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I spent some time thinking about Libertarians, because I find it interesting in many ways. I have some criticism that I don't write to tell everyone how bad Libertarians are, but because I am curious about the answers, where I am wrong and where I am right.


So for actual freedom wouldn't it make sense to take care that everyone can have a life of a certain standard - get food, a place to live, healthcare, education for free (not something luxurious, just something)?
Wouldn't a minimal state be extremely bad for people that have "bad luck" (disabilities since birth)?
Wouldn't it cause companies to create/be dictatorships (look up on Foxconn, they have more employees than some states have citizens and completely control their lives)?
Wouldn't such a society destroy the free market, because of stuff like monopolies?
Wouldn't we have all the benefits of a Libertarian society already if people would actually care about stuff like what products they buy and why would people care more in a libertarian society?

That is where many libertarians disagree. 

Some say there should be no right to these things and call themselves libertarians.

Some say that a free market is the best way to deliver these things and call themselves libertarians.

The first group call the second "socialists."

Libertarians would say the free market was destroyed because you prevented monopolies from acting, through regulation, and that monopolies are the free market in action - freedom, allowing them to grow large.

They forget that government is also a monopoly, and they've created themselves a paradox. If government is a monopoly, and monopolies are only possible in a free market, then it follows that we have a free market.

This means one of the three assumptions are false; either the free market was never destroyed, and libs are wrong about us living in an unfree market; monopolies are not inevitable in a free market; or government is not a monopoly.

The real world supports the view that monopolies are inevitable in every market (this is one of a capitalist business' goals).
The real world supports the view that governments are a monopoly on region (one winner taking all in every war).
Therefore, the only conclusion logically possible is that we live in a free market, and the libs are incorrect on this point.

Speaking only for myself...


Some claim charity can take care of that. Personally I'm not entirely sure... Though just because you are disabled doesn't mean you can't contribute. Look at Steven Hawking.


Not counting the government (har har), can you name a monopoly that exists now that can't be destroyed by a free market? We had a few companies grab power temporarily, but that never lasts... (Microsoft, Kodak, Ford, heck, even Foxconn will die as soon as Africa opens up, or 3D printing at home becomes more widespread)


They wouldn't care any more or less than they do now. People still shop at Walmart, buy BP and Exxon gas, etc. I don't think this will change.

I don't know this for sure, and would willingly change my opinion based on evidence, but I think that was part of the point of the whole welfare movement post depression/ww2.

could this be something that people buy insurance for? I mean, we are already paying unemployment insurance, Though indirectly, since it comes out of our paychecks before we even see it.

Perhaps.  Solving this problem will require changing how people view the state and their own responsibility.  Right now, people say, "I pay taxes so the Government should take care of X.  I have done my part."  The key to making a stateless society work is to make people realize they are responsible to take care of the unlucky and stopping monopolies.  Nested counsels and open debate will make sure a failure to take responsibility is known.

It certainly could, although how does one insure against being born with disability before you are born? You'd have to rely on your parents for that, which...has room for failure.

Yes, I've thought of that. I was only specifically commenting on the employment part. I don't have an answer to the disability part (maybe now that we can detect disabilities from genetic scans and ultrasound soon after gestation, we can abort any fetuses that will be born with disabilities?)

I suppose that could work as long as someone can enforce responsibility of care on the people who make that decision. The parents could take out insurance themselves before conceiving, but without it being mandatory there are going to be instances where disabled people are born to parents who thought they could support the child (or couldn't accept abortion), and can't for the rest of the child's life. On top of this, "someone" has to enforce responsibility / accountability on the parents which goes against the grain of libertarianism.

Ultimately I think this problem boils down to lesser evils. How many people suffer if we leave disabled (or unemployed) people to their own hardships, and how many people suffer if we all chip in to help them suffer less. There is surely suffering in either case, but which is more? How do we quantify suffering and happiness? Have these things already been done?

I guess this leads back to changing perspectives from "Government took my taxes to pay to support X, so it's not my problem" issue. That's going to be hard, and a lot of people will get hurt obviously.

Could you elaborate on what you mean? I don't quite follow your premise. Who's changing perspective?

I mean right now people thing that since they are paying taxes, it's no longer their responsibility to do thinks like take care of disabled or poor people. If that goes away, people's perspective will have to change, and they will have to take more responsibility for helping others. I think that change would be very difficult, since people will continue to think those other people are not their problem.

