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Would you rather live in Blefuscu, Brobdingnag, Balnibarbi, Lorbrulgrud, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, or Japan?
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# ? Nov 7, 2015 22:00 |
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# ? May 2, 2024 11:49 |
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Lilliput posted:Would you rather live in Blefuscu, Brobdingnag, Balnibarbi, Lorbrulgrud, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, or Japan? Which one was the one with the philosophers who'd invented a computer, that we were all supposed to make fun of? That one.
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# ? Nov 7, 2015 22:12 |
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:I don't understand why automation in particular would cause you to question libertarianism. Technology purchased by capitalists has been putting people out of work since the first Industrial Revolution. I'm not really a regular poster in DnD but i sure read it a lot. I think the idea is that too much power is consolidated in a couple of big corporations, as they have the financial assets to automate on a grand scale. I'd also say that that is why libertarianism is kinda bad anyway because that will happen regardless of automation. I'd be interested in hearing what Verge thinks what libertarianism is or means for him or her. Also thanks Dogcrash for this thread. Hope it will go well. heard u like girls fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Nov 7, 2015 |
# ? Nov 7, 2015 22:18 |
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Uncle Sam is going to torture me in a dusty basement. Can you help?
socket fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Nov 11, 2015 |
# ? Nov 7, 2015 23:42 |
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Lilliput posted:Uncle Sam is going to torture me in a dusty basement to ''destroy those loving cheese''. Can you help? good news! i just got off the horn w/ xavier becerra and hes assured me that the HPC is going to condemn your detention in the strongest possible language during that part of the daily house session where reps get to haltingly read prepared speeches to an empty chamber.
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# ? Nov 7, 2015 23:57 |
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:I don't understand why automation in particular would cause you to question libertarianism. Technology purchased by capitalists has been putting people out of work since the first Industrial Revolution. We're automating more and more stuff, and the jobs any mouth-breathing idiot could do will no longer exist. They will be replaced by positions requiring far more training and intelligence. If we get rid of the truck drivers, burger flippers, coffee makers etc and replace them with a fraction as many programmers, engineers, and technicians - what happens to the 50% of ex-workers who will never be capable of upskilling? If technology actually resulted in us working fewer hours, fantastic. Instead of everyone working twenty hours a week we will have some people still working hard and others out of work. The workers will hate the unemployed for leeching off their tax money. The unemployed will resent the workers for hoarding the few jobs left. The 2% of the population who own the robots will be the only real winners. Communism is a disaster but in the long term our current system isn't going to work. Eugenics / controlling birth rates might be the only way to keep the average standard of living high. e: Bonzi Buddy av is so good I'm going to stop baiting people in the hopes of replacing Garbage Dick. tumblr.txt fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Nov 8, 2015 |
# ? Nov 8, 2015 00:54 |
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tumblr.txt posted:Yeah, but there have always been other jobs to replace them. It was never actually feasible that technology would put the majority of the population out of work. If you're interested, that's actually more or less exactly what Marx describes at the beginning of the communist manifesto. Reading it now it's quite easy to see automated checkouts as part of the same chain that began with the industrial revolution putting cottage industry and guilds out of business.
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 01:17 |
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Eugenics / birth control policy is not just insidious because of social ills, but it creates unsustainable population shifts (look at China's aging population). It would be better to force retirement (or outright kill) the aging part of the workforce rather than cull the future generations.
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 01:35 |
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tumblr.txt posted:If technology actually resulted in us working fewer hours, fantastic. Instead of everyone working twenty hours a week we will have some people still working hard and others out of work. The workers will hate the unemployed for leeching off their tax money. The unemployed will resent the workers for hoarding the few jobs left. The 2% of the population who own the robots will be the only real winners. The solution you'd find from the majority of people in this instance is 'make the government the owners of the robots.' The whole idea that we have to work is part of a corporatist worldview that ignores that humans have always worked to live, and only started living to work thanks to capitalist systems deny them agency.
