Government is obsolete

[wufwugy]

Jimmy rustling title aside, the video is a concise explanation of how private markets regulate product safety better than government monopoly does

[spoonitnow]

I agree completely.

Also on the topic of being obsolete, so are condoms. It's 2014 and a man's best birth control option is wrapping a plastic bag around his dick. This is one step more advanced than using a Ziploc bag and duct tape.

Random interjection there. Carry on.

[wufwugy]

Spoon is obsolete

[OngBonga]

Damn I was hoping this would be a thread about anarchy or something equally as interesting.

Do I actually have to watch that video to talk about its content? Or can I just pretend I did and talk shit like I normally do? I'm sure I can get on the anti-capitalist bandwagon pretty easily. Surely that's related to this. Why the fuck has free market got control over product safety? Fuck it it's 4 minutes I'll watch it.

[OngBonga]

That felt like half an hour.

Fuck capitalism.

[wufwugy]

Thank you for the ongpinion

[OngBonga]

You're wufcome.

[wufwugy]

It's welwugy

[boost]

I found this video to be aesthetically pleasing.

[wufwugy]

I found this video to be aesthetically pleasing.

I am pleased with the direction the learnliberty channel is going. They have a lot of aesthetically pleasing, user friendly econ stuff

[pantherhound]

good video

[Renton]

Learnliberty does a great job of simply explaining concepts to people without the standard dickbertarian tone that turns so many people off.

[OngBonga]

Maybe you have to be American to not find his accent really fucking annoying. Are you all American?

[jackvance]

Silly question perhaps but how does a free market without goverment respond to a threat like ISIS appearing at their doorstep? Or even a similar threat originating from within? How would you credibly engage in the ever so important international relations without an effective government?

[Renton]

Silly question perhaps but how does a free market without goverment respond to a threat like ISIS appearing at their doorstep? Or even a similar threat originating from within? How would you credibly engage in the ever so important international relations without an effective government?

There are lots of youtubes that describe how a free and voluntary society would provide defense. It's an abstract problem though. Let me ask you this though: are states currently doing a good job at this?

[wufwugy]

There are lots of youtubes that describe how a free and voluntary society would provide defense. It's an abstract problem though. Let me ask you this though: are states currently doing a good job at this?

Show me

[wufwugy]

Silly question perhaps but how does a free market without goverment respond to a threat like ISIS appearing at their doorstep? Or even a similar threat originating from within? How would you credibly engage in the ever so important international relations without an effective government?

It's a great question. I don't know how well I can answer it because I haven't seen it discussed enough to flesh out my viewpoint. The majority of old school free market proponents are/were supportive of state defense. So they never discussed the idea, but that doesn't mean they weren't wrong. Renton is correct in how abstract it is since it's not something we'll change in our lifetimes. However, understanding it philosophically can do a lot of good, so it is an important question to answer

My most basic response to these things is that if government can do something, private interests can do it better, faster, and more cheaply. This is because both operate on consensus, but consensus is harder, longer, and more expensive to acquire for governments. For example, let's imagine the world is a clean slate with no government today. Tomorrow let's imagine an ISIS type agency arises in Silicon Valley and starts fucking shit up. Let's imagine we have two options to stop this: form a government and have that government tax and pass laws and set up a defense grid, or let the people whose property is on the line form their own defense. The former, even if government infrastructure was already in place, is clunky and operates like a sledgehammer on drywall nails, creating all sorts of unintended consequences. But the latter, where Google and Apple and a bunch of residents have the responsibility of stopping the Silicon Valley-ISIS from knocking down their doors, would be very swift and precise at getting the job done. They would value their property greater than SVISIS valued taking it, and Silicon Valley would shut it down rather efficiently

I don't believe there is something magical about what government can do. It's really just a middle man whose method is more inefficient than otherwise. If the public will is not substantive enough for a certain government policy, then that policy doesn't happen. But doesn't that mean that the public will is already there to do it without government?


The same sort of example applies everywhere. When the Iraqi forces fled Mosul, the Obama administration's response was basically that the will to defend by those people wasn't there, and that the ability for the US to step in and defend is also not feasible unless the will to defend was there.

Ferguson is another great example. If the government defense actually worked, there would not have been any rioting. But of course the government could have made that the case, but only through the hamfisted, unintended-consequences-juggernaut of martial law. Instead, if every business knew that they were responsible for their own security, the private infrastructure would have been used. That could mean anything from the businesses hiring security teams to just having their cousins stand outside the store holding rifles (the latter happened and it worked, but I can't find the source again). But even then, in a private market, none of that would have been necessary since the street/city itself would have been privately owned and there would have been no greater potential for riots to break out than they do inside malls or gated communities


I'll stop now to keep it short, but there is much more that needs to be done to create a convincing argument that government is not a defense solution

[wufwugy]

That said, when dealing with a relatively primitive economy, government becomes the most efficient way to establish defense. This is the reason we have governments today. The state arose from a need to defend against other states, and for the most part it has served no other purpose. The concept is quickly becoming obsolete today since the amount of wealth many different private enterprises command is enormous. For most of history, wealth was not something born of enterprise, but something controlled by state actors through force

[wufwugy]

As a matter of policy, I support just a gradual pullback from the Truman Doctrine but still an iron fist on non-proliferation of nuclear arms.

It wasn't military that collapsed the Soviet Union (it was economics) but it is military that is provoking Russia to antagonize (NATO expansion, for the most part). Frankly, I think ISIS is a much easier problem to solve with markets than NATO/USSR. I think the US has done a shit job since the USSR collapse. War mentality is the last thing that could solve the USSR problem after collapse. I think if the military pulled a Rand Paul and backed off, Russia would have incorporated into capitalism much more easily, and then we'd be close to global peace since Russia really is the West's greatest geopolitical foe

[a500lbgorilla]

Let me ask you this though: are states currently doing a good job at this?

The ones with a real interest in a stable market place are. Those run by men who seek to wield power, not so much. Problem is, even with a stateless free market, psychopaths will still rise to the top.

[Renton]

Show me

This one talks more about police than security but the concepts translate. It's part one of three.

[Renton]

I'm only 12 minutes into this one but Robert Murphy is the bomb and I'm sure he has great points for this subject.

[wufwugy]

This one talks more about police than security but the concepts translate. It's part one of three.

All three of these are fantastic and I encourage anybody interested to watch them. However, they do not address two important questions that many non-libertarians ask: (1) what happens when people choose to pay for no insurance or when they're too poor to purchase any in the first place, and (2) what happens when a group of powerful entities decide to overthrow the system and establish a government

I think there are answers to these, and they need to be addressed because they're the two main questions that non-libertarians need answers to before they accept the philosophy as workable and sustainable

[eberetta1]

I see how corporations are able to police themselves without government interference. Corporations paid off the credit rating agency to give them a good rating, then have government soak up the oil spill they created when everything collapsed from mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations. Too bad there is a government. Would have been glad to see some of these monopolies fail.

Let's admit it though. We now need monopolies to compete against foreign competitors. So we need government to approve monopolies when corporations want to combine forces.

[Savy]

What happens when wuf stops posting threads about his hatred of government?

[wufwugy]

What happens when wuf stops posting threads about his hatred of government?

What happens when you contribute?

More than once now, you have expressed an opinion and I have asked for further clarification yet you give no clarification. Do you not realize that this means that you are the one who is wrong?

Back yourself up or shut the fuck up

[wufwugy]

Let's admit it though. We now need monopolies to compete against foreign competitors. So we need government to approve monopolies when corporations want to combine forces.

Why do we need that when we don't have it now? Apple and Google and virtually all other companies are not granted a monopoly against foreign competition