Roylicious posted:

So, in response to my pretty bog standard macro-econ points, you give me some emotional appeal and when I don't just accept it at face value you do this.

You're really doing yourself a disservice, it's not like I give a poo poo in the end and I'm gonna be doing alright either way. Dunno why you're so closed minded but that's usually an indicator that your beliefs aren't logically defensible so you turn to getting mad or making fun or hyperbole to sandbag the opposing side.

ManDingo posted:

It's just too much dude. I had a reply half written before you made like 10 edits. My points were this:

Government doing less things which are patently bad would be a good thing. War on drugs, endless nation building, crony capitalism etc.

Simplifying the tax system is also a good thing.

ManDingo posted:

I have no interest in talking about video card production or how poor people are hosed. Like I said if those people had access to the economy that wasn't illegal drugs life will be better for them. There's plenty of threads you can read in archives that go over supply side vs demand side you can read at your leisure. Also if spending was in any way correlated with improved education we'd have seen it by now.

quote:

Also if spending was in any way correlated with improved education we'd have seen it by now.

Drunk Nerds posted:

All my libertarian friends I shut up by asking one question:
"How will this school of thought differ from the Gilded Age, when government stayed separate from business and the entire country went to hell as a direct result?"

Gammatron 64 posted:

It kinda boggles my mind that anyone wants to be a full-on anaracho-capitalist libertarian in light of the poo poo Wall Street's been doing for the past decade or so. People with more money than God can already do whatever the gently caress they want

Floating Utopias posted:

It is a libertarian dream. Hexagonal neighborhoods of square apartments bob sedately by tiny coiffed parks and tastefully featureless marinas, an Orange County of the soul. It is the ultimate gated community, designed not by the very rich and certainly not by the very powerful, but by the middlingly so. As a utopia, the Atlantis Project is pitiful. Beyond the single one-trick fact of its watery location, it is tragically non-ambitious, crippled with class anxiety, nostalgic not for mythic glory but for the anonymous sanctimony of an invented 1950s. This is no ruling class vision: it is the plaintive daydream of a petty bourgeoisie, whose sulky solution to perceived social problems is to run away–set sail into a tax-free sunset.

None of this is surprising. Libertarianism is not a ruling-class theory. It may be indulged, certainly, for the useful ideas it can throw up, and its prophets have at times influenced dominant ideologies–witness the cack-handed depredations of the “Chicago Boys” in Chile after Allende’s bloody overthrow. But untempered by the realpolitik of Reaganism and Thatcherism, the anti-statism of “pure” libertarianism is worse than useless to the ruling class.

Big capital will support tax-lowering measures, of course, but it does not need to piss and moan about taxes with the tedious relentlessness of the libertarian. Big capital, with its ranks of accountant-Houdinis, just gets on with not paying it. And why hate a state that pays so well? Big capital is big, after all, not only because of the generous contracts its state obligingly hands it, but because of the gun-ships with which its state opens up markets for it.

Libertarianism, by contrast, is a theory of those who find it hard to avoid their taxes, who are too small, incompetent or insufficiently connected to win Iraq-reconstruction contracts, or otherwise chow at the state trough. In its maundering about a mythical ideal-type capitalism, libertarianism betrays its fear of actually existing capitalism, at which it cannot quite succeed. It is a philosophy of capitalist inadequacy.

Libertarianism’s nemesis, “the state,” is no less abstract. This is particularly so for libertarianism’s seasteading wing, for whom the political entity “the state” is bizarrely geographically literalized. Their intent is to slip the surly bonds of earth not up but sideways, beyond littoral borders. It is a lunatic syllogism: “I dislike the state: The state is made of land: Therefore I dislike the land.” Water is a solvent, dissolving “political” (state) power, leaving only “economics” behind.

quote:

Libertarianism, by contrast, is a theory of those who find it hard to avoid their taxes, who are too small, incompetent or insufficiently connected to win Iraq-reconstruction contracts, or otherwise chow at the state trough. In its maundering about a mythical ideal-type capitalism, libertarianism betrays its fear of actually existing capitalism, at which it cannot quite succeed. It is a philosophy of capitalist inadequacy.

satanic splash-back posted:

[nodding] yes. mmhmm. i agree. indeedarooni neighbor-o. [still nodding]

ANIME IS BLOOD posted:

the twist is I loathe goldbug libertarians as strongly as anyone in this thread as they are very often at odds with my profession, directly, I also just have a healthy skepticism of the federal government's ability to actually accomplish poo poo better than local and state government

it's almost as if allowing any group of sociopath middle managers, whether they're in the private or public sectors, free reign to do whatever they want from far away while dictating terms for the rest of us is, in general, a bad idea, and even the good actors with good intentions are going to gently caress up by not understanding the ground situation as well as they should

Dreddout posted:

Free Nooner!

Dreddout posted:

Free Nooner!

Gaunab posted:

worse than a libertarian

Tiberius Thyben posted:

I'd take Nooner over a libertarian.

ANIME IS BLOOD posted:

because, like 8-bit explained,

mdm posted:

This is not a way you want to start your GBS posts, friend

Kthulhu5000 posted:

being friends with a libertarian is like being friends with a pedophile.

Champenema posted:

This is probably not the best way to start a post, friend

Tricky D posted:

IDK, I can't think of any other political philosophy that would legalize child porn.

Champenema posted:

This is probably not the best way to start a post, friend

Tiberius Thyben posted:

Athenian Democracy.

JakeP posted: