|
Wolfsheim posted:They personally won't have to worry about things like crippling debt leading to basically feudalism, because as soon as all that regulation is out of the way they'll blossom into the brilliant captains of industry they always had the potential to be. Not coincidentally everyone question that starts "Hey, don't libertarians realize that in Freetopia things would be much worse for <x> people because <y>?" has the same answer. Libertarianism is a religion.
|
#
¿
May 23, 2014 10:03
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 14:47 |
|
|
"Murray Rothbard and the Monstrous Babies" would be a pretty sweet band name e: "Monstrous baby" is also a good synonym for "libertarian"
|
|
#
¿
May 23, 2014 12:01
|
|
|
The fundamental disconnect is that the gun-carrying libertarian "knows" that they won't flip out and go on a murder spree, but the people around them generally do not. Furthermore, carrying a weapon may well indicate that a person is more likely to lose their temper and become violent than average. e: I say "knows" in scarequotes because it turns out that most people don't plan on outbursts of explosive anger. It is sort of like Google Glass wearers: they say that they're not a danger to others, but there's no way to be sure. Except whereas it's good to harass and shun Glassholes and break their toys, doing so to a gun carrier is dangerous. Mornacale fucked around with this message at 04:40 on May 24, 2014 |
|
#
¿
May 24, 2014 04:37
|
|
|
Who What Now posted:Trot? As in "Trotskyist"? Well that's a new one around here, but as far as insults go I feel that "statist" is better. Given that you clearly are not serious about wanting to understand Tias's politics, why would they have a discussion with you?
|
|
#
¿
May 25, 2014 23:02
|
|
|
Who What Now posted: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. 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.
|
|
#
¿
May 26, 2014 00:58
|
|
|
LogisticEarth posted:The basic issue is that racism is profitable when it's popular. Of course, it's also politically favorable when it's popular too. An interesting question is if a minority of businesses who have anti-racist policies would help drive society towards integration and non-racism in the absence of state power enforcing the status quo (e.g. Jim Crow, modern drug law enforcement, etc.). Wouldn't it be much more likely that those buinesses were destroyed, either by the Invisible Hand or by the visible hand of out-and-out terrorism if that took too long? I guess it depends to some extent on just how much of a majority is racist.
|
|
#
¿
May 28, 2014 15:42
|
|
|
Most libertarians seem to either believe that 1) inherited wealth is good, since it consolidates power among the genetic ubermenschen, or 2) it's no problem, since their dogma says that the cream will rise to the top regardless of starting position (unless the starting position involves any kind of government). e: Forgot a third category: the kind who support a 100% estate tax because they clearly believe themselves to be the ubermenschen and blame their lack of inheritance for not being an oligarch. Mornacale fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Dec 27, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2014 17:12
|
|
|
Cemetry Gator posted:Now you got me thinking of a libertarian version of A Clockwork Orange. My a priori reasoning doesn't allow it.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 28, 2014 21:12
|
|
|
EvanSchenck posted:I know you're joking but lynching actually works on a whole other level as a disproof of the ancap/voluntaryist argument that the community will spontaneously organize to punish violators of the NAP. In one sense, yeah, the boycott never happens. But in the other sense the community actually does spontaneously organize itself to punish transgressors! In a way, they're right, and it does work! The only thing this disproves is rubes like jrod who believe spontaneously organized terror against minorities is a bug and not a feature. For guys like HHH, this is evidence that ancapism works great.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2015 20:00
|
|
|
Antares posted:But the killer would have no intrinsic motivation to kill the person until you made it valuable by offering remunerations for his services. It's still non-aggression because the hitman has mixed his labor with the decedent, making them his property to do with as he pleased. The means justify the ends.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2015 02:23
|
|
|
Mister Adequate posted:The best part here is, even if the argument was itself sound and not reprehensible, libertarianism is supposed to be about the individual, not society. Their reaction should be "So what if it helps society as a whole? Individuals were harmed, and their wishes directly contravened." not "Oh well it's a shame some people suffered, but it helped that minority as a group and society in general." If they weren't trying to justify their own surrender to their most base of instincts, of course. Ah, but you're forgetting about the freedom of the poor blackmailer!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2015 08:59
|
|
|
Nolanar posted:How do people feel about This Week in Mises.org becoming a weekly thing? If you all had enough "fun" with the first round, I'll sift through the site again and post something tonight or tomorrow. Please do.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2015 20:43
|
|
|
quote:Yes, this is austerity — but only for the government. Ah yes, remember how in other countries, austerity policies include a government decree that private persons should refuse to spend money and intentionally starve the economy?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2015 07:42