Oh I see, yeah that change will be difficult.

I wonder, though...why do you think charity was abandoned in the first place, for something centralized?

I don't know. My guess is it was because of one of two reasons
1) it was not working well, so centralized option was put in place
2) someone wanted to score political points and started a small centralized option that eventually grew and overtook charities (the why should I give when government already pays issue)

Yeah point 2 would def be the balloon pressure once initiated.

Regarding point 1, I guess the political points would only have had weight if the charity version wasn't working very well. I don't think people would vote for something if they didn't see it actually happening around them.

This is very true, although I would still term the US as a relative capitalist state so socialism/communism themselves may not be responsible for extra poverty. You are trying to stop a war-like state with debate. It's like bringing a knife to a gunfight.


It's a public vouching system. You don't have to have your back rubbed by someone with a license, even now...get your friend to do it who "know's what they're doing".

oh, no I meant that legal or not, you could get someone to rub your back without the public vouch, and there's a small chance they're make it worse unless they know what they're doing. A license is just a higher standard of care. Anyone can bypass them, sure, and they're a huge pain the ass (fewer people able to perform the thing, higher cost to license, higher cost in hiring), but the whole purpose of licensing (as with any regulation) is to reduce the likelihood of known damage. You may have common sense and not think you need a license to carry a gun...but how many other people are as smart or considerate as you?

That's why I call it luck. Stephen Hawking at least had the luck to be in the right social environment.



So what's the benefit of a libertarian society then?

+1

We have someone like that here, who worked for a program that gave low interest loans to low-income apartment housing developers. She figured out how the program worked, set off on her own, and now makes millions by building those apartment complexes with the state's money. Every legislative session when the budget is being decided, she is always there to show how much she feels for the poor unfortunate folks who need housing, even crying if she needs to, to make sure the state can give her more money. It's such a waste.

If you start out being handicapped how would you pay insurance?

But isn't it always the fault of someone else? Also wouldn't these things require (enforced) transparency?

You don't.  Libertarians believe that charity and begging will be just as good as a state system.

Less waste. Every dollar wasted is a dollar taken out of our overall well being.

As dayfall says, right now people say "I voted for X and its his job to make sure the government takes care of pollution, crime and the usual things that no individual really wants to devote brain time to."

Thats why democracy works - most people do not want to get into the nitty gritty of understanding the interaction of zoning, economics, pollution and health costs.  We vote people in to do it and hope for the best.

Depending on your handicap, you can still work. Most of our employment now only requires a functioning brain and a set of fingers.

Not strictly true.  In a free market system, health care costs more than a socialised system.

The benefit of a libertarian system is primarily a moral benefit.  People like the idea of sturdy independence.

This is otherwise known as willful ignorance.

The higher amount of money spent on healthcare is not wasted. I mean literal waste of money, time, and resources.

Maybe.  I think of it more like car maintenance.  Sure I could buy a book for each car and learn how the engines work and how to look after them.  But that is not how I want to live my life.  I pay a garage to do it and hopefully while in the garage, the do more than put air in the tyres and make up a bill.

Same thing with the zoning/economics/pollution/health decisions for most people.  I find that particular discussion interesting but I have yet to meet anyone to talk about it in a pub.  Eyes glaze over and they watch the latest football.  Which is fine...they vote for people to think about that stuff on their behalf.

I don't go to pubs. And I don't watch football. I do ask questions about my car, have a genuine interest in something that important to me, have a detailed dated list of ALL maintenance ever done on it to make sure I don't miss tuneups (MY responsibility, not my mechanic's), and have a friend who is a mechanic whom I watch intently when he works on it to learn how to do stuff myself if I need to. My plan is to drive my car until it dies (I have a feeling "until it dies" will be a long way away). I drive a 12 year old Honda Civic that's about to hit 222,222 miles, still works and drives like brand new, still does 32mpg, and likely saved thousands of dollars just because I do my own basic maintenance (oil, spark plugs, tires, etc), and because I haven't yet had to spend $15,000+ on a brand new car. And I'm a f'n ACCOUNTANT with a full time job and evening MBA classes (about as opposite of a car mechanic or car junkie redneck you can get)! What's everyone else's excuse?

We have lives?

