Politics Dump

Politics and economics related. I'll just dump some of my stuff and see where it goes.

Other urls found in this thread:

newobserveronline.com/2017/08/us-white-birth-rate-boost-majority-of.html?m=1
archive.is/vMac7
cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/report002.pdf
file-upload.net/download-12575074/BookDumpPart1.rar.html
file-upload.net/download-12575107/BookDumpPart2.rar.html
texasobserver.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-freest-little-city-in-texas/
books.google.com/books?id=D4ZxhXwx19gC&pg=PA64&lpg=PA64&dq=free enterprise is a term in practice chomsky&source=bl&ots=XQgvnLmbBa&sig=iTEbwYvsqvKBVOrqFsFuHv301Qc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwik-a7H08_VAhXHyyYKHU6uCG0Q6AEIOjAG#v=onepage&q=free enterprise is a term in practice chomsky&f=false
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

And yes, this is from a libertarian/anarchocapitalist perspective.

...

...

...

lol butthurt

...

Not sure what's up with the two duplicate posts there. Must be a copypasta, but then why post a pic called "capitalism has failed"?

Actually, even if we assume that they are perfectly benevolent, communism cannot work. Calculation-problem, my friend. Look up Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, it's one of the most important economic essays ever written.

I don't think I ever heard that argument in my life. It's precisely because people listen to financial incentives that monopolies won't stay in business. If they're efficient, all is well. If they're inefficient, some other competitor will underbid them. This doesn't even have to be a competitor from the same branch. If the Coca Cola Company raised the price for a can of coke to ten dollars, it would be destroyed by the dairy industry.

COMMUNISM IS A BREAKDOWN SYSTEM TO TRY TO RESTART BASIC ASTROLOGY , LEARN TO /fringe/ AND REMEMBER THE ONLY FRIEND IS THE SAME ONLY DOER , THE DIVINE INFINITE UNITY , IS ALIVE AND A BEING BETTER THAN ANY OTHER , OUR ONLY FRIEND , Θε Δελτα-Διφινιτυ , .

THE HINDU ARE SPIRITUALISTS THAT ARE VERY IMPORTANT IN KEEPING THE BIG BANG ELECTRICAL STORM ELECTRICITY FROM KILLING US ALL , THE STORM STRUCK ALREADY , THE PLANET IS MAGNETIC WITH ELECTRICITY AND ABLE TO KILL PEOPLE , THEY HELP GUIDE PEOPLE FROM HARM , AND ELECTRICITY SHOULD BE FREE AT THIS RATE OF DAMAGE , EVERYONE IS CHANNELING THAT MUCH ELECTRICITY , THOUGHTS ARE NOT EASY TO FORM , !

φρεε ινφορματιον , θανΧσ βε το ουρ ονλυ φριενΔ , Θε Δελτα-Διφινιτυ , .

Keep practicing, OP

texasobserver.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-freest-little-city-in-texas/

I agree. Most of the good stuff he said was taken from guys like David Friedman and Murray Rothbard, decades before he said it. And Molyneux often dumbed their arguments down.

It is a good argument, one that's easy to avoid, but it still carries weight. If you're worried about gun violence, then it doesn't make much sense to put all the guns into the hands of the government. We've seen time and time again how that turned out.

I've seen far worse from Molyneux. He once talked for two or three pages about how stupid it is that statists say homicide is okay if you wear a uniform when you commit it. Which isn't what any statist in the history of mankind ever said. That was in Universally Preferable Behavior, which is a mess anyway.

We had a thread about that on >>>/liberty/62446

...

No counter-arguments against this: ?

You should try posting one at a time, autist.

Eh, I mostly agree, but the idea that our pistols and assault weapons would do much against a US government gone rogue is a little naive. 40% of the world's military budget and the entire US military vs. the citizens and our guns? My money would be on the most powerful military on the planet.

