slavery as a labor dispute. You are in no way showing an interest in a good faith discussion. quote:The single point I was trying to get across was that when we look at our un-libertarian world, the general trend is that those nations that have policies that are closer to laissez-faire libertarian free markets have greater prosperity, larger middle classes, less poverty, and higher general living standards. And the point that I, and others made is that your chart is a looney toons fantasy that ignores everything that disagrees with it. You didn't provide evidence, you provided the fever dream of a libertarian think tank specifically designed so that libertarians would have a chart to back up their talking points. Imagine my wife and I were having an argument about who did the dishes more and I went to my friend and asked him to produce a chart detailing who did the chores more in my house. The chart doesn't have to be scientific and he can use any criteria he wants. Would you be surprised to learn that the chart shows that I do the dishes way more often, occasionally sweep the floors and thus am clearly the one who does the most chores? What do you mean the laundry and bathroom cleaning aren't on there? Why would they be? This is what your stupid chart is. It is a made up think with absolutely no scientific backing that serves only to say "Hey look how great libertarianism is". It is no different from looking at african americans and saying they must be lazy because they are all poor. When you choose not to include anything that doesn't meet your ideological bias you can make 'data' say basically anything. So why the gently caress do you think we should accept your premise when all you are presenting us with is a chart that might as well say "Freemrkts R Great"? quote:Hardly anyone has actually responded to this claim and this general trend. Instead all you want to talk about is the workers rights abuses of immigrant workers that you claim are occurring in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Okay, you've addressed two out of the two hundred or so nations of the world but this is a textbook example of missing the forest for the trees. You're so desperate to validate your view of libertarians as sociopaths who only want to prop up the very rich and stomp on the poor that you'll be as dishonest and disingenuous as needed to maintain that narrative. gently caress you! I posted an in depth break down of this as did several other people. You are ignoring them in favor of responding to a troll post because that makes it easier.
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Nov 21, 2015 03:59
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jrodefeld posted:Walter Williams. Not Walter Block. Did you even read the post? Walter Williams is a black libertarian and economist who I have mentioned in passing before. Pot, kettle? And I knew who exactly you were talking about when I said Walter Block. I am very adept at determining the origin of your sources (remember that time I caught you plagiarizing?) and I absolutely meant Walter Block. You might pull from other sources, but your particular take on race and native americans is basically Walterblock.txt, which is why I called you out on it. It is hardly absurd to call you out for obsessing on race. For all the times you've talked about how you don't want to talk about race you always seem to end up talking about race. I'm not sure if it is some weird habbit or what, but you seem to be unable to simply look at a substantive post over one that calls you out on the fact that you have absolutely abhorrent beliefs on racism. I mean this post is a perfect example. I dropped two massive, substantive replies to you yesterday and this is the one you decide to comment on? Not the one where I meticulously break down your idiot study? Not the one where I talk about homesteading and the actual things you pretend you are here to talk about? No it is the one post where I tell you to stop loving talking about race. Here is a thought stop loving talking about race and go back to actually address some of the many substantive arguments levied against your godawful principle of property rights.
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Nov 21, 2015 04:05
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jrodefeld posted:If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you a little more about your personal story regarding libertarianism. From what I have ascertained from our past discussions you were once a dedicated libertarian who was familiar with all the common literature and arguments. The evolution in your thinking started when your friend became very ill and was unable to afford the treatment that could have cured her (my recollection is that your friend was female). From this undoubtedly traumatic event, you reassessed your position and rejected libertarianism. But this really doesn't account for the vitriol and hatred you have of libertarianism. At most, this event might make you reconsider a specific aspect of your beliefs, in particular that there is indeed a role for government policy in establishing some sort of social safety net that could have effectively helped your friend get the health treatment she needed. But this does nothing to undermine the many other libertarian arguments with which you are no doubt familiar. There must be more to the story. I'm fighting drunk so this might not be the best time to reply to you, but go choke on a dick and die if you would be so kind. I've told you this story about... probably three or four times so far. Someone actually bought me an avatar solely based around you doing exactly what you are doing here. Look to your left and you will see a Wookie with a Rand Paul sign and a Gadsden flag along with a quote recalling the first time I told you this story and you did this exact same thing you are doing now, trying to condescendingly act as if the death of one of my greatest friends was somehow insufficient motivation for me to reconsider my beliefs. Please, before you get to your keyboard and start being an enormous infected cock once again just stop and think about what you've just said. You know this story, you know that I had a very good friend who suffered from a treatable form of cancer. You know that she was unable to receive medical care due to cost and that she died incredibly young from a disease that had a 95% five year survival rate. You might even remember that in one of my more personal moments I actually talked about how we considered a sham marriage because she would have been eligible to receive medical care in Canada which might have been enough to save or at least prolong her life. Can you even consider that? Does your brain function enough to understand how much a loss like that can damage and affect a person? Years later my wife still finds me sobbing at my desk on the anniversary of her death. When push came to shove I realized how much of a selfish prick I'd been. I'd been just like you in fact, why do I need to pay for universal healthcare, I don't get sick! Maybe I'm still selfish in that it never really struck home to me until it hit me personally, and frankly I'm pretty ashamed of that. But once it struck home it struck home hard. The free market is great, right? It gets the best possible outcomes and people get what they deserve! Except this young, beautiful woman full of life and with a promising future wasted away while we knew how to help her. If she'd been born in Canada, she'd be alive, full stop. Want to cry a little tonight? Try googling before and after photos of cancer victims and imagine that its someone you care about. The free market doesn't work. That was basically all it took. The free market clearly didn't do its job. I'd always thought healthcare in the US was just better in Canada, and if you can afford it I suppose it is. But 45,000 people die annually from preventable disease due to lack of ability to pay. Once I realized that the free market isn't actually the best at providing some services, it wasn't a far hop to see what else was wrong. If you think the free market is always the best it is easy to think "Oh yeah lets just have free market roads". Once you've stopped being a cultist you tend to realize, as I have, that free market roads are ridiculous. As is free market justice. And free market healthcare. It really is that simple, once I realized government could do good I rejoined the human race and realized I wasn't some self made island. I owe a lot to society and it gives back in turn. I'm honestly curious if you really just can't understand how insulting it is that you think "No, the death of a loved one can't be enough of a catalyst for someone to change, it has to be something stupid like a breakup." quote:Have you ever had any traumatic real-life experiences with libertarians? A psychotic ex-girlfriend who happened to be a libertarian? An encounter with cultish Ayn Rand followers? I'm just trying to understand your transition from a person who was an informed libertarian to one who now holds a "particular loathing for libertarianism". It might be worth holding a particular loathing for Communism, but this hatred for an ideology that is based on opposing aggression seems excessive. If anything, your particular experience ought to give you a certain amount of sympathy for people who still hold these views, such as myself. I do love the bolded line because it shows what is wrong with you. I can see why you hate communism, or statism or whatever else even if I think you are wrong. The fact that you can't even conceive of an opposing viewpoint speaks volumes. As I've said earlier in the thread, what I have is pity for you. I know where you are and it is a sad, lonely and misinformed place. You live in your own little bubble, circle jerking with your philosophers with your pretend, easy understanding of the world. Everything is clear for you because you have secret knowledge in the same way that 9/11 truthers see the world the way it really is because they know. I hate many of the things you and yours say and espouse because they are actively harmful and lead to needless suffering and death, but I don't really hate you. I just feel sorry for you and hope that one day maybe you'll figure out that you are being duped and that you live in a fantasy world. quote:If I was a leftist, which I was and probably still would be had I not been persuaded by Harry Browne's writings and Ron Paul's presidential campaign in 2007 and subsequently through reading many of the important books written on the subject, I would nonetheless still appreciate the work of certain libertarian authors and commentators. Others have pointed it out, but you do realize that Ron Paul was one of the most bigoted, conservative republicans in 2007 right? I mean yeah, Mike Huckabee, but Ron Paul really wasn't far behind. Ron Paul is the broken clock, right twice a day on war and drugs. quote:Do you have a contemporary libertarian author or commentator that you still admire or appreciate, even though you disagree on plenty of important issues? I would think that you would appreciate Scott Horton and his daily radio show or the people who run Antiwar.com since they are narrowly focused on opposing war and police brutality. They publish probably more leftist commentators than even libertarian ones. I would assume that you might still have an appreciation for left-libertarians like Roderick Long and Gary Chartier. Maybe you haven't been made aware of the breadth of contemporary libertarian thought? No. There are libertarians with viewpoints that are good, but those same viewpoints can be found on the left absent all the insanity that the libertarians attach to them. Antiwar.com is great, except that their opposition to the war is in their own words based on the concept that "War is the health of the State." I personally prefer people who are antiwar because they are antiwar, not because they view war as a something that promotes statism. And I mean look at the rest of your list. Yeah, why wouldn't I like Gary Chartier! Sure he focuses on idiotic ideas like polycentric legal order that I am adamantly opposed to, but maybe if I were just exposed to him more. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I find your ideology to be a total fraud and faulty in its most basic underpinnings and that is why I don't like the people who follow it? Also lol @ 'breadth'. Libertarianism is a shallow kiddie pool indeed, sorry Jrod. quote:Anyway, I could easily list the leftist reporters and commentators that I most admire. I admire Glenn Greenwald, Ralph Nader and Jeremy Scahill to name only a couple. Though I have issues with their economics, Cornel West and Chris Hedges. That's nice. I don't really care who you admire. quote:The vitriol that many of you show towards libertarians is more than a little concerning. We are just individuals who are doing our best to discover a consistent moral and intellectual framework with which to establish civil society and allow human flourishing. If you stay within your own insulated bubble it becomes easy to demonize people who think different from you and forget our shared humanity. You are individuals who seek to perpetuate and expand upon the free market ideology that I believe is ultimately responsible for the premature death of one of the greatest friends I have ever had. The fact that dupes such as you do so without malice is the only reason my responses consist of something more complicated than the words gently caress you written in various fonts and sizes. Also the bolded section is sad coming from you, it really is.
