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The way to show government should intervene into personal lives

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  1. #151
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    George Takei did a TED talk about growing up in one of those camps*, and it's amazing how his dad tells him to stay a patriot because this imprisonment was against the American ideal, and it would end.

    *
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeBKBFAPwNc
  2. #152
    Quote Originally Posted by spoonitnow View Post
    And it was still American citizens being put into concentration camps on US soil, no matter how you want to try to spin it.
    No one here is trying to spin anything. I thought I made it clear that I'm not defending the practice of internment camps.

    But spoon, if you're gonna be such a judgmental know-it-all......what would have been a better solution? Imagine you're president.....

    The Phillippenes just got sneak attacked. There is an excellent reason to believe that Japanese immigrants could not be trusted. There was plausible and justifiable fear that immigrants on the west coast would attack civilian populations.

    Meanwhile.....you have NO NAVY with which to defend your coast. Most of your ships are at the bottom of Pearl Harbor.

    What would you do? If you cling to your American ideals, and you're wrong, there may not be an America to be idealistic about.


    Furthermore....can you please explain how the same thing could possibly ever happen to gays?
  3. #153
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    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    George Takei did a TED talk about growing up in one of those camps*, and it's amazing how his dad tells him to stay a patriot because this imprisonment was against the American ideal, and it would end.

    *
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeBKBFAPwNc
    George Takei is a piece of shit.

    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    No one here is trying to spin anything. I thought I made it clear that I'm not defending the practice of internment camps.

    But spoon, if you're gonna be such a judgmental know-it-all......what would have been a better solution? Imagine you're president.....

    The Phillippenes just got sneak attacked. There is an excellent reason to believe that Japanese immigrants could not be trusted. There was plausible and justifiable fear that immigrants on the west coast would attack civilian populations.

    Meanwhile.....you have NO NAVY with which to defend your coast. Most of your ships are at the bottom of Pearl Harbor.

    What would you do? If you cling to your American ideals, and you're wrong, there may not be an America to be idealistic about.


    Furthermore....can you please explain how the same thing could possibly ever happen to gays?
    It's easy: The government would round them up and put them in camps. The shit isn't rocket science. The more power you give to the government, the more power they have to abuse.
  4. #154
    how did nobody go to prison for that? are there loopholes in the law?
  5. #155
    spoonitnow's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    how did nobody go to prison for that? are there loopholes in the law?
    What law lol

    The government isn't subject to laws on any meaningful level. It just doesn't work that way. If they decide you're fucked, then they're going to do their best to fuck you.

    Just think about it for a moment: When is the last time a major government official on any level got actual prison time for some bullshit they pulled?

    That's one example of why people who shit on the Second Amendment are completely fucking retarded, not that there's any shortage of examples of that.

    Edit: I believe they were given reparations and a formal apology by the government at some point, early 2000s I think?
    Last edited by spoonitnow; 12-24-2017 at 02:45 PM.
  6. #156
    spoonitnow's Avatar
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    George Takei recently tried to blame Russian bots for why he confessed to sexually assaulting multiple men on the Howard Stern show.

    That sounds like some shit I would make up as a clickbait headline, but it's actually 100 percent true. He's such a fucking idiot.

    Edit: Wrong thread, but fuck it. It was inspired by this one.
  7. #157
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    how did nobody go to prison for that? are there loopholes in the law?
    People only get charged for war crimes when they're on the losing side.
  8. #158
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Savy View Post
    People only get charged for war crimes when they're on the losing side.
    Check out US-Japan relations post-WWII w.r.t. waterboarding.
  9. #159
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    how did nobody go to prison for that? are there loopholes in the law?
    It's pretty much the same loophole that says soldiers who shoot enemies don't go to prison for murder
  10. #160
    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017...nder-fire.html

    Synopsis: Republican bill makes it illegal to run the EPA based on government sponsored lies, the way Obama did.

    Democrats like to protect people by insulating them from things that democrats don't like. Republicans protect people by giving them more data to make informed choices.
  11. #161
    This is an old story, but a common one in my area. Always sparks a lively debate about the government, how it spends its money, what it's responsibilities are, and how it compensates itself.

