Bitcoin Forum

http://absurdresults.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/obama-stop-the-rise-of-the-machines/

...is there are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers . . . . If you see it when you go to a bank you use the ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller.

This reminds me of time when people were against lightbulbs because it would put candle workers out of business. I'm sorry you would prefer unskilled production over skilled technicians building our new tomorrow. However, I cannot empathize with your will to destroy wealth creation by making less efficient businesses in the name of putting more people to work in practically useless jobs. You don't like humanity, you don't like meeting needs, you just like putting numbers on paper.

I cannot believe any rational man would nearly advocate the dissolution of technology and wealth in the name of just pure numbers employment. It sickens me.

Seriously the guy is a retard.  The fact that he was the best choice is just proof positive that the US has jumped the shark and is busy doing one-eighties until it runs out of momentum and sinks.

The Fed and the US government have literally sold out the country to foreign banks and immigrants and now according to them the reason for 10% unemployment is that American businesses are just too darn efficient and we all need to go back to rubbing sticks together and making cave paintings.

That's a complete misrepresentation of what he's saying.


The "structural issues" are that many of the unemployed are not getting their jobs back because those jobs were lost to machines, not a bad economy.  That's a structure issue.  He's not saying that evolving technology is an issue.  ::)

The fact he thinks it's an issue -- structural or whatever -- is the issue.

And the fact you don't is the bigger issue.

Productivity, via this awesome technology, has not been FORMALLY factored into labor-related issues. See "Productivity Paradox."

Put it this way (and the way AyeYo puts it), say I make some awesome critically-thinking Watson like AI. From that point on, you're useless. What are you going to do then?

He is different from you. You don't get it, where he knows something's gotta happen (and he knows it'll make your Grandma cry).

Capitalism works just fine in a closed system with a functional government, even with zero growth.  Unfortunately:

1) We don't have a functional government.  Millions of new consumers walk across the border every year without the resources to sustain themselves.  Externalities such as population growth and resource depletion are encouraged rather than governed.

2) We don't have capitalism.  We have corporatism, in which centralization, risk, and instability are subsidized rather than regulated.

3) We don't have zero growth.  We have forced growth through debt-based currency, fraudulent fractional reserve banking, and taxpayer-theft-subsidized make-work.

That makes about as much sense as saying jumping off cliffs and flying works just fine in a universe with no gravity.

Everything works just fine under laboratory controlled conditions... but we don't live in a laboratory.

how can beleive thats someone beleives[at once]thats one[or anyone want/able to be politician] of politicians suddenly become rational, intelligent man, become rational and intelligent ?

Is that better?  I didn't mean to imply that openness was a limiting factor.  It works in an open system too;  it just requires an even more capable government.  So I thought I'd set the bar a bit lower.

Cuba is pretty much a closed system (except for all the European and Canadian companies interfering).  That lab experiment isn't working out so well, though it is working out as predicted.

We need to be viewing these things as a social science. People aren't variables that can be easily controlled.

That's true, but it's also not what I suggested.  It's a common mistake for libertarian-types to equate government with interference in the holy free market.  The free market would just as soon have you sold off into slavery at birth.  There is a place for government action (collective or otherwise) in order to repel the initiation of force by individuals.

That is exactly what lots of libertarians think government is for, and only for.

Unfortunately most fail to recognize the initiation of force in some of its most insidious forms.

And your screen name reminds me of the most absurd critique of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged was that the characters, particularly the villians, were just absurd.

No.  And to say it requires capable government is laughable, because free market capitalism is all about castrating government until it's doing literally nothing other than guaranteeing profits for the capitalists.

Pure capitalism has not existed anywhere, ever.  Pure capitalism is not a sustainable system (because it eventually transfers all wealth to the top), which is why it will never exist anywhere, ever.  If you'd like to see the closest examples of free market capitalism that have existed anywhere in the world, look at the examples of post-coup South American countries, especially Chile.  That free market experiment didn't work out too well, unless you were one of the elite wealthy folk.



No country on this planet is a closed system, Cuba included.  We live in an interconnected and complex world; no one is an island unto themselves.  If you think Cuba is failing due to its economic system choices, then perhaps you forgot about the embargos and Cuba's history.

The only example of free-market capitalism I've seen is pre-1920s America and it was pretty prosperous.

LOL  Yea, the good old days of child labor, expendable workers (literally, just work them to death), no safety regulations, polution all over the place, unemployment so high people were literally killing each other for a job - all of which culminated in the Great Depression...  a real wonderland it was.

And let's allow wiki to give us a quick recap of just how free market the "roaring" '20's were:



So, yea, those roaring '20's were definitely a free market utopia of no government interference.





This occasionally makes rounds on the interent, it was obviously written towards people like you...

It sure was prosperous... if you were in the top 1%.

Those people were not forced to work those jobs. They did because it provided far better opportunity than they had. Every developing country goes through that stage. It's inevitable and natural.

The Great Depression was caused and continued by the New Deal policies and similar regulations.

Please note the "pre".

In addition, Standard Oil was wonderful. It gave us the lowest oil prices we ever had.

You're right, they weren't forced to work those jobs.  The alternative was their family starving to death.  So, yea, no one held a gun to their head or anything.

And, no, every developing country does not go through that "stage."  That "stage" is a constant in a capitalist system because you need a large number of people doing near-slave labor in order to allow a ladder of profit to the top with reaonable priced good - the need for work at each level is pyramid shaped, while the wealth distribution is an upside-down pyramid shape.  Countries only go through that "stage" if they eventually come to the place that they can outsource it (as the first-world has done).  However, when there isn't anyone else to outsource it to, you're stuck with it.  As such, the third-world will never leave that "stage."

There is no ground for any of that garbage. Most people who work in sweatshops do it for a short period of their lives and go on to a more skilled job or start their own business.

See, this is the issue with Libertarians: your god is mammon and you masturbate to money.  Standard Oil was obviously a great business because it gave us low oil prices - that's all that matters, the low oil prices.  Dumping toxic waste into the river is obviously a great idea because it'll lower production costs significantly.  Not inspecting meat product is obviously a great idea because it'll decrease overhead costs.  Cap and Trade is a terrible idea because it'll reduce profits.


Stop thinking in terms of short-term wealth just for one second and ask yourself instead: what's good for society?

I, for once, agree with you. The problem is that he is lying. Technological improvements is not what created this crisis and/or is causing the unemployment. Both are caused by the capital structure distortion (the housing bubble).

Cite a source.  You can't pull stuff like that out of your ass.  I guess that's why Vietnam is a varitable entrepreneur's utopia of small businesses run by three year old kids who formly made my Nikes.  ::)

Vietnam doesn't make Nikes.  They don't make anything, really.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VaHmgoB10E

So your solution would be to deny them the ability to provide for their family, so that their only option is to allow them to starve to death? Brilliant!

Because paying them a reasonable wage is CLEARLY out of the question.  That would cost waaaay too much money.  ::)

Wait wait... you mean the mega-corporation owned, American MSM and some ultra-conservative, openly Libertarian reporter guy say sweat shops aren't that bad?  Ok, it's obviously the truth then.   ::)


I guess you aren't familiar with the concept of wage slavery.  It's called wage slavery for a reason - because employees are paid literally just enough to keep themselves alive.  They don't have anything extra left over to save up, make a better life for themselves, etc.  This massive base of cheap labor is so important to the first-world that we spend trillions of dollars in military might and economic strong handing to make sure these nations can never organize and advance.  Why do you think the IMF was created?  Why do you think the US is constantly intervening in the politics of third-world nations around the world?


I'm curious to know, when free market capitalism has made us all rich and pulled these third-world countries out of the dirt... where will the massive base of ultra-cheap labor come from?  If everyone is working a high paying job... who's left to work for pennies a month?

The free market already pays people a reasonable wage based on what their labor is worth. If you make 1 widget per hour and I sell those widgets for $5 each then your labor is worth $5 an hour. If someone comes along and demands that I pay you $8 an hour, guess what? You're fired. I'm not taking a loss of $3 an hour. I'd rather stay at home, eat Pop Tarts and watch "The Price is Right" because at least then I wouldn't be losing money.

Of course they make more money in a sweatshop than in farming just to feed themselves, or they wouldn't apply for the job.  Wage slavery is called that by tools like you, because you don't know what slavery is.  No one forces these people to accept these jobs.


This is an argument for less government, not more.

This thread (well this whole forum actually) is providing some nice examples of "vulgar libertarianism"

coined by Kevin Carson

http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/01/vulgar-libertarianism-watch-part-1.html

I'm certainly not an apologist for big business. I'm an apologist for voluntary human transactions i.e. not being forced by threat of violence to do something. If you don't want to work for Megacorp Inc. then don't. Start your own business, work for a small business or go live off the land.

Excellent.  That absolutely hit the nail on the head.

You obviously didn't read beyond the first paragraph.

I did, and the irony of it all is that the very 'vulgarus' he was complaining about was correct.  Although the rates that taco bell was offering was provablely low, they were still higher then the next presently available alternative, which happened to be subsistance farming.  As crappy as that work was, and as poorly as Taco Bell may have paid, those who worked there did so by their own free will.  They were not forced to do so.  If they had been, then it would have been real slavery, which is unacceptable.  But they weren't.  It's just that the job market in their area and with their skillset sucked.  If you wanted to help these people out, then start another factory nearby.  Offer better jobs for higher wages, and Taco Bell would have no choice but to pay more or close house.

Now proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that you didn't read more than the first paragraph.


Since you're incapable of using the down arrow, here's what you missed:

It requires a government capable of resisting the efforts of capitalists to thwart sensible restrictions on the initiation of force.  I don't see what's so difficult about that concept.

Because that's goes against the libertarian idea that capitalism is the purest form of perfect, ever, and needs absolutely no intervention for any government at all.  If you're admitting that capitalism needs a government to keep it reined in in order for it to be sustainable, then you're agreeing with my point of view and you just blew everything libertarians believe out of the water.

Libertarians don't believe in Capitalism as you understand it.  Libertarians believe in liberty, which naturally leads to the free exchange of goods, services and ideas.  What you consider to be capitalism is really corporatism, a softer form of fascism.  Capitalism can be both an ideology and a collective description of a set of naturally occuring economic conditions.  It's the latter form of capitalism that libertarians tend to advocate, and the former we tend to be wary of.

This assertion doesn't even describe most capitalists, let alone libertarians.  Bullets and neutron bombs can constitute extremely productive forms of capital.  But most capitalists support restrictions on their use.  Libertarianism itself is totally based on condemning and preventing the initiation of force.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that libertarians are against all intervention whatsoever.  They are merely opposed to the types of insanely harmful regulations that we see here in this thread, proposed by lunatic social democrats.

I understand that.  But do I really need to point out the inconsistency of you considering capitalism to be naturally occuring economic conditions... and then saying it takes a capable government to control in order to be sustainable?


Gravity is a naturally occuring condition, and it takes no government or person to harness it in order for it to be sustainable.


Capitalism != natural economic occurances no matter how you want to define it.  If it was naturally occuring then it would need no intervention to be sustainable.  Economics is a constantly changing field that's got different theories for each day of the year and then some.  There is no one set of "right" or "default" economic conditions and rules - there are merely a limitless number of ideas how things work.  Therefore, if you're going to sit there and tell me that you've figured out the natural economic system, then I'm going to label you as a typical Chicago School boy that worships Friedman, because he's the only one that believed in the existence of a perfect, naturally occuring economic system called capitalism.

If it walks, talks, and acts like a duck...

I have a duck in my back yard.  And he's telling me that you need to slow down and re-consider your assumptions.

Honestly man, I've doing the libertarian debate thing for literally years on opencarry.org.  The belief system is inherently flawed and contradictory.  I know full well what the proclaimed beliefs are, but I also know where the chips fall when the rubber actually meets the road.

