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AnemicChipmunk posted:I think everyone here should listen to this Majority Report podcast wherein Sam Sedar debates libertarian professor Walter Block. Here's the link. Walter Block is a childish idiot Holy poo poo Walter Block is a loving LOON! Not to mention and enormous racist ("blacks don't have jobs because they are too lazy to earn those minimum wage jobs." What?!  ). And it is way different hearing stuff that absolem was saying nearly word for word coming from a real person's mouth than it is reading it on a forum, and not it a good way. I wanted to violate the NAP and reach through time and space and throttle the man.-EDIT- VVVVVVVVV "If you don't stop making fun of him, I'll have to dock your pay to $3.25." "Well it's better than nothing!  "
Who What Now fucked around with this message at 14:56 on May 23, 2014 |
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May 23, 2014 14:52
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tbp posted:I'd hardly call any response I've ever received "ripped apart", and I think it speaks volumes that you would consider a discussion an arena wherein people need to be "ripped apart". Why wouldn't you want to be "ripped apart"? You should be coming here to have your ideas harshly challenged, not coddled like it was babby's first discussion.
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May 23, 2014 21:19
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tbp posted:Fair enough, I'd be glad to if there were discussion rather than goofball responses and cheerleading. But what is, I suppose a bit frustrating is that there is, at times, wholesale invention of events. For example, in the US Politics thread, I believe the only positions I've stated outright I support are ending the war on drugs, a GMI, and support for gay marriage. I don't think any of those have been debated, never mind "ripped to shreds", but if they have and I have not read the posts I figure I'll be unconvinced afterward because my support for those three mentioned is very strong. Then shut the gently caress up and  . If you're not here to state your position and have it evaluated then you're worthless. No one gives a poo poo for you to come in and say "hey guys, I like thing and don't care what anyone else thinks about it."
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May 23, 2014 21:54
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Sublimer posted:Out of these types of libertarians, which ones typically support (And supported before it was politically acceptable) gay marriage? I'm pretty sure the libertarian conservatives just want to leave it up to the states to decide, but I'm not sure about the others. The ones that don't want to call themselves liberals, I suspect.
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May 23, 2014 23:20
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SedanChair posted:Well, but the state engages in literal, actual, premeditated force. As you and the libertarians say, they send drones (or troops, or cruise missiles) and actually kill people. That's very far removed from simply having weapons of whatever caliber or lethality. Most people do not consider having weapons to be in itself coercion, and the number of weapons you have doesn't really change that. So why would libertarians especially view it as aggression? Nobody else does. If someone came up to me with a gang of 50 men and women all holding AKs and told me what a nice house I had and how awful it would be if something were to happen to it but luckily he and his nice employees behind him could protect me from anything terrible happening, yes I absolutely would feel coerced because most people understand things called "implicit threats". -EDIT- I see in the time I started this and walked away for a few moments this has moved on a bit. I still think that having even a single weapon does indeed constituent "coercion" of some sort, otherwise there would be no point to open carry. Who What Now fucked around with this message at 17:12 on May 24, 2014 |
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May 24, 2014 17:10
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SedanChair posted:Yeah, in my opinion it's gone over that line on several occasions. I wish I could find the photo right now of some tac'ed out beardlord standing in the bed of his truck with an AR at low ready, surveying some public gathering. This will have to do for now: I agree that armed police officers are coercion, and that they should only be armed if there is a meaningful chance they will also be met with armed resistance themselves. But the police have a set of laws and a a Justice system to answer to (on paper, let's not discuss how well this works in practice right this second) and so I trust the police more than I would trust any wannabe gunfighter or gangster in the glorious libertopia. Who What Now fucked around with this message at 18:20 on May 24, 2014 |
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May 24, 2014 18:16
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Tias posted:No. Anarchism espouses rule of law and democratic legislation. Rules make by the people they affect would probably criminalize assassination. And enforce it how? Who cares if it's illegal if there is no force more powerful that can impose the rule of law?
