Political Hypocrisy
To start out this section of the forum with something meaty, I'm going to ask a pretty serious question:
Why do people that say they believe in liberty and freedom think it's ok to steal money and coerce others for "the greater good?" I"m talking about today's "liberals" in particular: Why do they hate the idea of Republicans abridging their personal freedoms like freedom of speech...but have no problem with the state abridging their economic freedoms, like a right to privacy and a right to own and trade goods without government intrusion?
I'm honestly flabergasted that people think that it is sometimes ok to steal and enslave. Can some liberals help me understand how you are able to RATIONALLY justify this hypocritical behavior?
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Damn, these are getting really long.
I've heard plenty of stories about people rising from the dead after being crucified. They generally come from people saying what they want to hear and ignoring any evidence to the contrary.
Then how do you know you're right and I'm not?
Unless, of course, they ended up in a situation where they needed assistance. And, if that were true, there would have never been a need for it in the first place. Again, you seem to be ideologically opposed to the idea of helping someone out in just about any circumstance so I think this is just a disagreement between us.
I'm not opposed to helping people, I'm opposed to theft in the name of helping people. Robin hood was a theif even if he did give to the poor.
I believe people should be held accountable for their actions. They should be able to reap the full rewards for their actions and pay the full price for their actions. If someone ended up in a situation where they needed assistance, by their own works, they deserved it. If they are in that situation because of the works of others, the others should pay for it. If they are in the situation because of the works of nature, they're more likely to get sympathy. Did you see the tsunami of money that flowed in after the tsunami in Indonesia? People want to help each other, and I'm not opposed to that. I just want to be able to choose who I help and how much I help them.
"To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."All powers vested by the constitution. You're taking it out of context to make it mean what you want it to mean. The constitution enumerates government powers. This is nearly equivalent to Theocrats saying the date being specificed as "AD" makes it a Christian document.
In case you haven't noticed, they don't need a specified foregoing power to make laws. The FBI, CIA, and NSA are not justified by any of the foregoing powers in A1S8.
The UN is not a Federal organization which is how the US was set up, as a federation of independent states. Arguments between state's rights and federal rights are endless and part of our national character.
Which is part of the problem. The 9th and 10th Amendments are clear and there should be no arguement whatsoever if the Constitution is being respected.
All morality is arbitrary. An act can be defined rationally as destructive or constructive to human happiness but valuing human happiness itself is an arbitrary moral condition.The morality of beating one's wife, torturing animals, and burning witches are all issues that were defined along moral lines. All morals are subject to change from generation to generation. "Don't eat with your elbows on the table" was never a question of moralility, that's etiquette.
This episode of a podcast called "Free Domain Radio" does a pretty good job arguing to the contrary. I used to think morality was arbitrary too.
http://www.freedomainradio.com/Traffic_Jams/proving_morality_32.mp3
I consider the enforcement of morality to be authoritarianism which is actually what it's called. Socialism is a means of distributing wealth and services as is capitalism. You could aruge the morality or immorality of either but they remain economic systems and morality remains arbitrary. I believe the morality to which I subscribe is superior to the morality of Islamic law but I cannot logically establish that.
See above podcast.
This is voluntary blindness in that it's the equivalent of saying that capitalism is not dependent upon a lower class, which it certainly is.
Capitalism as in the free market is not dependant upon a lower class. It's dependant upon lack of intervention and privately owned property. You also completely failed to refute what I said and simply dismissed it. Please avoid doing that.
Beneficial exploitation would be where one finds a market for their knowledge, goods or services and manages to sell it in order to support themselves. The customer benefits from the vendor, the vendor benefits from the customer. Harmful exploitation would be a situation where one finds a weakeness in an idividual or system and exploits it for their own purposes without giving anything useful or meaningful back to the exploited.
How do you define "anything useful or meaningful back to the exploited" without being arbitrary? The only way I can do it is if absolutely nothing is given to the exploited, not even the satisfaction of having chosen to help someone else, in which case it is simply slavery.
Henry Ford specifically set out to defy the norm in that era in that regard. He didn't see the point of not being able to sell his cars to his workers. He was exceptional.
"We must ever remember we are refining oil for the poor man and he must have it cheap and good." - John D. Rockerfeller
There certianly were "Robber Barons" and horrific living conditions. If you don't see that, you're not looking.
This is a page of small audio files (3MB or so). Please listen to Industrial Revolution 2, 3, 4, and "Age of Robber Barons".
http://www.mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=27
There are myriad examples. Hiring union-busters was the norm back then and the people hardly had enough money to raise their own militia to fight back, despite the mercies of the free market.
Oh please. You could buy a machinegun for $6 back then. Compensating for inflation, $120.
I don't know what that would have accomplished, really, except a lot of violence.
It would have kept any potential attackers too far off to do anything.
As I said, I hardly trust a landlord with an AK over his shoulder compared to a trained professional who can be held accountable.
Then don't rent from him.
Ironic that the AK's you like so much were invented under socialist conditions.
Actually I like the SKS more, but more people know what an AK is, and it's much more intimidating.
It's because you're talking about an occupation that's governed by a morality surrounding the degree of acceptable violence. If the US really decided to have an actual war with Iraq, it wouldn't be a contest. An occupation is a far different thing from an all-out war.
A rich capitalist wouldn't be stupid enough to wage actual war. They would want at the very least the means of production in the conquered area. And killing potential customers is really bad business practice.
What we're seeing now is a colonial occupation in which we're unwilling--thankfully--to simply break the Iraqi people by using the full measure of the force available to us. It's not the effectiveness of their militias that keeps getting our soldiers killed, it's the fact that we haven't escalated to the extent we're able.
