Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Some comments in the ongoing debate regarding the candidacy of Elizabeth Warren got me to thinking about our political system and people’s reactions to it. Warren is criticized by the Right for obvious reasons, given her strong stances on managing the economy and controlling the excesses of the Corporate Culture. In a sense she offends their sense of political purity, but then that is but a given because she is a Democrat. We have seen though on the Right that such conservative stalwarts as Richard Lugar have gone down to primary defeat because he failed the Tea Parties test of what a “true” conservative should be. Richard Lugar failed the “purity” test even though his conservative history is impeccable. In my conception political purity conforms to “party line” thinking, punishing those that fail to adhere in all respects to the standards of a given faction’s concept of standards their candidates must adhere to in order to retain enthusiastic support. I use “faction”, rather than “party”, because our two party political system actually represents an amalgam of various factions imperfectly coalescing under the rubric of a “Political Party”.
From a Left, or even Centrist perspective, there has been both amusement and trepidation about how the “Tea Party” faction has exerted control over the Republican Party. Then too, there is the same reaction to the power exerted by Fundamentalist Christians, a group that at some points overlaps with the “Tea Party”. A human trait is to see the foibles of groups we define as “other”, while being oblivious to the idiosyncrasies of the groups we are aligned with. Liberals, Progressives, Radicals and even Leftist Centrists like to believe that they are immune from the turmoil that they see in their Right Wing opposites, yet the “Left” and even the “Center” also routinely define people in terms of litmus tests of political purity. This was highlighted by certain comments on the Warren thread where people who were seemingly in tune with her domestic policy views, disliked her positions on the Middle East and appeared to hold them against her. This has definitely been true with many progressives and/or civil libertarians in viewing this current Administration. My purpose here is not one of castigation for anyone’s perspective; rather I’m interested in exploring the phenomenon of the belief that political figures need to meet all of our expectations in their positions, or be unworthy of our support. My own perspective is that tests of political purity are self defeating because it is impossible for any particular political figure to be in perfect agreement with all that any of us individually believe and politics becomes oppression without the ability to negotiate. The process of real negotiation requires compromise. What follows is why I believe that is true. Before my discussion though, I think a definition of perspectives would be helpful. There are some of us, including myself to a certain degree, who believe that we are living under a corporate oligarchy and as such the common pretense that our national fate is in the hands of the majority’s vote, is but pleasant mythology. I wrote about this in my guest blog Published 1, March 17, 2012: http://jonathanturley.org/2012/03/17/a-real-history-of-the-last-sixty-two-years/ .One logical conclusion that can be drawn from believing that democracy is an illusion, is that voting is a wasted effort, since whatever person we choose will either be a corporate stooge, or unelectable. I can respect those who draw that conclusion since the evidence of its truth is quite convincing. My own conclusion is not quite there yet, even though I do believe that we are under the rule of a coalition of the Military Industrial Complex and of the Corporate Elite. The redeeming feature to me is that I don’t believe in the homogeneity of the “ruling classes”. I think that they are made up of various factions and roiled by clashing egos. In my estimation voting for politicians thus has value because the vote affects the competition among our oligarchs. There is a qualitative difference for instance between Buffett/Gates and the Koch Brothers, in the sense that the former believe in more humane social policies and the latter have a draconian social view.
If one believes that Democracy is completely illusory, then why bother voting, since voting is a futile exercise? The logical conclusion of such a belief is to disdain all of American politics and politicians as being tools of the Oligarchy. From that perspective it isn’t a question of particular policy, since almost every player in normative politics is not to be trusted. So the question becomes how do the people change things when the political process is believed to be non-existent? Obviously, if it is ones view that America politics is a total sham, then a massive uprising of the people would be needed to make change. How does that uprising occur? Will its’ nature be peaceful, or violent? While I know there are “militias” out in the hills of places like Idaho, are they capable of banding together to overthrow our current government, I think not. Violent revolutions always seem to breed unforeseen and unpleasant excesses, which make their original aims moot. So the question becomes how do we effect a peaceful revolution? The answer is simple, but the process itself is immensely complex. A peaceful revolution can come about when you are able to convince an overwhelming majority of the people that the current system needs change and that they need to refuse to cooperate with it. Think of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. When the media is in the hands of corporations though, the issue is one of how does the message of change come across to reach the populace? It’s a question I’ve pondered for years.
Back in the 60’s there was the idea of “dropping out” of a corrupt system. Its problem was that it was espoused by many and practiced by few. The truth was that for those “dropping out” the system didn’t miss their participation, nor would it now. A current conservative stratagem is to make voting harder, thereby limiting turnout of voters negative to their cause. We solve nothing by not voting. We could vote, but cast our votes for nascent opposition parties. This is not a bad premise in my estimation, even though in our loaded political system, minority party effectiveness is more limited than under parliamentary government. Let us think though about a minority party legislator’s ability to be effective once elected, since I assume that the process of gaining political power through organizing a minority party opposition would be slow and could be violently opposed. Think of the police reactions to Occupy Wall Street. However, OWS does show that the elite can feel threatened by a mass movement.
When we discuss the election of someone whose political views are outside of what the “mainstream allows”, we need to take into account how much positive influence they can have on the political process, if they are unwilling to compromise their “political purity”. Let us take the real instance of Senator Bernie Sanders, a socialist, as he does his job in the Senate. I believe that Bernie is the most ethical and perceptive Senator we have had in the Senate in a long time. He is also an effective Senator in terms of being able to not only put forth a progressive point of view, but to actually influence Senate activity. In order to be effective in the Senate, Bernie has had to compromise on certain issues and thus would certainly be seen from the orthodox socialist perspective to have sold out. In contrast let us take another man whose career I’ve admired, Dennis Kucinich. Dennis has been an aggressive/effective spokesman on a national level for unpopular, yet valid causes. Within the house though he has not been able to effectuate change simply because Dennis does not do compromise well
In today’s world a political change process is mainly effectuated in four ways:
1. Violent revolution, which is highly problematic at best.
2. Massive non cooperation with the system, ala Gandhi and King, which can be very successful based
upon the right circumstances.
3. Organizing and creating an opposition political movement, a possibly fruitful, yet hard process to carry
out with success..
4. Working within the system, imperfect as it may be, to effect slow change.
All of the above can be work to effect change in a given context, but one factor is a given no matter which method is chosen. To build a mass movement in a diverse population the need to compromise is paramount. This need to compromise is called “coalition building”. The Right has been effective at this for years when you think of the coalition between religious fundamentalists, lukewarm objectivists and outright corporatists. What would Jesus, Ayn Rand and even Adam Smith think of the ways their teachings have been presumably melded? In the past the Left also coalesced around certain issues, bringing together groups that were hardly homogeneous. However, from the 60’s onward building of coalitions on the Left has broken down. “Centrists” and “Liberals” became anathema to “progressives” and “radicals”. After all that he had accomplished Martin Luther King became an “Uncle Tom” in the minds of “Black Power” advocates for his refusal to entertain the concept of violence as a tool.
The Left coalition also began to break down in the 60’s over the issue of Viet Nam. Working class union members generally supported the war that was drafting and killing their children. The leadership of the AFL-CIO, who had striven to disassociate themselves from Marxism during the McCarthy era, had become part of the country’s establishment. As George Meany, the AFL-CIO President, began to play golf with Eisenhower and major industrialists, the Union movement swung away from its Left Wing roots. The fact that the labor movement was overwhelmingly “white working class” in an era where Blacks were demanding equal status also took its toll on the coalition between Big Labor and the Democratic Party. The AFL-CIO and Teamsters supported Richard Nixon in 1968..
The labor movement’s departure from coalition with the Democratic Party was to have devastating consequences for its strength. Their workers, doing well financially aspired to a scaled down version of the American Dream. The threat that competition with Blacks for jobs and with the Left’s critique of muscular foreign policy, helped drive white workers into the Republican Party. The fact that their leadership had become cozy with Management and Republicans led the way. The power of the labor movement waned until today it is a shadow of what it once was. The Left coalition forged under FDR and informed experientially by the “Great Depression”, began to fight amongst themselves. The battles increasingly became issues of “purity of political belief”. When a person’s political value is weighed on only specific issues that are politically “black and white”, coalition becomes almost impossible. Without the ability to coalesce “Movements” face severe limitations in their ability to grow.
I believe that in the desire for reforming our governance to work for the interests of all the people, all viable methods must be used. Of the four methods I list above I believe that only the latter three are really viable. A violent revolution in this country will only hasten the totality of oppression, since violent revolutions never seem to work out the way people have planned and that the people once having risen find themselves ruled harshly by those they so hopefully followed. Refute this premise if you will, but please don’t cite the American Revolution. While it certainly had violence it was a rebellion of colonies against an overseas colonial state. By revolution I mean the rebellion of a people in a certain geographical area against their own government.
Methodologically, none of the three methods can work without bringing together people of differing standards via a coalition that accepts deviation from a “party line”. This seems obvious to me since rarely do those who wish change agree on all issues. Are there “deal breakers” that cannot brook compromise? That depends upon the individual, the perceived threat and the current circumstance. I have my own deal breakers, certainly, but I invoke them in context of my reading of the perceived threat.
What do you the reader think of the argument I’ve made? If you disagree please let me know, since I understand that on any given subject I can be wrong and I am really willing to learn. If you agree with me then what are your “deal breakers”? Perhaps if you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
One of the deal breakers for me is women’s rights and reproductive freedom. I find myself more and more aligned with Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood endorsed Obama the other day. That’s why I could never have never supported Ron Paul, and I can vote for Obama despite disagreement with him on some other issues.
I am going to have to read your remarks at least a couple of times.
But I think you have mentioned one of the most disturbing and disruptive characteristics of today’s political scene – the refusal to compromise.
I think it is fair to say that America was formed precisely because individuals and groups were willing to compromise.
Much is made of American exceptionalism. If there is anything at all exceptional about the American experience it has to include the willingness to reach a deal. What is exceptional about America is the understanding that in a democracy, solutions require broad support, and that broad support usually comes from compromise.
bfm,
I agree with you, but you know what the golden rule is. He who has the gold, rules. Do you think those with the gold are going to give any of it up in the interest of compromise?
Politics is the art of compromise. Some compromises are done well and we have good art. Some are done poorly and we have bad art or war. Thus it has always been.
“deal breakers for me is women’s rights and reproductive freedom.” (SwM) … that is my only deal breaker and civil-rights for “so-called” minorities is a close, almost indistinguishable, second. As such I am fully aware that it is not a deal breaker for others as their issues are not deal breakers for me. Party affiliation for me is based solely on those issues. Otherwise, I’d probably be a Republican which is why Bob Stone and I get along so well.
Just notices I typed is rather than are ooops!, blouise. I could never be a republican as I am to pro-union.
noticed, oops again… Not having much success at typing. It is no wonder that I got a bad grade in it in high school.
SwM,
I’m a strong unionist but it’s not a deal breaker for me.
Interesting post. As a few others commented, the deal breaker for me is women’s rights, especially reproductive health care. Those I vote for are not going to be the ones who introduce or repeal legislation that negatively effects women’s access to health care or their ability to sue relating to unequal pay. I have a question though. In the last week I’ve seen Bernie Sanders labeled a Socialist. And maybe I’m splitting hairs here, but it was my understanding that Sanders is an Independent with populist leanings. Does he actually consider himself a Socialist? Thanks.
Karen, Sanders is listed on the ballot as an independent, but he has said that he is a socialist. He caucuses with the democratic party.
The reality of compromise is something we need to understand.
But that works against the constitutional and other values at the moment in our current state of affairs.
By that I mean we should not compromise our constitution away.
We should not compromise with torture, because international treaties, which are our law once we ratify them, should not be compromised, and torture is way wrong.
We should not compromise war crimes away to the point where perpetrators are not prosecuted.
Another thing that makes compromise difficult, is that in some cases sociopaths and psychopaths have been elected, and there is some confusion when their symptoms are confused with ideology.
Compromise in that case is problematic.
So, my concerns are that we be careful not to confuse our current political state of affairs with a normal political system such that we forget some of what we must do is therapeutic, not political.
That complicates matters.
Thinking that collective/plurality determinations, by the number of diverse groups that reside in most cultures, will provide what is in the best interest of the majority, is one of the logical fallacies that almost all people circum to. I’m not really sure if this should actually be called a logical fallacy or just a misconception. And here is why:
Most people vote for what is in the own best interests. One would tend to think that if we are all doing this then it would equalize out and everybody would benefit equally from the results. However it doesn’t.
In a nut shell, what money is redistributed by government is generally an expense or a cost of doing business to society and the political arena ends up driving up the costs as politician’s compromise to special interests. It’s not that anyone initiative is that bad in of itself, it’s that collectively every society ends up bankrupting themselves as all the various special interest promote what is in their own best interest rather than the majorities.
Today we have over 115 different taxes, and an almost continual expanding level of the redistribution of that money to the various special interests. It’s not, once again, that any one tax is horrible, it’s that collectedly, many businesses, have had a very difficult time in maintaining their companies, without getting some level relief/subsidy/grant/tax incentives, etc., from government or they must cheat the system in some way such as skimming the cash, not properly deposing of their waste and the host of other offences that businesses do to increase their incomes or lower the profits. Everyone talks about corporate welfare being unfair, well it is. Those whom get the benefits have an unfair advantage over others. How do we get those advantages, through the political system.
We’ve has some 41,000 factories close down just in the last decade for a variety of reasons but it is almost assuredly always economic in nature.
What I explored here one of the reasons why democracies throughout history have always failed and why our society is on the verge of failing unless we were to do a total about face and start going back to a much greater free market system with especially no corporate welfare. This is not likely to happen though, since most people vote for what is in their own best interest.
If you don’t beleive what I’m saying, perhaps it is my fault for just not explaining it well enough. What I can assure you is that this knowledge is well documented and discussed througout centuries of study by the various prominent economists throughout the world.
What the left [the entire spectrum] wants is not political or economic freedom. You cannot compromise with people who want to take what you earn; Frances new Socialist president is floating a 75% tax rate for upper incomes.
http://www.france24.com/en/20120228-hollande-sarkozy-elections-france-tax-rate-super-rich-top-earners
And hard leftists in this country would do the same thing in the name of “helping” the economy.
So how do you compromise with people who wish to take 75% of the money you work for? That is slavery pure and simple, no other word for it. A man uses the hours of his life to make money, to be productive and to strip 75% of his income is to take 75% of his life from him.
Why would anyone want to compromise under those circumstances? A compromise would be between no taxes and a tax rate of 15% to 20%.
I don’t think the left really wants to improve the economy; there is no benefit to them to see people thriving and supporting themselves. People who can fend for themselves don’t need government help; other than to provide a level playing field through the application of objective law.
If the choice is political and economic freedom on the one hand and a taxation rate of 75% and all the rules and regulations that must accompany that rate [like the one the French government will have to impose to keep the very rich from leaving France and taking their money with them], how can there be compromise? Why would you even want to compromise with someone wanting to steal 75% of your income?
Are you willing to do away with corporate welfare and bank bailouts? It was a democratic controlled house and senate who voted for TARP and Stimulus. Are you willing to set medicine free? Are you willing to shut down welfare payments, get rid of social security and do away with Medicare? Are you willing to let people be free to fail? Are you willing to have a voluntary social safety net where people join mutual aid societies of their choice rather than being forced to “join” the governments one size fits all “mutual” aid society?
The left will not, so what is there to compromise about? And why would the right want to in the face of one leftist economic failure after another? Even the Chinese gave up economic Marxism (“scientific” socialism) and embraced capitalism. In less than 40 years it has rocketed China to an economic power house. What do you think it would do here, in the states, especially with our long history of individual rights, self reliance and independence?
When you have a system which has produced all the wealth you see in the world why would you want to compromise with failure?
Bron,
If the current economic situation continues, failure is on its way. Seventy-five percent of zero is zero. Eat cake.
Bron 1, June 2, 2012 at 1:40 pm
… You cannot compromise with people who want to take what you earn …
When you have a system which has produced all the wealth you see in the world why would you want to compromise with failure?
=========================================
Those cut both ways. Thus one must have a factual background before one knows which way is being cut.
Failure in one society is success in another.
In the U.S. we have a tradition of seeking fundamental fair and equal opportunity. Slavery does not produce that. So we began a national behavior that would eradicate it.
It started with zero equal opportunity then headed for equal opportunity, which was a long distance to cover.
A hundred years later course changes were made to bring fair and equal opportunity more within reach.
Meanwhile the 99% began to be plundered by the 1% because of the sainthood of Ayn Rand and the embracing of those doctrines.
The recent census, mandated by the constitution, shows that we have become a plutocracy with a plutonomy.
The economy driven by the middle class consumers was replaced with a plutonomy that requires spending by the 1% for it to function anymore:
(The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy). The 99% have been plundered by a 1% designed plutocratic system that is the epitome of unfairness and inequality of opportunity.
Dredd,
You are my hero. And don’t think of that as a man crush.
“Thinking that collective/plurality determinations, by the number of diverse groups that reside in most cultures, will provide what is in the best interest of the majority, is one of the logical fallacies that almost all people circum to.”
Skiprob,
What you say may be true, but how do you equate that with what I actually wrote?
Dredd:
Real wages doubled in the 19th century. 85% of poverty had been eliminated prior to Johnson’s Great Society.
The 1% have plundered nothing from the 99%, the 99% dont have anything to plunder. The 1% created their wealth and created wealth for others, Ford, Gates, TJ Rodgers, Dave Thomas the list is endless.
If the wages of the 99% are too low, thank government for restricting innovation and economic growth. The government plunders 100% of people with jobs on a weekly basis.
Mike S, I agree with BigFatMike that your article requires reading, re-reading, and re-reading. This puts you in a class with Garcia Marquez and Nabokov, by the way (although I will not memorize it) so —
One of the most significant pieces of this article, for me, is this sentence:
“My own perspective is that tests of political purity are self defeating because it is impossible for any particular political figure to be in perfect agreement with all that any of us individually believe and politics becomes oppression without the ability to negotiate.”
OK, that is where I laughed out loud, because of the surprise involved in hearing a sentence I had probably been trying to SAY for 35 years. I would have left out the word “political” and “politics” and, thus edited, it would have represented probably the biggest real issue in my life, although I find myself dealing with the second, third, fourth, and fifth…(etc.) issues instead.
Let me try to state it, because I’m a bit stunned, yet:
My own perspective is that tests of purity are self-defeating because it is impossible for anyone to be in perfect agreement with all that anyone else individually believes, and life with others can become oppression per se without the ability to negotiate.”
Just so, I think that says it. Those who are sure that just by being WRONG you are divested (often AUTOMATICALLY!) of your rights to certain minimum interests. And “WRONG” can just mean you refuse to subscribe to one or another unwritten (or even written) standard, by some measure, in some way, even if that way is not a violation of any law or a crime as defined in any criminal code. This is not government, of course; it is bullying in its most fundamental form. Either AGREE WITH ME or you’re SOL. AMERICA: love it or leave it. You want to wear a hoodie and be regarded as a hood? Bang you’re dead. etc. etc. ad nauseam.
That’s where we are, at least some of the time. It’s both tiresome and scary, because it is not being properly identified as a problem for all of us. And in the midst of this, there are plenty of people who somehow make themselves agree with whatever the party line sells NOT because they agree with it (or, in most cases, even understand it) but because they WANT to accept some stupid prepackaged explanation of it that gives them enough of a “pride” feeling or a “yeah, what HE said” feeling to merit “support” for the proposition. Nobody in his right mind could believe that all Germans went along with Hitler’s program or even that all Nazis did, but once it was life-threatening to DISagree and a facile propaganda campaign made it easy to climb on board using one stupid platitude or another to justify adherence, the effect was so destructive that even the country itself has not yet recovered from the cataclysm it caused.
For a long time I have voted for the “less or least horrifying candidate” in every election. I have also aligned myself with causes that I have chosen because they promote the “least worst alternatives” available in each circumstance. Only once have I found my way clear to propose the “best alternative” to a situation and then I worked my way laboriously up to the level of both judges and legislators, so I could present my proposals, and to a one, each of them said, in his/her own way: “Oh of COURSE that would be best, but we can’t ever get anything like that going; all we can do at this point is to try to get a less terrible result a few times than we KNOW we will get most of the time.” That’s realism.
If you can’t even risk PROPOSING a really good alternative, because it would make the negotiation fail to even suggest it, your room for movement is so badly restricted that you knock yourself out for what amounts to a gesture, and often, that gesture involves the middle finger, either hand.
“What the left [the entire spectrum] wants is not political or economic freedom. You cannot compromise with people who want to take what you earn”
Bron,
If a country wishes to continue with a political system other than pure oppression then the diverse groups within it need to compromise on some level. This is obvious because people tend to have different opinions of how politics (as in the art of governance) should work. You set up a false premise at the outset by the statement that the Left is against political ad economic freedom, which is merely name calling of the “Nyahh! Nyahh! Nyahh!” variety and end by saying no compromise is possible. In essence your political philosophy would then be “my way, or the highway”. A sure bet to provide either decades of conflict, or to end up in a totalitarian state. You really do need to logically follow your pet economic/political theories out to their probable consequences.
In essence your political philosophy would then be “my way, or the highway”. A sure bet to provide either decades of conflict, or to end up in a totalitarian state. You really do need to logically follow your pet economic/political theories out to their probable consequences.
===========================================================
Probable consequences is correct. History repeats itself. A substantial percentage of the civilian population in the United States is armed to the teeth. Not making any judgment calls, just an observation.
“If the wages of the 99% are too low, thank government for restricting innovation and economic growth.”
Bron,
You are a leader at this blog in the ability to both believe and spout meaningless platitudes time and again, despite how many times they have been disproved. Though I thoroughly disagree with you I respect your talent for denial and by that I don’t mean a river in Egypt.
Great treatise Mike! I agree with some of the other commenters that inherent in our problems today is the control of our economy and government exercised by corporations and the wealthy. Without a real Republican Party that is willing to reasonably tax the wealthy and corporations, there is very little hope. Bron, You mentioned France’s proposed 75% tax rate and try to equate it to what progressives have been clamoring for, but your facts just don’t add up. No one on the left or in the Adminstration has called for a 75% tax rate. There have been mentions of how well the economy did during the Eisenhower years with that kind of tax rate, but that is the extant of it. Why do people with incomes over $106,000 (approx) not have to pay into Social Security once they have hit that magic number? Why do Hedge funds have a unique tax rate for their income? The answer is political power and greed.
“My own perspective is that tests of purity are self-defeating because it is impossible for anyone to be in perfect agreement with all that anyone else individually believes, and life with others can become oppression per se without the ability to negotiate.”
Malisha,
To paraphrase Sally Field’s Oscar Award speech “You get me….you really, really get me!” As to being compared to Nabokov and Marquez, while flattery might get you everywhere with such a wretch as me, in this case I’m all to aware of my limitations.
“The 1% have plundered nothing from the 99%, the 99% dont have anything to plunder.”
OOPS!
Mike Spindell, I was not flattering you. You’re not on-stage with Garcia Marquez and Nabokov! I just wanted to let you know that I would read what you wrote OVER AND OVER as I do with stuff THEY WROTE! (But some stuff they wrote I couldn’t even struggle through the first time!)
So, friendly blog-wretch, I have now self-corrected. (I say this quickly so as not to get into a life and death struggle with any of your enemies.)
Matt Johnson, in Yemen there are more guns than people.
Mike S asked:
I think you outlined the issues elegantly and succinctly, and I have no quarrel at all with it as far as it went, which was all the way from A-Z in terms of sane governance and politics.
As you probably well know, I view our current epoch of governance and politics to be seriously infected with sociopaths, and even psychopaths.
Thus, I see a need for therapeutic movements, which ought to be led by many folks like you around the country, who will in most instances have a better handle on a viable therapy.
“Purists” as a label is also used, no matter how politely, quite simply as a way of throwing names at those who disagree with you. When in doubt, look at the content or truthfulness of what someone says, no matter what side of the left-right spectrum, look at the danger or concern they are warning about, and not at whether he or she conforms to some allowable range of discussion or compromise.
To a Democrat, or a liberal, or many others without an easy category, a candidate willing to support a war with Iran represents a very real danger to the population as a whole, no matter what other enlightened positions that candidate may have.
To describe such concerns as being applied to Warren as a “litmus test”, or that they represent some impossible standard of “purity” to an ideal is nuts. They represent life and death for possibly millions of people. The War with Iraq confirms those numbers in spades. It was a far smaller military objective.
Warren’s comments about Iran and Israel are made in her very own words on her very own web site. It is not a matter of idle speculation and one can easily form their own opinion of whether they are as relevant to her candidacy as they are to her web site (she barely discusses any other foreign policy). But what one can’t do is claim that Warren’s position on Iran and Israel is like some minor position insisted on by “purists” of the left or the right. Precisely because of her “liberal” credentials, her support for such an unleashing of our military might would be hugely influential and potentially catastrophic.
Democrats compromise all the time. What else have thy got to offer?
Bron 1, June 2, 2012 at 2:43 pm
Dredd:
Real wages doubled in the 19th century. 85% of poverty had been eliminated prior to Johnson’s Great Society.
The 1% have plundered nothing from the 99%, the 99% dont have anything to plunder. The 1% created their wealth and created wealth for others, Ford, Gates, TJ Rodgers, Dave Thomas the list is endless.
If the wages of the 99% are too low, thank government for restricting innovation and economic growth. The government plunders 100% of people with jobs on a weekly basis.
===================================
That calls for a definition of “government”, which I define as a plutocracy currently, which is by definition is also “the 1%”.
It would seem, then, that our definitions of “government” are at variance.
If our definitions were the same, then we would be in agreement.
Compare your statement:
modified with my definition of government:
I do not see politicians (office holders), for the most part, as being anything but fronts put up by the governing 1% as deceivers who use propaganda to deceive the populace.
I’ll have to think about this a bit for a reply of substance, but a couple of thoughts now. First of all, I think that all four of Mike’s suggestions may be appropriate depending on the circumstances. This is what will require more thought.
I would point out that women’s rights and reproductive freedom is a deal-breaker for many: those who demand it and those who oppose it. Neither group is interested in compromise as things currently stand. There is a middle ground but that’s not being talked about. And both groups are ready to tar and feather me for suggesting that compromise is possible. Right now those advocating complete subservience are having success, which leads to those demanding freedom of decisions and access digging in their heels. Those in power are oppressing the needs of the minority.
Just to throw something in. Concensus is achieved when all parties can say “I can live with that.” What we have now leaves far too many saying that they can’t live with that, literally. And they aren’t being heard by those making the rules.
1. How come Denmark has such a big footprint?
2. Dredd, that goes on my list of “great ideas that unfortunately will never become the way of the world in spite of the obvious fact that they should.” It’s not a long list.
Malisha,
How many guns do you think there are in the United States? Are you trying to equate the U.S. with Yemen?
“Purity”: a pejorative term used by corporate Democrats like President Obama to denigrate and discourage any attempts by the poor and working class, i.e, The Left, to have a meaningful say in Democratic Party policies.
As opposed to “Pragmatic Centrism”: meaning “(further-to-the-right-ism),” or corrupt capitulation to corporate larceny and perpetual imperial war.
When Republicans win mid-term and presidential elections, they take what they want, because, as Dick Cheney said: “Reagan taught us that deficits don’t matter” and “This is our due.”
When Democrats win mid-term and presidential elections, they immediately defer to Republicans who scream bloody murder about deficits — except for endless war spending and tax cuts for the wealthy that produce the deficits. Democrats apparently take what Republicans say about deficits at face value. Democrats actually think that Republicans give a shit about the fiscal health of the nation instead of the vast wealth accumulation of a tiny fraction of the population. Democrats suffer from terminal learning impairment and Congenital Stockholm Syndrome.
FDR. New Deal. Get with the program, Democrats.
Michael,
What Tony C. said is correct. It’s probably going to take another meltdown before the public at large finally figures it out.
Remember the last depression when General MacArthur rousted the shantytown camped in Washington DC because they wanted their WWI bonuses? If that happens again there will be guns on both sides.
Brooklin Bridge 1, June 2, 2012 at 3:17 pm
…
To a Democrat, or a liberal, or many others without an easy category, a candidate willing to support a war with Iran represents a very real danger to the population as a whole, no matter what other enlightened positions that candidate may have.
To describe such concerns as being applied to Warren as a “litmus test”, or that they represent some impossible standard of “purity” to an ideal is nuts. They represent life and death for possibly millions of people. The War with Iraq confirms those numbers in spades. It was a far smaller military objective.
Warren’s comments about Iran and Israel are made in her very own words on her very own web site. It is not a matter of idle speculation and one can easily form their own opinion of whether they are as relevant to her candidacy as they are to her web site (she barely discusses any other foreign policy). But what one can’t do is claim that Warren’s position on Iran and Israel is like some minor position insisted on by “purists” of the left or the right. Precisely because of her “liberal” credentials, her support for such an unleashing of our military might would be hugely influential and potentially catastrophic.
==================================
You just changed my mind about Elizabeth Warren. That does not mean I am for Brown. I am going to have to think about it.
It is another case in point showing the politicians are puppets of the 1% who plunder the 99% through the W direction out on Highway 61.
Part of the sociopath / psychopath epoch in politics, which I mentioned to Mike S up-thread, is embodied in this foreign policy position by Warren that you pointed out.
We are infected with Pontius Pilots, not sincere people who have our best interests at heart.
Herman Cain is a lackey for the governing 1%.
There are 9 9 9 loopholes as a result:
(Minimum Wage For Restaurant Servers Remains Stagnant For 20 Years Under Industry Lobbying, emphasis added). All the politicians spout issue positions that work as lures, but once we bite on the lure, well reality happens.
If the U.S. military really wants to unleash its “military might” it can destroy the entire planet. I don’t think Elizabeth Warren is ever going to have her finger on the button.
The position of senator from Massachusetts that Warren is running for is that of a full blown senator. It’s not, a senator for financial reform alone. It’s not, a senator for woman’s rights alone. It’s not, a senator for civil rights alone. It’s not, a senator for the integrity of constitutional law alone.
It’s the unrestricted type of senator. If her position on war with Iran is unimportant because she is “unlikely to get her finger on the button”, then what position can she have that is important and who is to decide?
“Afghanistan
Our brave servicemembers have done all that we could have asked them for and more in Afghanistan, but it is time for them to come home. We need to get out as quickly as possible, consistent with the safety of our troops and with a transition to Afghan control. I believe that this can be done faster than the current timeline.
But we also need to learn a larger lesson from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States can never again put wars on a credit card for our grandchildren to pay for. If a war is in our national interest, then we should be willing to pay for it. Either all of us go to war or none of us go to war.
Israel
Since its founding more than 60 years ago, Israel and the United States have been steadfast, trusted, and reliable allies. I unequivocally support the right of a Jewish, democratic state of Israel to exist, safe and secure. I believe that it is a moral imperative to support and defend its existence.
For generations, the United States and Israel have shared a commitment to a stable, secure, and peaceful Middle East. But our alliance runs far deeper: it is a natural partnership resting on our mutual commitment to democracy and freedom and on our shared values. Both our countries have been sustained by our commitment to liberty, pluralism, and the rule of law. These values transcend time, and they are the basis of our unbreakable bond.
As a United States Senator, I will work to ensure Israel’s security and success. I believe Israel must maintain a qualitative military edge and defensible borders. The United States must continue to ensure that Israel can defend itself from terrorist organizations and hostile states, including Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and others. I also believe firmly that a two-state solution is in the interest of Israel and the United States. Lasting peace, however, requires negotiations between the parties themselves, and although the United States can and should aid in this process, we cannot dictate the terms. Unilateral actions, such as the Palestinians’ membership efforts before the United Nations, are unhelpful, and I would support vetoing a membership application.
Iran
Iran is a significant threat to the United States and our allies. Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, it is an active state sponsor of terrorism, and its leaders have consistently challenged Israel’s right to exist. Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons is unacceptable because a nuclear Iran would be a threat to the United States, our allies, the region, and the world. The United States must take the necessary steps to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. I support strong sanctions against Iran and believe that the United States must also continue to take a leadership role in pushing other countries to implement strong sanctions as well. Iran must not have an escape hatch.”
The above quotes are from Elizabeth Warren’s Website under the heading “National Security/Foreign Policy”. Below are the totality of Scott Brown’s positions on: “National Security & America’s Role In The World”
“I believe in peace through strength and that a strong American military is crucial to safety and security, both at home and around the globe. I have sponsored legislation to combat global terrorism, toughen sanctions on Iran and strip domestic terrorists of their American citizenship. I believe America must be clear and unmistakable in its position that Iran must not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. Regarding Afghanistan, I supported President Obama’s troop surge and his plan to bring down those troop levels, but we must constantly monitor the situation and be careful not to sacrifice the security gains we have made. Preventing Afghanistan from becoming a safe-haven for terrorist groups seeking to attack our country is critical to America’s national security. We need to continually re-evaluate our progress there based on reports from commanders and conditions on the ground. Last summer, I completed my annual National Guard training requirements in Afghanistan, which gave me an additional perspective about the conditions on the ground. I am continually impressed by the dedication of the men and women of our military serving on the frontlines to keep our country safe. They deserve the highest levels of gratitude and respect of all Americans.”
Just as one can compare and contrast the different views of the two candidates, with these quotes one can also compare and contrast the characterization of Elizabeth Warren’s position by both BB and MM to see if they are quite accurate in their representation.
However, after doing that comparison, one might also consider if the point I was making about political purity was one of supporting a particular candidate, or about the need to build coalitions to change the way America has been operating. Now I’ve read enough of both of your comments on other threads to know that the three of us are not very far apart on how we view the political scene. Unfortunately, in your comments above:
“To describe such concerns as being applied to Warren as a “litmus test”, or that they represent some impossible standard of “purity” to an ideal is nuts” Quote from BB
“Purity”: a pejorative term used by corporate Democrats [sic:presumably Mike Spindell] like President Obama to denigrate and discourage any attempts by the poor and working class, i.e, The Left, to have a meaningful say in Democratic Party policies.” Quote from MM
You both disparage me and to my mind that disparagement is because in writing what I wrote I failed your litmus tests. Nice going guys in proving the point I was making, which is that coalitions can’t be built by political purists. If you guys turn so facilely on me, someone who believes America has been living under a coup for the last six decades, who in hell are you going to join with to stop it? Now it may be that you may think we can’t stop it, so then I guess all you’re doing is getting off by spouting your righteous anger. However, if you really are sincere in doing battle with the Corporate oligarchy, then how do you propose to do so if you fight with those who mostly agree with you? Perhaps if you reread what I wrote you might see that your pre-judgment got in the way of your analysis.
Yep.
Centrists are really just what you call Democrats who support Republican policy.
There’s political purity and then there’s a bridge too far: the Democrats have put Social Security and Medicare on the table for cuts.
Also, the last 40ish years has seen both political parties drifting forever rightward on policy (at least neoliberal economic policy), even while support among the population generally is far to the left of Congress. Without calls for “political purity” the Overton window just keeps moving rightward and the Dumbocrats keep compromising with themselves.
As the Black Agenda Report says: Obama is NOT the lesser evil. He’s the more effective evil. At least with McCain in office, the Ds would have to pretend to oppose neoliberal policies.
Voting is a waste of time. You’re actually continuing to fight for something in a manner that does not work. Why do you think it is, that no democarcy in the history of the world has worked for a prolonged period of time? Even with elected representation and a bill of rights, the very principles of it foundation, have been usurped. Governments do not work, or at least no one has yet to invent one that works. Read Harry Brown’s book, Why Government Doesn’t Work. We’ve had 50 years of modern communications and yet, the very same social problems exist today that we had then and the same rhetoric still comes from our politicians lying mouths. The only thing that has changed Mike are the problems are even worse now. If you think things are bad now, they are going to get much worse before they get better. The U.S. economy is crashing as all governments eventual do. It is only a matter of time, because people will always vote for what is in their own best interests, which defeats the very essence of democracy and doing what is in the best interest of the majority. Might over right will always prevail, when it is legalized. That is the only solution. We cannot legalize the force of government through polical means. It doens’t work well for the majority and only works well for those that are corrupt and rich enough to manipulate the system.
“Purity”: a pejorative term used by corporate Democrats [sic:presumably Mike Spindell] like President Obama to denigrate and discourage any attempts by the poor and working class, i.e, The Left, to have a meaningful say in Democratic Party policies.” Quote from MM
- yeah – that’s basically it in a nutshell
“At least with McCain in office, the Ds would have to pretend to oppose neoliberal policies.”
Pepe,
They said the same thing about Nixon. How’d that work out for the hundreds of thousands of dead Vietnamese and Cambodians? Not to mention the tens of thousands dead and wounded U.S. troops.
“Might over right will always prevail, when it is legalized.”
So Skiprob,
I take it you’re a fan of my option number one above, or is it that you like things the way they are?
Yeah, you’re right, the first President to publicly claim the authority to assassinate US citizens without trial, and who counts all military age males who die from drone strikes as militants – yeah – let’s get him another Peace Prize.
“Yeah, you’re right, the first President to publicly claim the authority to assassinate US citizens without trial”
Pepe,
How quickly you forget G.W. Bush and the hundred years of U.S.foreign policy that preceded him. I’m not defending assassination, merely stating the historical fact that it is nothing new in our history. Patrice Lumumba, for instance?
Mike S, your idea that I “disparage” you is as nuts and defensive as saying that discussion of one’s position on war with Iran is a “purist” criteria.
Your jujitsu with the term and legitimate disagreement, not disparagement, with your use of it basically adds up to anyone who disagrees with you is applying a filter of purism and is therefore guilty of purism. Sorry, It’s tautological nonsense.
Oh, and yes, most of the time when people use that term, and you did and I didn’t, it is basically a form of name calling. Add all the sophistry you want, it remains just that. You wrote the post, not I or anyone else.
Tautology (rhetoric), [...] a series of self-reinforcing statements that cannot be disproved because they depend on the assumption that they are already correct
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology
Perhaps there is a misunderstanding here. On the subject of Iran, I do not live in the rarefied atmosphere of polite judicial discussion. When an issue as great as all out war is at hand, I’ll use the term “nuts” any day of the week — with my best friend — to describe something I disagree with.
Each year since the delaration of independence, except for literally a couple of years, the ruling elites have continuously usurped the rights of the Citizens. Surely it was better at any point in histroy, than it is now, but to say that the 1% had plunderd nothing is not quite accurate. You did however make a very good overall point.
Think of it in terms of math. It took 230+/- years to drum up a $7.5 trillion deficit and only 5 years to match it. From 1999 to 2009 gold and silver when up at least 300%. What do you thing it will go up in the next 10 years?
Mike Spindell:
That was a very good article.
But how do you reconcile taking a persons freedom from him by majority vote? Why would anyone want to compromise with a loss of freedom?
Tyranny by the few or tyranny by the many is still tyranny.
If liberals want welfare state social programs let them give half or more of their income to create them privately, in a free society no one would stop you from helping the poor. In fact many of us [free market types] would applaud you and donate to your cause as we do already.
Mike Spindell:
Sure seems to me government has facilitated low economic growth. At this point I dont even know how you could debate the issue.
You have your blinders too, so I wouldnt be so quick to chastise.
That is a big part of the reason the right isnt interested in compromising with the left. You think you are superior and that is great that you have a good ego, I think you need that in the world. But the problem is that most of your ideas usually have unintended consequences and ruin is often left in the wake of those high minded schemes.
Mike S.,
The way I look at it–there is NO perfect candidate for me to support in the presidential election. I can choose to sit out the election–or vote for Obama. I could never bring myself to vote for Romney–the former governor of my state.
There may be some residents of Massachusetts who choose not to vote for Elizabeth Warren because of her position on Iran. They may feel that Scott Brown is a better choice. I happen to think that he isn’t. I have kept tabs on this “pseudo” moderate, his position on issues, and his Senate votes. He is one of Wall Street’s favorite senators. He doesn’t support financial reform in this country.
Here are some of the reasons why I will not vote for Brown come November:
He supported the Blunt Amendment, signed Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge, is one of two senate co-sponsors of the Enemy Expatriation Act, made sure that the Volcker Rule was watered down BEFORE he voted for the Financial Reform Bill, joined with Republicans to filibuster the extension of low interest rates for federally subsidized student loans.
Elaine M. 1, June 2, 2012 at 6:12 pm
Mike S.,
….
There may be some residents of Massachusetts who choose not to vote for Elizabeth Warren because of her position on Iran.
============================================
She may be moderating it. Don’t know yet:
(Huffpo). Further down in the article she says she will take another look at it, after she was told the DOD does not think Iran is making a nuclear weapon.
Dredd,
I’ve read that article. I’m concerned about any candidate who would support/encourage a war with Iran.
I found the following position statements on Iran at Warren’s and Brown’s campaign websites on May 25th:
WARREN
Iran
Iran is a significant threat to the United States and our allies. Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, it is an active state sponsor of terrorism, and its leaders have consistently challenged Israel’s right to exist. Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons is unacceptable because a nuclear Iran would be a threat to the United States, our allies, the region, and the world. The United States must take the necessary steps to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. I support strong sanctions against Iran and believe that the United States must also continue to take a leadership role in pushing other countries to implement strong sanctions as well. Iran must not have an escape hatch.
BROWN
Iran
I support the bi-partisan Iran sanctions bill and believe that until Ahmadinejad gives up his nuclear ambitions he should be isolated from the rest of the world. With its reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons, Iran represents the biggest threat to Israel. Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier who has threatened to wipe Israel off the map. Meeting with him confers legitimacy when the only correct response is to treat him as an outcast. A personal meeting with Ahmadinejad, as suggested by my opponent, would embolden him and be used as a propaganda tool to strengthen his position.
*****
Those of us who live in Massachusetts need to be aware of both senatorial candidates’ positions on Iran–as well as their positions on other issues like women’s rights, financial reform, Social Security, education, social programs, unemployment insurance, collective bargaining, interest on student loans, healthcare, corporate tax loopholes, raising taxes on the 1%, etc.
The great illusion in America is held by certain people who believe that they are in the elite tier. They dont buy it that the elite tier is less than one percent of the population but they believe that they are in it. The true one percenters exploit the wannabes. A wannabe is some schmuck who has some assets or a good income and looks down on the great dumb masses. But schmucko is not getting any deal off of the present system and is himself being exploited by the One Percenters. Guys like Willard preach to the schmuck with the three car garage house and Cadillac and makes him feel special. He prays on their racism covertly. You need to vote RepubliCon Joe Bob because those minorities are gettin outta hand. It is a similar trick pulled by the likes of Hitler, Joe McCarthy, Nixon, Reagan, Bushies, and now Willard. So a chump is a schmuck with an uppity racisit ego problem who is getting used by the One Percenters. Is that clear Clarabelle? Or was it Clara Barton?
So If one agrees with Warren 93% of the time and with Brown 25% of the time, Why would you sit it out?
Mike S posted:
(bold added). I know you did not argue this point, but an “oligarchy” is discribed as:
(Wikipedia, emphasis added). So we should note the well-worn American saying “money talks and bullshit walks.”
Also we could note that in 94% of cases the politician spending the most money prevails, that therefore politicians are beholding to those who give campaign funds, and finally that 1% of the population controls the vast majority of wealth.
A plutocracy running a plutonomy is more accurate than oligarchy at the present time, with apologies to Aristotle.
Also there are so few voices in the senate that are truly committed to financial reform or for that matter even knowledgeable about it that she deserves a chance.
Compromise. It is so rational. Trouble is, we’ve gone crazy. Think I’ve overstated it? Let’s see what happens on Tuesday in the nice normal state of Wisconsin. I think the Dems will be crushed. The “heart” seems to have gone out of them.
And here is another prediction: if Congress is asked to vote for war with Iran, Brown will vote for it. Only outliers ever have the courage to resist a national call to war in the U.S.
This is a blog for adults. We don’t have to tip toe around issues of sex lest the children hear, or avoid discussing Warren’s stance on war with Iran lest it sway a vote, or avoid for the same reason discussing the strategic validity of leaving Brown or some other numskull in office because of the gridlock it would create for a set of right wing plutocrats that call themselves Democrats.
I’ve stated in other threads that I hope Warren wins but that in no way obviates or diminishes the importance of her stated views on Iran nor the importance of discussion of the same. It is also a perfectly reasonable argument to make, and that is what Blogs are for, the hypothetical, that voting for Brown by omission or ballot might just as well contribute to our safety from war or privatization of the social safety net by gridlock as putting Warren into office to do Obama’s bidding. As voters, we are provided only with blunt tools, just as the Fed is provided with little to control inflation. But do not imagine that the strategy of setting Democrats against Republicans to effect stalemate is ineffective simply because it is blunt. And don’t mistake these for ordinary times.
Those who state that because Warren left the administration on supposedly less than ideal terms have not used that argument convincingly to establish a separation between the two. It is perfectly possible and even likely that it was the usual pre-arranged theater to convince an already skeptical Massachusetts that she would not be just another Obama loyalist as would have been the case with Martha Coakley. Without Obama’s active support, for instance, it is highly unlikely Warren would have even been chosen as a candidate by the DNC. No one speaks of that. But it is fact.
Obama has provided a template for all of us to behold in horror. He publicly and loudly claimed a litany of progressive and enlightened positions (no wiggle room for many of them) during his campaign, all of which he systematically and ruthlessly ignored or actively shredded once achieving office. He has shown us that Democrats are operating under a completely different set of rules than what many hitherto imagined. Anyone who thinks Warren is exempt from such because she is a woman, or because she also claims similar such progressive views, or because she taught at the same university, is setting themselves, AND OTHERS, up for another big fat disappointment.
As a senator and a liberal, her position on Iran and Israel counts, big time, regardless of whether or not she would have her finger on some button. And frankly, her mishandling of what should have been 1/32 of nothing, has suggested that she may have other weaknesses when it comes to the difference between what she says and what she actually will do.
Swarthmore mom,
“So If one agrees with Warren 93% of the time and with Brown 25% of the time, Why would you sit it out?”
I’m not planning to sit it out. My son-in-law got me an Elizabeth Warren bumper sticker for my car recently. I’d volunteer to help with her campaign–but I’m too busy being a nanny granny.
Elaine, Maybe you will have time to do some get out the vote work in the fall from home.
Brooklin Bridge,
You say you hope that Warren wins. Yet, your comments about her seem to belie that. Do you have any concerns about Scott Brown’s Senate votes, his positions on the issues–Iran, Paul Ryan’s budget, the Blunt Amendment and women’s health, financial reform, corporate tax breaks, etc.?
“Anyone who thinks Warren is exempt from such because she is a woman, or because she also claims similar such progressive views, or because she taught at the same university, is setting themselves, AND OTHERS, up for another big fat disappointment.”
Has anyone on this blog suggested that Warren is exempt from the things you mentioned because she is a woman or a progressive? I believe we know how to look at political candidates with a critical/skeptical eye. I already KNOW what Scott Brown has done while representing my state in the US Senate. I prefer not to have six more years of him in Congress.
Swarthmore mom,
I live at my daughter’s house half the week. When I’m back home, I spend a lot of time visiting with my mother who is in a nursing home, taking her out, doing her laundry. I don’t have much free time these days.
Scott Brown should accept Elizabeth Warren’s debate challenge
By Scot Lehigh
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/blogs/the_angle/2012/06/scott_brown_sho.html
Excerpt:
SPRINGFIELD — Democrats faced a dilemma on Saturday: whether to value ruthless electoral efficiency or to honor the party’s putative spirit of inclusion.
Or, to put it another way: Should they help Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic frontrunner, by squashing the candidacy of long-shot challenger Marisa DeFranco, thereby letting Warren turn her full focus on incumbent Senator Scott Brown?
Or should they abide by small-d democratic values by putting DeFranco on the primary ballot, knowing Brown could use the excuse of theDemocrats’ contested primary as an excuse for sidestepping Warren until after the September 6 primary?
In the end, the Democrats opted for ruthless electoral efficiency. Warren won the endorsement vote with almost 96 percent of the vote, an unprecedented margin for a contested race and the only time in modern history that a Democratic convention has denied a candidate a ballot spot in a two-person race. It’s the same thing the Republicans did in 2010, when they gave Charlie Baker an unimpeded path by denying rival Christy Mihos a primary ballot spot.
Eliminating DeFranco’s candidacy means that the general election campaign starts now — as well it should for a race of this magnitude. Asked if she wanted to debate Brown this summer, Warren replied: “I’d love to see some debates with Scott Brown. Let’s start. Let’s get started. I’m ready.”
Brown should accept that challenge. He should accept it not because he owes it to Warren, but because both candidates owe it to the voters of Massachusetts.
The two should follow the example set in 1996 by Bill Weld and John Kerry, who held nine high-profile debates in their epic Senate contest. Those encounters focused that Senate race on big, important issues and gave voters the opportunity to take the full measure of the two rivals. The debates ended up boosting the stature of both candidates.
Elaine,
I did not hear that Warren no longer had a primary opponent. Thanks for he update!
Elaine M,
As to my hope that Warren wins and your insinuation that is false, you seem only to be able to measure it by how rigidly I parrot everything she does or says.
I hope she wins, but indeed my hope is conditional on her being what she says she is and I am profoundly suspicious of such things now-a-days. It seems oddly appropriate in contemporary politics.
As to Brown, you enumerate his right wing positions with encyclopedic thoroughness, over and over; why should I bother repeating it?
I’ve said else where that Brown is not an attractive candidate. He is moderately toxic on most issues. And that is exactly the opinion of most Massachusetts residents and most liberals who are even aware of him. He’s a moderate scum bag. If he stands for war with Iran then public opinion in MA wiill be against such a war. If he agrees with Obama that the social safety net needs to be raised in age and weakened in substance, Massachusetts residents and many others who are aware of him will know right off that such is a ruthless position natural to his party, natural to his right wing idology, and a total sell out on the part of Obama.
