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Chaos Motor posted:You make a really good point here. You honestly do, I'm being completely serious. If I had grown up in a nation with an actually functioning government that primarily served the people, I might not be so hardcore. But I didn't - I grew up in the heart of western corruption and excess, so I have a very cynical view of what governments do, and how. Wah, wah. It doesn't work here and that means it will never ever work anywhere anytime. 
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Jul 16, 2011 22:54
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quote:Institutionalized social safety nets are not only a new thing, but quite often a complete failure as they dis-incentive being productive. Um, I hate to jump on the whole dogpile here, but you are kind of totally wrong! I don't want to hash out the excruciating details right down to the near ubiquity of social safety nets in modern countries that remain fully functional, or the case studies of adopted institutional 'economic disparity compensatory measures' to some degree or another now being (rightfully) considered necessary for a postmodern economy to function, let alone prosper, or the premonitional study of american analogues like SCHIP, but I can give the cursory version: safety nets won; their tempering effects of the odd macro trends of capitalism actually make capitalism work better and overall equip it to be more stable, raise quality of life indexes substantially, are considered in some way by any non-failed state to be compulsory (we don't leave critically ill people outside a hospital to die if they cannot pay, for instance, nor do we cut them off when they are effectively confined to hospital or hospice care — and you would need a recommendation to do otherwise to maintain the ideological purity of 'a complete failure,' since it would follow that this particular safety net would, too, have to be abandoned — this is just one of scores of examples you can pick out of the woodwork) ... ... and as such, cause the argument on social safety net systems to drift out of the unsupportable 'they do not work!' position to attempting to assert that 'they would not work for America because X' — with X being any one of a number of arguments asserting we're so fundamentally different that we structurally or institutionally cannot engage successfully in the same practices that work elsewhere, like Sweden. Most common X's are 'we are too large a country' or 'we don't have a culturally homogeneous population' (a.k.a. 'we has darkies'). Anyway! Uh, sorry to derail. Carry on with the bitcoins!
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Jul 16, 2011 22:55
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^^ See, now if everyone else was able to provide actual arguments like this one, I might actually shut up. People, take notes from this guy. ^^ Perhaps if Madoff had actually operated in a free market... Cream_Filling posted:Seriously. It's like saying you're a pussy for not wanting to wrestle a piss-covered bum. Chhh, you just know you'd lose. Bums have retard strength, you know. Cardiovorax posted:If Libertarians actually cared, they wouldn't even consider it a "right" to not help other people in the first place. You have not made a case for why someone should be forced by threat of violence to help someone else, especially if that person has put themselves in that position through their own malfeasance. Furthermore, there is a huge difference between willingly providing aid, and doing so under threat of violence. Why would you ever want to accept help from someone who had been threatened with harm if they didn't provide it? I would think in that situation I would work with the person under threats of harm to remove the person threatening to harm them.
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Jul 16, 2011 22:56
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Gerblyn posted:No, it's the Daily Mail, so it fits in with the typical, foaming at the mouth, right wing, populist agenda. Stating that a small minority who abuse the welfare system is indicative of its failure, is equivalent to stating that Bernard Madoff is indicative of the failure of free market capitalism. Ah, yes, the Daily Mail. Truly a beacon for fine journalism. 
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Jul 16, 2011 22:58
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Did I just trip and fall into the NationStates forums?
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Jul 16, 2011 22:58
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Look people it's called a god-damned pound sign and calling it "hash" is immoral.
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Jul 16, 2011 22:59
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Chaos Motor posted:You have not made a case for why someone should be forced by threat of violence to help someone else, especially if that person has put themselves in that position through their own malfeasance. Furthermore, there is a huge difference between willingly providing aid, and doing so under threat of violence. Why would you ever want to accept help from someone who had been threatened with harm if they didn't provide it? I would think in that situation I would work with the person under threats of harm to remove the person threatening to harm them.
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Jul 16, 2011 22:59
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bosschair posted:Look people it's called a god-damned pound sign and calling it "hash" is immoral. 