Must I add, "And I'm taking Iaido and Kendo classes on Mondays and Wednesdays (when I don't have class), practicing flying in hopes of being a pilot, studying Japanese, participating heavily in Bitcoin stuff, trying to launch my own business or at least sell my patent to one, traveling at least twice a year, organizing cultural/business networking meets once a month, host fancy dinner parties at my house, watch movies, play video games, read books, and still have time to visit family and friends once in a while. Car stuff takes a few hours out of the morning on a weekend every few months. Seriously, what is everyone else's excuse, if not "it's just not important to me?"

Well, I guess it's a lot of how you define waste. I mean in a way you could call every form of economic system and what it entails a huge waste that could be replaced with a system similar(!) to communism (and by that I mean the early, basic concepts).

An even better concept I think would be a resource based economy (similar, but not necessarily exactly what he Zeitgeist Movement/the Venus project proposes).

Isn't that all very naive? Especially when we see how people (or companies, countries, whatever) usually benefit if they don't raise the finger. Wouldn't it therefor be much better to build a free society based on giving anyone what is required to live and the option to education since this is what always caused a benefit for the whole society. And if you would want a better society wouldn't it be possible to raise the minimum level so everyone can risk something in order to make society better and doesn't have to struggle with daily life? All this to prevent someone who could contribute from spending all of his time struggling with survival.

Don't we have a huge problem with how society thinks about certain groups. I mean like an actor once meant nothing and had low pay for doing a lot more and now they get tons of money. Same thing is true for computer science.

In general the money someone receives doesn't tell you a lot about how much someone contributes to society. It's even worse, money is actually demotivating (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc). Also it's hard to argue on what's an important contribution. Also it's simply stupid, that luxury goods like expensive cars, destroying the environment for everyone makes companies a lot of money. Like in many other cases people are more like "but others do it as well". And what about all the companies (Apple being a famous example) creating products that break soon so they make more money? They already make lots of money by making things worse, so what would happen if the was no regulation and it would be even easier for Apple to silence people complaining about that? Wouldn't this be the case in a Libertarian society, because the state doesn't create rules to prevent people who don't know lots of stuff from buying bad (like even dangerous) products?

Just because I often read it in discussions. It's simply not true to say that dangerous (or generally bad) products would simply disappear, because they have bad chances on surviving. Yeah, I think the world would be better off without states, being able to regulate itself and I think we should work into that direction, but on the other hand I am living in central Europe and I have seen and can see how liberation of markets makes things worse for the company, the people working there and the consumers. I am also close enough to US citizens to know they are worse off, because the US seem to push even more into free markets and while I have studied enough to know that everything would work better under certain circumstances I always get reminded of all the other ideologies about making the world better for everyone.

People love freedom. But freedom can be "Freedom to decide about every cent you earn and not give everything that state or whoever" and "Freedom to try new stuff, because it won't kill you when it turns out to be a mistake". Since society, like everything else evolves with trial and error isn't better to make sure you have more tries?


I think democracy "works" because it's maybe the most revolution resistant form of authority. It's easy to make people believe that they have power and can change things for better. Combined with various forms propaganda (a science that got far in the past 100 years) it simply, subtly hardens control. See the US. Only two huge parties that are similar in so many ways and everyone knows (as in believes) that voting for someone else doesn't change anything. Shouldn't that be enough they simply create exceptions. There is always some kind of opposition while in reality everything is stalled and reinforcing itself, because it worked until now. Basic evolution. Since it is the most influential country/the superpower it to a certain degree can even control the rest of the world through means of "globalization".

It's stable. It's maybe even better than alternatives. I don't know, I haven't seen them.

People can look at history, but still think it's different now. From my point of view it's just that things get more large-scale.

By waste, I mean spending a lot of time and money on things no one actually needs or wants. A business doing that will go bankrupt quickly. A government doing that will just continue to receive tax dollars. I do honestly believe that a majority of what the government does is not wasteful, but a very large portion of it is. How much raw materials we spend on bullets to shoot people in countries we shouldn't be in alone?


That depends on one important question: are you personally willing to give to someone? Can you go out, find a homeless person, and start giving them every day to make sure they don't have to struggle with daily life? If yes, then there is absolutely nothing stopping you from starting that society right now. If you can't afford it, then you've found the #1 reason that idea won't work. Do keep in mind that wealthy people (and corporations) typically have just as much free cash as you do. If you want them to spend their millions to help support everyone, that means they have to free up more cash, which means selling off real estate (kicking out people and businesses), pulling money out of stocks (depriving other businesses from cash they need to operate), selling their million's worth factories (firing people), or even just taking working cash out of their own businesses (employees won't know if they'll even get paid).