    Basically, the rule is....if you go into the wilderness and call for help, the gov't gets to evaluate you, your gear, your abilities, and then decide whether or not you made a bad decision. If they decide that you did......then you get a bill for the costs associated with rescuing you.

  12. #162
    Quote Originally Posted by spoonitnow View Post
    It's easy: The government would round them up and put them in camps.
    Fox News confirms that gay death camps are on hold until at least second-term. So chill spoon

    http://video.foxnews.com/v/570171246...#sp=show-clips
  13. #163
    spoonitnow's Avatar
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    Re: Thread Title

    It shouldn't.

    /thread
  14. #164
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    Observations can only inform us of what happens, not why it happens.

    In order to make statements about what "should" be, we must call upon faith, and not observation.

    If you want to convince anyone that anything should be or do something, then appeal to their subjective sensibilities.

    This manifests in moral / ethical / spiritual-based arguments, and is why politics is primarily mired in trying to unravel issues with no clearly measurable answer. If it was at all obvious that one side was right or wrong, then the discussion is over. It's only when it is not at all obvious which side is right that there is extended political discourse.

    As such, anyone who asserts their side is unequivocally right is almost certainly not holding a well-informed position which considers all of the facts, without confirmation bias.
  15. #165
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    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    Observations can only inform us of what happens, not why it happens.
    Wrong. If someone kicks me in the balls, and I see them do it, I immediately observe why my balls hurt.

    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    As such, anyone who asserts their side is unequivocally right is almost certainly not holding a well-informed position which considers all of the facts, without confirmation bias.
    Just because you're constantly unsure of yourself (which you should be) doesn't mean that the rest of the world (only most of it) is full of soulless self-loathing liberals.
  16. #166
    Humility is not the same as self-loathing.
  17. #167
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    Humility is not the same as self-loathing.
    Claiming to be smarter than a wildly successful politician and living-icon of business success is what you consider 'humility'?
  18. #168
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    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    Claiming to be smarter than a wildly successful politician and living-icon of business success is what you consider 'humility'?
    There is no cure.
  19. #169
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    As such, anyone who asserts their side is unequivocally right is almost certainly not holding a well-informed position which considers all of the facts, without confirmation bias.
    Yeah man, intellect = ignorance.....aliens.....look at all the stars.....do my hands look weird????

    What if you were well informed, and considered all the facts, and then objectively determined the outcome with the greatest net gain towards the stated goals??

    It's called problem solving. Do they not teach that in school anymore?
  20. #170
    One thing I will say is a lot of the stuff that characterizes the "left-liberal" zeitgeist doesn't characterize those who post here sympathetic to other things considered left or liberal.

    I tend to think not seeing that is a real problem everybody (everybody) has. Example: many (most?) teachers do not support social justice barbarian tactics in the schools, but if those people don't identify has conservative, they are typically lumped in as agreeing with the social justice barbarians.
  21. #171
    If we're talking about how to allocate resources, then this: "The way to show government should intervene into personal lives" is a super loaded prompt. You're assuming that society's resources are personally claimed, which is even more radical than assuming they're privately claimed.

    It's difficult to think of a system where the state doesn't intervene in how resources are allocated. In our current system, the state facilitates and protects private ownership. Property is 90% of the law. If you're looking for a place to stay and you come across a foreclosed home, if you squat there, the state will come and kick you out on behalf of the bank that owns the house. When a group of Indonesians make a flat screen television, it doesn't go to the workers or the factory itself or even stay in the country; the product and its bottom-line profits are allocated to a foreign entity. This is a great deal of what the state oversees.

    In anarcho-capitalism, the state goes away in only the most pedantic sense. The military and police are replaced by mercenaries and mall cops, but I guess at least the facade goes away that they're not acting on the direct behalf of private interests?

    In vanguard socialism, the state itself owns the resources and allocates them directly.

    In social democracy, the resources are primarily allocated via private ownership claims, but the state taxes enough that the government itself has enough resources that they can come to democratic decisions on how to allocate that segment of the economy.

    Even in most forms of fairytale anarcho-communist societies, resource allocation is ultimately determined by some institution. In anarcho-syndicalism, for example, it's basically the unions: syndicated groups of laborers jointly determine how they're going to use the means of production and to what use they'll put their labor.

    So it's just a matter of how you define the terms in your OP. If you think it's self-evident that someone having a picnic in a Baron's garden is an infringement on the Baron's personal liberties, and so having the police show up to kick them off isn't a government intervention, then you're going to demand an explanation if the Baron's estate ends up being used as a public space. If you see the police dragging a man away for having a picnic on an unused plot of land as a government intervention, then you'll see it exactly the other way. So having the conversation on those terms isn't terribly useful.
    Last edited by surviva316; 01-17-2018 at 02:56 PM.
  22. #172
    Not sure if we're on the same page here or not wuf, but my take is that many of those we identify on the "left" aren't nearly as passionate as they claim to be with regards to socialist economics, redistribution, and their complaints about income inequality. In fact, deep down in places they don't talk about at parties, they believe in meritocracy. Otherwise, they'd all give their money to the government, right?

    What I think has come to define the left is an entitlement that expects government to correct anything in society that doesn't meet their preferences. They demand laws that enforce their preferred narrative, and punishes those who think otherwise.

    Waaah! I don't like Trump, he should be impeached!

    Waaah! I blew all my money on drugs now I have no food for my family...give me food stamps!

    Waaah! Too many of my friends are in jail....tell the police to be nicer.

    And unfortunately for those on the right, identifying as a conservative means having some conviction in the principle of CONSERVATION, meaning the limiting of government powers. Hence we tend not to look to the nanny state for every little thing.
  23. #173
    Quote Originally Posted by surviva316 View Post
    It's difficult to think of a system where the state doesn't intervene in how resources are allocated. In our current system, the state facilitates and protects private ownership. Property is 90% of the law. If you're looking for a place to stay and you come across a foreclosed home, if you squat there, the state will come and kick you out on behalf of the bank that owns the house. When a group of Indonesians make a flat screen television, it doesn't go to the workers or the factory itself or even stay in the country; the product and its bottom-line profits are allocated to a foreign entity. This is a great deal of what the state oversees.

    In anarcho-capitalism, the state goes away in only the most pedantic sense. The military and police are replaced by mercenaries and mall cops, but I guess at least the facade goes away that they're not acting on the direct behalf of private interests?
    The state is funded by use of force. Anarcho-capitalism has the same institutions (essentially) yet they are funded by choice. This is the base distinction between the two. We will always have societies with rules and that is good. The question is who makes the rules and why do they make them.

    To encapsulate, the statist position is to have a monopoly that uses force to construct institutions. The anti-state position is to have institutions constructed by agents' choice. The difference is like if the government taxes to pay for school versus if people were to pay for school out of their own pockets.

    So it's just a matter of how you define the terms in your OP. If you think it's self-evident that someone having a picnic in a Baron's garden is an infringement on the Baron's personal liberties, and so having the police show up to kick them off isn't a government intervention, then you're going to demand an explanation if the Baron's estate ends up being used as a public space. If you see the police dragging a man away for having a picnic on an unused plot of land as a government intervention, then you'll see it exactly the other way. So having the conversation on those terms isn't terribly useful.
    This is a great observation. The distinction the OP makes is about who is doing the kicking off of Baron's garden and why. If it is a tax-funded rule-setting and enforcement body (typically we call this government), then for that to be better than it being by a freely-chosen rule-setting and enforcement body (there isn't a word for this yet) requires that it be more efficient. And vice versa.
  24. #174
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    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    Not sure if we're on the same page here or not wuf, but my take is that many of those we identify on the "left" aren't nearly as passionate as they claim to be with regards to socialist economics, redistribution, and their complaints about income inequality. In fact, deep down in places they don't talk about at parties, they believe in meritocracy. Otherwise, they'd all give their money to the government, right?

    What I think has come to define the left is an entitlement that expects government to correct anything in society that doesn't meet their preferences. They demand laws that enforce their preferred narrative, and punishes those who think otherwise.

    Waaah! I don't like Trump, he should be impeached!

    Waaah! I blew all my money on drugs now I have no food for my family...give me food stamps!