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Jul 16, 2011 23:01
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Gerblyn posted:No, it's the Daily Mail, so it fits in with the typical, foaming at the mouth, right wing, populist agenda. Stating that a small minority who abuse the welfare system is indicative of its failure, is equivalent to stating that Bernard Madoff is indicative of the failure of free market capitalism. Anyone who thinks people can get rich off welfare and isn't doing it themselves is admitting they're too dumb to manage it, when you think about it.
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Jul 16, 2011 23:02
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Chaos Motor posted:You have not made a case for why someone should be forced by threat of violence to help someone else... Watch this: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html Key point is at 11:30. Threat of punishment is necessary if you want people to give. But I'll continue this in PM from now on, sorry about contributing to the derail.
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Jul 16, 2011 23:02
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Okay, I'll bite for just a second: If you relied on charities to help out the poor, they would provide just as much incentive not to go to work, with less ability to help people find jobs and less power to actually ensure that people were searching for jobs. How in any way would that be better than government programs? By arguing for positive incentives as being better than threats of violence, you are actually arguing against libertarianism. Yes, a lot of us will agree that a lot of money has been wasted on wars. However, by saying that money should have been spent on things like training programs, you are actually arguing for a big government with market-distorting (in a way that is beneficial for society) programs. And how would a libertarian society deal with inevitable market failures? What about externalities? Say a company can provide a dirt-cheap product, but only because they do not have to pay for the massive amounts of environmental damage done in production. Most individual consumers will rationally choose to buy the cheaper product, because they personally are not affected by the environment. But on the whole, the company providing the cheap product is a net-negative for society because the amount of environmental damage is greater than the amount of money saved. If you say that the consumers will all choose the more environmentally friendly option, keep in mind that this would be an irrational decision for most consumers and that without government regulations the environmentally destructive company could just claim that their products are sustainable (like a CAFO labeling all its meat as free range or organic). Please let me know what your solution to this problem is, because I see literally no way for a libertarian society to deal with things like externalities and information asymmetries.
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Jul 16, 2011 23:02
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Chaos Motor posted:You have not made a case for why someone should be forced by threat of violence to help someone else, especially if that person has put themselves in that position through their own malfeasance. Furthermore, there is a huge difference between willingly providing aid, and doing so under threat of violence. Why would you ever want to accept help from someone who had been threatened with harm if they didn't provide it? I would think in that situation I would work with the person under threats of harm to remove the person threatening to harm them. Here's the fundamental issue with your argument. You are claiming that taxation is theft enforced by threat of violence. Taxation is your obligation to society in exchange for all the benefits you receive from living in it. It's doing your part, and we all have to do our part.
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Jul 16, 2011 23:05
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Edit: Monkey with gun posted what I was thinking, other information irrelevant. Chaos seems like s/he's missing out on a basic concept of Nash equilibrium.
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Jul 16, 2011 23:06
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Kavros posted:or the case studies of adopted institutional 'economic disparity compensatory measures' to some degree or another now being (rightfully) considered necessary for a postmodern economy to function, let alone prosper, These are "necessary" due to income inequality, which has been perpetuated both by businesses and by the government itself due to the regulatory bodies that protect existing businesses while creating high barriers to entry for new businesses, and refuse to prosecute the extremely wealthy while oppressively prosecuting the common man and stealing their wealth through schemes like property seizures. quote:safety nets won; their tempering effects of the odd macro trends of capitalism actually make capitalism work better and overall equip it to be more stable, raise quality of life indexes substantially, While we can't prove causation through correlation, would you at least consider looking at the rise of social safety nets concurrent with the growth of income inequality and the expansion of government powers? That is to say, as the government claims more power for itself and takes a larger portion of the GDP, fewer people are able to support themselves outside the government's intervention, while the same intervention from other arms of the government enables the growth in income inequality. quote:(we don't leave critically ill people outside a hospital to die if they cannot pay, for instance, nor do we cut them off when they are effectively confined to hospital or hospice care The fascist don't want them to die quickly, but slowly, and only after they've paid all their bills. Seriously, you may not be refused care, but you will end up with soul-sucking debt that, if you cannot afford insurance anyway, you probably will never be able to eliminate. Entirely because of government regulations, the last time I needed care, despite never seeing a doctor (only nurses), and me telling them outright at the moment I arrived exactly what the problem was and what I needed, I was billed $3000 for the right to obtain penicillin and opiates for my infection and pain. Without government regulations, I would have been able to purchase both on my own for a couple bucks. Is this is a unique situation? Potentially. Lots of people need care when they have no idea what the solution is. But lots of people also need care, and know exactly what the solution is, they simply can't afford it because of outsize government regulations restricting their ability to obtain it. So, yes, in that sense, government itself makes social programs necessary in many ways. Okay guys, I'm going to take a breather before a mod comes in and yells at me for the derail. Thanks for the interesting discussion. [edit: Between here and my last reply, several people have made good points that I really do want to respond to, but I don't want to continue the derail.]