Chomsky = reality
Rothbard = excessively ideological bullshit

Chomsky tends to be a bit cynical and defeatist, and anyone who believes in laissez-faire capitalism needs to get their head out of the clouds. Libertarians tend to fit into 2 main categories: quixotic individuals who basically think like any other ideologue, and greedy bastards who lack empathy–Mises on one hand and the Koch brothers on the other

except literally the opposite

K

that quote in the pic is taken entirely out of context. he was obviously referring to the "free enterprise" of the status quo as it currently is, and the politicians and big businesses who have a vested interest in keeping it like it is. his counterarguments to the quotes you posted would look different one could imagine

if he doesn't mean free enterprise, he shouldn't say free enterprise

I really would have thought a linguist like him would understand how language works

Not the user you're responding to, but Free Enterprise is a construct, and I don't think it's unwise to call Free Enterprise what it IS (or tends to be), rather than what one WANTS it to be.

it's not free enterprise if it's not free

Freedom doesn't exist. Checkmate

"in practice" is the operative word there. heres the context of the pages in the book where the quote comes from
books.google.com/books?id=D4ZxhXwx19gC&pg=PA64&lpg=PA64&dq=free enterprise is a term in practice chomsky&source=bl&ots=XQgvnLmbBa&sig=iTEbwYvsqvKBVOrqFsFuHv301Qc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwik-a7H08_VAhXHyyYKHU6uCG0Q6AEIOjAG#v=onepage&q=free enterprise is a term in practice chomsky&f=false

You communists are really fucking dumb tbh. How can you possibly believe in personal property but no private property??? They are often very interchangeable and in fact, private property can almost always cancel personal property out. How can you possibly say you own your own labor (on say a farm, factory, shop, etc) when you don't own them in themselves? What's stopping from people treading on "your" farm and taking the product of your production away from you? How can you distinguish crops from private property when they are connected in the plot of land? Furthermore, how can you say a house is "personal property" when it is on a plot of land (which is considered private property)?

2nd pic

and besides, wouldn't the house only be "personal property" as far as is absolutely necessary for living?

like if you had a spare bedroom, would that not be a means of production since you can rent it out?

Pic related. The government still has to rely on infantry, it cannot just bring out the tanks and fighter planes and do everything it wants to do with them. Generals and politicians have to expose themselves eventually, and infantry is required to actually hold territories. And so on.

In itself, that isn't an argument. It's contingent on whether the libertarians are correct with their arguments or not. I don't see how anyone can doubt this to be the case after carefully studying libertarian economists like Mises or Hayek. Even if one doesn't agree with them, their arguments are not easy to refute, much less conclusively. With anarchocapitalism, I can see why people would be skeptical. It has never been really tried, after all, and it runs counter to the common myth that the state is what keeps society together. Even then, I think it's telling that every single skeptic I ever talked to was running on standard narratives and "common knowledge" when refuting it. Not a single one ever referenced criminological research and theories. No one even named a key concept in criminology, if I recall correctly.

Weak, user. Just weak.

This.

Thank, Captain Obvious.

Because it is based on abstract, overly-ideological concepts that exist in the imagination… and stay there.

As for the giant wall of text: based on what I gathered from skimming it, it seems fairly reasonable. It highlights why the scenario is utterly ridiculous, and why hysterical republicans are morons. People who spend time thinking about these scenarios should be gassed.

Then why not cut to the chase?

That's the same as saying they're wrong. It's something you have to prove. Mathematics is also something that's abstract, the scientific method is abstract, hell, logic is abstract. Yet obviously, they can all be applied to reality.

No, it's the same as saying that human behavior is complex and relatively unpredictable, and it's not something that can be broken down in some grand, mathematical proof. The logic of an economist might be sound, but it's very relative, given the intangibles that arise from human behavior. There are many different ways to live, and if everyone could agree on one, unadulterated ideology, then it would certainly make life a lot easier–unfortunately, that's not the case, and you can take your pick of examples from history.

