Political Hypocrisy

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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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Ad hominems make you feel

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?


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The first one assumes

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

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.

MattShizzle wrote:
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.)

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.

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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.

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.

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And, of course, people still believe the attacks on Socialism without realizing they would be much better off under Socialism than Capitalism.

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.


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As to the 1st I read it in

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

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

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:

Zhwazi wrote:
MattShizzle wrote:
Are you actually serious?

Yes, I am. And you're either joking or wrong.

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Subsitence farming is no longer an option in an industrial society,

You can't repeal the laws of science, and the laws of science have not changed just because we live in an industrialized society. Subsistence farming is easier now than it ever has been, because we have better tools, better knowledge, and better understanding of aspects affecting farming. To say it's "no longer an option" is pure, unadulterated bullshit.

If the economy crashed and we started referring to the 1930s as "Great Depression 1", I'd sure as hell resort to subsistence farming to make sure I had food.

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The rich could afford protection, the poor couldn't.

Protection is expensive then? How is that possible if the employees are making slave wages? Protection should be cheap.

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They certainly couldn't afford medical care if nobody coerces their employers to pay for it.

Healthcare employees would be making slave wages too, wouldn't they?

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The rich could afford private armies to enforce their will.

And socialism isn't going to stop them.

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Even if there is technically anarchy, if enough well armed people don't want you to do what you are doing, it is effectively "illegal."

Right. So if all the arbitrarily defined "poor" people have guns and don't want to be "exploited" (also arbitrarily defined) then being rich is "illegal" right? Apply your logic both ways or don't apply it at all. Logic cannot only apply when convenient for you and then not apply when it's not convenient.

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Look how horrible things were for poor people in the 19th century - pre regulation.

Dude, things were bad EVERYWHERE back then. And 200 years from now, people are going to look in awe at what shitholes we live in today. The poor people have always had it worse than everyone else just because they're poor. It had nothing to do with regulation.

In the early 19th Century, people still did subsistence farming. In the post-civil war industrialization, more people got out of it.

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I certainly would not want to go back to that. Laissez-faire (sp) Capitalism is by far the worst econmoic system ever invented.

Worse than what?


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MattShizzle wrote:Are you

MattShizzle wrote:
Are you actually serious? Subsitence farming is no longer an option in an industrial society, The rich could afford protection, the poor couldn't. They certainly couldn't afford medical care if nobody coerces their employers to pay for it. The rich could afford private armies to enforce their will. Even if there is technically anarchy, if enough well armed people don't want you to do what you are doing, it is effectively "illegal." Look how horrible things were for poor people in the 19th century - pre regulation. I certainly would not want to go back to that. Laissez-faire (sp) Capitalism is by far the worst econmoic system ever invented.

As someone who immigrated from the USSR, I contest that claim.

An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.


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The book I mentioned will

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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Zhwazi
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You did not offer any

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.

MattShizzle wrote:
The book I mentioned will provide all the statistics you could possibly want.

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.

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responding to soem of the last part: Poor people could never afford as many guns as the rich

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.

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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.)

Armies' effectiveness is overrated. Armies are especially unadapted to guerilla warfare, which is exactly what insurgents, rebels, and traitors would be using.

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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.

I wanted to get you to specifically say that capitalism is worse than communism.

See the post before your last one.


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Quote:I've heard plenty of

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I've heard plenty of stories of bumbling bureaucratic inefficiency in places with socialized medicine.

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.

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If they'd been given back the money they paid to social security, they'd have more money than they'd get from social security.

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.

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As long as it's deemed "Necessary" and "Proper" the government can do whatever it wants. It does anyways, so necessary or not, the Constitution really isn't used these days for anything other than choosing how we vote, ratify, judge, and arguement over what rights people have.

"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.

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At the time of the founding the US was considered like what the UN is today. Not a ruling nation which governs the States (which are where people's allegiances really lay at the time), but similar to a treaty organization which all States agreed to obey. It stopped becoming a "Union" and became a "Nation" when Lincoln pulled that Fort Sumpter stunt that started the civil war.

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.

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There is arbitrary morality, which I really hate. Things like "It's bad to be gay" and "Don't eat with your elbows on the table" and "Don't use words like that" are arbitrary and stupid, and that's what changes from generation to generation.

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.

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My definition of socialism is "Belief that society supercedes the individual". Economic socialism such as communism is a form of socialism. I also consider laws of morality (such as laws against those arbitrary events above) to be a form of socialism which I call behavioral socialism, though they are generally a right-wing form of socialism.

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.

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There is no such thing as wage slavery. The word slavery means "involuntary servitude" and so long as work is entered into voluntarily it cannot be slavery. A wage is a price. A Walmart employee is no more a slave of Walmart than Walmart is a slave of Walmart shoppers. Workers have as much power to demand fair wages as Walmart shoppers have power to demand fair prices. Walmart has no power over the price it pays for labor, that price is determined by the labor that agrees on the wage. I'm also going to point out that the definition of "fair" is arbitrary and I can't work with it.

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.

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Without being arbitrary, can you differentiate between harmful and beneficial exploitation?

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.

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Actually there's a lot of bullshit flying around about that age. "Robber Barons" and all? Wages appear by today's standards to be miniscule because of inflation. If you look up how much wages back then would buy, and compare it to what wages today will buy, you'll get an idea of the real wages. And the wages were not at all bad. When Henry Ford opened his car factory promising $5 a day, people were lining up for those wages. That was good money back then.

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.

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The only example of this I'm familiar with was in one of the depression-era miner or construction worker camps. Hoover dam maybe? I forgot exactly which it was.

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.

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If that's the case, maybe the workers should have been waving guns around while they were protesting. A modern SWAT team would not be comfortable taking on a camp of angry workers waving AK47s and AR15s around, even with armor.

I don't know what that would have accomplished, really, except a lot of violence.

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It depends on the circumstances. If they live alone out on a farm, they obviously won't need one. If they live on a major road, the road-owners would pay for patrols to keep the road crime free so more people would want to use that road. If they rent an apartment, the landlord may pay for some form of protection, or just walk the grounds with an AK over his shoulder.

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.

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Ditto. That's why I like the idea of community militias. Modern day experience in Iraq makes it abundantly clear that it's impossible to occupy a place where any portion of the ihabitants don't like you. The US has a military budget that's the sum of the next 40 highest military-spending countries combined, last I heard. They're still taking losses in Iraq against a bunch of insurgents with nothing more than AKs and the occasional RPG-7.

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.

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I'm sorry but this is statist bullshit. Hitler's forces were already spread out too far, he dared not arm the conquered to fight for him knowing they would turn his arms against him and there's no way he could have gotten across the Atlantic and used Blitzkrieg against a heavily armed America. It's about 2000 miles too far away. The Japanese were outright suicidal and Japanese generals have been quoted as saying "You cannot invade mainland America. There would be a rifle behind every blad of grass."

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.

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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.
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.

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It's just absurd. And absurdities like that make people under 18 less employable. They either have to take a pay cut or they give the job to someone older. This harms the worker in an attempt to protect them.

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.

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I'll just have to keep showing you how it doesn't work in specific instances until you see that it is universally one, by it's very nature.

I've never seen anything in the world that's constant aside, perhaps, from the speed of light.

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Which makes your argument seem not dogmatic and I appreciate that. However, if I'm supposed to seriously consider this as a political philosophy I'd like to hear how it can address current problems. I'm not expecting you to answer every question. Everyone's got their own forte. But, for every government failure or brutality you claim or imply there's one that can be pinned on incompetence and greed on the part of the free market.

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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?

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Second, greed on the free market is what motivates mutually beneficial relationships.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Pro-citizen and anti-noncitizen are two different things. Once you see through the "us and them" mentality you realize that.

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.

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A lot of left-anarchists suffer from dictionary deficiency disease. They define anarchy and capitalism differently than the dictionary does.

"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.

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Anarcho-syndicalism then. Kthx.

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.

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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? 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.

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So Afganistan was made a shithole by a bunch of commie assholes. Got it.

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.

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I don't know the circumstances surrounding an effective disabling of the Afgan government. Could you summarize please?

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.

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But you have no right to force your opinion on others. For example, I might believe that my child going to the same school as rap-singing gangstas that won't shut up about how they're in love with a stripper is a bad influence. We can both have it our way. We don't have to force our will on each other's kids. We just have to tolerate each other's decisions.

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.

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Besides, I've seen what busing students in form poor communities does. At my high school we had students coming in from two schools over. They drove past Chamberlain and Freedom High to get to Wharton High. They were waiting at school for an hour and a half after school was out for their bus, out in the Florida sun in summer time (basically all year except december to feb, in FL). Is it really worth it?

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.

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You mean to say they offer no means for you to shove your opinion down other people's throats? Sorry, I know that's not what you intended, but it's pretty much what you said.

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.

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The KKK tried to outlaw private schools in Oregon. Wanna know why? Because they knew they couldn't control the private schools and use them to indoctorinate children. They knew there would be kids going through school and not become protestant racist assholes. And they didn't like 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.

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I speak from personal experience. The black people I've met disproportionately accused everyone else of discriminating against them when they got the same crap everyone else did.

And, as a rational individual, you must admit that anecdote does not equal evidence.

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Fear of monopolies and oligopolies in the free market stems from poor understanding of economics. I recommend the Mises Institute for some material on free-market economics. Mises.org if you wanna check that out.

It actually stems from the existence of monopolies and oligopolies.

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There would be no power structure.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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?

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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?

My way or the highway is pure Swayzisim.

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As for this term limits, elections, and all that, let me say, Democracy sucks. Hitler was voted in by a 90% majority. If that's not a testament to the failure of democracy, I don't know what is.

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.

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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.

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Define "trusts". There are infinite levels of competition. If I have a monopoly on 747s, people can still take 737s, 727s, 707s, 767s, and any other Boeing commercial aircraft. They can also take Airbus aircraft. They can choose small aircraft. They can choose to travel by boat or bus or car or train. They can possibly choose to telecommute. If all of the above were too expensive, they'd simply travel as little as possible. "Trusts" and "Monopolies" are arbitrary terms.

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.

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"Unfair" is also arbitrary.

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.

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Gee, thanks. You just made an arguement for anarchism.

I actually made an argument that the free market is an unattainable--and not necessarily a desireable--goal, but you're welcome.

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Do you have evidence of this?

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.

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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.

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You also skipped/merged what I said here:
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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.

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I never said income. I meant an improvement in conditions from the perspective of the acting individual.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Please, find a way to define profit in such a way that it can be equated with theft, or find a factual difference between the act of taxation from the act of theft.

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.

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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.

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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.

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Thanks. I'm learning from it too. I always enjoy debate for that very reason.

Me too.

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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.


Zhwazi
Zhwazi's picture
Posts: 459
Joined: 2006-10-06
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Damn, these are getting

Damn, these are getting really long.

ellechero wrote:
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?

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Women's sufferage.

Voting is indirect tyranny. Adding tyrants of different classes doesn't make it better.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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You're talking logistics. Efficency is something that can be attained through modifiying practices.

You can't trust bureaucrats with efficiency.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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[Fear of monopolies and oligopolies] actually stems from the existence of monopolies and oligopolies.