You're talking to two different people. For someone complaining about others not reading that's, kind of ironic. Anyways, the system that's being described isn't anarcho-capitalism or Libertarianism. It's fascism.

In a truly Libertarian society, you couldn't use government violence and you couldn't seize large chunks of resources without earning them. You would have to homestead, which is a process that requires some kind of work. In other words, in a Libertarian society, everyone earns what they own. If I own something then I don't owe you anything. I can offer you the use of my capital under my terms and you can accept it or reject it.

Yeah well I've been a libertarian since before the internet existed.  And I'm perfectly aware of the contradictory views of some libertarians.  So please just try to address the issues presented.  Because at the moment you're conflating my responses with those of MoonShadow, and just throwing out spray-fire of anti-capitalist nonsense instead of making any rational points.

You're also conflating a sustainable system with a just system.  Capitalism is derived from the facts of nature.  Natural resources are limited.  Human stupidity is infinite.  Yet it is not inherently just or particularly equitable without some additional considerations.  It would be perfectly sustainable, for instance, for 50% of the world's population to just be periodically marched off to die in war, or to instate a global one-child policy, or forced labor camps or what have you.  These systems are not, however, particularly just.

So there are considerations beyond just unfettered capitalism and sustainability;  there are reasonable restrictions that even most ardent capitalists agree are beneficial.  For instance, a power plant produces electricity which can benefit everyone, but it also produces pollution which can do harm.  The common aim of sustainability, libertarianism, and even capitalism, is to identify and quantify the harm, and to mitigate or prevent it without also destroying the benefit.

Thirdly, you're conflating capable government with big government.  Libertarians tend to believe that self-government is the most effective form of regulation.  That's not necessarily true.  But it's certainly a limiting case.  So you may assume "capable government" to be a utopian fantasy.  But ultimately governments can be replaced when they fail to meet the most basic requirements of those governed.

First, I didn't say that.  Second, libertarians are not anarchists.  We have a strict set of tasks that a good government should perform.  One of which is to protect the individual citizen from theft, fraud, etc.  Most of us accept teh premise that industries that profit from collective activities (i.e. governments) are also logicly subject to oversight.  Our problem is that it never seems to end there.


A truly free market needs no government oversight, but when a government participates in the market as either an overseer or a customer, it then distorts said free market so that it is no longer truly free.


There are, in fact, a set of natural laws that can be discovered by human reason.  I shouldn't even have to prove this, but I could.  They, however, can be boiled down into 19 English words, and are called "Maybury's Two Laws" or the "Two Laws of Civilization".  They were coined by Rich Maybury in his book, Whatever Happened to Justice?  They are as follows...

1)  Do all that you have agreed to do and...

2)  Do not encroach upon the person or property of another.

All natural, or 'common', laws flowed from this deep rooted concept of fairness.  The differences are borne of culture.  For example, what is property?  What is encroachment?  Are there any agreements (contracts) that an individual cannot make?  Is an individual bound to honor an agreement made under duress, or deception?  Generally speaking, civilizations that tended to honor those two laws (within the context of their own cultures) tended to prosper, while those that failed to honor those two laws tended to decline.  The accepted rules of free markets flow from these two laws naturally, and these can be collectively called capitalism.  As such, capitalism exists to some limited degree always and everywhere; from the black market traders of the strictest socialist nations on Earth to the unregulated digital halls of Silk Road.

What you haven't mentioned is that you would be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of places where the average worker has an actual choice between subsistence farming and Taco Bell.  Most people, even in wealthy countries like the US, are born into families that own no property.  They are born in large cities, where nearby property values are exorbitantly high.  It is impossible to feed a person on less than 1/2 acre;  most city lots are a fraction of that.  And if they happen to live in a more rural area instead, there is no Taco Bell nearby.

So, the fact is that employers like Taco Bell build their businesses in places with ready access to a pool of impoverished, property-less laborers who can be exploited because they have absolutely no other option.  They don't build fast food restaurants in the countryside in order to cater to farmers.

Wow, a semi-reasonable post.  My apologies for lumping you in with the rest of the corporatists in disguise.  I still think (know) that you're belief system is out of touch with reality and too utopian to work, but I'll at least give you large amounts of credit for not being one of the many here who are latched firmly onto the corporate teet.

I don't think any of us have advocated government protections (limited liability, grants, etc.) for our businesses.

Calling people names does you no good.

   It is funny how close Libertians and Communists are close, ar least at their idealism.
Both Communism and Libertianism, seems to have ability to function and benefit their society members.
But both of them have the same flaw. 
   They both can operate successfully, but  only in case that all, or at least 90 % of their populations, - share the same idea. In case of Communism - it is the idea of collective benefit.
In case of Libertianism - it is idea of preservation of personal freedom at any cost.

But Society`s will not NEVER  - and again, just for  better understanding -
will
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER
share same idea at this high  (around 90%) level.

   That is a  hard lesson that Russian Communism experiement give to the world.
If somwhere in the world will arise community of Libertians, than somwhere at range of 5-6 generation, will be time when world  should help them to get rid of that idea.
   Not because the world will need their "values", but becose they will, indeed need that help.

I am not trying to confuse anybody. This is just my opinion.

This is not true at all.  Communism does require a near absolute participation rate to be successful, but libertarianism does not.  You seem to believe that, because we have an ideal goal to aim for, that a society that fails to obtain such lofty heights wouldn't still be a society that we would prefer to live in right now.  That is a rediculous assumption.  We aim high, in part, because that is the only way to make progress.  For if you start with the open willingness to compromise, you will end up settling for less than you could have achieved.  This is true in any negotiation, and politics is basicly a negotiation on an ongoing and national scale.  Would a communist prefer to live in a moderately more socially dictated society that ours?  Probably not, because a thinking communist would understand that a half-measure of communism would undermine itself.  This is not so with liberty.  I would choose a somewhat more libertarian society, and if others were to choose to create small enclaves of communism within that society, that effects me very little if at all.

His job is to solve unemployment problems. In the future with all the technology eventually most jobs we see today won't be required. The gap between rich and poor will widen. It will be a sad day for most.

Really?  Where in the job description included in the US Constitution is that?

That's basically it, and it's the reason that no idealogy exists in pure form.  The real world is far too complex and the organization of a real (not hypothetical) society needs to take into account the beliefs of all its members.

There's a reason that non-libertarians refuse to the forever hypothetical libertarian society as a utopia, because it cannot exist in this universe.

Thats
   That is why, i am never tend to supress some point of view. My deep believe is that we, as world society, need extremists point of views. Somebody who believs in some thing, should to throw everything on the scales, to make his believs anyhow valued by others.

   We live in a world where balance is established only by extremists, not by the 80 % of inert mass.

   If you are interested why fully Libertians society are doomed - i am hope you will kisten to this arguments:
   Society contents lots of individuals, that are not interested only in private freedom, and that is more important, not all of them are some wellfare animals. There is some guys who dreamed and work to visit Mars someday. Some mathematics (well, i am forced refer to Perelman). All that peaples, that fighting with things they found realy important, and that things are not exist in material plane, but much more important for them. And again i am should mention somebody like Korolev - He worked on rockets being a prisioner.
   What i am talking about ? Think about this: This really important for humanity guy`s just have no time to fight fot their rights. They honestly thinks that their rights, freedoms, incomes, are UNIMPORTANT for humanity.
   Where will be their place in Libertian society ? They will quickly become SLAVES. Why ?
Because Libertianism are extreme form of egoism. Any Libertian, will take so much freedom, as it can from anybody, who not bother about personal freedom.

   And there i came to point why clear Libertianist`s society will fail. It will destroyed by competition.
First  it will be just economic competition. Unbelievably fast that competitions will turn in battle combat.
That process will ends by dictatorship of some more succseble libertianist. And as dictator he has chance to astablish dynasty that will last for maximum 5-6 generations- we know much of that examples.

That was well said and, while simple, is a perfectly valid explanation of why libertarianism will fail. 

Thanks for being the only other person in here that isn't riding hard on the libertarian bandwagon.

Funny how, again, you seem to skirt the issues being presented.

You can laugh, but just imagin, how boring is to read through theme named -
"This is where I stop believing Obama is possibly a rational, intelligent man."
LoL

What a pile of shit.  You really don't have any idea what libertarianism actually is, do you?

And you definately don't, AyeYo.

I don't think that either of you understand that your continued ability to express your opinons about libertarians on this list is entirely dependent upon the ideology that you think so little of.  You may continue to express your views, as popular as they may be outside of this forum and beyond the Internet, mainly because it is the firm belief of the powers present that you have the right to do so.  Thus, you have the liberty to defame your hosts, because the dominate ideology in control of this forum believes that you have that right.  Go try and support libertarian ideals on any forum that is not predominately libertarian and see how long your hosts permit you to do so.  Note that this degree of tolerance the opinons of others does not depend upon you believing that you have any such right.

   I am read through that post and was surprised that it means just  " blah-blah-blah".
I am did not belive in this and  give that post to  be translated by google. Unfortunatly - it again turns in
"Blag-blah-blah"
 
   I am was surprised and asked my english speaking friend about his opinion.
He answered me, that it is just "Bluh-bluh-bluh", and i am can ignore  this.
   But just in case, that there is, maybe, some missunderstanding, i am asking  your, forum user that reads this,  advice - is that just
"Blah-blah-blah", or there lies some arguements that i shoiuld answer ?

No, but it does depend upon you believing that I have that right.  ;)  Which, really, runs counter to the idea that its a "natural" right.


Free speech is not exclusive to libertarians or this board.  Did you notice that I have not once said that, as out of touch with reality as libertarians are, they should be silenced?  I'm all for free expression and you're free to believe whatever you want in this society, including your libertarian ideas.  Dobrodav even specifically said that all viewpoints should be allowed because that is how a good society is formed by concesus.  So don't act like libertarians invented free speech.

But we've reached another contradiction of libertarianism.  In libertarian society, non-libertarians are still forced to be subjected to libertarian ideals and societal forces which they do not subscribe to - kind of like how you're sitting here and crying about how you're unwillingly subjected to the forces of this non-libertarian society.

So how do you reconcile that contradiction?

LOL

Just read what I wrote in response and it will make sense to you want he said.

He is deflecting the arguments presented to him, and instead saying that it's libertarian ideals that allow us to freely express ourselves... but he's wrong because the idea of the freedom of speech was around long before libertarianism became an internet fad.

The same goes for the abolition of slavery. I guess that'll never happen either. Oh wait...


Yet again, you're engaging in name calling, attaching negative labels to ideas you disagree with.

   Ahh, i am get it. In some way he is right. If there will no be fight for freedom, than we will be live in some dictating society.
   Libertianism is off point here, but just because that movement did not exist in that times.
But there was another movement for freedom, and lots of that movement mans and womans died for their believs.
   Now, due to their extrimism we are enjoed the free speach.

   But it seems like he want to shot my mouth with clap. And this is very un-Libertianists.
At least it  looked like, he wants to take my freedom to speak about this,  - away from me.

  That is not libertianists way. But i am will not give him that freedom, do not matter how strong he want to take it from me.
 LoL

Abolition of slavery is a single issue, not a political, social, and ethical system of beliefs.   Nice try though. (not really)

Abolition of aggression is also a single issue.

The belief that all human interactions should be voluntary isn't a very complex issue.

The right to speak against the soverign was a uniquely 'liberal' concept in the 1700's, back when 'liberal' meant something much closer to 'libertarian' than you are willing to admit.  In effect, libertarians did invent freedom of speech.


What contradiction is that?  Is that anything like an athiest who gets bent because he goes to a child's baseball game at the YMCA, and then some jerkoff bible thumper has the audacity to expect him to sit still while there is a prayer!?  Oh my non-God!  No atheist should be forced to sit quietly while someone else prays to the culturally dominate deity in the society that I continue to choose to live within at a public event that I chose to attend.  Oh the horror!

