Why Should We Care About Property Rights?

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icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

he's still doing the thing where he replies to like 5 posts a day in chronological order right?

also you're a sociopath, gently caress off

# ¿ Oct 10, 2015 03:41

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 10:30

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

rudatron posted:

A good example of the role of early states in the economy is the Incan empire. The Incas were probably the first imperial power to establish themselves in the Andes. They were incredibly expansionist and attempted to assimilate a lot of people. Their economy also had a limited internal market. All economic organization was controlled by a kind of extended family structure, that provided both social services and controlled labor. Taxes to the central state was not paid in currency, but in both surplus food and corvee labor/military service.

This kind of model wasn't unique to the Incas either - early sumerian and egyptian empires followed a similar structure. There are literal accounting records for the Third Dynasty of Ur which show, for groups of citizen, a running account balance of the amount of goods produced, which was converted in worker-days using standardized prices. If they fell below quotas, they would be forced to pay back that debt with civil service/indentured servitude.

A big mistake of libertarians is to assume that fiddling around with financial structures constitutes progress, but in truth it's technology that drives social organization. The industrial age begins not with the joint stock corporation, but the invention of the steam engine, itself the result of important advances in metallurgy. Even today, the most important advance of the finance industry is...the ATM.

incas, sumerians, egyptians? sounds like brown people to me, you know they have an uncontrollable attraction to free stuff

# ¿ Oct 10, 2015 08:38

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

TLM3101 posted:

... Am I the only one who wants to hear more about the Homesteading Adventures of Caros and Stevicus; Roman Colonists at Large? Because I think that could be an amazing story.

... workers. Factory workers. Seriously, you are missing the point of syndicalism so goddamned hard that I'm amazed it doesn't register on seismic sensors the world over. Explain, pray, why factories should go to the owners, whereas farms should go to farmers or the "state function buildings" to the workers there? What makes factories qualitatively different here, hmm? Don't be shy, come on. Explain why factories should go to the owners, while everything else, apparently, should go to the workers? Because I can guaran-loving-tee you that the factory owner is not 'mixing his labour' with the goods produced on the floor!

Unless rudatron is right and you're just jacking off to the idea that a Great Leader will spawn once we get enough military or culture points, in which case... keep on keepin' on, I guess.

I don't think he's aware that most actual premodern farm workers did not own the land they worked and thus are exactly analogous to the factory workers.

That is no coincidence; I've long pointed out that Austrianism's ideal world would look strikingly similar to classical Western European feudalism, with sovereignity and property rights being conflated into essentially the same thing

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 11:36 on Oct 10, 2015

# ¿ Oct 10, 2015 11:29

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Nessus posted:

I had a libertarian for a US Government teacher back when I was doing my pre-requisites at a community college. He made great hay out of saying you vote with your dollars and that counts way more than your mere votes in an election, pshaw, they're all the same anyway. I think there's really something to this.

libertarians are pretty open about being explicitly opposed to democracy in the Rousseau / popular sovereignty sense

# ¿ Oct 11, 2015 01:59

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Polybius91 posted:

The more I learn about libertarianism, the more I struggle to grasp how anyone could believe in it without being an outright sociopath.

Being a smug, contrarian literal child? Lots of folks on reddit fit that mold

# ¿ Jan 27, 2016 22:56

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

property is theft, OP

# ¿ Feb 11, 2016 20:15

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Your Dunkle Sans posted:

I'm genuinely looking forward to Jrod's thoughts on the jazz music suggestions as a ray of optimism, even if it's wildly off-topic from the thread's purpose.

Irrational, illogical jungle rythms by and for genetic inferiors. Off to the gas chamber with you

# ¿ Feb 11, 2016 21:40

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

anyone who identifies with rorshach should probably be locked up for the the good of the public to be honest. i predict lots and lots of prisons full of autistic white reddit posting comp sci majors

# ¿ Feb 21, 2016 00:42

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Cemetry Gator posted:

One of the big appeals of libertarianism is how simple it is. After all, when you can have a consistent answer to any problem that comes along, it's appealing. It makes it seem more complete. The problem, of course, is that life is complex and very quickly, the simple answers aren't so simple anymore.

Take the idea that we should only intervene when someone is doing harm to another person.

How do you describe harm? How do you determine who is harming whom? What about a situation where one person is harming a lot of people, but not directly, and could possibly not be aware of the harm they're committing. A perfect example would be pollution.

What's frustrating about JRod is that he doesn't ever seek to understand why the world is organized the way we've organized it. Why did states rise up instead of libertarian communes? After all, the ideas that drive libertarianism are not new. And one just has to go back into history and see what happens when society is left to figure it out for themselves. Gangs of New York as not total fiction.

I would argue that JRod really doesn't know what he's talking about, beyond maybe having some experience with it. Like, he's gone to the doctor and he's worked minimum wage jobs, so he thinks he really has some understanding of how the system actually works.

What's frustrating is that he doesn't know when he doesn't know something. For example, I tend not to talk about economics in this thread. Why? Because my understanding of economics is very basic. I couldn't have an intelligent conversation on how it works. But he'll just talk about everything like he's an expert, and it really hurts the debate. How are you supposed to talk about healthcare with someone who doesn't understand why having licensed doctors is a good thing?

it also helps if you're a sociopathic white MRA for whom the idea of Property Rights (tm) always and forever as the be-all end-all solution to everything is a pretty sweet deal

# ¿ Feb 21, 2016 00:44

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

The basic problem is that modern progressive liberalism sees social and economic justice as key components of individual liberty, whereas libertarians don't. That's pretty much an unbridgeable gap

# ¿ Feb 21, 2016 01:08

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 10:30

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Billy Gnosis posted:

I just want to thank everyone in this thread before it closes tomorrow.

I have been infinitely fascinated with the way JRod thinks everything he believes in is objectively unquestionable. If we criticize him it must be because he didn't sell it correctly, not because we object to the ideas he's proposing.

This thread has also made me realize how much racism, suffering, and callousness are features, not bugs of libertarian thought.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxeology

Be fascinated

# ¿ Feb 21, 2016 01:55

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