|
|
|
It's impressive how it just takes a moment's thought to realize that saying "there was nothing in Duke's current program or campaign that could not also be embraced by paleoconservatives or paleo-libertarians" says a whole hell of a lot more about conservatives and libertarians than it does about David Duke.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2015 08:54
|
|
|
Disinterested posted:[Very long list of citations needed]. I know this is a popular and easy thing to say, but it's a real task to prove. I agree that poor people don't agitate very effectively in their own interests and that a lot of that stems from lovely education etc. but neglect and indifference are much easier to prove than design. A partial list of groups with a vested interest in keeping the poor from recognizing and acting in their interests in one or more ways: both major political parties; the news media; huge industries like defense, fossil fuels, and banking; the police/military; mainstream White Evangelical Christianity; every large employer of any type; and of course the rich in general. All of these groups actively propagandize and lobby against the interests of the majority of Americans. They are often more than happy to work together, for instance the military-industrial complex is lionized by the media, then sent to open up markets for industry and serve as a PR arm for politicians. Similarly, anyone who benefits from sexism, racism, etc has a vested interest in keeping one or more minorities from asserting themselves. Do representatives of every single one of these groups meet monthly to plan out their strategy for oppressing America? No, of course not. But we know that half the regulators in Washington came from industry, and half the lobbyists came from government; we know that the rich congregate in insular communities; we can see groups like the Chamber of Commerce or the Southern Baptist Convention. It's well known that these groups have from time to time made long-term investments, like think tanks and university economics departments, with the intent of fabricating "evidence" for future propaganda. (Hell, you've got business organizations like ALEC straight up writing legislation at this point.) All this is not to say that every single meme in our culture is a product of these forces, but there is absolutely an organized effort.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2015 12:53
|
|
|
Disinterested posted:It is a strong implication in what he is saying that he regards the whole thing as being more consciously intended by the agents than I do, and transacted on a more openly selfish basis. Cartoon villains don't have to come in to the equation - and, of course, there are hucksters and cynical people doing this kind of evil poo poo out there. I am saying that there is a concerted effort to advocate for ideas that are harmful, regardless of whether the ruling class is aware of what they're pushing. It's the same as how the Southern Strategy is racist, even if some supporters no longer hear the dog whistle. Also, I'm not terribly enthusiastic about giving people a pass for ignorance. We are talking, in general, about a group with more access to education, research, and communication than essentially anyone else in the history of human life. If someone is still pushing ideas like "poor people have it easy", the line between willful ignorance and maliciousness is pretty thin.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2015 22:11
|
|
|
Disinterested posted:I sometimes forget how bad the rhetoric towards poor people can be in the US, in a way that is simply not possible electorally in a lot of Europe. It is amazing to me that dialogue is always about the 'squeezed middle class', as if there isn't a much worse off wrung of hardworking people underneath them. I agree that the moral culpability of advocacy of anti-poor ideas shifts based on a number of factors, but regardless there is clearly an organized effort to push them, so I also agree with the claim that a lot of society is "designed to keep the poor thinking against their interests" that generated this conversation.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 11, 2015 00:30
|
|
|
Muscle Tracer posted:Yeah, it's hard to imagine that companies would turn their nose up at profit just because it's smaller than what it might otherwise have been pre-tax, until you're getting astronomically far from the rates in any Western country (or really any country at this point). Profit is profit is profit, isn't it? The standard (and not altogether untrue) response to this is that any attempt to make more money necessarily carries some risk of losing money--maybe you open that second store but for some reason nobody patronizes it, or whatever. The lower your potential profits are, the more likely that the risk/reward will be unfavorable, so raising taxes does theoretically discourage expansion to some extent.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2015 22:24
|
|
|
asdf, are you basically just giving an explanation for why supply-side economics seems to make intuitive sense (or why a supply-focused policy other than Reagan style "supply-side economics" could work), essentially "everyone wants more stuff so let's incentivize making more stuff", and leaving aside the question of whether it is good policy? Because I agree with you if you're simply asserting a cause for its appeal, and I get the idea that you agree with me (us?) that trickle-down economics does not in general do a good job of actually encouraging higher supply (because it often turns out that just sitting on the money winds up being a safer bet than producing more goods/services at lower prices, because capitalism).