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May 24, 2014 19:37
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OwlBot 2000 posted:Depends upon what he means by "anarchism", but most anarchist societies operated like a ground-up, nonhierarchical directly democratic government. If one small group decided the rules didn't apply to them the rest would respond in an organized way very much as a state would using their equivalent of police or militia. Anarchists draw some kind of distinction between State and Government, retaining the latter in all but name, but I'll let Tias give his own opinion. And what happens if the group isn't small? Like If Russia decides to invade? Are neighboring communities obligated to loan their militias in defense of another community?
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May 24, 2014 21:45
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Yes, you can "justify" absolutely anything. But that doesn't make the justification automatically valid and sound.
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May 25, 2014 17:48
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Tias posted:I've really given up on defending the left-anarchist position here in DD because of the shrieking trot circlejerk that always ensue, Trot? As in "Trotskyist"? Well that's a new one around here, but as far as insults go I feel that "statist" is better. Both make you look like a whiney baby, though.  quote:but if you lot are serious, PM me. I suppose I could, but since I'd just repost the exchange here, you might as well just post here anyway. Furthermore if you aren't able to defend your views then you should probably question why you even have them in the first place. Chances are you yourself probably don't even understand your own position.
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May 25, 2014 21:31
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Mornacale posted:Given that you clearly are not serious about wanting to understand Tias's politics, why would they have a discussion with you? What, do I have to use only the Queens Olde Englishe with no hint of humor and humanity? I honestly want to know why he believes what he believes, because the way it's been presented to me before is childish and untenable. So that's how I treat it.
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May 25, 2014 23:07
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Mornacale posted:I'm not concerned with your word choice so much as claiming a serious interest in someone's opinion while simultaneously calling them a whiny baby and claiming they don't understand their own ideology. Especially since if you're not even familiar with the use of "trot" as a pejorative it's pretty clear that you're not coming from a position of knowledge. Except that I had heard of trot as a pejorative, just not here on SA. And yeah, I think that people that come into the thread and go "you plebes just can't handle a discussion of my super awesome political philosophy" and peaces out probably doesn't actually know what they're talking about. But posting about posting about posting is even worse, so I'm gonna stop before the mods get mad.
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May 26, 2014 01:17
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SedanChair posted:Not only can I not think of a politician more arrogant and supercilious than Ted Cruz, I can't think of a historical figure who was. Napoleon Bonaparte? -EDIT- The entirety of pre-revolution French Aristocracy, actually. Who What Now fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 20:10
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Magres posted:They both rely on abstract, non-physical ideas for justification Reason isn't entirely abstract, though. It's also a codified thought process.
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Jul 18, 2014 20:15
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Nintendo Kid posted:I did, all your posts even reinforce it. No, even a quick glance tells me that you're wrong. He even spelled it out, if a man left at 8am and spent hours in town he could still be home by 7pm. That's a day. Singular. No overnight stay of any kind. This of course assumes that the person is lazy and leaves late in the morning rather than just after dawn, which would be around 5-6am. Look, just admit that you didn't do the research. It's already obvious you didn't and you're just making yourself look worse in the process of doubling down.
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Aug 18, 2014 19:22
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Nintendo Kid posted:I did do the research. His assumptions still leave most people unable to get to mail and back without taking multiple days. I'm really sorry that you people have trouble understanding the underutility of the postal service in the early republic; especially once migrations really kicked off. Do you even understand what population density even means? Most people lived in higher density areas, which is why they were, you know, of a higher density.
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Aug 18, 2014 19:28
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E: Rounding error
Who What Now fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Aug 18, 2014 |
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Aug 18, 2014 19:37
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SedanChair posted:It will not. It will reduce unemployment because all those teenagers and women and minorities who could never, ever do anything worth $6 an hour will be able to work. (This is now a mainstream neoliberal position.) This is what is most alien about this thinking to me; how they believe that any person's labor can be worth so very little. A person's time and effort is worth whatever a living wage is. regardless of how menial or easy it is.
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Sep 28, 2014 01:27
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:That's the thing though, my dad isn't even a libertarian; he's the type of centrist who likes to jerk off about how awesome and unbiased he is for "listening to both sides" and how nothing gets done because "both sides won't listen to each other". When the center espouses so many right-wing ideas like that, you know we're right hosed as a country. I don't think your dad is a centrist. He may claim to be, but if all he talks about and agrees with are Right-Wing talking points, then he's Right-Wing.