If Warren, on the other hand, tells us that we must make certain sacrifices for the greater good of all, and that therefore raising the age for social security and reducing the benefits for Medicare is a necessary though painful sacrifice, not only do we have a sell out, we have a truly destructive one that puts the Democratic party into a death-lock with itself. For one, no such compromise or even fix is needed at all for at leat 30 years and most of the serious economists will tell you so. Eliminate the Bush tax cuts for the rich and you eliminate the need to cut and gut what is already an utterly bare-bones program for millions of seniors. Will Warren take such a position? I don’t know, probably not, but her position on Iran and Israel leads me to believe that answer is not so clear cut as I used to believe. He personal position is almost certainly against war, yet she is willing already to take the exact same position as Obama and be even more hawkish than the DOD itself on possession of nuclear technology.
Talking about Brown’s positions is simply not the same as talking about Warren’s positions. In Brown’s case, harmful legislation is expected and can be corrected, in Warrens case it would be incredibly destructive., it would insinuate itself main-line into the Democratic platform (as Obama has proven again and again).
No matter how may times I suggest that party strategy is just as valid a position as voting for a candidate because of what they say, you insist on a ridged definition of, “It’s obvious you must vote for someone who says good things when someone else says bad things.”. That is not the only valid criteria for one’s vote.
If your objective is to slow down an ever increasing slide of the Democratic party into full blown fascism, other possibilities suggest themselves, such as playing one party off against the other.
And no, I’m not afraid to talk about voting for Brown, or of not voting for Warren. Again, this is a site of adults. We had a long discussion about parroting propaganda and decided against it if I recall.
Brooklin Bridge,
“As to my hope that Warren wins and your insinuation that is false, you seem only to be able to measure it by how rigidly I parrot everything she does or says.”
That’s your perception. I let your words speak for themselves.
*****
“As to Brown, you enumerate his right wing positions with encyclopedic thoroughness, over and over; why should I bother repeating it?”
I asked if you had concerns about Brown’s Senate votes–which I did not enumerate. I also asked if you had concerns about his positions on specific issues. You choose not to reply.
*****
“I’ve said else where that Brown is not an attractive candidate. He is moderately toxic on most issues. And that is exactly the opinion of most Massachusetts residents and most liberals who are even aware of him. He’s a moderate scum bag.’
I don’t considerate Brown to be a moderate. He has an approval rating over 50% in Massachusetts.
*****
“Talking about Brown’s positions is simply not the same as talking about Warren’s positions. In Brown’s case, harmful legislation is expected and can be corrected, in Warrens case it would be incredibly destructive., it would insinuate itself main-line into the Democratic platform (as Obama has proven again and again).”
Brown’s harmful legislative can be corrected–but Warren’s would be destructive? Not sure I understand your logic. What legislation proposed by Warren are you speaking of that would insinuate itself into the Democratic platform? Are you implying that Warren is no different from Obama in any way? Are you saying that Obama has been a big disappointment–so Warren is sure to be too?
*****
“If Warren, on the other hand, tells us that we must make certain sacrifices for the greater good of all, and that therefore raising the age for social security and reducing the benefits for Medicare is a necessary though painful sacrifice, not only do we have a sell out, we have a truly destructive one that puts the Democratic party into a death-lock with itself.”
If Warren does this..if Warren does that. Yes, let’s get our knickers in a twist because Warren MIGHT do this…MIGHT do that…MIGHT be a sellout.
*****
“No matter how may times I suggest that party strategy is just as valid a position as voting for a candidate because of what they say, you insist on a ridged definition of, “It’s obvious you must vote for someone who says good things when someone else says bad things.”. That is not the only valid criteria for one’s vote.”
I haven’t insisted on a rigid definition of anything. I’ve stated what my concerns are about Brown. I KNOW what he has done/not done while serving in Congress. I believe I can make a judgment about him based on his past performance as a senator. You’re extrapolating about what Warren might do, about her possibly being an Obamabot, about how destructive she might be. She impressed me when she was in Washington. I can’t say for sure that she will not disappoint me–as President Obama has–if she is elected senator. I trust her more than I trust Brown. Another thing: I don’t approve of the Republican party strategy…their war on women…the Ryan budget…Republican attempts to privatize Social Social and Medicare…and so on.
Are you implying that Warren is no different from Obama in any way? Are you saying that Obama has been a big disappointment–so Warren is sure to be too?
No, I’m saying that she could be, that it’s not any more far fetched than it was with Obama. Of course I don’t have solid proof because unlike Brown, and unlike Obama, she hasn’t yet served. But her positions on Iran and Israel and her mishandling of the 1/32 fiasco suggest she may not be as forthright as I once thought.
I asked if you had concerns about Brown’s Senate votes–which I did not enumerate. I also asked if you had concerns about his positions on specific issues. You choose not to reply.
You have copiously enumerated Browns legislation and positions in other threads. I don’t disagree with your assessments, but that doesn’t change any of my three main arguments:
1) Pit Republicans against Democrats and thus throw a monkey wrench into the two headed monster, and 2) Yes, Warren may not live up to your expectations at all. She wouldn’t be the first. And if she didn’t, it would be far more destructive to the Democratic party and to the country as a whole than if Brown acted as we all know perfectly well that he will. It’s a real concern and not as pie in the sky as you make out. Warrens position on Iran and Isreal, which we do know, would be far more devastating if it supported war than the same position taken by Brown because far more people would listen to it. 3) These are important and legitimate issues. I don’t need to prove concerns with Brown’s positions to raise them. Talk about litmus tests…
If Warren does this..if Warren does that. Yes, let’s get our knickers in a twist because Warren MIGHT do this…MIGHT do that…MIGHT be a sellout.
You seem to have quite the issue with getting our knickers in a twist. It’s the second time you mention it. I’m fine with my knickers, thank you.
For my part, Warren has raised serious issues and all I have heard you say is that her position on Iran concerns you too but Scott Brown is worse. That’s all. You never mention Iran elsewhere, it doesn’t inform a single comment of yours. And that doesn’t sound like much concern to me and as always, whenever it is raised, you immediately skip to Brown.
Brooklin Bridge,
“Pit Republicans against Democrats and thus throw a monkey wrench into the two headed monster.” What’s your argument regarding that? Aren’t they already pitted against each other?
You think Warren would be more destructive than Brown…if…if…if. How do you know that more people would listen to Warren than Brown?
“It’s a real concern and not as pie in the sky as you make out.”
What “pie in the sky” are you talking about?
What is your third argument?
Brooklin Bridge,
And when I mention Brown, you skip back to Warren and your concerns about what she MIGHT do. Your argument against Warren is mostly conjecture.
It seems you want to focus on one issue. That’s your prerogative. What do you see as the major differences between Brown’s and Warren’s positions on Iran? Are you comfortable with Brown’s position on Iran?
We can choose to make our own personal political decisions/choices as we see fit. We can discuss what we choose to discuss. We can support who we choose to support. You may disagree with my line(s) of discussion. I’m not fixated on one issue. You evidently believe that Iran is THE major issue in this campaign. I don’t have so narrow a focus. I prefer to look at the big picture. There are many issues that concern me. Sorry…but I play by my own rules.
http://billmoyers.com/episode/encore-how-do-conservatives-and-liberals-see-the-world/
Yes Elaine M., if if if. Before Obama was elected, what he would do was mostly conjecture. IF, IF, IF.A lot of people got taken by assuming lots of IFs are silly as you are trying to imply, including me. I didn’t question the IF’s. Yes, before Warren is elected what she would do is mostly conjecture. IF, IF, IF. Now I AM questioning the IFs, particularly when it comes to war.
Why would I skip back to Warren in a tread devoted to using Warren as an example of the pursuit of political purity? Why would I have focused on Warren in previous threads dedicated to Warren and her issues of lineage? The best answer I can give is because the subject has been Warren? Perhaps this is just how I perceive the world. If the subject of a thread is Warren, I talk about Warren. If that is too devious for you, or your unwritten rules, and all you can do is insinuate that I’m some sort of a Brown plant, well, go twist your knickers since that seems to be a familiar preoccupation of yours anyway.
Warren’s position on war with Iran by the US super power is important to the lives of millions of people. One’s willingness for such a war is not a litmus test in impossibly purist standards. It is not a good example of overly focusing on just one issue. It is a damned important issue. It’s bed rock. It deserves focus.
Brooklin Bridge,
I didn’t read Mike’s post as one devoted to Elizabeth Warren. I read it as one on political purity in which he used her as an example. He also talked about Senator Bernie Sanders, the Tea Party, the Military Industrial Complex and Corporate Elite, unions…
“A lot of people got taken by assuming lots of IFs are silly as you are trying to imply, including me. I didn’t question the IF’s. Yes, before Warren is elected what she would do is mostly conjecture. IF, IF, IF. Now I AM questioning the IFs, particularly when it comes to war.”
We can talk about the “ifs” in regard to ANY candidate–not just Elizabeth Warren. I didn’t get taken by “ifs” in the last presidential election. I am always skeptical about what politicians say when campapigning. As I noted to you on another thread. I did not vote for Obama in the presidential primary in my state. I did vote for him in November of 2008 because I thought that the Obama/Biden ticket was better than the McCain/Palin ticket.
I haven’t denied that Iran is an important issue. I understand your concern. I agree that It is “a damned important issue.” I am war weary too. Unfortunately, I think the great majority of politicians in Washington don’t have our best interests at heart. I thought Congress would have had enough sense not to start a preemptive war with a Iraq. I thought the majority of Congressmen and women would have remembered the lessons of Vietnam. They didn’t–and neither did many members of the press/news media who helped the Bush Administration beat the war drum.
The financial problems that trouble our country today are another major issue for me. I had hoped to see some real financial reform in this country after 2008–but the “too big to fail” banks got bigger. We have some school districts that are down to having classes in session just four days a week. We have crumbling infrastructure; families in financial distress because of loss of jobs or going bankrupt because of health problems; a dwindling middle class; millions of children who live in poverty. We also have a Republican party that is waging a war against women, workers’ unions, and collective bargaining…a party that would like to privatize Medicare, Social Security, the USPS, public schools…a party that wants to give big tax breaks to ultra-wealthy.
My biggest fear come November: The Republicans retain the House, win the Senate and the Presidency. They already have the Supreme Court. That is a scenario that really scares the hell out of me.
Matt Johnson.
1, June 2, 2012 at 2:18 pm
Dredd,
You are my hero. And don’t think of that as a man crush.
———————
me too….one of them anyways….
Brooklin Bridge,
Now that Elizabeth Warren doesn’t have to face a challenger in a primary, I hope that she and Brown will face off in a series of debates. I think that it would be good for the voters of Massachusetts to see how they handle themselves on the issues in that type of forum.
It just goes to show you that once strong central power is achieved, it almost always get stronger with time and why Jefferson was in favor of maintaining the Federation over the Constitution.He argued against the Federalists on this issue continuously.He obvioulsy did not get his way and why the U.S. has slowed usurped the very property rights that the various inalienable rights, in the Consitution were supposed to protect.
Secondly, it is my contention that only just wars should be fought and a just war is only when the war is being fought to increase individual rights. The problem with this is that military defense requires property to be taken from the citizens in order to have the money to protect the Citizens. It makes it really hard to know when war is just for one side. If one side must decrease their rights to enhance the rights of their apponents, it is not likely a just war. The book “Just and Unjust Wars” gives some extremely voluminous details on the subject.
Elaine M.
We agree. The debate will be good. In spite of what you may think, I still hope Warren wins. Unlike Obama, I will probably vote for her, probably, even though I have no problem discussing other alternatives as real possibilities. That is what I assume discussion is for.
You’re right, this thread is about political purity and I addressed that in my response, One’s willingness for such a war [with Iran] is not a litmus test in impossibly purist standards Nevertheless, this thread does use as it’s primary example my earlier comments in an earlier thread about Warren and her position on Iran and Israel as stated publicly on her own web site. So she, not Brown, is indeed very much part of the thread.
You have raised the issue that Warren no longer faces a primary challenger, and while I agree that tactically that is a good thing for Warren, I am not at all sure it is that good for “democracy” or the DNC to simply toss DeFranco aside for expediency. That may be effective but it is yet another example to me on how the right has succeeded in poisoning the political process and on how shamelessly willing the DNC is to go along with it. It is also why we have no one but Obama on the Democratic ticket for the presidency. It is a perfect example of how pointless discussions of using the primary process to effect political change have become.
“Why would I skip back to Warren in a tread devoted to using Warren as an example of the pursuit of political purity?”
BB,
As I said in a previous comment, you really need to re-read what I wrote since you obviously don’t get that this thread wasn’t about Elizabeth Warren at all and because you misunderstood what I was writing you have unknowingly turned the discussion away from what I was trying to convey. My normal tendency would be to be self-effacing at this point and apologize for my lack of clarity, but most of the other commenters seemed to understand the issues I raised, so I can only conclude that you misread my thoughts. The opening paragraph of my piece had this as my first sentence:
“Some comments in the ongoing debate regarding the candidacy of Elizabeth Warren got me to thinking about our political system and people’s reactions to it.”
“Got me to thinking” clearly conveyed that I was interested in a much broader issue than Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy. The entire opening paragraph not only mentioned Warren, but also Richard Lugar’s primary defeat. Both were used a examples to set up my further discussion. Neither Warren, nor Lugar were mentioned afterwards in this 2,100 word piece.
Since, however, you were determined to make you points about Warren let me comment further in that context to illustrate my thinking. I have clearly been stating on this blog for years that America is ruled by an Oligarchy (sorry Dredd but I think it is clearer than Plutocracy though I’ve used that also)
and that the only saving grace is the clash of egos amongst these self obsessed “Titans”. Our Democratic system has become (if it ever was different) a sham with mainstream media used as propaganda to fool the majority and the American Dream as its guiding myth. If this is true then the utility of elections comes down to whether the Draconian, or the “Enlightened” faction of the Oligarchy gains the upper hand. I the 20′s the Draconian’s ruled.
Roosevelt used the Great Depression to gain the upper hand and his era lasted until 1968, at which point the Draconians again gained the upper hand and have reigned since, with a few minor glitches. Unfortunately, beginning with Reagan the mainstream Draconians have moved extremely close to Fascism, while the “Enlightened” faction has moved slightly right of center. I see continued Draconian rule as potentially the end game towards total oppression where both you, I and many others here will be rounded up for our all too public views.
There is, However, a second train of thought that holds my interest. Both professionally and personally my life’s work has been dedicated to alleviating the struggles of those oppressed in one for or another by our society. I have seen/experienced things on the “means streets” that most Americans can ever imagine. I am also a proud child of the working/middle classes who appreciates what it is like to live with five people in a 600 square foot apartment, or to have to live from paycheck to paycheck. My health problems have been such that were it not for Medicare I’d be dead and without Social Security I would be impoverished.
I want lasting social/economic change in this country of my birth and feel that desire with every fiber of my being. The Republican Party if it gains total control will destroy the social safety net (poor as it is), further oppress people of color (as if they aren’t already oppressed), return women to a state of chattel, rabidly attack people’s sexuality. Now it is true that the one thing that the Oligarchy seems to have consensus on is in the realm of foreign policy and as I’ve stated in previous articles, I believe that is because the Military/Intelligence Cabal of the Oligarchy is not subordinate to the three branches of government and since it has the weaponry cannot at this point be made subordinate.
So in essence I vote in order to stave off further pain for the 99% of this country in the social/economic sense. While I vote I urge and hope for a mass movement to arise so that we can take back this country to the principles expressed (though not always adhered to) by our Founding Fathers. I could be wrong but I think where we differ is not in analysis, but in the means to get to a good resolution and the pain that will fall upon the shoulders of the 99% in achieving that resolution.
No not at all. However, it is my contention that political means will not solve the social problems that governments cause and that only free market means can solve free market problems. Isn’t it what many people believe, that government exists to solve the things the free market can’t. That must be some sort of logical fallacy since government causes the majority of the problems. I have proposed a system that needs to be greatly expanded and I beleive it might work to accomplish the goals of improving our social problems that decades of government has caused. We must focus on how best to protect the rights and property of the Citizens. If you think that government can do this after having viewed the last 50 years of our great experiement, then we will never be on the same page and why party purity cannot be achieved or democracy doesn’t work.
Let’s take just one issue, infrastructure: Most people are unaware of the fact that it was private enterprise i.e. banking that funded the building of the Panama Canal. This of course was when there was no central bank and very little regulation upon them. If private enterprise can build the Panama Canal, it can surely build any type infrastructure. Many of the railroad bridges were as well as many of the orginal turnpikes of New England.
Until we dispell the myth that some form of government can actually work for what is in the best interest of the majority, the very things that need to be done will be trumped by government intervention.
If we protect individual rights then govenment cannot steal our money and redistribute it using political determination. The key to protecting invidual rights is justice. So the real question is, can we improve justice? I think we can but only if we take it out of the corruptive grasp of govenment.
http://rsjexperiment.wordpress.com
Let’s see: 535 in Congress, another, 200 +/- central bankers, 1500 member bankers, the Federal Judiciary is probably another 1,200+/-, 500 in the administration and bureacracy and than say 1,000 in the private secter and media. That’s a lot less than 1% and if you think about it, the bankers have the greatest monetary power and control within this group. Until you break up this cartel, everyone else is pissing in the wind and you are not going to beat them at the game they control.
Mike Spindell:
I was wondering where in the founding documents it makes reference to equality of outcomes and being your brothers keeper?
I havent read them all so I would appreciate any help provided.
I am a member of the 99% who thinks that liberty is a good thing but that liberty also involves the possibility of failure.
I have enough experience to know that some things in life are beyond our control but how you deal with them is within our control assuming we have a sound intellect. Your experience is certainly a lot larger than mine but of all the people you have had to help how many are there by choice, by circumstance or by being unable to cope because of some intellectual disability? I would think the majority have some sort of intellectual disability that prevents them from properly functioning. The rest probably just dont give a shit.
Mike S., you did use my comments on Warren and her views on war with Iran as your example and so it was not only reasonable, but necessary, to use the same as a response.
I am not challenging your intentions or your bona fides. I am simply disagreeing with you that my earlier thread was an example of applying to Warren an impossible standard of purity from the left. The possible death of millions of people is simply way beyond a litmus test. It’s not a trivial position among many where a candidate couldn’t possibly be expected to get them all right. It’s WAR, preemptive war, between a powerful country in the Middle East and the biggest military super power on Earth. I used the term, “nuts”, which is something I reserve for friends, to disagree. Here is what I use when I get out the big guns, (cover your ears), Fiddlesticks! or Heavens to Betsy When the smoke clears, you’ll see it’s hardly disparaging, even for those I don’t respect or agree with in the main.
And yes, I did call you out on the use of this term, Purist. You may not be using it as politely disparaging, or name calling, but that is exactly it’s usage 99% of the time. To suggest otherwise begs credulity.
To be perfectly clear, change, When the smoke clears, you’ll see it’s hardly disparaging, even for those I don’t respect or agree with in the main. to, “When the smoke clears, you’ll see it’s hardly disparaging, even for those, unlike you, who I don’t respect or agree with in the main.”
I come late to this party, and haven’t read all the comments due to lack of time. That said, a few comments:
Mike: “Obviously, if it is ones view that America politics is a total sham, then a massive uprising of the people would be needed to make change. How does that uprising occur? Will its’ nature be peaceful, or violent?
Fitting with your prescription (4), working within the system, a massive uprising is not needed to make change. It is possible for a small enclave of fed up families to form (or buy) a township, with its own rules (as long as they abide by federal laws). In fact I will note this has been done, albeit for religious reasons, but the principle remains.
A township of like-minded people can expand to rule a county, then multiple counties, then influence the elections of congressmen and a few senators, their state governor and state-level legislatures, their judges, and so on. Offshoots in other states can do the same; begin with a town, take over a city.
So what is missing is true commitment. Even within a conservative state, liberals could organize, pick a city and county, and migrate there, take political control of that area, and set their own economic rules. Pass a city wide sales tax, increase property taxes for schools, take over power generation, provide shelters for the homeless, provide public transportation. Run a fair liberal government, courts, and police force. They can even change the rules for local elections and city charters.
If we are correct and those kinds of investments really DO produce growth and fairness, the converts can grow that start into other counties, towns, and cities. If need be, we could import liberals from other states to take up residence. Eventually, we would elect the Congressman for the area, then the Senators, governor, and state-legislature offices, and turn the red state blue.
Working within the American system, one CAN gain both immediate benefits and effect eventual change on the entire system, without physical violence, but still by dint of numbers. What it requires is FOCUS.
What it would require of us liberals is still a sacrifice of self-interest, but not to the point of death: Just to the point that, instead of putting up living with conservatives for the sake of personal convenience, even though that “convenience” makes us politically impotent, we sacrifice that personal convenience, get organized, and choose to live with our own kind (ideologically speaking) in sufficient percentages to make conservatives politically impotent instead.
If politically impotent liberals moved out of red areas to form concentrated economic pockets of blue area, then we could compete head-to-head with the red areas, and see whose policies really win, economically speaking, because ultimately good politics is about prosperity and money.
We will never win battling on the national stage over Supreme-Court-Level decisions like abortion rights. The way to win is to turn the cities.
To illustrate with a real example: Consider a small red state, like Wyoming, with about six hundred thousand people. In 2008, this was the Presidential voting in Wyoming: R: 164,958 (64.8%) D: 82,868 (32.5%).
What would it take to turn Wyoming blue? If we wanted 55% Democrats, then 164,958 would be 45%, so we need 283,705 more Democrats of voting age. That is a lot, including the children that would come along it would nearly double the population of Wyoming, but it would give us a governor, a congressman, and two senators, switched from Republican to Democrats, and a state that can act as an example of what the switch can accomplish.
What would they do there? Well, there are many businesses that can be done anywhere; and they can work those, or they can buy and run the normal businesses of a rural state (Wyoming is 90% rural land). I do not propose an exact plan, I think it could be worked out. Heck, let them start solar or wind farms, there is a LOT of cheap empty land in Wyoming.
The point I am making is that the issue is commitment, the rest of the country could easily lose about 150,000 liberal Democrat voting families to move to Wyoming and convert that state, without turning the places they leave from Democratic to Republican rule. The largest cities in Wyoming have less than 60,000 people; those could be hit first with just 20,000 families or so and turned Democratic.
If we were committed, we could start a regular mutual fund, an actual market-traded investment vehicle, that would work toward a Democratic Wyoming takeover: A fund that would be used to simply buy commercial operations, land, farms, etc in Wyoming, and have them sold to or run according to Democratic principles. Or it could help finance the move of entrepreneurial Democrats to Wyoming, that would contractually agree to certain principles of operation, safety, pay (for themselves and their employees), and other such policies we liberals believe in, and the fund would help them establish businesses in Wyoming in return for a slice of their profits that would go back into the fund; to be re-purposed or distributed to shareholders. In that way you can impose your OWN income taxes; e.g. include in the contract that 3% of income will be spent on behalf of local schools, in proportion to the attendance to those schools by the children and employees of the company.
A small army can beat a larger army by focusing its efforts on splinters of the larger army, and the most vulnerable of the larger army.
A small army can beat a larger army by focusing its efforts on splinters of the larger army, and the most vulnerable of the larger army.
Perhaps Greece is poised to be in just such a position.
Greek Left PreparesNationalization of Energy/Telecom
But also, Greece may prove a sad example of the fate of Wyoming in your delightful scenario. The small army is not in a vacuum. It may win battles, but it is still part of a much larger reality.
Tony C,
The new Township could also, through the charter process, make all local elections non-partisan thus removing the organized political party hold at its roots. As they take over the counties this “non-partisan” election process could be introduced county by county and then finally state-wide.
Bron 1, June 3, 2012 at 10:54 am
Mike Spindell:
I was wondering where in the founding documents it makes reference to equality of outcomes and being your brothers keeper?
I havent read them all so I would appreciate any help provided.
I am a member of the 99% who thinks that liberty is a good thing but that liberty also involves the possibility of failure.
I have enough experience to know that some things in life are beyond our control but how you deal with them is within our control assuming we have a sound intellect. Your experience is certainly a lot larger than mine but of all the people you have had to help how many are there by choice, by circumstance or by being unable to cope because of some intellectual disability? I would think the majority have some sort of intellectual disability that prevents them from properly functioning. The rest probably just dont give a shit.
==================================
The fella that wrote most of the federalist papers leading up to and including the founding documents, including the Bill of Rights, said this:
(The Greatest Source Of Power Toxins?, quoting James Madison). The current crop of conservative warmongers are the antithesis of these sage sentiments, wanting to cut everything but war spending.
The size and shape of American Skulls is changing for some mysterious reason, but we know what causes a big head don’t we?
I will also note that by contract in return for financing a business, one can make any tax breaks (income or otherwise) voting for a Republican might deliver can be made moot: We simply base the amount of donations to social benefit (such as schools, infrastructure, help for the poor, etc) on the state level taxes, so the final percentage remains the same.
This would mean, for businesses financed by the Democratic Wyoming fund, it is in their best interest to vote in Democrats that would level the playing field and force other business to pay their fair share of their income, too.
I will also note that I have some familiarity with venture capitalists, and it is not unusual at all for VC to demand 50% of a company (and significant control of a company) in order to finance it. That is what has earned them the tile of “vulture capitalists.”
I say that because many entrepreneurs are happy to give up even 50% of their profits, and quite a bit of corporate control, in order to get the capital they need to build their dream, and still pay all their other taxes after that 50% share was paid out. Demanding that their dream be accomplished by our rules in Wyoming is not some impossible hardship, there would still be plenty of willing candidates, because financing is just a really tough nut to crack, especially for mundane businesses: But the Democratic Wyoming fund should shun sexy new businesses. Mundane, work-a-day businesses are just fine, what we are interested in is routine returns (like 5% over inflation) with Democrats on the ground, not high-flying risks for high-flying rewards. I am perfectly happy with something like an Internet hosting business, for example, or product fulfillment center, or whatever. Plus all the other businesses of normal life, like car repair, restaurants, stores, etc.
@Blouise: A good idea, I agree. In fact, it could provide airtime on public TV to position statements, debates, etc. Most towns have the right to impose a tax or fee on residents, at least property tax, so it could use that to provide a communications channel for candidates or just citizens with something to say, if they gather a petition together.
But yes, you could run it according to a township Constitution based on liberal principles, without specifically demanding adherence to any political party. What matters to me is the outcome, not allegiance to a label.
Blouise,
“The new Township could also, through the charter process, make all local elections non-partisan thus removing the organized political party hold at its roots. As they take over the counties this ‘non-partisan’ election process could be introduced county by county and then finally state-wide.”
That idea is so good it sends shivers down my spine.
This latest discussion thread on this post brought to mind an old Peter Sellers movie. Not sure why.
The Mouse That Roared Trailer
Tony C,
Most communities already have “community access” channels negotiated through the cable companies. Political parties would still be active but getting one’s name on the ballot would not be dependent on party affiliation nor identified as such on the ballot.
Basically the Board of Elections would require a petition with signatures of 25 – 50 registered voters and a small filing fee of $25 – $50 to be submitted 90 – 120 days before the general election. The Bd of Elec verifies the signatures, cashes the check and the candidate’s name is placed on the ballot.
By charter it is determined what procedure is to be followed if a tie ensues. Usually it’s a special election within 30 days to break the tie.
Individual parties can be formed for like minded voters, they can even hold primaries through the Bd. of Elections if they assume the cost of same, but, no party affiliation appears on the ballot at general election time and no one has to participate in a primary to get their name on the ballot.
There will be kinks but I’m a strong subscriber to the thought, good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment, so don’t be afraid to go for it.
Gene,
It’s part and parcel of the process you and I have been discussing on and off blog for years.
It doesn’t matter how many names are on a ballot. One knows for whom one is going to vote before walking into the booth … find that name and make your mark. In the end, only one person wins.
Hell, the more people able to gather signatures and scrape together the filing fee, the more people actively engaged and invested in the process.
True that, Blouise.
Opening the primary and electoral systems to non-partisan and alternative party challengers is a long standing issue. Something needs to be done about it to give Americans more (and hopefully better) choice among candidates. The “two choices” option imposed on most voters is really just the illusion of choice.
@Blouise: I’d vote for that.
I would also, as a matter of course, randomize the ballots, which can be done on paper or on electronic voting media, so that nobody gains the benefit of superior position. It is easy enough (mathematically speaking) to ensure every candidate appears an equal number of times in every position of the ballot; and have them produced in collated order so the election workers can just pull the next ballot off a stack.
Gene H, re: “The “two choices” option imposed on most voters is really just the illusion of choice.” The following (one of my favorite stories, and if I have told it before on this blog, forgive me):
When I did daycare for a living, I found that my ability to communicate with my own three-year-old did not extend to other kids his age, and I had to learn quick to be in charge of a group of six. So i picked up some books from the library. One of them recommended “giving two choices.” You’d tell the kid who was being contrary that she could choose between two alternatives, and you’d design the alternatives so that either way, she’d be doing what you wanted her to do. But she got the feeling that she was in control of her situation. So after reading that book, I used it in the in-home day-care center. “Jennifer, you have two choices; you can holler and yell if you want to step out on the back patio, or you can stay here in the playroom if you want to stop screaming.” She’d figure it out and do one or the other, and the day would move forward with no feathers ruffled and with me in charge. My own kid was almost 4 at the time. The next morning, before other kids arrived for their day-care day, my boy came into the kitchen, sat down at the table, and announced to me calmly, “Mommy, you have two choices: you can give me chocolate cake for breakfast or you can give me ice cream.”
@Blouise: Most communities already have “community access” channels negotiated through the cable companies.
There you go; find the smallest community that HAS such an agreement; so we have a free communications channel, and we shall invade it. Um, Occupy it, as residents. Occupy the banks, the grocery stores, the city council, the mayorship, the school board, the police force, the judicial system, the county tax offices, the treasurer’s office, the local utilities, healthcare and insurance regimes become open book, zero-profit cost-covering operations.
The new phase of the Occupy Movement: Screw you guys, we are starting our own game with our own rules and you can’t really stop us.
Smart kid, Malisha.
Thanks for the answer, @swarthmore mom!
Gene H, he’s a genius. At that moment, I had to give him ice cream (because I had no chocolate cake in the house) and he was perfectly satisfied. (This I did more to preserve my own credibility as a leader than to put off a discussion of the issues.) I did worry a bit because I thought, “at this rate, he’ll be demanding 24-ounce sugary soft drinks within the decade, and I will have to resort to idiotic legislation to restore healthful practices around here,” but he very wisely returned to normal eating habits after making his point.
Elaine,
I was eleven when my father took me to see “The Mouse That Roared” and it had its effect on my political thinking. Plus it had Peter Sellers before he came to Hollywood which didn’t have a clue how to use his comic genius.
Tony and Blouise,
That’s the ticket. This is the type of movement that I want to see happening and can represent a way of taking back our country without violent upheaval. They were the kinds of ideas I was looking for when I wrote this piece. This is the direction that OWS should be moving in simply because it makes the MS Media’s job of mis-direction much harder to employ.
“You’d tell the kid who was being contrary that she could choose between two alternatives, and you’d design the alternatives so that either way, she’d be doing what you wanted her to do. But she got the feeling that she was in control of her situation.”
Malisha,
Perfect metaphor for the two-party system.
“I was wondering where in the founding documents it makes reference to equality of outcomes and being your brothers keeper?
I haven’t read them all so I would appreciate any help provided.”
Bron,
Straw man attack. The argument for equality of outcomes is not one that I ever make and although we’ve been talking back and forth for a number of years, you can’t seem to get that into your head. MY desire is for the equality of treatment under the law and for many that has never existed in America. Another part of that argument is that there is inequality of economic treatment and inequality of educational treatment. I’m all for the idea of the “cream rising to the top”, but only if everybody gets an equal chance to make their rise and/or fall. That doesn’t exist and in the type of market economy you propose it will never exist because those that have will rig the game. Or as
Leonard Cohen puts it:
Yeah, Mike S, that’s why it worked with the day-care crowd. But my son figuring it out and using it back on ME was a thrill!
Later in his life, when he was 12, he and I had a conversation about Republicans and Democrats and he asked me which I was (complicated reason that he did not already know as much as there would have been TO KNOW) and I explained that the two were not the only two possibilities for how to describe one’s politics. He was surprised! Then he enlarged, and asked about “communism versus capitalism,” and again, I spoke about there not being only a binary system. In addition to suggesting ways for him to conduct his own research, I gave him a book called “Anarchy” but it was seized (without due process) by a 90-day diagnostic facility in Virginia that later explained that he had been permitted to read “illegal materials” because of his mother’s “mental illness.” Just recently (he’s 34 now and very hip), when I reminded him of the “two choices” story, he said to me, “Mom, there are still only two choices: either you go for the crap or you don’t!”
Tony C:
My guess is that your new community would last 18 months. Socialism was tried in many such communities in the mid part of the 19th century, they all went under.
But good luck with trying to invent a faulty wheel.
Dredd:
yes, I agree war is a terrible burden on individuals and society.
“Mike S., you did use my comments on Warren and her views on war with Iran as your example and so it was not only reasonable, but necessary, to use the same as a response.”
BB,
For future reference please understand that if I was trying to call you, or Michael Murry out specifically, I would have used your names directly. I didn’t for a very specific reason and that was that as I put it in my article:
“One logical conclusion that can be drawn from believing that democracy is an illusion, is that voting is a wasted effort, since whatever person we choose will either be a corporate stooge, or unelectable. I can respect those who draw that conclusion since the evidence of its truth is quite convincing.”
Since I don’t know whether or not you and Michael have come to that conclusion, since from your writings there is some likelihood you have, how could I then attack you as purists when I can see the logic of the position? Although I’ve related my history more than a few times on the blog, perhaps it will help if I do it once more.
My personal political involvement began in the latter 60′s when I was an activist and minority Presidential candidate in arguably the most radical labor union in the United States at that time, the Social Services Employees Union in NYC. At that time the Communist Party (followed USSR), the Progressive Labor Party and the Trotskyites were very powerful within the Union. Also playing important roles were various factions of Socialists, in addition to garden variety liberals and Goldwater conservatives. I was basically a Hippie, with some Yippie tendencies. In college I had been at the founding meeting of SDS at my University, but I frankly didn’t like the guy organizing and declined to join.
I became a “power” in the Union because I was the head delegate from a large Welfare Center that kept electing me with 90% of the vote. It was sort of like being a Senator and a Governor combined. In that home base I was impregnable because I had built a coalition of people across the board from all parts of the political spectrum. That was done by staying strictly to an agenda of what was best for the workers and not trying to use them for my political purposes.
With all that each one of the varied Marxist factions tried to recruit me and I rejected them all on two grounds. The first was that they insisted that their membership adhere to a strict “party line” and frequently had purges where they’d throw out people who weren’t party line perfect. The Maoists went through a period where every six months they’d throw out their leader for not being pure enough. The year I ran for President I faced the two major candidates, one who has CPUSA backing and the other backed by the Young People’s Socialist League. The third part in the race was the Trotskyites and I represented a coalition of unaffiliated people. The Trotskyites only attacked me calling me names like “Running Dog of Capitalism”. I improbably came in third and beat the Trotskyites who had a bigger, better organized faction.
My experiences back the exposed me to radicals who were humorless asses and whose every political stand could be deduced before they opened their mouths, by what the current “party line” was. We see this same phenomena today in our political scene. We see people who are putative purists who attack simply because a particular political figure doesn’t meet all of their criteria. The problem I have with them is that if they are participants in the political system, then they either realize the limitations of any candidate to fully speak truth to oligarchic power, or they wind up not affecting anything but feeling warm and fuzzy that they’ve done the right thing. I take the oppression and tragedy laid upon the backs of much of humanity far too seriously to entertain the needs of those for whom politics is a game of ego.
I don’t see either you or Michael as being on “radical ego trips”, so I used your disagreements with Warren not in a personal sense, but because it allowed me a jumping off point for my article and was a good contrast for what had happened to Lugar on the Right.
The Progressive Labor Party were Maoists.
also
The second reason I rejected all the Marxist factions was because they weren’t the type of people i would want to get high, or hang out with.
Tony C.
Deal. (spit in hand and shake)
@Bron: Socialism was tried in many such communities in the mid part of the 19th century, they all went under.
Of course they did, and that is why the system I advocate is not socialism. I know you cannot understand that, because you have been so thoroughly brainwashed, and of course that is another advantage of my system: you and your kind can suck it, you can go find your own town and try your anarchic system and suffer in slavery while we cooperatively prosper in capitalism as it should be, and eventually, your children, after growing up in fear and misery and poverty, if they grow up at all, will beg for admittance. And we will welcome them.
The reason I do not advocate socialism, or communism, is because any system that does not reward work and sacrifice in a larger portion than laziness and selfishness is doomed to fail.
Your system rewards selfishness, and is doomed to fail. Communism and socialism do not distinguish strongly enough between hard work and lackadaisical work, between the sacrifice for education and the laziness of skipping it, between the sacrifice of risk-taking entrepreneurism and the safety of a government job (or salaried job).
It is fundamental human nature to make such distinctions, to believe the guy that worked his way through medical school should earn more than the guy that fell into truck-driving out of high school and just did that for 30 years. Those are both choices, but we really do believe the guy saving lives in the E.R. is contributing more to society than the guy hauling furniture from New York to Colorado.
The system I advocate, for liberal democracy, does not prevent people from becoming millionaires or billionaires, from cashing in on their inventions, brilliant writing, or anything else. If you are a class clown and end up making a few hundred million on wit (like Jay Leno), more power to ya, buddy. If you are some unnaturally gifted salesman and make a jaw-dropping fortune (Steve Jobs, Michael Dell), thumbs up. If you have a borders-on-magic insight into markets and business and go from nearly scratch to one of the richest men in the world (Buffet, Soros), we will smile on you. This system would not put a cap on wealth.
That means: Not communism, and not even pure socialism. If you work hard, sacrifice, take risks, you can get ahead. If you don’t, you can fall behind. But we won’t let you fall so far behind that your life is a hopeless ruin; we don’t roll that way, it really is not necessary, it would be gratuitous cruelty out of selfishness. We are not selfish.
And, for what it is worth, the social democratic party in Sweden has been running that country of 9 million since 1917, and is still going strong. Of course they also allow entrepreneurs, and millionaires and billionaires, and capitalism and risk taking, so maybe this is a matter of size, or maybe it is just a matter of income, but modified socialism like Sweden’s DOES work, and makes the people in it very happy, and very few of Sweden’s business people try to flee the country, renounce citizenship, or hide their income (which is nearly impossible in Sweden due to an open-book policy).
The Ultimate Logical Fallacy by H. Skip Robinson
Every democracy in the history of the world has failed over a prolonged period of time. They fail for very obvious reasons once one considers what happens and why in any political arena. Why are we facing the exact same problems today, as we did in 1960, but they’re even worse now. And why are the major candidates saying the same things they have been saying for 50 years? Why do the majority of candidates continuously promise the world, yet fail to deliver on just about every important issue. As Lester Thoreau said, “there are thousands striking at the branches of evil for every ‘one’ striking at the root.”
We are taught from the time we are able to understand the concept of government rule that democracy is the best form of government. The problem is that democracy has failed every time it has ever been attempted. Once the Citizens understand in a democracy that there is money available from the public treasury, to those that are willing to do what is necessary to get it, the fight for that money creates a political and highly adversarial conflict that actually ends up destroying the country rather than benefiting the majority. Instead, the majority of people end up voting or doing what is in the best interest of their political party, their company, their union or their profession. This is just one of several fatal flaws, a very important one I might add, why all democracies fail sooner or later.
The logical fallacy is based on this question. How can democracy be the best form of government, when it has never worked and more importantly can be shown logically, from every scholastic genre to have fatal flaws that will cause it to fail? Interestingly, the elected representation of a democratic Republic has the same fatal flaws as a democracy but you must add in the issue of political compromise by the elected officials, as one of the mechanism that adds to its eventual destruction. The logical fallacy itself is, “Since Democracy does not work, it cannot be the best form of government. The truthful and logical statement would be, No government yet devised by humankind, has ever worked and even what we thought was the best fails.” All governments attempted so far have failed and for the same basic reasons.
There must be a balance between a person’s self interest and their contribution to society and not only does this self interest differ for each person, some people are just better able to give a lot more back to society than others and in different ways. Look what George Washington or Nikola Tesla did for society in totally different capacities. It is impossible to socially determine what is fair for one individual and unfair for others in these two areas of human existence. People don’t even know what is in their own bet interests many times, much less knowing what’s in others or the majorities. This is another logical fallacy; that people collectively can determine what is in the best interest of the majority. Do you think that I can know what is in your best interest? If we can’t know what is in another person’s best interest, we surely can’t know what in the majorities. Add in the politicians, colluding with their special interest groups, and you can start to understand another portion of the fatal flaws of a democracy.
In logic and rhetoric, a fallacy is usually an improper argumentation in reasoning often resulting in a misconception or presumption. Literally, a fallacy is “an error in reasoning that renders an argument logically invalid”.
There are different kinds of logical fallacies that people make in presenting their positions. It is a good idea to be familiar with them so you can point them out in discussions, thereby focusing the issues where they belong while exposing errors.
It is true that during a debate on an issue, if you simply point out to your “opponent” a logical fallacy that he/she has just made, it generally gives you the upper hand. But then, merely having the upper hand is not the goal: truth is. Nevertheless, logical fallacies hide the truth, so pointing them out is very useful. Go here for a list of some of the generally recognized Logical Fallacies. http://carm.org/logical-fallacies-or-fallacies-argumentation
I can say unequivocally, with plenty of available empirical evidence, our democratic republic, the first of its kind, enhanced by a bill of rights, created some 230 years ago, has failed in its original intent. I can show you legislation and case law that provides this evidence. Most of the bill of rights enumerated and those not enumerated, but protected under Article IX have been usurped. Other than the abolition of slavery and gaining suffrage for those without property ownership, the protection of unalienable property rights, our primary Constitutional intent and the predominate feature within the Bill of Rights are no longer being protected by our government run courts. Only the elemental rights such as for freedom of religious, speech and the press, are the few rights remaining “So Far”.
The United States of America, I believe, is our greatest example of the failure of government. We of course have hundreds perhaps thousands of other examples of government failure, but the U.S., in most people’s opinion, made the greatest effort to make a government work.
The intent of our Constitution is quite simple in principle. It was to protect the individual and property rights of its Citizens. The Colonists paid very little in taxation, often times none and everything was working quite well under this limited level of taxation and regulation, as compared to the extensive levels of taxation and regulation under the Monarchs; hence, the idea of how limited government came about. When the nation was founded, the entire Federal Government ran off of only a luxury import tax. So when I say most of our property rights have been usurped, you can understand that now, with over 115 forms of taxation, they right to keep our money and property and do with it as each individual see fit, has been transformed (usurped) into a huge confiscatory machine, leaving no form of human action or business untaxed or regulated, except for perhaps the black markets. This is what is referred to in economics as fascism.
As a couple of recent examples of usurpations of individual rights, let me give you two very important one that now give rise to additional usurpations. Remember that the various encroachment against our rights have been done almost over the entire two hundred and thirty year period, slowly yet almost in a step by step manner.
The “Right” of Redress of Grievances” under Article 1, was denied in 2007 by a Federal three (3) panel Appeals Court and then was refused a hearing by the U.S. Supreme Court, that same year. They Appeals Court ruled that the Government does not have to answer questions related to the laws they are enforcing. That means, let’s say you’re on trial and the issue of what is the intent and application of a specific law is necessary to show your innocence, the government no longer is required to answer any specific questions pertaining to that law, even though they are the ones enforcing it. Sadly the judiciary works in a fairly discrete manner, as most Citizens do not understand the various complexities of the rule of law, nor follow it. We are not taught much about the legal system and therefore few understand its complexities, which is one of the other fatal flaws of a democracy or a democratic Republic. Half of our elected Officials and Judges don’t appear to take the time to read and fully understand the laws of our nation. The other is recent usurpation is Habeas Corpus which was enacted through the NDAA on Dec. 31, 2011 which fosters indefinite detentions without a grand jury or criminal complaint. Government can basically arrest someone without providing cause, detain them as long as they like and investigate them until they die, if they like. It is your guess, as to mine, why government at this juncture in our history, has now just recently usurped these rights.
Remember that governments are in a reality sense, Power Brokerage Cartels that use the laws of a society to gain privileges and controls (power). Government contracts are the best example, but there are other less obvious such as high ranking jobs, lobbying, favorable legislation and political access.
How can people really believe that government is necessary, when the facts show it to be a power brokerage cartel that corrupts many of the men and women that join its ranks and ojn top of that it has never worked well for the majority? That it is used as a weapon against those that rebel against the power and corruption created by the cartel. That government as it now exists has destroyed every culture, no matter how it is set up or what its original intent was, they always fail and for the same basic reasons.
Is it true that if you tell people something over and over again, even if it false, and they will eventually believe it. “We have to have government”, who is going to enforce the laws?
Is it true that many people do not really understand how Free Enterprise really works and therefore blame Corporations and free markets for many of the things that corporate welfare and government contracts really foster and the reason behind why many corporations go astray? That government actually gives certain corporations privileges in exchange for campaign contributions so let’s blame the problems on the poor regulation of the Corporations instead of the power brokerage Cartel that give out the privileges in the first place. It can’t be the government, who is going to enforce the laws?
You can even go down the list of its most powerful and prominent participants in government over the last 100 years and read the horrid details of their corruption, why they did what they did during their tenure and what benefits they received because of their corruptive exploits; money and power?
There are but a few like President Jimmy Carter, who was so naïve as to think that what he was saying and doing would actually make an effect on our society. His own party even ostracized him for many of the positions he took because it was contrary to the power of the cartel.
I think the ultimate example of how government really works is the attempted selling of the Illinois Senatorial seat by then Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. We even have evidence that President Obama was aware of the situation and that his administration lied to cover it up. Of course the prosecution of the most power men seldom comes about, unless it is so blatant a crime such as Blagojevich. Government is also a protection racket for the rich and powerful.
So let me ask you, are you really convinced “now” that government is a necessity or are you going to continue to believe another age old logical fallacy? It’s the Corporations Fault.
The corporation is but a contract amongst Citizens to engage in commerce. I do not have to be engaged in that contract unless government grants that group special privilege or monopoly power in which I am therefore forced to endure a commercial relationship. That is the problem and it can only be curtailed by severing government ability to render such privileges. As our history has shown, man can live under minimal government, but it cannot live without free enterprise. We have a choice, either no government, very minimal government or some level of fascism and we now have they history to show why fascism always fails. We now also have the evidence that a democratic republic with the intent to restrain government and maximize individual rights has failed. Thinking that two entities can co-exist, free enterprise and government, that are antithetic to one another, with one given legalized force to feed off the other is, in my belief, delusional and the Ultimate Logical Fallacy.
Tony C, right, right.
When my kid was 18, he was trying to get to know me some more, which he had been prevented from doing for years. He went with me one whole day wherever I went in Washington, DC, and we spoke about what I did, what was going on, etc. A street person came up and asked me for change and I gave him some, and because I was not very “flush,” my kid asked me why I had done that. I said, “I do it when I can and I don’t do it when I can’t.” He wanted to know, next, why someone who looked like he could work should get food and lodging if he DID NOT WORK. I said, “Well if he committed a felony this morning, say, arguendo, he beat somebody up this morning and broke their back, he would be jailed, and the jail would have to give him a decent place to sleep and three meals. If he needed medical treatment, the jail would have to give him medical treatment. So he would have to get food, shelter and basic medical treatment if he had committed a serious crime this morning.” My kid always knows when I’m setting the thing up for a punch line. He said, “I think I see where you’re going here.” I finished it off anyway: “Why would I consider it more important to treat him humanely all day and night if he had hurt someone than I consider it when he has NOT hurt anyone?”
It’s not that people are being rewarded for NOT being diligent and smart and successful, it’s just that if you want to be a civilized decent society, you have to recognize certain basic, inalienable human rights, and just make a serious, across-the-boards commitment not to violate them. It’s hard enough being an ordinarily capable and successful person in a dangerous world; being placed on the razor’s edge to live there at all times without a single slip-up is for movies lasting 90 minutes, not for living day to day for your whole life.
Tony C:
you can dress it up any old way you want, an old whore with good makeup is still and old whore and that is what you are proposing.
In a free society, you would be free to do what you outlined, hopefully it will work because I dont want your children mooching off of my children.
I would love to do an experiment take a town in Wyoming or Montana, in the most desolate place imaginable and pick 50,000 people to go there and live in a free market system with no taxes and no regulations and only a court of law and a government based on our original intent along with a police force to enforce those limited laws. Give it 5 years and see what happens. Let them have access to world markets with no tariffs and an unregulated financial market.
Do the same with your idea and give it 5 years.
Lets end this once and for all. The loser adopts the system of the winner.
Wow, Bron, Rhymes with “mistaken metaphor.” Used to be figuratively, but now, literally.
Bron,
There is no such thing as world markets with no tariffs. It seems abundantly obvious that financial institutions aren’t regulated enough. Banks too big to fail? Who benefits from that?
With regard to children mooching off other children, clogs to clogs in three generations.
Whoever is sure that it will not be his own descendants “mooching” off others, remember: Count No Man Happy Before his Death.
All governments end up being fascist oligarchies and we have not yet come of with a system to stop that. Mixed economies almost always become more totalitarian as the age. The U.S. is the best example. Come up with a solution to this dilemma and we’ll listen. You can try to argue for the various redistributrion of wealth programs, but they generally just make things worse in the long run. Read my essay I posted a few hours ago and you will have a clearer understanding of the dilemma. What’s make you think that you can make something work that has failed us throughout history?
All you democrats and republicans, when one generation finds that they can grant themselves benefits and past the liabilities off to the next generation, what do you expect will happen to each subsequent generation.?
Skiprob,
Do I detect an Objectivist bent in your writing. If so please name me one time any society remained free under a system based on “free enterprise” and no government. Logical fallacy indeed.
Malisha,
One of the things I appreciate about you besides your intelligence is your openness in discussing you life experiences here. It makes you real and real is good.
Tony C.,
In re your post of 7:34 – Yep. But it’s hard to sell that not all forms of socialism are created equal to someone whose native language is Aynish and a religious dogma that always puts personal profits first in decision making.
