I have occasionally visited this "outside" you speak of. And I found that most oligarchies that got broke up were replaced by monopolies. It's funny, really. If they'd just left it alone, when the profit margin got high enough, someone would have stepped in and made a good profit breaking up that cartel. Instead, they made a monopoly, and regulated the heck out of it, to keep any competition from coming in.
THEY made a monopoly? How do you make a monopoly by fining the companies who broke the law, put those responsible behind bars and tell everyone to follow the rules? That's how we handle oligopolies where I come from. How do you do it? Companies can still continue to operate, just within the rules. Perhaps you just have a crappy government that needs to be replaced? Start campaigning. |
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If you steal my TV, you owe me a TV. If you steal my life, you a owe me a life. I'm not sure why that's so complicated. Does me taking a TV from you make it so that you never stole my TV in the first place? No, but it's as good as we can do. Does taking your life and giving it to my family make it so that you never stole my life in the first place? No, but it's as good as we can do. Nobody here is thirsting for blood so spare me the negative labels. Either you have some argument of merit or you're just appealing to emotions.
Please don't tell me you compared a TV to a life? You don't think there's a difference there? Taking a life for a life is old testament stuff, and it's not as good as we can do. It's a horrible solution. The kind that blood feuds come from. I think society has a right to protect itself, and removing people who are threats to others is something society should do. If information is perfect and only logic is applied then your solution makes a twisted kind of sense, since the most effective way of removing a threat is to do it permanently. However since information isn't perfect, and people aren't driven only by logic, your solution is a bad one. You have no idea of the guilt of someone, what caused the murder in the first place or what if any disease might have played a part in the act. You can make reasonable assumptions, but what if you're wrong? Another murder to set things straight again? And who should we murder if we managed to kill an innocent? Just the guy who executed him? The judge? The jury? They've all taken part in the murder. Locking people up is the proper solution. It's not the best one but it's far better than running around murdering people. |
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A compromise between right and wrong is still wrong. A compromise between good and bad is still bad.
What's it like up there on your high horses? In everything but the simplest questions there's a compromise. |
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This doesn't take into account those that like kinky role-play and are into rape-fetish. If two adults are consenting to act out a scenario (no matter how twisted the depicted action is), how is that immoral?
As to the OP, no, i don't believe that bitcoin possesses any kind of morality, same as my computer.
A role play is a game. Whatever consenting adults do, it's not rape. And I don't think BitCoin is immoral either. I don't think that not all tools are amoral however. |
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Well, he did make the example outrageously restricted. The more people in the equation, the more likely it is that someone will come along who is willing and able to charge less/pay more.
I wasn't talking about the example. I was talking about the real world, today, outside your window. |
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I agree that insults are counter productive and I don't think I've ever insulted anyone on this forum. Not intentionally anyway. I might write things tongue in cheek sometimes though, which I assume some could find provocative, but the goal is never to insult.
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We rely on basic human greed to ensure that at least one will always undercut the others, and the NAP to ensure that the others don't beat him up for it. That's a distinct oversimplification, but, there it is.
But if that doesn't happen today, why would it happen in an AnCap society? Oligopolys are broken up regularly. It seems that basic human greed is what creates an oligopoly, not breaks up one. |
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What about a tool that only has an amoral use?
I assume you mean "immoral". But, sure, just name one. I did. A bit quick on the keyboard there. How about the rape-kit that was described by another poster. I'd say it only has an immoral use. My point was that I think that most tools are amoral, but not all. |
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Just wanted to hear you say it yourself. So, what you're suggesting, is that when someone murders someone, we should take money from not just the friends and family of the victims, but the entire society, people who have no connection to either the victim or the murderer, to pay for the care and feeding of the murderer? Rather than do something to redress the crime, and make those who were most hurt by it feel at least a little better, you would make them a victim a second time, and include the rest of us too, while you're at it? You would threaten, with violence or murder, millions of people, to support the life and needs of one murderer? Don't you see the hypocrisy there?
Oh get over yourself. Do you equal murder with taxes now? "... a victim a second time ..."? Does the gene for being a drama queen come with AnCap/Libertarianism? And "... threaten you with murder ...", dear lord are you really serious? Yes, I'm sure those who've had a relative murdered feel that had they just not paid taxes things would be better. That last sentence was irony, in case that didn't get through. I'll give a proper answer when I don't get timeout's all the time. I had a long answer written down that got lost. ;( |
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Tools are always and totally amoral. Bitcoin is a tool.