There is an extent of ability and an extent of practicality. If the US wanted to, Earth's landmasses could be turned into glass craters, thereby eliminating any potential threats. It's not stupid enough to do that.
To be clear, I'm not at all endorsing that we do. I'm simply pointing out that the militia's successes demonstrate our restraint more than their effectiveness. If we really wanted to pacify Baghdad, we could just drop volleys of nerve gas and nukes on it until it was sterile glass.
But that would be impractical.
If there was a rebellion in the US, the military wouldn't turn the US into sterile glass.
I'm sorry, that's revisionist bullshit. Hitler's forces were too spread out because he underestimated Russia, a communist state and because he was an incompetent military planner.
Major points not contradicted: His forces were too spread out, and he still couldn't have invaded the US.
In all of WWII, the majority of the losses the Nazis suffered were at the hand of organized armies, not from militias. The French Resistance and the Polish Home Army were hardly effective compared to the Red Army and the rest of the Allies.
That's because the organized armies had a lot of stolen money.
Start naming successes of government and I'll refute as many as possible without resorting to the "well it's paid for by taxes" arguement, which is deeper than being about theft, but yeah.
Civil rights.
Uses guns to compel people to act a certain way. See your earlier comments on behavioral morality/authoritarianism. Civil rights is morality legislation.
Organizing and planning the Interstate road system.
Without bureaucracy it would have been done cheaper and planned more efficiently, if people wanted such roads at all. Interstate system currently responsible for traffic jams by focusing traffic onto single roads.
Social security.
It redistributes wealth from the poor to the rich because it taxes regressively and the rich are more likely to live longer past 65. It's also completely bankrupt. Money put into social security would get higher interest rates on the market. Interest paid by Social Security doesn't even begin to approach the rate of inflation.
The New Deal.
Extended the great depression, worsened conditions.
Protectionist agricultural tarriffs made food more expensive.
Attempts to increase wheat prices by limiting production or buying up excess hurt everyone else by making food scarcer. Prices fell anyways.
Cotton acreage was cut, resulting in less cotton being on the market. The price increase didn't compensate for the lost revenues.
Most other interventions had similar results. This is already long enough of a post for me to want to add more at the moment.
If there are any specific New Deal policies you would like addessed, please offer them.
Women's sufferage.
Voting is indirect tyranny. Adding tyrants of different classes doesn't make it better.
OSHA
Uses guns to compel behavior. Authoritarianism is always done "for your own good". Workers are able to determine their own needs for safety and health. Added a layer of bureaucratic inefficiency and government spending.
The FDA
Makes drugs much more expensive. Creates oligoplies (small drug makers can't afford FDA testing costs). Keeps drugs off the market during testing, even though it may potentially cure ailements.
The FDIC
If I'm not mistaken, it's insured by the Federal Reserve Bank. The Federal Reserve Bank being the cause of inflation. Any insurance paid inflates the dollar, raising prices. Federal Reserve Bank also caused the Great Depression.
That should be enough for now. "It isn't perfect" doesn't qualify as a failure, by the way.
I typed all my responses before reading this. I have no intention of using such stupid, unspecific attacks.
It's actually not absurd. I worked in a lumber mill when I was 16 and was operating equipment that I should not have been operating and was injured doing so a couple of times. It's not just the safety of the employee that's concerned here but the safety of those around them, as well.
If you though you weren't safe, why were you working there? Because costs justified rewards?
Cars are equipped with safety systems, there are well-established sets of traffic rules that, when followed, afford about the safest driving experience possible.
Volvo was putting safety systems in it's cars before regulations. Some regulations make cars less safe (I read a recent story about Toyota finding a problem with it's trucks, and they had to remove the turn-off-passenger-airbag feature to comply). Road signs distract drivers. Speed limits slow commerce.
Teenagers need to learn to drive as it's a requirement in a society where public transportation is not particularly valued.
Teenagers do not need to learn to drive. Most of them do anyways.
The risks of them driving are offset by the rewards of having them able to drive when they're 18 and on their own.
In your opinion. Authoritarianism is "for your own good."
The risks of them operating heavy machinery that requires focus and discipline to operate safely
Like balers. Load carboard, push button. I can see how that needs focus and discipline.
is not outweighed by the inconvenience of having a qualified, older operator perform the same task.
The machinery that requires a qualified, experienced operator won't be operated by teenagers anyways, unless they are sufficiently skilled and qualified, in which case you're no worse off with a teenager than with an adult.
I've never seen anything in the world that's constant aside, perhaps, from the speed of light.
I have.
1. Theft always involves involuntary deprival of property.
2. Slavery always involves involuntary deprival of liberty.
3. Murder always involves involuntary deprival of life.
4. Theft, slavery, and murder are always inflicted via force and fraud.
5. Government is a monopoly of force, and can do nothing other than force and fraud.
Quote:First of all, incompetence on the free market means losing money.
Please, how many times have the drug companies fucked up and still managed to remain obscenely profitable?
Obscene profits come from oligopoly, oligopoly comes from FDA testing costs.
A lot of things motivate mutually beneficial relationships. You're reaching for absolutes here where there aren't any. The free market motivates one-sided relationships, as well.
A one sided relationship is a contradiction, as relationship inherently requires two entities.
If "one-sided relationship" was intended to mean voluntary relationships where one benefits and the other loses, that doesn't happen. People seek improvements in conditions, and when given a choice, do not choose deterioration in conditions.
If "one-sided relationship" was intended to mean involuntary relationships, then what is socialism but one-sided relationships?
Quote:People want things. People know that just taking whatever they want without paying has bad consequences.Only if they get caught. Which would be an example of bad exploitation.
It depends on the circumstances. Someone shoplifting from the store is not said to be "exploiting" the store.
Quote:The only way they can make money on the free market is to engage in mutually beneficial exchanges by consenting individuals.