    Waaah! Too many of my friends are in jail....tell the police to be nicer.

    And unfortunately for those on the right, identifying as a conservative means having some conviction in the principle of CONSERVATION, meaning the limiting of government powers. Hence we tend not to look to the nanny state for every little thing.
    It's all Peter Pan syndrome. They don't want to grow up. They want mommy and daddy to take care of them and protect them in their little bubble full of their participation trophies.
  25. #175
    Man I remember those participation trophies. Even as a fucking child I was like WTF is this bullshit.

    Or maybe that's just my athletic privilege since I got real trophies by winning real competitions.
  26. #176
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    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Man I remember those participation trophies. Even as a fucking child I was like WTF is this bullshit.

    Or maybe that's just my athletic privilege since I got real trophies by winning real competitions.
    I play a real sport. Ain't nobody trying to be best at exercising.
  27. #177
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    The anti-state position is to have institutions constructed by agents' choice.
    In this case, the choice of how to allocate resources is held exclusively by people who have access to those resources. Mutually agreed-upon exchanges are made between people who have capital to exchange. It's literally a direct plutocracy.

    In the case of the Indonesian factory worker, I'm not sure what choice you think they have in the matter other than to either build the television or starve. They only have their labor to sell, only find work only so long as their labor increases the capital of those who already have capital, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market they have no say in.

    In the case of first worlders (even "poor" first worlders) the distinction is less stark. They have access to enough specialized educational opportunities to be able to have a specialized labor that they can sell on a robust marketplace that at least has a few potential frontiers left (be that in entertainment, apps, what-have-you) that even with nothing but your labor to sell, that labor can be valuable enough to become a capitalist. There's just enough opportunity in the market through specialized labor to sustain the illusion that this choice is available to everyone in the first world. It's worth noting that even if this were the case, the "votership" (if you will) of who becomes next generations capitalists is exclusively held among established capitalists, be that through your parents, a bank, shareholders, etc.

    So again, the distinctions just a pedantic one. A monarchical society is based on choice; the choice of the monarch! Anarcho-capitalism is based on choice; the choice of the plutocrats!
  28. #178
    Quote Originally Posted by surviva316 View Post
    In the case of the Indonesian factory worker, I'm not sure what choice you think they have in the matter other than to either build the television or starve. They only have their labor to sell, only find work only so long as their labor increases the capital of those who already have capital, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market they have no say in.
    The Indonesian factory worker has the choice to not work in the factory. He has other choices too, and the reason he chooses the factory work is because it makes him better off.

    Three things on this: (1) Economic theory says Indonesians are better off when they choose to work in the factories than in the farms. (2) The data back this up big time. (3) If we step outside of the West's echo chamber and actually see what East and Southeast Asians think about this, it's totally different. There is heavy competition to get factory work. When they can, they typically return. Their living standards are skyrocketing far beyond any that those of us born in the West can understand. If you're interested in a Chinese documentary that illustrates this even though it does so inadvertently, watch Last Train Home (2009). Millions of Chinese kids are many times over wealthier than their parents because their parents choose to leave the farms and work in factories. You can even see it in the main family the documentary follows, where the father's daughter is bigger than he is. He grew up malnourished and is small because of it, and now his daughter is fully nourished and works in a restaurant. Freedom of choice of production and consumption is to credit.

    Like the second most renowned economist has said, Milton Friedman, every instance of a society rising out of poverty comes when that society adopts free market principles.

    In the case of first worlders (even "poor" first worlders) the distinction is less stark. They have access to enough specialized educational opportunities to be able to have a specialized labor that they can sell on a robust marketplace that at least has a few potential frontiers left (be that in entertainment, apps, what-have-you) that even with nothing but your labor to sell, that labor can be valuable enough to become a capitalist. There's just enough opportunity in the market through specialized labor to sustain the illusion that this choice is available to everyone in the first world. It's worth noting that even if this were the case, the "votership" (if you will) of who becomes next generations capitalists is exclusively held among established capitalists, be that through your parents, a bank, shareholders, etc.
    When we talk freedom of choice, that doesn't mean any choice. Everybody has significant constraints. The distinction we make is that things work out better when people themselves can make their choices instead of their choices being made by a handful of bureaucrats who never met them.