Which stem from government. Did you check the Mises Institute?

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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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.

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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?"

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.


Yellow_Number_Five
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Quote:ellechero wrote:>You

ellechero wrote:
>You don't know or work with many "disabled" people, do you?

I helped supervise a group of five developmentally disabled people in a lumber mill in which I worked when I was 16. They did minor things like handing stickers to the people stacking lumber for the kiln. One of my best friend's has Parkinson's at 29 years of age. My father's back is essentially destroyed from being hit by a car when I was 5. Yeah, dude, I know quite a few disabled people. You said Stephen Hawking was hardly poor. I pointed out that his situation is definitely atypical.

And we've both showed such people can earn a living. Let's also not forget charity.

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Given that most anarchists subscribe to the idea that government ought to be reduced to almost nothing or eliminated altogether and that their reason for believing so is based on individual freedom, it seemed like a reasonable comparison. I have no idea why you're insulted by that. Some great minds have subscribed to Anarchism.

Understand - any opposition I have to anarchism depends on the anarchist. I think I've got an idea about a limited government in conjunction with personal responsibility that would sell like hot-cakes. I don't call that anarchy - some choose to.

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You seem fucking clueless from time to time and given to taking things personally, yourself.

I mentioned Afghanistan as an example of a serverly reduced/non-existent government.

But in a nation where the norm is tribalism. When you've had a tast of something better, it isn't hard to imagine something better - if only we allow ourselves to have it.

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I mentioned it as an example that an absense of authority doesn't ensure that people will act constructively any more than a presence of one does.

Very true. I will give you that. I think without a stable economy what I'm talking about is not possible - unfortunately, what I'm talking about isn't possible without a free market.

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I pointed it out because it seems to be an example of the worst case scenario of a lack of governance. Obviously, it's not a functional society at all and I was wondering what would suggest that a libertine society would function. If you're going to point your finger at me for taking something personally, at least have the courtesy to notice it in yourself, as well.

Fair enough, I hold out the olive branch. Realize though, you're asking how a libertine society would deal with abject chaos - how does any society deal with that? I don't think ANY system does it well.

The point is in avoiding such things, and that can be done very easily via globalizaiton. The only thing borders do is inhibit commerce and cause wars.

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Yes, I do take it personally when a thread starts out with "hypocrite" in it and then it's full of nasty back and forths and when someone goes for the blame liberals thing again. I started out my thread in a way that was neither respectful nor constructive and I admit that was a poor way to ask a question. My bad, fair enough.

Yeah, we've both been dicks. Though, to be sure, I don't blame liberal. I have issues with conservatives and liberals equally - I don't much care for either brand.

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The rest of your answers are actually damn interesting and make sense, particularly the "I don't know" which indicates that it's not a lockstep ideology you're espousing and I appreciate that. I don't know everything, either, and am generally suspect of people who claim as much.

If I "knew" everything, I wouldn't feel the need to bounce it off people who disagree like you. How do you think I shape and hone my arguments and beliefs? I argue with people who think I'm full of shit - that's how.

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If you're looking to forward this as a political movement, here's what I can offer. I probably fall into the category of "liberal" in most instances though not all--I own guns, I think prohibitions on weapons are a stupid as prohibitions on behaviors.

Huzzah! We can agree.

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I don't necessarily think that everything on Earth has to be accessible to everyone. It's not fair but, as you said, it's life. If someone has some fucked-up ideal that prevents them from giving me a fair shake, well, fine. I value their right to be stupid more than my right to be employed by someone who doesn't like me.

Again, Huzzah!

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A lot of us in the "liberal" category are there because, generally, when you hear free market or personal responsibility, it's immediatey followed by a bunch of religious, imperial rhetoric.

Do I do such? I don't think I do ;?

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The same way I'd imagine that, when you hear the term civil liberties, it's followed by an economic ideology that you find repugnant.

Quite true!

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And nowhere in any of it does anyone dare say "I don't know." There isn't a real choice offered and many of them are false choices when it seems that trend it being broken.

I did used to say as such, I've simply made up my mind since.

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>Well, you either get it our you don’t.

Which is what I was saying. I don't get it when someone is trying to start a debate by immediately saying half the population are hypocrites. Perhaps they're misguided from your point of view? I realize this wasn't your post but it seems to fit the spirit of things thus far.

Thing is, I DO think most people are idiots. You'd be an idiot not to recognize such.

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Liberal and conservative are really party definitions at this point and pretending they're not is kind of silly.

And yet we've but 2 choices. A shitty choice or a shittier choice.

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They're both synonyms for the two dominant political parties and don't really mean anything other than Democrat or Republican. Saying that anyone who votes Democrat is a hypocrite is not endearing anyone to your cause.

Then for fuck's sake, what do I have to do? If you are voting for the lesser of the evils, you ARE part of the problem. YOU are the people who have endeavored to hold this 2 party cluster fuck upon us. YOU are the ones who need to work for change and vote for such. Tell me, what happens when you keep voting for the lesser of two evils?

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I vote Democrat because the other party is constantly engaging on a direct assault against the liberties that matter most in my life, not because I really care about making sure you pay taxes.

There are pleanty of Democrats involved in the assault you mentioned. What on earth keeps you from simply voting what you think would be best? What makes you choose between two fuck ups?

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The type of answers you gave in the last part of your post are why I'm going to look up who happens to be running on the libertarian ticket in New Mexico and what they're about. I don't know whether I'd vote for them now or not but being called a hypocrite certainly didn't persuade me to even consider it.

It obviously got your attention though. You wouldn't take such objection if thier weren't a grain of truth in it.

At any rate, I hope I simply got you to think and reconsider how you cast your vote. Who do you think has your fundamental freedoms at heart?

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins

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Yellow_Number_Five

Yellow_Number_Five wrote:
Understand - any opposition I have to anarchism depends on the anarchist. I think I've got an idea about a limited government in conjunction with personal responsibility that would sell like hot-cakes. I don't call that anarchy - some choose to.

I think most of his refrences to anarchism have been directed at me, because I'm an anarchocapitalist.

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Thing is, I DO think most people are idiots. You'd be an idiot not to recognize such.

Seconded.

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And yet we've but 2 choices. A shitty choice or a shittier choice.

The worst part is you can never tell which one is shittier.


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Anarcho-socialist here!

First let me say that you are all making very good points, but I'd like to add something of great importance to be. That is the abolition of capital (money, as we know it). TAXATION IS NOT THEFT!!!! It's the federal reserves money. If they want to take it all back, there is nothing stopping them. You never owned it. You own your products, sevices, and labor. You trade that for a symbol of confidence in the economy. No different than a holy symbol. It's the confidence that someone will take your faith and exchange it for their own goods. The arguement that production would go down under socialism is acceptable. We produce too much. Not just too much for America, but too much for the whole world. We could feed the world population 12 times over with production like it is today. I could be a liberatarian if there wasn't such an acceptance of capital. The biggest problem of capitalism, is that you can use capital to generate more capital. It has nothing to do with hard work. I will never be rich or even live comfortably. Not because I don't work hard for it. I'm not anti-materialist (I enjoy buying and owning things very much). I just have a moral objection to investment. It seems to me that under capitalism, you have a few choices: You could get very lucky, and somehow come-up with a brilliant idea that tons of people think they need. You could invest what little capital you have in order to generate more capital (usually at the cost of the workers and the consumers). Or you could remain in the "lower class" through hard work, sacrifice, and thrift. Steal a little extra on the side.

A daughter of hope and fear, religion explains to Ignorance the nature of the unknowable. -Ambrose Bierce


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Quote:TAXATION IS NOT

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TAXATION IS NOT THEFT!!!! It's the federal reserves money. If they want to take it all back, there is nothing stopping them. You never owned it.

FRNs are not money, they're currency. Money has intristic value. Money, according to US law, can only be gold and silver.

And FRNs are not the only things which are taxed. If they were, I would gladly use nothing but bullion and Liberty Dollars to buy and sell. They will tax my transactions with those as well.

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The arguement that production would go down under socialism is acceptable. We produce too much. Not just too much for America, but too much for the whole world. We could feed the world population 12 times over with production like it is today.

Human demands are insatiable. We always want more. There is no such thing as too much production.

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I could be a liberatarian if there wasn't such an acceptance of capital. The biggest problem of capitalism, is that you can use capital to generate more capital.

How is this problematic?

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It has nothing to do with hard work.

We should embrace systems that do not require us to work hard.

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I will never be rich or even live comfortably.

Robert Kiyosaki wrote a book called "Rich Dad Poor Dad", subtitle "What the rich teach their kids that the poor and middle class do not!". Do yourself a favor and buy that book. It'll open your eyes.


ShadowOfMan
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This is the big question...

I have NO LOVE for the IRS. Trust me! And I want to say again that I respect liberatarianism very much. Anything is better than what we have now (A mixure of the worst aspects of capitalism and socialism). I was an active member of the liberatarian party in highschool. Actually I was anarcho-liberatarian. I have since gone more anarchist, and lost my acceptance of money systems. This could be a very intense debate that I am admittedly, not extremely knowledgable. It is my understanding that we have not operated on a gold standard since the end of WWI. The gold standard collapsed in order to create our current credit based economy. The fed was created in order to keep the banks from going under during the depression. Bullion and liberty dollars are no different than FRN in my opinion. You my in fact actually own them, but they encourage the same immoral behaviors. The use of capital to generate more capital at the expense of the laborers and the consumers. It is beyond me that people can't see the problem with this. Capitalists claim to be concerned with poverty, but they also seem to think that everyone can be rich. That's garbage! There is not an infinate amount of MONEY to go around. When one makes $20 million, 10 thousand people lose. Capitalism is a game and there will be losers. That's a fact! And the winners are the sorest winners. I wish I knew how to do that quote thing, but we should absolutely embrace systems that REWARD hard work. That's silly! You know I really wish I could swallow this pill! I really wish I could believe that we, as Americans, should all get rich by investing our capital in corperations that produce with the lowest possible labor costs, maybe in Honduras. We can all make millions of dollars and still get our clothes, electronics, even food at Wal-marts everyday low prices.
This is the way that I really look at it all currently. The GDP of the US is about $12 trillion a year. The current population is 300 million. Without forcing anyone into a communist system, if you TAKE more than your share of $40 thousand, then the rest of us have a right to TAKE it back.

A daughter of hope and fear, religion explains to Ignorance the nature of the unknowable. -Ambrose Bierce


Zhwazi
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ShadowOfMan wrote:I have NO

ShadowOfMan wrote:
I have NO LOVE for the IRS. Trust me! And I want to say again that I respect liberatarianism very much. Anything is better than what we have now (A mixure of the worst aspects of capitalism and socialism). I was an active member of the liberatarian party in highschool. Actually I was anarcho-liberatarian. I have since gone more anarchist, and lost my acceptance of money systems.

Please familiarize yourself with the Austrian School of economics. It's impossible to do away with money. If you could confiscate all FRNs in circulation, people would start trading something else as if it were money. People use money to make exchange convenient, and it's impossible to stop them from doing so.