It's called freedom of religion, not freedom from religion, quite intentionally.  You are just as free to ignore libertarians as that atheist is free to ignore the Christians.  No one is forcing anything upon you, you came here of your own accord; and knowing now that this is a forum dominated by a culture that you detest, you contine to return of your own accord.  If you don't like it, I'm pretty sure that even you can see the options available to you.

That has absolutely nothing to do with what I posted.  Try again.


See this post as well:



How is the action to be a part of a libertarian society voluntary for those that don't want to be a part of that society?

The same way that the state of your residence is voluntary.  If you don't like the one you're in, you are still free to move to another.  People still do it all the time in this country, it's called freedom of travel. 

Perhaps you don't understand analogies?

   Well, i am do not want to stop your brave libertianists fight.
Look at this :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzxRCbCXlz0

     There is just a little example of what we are achieved on far north, wide land, surrounded by enemys.
What communism idea achieved.

     I`am was born in 1975. That ideas are not simple echoes, of distant past for me.
They never will be just empty sound for me. I am will die with them in my brain.
     And we are FAILED.

     And your fight for "bright libertian future" also will fail. But we both doing same good joob. We are preserving balance, - we are fighting for justice.
     And there is no difference are we at same, or different side`s of barricade  - we are like advocate and procuror.
     We are fighting for truth.


    

Then what are you doing sitting here bitching about unjust social contracts, coercion, men with guns stealing from you, etc.?  That same logic applies to all you people.  If you don't like the rules of the society, GTFO.

The biggest truth here is that I can honestly believe that you honestly believe what you are saying.

The analogy is EXTREMELY flawed and not the least bit relevant.


See my previous post.  All the bitching and moaning you do about the unjustness of our current society and how persecuted you feel in it... that all applies to non-libertarians under a libertarian society too.  You're all about making all choices voluntary and you claim the current system isn't voluntary... then how is your system voluntary?

Address that contradiction.

If you want to form a Democracy, Theocracy or Communistic society you're perfectly free to do so as long as the people that are participating do so voluntarily. You just need to refrain from using aggression to force others to do what you want them to do and it'll still be a Libertarian society.

Like I said, all human interactions should be voluntary. Try couching your argument in those terms and see if you can make sense of your complaint of being forced to not force others to do things they don't want to do. I don't think that's even coherent.

And where did you see this at?  Or are you projecting?


I did.  You just can't wrap your mind around it.

You obviously don't understand the question.  WITHIN a libertarian society, there will be people that are not libertarians.  How is the lack of choice, the coercion, and the aggression that you're claiming is being heaped on you in this society ANY different than the situation that those non-libertarians find themself in in a libertarian society?

It's the basis of libertarianism, i.e. our current society is based on coercion and aggression - see the posts by bitcoin2cash.

Even if bitcoin2cash was the pope of libertarians, this statement wouldn't hold water.  The fact that current society is based upon coercion is a provable fact, but has little bearing on how I might feel about it.  I certainly don't feel persecuted.  I've certainly said nothing to suggest what you imply about myself or libertarians in general.  Or were you trying to use the general 'you' while directly addressing an individual on a forum dominated by individualists?

And how is libertarian society not based on coercion?


Sorry for cutting out so much.  I'm trying to wade through the BS and distractions and keep this on point.

Perhaps there is some confusion here about the meaning of 'coercion'.  What do you think that it means, and in what way do you imagine an ideal libertarian society fitting this description.

And you had a point?

Libertarian society is simply "keep your hands off other people and their property unless you have their permission". Are you really going to argue disallowing that is tantamount to coercion? Do you really think you should be free to deny others their freedom?

Well there is, because libertarians make it mean whatever they want it to mean on the case by case basis.


Let me say this for the umpteenth time...


If someone is living in a libertarian society (thus being forced to abide by libertarian ideals and being affected by climate and forces created by libertarian society) and they are not libertarian, nor do they want to be libertarian, how is that ANY different than you living in this current society and claiming that  itis coercive and without voluntary choice simply because you don't agree with it?

So, you think you should be free to deny other people their freedoms? Then why should we respect your freedom? It's nonsensical. You aren't special. If you make a rule such as, it's alright to deny people their freedoms, then the same rule applies to you. It's like saying that you should be free to kill other people but they shouldn't be free to kill you. It's not even something that merits debate.

I'd really like to see you support that statement.


FAIL

Your premise is false, therefore the remainder of the question cannot be rationally answered.  Try and establish a logical reasoning behind the idea that living in a lib society = forced to abide by lib ideals.

I am, by the way.


Well, if he wants to steal property and since a Libertarian society doesn't permit theft then he will be forced not to steal. Likewise, if he wants to murder people and since a Libertarian society doesn't permit murder then he will be forced not to murder. In a way, he will be forced to abide by Libertarian ideals. However, the question is, why should we care about disallowing theft and murder? Am I really supposed to feel pity for a murdering thief? Why should I, when such a person has no pity for their victims?


It's voluntary because you aren't forced at gunpoint to refrain from doing anything that doesn't violate someone's natural rights. If you think you should be free to take money from people, too bad. That's nonnegotiable as far as I'm concerned.

The current system isn't voluntary because we are forced at gunpoint to refrain from doing things that don't violate someone's natural rights i.e. there are certain drugs we can't consume, we can't pay or be paid less than minimum wage, we can't keep all the money we earn and not be forced to pay taxes, and the list goes on. Again, if you think you should be free to steal from others in the form of taxes or kick down their doors because they are smoking a joint, that's just too bad. I don't feel sorry for coercing you to leave other people alone.

Since we're making analogies to religion, your argument is kind of like when some religious person claims that atheists have faith because they can't prove God doesn't exist. So yes, I am forcing you to leave other people alone and keep your mitts to yourself. If you think you should be able to steal and kill, there's nothing stopping me from doing the same to you. You can't have it both ways. You can't claim you should be free to strip others of their freedom. You really need to acknowledge the difference between self-defense and aggression. One is justified, the other is not.

Notice how I responded to your argument without resorting to name calling. I didn't accuse you of "whining" or "sucking the teat of the government" or any other insults. Please give that a try because that kind of cruft adds nothing to the discussion. It's just noise.

   OK, lets start from begining. We have some libertianists society establashed.
I am do not know how, - lets imagine that this is a result of comet impact.
   Well, after some time, - when big teath and hard muscles (and maybe some firearms) will stop plaing their  major role, we will have some society based on libertinans ideas, - for some reasons ( there is no any of that reasons, but still).

  Well. it is strange, but around this society will be some other societis.
And this is true, even in a case when that society will arise without any comet impact. Strange, huh - ?
 
  Again, we have some libertianist society on land limited state.
That is remind  me about "socialism in one, separately  taken  country". But we will throw away that uncomfortable comparison for now.

  Ahh, i am forgot. Do you know  what was a necessary condition for the victory of communism ? -
The spread of world revolution to the whole world.
That guys, your know, like  - Marks, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, was absolutely confident about this. That caused all that famous KGB hyperactivity, through the world.
But lets count this, just as historycle remark.

   Ok, now we have some pure, and  even fanatical libertianists in some place.
Well there is coming one generation ... Let assume that this generations was teached at home.
Next Generation should fight for their rights, because, they are know, that they should fight for their rights,
or they will be dumped as trash.
   Suddenly there is some fking strangers arise from other countries. Oh FK ! We was not started world fire
of liberty in surounding countries, we was to busy by raising our childs as true citizens of Liberty at that time.
   Well, libertians are fully free. They are free to gather in gangs, and burn out those awkward immigrant`s.
Nice. Smell of freshly smoked "slave minded" immigrants will please their minds for some time.

    But new problems will arise to a new established community.
Some idiot working on relativly infinite source of energy for humanity. Ha- ha-ha  - "Humanity".
Idiot for real.
    It is just coincedence that this moron are smart enough to work on somethig like this - you know : Raining man, and all that genial idiots.

    - Just in case, - that he can really solve that problem, we should take him under our protection.
    - No Way ! WE should take him under  our protection !

     Huh ? YOU ? You are just bunch of idiots that depends  on electricity !
You have no idea what FREEDOM is about !

  - Morons ! - Bustards ! - BANG! - PEWW !! - PEW,PEW,PEW !

   -Okey, it seems like we are loose. But as open minded and really free libertians, we can not allow, that somebody will have advantage over us.
    -HACK! Sorry, moron. But we should to kill you, before that power willing bustards, will claim results of your work.

     We are ready to do anything, to defend our freedom !

Okay, okay, I've finally been baited into a discussion i swore I would never have again because it goes around and around in circles.

But it will take me a minute to make that point, if you'll indulge answering me some questions first. I promise I won't call anyone capitalist swine or apologists for tyranny or anything.

1) We wake up tomorrow in magical Libertopia. How do we divide the land? How do we divide the wealth?

2) We are living happily in Libertopia for many years when a group of workers travel back to the moon for the first time. They manage to set up some giant mirrors at great work and expense that send a concentrated beam of solar energy to a solar panel factory they have back on earth that they sell electricity from. They also mine a bunch of moon rock to bring back and sell for souvenirs. Do they own the moon?

It's a loaded question because we both know that we don't have an answer.  We don't know how "Libertopia" would work out questions of natural resource ownership or real estate because it's never been tried and the answer is highly dependent upon how a truly free people choose to organize.  From homesteading to high rise condos, those issues can be solved in more than one way.

As for how do we divide the wealth?  Under what conditions would we be dividing anything?  This is a false premise to begin with, that there is a standard way to 'share the wealth', or even a prohibition on coming up with such a method.


Some of it, yes.  They have a claim, certainly.  Did they all come back?  If so, they have abandoned their claims to that which their developed mirrors do not require.  They have a claim on the mirrors only because they are (I assume) still in active use.  Those whom remain have at least as much as they can improve.  That's actually a pretty easy one, and one that has been mentally tortured since The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

And have you ever considered the possibility that this discussion goes in circles because of the single common denominator, yourself?

no, it is because there is no "natural right" to property that is not axiomatic. Libertarian socialism and anarcho-capitalism rely on two different definitions of property basically, and both of those definitions are axiomatic. They are accepted as a priori givens and then ideas of what "liberty" means are built upon their backs. You can't argue with an axiom in a philosophical system because, by definition, that definition is simply given to be true to form the basis of later theorizing.

You can brush off question number 1 as irrelevant, but I find it highly relevant because the vast majority of property (and I think we can agree on this) is stolen, it is intertwined with an immoral and coercive state system, in many cases it was taken by force, built by slaves, expanded through colonialism and empire, etc. If i am to take serious anarcho-capitalists claims that we are both working on movements of liberation, then even if I don't accept your property rules, at least tell me how you think your property rules will be transitioned to.

--

"The vast tracts of land claimed by present-day land barons are illegitimate by any plausible libertarian standard, including the Lockean rule of appropriation. In early modern Europe, the landlord class acted through the State to turn its "ownership" in mere feudal legal theory into a modern right of absolute ownership, and in the process robbed the peasants who had occupied and tilled the land from time out of mind of their very real traditional rights in the land. This process was followed by rack-rents or by mass eviction and enclosure. In the New World, the state acted to preempt access to empty or nearly empty land, by claiming it for the "public" domain. This was followed by restrictions on access by individual homesteaders, coupled with massive land grants to land speculators, railroads, mining and logging companies, and other favored classes. The result was to limit the average producer's independent access to the land as a means of livelihood, to thereby restrict his range of independent alternatives in seeking a livelihood, and thus force him to sell his labor in a buyer's market.

In virtually every society in the world where a few giant landlords coexist with a peasantry that pay rent on the land they work, the situation has its roots in some act of past robbery by the State." (Kevin Carson)

Define "improve". Not on the moon. Here on earth would be just fine.

If you mix your labor with the land, do you own the radio waves that pass through it? what about a river? the air?

A landlord has 10 buildings they are renting out. One doesn't get rented and falls into disrepair. How long until they don't have a legal claim to that property? (Yes I realize different communities could come up with very different rules about absentee landlords. What's your opinion of your ideal community norms w/rt to this?)

Also, just so I don't sound like I'm speaking down to you. Are you familiar with any classical or contemporary anarchist theory that falls broadly on the spectrum all the way from anarcho-communism to individualism/mutualism? Proudhon? Malatesta? Bakunin? Kevin Carson? Voltarine de Clair, Kropotkin, David Graeber, etc? I can't claim I've sat down with many Libertarian Party newsletters, but I have certainly cut my teeth on Nozick, Rothbard, Hayek, von Mises, etc.

Unless there is some record of theft, we assume that the current owners are the rightful owners. The exception, as I hinted at, is when there is a record of theft, for example, my family owned a farm for dozens of generations and then the government seized it under "eminent domain" to build a road. That land would be returned to me.


They don't own the whole moon, no. They own part of it. You need to understand homesteading. To claim unowned property, you have to mix your labor with it and you only own so much as you've mixed your labor with. If you build a base on the moon, you don't own the whole moon or even that chunk of the moon all the way to the center. You've never been to the center of the moon. You only own that area on the surface and enough below it so that if I dig beneath you, I'm not compromising the structure of your construction. If it's found out that there's a lot of valuable resources below that, I can dig at an angel to retrieve them, as long as I don't damage the integrity of your base.

You really need to read some books on Libertarianism. I would suggest Walter Block's "The Privatization of Roads and Highways" as he discusses how to homestead things that are currently unowned as well as things that are currently owned by the government, which presents a slightly different problem.

You can read his book online: http://mises.org/books/roads_web.pdf


You have to be able to exclude others from using it. You can't own a farm and then yell up at the airplanes to stop trespassing. However, if you build a glass dome over your land then you can own the air, the radio waves as well if you can stop them from leaving your property. Rivers are a slightly more complicated issue because if there are people downstream from you, you can't dam it or pollute it because that would be damaging their part of the river and you can't damage other people's property. However, if the rest of the river is unowned, you can do whatever you want and someone can't come in later, notice a dry riverbed and then demand that you tear your dam down so they can have some water. You were there first.

Poor horseshoe makers, almost all got unemployed ...

Sorry. Wrong answer. That supposes a "naturalness" or a "neutralness" to nearly all current ownership when even the most cursory libertarian analysis of the last few hundred years would show that the vast vast majority of ownership is very much tied into a coercive and violent system and was gained through some combination of force, slavery, and state+corporate power.

I agree with you but the reason why my answer still stands is because the keyword is record. There's no way to determine who the rightful owner is without some sort of record. If I bought a parcel of land from Alice, who bought it from Bob, who bought it from Carol, and so on, then all that is considered legitimate unless you can demonstrate that at some point it was stolen from someone, for example Carol stole it from Dave. Otherwise, the current titles can be considered legitimate. If you disagree then you have some sort of burden of proof. Also, I did mention "eminent domain" in the post you're responding to. So you can't say that I didn't already acknowledge your point before it was even made.

There is ample proof and historical record that all of North America was stolen from its indigenous population through State-sponsored conquest - first the European colonial powers, then the fledgling US government itself. There is no debate about this, it is all quite out there in the open. There is ample proof that common arable fields in the UK were stolen through enclosure laws via landlords empowered by the King - often in open armed conflict with the peasants. Your desire to rely on written land contracts that specify transfers from person to person as an unbroken chain is a nonsensical invention, as much of the land stolen from those that had a natural right to it (through mixing it with their labor, according to AnCaps) were often not using contracts or deeds and/or holding land in common and/or had no concept of individual private property.

There is also ample proof and historical record that the indigenous populations stole land from each other. Do you honestly think that every Native American tribe obtained its land through homesteading and never a drop of blood was shed? My point is, even if we acknowledge the fact that there is some rightful owner, there's no way to return the land to the heirs of its rightful owner because there's no record of who that rightful owner is and no record of who the current heirs would be. Simply saying, "let's give it all back to the Native Americans" ignores the fact that they were just as likely to use violence in obtaining land as anyone else. What you suggest would be ideal if we had a god's-eye-view of history but we don't. Without some sort of record of actual theft, even acknowledging that theft took place, the rightful owners have no way to prove they have a legitimate claim.

people are just people. not expect much from them and always plan failure-related plan[at least one]and/or fix stragegy/tactic/actions "on the fly", ie BEFORE too late.
http://citizenwells.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/larry-sinclair-obama-cocaine-gay-sex-november-1999-chicago-washington-dc-sean-hannity-rush-limbaugh-msm-wake-up-sinclairs-story/
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=56626
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl3Nt4aWQ80

Sure your assumption is that ownership is valid unless it can be proven otherwise. My assumption is that all ownership is invalid because it is tied up with such a grotesque and authoritarian system and any libertarian needs to honestly grapple with how a redistribution would occur. Not even necessarily as a practical exercise, since there will certainly not be some meeting "after the revolution" where we decide these things, but as a theoretical exercise in more sharply defining what we mean by concepts of liberty and justice.

Nowhere and at no time has the large-scale ownership of land come into being through the working of economic forces in the market. It is the result of military and political effort. Founded by violence, it has been upheld by violence and by that alone. As soon as the latifundia are drawn into the sphere of market transactions they begin to crumble, until at last they disappear completely. Neither at their formation or in their maintenance have economic causes operated. The great landed fortunes did not arise through the economic superiority of large-scale ownership, but by violent annexation outside the area of trade.... The non-economic origin of landed fortunes is clearly revealed by the fact that, as a rule, the expropriation by which they have been created in no way alters the manner of production. The old owner remains on the soil under a different legal title and continues to carry on production.

(Marx? no! Von Mises)

Yes, exactly. I'm with Walter Block on this.


Without evidence, what is left? Your word? A gut feeling? Even if we had a god's-eye-view of history, not every parcel of land that was once stolen currently has a living heir that it could or should be returned to. In those cases, it can be considered abandoned property and the current owner does have a legitimate claim to it as having homesteaded it. Even worse, since we don't have a god's-eye-view of history, it's irresponsible to overturn who knows how many legitimate property titles because of some vague notion of injustice that can't even be proven to have occurred.

That's not to say that all property titles should be upheld as legitimate. People that claim to own vast sums of land that hasn't been homesteaded actually don't have a legitimate claim to it, even if they paid for it, simply because there was no owner from which to buy it from. Just like people that claim to own parts of the moon don't have a legitimate claim to it because they haven't homesteaded it.

You still haven't answered the question.

What was the question again?

"I hear Republicans and Libertarians and so forth talking about property rights, but they stop talking about property rights as soon as the subject of American Indians comes up, because they know fully well, perhaps not in a fully articulated, conscious form, but they know fully well that the basis for the very system of endeavor and enterprise and profitability to which they are committed and devoted accrues on the basis of theft of the resources of someone else. They are in possession of stolen property. They know it. They all know it. It's a dishonest endeavor from day one."
-Ward Churchill

It's quoted right in the post.

So, if a child is born due to a man's pillage of rape and murder, he should not deserve to live freely?

Very few of the American Indian tribes made any claim towards owning the land.  For the most part, the tribes West of the Missippi River were nomadic; and did not have a coherent concept of property ownership at all.  Tribes East of the Missippi, however, generally did.  In particular, the five tribes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Civilized_Tribe) that made up the Cherokee nation; who owned all of Ohio and much of the territories that now make up surrounding states.  I'm directly decendent from Cherokee stock, and I can prove it.  Are you trying to say that I should have a claim to the state of Ohio?  I reject that concept.  I've never owned it, and as far as I can tell, none of my ancestors were swindled out of anything.  Prejudice of the early white settlers aside, my ancestors chose to move of their own accord.  Probably, in part, because of their own prejudices.

I already covered that. Native Americans were just as likely to steal land as anyone else. I hope you really don't believe for a minute that not a single drop of blood was spilled over land by Native Americans. However, I'm all for returning stolen land if there is any evidence that there was once a rightful owner with a heir that's still living, otherwise, it's a moot point. Can you prove that anyone living owns this land? No? Alright then, let's move on.


Oh but I did answer your question. I guess you weren't satisfied with my answer so I'll try again. How is forcing others to live under a Libertarian society different from being forced to live under any other society? The answer is, Libertarians don't violate your rights. If you want to form a hippie commune then go for it. But, when you try to take my property through taxes or arrest me because I don't empty my pockets, I'm well within my rights to defend myself. You, however, don't have the right to take my property. That's how it's different. All other societies are based on violations of rights but a Libertarian society is not. Are you satisfied now?

That blogger misinterpretted Obama's statement, and it looks like the posters here are running with that because they've already decided they don't like Obama. Obama isn't saying that the advancement of tech is bad, he's basically just pointing out the dislocation that technological advancement creates. Technology does create unemployment, because jobs that people used to do are made redundant due to efficiencies and automation. In theory this is not a problem because those jobs are offset by new ones (creating the machines and automation, new markets that open up).

The problem with this though, is that people don't simply reeducate themselves for the most part, at least not very easily. People who've lost their jobs due to outsourcing and automation only knew how to do what they were doing before. But now their skillsets are not needed. It can take over a decade for a work force to realign with the skills that are in demand. This is a well known economic phenomena, and it's existence is not up for debate. That is what Obama is referring to when he says structural issues – that there are a ton of people who's skills are no longer in demand. That is an "issue" from the standpoint that having unemployed citizens is a public problem.

Thank you. I'm sure you will all continue to hate on Obama and call him a retard without any real basis though.

It's pretty obvious that Obama doesn't understand the first thing about the economy.  He is making the problems worse.  He bailed out the failed, crony capitalists and destroyed jobs at the thousands of small businesses that could have picked up the pieces.  He is engaging in massive wealth redistribution in order to prop up investors in McMansions and strip malls.  He is continuing the retarded neo-liberal zero-tariff policy of free trade that enables outsourcing.  Worse than that, he's allowed the Fed to give away half a trillion dollars to foreign banks on the off chance that it will eventually make it's way back to the US economy in order to stimulate jobs.  He doesn't understand why, instead, energy and commodity prices are rising and the US is being drained of capital.

And, frankly, you're a retard too for giving the guy a pass.  It's been over two years and he's a total failure.  Bigger than Bush, even.  And I for one wouldn't even have thought that possible.

I'm not sure if that was directed at me. But if so that was totally irrelevant because I didn't say anything to support any of Obama's actions regarding any of what you just mentioned. I simply explained that the OP and the blogger he quoted had misinterpreted the Obama quote. Nothing more, nothing less. If it wasn't directed at me then ignore this post.

I don't believe the banks should have been bailed out. But I also believe the only political figure who would have even entertained the notion of NOT bailing them out would have been Ron Paul. Anyone else, even GOP and Tea Partiers who like to decry bank bailouts, would have bailed them out at the time. 

I don't think it really has anything to do with understanding or not understanding, being smart or not, etc. Both political parties are bought, paid for and brought to by the military-prison-industrial complex, and wall street/corporations. You may get different shades of good cop/bad cop. You may get one party that tends to reward Big Oil and another that tends to reward Big Banks. But neither of the parties are going to do anything once in power to shake up the power structure that got them there. Look how quick Obama sold progressives out. Look how quick the Tea Party freshman candidates have by and large turned their back on their rhetoric to practice business as usual. Anyone that thinks change can come to the US through the ballot box hasn't been paying attention.

That's completely untrue.  I'm being forced under threat of violence to conform to a society whose rules I do not agree with and whose "coercive" market forces (your definition, not the real one) affect my daily life even though I do not agree with the policies that created them - just like you living in our current society.

A policy of no theft creates horrible policies that disturb your daily life?

Care to present an actual example of this?