Perhaps we can both agree that democracy is a joke in the U.S., and that we need to remove as much money from the political system as possible; however, unlike most libertarians, I don't believe in chucking the vast majority of the government simply because it isn't perfect. Leaving people to their own devices and to mostly work things out amongst themselves is not the answer–people tend to look for ways of exploiting any system, and there's no reason to think the magic of The Free Market™ would just resolve everything.

There's a reason why we live in a society that favors government, and it's not because privatizing everything is optimal, nor feasible. At the same time, people need to realize that we're essentially living in a plutocracy right now.

But what if the "monarch" is a modern-day Crassus, whose wealth amounted to very nearly half of the estimated GDP of the entire Roman empire; which would be comparable to a modern American with a net worth of $9 trillion (roughly 100 times more than Bill Gates or about 20% more than all 2,043 of the world's billionaires combined)?

...

Real capitalism has never been tried!

top kek

That it's complex and unpredictable doesn't mean it does not follow a logic. Every action follows the rules of praxeology, anything else would be inconceivable. Along with certain psychological assumptions, mostly trivial ones, this allows us to know which economic systems work and which don't. If you took your own premise serious, you would not say that laissez-faire capitalism does not work, you would say that you cannot know if it works.

Exactly what I mean. You yourself agree that human behavior follows certain rules, otherwise you wouldn't make this statement.

I never said that the free market solves everything. No prominent anarchocapitalist ever did, to my knowledge.

People have kept around the practice of human sacrifice for thousands of years. There were reasons for that, sure, but it doesn't mean those reasons were actually sensible.

I'd rather call it an ochlocracy. Political decisions are made by demagogues who appeal to the lowest common denominator, and right now, this denominator is very low indeed. Even our leaders aren't far removed from this.

Then obviously, Rothbards argumentation doesn't apply, and he actually can evict people from his legitimately acquired property. Whether he can evict them all the way to the ocean, that's debatable. My answer would be no, and many ancaps (especially those not in the Rothbardian tradition, like utilitarians and intuitionists) would agree with me. But that he can, as a general thing, do with his property as he wants, that's something no ancap will dispute.

That he acquired his property legitimately makes all the difference. The end result may look the same as if he stole it, but only if we pretend that the people who gave him their money and land acquired nothing in return. That isn't the case, however. They're better off than they were before the trade.

Commies even steal your arguments, kek.

More like all ideologies are skub and it's impossible to form a lasting government that isn't just another flavor of the same oppression.

No one's free from ideology. Look up the origins of this cherished idea of democracy. It was "pure" ideology, as some would say, yet I don't see this charge levelled against it. Why not?

Well, fact aside that we don't need a government: Not all governments are equal. The US government nowadays is more oppressive than it was two hundred years ago, communist regimes are more oppressive than fascist ones, regimes in South East Asia more oppressive than those in South America, and so on. This kind of defeatism is unwarranted.

See: "The logic of an economist might be sound"
Oh look, more psudoscience. Karl Marx thought he understood human behavior too.

I would say it's unrealistic to think it's even possible

It's why I said it was RELATIVELY unpredictable. And yes, the Will to power is the one thing we can always rely on being consistent–it's also why most ideologies fail in their pure form.

This is essentially what an anarchocapitalist believes–not that the Free Market would be perfect, but that because of competition (etc. etc.) it would resolve itself.

Yes, we're constantly evolving and knowledge is provisional, I get it. But this is a really bad analogy, because you're comparing the effects of myth and supernatural beliefs to something that is very tangible. The Will to power is not going to change, and we're always going to have a hodge podge of institutions of control, along with the people who resist them. The most I'd be willing to concede is that abolishing government would leave us with the same shit, different toilet.

But honestly, you end up rendering yourself ineffectual when you refuse to compromise and deal with reality. These things are a fun mental exercise, but it's mostly pointless to debate the actual feasibility of an anarchist way of life, given that we're lightyears from it.