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Sep 28, 2014 02:08
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The Mutato posted:Liability insurance would be necessary in a free society. Sounds more like the failing of a monopolised legal system to me. Necessary how? Why? Who the gently caress is going to take these businesses to task?
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Sep 30, 2014 15:28
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jrodefeld posted:The market, in contrast, is not the "absence of all constraints" but is the exact opposite. The free market is a system of regulation that the consumers impose upon businessmen. The rules are strict and decisive. No one may be permitted to initiate force against anyone else. Live up to your contracts. Respect private property rights. If a businessman anticipates consumer desires and satisfies them, then they are permitted to continue to make a good living. If, on the other hand, they offer a lousy product, poor customer service or they act poorly and attract negative press, then the consumers can put them out of business in short order. Something that I know you've been asked time and time again and that you always ignore is this: Say we have a businessman in a town, the only town for quite a long ways away. This businessman owns not only all the arable land for hundreds of miles around, but he also owns all the mineral rights and most means of production. On top of all this he owns a number of stores and other businesses. He is quite successful. People rent small homes from him, and in exchange they work his fields and staff his businesses on top of a small salary with which they buy food (from his stores) and products (that his factories made). Now, it would be impossible for anyone to open any other stores here or start any new farms as he owns all the land, and he refuses to sell even a square-inch of it. On top of this anyone renting a house from him is bound by contract to never attempt to start competition with him. What's more, he owns all the roads, and he sees fit that anyone using them to enter need only do so for $.01, but anyone leaving must pay $10,000.00, or ten years salary if you literally never spent a single cent that you earned. Hey, they're his roads, he built them, and they're on his land, right? And anyone trying to use these roads without paying have initiated force, and he has a DRO (that he owns) on standby to subdue and return anyone leaving without paying to toll to their homes. Agreeing to only use this DRO is obviously part of the renters contract. And the toll fee is not openly posted to outsiders, as pricing is a key part of his business and he only does business with people that have contracts with him already, our are export buyers. So we have people that per contract that they willingly signed must work for him, can only pay their wages to him, and can only leave after many years of squalid living can they leave. To try and escape would be both initiating force against the Businessman by misusing his private property in a way he does not see fit and/or constitutes trespassing as well as a breach of willingly entered into contract. And yet how is this effectively different than slavery? Let's take this scenario a little further. This is a short one, don't worry. Now let's say that this businessman, in secret, begins mass producing firearms and body armor, and outfits a PMC over 10,000,000 strong, and then proceeds to invade all the neighboring towns to conscript the people into contracts and to "buy" all the land for $1. Who is going to stop him? Let's drop the businessman scenario, and let's say you get what you want, a totally stateless America. It is now whatever form of self-governance you see as best. Then as the last vestiges of federal and state governments and destroyed, China invades the land formerly known as California in a blitz, dropping almost all of its troops by both air and sea as quickly as it can, and begins shooting everyone in sight. Who is going to stop them? How does your perfect Libertopia protect itself from foreign powers?
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Sep 30, 2014 16:47
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Ratoslov posted:Why, every rationally self-interested individual independently donates to the most effective effort to protect their libertopia, of course! Well at the very least we know that my hypothetical Businessman/Despotic War Lord's lands and
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Sep 30, 2014 17:39
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I'm really honest to god curious what Jrod (or even The Mutato) has to say about this in his own words. I mean, obviously they don't think that outside nations will automatically respect the Non-Aggression principals, and America does have quite a lot of natural resources others with fewer moral scruples would take be willing to take by force. Hell, people within Libertopia would do it. My hypothetical slave owning warlord would crop up by the dozen inside of a month.