I'd also like to know which libertarian policies, specifically, you feel are oppressive.  Saying "the market" is not sufficient since markets exist even in the absence of government.

How about the example by where a group of people who don't believe in private land ownership or titling or other Western concepts of contract law have their land stolen by a bunch of people who then sell it to anarcho-capitalists who claim that the original landholders/users aren't entitled to either their land or compensatory damages because they can't show proof of ownership?

Land has little value nowadays. Value is derived mostly from other media. Even if we could return land to its rightful owners, it would add little value to the situation at large. In fact, it would take away more resources to make such a thing happen. It's an unrealistic gambit.

"Media" like the slave labor of landless peasants?

He means the improvements of construction and the like.  The land that once belonged to an indian tribe in Florida was nearly worthless swampland until Walt Disney & company bought it up to build Disney World.  It was the idea that was most valuable, not the real estate.  But even the idea was worthless without the labor to make it real.

Land has plenty of value everywhere. Land still has an incredible amount of value and is the difference between being able to live/die or provide for your family without slave labor in someone's factory 2 days away in large swaths of the unindustrialized world.

You do realize clashes over land reform and land ownership are still resulting in guerrilla and  civil wars in many countries, right?

I agree that "land" tends to be fetishized by socialists and libertarians alike, and that today large scale inequality in capital may be of much more pressing importance in industrialized countries, but it still doesn't chance the fact of the argument that basing a society around an atomistic view of the individual and individual rights as well as strong and exclusive property rights rests on axiomatic assumptions that people have to agree to (or be forced to agree to) which was my original point and at least part of AyeYo's point (I think they want to make other points as well, so I won't speak for them)

Well, it's not really pertinent to the topic of the thread, but there are far too many erroneous assumptions in a statement like "land has little value nowadays" to even begin to deconstruct here.  It's kind of like, if I burn down your house, and then give you a tent, and then erect a monetary monopoly that spends a hundred years forcibly subsidizing tents and burning down houses, and then claim that "value no longer comes from houses, it comes from tents".

What I mean is that most wealth today isn't derived from land. It's derived from innovation and a lot of intangible products.

An actual example of what?  The fact that, if defined as you people define it, ANY system of social contruction is "coercive" to those that do not 100% agree with it and ALL are enforced under threat of violence to one extent or another?

I'm not sure which part of that you're having a difficult time wrapping your mind around.  Perhaps it's because you think Liberland would be a flawless utopia that no person could do anything but love with all their heart.

If you really can't stretch your mind even the slightest bit, this snipet from a blog I read recently sums up the issue pretty well...



Now, try hard, using my previous posts, if necessary, in which I've had to repeat myself at least five times, to understand the simple 1 + 1 = 2 going on here.


EDIT:

Just noticed this post, in which the issue is summarized even better:

Wow.  You really have no clue what a libertarian believes.

I think the question AyeYo is asking is thus:

What if non-libertarians in a libertarian society object to the use of force to establish property rights on the grounds that the libertarian conception of property is one that they reject?

Corollary: There is no "true" conception of property (or of the individual, though that is a different argument) - and right-libertarianism, though it is very internally consistent on coercion and rights, still rests on an assumption about what property is just as various flavors of left-libertarianism, also internally consistent, rest on different assumptions about the nature of property and ownership.

Then they are still free to start their own society or leave and seek out an existing one more to their own liking.  The fiction book, The Diamond Age explores this concept with depth. 

Well, I do like Neal Stephenson, and I actually think that is his best book - even beats Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash in my head, but this still does not resolve the question of me not having the choice to leave, or me being in a different society but the lib society is infringing on me, etc and doesn't resolve questions of actions which affect people across time and space (like say, dumping carbon into the atmosphere or launching radioactive waste into the air and putting it on the moon). Hell, even right libertarians have substantial disagreements on IP.

It's not only a matter of past injustices, but of ongoing "theft" from the commons, or from future generations. There are considerable (huge) differences between even "middle ground" versions of libertarianism such as mutualism and georgism mcuh left full on anarcho-socialism and anarcho-communism (which is where I roughly fall politically) that can't simply be resolved by saying - okay, well you anarcho-capitalists get this state and you anarcho-socialists can go set up your collectives across that mountain over there

--

There isn't an answer to this one, I would just like right-libertarians to admit that at some point their society does in fact rest upon an arbitrary definition of property and individual rights and then seeks to be coercion-free from there, but is not in fact without coercion if you don't accept the starting point. Just as left-libertarianism rests upon assumptions that right-libertarians would find coercive.

You can't eliminate any 'coercion' that may derive from self-ownership.

You can't even come up with a condition that a lib society fails to grant you the choice to leave, or how a lib society could actually be infringing upon yourself.  If you violate a known libertarian 'law', such as kill someone in the act of attempting to possess material objects that they would have considered their property, then you are a criminal.  Other than that, if you don't like living in a libertarian society, what prevents you from leaving?  Your complaints are without merit.


Why would I have to resolve those issues?  Those are questions of commons and externalities, even the ones that matter.  They are not coercive acts against you.  They are not even relevant to the question posed.


Of cours not.  There can't be a solution posed to a problem that doesn't exist.  I you can't even frame the problem as a 'strawman', even after you have been repeatedly promted to do so, then no problem exists.  Perhaps I simply cannot invision such a conflict because I'm biased.  But then perhaps you can't frame the problem because there isn't one.

Well, it's far from arbitrary, but okay.  A libertarian society is dependent upon collective force used against those within, and without, who would choose to violate the (majority) accepted concepts of property and natural rights; compelling them to either cease or leave.  Most libs would call this the primary purpose of governments.

Happy now?

But we can have different definitions of property and therefore ownership
(And also different definitions of the self, though that gets further into philosophical waters than would be useful for this thread.)

Let's get back to basics.  Does a person own himself?

Of course they are. If your definition of the commons is much smaller than mine and your definition of externalities is much narrower than mine, than in effect you can steal from me in particular/society in general

I've already given lots of specific examples - from carbon release to air pollution to problems with demanding a historical record of land ownership to an unwillingness to discuss how redistribution of current wealth (much/most/all of which was gotten in conjunction with corporate/state power) would occur, to ownership of space, to depletion of unrenewable resources, to an unwillingness to deal with economic power and hierarchy inherent in gross inequalities and the different between someone who owns the means of production and someone that has only labor to sell, etc

--

I could provide a variety of examples, but they have been well discussed elsewhere. It is clear that people have put a lot of energy into reading critiques of right-libertarianism/anarcho-capitalism from a classical liberal or statist standpoint, but there exists 200 years of left-libertarian theorizing and at least 50 years of left-libertarian critique of right-libertarian thought - Rothbard/Hayek/Von Mises/etc

But if the only goal of such an argument is to throw up one's hands and say "Well you can go live elsewhere then" rather than say, "Ok you identify as a libertarian and I identify as a libertarian but clearly we understand the meaning of that word very differently, how might both of our envisionings of a non-coercive society be deepened through dialog/debate" then meh.

Hmmm, well I prefer to think in terms of autonomy rather than "ownership", but self-ownership is not incompatible with more egalitarian understandings of property rights.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=10&ved=0CGAQFjAJ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theorein.org%2Fvrousalis-ls.pdf&rct=j&q=left-libertarian%20self%20ownership&ei=JmACTrSbKaX50gG8pP2HDg&usg=AFQjCNHIIzoRWBVDkovvwQb2K6ivq8kGMA&cad=rja

http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=1418

Then we need to get even more basic.  What defines "ownership"?  What does it mean that an individual believes that he "owns" a thing, whether or not others recognize his claim?

This post is intentionally left blank. Delete.

Imagine Able and Infirm living alone on an abandoned island. They have access to three huge coconut trees (resources) which provide them with coconuts (welfare). Able is strong and healthy, and can therefore work long hours, each day, on more than one tree. (What authority defines this?) Infirm can only work a limited number of hours per day and cannot climb up the trees for coconuts.(Again, what authority defines this?) His (opportunity for) welfare is therefore limited to coconuts immediately accessible on
the ground. (Can this really be objectively defined? Could he not facilitate the construction of a machine to help with his coconut collection?)

The non-socialist, left-libertarian strategy for achieving justice in distribution between Able and Infirm involves giving Infirm a private property share (How? By stealing it from somebody or claiming it in the first place?)in the coconut trees sufficient to induce Able to engage in unforced, uncoerced, voluntary exchange with Infirm, in a way that produces (appropriately construed) equality (What entitles equality? Who is to define this is fair?) between the two.

At the same time, Able must be guaranteed effective self-ownership, so that he is not forced to sacrifice life, limb or labour for Infirm. To this end, Able is granted private ownership rights over an adequate amount of physical space and over one coconut tree. Infirm is granted property rights to two coconut trees.

This is where this becomes a load of horse shit in terms of rights to oneself. It totally throws away who owned the trees before. Able may have possessed these trees but then some "collective" authority takes them away and gives them to Infirm. Oh, but the collective sees this as 'fair' and 'good'. This is statism. No doubt about it. I can't have my trees because Infirm only wants to leave his recliner and grab so many a day.

I thought there would be sounder logic for all this but I am only left disappointed. It's people who just can't accept some organisms are stronger than another and can achieve more than another. It's pure parasitism in the name of a subjective common good.

Intentionally left blank. Delete.

To those who say I have no use than more than one coconut tree, you are wrong. I could start a coconut farm, increase efficiency and sell to more lazy people like Infirm, instead of having them pick them off the ground.

Oh, but that would be food for profit! I will profit as much as I damn well please. It takes a lot of work creating a coconut farm, thank you.

In the end, I think it would achieve a better result than having men with guns divide up trees.

This quote would make a lot of sense in 2008. When he became the clear mainstream candidate....

Imean they all do, don't they ? After a while it becomes more and more evident their politics is == their campaign/lobbying money. This latest thing which the OP brings up, to me is no surprise, he wants to defend his ratings, great isnt it ? (afterall it's exactly how democracy works, just get re-elected dude and nothing else matters! Just save those jobs now! It will improve our stats!)

Welcome to Disneyland, I mean long live democracy!

http://desertislandgame.com/

I'll just leave this here....

I guess it really would just kill you to stop dodging and just address what's being presented to you.

That is just conjecture. One could paint right-libertarianism as being pure selfishness without regard for any other person. As part of a community, people could define a different set of norms regarding ownership and distribution that hold equality of opportunity as a higher good. (Yes, I realize there is nothing inherently opposing some people coming together in anarcho-capitalist land and deciding to live this way -- in fact I believe that in a pure anarcho-capitalism, it would evolve towards most workers working in collectives).

Also, you neglected the explanation of sufficiency vs surplus and when each was entitled to sufficiency and when each was entitled to surplus.

Regardless of what you think about the contrived coconut example in one essay, there is a larger question of land ownership and resource ownership. Most left-libertarians would assert that natural resources are, a priori, held in common trust. Therefore, they either must stay in common trust, or if they are taken out of common trust some benefits need to be paid to everyone for taking their inheritance. (This for example, is the backbone of Thomas Paine's Agrarian Justice pamphlet where he argues that every person born in the United States should be guaranteed a basic level of subsistence income/goods). (I would go further and say that any surplus created from labor belongs to labor equally as well as the owner of the means of production)

This is fundamentally opposed to the right-libertarian notion that natural resources are "unclaimed" until someone claims them by improving them.

Whether or not natural resources belong to the world or belong to no-one is an axiomatic declaration. You can build a set of internally consistent ethical rules on top of that supposition, but it is hard to argue one is inherently "truer" than the other.

Sorry but asserting Comparative Advantage (which, BTW, assumes immobility of capital - bitcoins in particular should move us towards absolute advantage) has little to do with the philosophy between reconciling strong ideas of self-ownership with egalitarian preferences

It means that the individual believes she has the exclusive say over how such "thing" is used.

1. Make everything illegal
2.Arrest everyone
3.Put them to work in prison labour camps
4.Full employment
5.Profit$$$

The only thing you're being forced to do is keep your paws off of other people and their stuff.

We can debate whether or not you should be allowed to rob, rape and murder all day but as soon as you try to do any of those things, the debate is over and we settle this with violence. It's your call. I'd prefer peaceful means but if you touch me or my property, you do so at your own peril.

1) How did they get that stuff? What if that stuff belongs to everyone like clean air? Can I shoot you for polluting my air with your wood stove?

2) Who decided that taking a human life was a morally acceptable way of defending property that can be made whole through restitution on other ways?

Not quite.  The delivery truck driver in the former Soviet Union had exclusive say over how the truck was used, so long as he was still the driver.  This is because he had possession, but he did not have ownership.  One of the necessary conditions of ownership is the right to destroy the thing.  The truck driver didn't have the right to destroy the truck, even though he certainly had the access necessary to do so if he had the will.  I will presume that you would agree that only you should have the right to decide to destroy the fleshbag that your mind resides within.  So would you agree that you own your own body?

Also, I guess the first part of the first question we have already agreed to disagree on w/rt proving breach of contract, but the second part I'm interested in. Presumably you think that if I come to your house and you catch me attempting to steal your car, you can threaten with with force (as I initiated force by trespassing and attempting to steal your car), I ignore you and continue to work on hot-wiring your car. So somewhere along the line you can use physical force right? Does that apply to people being trespassed on by polluters? or do they have to go through the arbitration courts to prove harm? Is there any rule of proportionality? (ie you could shoot me if I was trying to kill your kid, but not if I was trying to steal your money)

Lacking evidence to the contrary, it is presumed that they came by it honestly, via their own labors.  Either they made themselves, or they traded for it.  You seem to insist that the basic assumption is that those who posses an object or real estate came by it dishonestly.


No one decided this, because no one can.  Where did you come up with this idea?

Homesteading or legitimate title transfer.


No, restitution and punishment have to be proportional. If you point a gun at me and demand my wallet, I can shoot you. If you just grab my wallet and run, I can't shoot you. However, once I capture you, you owe me my wallet, plus another wallet, plus the cost of capture, plus the cost of how scared you made me.

Have you read up on Libertarian punishment theory?


Nobody because you're making a straw man argument.

Yes, there is.  It's called escalation of force.  I have the right to try and prevent you from continuing to damage my property.  I can, if I see fit, lay hands on your person to attempt to physically eject you from my property.  If you are harmed in the doing so, I might be liable for that or I might not, but that depends on both the degree of the harm and the intent of action.  If you bumped your head because you tripped while being pushed off my property, but the bump was neither long term brain damage and a reasonable third party observer wouldn't have assumed that I intended to cause you harm, nor that same observer believe that I had used a level of force that was unnecessary towards the goal (protect the property, eject the thief) then I have done nothing wrong.  If you resist my interference (or the interference of my hired thug) and then either take a swing at me or threaten to do so, then that is the initiation of force that escalates the conflict, not me protecting my own property from harm.  If you pull out a knife, a deadly threat has been issued even if nothing was said.  At this point, I'm within my rights to pull out a firearm, but I can't shoot you in the back.  If you are trying to escape, I must let you leave, no matter the harm already done to my property. 

Yes I'm quite aware of the possession/ownership distinction. And I've read Nozick, so I get where this goes. But for the sake of argument, yes, I would agree that in general you and only you have the right to destroy your body. (But I'm also a postmodernist/social constructionist as well as a Buddhist so I think the boundary of the "self" is a bit blurry, but we can set that aside for now).

But as I said, whether you want to regard it as semantic or not, I would argues that only alienable "things" can be owned. Selves cannot be owned, even by themself, but they can by sovereign over themselves or autonomous.

(Other sentient beings are a stickier question - I think they can be partially owned, but only partially, so that, for example if you have a dog, no one has the right to take that dog, but you don't have the right to torture the dog, in that case the dog's partial selfhood/partial autonomy overrides your ownership.)

Amazing how the desert island game only works by initially dividing up all the property and not allowing it to be traded...

A bit. I get the initiation and escalation of force arguments. I thought you were making the argument in your post to AyeYo that you thought you had the right to do whatever you wanted to "protect your stuff".

I'm not sure how you got that idea but hopefully the misunderstanding has been resolved.

Sounds a bit threatening.

People prefer to be bound in commoditized labor than to negotiate work and build relationships. Labor is mass produced homogenized slices of work. Pitiful suckers.

Stopping the rise of machines is not going to initiate the rise of mankind.

Except I'm not convinced he's doing it for socialist reasons. I really think he's the bankers' inside man pulling a Scott Walker fire sale on the whole economy.

Democrats will break your machines. Republicans will sell your fundamental infrastructure for pennies. Same result.

Completely false.  See all previous posts.

At least two of us asked you for a specific example several pages ago, and I'm yet to see one...

Already addressed, see previous posts.


This will be the last time I repeat myself before I chalk your unwillingness to answer up to nothing more than a cop out because you don't have an answer.

Seriously, just continuing to repeat your assertion that libertarianism is coercive without actually giving a specific example of coercion is an utterly shite argument.  You're convincing no one.

You might as well blame libertarianism for gravity and the tides if "the market is coercive" is the best you can come up with.

I'm threatening to defend myself and my property.


What else are you forced to do that doesn't logically follow from keeping your hands off of other people and their stuff? Please be specific.

Just keep reading it over and over and over again until it sinks in.  There's no need for me to repost it because it's already on this page.  If you just can't wrap your mind around it... well... that's probably 90% of the reason you're a libertarian.


Flex those tiny brain muscles.  This is as straight forward and simply to understand as it gets.  All it requires is that you apply your beliefs equally to all systems of society, including your own fantastical utopia.

"The argument for laissez-faire capitalism is built on a contradictory view of liberty. Right-wing libertarians understand that state control of all economic activity is tyrannical: that the power to determine if and how people make a living is the power to enforce conformity. But they don't see that the huge transnational corporations that own and control most of the world's wealth exercise a parallel tyranny: not only do these behemoths unilaterally determine qualifications, wages, hours, and working conditions for millions of workers, who (if they're lucky) may "choose" from a highly restricted menu of jobs or "choose" to stop eating; they make production, investment and lending decisions that profoundly affect the economic, social, and political landscape of communities and indeed entire countries -- decisions in which the great majority of people affected have little or no voice. Murray defines economic freedom as "the right to engage in voluntary and informed exchanges of goods and services without restriction." Fine -- but if an economic transaction is to be truly voluntary and informed, all parties must have equal power to accept, reject, or influence its terms, as well as equal access to information. Can anyone claim that corporate employers and employees have equal power to negotiate their exchange? Or that consumers have full access to information about the products they buy? And if we're really interested in freedom, the right to voluntary and informed engagement in economic transactions has to be extended beyond their principals to others affected -- whether by plants that reduce air quality or rent increases that chase out shoe repair shops in favor of coffee bars. The inconsistency of the belief that economic domination by the state destroys freedom, while economic domination by capital somehow enhances it, is often rationalized by attributing the self-interested decisions of the corporate elite to objective, immutable principles like "the invisible hand" or "supply and demand" -- just as state tyranny has claimed to embody the laws of God or History. But the real animating principle of a free society is democracy -- which should include a democratic economy based on enterprises owned and controlled by their workers."
-Ellen Willis

The problem is that you're conflating "voluntary" and "informed" as if those were inseparable. As far as the law is concerned, it's only the voluntary part of the issue that should be enforced. We need to be protected from force and fraud. But let's say that I know where to buy X for $5 and you only know where to buy X for $7. It may or may not be immoral to exploit your ignorance and sell you X for $6 but I'm not taking a side on that issue because it's irrelevant to the issue of legality. Also, let's say that I'm the only one that knows how to get Y which is in high demand and therefore gives me a natural monopoly. I start charging $1,000 for Y because you'll pay it even though it only costs me $1 to obtain Y. You can't influence the terms equally but it's still my Y and therefore you can either pay the price or do without. It may or may not be immoral to gouge you on the price but again, that's irrelevant to the issue of legality. In both cases, X and Y, everything is still voluntary because I'm not physically forcing you to do business with me nor am I physically preventing you from doing business with anyone else.

Like I asked before, what else are you forced to do under threat of violence that doesn't logically follow from physically forcing you to keep your hands off of other people and their stuff? If you can't name anything, this debate is over.

To protect all people from ignorance would require the enslavement of people to teach the incompetent. Hardly a rational solution.

They are inseparable.  You cannot volunteer for something if you do not fully understand what you're volunteering for.  It's contract law 101.  This is exactly why you doctor must explain all possible negative outcomes to you before you agree to have surgery.  This is why we have satutory rape laws.  This is why we have an age of majority.  This is why intentionally misleading or miscommunicated contracts are void.

Once again you prove my point that you're only interested in your brand of freedom that applies only to the people you see fit to care about.

This seems like a good place to leave this...

http://falkenblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/humans-born-capitalists.html

Copping out again, aye?

I agree with you there but you're misapplying that maxim. If I tell you that I'm selling X for $6 then you are volunteering to buy X for $6. As long as it's actually X and actually $6, it's voluntary. However, if I bait and switch you, that's not voluntary. That's fraud. I mentioned in my previous post that fraud is completely unacceptable.

Where we seem to disagree is that you think failing to disclose that I bought X for $5 and sold it for $6, or telling you where to buy it cheaper, is somehow fraud. Your doctor analogy isn't applicable because there's nothing I'm physically doing to harm you, unlike informing you about a risky surgery so you can give informed consent.

The good news is that at least we are having an actual disagreement now instead of hurling insults and personal attacks.


Damn, I spoke too soon. I'm not sure what you think you gain from these personal attacks. I'm either right or I'm wrong. You should be able to explain why based on evidence and reason. Saying that "you don't care about other people" or "you're just a big old meanie" adds absolutely nothing to the discussion. It's just noise. If you want to vent your frustration, go squeeze a stress ball.

Please, let's keep this academic, thanks.

But bitcoin. . . .you think ATM's put tellers out of business?  You ain't seen nothin' yet

Again you make a completely unrelated and irrelevant example in an attempt to reconcile the inconsistency of the your belief system.


Real world example #1:

Fantasy Free Market Liberland economics says that if Company A grossly pollutes the environment, consumers will eventually stop purchasing from them and instead purchase from Company B that does not pollute the environment, because most people don't want their environment polluted.

Outside of the Fantasy Free Market Liberland, the consumer has no idea that Company A is a gross polluter and Company B doesn't pollute at all.  That blows this entire idea of "the market will work everything out" right out of the water, and also shows how what you don't know can hurt you.  Uninformed consumers and citizens cannot make truly voluntary decisions because they have no idea where their dollar is going.


Real world example #2:

Fantasy Free Market Liberland economics says that if Company A grossly pollutes the environment, consumers will eventually stop purchasing from them and instead purchase from Company B that does not pollute the environment, because most people don't want their environment polluted.

Outside of the Fantasy Free Market Liberland, BOTH Company A and Company B are gross polluters.  There are no other companies in the industry.  Consumers are now forced (there's that word you hate so much) to support the pollution of public resources or go without an entire set of products and/or services offered by this industry. 


Real world example #3:

AIG et.al. create complex, dangerous finanical instruments.  They market them as something they are not (lack of disclosure due to no regulation, strike one) and sell these instruments to investors as "safe" investments.  The investments aren't safe, but the investors don't know that (access to information disparity, strike two).  These "safe" investments go bust and take down the entire world's economy.  The decisions of just a handful of corporate executives negatively impacted the majority of the developed world's population who had absolutely no say in the decision making, but nevertheless suffered the consequences (the actions of a few affect the lives of many, strike three).