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 01:43 |
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tumblr.txt posted:Yeah, but there have always been other jobs to replace them. It was never actually feasible that technology would put the majority of the population out of work. a person who is concerned primarily with the ability of the economy to put people to work, or with the ability of the economy to produce value in an abstract sense, is not a libertarian. libertarianism is concerned with one thing and one thing only, that is, absolute private property rights. i've said before on this forum that libertarians have done an astonishingly good job marketing libertarianism as centrist technocratic liberalism. but it's not
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 02:26 |
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archangelwar posted:Eugenics / birth control policy is not just insidious because of social ills, but it creates unsustainable population shifts (look at China's aging population). It would be better to force retirement (or outright kill) the aging part of the workforce rather than cull the future generations. so what you're saying is, death panels
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 04:34 |
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tumblr.txt posted:Yeah, but there have always been other jobs to replace them. It was never actually feasible that technology would put the majority of the population out of work. We don't need to work, vast numbers of people could just live off of heavy taxation on the rich. Read Bertrand Russell's In Praise of Idleness
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 07:26 |
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someone has to design and take care of the robots. As a robot-tender I'd be infuriated at working while 70% of the population did nothing.
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 09:34 |
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tumblr.txt posted:someone has to design and take care of the robots. As a robot-tender I'd be infuriated at working while 70% of the population did nothing. AI and such. For more read the work of Ian Banks.
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 09:36 |
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I think we are a long way away from a post-scarcity society where literally no-one needs to work. In that scenario Communism makes sense. The problem is the painful transition between "everyone can contribute to society by working at something" and "er, we only have jobs for people with IQs over 130".
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 10:21 |
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tumblr.txt posted:I think we are a long way away from a post-scarcity society where literally no-one needs to work. In that scenario Communism makes sense. The problem is the painful transition between "everyone can contribute to society by working at something" and "er, we only have jobs for people with IQs over 130". This, pretty much. All this jerking off about self-driving cars and stuff isn't quite ready for when an automated semi-truck smashes my family into a fine paste because UberTruck managed to lobby around DoT regulations. I automate pharmaceutical research for a living and I know that human intervention is way more effective at handling edge cases than someone who thinks their code is going to disrupt the future.
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 11:22 |
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Most of the libertarians in this forum recanted after the GFC showed them the Invisible Hand was more likely to dick punch them than to jerk them off.
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 15:25 |
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tumblr.txt posted:I think we are a long way away from a post-scarcity society where literally no-one needs to work. We're already in a post-scarcity society, though. Assuming you live in the West, that is. The only scarcity you encounter is because of supply-side economics, which is a political decision, not a lack of resources. There is more than enough resources to provide everyone in your country with a brand new car, a nice house, a big ol' TV, iPads and every games console they could desire. Now, this is not the case with everyone on earth, but acting like scarcity exists in the United States of America, or Canada, or the UK or Australia or New Zealand or Western Europe is disingenuous. By creating scarcity on the African continent we ended scarcity for ourselves.