Perhaps someday we'll be noble enough creatures to be able to cooperate with each other on such an efficient level, but I can't foresee that happening anytime soon.

IN-FUCKIN-DEED!

Politics don't exist. I'm just a hero on a motherfucking journey.

...

...

You're cleanly contradicting yourself. If your logic is sound, but yields only results that must be relativized when they are supposed to be absolutely true, then your logic cannot be sound.

Should be easy for you to refute it, then. We can start with the action-axiom, if you want. Prove to me that human beings don't act.

Another contradiction. Based on what you said before, you cannot say that.

Okay, so basically, you're afraid of commitment to any stance that isn't vague as hell. But that aside, mind explaining how the "Will to power" is going to change the fact that capitalism works best?
So we're back to the old and tired warlords-argument, and to pretending that under a government, sociopaths somehow stop existing instead of seizing control of said government and the thousands of taxpayer-sponsored nukes under its command?

No, we don't say that either. We fully acknowledge that a society with a free market can be shit if the people are shit, although we then add that under a state, this society would be even more crappy.

And you think that the ideas of democracy and of economic intervention are fully rational? There was no bias and no irrationality involved in getting them accepted?

The way you're constantly asserting this without giving any sound arguments makes me think that you're just opposed to radical ideas on principle. Your appeals to moderacy do nothing to invalidate anything I said.

That isn't plutocracy, it's ochlocracy. As I said, and as you didn't say.

Communism doesn't work because people are lazy

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear, because I think we're talking past each other. I was referring to economic theory when it's coupled with postulations about human behavior; in other words: on paper, it might be sound logic.

So, you think that stating the excruciatingly obvious bolsters the abstract, ideological assertions? The relative unpredictability and complexity of human behavior is essential regarding the efficacy of a system's implementation… but you can keep your head in the sand if you want.

Not sure what you're referring to, but obviously I'm only speculating here.

I'm telling you how thing are–you're telling me how you think things should be.

I'm not necessarily anti-capitalist, and the Will to power is the reason it exists in the first place.

So, we're pretending that we'd all get along under anarchocapitalism?

Yep, that's pretty much what your fantasy-land ideology amounts to.

Not at all. There's no such thing as a fully rational system of government, but we do our best to compromise on effective solutions to our problems–at the moment, that doesn't seem to be working out too well, but I'm trying to remain optimistic.

I haven't proven you wrong, but that would be impossible (take note). And my appeals have mainly been to basic psychology and sociology.

I was agreeing with what I greentexted.
Yeah, this isn't a completely nebulous term

On paper, it's sound logic, but it isn't informed by reality. Got that now. It doesn't apply, however. Sound economic theory is not just logical in the analytical sense, it has premises as its starting point that are undoubtedly true.

What we can deduce from the action-axiom becomes less and less obvious, even if the fact that humans act sounds trivial. That humans have a time-preference is a requirement of action, but it also explains the phenomenon of interest. That humans always act to remove the greatest felt uneasiness explains the phenomenon of diminishing marginal utility. That human beings act is, again, undeniably true. If your premise is founded in reality and your logic is sound, then your conclusions must be true.

Nope, we're admitting that we already don't get along, and that the state is helping us in not-getting-along. Under the modern, democratic state, bad people can elevate their ill intentions to the rank of a public policy.

Not any more so than plutocracy.

And what I'm saying is that those premises are in a constant state of flux, therefore, need to be perpetually adjusted; we just disagree on which system (or lackthereof) would be best equipped to handle it. A direct democracy is far from perfect, but I believe it's the best option in balancing the ebbs and flows.

The conclusions lie in the results, and the results in an exponentially evolving world are far from guaranteed.

I agree, and I've already addressed this.

Hmm mob rule or government by the wealthy…

I'll go with a government controlled by the wealthy