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2015 08:26
|
|
|
Muscle Tracer posted:And this also misses a little ol thing called "inflation." If the United States Government prints a trillion trillion hundred-dollar bills and starts airdropping them into the cities of the nation, we're not going to suddenly be a trillion times wealthier than everybody else: the value of those dollars will plummet. Money is only infinite in a beep-boop quantities sort of way, not an "ability to trade for goods" way. I'm pretty sure that this, if anything, supports asdf's point. The supply of money is simply a limiting factor for people's capability to purchase goods, not their desire for the goods themselves. So when the money supply goes up, people seek to consume much more; even if they reach a limit of the number of goods/services they can consume, they start to seek higher quality (which presumably requires more resources/time to produce). But supply is limited much more stringently than the potential aggregate demand, so if you give everyone a trillion dollars the people who control the limited supply can simply use this opportunity to gouge consumers on price. Giving everyone a hundred dollars (demand-side) isn't maximally useful unless you also find a way to produce an extra trillion dollars of stuff per person, via things such as scientific research. (It's still somewhat useful because the marginal value of a dollar ensures that the poor will receive the most value, so it's basically a progressive tax via inflation.) Any sensible economic system needs to be concerned with the supply side, so that our economy is producing enough to fulfill everyone's needs and hopefully some wants. Any sensible economic system needs to be concerned with the demand side, to ensure that people are actually able to acquire the things being produced. Neither of these concerns is addressed by slashing taxes for big business, which is why that is such a terrible policy.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2015 00:27
|
|
|
Lemming posted:There's an implicit suggestion here that supply is always driving maximum all the time. It's not. Supply is limited by available demand. People don't make more poo poo than people are willing to buy. They'll sit on their cash instead. If demand increases, then factories and stores and such can open back up to meet it. Obviously only up to a certain point, but a recession is the exact time that you want to do something like this specifically because a lot of poo poo had to close down, because the economy is lovely, because demand is lowered, because everyone is poor and can't afford to buy poo poo. I agree that the USA in general, and the USA during this recession in particular, is doing a woefully bad job of addressing the demand side of the economy, and I specifically pointed out that even such a brute-force stimulus as "give everyone an equal amount of cash" would be helpful. I think we can also agree that a stimulus more targeted toward the people with the least spending power (like increased welfare) and/or that results in increased production (such as public works) would be even better, right?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2015 01:11
|
|
|
It warms the cockles of my heart that at least one branch of my government would rather have poor Latin@ immigrants than repatriate some wealthy bitcoin gently caress.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2015 12:39
|
|
|
Nolanar posted:The left-wing revolutions of the twentieth century ... such as “anything goes” Weimar Germany Noted left-wing revolutionaries, the Nazi Party 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2015 22:53
|
|
|
Cemetry Gator posted:I love the reactions of people who are upset about this. I mean, it's the United States' country. They should be free to let people in and out as they choose, according to Libertarian philosophy. This guy broke his contract with America once before. Surely, a reasonable businessman would not make another contract with someone who broke a previous contract. The idea that the U.S. government is illegitimate, and therefore does not have a legitimate authority to restrict migration, is in theory consistent. Ask them what they think about unfettered immigration in general, though, and the level of hypocrisy is going to rise dramatically.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2015 04:39
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:No it doesn't. Politicians have the legal authority to use initiatory force while businessmen do not. This was your post's first assertion to be completely opposite of reality.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2015 07:44
|
|
|
jrod: 1) Do you personally believe that discrimination based on race--not the right to discriminate, but the actual practice--is morally good? 2) Why do you believe that many libertarians, such as Hans Hoppe as well as the many avowed white supremacists/"race realists", derive a society with increased race-based discrimination from their first principles? Is an increase in racial discrimination objectively proven from libertarian first principles, like the rest of praxeology, or is this one issue uniquely the result of some fallacious thought process among these libertarians? 3a) If increased discrimination is an objective and unavoidable result of libertarian axioms, how do you square this view with your oft-repeated claim that libertarianism is the greatest hope for anti-racism? (Note that the idea that other races will be happier in some way if forcibly separated and excluded from white society--especially in a paradigm where white society owns the vast majority of the world's resources--is explicitly racist.) 