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Sep 30, 2014 18:21
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One thing I've just fully realized about libertarianism, that I've always known in a way but now realize how to articulate, is that it promotes an entirely reactive type of society. It almost goes out of its way to cut out any way to proactively protect oneself from dangers. The obvious things like fires and protection against crime have been brought up time and time again, and the answer most consistent with libertarian ideals is that you wouldn't be charged until you need it, because why would you pay to protect yourself against something so statistically insignificant? That these charges would be exorbitant is simply fair market value, to ask for less would be immoral. But the recent discussion about environmental hazards is what made it click for me. In libertopia if you had a happy cottage in an idealistically beautiful field of grass and flowers and one day woke up to see a coal burning plant laying a foundation not 100' from your front door, there is absolutely nothing you could do about it. You would have to wait until after obvious harm was caused to you to try and bring up a grievance, and really the only way to show that to a degree acceptable in a libertarian court is if someone in your house dies and when you cut open the victim's lungs the tumors spell out "Coal Burners Inc. did this". But until that happens you can't do poo poo, and it's cold comfort to the deceased in any case. The most proactive thing you can do in a libertarian society is contract with a DRO, but even the most revered of Libertarian scholars admit that DROs are mediators, only stepping in after a dispute erupts, almost never before. And even though they say otherwise, businesses too could only exist reactively in libertarian-land. While on paper he who can correctly predict a new need will be the most successful, in reality it's whoever can spot a new need after it has a grown to have sufficient demand to support the economic risk of providing the wanted good or service will be the one that does best. Prediction carries immense risk, while retrodiction carries almost none. It's obvious which choice everyone would take. It's an ideology made by and for people who are missing the part of their brains responsible for long-term planning.
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Oct 1, 2014 02:38
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DarklyDreaming posted:I would say the opposite, libertarianism depends on preparing for every conceivable eventuality and being able to survive it, with those that can't prepare being left in the dust for lacking "Time-preference" Somehow "preparing for everything" always boils down to "have enough cash on hand to fix it", though.
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Oct 1, 2014 03:39
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wateroverfire posted:So to summarize the action so far: So did you completely miss Jrod and Mutato's posts, or are you making a concious decision to pretend that they don't exist and didn't post in this thread? Just curious. -EDIT- wateroverfire posted:None of that is precluded by a "small" government unless you decide for some reason to define small that way, though. The way you buy things and the way a government buys things are so radically different that it's nonsensical to compare the two in any way, shape or form. DO you read those "If the government were a household of four, here would be it's budget" email forwards and think it's some sort of sage wisdom and epic burn against big government too? Who What Now fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Oct 1, 2014 15:35
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jrodefeld posted:A free people working to defend their own property, as history has shown, are capable of repelling far more powerful armies at a drastically lower cost. And this is why Europeans were never able to gain a foothold in the Americas, right?
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Oct 2, 2014 01:23
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Jrod, can you provide an actual example of a stateless society effectively fending off a better funded state-backed aggressor? Because I find that to be the most blatantly bullshit claim you've possibly ever made. In fact, if you can not only give me one, but five examples (which if your claim is correct should be easy) I will buy you a new avatar, platinum, or archives. So on top of being factually and morally superior to us lowly statists, I'm giving you a true economic incentive to provide examples.
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Oct 2, 2014 02:21
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Rhjamiz posted:Aptly put; all that would need to happen is for one DRO to go rogue and start aggressively seizing property and resources. After that, all bets are off. Theres a reason that everywhere there is a weak state presence is ruled almost entirely by warlords, despots, and pirate gangs.
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Oct 2, 2014 02:57
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QuarkJets posted:As you and your party walk around the corner, you are confronted by a jrodefeld. He mutters, "in a stateless society there can be no war", and then lunges at you with a knife! I jack my cyberdeck into the nearest data-terminal and begin mining for bitcoins.
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Oct 2, 2014 03:40
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QuarkJets posted:Yes, that is what happens I looked up the jrodefield entry in the book and his knife attack deals 1d1-1 damage, so Karia is safe.
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Oct 2, 2014 03:55
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jrodefeld posted:Almost all major wars in the history of civilization were financed partially or mostly or entirely through inflation. That is just a historical fact. In fact, can you name a single major war of aggression that was fought in the past several centuries that was not financed with paper money? Hey, can you provide examples of a stateless society fending off a better funded state-backed aggressor like I asked you three pages ago? You don't get to shift the burden of proof on the poo poo you pull out of your rear end.