    So again, the distinctions just a pedantic one. A monarchical society is based on choice; the choice of the monarch! Anarcho-capitalism is based on choice; the choice of the plutocrats!
    The difference between you buying/selling what you want versus the government taxing you to buy/sell for you what it thinks/says you want is very big.
  29. #179
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    One problem that crybaby libtards have with any discussion of capitalism is that they don't understand the concept of personal choice because it's too closely related to personal responsibility and not being a massive piece of shit leech on humanity.

    Edit: Changed 'probably' to 'problem.' Autocorrect got me.
    Last edited by spoonitnow; 01-17-2018 at 06:40 PM.
  30. #180
    Quote Originally Posted by spoonitnow View Post
    One probably that crybaby libtards have with any discussion of capitalism is that they don't understand the concept of personal choice because it's too closely related to personal responsibility and not being a massive piece of shit leech on humanity.
    There are two views I like that I've seen.

    (1) One of the ways people organize their worldviews is through one of these two lenses: (A) people are naturally good, (B) people are not naturally good. The former tend towards ideas held on the political left, like welfare is needed because poverty is a product of something other than the values of the people that make up the society. The latter tend towards ideas held on the political right, like the natural state is an impoverished one, and the way to overcome that is to BE good and DO good from the ground up.

    (2) The other way of organization of worldview: (A) distaste of markets, (B) distaste of the ideas emergent of the distaste of markets. The former tend toward ideas on the political left, like a one-size-fits-all, centralized, strong authority, judgmental policy. The latter tend towards ideas on the political right, like opposition to a one-size-fits-all, centralized, strong authority, judgmental policy.

    Note that this isn't anti-market vs. pro-market bias. We have a long way to go before people are biased away from telling others what they should do. Indeed we should expect humans will never get there. Humans are incredibly judgmental and incredibly confident that they each know what is best for people they don't know.
  31. #181
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    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ...the natural state is an impoverished one, and the way to overcome that is to BE good and DO good from the ground up.
    Here's my thing. I can't see how anyone could not see this. Do they think cavemen were running around swiping their EBT cards or some shit?
  32. #182
    Quote Originally Posted by spoonitnow View Post
    Here's my thing. I can't see how anyone could not see this. Do they think cavemen were running around swiping their EBT cards or some shit?
    We've been over this. It's too easy to sell "racisim" as the source of income inequality. Similarly, "corporate greed" is an easy villain, so is "privelege" in any form. If it weren't for this brainwashing, the democratic party wouldn't exist.
  33. #183
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    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    Here's my thing. I can't see how anyone could not see this. Do they think cavemen were running around swiping their EBT cards or some shit?
    We've been over this. It's too easy to sell "racisim" as the source of income inequality. Similarly, "corporate greed" is an easy villain, so is "privelege" in any form. If it weren't for this brainwashing, the democratic party wouldn't exist.
  34. #184
    Quote Originally Posted by spoonitnow View Post
    Here's my thing. I can't see how anyone could not see this. Do they think cavemen were running around swiping their EBT cards or some shit?
    Maybe they just don't think.
  35. #185
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    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Maybe they just don't think.
    Which brings me back to my zombie analogy.
  36. #186
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    We've been over this. It's too easy to sell "racisim" as the source of income inequality. Similarly, "corporate greed" is an easy villain, so is "privelege" in any form. If it weren't for this brainwashing, the democratic party wouldn't exist.
    Note that this narrative is the manifestation that Marxism took on after communism collapsed.

    So, perhaps, to understand it, we have to understand its intellectual movement. My read is that it goes back pretty far, as far as Hellenism perhaps, but that its strength of manifestation depends on the lack of skin-in-the-game brought upon by prosperity. Essentially, Marxism and postmodernism are a product of intellectualism. Intellectualism is made up of a bunch of smart people in the abstract who are actually very stupid because they know nothing of the real world. Contrast this to the Renaissance Man, to philosophers of old, who were all very big into real world, every day experience. They rightly knew that it was folly to exist merely inside ideas, but I doubt they realized how catastrophic the results would be when a large enough group of people would exist merely inside ideas.
  37. #187
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    The Indonesian factory worker has the choice to not work in the factory. He has other choices too, and the reason he chooses the factory work is because it makes him better off ...
    This entire section makes my point for me. My point was that the Indonesian factory worker has no choice other than to work in the factory or to starve. You pointed out that they had other choices but they're even worse. And you added to what I'd already implied: that even the factory work isn't something always available to them, so their options are often even worse.