I don't want to take apart the rest of your post bit by bit because it would take too long (but can point out issues in it if you really want me to), but in short, you are of the belief that everyone should be cared about and deserves a chance at life and minimum sustenance (like I was 5 years ago) and I'm, to put it bluntly, am now jaded and of the belief that it's OK to let people who choose to stay ignorant to die off from their own stupidity.

I don't want anyone to spend any money on anything.

Besides that you are wrong. It does not depend on how much money you have. Look at history. How many forms of society have been based on someone with money starting that.

You are also wrong when you say a wealthy person don't have enough cash to support others so they don't have to struggle with daily lives. There are tons of people supporting others lives.

I think one possible way to create something like what I said would be inflation. People get a basic amount of money from a central bank, enough to live and maybe to pay school. Basically how Cuba (and yeah, when it comes to stability they are doing very well when you think about the US sanctions, even if the government is damn oppressive and stuff. Many people there even seem to be very happy, even if they have a good reason to complain about there government and do so) has been doing it for a while now, but I guess "normal" money would be better.

Basically, if you want any kind of luxury you'll have to work for it. This would of course have a huge effect on inflation, but that's natural in times of upheavals.

I think a big problem is that people forget about money and economics are tools for society. Society should be independent of it. It's imply stupid to create systems where you can have a financial crisis and it's a huge problem for the world. It certainly is a problem so it needs to be fixed. I guess it will be fixed at some points. I just think (and fear) a lot more people will have bad luck (wrong time, wrong place) until then.

What you are saying is you want to create things from nothing and without any effort. Money is simply a representation of things and effort.


I don't know my history well enough, so I'll ask you, what changes in society, or revolutions, began without any money or work?


Does that mean the money they are using to support others is free to use/take? If you take that money that is supposedly free to use, won't the people whom those wealthy chose to support (friends, family, etc) suffer?


That's still not free money. Someone has to print it, someone has to distribute it, and even worse, that wealth has to come from somewhere. It comes from the fact that the money in someone else's savings account is now worth less. In that closed system, there is very literally NO difference between the government printing money to give to poor people, and the government taking a few pennies from everyone who holds any amount of money and giving it to poor people. E.g. imagine you are a shop owner. You sold a big TV for $3,000. You Gave away something worth $3k, and got something in exchange that's worth $3k, that's now sitting in your safe. The government prints out another round of money to give to those in need. Suddenly, the guy you sold the TV for still has $3,000 in value, but you only have $2,750 worth in exchange, or rather, if you wanted to buy another $3,000 TV to sell, you now have to pay $3,250 for it. Does this makes sense?


First, I want you to explain to me in detail what you think money is. How do you see it, how do you believe it works, and what kind of an idea or thing do you think it is? I am really having trouble wrapping my head around your thinking, so hope that will help me.

Then, do me (and yourself) a favor. Try to imagine money as just a commodity, no different from sugar or wheat, following the exact same principles of supply and demand. That's all that money actually is: a commodity we use to measure things against. Let me know if that changes your view of money in any way.

Again: I don't want to. I am just thinking about stuff.

Work is not money. Revolutions usually are independent of money.

That's exactly it. I didn't say anything about taking money. I just said people can support others. Family and friends are examples.

It's called inflation and in various situations it's actually a good thing. Especially because it causes money to be moved. Most systems are based on money that needs to move.


In an evolving and growing society it does.

Also you could argue about financial crisis, now and 90 years ago. The factories have been there, the workers and the resources. But there is this big crisis, so the whole economy has to stall. Doesn't make a lot of sense either.


Well depends on a number of things. Do you mean what it is now or what it used to be? First and foremost it is an abstract scheme to define/convert values of goods and services.

But the view on things can be different depending on whether you are a government, a central bank, see money in the cash market or see physical money.

No. It's simply one perspective.

What do you know about political economy? What do you know about terms like controlled inflation? Central (banker's) banks do create more money (in form of interest) under certain circumstances.

Money is an abstract scheme to define value. Specific money, be it Dollars, Euros, or Bitcoin, is just a controlled/regulated commodity, and follows all the exact same laws of such.
I know everything about political economy. That's pretty much what my degrees are in.