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This could be a very intense debate that I am admittedly, not extremely knowledgable. It is my understanding that we have not operated on a gold standard since the end of WWI. The gold standard collapsed in order to create our current credit based economy. The fed was created in order to keep the banks from going under during the depression.

The FED was created in 1913 around the same time as the income tax. I consider 1913 to be the year most of our problems in America really picked up for that reason. The FED caused the great depression by making an economy that was riding on easy credit. After the FED cut back money production, easy credit was no longer easy to get, and the economy crashed.

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Bullion and liberty dollars are no different than FRN in my opinion. You my in fact actually own them, but they encourage the same immoral behaviors. The use of capital to generate more capital at the expense of the laborers and the consumers. It is beyond me that people can't see the problem with this.

When you use capital to generate capital, you free up labor resources to move on to more productive areas of the market. You also make whatever you are producing cheaper, which benefits both consumer and producer.

How is use of capital to generate capital in any way immoral?

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Capitalists claim to be concerned with poverty, but they also seem to think that everyone can be rich. That's garbage! There is not an infinate amount of MONEY to go around.

Wealth and money are different.

There is an infinite amount of WEALTH to go around. We have the resource-rich earth and the whole universe that we can yet claim as property, and a population of billions with which to turn that raw material into useable products to satisfy our wants.

If we did have an infinite amount of MONEY to go around, money would be worthless because everyone would have a lot of money, but nothing to buy with it. WEALTH has to be produced before it can be purchased. With zero production but an infinite supply of money, you will starve to death.

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When one makes $20 million, 10 thousand people lose. Capitalism is a game and there will be losers. That's a fact! And the winners are the sorest winners.

The core fallacy here is that one believes in objective measurement of value. If one makes $20 million, 10 thousand people each preferred what you gave them to $2000. Objects have no fixed, objectively measurable value because value is an entirely subjective, completely mental phonomenon. In market relationships, both sides win or neither side would participate in the exchange in the first place.

While, say, a car might be worth $10,000 to you who made it, it might be worth $15,000 to someone else. The price will fall between those two points. If they offered $8,000 for it, you would not sell, for your prefer the car to $8,000. If you offered it for $18,000, they would not buy, for they prefer the $18,000 to the car. If you put the price at $13,000, you will have gained and they will have gained from the exchange. You will be $2000 richer. If you can repeat such an exchange 10,000 times with different people, everyone believes themselves better off than they were before the exchanges. You are $20 million richer, and they all have cars at a price they liked.

Capitalism is not a game where there are winners and losers. There are only varying degrees of winners. Capitalistic exchange exists only in win/win status. No other exchanges occur except under coercion.

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I wish I knew how to do that quote thing, but we should absolutely embrace systems that REWARD hard work. That's silly! You know I really wish I could swallow this pill! I really wish I could believe that we, as Americans, should all get rich by investing our capital in corperations that produce with the lowest possible labor costs, maybe in Honduras. We can all make millions of dollars and still get our clothes, electronics, even food at Wal-marts everyday low prices.

Not just investing, but making businesses. Check out that book I told you about. I really recommend that one.

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This is the way that I really look at it all currently. The GDP of the US is about $12 trillion a year. The current population is 300 million. Without forcing anyone into a communist system, if you TAKE more than your share of $40 thousand, then the rest of us have a right to TAKE it back.

Mutually beneficial relationships exist. There is not a winner and loser on every side. See my refutation of the objective theory of value basis for such a belief.

If I produce more than my fair share of $40,000 worth of stuff, do I not also have the right to TAKE more than my fair share of $40,000 worth of stuff?

If I build a house worth $500k and sell it, do you truly have a right to take anything above $40,000 that I make off that house?

If I build a house worth $500k and live in it, do you have a right to take as much of my house as you want until I have $40k of house left?

And how many $500k houses will be built in such a system?

The way you quote is by typing a bracket, [, then the word "quote", then a closing bracket, ], paste whatever you wanted to quote, then repeat at the end, but use "/quote", with a slash in the front, at the end of the quoted material.


Yellow_Number_Five
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ShadowOfMan wrote:First let

ShadowOfMan wrote:
First let me say that you are all making very good points, but I'd like to add something of great importance to be. That is the abolition of capital (money, as we know it). TAXATION IS NOT THEFT!!!!

No, it is not the Fed Reserve's money and taxation IS theft. It simply happens that my productivity and toil and investments are represented in bills the Fed issues at the moment - this does not in any way affect the intinsic value this labor and productivity and investment have - it could be represented by widgits or dollars or simple barter.

A good is worth what it is worth and a service is worth what it is worth with or without the government. All the government can do is get in the way of free trade and make trade more unfair to some than others.

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It's the federal reserves money. If they want to take it all back, there is nothing stopping them. You never owned it. You own your products, sevices, and labor. You trade that for a symbol of confidence in the economy. No different than a holy symbol.

And that ONLY happened when we went off the gold standard. We never should have.

Ultimately though, no matter what we use as currency or who or what backs it, the goods and labor behind it stilll have basic intrinsic value. You don't need a dollar bill to tell you what a "dollar" is worth.

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It's the confidence that someone will take your faith and exchange it for their own goods.

Right, and it wouldn't matter if you were giving them clamshells or widgits or dollars or gold in this case. You've made a contract - goods for wealth. All that matters is that we agree on the representation of wealth. Calling a dollar a widgit won't devalue the dollar. It is what the currency represents that matters. I think reverting to a rare currency would protect us to a large degree of devaluation and inflation - IOW, we should be on the gold standard or something similar.

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The arguement that production would go down under socialism is acceptable. We produce too much. Not just too much for America, but too much for the whole world. We could feed the world population 12 times over with production like it is today. I could be a liberatarian if there wasn't such an acceptance of capital. The biggest problem of capitalism, is that you can use capital to generate more capital. It has nothing to do with hard work.

There is something inherently evil and wrong with investing wisely? That's what you're saying.

The ENTIRE point about capitalism is that it generates more capitalism. How do you think economies grow? How will the third world ever catch up without it?

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I will never be rich or even live comfortably. Not because I don't work hard for it. I'm not anti-materialist (I enjoy buying and owning things very much). I just have a moral objection to investment.

I see no reason why you should. Stalin forbid I invest in a start up company in South Africa or the Phillipines (I have, btw). I expect huge returns too. They'll win, I'll win, and their country will win. Of what evil hath capitalism wrought!

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It seems to me that under capitalism, you have a few choices: You could get very lucky, and somehow come-up with a brilliant idea that tons of people think they need. You could invest what little capital you have in order to generate more capital (usually at the cost of the workers and the consumers). Or you could remain in the "lower class" through hard work, sacrifice, and thrift. Steal a little extra on the side.

Or you could simply find a way to better serve the consumer and globalize our world.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins

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Yellow_Number_Five
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Zhwazi

Zhwazi wrote:
Yellow_Number_Five wrote:
Understand - any opposition I have to anarchism depends on the anarchist. I think I've got an idea about a limited government in conjunction with personal responsibility that would sell like hot-cakes. I don't call that anarchy - some choose to.

I think most of his refrences to anarchism have been directed at me, because I'm an anarchocapitalist.

Believe me, I DO lean that way. There are simply some things I'm not comfortable entrusting fully to private enterprise - the courts being one (eh, well, really the only one).

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Quote:
Thing is, I DO think most people are idiots. You'd be an idiot not to recognize such.

Seconded.

Yet we both want them to have equal say in our society Laughing out loud

[quote

Quote:
]And yet we've but 2 choices. A shitty choice or a shittier choice.

The worst part is you can never tell which one is shittier.

Quite true, unfortunately.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins

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Yellow_Number_Five
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Oh, and if it comes up,

Oh, and if it comes up, please don't ask me what I think of Matt Shizzles posts in the forum. If you do, I'd have to say that the I find the man insane, and I don't want to to have to do that.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins

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ShadowOfMan
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Quote: Please familiarize

Quote:
Please familiarize yourself with the Austrian School of economics. It's impossible to do away with money. If you could confiscate all FRNs in circulation, people would start trading something else as if it were money. People use money to make exchange convenient, and it's impossible to stop them from doing so.

Understanding the Austrian School is definately on my to do list. I do understand that you need something to make exchange convenient. But I need to ask this.....
What does the dollar represent today?
It certainly doesn't represent a persons hard work. It only represents what someone thinks my labor is worth. And what I will settle with. In that sense, it doesn't represent anything really. It's just black magic.
Quote:
The FED was created in 1913 around the same time as the income tax. I consider 1913 to be the year most of our problems in America really picked up for that reason. The FED caused the great depression by making an economy that was riding on easy credit. After the FED cut back money production, easy credit was no longer easy to get, and the economy crashed.

Seems we are running on easy credit now. I know I am.
Quote:
When you use capital to generate capital, you free up labor resources to move on to more productive areas of the market. You also make whatever you are producing cheaper, which benefits both consumer and producer.

How is use of capital to generate capital in any way immoral?


I really don't know what you mean by all of that, but by making production cheaper you are devaluing labor, which benefits the investor only. The consumer benfits at the cost of the economy.
Quote:
Wealth and money are different.

There is an infinite amount of WEALTH to go around. We have the resource-rich earth and the whole universe that we can yet claim as property, and a population of billions with which to turn that raw material into useable products to satisfy our wants.

If we did have an infinite amount of MONEY to go around, money would be worthless because everyone would have a lot of money, but nothing to buy with it. WEALTH has to be produced before it can be purchased. With zero production but an infinite supply of money, you will starve to death.


Oh definately! There is an infinate amount of wealth. Everyone in this world could be wealthy. I really, really, really want you to prove something to me. If we all had an infinate amount of money, there would be nothing to buy and people would starve to death?
First of all people stave to death now under capitalism.
Second, are you really saying that if there was no money, everyone would just waste away their lives and time? Nothing would ever get produced? You'll have to prove that to me.
Quote:
Capitalism is not a game where there are winners and losers. There are only varying degrees of winners. Capitalistic exchange exists only in win/win status. No other exchanges occur except under coercion.

Maybe there could be a perfect capitalist system in place. I can't see it. There seems to be alot of coercion going on.
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If I produce more than my fair share of $40,000 worth of stuff, do I not also have the right to TAKE more than my fair share of $40,000 worth of stuff?

If I build a house worth $500k and sell it, do you truly have a right to take anything above $40,000 that I make off that house?

If I build a house worth $500k and live in it, do you have a right to take as much of my house as you want until I have $40k of house left?

And how many $500k houses will be built in such a system


I'm attepting to explain my perspective in the frame work of our current system of currency. I really can't do it. It's too fucked up.
Currently, the average CEO makes 400x the amount that the regular laborer makes. That's fucked up.
5% of the worlds population owns 95% of the wealth. That's 1 in 20. Even though there is enough for everyone to be wealthy 12x over. That's fucked up. It's fucked up because they created the system in their favor. It's the golden rule. Those with all the gold, make all the rules. That's fucked up.
The more money you have, the more you can make.
The less you have, the less you can get.
The poorer you are the more expensive everything is.
The worse the pay the harder the job.
The higher the pay, the easier the job. And, as a capitalist, you don't ever have to work again. Your capital is making you more capital, and what that means is other people are doing work making you rich That's fucked up. What is the difference between a king and a rich capitalist? I'll tell you. The king convinces the poor that divine right grants him the crown. The rich capitalist uses a very sneaky, complex system of lies to convince you of a philosophical principle, stacking there own deck, brain-washing you into thinking that it's all moral.