That's absurd. You would have to ignore every swindle off of which someone got rich to even start to think that was true.
Those are not free market exchanges, those are theft.
Quote:EXACTLY. And you can always find a way to override their decisions if you want. You seem to be showing a "victim mentality".I think someone who gets assassinated is pretty free to be called a victim. The idea of never having to retreat because of one's supreme power in the universe is exactly what got Hitler's forces over-extended, by the way.
You didn't seem to understand what I said. Because I don't find that to in any way contradict what I said, and if your goal was not contradiction or refutation, I don't know what your goal in responding was.
There are more than two ways to see that issue. Us and them is one way, the universal character of humanity is another. I think both are a bit unrealistic and I'm not a particular subcriber to the "us and them" as a reality. It is, however, reified by most of the world and therefore a condition that must be dealt with. No matter how much you want to embrace humanity without borders, you're going to have to face up to the fact that most of the world does embrace those borders and are going to force you to deal with it.
You in no way contradicted my position that pro-citizen and anti-noncitizen are not mutually exclusive.
"Left" is a political ideology that would have to be maintained by force at some point, as is Right. Left and right Anarchists both get annoyed when you point out that both of them are still clamoring for a system to support.
"Right anarchists" are called such by traditional anarchists, who believe themselves leftist. It says nothing of any identity it shares with the political right.
Quote:Of course not all humans have leadership qualities. I have no problem with people choosing to obey leaders, I just have a problem with them imposing their leaders on me.Unless it's the free market, I presume?
No, especially in the free market.
Given that most people will never be at the top in the free market, you're going to have to accept someone's leadership and it's not going to be a matter of you picking and choosing anyone so much as a matter of picking and choosing from what's available.
I meant leader in the sense of ruler, someone to direct them how to act and what to do, not in the sense of being ahead of everyone else.
You do not have to be at the top to be a leader in the free market. All entrepreneurs are leaders.
I'm sure it's theraputic to call communists assholes but it totally misses the point which was the removal of their government and the power vacuum that resulted.
Yes, it does feel good, actually.
Sudden removal of the government causes problems, I won't dispute that.
What I want can be described more an individual right to secede from all governments than as overthrow or destruction of government. With the right to secede as an individual right, all interaction with government is voluntary, which rectifies the inherent criminality of government. Those who are dissatisfied with government's laws would be allowed to simply secede, to either govern themselves of choose a new government. This would not create a power vacuum. As those who are dissatisfied secede, a government's power decreases until enough people are satisfied with the government.
In essence, free-market government.
Short version, The Soviets overthrew Amin's regime which was involved in a back and forth fight against Islamic tribesmen. The Soviets attempted to set up a puppet dictator, which failed, and eventually withdrew leaving no government at all and the country to the mercy of the Islamists who are now spending their time shooting at us. If they hadn't created that vacuum, there's a chance that the former communist regime would have reformed along with the collapse of European communism and wouldn't have fallen into the hands of the Jihadis.
The mistake was the overthrow of government. Use of force always has negative consequences.
So, sheltering children is the goal here? My current girlfriend is a stripper, by the way. I'm not sure how what she does is inherently bad anymore than how eating with elbows on the table is bad.
I have nothing against strippers. I don't subscribe to that kind of morality that objects to that. I was making a joke about how there was a popular hip-hop song with a line saying "I'm in love with a stripper" and people would randomly sing that aloud in the hallways. I personally hate rap and the culture that glorifies it, I believe it to teach ignorance, pride, violence, and conspicuous consumerism, and it's popular especially among the group that can't afford those as virtues. It keeps poor people poor. It glorifies buying expensive gold jewelery and living in the ghetto instead of saving your money to get out of it. I don't want my kids to get into that stupid crap.
You're talking logistics. Efficency is something that can be attained through modifiying practices.
You can't trust bureaucrats with efficiency.
It also seems to fly in the face of your other argument. I think what a lot of those stripper-loving rappers need is an opportunity to see that there are other options out there. Something they may well get from other kids around them.
Their parents are free to look for that. They have no right to force me to be the one to pay for it.
And segregation is not shoving your opinion down someone else's throat?
Forced segregation is. I believe you were objecting to the potential for segregation in the free market. Both forced integration and forced segregation are force, and both are shoving beliefs down other's throats. If I own a school, then I have the right of exclusive control over that school. If I want to segregate, that's my business. If parents don't like it, they can find other schools. If I want to integrage, that's my business. If KKK parents don't like it, they can find other schools.
You can still send your kids to a private school if you want. There's no law against that. If you can't afford it, you can go get a different job that will allow you to afford it.
I was planning on homeschooling as much as possible.
You would have to establish how every public school endorses protestant racist assholedom to even begin to convince me how it's related.
It was back when the KKK was popular. Teaching evolution used to be a crime, remember? Times change.
These days, it's leftists. They try to indoctorinate communism and anti-capitalistic ideas instead of protestant racist assholeism.
Looking for logic the motivations of the KKK is like looking for meat in a McDonald's hamburger. There might be bits of it there, but it's mostly crap.
True that.
And, as a rational individual, you must admit that anecdote does not equal evidence.
It is evidence. Not good evidence. And definately not proof. But I believe it does constitute evidence however insignificant in value.
[Fear of monopolies and oligopolies] actually stems from the existence of monopolies and oligopolies.
Which stem from government. Did you check the Mises Institute?
Quote:There would be no power structure.
Of course there would. The free market is a type of power structure.
If you insist. Perhaps we have conflicting definitions of power.
Laws would come from private courts and private security firms would contract with those courts to form private law and private law enforcement.
Woah. That doesn't sound very freedom fostering to me in that equal-access is not guaranteed. And, yes, where law is concerned, I think equal access is a right.
Well then you should object to the FDA, which discriminates against small drug companies by charging buttloads for testing.
Equal access to law? We might have conflicting definitions of law, I define law as "will of legislature or bureaucrats imposed upon others involuntarily", it's not something I want equal access to, it's something I want no access to. Perhaps you meant equal access to arbitration?
If you didn't like your laws, you could stop contracting with the enforcement agency.
Unless they decided to make it illegal to stop contracting with them and got the private courts to agree.
That would violate the contract and render it invalid. In such a case, other private enforcement agencies working with other courts could protect new customers from the rouge agencies and courts. In the present system, you are subject to arbitrary will of bureaucrats and it's illegal to stop contracting with them, so even if what you said happened, we'd just be right back where we started.
Quote:They stop getting as much money, try changing contracts with the courts, and see if people like the new law setup. That's how they're held accountable.Only if the private law has some kind of moral issue with a shakedown. A legal one seems to be something they could remedy easily enough. Don't for a minute tell me the good ol' AK in the hands of the citizens who need to buy protection from the hired goons in the first place is going to fix this when they can't even protect themselves from the common criminals. If they could, why hire the goons?
I wouldn't hire the goons. I'd rely on ole' faithful Kalashnikov. But I don't get a choice in the current system. The good thing about the system is that it's totally voluntary.
Quote:But statism is the alternative to anarchy. If you don't support anarchy, you support a state, and that means assuming the rulers will try to do good.
You're sounding like those people who say if I don't support god I support satan here. Absolutes turn me off. They turn my girlfriend off, too. Did I mention that she's a stripper?
What is there betwen having a state and not having a state? Having sort-of a state? Because I meant statism in this instance as "belief in legitemacy of involuntary geographical monopolies on force (aka the State)". I didn't mean totalitarianism and anarchism, there's a continuum between them. I mean having a State or not having a State. What other condition is there of the State? Existence or nonexistance and what is in between? A light cannot be on and off at the same time, it can be differing degrees of on, but it cannot at the same time be off.
It's a testament to *a* failure of democracy. By that logic, you would have to say that any success of democracy would invalidate all of your arguments.
You would also have to find an instance of democracy which I believed were successful. Democracy, by it's nature as tyranny of the majority, is never successful at meeting the needs of all individuals. When an individual dissents from the majority and cannot have his peaceful alternative because the majority prevents them from having it, democracy is a failure. When no individuals dissent, and it is unanimous, democracy is unneccessary and redundant.
Quote:But my mom chose to raise me. You make no distinction between forcing people to help each other and the benefits of people choosing to help each other in that statement. Voluntary is good, involuntary is bad. If the government is doing it, that means it's involuntary.Of course I do. Government is a means for people to organize volunteer efforts quite frequently. People volunteer for the army all the time. They're not forced into it unless there's a draft. People volunteer to raise unwanted children through the state. Not everything government does is coerced.
My mistake. What I intended to say was "If government must do it, that means it's involuntary." Yes, not everything the state does is involuntary. Things that can be done by no other means are involuntary. Adoption doesn't require the state, and the military is paid for involuntarily, whether or not it's entered into involuntarily, and you did admit that involuntary drafts do take place.
But what if your 747's suck and you manage to keep providing the same crappy 747 even though a better partnership is not available only because you use your power to repress it? That is a trust.
So if I own all cars which are green with purple polka dots because I own the only one in existance, do I have a trust?
If I own all human bodies with my exact genetic makeup, do I have a trust on my genetic makeup? So what if my partiular body sucks and I keep using the same crappy body even though someone else can take care of it better, but I use my individual exclusive control over it to repress the ability of others to improve it? Is that a trust?
This is what I meant by being arbitrary. No two objects are exactly alike. Someone who owns something has a trust in that thing. Where you must be arbitrary is in defining how narrow the category must get. You can either include everything, in which case "trust" means nothing because no other state of affairs exists, or you can include nothing, and a trust cannot exist, or you can be arbitrary, which in my mind is irrational.
I reject the entire concept of a "trust" for that reason.
If you need a definition of a trust, look up early 1900's America. It's all there. All you have to do is look. You're definitely bright, if you're pretending to not know what a trust or a monopoly is I think you might be being cheeky.
I know what the word means. The word is arbitrary, however. That's why I needed you to define it, so I understood what arbitrary level is meant when trusts are discussed.
Quote:"Unfair" is also arbitrary.
Not if there's a universally applied morality.
The word wasn't being used in a sense relevant to the morality.
Quote:Is undercutting prices unfair? I bet the consumer is happy about it. [\quote]
They're happy about the lower prices until the competition is eliminated and the prices go back up.
Once the prices go back up competition is invited back into the field.Quote:Quote:I don't trust a cop to be there when my house is getting robbed. My neighbor and his nine are more likely to be there.
Trusting your neighbor to stick up for you is what makes most bullies a huge success.
I wouldn't be trusting my neighbor, I'd be trusting my ole' faithful.Quote:Quote:How was the obligation to contribute a fair share originally created?
It's an ongoing process based upon people's desire to eliminate as much suffering as possible in the best cases.
That was unresponsive. You answered the question "What is the obligation for?" when I asked "How was the obligation originally created?"Quote:My friend Jeff became one because he worked in a Mexican orphanage and wanted to be able to help people. You can try to diminish the altruism of this if you'd like but I'm really not buying that.
He chose to do that because it satisfied a want of his. Selfishness is motivation for attaining a goal, altruism is a potential goal. Altruism didn't motivate him, the desire for satisfaction of reaching the goal of altruism did.Quote:Quote:You need to understand how they maximize profits. They provide a good or service with higher quality and lower price than any of their competitors. That's how profit is maximized.
That's one way, yeah. Another way is to lower the price you pay by underpaying your workers and keeping the rest for yourself. Yet another is to convince people they're getting something they're not.
Paying workers less is part of having a lower price. That's not another way, that's part of what I said. Intentionally convincing people they're getting something they're not is fraud.Quote:Quote:It could lend itself to being a profitable business. Even if it was nothing more than a sterilized office building with doctors that rent "offices" which provide the revenue, and individual doctors competing for the lowest price.Hospices do not function like that at all. They provide end of life care regardless of how much a person can pay. I have no problem having a bit of my money going toward morphine for someone with bone cancer. You can call that theft if you want, but I'm not so cold as to think it's not worthwhile.
Heh, oops. I read it too quickly and thought you wrote "hospitals".You can give all the money you want and have to such causes. Forcing me to pay for something I don't want to is authoritarianism, subjecting me to your arbitrary moral or ethical code, which you said you didn't like. Just because it's an authoritarianism of money doesn't mean it's any less authoritarian.
Quote:Quote:1 year ago today I had no money. I now have $2500. If it takes money to make money, how do you explain this phenomenon?
I bet you drove to whatever job you made the money at, you had to feed yourself, clothe yourself. If you'd shown up naked and starving I doubt you would have convinced anyone to hire you. If you only topped off $2,500 for yourself in a year, that's hardly a convincing argument. It's not going to last long if you happen to need some of our great free-market medical care, I can tell you that much.
If I'd shown up at the right place naked and starving I could have worked for food and clothing then started working for money. As a nudist I honestly have no problems with working naked, I just wouldn't be doing anything involving face-to-face contact with customers. If the alternative was starvation, I'd go pick veggies with the illegals until I had enough money to stop.
And no, I haven't earned only $2500 in a year. I said a year ago I had nothing. I started working a few months, but not quite a year ago. I'll have more than that once it becomes 1 year since I started working.Quote:Quote:You have time and you have energy. If you need money, you just need to sell your time and energy doing things for other people until you do have money.
Unless you don't have a market for whatever it is you do, or someone else has all the business locked up. I'm sorry, but that's a bit simplistic and very romantic. It takes more than time and energy to compete.
There is always a market for unskilled labor. And you don't need business to have a job. Businesses are fictive entities, you are ultimately working for an individual, and individual wants are infinite and unsatiable, so there is always something you can do for someone. If there's not much, then you don't get paid much, but there's always something you can do.Quote:Quote:The number of people that are incapacitated to the point that they have absolutely no means of generating income is small, and those people could be helped by charities.
Provided the charities wanted to help them.
Well if you prefer tax-and-spend by government, then it's "provided the government wanted to help them". Which isn't any kind of improvement in conditions.Quote:I already did above. Profit can be generated by stealing the money from those that produce the goods one sells vis a vis lowering their wages to the point that they're working for less than the value of what they produce. If you're not getting paid for what you're giving up, you're being stolen from.
Value is entirely subjective, there is no objectively measurable value for anything. What you produce might be worth $20, and you might get paid $15 for making it, with $5 of profit that you don't get. However, what you sold me was not the $20 worth of stuff to make it for which I gave you $15, what you sold me was your time and energy. Marginal utility theory: The more of something you have, the less each individual item is worth. If you have an abundance of time and energy, some of your time and energy may be near worthless to you. Selling it to me for $15, you get more than you gave up, and I get more than I gave up. Now, the less time and energy you have (the more is consumed at the job) the more the remainder of your free time is worth, and in that way, we agree on how many hours you work. When I'm sitting idly by, doing nothing of any value, if someone offered me $5 to help them for an hour, I would accept. If my time is scarce, I might prefer to relax for an hour than to have $5.Quote:Theft is an instance where you get nothing back for what's been taken.
"Taken" implies force was used, and that it is involuntary.Would you say "Theft is an instance where you get nothing back for what's been given"? That implies that it was consentual. Giving money to someone, you might be getting nothing in return. If you say you have gained satisfaction, then if someone threatens your life for your wallet, you have been given your life. Do you recall the robber that walked into a store, put a $20 on the table, had the clerk empty the register and give him all the money, and left the $20 on the table? That was clearly theft. It is not relevant that he entered with $20 and left with $15. That does not determine whether it was theft or not. Nor does it make the act any more or less moral.
Quote:The government does provide services, even to people who hate them, if you don't take advantage of them when you need them that's your choice.
A theif provides me the service of not killing me. I could decide not to take advantge of that, and kill myself, that's my choice. But the fact that I can choose to kill myself and not accept his services does not change the fact that he is stealing my money.Quote:Quote:If people stole because they were poor, all poor people would steal.
Please, that's way beyond the pale. Poor people who don't have an issue with stealing use it as a means to get what they want and or need. Not all poor people find stealing morally acceptable and not all poor people find it an effective means of meeting their needs. I never said poverty causes all theft, but it does provide sufficent motiviation for some of it.
That's what I was saying. People don't steal because they are poor. They steal because they believe it will reward them. Marginal utility theory: The less of something you have, the more each part is worth. A poor person's judgement of "rewarding" is altered by their being poor. An effect upon judgement is not cause. Poor people do not rob banks because they do not believe bank robbery to be rewarding; they believe they have a high probability of being shot, which is not rewarding. They might rob houses where there is less reward, but less potential loss.Do you understand what I'm trying to say? Motivation and cause are not the same thing. Poverty can be part of the motive, it is not cause.
Quote:Quote:I should have used a word like mug (as that is what I was specifically thinking of), good point on the rich people do steal. But you have just affirmed my point that people don't steal because they're poor. They steal because they believe rewards to outweigh risks.I did no such thing. I said poverty is sometimes a motivation for theft. Greed is also sometimes a motivation for theft. Sometimes theft is an act of pure maliciousness. The rewards outweighing the risks is a condition of the perceived value of the reward. If the reward happens to be eating and that reward is of sufficient value to the thief, then they will steal. If the reward is yet another yacht, ditto.
You confuse cause and motivation. You affirmed that poverty is not cause, but that it is motivation. I'm not contesting that poverty is motivation for theft, but it's not cause for an action. Motivation is entirely psychic, you can have motivation without action. Motivations must create a cause for that cause to create the effect of theft. Motivations that do not cause do not manifest effects. That's why poverty isn't a cause for theft.Quote:Quote:Could you please opint out a few contradictions in the free market? I'm not aware of any.
The fact that you're arguing for something you admit has never truly existed. There is a great deal of faith in any Anarchist argument.
That is not a contradiction. A contradiction is two mutually exclusive and simealtaneous states. A government cannot be involuntary and legitemate unless a mafia can be involuntary and legitemate. A free market can be nonexistant and desirable at the same time, there is no conflict between the two whatsoever.
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Ad hominems make you feel good about yourself, they don't make you right.
Can you even attempt to refute those two quotes which contradict your position, or do you hold the belief that ignorance is strength?
The first one assumes something that isn't true anymore: Most money is made in the US today by finance - shuffling money around - rather than actually manufacturing something. Rich people can make money from other rich people, or from poor people (selling something cheap enough the poor can barely afford it - and selling to enough to get rich.)
The one on government - sadly, it's impossible to get elected without a LOT of money - so almost anyone who can run for anything but the lowest level office must already have money - and they of course get funding from the rich and corporations. And, of course, people still believe the attacks on Socialism without realizing they would be much better off under Socialism than Capitalism.
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Now that I've at least gotten you to be responsive, I'll readdress some things.
1. I never defended things as they are. I never defended government nor government action.
2. My arguements were in no way comparable to a theist's. If they were, please point out how.
Please, do provide statistics. I'd love to know how you came to that conclusion.
Because if this is true, we have much bigger problems than terrorism. If more money is invested than spent, the Federal Reserve has really fucked up the economy bigtime.
Which means that government isn't going to be helping the working man, it's just going to keep giving those evil greedy capitalist pigs more tax breaks.
Then how do you explain the abysmal standard of living in Commie Russia?
Also, please respond to my next-to-previous post. You haven't bothered to refute any of that either.
As to the 1st I read it in the book "American Theocracy" by Kevin Phillips. He says the US is in big trouble due to the combination of overdependence on oil, too much religion and the shift to finance from manufacturing. This guy used to be a Republican strategist, but was so horrified by the new religious right he switched parties. If we would get a socialist government, things would be better. As to Russia - are things good there now? Were they good there pre-Communism? And it could easily be argued they didn't even really follow socialism or communism (I'd suspect the problems were more due to the totalitarian aspect.) All the countries that were communist were very poor in reources, and poor before they turned communist (or half destroyed under the Nazis before being overrun by Russia.)
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By the way, i didn't even realize the book was attacking Capitalism when I ordered it - I thought it would mainly abe about the dangers of religion. Unfortunately, it only attacks "extreme" religion and seems to consider "radical secularism" almost as bad as fundamentalism. That was the worst part of the book. It was also kind of boring.
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You did not
-prove that I ever defended the status quo or government, which you accused me of doing
-give statistics as I asked for
-respond to the earlier post:
As someone who immigrated from the USSR, I contest that claim.
An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.
The book I mentioned will provide all the statistics you could possibly want. responding to soem of the last part: Poor people could never afford as many guns as the rich, and the rich could pay their personal armies enough to keep them loyal (more than workers, but still enough to keep them from being a true middle class - except maybe an "officer" class.) As to the very last - do you really not know what "worst ever" means? If you really need to ask "worse than what", "worst ever" means worse than anything else - ie worse than communism, socialism, mercantilism, regulated capitalism, etc.
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You did not offer any evidence supporting your assertion that subsistence farming is "no longer an option", or my explanation for why things sucked in the 1800s.
I don't have the book. You appearantly do. So give me the stats. I'm not buying a book for statistics that you already have.
It doesn't matter how many guns you have, becuase it's REALLY hard to shoot more than one at a time. Guns are not hard to procure. An SKS can be bought for $100 to $150 in the US by anyone 18 and up, and uses pretty cheap ammo ($120/1000rnds). Besides, with just a few rich to kill, and too many potential killers, it's inevitable that they'd be killed if everyone was really trying.
Armies' effectiveness is overrated. Armies are especially unadapted to guerilla warfare, which is exactly what insurgents, rebels, and traitors would be using.
I wanted to get you to specifically say that capitalism is worse than communism.
See the post before your last one.
I've heard plenty of stories about people rising from the dead after being crucified. They generally come from people saying what they want to hear and ignoring any evidence to the contrary.
Unless, of course, they ended up in a situation where they needed assistance. And, if that were true, there would have never been a need for it in the first place. Again, you seem to be ideologically opposed to the idea of helping someone out in just about any circumstance so I think this is just a disagreement between us.
"To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
All powers vested by the constitution. You're taking it out of context to make it mean what you want it to mean. The constitution enumerates government powers. This is nearly equivalent to Theocrats saying the date being specificed as "AD" makes it a Christian document.
The UN is not a Federal organization which is how the US was set up, as a federation of independent states. Arguments between state's rights and federal rights are endless and part of our national character.
All morality is arbitrary. An act can be defined rationally as destructive or constructive to human happiness but valuing human happiness itself is an arbitrary moral condition.
The morality of beating one's wife, torturing animals, and burning witches are all issues that were defined along moral lines. All morals are subject to change from generation to generation. "Don't eat with your elbows on the table" was never a question of moralility, that's etiquette.
I consider the enforcement of morality to be authoritarianism which is actually what it's called. Socialism is a means of distributing wealth and services as is capitalism. You could aruge the morality or immorality of either but they remain economic systems and morality remains arbitrary. I believe the morality to which I subscribe is superior to the morality of Islamic law but I cannot logically establish that.
This is voluntary blindness in that it's the equivalent of saying that capitalism is not dependent upon a lower class, which it certainly is.
Beneficial exploitation would be where one finds a market for their knowledge, goods or services and manages to sell it in order to support themselves. The customer benefits from the vendor, the vendor benefits from the customer. Harmful exploitation would be a situation where one finds a weakeness in an idividual or system and exploits it for their own purposes without giving anything useful or meaningful back to the exploited.
Henry Ford specifically set out to defy the norm in that era in that regard. He didn't see the point of not being able to sell his cars to his workers. He was exceptional. There certianly were "Robber Barons" and horrific living conditions. If you don't see that, you're not looking. And I've never met anyone who thought wages were low back then because they didn't understand inflation, by the way. Everyone gets that $5 a day back then was the equivalent of a lot more now.
There are myriad examples. Hiring union-busters was the norm back then and the people hardly had enough money to raise their own militia to fight back, despite the mercies of the free market.
I don't know what that would have accomplished, really, except a lot of violence.
As I said, I hardly trust a landlord with an AK over his shoulder compared to a trained professional who can be held accountable. Ironic that the AK's you like so much were invented under socialist conditions.
It's because you're talking about an occupation that's governed by a morality surrounding the degree of acceptable violence. If the US really decided to have an actual war with Iraq, it wouldn't be a contest. An occupation is a far different thing from an all-out war. World Wars I and II were true wars in that each side was prepared to resort to genocide to eliminate the threat from the other. Firebombing Dresden, Hiroshima, are both examples of this. What we're seeing now is a colonial occupation in which we're unwilling--thankfully--to simply break the Iraqi people by using the full measure of the force available to us. It's not the effectiveness of their militias that keeps getting our soldiers killed, it's the fact that we haven't escalated to the extent we're able. To be clear, I'm not at all endorsing that we do. I'm simply pointing out that the militia's successes demonstrate our restraint more than their effectiveness. If we really wanted to pacify Baghdad, we could just drop volleys of nerve gas and nukes on it until it was sterile glass.
I'm sorry, that's revisionist bullshit. Hitler's forces were too spread out because he underestimated Russia, a communist state and because he was an incompetent military planner. He did, indeed, arm the conquered and a lot of young Poles died wearing SS uniforms they must have detested. In all of WWII, the majority of the losses the Nazis suffered were at the hand of organized armies, not from militias. The French Resistance and the Polish Home Army were hardly effective compared to the Red Army and the rest of the Allies.
As for Imperial Japan: Again, you're talking about occupation here versus warfare. The Japanese couldn't have taken over America on their own, of course. They could, however, have expanded their Pacific empire to the extent that we would have been economically crippled and, eventually, outnumbered. Which is why the Marines enganged in the island hopping operations.
Civil rights.
Organizing and planning the Interstate road system.
Social security.
The New Deal.
Women's sufferage.
OSHA
The FDA
The FDIC
That should be enough for now. "It isn't perfect" doesn't qualify as a failure, by the way.
It's actually not absurd. I worked in a lumber mill when I was 16 and was operating equipment that I should not have been operating and was injured doing so a couple of times. It's not just the safety of the employee that's concerned here but the safety of those around them, as well.
Cars are equipped with safety systems, there are well-established sets of traffic rules that, when followed, afford about the safest driving experience possible. Teenagers need to learn to drive as it's a requirement in a society where public transportation is not particularly valued. The risks of them driving are offset by the rewards of having them able to drive when they're 18 and on their own. The risks of them operating heavy machinery that requires focus and discipline to operate safely is not outweighed by the inconvenience of having a qualified, older operator perform the same task.
I've never seen anything in the world that's constant aside, perhaps, from the speed of light.
Please, how many times have the drug companies fucked up and still managed to remain obscenely profitable?
A lot of things motivate mutually beneficial relationships. You're reaching for absolutes here where there aren't any. The free market motivates one-sided relationships, as well.
Only if they get caught. Which would be an example of bad exploitation.
That's absurd. You would have to ignore every swindle off of which someone got rich to even start to think that was true.
I think someone who gets assassinated is pretty free to be called a victim. The idea of never having to retreat because of one's supreme power in the universe is exactly what got Hitler's forces over-extended, by the way.
There are more than two ways to see that issue. Us and them is one way, the universal character of humanity is another. I think both are a bit unrealistic and I'm not a particular subcriber to the "us and them" as a reality. It is, however, reified by most of the world and therefore a condition that must be dealt with. No matter how much you want to embrace humanity without borders, you're going to have to face up to the fact that most of the world does embrace those borders and are going to force you to deal with it.
"Left" is a political ideology that would have to be maintained by force at some point, as is Right. Left and right Anarchists both get annoyed when you point out that both of them are still clamoring for a system to support.
If you need that definition, but an Anarcho-sydicalist would demand that the workers owning the means of production be protected. I couldn't see any other way that it would turn out whether it was protected or not. It seemed to be a natural course. Anarcho-sydicalists will say they believe the same thing but a lot of their ideology is just smash the state and have faith in us as much as anyone else's.
Unless it's the free market, I presume? Given that most people will never be at the top in the free market, you're going to have to accept someone's leadership and it's not going to be a matter of you picking and choosing anyone so much as a matter of picking and choosing from what's available.
I'm sure it's theraputic to call communists assholes but it totally misses the point which was the removal of their government and the power vacuum that resulted.