The assumption is that in a society with a minimalist state then big corporations would wield even more power than they do currently, because the "protection" that the state currently offers would be gone.

I propose that it the big corporations that would suffer the most from much reduced government. The big corporations receive much more benefits through subsidies, bailouts, near-monopolies regulatory capture and the like than disadvantages through regulations and laws. It is the small companies that would benefit more than the big one from a reduced or absent government.

I agree that they would loose, but doesn't that mean they would be kinda forced to "be evil". I know, it's a stupid thing to say, since things are way more complex and I don't think things would become much worse than they are currently, but exactly for that reason I don't think a Libertarian world isn't really something that's worth going for. Overall problems would just be moved somewhere else. I talked about other ideologies, because it's the same there. You solve one problem by creating another or to say it in another way you give up one freedom for another.

Yeah, I know I have been in a lot of discussions on freedom and I read so many philosophic works on what freedom is and I know the different views. I kinda came to the conclusion that you really have to change society for most stuff and if you want to do it top down you have to use some form of propaganda or in other words mass media. Be it Martin Luther and the printing press or Hitler, who used rhetoric and political propaganda and pretty much started a new era of political campaigns. Again, see the US. You have tons of flags everywhere. See the New York Stock Exchange. I don't know any other country that's so nationalist when it comes to this. It brings a lot of stability as I told earlier.

So in a Libertarian society wouldn't pretty much a random big company or even some form of collaboration replace most parts of the state. I mean, if you say that they change then isn't it pretty much the same with governments? And in a Libertarian society where the state doesn't take a certain role bringing stability something similar would emerge and take that part. You are not forced into something by a government, but maybe by society or companies. So where is the change?

Companies can only entice and society can only persuade - government is the only thing that can actually _force_. If you find their appeals lacking you have the freedom to reject them. That's the change.

In a libertarian system where companies own the highways, you will be forced to pay to leave your house. 

And what exactly prevents said big companies from setting up their own government, a la Hudson Bay Company, the East India Companies, United Fruit Company, etc. complete with their own self-preferential regulations and laws, and continuing business as usual?

There are a good many corporations with cash flows that compare favorably with many countries.

For example, if Walmart was a country, they would be about the 24th largest by GDP, just behind Saudi Arabia.

SolidCoin


Oh, but wait.

Take a glace at real life. You can convince people to do/buy/whatever the biggest shit. In fact I learned in school propaganda (political advertisement) was probably the main reason Hitler came far. He has been discussed in history lessons, as well as latin/rhetoric because of it. The strange way he talked can demonstrably (as in verified by various studies) make your brain believe in random stuff.

People tend to forget that behind advertisements there is a whole science that only focuses on manipulating people's opinion.

See election campaigns. It is not about facts at all. It is about advertisement, being present, talking generic stuff that looks like it makes sense. People, like companies frequently win with slogans or making a valid opinion look bad.

The government can force you as much as any other entity. You can always decide on saying no. Look on what people think about the US government and look on what people think about Google, Apple or Facebook. Do you really think the government has so much power if some bug company actually puts their money into bribing, propaganda/ads and uses their best marketing guys.

In pretty much every country there is something like a TV channel, talk show or news paper that's so dominant that it can easily decide on who wins an election. In many this actually has happened. Depending on how liberal a country is it's either controlled by a politician or a private entity.

Really, take a look outside and see how much actual, verifiable information influences people or society and how much content-less, emotion focused (applied psychology) propaganda does. Marketing is just a science.

If you have a government that does shit you can always start a revolution, but if you have stupid companies doing shit it's often hard, because you have to stop using their products and (so there are) replace them with something else. You'll soon be an outsider and a weirdo nobody wants to listen too.

You misunderstood me then.

At "taking away freedom from others". Please try to have a look at actual reality. You use freedom in an extremely capitalist way. I mean what comes next? Do you complain about people that breath air you could breath or use the internet and so your connection gets slower?

One could also argue that Lybia lost its freedom to have a dictatorship. Later you mention North Korea. [SARCASM]Isn't it good that they have their freedom to be slaves?[/SARCASM]

[IRONY]That's great! We take a look on how worse it could be and rankings. Looking at rankings is a great way to measure actual advancement.[/IRONY]

Have you bothered read Marx's or Engel's stuff? In what way was Mao a communist?