A daughter of hope and fear, religion explains to Ignorance the nature of the unknowable. -Ambrose Bierce


ShadowOfMan
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Let's take this from a

Let's take this from a completely different angle and try to find some common ground.
We are all right to some extent. I think that all of us want to see an end to poverty. We all want productivity to remain at a superior level. We all want good hospitals, schools, roads, clothes, houses, food, ect, for everyone. We all want some sort of incentive for people to actually produce.

We can all agree that something is wrong with the systems in place today and something needs to change. Capitalists seem to think that public ownership is the problem. Socialists think that private ownership is the problem. So which is it?

Fact: We produce way more (maybe 12x more) than we need for all of us worldwide to be wealthy already several times over.
Fact: 5% of the population owns 95% of the wealth.
Things couldn't be more broken!

Capitalists are correct that true capitalism is in our nature. People can wheel and deal in trading markets and nothing will ever really stop that beyond brute force. They think that if there was complete public ownership of these human needs, everyone would just take advantage of the system. People would never work and it would collapse. I'm not convinced but hey, your votes don't count just like mine.

Socialists understand that true capitalism is in our nature. Informed socialists understand that people will create markets and it would take extreme measures to stop it. But they also think that if there was complete private ownership of these human needs, a few would eventually gain control of it all, and force the rest to all to do all the work. It is EXACTLY like the game monopoly. You can't make money without money.

But lets put the organizational aspects of the perfect economic structure aside for a moment.
It is my personal belief that we currently have a system that emphasises the worst aspects of capitalism and socialism, compounded with greedy people, overpopulation, and obscenely large and unmanageable government.

I don't know if the rest of you have a problem with the population, but it's my biggest peev of all. I think that we could halve all the problems in the world from enviromental to social with a population halved. Though I am completely against anything that would FORCE a negative birthrate, I'm for ANYTHING that would promote it.

Booming government is a problem for everyone except the politicians and the highly organised unions they work for. That includes the capitalists that get the government contracts and the lobbies like the Christian Coalition and the labor unions. The only way I see a fix, is to break down the federal governments powers and build the powers of the states, counties, and cities.

We can all agree that greedy people do and always will exist, right?
Matt Shizzle wants to kill the greedy people. I understand and relate to his frustrastion, but I don't really condon violence. Civil disobedience are the only effective and justified means. I prefer theft from those that have the most, and labor strikes.
Who is more greedy? Capitalists or welfare mothers?
How do the liberatarians think we should deal with greedy people?

A daughter of hope and fear, religion explains to Ignorance the nature of the unknowable. -Ambrose Bierce


Yellow_Number_Five
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ShadowOfMan wrote:Let's take

ShadowOfMan wrote:
Let's take this from a completely different angle and try to find some common ground.

Please, let's. It'll be a nice change from being called a capitalist pig at least.

Quote:
We are all right to some extent. I think that all of us want to see an end to poverty.

YES! And that's why it hurts when people accuse me of being a greedy pig. I don't care if you wish to argue with me, but when you question my motivation it makes me want to fucking vomit. Whatever you want to believe about what I say or advocate, understand that I say and advocate it because I honestly believe it is or could be if properly implemented helpful and beneficial to all.

Quote:
We all want productivity to remain at a superior level. We all want good hospitals, schools, roads, clothes, houses, food, ect, for everyone. We all want some sort of incentive for people to actually produce.

I don't think anyone would disagree.

Quote:
We can all agree that something is wrong with the systems in place today and something needs to change. Capitalists seem to think that public ownership is the problem. Socialists think that private ownership is the problem. So which is it?

Well, obviously it depends on who you ask. But there is a bit more to it. Fairness and civil liberty are ultimately what concern me - and I do think this extend to business.

Quote:
Fact: We produce way more (maybe 12x more) than we need for all of us worldwide to be wealthy already several times over.
Fact: 5% of the population owns 95% of the wealth.
Things couldn't be more broken!

This GREATLY depends on how you define wealth. We CERTAINLY DO NOT have the capacity worldwide to keep the entire world in the standard of living the US and Western Europe enjoy. Uganda won't be seeing Plasma screens for the majority of the populace for quite some time. There is a reason for this.

That is neither good nor bad morally speaking.

What needs to be done is the modernization of such countries. We must bring the third world into the modern age if they are willing to come. Hmmmm......how could we do that, care to venture a guess or two?

As I said earlier, the concept of imaginary lines in the dirt have to go. The fastest and easiest and most lasting way to unite the world is by the market place, not the treaty table.

Quote:
Capitalists are correct that true capitalism is in our nature. People can wheel and deal in trading markets and nothing will ever really stop that beyond brute force. They think that if there was complete public ownership of these human needs, everyone would just take advantage of the system. People would never work and it would collapse. I'm not convinced but hey, your votes don't count just like mine.

Ehh..I wouldn't go so far as to say that complete government control couldn't work. It worked VERY well for Pol Pot at least for a time. And even then, there was a thriving black market.

For the record though, I've never made the argument that socialism or communism fail because people become lazy and take advatage of the system. I'm sure that may be part of it, but the reasons are much deeper. I could go for paragraphs though, If any wants me to go off, ask, but I'll let it be for now.

Quote:
Socialists understand that true capitalism is in our nature. Informed socialists understand that people will create markets and it would take extreme measures to stop it. But they also think that if there was complete private ownership of these human needs, a few would eventually gain control of it all, and force the rest to all to do all the work. It is EXACTLY like the game monopoly. You can't make money without money.

There are informed socialists? Sorry, I've NEVER found any socialist online willing to admit that people ultimately want more than they are given or that their system would open the door for a vast black market. You're right though.

You are also right about the potential of monopoly in a free market system. I don't see that as a huge problem though for reason I will lay out if you ask.

Quote:
But lets put the organizational aspects of the perfect economic structure aside for a moment.
It is my personal belief that we currently have a system that emphasises the worst aspects of capitalism and socialism, compounded with greedy people, overpopulation, and obscenely large and unmanageable government.

Bingo. We should be working together. If I had my way or the other side had theirs, it still wouldn't be as bad as what we have now.

Quote:
I don't know if the rest of you have a problem with the population, but it's my biggest peev of all. I think that we could halve all the problems in the world from enviromental to social with a population halved. Though I am completely against anything that would FORCE a negative birthrate, I'm for ANYTHING that would promote it.

Let me tentatively agree. I don't think we should EVER tell people the cannot fuck and make kids. If there are subtle ways political groups or activists couild encourage people to refrain from doing so, let's do it. It ultmately isn't any sort of thing government should be involved in though, I'd hope you agree.

Quote:
Booming government is a problem for everyone except the politicians and the highly organised unions they work for. That includes the capitalists that get the government contracts and the lobbies like the Christian Coalition and the labor unions. The only way I see a fix, is to break down the federal governments powers and build the powers of the states, counties, and cities.

Well, first, I've got a problem with you demonizing all lobbiests. Lobbiests are important, especially for people like you and I.

Meet YOUR lobbiest: http://www.secular.org/meet.html (now give her money like I do!)

Now, I'm not opposed to making such things state right issues, but I feel anything that pertains to religion or speech relates directly to the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses - in which case it don't matter a bit what any state says.

Quote:
We can all agree that greedy people do and always will exist, right?

Yes. I'm GLAD greedy people will always exist. That means people want more than what is - that's a good thing.

Quote:
Matt Shizzle wants to kill the greedy people. I understand and relate to his frustrastion, but I don't really condon violence. Civil disobedience are the only effective and justified means. I prefer theft from those that have the most, and labor strikes.

We already have such teft - you call it tax.

Quote:
Who is more greedy?

Irrelvent. What is more fair?

If you take money from me against my will, what would you call it? Does it matter that you do it under the guise of law? Does it matter that you give it to somebody you think deserevs the money more than me an my family? Theft is theft, no matter what you call it or who you steal from.

Is it LESS wrong that I steal from WalMart than an local hardware store?

Oh, and answer that - ALL of you, because I'm VERY interested.

Quote:
Capitalists or welfare mothers?

Irrelevent. See above.

Quote:
How do the liberatarians think we should deal with greedy people?

What a ridiculously loaded question. If a person does not violoate the rights of another, we should not deal with them at all. There is NOTHING wrong with greed.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins

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ShadowOfMan wrote:I do

ShadowOfMan wrote:
I do understand that you need something to make exchange convenient. But I need to ask this.....
What does the dollar represent today?
It certainly doesn't represent a persons hard work. It only represents what someone thinks my labor is worth. And what I will settle with. In that sense, it doesn't represent anything really. It's just black magic.

It represents faith in government. It doesn't represent anything else, and that's not surprising, since people are essentially forced to use them (the government won't accept anything else as payment unless to sell for FRNs or to punish you for not having enough FRNs).

Quote:
Seems we are running on easy credit now. I know I am.

Yeah. There's a pretty bad depression coming. The more the FED tries to delay it by inflating, the worse it's going to be when it happens.

Quote:
Quote:
When you use capital to generate capital, you free up labor resources to move on to more productive areas of the market. You also make whatever you are producing cheaper, which benefits both consumer and producer.

I really don't know what you mean by all of that, but by making production cheaper you are devaluing labor, which benefits the investor only. The consumer benfits at the cost of the economy.

Labor is not devalued. Within it's specific sector, it is. While automation might mean some workers get fired, that lets the workers go and find jobs where they will be more productive. The worker may be out of a job for a while, and while I'm not unsympathetic, it is actually a good thing in the long run. Generally the experience gained in one line of work will make them more productive in a related line of work, anyways. I know people who've made $10,000 per year extra every time they've gotten a new job because of the experience gained in the earlier job. (And they've changed jobs four or five times).

And since everyone is a consumer, I don't have any idea how it's a bad thing for the consumer to benefit. The whole economy is driven by the need to satisfy consumers.

Quote:
Oh definately! There is an infinate amount of wealth. Everyone in this world could be wealthy. I really, really, really want you to prove something to me. If we all had an infinate amount of money, there would be nothing to buy and people would starve to death?

I didn't mean nothing literally. What I meant was to say that if I and everyone else recieved 5 billion dollars, it wouldn't make us richer, because we'd still have the same amount of actual useful stuff as we did before. We wouldn't have more houses to buy, we wouldn't have more TVs, we wouldn't have more cars. We'd have a lot of worthless paper, though.

Quote:
First of all people stave to death now under capitalism.

Not nearly as frequently as they did in the time of our grandfathers' grandfathers, and every previous generation in the history of the world.

Quote:
Second, are you really saying that if there was no money, everyone would just waste away their lives and time? Nothing would ever get produced? You'll have to prove that to me.

No, I don't know where you got the idea that I said that. If there was no money, exchange would be difficult. A car maker wouldn't be able to just buy one car's worth of bread from the baker. That would certainly slow commerce and people would stop making cars in favor of smaller, more tradable goods. But I never intended to say that without money people would waste their time or nothing would be produced.

Quote:
Maybe there could be a perfect capitalist system in place. I can't see it. There seems to be alot of coercion going on.

We don't live under free-market capitalism. All of that coercion is not capitalism, but socialism. Even the existance of corporations is socialist. (Socialists might object, so call it fascist if you want, I see no difference between socialism and fascism. They're two branches of the same tree.)

Quote:
Currently, the average CEO makes 400x the amount that the regular laborer makes. That's fucked up.

That is the fault of the laborer. I believe that everyone should avoid the large corporations for employment and instead seek to build their own businesses. Ideally, most people would strive to become a CEO. However, I see no injustice with a CEO making a lot of money and a laborer not. The belief that it is somehow unjust or "fucked up" as you put it, seems to stem from the labor theory of value, which has long since been refuted.

Quote:
5% of the worlds population owns 95% of the wealth. That's 1 in 20. Even though there is enough for everyone to be wealthy 12x over. That's fucked up.

The wealthiest individuals became so by managing resources in such a way as to help as many people as possible. John D. Rockefeller became wealthy by managing his refineries and such in such a way as to get oil to the consumer as cheaply as possible. He became wealthy by helping people. There is nothing fucked up about whoever does the most to help the most people becoming the wealthiest.

Quote:
It's fucked up because they created the system in their favor. It's the golden rule. Those with all the gold, make all the rules. That's fucked up.

There are two kinds of rules. Natural rules, which are unchanging, cannot be repealed, modified, added to, or anything. Rules such as the law of supply and demand. That rule applies to everyone equally. The other kind of rule is the arbitrary rule. These can be changed, rewritten, repealed, and added. Government is a monopoly of arbitrary rule. The only way they can create a system in their favor is through government. Without it they follow the same rules everyone else follows.

Quote:
The more money you have, the more you can make.
The less you have, the less you can get.

Need I say more than "Bill Gates"? He didn't have a lot of startup capital and look where he ended up. And look what he did with his money. He donated it to charity.

Quote:
The poorer you are the more expensive everything is.

Subjectively, yes.

Quote:
The worse the pay the harder the job.
The higher the pay, the easier the job.

The difficulty of a job is irrelevant to how much it pays. It is relevant to successful management of resources in such a way as to satisfy some consumer's demands.

Quote:
And, as a capitalist, you don't ever have to work again. Your capital is making you more capital, and what that means is other people are doing work making you rich That's fucked up.

Not fucked up at all.

You're well aware that the product of a laborer is always less valuable than the laborer's wages, correct? The difference is something of a "rent". For example, where would the factory worker be if there were no factories to work in? He does not pay for the factories himself. He, in essence, "rents" a position in the factory. Because he gets better equipment to work with, he is able to produce more. He produces more with the aid of the factory, even minus the difference between product and wages, than he would make without it. It is beneficial to the worker. And if you have constructed a place which people will use and make their lives better, do you not deserve payment?

What is the difference between the position of the factory worker and a position renting an apartment? Whether I own the apartment or the factory, I am providing you with something that you want which makes your life better.

Is collecting rent from an apartment you own, that you had built with your own money, or perhaps built with your own hands, in any way unjust?

Quote:
What is the difference between a king and a rich capitalist? I'll tell you. The king convinces the poor that divine right grants him the crown. The rich capitalist uses a very sneaky, complex system of lies to convince you of a philosophical principle, stacking there own deck, brain-washing you into thinking that it's all moral.

I see it differently.
The king steals his money. The capitalist manages resources in such a way as to help people.

The capitalist does not use a sneaky, complex system of lies to convince you of a philosophical principle, staking their own deck, brainwashing you into thinking that it's all moral. That's what governments do.

The sneaky system of lies is one in which a person born in a certain area of the world is told that they have a duty to their country, or loyalty, or something similar. This breeds nationalism.

The philsosphical principle it tries to convince you of is that it is okay for the government to do as it wishes, and that you should accept it.

It brainwashes you into thinking that all the war, law, regulation, imprisonment, and all other areas of the state or somehow moral.

Can you specify exactly how it is the capitalist that engages in the activities you accused them of?


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ShadowOfMan wrote:We can all

ShadowOfMan wrote:
We can all agree that something is wrong with the systems in place today and something needs to change. Capitalists seem to think that public ownership is the problem. Socialists think that private ownership is the problem. So which is it?

Public ownership. "Society" is a fictive entity.

Quote:
Fact: We produce way more (maybe 12x more) than we need for all of us worldwide to be wealthy already several times over.

Fact: Your definition of "wealthy" is arbitrary and defined only by the age in which you life. We'd be poor by 2100 standards just as people in 1900 were poor by today's standards. The wealiest men alive today do not have access to things that the average man will have in 100 years and take for granted.

Quote:
Fact: 5% of the population owns 95% of the wealth.

Fact: Some people are better at helping as many people as possible than other people are.

Quote:
But they also think that if there was complete private ownership of these human needs, a few would eventually gain control of it all, and force the rest to all to do all the work. It is EXACTLY like the game monopoly.

I'm not convinced, but hey, your votes don't count just like mine.

Quote:
You can't make money without money.

Steve Jobs was working out of his mom's garage to build Apple, if my memory serves me well. That is pure bullshit.

Quote:
It is my personal belief that we currently have a system that emphasises the worst aspects of capitalism and socialism, compounded with greedy people, overpopulation, and obscenely large and unmanageable government.

I contend that there are no bad aspects of capitalism, and all problems we have are caused by socialism.

Quote:
I don't know if the rest of you have a problem with the population, but it's my biggest peev of all. I think that we could halve all the problems in the world from enviromental to social with a population halved. Though I am completely against anything that would FORCE a negative birthrate, I'm for ANYTHING that would promote it.

Look up "Economies of scale". The larger the population, the more efficient it becomes, and the wealthier everyone is.

Quote:
Booming government is a problem for everyone except the politicians and the highly organised unions they work for. That includes the capitalists that get the government contracts and the lobbies like the Christian Coalition and the labor unions. The only way I see a fix, is to break down the federal governments powers and build the powers of the states, counties, and cities.

Alas, we agree! Abolish the Federal government! More local control! I just believe that the best degree of "local control" is each person governing themselves.

Quote:
We can all agree that greedy people do and always will exist, right?

There's nothing wrong with being selfish or greedy. What is problematic is it's use as motivation toward the use of force.

Quote:
Matt Shizzle wants to kill the greedy people. I understand and relate to his frustrastion, but I don't really condon violence. Civil disobedience are the only effective and justified means.

Civil disobedience can't be used against capitalists. You can only use it against government. Boycotting is what you use against capitalists.

Quote:
I prefer theft from those that have the most, and labor strikes.

Those that have the most use their wealth to help others (as this provides a return on the investment). Those that do not have wealth simply consume it.

Quote:
Who is more greedy? Capitalists or welfare mothers?

Who is more greedy is immeasurable. I'm not aware of any scale or unit of measurement of greed, and thus the two are incomparable. Subjective judgements are like that.

Quote:
How do the liberatarians think we should deal with greedy people?

If they attack you, shoot them. As long as you can dissuade them from using force, the only way they can act on their greed is to improve your lot in exchange for your money. They have no other way of attracting money.

Oh, and I don't mind being called a "Capitalist Pig". I use the term to describe myself a lot. The alternatives to the "Capitalist pig" are the "Socialist sheep" and the "Authoritarian Wolf".

If I had to describe libertarianism in one word, it would be "tolerance". Libertarians can tolerate socialist communities. For all I care a bunch of socialists could go buy a big plot of land and practice socialism among themselves, I have no problem with it. Socialists are the ones that can't tolerate libertarian communities. Think about it a bit. Learn to tolerate the fact that some people have more stuff than other people.


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I skimmed over this thread

I skimmed over this thread and I just wanted to say that there are always people who abuse systems put in place for the less fortunate. But there are always people who need them.

I live in Canada, and I grew up on welfare after my dad left. Mom was always looking for jobs, but since she'd quit work to take care of us while dad worked, all her references were long gone. Without the pretty much socialist programs run by my government, I doubt I would be alive or mentally sound right now. It kept us afloat for a few years, then mom got a job and is doing fine. I have a job in a career I adore, and I pay into the system in my taxes. But I really don't mind. Just in case I ever need to dip into it again, and in case it helps someone else. I get scared when I think about people losing their jobs and struggling to make ends meet. Sometimes shit happens, and you need a safety net.

Now, donating my taxes to churches? I have a serious problem with THAT. Sad
I wish we had checkboxes on our tax forms where you could say what you wanted your taxes to go towards. Like people opposed to welfare could leave it off, and I could leave off churches... I like my system, LOL.


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That's stupid. It's not hard

That's stupid.

It's not hard to find a job. If it takes you more than three months to find a job, your expectations are too high. If you have to flip burgers and eat ramen to make ends meet, you do that.

What you don't do is delegate some bureaucrat to steal my money so you can keep looking for a nice job. Theft is still theft even if it's for a good cause. And taxation is what the government calls it's particular bureaucratic version of theft.


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Yeah, Glamor Kat! How could

Yeah, Glamor Kat! How could you be so insensitive? Shame on you and your dirty, dirty mother! Don't you know that the welfare you STOLED from your fellow canadians meant something to them? Maybe as much as a gallon of gas from someone like me. Don't you know that I needed that gallon. I worked a whole 15 minutes for that gallons. And I can't bare to think about what it must have done to someone like poor old Paris Hilton. She might not have been able to go to Brazil for that new bikini she saw there last weekend.

A daughter of hope and fear, religion explains to Ignorance the nature of the unknowable. -Ambrose Bierce


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Zhwazi wrote:That's

Zhwazi wrote:
That's stupid.

It's not hard to find a job. If it takes you more than three months to find a job, your expectations are too high. If you have to flip burgers and eat ramen to make ends meet, you do that.

What you don't do is delegate some bureaucrat to steal my money so you can keep looking for a nice job. Theft is still theft even if it's for a good cause. And taxation is what the government calls it's particular bureaucratic version of theft.

Well, I was only 12, man. So I couldn't exactly go and get myself a job.... Sad
As it was, mom did try to find a job, ANY job, not a "nice job", and welfare isn't that much money. And finding a job with enough pay to support 2 children after 12 years of not working... well, it's hard.
If you make any more than $300 a month, you get taken off welfare. Obviously. But $400-$600(which is what she'd have been possibly making) isn't enough to pay rent and feed 2 kids. So we had to stay on welfare.
And we didn't exactly eat banquets, LOL. Try crackers and peanut butter for dinner. And powdered milk in place of actual milk.
Barf!

A lot of people imagine welfare as this "high on the hog" lazy dream life for people lacking the ethics to make their own money. It's really not. It's for people who get fucked over temporarily.
I tell ya, I appreciate my job and money even more now for growing up like that. I never want to be on welfare again. I don't want to take money from the govt's coffers, believe me. I heart my $$$.

Just curious, what about children of poverty? What systems do you envisage in place to help children raised in poverty?

And did you at least like my suggestion about a checkbox for what you want your taxes to go towards? Laughing out loud

BTW: thx, ShadowOfMan, for telling me the truth, LOL.


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ShadowOfMan wrote:Yeah,

ShadowOfMan wrote:
Yeah, Glamor Kat! How could you be so insensitive? Shame on you and your dirty, dirty mother! Don't you know that the welfare you STOLED from your fellow canadians meant something to them? Maybe as much as a gallon of gas from someone like me. Don't you know that I needed that gallon. I worked a whole 15 minutes for that gallons. And I can't bare to think about what it must have done to someone like poor old Paris Hilton. She might not have been able to go to Brazil for that new bikini she saw there last weekend.

It would be wrong for her to go and steal that money by putting a gun to a clerk's head. It's no less wrong that she delegates someone else to do it for her. Theft is theft even when called taxation and done by a bureaucrat with a defined system of administering it and a badge allowing them to imprison those that don't pay and kill those that resist imprisonment.

Libertarian morality is universal. It makes no difference for time or place. It makes no difference whether you work for the government or the mafia or yourself if you use force or the threat of force to compel payment. It makes no difference whether you steal it to help the poor, help your boss, or help yourself. It makes not one iota of difference for who, what, when, where, or why. If your method involves use of force or threat to use force you have committed a crime.

I don't care who you are. A needy mother, a mafioso, or a cop sent by a needy mother, I make no difference for such things.
I don't care what you call it. Theft, taxation, welfare, I make no difference for such things.
I don't care when you do it. Out of my bank account, out of my paycheck, I make no difference for such things.
I don't care where you do it. At the bank, on the street, coming to my house, I make no difference for such things.
I don't care why you do it. You are starving, your need a drug fix, you want a new TV, I make absolutely no fucking difference for such things.

If you resort to theft, irrelevant of other issues, you are in the wrong, you deserve nothing less than a warm, loud greeting courtesy of Mossberg.

If you want my stuff, ask me nicely, offer me something to buy, or fuck off. I don't know if I can put it more plainly. Do not tax me, do not rob me, do not steal my property, or in any way by any means for any end deprive me of my property without my consent.


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GlamourKat wrote:Well, I was

GlamourKat wrote:
Well, I was only 12, man. So I couldn't exactly go and get myself a job.... Sad

That's because the government has essentially prohibited you from doing so.

Quote:
As it was, mom did try to find a job, ANY job, not a "nice job", and welfare isn't that much money. And finding a job with enough pay to support 2 children after 12 years of not working... well, it's hard.

I found a job that pays enough to support myself after 18 years of not working. I went from store to resturaunt to hotel applying for jobs. And I found a job in under a month.

Quote:
If you make any more than $300 a month, you get taken off welfare. Obviously. But $400-$600(which is what she'd have been possibly making) isn't enough to pay rent and feed 2 kids. So we had to stay on welfare.

If I earned $500 a month, I would be able to feed myself and several others, make booze, pay rent, and have money left over. Your mom wasn't trying hard enough if she couldn't do that.

Quote:
And we didn't exactly eat banquets, LOL. Try crackers and peanut butter for dinner. And powdered milk in place of actual milk.

Cream of wheat sprouts. It's extremely cheap, nutritous, easy to make, and while certainly not the tastiest thing you'll ever put in your mouth, it'll feed you well enough. Milk is absurdly expensive due to government regulations ensuring the milk industry make exorbitant profits.

Quote:
A lot of people imagine welfare as this "high on the hog" lazy dream life for people lacking the ethics to make their own money. It's really not. It's for people who get fucked over temporarily.

It's intent and actual use are two different things.

Quote:
Just curious, what about children of poverty? What systems do you envisage in place to help children raised in poverty?

In the libertarian dreamworld? Extremely low rent because there'd be no property taxes. Increased income because there'd be no income taxes. Everything would be cheaper because there'd be no sales taxes. Increased employment opportunity because there'd be no licensing and no regulations. Imported goods would be cheaper because there'd be no tariffs. Protection would be cheap because you could buy a machinegun for $50. Gas would be cheap because there'd be no gas taxes. Driving would be cheap because you wouldn't need insurance. Interest rates would be low because bankers would be free to pick their own interest rates according to your needs, so if you needed a loan, you could get one.

In the event someone can manage to be in poverty under such situations, there's charities to help their kids. Charities which would have a lot more money once everyone was making more money and thus able to donate more money.

Quote:
And did you at least like my suggestion about a checkbox for what you want your taxes to go towards? :D

No. They'd never have a checkbox saying "Give me back my money." It wouldn't solve my problems.


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Quote: Whatever you want to

Quote:
Whatever you want to believe about what I say or advocate, understand that I say and advocate it because I honestly believe it is or could be if properly implemented helpful and beneficial to all.

I truely believe that you are being sincere. And I don't at all look down upon you for holding capitalism in high esteem. If you were in the 5% wealthiest, I probably wouldn't like you though. This is extremely healthy debate, and I've learned a whole lot so far. I haven't changed my mind, but I want you to keep trying.
Quote:
This GREATLY depends on how you define wealth. We CERTAINLY DO NOT have the capacity worldwide to keep the entire world in the standard of living the US and Western Europe enjoy. Uganda won't be seeing Plasma screens for the majority of the populace for quite some time.
What needs to be done is the modernization of such countries. We must bring the third world into the modern age if they are willing to come.
As I said earlier, the concept of imaginary lines in the dirt have to go. The fastest and easiest and most lasting way to unite the world is by the market place, not the treaty table.

Wealth is hard to define, isn't it? I say (as defined by our modern age): nutritious food, clean water, decent shelter (THAT THEY OWN), enough electricity (heating), good healthcare, AND higher education. Anyone with less is poor. Anyone with more is wealthy. Then there's the people in the middle.
Is there anything wrong making sure that everyone in the world gets this basic human needs? And I don't care what you say, getting rid of welfare, financial aid, ect., will only make it worse! And I could never support a party that would rid us of this safety net! Even though I have never once been given a dime by the government, and I wish I didn't have to pay taxes (I only make about 15k/year), I support taxation under this particular economic system. I must be the stupid. That's the only explaination. Just keep learning me.

A daughter of hope and fear, religion explains to Ignorance the nature of the unknowable. -Ambrose Bierce


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Maybe she should have given

Maybe she should have given blow jobs in the Wal-mart bathroom for a value meal. This is rediculous! So instead of swallowing your pride and paying taxes that, yes Kat, you could even make sure your dollars are going to secular charity rather than making bombs, you want people to actually have to beg you for food, or "offer something" for you to buy.
Stealing a loaf of bread is NOT the same as stealing a million dollars. Your talking in black and white nonsense. It's very biblical almost. And yes Yellow 5, stealing from your local, hardworking, mom and pop hardware store is WAY worse that stealing from Wal-mart. How could you even compare the two. It's like a chimpanzee in the forest with nothing is not going to steal one banana from the guy on his left, when the guy on his right his 100 acres of banana trees. It's just that we humans can talk and the masses can decide to collectively march in and make dude give SOME up. That's true anarchy dude! Believe it!

A daughter of hope and fear, religion explains to Ignorance the nature of the unknowable. -Ambrose Bierce


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ShadowOfMan wrote:I truely

ShadowOfMan wrote:
I truely believe that you are being sincere. And I don't at all look down upon you for holding capitalism in high esteem. If you were in the 5% wealthiest, I probably wouldn't like you though. This is extremely healthy debate, and I've learned a whole lot so far. I haven't changed my mind, but I want you to keep trying.

If I were in the 5% wealthiest (as I intend to become), I would be there because I helped the most people get what they want. Is that reason to not like me?

Quote:
Wealth is hard to define, isn't it? I say (as defined by our modern age): nutritious food, clean water, decent shelter (THAT THEY OWN), enough electricity (heating), good healthcare, AND higher education. Anyone with less is poor. Anyone with more is wealthy. Then there's the people in the middle.

As I have said, your definitions are arbitrary and determined only by the age in which you live. 2000 years ago, most people were starving, clean water would have had to be searched for, decent shelter would be a mud and wood shack, electricity was something to be afraid of, healthcare was folk remedies, and higher education essentially didn't exist. Back then, you were wealthy if you had slaves.

2000 years from now, wealth will be things we can't even imagine.

Quote:
Is there anything wrong making sure that everyone in the world gets this basic human needs?

Not at all. What's wrong is stealing, whether you are trying to make sure everyone gets those basic human needs or not.

Quote:
And I don't care what you say, getting rid of welfare, financial aid, ect., will only make it worse!

That is a statement of blind faith. If you don't care what I say, and I can never change your mind, you are taking no actual state of the world into account in believing what you believe.

People lived for a million or two years before we had welfare. People will keep living indefinately if we get rid of it.

Quote:
And I could never support a party that would rid us of this safety net!

I learned the hard way that the way you get someone out of the safety net is by letting them bust their ass on rock bottom until they shape up.

Quote:
Even though I have never once been given a dime by the government, and I wish I didn't have to pay taxes (I only make about 15k/year), I support taxation under this particular economic system. I must be the stupid. That's the only explaination. Just keep learning me.

You're not stupid, you're just missing information that would change your mind. You would be stupid if you had that information and declared that you were correct anyways, without having even refuted it.


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How cool would it be if

How cool would it be if there were no republicrates? We need this kind of debate at the forefront of American politics!

A daughter of hope and fear, religion explains to Ignorance the nature of the unknowable. -Ambrose Bierce


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ShadowOfMan wrote:Maybe she

ShadowOfMan wrote:
Maybe she should have given blow jobs in the Wal-mart bathroom for a value meal. This is rediculous!

If you want to assume it involves blowjobs go ahead. Demonize whatever I say that will make you feel better about yourself. Distract yourself from the rationality of my statements by appealing to emotion. Don't call yourself an atheist though. You'll disgrace the name.

Quote:
you want people to actually have to beg you for food, or "offer something" for you to buy.

Did I say beg? No. I said ask nicely. If you have something I want, I won't just take it from you, I'll ask for it.

If someone came to my door and knocked on it asking if there was anything they could do for me to earn some money, I would look around for anything I need done that I trust them to do, tell them what they can do, offer them a few dollars, and if they do it, I'll pay them. Paint my house, help me move furniture, whatever, I'll pay you for your services.

Quote:
Stealing a loaf of bread is NOT the same as stealing a million dollars. Your talking in black and white nonsense.

The same in kind, not in degree.

Quote:
stealing from your local, hardworking, mom and pop hardware store is WAY worse that stealing from Wal-mart.

Well then please provide evidence or reason which refutes opposing views.

Quote:
How could you even compare the two. It's like a chimpanzee in the forest with nothing is not going to steal one banana from the guy on his left, when the guy on his right his 100 acres of banana trees.

Chimpanzees will go toward the guy on their left if the guy on the right has a shotgun that the chimpanzee is familiar with, and if both have shotguns, the chimpanzee will run away and find other bananas.

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It's just that we humans can talk and the masses can decide to collectively march in and make dude give SOME up.

Because theft is justifiable.

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That's true anarchy dude! Believe it!

Anarchy is ana-, meaning without, -arch-, from the greek 'archon' meaning 'ruler', and the suffix -y.