3b) If the push for discrimination is in fact a mistaken belief, what do you believe has caused this particular error in thinking? Is there a reason I should believe that Hoppe et al made this specific error for some reason other than an existing desire to justify discrimination against other races? 4) Why is libertarianism much more popular among white supremacists than anti-racists, especially minorities? Are all these people (both the libertarian racists and the anti-racist non-libertarians) simply not smart enough to realize that libertarianism is in fact an anti-racist ideology? What is it about libertarianism that makes it uniquely attractive to the exact opposite people who "should" be attracted to it? e: Bonus: Are you aware that race is a social construct rather than a biological trait?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2015 02:30
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:I'll answer this post even though I am trying to move away from the race question. I did answer the question on healthcare after all, so I'm not exclusively focusing on this issue. Since you're actually answering questions about healthcare, I am not going to debate you about libertarianism's inherent racism. But I want to just give you an idea to mull over. When asked if racial discrimination is morally wrong, the first thrusts of your response are 1) justifying the idea of not preventing it, and 2) nitpicking about how it's okay sometimes. This suggests to the reader that you are more concerned with not being called racist than with actually ending racism. I would ask you to really seriously think about what caused you to address the question in this way. e: Just for clarity, I am not trying to drive you to the conclusion "I, jrod, secretly hate all black people" because I am honestly willing to believe you that you want the best for others. Mornacale fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Jan 24, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2015 23:13
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:Could not the exact same argument be made against the ACLU or other left-wing free speech groups who support the rights of bigots to publish hate speech? No one accuses ACLU lawyers of being secret racists when they come to the defense of people who make reprehensible statements. Their goal as an organization is in the defense of the Bill of Rights and any restriction on these rights, even for popular measures such as stifling hate speech, creates a chilling effect and precedent for the censorship or suppression of less controversial speech and eventually all speech becomes threatened. First, I do not agree that there should exist any right to produce or publish hate speech, so your supposition that I automatically support the ACLU in such a case is misplaced. I'm not a liberal, so I don't have to tie myself in knots worrying about the ~*~freedoms~*~ of fascists and wannabe slaveowners. But I will concede that I'm predisposed to give the benefit of the doubt to the ACLU, since I think on the whole they do a lot of important work defending the rights of the disempowered, even if they are ultimately more your ideological allies than mine. That said, if I were talking to an ACLU member, and they actually forced me to ask them for an unequivocal condemnation of hate speech, and I specifically worded my request to focus on the actual practice of hate speech and not the right to create or disseminate it, and their response STILL led off with asserting the importance of the right to hate speech, and the claim that I'd surely agree that hate speech is really okay sometimes, then I would absolutely, 100%, question whether stamping out hate speech was truly a major concern to that person. Do I think that you actually like hate speech? I prefer to give you the benefit of the doubt and believe your protestations that you don't. But I do think that you care more about some abstract vision of the rights of racists than you do about the concrete struggle of people of color. And because of this, in my opinion, you function as a tool for racists: by using the rhetoric of individual freedom to talk about a vision of society that is intrinsically amenable to white supremacy, they are able to gain followers who want to believe that they can separate the "freedom" from the racist motivations. But as Caros says, these are ultimately inseparable. Anyway, my goal here is not to convince you that the entire project of libertarianism is racist, or even that some individual libertarian is racist. I was being 100% serious when I said that I was simply asking you to take a little time for introspection, and I still hope you will do that. Just honestly ask yourself: why did I feel the need to talk about the importance of the right to discriminate, and the times when discrimination is good, before condemning discrimination? If a person who faces racial discrimination reads my response, would they believe that I was honestly their ally? If a personal who had committed racial discrimination reads my response, would they believe that I was their ally? I hope that you will consider these questions seriously, and if the answers make you uncomfortable at all, I hope you'll think about privileging abstract rights over real people a little less. If your goal is truly to develop and support a libertarianism that truly advances racial equality, then this sort of self-reflection is essential.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2015 11:46
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:I think you honestly make some good points. I always self reflect and I will continue to do so. Tone is important and I agree that it is important to convey what your values truly are. If I start going on and on about "States rights" some southern neo-confederate and pro segregation racist might get the impression that I am on his side. And I most certainly am not. I think it is important to convey the anti-racist values that I hold. I went to college in a small town in western Pennsylvania. In that town, there are several bars, and in one of those bars it's understood that black people aren't welcome. They will receive anything from intentionally poor service to threats from patrons. I have absolutely no doubt that there are plenty of places in the USA that are similar, and therefore no doubt that if it were legal to just straight-up ban minorities from your business it would occur. And not just bars: schools and neighborhoods are already highly segregated, and bussing minorities to rich white schools was hugely hated by white people. The idea that removing regulations would somehow decrease this seems awfully questionable. Hell, remember that we are only 15 years away from Bob Jones University banning inter-racial dating. Or look at how many schools had to be dragged kicking and screaming by the government to give any sort of support to women's athletics, let alone not to completely ignore the epidemic of campus rape. Or change focus entirely and consider Hollywood, where minorities are routinely discriminated against because (white male) executives are absolutely convinced that movies about/starring white men are the most profitable. In fact, there are any number of situations in which discrimination is either not sufficient to make a business fail, or is actively profitable (or perceived to be profitable). Because all those people who you think are "only" racist because of some stupid stereotype: they're the same people who know that eating at Chik-Fil-A gives money to hate groups, but their sandwiches are just so good, and really it's not their place to say what a business owner does with his money right? And you and I, who truly want to consume ethically, we have a HUGE burden of research, to the point where I believe that the most profitable option for a company is to simply invest money in obfuscating or outright lying about the bad stuff they do. Boycotts are great morally, but I don't have the slightest bit of confidence in their ability to effect real change in a late-stage capitalist economy. The impacts of your decisions are just too abstract. So it's much better, as far as I'm concerned, to collectively decide on some limits to the behavior you're willing to countenance, and empower someone to enforce those limits. quote:I find it surprising that you don't think anyone should be able to print or publish hate speech. Shouldn't we counter offensive speech with better speech rather than ban and censor that which we are repulsed by? This is a classic example of a dangerous slippery slope where the category "hate speech" can grow larger and larger until all manner of speech is banned and people are afraid to openly express themselves for fear of legal repercussions. Here we sort of get into one of the core things I'm trying to get you to think about. For all that your philosophy is concerned with individuals, it ironically operates on an extremely abstract scale where the individual pretty much disappears. What I mean by this is that your overarching concern (in this context) is with the abstract concept Free Speech, and with the general rule that it should apply to every person in every circumstance. And since it's the abstract, general concept that you care about, me saying that I'm not concerned about a general right to hate speech reads to you as "I want to ban hate speech". But that's not what it means; I am simply not a deontologist. My concern is not with what "rights" are theoretically assigned to people, but rather what their actual lives are like. I believe that racist speech makes the lives of others worse (I'll expand on this later). So my primary concern w/r/t hate speech is: stopping it. If the best way to stop it was to ban it, then an abstract concept is not that important. This is not to say that banning hate speech is the best way to stop it--you're absolutely correct that policy must be concerned with potential misuses--but rather that I am perfectly happy to champion Al Sharpton's right to speak while simultaneously shouting down David Duke. Individual cases need to be handled individually, trying to fit everything into one global concept might seem really pleasant to you but you need to recognize that it's going to be actually harmful to individuals. quote:And banning hate speech obviously doesn't eliminate the hate that the people feel in their hearts and minds. If the grand wizard of the KKK wants to write a book titled "I Hate Niggers" let him do it. Just the fact that it reminds decent people that there are still people who think this way is a service of sorts, waking us up and making us more aware of the continued problem of racism and hate. As I said above, I don't specifically support a legal ban because it's a complex matter that impacts more than just hate speech. But there are absolutely concrete benefits to a society without bigoted speech--even if prejudice still exists!