@Bron: Give it 5 years and see what happens.
Already did it, dummy. The founders did it. What happened? People abused it, the people they abused demanded protection from them, and voted in the politicians that would make that protection law, and here we are. Your system resulted in child labor, lethal working conditions, rampant fraud in medicine to the point that nobody knew if anything actually worked, and both real slavery and virtual slavery in natural monopolies like mines. Your system was fully in place on the frontiers, in the mountains, and in the Old West with murders unpunished, contracts meaningless, and rule by force of arms with life-threatening intimidation around every corner.
We’ve been there and done that, we don’t have to try it twice, the founders gave it to us, and the result is what you see before us. The reason the vast majority of us do not WANT the laws undone is because the vast majority of laws PROTECT us from people like you.
The system I propose? Already done too, in Sweden in 1917, and they have given it 95 years, and now here THEY are, the country with better education than us, more entrepreneurship than us, better healthcare than us, a populace FAR happier with their government and LIVES than we are.
Mike, quite the dilemma. Governments don’t work, yet “they” have always deprived the Citizens of their liberties. The very entity that is supposed to be protecting our rights and liberties never is willing to do so and therefore must lie to the Citizens in able to fool the majority into acquisience. Is it ignorance on the part of the Citizens? Even our founding fathers fell for the fatal trap.
My question to you is what is it going to take, to take it to the next level in human inlightenment or are we stuck with the democratic capitalist illusion forever? How many more millions are going to be killed by government in the 21st century, before people wake up to the scam of government and the fascist oligrachy who controls it.
An institution that has for it’s economic foundation, the right to legally steal, coerce and imprison people in order to acheive its financial existance, logically can not foster an ethical society. The chinese proverb “the fish rots from the head down” is a fitting cliche for our current political and economic system.
It discusts me to see people keep arguing in favor of something that we now have 230 years of evidence to show that it doesn’t work nor can’t work, at least not well and especially which is intended to benefit the majority and instead benefits the ruling oligarchy to the demise of the majority.
Just the loss of individual rights in our lifetime should be sufficient for everyone to achowledge the evidence. Can even the higher intelligent within our society misunderstand the antithetic forces at work and the violence that it has subjected humans to? Its time to stop and change course, especially in America, since our economic existance is currently so fragile.
@skiprob: I’m not reading your essay, it is the same claptrap proposed by all Aynish.
The problem is that democracy has failed every time it has ever been attempted.
What bullshit. A Democracy is a form of government in which people vote for either laws directly, or representatives that will form the law. Most governments that do that are still going strong, including ours, England’s, France’s, Germany’s, Sweden’s, and on and on. (The constitutional, parliamentary monarchies are technically Democratic).
Oh wait, I know, you are going to redefine the word “failed,” so it doesn’t mean the Democracy has been replaced by some entirely different form of government, you will say it can ‘fail” but continue to hold elections that it abides by, that even if leaders that lose elections still step down and it still has all the appearances of a working Democracy and representative government, by your secret squirrel definition, it “failed.”
That’s Aynish for you; a foreign language that stole the words of English and redefined them to mean something completely different.
I hear that Somalia is nice this time of year. Those who believe in free enterprise in place of a government will feel right at home there.
@skiprob: Governments DO work, that is why we have them, why we tolerate their shortcomings and corruption, and why we haven’t overthrown them even though we could do so quite easily.
An institution that has for it’s economic foundation, the right to legally steal, coerce and imprison people in order to acheive its financial existance,
That is not government, because government does not have the right to steal. In a free society you are talking about SOCIETY, the parent of government, and from whom government takes its orders. It is SOCIETY that says if you want to be a part of it, you have to pay a share of the goals it determines or get out of it. You have a choice, in this country: Pay the share that we decided we will all pay, or leave this country. As soon as you are an adult, you have that choice. Government is not “stealing” from you, it is collecting a debt you incurred by your choice to stay, because your choice to stay involved your partaking of the military protection that benefits you, the police protection that benefits you, the right to sue other individuals that harm you or rip you off, that benefits you, your right to quit your job and seek another that benefits you, your use of our roads, our inspected-for-safety food, our inspected-for-safety structures, our inspected-for-safety doctors and other professionals. Whatever benefits you gain from living in this society, whatever makes you reluctant to LEAVE it, is why you owe what this society demands.
The government is OUR arm enforcing OUR will on those that would cheat us. WE pay our taxes, and unfortunately we have to pay more to make sure dumb asses that think everything should be free pay THEIR taxes.
Government doesn’t “steal,” they work at the behest of a free society, and it us US that have given it permission to kick your ass if you try to pull your free rider bullshit.
Wow, Mike Spindell, here I was working on something that I not only hate but that makes me feel physically sick when I’m not (actually nauseated), and I thought, oh Heck, I’ll steal a few minutes away from this horror and go check out the bloggosphere.
And saw your lovely note.
And it raised my spirits, and it meant a lot to me. I was actually thinking, “You keep telling these stories and they’re not exactly marvels of erudition” but then I keep telling them, because really, I haven’t read much political history or sociological analysis and I know more about day-care than philosophy. But since you’re so kind, here’s a story:
In 1980 I had to go to a child psychiatrist (chosen and hired by my then husband) for complete evaluation to see whether I was too mentally disturbed to continue mothering my then two-year-old kid. So I went in the first day and said, “where do I start?” and he said, “When you were born.” So blah blah blah. At the end, he decided to also send me in for a barrage of psychometric tests, to a different guy, a forensic psychologist.
OK, I get there, he administers the MMPI, some other tests with hundreds of questions (true false blah blah blah), asks me what words mean, makes me count backwards by sevens, shows me pictures, tells me to make up stories, gives me the Rorshach test, makes me do sentence completions, what’s wrong with this picture?, this and that and the other, draw a person, draw a house, more more more. One picture stumped me; couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it (a ship). I couldn’t remember the word “audacity” and got totally flummoxed because it’s an easy word. OK, and then he whips out some little red and white blocks.
“Make this shape,” and I do.
“Make this shape,” and I do.
“Make this shape,” and I do.
“WOW,” he says, with genuine astonishment in his voice. “You did those blocks the fastest of any person I have ever tested in 16 years!” I blinked. He was looking at me like I was a creature from outer space. I said, “I do day-care for a living. Half of what I do every day is play with blocks!” He then said, “The smartest lawyer I ever met was a woman.” I remember thinking, “Isn’t that a non-sequitur?” But after all, he was going to write me up and either approve me for custody or say I belonged in a nut-house, so I didn’t want to challenge him.
Oh well, thanks so much for your kind words. I gotto go take my compazine now and finish this motion for summary judgment.
Interesting……
AY, if you meant my story, here’s a punch line: He said I was a good enough mother but I might “degenerate into a frank psychosis” because I was “ambivalent” about my husband!
@Malisha: fwiw, ONE of the symptoms of “frank psychoses” is essentially equivalent to depression or unhappiness. It is so subjective as to be useless. But you need at least TWO of the symptoms, so you have plenty of company, anybody that has resigned themselves to suffering in a bad situation (personal or work) was “at risk” with you.
Now, combine that with hallucinating severed heads in pirate costume singing Broadway show tunes, and there would have been the proof you were “at risk.”
Tony C — how did you know? Were you watching me? Are you following me? Who said those terrible things about me?
(Which Broadway show tunes? Lot’s Wife?)
“Cassius: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
Skiprob,
Taking the largest perspective the reasons we humans always seem to screw up our societies is our own heritage dating back to our origins. We began as herbivores, became omnivores and developed into the greatest predators on the planet. When human society greater than the family unit began to develop,
perhaps 20,000 or so years ago there was an evolutionary advantage in creating a hierarchy of patriarchal power led by an Alpha Male. As we have progressed as a species this trait has diminished but remains strong within us. Historically we know that in at least about 600 BCE the wiser among us, in this case Confucius, began to despair at the waste of endless warfare and power struggles. He developed a philosophy whose foundation was “”Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself”. This radical change in perspective was later posited by The Buddha, the Hellenic’s, Rabbi Hillel and Jesus. Unfortunately, philosophy while potent does not easily overcome genetics. Here we are today and in every society throughout humanity we have Alphas struggling to rise to the top of the hierarchy with little consideration for anyone but themselves.
So government will always be imperfect until we can overcome this unneeded evolutionary anachronism. While thus far all forms of government have fallen short of being satisfactory, that fact doesn’t preclude our advancement. Indeed, for every instance you give of failed governance I can counter with an example of how life for all of humanity has gotten better through the years.
The inherent problem with a “Free Market” non-governmental society is that the Alphas would quickly take control and impose their will upon it. The purpose of any business venture is profit and market share. If there were o restraints on business then Microsoft, for instance, would have controlled 100% of the personal computer market, eve though their products just aren’t that good. The Objectivist/Libertarian conception of society is probably given the evidence of history the most fanciful of political/economic theories.
“Can even the higher intelligent within our society misunderstand the antithetic forces at work and the violence that it has subjected humans to?”
The problem is within the definition. Who gets to decide who the “higher intelligent” in society is? May people thought the ass Allan Greenspan was the higher intelligence in economics and he’s now even admitted his wrongs. What you define as failures, I define as struggles of evolution. With all the horrors of the past century and with all the horrors of this current one thus far,
I’ll take this time over any other in past history. I’m old enough to remember the
50′s and with all the prosperity that existed then in America, it was an awful, fearful time for many. Do I have a viable political/economic model to lead humanity to a better overall life, no I don’t because it is our own personal evolution that will do so, or not. However, all the false nostrums of Marxism, Fascism and “Free Marketism” will not only not work, but actually make things worse.
Malisha,
During my time as a Psychotherapist the saddest lesson I learned was that most of my profession be they Psychotherapists, Psychologists and/or Psychiatrists were batshit crazy. That’s why I gave it up.
1. @skiprob: Governments DO work, that is why we have them, why we tolerate their shortcomings and corruption, and why we haven’t overthrown them even though we could do so quite easily.
In all due respect, you are unwilling to except something because you have been conditioned into believing it even though you are fully aware of the failures it presents. Everyone knows it supposed to work like that “but it doesn’t. A government by the people of the people and for the people sounds wonderful, but you know that it is not the way it really works, and you don’t want to ever evaluate why, when the evidence is there.
You additionally argue for the logical fallacy “if it exists, it must be working”. Slavery worked but you must concede that it did not work well for the slaves. Democracy of course works, they just don’t work well for their intended purpose and for a number of easily recognized reasons. All democracies end up failing over time and one of the reasons why are founding fathers set up a democratic republic. The problem is that there are even more fatal flaws in a democratic republic.
One being, people like you who are “not” willing to read and therefore keep regurgitating what they are told to believe. Are you one of those people who actually believe your political representatives? They’re lying if they tell you that government can succeed. They’re lying when the promise the world and end up delivering nothing of real value. If you noticed, only Ron Paul tells the truth and his message is that that the free market can succeed better at providing for what is in the best interest of the majority. Ignorance of economics and the other scientific studies like psychology and sociology lend to societies inability to make proper determinations at the voters booth.
It is tragic that someone is not willing to read and one of the reasons democracies fail. Just google the terms “democracy and illusion” and READ.
An institution that has for its economic foundation, the right to legally steal, coerce and imprison people in order to achieve its financial existence,
Tell that to the hundreds of people who have been put in jail for not paying an income tax that does not exist or the thousand who have had their property stolen from them. But first understand that we are not a democratic Republic anymore. We are a fascist oligarchy. Also please read that the 2nd platform of Communism “a high, progressive or graduated income tax. “The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx. Please start reading dude.
That is not government, because government does not have the right to steal. In a free society you are talking about SOCIETY, the parent of government, and from whom government takes its orders. It is SOCIETY that says if you want to be a part of it, you have to pay a share of the goals it determines or get out of it. You have a choice, in this country: Pay the share that we decided we will all pay, or leave this country. As soon as you are an adult, you have that choice. Government is not “stealing” from you, it is collecting a debt you incurred by your choice to stay, because your choice to stay involved your partaking of the military protection that benefits you, the police protection that benefits you, the right to sue other individuals that harm you or rip you off, that benefits you, your right to quit your job and seek another that benefits you, your use of our roads, our inspected-for-safety food, our inspected-for-safety structures, our inspected-for-safety doctors and other professionals. Whatever benefits you gain from living in this society, whatever makes you reluctant to LEAVE it, is why you owe what this society demands.
Your utopian democratic fantasy is an illusion. “We live in this perfect democracy Republic and it has solved all our social problems.” You are in a state of illusion if you think that this is the way our system really works. Just look a the last 50 years. We have the same problems today that we had them, but they’re even worse.
The government is OUR arm enforcing OUR will on those that would cheat us. We pay our taxes, and unfortunately we have to pay more to make sure dumb asses that think everything should be free pay THEIR taxes.
The redistribution of wealth has been a drastic failure time and time again, as it ends up bankrupting those countries that embrace it. Just study the collapse of the last 25 counties in the last 25 years. It all there to read dude.
Government doesn’t “steal,” they work at the behest of a free society, and it us US that have given it permission to kick your ass if you try to pull your free rider bullshit.
You should know that Governments work on behest of “special interest groups” not the majority. I can probably show you with your own writing of you complaining about this fact. Your premise is wrong!!!!! I grant you that is what is supposed to happen but it doesn’t. Why. Because the majority of people vote for what is in their own best interest instead of the majorities best interest. Try asking a military contractor to vote for less military spending even when everyone knows we spend way too much on defense. Somewhere in the area of more than the top ten other countries combined.
I can only surmise that you are not taking all things into consideration when you write what you write
Joseph Stiglitz | Inequality Major Impediment to Recovery
by 4closureFraud – posted just today
I thought democracy was supposed to create equality yet it has created just the opposite. This is what our great democratic Republic has created and not one person on the entire planet can give you a “valid method” on how to change it using the current political system. Why is that Mike????
What most people fail to understand is that socialism is really a tool employed by the ruling oligarchy to cheat the majority out of their money. We now know how they do it and yet we still can’t stop them.
Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto “not for the Proletariat as most people believe, but for the Bourgeoisie. Marx erroneously called the Bourgeoise “capitalists” just as the oligarchs are calling our quasi private sector capitalists today. They were no more capitalist then, then our major corporations are now. Just look at the special interests, military & pharmceutical industrial complex and see the level of corporate welfare and government contracts they get.
You know all this Mike yet you still just don’t want to beleive that the system of government can be so unethical. 170,000,000 people killed by their own govenrments in the 20th century alone. Can’t wait to see what happens in the 21st century, if we continue down the same path. Barack Obama has really changed everything so there is hope…. yea for the morons that beleive him or those sucking off the public treasury.
@skiprob: Aynish crap, of course, and as I expected, you redefine “failed” to mean whatever you want it to mean.
I did not read the rest, I won’t argue with the Aynish if they refuse to speak English.
This was funny, though: In all due respect, you are unwilling to except something because you have been conditioned into believing it even though you are fully aware of the failures it presents.
Apparently the respect due was zero; since you claim I am so stupid for not believing what you believe that I must have been “conditioned” like an animal or a brainwash victim.
I have thought (and written) about this for far longer than you, and YOU are the one brainwashed by objectivist, Randian fraudulence, you cannot see the facts in front of your face.
It is why you will prove you are incapable of arguing without using Ayn Rand redefinitions, all you Aynish can do is parrot a bullshit artist and pretend it is irrefutable logic, when it is in fact circular redefinitions on top of bullshit predicates just masquerading as logic.
A failed government is one that has been replaced by either anarchy or some other form of government. Our government has not failed. When Bush’s term was up, he left office. When longtime Senators and Congressmen lose their primaries or elections, they concede and vacate their office. For evidence, just look at the turnovers in 2008 and 2010. All the same is true in most Democracies.
We can still vote people out of office, and do. That is not a failure of our form of government, that is our form of government working.
Skiprob,
Now I was thinking we might have a dialogue regarding your beliefs and my beliefs. This seems to be something you are unwilling to do. Instead you keep repeating your mantra that “government is bad” without articulating what should replace it. The problem with your repetition is that I have articulated reasons why there is a problem with governments, so I’ve somewhat granted your proposition. Yet you keep operating under the false premise that I’m saying all government is good.
Binary thinking in action, Mike.
Obviously most of you recognize that I’m a libertarian. I even ran for the State House here in Florida in 1992. The guy I ran against and lost too in a 75% Democratic district, has never again even run for public office. I threw him under the bus pretty good. Guest what he does now. He’s a lobbiest. Go figure. I also ran on the Voucher system thinking erroneously that it would be a good step in the right direction to improve education. We can all see how that turned out. Sorry I didn’t realize just how devious govenment is. I didn’t realize that people voted for what is in their own best interests instead of the majorites. I thought the public education would welcome competition since it’s monopolypower had shown some pretty poor results. Here in Palm Beach County we currently have about a 33% drop out rate and horrible truency rates as well. I don’t have a solution that most will welcome.
Why do you think that I’m not even a member of the libertarian partyany more? I started evaluating the posibility that a political system could solve the various social problems facing our country and world.
I hear tons of rhetoric yet as each year goes by, I’m now 59, I see the same problems year after year, with one exception, most of the problems are worse today than when I was a young man. Hmmmm.
I can give you the reasons why every government ever created thus far, will almost assuredly fail. As I say to some people, I can make the institution of slavery work, but it is not a good system. The same holds true for government. It always fails at it’s intent. It doesn’t provide justice, equality, peace or prosparity except for those that are willing to work the system. Of course, in my opinion you must sell your soul to the devil to do this and/or more importantly, you must turn your back on the majority in favor of what ever special interest you serve. Good luck everyone. I’ve gone Galt until somebody can change my mine. I’m all ears!!!!
Tony, I do not have to redefine failure. It is obvious if you understand the constitutional intent of our democratic Republic and the usupations that have extinguised it’s potential of serving the majorities best interest. You have to read to do that partner, can’t keep you head in the sand.
Well . . . that sure explains a lot about Florida.
@skiprob: I didn’t realize that people voted for what is in their own best interests instead of the majorites.
Then you are a fool, and as your spelling consistently shows, a fool that cannot be bothered with details that make a difference.
I’ve gone Galt until somebody can change my mine. I’m all ears!!!!
I assume you mean “mind,” and I also assume you are lying about being willing to listen, just by your reference to Galt. Galt is a fictional sociopath, if you admire him, there is nothing that will change your mind, because the vast majority of people are NOT sociopaths and do not ADMIRE sociopathic behavior, as Ayn Rand did. The vast majority of people are willing to sacrifice some of their work, some of their time, and forego some of their natural advantages of intellect or financial station to help others less fortunate than they are.
If you begin from the unalterable premise that mandatory taxation for common benefit is theft, as you seem to do, then no common ground for rational discussion exists.
Tony C, Mike S, the stuff about being crazy has always led me down the same path: If I were not depressed, I WOULD BE CRAZY!
Just taking the single case that brought me onto the Turley Blog: Zimmerman & Cops v. Trayvon Martin & people. Look at the insanity! The fact that it takes a million dollar campaign to make law enforcement even BEGIN to enforce a law (against MURDER!) and the psychosadistic crap that resulted (and will result >>>>>>>>>>) and the crazy-making “public theater” that even the Feds are sunk in UP TO THEIR EYEBALLS and the fake complexity (“Who hit whom first? We will never know!!!!!”) and the side-struggles allegedly consuming real passion and attention (“A school is handing out skittles!”) and the blah blah blah that is all but intolerable alongside the plain fact: the kid is dead. I don’t think it is going too far to say that I might “degenerate into a frank psychosis” if caring about “the kid is dead” is dominant in my mind when, “wait wait — was that ‘coon’ or ‘punk’? he said?” is generally thought of as the important issue.
Mike S, I think the shrinks are nuts because they’re carving out a way to deal with that “ambivalence” issue without saying, ever: “You know, you’re right, that’s JUST WRONG.”
Are you’re asking me to come up with a system of replacement because you acknowledge that the system needs to be replaced or to see if I have a system in mind? I do, but it is far from certainty of it’s ability to improve upon what we have, which I think of course is horrible. The point is, we need to try something new since we are reaping more and more of the negative ramification and results of various failed political policies. Running $trillion deficits will come home to seriously haunt us.
I obviously did not get elected Gene, but your brotheren did which does explain a lot.
Too bad for you democracy is at the core of the Constitution, skip.
If that bothers you, I suggest you look at the pantheon of alternate viable forms of government (which does not include Libertarianism as has been proven in this forum time and again), select a country that utilizes your system of preference and make that your domicile of choice because the only way to do away with democracy here at this point is by revolution. You do not fix the problems of democracy by abdicating it. You fix the problems of democracy by education, vigilance, voting, engineering your social systems like legislation and elections so they can be as free from the manipulations of money as possible in the decision making process and holding your elected officials responsible for their misdeeds in office.
There is no convincing someone like you and we’ve got Bron to prove that proposition.
You simply provide an alternate example of the failure of binary thinking and the psychologically misguided and disastrous ideology of Libertarianism – an ideology cloaked in the language liberty and freedom which will only bring about oligarchy and economic tyranny (or possibly anarchy) in application.
Convince you?
If having your arguments consistently dismantled doesn’t convince you, nothing will.
skip,
Other than the Mike’s and pete, I have no brethren in Florida I know of. In fact, that you didn’t get elected and yet boast of “throwing someone under the bus” only illustrates that Florida voters are smarter than I generally give them credit for being.
Gene H –
Don’t give those Florida voters too much credit yet –
Gene, the question is, would you raise up arms against me for not wanting to participate in your wretched system. Your bretheren, and I say that metaphoricaly- those who embrace your fascist ideology, are one of the reasons why a libertarian society has yet to be produced. They keep getting shut down by the various fascist governments. The world is uprising though and Hosni Mubarak is just one of the scumbags behind bars, for life. Its a great start. The collapse of the fiat curriencies should speed this process up. So perhaps there is some hope.
Your right. This is politics at it’s finest. Media, government and the Citizens all trying to protect or promote their special interests. The oligarchs love stuff like this because, all though it’s important to the parties directly involved, it detracts us from the real problems which they are causing. More people will follow this though than the real problems.
@skiprob: I will make one more point regarding Galt: He is fictional.
Some people are simply unaware of the mechanics of producing professional fiction for books, TV or stage. It allows the freedom of rewrite, and a phenomenon known among writers as “laying pipe,” which is creating early fictional circumstances that justify later, and otherwise implausible, actions. For example, if you want your 90 pound female heroine to throw a 300 pound man through a window, you better lay a lot of intensive martial arts “pipe” very early in the story, and reinforce it a few times leading up to the critical throw.
The great thing about laying pipe is that it can be done in rewrite, if you want your hero to be victorious by taking advantage of a weakness in the villain, just go back in time (story time) and show the villain getting that weakness. Or, you can just have the villain give up when no sane person would, or take a risk that no sane person would. Just go back and make that part of the villain’s character, make that risk he is going to take the second time he takes it, with the first time wildly successful.
This is the nature of fiction. Galt wins because the author wanted him to win, and manipulated his environment, his allies, and his enemies so he would ultimately win. If a circumstance arises in the story where he plausible would ultimately lose, the opponent is weakened, history is invented to make the hero prepared with a clever riposte, and the opponent dumbstruck into submission or fatal error.
That is the nature of fiction. Go ahead and emulate Galt, you will have about as much success in that as in emulating Batman, because there is no author to rewrite reality for you.
Well Gene since you obviously have all the answers, the world awaits your engineering plans and we will remain patient and vigulent in our support. P.S. I’d like to see at least a little improvement in my lifetime. Goodluck
skiprob,
That you don’t understand the nature of fascism is readily apparent. Your Libertarian ideology and laissez-faire economics leads precisely to corporatist fascism. Applying the label of fascism to something you disagree with without understanding what the flavors and details of the various forms of fascism there are doesn’t make you look intelligent. It makes you look like someone who doesn’t know the meanings of the words you use.
Tony, You missed my entire point. Going galt is: I’m no longer participating in the political system. Remember, I’m not even a member of the Libertarian Party anymore. I prefer not to be participate within our highly corruption system. I got tired of banging my head against the wall. There are to many idiots that are willing to compromise their ethics to gain benefits from the system. The public treasury is all yours. Have at it. Keep redistributing the wealth from the majority to the wealthy and see where it gets our nations.
Gene, you just said in a post or two ago that there is no libertarian society nor has been, yet you blame laissez-faire economics on the fascism we are experincing today. You have it backwards. It’s government collusion with corporations utilizing the redistribution of wealth as their agenda that is causing many of the problems. You think that you can stop that. Yea right. Dream dream dream.
Since your logic is irrational, I understand why you must pick on my spelling to make yourself feel good. It’s as much my typing as my spelling. I do suffer from mild dislexia though. Thanks for bringing it up instead of debating the issues.
skip,
There is no there to have backwards. First, it is a fact that there has been no Libertarian society. The premises of Libertarianism are faulty and doomed to structural failure from the start being the primary reason. It’s an idea that – much like Communism – looks good on paper but fails when attempted to be put into practice. Second, we don’t yet have a laissez-faire economy, but the constant conservative effort to dismantle regulation of business is leading us there. Since we have not yet reached that ideal of laissez-faire economics so beloved by Libertarians and we are experiencing a rise in corporatist fascism, it doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots.
That you don’t think the problem can be solved by systemic legal/social engineering is your opinion and you are entitled to it. You are also entitled to be as wrong as you like. The heart of the solution lies in returning power to the people, in making government officials responsible for their actions, and reigning in the expansionist abusive nature of the corporate form which as a creature of state charter is perfectly possible by legal means as corporations are not real people but a legal fiction and endowed only with the operating parameters that the state allows..
@skiprob: Your problem, as before, is in your definitions. Anybody that disagrees with you is apparently “an idiot.” Anybody that believes in caring for others in need is “compromising their ethics.” Or is it just anybody that takes a dime in aid from the government in a time of need that is “compromising their ethics?”
I think you mean they are compromising your ethics.
Keep redistributing the wealth from the majority to the wealthy and see where it gets our nations.
Although we do have a corruption problem to deal with, the vast majority of federal public wealth is not redistributed to the wealthy, it is redistributed to the relatively poor and lower class, in the form of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, and military payroll.
For local governments we have a similar corruption problem, but the vast majority of localized public wealth is redistributed to public good: infrastructure maintenance, schools, police, and other elements of the justice system such as courts, records, jails, and safety and licensing inspections.
I do not deny that corruption is a problem to be solved, but it would serve us well to keep it in perspective. 62% of the budget is required by law that most of us do not want undone. 43% on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security alone; those programs have about 70%+ approval ratings. That is not redistributing wealth from the 99% to the 1%, it is from the 99% TO the 99%. Neither is more than a tiny fraction of what we spend on the military (19% of the budget). Most of that is on personnel, training, routine equipment and maintenance of real estate.
You have been misled by a fraud.
@skiprob: I do not pick on your spelling to make myself feel good, I pick on your spelling because consistently bad spelling is indicative of an underlying attitude, a lack of attention to or respect for details.
In itself that is not a remarkable trait, and I seldom remark upon it. However, when I see it in an adherent of Objectivism, it is symptomatic of a deeper problem, which is gullibility. It is the consistent failure to be pay attention to the details of claims, definitions and logical progression that allows one to be suckered into Objectivism in the first place.
You have been misled by a fraud that foisted an unworkable philosophy of human interaction upon you. You got suckered. As they say, the devil is in the details, and details are not your strong suit.
Ahh, see, I made a mistake, I have an extra “be” in there. But at least I caught it myself.
Hey Gene, just stay with me on this and try to look at it in a different way. First, in my opinion, the reason why people believe we need regulations, is the failure of the justice system to mitigate the injustices. Rather than fixing the justice system, what do we do; we add on more regulations thinking that this will help and when that doesn’t wrok we add on more.
Before we go any farther, lets understand that all law is based on a really very simple principle. You’re not supposed to harm another person or their property and things like water polition, noise polution and air polution, I believe fall under that principle as well. There are some caveates. Self defense, being one. These are generally recognized principles, some call natural law, and I think we can easily say that these are the foundation of individual rights and property. You’re not supposed to harm other people are their property and doing so would take away their rights of life, liberty and enjoyment, or at lease it’s pursuit.
As society organizes it’s efforts, complexities arise. Let take the stock market. In trying to come up with a system that allows everyone to participate in the profits of business, this is thus far the best system that we have come up with. Has all the govenrment regulation in your opinion, helped? The way it’s currently set up, I think it is very risky for the average retail person to play the stock market. Why would I feel this way? The facts tell me that dispite years of government trying to improve the system through regulation, it is still highly munipulated by the various controlling entities.
So we have two choices: 1. lets add more regulations which even cost more money to affectuate, or 2. lets fix that justice system so that when people are cheated by those manipulating the system, that the victim receives adequate restitution for damages incurred.
I think that the justice system is the problem and that as long as government has the ultimate control over it, it cannot be improved. Now if you want to debate this issue, OK I can agree to this but, to me, the political stuff is a huge waste of time.
Tony C.,
I don’t challenge the facts about the majority of government resources going to the 99%, nor your points made to Skyprobe, but isn’t mere “corruption” painting a bit of a rosy picture?
It’s not only what happens, but also what goes into making it acceptable, that makes me wonder if just “corruption” is sufficient to describe it?
Preemptive wars, stolen election, spying on citizens, redefinition of ownership, torture, all sorts of constitutional break downs like indefinite detention, drones for hire, kill at will, etc. But just as important as the events is public reaction; the media yawn, people’s acceptance – indifference, admiration of… Just corruption?
Are things really doing that well under the surface in this country? It seems like our (never mind Europe’s) acceptance of the whole austerity fiasco alone is indicative of something more systemic.
Sorry if I’m missing context here, I did try and skim most of the comments leading up to this.
The basic failure of your premise is that the justice systems relies upon laws – including regulations – to define both socially unacceptable acts and their punishments. If campaign contributions – which are tantamount to graft in large scale application – were limited and very strictly so with prison penalties attached for exceeding a limit of say $500 per person and $0 for corporations and like special interest groups along with a prohibition on EVER running for or holding an appointed public office for the person taking the bribe? There would have to be a law describing that behavior and its consequent punishment for the judiciary to effect judgment. Sorry! That whole “less is more” mantra is ridiculous. Laws need to be exactly the size and shape to achieve the desired goals.
You have as much chance of convincing me that Libertarianism is a viable ideal as you do of building a perpetual motion machine. The ideology has been dismantled here in so many ways over the years it is beyond count at this point. This is so because the fundamental underpinnings of the ideology are based on faulty and even bad assumptions about human psychology both individually and as groups and on what can only be described as fictional economics. It is a discredited political ideology every bit as much as Communism is but some people are just too stupid to realize it yet.
The only thing we have in common is that we both see the system as it exists now as being dysfunctional.
You, however, have some kind of faith that the delusional propositions of Libertarianism holds the answers when any reasonable application of political and economic theory shows it is an inherently flawed belief.
The solution to dysfunction is repair, not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Ease up on me man, this is not an Answer and Affirmative Defenses, it’s a damn blog which I spend way to much time on for my own benefit. Part of the reason I do, is that I’m pretty sure that the next few years are going to be the hardest years the majority will face in U.S. history because we have run up the money supply by $7.5 trillion in the last 5.5 years which according to some very reliable sources is going to equate to severe price inflation and will hit us very soon. You guys probably think I’m wealthy or something but I’m probably multiple times poorer than either of you.
Sorry, I guess you were focusing just on how we distribute public resources. Ignore above.
You are both a hard head and wrong. When have you ever dismantled libertarianism on this blog. The only thing I’ve ever read is you constantly saying it desn’t work, yet you give not reasons. The libertarians have long won the debates at the higher academic levels now it just educating the masses and it’s slowly working. Just answer one question. How are you going to eliminate big money from a power brokerage cartel? Gene, you think government is this nice ethical institution that is here to serve societies majority. Gene, the people that run this country will kill if necessary as they did Kennedys and King. They are evil and you and your engineering plans have literally “NO” chance of success in fulfilling your ideas.I’m still waiting patiently for your plans.
No Brooklin, your right. If one denies the horribly level of the current state of affairs as Gene and Tony do, it’s much easier to correct the minor problems we face with campaign reform using Gene’s engineering prowess. We have so many systemic problems that the whole system needs to be trashed. It will probably imploid on it own in the near future, as most governments eventually do. The question is what can we do to correct it so it doesn’t happen again.
skip,
I’ve shown you one of the threads where both Objectivism and Libertarianism were discredited THREE TIMES now. You’re failure to read it let alone understand it your problem at this point. However, I’ll include it again for others who might be interested. It is but one of many.
What Makes A Good Law, What Makes A Bad Law?
Ease up is not one of the things I do, skip. If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. If you don’t want to get bit, don’t poke the bear. I got a million of them, but you get the idea. Or maybe not. Speaking of not getting the idea and not easing up . . .
“If one denies the horribly level of the current state of affairs as Gene and Tony do, ”
Straw man. Which is a logical fallacy where someone intentionally misrepresents the position of another just to attack it. Keep your words out of my mouth let alone your grammatically garbled straw men.
By the way, it’s never wise to try a straw man argument directly after someone stipulates to the exact opposite, such as what you said above after I’ve just said, “The only thing we have in common is that we both see the system as it exists now as being dysfunctional.” It shows you to be someone who is dishonest in their arguments, i.e. a liar.
As to your waiting?
I and others here offer practical solutions to the many problems plaguing our government all the time. I’m not going to summarize them for you. Sink or swim, it’s up to you.
Gene, Do you really believe that your essay “What Makes A Good Law and What Makes a Bad Law” is valid in helping anyone determine the difference and that it discredits libertarianism?
You cannot know what is in the majorities best interest. Period. Thinking that a political system can is erroneous. So the questions we should answer in order to make a determination are not answerable. You cannot know the answers to the following except how it effects “you”.
So give me the answer to this question at law. Under your guidelines, is a central bank a good or a bad law? And back it up with the evidence. I had asked you to tell me if drug prohibition is a good law or a bad. You wouldn’t answer that one either.
Gene’s Rules of determination:
“This proposition suggests the following framework for evaluation of whether a law is good or bad.
•How many people benefit from the good consequences of a law?
•How many people benefit from the reduction of harm as consequences of a law?
•Does the benefits from promoting good consequences outweigh the costs of reduction of harm?
•Does the benefits from reducing harm outweigh the costs to the greater good in taking no action?
•Are the net consequences of a law perfectly knowable from either perspective or does the possibility of unforeseeable consequences exist? Can the unforeseeable risks be minimized either by construction of the law(s) to allow for contingencies or by regulating other risks or contributing factors?
•Do solutions from either perspective negatively impact human and/or civil rights? Do those negative impacts outweigh the positive effects to the greater human and/or civil rights of all?”
Gene H:
“disastrous ideology of Libertarianism – an ideology cloaked in the language liberty and freedom which will only bring about oligarchy and economic tyranny (or possibly anarchy) in application.”
We have that now and we certainly dont have free markets or a libertarian society. So I am curious how we have that now when we havent had free markets for over a hundred years and they were not 100% free. By your own admission.
What I do know though and it has been proven time and time again, is that socialism or whatever you want to call it does lead to a restriction of freedom and wealth amassed at the top which is what we have now.
@Brooklin: You are right, corruption is probably too weak a word in the larger picture. I was using it in the context of “wealth,” brought up by skiprob claiming transfer of wealth from the 99% to the 1%. I should qualify it somehow. My contention is that actual THEFT of money from the 99% is relatively small potatoes, most of our taxes pay for services that actually benefit us.
I believe we could be more efficient and get those services for less money, and I believe there is some low percentage of waste, fraud and abuse of the system that could be eliminated by better management and oversight. I believe Congress is doing an incompetent job there. But I do not believe correcting those problems would reduce our taxes even 15%, I think upon close examination what we pay is within about 15% of what it costs. The difference is a big number, to be sure, and galling that people are making billions ripping us off, but it isn’t what is wrong with the country by any means.
Do not take that to mean we aren’t in serious financial trouble, either. We are, and we are headed for a Great Depression style correction; so is Europe. I am just saying it isn’t the result of people stealing our tax payments!
All of the problems you list I agree with; the real problem with this country is the abandonment of the rule of law and the Constitution in the name of “safety,” and I do not know how to fix that. The real problem is not the theft of tax dollars, it is the refusal of government to enforce the law upon, or pass laws to control, the giant corporations and very wealthy.
And because such entitites have become somewhat immune to the law, they increasingly do not care what laws are enforced on the masses, or what laws technically apply to them. If they get called out on any of it, they will throw lawyers and money at it then, and that turns out to be more cost effective than actually taking the effort to obey the law.
The economic problems in this country are likewise a failure to protect citizens because that is not in the financial interest of rich corporations.
“What I do know though and it has been proven time and time again, is that socialism or whatever you want to call it does lead to a restriction of freedom and wealth amassed at the top which is what we have now.”
Again, misusing words. What we have now is not any form of socialism. It’s an oligarchical structure with features of plutocracy and corporatist fascism and pushing toward a laissez-faire and purely corporatist fascist end, but it isn’t any form of socialism. Socialism by definition is not a plutocracy or corporatist fascism although it is possible for it to be oligarchical just like it is possible for other forms of government and/or economics to become oligarchical. Oligarchy unto itself addresses where power rests in a system as do the terms democracy and dictatorship. Many forms of government can be set up as an oligarchy.
@skiprob: The libertarians have long won the debates at the higher academic levels now it just educating the masses and it’s slowly working.
As a member of the higher academic levels, I would say that fiscal libertarianism is held in disdain by most professors, social libertarianism (the right of adults to do as they please in terms of drugs, sex, speech, politics, religion, dress, etc) is widely held, but typically self-identified as “liberalism.” Most professors support the idea of welfare for those in need, free public education and assistance even at the university level, publicly funded research, national healthcare or at least insurance, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance. Aynish Objectivism is held in disdain; at least among those whose results must be confirmed by reality, which excludes economics professors.
There is a cool “Demotivators” poster about that, the title is (from memory) “Economics: The art of explaining tomorrow why the model you built yesterday failed to predict what happened today.”
@Bron: …and they were not 100% free.
Any philosophy that depends on 100% anything is simply not viable; humans are not machines, they are incapable of 100% certainty, 100% reliability, or even 100% incorruptibility.
If your philosophy (or any philosophy) of government does not admit “more free” will have better results than “less free”, if the only way it works is with absolutes, it is pointless to discuss it.
A hundred years ago, markets were more free. Since then, people have incrementally demanded laws and gotten them passed to make the market less free, NOT because they wanted to harm themselves, but because they wanted to prevent others from harming THEM, and at the time it was LEGAL for others to harm them, and the markets and laws at the time were not providing any recourse to being harmed, and they wanted it stopped.
Virtually all the regulations on business we have are there to correct the failures of the free market. Minimum wage, OSHA, Social Security, the ADA, gender and age discrimination, sexual harassment laws, laws on hours and overtime, uniform benefit availability, disclosure laws, the FDA, the SEC, and on and on and on, are all there to address the abuses of businesses and the failures of the free market system.
and the side-struggles allegedly consuming real passion and attention (“A school is handing out skittles!”)
Malisha, from the moment I read about it, I wondered if it was simply a PR strategy.. I haven’t really followed it up, but the little I read about felt soooo lacking in substance or content. Wasn’t it a free gifts or iced tea and skittles of plus day off school. The Skittles are just as superficially related to Trayvon Martin. After all he intended to bring it to the little boy. Would he want to be reduced to free iced tea, skittles and a day off?
Yes, they have come under public pressure because of their affiliation with ALEC.
I have no time and interest in looking into this, but it feels they would have a motive to be associated with Trayvon Martin. I haven’t looked at PR watch for quite some time.
skittles
of…… reduced to free iced tea, skittles, and a day off school? How wonderful? Why not give pupils a chance to discuss it with their teachers, reflect how it could be used as a subject in specific fields … You’ll sure have their attention. Good public relations is a rare bird.Considering discussion here, some of the best discussion on the US web I have ever stumbled across. This one too.
Tony C: [...]the real problem with this country is the abandonment of the rule of law and the Constitution in the name of “safety,”
Yes indeed. I’m not sure that entirely explains what has been going on for the last 40 years, but it nails what is wrong right now.
Leander, maybe I misspoke myself. I meant to say that all the side struggles about the Zimmerman case, such as bloggers getting up in arms because a school had declared “Trayvon Martin Day” and was handing out skittles to symbolize the event they were opening to public discussion, were quite unimportant. I did not mean the school’s activities were unimportant; CRITICIZING the school was unimportant. So I was trying to say that if these crazy-making cases are so blatantly drawing the public attention AWAY from the real issue (the killing of an unarmed teen-ager), how is our sanity, as a society, to be measured?
My sanity was being measured as a mother. I did fine. But many irrelevant factors were examined. I remember that the forensic psychologist thought my clothes were “dowdy.” His own were “natty.” Who possibly can care about the crazy stuff?
It is true that these threads are getting into wonderful discussions. Sometimes I find myself trying to escape into a thread, to forget what is outside it…but then I can get into a rather scary place at times too (the catskin helicopter scaring the spotted cows, for instance).
Does anybody know offhand what was missing from the psychometric test with the picture of that ship? I would still like to find out!
Tony C — singing those showtunes — here’s Lot’s Wife, as it was on Broadway during the truncated run of Caroline, or Change. Tonya Pinkins had told me she would “never play a maid or a slave” but then she did this on Broadway (and on TV at the Tony Awards presentation that year) and I never said, “Hey, wait a minute…”
@Tony C. Gene stated: “What I do know though and it has been proven time and time again, is that socialism or whatever you want to call it does lead to a restriction of freedom and wealth amassed at the top which is what we have now. Again, misusing words. What we have now is not any form of socialism.”
Gene. Your first sentence is absolutely true and you’re not misusing the word. However the third sentence is false. Of course, the U.S. has elements of socialism. We have a level of socialized medicine in medicare and medicaid, as do many countries. FMNA and Freddie Mac have been nationalized which is a form of socialism/communism. These are terms that are based on the same concept; society and community that really mean the same thing. Socialism is generally believed to be when government administers an industry but does not necessarily own the property involved. However, often times we do call it socilized medicine even when the property is owned by the government such as Veterans Hospitals. It’s really communism, yet it is paid for through taxation and regulated which really refers to fascism in an economic context. When reviewed amost all goverments are fascist oligarchies with different degrees of private property ownership by government. Think of a publically owned park. In China it is communism since they own the industries whihc pay for the parks and in the U.S. it is fascism because we utilize taxation to pay for it. Both countries are run by an olgarchy, just that American don’t realize it or believe it, even when you spell it out in detail for them.
Try to look at socio-economics or as our founders called it “political economy”, as two components that feature the economic system 1. The free market/private enterprise. 2. mixed economy; a mixture of free market, fascism and/or communism and 3. communism; government administration and ownership of all private property. The other portion is who makes the decision. Dictators, monarchs, military juntas, democracies, democratic republics, etc. Everyone is trying to come up with ways in which to define the various combinations and potentials between these basis entities. Everyone tries to come up with a distinctive definition which really just confuses everything.
I think it’s better to understand the ramifications of the various laws that come about from the various governments rather then argue what is called what. Does it really matter if it is a democracy or a monarch who makes the law or is it the laws they make, that really matters in relation to the welfare of the Citizens.
I have a challenge to you and Tony: Give me the potential negative ramifications of a central bank. We all know what the bank was supposed to do or at least what the public was told for the reason for its enactment. What we do know is that the Central bankers have monopolistic power over the money supply, interest rates and bank underwriting.
Gene Stated: “It’s an oligarchic structure with features of plutocracy and corporatist fascism and pushing toward a laissez-faire and purely corporatist fascist end, but it isn’t any form of socialism. Socialism by definition is not a plutocracy or corporatist fascism although it is possible for it to be oligarchic just like it is possible for other forms of government and/or economics to become oligarchic. Oligarchy unto itself addresses where power rests in a system as do the terms democracy and dictatorship. Many forms of government can be set up as an oligarchy.”
I don’t think it is necessary to comment on this paragraph as it provides us no greater understanding of the various issues. Gene once again I noticed you didn’t answer the important questions posed in my last post. You argument is really weakened by your inability to answer the questions since the system you are proposing is offered so that people can make the determination and answer important social questions.
That explains a great deal Tony. However the Austrians have long known that socialist/fascist hade long ago infiltrated our education system. Many were brought in specifically by the the early 1900s administrations – FDR especially. Not only did they do that but the 1928 and 1932 socialist party platforms are now law in this country. It was a big push by the Central Bankers as a means of taking over total control over the various industries that controled the means of production. The family that now owned the Washington Post was originally bought by the Chairman of the NY Fed Bank in 1933 while in bankruptcy. That family is now headed by Catherine Graham who was married to the deceased Phillip L. Graham, WPLG TV MIami who’s nephew is Robert Graham, former Governor of Florida and U.S. Senator.
I can remember some thirty five years ago telling people that America would sometime in the near future face the greatest economic crash in the History of this country, even greater than the first depression. Understand that we are only in the 1st stage of the depression and it will be much more catastrophic than the first for these basic reasons.1. We were on the gold standand then. 2. We had a much smaller per capita governement then. 3. The U.S. dollar was not the trade reserve currency of the world than and the currency was not even close to being as debased as it is today. We have doubled the total deficit in just the last 5.5 years to $15 Trillion. 4. Our GDP was not almost entirely dependent upon the productivity of the military industrial complex which is totally dependent on government spending through deficit spending.
Not only did the libertarians tell you what was going to happen, they told you why it would happen. We even told you what had to happen to stop this from happening. Perhaps some day you will start to listen, probably, as all societies do, when it is to late to do anything about it.
skip,
I’m pretty sure I don’t care what you think of my arguments.
“So give me the answer to this question at law. Under your guidelines, is a central bank a good or a bad law? And back it up with the evidence.”
I think that’s practically irrelevant to the discussion of good or bad political systems. A central bank is a tool. In the modern economy, a necessary tool but that is not the issue with political systems or laws and a topic for the discussion of global economics. The laws that regulate said bank are relevant though. I think right now the collusion between the Fed and Wall Street in covering up the crimes of Wall Street shows that the laws that regulate the Fed have severe deficiencies in both Federal oversight and constraint of Fed actions. I also think the private segments of the Fed (and it has both public and private components) are a really bad idea and were from the start. Private enterprise has no proper role to play in a central bank.
“I had asked you to tell me if drug prohibition is a good law or a bad. You wouldn’t answer that one either. ”
Actually I answered that question twice, skip. Neither time you bothered to read it or understand it. My stand on prohibition laws is well known around here. I’m not repeating myself because of your willful ignorance.
Also, that you derived no greater understanding from the distinction of what actually constitutes oligarchy is of no concern to me, skip. I’m not trying to convince of you anything perhaps other than you are wasting your time. You’re a true believer. Thanks, but I already got one. It is, concurrently, your time to waste and you are wasting it here by your own admission. We’ve already got a resident cheerleader for the Libertarian cause. While he occasionally gets drive-by supporters, he and they never have managed to win one single argument in favor of the majority of the Libertarian platform. That’s because people with substantive knowledge of the law, political science, economics and psychology or any subdivision thereof can quite easily spot the inherent flaws in Libertarianism. I don’t call it the perpetual motion machine of political science for no reason, skip. The idea of people accepting laws without enforcement, privatizing all social services and deregulation of business leads to bad ends for a society. Laws without enforcement are suggestions. Privatizing social services puts a profit motive into systems where profit is antithetical to providing services. Deregulation of business breeds corruption and fraud and encourages greed above all other considerations.
Don’t get me wrong.
I think most Libertarians hearts are in the right place in decrying dysfunction and corruption. It’s a real problem. It’s too bad all your solutions suck and have disastrous consequences in real world application. If you think corruption is a problem and don’t see the nexus between the current level of dysfunction and corruption, business deregulation, campaign finance and expanding corporate personality? You should really get a different hobby because your causal analytic powers in the areas of law, political science, economics and psychology or any subdivision thereof are as out of whack as they can possibly be. As to the minor planks of the Libertarian platform? Some of them are very attractive to both self-identifying conservatives and liberals both, but that does not change that the major structural components of Libertarianism are an accident waiting to happen.
Also, your “economics” in your response to Tony are ridiculous. Our Founders only official stance on the economy involved the recognition of personal property (which makes Communism the only form of economy that is prime facie unconstitutional), the establishment of currency and the ability of Congress to regulate commerce. There was no official economic form endorsed by the Founders in our founding documents. We could nationalize all kinds of stuff tomorrow and adopt full-blown socialism (which is not what I advocate no matter what Bron might tell you) and as long as the Takings Clause requirements were met, it would be perfectly constitutional.
Skiprob:
Gene is a full blown socialist even if he says he isnt, nothing wrong with that or course, it just doesnt work. If it worked I would be all for it being a pragmatist and a utilitarian myself, the greatest good for the greatest number is my motto.
The liberals and progressives have it all wrong, you free up the economy and allow the market to do what it will always do [think China], make money and then you have money to spend on social welfare programs to help the people that truly need help. It is really pretty simple but for some reason liberal/progressives dont want to do that, I guess ideology prevents them from being utilitarian pragmatists.
If a company’s executives get out of hand and defraud people just shoot the sons of bitches like they do in China, free markets baby but you perpetrate fraud then bam. Transparent markets are in everyone’s self interest so you cannot have people telling tales and distorting the market. Same goes for politicians who accept bribes, shoot them. And if the federal reserve chairman prints too much money or artificially raises or lowers interest rates, taking the savings of the people, shoot that bastard too.
You will have to shoot a couple of dozen or so until they realize free markets are the way to go, it has been a long time and people have forgotten what a free market does. I bet you only have to shoot a half dozen executives, two dozen politicians and 2 fed chairman before they get the idea. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.
Being a utilitarian pragmatist makes it ok to do this because it is all about the greater good and what are 32 lives when 300,000,000 are at stake?
@Bron: [socialism] just doesnt work.