Another great comparison of yours. So the US only looks good when compared to possibly the worst country on the planet, the worst dictatorship at least. Really, you'd rather live somewhere else? Oh and North Korea is truly built on the ideals of socialism and communism.

 
And I am sure you'd deny all the stuff the US did in cold war, right? They are so democratic and everyone has the freedom to randomly picked out for human experimentation. Also it's so nice that they gave the researches of Nazi-Germany a second chance to experiment in the US, so they weren't cruel socialists anymore, but have been paid lots of money to torture people in an ethical way. Because it is for freedom. That's what the US is all about.

This never happened? Here just a starting point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States

Also dropping atomic bombs on countries before they capitulate, just for the sake of it is a freedom everyone should have.


Okay, so I really don't want to be unfair. It's just that you won't find a country that didn't do lots of shit. It's just dumb to connect all these things. Greece has one of the longest histories when it comes to democracy does it mean democracies lead to a country going broke? When Hitler came to power (not after he already had it!) it was a completely democratic process, especially for that time. Does it mean democracies lead to violent wars, genocides and nationalism? (I wouldn't really call it socialism, because their biggest opposition actually have been socialist and communist movements that in that time actually thought for democracy)

It's just dumb to say any of these things is about taking freedom. Most of these philosophical-political "ideas" came from people who thought about giving everyone more freedom. One of the core ideas of Marx's communism for example was that workers, who basically had no rights should get them. Another core idea was about people being (in a political sense) equal, which is the opposite of a dictatorship. I think he was wrong in many ways, but from a historical perspective he actually caused workers to have more freedoms. I am not talking about communist states, but for example in England and western Germany workers began to work together in unions and changed things in a good and not extreme way. It also depends a lot on how the countries were before that. Dictatorships usually arise where people are already at the verge of existence. See the fact that the main reason for WW2 was WW1. People just didn't have enough and Germany was kinda enslaved by the winners of the first world war.

Most people naturally have the same idea about what's good. Only their approaches differ a lot. See Die Freien (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Freien). Lots of philosophers who think about Freedom in different ways. You can see socialists, liberalists and if the term had been established back then liberatists. Also see the Bitcoin community (or the open source community). All trying to get freedom.

Taxes are unfair, as they take stuff away from you. I completely agree. See the subject of the thread. I am completely aware that I may be wrong about a lot of stuff.

My approach with giving everything basic stuff - and I mean the most basic stuff is to overcome certain things that a worse. The problem is that minorities (in whatever way) often have financial problems. I also think a lot of money simply gets wasted by a complex financial system. It's why I am unsure about minimal stats. I mean something like that would simply solve that problem. I know, taking 1% (random value) from people is still taking things from someone and I think using force sucks. I basically think everyone should have the right to say "no" to everything (a reason why I think a world governments for example may not be a good idea). However, I think guaranteeing life (water, bread, healthcare that makes sure you don't die or even better can work) and education (and with that I basically mean what we have now. Libraries and open universities) will bring us into a better position quicker.

A lot of bad things (many dictatorships and violence) simply came from the fact that people didn't think about it, didn't know it better and didn't know how to survive. In the end some kind of revolution (and with that I also mean declaration of independence, because it usually is against the will of something else) changed things, sometimes to better, sometimes to worse, usually at least a bit of both always caused to change things. I think in such revolutions we lose too much, stuff that either has to be rebuilt or is lost forever. I think things will always be better if you have more educated people and take a look at history. It is true.

I know you can argue about how education is done. It's usually suboptimal and sucks a lot, but for most part it is good because knowledge causes you to look at things from a different perspective, question bad stuff and not blindly follow someone who wants to take your freedom.

We find ourselves in a position where we already pay lots of stupid taxes. I think the first incremental step towards a more free society is to unify them, making them fair and more efficient (not using taxes on managing taxes), like one tax for everyone. Then using them for basic stuff, basically that kind of stuff that's described in the declaration of human rights. From there it would be much easier to get into serous discussions that are less about emotions and more about advancement. Of course the optimal society would be one that's completely without force where people decide what they consider right, by thinking for themselves. Really I am completely on your side, but I don't think we can go there in one step. There would be revolution, counter revolution and we'd end up where we are, not having solved most of the problems and having thought a war with even worse weapons. What's even worse is that we would have lots of time, lots of lives, lots of chances.


Really? Do you consider the US capitalist? They never had COINTELPRO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO)? There are no companies that kill people because they know their products are bad or they do something criminal?