--and I think it's important to point them out. Because there is a real human cost to allowing this, and if you're going to advocate paying that cost then you should have to honestly justify that it's worth it. 1) Bigoted speech perpetuates bigotry: Since race (and gender, sexuality, etc.) is a social construct rather than a biological fact, racism cannot be an inherent trait. Therefore, to become a bigot, a person must learn it from someone else. Even if every person was racist "in their hearts and minds", if they don't communicate it then it will be gone after a generation. And the spread of memes is not linear, so even a small reduction in hateful communication can have a big effect on how many people receive the messages. 2) Extreme speech leads to extreme action: Of course, surreptitious racism is terrible and harms a great many people. But allowing any hate speech necessarily leads to some people who will justify any sort of atrocity. And that speech always carries the chance of some people taking it seriously and actually putting it into action. 3) Fake it 'til you make it: Psychologically, we know that the act of pretending to believe something long and hard enough actually leads to holding the belief. Have you ever repeated a lie so much you started to feel like it was true? Or had the act of putting a happy face forward during something you disliked led to actual enjoyment? Similarly, pretending to not be racist will actually make people less racist over time. 4) Isolation: You're well aware of how difficult it can be to be alone in a belief. Now, imagine if none of your friends ever spoke positively about libertarianism, if Mises.org and similar platforms for libertarian politics didn't exist. Maybe you'd still hold the very same beliefs, but it would probably be pretty hard to get many of your policies enacted. Individuals with bigoted attitudes is a lot better than groups of people coordinating. And, as a bonus, you are psychologically disposed to conform to the beliefs you see. So even if everyone is racist in their heart of hearts, if they're all presenting themselves as non-racist then they'll convince each other to be less so! 5) Experiencing hate speech harms its targets: Being the target of bigoted speech increases stress, lowers self-esteem, and in general is hard on a person's mental health and development. Being aware of negative stereotypes has been shown to decrease academic performance, and being reminded specifically has a short-term harm. So, yeah, I'm not that compelled by the argument that we should be thankful to be reminded that racism still exists.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2015 00:38
|
|
|
Wolfsheim posted:I'm starting to think that the reason jrode breezes past any questions of the practical applications of an-cap but gets really, really fixated on accusations of racism is because he doesn't really care about practicality. The moral high ground is the only thing that matters. This is true and he has said as much in this thread. The means justify the ends. jrod, this "secession" thing is another example of our discussion from a few pages back where you generalize so much that you can no longer conceptualize individuals. It's imperative that you understand that when we discuss issues, we ultimately have to place them inside a historical and material context.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 29, 2015 00:19
|
|
|
Racism is the Kevin Bacon of libertarian thought. That's why the thread always comes back to it: ultimately there is just no way to be a proponent for modern libertarianism without coming up with some defense of slavery, genocide, etc.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2015 00:59
|
|
|
50 pages of math are only useful if you can convince anyone that the implications of your theorem are actually important and desirable. e: Math is cool for its own sake, though, so I hope the proofs are interesting even though they will probably be meaningless.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2015 00:08
|
|
|
Antares posted:Here's a full article on the supplements: The existence of the US regulatory apparatus probably does in some way aid these sorts of scammers. I can't prove it, but I have a strong suspicion that many Americans don't realize just how much deception is legally allowed, and what categories of products the FDA does/doesn't test. Unethical companies can play on these misconceptions, whereas more consumers would probably be more skeptical if there was no FDA. But of course you could also solve this in a sane manner by 1) increasing regulations to actually cover the things consumers assume should be covered, and 2) educating consumers on what claims are and aren't verified by the FDA.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2015 03:57
|
|
|
Falstaff Infection posted:Even if you did have hours and hours to spend reading Yelp reviews there's no guarantee they'll be at all reliable. In fact, given the huge issues with Actually Existing Yelp, it's basically a guarantee that they wouldn't.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2015 23:44
|
|
|
Mr Interweb posted:That comment about washing hands from that idiot Thom Tillis is the kind of thing that I occasionally see that makes me wonder who the hell poo poo like that is supposed to appeal to. I mean, I can see the appeal of supporting something like low taxes, but who the gently caress is out there clamoring for people to not be as hygienic as possible when it comes to handling your food? It's how you tell that someone is a true believer in the libertarian religion. They no longer consider deregulation as a means to an end, but rather instinctively treat it as a goal in and of itself.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2015 09:19
|
|
Is there a gigantic, untapped demographic of coprophagiacs or something I'm not aware of?
|
jrodefeld posted:The major problem is that you envision a whole host of terrible consequences to implementing a libertarian society. The claim is that the poor will die in the streets, the elderly will suffer without medical care, wealth disparity will be worse, and society will crumble into violent chaos. Now, this is merely a speculation on your part. You cannot point to a very recent society that was governed by ideological libertarians with a non-interventionist foreign policy, a gold standard or commodity money, law based on the non-aggression principle and a night-watchman State or no State at all. You are mistaken about the standpoint from which we criticize libertarianism. Our objections are not, and never have been, limited purely to a demand for empirical proof. Instead, libertarianism is absolutely rife with errors in correctness, morality, consistency, and logic. We see the logical axioms of the ideology and reject them as ridiculous. We see the context from which it originated and in which its most prominent supporters exist, and recognize that its purpose is to entrench and justify oligarchy and white supremacy. We read about its tenets and look at the state of the modern world and make reasoned deductions about the results of the ideology--namely, that it would fail to address some problems and make many much worse. We also take note of historical examples of libertarianism and see that it generally resulted in negative outcomes, and use these historical examples to support our other claims. Those of us who are Marxists make inverse judgements of Marxism. We believe the axioms are reasonable and consistent with the real world. We believe the ideology to be a good-faith effort to bring about a more moral society. We deduce from the stated goals and methods of Marxism that adopting it would solve many of the problems we see in modern society, and believe we can mitigate problems that it might create enough to make the tradeoff worthwhile. We look at historical examples of Marxist politics and see support for some of these claims and--since we, unlike libertarians, believe in empiricism and utilitarianism--adjust our theories to work better in the future. Ultimately, we come to the hypothesis that some variant of Marxism is currently the best way to organize society. Could we be convinced if you were able to offer a legitimate empirical example of libertarianism working? Yes. But the reason that's necessary is because you have failed to offer a convincing case on any other grounds. quote:For society to progress, it is not just libertarianism which deserves a chance, but Marxism, anarcho syndicalism, Georgism and other notions of political organization. How else can this be accomplished but through decentralization? This is ridiculous. Tests of political ideologies have very real cost in human suffering. Testing an ideology will affect even those people who don't take part in it, even if just by claiming access to some set of resources. I personally am all for decentralization and free association (I think that empathy is both necessary for functioning society and impossible on the scale of a modern nation), so I'm fairly sympathetic if a group of nuts want to run their commune according to your religion, but the idea that believing in one radical political position necessitates acceptance of any radical politics is absurd. (Most obviously, Naziism can't "deserve a chance" because an intrinsic aspect of that ideology is violent expansion.) Since I am convinced that Libertopia will be a nightmare society, I consider any resources you control to be wasted and any harmful byproducts you produce (pollution, evangelism, rapacious neofeudal armies, etc) to be pure downside; not everyone is going to agree that the abstract good of self-determination is worth these costs. quote:I adamantly support Secession as a principle, the breaking away of various communities from the central State not just in the United States but around the world. I want smaller, competing States instead of large centralized States. From these small States, we can then have different experiments in political organization. You could experiment with anarcho syndicalism if you like, and I could enact libertarian free market anarchism with a gold standard and private property rights. Once again, you are showing yourself to be much more concerned with defending your ideology from being called racist than making your ideology anti-racist. But even then, you fail. I absolutely accept your premise that secession is a major option for anyone who wants to live under your ideology. After all, as a Marxist I am stuck in the same space: it's either revolution or some form of secession, and it's pretty clear that revolution isn't happening anytime soon. But I don't know of any prominent Marxists that spend a lot of time talking about secession in the abstract as opposed to as part of a specific part of a plan to advance their goals. But the people we are calling racists are not analogous: they are not making an argument for libertarian praxis that happens to involve secession as a necessary step, they are making an argument for secession that happens to use the language of liberalism for justification. And it's extremely obvious, from a variety of ideological and contextual factors, that their desire for secession is intimately and inextricably