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Jul 16, 2011 23:07
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Wait, this isn't the making fun of bitcoins thread anymore? Now it's full of unironic Libertarian tears 
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Jul 16, 2011 23:15
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SAVE_US.CHR
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Can't respond to any of that, because it's not about bitcoins!
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Jul 16, 2011 23:15
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Found this, thought of you:http://www.xc0n.com/2011/05/silver-bullion-sinks-while-bitcoins-sky.html posted:Bitcoin , the decentralized crypto-currency of the future on the other hand is SKY ROCKETING. In my last post about bitcoins I discussed my purchase for a number of them at $1.00 USD a piece, where they climbed to $1.60 but fell a few weeks later too $.50 where i bought a handful more because i couldnt resist the urge. Today after a few months of not paying attention to the market, i decided to give the current price a peak. Two words HOLY poo poo. Bitcoins are now trading at a high of $3.61 and a low of $3.30. Would i be safe to say BOOOOOOYAH. With the current unregulated status of Federal Reserve constantly inflating the USD, oil prices, and the rest of that commodity jazz beating the public as if the public calls them self toby, the answer is clear, Bitcoins will continue to skyrocket. With production limited to 21 million BTC ever to be produced, ill continue to accumulate mine and hold onto them like they are my girlfriend. From what the word on the BTC scene is, their has been an awful lot of press on bitcoins. The more press, the more bitcoins will be valued. OH btw. donate a bitcoin to my address at the bottom of this post ^_^ even if its a bit penny ill still love you <3 I treat bitcoins like my girlfriend. Also, from here: http://bitcoinme.com/index.php/invest/ "What type of investment goes up 583,900% per Year?" It's bitcoins.
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Jul 16, 2011 23:21
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Inaction Jackson posted:And how would a libertarian society deal with inevitable market failures? What about externalities? Say a company can provide a dirt-cheap product, but only because they do not have to pay for the massive amounts of environmental damage done in production. Most individual consumers will rationally choose to buy the cheaper product, because they personally are not affected by the environment. But on the whole, the company providing the cheap product is a net-negative for society because the amount of environmental damage is greater than the amount of money saved. If you say that the consumers will all choose the more environmentally friendly option, keep in mind that this would be an irrational decision for most consumers and that without government regulations the environmentally destructive company could just claim that their products are sustainable (like a CAFO labeling all its meat as free range or organic). Please let me know what your solution to this problem is, because I see literally no way for a libertarian society to deal with things like externalities and information asymmetries. The sad thing is, that there IS a way for libertarian society to deal with this situation. At some point, the damage done by your theoretical company will reach a level where it will begin to have a marked impact on the lifestyle of consumers, or will cause a disaster of such magnitude that the consumers can no longer ignore it. At this point, the market will go through a correction as other companies begin to capitalize on the situation by pointing out why company A is bad, and that people should by their own more expensive products instead, which do not have such bad environmental consequences. Which is really the key problem I see with the whole concept: It's entirely reactive. When do people stop buying food from the company selling cheap meat, infested with Ebola? After 50,000 children vomit blood all over the walls. When do people stop buying refrigerators that spew CFC gases into the atmosphere? After the ozone layer is so hosed that half the population of Alaska comes down with skin cancer. Modern marketing and advertising techniques mean that the free market can ignore any warnings from academics or scientists, until the thing they're warning about starts doing so much damage that consumers are forced to face the truth.