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 15:50 |
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Literally The Worst posted:here's a suggestion: not libertarian What an eloquent point. Please, though, read on and you might be surprised to see I'm not some anarcho-capitalist out to fulfill my survival of the fittest wet dreams. Vivian Darkbloom posted:I don't understand why automation in particular would cause you to question libertarianism. Technology purchased by capitalists has been putting people out of work since the first Industrial Revolution. Well I've always understood one basic concept: automation, in full-swing (think Wall-E) demands socialism. Where you draw the line is up to you, but it's somewhere between hunter-gatherer societies and wealth saturated (defined as there being too much resource income to explain why even 1 person can't have 5 gold yachts) societies. I feel like right now is about the time to acknowledge our new position relative to the line, for me, anyway. Again, however, I'm not sure where I stand with this new acknowledgement. Sorry, I guess I'm really kind of dodging (accidentally) the question. To answer more directly: it's not that we have automation, it's that with recent (last decade) and coming (next decade, excepted, in my view) innovations in labor-saving techniques have been and are going to be, if I'm right, overwhelming. Basically: self-driving cars. I live in Oregon. It's illegal to pump your car w/ gas. This creates jobs. Now whether I'm for or against that, I understand it. Unless you have a decent method of replacing the jobs of truckers, cashiers and others impacted by the recent automation, your society becomes burdened with desperadoes. No one likes desperadoes, whether they're begging on the street or stealing your bread, we all want them to go away and since euthanasia is unpopular with politicians and voters alike, I have to re-evaluate my political alignment. Humans Among Us posted:I'm not really a regular poster in DnD but i sure read it a lot. Well it's not just that. Consolidation of wealth isn't the concern of question, to me, at this time. If I'm drunk at a bar, I have to call a cab...but if I have a self-driving car, I don't need a cab. This completely eliminates a job before a company (yes, I know taxis will always exist if not in the form of a rent-a-self-driving-car) even has the opportunity to serve me. I know that's a lovely anecdotal example but I don't think I have to put any effort into the argument that automation is a problem for a libertarian world, if you want it to function remotely like it does now. To answer your question of what libertarianism is to me, I have to explain that there is no true Scotsman. For some hosed up reason, we get a lot of guys that think pure libertarianism would work just as pure socialism would work. An ultra-pure libertarian world would degenerate into an empire in 2 seconds flat, guaranteed. A megacorp would rise to power and buy up every piece of land and pay us all in minimum food with a place to sleep in exchange for maximum work. Obviously I'm not for that world. You need balances. I will explain what my dream is, or was, before I started questioning my worldview: My libertarian utopia is one with a simple ruleset designed to simply keep monopolies in check (if monopolies are allowed, the free society becomes an empire) and provide services that only a benevolent neutral empowered party can. If someone can devise a way to privatize police without fostering a mercenary nation OR a monopoly, awesome, but I've yet to hear one so leave it to the government. Same with roads, it's difficult to do w/o a monopoly. Second: If you are unable to generate income for yourself and end up starving, you die of starvation unless a third party intervenes. I don't know why they would but that is their business, not my dollar to vote for. Third: if a business takes on odd practices, let them. If a business wants to be wholly racist, discriminatory, sexist, and overall bigoted, I would let them be free from the skilled workers and profitable consumers they could cater to, damaging themselves with the cancer that they are. Freedom to shoot yourself in the foot, I'll call it. Note that this doesn't mean I'd let anyone harass someone else. I'd rather see a swastika in WorkCorp's logo than hear a person of color recount the time he overheard his boss bitching about racial quotas. Not that I've ever heard that, I'd just prefer to live in a world where it's impossible, unless a private organization places quotas upon itself or accepts quotas from another private organization, as per my individual rights agenda. Fourth, and you're gonna call me weird: if the government officials ever feel they can start a corporation, with federal seed money equivalent to a competitor's net worth, to contest a market (see: USPS vs FedEx/UPS) I would allow it. Perhaps with a "warm up" time of, say, 2 years (to ensure the federal government doesn't simply squash an up and coming market for funsies). After all, if the government can found a business that beats out the competition, then the competition wasn't competing enough, was it? This makes regulation of price fixing and price gauging easier. It also somewhat future-proofs the nation against the need for socialism as the nation becomes socialist. Naturally, the profits from fed-companies are treated as taxes, since the govt. is 100% shareholder. Basically, every law would take to heart the quote, "Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose," until you start being a detriment to society by being a fuckwad. I know, for someone that calls himself a libertarian, I'd give the government a lot of power.
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 17:08 |
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Eliezer Yudkowsky of Lesswrong.com has written about AI and automation before. Really, any political questions can be directed to the esteemed scholars of Lesswrong. Highly recommended.
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 20:01 |
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If you're in favor of repealing the Civil Rights Act, privatizing the police, and letting people die of starvation in the streets, you are in fact an extremist and not a moderate icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Nov 10, 2015 |
# ? Nov 8, 2015 20:32 |
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You can find an intelligent, civil community of cool people in your local newspaper comment sections.
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 20:39 |
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Lilliput posted:You can find an intelligent, civil community of cool people in your local newspaper comment sections. Mods?