It doesn't matter where the money is going unless that's part of the agreement. I hope you understand the difference between "I'll buy that watch from you" and "I'll buy that watch from you but only if that watch wasn't made by Chinese orphans". If you agree to the former then it's irrelevant who made the watch, it's still voluntary. If you agree to the later then it's fraud if it is the case that the watch was made by Chinese orphans.


Emphasis mine.

Having a limited choice of alternatives is not the same thing as being forced to pick one of those alternatives rather than another. You might be "forced" to rape a woman or go without sex tonight but it's still a voluntary choice to rape or not rape.


Then that's fraud, which I'm against. That's not an argument against my position. If I say my watches are made in the USA but are really made by Chinese orphans, that's fraud. If I say my investments are safe but they're not, that's fraud.

So, you still haven't met my challenge. Give me an example of anything you are forced to do under threat of physical violence other than keep your hands off of other people and their property.

Oh, I get it now.  AyeYo doesn't actually understand the difference between force and the initiation of force.

Oh but it very much matters where the money is going because the entire laissez faire system hinges on it.  If consumers are not fully informed, the system doesn't work.

Consumers will NEVER be fully informed because of the huge information disparity between massive business and little Joe Consumer.


Another piss-poor example.

Real world example #1:

A computer has become a necessity these days in this country.  However, all computer hardware is made by companies that exploit third-world wage slavery labor.  I have a choice between supporting these companies doing things I don't agree with or going without a very important piece of equipment that will have a large impact on my ability to communicate efficiently, get a job, etc.  There is no substitute for computers.


Real world example #2:

Credit cards are another modern necessity.  However, the banks and financial institutions offering them are crooked, corrupt, and the same places that caused the recent financial collapse.  Once again I'm forced to support bad thing or simply go without.  There is no substitute for a credit card.

Real world example #3:

Cars are a modern necessity, especially to those that live in areas with poor public transportation and/or spread out populations.  Cars run on gas.  Liberland theory say that if Company A and Company B charge too much for gas, I can buy at the cheaper Company C.  In the real world, there are so few gas companies that ALL of them charge outrageous prices.  I'm forced to either buy the overpriced gas or go without a car/motorcycle/scooter.  Once again, that is not a true choice, that's an ultimatum.




No, that's not fraud.  That's a lack of disclosure and it was perfectly legal.  Information disparities are NOT fraud (though I understand that libertarians like to change defintions whenever it suits them, it's the only way to stay seemingly consistent).  These CDO's were sold as... CDO's.  "What's in it?" you ask.  "It's a bunch of mortgages," they say.  Fine and dandy.  What they didn't tell you is that it's a bunch of crappy mortgages with a high probability of default.  Even one better, the INDEPENDANT, PRIVATE rating agencies gave these investments AA to AAA safety ratings because of the way in which the CDO's were contructed.  So what's in them?  Well they're mortgages and the investment is very safe.  They only had to jump through all those hoops and be creative because of the government regulations.  In Liberland they wouldn't even need to do that much because there wouldn't be anyone policing them or setting any disclosure standards at all!

That's not fraud, that's creative marketing and creative finanical work to great something with a high rating out of a bunch of crap.  When Joe Investor comes along though, he has a massive information disparity with the financial institutions, just as the consumers in the examples above do, just as ALL consumers do in an unregulated market.



Your physical violence BS is a redherring.

More relevant quotes:

"Now, the Libertarian Party, is a *capitalist* party. It's in favor of what *I* would regard a *particular form* of authoritarian control. Namely, the kind that comes through private ownership and control, which is an *extremely* rigid system of domination -- people have to... people can survive, by renting themselves to it, and basically in no other way... I do disagree with them *very* sharply, and I think that they are not..understanding the *fundamental* doctrine, that you should be free from domination and control, including the control of the manager and the owner."
-Noam Chomsky

"There isn't much point arguing about the word "libertarian." It would make about as much sense to argue with an unreconstructed Stalinist about the word "democracy" -- recall that they called what they'd constructed "peoples' democracies." The weird offshoot of ultra-right individualist anarchism that is called "libertarian" here happens to amount to advocacy of perhaps the worst kind of imaginable tyranny, namely unaccountable private tyranny. If they want to call that "libertarian," fine; after all, Stalin called his system "democratic." But why bother arguing about it?"
-Noam Chomsky

Honestly, you suffer from a terminal lack of imagination.  #1 Seriously?  Have you ever heard of a hackerspace?  Adafruit?  Just because it's cheaper for Chinese factories (not slave labor) to make them and ship them around the world, does not mean that you couldn't find someone locally with the skill set to do this.  You just probably couldn't afford it.  #2  Look around the forum you are on.  What do you think is happening here?  Personally I haven't used a credit card in a decade.  They aren't necessary.  #3 What says that your vehicle must run on gasoline?  What says that you even need your own vehicle?  What about flinc.mobi, zipcar.com, relayrides.com or the many other private transit solutions popping up?

OMG, the solution was right in front of me the whole time!  There is a third option!  Manufacture my own computer components, find/drill/refine my own oil, create my own investments!!!  OMG that's a totally realistic solution! 

You failed to address the argument.



Enjoy trying to get a car or home loan without a credit history via a card.  ::) 

Again you sidestep and fail to address the argument.




OMG YES!  I'll pay a service that's non-existent in my area to drive me around everywhere I go at very high cost!!

Three strikes, and you haven't addressed the argument.  Try again.



How about that second section?  Where's your response to that?

Look everyone knows candle workers can't turn a bulb in its socket.

No, I didn't.  Troll.  I pointed out that there are people who have the skills to manufacture the computer componets for you in your locale.  You just can't afford their services.  Mass production by semi-skilled labor always wins on economies of scale.


I don't have a credit card, and have never had an issue getting any kind of installment loan.  Revolving credit is not comparable to an installment loan with collateral.  Obviously you don't know what you are talking about.


No, I didn't. Troll.


Three times, no I didn't, troll!  If the service doesn't exist (yet) in your area, that is not evidence that it couldn't be if the need were to exist in the future.


The top was so much crap, I didn't bother to continue.

You're moving goalposts. We were arguing about whether or not you are physically forced to do anything other than keep your hands off of other people and their property. Now you want to argue about whether or not the system works. That's an entirely different argument. Stick to one at a time please.


Why is it a "piss-poor" example? Just because you assert that it is so? You didn't even attempt to give a rational argument to back up your claim.


Do without. Become a farmer. The rest of the world doesn't owe you a living.


Use cash. Don't spend more than you earn. Nobody owes you a line of credit.


I just came back from the Netherlands. A friend of mine living in Rotterdam doesn't own a car. Most people don't there. He only owns a bike and survives just fine. Lots of people ride bikes over there. Maybe you should too? It's good exercise.


Don't confuse our current legal system with the hypothetical libertarian legal system you're trying to argue against. You said that X was being passed off as Y. That's fraud. You can't imply that X is Y when it's not. However, if all you're doing is selling X and people mistakenly think it's Y because they didn't do due diligence, research it, read the label, whatever, then that's not fraud. That's ignorance on the customers part and the blame rests on them.


That's why you should ask what the probabilities are and if they don't know or can't provide evidence to back up their claims, don't do business with them.


That sounds like fraud to me.


In one sentence you say the regulations didn't prevent what they were designed to prevent and then in the next system you despair that we wouldn't even have those nonworking regulations? That sounds like nothing of value would be lost. However, there will be policing and standards set by the market. That's why we have things like Consumer Reports and other independent agencies that are actually independent because they don't have an artificial barrier to entry. You can't look at our current hybrid system of private companies regulated by the government and draw conclusions about a purely free market from that.


That's why you do your homework and factor that risk into your investments.


No, it's the issue at hand but since you want to ignore it and refuse to meet my challenge to give me an example of anything you are forced to do under threat of physical violence other than keep your hands off of other people and their property then I guess there's nothing left to debate. You give up.


I'm sure he understands the difference. He just wants to pretend that there's more to liberty than that. He wants alternatives that suit his personal tastes but that's just too bad. I go back to my previous example, he may be "forced" to rape a woman or do without sex tonight but that doesn't mean his choice to rape or not rape isn't voluntary. Just because he doesn't like the alternatives doesn't mean there isn't one that doesn't involve him being forced under threat of physical violence.

That doesn't change the fact that it doesn't exist now, thus my point still applies and you have still not addressed the argument.




Yet another cop out.  I'd respect you and your position more if you just admitted the inconsistency of your position or, at the very least, your inability to properly defend it.

Wrong.  The argument is about the inconsistent, contradictory, and hypocritcal nature of libertarianism.  In typical fashion, you're attempting to narrow the bounds of the argument to one of your preset talking points - not going to happen.


lol @ asking the probabilities

Methinks you're a bit over your head.

Since you continuously refuse to address my points, wish to ignore what I say and are constantly engaging in name calling, I'll be ignoring you now. As far as I'm concerned, you were refuted. Bye.

I won't address your strawmen and I will not let you narrow the focus of the arugment to a talking point (oldest libertarian trick in the book), so I bid you farewell and will be happy to be put on ignore.

That wasn't the argument, but I'll address this one.

By definition, government imposed regulation limits consumer choice.  It is their primary tool.  In the absence of regulation, therefore, consumer choice would be greater.  There is nothing that promises that those other choices are actually better, this much is true.  But on average, history shows us that the kind of innovations that drive technology and culture forward (thus society as a whole) are the very kind of innovations that regulators cannot forsee (how could they?  otherwise they would have been the innovators) and whose limiting powers tend to restrict choices and delay progress.  I will concede that there is nothing in libertarian thought (I'm not an anarchist) that actually prohibits such a worst case scenario, but there are natural regulatory forces in a free market that you are wont to acknowledge.


It proves that your contrived scenario is invalid.  Likewise, just because you feel you need a credit card to survive in the modern world, doesn't invalidate the concept that in a libertarian society you would not.


It doesn't have to exist now, it just has to be possible.  I just pointed out that there already exist private party/ free market solutions to the problems presented that do exist already, even if they don't exist where you live.


I don't require your respect.  You've already lost the respect that I grant others due to lack of knowledge of their faults.  I shouldn't need to defend anything, whether I'm poor at it or not.  Libertarianism is not on trial here.  This is our house.  You are a guest, who is quickly wearing out his welcome.  From what I can see, you are very poor at presenting valid and rational arguments to support your own position, relying heavily on repeation of falsehoods, a lack (or feight of) ability to understand the positions and arguments presented to you by your opposition, and attacks upon the writing skills of your opposition.

Project much?

You mean the ones that I've explained DON'T work without fully informed consumers that are on equal footing with the supplier?





Prove it.




If it doesn't exist where I live then it's of no use to me, kind of like the fact that water exists while people die of dehydration in the desert.


Still, you avoid the actual point being made.  The argument over transportation is fluff.


Wrong.  You're the one that believes in an ideaology that has no real-world examples of actual use.  The burden of proof is on YOU to prove that it's everything you claim it is.  I'm not making anY claims, I'm just shooting holes in your claims.

I can't prove a negative any more than you can, despite your repeated attempts to do exactly that.  All of your arguments are rooted in your belief system.  While that may be true with us as well, at least we can make a credible appeal towards logical premises. 


So it has to be true for you to be true anywhere?  Wow, that's a novel argument!


You believe you are doing such a thing, but really you are just upsetting your hosts and making a general ass out of yourself.  BTW, there are actually real examples of societies that were very libertarian in their own times.  The Swiss cantons from ~1270 till at least the 1600's is a fince example of this.  Yes, the Swiss were a stable society because of their social constraints and homogenous racial makeup, but their actual national government was almost non-existent for hundreds of years.

I didn't ask you to prove a negative.  I told you a prove your statement that credit cards wouldn't be necessary in Liberland.  Proving a negative would you asking me to prove... "why not?"  Which is what you've done repeatedly.  You made a statement, I'm asking for proof that the statement is true.  You make the statement, you shoulder the burden of proof.  Argumentation and debate 101






So it has to be true for you to be true anywhere?  Wow, that's a novel argument![/quote]

If I don't have access to what you're claiming is a valid alternative, then possession of a valid alternative doesn't apply to me.