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Jul 16, 2011 23:22
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Gerblyn posted:The sad thing is, that there IS a way for libertarianism to deal with this situation. At some point, the damage done by your theoretical company will reach a level where it will begin to have a marked impact on the lifestyle of consumers, or will cause a disaster of such magnitude that the consumers can no longer ignore it. At this point, the market will go through a correction as other companies begin to capitalize on the situation by pointing out why company A is bad, and that people should by their own more expensive products instead, which do not have such bad environmental consequences. This is literally the plot to Resident Evil 4 & 5. Except the corporation that takes over after them is even worse! So, I guess what you're trying to say is that Bitcoins is like the Umbrella corporation and will inevitably create toxic Zombitcoins that will destroy national markets and they will just poo poo all over us.
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Jul 16, 2011 23:28
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Chaos Motor posted:There are families in Britain that haven't worked in generations due to this Also the fact that industries that have historically supported many of the poorer communities simply no longer exist, but I guess they're just lazy! 
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Jul 16, 2011 23:30
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JDanielS posted:This is literally the plot to Resident Evil 4 & 5. Except the corporation that takes over after them is even worse! That's right, nowhere to go but up, up, up!
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Jul 16, 2011 23:30
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Chaos Motor posted:^^ Ignorant assertions are still not arguments. How do you expect to change my mind if you simply and repeatedly assert I'm wrong? It wouldn't change your mind, would it? But first, show me a libertarian society if you're going to claim that incentives do not exist in one. Oh wait, you can't. ^^ Sure we can, we can show you hundreds of libertarian societies: tribes. Most of them don't exist any more because tribes are inevitably destroyed or absorbed by civilizations, but otherwise they can function successfully for thousands of years with no taxes and little or no government.
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Jul 16, 2011 23:33
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This thread was more fun minus the rabid flag waving from both sides.
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Jul 16, 2011 23:39
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If people willfully by dog turds that you sell, that's the free market in action. Don't judge me or my Dog Poo Store.
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Jul 16, 2011 23:41
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JDanielS posted:Found this, thought of you: And all the stability of a brandy tumbler on a water bed.
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Jul 16, 2011 23:42
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Angela Christine posted:Sure we can, we can show you hundreds of libertarian societies: tribes. Most of them don't exist any more because tribes are inevitably destroyed or absorbed by civilizations, but otherwise they can function successfully for thousands of years with no taxes and little or no government. This is hilarious because I learned about Shaka Zulu and his ability to frustrate British forces because of his charismatic organization of troops and allocation of resources which required the support of the local population. If only he had created a decentralized currency then he could've easily outmaneuvered the British's archaic and dumb financial institution and caused the king himself to break up the government.
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Jul 16, 2011 23:44
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JDanielS posted:This is hilarious because I learned about Shaka Zulu and his ability to frustrate British forces because of his charismatic organization of troops and allocation of resources which required the support of the local population. Also, bitcoin would have stopped Hitler from taking over Europe!
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Jul 16, 2011 23:58
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Chaos Motor posted:I was billed $3000 for the right to obtain penicillin and opiates for my infection and pain. Without government regulations, I would have been able to purchase both on my own for a couple bucks. The reason you can't go and buy penicillin whenever you feel that you need it is because if everyone did this it would gently caress up the world for everyone by creating super-bacteria.
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Jul 16, 2011 23:59
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JDanielS posted:This is hilarious because I learned about Shaka Zulu and his ability to frustrate British forces because of his charismatic organization of troops and allocation of resources which required the support of the local population. To be fair, Shaka Zulu was king of a kingdom, and he had taxation, too. That said, small, tight-knit communities of mostly related individuals in societies with limited accumulation of property, low social stratification are pretty cool. A network of close personal relationships would allow for a social safety net to develop informally, along with most other aspects of governance. Unfortunately, the moment your little society gets any bigger than a few hundred people or when particular power groups such as clans start accumulating property, then you'll have a problem.