Short version, The Soviets overthrew Amin's regime which was involved in a back and forth fight against Islamic tribesmen. The Soviets attempted to set up a puppet dictator, which failed, and eventually withdrew leaving no government at all and the country to the mercy of the Islamists who are now spending their time shooting at us. If they hadn't created that vacuum, there's a chance that the former communist regime would have reformed along with the collapse of European communism and wouldn't have fallen into the hands of the Jihadis.
So, sheltering children is the goal here? My current girlfriend is a stripper, by the way. I'm not sure how what she does is inherently bad anymore than how eating with elbows on the table is bad.
You're talking logistics. Efficency is something that can be attained through modifiying practices. It also seems to fly in the face of your other argument. I think what a lot of those stripper-loving rappers need is an opportunity to see that there are other options out there. Something they may well get from other kids around them.
And segregation is not shoving your opinion down someone else's throat? You can still send your kids to a private school if you want. There's no law against that. If you can't afford it, you can go get a different job that will allow you to afford it.
You would have to establish how every public school endorses protestant racist assholedom to even begin to convince me how it's related. Looking for logic the motivations of the KKK is like looking for meat in a McDonald's hamburger. There might be bits of it there, but it's mostly crap.
And, as a rational individual, you must admit that anecdote does not equal evidence.
It actually stems from the existence of monopolies and oligopolies.
Of course there would. The free market is a type of power structure.
Laws would come from private courts and private security firms would contract with those courts to form private law and private law enforcement.
Woah. That doesn't sound very freedom-fostering to me in that equal-access is not guaranteed. And, yes, where law is concerned, I think equal access is a right.
Unless they decided to make it illegal to stop contracting with them and got the private courts to agree.
Only if the private law has some kind of moral issue with a shakedown. A legal one seems to be something they could remedy easily enough. Don't for a minute tell me the good ol' AK in the hands of the citizens who need to buy protection from the hired goons in the first place is going to fix this when they can't even protect themselves from the common criminals. If they could, why hire the goons?
You're sounding like those people who say if I don't support god I support satan here. Absolutes turn me off. They turn my girlfriend off, too. Did I mention that she's a stripper?
My way or the highway is pure Swayzisim.
It's a testament to *a* failure of democracy. By that logic, you would have to say that any success of democracy would invalidate all of your arguments.
Of course I do. Government is a means for people to organize volunteer efforts quite frequently. People volunteer for the army all the time. They're not forced into it unless there's a draft. People volunteer to raise unwanted children through the state. Not everything government does is coerced.
But what if your 747's suck and you manage to keep providing the same crappy 747 even though a better partnership is not available only because you use your power to repress it? That is a trust. If you need a definition of a trust, look up early 1900's America. It's all there. All you have to do is look. You're definitely bright, if you're pretending to not know what a trust or a monopoly is I think you might be being cheeky.
Not if there's a universally applied morality.
[quoteIs undercutting prices unfair? I bet the consumer is happy about it. [\quote]
They're happy about the lower prices until the competition is eliminated and the prices go back up.
I actually made an argument that the free market is an unattainable--and not necessarily a desireable--goal, but you're welcome.
Absolutely. The police have a very specific set of rules where the escalation of force is concerned. They can't legally shoot someone just because someone pisses them off. They can't shoot someone for stealing a Twinkie(TM) but they can shoot at a car thief because the car constitutes a deadly weapon. Again, I get the idea you're selectively reasoning here.
Trusting your neighbor to stick up for you is what makes most bullies a huge success.
It's an ongoing process based upon people's desire to eliminate as much suffering as possible in the best cases.
My friend Jeff became one because he worked in a Mexican orphanage and wanted to be able to help people. You can try to diminish the altruism of this if you'd like but I'm really not buying that.
That's one way, yeah. Another way is to lower the price you pay by underpaying your workers and keeping the rest for yourself. Yet another is to convince people they're getting something they're not.
Hospices do not function like that at all. They provide end of life care regardless of how much a person can pay. I have no problem having a bit of my money going toward morphine for someone with bone cancer. You can call that theft if you want, but I'm not so cold as to think it's not worthwhile.
I bet you drove to whatever job you made the money at, you had to feed yourself, clothe yourself. If you'd shown up naked and starving I doubt you would have convinced anyone to hire you. If you only topped off $2,500 for yourself in a year, that's hardly a convincing argument. It's not going to last long if you happen to need some of our great free-market medical care, I can tell you that much.
Unless you don't have a market for whatever it is you do, or someone else has all the business locked up. I'm sorry, but that's a bit simplistic and very romantic. It takes more than time and energy to compete.
Provided the charities wanted to help them.
I already did above. Profit can be generated by stealing the money from those that produce the goods one sells vis a vis lowering their wages to the point that they're working for less than the value of what they produce. If you're not getting paid for what you're giving up, you're being stolen from.
Theft is an instance where you get nothing back for what's been taken. The government does provide services, even to people who hate them, if you don't take advantage of them when you need them that's your choice.
Please, that's way beyond the pale. Poor people who don't have an issue with stealing use it as a means to get what they want and or need. Not all poor people find stealing morally acceptable and not all poor people find it an effective means of meeting their needs. I never said poverty causes all theft, but it does provide sufficent motiviation for some of it.
I did no such thing. I said poverty is sometimes a motivation for theft. Greed is also sometimes a motivation for theft. Sometimes theft is an act of pure maliciousness. The rewards outweighing the risks is a condition of the perceived value of the reward. If the reward happens to be eating and that reward is of sufficient value to the thief, then they will steal. If the reward is yet another yacht, ditto.
Me too.
The fact that you're arguing for something you admit has never truly existed. There is a great deal of faith in any Anarchist argument.