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 20:42 |
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Verge posted:My libertarian utopia... Start with the problems your political economy is meant to address. What's the point of your personal libertarian utopia? Do you want to fully mobilize the productive forces of capitalism (for war or some other purpose)? Create an ethnically homogeneous nationstate? End alienation and exploitation? Create an equitable society based on mutually accepted notions of justice? Please God/the gods? Also, your use of "empire" seems really unorthodox- maybe define it. edit: as salaam alaikum VVVVVV Dilkington fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Nov 8, 2015 |
# ? Nov 8, 2015 20:49 |
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Is this the thread for building patron-client relationships? I'm looking for a Sheikh with effective ad hominems I can mindlessly repeat
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 20:52 |
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Squalid posted:Is this the thread for building patron-client relationships? I'm looking for a Sheikh with effective ad hominems I can mindlessly repeat my dude i can hook you up with argumentums ad whatever you want. i got more slippery slopes than a six flags waterpark. i got fewer true scotsmen than a tilted kilt franchise.
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 21:08 |
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Here's how to become a debate champion. 1. Demand everyone cite sources. 2. Keep a list of logical fallacies on hand and shout at people for infractions. 3. Begin sentences with ''I'm not a mod but...''.
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 21:33 |
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What, exactly, do you envision to stop monopolies from forming? If I own all the grocery stores in the county and all of a sudden I decide that I'm only going to sell to whites, then what recourse do the, let's say 5% of non-whites have? And what's more is that I have contracts with all the local farms and food wholesale distributors such that they can only sell me to. Who's going to start a new store, with what money, and where are they going to get to get product from? What's going to protect this new store from me drastically undercutting their prices? What are the non-whites supposed to do in the interim while this new business is being established/put out of business?
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 21:44 |
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one weird trick to stop monopolies from forming! fatcats hate it!
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# ? Nov 8, 2015 22:05 |
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Tujague posted:I think the truth is somewhere in the middle Also, someone post that blehrickson "debate is like chess" thing.
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# ? Nov 9, 2015 01:55 |
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ReindeerF posted:I see we have a regular poster from the Current Events days here. Lollerskates. I never post in D&D anymore it seems. Do I count as a regular or can I post here?
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# ? Nov 9, 2015 04:40 |
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Who What Now posted:What, exactly, do you envision to stop monopolies from forming? If I own all the grocery stores in the county and all of a sudden I decide that I'm only going to sell to whites, then what recourse do the, let's say 5% of non-whites have? And what's more is that I have contracts with all the local farms and food wholesale distributors such that they can only sell me to. Who's going to start a new store, with what money, and where are they going to get to get product from? What's going to protect this new store from me drastically undercutting their prices? What are the non-whites supposed to do in the interim while this new business is being established/put out of business? Monopolies are difficult. I cited one protocol, giving the government the power to manually fight them off but that wouldn't solve your scenario. We have anti-trust laws that seem to work..sort of. I suppose, though, that if anyone is tha much of a dick and is that calculating about things, nothing will stop them. That being said, your hypothetical bigot is literally Hitler and therefore hard to prevent. Any ideas on your end? Dilkington posted:People will empathize with you more if they know your intentions. My goal is to create the most free world we can. By empire, I mean complete oligarchy - a nation completely and rightfully owned by a corporation. Such a thoroughly owned nation that it is indistinguishable from a monarchy.
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# ? Nov 9, 2015 06:28 |
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Verge posted:Monopolies are difficult. I cited one protocol, giving the government the power to manually fight them off but that wouldn't solve your scenario. We have anti-trust laws that seem to work..sort of. I suppose, though, that if anyone is tha much of a dick and is that calculating about things, nothing will stop them. That being said, your hypothetical bigot is literally Hitler and therefore hard to prevent. Any ideas on your end? Was the owner of a 'Whites Only' lunch counter also literally Hitler? The only difference between an entire town of business owners who are racist and my scenario is that I made one large racist to simplify the hypothetical. But what would you do to stop a non-monopoly that is doing exactly what I described as well? What's to stop multiple different businesses from barring service, multiple different banks from refusing to give out loans (or only give out extremely toxic loans), multiple different landlords from refusing to rent all but the most dilapidated of housing to non-whites? When instead of a monopoly it's a congregation of racists working independently or through collusion? And this isn't some strange, impossible or improbable scenario. This happened just a few scant decades back, there are tons of people still alive that lived through it. You said you're fine with someone discriminating against a certain clientele based on race, but honestly, I don't think that you are. So I want you to know that I'm not attacking you personally here, but I am trying to see how far you're actually willing to stand by that statement. Are you ok with entire towns refusing to service people? Are ok with non-whites being forced out of their homes through necessity of survival? Because I guarantee as soon as you repeal the protections for civil liberties that people literally died for that some town, somewhere, is going to openly and loudly declare "No niggers, kikes, or faggots welcome here" and all the rest of the bigots around will flock to it. One need only look to the few businesses that refused to do business with homosexuals, or the cops that murdered a young black man in cold blood, and the heaps of money they earned through crowdfunding websites to see that that's true. So when you say "I'm ok with people being discriminated against and I'm ok with poor people starving and dying in the streets because MAXIMUM OVER-FREEDOM!!" you have to really think about what exactly that means and will entail, because I sincerely doubt that you'll actually like what the outcomes will be.
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# ? Nov 9, 2015 15:32 |
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Who What Now posted:Was the owner of a 'Whites Only' lunch counter also literally Hitler? The only difference between an entire town of business owners who are racist and my scenario is that I made one large racist to simplify the hypothetical. But what would you do to stop a non-monopoly that is doing exactly what I described as well? What's to stop multiple different businesses from barring service, multiple different banks from refusing to give out loans (or only give out extremely toxic loans), multiple different landlords from refusing to rent all but the most dilapidated of housing to non-whites? When instead of a monopoly it's a congregation of racists working independently or through collusion? First off, thank you for attacking my points and not my personage. I know that can be hard for people, especially when talking about subjects as touchy as race. You're right, I don't have hatred in my heart for any races/sexes/orientations. Entire towns? Not only can I believe that, I condone it. Look, racism is a very difficult idea to kill, the best we can hope for is to either censor it or quarantine it. What better way than to create a haven of sorts for them, rather, let them create said haven. Yes, any minorities left in that town will absolutely hate their life but on the bright side you have the potential for a virtually hate-free community outside of these toxic zones...in theory (I'm not going to sit here and act like these ideas work without question). Maybe I'm being naive but I can't see Wal-Mart or many other large companies putting hate above profit. As far as what prevents, say, a major collusion of racists keeping minorities down, first off, I don't believe in price discrimination; you either serve or you don't - no in-betweenies. My motive for that opinion is actually for completely different reasons but it serves useful here. Second, if you're a bank and you're either not serving minorities or charging them, say, 10% APR while whites get 5%, you're creating a niche market for would-be competitors. That means anyone can step in, offer everyone 6% APR and make a killing off minorities. Naturally, this is still wrong, right? Well worry not, the niche market still exists and others will undercut the 6% It's worth noting that I'd require very large and obvious signage indicating a business's racism, if existent. Further, if this still didn't quelch the issue, if minorities are still having trouble conducting business due to racism in the business world, we'd have to invoke some sort of racism 'penalty' by requiring a license for racism that'd, say, add 10% to their yearly taxes. Not exactly a completely free world by my standards but a necessary compromise to keep racist businesses a small niche. Again, I only have a problem if this became a nationwide issue, not a city-wide issue - I simply wouldn't want to live in that city. Disclaimer: I can not empathize with those who do not move away from their city when the going gets tough. I live in an awesome city, I'll move if it becomes less awesome, so if I sound cold-hearted, it's simply because I don't understand why people remain in lovely cities.