    This doesn't help the original point I was refuting, which is that they choose how the institutions are constructed and are not forced into them.

    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    When we talk freedom of choice, that doesn't mean any choice.
    Again, I don't think you're following the thread of conversation from the beginning. Freedom of choice is another term that could mean a million things. When we talk about freedom of choice in this context, we're talking about the freedom to choose how these institutions (which in the parent post was mercenaries and mall cops) are constructed. People's institutional power in a society where the institutions are entirely privately funded and controlled would be in direct proportion to how much capital and private ownership they have. Except it'd be well beyond that because only people with disposable capital are going to be able to invest in those institutions. And far worse than even that because private capital is largely made up of corporate spending power, so talking about people at all is optimistic.

    So corporatocracy or plutocracy, take your pick. In any case, it's not going to be the common man's choice and self-determination that shapes the institutional landscape. The logic seems to be crony capitalism doesn't work because it's so corrupt, so we better just cut out the middle man and hand all the power directly over to the corrupting force.

    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    The difference between you buying/selling what you want versus the government taxing you to buy/sell for you what it thinks/says you want is very big.
    Again, we're not talking about the power you have versus the power the government has; we're talking about plutocratic power versus semi-democratic-republic-elected power (assuming we're comparing this to our government).
  38. #188
    Quote Originally Posted by surviva316 View Post
    This entire section makes my point for me. My point was that the Indonesian factory worker has no choice other than to work in the factory or to starve. You pointed out that they had other choices but they're even worse. And you added to what I'd already implied: that even the factory work isn't something always available to them, so their options are often even worse.
    This is when we ask ourselves one of economist Thomas Sowell's three fundamental questions: Opposed to what?

    It is by the increase of freedom of choice that many East and Southeast Asians have the option to not go hungry.

    Again, I don't think you're following the thread of conversation from the beginning. Freedom of choice is another term that could mean a million things. When we talk about freedom of choice in this context, we're talking about the freedom to choose how these institutions (which in the parent post was mercenaries and mall cops) are constructed. People's institutional power in a society where the institutions are entirely privately funded and controlled would be in direct proportion to how much capital and private ownership they have. Except it'd be well beyond that because only people with disposable capital are going to be able to invest in those institutions. And far worse than even that because private capital is largely made up of corporate spending power, so talking about people at all is optimistic.

    So corporatocracy or plutocracy, take your pick. In any case, it's not going to be the common man's choice and self-determination that shapes the institutional landscape. The logic seems to be crony capitalism doesn't work because it's so corrupt, so we better just cut out the middle man and hand all the power directly over to the corrupting force.
    The amount of capital held by those who do not hold the most capital is staggeringly vast. You are describing systems in which laws stop people from using their capital to better their lives. I am describing a system in which laws do not stop people from using their capital to better their lives.
    Last edited by wufwugy; 01-17-2018 at 10:50 PM.
  39. #189
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    This is when we change the subject.
    This is how every conversation I get in on FTR turns into 50 paragraph monstrosities that's a blackhole for my whole work week and something I regretted getting into.

    You wanted people to show you that the government should intervene in personal lives, I said in a capitalist society, the state facilitates a television being built in Indonesia being allocated to some overseas entity. Then you said well sure there's going to be some institution that ultimately determines what belongs to who, but at least in an ancap society, that's based on choice, and I pressed you on what choice the Indonesians have in the matter, and now you're just entirely changing the terms of the conversation.

    So are you conceding all the earlier points, including the one on institutional intervention and the one on everyone having a choice in the matter? If we were to move on, would it be in agreement that those are meaningless terms on which to base the conversation?