You described mass theft. The two are in no way related.

If your vision of true anarchy is a thousand poor raiding a large store, my vision of true anarchy is a large store owner with a thousand targets and an automatic rifle.

I don't care if you're starving. If you steal, you'll be eating hot lead.


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Quote: If I were in the 5%

Quote:
If I were in the 5% wealthiest (as I intend to become), I would be there because I helped the most people get what they want. Is that reason to not like me?

Seriously dude, good luck with that! lol I just don't believe the idea that the richest are the biggest helpers. Is sounds good the way you say it. I just don't see it that way. That's all I have to say.
Quote:
As I have said, your definitions are arbitrary and determined only by the age in which you live. 2000 years ago, most people were starving, clean water would have had to be searched for, decent shelter would be a mud and wood shack, electricity was something to be afraid of, healthcare was folk remedies, and higher education essentially didn't exist. Back then, you were wealthy if you had slaves.

2000 years from now, wealth will be things we can't even imagine.


I'm not talking about the future! Why do you ask, "What is wealth?", and then say my definitions are arbitrary. My wife's libratarian mom does that and it drives me crazy!
Quote:
What's wrong is stealing, whether you are trying to make sure everyone gets those basic human needs or not.
Well again, I have a problem with stealing from the poor. I can't help but feel that robbing the rich is fair. I can't help but feel that they are stealing from me. Eating me alive in fact.
Quote:
That is a statement of blind faith. If you don't care what I say, and I can never change your mind, you are taking no actual state of the world into account in believing what you believe.
People lived for a million or two years before we had welfare. People will keep living indefinately if we get rid of it.

Keep trying to convince me! You could change my mind. You just haven't yet. I'm just trying to say that things would get worst before they get better. And more would go hungry.
We could argue all day long about how to define hunter-gatherer economics. I would say the best aspects of both capitalism and socialism.

A daughter of hope and fear, religion explains to Ignorance the nature of the unknowable. -Ambrose Bierce


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ShadowOfMan wrote:How cool

ShadowOfMan wrote:
How cool would it be if there were no republicrates? We need this kind of debate at the forefront of American politics!

Yeah, maybe then people would become more ideologically aware. These days they just think "Well I'm a republican, and republicans, think this, therefore I think this." I wish they'd think "Well the collectivists have a point, but the individualists are espousing sound doctorine."


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ShadowOfMan wrote:I'm not

ShadowOfMan wrote:
I'm not talking about the future! Why do you ask, "What is wealth?", and then say my definitions are arbitrary. My wife's libratarian mom does that and it drives me crazy!

Arbitrary definitions are by their nature invalid.

Quote:
Well again, I have a problem with stealing from the poor. I can't help but feel that robbing the rich is fair. I can't help but feel that they are stealing from me. Eating me alive in fact.

Feel. Feel. Feel. But not think. What rational basis does your feeling that they are stealing from you rest upon?

Quote:
Keep trying to convince me! You could change my mind. You just haven't yet. I'm just trying to say that things would get worst before they get better.

Is a short term hardship not worth long-term propserity?

Quote:
And more would go hungry.

Then they should be taught how to aquire inexpensive but filling food.

http://kurtsaxon.com/foods000.htm

There is wisdom in the words "Give a man a fish and he shall eat for a day..."


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FINE!!! You give me a

FINE!!! You give me a definition of wealth that isn't arbitrary. One that refects today, and not 2000 years from now.

Quote:
What rational basis does your feeling that they are stealing from you rest upon?

All I know is my own local economy. Here in my region, I've got manufacturing jobs moving overseas for the cheap labor. I've got Wal-mart out-competing the small local businesses without adding anything back into the local economy. My town is bleeding slowly, but surely. And I have a FEELING that many other local economies are experiencing the same thing.
Quote:
Is a short term hardship not worth long-term propserity?

But I don't really see it getting any better. I see it going back to the way it was in our grandfathers, grandfathers time.
Cool website though!

A daughter of hope and fear, religion explains to Ignorance the nature of the unknowable. -Ambrose Bierce


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ShadowOfMan wrote:FINE!!!

ShadowOfMan wrote:
FINE!!! You give me a definition of wealth that isn't arbitrary. One that refects today, and not 2000 years from now.

Wealth or wealthy? You defined wealthy.
I define "wealth" as the tools and resources we have to sustain ourselves with maximum satisfaction.

However, wealthy cannot be defined without being arbitrary. I don't use words like "wealthy". I carefully phrase my arguements to avoid conveyance of arbitrary meanings.

Quote:
All I know is my own local economy. Here in my region, I've got manufacturing jobs moving overseas for the cheap labor.

And that cheap labor is helping Indian and Chinese poor people put food on the table.

Quote:
I've got Wal-mart out-competing the small local businesses without adding anything back into the local economy.

It's giving plenty to the local economy by helping the local economy get more stuff without spending more money.

Quote:
My town is bleeding slowly, but surely. And I have a FEELING that many other local economies are experiencing the same thing.

That dollars might be leaving does not mean you are worse off. If dollars are leaving but wealth is entering (wealth being the tools and resources that make our lives better), then your local economy is wealthier.

Quote:
But I don't really see it getting any better. I see it going back to the way it was in our grandfathers, grandfathers time.

The standard of living would not decrease to that level, though I would welcome a cultural return to that age. Back then independance, self-sufficiency, and responsibility were virtues. These days obedience, dependance, and theft appear to be virtues.

Quote:
Cool website though!

That's Kurt Saxon's website. He's the guy that started survivalism (not in the "get a bunch of guns in preparation for apocalypse" type, the self-sufficiency and independance type). He sells books on how to do a lot with common household stuff.


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I'm taking a new stance on

I'm taking a new stance on some things. I have to commend you on your agruements. I have always, at least, respected the liberatarian philosophy as a limit on government. Like I said, I used to even go to meetings with our local liberatarian candidate. Maybe these ideas could be good on a global or federal level. Socialist circles are most efficient on a local level anyway. Maybe labor unions would get a fire under their asses and start demanding more value for their labor.
I would still like to know why you think that the Labor Theory of Value couldn't work.
And how you think that private currencies would be a better alternative to the FRN. Wouldn't some people just reject certain companies currencies? I know I probably wouldn't take a liberty coin as payment. Maybe that's my naivity. Money based on metals, or any one commodity, seems stupid to me. There is a limited supply and it's easily horded.
I like the idea of money reperesenting labor, or the "wert".

A daughter of hope and fear, religion explains to Ignorance the nature of the unknowable. -Ambrose Bierce


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ShadowOfMan wrote:Maybe

ShadowOfMan wrote:
Maybe these ideas could be good on a global or federal level.

Well any subdivision of global inherently means at least two groups more or less ruling themselves. Today we have about 200 such groups. I would rather see 6 billion such groups.

Quote:
Socialist circles are most efficient on a local level anyway.

I contend that socialism is less efficient than lassiez-faire on any level. Localization is good though, I believe we can agree there. If a group of socialists want to go and form a socialist community I have absolutely no problem with that so long as they respect a group of libertarians that want to go and form a libertarian community.

Quote:
Maybe labor unions would get a fire under their asses and start demanding more value for their labor.

They already do that. After it stopped working they asked for a minimum wage to get unskilled labor fired so they'd have less competition.

Quote:
I would still like to know why you think that the Labor Theory of Value couldn't work.

It's not that it couldn't work, it's that it's just wrong. It is not an experiment one can try, it is an answer to a question.
If value derived from labor, mudpie manufacturing would be easy money. And wine making would be a nonexistant industry. Baseball cards could never be worth millions, and yet they are. The evident absurdities that arise from attempting to apply the theory fairly well discredit it.

The correct theory of value is the subjective theory of value as explained by the Austrian School of economics. The "value" something has is unquantifiable. It can only be ranked. Furthermore, because they can only be ranked within one individual's mind, overall value cannot be maximized by taking from one who has much and giving to one who has little because no basis to compare the subjective value of the object between the two people exist. Something's value might be increased by it's scarcity, it's utility, the amount of labor going into it, but these things do not determine the value of an object. People do.

Labor Theory of Value is an objective theory of value. It holds that the value of an object is determined by the amount of labor that goes into it's production, and barring additional labor, it's value does not change. Which would mean that a beat-up and wrecked car would be worth just as much as a brand new car of the same make and model. Obviously this isn't the case.

The LTV cannot explain a large number of economic phenomena and thus it is useless as a theory of value.

It is also my understanding that even Karl Marx refuted the LTV in one of his versions/editions of Das Kaptial (sp?), the third if my memory serves me.

Quote:
And how you think that private currencies would be a better alternative to the FRN.

The FRN is not worth the paper it is written on. If the US government died today, the dollar would be kindling for fires. There is absolutely nothing behind it. It's not on the gold or silver or any standard. It's a currency backed by faith.

Quote:
Wouldn't some people just reject certain companies currencies?

It would be in companies' best interests to accept as many methods of payment as possible. Just as today you can pay in cash, check, credit, debit, money order, et cetera, you could pay in gold, silver, dirty socks, diamond, et cetera.

Quote:
I know I probably wouldn't take a liberty coin as payment.

If the US government died today, the dollar would be worthless paper, but the LD would still be .999 pure silver, and people will still accept that, it is still valuable.

Quote:
Money based on metals, or any one commodity, seems stupid to me. There is a limited supply and it's easily horded.

If the money was hoarded, the hoarders would have a lot of metal doing nothing for them and not a lot of food, shelter, clothes, et cetera. And it would always be possible to switch to another backing should it turn out metal-backing doesn't work, an option which we don't really get today because government fiat essentially mandates use of FRNs. Thousands of years of history do quite well to dispel any potential problems arising from gold money, as gold has been used as money since history has been recorded.

Quote:
I like the idea of money reperesenting labor, or the "wert".

The problem with currencies based upon labor are that they depend upon the recipient to care to actually provide labor. You might get a note redeemable for one hour of labor, for example, but you cannot actually make me perform one hour of labor. It has some utility as a store of value but as kind of money it suffers from lots of problems.


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GlamourKat wrote:I skimmed

GlamourKat wrote:
I skimmed over this thread and I just wanted to say that there are always people who abuse systems put in place for the less fortunate. But there are always people who need them.

Fine, does helping your family justify stealing from mine? You get to eat but my kids don't get to go to college? That is what you are ultimately saying, right?

Look, like I said earlier, I don't think anyone should be allowed to starve in the streets, but at the same time I can hardly justify theft to prevent such a thing. There's got to be a better way, don't you think?

Quote:
I live in Canada, and I grew up on welfare after my dad left. Mom was always looking for jobs, but since she'd quit work to take care of us while dad worked, all her references were long gone. Without the pretty much socialist programs run by my government, I doubt I would be alive or mentally sound right now. It kept us afloat for a few years, then mom got a job and is doing fine.

And hey, you and you mom got shafted, I agree. What I would propose is actual unemployment insurance - like you pay for car insurance. Aside from that, you rely on charity. I do not see any other fair way to do things.

Before you scoff at such a thing, consider the reality it would mean - people would have to pay maybe 5% or less of the tax they pay now - that's an awful lot of cash to give to the good will.