I wouldn't call it capitalist vs socialist tough, because.. China. It says and is considered communists, however acts capitalists, when it comes to their market.

The problem is that these -isms are just causing confusions. Seriously, everyone sees everything in a different light depending on where they grew up and what books they read. I mean you can force people when you have more money. A person that comes from a rich family can "simply" force a person from a poor background. In fact that's what happens in India and China. Rich companies from western/developed countries force them to do work and dump wages. Of course it's stupid to say that's the work of capitalism, but it's just as stupid to say socialism is about authorities and taking away stuff.

The thing is that capitalism in a way requires some fundamental equality to be fair, while socialism in a way tries to enforce it. I am talking about the philosophies here, not about reality. Like really in the beginning a lot of capitalists were like "god will do the rest/be that magical hand that makes things regulate themselves". It's wrong like this. It's wrong to think that a completely free market will magically try to regulate itself, because there are things where there always is more demand than there could ever be supply and a lot of people that simply have interest to make profit and team up so that they for example control pretty much all sources of a certain resource. Anyway, I don't want to talk about why capitalism isn't perfect. I don't know anything else that's really flawless and much better.


Wrong perspective!

The poor in non-free markets often "pay" (work or whatever) for other countries.

Also you are kinda saying that people in a functioning country are better of than in a non-functional and say that it is about free markets.

Since you like to talk about socialism. See Cuba. It's the most successful country in that area (see neighbor countries), despite US sanctions which would kill every European country. Now, I don't think Cuba is a great country, but poor people there are way better off than neighbor-countries with freer markets.

Also European countries usually are usually less liberal than the US, still the poorest people of for example Sweden, since you mentioned it are better off than in the US. I think pretty much everyone, but a few super rich (maybe even they) are better of in Europe than the folks in the US. Yes, really.

Besides that even a lot of poorer countries in Europe have fewer debts per person than the US. Oh and these mean, socialist countries (in a lot of European countries socialists/social-democratic parties are in the government) don't use torture on anyone, don't have death-penalty, have healthcare for basically everyone, often even free or mostly-paid universities, ...

Oh and consumers have more rights, meaning more freedoms. They are allowed to modify products for their own use, don't have that draconian DMCA stuff, etc.

It's just wrong to think free markets magically make everything better.


But seriously all of this can change at every moment, with a financial crisis, with China finally using their power or whatever. What's really important is to set up certain anchors of freedom. Which means making sure you are independent and sorry, but this includes a certain minimum of "free" stuff. It doesn't even have to be paid by taxes. A library usually can pay for itself. We, no matter whether you are a capitalist/liberalist, socialist, anarchist (like communist or capitalist or whatever), define yourself as democrat/republican (not talking about the parties here) or whatever should simply create the right tools and infrastructure for us and everyone else (because we simply can't do everything on your own and we need all support) to strengthen freedom, independence and help everyone to fight oppression now matter what kind of -ism the oppressor does or pretends to follow.

I mean seriously, look at what people can do when working together. The Internet, Bitcoin, Wikipedia or whatever isn't built by only capitalists or socialists, but by people who think it's the right thing to do.

Yes, I think it is better to have basic stuff for free. I actually spend a lot of money on free stuff, like music on Jamendo, donations to EFF. I run a pretty big Tor server. I am renting/paying for a server to run stuff like Tor on it, because I want people and I don't care what they consider themselves or others to be to advance freely.

And in between I enjoy to annoy people by criticizing their philosophies, hoping it is a bit constructive, pretending that it is a good thing to do. When I talk about education I mainly want people to be smart enough see that it's (in an egoistic way) better for them if they help others and to see things from a completely different perspective. Being social and friendly (in a non-political way) is a desire people have anyway, just like sexual desire. So it's not like I would ever think that you need to force someone. I even agree that it is stupid to force someone. I just think that in an evolutionary way it probably is a good first step to a freer society. I could be completely wrong and that's why I want to see what others think about. And then I will just use these arguments when criticizing someone who thinks like that. Research in a way.

So yes, I change my position a lot. On purpose. While you may consider it stupid and in a way weak I think it's the best way to learn and find out what's right.

Don't forget that the government exists in the ultimate free market that is history. There are no physical laws that mandate the existence of government. It's just the natural result of millenniums of social interactions.

If 'Herding' is natural, then so are Governments.

QFT