On the contrary, it does. We have a system of public highways and roads in this country that have contributed about 1000 times their cost to economic productivity, in reduced costs of shipping, mobility of consumers, the widening of markets for products to essentially the entire nation. furniture made in Oregon can be sold in Florida or anywhere in the country, really. If the roads were all toll roads and had to pay for their own maintenance and just tried to earn the typical markup of other companies, that simply would not be true: Shipping would add so much to the cost that Oregon manufacturers could not compete with local manufacturers, that had to ship less distance. The market would be fragmented, there would be no economies of scale to reduce production costs.
The Post Office is a bit of socialism that works too. Oh, I know, you will tell me how they are always running short of money, but you do not realize that is how a government office SHOULD run: The post office works at COST, that is why the stamps are 48c or whatever. If you added all the overruns to their budget, they would be delivering letters for 50c instead.
Compare that to a for-profit postal service, FedEx, and $11 a letter. The US Postal Service sets a budget based on previous years and expected costs, but in the face of inflation and unexpected costs, it overruns its budget and estimate of costs. It does not try to build in a profit margin, so it has no buffer to work with like FedEx, and does not charge whatever the market will bear like FedEx.
That is precisely how we WANT the USPS to work, we want it to provide a service at cost, and its overruns are expected symptoms of it operating at cost. The same is true for Medicare and Medicaid, overruns are expected and as long as the reasons for the overruns are legitimate care expenses (i.e. not waste or fraud), they are not evidence the system is a failure, but evidence the system is a success and its managers are not padding their budgets.
Socialism for products and services that virtually everybody benefits from will work just fine (and that includes health care). It obviously works, even in theory, because everybody can get the product or use the service at COST without any mark-up whatsoever: It could not possibly be cheaper. No privately produced for-profit road is going to be better for me, or cost me less to use, than the taxes I pay for public roads. No privately produced for-profit post office will have the range and service of the USPS for 50c per letter. As has been recently demonstrated, no privately produced for-profit insurance comes even close to matching the cost structure of Medicare or comes even close to devoting as large a percentage of premiums to coverage.
Socialism is just a co-op, it is disintermediation so we get a discount on the product by not paying any middle men profits. If roads were privately owned and for profit, 100% of the profit taken by all the owners of all the roads is money that would be out of OUR pockets. Tolls on for-profit roads can exceed 35c per mile. Gasoline taxes (combined federal and state taxes per gallon) that support road maintenance and building average 49c per gallon (the max is 68c in Connecticut).
Here is some data on cars from the US Department of Transportation.
The average car in America gets a little over 20 mpg, so the 49c tax divided by 20 is about 1.5c per mile. In Connecticut, 3.5c per mile. That is about what we pay in taxes for our road system, about one tenth of what we would have to pay if all roads were for-profit toll roads. Perhaps even less, since some roads are natural monopolies and would charge much more per mile in a free market economy.
Just to put that in perspective, if we just added the for-profit difference of 33.5c per mile to a gallon of gas, the cost of a gallon would rise by $6.70, to over $10 per gallon.
The average vehicle drives 11,850 miles per year; that is 592 gallons worth of travel, and that means for-profit roads would cost the average driver about $4000 more per year than it costs them now.
Multiply that by the 250 million vehicles registered in this country, and it is one Trillion dollars in economic benefit, provided by free public highways, roads, and Interstates, every year.
A claim that limited forms of socialism do not work is simply ridiculous on its face, it is equivalent to claiming that cooperation for mutual benefit cannot work.
Tony C:
Shipping costs in expense from highest to lowest:
Highway
Rail
water
The interstate system has actually cost us more money for shipping.
Within the continental US it is cheaper to ship a ton of freight by rail than by road.
What was that you were saying?
Cooperation for mutual benefit does work, it is called a free market. Socialism is coercion it is not cooperation.
But you are right about some roads, I am pretty sure a private toll system would not work for all roads, especially local roads.
@Bron: No, you are wrong again. Rail and water are only cheaper for long haul point-to-point shipping; the vast majority of road usage, including interstates, is NOT for long hauls, it is for short hauls of a few hundred miles or less.
The product hauling railroads have pretty much built out, already, they are only efficient between cities, and it is not economically feasible to build a railway for a short distance, the pricing cannot amortize the loading and unloading, starting and stopping costs.
Because we DO allow markets to compete, whenever rail is noticeably cheaper than roadway, rail is used, and that is as it should be: The highway system is NOT used if it would cost significantly more than rail. That is fine, in my philosophy of limited socialism, I would not begrudge a private for-profit alternative to any public service. I would not subsidize it, I would not forgive taxes that support the public service, but if they can do better, more power to them. I do not mind FedEx, or private schools. I will not give VOUCHERS, I do not believe in supporting private enterprise with taxes (and I feel the same about Obama’s insurance mandate, I think it is unconstitutional.)
The highway system is far more convenient and more flexible in schedule and delivery than rail, so a little more expense to enjoy those benefits might be paid. But we do not MANDATE that businesses use road instead of rail, they make their own economic decisions, and they CHOOSE road instead of rail.
Your argument is simply wrong; you do not think things through.
Oops. I had an edit mistake, I said a “few hundred miles” or less, I meant a few dozen miles or less.
Tony. How can any entity that is antithetic to another end up working in any other way than adversarial. These gov agencies end up worrying about the same thing businesses do. Where are we going to get our next paycheck? However, business cannot, or at least there not supposed to go to government and say give me some money. That is what govenrments do. Business must go to the general public and actually sell something to somebody to at least break even on their costs to stay in business. Government must either tax Citizens or Businesses. There are over 115 different taxes in the Country for gov. to do this.
Until you are ready to concede that although taxation may be necessary, it is still theft. Just because the theft is determined by political means, that doesn’t make it right. So the majority has the right to steal from the minority. Still not right. Once you look at it this way, then you can start to observe some of the negative ramifications the system creates. We see the outcomes all the time. We see the no bid contracts and government waste. We read about another government bureaucrats being procecuted every day in the news. Selling Senate seats. A Congressman getting caught trying to get his cash out of a safe during Katrina in New Orleans. How many Ilinois Governors have gone to jail. Half the County Commission has gone to jail in West Palm Beach. Every major law enforcement agency in the country has had numerous members of it’s force indited for police corruption in some manner; drugs, police brutality, evidence tampering, murder etc. etc. etc.
I know that people in the private sector are bad also but lets consider the big picture. 170 Million people have been killed by their own governments in the 20th century alone. This does not include military combatants which would add millions more to that list. Why do you think that most of the major attrocities throughout history have been perpetrated by govenrment or religion when they are combined?
First, it’s a power brokerage cartel. Secondly, they have the legalized power to steal, coerce, imprison and conficate property and they do it eligallya lot more than what we want to believe. I know at least 5 people who were framed by goverment and were absolutely innocent. You write like an attorney so perhaps you can give us an analysis of why the legal system is so full of corruption. Third, government is a protection racket for the ultra wealthy and their cronies. How may poor black guys are in jail and how may rich jewest bankers are in jail for laundering all the drug money???? Somebody is laundering all this drug money yet when was the last guy you rmember being procecuted for this.
Socialism although it feels like it would work, is really a devious system designed to steal money for the majority and filter it to the various enterprises of the wealthy. The military industrial complex is the favored recipient today if you haven’t been paying attention.
@skiprob: These gov agencies end up worrying about the same thing businesses do. Where are we going to get our next paycheck?
No, they do not. Businesses have to worry about making a profit, government agencies do not. Businesses have to worry about pleasing investors, government agencies do not. Businesses have to worry about survival, government agencies do not. Businesses have to worry about cash flow and financing, government agencies do not, a government agency has unlimited credit (subject to the approval of citizens or representatives of the citizens), and can make up a shortfall or loan with higher pricing or higher taxes in subsequent years, as needed.
As for the “next paycheck,” if a government agency finds it has more workers than it needs, it can lay off people just like a business can. Or it can allow the workforce to decline by attrition; stop hiring replacements for those that quit or retire. There is no reason to assume the USPS cannot reduce its work force if the volume of mail declines, say due to the Internet. The people, through Congress, can mandate that.
You are wrong. A for profit organization is managed to maximize one value; the amount of profit to the owners. A government agency should be managed to maximize the same value, but the owners are the people, and the profit is in the amount of services rendered and the good done on behalf of the people. Both can be managed using the same techniques, including controlling payroll costs, making operations more efficient, reducing the costs of goods through negotiation.
The difference is that instead of ending up in the pockets of a few, the profits end up on the pockets of the people. Congress, as the representative of the people, is responsible for representing the owners and managing the business; they are the board of directors for the government agencies. For those that think the board is incompetent, stop voting for them.
Until you are ready to concede that although taxation may be necessary, it is still theft.
I will never concede a blatant lie. Taxes are not theft. You pay them voluntarily. You have the right to not earn anything. You also have the right, unless you are in prison, to renounce your citizenship and leave the country.
All taxes are paid voluntarily just like you pay for food voluntarily. If you REALLY want to (and some people have) you can buy rural land outside of any municipality, and grow your own food, feed for chickens, and generate your own solar or wind power, pump your own water, and have zero income and pay zero taxes. Hell, you can even make your own bio-diesel and not pay gasoline taxes; we will still let you use our roads for free.
Taxes in THIS country are 100% voluntary. They are not taken from you by force, or theft, you owe them as a fee for earning money in this country. If you do not want to pay the fee, then don’t work. Just like if you think the price of a burger is too much, don’t buy it.
Businesses do not complain that when they pay for rent, supplies, delivery, A/C, insurance, alarm services and janitorial services that those payments are inherently THEFT. They are a fee for services and infrastructure. That is what taxes are, they are not THEFT.
Which makes the rest of your commentary moot.
Gene, first, how we determine the usefulness of a specific law helps us to understand how best to create or more importantly improve on our socio-economic system. The specific laws enacted determine specific outcomes. For instance a central bank which you believe necessary in modern society, is the 5th platform of Communism. So, what laws you embrace can have catastrophic consequences on your society as the Central bank has. You just don’t obviously understand it. Read “The Creature from Jeckyl Island, a non-fiction by G. Edward Griffin. Great history book for those who want to understand the true economic history of the 20th century.
So your dead wrong again on the relevence of specific laws and how they effect us within our political system.
If you don’t know Gene, it was FDR and the Central bankers that stole the gold from the Citizens in 1933 under a Presidential executive order. Why would you want to give monopolistic power, via a central bank, to a group of the most powerful financial interest in our society and that’s waht happened in 1913?
Sorry I missed you specific post on if drug prohibtion is good or bad. Please provide it so that all the posters can see it again, just in case they missed it to. Your wrong on the Central Bank so your probablly wrong on drug prohibition as well.
What makes you believe that “only” government can enforce laws. People use private mediation companies all the time to solve their differences at law. The Law Merchant, our UCC was created specifically to stay out of the slow and highly biased government courts. Government doesn’t have to be the final arbiter. Matter of fact, since it does such a poor job, we need to get at least one private system in place ASAP.
The rest of your post is deny and criticize, deny and criticize. It’s always half of your posts. If you really believe you positions, give me at least something other than your opinions. Some facts would help.
Bron & Skip keep repeating timeworn mantras to support their beliefs in the “free market Fairy”. They consistently fail to understand what socialism really is, so they can label everthing they discern as heresy from their zany religion as their bogeyman socialism. They of cOurse have the right to have theor beliefs, but the might make a better case if they understood what they were talking about.
Also said that things were better when he was young, but I wonder if black people, gay people and most women feel the same. I’m 8 years older than Skip and I know that as bad as things are now they were worse then, except for the economic situation of the 99%.
Tony C:
“@Bron: No, you are wrong again. Rail and water are only cheaper for long haul point-to-point shipping; the vast majority of road usage, including interstates, is NOT for long hauls, it is for short hauls of a few hundred miles or less.”
No I am not wrong, the context is just different. I agree that trucks should be used from the freight yard to the local area, actually they need to be because you cannot get rail service everywhere.
@skiprob: Any profit motivation in the ultimate enforcement of law or the protection of citizens is de facto rule by strongman and mercenary, the people with the most money have the most protection. A law is not a law if it is not uniformly enforced regardless of the wealth of the participants. If you have to pay to be protected from murder or theft, and you are not protected if you cannot pay, you are simply being extorted by a strongman.
Murder of the destitute, homeless and penniless can still carry the death penalty in this country. If you are murdered and die in debt with negative assets and zero insurance, your murder is still prosecuted, and the guilty are still punished if found guilty. If your life savings and all of your property are stolen from you, the theft is still prosecuted even if you cannot pay for it.
Now, if in a contract you agree to have any dispute settled by arbitration, which is something I have done myself, that’s fine: That is an agreement over money and terms, it is not a replacement of the law. All contracts are subordinate to the law and cannot agree to something that breaks the law.
@Bron: Your own philosophy makes you wrong. If trains are the most cost effective means of transportation, people are free to use them.
If people used them, rail companies would try to grow. They have long stopped any serious attempts at growth, therefore, we can conclude they have reached the limit of their economic niche.
If free roads had anything to do with that, it just proves my point that free roads are delivering a large economic benefit. Which actually does not DEPEND on the role of rail or waterways, it only depends on the price of tolls on private toll roads, which is a decent proxy for what private enterprise roads would charge. (We could also figure the cost of roadway, as a capital investment, and apply standard business principles of cost recovery and profit within the lifetime of the asset to arrive at a typical price. However, that price works out higher than the 35c per mile cost of privatized toll roads, which have higher than normal traffic to compensate.)
Based only on that, roadways deliver about $1T in return to the people as a direct profit. Indirect benefits, like availability of goods from further away, have economic value but are not included. In the case of roadways, since they are typically paid for by gasoline taxes, the cost per citizen is actually pretty proportional to use by the citizen.
Yea that’s right Tony; Government agencies never get hit with budget cuts or just total elimination. Ask the bureaucrats in Greece and Spain, where the next checks are coming from as Citizens are no longer willing to fund the excessive spending of their government because the bonds they issued as collateral are losing their value, because the government is unlikely to be able to pay the interest on them. Just wait until this happens in this country. Yea that’s right it already is in a number of places.
“Taxes are not theft. You pay them voluntarily. You have the right to not earn anything.”
Yea, I have the “Right” to let myself starve to death. Tony, are you actually thinking about what you are writing????
You’re living in the matrix as one of my friends likes to say. I know what we all believe government is supposed to do. You do not have to expand upon what we were taught in elementary school.
What you need to do is learn about how the system “really works”. You idealistic beliefs on government are absolutely naive. Wakeup.
Just because “you” believe that certain expenses in society are necessary, therefore taxation is necessary,” taking money from one person that it rightfully belongs to and giving it to someone it doesn’t rightfully belong to, is still what the legal system calls theft”. If A is unethical and B is thought to be necessary, thus we need to do A, A is still unethical, despite B being thought to be necessary.
Add in the fact that B is really, desired but not really necessary, makes A absolutely unethical. For instance, the roadway bridge is really less effective that a railroad bridge. Most of the railroad bridges were built by the railroads, not government. Road bridges are not really necessary, their just desired so that our wives and girlfriends can more easily get to the malls.
Mike Spindell:
Oh, and you guys on the left dont keep spouting the same old tired mantras?
You think libertarians and Objectivists were holding blacks, gays and women down? I would say you dont know much dont much about either philosophy.
You guys on the left want your political freedom but you dont want economic freedom, you are the inverse of China.
@skiprob: . For instance a central bank … is the 5th platform of Communism.
Ahhhh, run away!!!!
I am joking, of course. You seem to think that empty keywords should frighten us. Grow up. We are not afraid of Communism, we just do not think it will work, because it is fundamentally incompatible with human nature. If it was a workable idea, we would embrace it. It isn’t.
Just like religion, not everything in Communism is inherently toxic. As a whole both are just silly blather, but in parts they can be just fine. For example, I am an atheist, and I think much of the Old Testament is morally repellent. But in rejecting religion, I do not reject the idea that murder, theft, and lying for personal gain are morally repellent, they are.
Claiming something is part of Communism does not mean anything, we aren’t frightened by labels.
So what your saying Tony is that the oil companies, through gasoline sales, the car companies through car sales, the tire companies through tire sales, the auto parts companies through auto parts sales etc. have a vested interest in roads and would very likely provide roads. You would think that the oil companies would be able to provide lower cost roads since they are the providers of the asphalt. Private enterprise could provide the roads as they did originally in many parts of New England.
I wonder since centralized sewage and garage have created such problems that private enterprise can provide a better alternative as well?
@skiprob: First, those entities did NOT provide the roads, they had a good four decades to provide the roads and failed to do so. Second, if they DID provide the roads, the roads would be privately owned toll roads, and because any road is pretty much a natural monopoly as the shortest path between two points, we could expect monopoly pricing, which by current standards is about 35c per mile, and somewhere between 10 and 25 times what we pay now per mile in taxation. It would be the equivalent of paying an extra $6.70 per gallon in gas, or $4000 per year per driver.
You do not seem to comprehend basic arithmetic.
@skiprob: And I did NOT say that, YOU said that and attributed it to me. Do not start lying. If I say anything, I say the oil companies, car companies, and tire companies are all making profits on OUR public works, because they would not be as large or profitable as they are without US creating the roads that enable their business model. I say they would not EXIST without us, and they should be taxed so we get our fair share of their profits.
They do indeed have a vested interest in roads, and they should be taxed to help pay for the maintenance and creation of roads.
Tony, my townhouse development provides our own roads. We pay for it through out maintenance fees. Why the government did not force the developer to turn over the roads in our development, as they usually do to developers, is unknown. So most roads are built by developers/private enterprise and than forced to turn them over to the government. thinking that the businesses would not care for the roads that their property wa on is like saying people won’t paint their building unless forced by government. Your thought on monopolies in this situation make no sense. From what I have observed, people generally shop the best price and quailty when government intervention is not involved as we did with out road in my development.
@skiprob: You are probably getting ripped off by your developer then, because you are paying the taxes that would entitle you to free road maintenance, through your gasoline purchases, and then relinquishing that entitlement to pay your developer for maintenance on top of that.
It is my understanding that developers are not “forced” to turn roads over to the government, they petition to turn roads over to the government so they will not be responsible for the maintenance, and cannot be sued by residents for failing to maintain them (or causing injury through a pothole accident or whatever).
In fact, in a similar development where my sister owned property, she DID sue the developer for failing to maintain the main road into the development (a long section of it was washed away in a big storm), and she won both actual damages and punitive damages of several thousand dollars.
“Gene is a full blown socialist even if he says he isnt, nothing wrong with that or course, it just doesnt work. If it worked I would be all for it being a pragmatist and a utilitarian myself, the greatest good for the greatest number is my motto.”
Too bad for you that you have demonstrated time and again that you niether know what the term “socialist” means nor your own “motto”, Mr. Selfishness is a Virtue. A Randian Objectivist claiming their motto is “the greatest good for the greatest number” is perhaps the funniest thing I’ve heard today.
****************************
skip,
“If you don’t know Gene, it was FDR and the Central bankers that stole the gold from the Citizens in 1933 under a Presidential executive order. Why would you want to give monopolistic power, via a central bank, to a group of the most powerful financial interest in our society and that’s waht happened in 1913? ”
See skip, this illustrates perfectly why talking to you like talking to a child.
You don’t even read what others say let alone understand it.
Firstly, I said, I also think the private segments of the Fed (and it has both public and private components) are a really bad idea and were from the start. Private enterprise has no proper role to play in a central bank.” Which is the exact opposite of your straw man statement above.
Second, your statement is historically factually false, economic drivel and commits the logical fallacy of begging the question. In 1913, the President was Woodrow Wilson. The creation of the Fed – which was the third central bank created by the way – was sheparded by the head of the bipartisan National Monetary Commission and Senate Republican leader Nelson Aldrich. Aldrich was a financial expert who originally opposed the idea of a central bank and even went to Europe to study the emergence of central banking there to gather ammunition against the practice. It was upon seeing the benefits of the German central bank in action that he changed his mind and pushed through the Federal Reserve Act. It was Aldrich – who was great buddies with J.P. Morgan and John Rockerfeller, Jr. – who was responsible for the private sector components of the thrid central bank. The question you beg is that going off the gold standard was either thievery (it wasn’t and that is a legal fact) or not necessary. Considering that most economic historians credit staying on the gold standard with exacerbating (that means making worse, skip) the Great Depression because it prevented the Fed from expanding the money supply to stimulate the economy, your notion that the gold standard or a return to it being a good idea is one of the many economic fantasies that Libertarians labor under. As a historical note, the first central bank was created under Washington’s administration at the urging of Alexander Hamilton. It was vigorously protested by both Madison and Jefferson. Ironic considering that the second central bank was created Madison’s administration because of difficulties in financing the national debt after the expeditures of the War of 1812. The seminal case of McCulloch v. Maryland 17 U.S. 316 (1819) decided under Madison’s successors tenure – Jame Monroe – upheld the legality of a central banking system. The second central bank was forcibly dismantled by Andrew Jackson who managed to reap some short term benefits from his actions, but in the long run helped create the Great Depression by removing a centralized brake for banks and the money supply and contributing to the later Great Depression.
Your opinion that the abdication of the gold standard was theivery and that a central bank is unneccessary is both wrong and manifestly uninformed.
Enjoy the ignorance that is the Libertarian Economic Kool-Aid.
“we aren’t frightened by labels” (Tony C.)
I am constantly amazed by the many visitors to this blog who don’t get that one simple fact.
gENE h:
I think you should listen to some of Tom Wood’s video’s. He is an historian who writes about economic issues. He is pretty good too.
He speaks to most of the issues you covered.
We can argue this all day long but there have been other depressions in the 19th century worse than the one of 1932 to 1946 which lasted 6-18 months and did not cause any where near the misery the one in the 1930′s caused.
Keynes himself would not have approved of the level of spending we are seeing today as he thought stimulus money should be paid back once the stimulating had been done. How are you going to do that? Confiscate all the wealth in America? If you pay it back over time you run the risk of having to do it again at some future point because the cause has not been corrected.
Bron,
Just how many blacks and latino’s were heroes in “Atlas Shrugged”?
“If you pay it back over time you run the risk of having to do it again at some future point because the cause has not been corrected.”
If by this you mean that banks are not adequately regulated and policed and this allowed them to perpetrate the criminal malfeasance that wrecked the global economy in the first place by allowing them to play casino with other people’s money, then yeah, the cause has not been corrected.
Otherwise, your reasoning contains disjunctive causation. Having a central bank wasn’t the cause of the current economic situation. The cause there was a breakdown of the barriers between commercial and financial banking by industry lobbyists that removed the protections of Glass-Steagall combined with inadequate controls and penalties for irresponsible derivatives trading and other high risk speculation allowed to be done with the money of unwilling participants to the scheme like homeowners who simply wanted to finance a house, not be bundled into some scam people like Jaime Dimon were selling to the ultra-wealthy sitting at the JP Morgan Chase craps table.
@Gene: Exactly.
The economic collapse of 2008 was the direct result of the Republican led repeal, signed by Bill Clinton, of a consumer protection, the Glass-Steagal act passed in response to proven abuses in the banking system that led to the repeat of the same abuse, wild speculation for private gain with other people’s money.
Tony,
I’m a firm believer that in a just world, the Dimons and Blankfeins of Wall Street would all die penniless after living the rest of their lives in small concrete cell and showering with other criminals as a cautionary tale to future bankers. That’s only because we don’t have a castle and the Constitution prohibits us from putting their thieving heads up on pikes along the ramparts.
@Gene: I think I can figure out how to build a sturdy castle. And a guillotine. Pikes are not a problem. Are you sure about the Constitution?
lol
I have been doing some calling into Wisconsin on the recall vote today. Tom Barrett is a moderate democrat. If Warren isn’t pure enough, he probably isn’t either……….
@Swarthmore: Thanks for your contribution, and the best of luck. Truly.
Tony C, Don’t be too nice, Tony C, or I will post that Obama video that’s going around on the web for you. lol wink! wink! I have no expectation that Scott Walker is going to be defeated. Turnout is high but it could be republicans.
Mike Spindell:
Francisco D’ Anconia was a major hero I think he was from Chile.
It really doesnt matter though, Hank Rearden could be Chinese or black or from Nigeria or India and so could Galt. And it wouldnt change the story line. Because the story is not about race but about human potential among other things. Human potential has no racial boundaries and neither does human liberty.
Shit, India has it’s very own Hank Rearden in the person of Lakshmi Mittal, although I think the fictional character of Rearden may have been a little bit more ethical.
In my opinion you need to quit looking at the world through the prism of race.
SwM,
According to the exit polls in Wisconsin, it’s too close to call. Turnout reportedly is high which should benefit Tom Barrett. The polls close in a little over an hour.
Matt Johnson:
Walker won pretty handily. It wasnt too close to call, Walker had that lead from the beginning and held it all night long.
@Bron: Yeah. Well, back to the old-school, pre-union days. The union workers should stop working. Call in sick, take vacation, or show up and don’t do anything. Not quit, I don’t want them to lose pension eligibility, but work the system in place wherever they are; force the employers to go through the motions of reprimand and punishment, and have lawyers on hand to sue the state to kingdom come for every attempt at punishment.
There is also nothing stopping them from all being individually represented by the same lawyer; for, say, a $25 retainer. That is not a “union,” it just so happens that after friendly discussion all the employees arrived at identical demands, and one lawyer has agreed to represent all comers for a low fee only so long as each person agrees not to deviate from those demands.
There are ways to fight; unions became law for a reason, and could be restored using similar non-violent tactics. The problem is the unions have not exercised their unanimity in so long, people think they can ignore them, and now need to be reminded they cannot.
As before, that would take sacrifice and hardship from the union members to impose hardships on their opponents, but that is the nature of adversarial negotiation. The unions have been hit, they have to hit back or they will be hit again, and again, and again.
Tony C:
I dont think Walker did away with unions. People have a right to join a union or not as they see fit. I understand 50% of the government workers decided to leave the union or at least that is what one article said.
I think unions need to take another look at their role and maybe start being retirement and health care providers, people should join a union to improve their station in life. Maybe even have 2 or 3 unions in one company competing for employees by offering the best retirement and health benefit plans. Offer legal services and financial planning and become non-political since members are both liberal and conservative, get out of politics altogether. Why should people have to pay dues to keep their jobs? And have those dues go to politicians who do not believe as they do, they are free to donate to the candidate of their choice. The union dues ought to go to pensions and other benefits, the billions of dollars unions have donated to politicians over the years is money taken from the monthly retirement plans.
I don’t like unions contributing to political candidates either; but the point of the union is to present a united front to the company, and make the company pay for retirement and health care and benefits.
Ideally, a union prevents a company (or government agency) from exploiting a monopolistic advantage to oppress workers; it counters one monopoly with another monopoly.
For example, because we have (and should have) public schools, the state has a functional monopoly on teaching jobs. Unchecked, that monopoly would (and has in the past) led to abuses of teachers, in pay, by principals, in hours worked, in lack of resources and benefits. A teacher’s union counters that monopoly on teaching jobs with a monopoly on teacher’s work. By banding together, the teacher’s union has leverage to prevent teacher abuse.
The same thing is true in something like a mining town. It isn’t like there is another mine to work at, the mine owners have an effective monopoly on jobs in a mining town, and the workers form a union to counter that monopoly with their own monopoly on miners.
I agree that leverage can be misused, but it exists in response to abuse. In fact, if government had done its job in the first place, instead of being in the pocket of wealthy owners way back when, then they would have prevented all of the abuses that unions were formed to counter.
Unions are a symptom of a corrupt, corporatist owned government that refused to protect the weak from the strong, and in many cases I agree the Unions became corrupt and the end result is worse than if government had just done its job in the first place and regulated the workplace, hours, safety, and fair wages.
I think one reason for the decline in unions is OSHA, ADA and other laws that have diminished (but not eliminated) the need for employee unions to protect the life, health, benefits and rights of employees.
Tony C:
re teachers, my wife teaches and belongs for just that reason but she says that the school system only abuses teachers during hard financial times. During the boom times they treat them really well so they dont run off to the private sector. My wife hasnt had a raise in at least 4 years but her union hasnt done anything for her in that regard.
Basically what prevents employers from abusing workers is a robust economy where they are having to compete to hire.
I am all for what you and Gene H are for, I just want to use another mechanism to achieve the end result. I could care less about the rich, they can take care of themselves. I think the little guy [of which I am one] has a better shot in a free economy with an objective set of laws.
but she says that the school system only abuses teachers during hard financial times.
All sorts of crime increases in hard financial times, from shoplifting to murder. I am not sure what the point of your diminisher “only” is supposed to impart in this sentence. That the abuse is justifiable somehow? Would you accept that excuse for any other crime? “We only resort to bank robbery in hard financial times, don’t worry about it so much. The solution to bank robbery is a more robust economy.”
I think the little guy [of which I am one] has a better shot in a free economy with an objective set of laws.
So far, you have pretty much advocated for no laws or regulation whatsoever.
I think the first purpose of government is to protect the weak from the strong, on many possible scales of strength and weakness, and I think the little guy [of which I am one] is, by definition, on the weaker side of the scale and the strong-arm side of the scale is populated with the wealthy, the large businesses and corporations, the politically connected and other such heavyweights with big resources.
I think the way you control bullies that would take more than their fair share is through force. Not dialogue, not propitiation, not subservience, not resignation and acceptance of a shitty deal: FORCE. And it is government that should provide that force, for the little guy, and neutralize the force the bullies are wont to use to exploit the little guy and rip them off.
In fact, I think government and regulation is the only way to achieve even a semblance of fair play in life. And by “fair” I do not mean equal outcomes, I mean equal chances, equal opportunity, and non-exploitation.
Nicely said. I was just thinking about all these discussions we been having and it’s kind of interesting that we all appear to be trying to help the little guy. What we are arguing about is how to do that. Whether it’s the financing of the Panama Canal by Citicorp over 100 years ago or my HOA repaving the roads in my subdivision, people are going to make improvements to our world. Are we fighting over the profits and ownership?
Unless I do something such as invest my money or provide some sort of service I don’t think another person or the government owes me anything.
I don’t want social security and am not going to get it. I would rather earn my money myself and I would rather decide for myself how that money is spent. I learned long ago that government does not necessarily provide a safety net that is equitable to all. An example is Congress has a much better insurance and retirement package than most of the rest of us. I also see people getting a measly $650 a month in social security after having paid in $100s of thousands in various taxes over 50 years. Without food stamps this 80 year old man would probably be homeless.
I think we can all agree that the current system is quite broken.
If I think I want to spend my money on the local militia group, it’s my money and I think Individuals should be allowed to keep their money and spend it as they see fit. If they want to save whales like my sister-in-law did for some 25 years with Sea Shepards, I think that is great. My brother, my daughter and I all do things to help the homeless, the very thing the government is supposed to be doing. The government instead harasses the homeless as the hang around in the various areas in our community.
We’ve seen throughout history that you can’t trust the typical politician because they are willing to be bought by the highest bidder. Well there goes the little guy. No wonder we have the largest military industrial complex in the world, and an exploding homeless population.
Some people appear to favor the collective good and are willing to sacrifice individual benefits if the benefits to the collective warrant the sacrifice. This is the actual base philosophy of communism. The collective is more important than the individual. Libertarianism is just the opposite. The individual is more important than the collective. Protect individual rights, and we now have a least a level playing field in which everyone can go out into the world and seek their happiness.
Money is always going to be an advantage in any situation. You surely don’t want to give money any additional advantage through laws. Limited government did well for our nation and as government has grown the ability of the little guy to live the American Dream appears to have been weakened, not enhanced as government proponents proclaim. The addition of layers and layers of taxation and regulation has done little solve the various social problems facing our world and this appears to just benefit the super wealthy.
Now if you understand how government really works, it’s clearly a manipulation by the very entities that are prospering the most through this system. Just follow the money as Deep Throat recommended. It’s not hard to figure out.
Now here’s the problem. People think that we can utilize the political system to fix these problems. I think that there is clearly enough evidence to prove that this is an illusion. The political system will never regulate itself. It like thinking the foxes will regulate the chicken coup. Remember the old cliché on Democracy. ; two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for lunch.
@skiprob: The addition of layers and layers of taxation and regulation has done little solve the various social problems facing our world and this appears to just benefit the super wealthy.
Then you are just ignorant or in denial or lying to support your point. Government has stopped children from being killed in factories, it has stopped workers from being exposed to carcinogens and lethal dangers, it has prevented natural monopolies from virtually enslaving their workers, it has allowed blacks to vote, virtually ended discrimination in the provision of services, although it has not ended racism it has ended the worst abuses of it. Government has saved countless lives from murder, theft, and assault and battery. It has prevented enormous amounts of misery. It has protected the country from invasion.
Taxation and regulation have quintupled your standard of living. Compare it to areas of the world with zero government, and you have literally thousands of times the excess income as those people do. And before you tell me that technology or business did that, they would not even exist without government, regulations and taxation to back up their contracts. If you think otherwise, look at the border region between Iraq and Afghanistan, where governments are afraid to intrude without being heavily armed and armored: It is entirely ruled by strongmen whose whim is lethal law, and every person there is either subordinate to a strongman or subjugated by one at gunpoint. Literally. That is the effect of no government, and no regulation, and zero taxation. Being ruled by brutal psychopaths that answer to no one.
“Walker’s win will certainly provide a blueprint for fellow Republicans. When they gain a majority, they can quickly move to not just wrest concessions from public sector unions but completely destroy them, which in turn eliminates one of the strongest sources of political organization for the Democratic Party. And whatever backlash develops, it’s probably not enough to outweigh the political benefit. Walker has pioneered a tactic that will likely become a staple of Republican governance. Fortune favors the bold.” Jonathon Chait
Governments have also killed 170 million people in the 20th century alone. Our govenrment has also bankrupted our society in doing the few thing you suggest. How many millions of people are suffering from mesothelioma. There is no such thing as a natural monoploy by the way, only government granted monopolies like Florida Plunder and Loot (FPL) and the Federal Reserve Bank – read some of the books on the subject. You really believe that it was the govenrment that stopped children from being killed in factories? Despite Osha, how many people have been killed in mining accidents and all the other people killed on their jobs in the last 50 years. All that crap you were fed in Middle School is wrong. They tried teaching you to be a good little socalist and succeeded.
You have this illusion of govenment as being our protector. “Taxation and regulation have quintupled your standard of living.” Tony there are 44 million people on food stamps. The amount of foreclosures and bankruptcies is staggering. We have the same social problems today that we had 50 years ago but as government has grown, the problems have gotten worse. Is that light bulb going off yet. You don’t need regulation if you have a good justice system. People won’t board up the back door of a factory if people won’t work there or the insurance companies won’t insure them. There is no utopia, but thinking that government is the savior of all things is dilussional.
If you think this system of taxation and regulation is so great let’s step it up a notch. Let’s try everyone working for the government. But we have the Soviet Union to show us that this didn’t work our very well. So let’s try substanically less govenrment like our founders had invisioned and worked pretty good for a long long time. There is no doubt that the protection of individual rights works. The question should be what system does that the best. It can’t be government because government has to take away rights to fund it’s programs.
@skiprob: Tony there are 44 million people on food stamps.
Ha! Are you telling me that government providing people food when they have none is an example of government NOT protecting people? Holy crap you Aynish have your minds twisted into knots.
@skiprob: read some of the books on the subject.
I think what you really mean is, “read the propaganda and one-sided arguments I read, and swallow the total bullshit I did, and then maybe you would agree with me and we would both be stupid beyond all comprehension.”
Robin Hoods Don’t Smash Shop Windows
Shouldn’t supposedly selfish conservatives—not idealistic liberals—be producing nasty mobs?
By JOHN AGRESTO
The myth persists that the left—while it might often be naive and unrealistic—still has its heart in the right place. Those who want to redistribute income are the gallant Robin Hoods of contemporary life. “Occupiers” and socialists clearly have real concern for the downtrodden and poor. Those who demand social justice are more sincere, more compassionate, more spiritual, and surely more Christian than the rest of us.
Fairness and decency are the heart of the left; materialism and selfishness the hallmarks of the bourgeoisie, Wall Street, the tea party crowd, and, well, ordinary Americans in general. So we are told.
Of course, every now and then this narrative unravels. An Occupy crowd goes on a rampage smashing the windows of small shopkeepers, stealing, destroying private and public property, throwing bricks at the police, and threatening the lives of ordinary citizens. In social-democratic Europe, gangs of idealistic youths take over universities, riot, and firebomb their way to achieve what they characterize as justice.
“Outliers,” we are told. “Fringe elements,” the media strains to label them. And, yes, so they are. While these men and women are clearly left in their outlook and desires, they’re not your ordinary center-left liberals. Nancy Pelosi may praise their passion, but she doesn’t have it in her heart to join them.
Yet two things seem as obvious as they are curious. Movements and associations of most ordinary Americans seem to lack the elements of destruction and hate we see on the fringes of the ideological left. And there is something about the left that seems to regularly produce a violent, even nihilistic fringe.
Shouldn’t it be exactly opposite—shouldn’t selfish conservatives be the ones to produce nasty mobs and shouldn’t the left, with its vaunted idealism and love of neighbor, produce on its margins those even more idealistic and more loving?
But we’ve all seen the images on television or even, perhaps, been to rallies and demonstrations of the left. And all too often what we see looks like the opposite of compassion and virtue.
Maybe we have the narrative exactly backward. Perhaps it’s the more centrist and even conservative side, with its constant call for individual liberty, for self-reliance, for individual responsibility and hard work, that results in stronger virtue and greater neighborliness—and the left, with its constant striving for equal results, greater redistribution and more entitlements, that results in a weakened moral sense and an erosion of moral character. Perhaps the more we tell people that their problems are always someone else’s fault, that “others” are robbing them of all they are “entitled” to, the more we corrode peoples’ character.
What happens in those supposedly more virtuous places where welfare is “owed” and the expectation that others are morally bound to take care of you has become the rule? Exactly what we see in socialist Europe as it declines, or the street gangs of Britain, or the worst elements of the organized entitlement crowd in the United States: When things do not go well, it’s other people’s fault-the successful, the wealthy, the “speculators,” the powerful, the Jews, selfish and racist Americans, whomever. They all have too much money, aren’t sharing, are unjust, are keeping you down.
And since it’s their fault that you are poorer than they, and their fault that you are not “fairly” being taken care of, we have not only the politics of resentment and envy but the politics of anger and hatred. And it’s hard to make anger and hate into virtues, no matter how much the left likes to vaunt its superior morals.
Whether it be Marxism, Christian Socialism, Rawlsian fairness or legalized economic equality, these movements’ followers come to the same conclusion. We on the bottom are owed, and you supposedly above us owe.
Historically, all the various ideologies that struggle to equalize humans and redistribute their possessions eventually find that they can only do it through force, often the most oppressive totalitarian force. This is not an accident but has a real and unshakable philosophic base.
Those who wish to have what others have worked for, those who think there should be “preferential options” for their kind and those they favor, those who believe that they are entitled to have their desires satisfied, can only see other people as means to their ends and not as ends in themselves.
They can only see that others have what they do not, that others possess what they want, and they command the redistribution of these things to themselves. That principle-that others must give when they demand, that others are means and not ends-is the father not of generosity of spirit, not of love of neighbor, but rather of the worst immorality.
Mr. Agresto is the former president of St. John’s College in Santa Fe., N.M., and the American University of Iraq. He is the author of “Mugged by Reality: The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions” (Encounter, 2007).
A version of this article appeared June 2, 2012, on page A15 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Robin Hoods Don’t Smash Shop Windows.
“Governments have also killed 170 million people in the 20th century alone. Our govenrment has also bankrupted our society in doing the few thing you suggest.”
Skip,
Alright, so what exactly is your alternative? That is what I keep missing from your argument. If it is as I assume, the complete unfettering of “a free market economy” along with no governmental structures, then I think you are being totally naive. An objectivist society that you envision will quickly become one where jungle law rules. Those with power will fight it out until the hierarchy is established and the woe be to those lower down on the food chain. If the sequel to Atlas Shrugged would have bee written with honesty, John Galt would be ruling the world and woe be to those who opposed him. This has been the history of the human race, despite the naivete of those that believe economic freedom mean human freedom. Ayn Rand was a rather mediocre writer and a terrible political philosopher. She became a best seller among those whose own personal selfishness found a comforting voice in her nonsense.
Tony C,
The earth is flat. It was created 6000 years ago or less. Global warming doesn’t exist, can’t exist, because 99% of scientists agree it does exist, and if it did exist, human activity would have nothing to do with creating it by the same irrefutable logic; namely, 99% of scientists agree humans are the cause of global warming, so it MUST mean government is the root of all evil cause someone somewhere is probably lazy and if you multiply that times your imagination (l x m) what more proof do you need that theyare all out to get your tax dollars, especially since your corporation doesn’t pay any tax dollars and so there you have it, concrete proof that socialism is government coercion in a system where government runs a socialized mail service right along side of a private mail service because – duh – the private mail service is doing just fine cause the government coercion ran it out of business.
So There! Now prove it ain’t so.
skip,
Once again you’ve demonstrated your knowledge of law, sociology, logic, argumentation and history apparently comes from what you’ve read on the back of sugar packets at Denny’s.
“Governments have also killed 170 million people in the 20th century alone.”
The fallacy of composition and incomplete comparison. Governmental actions has saved far many more lives than it has taken and not all governments are created equal in form or function.
“Our govenrment has also bankrupted our society in doing the few thing you suggest.”
Our government is not insolvent.
“How many millions of people are suffering from mesothelioma.”
You mean at the hands of industry who knew the risks of asbestos but did nothing until regulation forced their hand and created a remedy for those wrongs?
“There is no such thing as a natural monoploy by the way, only government granted monopolies like Florida Plunder and Loot (FPL) and the Federal Reserve Bank – read some of the books on the subject.”
You deny that oligopolistic competition arises even when an industry’s cost conditions involve natural monopoly characteristics such as in the semi-conductor industry? The kind of coercive monopoly that Microsoft is currently engaged in with hardware manufacturers to force them to build in firmware blocks against other competeing operating systems? The kind of deliberate anti-competitive actions by business such as Standard Oil that led to the creation of the Sherman Antitrust Act in the first place? Just because you don’t think monopolies or oligarchical market domination can occur from anticompetitive business practices doesn’t make it so, skip. I know this because history – including current history – tells me so.
“You really believe that it was the govenrment that stopped children from being killed in factories?”
That’s simply too ridiculous to address without laughing. Are 10 year olds in America being forced to work in slave labor conditions like they were before child labor laws? No. Instead industry exports manfacturing overseas where they can continue that exploitive practice without government interference.
” Despite Osha, how many people have been killed in mining accidents and all the other people killed on their jobs in the last 50 years.”
Far fewer than would have absent any kind of controls placed on industry. A fine example of the Nirvana fallacy in rejecting a solution for being imperfect.
“All that crap you were fed in Middle School is wrong. They tried teaching you to be a good little socalist and succeeded.”
Too bad for you many of us posting here have terminal degrees and aren’t relying upon middle school education (no matter how you choose to mischaracterize middle school education). Also, you’ve demonstrated time and again you don’t understand socialism and use it as a demon word. Value loaded language will get you no where as Tony pointed out.
“You have this illusion of govenment as being our protector. “Taxation and regulation have quintupled your standard of living.” Tony there are 44 million people on food stamps.”
Who would likely be starving absent the Food Stamp program.
“The amount of foreclosures and bankruptcies is staggering.”
Due to a lack of proper regulation and enforcement of the financial industry.
“We have the same social problems today that we had 50 years ago but as government has grown, the problems have gotten worse. Is that light bulb going off yet.”
No. We have some of the same problems and some completely new ones that didn’t exist 50 years ago, but concurrently we have a lot few of some of the problems of the past such as discriminatory hiring practices and the ability of industry to pollute without consequence.
“You don’t need regulation if you have a good justice system.”
Actually you precisely need regulation to have a justice system period. Courts require laws – including regulation – to even operate. Otherwise they are not courts of law.
“People won’t board up the back door of a factory if people won’t work there or the insurance companies won’t insure them.”
Really. And how exactly does a business survive without workers or survive a catastrophic loss in the absence of proper insurance coverage for thier risks?
“There is no utopia, but thinking that government is the savior of all things is dilussional.”
Thinking that the absence of government is the savior of all things is the delusional and childlike belief in anarchy and that there are no bad actors in society.
“If you think this system of taxation and regulation is so great let’s step it up a notch. Let’s try everyone working for the government. But we have the Soviet Union to show us that this didn’t work our very well.”
“So let’s try substanically less govenrment like our founders had invisioned and worked pretty good for a long long time.”
Which included the ability to regulate commerce.
“There is no doubt that the protection of individual rights works.”
And it works when it works through the coercive power of government used for keeping others from taking what is yours without consequence be it by economic or physical coercion directed against you. Steal with a pen or steal with a gun, without government, your only recourse against the theif is self-help. Good luck with that, Charles Bronson.
“The question should be what system does that the best. It can’t be government because government has to take away rights to fund it’s programs.”
Begs the question that taxation is theft – more Rothbard idiocy. There is no government of any form without taxation. Taxes are the only way to make sure that all members of society contribute to the costs of the mutually derived benefits of government like protecting your civil rights, promoting the general welfare of society and providing a common defense.
Bron,
You’re going to quote obvious propaganda from a News Corp. outlet as some kind of proof?
That’s cute. Ridiculous, but cute.
“Movements and associations of most ordinary Americans seem to lack the elements of destruction and hate we see on the fringes of the ideological left. And there is something about the left that seems to regularly produce a violent, even nihilistic fringe.”
Not at all like those fine upstanding right wing movements such as the KKK and the Aryan Nation. Oh, wait! Those are “fringe” groups at the “ideological edge of the right” aren’t they?
That whole big of rightwing polemic is based on the dual use of the fallacy of composition and division, Bron. He uses the composition error to attribute to all the motives and actions of the few to the whole and the dividion error to take the actions of the few to impugne the motivatations and actions of the whole. As political polemic propaganda, it’s really fairly well put together. As fact, it’s utter bullshit.
Bron,
John Agresto? Really?
http://exiledonline.com/mugged-by-mediocrity-dr-dolan-schools-neocon-imbecile-john-agresto-in-the-art-of-character-assassination/
@skiprob: Our govenrment has also bankrupted our society in doing the few thing you suggest.
No it hasn’t. Are you literally bankrupt? Are you even in danger of being bankrupt? The vast majority of Americans are neither, and that is what society is. If anything is responsible for the current economic downturn, which is NOT a bankruptcy, it is the deregulation of banks, and the subsequent risk-free speculation they engaged in and lost at.
The GDP of the USA is $15 trillion, which also happens to be our debt. If a person earned $50K and owed $50K, would we call them “bankrupt?”
Almost anybody that has owned a house has been in debt for two or three times their annual income; including me (and at about five times the interest rate the US Government has to pay for its debt).
All you can do is spew hyperbole designed to mislead.
Skip and Bron,
You both suffer from what has become a common malady these days. You take diverse pieces of information (44 million people on food stamps), combine it with uninformed premises (anyone who defends government is a socialist and the “free market solves all problems”) and mix that in with self-serving propaganda sources (Ayn Rand, John Agresto) to synthesize what to you seems a coherent political philosophy, but is in fact
a logically inept hash. This is not to say that there are no arguments to be made for your viewpoints, just that most are as incoherent as your own.
Ha! Are you telling me that government providing people food when they have none is an example of government NOT protecting people? Holy crap you Aynish have your minds twisted into knots.
==========================================================
Don’t feed the children in school. Do you know why the school lunch program was instituted? Because too many draftees, cannon fodder, were found to be malnourished.
@Brooklin: The earth is flat.
It certainly appears that way when you are standing on it.
Which is the problem with the Aynish, they are so unbudgingly selfish and self-centered they cannot see anything from any other perspective other than selfishness, no matter how brutal or unfair the outcome.
@Gene: …the back of sugar packets at Denny’s.
That was hilarious.
@Gene: Thanks for the reply to Skip; I was busy, but you were right on point.
Thanks, Tony, but to give credit where credit is due, I appropriated that joke from “The Simpson’s”. Grandpa was giving Bart an absurd history lesson on one episode and Bart asked where get learned all of his history. Grandpa’s response was “I mostly pieced it together from the back of sugar packets at Denny’s.”
**where he learned all of his history. **
Bad fingers. Bad! Get under the house!
First, this is a site I read almost every day and today it just so happened to be on regulation so I put the below URL for the group to read. He uses a very interesting style — http://www.thedailybell.com/3968/Wisdom-of-Regulators-Systemic-Risk-Group-Formed-to-Supervise-Wall-Street
I think the key is justice and the idea of competing justice systems is the only thing that I’ve ever seen that has the potential of working. It would be open participation by those interested in trying to develop and improve our system of justice, but it would not be through force or privilege. I don’t know if even this will work, but throwing in some competition into the current system might have some benefits. The problem is that we are going up against a government grated monopoly that has the full force of police power behind it. It would allow people to start looking at other ways of improving our world and hopefully stop thinking that they can sit back and let government do it. We have to try something different because the system we have now, in my opinion, has too many fatal flaws and the results appear to support this.
I have began thinking about how best to implement a new system and I’ve come up with some ideas of at least how to start putting it together. It’s basically a web based highly encrypted super communication system that’s combined with a voting system and private and public blogging, that allows interested participants to work together in developing concurring and dissenting court opinions. It faces the same problems of our current system, but opens up the number of participants to whatever the group would be able to manage. I think that it is a little strange to have only 9 Judges determining the Constitutionality of a law for a society of some 325 million people. That surely fits the definition of an oligarchy.
At the very least, it would be very interesting to see how the opinions of the group would match up against the current judicial system. Of course I would try to stack it with as many libertarians as possible but in all fairness, we would not even discourage the communists from joining in.
I think our Constitution is a pretty good document, if you understand its intent. Of course that intent is debatable as any good lawyer will surely introduce a multitude of complexities into the mix.
If something like this doesn’t work, I see 6,000 more years of adversity and continued violence. When is it going to hit the U.S. really hard concerns me.
Mike Spindell:
How typical of the left when they dont like some one’s ideas, attack the messenger rather than refuting the ideas.