    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    The amount of capital held by those who do not hold the most capital is staggeringly vast.
    Do you have any numbers to back that up? The bottom 40% of the US owns 0.2% of personal wealth. That already doesn't seem staggeringly vast. And the only meaningful metric would be how much disposable capital they have, because only people with a certain amount of wealth are going to be able to put any percent of their capital toward a stake in the institutions. And that number only relates to personal wealth, which isn't even barking up the right tree to begin with because institutional investments would largely come out of (the now untaxed) corporate budgets.

    And again, that's talking about one of the biggest economic winners on the world stage, which we both agree is a privileged place to center our conversation.

    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    You are describing systems in which laws stop people from using their capital to better their lives. I am describing a system in which laws do not stop people from using their capital to better their lives.
    Well, I'm not describing any system, except for the post where I just dispassionately listed every economic system I could think of off the top of my head. In any case, the two-liner for any economic system sounds equally great. ... I started to list off what all the advocates of all the various economic systems would say as a critique of your system followed by a facile statement about what's so fundamentally great about their system, but I think you can just imagine that without me wasting my time typing it out and exposing myself to some misunderstanding that I'd actually like those to each be refuted one-by-one.
  40. #190
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    I missed you, viva.

    IDK if anything can return us to the days where we could argue about taxation for 100 posts and remain mostly on topic.
  41. #191
    Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post
    I missed you, viva.

    IDK if anything can return us to the days where we could argue about taxation for 100 posts and remain mostly on topic.
    ^ off topic
  42. #192
    Quote Originally Posted by surviva316 View Post
    This is how every conversation I get in on FTR turns into 50 paragraph monstrosities that's a blackhole for my whole work week and something I regretted getting into.

    You wanted people to show you that the government should intervene in personal lives, I said in a capitalist society, the state facilitates a television being built in Indonesia being allocated to some overseas entity. Then you said well sure there's going to be some institution that ultimately determines what belongs to who, but at least in an ancap society, that's based on choice, and I pressed you on what choice the Indonesians have in the matter, and now you're just entirely changing the terms of the conversation.
    I have laser-like focus on the original subject. East and Southeast Asia have undergone the most drastic increase in economic freedom at the individual level in perhaps all of history, and the results have been phenomenal. They have been rapidly gaining choice. The current circumstances that for many of them are below the West's standards represent them utilizing choice they did not have several years and decades ago.

    Do you have any numbers to back that up? The bottom 40% of the US owns 0.2% of personal wealth. That already doesn't seem staggeringly vast. And the only meaningful metric would be how much disposable capital they have, because only people with a certain amount of wealth are going to be able to put any percent of their capital toward a stake in the institutions. And that number only relates to personal wealth, which isn't even barking up the right tree to begin with because institutional investments would largely come out of (the now untaxed) corporate budgets.
    Financial capital and investment capital are not the only kind of capital. Human capital is a more productive measure in the context of philosophy of economics. Human capital is a human's ability to make himself better off by expending any form of energy and/or skill he has. The success of free market capitalism largely depends on the freeing up of human capital. The proposal to use a competitive system of institution building rather than the tax-based monopoly system is largely about freeing up human capital. That isn't the only thing it's about, but it's a key component for why systems that free up individual choice yield greater prosperity.

    Also, I discussed this recently but I suspect you weren't around to see the posts, so I'll briefly provide it for you. Monetary wealth is a useful approximation of real wealth, but that isn't quite how economists view the underlying values that make up wealth. Wealth is better thought in terms of production (and even ability to produce in a less strict sense), and it is best understood through the lens of how production impacts the subjective preferences of the consumer. Economists believe that every time there is a voluntary exchange of goods or services, all participants are better off regardless of if one gained more monetary representation of that "better offness" than another.



    FWIW I have conversations quite differently now than I used to. My understanding of economics has become significantly more sophisticated over the years (mainly because that's what I studied in university), and the university experience as well as some hobby experiences have markedly improved my ability to productively navigate discussion. So don't worry about getting the dreaded stuff of old from me.
    Last edited by wufwugy; 01-18-2018 at 01:46 PM.
  43. #193
    spoonitnow's Avatar
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    Yeah you're not quite as boring as watching fucking paint dry now.

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