JasonC SBB

Strawmen. It was libertarian in that gov't was small. A small government with a strong rule of law that *protects* individual rights will not allow slavery.

The argument that "more gov't" = "no more slavery" but also "welfare, economic intervention, warfare and empire" is a false dichotomy.

Slavery violates the right to liberty of the slaves.

Child labor ended *not* because governments banned it, but because society got wealthy enough that children need not work. Governments started banning it when it was on the decline. In Bangladesh, poor children worked because the parents' income was not enough to put food on the table. When it was banned, they turned to the black market - child prostitution increased.


Your ignorance is showing. You make a knee-jerk argument without studying anything about the Icelandic Commonwealth:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/long1.html

More ignorance. If you want to argue, first read up on it.

I myself may not agree that it is possible to get from here to a stable AnarchoCapitalistic society, but a lot of the concepts made clear by their proponents are very useful in analyzing today's society.

Here are 2 free PDFs:
http://www.google.com/url?http://mis.../foranewlb.pdf
http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf

Your uninformed arguments are why I prefer to discuss the merits of Minarchy as opposed to the theories of AnarchoCapitalism. It would be a Strawman argument to say "Jason doesn't know what he's talking about when he discusses Minarchism, because he discusses AnarchoCapitalism which is lunacy".


Your style of posting does not produce productive discussion. You are arguing to win, not to learn.

Hiro and Satori

implicited suggestion has always been that more personal liberty equates to a higher quality of life, otherwise it's a step backwords.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

JasonC SBB

I already explained that it depends on the legal definition of the beginning of life. It might be "when brain waves appear" which might be 4 months (?). Before such a point, abortion does not violate the right to life.

You are very wrong about this. You need to look at the body of philosophy that they based the Declaration of Independence on, rather than their actions as men. The philosophy was based on writings of philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment such as John Locke.

The fundamental principle is Individual Liberty.

The weak mind argues appearances, the mediocre mind argues personalities, the strong mind argues ideas.
Don't argue what the Founders did or did not do.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

I don't care if you're the most lavishly cared for slave in the world, you're still a slave.

Hiro and Satori

I've been in love with libertianism since I was a young Republican who stayed up late to watch Wally George.

Idealisticly, I am for it, I just don't see such a wonderfully common-sense solution working in todays world, where sense is less than common.

I'm familiar with Friedman, had him sign a couple of his works when I met him at the Real Time with Bill Maher show. That said, I believe that supply side economics has shown less merit than Keyes.

The popularity of "Liberty" waxes and wanes decade after decade, being popular when times are stressful and less so when we feel like we're doing better than we did last year. The public is fickle.

Capitalism *perfectly* works for society when employees, customers and owners all stand equal, it creates wealth and leads to innovation. History shows us that balance is not easy to find, because of self interests, any of the 3 players can destablize the health of a company, and on the macro level ruin an economy. For instance,over paid union workers can bankrupt a strong company, customers choosing to buy low quality disposible imports vs high quality durable domestic products, or the owners out sourcing jobs for a bump in stock value. I'm sure we agree that these actions all have a negative effect on society. This is a reason why Co-Ops became popular during the turn of the 20th century, pure capitalism had lost it's ability to find it's *perfect* form for society, so society found another form....but they were fickle and FDR got elected.

When an outside hostile influence, say 9/11, happens, certainly there is a role for Government to support businesses while they suffer from the ramifications of a failure of the Military/Intellegence arms of the government? If Uncle Sam can help the airlines, it seems they should help the family of victim John Doe, too. The tough part is cutting off that support once the economy has healed. Historically we've failed to do that, the result is the enormous government spending we currently "enjoy".

I enjoy both sides of this arguement, I have never meant to insult or be cruel or mean, but I can be harsh, I apologize for the lack of non verbal ques.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

You're wrong.

Hiro and Satori

Yeah that's possible, I'm only human. It's a personal liberty that the government hasn't taken from any of us yet.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

More specifically, I meant that you're wrong that we all agree on that point. For instance, I reject the idea that outsourced jobs are automatically a negative influence on society.

Hiro and Satori

So JasonSBB leaves me with a (false) dilemma, either support individual liberty or support Stalin-ism?

Nobody is going to argue the merits of individual liberty. That's like saying having two thumbs is great.

What we really want to know is how much more liberty are we entitled to.

We can't even elect a Congress that will repeal the MJ laws, which would free people from prison and provide for a creation of wealth.

When such no-brainer ideas are left dead in the water, it's simply crazy to suggest the more extreme limbs of congress will bear any fruit. Yet the same Congress (more or less) will be elected again, because it's our nature to believe that our representive have got it right and the rest of country is full of idiots.

There is that old belief that the Devil you know is better than the Devil you don't, that, in my opinion, is the idea that is holding libertarianism back.

Hiro and Satori

Now I didn't say anything happened automatically.