If my only choices are Company A and Company B, then the fact that Company C exists on the other side of the planet doesn't change the fact that my choice is still only Company A and Company B, thus free choice does not exist for everyone in this hypothetical Liberland.  So what you're saying is that as long as you have free choice it's cool.  Everyone that doesn't get just get fucked, tough luck for them.  Sounds like real freedom to me.

If the only companies I can choose from support things/do things I don't agree with, charge too much, offer shitty products, etc., then the fact that one tiny company exists in an alternate universe that doesn't do these things doesn't do me a damn bit of good and doesn't change my restricted, ultimatum choice.  Yet you'll keep pointing to that one tiny irrelevant company because it'd destroy your belief system to admit that truly free choice doesn't always exist in an unregulated market.


Wrong.  You're the one that believes in an ideaology that has no real-world examples of actual use.  The burden of proof is on YOU to prove that it's everything you claim it is.  I'm not making anY claims, I'm just shooting holes in your claims.
[/quote]
You believe you are doing such a thing, but really you are just upsetting your hosts and making a general ass out of yourself.  BTW, there are actually real examples of societies that were very libertarian in their own times.  The Swiss cantons from ~1270 till at least the 1600's is a fince example of this.  Yes, the Swiss were a stable society because of their social constraints and homogenous racial makeup, but their actual national government was almost non-existent for hundreds of years.
[/quote]


Of course I'm upsetting the hosts.  The hosts are libertarians and they're getting called out to support and defend their belief systems.  It's much easier to believe in something you're never challenged on or forced to prove.

In free market landia (where property rights are respected), pollution would be treated as a form of trespass.  Company A will be held legally liable for any damage done to neighboring property owners affected by the pollution.


In free market landia, Company A and Company B will be shutdown immediately.  The stock owners and the managers responsible for the pollution will be held legally liable for any damages done.  Therefore they must provide restitution.  If not, then the private defense agencies of the homeowners and other property owners affected by the pollution will collaberate to arrest the managers or otherwise forcibly shut down Company A and Company B.


In free market landia, ordinary people will not be forced to use government fiat currencies that are regulated by the FED and banks.  Ordinary people will be able to use bitcoin, a peer-to-peer distributed currencies which makes the entire banking industry obsolete.

hmmm interesting discussion devolving quickly into anger and pissing contest....Best to start up new and civil discussions on specifics aspects of right-libertarian philosophy (strong-property vs weak-property // self-ownership vs world-ownership // externalities and information disparities // etc)

Alright, now we're getting somewhere!

Who will hold them legally liable?  Who will assess damage?  Who will put a monetary figure on, say, decreased air quality?



Sounds reasonable and realistic enough.  Just a couple questions...

Again, who sets the value on the damages done when the value is abstract?  Who determines at what point these company's are subject to arrest by these private defense funds?  Pollution is a fact of production.  Who sets the threshold?

If Company A and B are successfully shut down, what happens to their assets?  

What happens to property owners who cannot afford a defense fund, who protects their right to not be poisoned by toxic waste?

How is the scope of affect determined?  If I've got soot on the side of my house and my drinking water tastes like sewage, those are obvious affects.  When all the bees die off and the farmer has nothing to pollenate his crops, who pays for that?  When food prices go up because of this, who pays for that?  Markets are massively linked, how are all the far-reaching affects dealt with so that people who had no voluntary connection to the original issue are not affected by it (or at least compensated for it)?


I think P2P currencies will be more of a suppliment than a replacement, but that's a discussion for another thread.

Sorry for all the questions, but you seem to the best first person that might actually give me answers instead of dodging them.

Which I have already done, and you ignored it.  It's possible to live, and even use credit, without maintaining a credit card right now.  I, therefore, conclude that it would still be possible to do so in an imagined free market society.  The burden of proof, if there actually could be any, rests upon yourself to show that I'm wrong on that assumption.

Although this true enough taken alone, it's not relevent to the argument because I have already shown that it's possible, by presenting an existing solution.  Are you twelve?

This forum doesn't exist to support the ideologies of the hosts, or anyone else.  It exists to support Bitcoin and educate those who wish to be educated in this subject.  The fact that one ideology predominates, for which you disagree with, is not material.  So you are calling out your hosts to defend something that they shouldn't have to defend in this forum.  Thus 'calling out' in this context is trolling by definition.  Granted, so was the original post that started all this, and I'm ashamed that I was sucked into this at all.

That is provablely not the case, and he will grow weary of your crap soon enough.

It's not a solution if it doesn't apply to everyone affected by the problem.

Nothing in life is absolute.  You are tweleve, aren't you?

The private courts/defense/legal/insurance/dispute-resolution agencies (I've heard various names and various formations).


Just recently, my car was involved in a collision.  My insurance company provided me with a list of various collision repair shops which they had selected as meeting their standards for accurate cost estimation of damages.  I then chose one.  Most likely you would see something similar in free-market-landia.  Assuming there would be a large body of past knowledge about the damage done by various pollution factors on various pieces of property and on humans health.  There would be different companies out there who would specialize in measuring and assesing the polution damage.  Your insurance company could then obtain an estimate from them.


Assuming there is a large body of scientific study on the effect of the pollution on human health, there experts could estimate the damage done to a human's health based on a certain degree of exposure to the pollutants.  (I guess one issue right now is that we simply don't know the effect of many pollutants on humans).  Depending on which insurance company you subscribe to, they  would have a certain rate of payment based on such factors as the number of years your life would be shortened or other damage to your family's health.  Since your insurance company would have to pay monetary damages to your family due to premature death or damage to your health, your insurance company would be inventivized in measuring and minimizing the damage done to you, and would either forbid you to live near dangerous polluters, or if a dangerous polluter attempted to build a factory near your place, they would pursue legal action against the aggressor company.


Eventually, such a peer-to-peer based legal system would reach precise monetary damage rates and threshold, and possibly a universal damage rate and threshold would arise through the emergent order.  Through a large history of legal precedents, a Common Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law) may emerge.


Even if you are a homeless nobody, there will still be a legal claim on damage done to you.  This claim can be "homestead" by any lawyer to take to court and receive damage.  Market-anarchist Roderick Long does a great job explaining this in his "Libertarian Anarchism: Responses to Ten Objections" (http://www.lewrockwell.com/long/long11.html) under objection (8) The Rich Will Rule copied below:


So under libertarian law, since lawyers can still initiate legal action posthumously representing a homeless nobody, then therefore polluters could still be held legally responsible for damages done to homeless nobodies, and will therefore be incentivized to avoid treading on the nobodies. :)


Hmm...I guess this really depends on whether this is an actual scientifically proven correlation and is measurable.  All I can say is that science and accurate measurement is important.  This issue remains the same for both statist and non-statist societies, though.


If food prices go up, then the market will incentivize people to purchase less food and grow more food.  Then will reach a new equilibrium, so problem solved.  Just like what happens when there is a drought or massive disaster in some part of the world today.


Hopefully people plan ahead by stocking up on food/emergency supplies and purchasing insurance to handle significant but rare problems that are out of their control.  For instance, once I got into a collision with an uninsured driver.  Fortunately I had enough foresight and included uninsured driver coverage in my insurance plan, so it was not a big deal.


No problem.  I used to have these doubts as well.  You just have to realize that people are smart, and if there is a problem that needs to be solved, some entrepreneur will think of a creative way to solve it.  And again, the ideas discussed above are just one possible way to handle such problems.  I don't claim to be able to predict all the massive number of alternatives ways that a libertarian society could handle such problems.

Let's assume, arguendo, that there is some awful, terrible problem that can't be solved by a libertarian society. I say too bad. It still doesn't justify putting your hands on other people and their property. This entire exercise in coming up with plausible solutions is pointless and irrelevant. In a libertarian society, the only thing you are forced to do is keep your hands off of other people and their property. I challenge someone to give me an example to the contrary. Otherwise, my point stands and consequences be damned. "Let justice be done, though the heavens fall." -John Quincy Adams

Obama: Advanced manufacturing can boost jobs (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110625/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama)

Now he thinks robots will create jobs.  At this point I just kind of feel sorry for him.

Sounds reasonable enough at face value, but I question how sustainable it would be.

This is very important... What prevents the massive, large and powerful polluting companies from buying up all the private courts/resolution agencies?



Alright, that one I'll buy.  Seems both sound in theory and doable in the real world.




Again, reasonable and realistic enough that I'll agree it's possible.




Same question, who prevents a rich guy/large business from owning this private legal system?  i.e. how are monopolies and conflict of interest ownership controlled, if they're controlled at all?



Reasonable on the surface, but what entity is actually enforcing the fact that Joe Poor Nobody has a claim to compenstation, never mind actually ensures he gets his money?  What's preventing the polluters from telling him to get fucked (they know he has no recourse)?  What's preventing the lawyers from making his claim money disappear into their own pockets without ever notifying him (they know he can't afford to pursue legal action against them)?



Good point.



That's beside the point though.  People are now making due with less food at higher prices because of the negligent and/or harmful acts of others that were out of their control (i.e. libertarian lingo "coercion").  What is in place to prevent these market forces from affect people that never agreed to be affected by it (same idea as libertarians complaining about the "zomg I never signed a social contract" in our current society)?



Again, that's beside the point.  See above question, how are "coercive" market forces prevented from affecting people that didn't volunteer to be affected by them.



My issue isn't that I have any doubt that people are smart enough to solve problems.  My issues is that the rich and powerful are smart (and powerful) enough to game any system that you manage to put in place, unless that system is equally as powerful as they are and properly protected from their influence.  The weaker you make the system of government and the laxer the regulations, the less hurdles there are for these people to jump over before they can have the run of the place.  Currently, they need to go through all the time and effort of controlling the government before they can control society.  Without government, they can control society directly with even less effort and with absolutely no recourse for the masses short of armed conflict.  That's my worry.

Thanks for actually directly answering my questions though.  Nice to see someone here has a solid enough grasp of what they believe to properly defend it without dishonest debate tactics.

It's not his fault you take what he says out of context in order to support your world view.

I'm sure you have no idea what my world view is, regardless...


Does that mean something different to you?

Nope, but the quote this thread is about sure as hell does, and that's where you're coming up with the idea that he's being inconsistent.  ::)

I never said he was inconsistent.  I said he was a retard.

But do you agree that robots create jobs?

Yes, someone needs to make the robots, someone needs to build the facilities to make the robots, someone needs to design the robots, someone needs to design the facilities, someone needs to bankroll all of this, someone needs to supply the raw materials, etc.

So, yes, in the short run it has the potential to create some jobs.

NEWSFLASH: Obama's Latest Plan to Lower Unemployment and End the Great Recession

"In the short run it has the potential to create some jobs," say supporters.

 :D

It seems like every week since 2008 that Obama announces a new plan to solve the economy. Yay! :)

You bet your ass they do.



Thats a bit harsh...   Every president with his speech writing and talking points corps are bound to throw out a stinker every now and then.

Please explain how, in explicit detail.

Ain't gonna program, build, maintain, clean, or repair itself, is it?

Net jobs.

(But to answer your question, there's no reason why not (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SREct28lJM).)

Then you're going to need to tell us what kind of robots.

Can't be elephants all the way down. ;)

You tell me, since I'm the one who asked the question.  What kind of robots create net jobs?  Crappy ones?

I industries that don't exist yet that require robots for production such as the production of photovoltic cells or hydrogen fuel cells.  You cannot produce these cost electively w/o the prerequisite robot tech.  Since these industries don't exist yet when they come on line there will be an explosion of jobs created in the production, distribution, sale, and installation of these products.  When talking about high tech you are talking about future job production not immediate job production.