A lot of people will say, well, if you don't FORCE people to take care of each other, they won't. I say, if we won't do it out of our own kindness and good will, why bother pretending our society is going to last? We're in a VERY poor way if we are FORCED to take care of each other.

Quote:
I have a job in a career I adore, and I pay into the system in my taxes. But I really don't mind. Just in case I ever need to dip into it again, and in case it helps someone else. I get scared when I think about people losing their jobs and struggling to make ends meet. Sometimes shit happens, and you need a safety net.

Yeah, shit does happen. I'm unemployed myself right now. I STILL advocate the system I've presented. Unemployment insurance should have NOTHING to do with the government, if private comapanies wish to cover you for a premium, that would be acceptable.

And since I know you are going to ask, YES, I am collecting unemployment insurance from the state - but this was paid for by ME and the company who laid me off. Why not simply make it a choice? Make it privitized? Make it fair?

You don't MIND paying taxes, because no other option has ever been presented to you. You take the system you are handed as a given, do you not?

Quote:
Now, donating my taxes to churches? I have a serious problem with THAT. Sad

And this happens to an extent in the US. What do you think Faith Based Initiatives are? On top of that churches don't pay taxes on their property or income like every other business or person in the US do.

Quote:
I wish we had checkboxes on our tax forms where you could say what you wanted your taxes to go towards.

SO DO I! That's ultimately what I'm arguing for, I simply remove the government from the equation. You get to choose where you money goes, and the government doesn't get a chunk of it. Don't you see that's what I advocate?

Quote:
Like people opposed to welfare could leave it off, and I could leave off churches... I like my system, LOL.

Guess what? You agree with me. You are a libertarian. If we can choose where our taxes go, why do we need a governmental entity to collect and distribute them?

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ShadowOfMan wrote:Quote:

ShadowOfMan wrote:
Quote:
Whatever you want to believe about what I say or advocate, understand that I say and advocate it because I honestly believe it is or could be if properly implemented helpful and beneficial to all.

I truely believe that you are being sincere. And I don't at all look down upon you for holding capitalism in high esteem.

It isn't so much capitalism I value as fairness and freedom.

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If you were in the 5% wealthiest, I probably wouldn't like you though. This is extremely healthy debate, and I've learned a whole lot so far. I haven't changed my mind, but I want you to keep trying.

Personally, in a true free market, I fail to see how anyone gets the shaft. Can you honestly say that a global free market economy wouldn't benefit the world?

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This GREATLY depends on how you define wealth. We CERTAINLY DO NOT have the capacity worldwide to keep the entire world in the standard of living the US and Western Europe enjoy. Uganda won't be seeing Plasma screens for the majority of the populace for quite some time.
What needs to be done is the modernization of such countries. We must bring the third world into the modern age if they are willing to come.
As I said earlier, the concept of imaginary lines in the dirt have to go. The fastest and easiest and most lasting way to unite the world is by the market place, not the treaty table.

Wealth is hard to define, isn't it? I say (as defined by our modern age): nutritious food, clean water, decent shelter (THAT THEY OWN), enough electricity (heating), good healthcare, AND higher education. Anyone with less is poor. Anyone with more is wealthy. Then there's the people in the middle.
Is there anything wrong making sure that everyone in the world gets this basic human needs?

Not at all, so long as you don't steal to do it. Think about what I'm advocating. I want to open all borders, abolish tariffs and excises - how is this going to do anything other than bring the third world up to a proper standard of living, to let them grow and gain equality? It's already happened or happening in India and China, and it is going to happen EVERYWHERE. The ONLY way the world and its people can really be equal and free is to put us all in ONE market.

There will ALWAYS be rich and poor, but I see no reason that the difference between the two should be life or death. On that we can probably agree. The difference here is I advocate the inevitable solution that must be achieved if we are to survive as a species, and other solutions either inhibit of provide simple stop gaps along the way.

Do you not agree that globalization is inevitable if not necessary? Do you not think it will increase the quality of life around the the globe?

Already prosperous countries have been fighting this for the last century, it is time to give in, because it ultimately hurts us all to have such a gap between the 1st and 3rd world.

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And I don't care what you say, getting rid of welfare, financial aid, ect., will only make it worse!

How, exactly? How has what we've been doing working? How has what we've been doing decreased the gap between rich and poor? How have we done anything other than steal from people in order to put a finger in the dyke without addressing underlying issues?

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And I could never support a party that would rid us of this safety net! Even though I have never once been given a dime by the government, and I wish I didn't have to pay taxes (I only make about 15k/year), I support taxation under this particular economic system. I must be the stupid. That's the only explaination. Just keep learning me.

You are not stupid, you've simply never been offered a better way or considered the fact that there could be one. You're comfortable with theft, and have no ideas for addressing the problems you think necessitate that theft - I guess that's where we differ Laughing out loud

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ShadowOfMan
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Thank you liberatarians for

Thank you liberatarians for making me work harder to understand economics. Unfortunately, I feel like I have a spike in my brain. I feel like I'm no longer willing to push any agenda. Ultimately I love the smallest government influence possible.

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You are not stupid, you've simply never been offered a better way or considered the fact that there could be one. You're comfortable with theft, and have no ideas for addressing the problems you think necessitate that theft - I guess that's where we differ

I don't like theft if everyone has an equal share. But I do endorse theft, especially organised mass theft, from the haves under this particular economic system. You are also not very willing to concider a better way. One that maybe radically different than the currencies that have been offered. Under the current system, some are able to walk away with an obscene amount. Taxes are an effort to level the field, and they don't go far enough in my opinion. I'm all for consumption taxes or flat out taxing the rich only, to help the poor. I steal sometimes and I won't stop.

Maybe it's liberatarian to suggest that you may own just as much as you could personally defend. If there was no police force to protect personal property, maybe people could hire their own private security forces, armed to the teeth. Maybe hostile, corperate takeovers would get a lot more interesting.

A daughter of hope and fear, religion explains to Ignorance the nature of the unknowable. -Ambrose Bierce


Zhwazi
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ShadowOfMan wrote:But I do

ShadowOfMan wrote:
But I do endorse theft, especially organised mass theft, from the haves under this particular economic system.

The way to do it isn't to steal from them all, it's to take away their priviliges. A "Corporation" is such a privilige.
Note that I'm not using "Corporation" in the same sense as "Company" or "Business". A "Corporation" is a legal entity, not an economic one. It's a folder of papers in a government office somewhere. It's a privilige because corporations pay lower taxes, are taxed on profit rather than income (so if a company takes in 10 million and spends 9 million, only the 1 million dollars are taxable), giving them a tax advantage, the owners are not held liable for debts incurred in the corporate name (so if a company takes in 9 million and spends 10 million, bankrupting the corporation, the owners of the corporation don't have to pay the extra 1 million difference), and a few other things.

Don't steal their money, take away their privilige. That will put everyone on an even playing field.

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Under the current system, some are able to walk away with an obscene amount.

This is not a bad thing. People that make an obscene amount can do so because the decisions they made pertaining to allocation of resources helped obscene numbers of people get what they wanted. Workers get the paychecks they wanted. Customers get the products they wanted. There is no inherent injustice in some people making more money than other people.

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Taxes are an effort to level the field, and they don't go far enough in my opinion.

Taxes are an effort to raise revenue for the government. Progressive taxes are an attempt to redistribute wealth. "Level" and "Redistribution" are incompatible. What happens in a free market is "level". Taxes redistribute such that it is no longer level. So do Corporations. With taxes and corporations it's extremely unbalanced which throws everything out of whack. Get rid of both.

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I'm all for consumption taxes or flat out taxing the rich only, to help the poor.

I don't support stealing a fish to feed a poor man for a day. I'd rather donate my time to teach the poor man to fish.

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Maybe it's liberatarian to suggest that you may own just as much as you could personally defend.

That's nihilist, not libertarian. That would plunge us into feudalism. It would return us to the age of the strong preying upon the weak. The strong would become Lords, the weak would become serfs. Such a system cannot by any stretch of the imagination be "libertarian".

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If there was no police force to protect personal property, maybe people could hire their own private security forces, armed to the teeth.

The security forces would then kill the owner and take over all of his property. It would be stupid to do so.

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Maybe hostile, corperate takeovers would get a lot more interesting.

Corporate takeovers are not "hostile". A corporate takeover is when one corporation buys a lot of stock in another corporation which gives them control of the corporation. There is nothing hostile about it. Hell, John D. Rockefeller made one guy rich using corporate takeovers. Rockefeller would buy his competitor, and the guy would just go make another company, and Rockefeller would buy that. He did that several times and retired with a lot of money. If it was so hostile, why did the man keep going into business knowing his corporation would be taken over? There is absolutely nothing hostile about it!


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"I don't support stealing a

"I don't support stealing a fish to feed a poor man for a day. I'd rather donate my time to teach the poor man to fish."

Didn't you ever hear that saying whoever said "give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat forever" must have never gone fishing?

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What, you can't actually

What, you can't actually refute anything I say, so you contradict a metaphor? You're a brilliant debater.


Yellow_Number_Five
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ShadowOfMan wrote:Thank you

ShadowOfMan wrote:
Thank you liberatarians for making me work harder to understand economics. Unfortunately, I feel like I have a spike in my brain. I feel like I'm no longer willing to push any agenda. Ultimately I love the smallest government influence possible.

I just state my case, you take it for what you will.

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You are not stupid, you've simply never been offered a better way or considered the fact that there could be one. You're comfortable with theft, and have no ideas for addressing the problems you think necessitate that theft - I guess that's where we differ

I don't like theft if everyone has an equal share.

What would organized theft accomplish in such a case?

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But I do endorse theft, especially organised mass theft, from the haves under this particular economic system.

That will NEVER be acceptable to me, so long as I don't see such a think as necessary. The fact is, it isn't necessary, and even if it were, it would be difficult to justifiy or effect without totalitarianism. Regardless of Robin Hood's intentions, he was still a thief. No person's well being is so great or important that it justifies violating another's rights and property against their will to serve the former.

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You are also not very willing to concider a better way. One that maybe radically different than the currencies that have been offered.

Of course I am, no such system has ever been presented to me.

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Under the current system, some are able to walk away with an obscene amount.

So? Did they not earn this money?

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Taxes are an effort to level the field, and they don't go far enough in my opinion. I'm all for consumption taxes or flat out taxing the rich only, to help the poor. I steal sometimes and I won't stop.

So, yeah, like I said, you advocate theft in order to put a band-aid on the symptoms of the problem. I advocate a system that could actually fix the problem. I never claimed it would be perfect or that it wouldn't hurt as we worked toward it, but I've proposed a way to a better world for all, IMO.

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Maybe it's liberatarian to suggest that you may own just as much as you could personally defend. If there was no police force to protect personal property, maybe people could hire their own private security forces, armed to the teeth. Maybe hostile, corperate takeovers would get a lot more interesting.

That's a rather grim view, and I see no reason at all that a corporate police state is the inevitbale outcome of what I advocate - I most certainly have considered the possibility though. If you wish to address some of the other points I've made, feel free to.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins

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