I must say I [dont] put great weight in what a person who was fired by an individual has to say about said individual. I also [dont] put great weight in what a newspaper had to say 20 plus years ago about someone who was only 10 or 15 years into his career. Add in the newspapers back then had a decidedly liberal bias and what have you got?
Not too much.
@skiprob: If you think this system of taxation and regulation is so great let’s step it up a notch. Let’s try everyone working for the government.
Let’s not, since it wouldn’t work. This is the problem with the asinine Aynish, they think everything is all or nothing, they understand nothing about proper proportions, about recipes, about interactions or enabling or a foundation of operations.
My house has a concrete foundation. My house is not 100% concrete, nor do I want it to be. The foundation provides an anchor for my house, and a rigid and reliable load bearing support structure for the walls, flooring and furniture. It keeps my house safe, and because my foundation is properly constructed and sound and my house is firmly attached to it, my house is not cracked or leaking, and isn’t breaking pipes to endanger my health or property.
That is what government does, it provides a foundation upon which people can do whatever they want to benefit themselves and others as long as they do not harm others in the process. Nothing but government can accomplish that.
If no laws are enforced at gunpoint, then gunpoint will be the only law.
Matt Johnson:
I guess they succeeded too well since there is an obesity epidemic now. Or maybe people werent undernourished and it was just a ploy to expand government yet again.
Tony C — I’m not being cheeky, just do not understand the thing about gunpoint. Can you explain it for me?
“I think the key is justice and the idea of competing justice systems is the only thing that I’ve ever seen that has the potential of working.”
And your thinking is ridiculous. The very notion of “competing justice systems” invites a lack of finality of judgement (key to any judicial operation as they are specifically finders of fact set up to resolve disputes with finality), invites forum shopping, and it encourages social instability because of these things. You don’t like what one court rules? Go find another that will rule for you! Pure genius that in the end equates to not having any courts at all.
The primary function of any court system is to help keep domestic peace. WIthout an institution accepted by the citizens of a society as an impartial and authoritative judge of whether a person had committed a crime and, if so, what type of punishment should be meted out, vigilantes would be invited to “dispense justice” as they individually (and usually not so impartially) might see fit. If no social agency were empowered to authoritately and impartially decide private disputes, people would have to rely upon self-help to settle their disputes with simple brute forcer rather than legitimate authority likely being the basis of such decisions, i.e. the result would be the tyranny of the strong over the weak. This is a blueprint for anarchy. Even the most primative of societies have a final arbiter of disputes to avoid the social disorder self-help creates. Having competing justice systems is antithetical to the idea of a justice system in the first place and as a matter of defintion.
Of all the stupid crap you’ve suggested, skip, that ranks right up at the top.
Bron,
You, as the messenger, were not attacked. Rather the substance and the source of your message was attacked. How typical for someone unable to sell their bad ideas and propaganda or the bad ideas and propaganda of others to proclaim they are the victim.
Gene H:
I was talking about John Agresto’s column.
What do you always say about reading comprehension? Just go back and read one of your statements to any of a number of different people on the subject and consider it from me. You will probably find it under your macro for reading comprehension maybe ctrl+shift rdcmp?
If the ideas are so bad then refute them.
“I was talking about John Agresto’s column.”
So was I.
I was critical of both what he said and how he said it.
Mike was critical of the man as an unreliable source of information, i.e. attacking his credibility as a witness.
There is some problem with reading comprehension here, but it is most assuredly not mine.
Now tell us again how the messenger (you as the propagator of Agresto’s propaganda) was attacked.
@Malisha: The government has to use coercive power to make people obey laws. A metaphor for that is “gunpoint,” laws are enforced at gunpoint. Of course, there are things like a police order or fines, but ultimately, the law is designed to escalate from a refusal to obey an order to ultimately physically coercive action with lethality if need be.
If there ARE no laws, and no regulation, then the result is anarchy. The only protection you HAVE is force, or, in the metaphor, a gun. That is all that protects you from theft, murder, rape, enslavement, etc.
There are bad actors in the world, sociopaths and psychopaths without empathy or remorse that understand nothing but force. They are not rare; they comprise around 1% or 2% of the population. Government must control them with force, or they will control us by force.
There is simply no escaping that dilemma, force is a necessity. Of the two options, controlled force is the preferable option, which means government controlled by the people that uses force in proportions determined by the people to be fair and just.
Malisha:
in regards to Tony C and guns, he is saying we have to kill the patient to save the patient.
God damn it we are going to tyrannize you so you will god damn well be free from tyranny.
Tony C and Gene H are totalitarians at heart. Its kinda cute actually. Just picture Marx and Lenin in baby diapers with big adult heads and little baby bodies running around shouting proletarians of the world unite [or we will use a gun and make you]. Make sure it is a high squeaky voice for maximum effect.
Gene H:
yes, I went back and read one of your reading comprehension slights so consider me chastised.
Sorry about that, accusing you of poor reading comprehension.
Have your laugh, I did.
@Bron: I am not a totalitarian, I believe in majority rule. You and all of the Aynish are totalitarians, you are the ones that would deny a 99% majority that wanted to impose a regulation on business or a tax on income, on asinine Aynish principle. What could be more totalitarian than imposing a literally life threatening philosophy of a tiny little minority on the vast majority?
“Tony C and Gene H are totalitarians at heart.”
I don’t consider wanting justice for all, a peaceful society that provides mutual defense and promotes the welfare of its citizens while maintaining the maximum possible individual liberty to be totalitarian but if that makes me totalitarian, well . . .
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
I’m in good company.
That and you have as little understanding of the political science term “totalitarian” as you do of the word “socialism”.
Totalitarianism is a system characterized centralized control by an autocratic authority and the political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority where as I favor a system of checks and balances that serves to protect the civil rights of citizens from abuses by each other and by the government itself through an independent judciaty and a government that is democratic in form which means that absolute authority rests in the people and not the state.
Which means I’m the exact opposite of totalitarian.
And I’ll enjoy my laugh at your expense just as much as all the others I have at your expense, no more – no less.
Gene, you really need to read that essay “The Myth of the Rule of Law”. http://rsjexperiment.wordpress.com/ by John Hasnas. If the parties except the decision, that is all we want. The pure idea that the court can overturn a prior decision proves that there is really no finality to any decision. Government does not have to be the final arbiter. You’re letting your own perspective, limit your creativity and open mindedness.
The rule of law has long been controlled by the oligarchy in this country that has long stopped in providing rational context to many of their decisions. How do we stop this? The Judicial system has basically subverted the Constitution and turned our country into a fascist oligarchy. The basic premise of being able to go out into the world and pursue life, liberty and our happiness without having to get government permission, as long as you don’t harm others, is gone and that is the principle of an individual right. So what’s the rule of law, what ever our corrupt courts say? Is this what you want your kids to live under? How are you going to get the wolves to give up their power?
Also you continue to use terms like plutocracy and autocracy that are passé in economics.
I think it is in the book The Voluntary City, where competing judicial systems were utilized in the Celtic civilization, which worked well until the fascist Roman Empire, as they did throughout the world, invaded them. Now that we know how to stop invasions, perhaps we should try improving our judicial system again.
Gene H:
I am glad you did, it is only fair for all of the knowledge I have gained reading what you wrote and then researching and finding the real truth.
You are more than welcome, the pleasure has been all mine.
“Also you continue to use terms like plutocracy and autocracy that are passé in economics.”
Skip,
Seriously? Who has defined them as passe’? Both you and Bron are plagued by believing that which is not there. You have characterized Gene, Tony and myself with silly labels that are the product of your own imaginations. You see the world through the fogged lens of your political perspective. Any fair examinations of the writing of Tony, Gene and myself is that we are not at all doctrinaire “leftists” by any means. Yet you are so rigidly locked into your beliefs that you are unable to perceive it.
Bron 1, June 6, 2012 at 1:48 pm
Matt Johnson:
I guess they succeeded too well since there is an obesity epidemic now. Or maybe people werent undernourished and it was just a ploy to expand government yet again.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
What is that supposed to mean? You’re an ass. When I was in boot camp the fat guys either made it or they didn’t.
Tony, The status Quo is not working and you and Gene cannot come up with “rational means” of improving the system. You think the magic majority is all of a sudden going to agree on doing something using the political system to improve the system. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again and expecting different results.
skiprob,
Maybe it’s time to stop being insane. Wisconsin voters tried. No wasted effort.
“Here is a good article philosophically speeking which addresses altruism I am sure you will love it:”
Bron,
This is another example of your obtuseness when it comes to anyone who disagrees with you, you read what you imagine, rather than what is written. In all the years we’ve exchanged comments I have consistently told you that I’m not an altruist and I don’t believe in altruism. Caring for the lives of others is not altruism, it is intelligence. You, however, are so caught up in your own selfish purposes that you need to defame others as “altruists” because you cannot understand that as members of a society we are better off caring for all the people, rather than retreating solely into our own selfish interests as you do.
Criticize and Deny, Critciize and Deny.
It is interesting to note that the below analysis does appear to also relate to our democratic republic today. – Exactly what I’ve been saying and understanding that the two party system is really a two-headed snake is important.
In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:
“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.”
“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years.
During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage..”
The Obituary follows:
Born 1776, Died 20….
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul ,
Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the
“complacency and apathy” phase of Professor Tyler’s definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation’s population already having reached the “governmental dependency” phase.
skiprob:
have you ever heard of P.E.T.R.?
people for the ethical treatment of rodents. DC is a charter member, they trap rats and send them across the river to Virginia. They have a law in DC preventing the destruction of rats.
Mike Spindell:
I am all for helping people as long as they arent able to help themselves. The severly disabled both physical and intellectual come readily to mind. Most other people can work and should, they arent my responsibility. Why should I pay for some one who can work and doesnt because they want to suck on the government teat instead?
Matt Johnson:
I am ass? Why do you say that? You are the one that said public schools started giving free lunches because the cannon fodder wasnt big enough and well nourished enough.
That is the thing with big government, that is how they think of the citizens, as cannon fodder. They own us or so they think, the government is going to find out they dont.
@skiprob: you and Gene cannot come up with “rational means” of improving the system.
Actually, I suspect Gene and I would do just fine on the rational front. The rational front is not the problem, the irrational front is. That it you and your Aynish kin, the irrational religious, the irrational “conservatives,” the irrationally apathetic, the irrationally greedy, the irrationally deferent to fame, fortune and power, and those that irrationally crave to be subjects of royalty.
The rational front does not make something complex out of something simple, it outlaws and severely punishes sociopathic behavior. In fact, the rational front would pass just enough regulation and law so that all the wonderful magical things you claim for the free market would actually come to pass.
We would ensure that companies can only compete on price, quality, service, cachet, guarantees and safety, and prohibit them from influencing politics, endangering their customers or the environment or their employees, defrauding their investors, or making false claims or breaking their contracts and agreements.
In fact, it is irrational of YOU to deny us those regulations, because if you truly believed in your failed ideology, such regulations would be entirely neutral, no companies would engage in underhanded practice, or poisoning of their customers or employees. What possible rational reason is there to permit a food company to poison their customers, or a factory to expose workers to carcinogenic radiation without even telling them about it?
You Aynish are the irrational breed, because if businesses acted as you claimed, these laws would not exist, they are overwhelmingly passed in response to the outrage caused by the commission of the very acts they outlaw.
The rational people know exactly how to fix the problem, we are thwarted by the irrational people like you.
Bron,
Are you intellectual? Doubt it. I have to agree that promoting voting is the best approach. Wisconsin tried and lost. But they didn’t really lose.
Bron,
Considering how often you come up with things from questionable sources like Ayn Rand, the WSJ and von Mises organelles, I wouldn’t exactly call what you’ve found “the real truth.” You’ve demonstrated time and again that you are logic and evidence resistant past your self-imposed ideological boundaries and tend to think “the real truth” is whatever plays to your confirmation bias(es). That’s what happens when you adopt an ideology without question instead of letting your questions and the best evidence you find in pursuit of those questions (no matter where they lead you; evidence informs theory, theories don’t inform evidence) inform your operational principles that you define rather than let the operating principles others dictate define you for you. Operational principles that may and often do play to the that person’s specific agenda which may or may not be in your best interests. You may criticism the syncretic approach to philosophy and ethics, but in fact, it grants me greater freedom than your dogmatic approach and absolutisms. Dogmatic adherence to any single system is a hobble no matter if your system is defined by Rand, Kant or Jesus. No one system is perfect and must have an assumed truth somewhere in it and assumptions – even if correct – can lead you further astray than a fact ever will. That is one of the beauties of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems. They point to the flaw in acting as if any single system is consistent and perfectly factually valid. You may be thankful for things you’ve learned from me, but you have failed to learn the most valuable lessons of all: let evidence inform your theories – not dogma, above all think critically and for yourself and to realize that no one system has all the answers.
Perhaps it is your inability to think outside the binary box is physically based. I’d like to think it is merely a bad choice on your part but as time goes on, maybe that freedom of thought I wish for you simply isn’t possible. The primary difference between you and skip – given that you are both dogmatically Libertarian and in your case Randian Objectivist by choice – is that I think you have the ability to think for yourself, but you are simply either too lazy or fearful to follow the small “o” objective evidence and arguments to their natural logical conclusions. You stop yourself from learning better and I think it is by choice even if that choice is subconscious. You can learn and learn things contrary to some of your preconceptions. I and others here have seen you do it up to and until it runs afoul of your dogmas. Your ignorance is often willful even when it is subconsciously driven. That is very often the nature of confirmation bias. Skip on the other hand simply doesn’t seem to be very intelligent on top of being poorly informed. I suspect he simply can’t learn well. All men are created equal, but they are not all created equally.
And that is my teacher’s lament on and to you.
You have potential to much more intelligent and better informed and you waste it on dogma and the triteness of propaganda that plays against your interests and the interests of society as a whole. You may have learned information from me, but you haven’t learned the lesson and the knowledge that goes with it. By being dogmatic and absolutist, you use information to chain yourself and limit your perception of the vast tapestry of nature. It’s not all straight lines and black and white. It’s wiggly and full of many colors of many shades.
Free your mind. Without that critical step? You will never be truly free.
You can do it, Bobby Boucher.
There’s even a frog muffin in it for you if you succeed.
But you have to let go of Ayn and von Mises shackles first.
Bron 1, June 6, 2012 at 4:01 pm
Matt Johnson:
I am ass? Why do you say that? You are the one that said public schools started giving free lunches because the cannon fodder wasnt big enough and well nourished enough.
That is the thing with big government, that is how they think of the citizens, as cannon fodder. They own us or so they think, the government is going to find out they dont.
==================
What are you going to do about it?
Any legislation can be easily be trumped by the Judiciary. Anything of importance generally is. That’s why I keep saying to even libertarians – You are not going to change the system using the system controlled by the very people who are our adversaries. You haven’t got enough money and time. I don’t care how many Rand and Ron Pauls get elected. You aren’t going to beat them at the game the control and you’re not going to take their controls away.
“Any legislation can be easily be trumped by the Judiciary. Anything of importance generally is. ”
No, it can’t. The Judiciary is constrained by the Constitution and any constitutionally valid constraints put upon it by the Legislature. If legislation is trumped by the Judiciary it is because that legislation runs afoul of the Constitution and/or was vague in some respect that merits adjudication until Congress either remedies their vagueness or opts to let precedent and stare decisis control that legal standard at bar. The Judiciary is, despite your mischaracterization, the weakest of the three branches of government.
skiprob,
The Judiciary is overwhelmed. There can either be an equitable adjustment or not. There is always an adjustment.
I like it that Professor Turley is defending the little guy. Take it or leave it.
That’s very real problem you point to, Matt.
The Judiciary simply doesn’t have the number of judges it needs to confront the workload the system has.
Ah, I see that you do not understand that most regulation is really created to stifle competition so that it can be used by the oligarchy to gain further controls over the means of production. It allows them to know every single bsuiness activity that is going on. Why do you think they also pushed so hard to maintain a central bank and get it back after Jackson killed the 2nd Bank of the United States? It helps them to control the various industries and therefore consolidate their financial interests. The Creature From Jeckyl Island is about the true story of the secret meeting in Jeckyl Island, GA where the Morgans, Rothchilds and the Gov. planned in 1911 the enactment of The Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Facinating book, you boys should trying reading something useful.
I’m a little guy also. Who do you think I’m trying to defend? Not the friggin oligarchs. I’m trying to crush their power and not allow it to continue to be consolidated as it has been over the last 50 years. Check the stats their winning.
Gene H:
To save me the trouble of responding, I just ask others to read what you wrote and substitute Marx, Rawls, and Alinsky along with the Huffington Post, Think Progress and George Soros along with your name.
You make me laugh, we all have our biases. At least I know I am biased toward free markets and human liberty. You dont admit your bias toward socialism. Nothing wrong with socialism, it just doesnt work.
skiprob,
Maybe you should try some common sense.
Ah, I see that you don’t have a clue as to what you are talking about.
Also, you really must get over the idea that I don’t recognize the imprudence and failure of the private components of the Fed as it exists today. I’ve clearly stated more than once that they were a bad idea from the start that in no way impair the arguments for both the utility and necessity of a public central bank.
If you keep using straw men, skip, I’m going to be tempted to start rubbing your nose in it like a bad puppy. You consistently ask what I think of something, I tell you and then you either mischaracterize what I’ve said or you ignore it and/or say I didn’t answer you.
Matt Johnson:
no, I am not an intellectual. That doesnt mean much, I know a whole host of intellectuals who are dead and wrong starting with Plato and ending with Rawls.
So what is your point?
skiprob 1, June 6, 2012 at 4:29 pm
I’m a little guy also. Who do you think I’m trying to defend? Not the friggin oligarchs. I’m trying to crush their power and not allow it to continue to be consolidated as it has been over the last 50 years. Check the stats their winning.
=========================================================
What do you think the Wisconsin vote was about? They aren’t going to win. Forget about the mansions. The Gilded Age doesn’t work.
Wait until you get a pike stuck up your ass if you think it does.
Matt Johnson:
All I can do is vote.
@skiprob: Ah, I see that you do not understand [my tinfoil hat conspiracy theory].
And I see that you do not understand basic reality.
Bron 1, June 6, 2012 at 4:35 pm
Matt Johnson:
no, I am not an intellectual. That doesnt mean much, I know a whole host of intellectuals who are dead and wrong starting with Plato and ending with Rawls.
So what is your point?
+++++++++++++++++++++++
I know who Niccolo Machiavelli was. And that isn’t you.
You should try reading “Free To Choose” by Milton and Rose Friedman.They won the Nobel Prize in economics for this book. He was a student of the folks you criticized in your post. You are amazingly critical of what you appear to know nothing about. Your sociological babble may to impressive to those who don’t know any better, but it doesn’t fly with us. You’ve given me one reference so far and it was something you wrote that is dead wrong. You wouldn’t even use your own logic to answer basic social questions that I posed. Your acting like a fraud or perhaps a political operative.
Bron,
Or you can continue to wallow in your intellectual inadequacies.
“I just ask others to read what you wrote and substitute Marx, Rawls, and Alinsky along with the Huffington Post, Think Progress and George Soros along with your name.”
And I ask you to prove where I’ve used any of those people or sources as authoritative. Otherwise, you’re just playing at propaganda again (and poorly).
“You make me laugh, we all have our biases. At least I know I am biased toward free markets and human liberty.”
Being biased towards the teachings of a sociopath and the political polemic of non-scientific “economist” isn’t the same thing as being biased toward liberty. If you were truly concerned about liberty, you wouldn’t be such a blind laissez-faire economics guy because you’d realize the reality of economic tyranny that method produces in practice.
“You dont admit your bias toward socialism. Nothing wrong with socialism, it just doesnt work.”
Said the guy who consistently demonstrates he doesn’t know what the spectrum of political and economic behaviors that fall under the umbrella term “socialism” means. I’d admit to a bias toward socialism if I had one just as I admit my bias toward the Constitution. My bias is to pragmatic utilitarian solutions that actually fix problems, not the ravings of a crazy woman or the corporatist fascist apologetics of an Austrian pseudo-economist.
Too bad for you you telling me not to respond isn’t going to negate these facts or the very real criticism leveled at your ability to learn and comprehend as hobbled by your dogmas. It’s also not going to stop me. I don’t care if you take what I say to heart, Bron. You are a lost cause be it by choice or simple inability to think properly. In pointing out your flaws though, I do hope that someone, somewhere won’t make the same mistakes you’ve made.
See? Not all lessons are for your sole benefit. You’d maybe realize this if you didn’t wear the chains of Objectivism.
skiprob,
You’re full of shit. And I got fired because I’m not political.
Don’t underestimate youself Matt, you communicate just fine and that is the basis of an intellectual. Also “Common Sense”. Yea, I read that. Thomas Paine. Good read along with Age of Reason. Paine agrees with the libertarian perspetive. Much of it was probably gained from him. I wish I could get Tony and Gene to read somthing other than what their reading. Maybe they would start to see the light.
Skip,
Maybe you should try understanding what you read. Also, you saying I’m wrong isn’t the same as you proving I’m wrong. How’s that worked out for you so far? Not all arguments require references, skipster. Some merely require proper definitions and logic – things you don’t seem to utilize very well if at all. You can appeal to authority all you like though. It’s just another logical fallacy to add to your ever growing list. BTW, Milton Freidman also thought medical doctors didn’t need to be licensed and was another laissez-faire clown. He was just full of bad ideas. I take him as seriously as I take Alan Greenspan. Which is to say I don’t take him seriously at all unless it’s as a threat to democracy because of his laissez-faire stance (which inherently ends in economic tyranny when put into practice). He was less economist as scientist than he was economist as apologist for the wealthy, a lot like your Libertarian buddy von Mises. Critical of those he learned from? Hell, I’m critical of the man himself consider the dismantling of the consumer protections against bankers malfeasance began under Reagan and that Friedman was one of the Gipper’s chief economic advisers.
skiprob,
Tony and Gene can figure out what to read for themselves.
Skip,
If you think you have a chance of selling me on Libertarianism?
Good luck with that.
You’re going to need it.
If Bron and others across 2000+ comments on another thread couldn’t make the sale and with much much better arguments than you present, you don’t stand a chance.
Matt,
Not only that, we understand it when we’re finished.
Gene H:
Good reply, you didnt say much but it was sure purty.
“Being biased towards the teachings of a sociopath and the political polemic of non-scientific “economist” isn’t the same thing as being biased toward liberty.”
Says the guy who thinks Jean Jacques Rousseau ideas of government are a good model for a free society.
Wasnt Marx some sort of sociopath? And Lenin was probably a psychopath. He was definitely a mass murderer.
@skiprob: Not only can I read, I can think for myself, and I have the benefit of a few hundred years of observation since Paine.
Bron,
Straw man again. I never said Rousseau’s “ideas of government are a good model for a free society.” I said that his formulation of the social compact was the underpinning of any government of any form. Because the social compact is the underpinning of any and all forms of government.
Also, show where I’ve cited Marx or Lenin as authoritative sources or as the basis for any argument I’ve ever made. In fact, I’ve explicitly argued against Marx and I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned Lenin except perhaps in the context of history. I’m even less likely to cite him is political, legal or economic authority than I am Marx, which is to say not likely in the slightest.
You continue to foam at the mouth trying to paint me as a Marxist all you like though considering you have absolutely no basis for that accusation. Compared that to the well known facts that you are an admitted (and worse yet, proud) Objectivist and fan of that clown von Mises and laiseez-faire economics and your accusations are one thing:
Really funny.
You’d have a better chance of proving I’m a Nihilist.
If it makes you feel better to hide your intellectual failings behind a litany of baseless counterclaims? Do what you need to make yourself feel like the hero of your own story. Catering to your own ego over any kind of fact or logic is what Objectivists do best anyway.
Tony,
There is indeed no replacement to being able to think critically and for yourself.
Gene H:
have you ever given thought to the possibility your regulations have given rise to complexity and instability?
The 20 page agreements we sign for doing any thing financial are created because you are trying to protect the public from the “evil” bankers. Maybe if there were minimal regulations financial markets would stop creating these complex vehicles which stupefy all but the most astute.
I should be able to lend skiprob $100,000 with a contract of less than a page.
Your regulations have created all this mess because the government regulators arent smart enough to think of all of the possibilities. And necessity is always the mother of invention, any regulation can be gotten around by some loop hole either existing in the legislation or in the future after people have thought about how to get around the regulations.
Yep, you go on believing complexity is good and that people like me are too stupid to understand complexity. Your regulations have created the chaos which has hurt untold millions of people.
Skiprob and others, including myself, are waiting for the day when the majority of these half baked regulations are repealed. So that we can purchase a house with a contract of a single page. But that doesnt benefit lawyers or b-crats.
Tony C,. not you Matt… And you still don’t think Paine and Jefferson were right? You should be even better able to expand on what they said. No offense, but I’m hearing the Hamilton Federalist side out of you guys. Hamilton was a banker. I’m not hearing the Anti-Federalists, as were Jefferson and Paine, coming out of your arguments. Greater centralization of government. You may not understand it, but that’s the position your advocating.
Bron,
Have you ever considered the entire point of the “Good Law, Bad Law” discussion wasn’t about quantity but about quality?
Also, I never said complexity is a good thing, Mr. Straw Man. I said it is a real thing and if one is not mindful of it – say by making sure laws were carefully tailored to reach a specific outcome with the least complexity possible – it will bite you on the ass. I’m for improving the system, Bron, which means by necessity cutting as well as building. Not all regulations are necessary and they are not all properly implemented or formulated when they are necessary. But you keep buying into that idea that size is the primary defining characteristic of the stability of a complex system instead of functionality. That’s how you get non-viable solutions like those offered by Libertarianism.
Gene H:
Marxism/communism is scientific socialism. Go figure. You dont need to site Marx or Lenin directly. For example many of Rands ideas on economics come from Frederic Bastiat, he wasnt a sociopath. He seems like he was a pretty decent guy.
Many of the people you read have their basic philosophical outlook geared toward Marx and his writings or other progressives who have agreed with and expanded on Marx’s works. You dont have to quote Marx directly.
Social compact basis for government OK so you use the social compact to form a government. Sounds like a model to me.
Yea and he won the Nobel prize in Economics. Of course Doctors don’t need to be licensed. According to you, people are to stupid to choose qualified doctors and you wonder why medical cost are so high. It’s called monopoly power, the same cause of the extremely high costs within the justice system and one of the biggest problems. These folks are making 10 to 20 times more money than the average person and we’re still the 43 sickest nation in the world. We have licensed doctors, just nobody can afford them. You pill pushing system is really great Gene.
skiprob,
Alexander Hamilton shot at a tree branch. Burr shot to kill after Hamilton already fired his shot.
Gene H:
The size of government matters, there is no way around that because the bigger it is the more mischief it is able to make. The entity called government is unable to control itself, it will always work in tandem with the baser instincts of the governed. That is why the founders wanted it limited, that is why they wanted a republic. But you know that.
What does that have to do with the various political perspectives. You saying Hamilton was a good guy and therefore let Burr kill him.
@skiprob: I have discussed it before, in the Good Law, Bad Law thread Gene started, and I won’t again. Besides, in my opinion you are too beholden to authority to understand subtlety, so the fact that much of my philosophy is the same but I disagree on certain points with Paine or Jefferson or Smith is really going to be too much for you to handle. Like most of you Aynish, your only response will be pathetic derision for somebody that doesn’t believe what an “authority” told you.
Unlike you, it is my job (literally) to question authority and dogma and invent better approaches, better techniques, better math, better precision and less failure, but of course you would not understand that, either.
Because if you could, you wouldn’t be Aynish in the first place. Unless you are under 15 years old, but I kind of doubt that.
Give me one of your so-called non viable solutions so that I can explain it to you that it is in fact very viable.
skiprob,
Hamilton learned to be a clerk as a servant. I wouldn’t have shot at the tree branch.
Doesn’t the fact that pure libertarianism eliminates all force under the guise of authority pretty much discount your opinion of me on that subject.
Thinking that I can’t handle your intellectual prowess is also pretty arrogant. You should run something legitimate by me before you criticize me once again.
So far I’ve mainly heard cheap shots out of you. Did you read Gene’s essay on the How to determine a Good and Bad Law or what ever the title was. I would like to get your opinions on it.
In my opinion, Gene appears to think that he is some sort of a God and can therefore determine what is in the majorities best interest. The entire Congress can’t get it right, but Gene can.
Skiprob: “The entire Congress can’t get it right, but Gene can.”
You can just end the sentence where the comma appears. Q.E.D.
@skiprob: You aren’t the first fool Aynish I have encountered, either here or in real life, and I have already heard your rote explanation a dozen times. Since you have already demonstrated that you are immune to actual logic and reality (e.g. your claim there is no such thing as a natural monopoly), I will pass. If you believe what you have claimed, you are far too divorced from reality for us to find any common ground.
skiprob,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_code
Ask Bartolomeu.
@skiprob: I would like to get your opinions on it.
Read the comments. Search for my moniker (use CTL-F for find). I had a few posts in there. If it loads slow, I suggest you turn off Javascript; that will help.
@skiprob: Thinking that I can’t handle your intellectual prowess is also pretty arrogant.
Do not mistake my accurate apprehension of reality for arrogance. In fact, I believe MOST people have the intellectual prowess to follow my arguments. So it doesn’t have anything to do with my intellectual prowess, it has to do with your distinct lack of it, which is evidenced by your dogmatic Aynsanity.
Are you an attorney?
skiprob,
If you’re talking to me, I’m an accountant.
Skiprob,
If you’re talking to me, I’m a NAL.
Reality is a perception based on knowledge and understanding. Once again you provide no evidence, an unsubstantiated opinion and criticism. Your Standard Operating Proceedure in debate. Does that somehow makes you feel good about yourself; thats what psychoolgists say.
skiprob,
It doesn’t matter what psychologists say when you’re hanging from a rope.
Perception is reality. Those who perceive. Be careful.
Laurie ‘Bambi’ Bembenek didn’t do it. Certain others did. So much for the judicial system.
I was directing that question to Tony C. but it’s good to know what people do. I’m a realtor and appraiser. Invented a water turbine that’s still patent pending. NAL – Norse Goddess? Matt, what ever I said before to cause you to come back at me like that, I think was misdirected because I didn’t understand your remarks.
skiprob,
Perception is reality, presumably. Jury trials aren’t worth as much as you think they are.
“Marxism/communism is scientific socialism.”
How’s that making up the meaning of technical terms working out for you, Bron?
“Many of the people you read have their basic philosophical outlook geared toward Marx and his writings or other progressives who have agreed with and expanded on Marx’s works. You dont have to quote Marx directly.”
Many of the people I read thought Marx was a fool and if I had wanted to quote Marx, I would have, your again futile attempt at a straw man and using demon words notwithstanding.
“Social compact basis for government OK so you use the social compact to form a government. Sounds like a model to me.”
Sounds like you cannot differentiate between a model and a general statement of political theory.
“The size of government matters, there is no way around that because the bigger it is the more mischief it is able to make.”
And if it is too small to do the jobs required, it’s still dysfunctional. Government size as a measure of success in outcomes is only relevant to the measurement of efficiency. Size is irrelevant to measuring functionality. The only metric valid for measuring functionality is “does the job get done that the mechanism was designed to accomplish?” Whether it is efficient or not is another matter altogether.
“The entity called government is unable to control itself, it will always work in tandem with the baser instincts of the governed.”
Unless controls against corruption like limits on campaign contributions are present. A system is only as error free as its internal controls and error correcting mechanism.
“That is why the founders wanted it limited, that is why they wanted a republic.”
Limited does not mean small and it does not mean ineffective to insuring the goals stated in the Preamble. Limited means limited from imposing on the rights and liberty of citizens. That you cannot distinguish that your freedom to profit ends where others rights not to be exploited begins is a failing of your Libertarian/Objectivist dogma.
“For example many of Rands ideas on economics come from Frederic Bastiat, he wasnt a sociopath. He seems like he was a pretty decent guy.”
And some of Hitler’s ideas came from Darwin and he was a pretty decent guy, Bron.
skip,
“In my opinion, Gene appears to think that he is some sort of a God and can therefore determine what is in the majorities best interest.”
I’m not a God and I have not ever claimed to be one. However, what I supplied in that article was an logical analytical framework that can practically answer the question of whether a law is good/beneficial or bad/detrimental. That you are incapable of understanding that distinction let alone the framework proper only furthers that Tony is correct in asserting that this isn’t about either of our intellectual prowess, but about your lack thereof.
It’s called common sense. Leave your personal ego and bullshit out of it.
skiprob:
I’ve known Gene for some time and he’s never pretended to be anything god-like. No burning bush orations, no flying without technology, not even so much as a Nabisco cracker from heaven. I read Gene’s piece about the framework for assessing good laws and so did scores of others. It’s well-thought out and logical unlike some of your off-the-cuff commentary. In short, only a cargo cult would consider Gene a God for the things he’s written but if they did, they could do a whole lot worse.
Communication is an interpretation. Ask the shrinks. I don’t think Gene thinks he’s a God.
Skip,
Here’s your problem. You are good at saying what you don’t like, but except for your dueling judges idea, you refuse to give a coherent picture of how you would rkeplace government, though I’ve asked on a few occasions. It’s easy to be a critic, but hard to offer solutions. You say that libertarians propose a peace-loving society and if that’s true who keeps the peace?
“Scientific socialism is the term used by Friedrich Engels[1] to describe the social-political-economic theory first pioneered by Karl Marx. The purported reason why this socialism is “scientific socialism” (as opposed to “utopian socialism”) is because its theories are held to an empirical standard, observations are essential to its development, and these can result in changes/falsification of elements of theory.
Although Marx denounced “utopian socialism”, he never referred to his own ideas as “scientific socialism”.”
Yeah Marx never called it scientific socialism because he would have had to change it to capitalism after it didnt work.
Bron,
There is no such thing as scientific socialism. You’re still full of shit.
@Bron – Matt, appears your wrong buddy. Look this stuff up before you write crap that is incorrect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_socialism – Scientific socialism is the term used by Friedrich Engels to describe the social-political-economic theory first pioneered by Karl Marx. The purported reason why ….
Well, in all fairness, I just don’t like to talk about the flying without technology thing. De-icing is most unpleasant and a little undignified. But I am smaller than an ultralight so I don’t require FAA certification. So I got that going for me. Which is nice.
Mike, to give you the necessary information, requiies more that a few pages. Just go read the book, The Voluntary City. Why do I have to rewrite something for you that would take me agreat deal of time, that’s already been written. Buy the book. David Friedman, Milton Friedman’s son wrote the “Machinery of Freedom”. Didn’t read that one, but chapters from it are in The Voluntary City. Great book, that everyone should read. A lot of history and some pretty cool research on private education in the poorest communities in India, even when free public education is available.
skiprob,
Are you a communist? Bill Clinton said there haven’t been any communists for at least ten years. What are you?
The God comment was scarcasim. Just a little teasing!!!!
skiprob,
Are you a girl? If you’re not, you don’t get to tease.
Scientific socialism is not the same thing as what I endorse, however, which was the implication of Bron’s comment. What I endorse is democratic pragmatic soft rule utilitarianism. The method is scientific, but the results are problem solving oriented (be that problem economic or political) and not tied to any political ideology other than the belief that democracy is better than any form of oligarchy or autarchy. Even Marx didn’t think of his economic philosophy as scientific. Since he didn’t, what the fool Engels choose to call it is irrelevant. Economics and specifically differential economic models are merely a tool, a means to an end, but those who think they are an end in and of themselves is as foolish as Marx or von Mises (who openly refuted scientific methodology in forming his pseudo-economics which are in fact more political polemic than useful economics). Marx’s devotion to an extreme version of socialist models – Communism – was the downfall of the political practice of Communism because it was founded on unrealistic views of human psychology. Just so, the same can be said of von Mises except thankfully his laissez-faire model has never been put into full application because it would lead to disastrous results of a different sort than Communism, just rooted in a different but equally unrealistic view of human psychology. Using economics solely as a driver of political process completely disregards the other components of society required to maintain and nurture civilization. There are other considerations. This is why I don’t choose exclusively from either the capitalistic or the socialistic toolbox in formulating solutions. Holding either of them as some sort of sacred dogma only serves to unnecessarily limit finding workable solutions to a societal problem. As I’ve said before, socialized market segments should serve very narrow functions in society (like health care insurance) and free (but still regulated to prevent abuses) markets are just fine for everything else we engage in. That this is abhorrent to Bron’s ideal of everything is good as long as personal profits are maximized says more about his innate worship of money than it does about finding the best solutions for problems based on logical and scientific examination of the evidence surrounding and the parameters proper of a given problem.
Gene, regarding ultralights
A guy once tried to talk me into flying his ultralight aircraft. I refused. I won’t fly any airplane that weighs less than I do.
OS,
I’m with you on that issue. Ultralights just don’t seem like a good idea to me either.
@matt your kidding me aren’t you? Just in case you aren’t. No Matt, I’m the exact opposite of a communist. Communists support various things such as a national Income tax, central bank and public education as well as the controls of transportation and communications by the government. They want all private property under the control of the government. Google the 10 Platforms of Communism and study them closely. Remember that Karl Marx really worked for the oligarchs, then called the bourgeois.
“According to Karl Marx, there were only two classes: those controlling the means of power and those not. The bourgeois were those who controlled the political system, creating laws and values that would ensure their control of power over the proletariat working class”. — This is from the web.
Marx wrote to attempt to scam the majority into excepting communist doctrine, trying to convince people that it would do the opposite. His arguments have been embraced by Citizens around the world and the world (the majority) has suffered greatly for it.
Communism is the means in which to steal the wealth of a nation and until you understand completely how that is accomplished through each of the platforms, your missing an important part of the puzzle.
skiprob,
My apology. I just felt like insulting you. The women have a natural inclination to control everything. They’re not communists, they’re dictators.
@skiprob: I am not an attorney.
We call that being on the fence. That’s OK, it better than being on the wrong side of the fence. Just remember that the force of government is always greater than its adversary, those in the free market. For instance if government is allowed to compete with the private sector, lets say in mortgage finance, it can always beat out the private sector because it is not effected by market forces. It can just lower the rate on their loans, since they do not have to worry about profitability because they are being subsided by the taxpayer. As stated a couple of tiems, trying to blend two antithetic entities is in my opinion impossible over the long term. First we have to understand the decision making fatal flaws within the democratic and democratic republic government models and understand why private enterprise and government are antithetic to one another. The private/public partnership sounds great, buy like many things once you explore the relationship, there are fatal flaws. Not now though. Another post at another time.
So what is your profession and employment?
“We call that being on the fence.”
I don’t care what you call practical, skip.
“Fences” don’t apply to the way I think about problem solving.
Unlike you and Bron, I’m not hobbled by binary thinking.
skiprob,
Who are you asking. Speak with specificity please.
Yea Hitler one minute, the cleaning lady the next. Thank god I have one though. They do the stuff I hate to do and she surely give me some great laughs, especially when it comes to physics and chemistry. She’s a blond.
skiprob,
You’re a psychopath. Hope your cleaning lady doesn’t stab you in the guts with a knife. Then again, I hope she does.
Skiprob: “NAL” does not mean Norse Goddess (and I am not Norse) (and I only levitate by means of chocolate)(Please see Garcia Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude, Priest Chapter)(Gabo is also my friend). According to the guest blogs on the Turley blog, it means “Not A Lawyer.”
“The women have a natural inclination to control everything. They’re not communists, they’re dictators.”
See, that’s a good thing. I remember at one point Professor Turley put up some kind of an article about the Saudis, I believe it was, who wanted to make sure women could not legally drive in their country because if the women were permitted to drive, the culture would be destroyed, the morals in the country would go to Hell, there would be mass chaos and bad stuff, and ultimately there would be war. Then there were a bunch of liberals who disagreed with that and fussed about the unfairness to women and so forth but I believe, if I remember correctly, that I weighed in on that one.
Said I, the predictions about all the terrible things that will happen if women are allowed to drive should not be mocked; they are already proven and have been replicated over and over again. The proof: Men ARE allowed to drive and they have, as a consequence, already destroyed the culture, driven the morals of the country to Hell, caused mass chaos and bad stuff, and ultimately, brought on wars.
My point: This state of affairs that has resulted from men controlling everything for a few millennia is really piss-poor; it’s time to turn that ship around, man.
Malisha,
There’s no need to turn the ship around. Just put it on the right course.
Matt Johnson,
Your Admirals have not been capable of steering “the right course,” which is an argument for turning the ship around.
I frankly would LOVE to see the “right course” but you haven’t asked me what it was.
Malisha,
Don’t sail through a tsunami.
@skiprob: if government is allowed to compete with the private sector, lets say in mortgage finance, it can always beat out the private sector because it is not effected by market forces.
You mean “affected.”
In any case, it isn’t true; government services do not get infinite dollars. They have a budget, and their mission is to deliver as much care as they can within their budget.
This is identical to most divisions of a company (and for three years I managed an engineering division of a public company). You get a budget, you have a mission and goals to meet that you cooperated in detailing but were not set primarily by you, and you do the best job you can within that budget. You cannot count on more money magically appearing, and if significantly more money is needed, chances are good you won’t be the manager spending them, because you have proven yourself incompetent.
I have been a paid, expert consultant both to government agencies and public companies and they both work the same. Both ultimately answer to their owners; a government agency ultimately answers to Congress or a state legislature, a commercial operation answers to its board of directors or private owners. Beneath the C-level (Chief [function] Officer/Executive) 99% of the company is not working for a profit motive, they are working for an annual salary or hourly wage. Unlike entrepreneurs, if they double their productivity, or cut the goofing off in half, they get little or no monetary benefit.
So in the agencies and in the corporate world, 99% of the people work precisely the same, with the same incentive: Not getting in trouble with their supervisors, meeting their goals and tasks and deadlines that have trickled down from above and over which they have no control, so their performance review doesn’t threaten their job.
It is possible to compete against government, especially if one believes (as you do) that government is going to be inherently incompetent. Then they won’t be efficient or competent, so you can compete on that front: Fast service done right. They aren’t going to provide premium services or amenities, they are going to provide no-frills, spartan, long wait, Walmart style services that get the job done without any pleasantries, because that is what delivers the most service for the buck.
So companies can compete on that front.
The argument you are making is actually an argument against monopolies (which have essentially unlimited funds to crush any competition that threatens them and their monopolistic pricing).
Skip,
I ask you to state what your societal organization preference is and you refer me to a book because it’s too complicated to explain? I’ll contrast that with the fact that you can write many disjointed paragraphs explaining what is wrong with government. If you aren’t able to clearly explain what you believe in perhaps four paragraphs then I think what you believe in is beyond your comprehension. You are expressing a faith system similar to many religious beliefs. That represents a good example of what my article talked about. You are a political purist following a party line laid down in a book whose logic you are incapable of expressing succinctly.
Examples of faith-based political beliefs based on books can be found in Marxists, NAZI’s, Aynists, fundamentalists, etc. That type of belief exemplifies an authoritarian mindset that is unable to logically draw their own conclusions. This is why you and Bron find Gene, Tony and I so hard to understand that you have to try to fit us into your pre-conceived political/economic boxes. Unable to marshall your own critical thinking you can’t understand how others can. The common thread between the three of us is we rely on our own intelligence to reach our political assuptions. You on the other hand need an authority to explain to you what you should be thinking.
And once again the fatal flaw in strict adherence to dogma is revealed to be a penchant for the abdication of free and independent critical thought for the spoon fed answers served by authoritarians.
I believe we only have a fatal flaw, when it (free and independent critical thought) is used to deny the rights of others in a political context. In a none-government context, I think plurality determination in a group is vital as I propose in the system I discussed previously. Podolsky asserts from his research that the greater the plurality, unanimous being the best, the greater the level of ethics in a determination. The greater the level of ethics, the greater the creativity and outcome. If two people are allowed to enslave one person in a 3 person democratic vote, how is that free and critical thinking? Let’s vote for my rich neighbor to pay for us poor people’s children’s education. We want free lunches also and by golly we can get out the vote. There are more of us poor folks than you rich folks.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not rich monetarily, but I would never vote any privilege to myself, which denies another person their individual rights.
I wish I could only get the majority of people to understand this.
skip,
Now you claim plurality as a method of decision making after bemoaning democracy as a great social ill. How incredibly self-contradictory. That post is also so full of false equivalences, begging the question, a fundamental lack of comprehension of how civilization operates as well as appeals to authority instead of any kind of free and independent critical thinking, I think I’m just going to let your idiotic dogma stand all on its own this time instead of dissecting it. It’s Tony’s turn.
skiprob:
Gene said:
“Unlike you and Bron, I’m not hobbled by binary thinking.”
Gene engages in unitary thinking, it is his way or the highway. I think it comes from being a cat slave. He cannot fight his feline masters.
Come to think of it Ayn Rand was a huge cat person and all of the people I have ever met who have been cat people are strange as hell. Loners mostly and not inclined to actually like people.
Just a general observation but it may explain a good deal. Maybe it takes a sociopath to know a sociopath?
Bron,
It’s not “my way or the highway”. It’s “if you think I’m wrong, prove it”. That you are really bad at proving anything via argumentation and evidence is your failing.
As for the sociopath thing? I’m not the one here who thinks selfishness is a virtue and professes a love for Objectivism. Nice try at the Rove maneuver there, but you’ll need a lot of luck and/or lies to convince anyone I’m a sociopath. If you don’t like people thinking you are a sociopath, perhaps you shouldn’t pimp for one like Rand.
I like most people just fine, by the way.
I do, however, think you suck as a human being. Don’t take it personally. Most people who worship their own ego and money suck even if they don’t adhere to your religion of Objectivism.
@Mike Spindell – I read you initial article and I think one of your suggestions is important to discuss. I think you know my stance on your other suggestions.
2. Massive non cooperation with the system, ala Gandhi and King, which can be very successful based upon the right circumstances.
If you think about it, what other event was as successful and as peaceful as this in eradicating the brute forse of an occupying government. Total success with relatively little bloodshed. I believe there was a lot more bloodshed fighting over the spoils by the two religions then when the British where kicked out. It just goes to show you what people are willing to do to gain political power.
What we are talking about is the “Boycott”. It’s a free market solution to tyranny and oppression, whether it is comes from government, private enterprise or when there is collusion between the two.
I read a story about a boycott in Spain where college students boycotted the government. What they did was every week at the same time they would flush their poilets and flip their light switches. Reportedly, it caused sewer pipes to burst and switching stations to exploid, etc. I don’t remember the exact details, but it worked. I don’t even remember what they were boycotting, just that it was a very clever way of doing it. Matt gave us a URL on the pirates code. Go figure, pirates had a code of ethics.
The point is that we humans have an incredable potential to do the most amazing things if we can agree on what to do. We think of pirates as the bad guys, but Spain, Portugal and England were rapping and pillaging the western hemisphere at the time. Ask the native Americans for their perspective on the Spanish. Who were the bad guys?
If you were going to boycott one of the multinationals, which one would it be????? My choice would be Texico for their involvement with the Bush Family and the military industrial complex. You can bring a company to it’s knees. Boycotting the government is a bit more risky. Withholding your tax dollars and paying it into a escrow account has, I believe, been tried unsuccessfully. We’re kind of doing a boycott because so many people just can’t afford to pay their taxes, mortgages and such, anyway.
I think the $USD has seen it’s day because there is no longer the need for a world reserve currency with forex now available for any country to exchange currencies. If you follow the news, the various countries (Japan & China) are slowly weaning themselves off the dollar trade system which should theoretically cause hyperinflation as all the money comes back to the U.S.
@skiprob: If two people are allowed to enslave one person in a 3 person democratic vote, how is that free and critical thinking?
Two people are not allowed to enslave one person. When a democracy passes a law, the law applies to everybody equally including the people that voted for it, so if the law enslaves anybody it enslaves them too.
As for the wealthy and taxation, they are free at any time to stop earning money in response to a law that taxes their income; they are free at any time to up sticks and hightail it to some private island compound or whatever. They are not slaves.
The reason they typically do not do that is because their earnings are inextricably linked with the citizens and infrastructure of our country, and it is impossible to undo. So they pay their taxes, which are the fees they owe for doing business with us, on our roads, with the protection of our police force, using our workers that need healthcare, retirement, and protections, with our public utilities, with our courts and our contract enforcement.
The country demands a percentage share of the profits because it is in silent partnership with the businesses that use the services provided by the country. By silent partnership, I mean the government is not making the direct management decisions, but like an individual that is a silent partner it is still entitled to a share of the profits, and those cover the expenses it incurs to provide its services that support the business.
Your demands are equivalent to saying you want to be a free rider, or that you do not want a silent partner, you want a service provider so you can pick and choose and control your costs.
However, that is not a feasible model. When the police arrest, try, and imprison a armed robber, they protect you even if the armed robber was never within 50 miles of you or your business.
First, they took a criminal off the streets that might have victimized you, and almost certainly would have victimized others. Second, the fact that they punish armed robbers serves as an example to discourage others from becoming armed robbers, so you are protected from their thwarted predations too. Third, the fact that crime is reduced by the enforcement of laws against theft allows you to spend less on security and protection of your property, allowing you to keep more of your money. It is the reason clerks in stores are not 100% locked behind bulletproof glass.
Letting you decide what that protection is worth is not a feasible alternative, because as a society we cannot provide one reality to some people and a different reality to others. It is like the military: We cannot defend the country from invasion for those people that pay, but allow the country to be invaded for those that refuse: The enemy won’t cooperate and work from our client list while looting us.
We cannot provide free roads without any access restriction for some people and not others, free courts for some and not others, free police protection for some and not others, free building safety inspection for some patrons of an establishment but not other patrons of that same establishment.
What we do instead is act as a landlord/partner. We provide an environment in which you can engage in profitable activity, and we demand a percentage of the profits earned using our environment.
If you do not like our terms, you are free to stop earning, or leave. You do not even have to renounce your citizenship, just wander into Mexico and find a job on a farm or ranch somewhere. No income tax from us, because you aren’t using our environment. See how simple?