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Jul 17, 2011 00:00
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Delthalaz posted:The reason you can't go and buy penicillin whenever you feel that you need it is because if everyone did this it would gently caress up the world for everyone by creating super-bacteria. But he's a rational actor who knows more about his requirements than some doctor! Why wouldn't you let him chose his own treatment?
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Jul 17, 2011 00:02
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Delthalaz posted:The reason you can't go and buy penicillin whenever you feel that you need it is because if everyone did this it would gently caress up the world for everyone by creating super-bacteria. Seriously, how do libertarians solve the tragedy of the commons? It's an incredibly basic problem that really can't be solved without some sort of central arbiter with enforcement powers i.e. a government. The same goes for things like property rights or contracts. In other words, all the poo poo that libertarians love and obsess about.
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Jul 17, 2011 00:02
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Chaos Motor posted:
I hope that you are not under the impression that there is such a thing as a free market as long as you cannot count on every single theoretic assumption, which you can't if there are actual physical goods and factors and actual people involved. Which is also why in current economic theory there is no efficiency without regulation in most sectors, which is also why no one, except internet libertarians without economic education, wants such a thing. Edit: Reading your posts I need to clarify We can show - using math - that a free market is not optimal for an economy under standard assumptions. Libertarians are literally wrong if they think that. So it's not that it's a circlejerk, it's that it is universally accepted that those people are a joke. Because their whole premise is based on not knowing their poo poo beyond community college level.
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Jul 17, 2011 00:02
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Chaos Motor posted:You have not made a case for why someone should be forced by threat of violence to help someone else, especially if that person has put themselves in that position through their own malfeasance. Furthermore, there is a huge difference between willingly providing aid, and doing so under threat of violence. Why would you ever want to accept help from someone who had been threatened with harm if they didn't provide it? I would think in that situation I would work with the person under threats of harm to remove the person threatening to harm them. You are really god drat retarded, do you think you'd be able to use roads, electricity, healthcare, the policeforce in a free market without paying for it? No you loving wouldn't, so shut the gently caress up and pay your taxes that provide you with all the things you take advantage of. How are you going to get anywhere without having to pay for passing through private property? What do you think the owner is going to do to collect payment without public law enforcement to stop them doing real violence to collect payment. And don't give me that "but I can choose not too!" crap, that's a giant loving lie, you won't be 100% self sufficient on your little plot of land. For one, how are you going to stop someone forcibly taking your land from you without a security force at least equal to there's?
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Jul 17, 2011 00:02
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Whenever anyone talks about "free markets," I mentally substitute the word "good" or "well regulated" for "free" and all of a sudden it makes sense.
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Jul 17, 2011 00:05
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Delthalaz posted:The reason you can't go and buy penicillin whenever you feel that you need it is because if everyone did this it would gently caress up the world for everyone by creating super-bacteria.
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Jul 17, 2011 00:06
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Believing in the free market is like believing that the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus exist: childish.
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Jul 17, 2011 00:07
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Hungry Gerbil posted:Believing in the free market is like believing that the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus exist: childish. It's like saying that if the Santa in the mall was just fatter and jollier and had a bigger beard, then eventually if he was Santa enough he would become magic and everyone would get free toys.
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Jul 17, 2011 00:09
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Cream_Filling posted:It's like saying that if the Santa in the mall was just fatter and jollier and had a bigger beard, then he eventually if he was Santa enough he would become magic and everyone would get free toys.  I love you.
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Jul 17, 2011 00:11
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Hungry Gerbil posted:Believing in the free market is like believing that the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus exist: childish. Believing in an universal free market just means your assumptions do not fit with reality. It is literally a faulty scientific model. I don't know what else to say. I know High School education is poo poo, but it's not like this is something new. We can argue about the consequences all day, but there isn't a single credible economist that will ask for a free market in the way that internet libertarians do and there hasn't been one for decades, so
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Jul 17, 2011 00:11
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homeless snail posted:And if you want an incentive to be unproductive, cheap opiates! I could get used to libertopia. Libertopiates Kinda reminds me of Freedom Fries... heh, remember that poo poo? 
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Jul 17, 2011 00:11
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