Are they? I'm not so sure. What about a tool that only has an amoral use? You would have to be amoral to use it yes, but is the tool itself amoral if it has no other purpose than to commit amoral acts? |
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I advocate imprisonment.
OK. Who pays? Who pays for the criminal's meals, medical care, housing, and protection? And if we goofed, who pays for that 'truckload of money'? Taxes. I thought that was obvious. Haven't I've been here long enough to let you guess that on your own?  Prisons are an operating cost of running a society. |
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Firstly, I never said that another murder would help anything. In fact, I explicitly said that I would rather a murderer be rehabilitated. Premeditated murderers and mass/serial murderers would most likely do it again, however. So, how would you suggest they be dealt with?
I agree, that killing an innocent person would not benefit anyone, which is why it is important to make sure you get the right guy, the same as it is in today's system.
Give the perpetrator to the next of kin and turn you back certainly implies that you wouldn't mind, but if that wasn't what you meant I don't know what you really wanted to say by that. I agree with you that rehabilitation is the preferred solution, but peoples sense of justice also demands some kind of punishment, for which jail is an adequate solution. That is coincidentally the same way I'd deal with people who can't be rehabilitated. Lock them up, for life if you have to, although research shows that violent criminals more or less stop being violent at around 60 years of age. Not all obviously. Today's system is also broken. There are quite a few innocent people who have been murdered by the state. I advocate imprisonment. If you should make a mistake you can just say "Oops, sorry, here's a truckload of money. Enjoy the rest of your life." It's not perfect, but far better than "Oh, I guess that guy we executed was innocent after all". And you should go after the reasons for crime, which quite often are poverty, drugs and lack of education, among other things. Surprisingly often criminals come from the lowest social class. |
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Read fully the original post of mine that was quoted.
The one about turning your back? It doesn't answer any of the questions I asked. |
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To be honest, for premeditated murder, and serial/mass murder, I'd probably give the killer to the deceased's next of kin, and turn my back. That's fair. Ideally, if A kills B then we would put B's dead body in one chamber of a machine and A's live body in the other chamber of the machine and transfer A's life to B. Since we don't have a machine like that, the next best thing is to give A's life to B's heirs and they can do whatever they want with it, including public execution. The blood thirst here is scary. How does another murder help anything? It just creates more victims. Even a murderer has family that cares about him/her. It might prevent more murders, although it's not the only way, and who knows if the person would ever kill again? And that's assuming that no mistake has been done finding the killer. What if you managed to find and kill an innocent, then what? Does another murder put that right? |
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I'm from scandinavia and I really don't give a shit whether we managed to stand upright through the financial crisis or not. We're getting less free every year with increasing privacy intrusions and ever increasing taxes to fund the paychecks of a growing state-employed & political elite. Sorry to disappoint any leftists "looking to norway and sweden", but this is just not working out at a base human level. The only thing I can appreciate about living in a humongous welfare state is that going Galt is pretty damn comforting!
I have no idea what "going Galt" means. Apart from that what was mentioned in the article was that Sweden has done quite well recovering. They have done so by "meddling" in the market, which goes against the Austrian school which many here subscribe to. I found that interesting and thought I'd get some comments on that. I'm sorry you feel less free. Where would you rather be? Are there other places that you feel "work out" better at a base human level. |
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Can you try to argue without putting in my mouth words that I did not say? Why do you need to be dishonest? If you are right, you dont need to be dishonest. That you are manipulating and adopting a trolling attitude shows that you are insecure because probably you already know the article does not hold. I did not say the article is fustrating or that the article "works in real life". What I said is the article is a bunch of non-sequiturs. This article is quite ridiculous. Anyone with a bit of critical thinking capacity can see it. Lets take for example the part on monetary policy. It almost does not explain how this aggressive monetary policy is good. If you take the explanation of the situation and the rethoric out, this is all that is left to explain why this aggresive monetary politcy is good: The impact of low rates on the economy, however, are clear.
“Interest rates fell very low, and households had more money available for consumption because their mortgage payments dropped,” said Lena Hagman, chief economist of Almega, an association of major employers in Sweden’s services sector. First of all, the first sentence is a typical form of propaganda. This is clear. Period. Nothing to discuss here. Is typical rethoric from a cult. Then you have the typical falacy that lower rates call always create more consumption, and then the even bigger fallacy that more consumption helps the economy (how did that work for Greenspan and Bush?). Have you consider that the reason why this abuse by the central bank did not have a worse effect and the economy did not suffer too much from it, is that there was no housing bubble in Sweden? No, lets compare a Sweden without a housing bubble with a USA with a housing bubble. Yeah, that makes sense... How about Germany performance when the ECB wasnt as aggressive as the article suggest a central bank has to be? Oh well, Germany did not have a housing bubble and they are doing good. While Spain also under the ECB policies is doing very bad, and, surprise surprise, they had a housing bubble. So the countries that didnt have a housing bubble are doing a lot better than the countries that had a housing bubble, all with more and less agressive monetary policies. But hey, its the agressive monetary policy, no doubt! The whole thing is propaganda, and anyone with a bit of critical thiking can see it. But I dont think you want to really discuss the issues, nor the rest of your "budies" want to rationally discuss neither. This thread was just opened for name calling, so you can proceed. Quite a long answer. I'm honoured. I don't mean to put words in your mouth. I just thought I could sense a little bit of frustration in your reply, if that was wrong, I apologize. And yes, the response was written a bit 'tongue in cheek', I didn't mean to be trollish though. Now, if I extend such courtesy to you, perhaps you could do the same and refrain from statements such as "anyone with a bit of critical thinking capacity can see" which clearly implies that anyone who doesn't agree with you lacks such capacity. Why do you only focus on one of the points mentioned? But OK, let's talk about that one point. What's so controversial about mentioning that lower rates gave households more money to spend? It generally does. Was it all spent? I don't know. Some of it probably was. And why wouldn't consumption help the economy? I don't know enough about Greenspan/Bush to address that, but feel free to enlighten me. And I don't agree with you assertion that "the first sentence is a typical form of propaganda. This is clear. Period. Nothing to discuss here. Is typical rethoric from a cult" at all. If you want to make that assertion, do so with facts and not some hand-waving and "everybody knows this". I agree that the housing bubble is a problem. It's the same in Ireland afaik. There was a housing bubble in Sweden in the 1990s (google it) and from what I've read they recovered quite fast from that too. http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2008-04-01-sweden-financial-crisis_N.htmhttp://www.businesspundit.com/10-of-the-worlds-most-dramatic-financial-crises-and-their-lessons/http://articles.cnn.com/2009-04-02/us/japan.sweden_1_japanese-banks-interest-rates-resona-bank?_s=PM:USI don't recall if these were the exact articles, but I'd imagine they say pretty much the same thing. |
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I recomend to some of the poster here to stop insulting to other members of the community.
Regarding the article is a bunch of non-sequiturs. I would appreciate if the op would bring a serious economic analisys and not the economic political propaganda.
Being the OP I apologize that the article doesn't fit your world view. I know how frustrating it must be to find that something you've academically decided doesn't work, actually does in the real world. People in these forums say "the market will fix it, just leave everything be" and it turns out that the highest performers out there are actually those who DON'T do this. If I'm not misinformed Lithuania was also a big mess not too long ago, then they employed some strict economic policy and turned everything around, doing quite well now. If everything in the article are just "non-sequiturs" was it just blind luck that made Sweden come out on top? Please point out the flaws in the article instead of just dismissing it as propaganda. |
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It's called economy of scale. Walmart has a higher cost per shipment, but a disproportional amount of profit, because they average that cost over a much larger amount of goods. Yet, they pay almost exactly the same amount of taxes, proportional to the cost of shipment. The price of the roads being factored into the gas prices, probably much less (Both trucks run on a diesel engine, but the semi uses less fuel, as a percentage of the profit from the shipment, than does the smaller truck).
You want to punish WalMart for being effective and utilizing economy of scale? |
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Social-democrat: Social-democracy will help everybody.
Other: Then why does it always concentrate the wealth in a few hands and hurts the poor?
Social-democrat: Because this is not a real democracy. We need a real democracy.
Oddly enough I've never heard any social democrat say something like that. "Most fair distribution" or "Least unfair distribution" perhaps. Several posters on this forum have repeatedly said that whenever a flaw in a free market was presented it was because the market wasn't free enough because of government interaction. And I've spent lots of time with left wing youth to know every angle of "Communism will help everyone when we get REAL communism", which is an equal amount of BS as "the market will fix everything" imho. |
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