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# ? Nov 9, 2015 16:50 |
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Verge posted:My goal is to create the most free world we can. By empire, I mean complete oligarchy - a nation completely and rightfully owned by a corporation. Such a thoroughly owned nation that it is indistinguishable from a monarchy. What exactly do you mean by "the most free world", and why would creating such a world be a good thing? This is kind of important, since your argument won't be very convincing and it's hard to debate it properly unless you make your underlying assumptions and definitions clear from the get-go. Cerebral Bore fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Nov 9, 2015 |
# ? Nov 9, 2015 17:26 |
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In my opinion a lot of libertarians are essentially liberals who misunderstand some very important tenants of that ideology. Basically, liberalism is an ideology based around individual rights. But 'rights' does not necessarily mean absolute private property rights. It could mean lots of thing, up to and including the classic left-liberal positive rights like the right to employment, education, medical care, etc. My suggestion for these people is to go read some liberal thinkers later than the 1700s, like John Stuart Mill. Libertarians conspicuously love the early political philosophers but stop right around the start of industrial society, because liberalism developed to address that society and turned away from the jealous god of absolute private property rights
icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Nov 9, 2015 |
# ? Nov 9, 2015 17:52 |
icantfindaname posted:In my opinion a lot of libertarians are essentially liberals who misunderstand some very important tenants of that ideology. Basically, liberalism is an ideology based around individual rights. But 'rights' does not necessarily mean absolute private property rights. It could mean lots of thing, up to and including the classic left-liberal positive rights like the right to employment, housing, medical care, etc. My suggestion for these people is to go read some liberal thinkers later than the 1700s, like John Stuart Mill. Libertarians conspicuously love the early political philosophers but stop, for some reason, right around the start of industrial society, because liberalism developed to address that society and its needs Libertarians always use the least intellectually credible author available to assert their argument. Most libertarians don't even like Nozick, and his is by far the most credible recent effort at justifying libertarianism. There is just too much danger in the slippery slope away from core libertarian doctrines if you import too much of the broader anglophone philosophical tradition, I guess.
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# ? Nov 9, 2015 18:03 |
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Verge posted:Monopolies are difficult. I cited one protocol, giving the government the power to manually fight them off but that wouldn't solve your scenario. We have anti-trust laws that seem to work..sort of. I suppose, though, that if anyone is tha much of a dick and is that calculating about things, nothing will stop them. That being said, your hypothetical bigot is literally Hitler and therefore hard to prevent. Any ideas on your end? What do you mean by "most free"? Free from what? Free to do what? Why is that most important to you? I think clarifying your goals would help people understand your argument a little better.
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# ? Nov 9, 2015 18:28 |
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Verge posted:First off, thank you for attacking my points and not my personage. I know that can be hard for people, especially when talking about subjects as touchy as race. You're right, I don't have hatred in my heart for any races/sexes/orientations. Why did you assume your readers could intuit your motivation for this compromise: quote:Not exactly a completely free world by my standards but a necessary compromise to keep racist businesses a small niche or why this distinction is important to you: quote:Again, I only have a problem if this became a nationwide issue, not a city-wide issue By my count you've written eleven paragraphs articulating your libertarianism, but only one sentence about why your stipulations are what they are. Imagine I want to talk to some sporty people and get opinions on how good my exercise regimen is. If I were to just say "I jog twice a week," it's not really useful to them since they don't know what my fitness goals are, my current level of health, etc. This sort of information is even more important in political science, since there's a lot more variance between conceptions of "the good" then there is between conceptions of physical fitness.
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# ? Nov 9, 2015 18:44 |
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# ? May 2, 2024 11:49 |
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Verge posted:Further, if this still didn't quelch the issue, if minorities are still having trouble conducting business due to racism in the business world, we'd have to invoke some sort of racism 'penalty' by requiring a license for racism that'd, say, add 10% to their yearly taxes. Not exactly a completely free world by my standards but a necessary compromise to keep racist businesses a small niche. Again, I only have a problem if this became a nationwide issue, not a city-wide issue - I simply wouldn't want to live in that city. Disclaimer: I can not empathize with those who do not move away from their city when the going gets tough. I live in an awesome city, I'll move if it becomes less awesome, so if I sound cold-hearted, it's simply because I don't understand why people remain in lovely cities. Because only people with some financial freedom and latitude can just up and move. It also helps if you don't have kids with friends in school.
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# ? Nov 9, 2015 18:52 |