By analogy, in nearly every restaurant in this country, a typically dressed person can walk in, order a meal and eat it without showing a dime. Your complaints are the equivalent of doing that, and then complaining when the bill comes due that you are being robbed. Robbed!
You know when you order a meal you will have to pay for it, and you know when you take a job that you will have to pay taxes. It is no different; you do not get to use our infrastructure without paying some rent on it, and our payment arrangement is actually MORE generous than the typical landlord. With the typical landlord, you owe rent whether you make money or lose money. With us, we take the risks with you, and we only charge a percentage of your profits, and we charge you nothing if you lose money, despite the expenses we incurred on your behalf.
That is a sweet deal for you, really.
Tony, Tony Tony. So the middle class can’t vote to raise taxes on the wealthy without raising taxes on themselves. Are you thinking when you write this stuff?
And Tony you’re free to leave the country and go live with you socialist comrades somewhere else. FYI: Thanks for giving me the right to not earn any money. You’re quite generous. This is a country whose Constitution is based on the protection of individual rights and I’m having to argue against someone whose opposed to it. Whether you know it or not, you’re really arguing for a position that give greater power to the oligarchy. That is all that I’m trying to make you understand Tony. Socialism is a deceitful means of transferring wealth from the majority to the ruling class. I can show you how they do this, but you should know this already. Sure, they throw the majority some bones to make them feel good about the political work but they’re transferring much more wealth into their own pockets than most understand. Most people are either apathetic or complicit to the scam.
@Tony C. – Economic slavery is almost as bad as physical slavery. So instead of having private police and private roads because you think that free riders are going to exist, even though they exist at a greater level under the current system, lets run up the deficits so high that we bankrupt our nation. That’s what you’re arguing for, because that’s what has happened every time in a democratic republic. You promoting a system that will eventually bankrupt the posterity and it may be this generation, since we are already in the later stages of the U.S. economic cycle. I know how we think it should work, but it doesn’t end up working in the way we all think it should. We have already been in bankruptcy once in 1933, so keep this in consideration when analyzing our current condition.
Have you ever studied the Swiss Military – They’re the only modern country is the world that I’m aware of that hasn’t been invaded in the last several hundred years. Why? Each military person serves one month a year and keeps an automatic weapon in their posession (stored in their home) not much crime in the country either. Guess who pays for the military personel while there serving. The company that they work for when they’re not serving. So there are a bunch of way to skin a cat.
I would like “you” to elaborate on the “well regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state”. 2nd Amendment. Remember, back then “regulate” meant to assist. Remember how key the Green Mountain Boys were in winning the Revolutionary war. The Swiss have a kind of modified militia system.
If you say that, you did not understand my post. Read it again. I have no problem with using a plurality vote, if I have the right to choose if I want to be a part of the group in the first place. If people are forced to be a part of the group, that I can assure you, is not going to be good for the majority. You socialists just don’t appear to understand the concept of force and how it adversely effect us in a social capacity. Just look at the system and see how screwed up it is. If you think this is the best system we can come up with, God help us all Gene.
Just remember guys that you constant unconstructive and unsupported criticizm generally weakens your positions, even when your right. You guys are smart guys so you shouldn’t have to do this.
OK, mIke, I’ll give you a hint but first explain to me in specific terms, how an automobile gets to your driveway, from the time it starts out as iron ore and other commodies. How does the free market produce the billions of items that are available to us to buy. How do people voluntarily associate, under various contracts to produce all this stuff and then voluntarily go out and buy it.
If you don’t think market forces are powerful, look at how Greece and Spain are currently being treated now by the world. They hadly have any industry left and they have the huge bureaucarcy that has bankrupted them.
Why should I have to write a book for you when one has already been written. Get off you lazy butt and go buy the book. As far as not being able to understand what you, Gene and Tony are trying to say. Please, you think this is the first time that I’ve been up against a bunch of yahoos that support the mixed economic model.
@skip: The majority can choose to raise taxes on the wealthy, yes. Does that “enslave” the wealthy? No. Does it oppress them? I suppose it could in some country, but not in this one: We use a progressive tax system, so higher taxes are only levied on the portion of income over a threshold, and taxes are always less than 100%, so the wealthy are always guaranteed to earn MORE than anybody that pays LESS tax than they do. That is a mathematical proof a sixth grader could outline.
What it means is the knife cuts both ways: If the wealthy are “oppressed” while earning more money than the middle class, then the middle class are obviously “oppressed” by being paid less of the profits the wealthy are reaping.
In fact nobody is oppressed; the wealthy pay more because they USE more of the infrastructure of society than the middle class does. The use does not go up linearly, there is a curve to the line, and the progressive tax rate indicates that.
As for your right to earn nothing: Isn’t that your prescription for individuals in a company town? If you don’t like the job conditions, just leave and go somewhere else. Isn’t that what you Aynish are always telling us? That there is always a choice to just refuse to work, because you can always move to another company, another county, another state?
You get the same shit-sandwich deal, Skipper. You have the choice to drop off the grid and earn zero dollars and still survive. Save up some cash and buy yourself an untaxed arable acre for $5000 or so, if you have a good well you can indefinitely sustain a family of eight on that puppy, managed properly, and never pay tax again. Heck, you can even earn $400 a year, per adult, selling produce and the IRS says you do not even have to report it.
Mike stated: “Examples of faith-based political beliefs based on books can be found in Marxists, NAZI’s, Aynists, fundamentalists, etc. That type of belief exemplifies an authoritarian mindset that is unable to logically draw their own conclusions.”
Explain, because, I became a libertarian before I was really exposed to it. I found that government granted authority was suspect. I caught the local garbage company and police redistributing drugs after it was initially conficated from the so-called bad guys. A highschool class mate of mind, a ex-police officer is serving a life sentence for killing two of his prostitutes who rolled on his drug business. You want me to tell you about the military industrial complex creating warfare for profit or the CIA and DEA involvment in Drug trafficing.
Gents, I’ve been studying this struff all my life. I think I have a pretty clear handle on the realites. It took me four year of debate before I signed the libertarian oath in 1992.
I draw my knowledge from years of experience and yes I also read many books so bring it on.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/06/1097886/-Florida-voter-purge-official-linked-to-Koch-funded-efforts-to-defeat-Obama
A high progressive or graduated income tax is the second platform of communism. Do you support a Federal or State Income tax Tony?
Be careful what you answer here buddy because you should be able to reason what my next statement would be.
Yes, taxes suppress/oppress all peoples ability to survive, but mostly the the poor and middle class. The idea is to get the expense portion of your society as low as possible which equates to less taxation. The free market can generally do and make things better and less exspensively. That’s why you seldom see government making many products.
@skiprob: would like “you” to elaborate on the “well regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state”.
Why should I? I believe that condtiion existed in Colonial America, I think it is an archaic prescription now, and should be re-written in clear language.
As for guns, I am a gun owner, as a young man in the military I was proficient with a rifle, I am currently proficient with a handgun. I have never been hunting, but I do not have a problem with people owning guns for both sport and self-defense. I am not a member of the NRA, they are idiots, but I am a fan of every season of Top Shot.
But the phrasing of the 2nd Amendment is convoluted and ridiculous; the right to own guns, in my mind, has nothing to do with defending the State, it has to do with defending yourself and your property from dangerous predators, primarily of the human variety.
The fact that gun ownership results in more deaths, including deaths of police officers, civilians, and children, is a price we pay, but I think freedom, even self-destructive freedom, trumps that price. Just as I believe people should be free to consume alcohol (I do not) or tobacco (I do not) or pot (I do not) or other mind-altering drugs like crack or heroin (I do not). I DO think that if a child is shot to death in a home with a gun, the parents should be tried for manslaughter by reckless endangerment.
To me, the idea that gun ownership is for a militia is antiquated and ludicrous. The 2nd tries to justify gun ownership, and I do not know why, because to me it is simply a right that requires no justification, like freedom of speech.
Good Article by Walter Williams:
Benjamin Franklin, statesman and signer of our Declaration of Independence, said: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” John Adams, another signer, echoed a similar statement: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Are today’s Americans virtuous and moral, or have we become corrupt and vicious? Let’s think it through with a few questions.
Suppose I saw an elderly woman painfully huddled on a heating grate in the dead of winter. She’s hungry and in need of shelter and medical attention. To help the woman, I walk up to you using intimidation and threats and demand that you give me $200. Having taken your money, I then purchase food, shelter and medical assistance for the woman. Would I be guilty of a crime? A moral person would answer in the affirmative. I’ve committed theft by taking the property of one person to give to another.
Most Americans would agree that it would be theft regardless of what I did with the money. Now comes the hard part. Would it still be theft if I were able to get three people to agree that I should take your money? What if I got 100 people to agree — 100,000 or 200 million people? What if instead of personally taking your money to assist the woman, I got together with other Americans and asked Congress to use Internal Revenue Service agents to take your money? In other words, does an act that’s clearly immoral and illegal when done privately become moral when it is done legally and collectively? Put another way, does legality establish morality? Before you answer, keep in mind that slavery was legal; apartheid was legal; the Nazi’s Nuremberg Laws were legal; and the Stalinist and Maoist purges were legal. Legality alone cannot be the guide for moral people. The moral question is whether it’s right to take what belongs to one person to give to another to whom it does not belong.
Don’t get me wrong. I personally believe that assisting one’s fellow man in need by reaching into one’s own pockets is praiseworthy and laudable. Doing the same by reaching into another’s pockets is despicable, dishonest and worthy of condemnation. Some people call governmental handouts charity, but charity and legalized theft are entirely two different things. But as far as charity is concerned, James Madison, the acknowledged father of our Constitution, said, “Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” To my knowledge, the Constitution has not been amended to include charity as a legislative duty of Congress.
Our current economic crisis, as well as that of Europe, is a direct result of immoral conduct. Roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of our federal budget can be described as Congress’ taking the property of one American and giving it to another. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid account for nearly half of federal spending. Then there are corporate welfare and farm subsidies and thousands of other spending programs, such as food stamps, welfare and education. According to a 2009 Census Bureau report, nearly 139 million Americans — 46 percent — receive handouts from one or more federal programs, and nearly 50 percent have no federal income tax obligations.
In the face of our looming financial calamity, what are we debating about? It’s not about the reduction or elimination of the immoral conduct that’s delivered us to where we are. It’s about how we pay for it — namely, taxing the rich, not realizing that even if Congress imposed a 100 percent tax on earnings higher than $250,000 per year, it would keep the government running for only 141 days.
Ayn Rand, in her novel “Atlas Shrugged,” reminded us that “when you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good.”
That was good. The ship is clearly going in the wrong direction and if we keep thinking like neanderthals, it going to go off the edge of the world.
People keep thinking that this public private partnership mixed economy model is going to work. The private sector and government come from such adversarial postions, that I do not see the ability to compromise, that would get us on the right course. Greece and Spain are really good examples and many other countries that have been working this model are in the same positions. Every culture thinks that it cannot happen to them, that they’re special and that their socio-economic system cannot bust. History tells a different story.
@skiprob: The free market can generally do and make things better and less exspensively.
No, they cannot, because they have an inevitable markup that the government does not need to apply. Even in theory, the free market cannot not do or make anything better or less expensively than the government can, the government can make and sell things at cost with zero markup, the free market cannot do that, they MUST mark up their products to be able to survive market fluctuations.
Once again, you are parroting bullshit nonsense somebody told you instead of thinking it through for yourself. The reason you do not see government making many discrete products for sale is that is not their mission, their mission is primarily law enforcement, defense, and public works, not factory work. They will, in public works, build schools, roads, bridges, parks, etc. Sometimes with contractors, sometimes with their own employees.
@Bron: The problem, as always, is you falsely assume that 100% of whatever you earn is YOUR MONEY, and it isn’t. The only way you were able to EARN that money is by using OUR resources that we all own collectively, and those require maintenance and support, and you are responsible for a share of that maintenance and support.
The only reason you are free, instead of a slave, is by virtue of OUR resources. Probably the only reason you are alive is by virtue of OUR resources.
That is the point you refuse to acknowledge, but tough shit. We are not taking YOUR money, we are taking OUR share for YOUR use of OUR resources.
Actually Matt, I’m one of five brother and I’m the one who takes care of our brother Brian who has a really severe cognitive disability, even though two of the others are in a better position to do so. You shouldn’t be so angry. My cleaning lady is my best friend and lover. I also call her my pool bitch, jokingly of course. I don’t think any of my freinds would call me a sociopath, however from what I understand 6% of the population are. If I were to consider someone in the group as being a sociopath or psychopath, it would be…….. What are we here for people? Just think, if we can’t come up with a decent idea, Congress is really screwed.
What you need to study is when private companies are nationalized by governments. You’ll find that even with “the markup” government is not very good at running businesses and generally can’t compete with private enterprise, if they’re not a monopoly. Government eventually either shut them down or sell them off back to private enterprise. That is why government generally doesn’t make any produces and sub contract most everything out.You will find that even the research labratories are often managed by private companies. The government does make pretty good license plates though.
As to law enforcement, you can see in this blog almost on a day to day basis how good our government run law enforcement system is working. Police corruption and brutality has become common place. One ex-cop thinks it’s from the training institutions incouraging the take no prisoner type attitude. What I’ve seen that it surely has increased in the last couple of decades. The war on drugs in my opinion has added fule to the fire. Wealthy people have to hire private security if they really want to be protected. Our police have be allocated to collecting money for the bureacracy and investigating crimes.
@skiprob: That just isn’t true, you are parroting bullshit too. Look at Medicare and the Veterans Administration Hospitals for some real life examples; Medicare has a lower cost structure and pays out more than ANY private for-profit insurance company, and the VA is consistently rated as the top hospital system in the country by dozens of independent criteria.
As for law enforcement, there are problems, but your focus on the failures of law enforcement means nothing; in fact this blog focuses on extremes and they must be relatively rare, since they only appear once in a while.
The proper comparison is between law enforcement and no law enforcement; and on the proper criteria, our law enforcement is doing quite well.
That is what this argument is about. Whether guys like you, Gene and the rest of your government cronies should be given the legality to steal from Bron and me. Who gave you the authority to make such an assumption that you can do this? The Constitution that you guys don’t follow any more?? The Law of Nations? Where does government get its authority. I don’t remember signing on for” THIS” deal. And I bet if you offered this deal to the full majority, they’d turn it down. You think all the guys in prison on drug related charges would sign on for this system.My udnderstanding is that its 50% of the prison population and the highest in the world.
You need to fix the system you advocate before you can criticize what we believe. We told you this economic collapse was going to happen. If we knew it was going to happen, it stands to reason, that we new why.
I meant Medicare pays out more (as a percentage of premiums) than any private for-profit insurance company.
Also, police-for-hire is inherently unequal. When we say all [persons] are created equal, we mean equal in the eyes of the law and in protection by the law. That includes people that cannot afford to pay, ever.
Also, police-for-hire distributes the burden unfairly on those that are victimized, because those that have not been victimized still benefit from the law enforcement action, and they would be free riders on the victims.
Finally, the police-for-hire means the wealthy are more protected than the poor, it is simply a system of hiring mercenaries to do one’s bidding and nothing else. It is not justice, because it is inherently biased, it renders the word “law” meaningless because the law is not enforced if you cannot afford to pay whatever the market will bear, and the rich can evade the law by simply paying the police more to NOT investigate a crime. If that is the system you want, move to North Pakistan.
Show me this evidence – I want proof because it doesn’t make sence to anybody that has studied economics for a long time. Something has to suffer if government is involved. It’s generally either the price or the quality of service. The reports I’ve read is that Veterens have been complaining about the quality of service. Probably because of budget cuts but that’s just a quess. Sounds like you been reading other socialist blogs or the NY times for you facts.
Skiprob,
My cleaning lady is my best friend and lover. I also call her my pool bitch, jokingly of course.
==================
Why don’t you marry your pool bitch cleaning lady if she’s your best friend and lover? It appears obvious you’re part of the 6% you referred to.
As a politician, I, Barack Obama and I, Mitt Romey, hereby promise to tax those people that do not vote for me and give it to those who do vote for me. What a country. Actually it’s worse than that due to special interest. If you guarentee my company a government contract, I’ll use the excess profits from overcharging the government, put it in my superpact to get you elected. That’s why I don’t particpate in representative government anymore. I don’t have enough money to be competitive. Jsut kidding, even if I had the money, I doubt that I’d participate.
Yea, that why the roads, schools and other government services in the richer neighborhoods are far superior to those in the poorer neighborhoods and communities. That’s why there are so many rich white guys in jail.
We’ve been together for 15 years. Why are you so concerned with my marital status?
Tony C:
roads and bridges and wastewater treatment facilities could be private, police, fire could be private. Defense and the court system should be run by the government.
The government does way too much it doesnt need to do. Most of government spending is used to finance defense and social welfare programs of all kinds. So if you cut my taxes by 50% and do away with social welfare programs, which by the way arent resources that I use or need to use to run my business.
You really dont make any sense at all, because only a small percentage of taxes go to maintaining our infrastrucutre and we pay a use fee in the form of a gas tax for roads and bridges. So I am happy to pay 5% or 10% of my income to pay for defense and other necessary infrastructure and the government necessary to support that limited responsibility. You and Elizabeth Warren are wrong.
@skiprob: That is what this argument is about. Whether guys like you, Gene and the rest of your government cronies should be given the legality to steal from Bron and me.
No, it isn’t, what this argument is about is the definition of the word “theft,” pure and simple. What you call “theft” is ridiculous to call theft, because by using that definition there is no such thing as rights or laws, the definition of rights and laws becomes meaningless too. Society is not obligated to punish a man that murders my wife or rapes my daughter, they will do it if they feel like it, if they like me, or I must go and exact justice myself, or pay a hitman to do it for me.
Rights and laws ONLY mean something if society is obligated to enforce them and punish those who violate them. That obligation must prevail whether they like me or not, whether they hate me or not, whether I have money or do not, whether I am in their religion or despise it. That enforcement and punishment will cost money, because it will take time and effort and entail risks to life and limb. Who will pay for it?
There is one, and only one way to pay for it that preserves equality under the law, and that way is through mandatory taxation. Without that equality under the law vanishes and “rights” and “laws” are meaningless, because the poor, disabled, sick, elderly, or even those robbed of all their posessions and have no property or money left are no longer entitled to any protection or rights at all. The single person without friends is no longer even entitled to LIFE, they can be murdered and it is not in anybody’s interest to pay for an investigation, prosecution, or punishment: It would be a pointless exercise. Are people entitled to liberty? Not unless they can pay for protection, because if they can’t they can be beat up and driven back indoors with impunity.
Without mandatory taxation for law enforcement, there is no society or government, there is armed anarchy and mercenaries and nothing more. If you define mandatory taxation as “theft,” then this is what you advocate.
It isn’t theft. It is a fee for the use of the environment, and you DO have viable choices to do something else, even within the country and without renouncing citizenship, which means ONE THING: You choose to pay taxes when you choose something besides those viable choices, you choose to incur the debt that becomes taxes when you choose to earn money.
skiprob,
We’ve been together for 15 years. Why are you so concerned with my marital status?
==============
You’re a psychopathic piece of shit. I hope your pool bitch cleaning lady stabs you in the guts. And I hope she gets away with it.
Maybe Larry, Moe and Curly can understand this. How often do you see counties collapse from excessive private enterprise? Yea, there are just too many businesses making too much money. We have to many people employed and the excessive productivity is just killing this country.
All the current countries in trouble around the world today are facing the same problems. Too much government debt because of excessive government spending.They have taxed and regulated the majority of private enterprise out of busniess. Governments just keep spending and spending until no one is any longer willing to buy the debt. Can you really blame people for not wanting to invest in a bloated bureaucracy that can’t pay their expenses? Of course not. If the boys in the band can come up with a means of curtailing governments incessant need to spend more than they make until the country is eventually bankrupted, I’m all ears. They just don’t understand how excessive taxation and regulation handcuffs the competitors in the marketplace. I guess that you would have to be in a business, that does not get any government benefits or contracts to understand what the business environment is like when you face the high costs of taxation and regulation create.
@Bron: roads and bridges and wastewater treatment facilities could be private, police, fire could be private.
Not police, that leads to a mercenary state without law.
Not wastewater, that leads to disease, and liability for the disease cannot be traced back to individual liability for obvious reasons.
Fire should not be, for a similar reason: Unsafe fire conditions at one house can burn neighboring houses, and the ability to pay by the fire-starting homeowner cannot be guaranteed.
As for the rest, what COULD be private and what SHOULD be private are different things; as I pointed out in an earlier analysis, if roads were private they would cost you an extra $4000 a year, and cost the country an extra trillion dollars a year, with the exact same level of maintenance, repair, and development, but a much longer commute.
That is part of the point, Bron, what you want to make private isn’t going to save you any money, it is going to cost you MORE money, because the private concern will charge you ten or twenty times as much for the identical thing. That is what toll roads do, the private for-profit toll roads charge 35c a mile, the public roads charge you 1.5c a mile.
Your “free market” ideology FAILS, the private toll roads do NOT drive the cost down to less than what government charges you. Why? Because they have no competition, and nobody can develop any competition, because it is too expensive to buy the land and build the road just to engage in a price war to the bottom with the existing solution! Competitors think before they jump in, that is why a private toll road, once established, is a natural monopoly; a for-profit mind would be insane to try to compete with it. The result? Exactly what we see with private toll roads, monopolistic pricing at twenty times the government rate.
Matt, your out of control dude. Your acting like a little girl who had her feelings hurt. I’m done with you.
@skiprob: Show me an industrialized first world country without ANY mandatory taxation, then we can talk. You do not become an industrialized first world country WITHOUT mandatory taxation. As for “countries in trouble,” all the countries that are doing well in this world and are not debt ridden have extensive socialist programs, including Germany and Sweden. Or did you fail to notice that in your cherry picking?
Civilization isn’t possible without “rules.” That’s what government is for. Without “rules” there is anarchy. Human nature being what it is. That said, I don’t think the United States should be the policeman for the entire globe.
There is going to be an economic collapse. The Asian countries keep buying U.S. government debt because they need to keep their people employed to keep them relatively content. Who is their major export market? The Chinese have been expressing concern about whether or not they’re ever going to get their money back. What happens when a billion Chinese are unemployed?
Do you know how the U.S. is going to deal with the massive government debt? Hyperinflation. I will gladly give you a dime tomorrow for a dollar today.
skiprob 1, June 7, 2012 at 4:26 pm
Matt, your out of control dude. Your acting like a little girl who had her feelings hurt. I’m done with you.
==========================
Thank God. I’m agnostic, but I’ll thank God anyway.
@Tony C.: You stated,” No police, that leads to a mercenary state without law.” Ok lets assume your right but first you’re going to have to show me the evidence of that. See Tony, because throughout much of the world up until about 1900, such as in most of England, they didn’t have any government police, i.e.Bobbies as they’re called in England. The had private police. People in communities just put up their money to pay somebody and they didn’t all get government sanctioned badges. Like my forefathers, they had their militia group that protected the communities. Go figure, the men in the community would get together and voluntarally organize to provide the security for their families and communtiy. In a true story, the Governnor of New York, actually tried to seize the land grants away from my family and the other settlers, now known as Bennington, VT. Go figure, government trying to take property away from Citizens who had lawfully earned and purchased the land grants.
FYI: I’ve never heard of a mercenary state. Mercenaries are generally hired by the state, as England did when they hired the German Hessians during the revolutionary war.
History can really teach you a lot Tony.
By the way Capt. Samuel Robinson had to go back to England to get the ex-government of New England to verify the validity of the land grants which he did. He sadly died over in England from the Black Fever, because the f……. govennor of York was a piece of shit, in my buddy’s Matt’s words.
Matt Johnson:
“You’re a psychopathic piece of shit. I hope your pool bitch cleaning lady stabs you in the guts. And I hope she gets away with it.”
Why would you want skiprobs pool bitch to stab him in the guts?
Tsk, Tsk.
Us 1%ers just like to use the 99% for fun. The people I have slav er working for me work 75 hours per week and I dont pay them overtime, they make about $150K per year and they will jump up turn around and pick a bale of cotton if I ask them to. I always have them do some sort of stupid shit every day so me and my partner can laugh at them when we leave work at around 1 pm and got to the golf course to play a couple of rounds and then we tip the caddies $2 or 3 bucks, we dont want them getting too uppity you know how poor people are.
They make $150K and are happy as clams while I am cleaning house and making about $750k on each one of them. Pure profit, I dont share either if they want more let them go start a business. Otherwise get to work bitch and make me some mo money. I drive my Rolls to work most days and bring my dog in just so they can see how well I treat him compared to them.
At Christmas I put on a big party and have it catered from a real expensive place and give chicken shit bonuses to them, 5, 10, 15, 20k and I have a little competition to see who can get to the stage the fastest with a pen or a paper clip or a piece of paper from work or a cell phone with my number as the last call. You should see how fast the 99% move for $1000 bucks, I laugh my ass off every year.
It sure is good to be part of the 1%.
Matt Johnson:
Everyone of those stories are true, I experienced them when I was working for someone else. You know what they all had in common?
Everyone of those owners was a liberal democrat.
Matt Johnson:
maybe it was just coincidence it was only 4 or 5 places.
skiprob 1, June 7, 2012 at 5:04 pm
By the way Capt. Samuel Robinson had to go back to England to get the ex-government of New England to verify the validity of the land grants which he did. He sadly died over in England from the Black Fever, because the f……. govennor of York was a piece of shit, in my buddy’s Matt’s words.
===========================================================
Bartolomeu hanged the governor on the deck of the ship and danced underneath his hanging corpse. Not a good idea. Should have held him for ransom instead.
Bron 1, June 7, 2012 at 5:12 pm
Matt Johnson:
“You’re a psychopathic piece of shit. I hope your pool bitch cleaning lady stabs you in the guts. And I hope she gets away with it.”
Why would you want skiprobs pool bitch to stab him in the guts?
Tsk, Tsk.
============
Because he’s the same piece of shit you are. Maybe she can stab you next.
Bron 1, June 7, 2012 at 5:16 pm
Matt Johnson:
Everyone of those stories are true, I experienced them when I was working for someone else. You know what they all had in common?
Everyone of those owners was a liberal democrat.
============================================
What are you talking about? Be specific, dickhead.
Skip,
Name 3 private companies that were taken over by government in the last 60 years?
Bron 1, June 7, 2012 at 5:17 pm
Matt Johnson:
maybe it was just coincidence it was only 4 or 5 places.
===========================================
Once again, be specific.
Throughout the world or are you going to limit me to this country? FNMA, Freddie Mac and Portions of AIG and GM. Obviously The rest of the governments of the world provide a larger statistical sample of the relationship between goverment and private enterprise.
@skiprob: The evidence is in the logic of it. The mercenary state is precisely what you described in your post; fighters for hire to the highest bidder, and the only people that are protected are the people that can pay for it, and everybody else can forget any hope of justice. If people cannot form a militia to protect their property with guns, then their property can be stolen forthwith, and nobody anywhere will do a damn thing about it. If a gang of bikers with AK-47′s shows up and mows down the militia, they can rape and pillage the town, burn it to the ground, and never be punished.
That is the mercenary state. There are no rights, there is no obligation of anybody to protect anybody else. That is what you advocate, and apparently what you admire, some macho adolescent male fantasy of Rambo Justice.
Matt Johnson:
Does your mother know you are using the computer without permission?
I guess you are what is called the vitriolic left?
By the way, how do you know I am a piece of shit?
What sort of specifics are you looking for?
Skiprob, if I got this correctly, you said to Matt Johnson: “Matt, your out of control dude. Your acting like a little girl who had her feelings hurt. I’m done with you.”
Hmmm. Now, if you were posting around on this thread and you somehow managed to hurt a little girl’s feelings, what would you do about that? Would you, f’rinstance, try to figure out what had caused her that kind of pain?
Just checking. I want to understand the behavior of political commentators.
First of all, I try very hard not to hurt womens feeling. I’ve got a daughter and a significant other that keep me on my toes. I would try to find our what caused her the pain. I don’t know what I did or said to Matt and I asked him what I said to offend him and apologized. I’ve tried to treat him with respect, perhaps kidding him at times. So assassinate me if I’ve acidentally offended someone.
Bron,
I don’t need my mother’s permission. Do you?
I still think you’re a piece a piece of shit.
It’s up to you to define the specifics.
By “mercenary state” I mean a lawless region where the person that can hire the most fighters will prevail. It is just gang warfare, written law means nothing if you can’t afford to back it up, so the written law really NEVER means anything, all that matters is who has the most money, guns, bullets, or ruthlessness. It is anarchy.
In a real society, the entire populace is obligated by membership to enforce the written law, and the way we ensure that obligation is met in large societies is by hiring professionals that we train to do the job without charging people, fairly and impartially, using mandatory taxation.
We make sure the law enforcement works for everybody equally, and thereby can remain unbiased and fair. That can never be true in anarchy.
Matt Johnson:
Do you know Peter Dragon?
That is certainly all right with me, if you think I am a piece of shit then I am doing something right.
Are you a real accountant or just a para-accountant like the ones who cant pass the CPA exam. I’m thinking para-accountant.
I don’t know if I would call myself a political commentator. Matt called me a psychopath. I’ve looked that up as well as sociopath and in my opinion and my friends opinion, it doesn’t fit me at all. I can’t remember the last time I caused somebody harm, especially on purpose. I do many things for people for free, without asking anything in return. I don’t know what he thinks that would make him think that I’m a socio or psychopath.
skiprob:
I think Matt may have a bad case of CR or cranial rectumitis, we probably ought not engage him.
Cranial rectumitis is most typically diagnosed in people who have their heads up their asses.
Peter Dragon. Under the bleachers? I passed the CPA exam over twenty years ago.
skiprob:
to a liberal anyone who thinks the money they earn is theirs is a sociopath or psychopath.
they tell people that to back them off, I mean who wants to be thought of as a sociopath. It is like racism, that isnt working anymore so they are now calling people sociopaths or psychopaths when they dont agree with them or dont have any clue as to how to answer them.
You know you are winning an argument with a liberal when they call you a sociopath. It used to be a racist, same methodology they just upped the anty.
It is really pretty sad considering most if not all the violent demonstrations in this country have been conducted by the left. They cant seem to get away from that Marxist philosophy.
It must have been easier back then.
skiprob 1, June 7, 2012 at 6:44 pm
I don’t know if I would call myself a political commentator. Matt called me a psychopath. I’ve looked that up as well as sociopath and in my opinion and my friends opinion, it doesn’t fit me at all. I can’t remember the last time I caused somebody harm, especially on purpose. I do many things for people for free, without asking anything in return. I don’t know what he thinks that would make him think that I’m a socio or psychopath.
=====================================================
Crazy people don’t know they’re crazy.
Matt:
take your own advice.
Bron 1, June 7, 2012 at 6:57 pm
It must have been easier back then.
============================
Try it now, asshole.
Bron 1, June 7, 2012 at 6:58 pm
Matt:
take your own advice.
====================
You still aren’t being specific. Are you a pussy?
Actually someone displaying sociopathic tendencies characterized by asocial or antisocial behavior or exhibiting antisocial personality disorder is a sociopath. Agreement or disagreement has nothing to do with it. For example, your insistence that property rights are absolute in society is simply factually and legally wrong although it indicates that you don’t understand the concept that others have rights too and that includes the right to be free of all forms of tyranny including economic tyranny. Lacking empathy and thinking you’re above everyone in society (let alone based on a property right) and deserving special treatment is a symptom of sociopathic behavior. If you don’t like that some might think you’re a sociopath, Bron, I suggest that you get fleas when you lie with a diagnosable dog of a sociopath like Rand and her “philosophy”. That would be your bad choices in action. Her “philosophy” and the economics that accompany it are based in fundamentally antisocial ideas and display a stark lack of understanding about how the social compact works.
Gene H:
your post, as usual, is a mass of contradictions.
Bron,
Your failure to comprehend, as usual, is completely expected.
Gene, I am puzzled by Bron’s response. I saw no contradictions at all in your presentaton. Logical and tightly reasoned. Must be because your observations contradicted his world view, which is skewed by being a disciple of Rand.
Matt Johnson, some crazy people DO know they’re crazy.
Pay-Back, by James Brown:
Don’t do me…no damn favor,
I don’t know karate, but I know ka-rayzee.
Gene, you’ve just displayed that you do not understand the basic concepts of individual rights. Here ‘s what you wrote :”For example, your insistence that property rights are absolute in society is simply factually and legally wrong although it indicates that you don’t understand the concept that others have rights too and that includes “”"”the right to be free of all forms of tyranny including economic tyranny.”"”"”"
First of all, I “beleiveeeeeeee” that it is of the upmost important to protect individual rights. Individual rights are supposed to protect us legally from such things as involuntary survitude, slavery, from being physically harmed and from people harming our property such as stealing it or damaging it. Long established legal concepts. That is supposed to apply to government agents as well. To bad they don’t really adhere to the concept.
One of the very premises of individual rights, is that you cannot take away the rights of others. I cannot legally harm you are you property or that takes away your ability to have life, liberty and the persuit of happiness. Do you recall that phrase?.
However, If you agree to being under some form of governmental tyranny as you do, how would I be able to stop that and am I responsible for your actions, contracts and associations? If you are not willing to fight for your own rights, somehow I’m responsible?
The idea, that I have to protect you from tyranny, is in fact interesting. So if you wife desides to go to a bar where there are known sociopaths then I’m somehow responsible for her actions and associations. That is an interesting legal concept. I would like to see that hold up in a court of law even in some fascist court like in Liberia. I used Liberia, because reportedly, that is where honest Abe Lincoln wanted to sent all the freed slaves, so as to keep the races segregated, after their emancipation. Not quite the exceptional character we were taught in elementary school. Obviously the winners of the war, wrote the history but also obvious, the abilility to read his actually speeches and letters on the internet is changing all that.
You’re going to have to be a little more specific as to what you beleive my liabilities are, as it relates to protecting you. Example, would I protect you, if you are placed in harms way. Most likely I would. That would depend though if I were able to trust you, if I were placed in harms way, to protect me. Would you protect me from tyranny? We don’t even agree on what tyranny is and you say that you have the right to be protected from tyranny, by me.
Define what is tyranny and what has to occur in a sociaty for there to be the evidence that tyranny exists. Maybe we can agree on something.
Matt, You’re most likely the psychopath. You have yet to say one intellegent thing since you entered this blog. We don’t want to hear you childish morronic comments anymore. Leave dude. Stop writting your stupid ignorant crap. I can’t beleive I even commented on you BS. I can guarantee it won’t happen again. What a loser…..
skip,
Not at all. I’ve displayed that you once again don’t know your ass from a hole in the wall when it comes to law. What you believe and the facts of how the social compact work are not the same thing. Part of the social compact – the part which you and that idiot Rothbard think is thievery but isn’t – pays for the operation of government by which mutually derived benefit is gained. That part of the social compact is a limit on your absolute rights to property which exist only in the state of nature. That limitation is called “taxes”. So right out of the gate, you see an agreement to limit absolute rights in exchange for mutually derived benefit which is the very core of the idea of the social compact and the theoretical heart of any form of government and/or its attendant society. Got that? When you join a society via the social compact, you are sacrificing the absolute liberties you have in the state of nature for the mutually derived benefit of society as manifested by government.
“One of the very premises of individual rights, is that you cannot take away the rights of others.”
Actually that has nothing to do with the premise of individual rights, skip. In the state of nature (i.e. without society and government to protect your rights), you are absolutely free to act however you like, including stealing from others. That you may choose not to is a personal ethical constraint on your actions – a self-imposed law. But in the state of nature, there is no laws – no rules – to constrain your freedom of action. That is the very definition of an absolute right.
“Individual rights are supposed to protect us legally from such things as involuntary survitude, slavery, from being physically harmed and from people harming our property such as stealing it or damaging it.”
Individual rights as they exist in the state of nature don’t protect you from a damn thing other than what you are personally bad enough to protect for yourself. That’s part and parcel of one of the many flaws underlying Libertarianism. Without laws and enforcement of laws to protect your rights, you are left with only the rights you are strong enough to keep from being stolen from you by those who want what you have.
“The idea, that I have to protect you from tyranny, is in fact interesting.”
The idea that you have to protect me from tyranny is ridiculous. That is what our specific form of government is supposed to do by the terms of both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence (an oddity in the legal world as it specifically spells out the terms of social compact in re tyranny). Just so, no one expects you to protect my contractual rights. That is the job of the government should I bring suit against another in breach, win on the merits and receive a judgment. One of those mutually derived benefits of the social compact; I don’t have to rely on self-help or asking Skippy for help.
Skip, we’re never going to agree on anything because you operate in a fantasy world of Libertarian dogma that has nothing to do with reality. Like most Libertarians, you have a very loose grasp on the idea of liberty and how liberty works in society under the social compact. Freedom and liberty does not mean you are not free to do as you please and not contribute to societies upkeep. You are subject to the rule of law including taxation. If that “infringes” on “your freedom”, as Tony pointed out, feel free to live in a lawless region where you owe no taxes and have no constraints on yours or others actions let alone remedy other than self-help should you be wronged and let’s see how much protection your “individual rights” provides you when the warlord from the next village over decides he wants your TV and shows up to take it with a .50 cal. Too bad you didn’t want to pay taxes for a military or cops to provide for public defense and safety, because unless you’re bullet-proof, you’re screwed.
Agreed, it appears there is little difference between a thief and a sociopath. When you can’t understand that taxation is theft, that apparently pretty much discribes a sociopath. I’m somehow responcible for someone elses liabilities. Interesting legal concept. I must also be responcilbe when a prostitute gets herpies, of when a drug gang member is shot. According to the sociopaths, I’m responciple when corrupt polticians get together and spend more money then the raise in tax revenue. I’m obviously therefore responcible when the Central Bankers exspand the money supply to create irrational exurberance and then contract the money supply to cause the real estate bust. I must also be responcible when a cop beats a unarmed citizen.I’m starting to feel that I’m responcible for everyones safety, their health insurance and their education. Perhaps I should become a sociopath too. It seems the better deal and is why all democracies fail.
“Agreed, it appears there is little difference between a thief and a sociopath.”
Actually, there is quite a bit of difference.
“When you can’t understand that taxation is theft, that apparently pretty much discribes a sociopath.”
Begs the question that taxation is thievery when it is an essential component of government under the social compact no matter what the form of that government might be.
“I’m somehow responcible for someone elses liabilities. Interesting legal concept.”
Utter bullshit and not a legal concept in the slightest. You are responsible for your own taxes, not the taxes of others. The term “liability” has a very specific meaning as a term of legal art and you are misusing it (probably because you operate off of a mishmash of pseudo-philosophy, misinformation and non-scientific “economics”). Liability in the legal sense of the word means:
liability
1: the quality or state of being liable
2: something for which one is liable: as
a: a financial obligation: “debt”
Example: tax liability
Example: the bonds are liabilities
(compare asset)
b: accountability and responsibility to another enforceable by civil remedies or criminal sanctions
Example: liability for injuries caused by their product
“I must also be responcilbe when a prostitute gets herpies, of when a drug gang member is shot. ”
Reductio ad absurdum and misapplied at that. You are only responsible for these people if you gave the hooker herpes or if you shot the gang member (or by your reckless action caused him to be shot). That does not change that you are liable for your taxes that may be used by the government to provide both health care and law enforcement services relevant to the facts at hand as a matter of promoting both justice and the general welfare (specific functions of government as defined by the Constitution).
The same applies to the rest of your ridiculous examples. That government serves to protect and promote the general welfare of other citizens does not mean you are individually responsible for their protection or welfare.
“Perhaps I should become a sociopath too. It seems the better deal and is why all democracies fail.”
If it’s any consolation, skip, I don’t think you’re even a borderline sociopath (which is what I consider Bron due to his rabid reactions when his Objectivist dogma is threatened). I think you’re just really dumb and out of touch with the reality of human nature and the facts of law, history and political science. Like most Libertarians, you mean well, but you simply don’t know what the Hell you are talking about when it comes to law, its philosophical and theoretical underpinnings, psychology, sociology and how those relate to the social engineering required to maintain societies of scale. While we’re speaking of dumb, sociopaths are not “why all democracies fail” although they can contribute to the destabilization of society by the nature of the their pathology. You are making the fallacy of simple cause. The reason democracies (or any other form of normally viable government not based on faulty premises to start with) fail are complex and unique to each nation and their attendant circumstances.
@Bron — So what your telling me Gene, I don’t have a right to choose which social compacts I want. I have to agree with yours. If I think the government is corrupt, I have to leave if I’m unhappy, I can’t get rid of teh scondrels. Do you really think that you and I could agree on what contitutional rights could and should be protected? Your a fucking morron, why would I want to associate with you. Do you ever reread the stuff you write. You have yet to give me one source of knowlege that agrees with you. Yea I want to see some of you straw men. Ninety percent of the stuff you write is ludicris and when I challenge you, you can never answer a single friggin question. I sincerely doubt that if I had to rely on you to protect me in conflict, that you would be there.That’s what it’s about dude. Watching one anothers back and helping one another and not by force. The only thing I would expect form you is for you to steal from me. That what socialist do and you are surely a socialist and communist. You advocated the 5th platform of communism, a central bank, as did Matt advocate the income tax, 2nd platform for communism. If it quacks like a duck it is one. Bron, there are better sites to be on if Turley allows the advocacy of communism. It’s his call.
“So what your telling me Gene, I don’t have a right to choose which social compacts I want. I have to agree with yours.”
Straw man. I never said any such thing.
In the U.S., unlike some countries, when you reach the age of majority, you are free to opt out of our social compact any time you see fit. However, remaining stateless is unwise and you would be bound the social compact of any other nation to which you would become a citizen.
Also, I don’t care about your estimates of my intelligence or whether or not you like me, skip. You simply aren’t bright enough for that to have any impact on me whatsoever. I also don’t care what children, Objectivists and theocrats think of me either. I do indeed answer your drivel most of the time (although I did pass the ball to Tony today – we play tag team all the time) and yet you routinely ignore the answers opted to ask them again and again as if you’ll get a different answer you like better or you conflate them into something they are not using straw men. Sometimes both. I’m also going to point out – again – not all arguments require an appeal or cite to authority which I do use when appropriate such as referring to the Constitution. Most arguments can stand simply on proper definitions and logic. “Yea I want to see some of you straw men.” You’ll be waiting a long time because I don’t need them to win arguments. “That’s what it’s about dude. Watching one anothers back and helping one another and not by force. The only thing I would expect form you is for you to steal from me. That what socialist do and you are surely a socialist and communist.” Really. Eugene McCarthy called and he wants his insults back. “You advocated the 5th platform of communism, a central bank, as did Matt advocate the income tax, 2nd platform for communism.” Then you better get to explaining why every country in the world practically has a central bank and very very few of them (and none of any size) are Communist anymore. And taxes are – as I’ve explained many times – part of the social compact and part of government no matter what country you choose.
Given that I’ve specifically argued against Communism in the past, you’re seeing non-existent ducks.
As far as what Turley allows, he allows the full exercise of your (and mine) 1st Amendment rights to freedom of speech. To my knowledge, he does not deny advocacy of any view point. That you are unable to defend your view points is a failure that is based entirely upon the weakness of both your ideas and your ability to present and defend them. If that part of free speech presents a problem for you and your selective understanding and application of the Constitution, I suggest that is merely par for the course with Libertarians. You’re all for the Constitution until it says something contrary to your ideological dogma.
Gene H:
in regards liability:
“b: accountability and responsibility to another enforceable by civil remedies or criminal sanctions”
My taxes and skip’s taxes go to people on welfare [some probably in actual need] so they are our responsibility. If I dont pay my taxes I can face harsh penalties including jail time.
So it would seem skiprob called it right.
Thanks for supplying the definition.
@skip: I will answer the questions.
Q1: So what your telling me Gene, I don’t have a right to choose which social compacts I want. I have to agree with yours.
Correct, for all intents and purposes. The social compact is determined by a super-majority, if enough of us get together and agree, we can legally change the entire Constitution of the United States. Something like 75% of us, basically, although through the election process, it could be engineered to be a mere majority in the smallest 38 states or something.
So technically with enough like-minded people you could change the social compact, but short of that, you take what’s on the table.
Q2: If I think the government is corrupt, I have to leave if I’m unhappy, I can’t get rid of teh scondrels.
Also correct, for all intents and purposes. However technically, you could, with enough like-minded people you could vote them out of office, but short of that, you cannot do anything about it except leave for greener pastures.
Q3: Do you really think that you and I could agree on what contitutional rights could and should be protected?
Well I obviously cannot speak for Gene, but speaking for myself, perhaps on a few of them. Do you believe in freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, the right to be free of search without just cause, the right to life, the right to a trial?
Q4: The idea, that I have to protect you from tyranny, is in fact interesting. [...] That is an interesting legal concept. You’re going to have to be a little more specific as to what you believe my liabilities are, as it relates to protecting you.
Which brings us back to rights. If we declare that something is a legal right then we implicitly declare that violating it is an illegal act and that imposes upon society the obligation to capture and punish criminals that violate it.
No matter how that is done, it will entail publicly borne expense, at least the expense of time and risk of injury for something like a posse. To the extent that expense is not voluntarily given, it remains a legal obligation that must be collected, and like all obligations, by force if necessary.
Your liability, as it relates to protecting me, is your share of that obligation for enforcing the rights we have agreed upon. That extends to protecting me from tyranny as well, since rights are what do that.
However, when the group gets large it is going to contain psychopaths, sociopaths, the mentally sick and mentally disabled, the devoutly pacifist, the devoutly warlike, the devoutly racist, the devoutly Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Pagan, Environmentalist, Communist, Socialist, Aynish, etc.
Large groups will not unanimously agree upon anything, including the right to life or property. Throw a committed Communist in there, and they may refuse. Throw a psychopathic killer in there, and he might refuse, on the grounds that he does not want his insanity punished.
So how do we proceed, if we want ANY rights to be enforced, if it is impossible to achieve unanimous agreement?
There are three popular options. One is by authoritarian decree, a small minority of the people decides, and that is that. One is by popular vote, a majority decides, and that is that.
The third blends these two. A small minority will ultimately decide, but instead of being self-appointed or appointed by an authoritarian, they are chosen by popular vote.
There simply is no way to proceed with unanimous agreement. And do not think that means anarchy is the right thing to have, because anarchy violates the desires of the majority of the people. If you demand anarchy as the alternative to unanimity, then YOU are the authoritarian dictator setting the rules for others because it violates YOUR sense of fairness.
Without unanimous agreement, the majority does indeed rule, and it shall rule by force. We are not arguing that is untrue, because it IS true. We accept that as a fact of life, because we know that logically the only other alternative is anarchy, and we find anarchy abhorrent.
So the answer is YES, you DO have an obligation to protect me from tyranny, because you have an obligation to protect my rights, and the majority decided that a fair way for all people to meet that obligation without creating undue hardship for the unfortunate is by paying a percentage of your income above a certain threshold.
If you do not like it, if you want to shirk that responsibility, then you are a de facto advocate of anarchy, which is rule by force of arms alone. No system of voluntary participation in law enforcement will ever be a guarantee of any right, not the right to property, life, liberty, speech, or anything else. The definition of the word “voluntary” makes it a free choice and exposes the possibility of nobody choosing freely to prosecute a murder, a theft, an enslavement, a rape, or a brutal beating for saying something offensive. If a right has no guarantee of protection then it is simply worthless, empty rhetoric. Agreeing that all your countrymen should have a right implicitly agrees to a personal obligation to protect their right.
I hope these answers are clear and you can stop saying nobody is answering your direct questions.
Gene H:
“which is what I consider Bron due to his rabid reactions when his Objectivist dogma is threatened”
My Objectivist dogma? That is very funny. You havent once threatened my beliefs. You give yourself way too much credit for your powers of intellect.
Your thinking is much more dogmatic than mine and on top of that you are so mundane in what you believe. I can go into any high school class in America and here the same drivel come from the young skulls full of mush that I see you spout everyday. They just parrot what their teachers tell them who parrot what they learned in college from leftist professors like Tony C.
Your world view comes down to control. What was it Eddy Murphy said in that one movie where he played a home shopping guru? Something about people who are prepared for everything are prepared for nothing. People who like external controls have no internal controls, since they have no internal controls they must substitute the state. They use the state as a mental crutch since their own internal regulator is damaged or non-existent. They havent fully matured as human beings, they havent fully accepted reality.
Socialism is nothing but a crutch for damaged human beings who seek to make everyone live as miserable, fearful and confused beings. They do say misery loves company. I guess it is true.
Bron,
You are responsible for paying your taxes. The part of the definition of liability you refer to – “b: accountability and responsibility to another enforceable by civil remedies or criminal sanctions” – is talking about civil and criminal judgments.
“You havent once threatened my beliefs.”
No, I threaten them all the time by exposing how ethically bankrupt they can be. What I haven’t once done is change your mind, which in all fairness, is a function of your mind, not my efforts.
The rest of what you say is misrepresentations and drivel. The idea that external societal controls and internal controls are mutually exclusive is ridiculous and naive. As to your rant about socialism? Thanks for once again showing you have no idea what the term means. “People who like external controls have no internal controls, since they have no internal controls they must substitute the state. They use the state as a mental crutch since their own internal regulator is damaged or non-existent. They havent fully matured as human beings, they havent fully accepted reality. Socialism is nothing but a crutch for damaged human beings who seek to make everyone live as miserable, fearful and confused beings. They do say misery loves company. I guess it is true.” If what you said were true? The extreme form of socialism – Communism – would have gone over like gangbusters.
Really, you need to ditch Ayn.
She is holding you back.
Gene H:
That doesnt follow, there are people who dont live as fearful beings and are constantly trying to break the chains of that control.
Freedom always wins, it is the natural state of man. Most of us feel it as a part of our being, I have learned some do not. Those are the socialists/totalitarians among us. My wife always says the crazy makers are the ones who control a relationship.
What is happening now, as we just saw in Wisconsin, is that rational people are starting to wake up and say enough of this bullshit. The inmates have run the asylum long enough.
@Bron: As Jon Stewart pointed out, sixteen months ago, Wisconsin elected Walker over Barrett 52% to 43%. This time they elected Walker over Barrett (same two guys) 53% to 43%.