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Oct 2, 2014 09:48
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Jrod, when you're at a restaurant and you get your bill at the end of the meal do you simply walk away without paying for the food and service provided? I'm going to guess not, as that would be stealing and this be morally wrong. And so it can be said that the restaurant has a moral claim to your "justly" earned (the fact that you have never in your life justly earned a single thing is a topic we'll touch on another time) property, in this case in the form of money. And so it's the same thing with taxation. You use our roads, drink our water, siphon our electricity, enjoy the protection of our emergency services, and so much more. You consume and take all of that and then have the gall to say that it's immoral for you to pay a fair price for these things? What sort disgustingly arrogant and morally repugnant scum are you? VVVVVVV Pretty much, yeah. Isn't it convenient that Jrod always suddenly becomes too busy to post right around the time he talks himself into a corner and is shown to be the idiot that he is? Who What Now fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Oct 2, 2014 |
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Oct 2, 2014 14:28
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SedanChair posted:Did he ever circle back and explain why he wanted examples of warfare funded by not paper money, but precious gold? Because I think we gave him about 10 examples in five minutes. As per usual he immediately dropped that line of discussion and is pretending that it never existed.
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Oct 2, 2014 14:41
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wateroverfire posted:Civil rights can be in. "Women and darkies can work, but not for as much pay as a glorious white man." -A real person in TYOOL 2014
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Oct 2, 2014 15:18
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wateroverfire posted:Equal pay for equal work is a good slogan and a fine ideal, but it's impossible for a regulator to accurately determine whether two workers who are being paid differently are indeed equal in all the ways that matter except, for instance, gender. So what you're saying is that women and minorities deserve to make less because they don't work as hard as white men. Got it.
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Oct 2, 2014 16:20
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Vahakyla posted:Jrodefeld, how could the nomadic tribes and other scattered tribal communities not succeed against the state of Rome and their ways of taxation and laws in terms of warfare? They were not true examples of his ideal system, and we can know this because they failed. Stateless societies cannot fail, they can only be failed. -EDIT- Who What Now posted:As per usual [Jrod] immediately dropped that line of discussion and is pretending that it never existed. I'd call this prophetic if it wasn't so obvious it was going to happen again.
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Oct 2, 2014 21:23
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spoon0042 posted:I was wondering when someone would bring up ISIS. I wanted to ask jr how fiat currency is responsible for their existence. Something something statist imperialism something fiat currency.
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Oct 2, 2014 23:47
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VitalSigns posted:I posted earlier asking him about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory disaster, and he replied with the usual boilerplate about how it was the lack of development that was responsible for bad working conditions, because it just wasn't possible to run an industrial economy with modern safety standards. I'm also gonna guess that either some recent book he's read or the Econ 101 class he's taking at the night college mentioned the 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' fallacy because it seems to be his new go-to defense for hand waving away any pesky facts that point to a State succeeding in any way.
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Oct 3, 2014 00:57
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jrodefeld posted:I'll answer this and clarify my position. I don't think I said war was impossible without fiat money. However, I will take back what I really did say, which was something along the lines of "no modern large scale war was waged without fiat money". I shouldn't have said this. I don't have a comprehensive and exhaustive enough understanding of each and every war of aggression that States have engaged in to make such a sweeping statement. Why do Libertarians, most specifically you and Mutato, seem to have this completely retarded idea that wars are funded up front? They almost never are, and the aggressing force certainly isn't. I mean, do you honestly think that before a war is waged all the top military brass gathers up and says "Alright, everybody turn out your pockets and let's see how much scratch we have to work with here. Hmmm, alright, I think this'll just about pay for 30 cruise missiles and a light frigate. Let's go to war, boys!" Historically many armies were funded after the fact by the spoils of war they would claim. And if we return to a commodity based currency that would be even easier and much more desirable. What's a more lucrative target, Fiat-Paperland or Gold-Cointopia? Congratulations, Jrod, by choosing to carry around large amounts of precious metals and gemstones on your person you have now become person of interest #1 to Viking DRO, the largest and best funded DRO on the planet, so strong and powerful that no other DRO will oppose them and their army of money-hungry murderers.
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Oct 3, 2014 13:48
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