tied in to racism. It is simply impossible to divorce the League of the South from racism, and there is absolutely no reason to focus on the abstract benefits of secession except to justify an alliance with open, unapologetic white supremacists. If you do not want to appear racist, do not ally with white supremacists. quote:Communism ultimately failed due to its own internal problems and contradictions. Mises wrote about the problem of economic calculation under socialism, there is the problem of incentivizing hard work and we have plenty of examples of misallocated capital manifesting in bread lines and other shortages in comparison to capitalist nations. I don't want to let this get lost in your secession apologia, so I'm highlighting Babby's First Anti-Soviet Propaganda here for a bonus laugh.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2015 15:06
|
|
|
Caros posted:Ah, but Post Hoc Ergo Propter hoc.... err... wait. The question is whether he is learning to reason better, or just adjusting his evangelism to the target audience.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2015 04:31
|
|
|
Karia posted:See, I'm all for capitalism as our primary market system, provided: The only problem is that capitalism is inherently inimical to all four of these qualifiers. Capitalists will always accrue disproportionate power, by the nature of the system, and then use that to slowly chip away at the limits on their position (by the nature of humanity).
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2015 07:11
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:There is no "human nature" argument that comes out favorably for democratic government. If people are inherently good and rational, then the State is not necessary as people will self organize into functioning private societies where the needed functions of civil society will be funded privately. If people are inherently evil and irrational, then the State is FAR too dangerous to tolerate as this amounts merely to granting some of these irrational and dangerous citizens power to violently dominate the others. This is a false dichotomy. I strongly suspect that the only person in this thread who believes that there exists some perfect governmental form, based on deduction from first principles, to be yourself. Pure anarchy is simply ineffective at organizing society to pursue large-scale goals like infrastructure. Private for-profit companies are inferior to collective organizations at the provision of important things like health care, food, and water. So, if you value these things being available to the public, then some form of government is morally required. But on the other hand, the vast majority of us believe it's morally wrong to govern someone without their consent. These morals conflict--any collective group will sometimes work against the desires of one individual or another. Some people, such as yourself, retreat into a make-believe black-and-white world where you can derive a perfect, mutually-consistent moral system from first principles and then sacrifice that health and happiness of actual people at the altar of your axioms. Those of us who operate in reality, though, prefer to face the conflicts in our moral codes and work out some kind of compromise. Here is where the argument for democracy is located: it offers a method of providing for collective organization that responds to the desires of its individual constituents. People who feel that they have a say in their government are willing to give the necessary consent to the government as a whole, even though they know individual decisions will sometimes go against their wishes. But just because most of us support some form of democracy doesn't mean we think it's perfect! In America, for example, most peoples' say in the government is purely an illusion. Further, consent of the governed is largely coerced, both by militarized police and by the fact that it's tremendously difficult for the average person to "opt out". People have lots of ideas on how to fix this, whether by reforms within the system or by breaking things down to emphasize more local government. But the general idea that we seek an ever-improving compromise between moral needs remains central, and ignoring it will always make your proposed system ultimately evil. ninja e: God drat, this thread has moved fast while I was typing.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2015 06:54
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 14:47 |
|
|
I think the USSR is pretty important for anyone who wants to talk about communism, but any honest criticism has to acknowledge the huge gains in living standards as well as the mass murder and starvation. Just like any analysis of capitalism that focuses solely on the mass murder and starvation inherent to that system is incomplete if it doesn't recognize the advantages compared to mercantilism, etc. The question is: knowing the history of actually existing communism/capitalism, how can we preserve the advantages and limit the disadvantages? And then: is our best idea of communism better than our best idea of capitalism? But of course jrod believes he's already found the perfect political theory, so he doesn't care about trying to improve our ideas but rather propagandizing for Mises's.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2015 07:22
|
|