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Nov 21, 2015 04:40
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jrodefeld posted:Let's start with a written debate and see how it goes from there. A topic? Well, let's first figure out the logistics of how the debate would proceed. There are a million relevant topics we could discuss related to libertarianism and I'm sure regardless of the formal topic we decide upon, numerous other issues will no doubt intrude. Would we debate on this forum? I'm thinking that we set up a specific thread where we agree that only you and I will post. Maybe we set up a second thread where others can comment on our ongoing debate. Perhaps a moderator would be willing to ban people who intrude onto our thread to keep the rules established. This is just a thought. Well to be honest letting a million other issues intrude tends to make for a lovely debate in my experience. I'm biased due to my love of Oxford style debates, but I personally prefer debates with a stark motion. "We should abolish the death penalty" is a strong motion for example because it puts a vast gulf between the two sides and doesn't have too much room for intrusion on unrelated subjects. Again, just personal preference. Using multiple threads is pretty much a no-go in D&D unless Exclamation Marx decides he wants to allow it. To be honest the simplest way to handle it would be to include it in this thread or in another with a link to each post edited into the OP. Absent that I think the best alternative was one suggested by Who What Now wherein we use something along the line of an editable google doc that is linked to the thread so that we aren't cluttering up the forum with a useless argument. quote:I'd have to carve out enough time to dedicate to a debate as well but that shouldn't be too hard since I'll certainly have some free time this holiday season. There should be a reasonable time limit on the debate also. Since I have to sleep and will have some obligations during the day, something like a three day time limit seems reasonable to me. That way we can both say what we have to say but there is a finite limit. I assume by this you'd mean a limit between posts? Three days in total won't really allow for much to be done unless our schedules match up more or less exactly since we'd just be posting once or twice a day at max. quote:You play online role playing games so you'll probably appreciate this analogy. The reason I've never been able to get into those kinds of games is that I know there is always someone out there with less of a life than me who is willing to spend more time at the game, getting more experienced, more skilled and thus able to take advantage through sheer force of repetition and time invested. That is sometimes how I feel posting on these message boards. There are members on these forums who will end up spending a whole lot more time here than I am able to. In an open-ended debate, the poster who merely posts the most will feel as though they have won because the other person can't dedicate the same investment of time and therefore is not able to reply to each and ever post, read every link and source and so forth. So a hard time limit is a necessity to alleviate this problem. Frankly the simpler answer to this is to just limit the format. Written debates aren't something I have much, if any experience with in a formal setting to be honest. They aren't something you see much of at all because written debates pretty much neuter one of the main aspects of a debate, but even still we can work around that by using standard debate rules. Frankly Effectronica gave up his usual shitposting to even suggest some basic rules along the lines of a traditional debate, and in keeping with that I'll suggest a basic format if you'd like. I don't much care so pick what works for you. Opening Statement (One from each) Rebuttal Statements (One from each) Question Period (Several rounds. If we have someone moderating we can have him decide. Alternately we can ask the peanut gallery and/or simply pose questions to one another) Closing Statement (One from each each) Word count limits make a decent enough stand in for time restraints in a typical debate. If we did three rounds of questioning that would make it a six round debate which isn't unreasonable, but it is entirely up to you because as I said, I don't much care.
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Nov 21, 2015 05:06
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