In terms of the governor’s race nothing changed, nobody woke up, a Republican majority re-elected their guy.
However, the recall was a semi-victory anyway, since the state senate went from Republican control to Democratic control, so if the Democrats can get unified they can thwart further Republican depredations by Walker. We shall see what happens.
But, no, people are not starting to wake up. One Republican victory exactly like the last Republican victory means nothing at all, except that Wisconsin Republicans were not really outraged by Walker’s tactics, no matter how outraged Wisconsin (and national) Democrats were. Or maybe, to put the blame on the other foot, that Wisconsin Democrats were not willing to get out and vote for Barrett sixteen months ago and were still not willing on Tuesday.
There is no victory or change evidenced by this vote at all, as Stewart said, the message sixteen months ago was, “That’s our guy,” and the message now is, “Alright, you want to ask again? Fine. That’s our fucking guy!!“
Tony C:
keep telling yourself that. Minimize the win. The unions spent millions to take him down, they occupied the capital building and they went to great lengths to get rid of Walker. They failed. Wisconsin is a liberal state, very liberal. I wont go so far as to say Romney will win in Wisconsin but this is more than what you are making it out to be. It is not a good indication of things to come for Obama.
Stewart is minimizing the loss for political reasons. The White House was shitting itself on Wednesday morning.
“What you need to study is when private companies are nationalized by governments. You’ll find that even with “the markup” government is not very good at running businesses and generally can’t compete with private enterprise, if they’re not a monopoly.” Skiprob
“Skip, Name 3 private companies that were taken over by government in the last 60 years?” My question to you regarding your statement above.
“Throughout the world or are you going to limit me to this country? FNMA, Freddie Mac and Portions of AIG and GM.” Skiprob’s response.
“FNMA, commonly known as Fannie Mae, was founded in 1938 during the Great Depression as part of the New Deal.” Skip’s answer is wrong because this company was not nationalized.
“The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), known as Freddie Mac, is a public government sponsored enterprise. The FHLMC was created in 1970 to expand the secondary market for mortgages in the US.” Skip again has given a wrong answer since this Agency was not nationalized.
“AIG suffered from a liquidity crisis when its credit ratings were downgraded below “AA” levels in September 2008. The United States Federal Reserve Bank on September 16, 2008 created an $85 billion credit facility to enable the company to meet increased collateral obligations consequent to the credit rating downgrade, in exchange for the issuance of a stock warrant to the Federal Reserve Bank for 79.9% of the equity of AIG. The Federal Reserve Bank and the United States Treasury by May 2009 had increased the potential financial support to AIG, with the support of an investment of as much as $70 billion, a $60 billion credit line and $52.5 billion to buy mortgage-based assets owned or guaranteed by AIG, increasing the total amount available to as much as $182.5 billion.[6][7] AIG subsequently sold a number of its subsidiaries and other assets to pay down loans received, and continues to seek buyers of its assets.”
AIG was not nationalized as Skip implies. The company had become insolvent threatening the world’s financial structure and was assisted through government intervention, while allowing its management team to remain in power. The proof that they remained in control is here where Bernake admits a form of nationalization would have been preferable but the government lacked the power to do so:
“Had AIG been allowed to fail in a controlled manner through bankruptcy, bondholders and derivative counterparties (major banks) would have suffered significant losses, limiting the amount of taxpayer funds directly used. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke argued: “If a federal agency had [appropriate authority] on September 16, [2008], they could have been used to put AIG into conservatorship or receivership, unwind it slowly, protect policyholders, and impose haircuts on creditors and counterparties as appropriate. That outcome would have been far preferable to the situation we find ourselves in now.”
Further proof that AIG was not “nationalized”:
“The week following the September bailout, AIG employees and distributors participated in a California retreat which cost $444,000 and featured spa treatments, banquets, and golf outings. It was reported that the trip was a reward for top-performing life-insurance agents planned before the bailout.[ Less than 24 hours after the news of the party was first reported by the media, it was reported that the Federal Reserve had agreed to give AIG an additional loan of up to $37.8 billion. AP reported on October 17 that AIG executives spent $86,000 on a previously scheduled English hunting trip. News of the lavish spending came just days after AIG received an additional $37.8 billion loan from the Federal Reserve, on top of a previous $85 billion emergency loan granted the month before. Regarding the hunting trip, the company responded, “We regret that this event was not canceled.” An October 30, 2008 article from CNBC reported that AIG had already drawn upon $90 billion of the $123 billion allocated for loans. On November 10, 2008, just a few days before renegotiating another bailout with the US Government for $40 billion, ABC News reported that AIG spent $343,000 on a trip to a lavish resort in Phoenix, Arizona.”
AIG was not nationalized, it was bailed out. Now Skip, you and I may both agree that the government intervention was a mistake, but your characterization of the intervention as “nationalizing” is a false premise. Later on AIG paid out more than $400 million in bonuses to its top employees.
Your last example, GM, also fails the “nationalization” test. GM went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and received government assistance, but its upper level management retained control throughout the reorganization. Let’s get back though to why I asked the question, which you answered incorrectly.
This gets to the problem with your entire thinking. Your entire political conception rests on a bunch of false premises, that you call facts ad so represents a kind of false, circular reasoning. NO companies have been nationalized in the last 60, or 160 years in the US. So your premise:
“What you need to study is when private companies are nationalized by governments. You’ll find that even with “the markup” government is not very good at running businesses and generally can’t compete with private enterprise, if they’re not a monopoly.”
This is a false and phony premise, since no “nationalization” has taken place. The basic reason the people your blindly follow use such a premise is to make their specious point that government can’t manage various things as well as business. This is an idea that is basically nonsense and is disproved easily. Medicare’s administrative costs are 2 to 3%. The average private health insurer’s administrative costs are 15 to 20% and that doesn’t count profits.
If I was to go through every statement you have made Skip, in defense of your position, I would expose that every one is a false premise thrown out by you to create the illusion you are making sense. Indeed, I believe that to you, you are making sense. This is your illusion to justify an incoherent belief, all the element of which have been demolished by both Tony and Gene. When I asked you to define for us just what you believe can replace government you referred me to a book. All that indicated was that you couldn’t define it yourself in 3 or 4 paragraphs. I could define my theory of government in that space and so could Gene and Tony. Actually, they have in all their comments on this thread, but you are so much a believer in your religion of Aynism (as Tony calls it) that you are literally incapable of seeing any other perspective. What is sad about this for both you and Bron is not that you lack intelligence, but that your adopting a flawed belief system makes you sublimely ignorant and immune to other ideas. The one thing that Tony, Gene and me aren’t, is doctrinaire political thinkers. Yet your only way of seeing us, despite our proof otherwise is as Marxists. For you that term is an all purpose “bogeyman” to keep you from actually understanding the logical demolition of your belief structure. A mind is a terrible thing to waste and yet that is what you are doing.
@Bron: The unions spent millions to take him down,
On the contrary, by ALL reports the pro-Walker forces outspent the pro-Barrett forces by at least seven to one.
Also, the National Democratic party refused to pour money into the Wisconsin recall, because they also thought it was a lost cause. The White House did not campaign in Wisconsin for the same reason; Obama (and I am no longer any fan of Obama) does not help if he does not think it will create a win, he doesn’t want to be seen as a loser (and instead is seen by some of us former Democrats as an unprincipled jerk).
And you are mistaken if you think I give a shit about Obama’s chances against Romney.
Stewart is not minimizing the win, the win minimizes itself, within half a percentage point it was precisely the same outcome as the last time Walker and Barrett got in the ring.
You can believe a lie if you want, like all lies it distorts reality and therefore sets you up for a potentially painful reality check. The reality is that in sixteen months, after millions of dollars were spent by both sides, nothing in Wisconsin changed in the least.
If anything, I would say that is a positive sign on a different front: All that money spent by conservatives did not really change the percentage vote at all; people voted the same both before and after all the ads. Maybe people aren’t as gullible as the political common wisdom suggests, maybe after a lifetime of questionable product ads making hyperbolic and downright unbelievable claims, they are all just fast forwarding over the ads and the ads have a net zero effect on their vote.
tony c:
your lie is bigger than mine. just keep telling yourself what you just wrote.
the unions spent a good deal of time and money to pull this out and they lost. not looking good for other state unions. I said it probably doesnt have ramifications for the Obama Romney match-up in November but it is not a good omen for the democratic party seeing as how they get a good deal of money from the Unions.
Now if we could only control the money coming from lobbyists, one down and one to go.
@Bron: Yes, the unions lost in Wisconsin. It hasn’t been looking good for unions for quite some time, Bron, teachers or otherwise.
I believe that is because government and lawsuits have, responsibly, usurped many of the key benefits unions once delivered. Such as workplace safety and some benefits like unemployment insurance, limitations on hours, requirements for overtime pay, grievance policies, etc.
So in a sense the government competed with a private enterprise (unions) by providing union-like benefits to ALL employees. They took away the big features of the unions’ product. The union was once the only way to get a fair shake in the workplace, now there exist legal alternatives, so the unions are not as critical.
The reason people do not join is because they make a cost-benefit analysis and decide it isn’t worth paying the “tax” of the union dues when they get the benefit essentially for free from the government.
Thus in my view, I really do not care much if unions survive. They need to adapt or die. What they are “selling” is not worth what they are charging, so they need to find another product, lower the price, or both.
I really do believe in markets, Bron. The difference in me is that in my view not everything has a price, and in your view absolutely everything has a price, you Aynish have no principles that ever put anything above money.
FNMA and Freddie Mac are both Government “guaranteed” private companies called GSEs or at least they were until they were nationalized by the government after they financially failed. I told people in 2002 that they were going to fail. To nationalize is to take the business from private ownership to govenrment ownership and administration. Whether there are any private shareholders left, I’m not sure. They were bad ideas from their inception because they gave the profits to the business owners and shareholders, with any potential liabilities passed onto the taxpayer. A guaranteed failure as a business model and I’m not wrong. They are both now under government ownership and control and that is being nationalized. Mike, it looks like you used goggle but just didn’t go far enough down and read the entire page. I was a mortgage broker for some 15 years. Stopped in 2003 because I was unwilling to lie to borrowers once I discovered that the Central and Wall Street bankers with doing the same thing as they did to the stock market in 1933 but this time to the real estate market.
I think that both shares from AIG and GM were part of the deal. That is why I said that I perfer to go to others counties were full nationalization of businesses have occured and offer better case studies.
You like a kid just trying to find one thing wrong in what I write. I’ve never said I’m perfect. You need to read Genes posts for that.
Tony, When are you going to come to the realization that our two party system, Democrats and Republicans are a two headed snake. You can read all about it almost everyday for the last 40 years. What party controls what house makes not difference. There’re both trying to stick as much of your money into their pockets while doing as little work as possible and they will come up with as many reasons and programs as possbile, to attempt to get you to acquiscece and give them your money, until the majoirty someday wakes up broker and the 1% controls 85% percent of the wealth of our once great nation.
“When you can’t understand that taxation is theft, that apparently pretty much discribes a sociopath.”
When you make up the meanings and connotations of words to suit your own beliefs, without examining the common usage then you are the victim of propaganda’s delusion.
“FNMA and Freddie Mac are both Government “guaranteed” private companies called GSEs or at least they were until they were nationalized by the government after they financially failed.” Skiprob
“FNMA, commonly known as Fannie Mae, was founded in 1938 during the Great Depression as part of the New Deal.” Skip’s answer is wrong because this company was not nationalized.”
“The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), known as Freddie Mac, is a public government sponsored enterprise. The FHLMC was created in 1970 to expand the secondary market for mortgages in the US.” Skip again has given a wrong answer since this Agency was not nationalized.” Mike above.
Skip,
You are dishonestly avoiding the point I made which is that neither company was nationalized. The truth is that you can’t name any companies that were nationalized, so that the point you were making about private vs. government competence was a false one. At first I thought that your problem was just that you had been sold a line of bullshit, but after this performance I think that you are also being dishonest in your arguments. You still are unable to explain what you would replace government with are you? As a trained mental health professional I would say definitely though that you are not a sociopath. My basis for that is that usually sociopaths are convincing and intelligent. You’re merely a dumb follower of someone else’s sociopathy and so hooked you can’t even follow, much less counter, arguments that make you seem shallow. You only tactic is basically a variation of a ten year old arguing: Nyanhh!, Nyanhh! Nyanhh! You bore me.
“Tony, When are you going to come to the realization that our two party system, Democrats and Republicans are a two headed snake.”
Skippy,
You don’t read well do you? Way before you ever arrived here on this blog, Tony, Gene and I have all made this point about the Republicans and Democrats. If you examine the writings above in this thread and my own in the piece I wrote, that belief in the fact of both parties being depressingly similar was made. Being much older than you, I can say I came to that conclusion probably before you were weaned. A person who is unable to hear or see anything that could inform their beliefs is immune to reason.
Gene, communism did go over like gangbusters. The Soviet Union, Cuba, China, Argentina and a host of others including the U.S. and most of Europe have embraced large portions of communism. Let’s go over some of the platforms again. #2 is a high progressive or graduated income tax. #5 is a Central Bank and #10 is public education. We have actually enacted at least some portion of all 10 platfoms. As mentioned, all of the 1928 and 1932 platforms of the American Socialist Party, have also been enacted into law in this country. That’s the facts bro, check it out. Scary but even more fightening, is that when you point things like this out to people, it doesn’t change their perspective on socio-economics.
Secondly, do you think having the social crutch there in the first place, provides incentive to be irresponsible, compared to if the crutch wasn’t there? For instance, many of the modern day philonthropic organizations where created in the eighteen hundreds when there was virtually no government welfare programs. The point is that even than there was a crutch available for those that were trully needed. However, just because you had a bunch of kids when you could’t afford them, didn’t necessaily guarentee that someone would come to the aid and bail you out. There was no promotion of irresponcibily or guarantees if you were irresponcible and therefore people were probabally more responcible, or at least that what logic would indicate. There were even private organizations in the 1800′s that provide unemployment compensation and workman compesation to their membership. They were mainly trade type organization that provided this type programs. Probably the basis for modern day unions, but that’s a guess.
@hskiprob: When will you ever come to the realization that the vast majority of people completely reject your infantile philosophy that selfishness is good, that brutality in the name of selfishness is good?
When will you ever come to the realization that you are wasting your time pining after a fantasy system that will never, ever, come to pass, because if it existed for an instant it would be violently overthrown?
Most importantly, when will you ever come to the realization that all rights are meaningless absent any obligation on the part of society to defend them or punish the deprivation of them?
Your right to property is meaningless if you have to defend it all by yourself, it vanishes the moment a superior force presents itself. Rights are just empty rhetoric without society to back them up. What does it mean to have a “right?” It means that society has collectively decided nobody in the society can deprive you of it, or punish you for exercising it.
That in turn means your fellow citizens have an obligation to punish those that deprive you of your “right” or try to punish you for exercising it.
If all justice is by ad hoc gangs of volunteers, then your “right” becomes meaningless. If nobody has any obligation to act when you are deprived of life, liberty, or property, what is the difference between a “right” and just something you think?
What makes a right a right is the obligation of others to protect it. Such mutual obligations are also what makes a society. A society is not just a collection of people, a society is a collection of people with mutual obligations, and the only way you have any “rights” is if the society is obligated to preserve them, and if you are symmetrically obligated to preserve the rights of others.
In the USA, we meet those societal obligations through taxes on our excess income, which is used to pay others to do whatever we have collectively decided to do, as a society.
Mike, I admire and have learned from such people as Jefferson, Paine, Rothbard, Rand, Bastiat, Friedman, Buchanan, Spooner, Von Mises. Two of which are Nobel Prize winners. Calling these people’s “You’re merely a dumb follower of someone else’s sociopathy” perspectives on political economy, sociopathy is the stupidous thing you’ve said yet.
Also Mike, check your facts again because I’m 99% sure the government is now the principle owner of both FNMA and Freddie. The U.S. government has not “fully” nationalized any other companies that I know off. However, there are many companies around the world including US companies that were nationlized by other Governments. I don’t know what point your trying to make but criticize, often times using lies which is one of the few thing you appear to understand how to do. Talk about boring, What have you said that is really providing anything of interest.
Your only intent appears to be purely trying to discredit a philosophy which is embraced by 10 of millions around the world and your methods are horrible, demeaning and mean spirited. Seldom providing any validated or logical analysis. It’s like Genes opinions. He never supports them with any facts or reference. He thinks his opinions are supported by his own logic and although he appears to be a pretty smart guy his arguments are very imperceptive and unclear. He appears to be using socialogical terms that aren’t commonly understood. He is not doing a very good job selling his position.
From your first statement Tony it is clear that you have not read Rands book. You have not read it and don’t lie to us because you’re regurgitating someone elses sociopathic, spin aren’t you. Whose your pethetic source.
Pretty good ah, I’ve have learned much from you guys. Criticize and Deny, Criticize and Deny.
@hskiprob: I regurgitate nothing; my thoughts are 100% my own. I realize that concept is alien to you, having never had a thought of your own I am sure original thought is as mysterious to you as calculus.
If you are trying to search for arguments against me, you will have to invent your own. I suspect you are not capable of that.
No, I don’t have to agree with your social compact. I can always move to another juresdiction where there are more individual rights. Matter of fact, many have already done that, at least the smart ones. Acutally that is my plans. Dominica or Belize. The interenet is also opening up the world. People are starting to catch on to reality and not the illusions we’ve been fed by the the ruling class. The oligarchs are holding on to the seat of their pants, as bond markets drastically weaken worldwide. The free market always eventually wins, it just a matter of time. Just as the American, French and British revolutions created a period of extensive freemarket activities and limited governments, the time will come again when government is reduced to ruins. Hopefully this time, the Citizens will have learned from the experiences and know how to stop the government incroachments. It would be nice if our children did not have to go through this but that is apparently what the majority of people are willing to tolerate. People like Ron Paul and Ex-Governor Gary Johnson are gathering greater and greater followings.
Skippy,
“Gene, communism did go over like gangbusters. The Soviet Union, Cuba, China, Argentina and a host of others including the U.S. and most of Europe have embraced large portions of communism.”
Really. If Communism was such a success, then why out of the 196 countries (if you count Taiwan) in the world today are Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and North Korea the only Communist dogs left standing? Don’t say China either unless you just want me to laugh. China now practices a form of state capitalism even though they are still controlled by the Communist Party politically and technically speaking. That’s 39.2 times more non-Communist countries than Communist countries. Seems that on the numbers alone, Communism didn’t go over like gangbusters at all but was instead a dismal failure. One of those pesky facts you seem to think I don’t have. Also, that you don’t understand my arguments is irrelevant to their objective logical and factual validity. I am not addressing you even when I am addressing you. You’re a true believer. There is no convincing you. Never has been.
“Let’s go over some of the platforms again. #2 is a high progressive or graduated income tax. #5 is a Central Bank and #10 is public education.”
You insist on begging the question that taxation is theft over and over again despite the fact that it 1) isn’t theft and 2) is an essential component of any government no matter its form. You also insist on trying to demonize the idea of a central bank instead of taking specific criticisms of what is wrong with our central bank. Central banks are a necessary thing in a complex global economy. Whether you see the factual truth of this matter is irrelevant to it being true. As for public education? You Libertarians sure love to (mis)quote Jefferson in support of your tripe, so here’s a Jefferson quotes that are both informative and detrimental to your anti-public education stance (not to mention that public education is the very essence of promoting the general welfare of society):
August 13, 1786 Letter to George Wythe: “I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised, for the preservation of freedom and happiness…Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils [tyranny, oppression, etc.] and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”
December 20, 1787 Letter to James Madison: “Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to ; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.”
April 24, 1816 letter to Dupont de Nemours: “Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day . . . . I believe it [human condition] susceptible of much improvement, and most of all, in matters of government and religion; and that the diffusion of knowledge among the people is to be the instrument by which it is effected.”
January 14, 1818, letter to Joseph C. Cabell: “Now let us see what the present primary schools cost us, on the supposition that all the children of 10. 11. & 12. years old are, as they ought to be, at school: and, if they are not, so much the work is the system; for they will be untaught, and their ignorance & vices will, in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences, than it would have done, in their correction, by a good education. . . . A system of general instruction, which shall reach every description of our citizens from the richest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so will it be the latest, of all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest.”
Some of us actually understood what Jefferson wrote and from their original sources instead of relying on some distorted Libertarian translation of his ideals. Yeah. Public education is for Communists! Despite it being a very real concern of the Founders well before the creation of either socialism or Communism. Just think of what you could have accomplished if you hadn’t wasted your education, skipster.
Also, since you place such a high value on references even when they are not required, here is a pamphlet from 1928 outlining the ASP’s platform. Other than the nationalization plank, they sound a lot like the planks of just about any other platform past or present of any pro-democratic party at one time or another. I’ll let the reader make up their own minds about it just like I usually let them decide for themselves about the easily verifiable facts on which my arguments are built. Just because you require hand holding doesn’t mean everyone does. Also, a car and an atomic bomb both use screws but they are not the same thing. You are making the logical fallacy of composition again. As an aside, if you think I’m factually wrong in an assertion – then prove it – but opinion that I don’t know what I’m talking about isn’t the same as proving it. I assume that most people are both more intelligent and better informed than you. I say this in part based on the very large number of times you have been proven wrong as a matter of historical (or legal or psychological or sociological) fact. Speaking of which . . .
“He appears to be using socialogical terms that aren’t commonly understood.”
That doesn’t mean they are being incorrectly used or that others don’t understand the technical terms. That you don’t understand is immaterial. Understanding is not your strong suit even once things are explained to you (usually more than once). You repeatedly read facts and/or logic counter to your assertions and then the white noise of your dogma quickly drowns it out before you are forced to minimally but actually think for yourself let alone think critically.
Carry on attempting to distribute your Kool-Aid though.
Too bad for you this is the grown up drinks section.
Tony, your thoughts are an accumilation of prior obtained knowledge perhaps with a bit of creativity included. I have heared all you argument before so you are not the highly enlightened thinker you think you are.
You lied about reading the book didn’t you?
@hskiprob: I did not claim to be a highly enlightened thinker, I claimed to be an original thinker. If my conclusions have been reached before, and published before, then all the better, it means my casual efforts are on the same track as what the professionals see fit to publish.
You only compliment me by claiming that is true.
.” Really. If Communism was such a success, then why out of the 196 countries (if you count Taiwan) in the world today are Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and North Korea the only Communist dogs left standing?
Gene, you should know this answer. It is easier to sell fascism and give the Citizens the illusion that they have private property rights. They still use the same communist enactments, but instead of outright owning the businesses, they just take/steal most of the profits through taxation and regulation.
You should understand this stuff Gene. For instance, the central bankers don’t give two shits about the American majority or they would not have done the many things they have since they gained power in 1913.
The central bankers are the prominant perpetrators of the boom and bust real estate cycle, we are now experiencing.
skip,
Your inability to comprehend that fascism and socialism (let alone Communism) are completely incompatible systems is staggering. Fascism – at the least corporatist form of fascism you are talking about even though such a distinction is lost on you – is dependent upon both the idea of private property and the property motive to operate. And you have property rights, skip. They just aren’t absolute like almost all Libertarians seem to think. That preoccupation with money and material goods your Objectivist and Austrian base certainly distorts the reality of the matter.
As to central bankers? You keep ignoring the part where I’m critical of the private enterprise components of the Fed. None of which mitigates that as a structural matter, in a complex global economy, the functions a central bank (preferably under strict public control) is necessary.
As to your “analysis” of the boom bust cycles, that is so far divorced from economic and political reality I’m not even going to address it. It’s a waste of time.
@hskiprob: It is easier to sell fascism and give the Citizens the illusion that they have private property rights.
Ah, I see, the vast population of the world is just gullible suckers. Not only that, but the ones that think they are happy, safe, productive, and living a good life are just delusional.
You are the one that is delusional, your idiocies are so easy to puncture it is laughable.
, they just take/steal most of the profits through taxation and regulation.
Now you will redefine the word “most.” That’s the Aynish language for you!
The top tax rate right now is about 1/3 of profits, with plenty of ways to avoid it, including one fine way to avoid it completely and keep all of it.
Skippy. Skippy. Skippy,
You made a statement which I proved wrong and now you want to switch premises. Your point was that every time the US government nationalizes a country it screws it up. The only problem is the US government doesn’t nationalize companies. When I called you on your stupid statement you came back with four examples none of which were nationalized. You only made a weak effort to defend two of your choices and ignored GM & AIG. Now the reason I asked you specifically about the US is because your entire litany of criticism is directed at the US government.
Face it Skippy you probably seem wise when talking to your friends, quoting asses like Rothbard and Buchanan, but here you look puny, not because you’re dumb, but because you lack the logic to make a strong argument. You still can’t succinctly tell me what you would replace goverment with and that’s because you have no idea, never having drawn your thoughts out that far. By the way if one of your heroes is the racist, Jew Hater Buchanan, then maybe that adds another piece to the jigsaw puzzle of your profile. Seriously, the best you can do is blow s moke out your ass. Bron defends your position better than you can because he tries to stivk to the subject and admits when he’s wrong. You are just a lame bullshit artist who is finally being called on your lack of substance. You are the propagandized puppet I called you out as being. Boring.
No Mikey, Mikey, Mikely I said nothing of the U.S. and in each subsiquenct post I mentioned other countries. You’re the one that mentioned the U.S. in your question to me. South American is the best place to study the nationalization of companies.
Mikey, Mikey, Mikely, James Buchanan, the nobile prise winner, not dick head Pat.
Logic. like Gene continually stating that law must have the government force of effect when the body of law called the Law Merchant, that was created by private enterprise has worked for 100′s of years.
You’re correct in that I do have a difficult time writing down to your guys level in short posts.
I did tell you what I want to replace governemnt with. I’ve even desigened a system. I even asked you to tell me how free enterprise works; remember the automioble question. I was trying to get you to answer your own question Mikey.
Propagandized Puppet: You guys are the ones that obviously need big brother taking care of you. Why: only because you believe their (the oligrachs) authority and the main stream media propaganda they control. You really can be responcible for governming and protecting yourself guys. You don’t have to buy into their unethical authority to rule your lives or you will forever be complicit in the economic inslavement of the majority. Government authority is almost always derived by unethical force. Thinking that will just all of a sudden convertgovernment to an ethical institution has been shown to be illogical.
And then you have Tony C.: The revolutionary war was won with the use of militias and privatiers. He said somthing about a group of bikers taking out militia groups. The miilitia group here is west palm is about 3,500 strong. I don’t think a littler biker gang is going to take out militia groups especially when you add in the armed citizens of the communities that aren’t part of the militia groups.
How can I logical argue with you guys???? You’re just to good for me!!!!! Sarchasm.
The real point of all this though was supposed to be how to improve our world and coming up with viable solutions. Gene has suggested campaign finance reform which hasn’t been successfully done in our lifetimes. I’m sure he has a system though and can show us all how to implement it. He’s very logical like that. Sarchasm again.
If you want to discuss something constructive, I will continue even though I don’t think that you guys can contribute anything of value. Hopefully you can prove me wrong on this one.
“Ah, I see, the vast population of the world is just gullible suckers. Not only that, but the ones that think they are happy, safe, productive, and living a good life are just delusional.”
You apparently are falling to consider the effects on a huge percentage of the world population whom are suffering from the current worldwide financial meltdown which is caused by systemic fascism. Think Tony what you write. The ruling class in the Soviet Union was living a happy, safe, productive, and a good life. Not so much though for the rest of their citizens.
Under your logic, the current unemployed of the world should not be considered. It’s there own fault they don’t have a governemnt job or are a govenrment contractor since Obama and his fascist cronies in Congress are giving out free money by the $trillions.
And to answer your first question. Yes Tony you are gullible as are most people whom are as brain washed as you and sadly that is the majority.
I don’t mind that you argue against anarcho capitalism but your insistance on arguing in support of the authority of fascist oligrachies being legitimate is a bit disturbing.
Gene, You are unwilling to consider the negative ramifications on society of the various communists enactments, ie. income tax, central bank, public education. You believe somehow, dispite continuous failure that govenment will regulate their own actions as well as the controls over the marketplace.
You want to blame coporatism for the failure of govenment when it is the other way around. You fail to udnerstand that in reality, government is a power brokerage cartel.
You can keep spitting out what you think government is suuposted be that doesn’t make it a reality.
I disgree with you on almost everything. You’re inability to provide the negative ramifications throughout your posts indicate that you are just ignoring them so that you don’t have to logically deal with them.
Good luck with that strategy. You have to evaluate the good and the bad if you are to gain reality. Just blaming the failures of a central bank on the lack of government oversite, and not consider either how poorly government regulation actually ends up working or how insedious a central bank is, is not going to give you a realistic analysis of it’s true need and usefulness in a modern society.
Tony, libertarians have been debating these same issues using the same arguments for decades. You’re obviously a smart guy Tony but you do need to do some more reading. There is so much knowledge out there.
Within the libertarian community there are two basic groups, there are the mini-archist which beleive that we need some form of limited government and then there’s the anarcho-capitalists that think government cannot provide the basic functions of law, defence etc. in a sufficient manner.
Interesting enough, many libertarians begin as mini-archists and as they become more knowleagble and after they lose every debate, go on to become anarcho-capitalism.
This is the same stuff we debate at meetings.
@skip: Oh, I see, now the revolutionary war was won WITHOUT a government! Man, that Aynish language is awesome, it lets you just make shit up.
I don’t think a littler biker gang is going to take out militia groups especially when you add in the armed citizens of the communities …
You admit my point, with the word littler, that the largest gang wins. Not the law, not rights, just the largest force of arms. In your infantile system people have no rights unless they can personally defend them with arms, not even the right to life, because if a person is murdered and nobody cares enough about them to risk their life trying to bring the killer to justice, the murder goes unpunished. The poor, in particular, with no resources to pay and too much responsibility to labor for their family to warrant risking their lives for a stranger, are simply oppressed and ruled by force.
Thus you misunderstood the point entirely, as the Aynish always do when they start imagining their glorious battles. The point is that to be fair, and provide anything remotely resembling equal protection of rights, requires a society of people with mutual obligations to each other to enforce those rights, regardless of any ability to pay.
Rights are not free, any right you think you have that is not granted TO you by society is not a right at all, it is just your private mental justification for something. A Right is not a gift from God, it is not inherent in your being, it is a license by society to all members of that society, and in return for that license all members have the proportional obligation to defend the rights of others. Thus if somebody tries to violate your right, you have the resources of the entire society on your side, even if you are penniless.
That is the only system that can deliver rights; your system is, as I said, just armed anarchy, a mercenary state of affairs without real laws or rights at all.
@hskiprob: Under your logic, the current unemployed of the world should not be considered.
You are full of shit.
This is the same stuff we debate at meetings.
What you discuss in your echo chamber of like-minded fools is of no concern to me. You are a self-selected group already committed to the selfish pursuit of wealth, and already committed to ignoring the pain, suffering and injustice you cause to others, on the grounds that somehow that will be “good” for them or “good” for society. You are already committed to the dictatorship of refusing to let society decide for itself what is good for it, and deciding for it that your selfish agenda of rule by force of arms is the only government they will ever be allowed.
Why would I be surprised by anything such a despicable group comes up with?
@hskiprob: Tony, libertarians have been debating these same issues using the same arguments for decades.
I see, and where has that gotten them? Nowhere.
One half of the libertarian argument resonates strongly with citizens almost everywhere (except for states run by strong religious authority), and that is the civil libertarian side of the equation, the ideas of rights like ours, and personal freedom and choices in life, to the extent that nobody else is intentionally harmed or defrauded.
That part is, to a large extent, built into our own Constitution.
The second half of the Libertarian argument is for small government. That sounds attractive at first, especially fiscally, but eventually loses the vast majority because the implications of small government are, obviously, directly contrary to that qualifier above: The vast majority wants freedom for themselves and others to the extent that nobody else is intentionally harmed or defrauded.
Small government necessarily means very little law enforcement, and that is definitely NOT what the vast majority wants, they want harmful behavior to be against the law, and punished.
That is human nature, and that is why your Libertarian message simply has no traction now and never will, because once people realize what you are saying, that they can be exploited, oppressed, defrauded, and nobody is obligated to help them, they will vote for any amount of profit taxation it takes to prevent that.
This is the human nature you refuse to acknowledge or compute with: People (the vast majority) want an armed and strong government to protect them, they want laws that prevent exploitation and harmful acts and endangerment of customers, employees, investors, suppliers, the public and the environment, and they want all of those things to be somebody’s full time job with the authority to use any force necessary to put an end to those harmful acts.
Libertarians get nowhere because the vast majority wants both laws and law enforcement, and the Libertarian replacement for that is either nothing at all, or the ludicrous suggestion that people should just arm themselves and protect what they have on their own. Of course, the vast majority of people are not trapped in some male high-school student’s delusion of invulnerability and invincibility, and they understand that anything they are responsible for keeping by force can also be taken from them by force and they couldn’t do a damn thing about it, so they reject that solution.
People want freedom, but they want protection even more, even if it limits their freedom, and even if it costs them money. They want a balance between freedom and protection. As long as Libertarians are absolutist, they will never get anywhere, because they will always be out-voted by the vast majority that wants a government to protect them.
Characterize that however you want, as cowardice or ignorance, that is human nature and I do not think it will change.
I do not think you are looking for a constructive argument; I have already provided one. You are using the Aynish definition of “constructive,” which is “Anything that agrees with me, nothing that does not.”
“No Mikey, Mikey, Mikely I said nothing of the U.S. and in each subsiquenct post I mentioned other countries. You’re the one that mentioned the U.S. in your question to me. South American is the best place to study the nationalization of companies.”
Skiprob 1st comment on thread 6/2/12 at 1:08 pm.
“Today we [you have to mean the US] have over 115 different taxes, and an almost continual expanding level of the redistribution of that money to the various special interests. It’s not, once again, that any one tax is horrible, it’s that collectedly, many businesses, have had a very difficult time in maintaining their companies,”
Skiprob 2nd comment on thread 6/2/12 at 4:59 pm.
“Governments do not work, or at least no one has yet to invent one that works. Read Harry Brown’s book, Why Government Doesn’t Work. We’ve had 50 years of modern communications and yet, the very same social problems exist today that we had then and the same rhetoric still comes from our politicians lying mouths. The only thing that has changed Mike are the problems are even worse now. If you think things are bad now, they are going to get much worse before they get better. The U.S. economy is crashing as all governments eventual do. It is only a matter of time, because people will always vote for what is in their own best interests, which defeats the very essence of democracy”
Skiprob third comment 6/2/12 at 5:41 pm:
“Each year since the delaration of independence, except for literally a couple of years, the ruling elites have continuously usurped the rights of the Citizens. Surely it was better at any point in histroy, than it is now, but to say that the 1% had plunderd nothing is not quite accurate.”
Skiprob fourth comment 6/2/12 at 5:54 pm:
“Think of it in terms of math. It took 230+/- years to drum up a $7.5 trillion deficit and only 5 years to match it. From 1999 to 2009 gold and silver when up at least 300%. What do you thing it will go up in the next 10 years?”
Skiprob fifth comment 6/3/12 at 9:56 am:
“It just goes to show you that once strong central power is achieved, it almost always get stronger with time and why Jefferson was in favor of maintaining the Federation over the Constitution.He argued against the Federalists on this issue continuously.He obvioulsy did not get his way and why the U.S. has slowed usurped the very property rights that the various inalienable rights, in the Consitution were supposed to protect”.
Skiprob sixth comment 6/3/12 at 10:23 am:
“If you think that government can do this after having viewed the last 50 years of our great experiement, then we will never be on the same page and why party purity cannot be achieved or democracy doesn’t work.”
Skiprob seventh comment 6/3/12 at 10:49 am:
“Let’s see: 535 in Congress, another, 200 +/- central bankers, 1500 member bankers, the Federal Judiciary is probably another 1,200+/-, 500 in the administration and bureacracy and than say 1,000 in the private secter and media. That’s a lot less than 1% and if you think about it, the bankers have the greatest monetary power and control within this group.”
Following those first seven comments 75 of your 95 subsequent comments directly referenced the US as the basis of their arguments. Of those 20 that didn’t 11 were replies to personal attacks or questions. Thus, our of 102 comments you’ve made on this thread 81 out of 91 referenced the US and its economy. My habit, perhaps an obsessive one is to read every comment made on a specific thread I comment on. The fact that 89% of your comments used the US to exemplify your position makes my questioning of your statement regarding nationalization pertinent.
Commonly, country club pontificate’s such as yourself seem successful among their cronies because no one examines their logic. I ca see that being doubly true in your “discussion group”. Unfortunately, you don’t get the same leeway here Skippy. I could go through much of what you have presented here as “fact” and do the same deconstruction.
You’ve finally gave a description of your viewpoint Anarcho-Capitalism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism. The silliness of the Anarcho Capitalist is that it inevitably leads to those that have the most weaponry and
funding taking control, with a repressive society to follow. Those following this model though, usually on a sub-conscious see themselves as part of the power elite to follow. How many AK47′s do you have in your gun-safe Skip? You’ll need them comes the revolution.
I would also point out the utter hypocrisy of the Libertarian Free Marketeers: They think the market should determine winners and losers, and yet continue to demand a political system that everybody has had plenty of time to consider, and the vast majority of people have rejected.
Which just goes to show, they are not interested in liberty at all, what they are interested in is not getting punished by society for their oppressive acts; they want to run roughshod over anybody in the name of selfishness, and have the rest of us submit to their brutality in the name of “freedom.”
Tony, libertarians must sign an oath that they will not commit force or fraud against another human being or their property.
Would you sign the oath??? Is this a good rule/law/agreement for people in a society to live by; one that we should enforce?.
You obviously have no idea what a libertarian believes in or what Rand believes. You miss understand her title of her book because you never read it. Before you go trying to think your own thought, you might want to try reading others that have become famous because of the number of books she sold. Only a jackass would criticize a persons book and philopophy that is the best selling American author in U.S. history, without reading her books. You’re friggin brilliant Tony.
People do act in the own self interest and that is not necessaily a bad thing. Matter of fact if you don’t take care of yourself, we must then have a welfare system for those that can’t. 44 million people on foodstamps ring a bell, or make a light go off. This is some of the things she talks about in her book, paraphrasing of course since it’s been many years since I read it.
When you give to your favorite charity, doesn’t that make you feel good? Do I do it for my own self interest, yes. When you understand what I just said Tony, I will post again on one of your poorly thoughout ideas.
hski….your avatar link is askew…
Skip,
I’d sign that oath without a second’s hesitation, but then that’s how I’ve lived my life. However, life and history has taught us over and again that many do not feel bound by the oaths they made. Your oath in truth is a worthless nostrum designed to let you all feel that there is viability in your ill thought out system.
skip,
“You are unwilling to consider the negative ramifications on society of the various communists enactments, ie. income tax, central bank, public education. You believe somehow, dispite continuous failure that govenment will regulate their own actions as well as the controls over the marketplace.”
You are unwilling to accept that taxation is a fundamental component of any form of government, that central banks are necessary in a modern economy and that public education is not only a valid part of the mission of the U.S. government as defined by the Constitution in promoting the general welfare, but it was considered of paramount importance by the misappropriated Libertarian hero Thomas Jefferson. In short, you argue from ignorance because your definitions and understanding of the fundamentals of American civics and political theory are simply wrong. That’s logical fallacy #1.
“You want to blame coporatism for the failure of govenment when it is the other way around. You fail to udnerstand that in reality, government is a power brokerage cartel.”
Straw man. I blame the corrupting influence of corporate money on government for the majority of the government’s dysfunction. See, Bron has already tried that line of reasoning before and it fails for a very simple reason: by definition, graft is a crime that requires a minimum of two participants acting in collusions – a graftor (corporations) and a graftee (politicians). That’s also arguing from ignorance. That’s logical fallacies #2 and 3.
“You can keep spitting out what you think government is suuposted be that doesn’t make it a reality.
I disgree with you on almost everything. You’re inability to provide the negative ramifications throughout your posts indicate that you are just ignoring them so that you don’t have to logically deal with them.”
I don’t care if you disagree or not. If you think there are negative ramifications to those items you point to? There is a saying in Latin that every attorney knows (or should know). Onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui negat. You’re the one claiming there are negative ramifications? The burden of proof is on the person who makes the claim, not on the person who denies or challenges the claim. The burden of proof rests on you to prove it, skipster. Often people who argue from ignorance try to shift the burden of proof. So congratulations! You committed a double logical fallacy. At the half, that’s logical fallacies 4 and 5, actual valid arguments by the skip-o-matic, 0.
“Good luck with that strategy.”
Right back at ya.
“You have to evaluate the good and the bad if you are to gain reality.”
Too bad for you, I’m simply better at making realistic evaluations of government and society than you are because of my background. That you disagree is your choice, that you fail to understand the folly of your positions is your failing.
“Just blaming the failures of a central bank on the lack of government oversite, and not consider either how poorly government regulation actually ends up working or how insedious a central bank is, is not going to give you a realistic analysis of it’s true need and usefulness in a modern society.”
Fallacy of simple causation and mischaracterization (6,7). I don’t just blame the problems – and they are operational problems not an inability to perform functions as designed (which would be a failure) – of the central bank solely on lack of regulation and/or oversite. I also blame the dysfunction of the Fed on the private components of the institution. Letting industry have a role in the central bank makes as much sense as putting the fox in charge of the hen house. There is also the generally exacerbating factor of the culture of greed in this country. So your fallacy of simple cause and your mischaracterization compound to make yet another straw man where you have misrepresented my position by over simplification and omission.
So the final score for those playing the home game is Logical Fallacies 8, Skippy the Wonder Libertarian 0.
Better luck next time, Skipster.
tONY C:
“The difference in me is that in my view not everything has a price, and in your view absolutely everything has a price, you Aynish have no principles that ever put anything above money.”
Everything has a price, everything. Maybe not a monetary price but everything has a price. There are no free lunches.
Reality doesnt allow for free lunches, some one has to pay some where in the chain of events which lead to the free lunch, in either effort or money but then money is only earned by effort [assuming it isnt stolen].
But money isnt the value Objectivists seek. Money isnt the value Objectivists place on anything. Money has no value, nothing has any value unless human beings place the value. Values begin and end with individual human beings. That is what we value, individual human beings. We value there freedom, we value individual rights. Money is a value only in regard to the time we spend of our lives to produce it, now this is very Lockean and Rand expanded on Locke.
Locke says a man has right to his labor because it is his life which produces the fruit of that labor. Whether it be a check at the end of the week or a 500 acre apple orchard. A man uses his life to produce that value. It is what Thomas Jefferson was talking about in the Declaration. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness mean a man has right to his own life, to live it as he sees fit [and that doesnt mean he has a right to impose on others].
I am flattered you think I speak “Aynish”, it has a long history of human liberty, of valuing human beings for no other reason than they are human, because they have the capacity for rational thought. Because we ought to treat people as we would like to be treated.
So thank you for recognizing I value human life and individual rights more than anything else. Guilty as charged.
There is no such thing as a humanitarian Objectivist. They are contrary and incompatible positions. One value system places prime value on all of humanity and the other value system places prime value on the self.
@skip: , libertarians must sign an oath that they will not commit force or fraud against another human being or their property.
Who shall punish them if they break that oath? Why would they bother, since there is nothing in it for them? If you hire somebody to do it, what is your self-interested reason in punishing a murderer that did not murder anybody you know? What is your self-interested reason in punishing the killer of a homeless hermit that nobody knew?
A solemn oath is nothing but bullshit to a sociopath, that is why contracts are written, and why laws are written, and why laws are punished by publicly funded sources that CAN be neutral and fair.
When you give to your favorite charity, doesn’t that make you feel good?
This is an example of Aynish bullshit reasoning, that if anything makes you feel remotely good you are acting entirely in your own selfish interest.
The reason it is bullshit is because it ignores definition: Whether I do something that is in the interest of somebody else is to be judged by others, including the beneficiary, and how I feel about it is truly immaterial. If they believe I have helped them, and other citizens would judge that I have helped them, then I have executed a charitable act, period. Not a selfish act.
Me feeling good about doing somebody else a good turn does NOT make the good turn a selfish act in any way, and does not diminish the good turn in any way, because it does not diminish the effect of the good turn in any way. It makes me an emotional being with empathy that enjoys the reflected relief or happiness I have created.
As with all Aynish, Rand has confused you by misdirection into thinking that all acts are selfish, and therefore robbed the word “selfish” of all meaning, which was her intent, to rob the word “selfish” of its sting.
A selfish act is one that benefits only you, and selfishness exists in degrees: The more it benefits you at somebody else’s expense, the more selfish it is, the less it benefits you to somebody else’s gain, the less selfish it is. It is not an all-or-nothing thing, and feeling good about giving money away to a charity, which is sacrificing one’s own selfish enjoyment for somebody else’s benefit, remains about as un-selfish an act as one can make.
Next, you will be telling me that a soldier diving on a grenade to save his friends is acting in his own self-interest, because he feels pride in his successful defense of them at the moment of his death.
This is the problem with the Aynish redefinitions of language, when sacrifice is transformed into self-interest, then the words no longer convey any real meaning whatsoever, and can therefore be used to argue any point whatsoever.
Whether an act is charitable or selfish has nothing to do with how the actor feels about it, it has to do with the effect of the act and who benefits from it.
Gene, you are unwilling to except that the system you advocate is a dismal failure, that has and is corrupting our world, Public education is a failure. The drop our rate in So. Florida is 33% and the majority of our college students are dropping out. The central banking system is run by a bunch of thieves ifd you don’t realize.There is only about 50 videos on the web that should you waht and how they do it. Read the Confessions of an Economic Hitman and see how great and necessary a central bank is. Since when has central planning and controls ever worked. The redistribution of wealth through political means has given us centuries of oppression and murder by government and it doesn’t matter whose running the govenrment. How many wars and how many people have died fighting for so-called democracy. We have freedom because we kill a bunch of people? How many of our our soldiers have died or maimed in the last 30 years and for what real reasons? Domino theory- a fraud, Weapoms of mass distruction, a fraud. Promoting democracy in Afganistan a fraud. Stopping al Qaeda – a fraud.
At least my system promotes an ethical foundation which is at least a start to changing our world. You think that I’m impressed by the level of violence, crime, ignorance, warfare, poverty, and desease that your so-called humanitary system of fascist governments provides to the world. Open your eyes.
Are you really happy at how the current system is functioning and more importantly, can you honestly tell me that you have a way to fix all the social problems we face using the system you advocate when it is the system that is obvioulsy causing the problems. You would be luckly to have two people follow you on any political project.
The system you advocate is the greatest producer of military weapons the world has every experienced yet we have 17% unemployment rate and even higher in other countries. 40% among blacks in many communities. Hihest incareceration rate inthe world. 25% unemploment for people under 25 years old. More bankrupcies and foreclosures then ever in recorded history, 44 milion on food stamps and public debt so large that it can never be paid off. We have a fiat currency that teh rest of the world no longer want to use that has devaluted by over 98% over it’s history. We are $7.5 trillion in debt in just the last 5.5 years, the same amount that it took our country 220 years to achieve. $16 trillion which is devaluating every day. Just remember that fiat currency eventually reaches it’s intrinsic value. Ask the Germans, ask the Russians and ask the Zembaweians (sp) whats it like to experience, so that you know what coming, hyper inflation like with had in the late 1970s but even worst because it’s comming again and for the same reasons. I don’t want to scare people, but you can not print $7.5 trillion and expect there to be no negative ramifications.
It appears that the system you advocate does the exact opposite of what it’s designed to do and the failure to recognize this is unconscionable. You should at least be lashed 50 times with a cat of nine tails. You’d probably like it though.
You can keep denying and criticizing, denying and criticizing but more and more people no longer believe your opinions. And that’s all they are, your opinions. You and your social compacts are bullshit, if force is necessary for their economic foundation.
Think Gene and Tony, If people are not voluntarily willing to give you money for what you believe is politically necessary, it’s probably not a good idea.
@Bron: Reality doesnt allow for free lunches
On the contrary, reality offers many a free lunch. Sunlight grows food, animals, fishes, the land offers valuable minerals for the taking at essentially zero effort. It is only man that sets a price on things they got for free.
Money is only earned by effort.
No it isn’t. Money can be earned by rent that requires zero effort, money can be earned by simple ownership. Money can be earned by money; I have invested money into a business, done absolutely nothing, and gotten more money out of it. That is not “effort.” Many of the rich, for example, earn truckloads of money without ever lifting a finger. Paris Hilton, for one, the Waltons of Walmart, for another, Mitt Romney for a third. They have so much money they can afford to turn the entire operation over to employees and not expend a single second on it, and still earn millions of dollars. The idea that money is only earned by effort is ludicrous.
Locke says a man has right to his labor because it is his life which produces the fruit of that labor.
Locke is wrong because he uses absolutes. Did you think the man was infallible?
The reason Locke is wrong is because no labor is executed in a vacuum, labor is executed in an environment of laws, courts, justice, police, contracts, national defense and infrastructure that all cost money and are absolutely and inextricably necessary to the labor having any monetary value whatsoever. Thus, although a man is entitled to most of the fruits of his labor, man is also obligated to pay a fair share for the cost of maintenance of the machine that lets him labor in the first place.
If you rent retail space in the mall, they will charge you a fee (and often a percentage of your earnings) for common maintenance. The parking lot, the hallways, the bathrooms, the A/C and security are provided by the mall, and if you want to BE in the mall, you have no choice but to pay.
The country is the same. We provide certain services, if you want to use our real estate as your base of operations for labor, you will pay a fair share of the maintenance. Like the Mall, WE will decide what we will provide, and what we will charge, and you will pay it or you won’t labor here.
skiprob,
I’m unwilling to accept your manifestly irrational and ill-informed opinions about subjects you’ve demonstrated a through lack of understanding of the basics of yet alone the complex issues they entail?
Imagine that.
You’ve offered nothing but opinion as rebuttal, skippy. Again.