We all know people who lost good jobs due to outsourcing, while the executives made millions in stock options even as the company takes billions in charges for the downsize and stops paying dividends. That has an effect on society, particularly in it's sense of confidence in the future. It's tough to see a bright future when your retirement was a 401k that tanked after you lost your job and the CEO bailed with a pay check equal to 10 of your LIFETIMES.

If it had no effect neither the Tea Parter nor the Occupy groups would have found an attractive niche. At their roots, both camps have formed because adults feel that they are unable to provide a world of individual liberty for the next generation. They both struggle to find real world solutions from their idealistic perspectives. It's a tough nut to crack!

blaen99

iTrader: (6)

Uh oh. He said something good about Occupy.

opcorn: This is going to get good. :wave: Brainy

JasonC SBB

There are shades of gray, relative amounts of liberty. Singapore is tops in economic liberty but lowish on individual liberty. The USA, Switzerland, and Chile are on one end of the spectrum, and Cuba and North Korea on the other end.

ALL of it, except when you violate others' liberties. And your use of "entitled" is very telling - like liberties are something some higher authority grants you. This is WRONG. That is a STATIST belief. That gov't is a superior body. Liberty is an inalienable right.

Exactly. The problem is believing the the gov't has the right to restrict you from putting certain things in your body.

Bingo. This is rooted in STATISM. That a small elected elite has the right and the duty to tell us what we can and can't do, in the name of the common good.

Ron Paul IMO has done the most in recent decades to get the ideas out in the open for discussion.

JasonC SBB

There is a VERY important distinction which you are missing, between Free Market Capitalism and Corporatism aka Crony or State Capitalism. In the latter, big players get to influence gov't to pass laws that favor them at the expense of smaller competitors and of the general public.

With Free Market Capitalism, the customer is sovereign because businesses live or die by pleasing their customers. In a free market there is *free entry* for startup competition. Additionally regulation is done through competing interests - for-profit regulatory agencies will provide regulation. VDE which tests wheels is one such example. 949 wheels have undergone VDE style testing. Look at the competition 949 and TSE have to face and how much choice use customers have. Such a dynamic is thwarted when gov't gets in the picture...

In Corporatism the gov't erects barriers to entry to limit competition and protect the big players. Costs go *up* instead of down. Any industry with heavy regulation shows this. You name it. Big Pharma, Big Finance, Big Agri, marijuana growing.

Here's an excellent video on the TRUE roots of Progressivism. Very well worth viewing:

blaen99

iTrader: (6)

I'm just going to quote this all in one go.

We'll have to seriously disagree on this (Edited removal by meeeeh, unfair).

Statism is simply the belief that a government can accomplish something either more effectively than can otherwise be done, or can only be accomplished via that. There's nothing inherently good or bad about it - it's one of the most generic theories in the political science realm. What you are arguing against is a very specific form of statism, not statism itself

What you are arguing against is right-wing statism. Specifically, what you argue against is almost verbatim what right-wing authoritarianism defines as statism. Or, to put it more simply, what you are arguing against is authoritarianism.

This is ALMOST verbatim for the definition of authoritarianism, not statism. It's important to keep the two distinct in this case: You and I have very similar beliefs, but the problem is that you are attacking a strawman other people have set up. Here, read this...

Do you see something similar? Statism is a very generic (And, really, largely useless) theory about individual power vs. government power. It's boring, bland, and is used frequently in an ill-defined and politically motivated fashion when people should be attacking something else entirely. Statism does not oppose individualism. What opposes individualism is authoritarianism and collectivism - of which both are distinct and only tangentially related to statism in the fashion you are arguing. (Ninjar edit) The only thing that opposes statism is anarchism - in the most literal sense. Minarchy, to put it simply, tries to minimize statism. It accepts there are some things that can either only be accomplished via the state, or can be accomplished best via the state (enforcement of contract law, as an example). But, because of this, even minarchism still adheres to a form of statism.

Yeah. It's a very, very good source on what liberals are, and it manages to clear up some difficult-to-express sentiments.

UrbanFuturistic

I waited til this morning to read this. It is indeed an interesting concept.

More interesting is, in the meantime, I started to watch Jared Diamonds Guns, Germs, and Steel. It's a little hard to swallow all of what he says in his documentary. But I can see why he believes the above Icelandic commonwealth didn't work out. But he uses extreme examples of things to make his points. He uses new guinea to prove his point that farming, and thus geography, dictate your success in any given society. But I just can't buy into it, completely. I'll comment more after I finish watching.

jared8783

iTrader: (2)

dont forget now
ron paul thinks mexicans take your shoes
wants to make a zoo with our tax dollars
AND he wants to give away free bananas


sorry for the repost
i couldnt help myself

JasonC SBB

And here's a fascinating counterpoint:
http://blog.ted.com/2011/09/19/the-6...on-on-ted-com/