And as to the “system I advocate”, you’ve shown no understanding of what I advocate as evidenced by your constant and tiresome misrepresentation of my positions. So pardon me if I laugh my ass off at the idea you trying to communicate the “system I advocate” when you admit you cannot readily even summarize the system you would advocate in its stead (as evidenced by several of your exchanges with Mike). If you can’t tell us what you want in any cogent manner, you certainly can’t tell us what I want in any cogent manner. Unless you simply want to build straw men to attack. Which is what you do. Ad nauseum. Seriously, a trained monkey could do a better job of making their case than you do, skippy. Mike suggested earlier that you function as a propagandist. I submit that you aren’t persuasive enough to be a propagandist. I think you’re a Norwegian Blue and pinning for the fjords.
And much like the Norwegian Blue, your “arguments” to this point are stone dead.
Gene H:
“There is no such thing as a humanitarian Objectivist. They are contrary and incompatible positions. One value system places prime value on all of humanity and the other value system places prime value on the self.”
So you dont think individual rights are a good thing for humanity? And you dont believe in “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”? All of which I might add are done by individual humans.
So according to your way of thinking, Jefferson got it wrong and should have said the collective should pursue anything that infringes on the rights of the individual as long as society [which is a collection of individuals and has no rights as such] is benefited even if it means individual humans are hurt. It is your only option left open. Freedom is an absolute, you either are or you’re not. The degree doesnt matter.
Tsk, Tsk, you havent learned anything; still the totalitarian dreamer.
The Constitution was written to protect society from people like you and Tony C.
Tony C:
“On the contrary, reality offers many a free lunch. Sunlight grows food, animals, fishes, the land offers valuable minerals for the taking at essentially zero effort. It is only man that sets a price on things they got for free.”
The context is man and man must expend effort to sustain his life. Not withstanding inherited wealth but even then some one expended energy to create that wealth.
Yes it is called economics, its been around for thousands of years. Men had to figure out some way to put a value on their productive energy.
I must say your response was so cute, did you think that up all by yourself? It sounds like something Paul Krugman or Elizabeth Warren would say.
Some one earned the money which allowed the multiplication , some one’s productive effort caused that to happen, it didnt just spontaneously occur.
It all goes back to a man’s labor. That some men are better at creating and maintaining wealth is a fact of reality.
Tony C:
When you give to charity, it is to help other people. I dont know about you but when I give money to CF or MDA, I am thinking about the good my money will do for others and maybe for myself.
You give to causes you believe in, a truly selfless act would be you giving money to the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. Now that would be altruistic. So put your money where your mind isnt and tell us again people give to charity out of purely selfless considerations.
If they are honest they will admit they have a dog in that fight or it makes them feel good.
Bron,
That you refute the tenets of Objectivism and dare to call yourself and Objectivist because you feel some need for people to not think you’re just another selfish bastard like other Objectivists is your hilariously self-contradictory Libertarian failing.
Wrongly accusing others of totalitarianism because they see through your bullshit is just as funny as your propensity to label anyone who disagrees with laissez-faire capitalism as socialists (a word you’ve demonstrated time and again you have no clue as to what it means) or Communists (which is just plain funny, Sen. McCarthy).
As to Jefferson, you can go cherry pick some quotes if you think it’ll help, but the bottom line is he was the most democratic of the Founders. You, like most of your Libertarian brethren, have also demonstrated time and again that you may like some of the individual quotes of Jefferson but that in context of the totality of his writing, you actually have very little understanding of the ideals for which he stood. That you think “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” are “done by individual humans” apparently without the aid of government in protecting their life and liberty is a reflection of the anarchist bent that underpins Libertarianism and the macho ideal that you and you alone are sufficient power to defend your rights against bad actors. As I’ve said before, good luck with that, Charles Bronson. Jefferson believed in checks on governmental power to protect the rights of individuals, but he also properly understood the necessity of government and the value of the rule of law in a society.
You set up all the straw men you like. Your principles of Objectivism and Libertarianism are built on foundations of sand. That is why you fail to sell them here time and again. There there is no such thing as a humanitarian Objectivist. They are mutually exclusive by the nature of their defining characteristics. Libertarianism is for a selective reading of the Constitution to get what they want – which is in line with the selfishness of Objectivism – but as soon as there is something in there contradictory to their other selfish ideals – like promoting the general welfare – then they go in to any number of gyrations to rationalize why that’s wrong. That Libertarianism tries to sell this load of contradiction is one of the reasons so few people buy it.
Protect society from me and Tony? That’s pretty funny coming from a guy who would do away with one of the functions of government as defined by the Constitution because he feels it doesn’t benefit him directly. If anything, you have that backwards – like you have most things – the Constitution was designed to protect citizens from the kind of economic tyranny, oligarchical and non-egalitarian legal system you clowns would have if left up to your own devices. There is a reason Libertarianism is the perpetual motion machine of political science; it is internally inconsistent and talks out of both sides of its mouth in a way that would even impress the Roman god Janus.
@Bron: tell us again people give to charity out of purely selfless considerations.
I never told you that in the first place, you liar. This is a second problem with you Aynish, you cannot think on a spectrum, everything is either zero percent or 100 percent.
If you bothered to read my post, you would have seen I defined selfishness on a spectrum, and I refuted the idea that how you FEEL about it is immaterial to how selfish it was, what matters is the effect. A donation for any reason has an effect, it has consequences. The consequences it has are not affected by how the donor feels about the donation. That I feel good for having done it does not make the donation SELFISH. What makes an act selfish or charitable is NOT how one feels about it, but whether it has increased fairness, reduced misery, prevented catastrophe, extended life, reduced despair, relieved pain either psychic or physical.
Any prescription to do those things WITHOUT feeling good about it is to demand an inhuman, psychopathic response. It is typical human nature to feel empathy, sympathy, and to feel good for sacrificing to help others. That is not selfishness. Selfishness is doing something that benefits you while doing the opposite: Decreasing fairness, increasing misery, creating catastrophe, endangering life, increasing despair, causing pain either psychic or physical.
@Bron: Not withstanding inherited wealth but even then some one expended energy to create that wealth.
Notwithstanding? Bullshit, people with inherited wealth do not have to expend any energy to save their life, which disproves your entire premise. They are free riders.
Some one earned the money which allowed the multiplication , some one’s productive effort caused that to happen, it didnt just spontaneously occur.
More bullshit. Quite often, someone oppressed and enslaved others to make the money; look at the royal family of England. Look at the wealth remaining still from the slave owners of the South. Look at the Vatican and the Catholic Church, was that wealth created by honest labor, or brutal oppression?
Look at the Mafia millionaires, drug lords, and the Industrial Military complex in this country; look at the banks foreclosing on homes with fraudulent loan documents.
Your claims are pathetically stupid.
Tony C, for a long time I gave some people a lot of help without asking anything in return, and I did it for a very personal reason. It was something I could do (short of actual murder!) that would make me FEEL BETTER about a situation that I regarded as intolerable. I felt like my contributions of effort and time (I had no money) and simple human belief were keeping me human at a time when I wanted to leave my moral structure behind and strike out as someone with no more conscience to tend to. And it worked.
98% of the people I tried to help did not benefit from my help. Six out of 257 did benefit, and I would say, probably GREATLY benefitted. Very small rate of return. But to me, it was worth everything. It was a way to stay alive and continue to be a non-criminal for more than 10 years.
Was it selfish? No. Was there what the shrinks call “secondary gain”? Hell yes! Would I trade it for anything else now? Who cares, I can’t.
When I think back on it, or really any part of it, I have a tendency to wonder, if I had spent all that energy and time on “myself” would it have been better? It is a fallacious question! I did spend the time and energy on “myself,” on making myself what I am now, for good or ill.
Your two-comment exposition on this has made that clear to me in a very comfortable way, and I thank you for that. Now, when some of my friends ask why I didn’t put all that time and effort into myself, I am going to answer: I DID.
@Bron: Not to mention, the majority of great fortunes in the world today are simply mining wealth, which includes oil wealth. Nobody worked for those, the “labor” is a tiny factor in the extraction of oil, gold, sliver, diamonds, or other natural products. The wealth is just a function of the rarity of a natural product, not the work people put into getting it.
The Saudis had no particular education or work ethic or inspiration, they were just the recognized owners of the land they took by force of arms and brutal murder in the middle ages.
Much the same is true in the USA, the land wasn’t earned by work, it was taken by force, and the wealth in the land was usually discovered much later. The majority of fortunes are “found money,” not earned.
As for industrialists that get rich, like Sam Walton, he did not get that rich on HIS labor or his families, he got rich on the labor of others; by paying them much less than the profits they were generating for him.
I do not mind that too much, but if you truly believe that the fruits of a man’s labor should be HIS, than you should believe that the owners of Walmart are THIEVES. Because it would make no difference what the person AGREED to work for, the fruits of his labor are his proportional share of ALL the profits generated by Walmart, and that would mean a significant bump in his salary. Why should the owners of Walmart be entitled to any share of his fruits at all? What have THEY done? Not a damn thing, they jet around to parties and produce nothing of economic value whatsoever.
@Malisha: I certainly think intent has something to do with whether it is selfish or not; if you were devoting time and energy to try and help somebody else, that is charitable.
Not everything has to be charitable, an activity that makes you feel good (eating out, getting a massage, going on vacation) and harms nobody is neutral on the selfishness scale, to me. There is nothing wrong with enjoying yourself or having a hobby. The same is true of work, I have done many a job that was just for money, and I do not feel bad about that, and I do not think it was “selfish” in any pejorative sense, I was not doing harm to anybody, just helping companies produce their product.
To me, selfishness in the pejorative sense (and Objectivist sense) is doing something for personal gain (including good feelings or actual reward) that the actor knows harms others, or does with disregard for any harm it may cause to others. Selfishness is not giving a shit about other people.
Jefferson did not think democracy a viable government and he even was opposed to the Constitution as it was passed. As Anti-Federalist,Jefferson and Paine were the most libertarian of all the founders. Obviously not anarcho capitalist but surly very limited govenment.
Do you even know what the word “democratic” means, skip? Apparently not.
dem·o·crat·ic \ˌde-mə-ˈkra-tik\, adj.,
1: of, relating to, or favoring democracy
democracy \di-ˈmä-krə-sē\, n.,
1a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.” Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, 1782.
Why . . . that sounds a lot like democracy!
Seriously, skippy. It’s funny when you talk about thinks you really know nothing about.
“What makes an act selfish or charitable is NOT how one feels about it, but whether it has increased fairness, reduced misery, prevented catastrophe, extended life, reduced despair, relieved pain either psychic or physical.”
Part of our problem in being both a society (undeniably) and a collection of individuals trying to survive or get ahead or both is this:
“whether it has increased fairness” — defined by some politicians, openly, as increasing fairness to the people who have the most money because they should have the most decision-making power to decide what happens with the society’s money, since they control more of it than do others
“reduced misery” — again, some politicians and those who vote for them believe that it should reduce misery for THEM and that includes making them feel better about NOT “GIVING” “THEIR” MONEY TO OTHERS
“prevented catastrophe” — some people who wield enormous political power in this country do not believe that “catastrophe” includes the illness, death or even murder of lots of people who “deserve it.”
“extended life” — whose?
“reduced despair” — but again, if you’re stupid enough and unworthy enough to be poor, then you deserve your despair, don’t look at us to reduce it
“relieved pain either psychic or physical” — here we run into a real problem. George Zimmerman would have undeniably had psychic pain if Trayvon Martin had “gotten away” on 2/26/2012. YET ANOTHER ASSHOLE GOT AWAY!! That would be painful for Zimmerman; nobody could deny that. I think we’ve reached a point in our society where you have some people screaming in pain and attracting a lot of political attention but who are really expressing the “PAIN” of the psychopath who cannot manage to get into control of a situation he desperately wants to control. It has probably always been so but I probably haven’t noticed it so much in the past.
This came home to me recently when a situation came up where a grown woman, who works as an aide to a prominent US Congressman, was in a situation with me. I wanted to propose that she correspond with her mother, who had saved her life when she was a child, but who had been viciously slandered and deprived of all contact with her for years as a result (took her to the emergency room when the child was near death, and in spite of medical testimony that she saved her daughter’s life, the violation of a court order not to seek medical help caused her to lose her visitation). I came at this gently at first to suggest that there could be a measured mediation of their relationship so they could once again talk. BAM — I was hit full force by a GANG of people describing me and another person as “agents provocateurs” and criminals of all sorts and a big-wheel at AEI personally dressed me down using the most bizarre and hateful terms and then I was called in to a meeting with a psychiatrist and a social scientist to be informed that I was about to cause this young woman to commit suicide and it would be on me — blood would be on my hands — for killing this poor young innocent who could not tolerate the IDEA of such a thing happening. So I caused all this psychic pain and risked a life, see? And a nationally recognized psychiatrist told me this. He gives speeches to wealthy notables about how the mind works, and even about peace on earth and stuff. He’s a public figure.
So decreasing pain, despair and hopelessness and increasing equality and fairness may be best expressed by — it’s quite open to many forms of Romnification, that’s all I’m saying. (Oh, and if you’re a suspected terrorist, it will also be open to several lethal forms of Obamnification; don’t even think about it.)
@Malisha: Obviously for all of those things I am talking about charity preventing harm to others, not to yourself or your cause.
Do not pretend you did not understand that just for the sake of turning the subject to something that interests you more, like the Zimmerman case. That is being selfish.
Gene H:
I have never said I was for no government Mr. Cant Understand English, I have said many times that some government is necessary. Locke says that government is for the protection of Life, Liberty and Property and Sam Adams also said that in document from 1773.
Jefferon’s Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are directly from Locke. As Bob Esq schooled us all a few months ago.
I know full well what communism and socialism mean and I also know from history that McCarthy was right, there were many communists in government in the United States. Now that is OK if they were elected and identified themselves as communists on the ballot. But during the late 40′s and early 50′s most people would not knowingly vote for a communist. So I am not sure what your point is, or if you even have one.
I dont like communism and I dont like socialism, I think they are bad economic and philosophical systems. I dont think they have any redeeming value and they always fail because they are bad, not because they havent been tried correctly. They are just shitty systems from the mind of a troglodyte for troglodytes.
By the way from Websters 1913 version the definition is:
Trog”lo*dyte (?), n. [L. troglodytae, pl., Gr. one who creeps into holes; a hole, cavern (fr. to gnaw) + enter: cf. F. troglodyte.]
1. (Ethnol.) One of any savage race that dwells in caves, instead of constructing dwellings; a cave dweller. Most of the primitive races of man were troglodytes.
In the troglodytes’ country there is a lake, for the hurtful water it beareth called the mad lake.” Holland.
2. (Zoöl.) An anthropoid ape, as the chimpanzee.
3. (Zoöl.) The wren.
Bron,
I didn’t say that you said government wasn’t necessary. I said Libertarianism has an anarchistic bent and a tendency to selectively read the Constitution until it comes into conflict with some of Libertarianism more ridiculous ideas. You and skip should look into buying straw men in bulk. You’ll get a discount.
As for Locke? Schooled and yet you still don’t recognize that Locke isn’t a source of secondary let alone primary law. Tsk tsk.
Also, you saying you understand socialism is not the same thing as demonstrating you understand socialism, Bron. You can say you understand all manner of things. Until you demonstrate that you actually do, you are just blowing ill-informed opinionated smoke out of your ass. You have demonstrated time and again you don’t have clue about most political/economic forms and cater to your preconceived Libertarian notions instead of relying upon actual knowledge and understanding and letting that information inform your theories instead of your theories informing your information. Combine that with your propensity to think in absolutes and that’s a recipe for argument from ignorance.
Yea Gene, in the 40 plus years of reading and writing about political economy, I’ve never looked up the word Democracy.
“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.” Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, 1782.
Gene Stated ……..”Why . . . that sounds a lot like democracy!” You’re almost always wrong dude.
Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either [aristocracy or monarchy]. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” – John Adams
Remember when Ben Franklin was asked by a women what kind of government did you give us. I believe he stated “A Republic my dear, if you can keep it.” A bill of rights was added for obvious reasons.
To bad we have not protected them.
I wonder if the term ignorance come from phrase “to ignor” —- Perhaps Gene you need a bit clearer understanding of just what a democracy really is. Remember this Cute little parable. Two foxes and a chicken deciding what’s for lunch. Maybe that we help you remember it.
@Bron: As we discussed before, if government is necessary, mandatory taxation is necessary, if mandatory taxation is necessary, then that is not theft or a crime.
It is impossible to define a system of society in which crimes are absolutely necessary for it to continue. Such a system redefines the word “crime,” which has to be something absolutely prohibited and punishable by society. It would make the word “crime” meaningless, it becomes a synonym for the word “act:” We have “crimes” that are necessary to our survival and therefore are not prohibited and cannot be punished, and “crimes” that are prohibited by society and punishable by society. Substitute the word “act” in there, and it means precisely the same thing. But we already have a word that means “an act that is prohibited by society and punishable by society,” that word is “crime.”
Mandatory taxation is not a crime. The only possible way to understand that is to understand that it is not extortion, or theft, but is a payment of some sort, which means that a legal debt was incurred, and thus you have to understand that a legal debt CAN be incurred without your explicit agreement.
That is what happens, because it would be silly and expensive overhead to have every 18 year old agree in writing that they wish to remain a US citizen, remain in the country, and agree to pay taxes and abide by the law and accede to the system of government, representation and determination of laws we have devised.
What we have is the equivalent of that, however. If you stay with us, you owe us a share of any profit you make or work you do, it is as simple as that.
@hskiprob: I have a better parable for your philosophy: One fox and 99 chickens deciding what’s for lunch, with no holds barred.
skip,
If you want to live under the rule of aristocracy (which is what an oligarchy is) you be my guest. No man is my master. They may be my representative, but in a democracy, they work for me – not the other way around.
So much for all of your talk about freedom. In the end, with Libertarians, that’s all it is: talk without substance or understanding of the meaning of the word.
And what Tony said.
Tony C:
A fox would tear 99 chickens a new asshole and be well fed. That is why some government is necessary to protect the people from predators. But that doesnt mean you put the people in a small enclosure and have many guards running around.
But anyway humans arent chickens. Your analogy is telling. Comparing humans to chickens is a real tell into how you think about government. And what you think about people.
Rational chickens would kill the fox. Rational chickens dont need a farmer to protect them, they dont need a pen to keep them contained.
Tony C:
I dont know why you think I am not willing to pay taxes, I just think we have too many and the government has many places in which it could tighten its belt and never miss the money.
I think a flat tax [total tax, state federal and local and sales tax] of around 15-20% of any income is fair. If you make 1000 bucks from any source you give up between $150-200.00 that’s it. No occupational taxes, no sales taxes, no property taxes, no social security taxes, etc. 15-20% and government has to figure out how to do more with less. My guess though is that with the substantial reduction in taxes, the private sector would go gang busters and we would easily make up the difference.
But politicians use the tax code as a weapon and so does government. They dispense favors with it. They use its size and complexity to make us all criminals.
Tony C, well here I think you got me wrong. What I was talking about was the way the “public policy” gets made out and described because of the linguistic propaganda that is very commonly in use. It’s stolen a march on the language so that “freedom” means the right of the powerful to do exactly as they wish and “catastrophe” is when a bank has to go under, rather than an individual losing his home.
I don’t have to pretend not to understand you, and of course I did understand what you were saying and it was quite correct in my view. But what I was doing was trying to show the massive projection that we have all seen going on for probably our whole lifetime, where the words are used to essentially represent the opposite of what they mean.
If one stands on the real meaning of the words and insists that we mean fairness to OTHERS (I don’t know how to use boldface type in these comments) and so forth having to do with OTHERS, pretty quickly our points are dismissed as “socialist” and all meaning is gone.
The American Constitution Society, for example, always emphasizes the “tension between freedom and equality.” This is a struggle, as far as I can tell, between each of us taking the freedom to do as much to others as we possibly can, and the freedom to gain as much from others as we possibly can, which is then balanced against equality, which would have our personal gains and contributions moderated by some method that would decrease the freedom of those who were “winning” to continue to “win” without limit. I argued, for a while, that there was no real tension between freedom and equality because each person’s freedom ended where the other person’s position appeared, although we had taken to defining “freedom” as the right to run over that line any time we could.
Naturally when I read I interpret things by comparing them to what I already know. If that’s “selfish” OK, but if it’s just my way of dealing with information so I can make sense of it, and my way of commenting on it in an articulate way, so I can live with that degree of selfishness.
BUT to fit into your definition of selfishness:
“To me, selfishness in the pejorative sense (and Objectivist sense) is doing something for personal gain (including good feelings or actual reward) that the actor knows harms others, or does with disregard for any harm it may cause to others. Selfishness is not giving a shit about other people.”
I’d have had to do a lot more than what I did, or else others would have had to be harmed by something that was pretty passive, along that continuum of doing damaging things.
Unless I got you wrong again.
@Bron: But anyway humans arent chickens. Your analogy is telling.
I was responding to skip, and I did not compare humans to JUST chickens, I did the same as him: A fox and chickens.
On the contrary, my analogy was quite apt. Chickens will quarrel, but mostly they are just focused on their own business. The problem is the humans represented by the fox; the 1%, the sociopathic and pyschopathic that will murder their fellow humans and (metaphorically) destroy their lives in return for a good lunch. The problem in human society is the humans, born every minute, that are incapable of NOT harming others, that have no empathy, no sympathy, and will do literally anything (including torture and murder) that they can get away with.
Your philosophy does not allow for the control of those people. Your philosophy is based on the naive, practically infantile idea that nobody would intentionally harm another for profit. It is as laughable as the admiration you have for the monied, whose fortunes are quite often built on somebody (them or an ancestor) getting away with the brutal exploitation and robbery of other human beings and making a fortune in the process.
@Malisha: Unless I got you wrong again.
I certainly might have got you wrong, I am not infallible; but it sure looked to me like you were trying to hijack this thread to replace the old Z-M thread, because you aren’t done talking about it.
I have seen that sort of selfishness before, somebody is upset that posters have moved on from a thread they liked, and aren’t responding to them, and so they decide to try and make a new thread into their old thread because they aren’t done pontificating. I think that behavior is rude and selfish, it is like butting into a conversation between a few people at a party and trying to take it over with a new topic. It fits my definition: Screw what they want to talk about, I want people to talk about MY topic!
This thread has nothing to do with Z-M. We are still subscribed to that thread and get the posts. Speaking for myself (and perhaps some others) I think there is nothing more to say until something really new develops that establishes something definitive, and I expect Turley (or one of his guest posters) will begin a new thread if that happens.
To bold something, use HTML code. If you remove the underscores from the following, the code to start bolding is and the code to stop bolding is . So three characters to start, four characters to end. Italicization is the same way; but ‘i’ instead of ‘b’. They can be nested.
Here, try and reproduce this line: Fuck you, Tony, you supercilious bastard!
Oops, that didn’t come out. The tags are the greater than sign and less than sign, the two angled brackets. So let us try { and } for those, and see if they work. {b} starts bolding {/b} stops bolding…
Okay good, replace the { and } with the less than and greater than sign respectively; shift comma and shift period. Give it a shot!
Tony C:
“Your philosophy does not allow for the control of those people. Your philosophy is based on the naive, practically infantile idea that nobody would intentionally harm another for profit. It is as laughable as the admiration you have for the monied, whose fortunes are quite often built on somebody (them or an ancestor) getting away with the brutal exploitation and robbery of other human beings and making a fortune in the process.”
People harm people for profit all the time, that is why we have laws and why we need government. The laws protect people like me from predators like you and Gene. Predators who dont eat what they kill but redistribute to the tribe for their own selfish motives. All the while claiming they are selfless and somehow morally superior because they dont eat what they kill.
It is infantile of you to think I am not aware that people will not always act in their self interest and sometimes screw the other guy. The best deals however are those where everyone walks away thinking they did well. Because then people will want to keep doing business with you and that is good for the bottom line. That is what we in the Objectivist community call rational self interest.
You think Madoff was selfish? He wasnt rationally selfish, he is spending the last years of his life in prison, one son is dead, his wife and other son are pariahs in society. He was living a lie. See the difference Dr. C?
“The laws protect people like me from predators like you and Gene. Predators who dont eat what they kill but redistribute to the tribe for their own selfish motives.”
Bron,
Seriously? I think this statement is more than a tad hyperbolic. Why is it that whenever you find an objectivist mate to hook up with on a thread, like Skippy,
your rhetoric increasingly turns to hyperbole as the thread continues? Any rational reading of all that both Gene and Tony have written about politics & economics easily shows that neither is a partisan of any particular position,
rather they come at the issues pragmatically, based on their own conceptions of the world around them. Each in his own way presents their own original perceptions, without regard to the adoption of partisan lines. To wit in the context of the original article they are most definitely not political purists.
Now Bron, most times though we disagree on much, I would admit that you too bring your own unique conceptions to your political/economic theories.
That changes though when on a thread you find a cohort that presents the objectivist viewpoint. When you find such a soul-mate then you become a party line purist. Why is that?
@Bron: Because then people will want to keep doing business with you and that is good for the bottom line.
That is the irrational part, believing in that infantile view of commerce as if everybody NEEDS repeat business. The vast majority of transactions are one-shot transactions, and the reason the current system is failing is precisely because of that.
For example, how many times must you be denied life-saving medical care, despite your insurance? ONCE. Then despite paying a lifetime of premiums, when the time comes for them to pay up, and they refuse, what is your recourse? You have cancer and six months to live without somebody paying for care, the insurance company knows that, and they are the “fox” among the chickens because they can wait out and delay any lawsuit until you are dead, and the fact that you do not have money (which is why you needed the insurance) means you cannot fight their court tactics.
Car dealerships, TV dealerships, home builders, and on and on, people use them so infrequently their business model is not really dependent on repeat business, and to forestall the next argument, they do not really worry about word of mouth too much either, it is far overrated. A hospital treating your heart attack or car accident trauma is not depending on your repeat business, that is why they can charge you $30,000 a night with impunity.
The laws protect people like me from predators like you and Gene.
The laws protect all of us from predators, including the predators that can sell you something indirectly and hide their identity so you cannot ever pin the blame on anybody. In your system, that can happen all the time, and nobody would be protected. That is what the FDA is for, the SEC is for, the FAA is for, the EPA is for, and on and on. All are in response to predators getting away with harming and killing people for profit.
Your idiotic solution is “contracts” that will not work, and obviously so. If you want proof, look at the standard Software contract (or license agreement): Absolutely no liability for the seller anywhere, of any kind, ever, and you will not find software liability on any consumer software.
That is what you get when liability is left up to vendors: In their own self interest, they protect themselves and absolutely everything is at your own risk. As part of protecting themselves, they also will not disclose a damn thing about how they produced their product, what chemicals or compounds were used, whether they were carcinogenic, or anything else. If you think the market will produce testing: Where are the testers for software? If they also prohibit any liability for their test results (e.g. “You rely on our test results at your own risk”), how do we know they aren’t lying or corrupt or paid off by vendors? Who tests Consumer reports? Who tests the guys that test Consumer Reports?
What is infantile about your approach is your belief that liability cannot be hidden and can always be traced, and your belief that responsibility will be voluntarily accepted.
The opposite is true in both cases, when people act in their selfish best interest they will conceal as much as possible to make it difficult to pin responsibility on them, and in contracts if they are allowed they will make all deals liability free on both sides, just like the standard software license.
That is fine under your system, and the result is not the kind of freedom citizens want, because it is just the freedom of the ruthless to prey on the desperate without reprisal, the freedom of the strong to subjugate the weak, and the freedom of the rich to exploit the poor.
Of course that is the other infantile thing about your ideology, you see yourself as the hero in that environment when you would be the victim, just as you see yourself in your fantasy battles as killing the bad guys when the bad guys would be killing you, as the defender of your castle when they would be raping your wife and children. The irrational thing is you think you would do better if the criminals were less constrained, when history proves you do worse.
As for “fuck my victims” Madoff: For a man without empathy or shame, what is irrational about spending 30 young years living like rich royalty on a billion stolen dollars in exchange for probably less than five years as an old man in prison?
Gene stated: “Skip, If you want to live under the rule of aristocracy (which is what an oligarchy is) you be my guest. No man is my master. They may be my representative, but in a democracy, they work for me – not the other way around. So much for all of your talk about freedom. In the end, with Libertarians, that’s all it is: talk without substance or understanding of the meaning of the word. And what Tony said”.
I feel like we’ve almost gone full circle. I don’t know why your would say I want to live under a fascist oligrachy, when I’ve been the one speaking out against a fascist oligrachy since the beginning of this blog?
I will make an assumption that you believe that a democracy or more specifically, a democratic republic is the only entity capable of usurping the powers of a fascist oligrachy. Since we both want to do the same thing, it is really a matter of how to “get er done”.
As an example, the American consititutional republic with even a bill of rights has failed to protect private property rights and limit government powers. Further evidence of this, is if you take the production of the military industrial complex and war out of the equation, our total cost of government as a percentage of GDP puts us into bankrupcy and just printing more money, over the long term just exascerbates the imbalance.
Hense, another democracy has failed to achieve success at dismantling the power of the ruling elites.
I have been saying that government itself is a tool of the oligarchy to achieve additional powers. I think it was one of the Supreme Court Justices who said, the “Power to Tax is the Power to Distroy”.
So what you and I have been squabbling over is really, as the Harvard economist Howard Schwartz once said to me “what are the ligitimate functions of government”.
In a nut shell, the common thought is a Justice/penal system, defence/police, education, infrastrure and helping the less fortunate who cannot care for themselves.
My contention is that if you give government this much power, that you will not be able to negate/curtail it’s growth over the long period and that no society that I’m aware of, has done so. Eventually they collapse from their own excessive governement spending.
I keep looking for a solution, sadly from my observations and study, government doesn’t appear to be a viable part of the equation. The reasons why are multi page analysis, in of itself, so I will not detail them here. The question really is to you, how do we limit government?
If you are able to do this and more importanly tell everyone how to specifically implementand and enforce it, you will be the new Jesus Christ Superstar, overshadowing the valient efforts of our founding fathers.
Tony you state so many things that are finite and incorrect. Such as your first two sentences. A home builder may not require repeat customers but a hardware or grocery store does. When your premises are wrong, you conclusions are going to follow suit.
You sue the insurance company. At least you are finally acknowleging that the system we have now is really screwed up.
“Since we both want to do the same thing, it is really a matter of how to “get er done”
Skippy,
That isn’t quite true. Anarcho-Capitalism doesn’t eliminate Fascism, it leads to it inevitably and nothing you’ve presented contradicts that. Your system ends basically in the proposition that whoever has the most guns/power wins. Even if you are personally pacifistic in nature the sociopaths/psychopaths making up society will always push themselves towards the top. Anarcho-Capitalism only facilitates their rise.
“Hense, another democracy has failed to achieve success at dismantling the power of the ruling elites.”
While you may be as well read as you say you are, your comprehension skills are lacking. Nowhere in humanity’s history has there ever been any society not ruled by an oligarchy/dictator. This was true in Athens and it is true in the U.S. since its birth. The difference always has to be measured in degree. The US is provably a better systems than Athens, but it is highly imperfect. Your problem is that your solution is provably unable to mitigate against that and in fact guarantees it. Like Rand you postulate a non viable Utopia and deem it the solution.
@hskiprob: A home builder may not require repeat customers but a hardware or grocery store does.
The fact that you admit businesses exist that do not require repeat business is all the evidence we need to show that any “invisible hand” regulation relying upon the mechanism of repeat business is fatally flawed.
As for grocers, if NO grocer will sign a contract making them liable for food poisoning, carcinogens, or any other unsafe condition of the food they sell, then what? People will still frequent the grocer because they have to EAT.
A grocer that guarantees their food might get more business, but two things would prevent that: First, it would cost the grocer more to inspect the food, test the food, and to discard unclean food, so the grocer would only be catering to the rich that do not CARE how much their food costs, and second, bad food can kill, and any lawsuit against the grocer could easily undo many years worth of added profit. So they won’t accept liability voluntarily, it just isn’t worth the risk.
So we have grocers that refuse liability, and customers forced to accept that in order to keep eating, or grow their own food (then you have the same lack of liability situation with pesticides, fertilizers, seeds, preservatives, etc).
Liability must be based in the law. By making ALL grocers reasonably liable for the safety of their food, they all have the same overhead and it is still a level playing field, but consumes are protected. The grocers can all pass on the cost of ensuring safety, and there are punishments if they try to cut costs by cutting corners on safety and endangering their customers.
And the law can specify legal guidelines that limit liability. If they have met reasonable health inspection standards for cleanliness, procedures, temperatures, pest control, disinfected surfaces and so on, the law can reject suits against them as baseless without further proof of negligence.
In short, the free market fails when it comes to liability, whether it is one-time transactions or repeated transactions. With repeated transactions, withholding your repeat business does you no good if the vendor’s endangerment of you kills you or your kid or your elderly grandparent. When it comes to liability, the free market fails, it is NEVER in anybody’s best interest to accept responsibility for liability if the liability can exceed the profit from the transaction.
The solution to free market failures is to make liability the LAW, so it is inescapable. Then vendors work on a level playing field; when product liability claims cannot be escaped by contractual agreement, they must all do the work to minimize their liability claims, and that means fewer product failures and that means this system protects consumers, even if it costs them more (due to safety costs being figured into the product price).
Underwriters Laboratory, a private company founded many years ago tests most products when public safety is a concern. I think most products must be UL labeled to be sold in the US. That’s why no one really worries about their lamps catching on fire anymore.
Tony, have you ever seen or read about what a group of homeowners, either pre or post construction, can do the the builder/developer when they are unhappy with either quality and/or price?????
You don’t believe that people will hire the better doctor or dentist as the community gains more knowledge of his capabilites, quality of service and experience??? Do people generally trust the older more experienced doctor rather than the young wet behinds the ears doctor???
In our area, even hospitals are noted by there reputation. There is even a rating system for them.
@hskiprob: I think most products must be UL labeled to be sold in the US.
That is a LAW, dummy, it is not an OPTION.
That is your opinion Mike that many people disagree with and that you have provided no “facts” to support. Like Tony and his inability to understand the invisable hand of the market, you are perhaps not taking into considerations something that you have not considered as your opinion is highly and extensively disputed.
The problem is, I cannot know what you don’t know or should I just assume that you know everything.
http://www.cracked.com/video_18426_ayn-rand-5Bplaceholder5D.html
The true story!
Mike stated “Since we both want to do the same thing, it is really a matter of how to “get er done” Skippy, That isn’t quite true. Anarcho-Capitalism doesn’t eliminate Fascism, it leads to it inevitably and nothing you’ve presented contradicts that. Your system ends basically in the proposition that whoever has the most guns/power wins. Even if you are personally pacifistic in nature the sociopaths/psychopaths making up society will always push themselves towards the top. Anarcho-Capitalism only facilitates their rise.
Funny; It seams like you could just as easily be discribing a democratic republic and your inability to present contradictory facts. Back at yea.
From a poll:
What is the single most important problem facing America?
The Existence of The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States – our central bank 12.12% (4 votes)
The Existence of Fiat Currency – Federal Reserve Notes 9.09% (3 votes)
The Existence of a High Progessive or Graduated Income Tax – Federal and State Income Taxes 3.03% (1 votes)
The Existence of Public Education – Free Education controlled by Government 3.03% (1 votes)
Centralization of the means of communication and transportation in the hands of the Federal Government – FCC and DOT 0% (0 votes)
None of the Above 12.12% (4 votes)
All of the Above 60.61% (20 votes)
I used the platforms of the communist manifesto as the basic questions except for the fiat currency question.
“That is your opinion Mike that many people disagree with and that you have provided no “facts” to support. Like Tony and his inability to understand the invisable hand of the market, you are perhaps not taking into considerations something that you have not considered as your opinion is highly and extensively disputed.”
The problem is, I cannot know what you don’t know or should I just assume that you know everything.”
Skip,
You have been the one stating mere opinions here, in addition to providing various false intimations like “The US “nationalizing” companies, that I’ve proven false. While Tony and Gene have done the yeoman work of logically and factually showing your assertions to be laughably Utopian in content, I’ve also done the same to a lesser degree.
As far as my knowing everything, I’ve learned as I’ve aged that I was beginning on the path to wisdom when I realized I didn’t know everything, from your comments here, I see that you haven’t and may never reach that point of maturity.
From a poll::
Is Anarcho-Capitalism is a viable solution to government problems?: 1%
Was Ayn Rand full of shit”: 98%
Is selfishness a virtue?: 5%
Does Skip lie in defense of his positions? 99%
Does Skip provide facts instead of assertions?: 1%
Hint: My poll wasn’t done at the bar with my cronies after a “tough” round of golf.
The narrow mind, awash in the certainty of false belief, is unable to ascertain the difference between fact and fiction. It inevitably chooses comforting fiction, while in denial of actual fact. The denial is akin to intellectual blindness.
Supporting documentation: http://jonathanturley.org/2012/01/21/the-authoritarians-a-book-review-and-book/
@hskiprob: I have seen homeowners screwed by developer that had already gutted his temporary corporation of all profits, and left the homeowners hanging. Is that what you are talking about?
The question is NOT whether an individual dentist or decorator or restaurant can gain a good reputation or not, you make the mistake of thinking that if your philosophy can work in just ONE hypothetical instance it must work in ALL cases.
This is not about that; this is about what will plausibly work in the vast majority of cases, what will minimize the harm done to others. Nothing will eliminate it. The fact is I understand the “invisible hand” just perfectly, and the logic is wrong, and it doesn’t work. The free market fails, in particular it fails on the liability issue, in particular it fails when people do not have the time or information needed to choose (like when they are bleeding to death, or must choose a path when no information is available). In particular it fails when competition does not appear because their share of the resultant market would not cover their costs. In particular it fails when people’s external circumstances, like responsibility to an extended family or a support network of friends or a spouse’s job or the savings they have from living in an inherited home or their desire to remain close to their doctor that has been treating them prevents them from making market choices like moving elsewhere to seek better employment.
I do not deny the free market can work in many circumstances, perhaps even most circumstances. But the free market can also fail, and in failing cause grievous harm and hardship and effectively cause all the ills of complete subjugation, and the only way to correct those failures is through law and law enforcement that prevents those ills.
Mike Spindell:
I dont agree with skiprob on every one of his ideas, I think his anarcho-capitalism is not right. There are also things like free market courts I dont agree with him about, I think that is a terrible idea. Also free market police and especially a mercenary army; that is truly a bad idea.
I should say, I do not deny that free market principles can work, such as a consumer’s liberty to choose among vendors that compete on various combinations of price, quality, service, and rarity, or salary, benefits, hours, and safety. However, the competition is always in response to the consumer’s choices, and market failures occur when the consumer choice becomes limited or is eliminated. If there is only one place to work in town, the market allows that place to be draconian. If the “consumer” of emergency care is going to die without it, the price can be everything the consumer owns. If no grocer, distributor, or farmer is ever willing to accept liability for the food they sell and demands specifically to be released from all liability, the consumer has no choice but to take their chances (or buy enough land and spend enough time to grow their own food).
What works to drive competition is consumer choice, but in reality choice is often very limited or just non-existent, and in those cases what protects the consumer from predation is the laws that prevent predation.
Mike Spindell:
I am sort of curious as to how skiprob is an authoritarian seeing as how he is a libertarian and further seeing as how libertarians dont allow for the initiation of force against others.
I am further confused by the fact that you can have socialism in a capitalist system but you cant have capitalism in a socialist system unless forced to like they do in China.
The authoritarians are far more prevalent on the left than on the right. Fundamentalist Christians dont count, we dont claim them and wish they would go away.
But I do admit to having a narrow mind when it comes to economics, that socialism shit just doesnt work and China had to accept capitalism to prosper.
@Bron: Capitalism within socialism works just fine; look at Sweden. Your claim that socialism just doesn’t work is bullshit, it is working fine in many parts of the world.
Pure communism has been pretty much a failure, that was what China was doing, but pure communism does not let individuals pursue prosperity and get ahead by working and producing value, pure communism does not reward people for developing their talents through practice and sacrifice. Socialism allows for those things, and that is why it can succeed (and has) where pure communism does not.
Socialism is not mutually exclusive with capitalism in the least, in fact socialism has been proven to increase and complement capitalism.
“I am sort of curious as to how skiprob is an authoritarian seeing as how he is a libertarian and further seeing as how libertarians dont allow for the initiation of force against others.”
Bron,
An authoritarian is someone who adheres to the preaching of given authority with religious zealotry and are unable to see any other possibilities. It is defined not by ones beliefs on the political spectrum, but by their denial that theirs is not the only way. This has been the point of much of what I have blogged about here and the thrust of a large percentage of my comments. You will note that from my writings I have been just as critical of Leftist partisans, as I have of those on the Right. You might also remember, because I have written about it a lot in comments, that I had a great deal of experience with both Communists and Socialists in the 60′s. Perhaps too you might remember that I opposed them politically. I understand them far more than either you or Skip do because of actually knowing them and because they tried (but failed) to recruit me.
When you and Skip see Socialism, Communism and Marxism as all being the same you miss the boat historically and realistically. As has been pointed out by both Tony and Gene there is a continuum. Socialism, of the non-Marxist variety, can and does exist harmoniously in many countries where the citizens are very happy. However, I’m not certain that such things as universal healthcare are strictly socialist and as such antithetical to free enterprise. Health Care is one area where this is particularly true. Medicare has a three percent administrative cost, versus private insurance which has at least a 15% admin cost. Medicare works more efficiently and better than private health insurance at 20% of the cost of private insurance. However, the thing often missed by the Corporate elite in the US is that if Healthcare were Universal, business would be relieved of significant expenditures. This would lead to greater profits and a better ability to compete in other markets.
I worked in government on the executive level as a Budget Director, Agency Chief Contracting Officer, Director of Administration and as Deputy Director of Fiscal Integrity. Compared to the private sector, in many measurable ways, we worked much cheaper and with greater efficiency. I know this because I’ve had may friends who were quite successful in the private sector and through the years we’ve compared notes. In the end though, as I’ve stated many times, I’m not into any “Isms”, except for Pragmatism as a means to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to maximize their potential in life.
“Pure communism has been pretty much a failure, that was what China was doing, but pure communism does not let individuals pursue prosperity and get ahead by working and producing value, pure communism does not reward people for developing their talents through practice and sacrifice.”
Pure Communism is and has always been Utopian bullshit. It has been a vehicle for sociopaths like Lenin, Stalin and Mao to seize power and rule oppressively. The same is true though for Objectivism and what is presented
as Libertarianism, not to fail to mention Fascism. These are all philosophies that Authoritarians are drawn to despite their protestations. Authoritarians are drawn to philosophies like this because they are looking for simple solutions to deal with the complexities of humanity’s social interactions. The same is true for those who are doctrinaire religionists
As I’ve quoted before from Julius Caesar “The fault dear Brutus is not in the stars, but in ourselves”. No “Ism” will cure society of its’ ills, but “Isms” will continue to allow Sociopaths and Psychopaths to control weak minded people with absolutist approaches.
Tony Stated: What works to drive competition is consumer choice, but in reality choice is often very limited or just non-existent, and in those cases what protects the consumer from predation is the laws that prevent predation.
In communist countires that would be generally true but in free market societies that is generally false. The greater the resrtictions (taxation and Regulations) generally the less competition. Remember I’m including the costs of things such as permiting, costs of inspections, fines etc. as part of taxation as a general term. Is a fishing license taxations?Yes. I’m having a hard time coming up with a product or service where as a consumer, I felt as if I’m being victimized and the only one I can think of is FP&L, our government granted utility monopoly or where I’m currenlty living, where the rates are even higher, the Lake Worth Utility.
@Mike: That was me talking about pure communism; as opposed to the forms of socialism that DO preserve a merit-based reward system, for those willing to work harder, invent, create, take risks, etc.
Sweden is a good example of that because they provide for the basics of life through socialism funded by income taxes, but have a market-based economy for everything else. You can still start a company, work hard, get rich, hire servants, live in a big house, own a lot of land, etc. There is no cap on income, or net worth. They have far more entrepreneurs per capita than America, a more educated populace than America, better health care, unemployment and care for the poor than America.
@skip: but in free market societies that is generally false.
No, it isn’t. That is a lie.
Mike stated: Socialism, of the non-Marxist variety, can and does exist harmoniously in many countries where the citizens are very happy.”
You must be defining harmony, as people who are not yet shooting one another in the Streets. Or you must be talking about places like Andora, which is one of the most free market places on the planet and very expensive to live.
Where are you talking about? Because if you give me a country, I will send you tons of news to the contrary.
Tony,give me an example or two. Where and When? If monopolies exist for any length of time, they are always government granted, like the US Post Office or Florida Power and Light. Perhaps in a few situation which are short term migratory situations such as the mining towns of the old west, you might get a one store town where the store owner surely had an economic advantage. Of course he had to pay a pretty penny to ship in supplies. No one says that free markets are perfect ther just way better than any form of fascism, which is what almostall countries eventually turn out until the collpse.
@hskiprob: Because if you give me a country, I will send you tons of news to the contrary.
Your cherry picking is not evidence and not welcome. However, for a scientific approach, I suggest you Google the Gallup World Happiness report, which ranks countries in the world by how happy their citizens are. The top 11, in order, are:
Denmark, Finland, Norway, Netherlands, Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, USA.
I will leave it to you to figure out whether the more socialist countries in the world are more “harmonious” than the USA. And just for good measure, the least happy countries in the world are also about the most unregulated markets imaginable.
@hskiprob: give me an example or two.
Why should I have to prove my claims when you just make bullshit claims without any justification or proof or examples at all?
Unregulated markets allow companies to compete by any means necessary. The first rule of business becomes making sure competition never gets a foothold; and that is done by forcing startups out of business through entirely unfair means. Like bribing suppliers to refuse them service, selling at beneath their cost in order to starve them out of business (and then recovering the cost of that by returning to monopolistic pricing), false advertising about new competition, purposely opening up a money-losing competitive site next to them, and so on.
Monopoly is the natural outcome of business competition; the objective of competition is to put one’s competitors out of business, and sooner or later somebody screws up, or a fire occurs, and a business is lost. Unregulated business gets dominated by the strongest player, even if they have to buy up competition, or collude to set prices with their competition and, like mafia families, define a territorial truce of non-competition so they have an effective monopoly within an area.
We prohibit many of those tactics by law precisely because they worked, in the past, to extort money from consumers and prevent actual competition.
An economy riddled with non-competition and monopolies is the natural state of an unregulated market; we have been there and done that, there was a good reason for Teddy Roosevelt’s trust busting circa 1900, in the far more unregulated markets of that time, monopolies and collusion to fix prices was rampant, and Roosevelt’s efforts were applauded by the vast majority of Americans suffering sky high prices (in terms of hours of labor worked) because of it.
The people of 1900 were not buying your snake oil, and the people of 2012 want it even less.
Skip,
When somebody uses the word “dude” while addressing somebody else that means they’re mentally deficient and not worth listening to. You’re the one who should leave. I don’t like writing responses to you except to tell you what you are.
Skip,
Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either [aristocracy or monarchy]. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” – John Adams
Remember when Ben Franklin was asked by a women what kind of government did you give us. I believe he stated “A Republic my dear, if you can keep it.” A bill of rights was added for obvious reasons.
To bad we have not protected them.
I wonder if the term ignorance come from phrase “to ignor” —- Perhaps Gene you need a bit clearer understanding of just what a democracy really is. Remember this Cute little parable. Two foxes and a chicken deciding what’s for lunch. Maybe that we help you remember it.
===========================================
You’re the chicken.
Before I go into your highly scientific happiness index report, take a look at this.
Interestingly, the report references a statement by the late Senator William Proxmire, Democrat of Wisconsin, from 1969 about the revolving door of the military-industrial complex:
The easy movement of high ranking military officers into jobs with major defense contractors and the reverse movement of top executives in major defense contractors into high Pentagon jobs is solid evidence of the military industrial-complex in operation. It is a real threat to the public interest because it increases the chances of abuse . . . How hard a bargain will officers involved in procurement planning or specifications drive when they are one or two years from retirement and have the example to look at of over 2,000 fellow officers doing well on the outside after retirement?
In forty years, the problem has of course not gone away. The author of the CIP report notes that there are scores of former government officials working in the nuclear weapons lobby, providing it with special access to the government that it otherwise would not have. The report uses the following table to demonstrate this:
“A bill of rights was added for obvious reasons.”
The bill of rights = the first ten amendments to the Constitution.
Only at Amendment 13 was slavery abolished.
So we had a government that did not seem schizophrenic — including the bill of rights AND slavery within the same structure — for over 100 years. Does this say something about how authoritative Jefferson, Adams and Franklin’s pronouncements are in our society today?
Bron 1, June 10, 2012 at 5:25 pm
Tony C:
A fox would tear 99 chickens a new asshole and be well fed. That is why some government is necessary to protect the people from predators. But that doesnt mean you put the people in a small enclosure and have many guards running around.
But anyway humans arent chickens. Your analogy is telling. Comparing humans to chickens is a real tell into how you think about government. And what you think about people.
Rational chickens would kill the fox. Rational chickens dont need a farmer to protect them, they dont need a pen to keep them contained.
==================================================
You are contradicting yourself. How do 99 rational chickens kill the fox when the fox will tear them a new asshole and be very well fed? Do you want to be a rational chicken? Like Skippy.
Skip,
The report uses the following table to demonstrate this:
===========================================
Where’s the table?
@hskiprob: I am not interested in your analysis of the survey, you really are not competent to offer any opinion worth scientific spit.
I am not sure what you are trying to get me to look at; but if it were up to me, at some level of management people working for the government would no longer be permitted to work for private industry at all.
The only people allowed to manage more than 100 people or so would be required to sign lifetime contracts with the government as civil servants, and I would say to have at least 15 years of continuous service as a civil servant already under their belt.
This lifetime contract would ensure their pay at no less than that level, although it would not ensure their particular job, and it would ensure their retirement, pay and benefits. I believe there would be plenty of takers, most people in such positions are in it for the career anyway, and only such “lifers” would be permitted to negotiate any contract with a for-profit individual or firm.