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JJLehto 
Prog Reviewer 
Joined: April 05 2006 Location: Tallahassee, FL Status: Offline Points: 34550 |
 Posted: January 28 2011 at 00:40 |
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And forgive me Teo if there's any confusion, I really need to go to bed
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The T
Special Collaborator 
Honorary Collaborator Joined: October 16 2006 Location: FL, USA Status: Offline Points: 17493 |
Posted: January 28 2011 at 00:57 |
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The test mention was just a little picturesque detail that illustrates the incongruence, that's it. Of course I didn't need a test then or now, but it's a graphic way of showing you the contradiction.
The notion goes quite way back. In fact, not totally similar but even in Socrates view of society there had bo a group in charge of the rest (the rulers) and a group of ruled fools (farmers). And Greece was the cradle of democracy... I am seen with my own eyes in my very country democracy turning into tyranny, slowly, without most people realizing it, just one step here, one prohibition there, everything validated by the same people, including intelligent people (cousins I have) who sign their liberty away and defend it by saying "it's democracy. It's what the majority wants, even if I don't like it". I see it in history. I see it everywhere. To achieve economic control, to be able to follow central planning of elements of the economic system, compulsion, force is necessary. Is necessary to ask, force people to behave in one way or another. That is a small but significant step. The common good first expressed in economic designs. Then the common good asks for activities and thoughts to be banned (you have seen it here). All gradual steps. It might not happen overnight. But the gradual loss of freedom is certain. And unavoidable... ...unless people become aware of it. The US still has a strong healthy system of preservation of freedoms and a fantastic constitution. Only a radical view of things can make sure that tyranny never takes over. I still loathe republicans as the political arm of corporations. Democrats think they're helping the people by doing everything for the common good but, on one hand, many are also corporate tools, and in the other, those honest for-the-people democrats are unknowingly setting the foundation for the end of true liberty. They don't even realize it. They are playing the game of an abstract monster, the monster of Central Power. This monster, this system, which feeds on good intentions. I'm independent. I still believe in a small government for roads, infraestructure, courts and justice, foreign representation and armed forces. Other than that, it has to start to go back. Become smaller, more manageable. Go to a point where it SERVES people, not controls people. You ask me if I consider myself a libertarian now. With this considerations in mind, knowing that I'm no anarcho-capitalist (yet), you can be damn sure I am. |
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The T
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: October 16 2006 Location: FL, USA Status: Offline Points: 17493 |
Posted: January 28 2011 at 01:00 |
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Oh damn Americans that switched the meaning of words. "Liberal" means not what it means in the rsst of the world (and in history). |
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JJLehto
Prog Reviewer
Joined: April 05 2006 Location: Tallahassee, FL Status: Offline Points: 34550 |
Posted: January 28 2011 at 01:14 |
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Indeed we did. I know better, (since I have filled my head with and studied every damn term) but it's just easier It's why terms are so silly/annoying. And can't say I disagree really with much of what you said. I know I don't have to tell you how much I have grown to loathe the Democrats as of late, (well OK always have deep down just can finally admit it now) and am looking for more non governmental solutions to a lot of issues. Some of which were provided by our friends in here  Edited by JJLehto - January 28 2011 at 01:15 |
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JJLehto
Prog Reviewer
Joined: April 05 2006 Location: Tallahassee, FL Status: Offline Points: 34550 |
Posted: January 28 2011 at 01:20 |
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My biggest problem is that I am still too much of an idealist.
I want so deeply to believe in what I do at my core, (especially since I DO think it's right) but for my hope to be true...we need a government that does serve the people as you said. A government that governs, primarily. Does its job! This, by nature, also means free from corruption. Be fairly efficient running. I do believe it is possible, and have seen the real life proof of, but will it ever happen here? That I don't forsee. Also the increasingly globalized world we are living in does present some challenges. Anton said my views are drifting but I'm ok with it! Edit: Oh, and I doubt I hate Marx/Communism as much as the guys in here, but I certainly dislike it a lot Edited by JJLehto - January 28 2011 at 01:24 |
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manofmystery
Forum Senior Member 
Joined: January 26 2008 Location: PA, USA Status: Offline Points: 4335 |
Posted: January 28 2011 at 01:43 |
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Drifting where? Not sure what you think I'm thinking about your thinking.
What I've always taken to be what you believe is that: it is somehow possible for some form of governing body to effectively meet society's needs and that we simply need to find this body to thrive. If I'm right about this then I have many problems with that line of thinking. Edited by manofmystery - January 28 2011 at 01:44 |
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 Time always wins. |
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JJLehto
Prog Reviewer
Joined: April 05 2006 Location: Tallahassee, FL Status: Offline Points: 34550 |
Posted: January 28 2011 at 02:00 |
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Maybe a misinterpretation? I took that as in I am drifting around the ocean of politics. Not quite sure where I'm going. Which in a way...I won't disagree with. If you even meant that That is not a bad way to put it, though again I'm always thinking about issues. Such as healthcare, and welfare. Two biggies in particular I am not quite sure about at the moment. I've opened up to other ideas as well such as public education (if you recall) and looking at the recycling program. But anyway go ahead, what are your problems with it? Is it anything different from the 250+ pages we've gone through? The very existence of government is by nature an infringement on freedom, so anything they would of course provide is even more of an infringement? Also that tax is theft. |
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Equality 7-2521
Forum Senior Member
Joined: August 11 2005 Location: Philly Status: Offline Points: 15784 |
Posted: January 28 2011 at 08:31 |
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Most libertarian scholars still use the word with it's original meaning. Mises is often called the last knight of liberalism.
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"One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn't fall. "
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Equality 7-2521
Forum Senior Member
Joined: August 11 2005 Location: Philly Status: Offline Points: 15784 |
Posted: January 28 2011 at 08:40 |
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There's something you have to eventually realize about government. 1) It will always be corrupt. There's no way around it. Politicians see direct economic gains from corruption with little to no negative effects. The compulsive nature of government turns the entire incentive system upside down. In a free market, consumers interests and suppliers interests coincide. Not so with politicians. What's better for you as a mayor, to take tens of thousands of dollars in a bribe and give an expensive construction contract to an inefficient company, or to do the right thing and give it to the company which can do the job most efficiently? There's not an effective feedback mechanism in politics to punish these acts. 2) The government doesn't know the needs of the people. If it did, the government wouldn't know how to meet them. Nobody knows what goods a person needs or wants. Nobody knows how much should be charged for it or in what supply. This type of knowledge is only 'achieved' in the market where the success and failure of thousands of firms driven by profit work essentially through trial and error to find the correct goods and quantity of goods to produce. Government is not privy to this info and can not replicate this process. Just acknowledging those two things should scale you back into quasi-libertarian grounds.
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"One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn't fall. "
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Epignosis
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: December 30 2007 Location: Raeford, NC Status: Offline Points: 32530 |
Posted: January 28 2011 at 09:14 |
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The US government's role is to protect the life and rights of the people. I support government to this extent.
All this excess spending will ruin not only the US, but the world economy. A lot of people don't realize that if the US economy sinks, the global economy will too. Even if we treated the national debt like a 30 year mortgage, each family would still have to pony up like $20,000 a year. I don't even make $20,000 a year. |
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Equality 7-2521
Forum Senior Member
Joined: August 11 2005 Location: Philly Status: Offline Points: 15784 |
Posted: January 28 2011 at 10:44 |
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The government will never be able to pay back the debt. It's just delaying the inevitable day it has to default on its loans.
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"One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn't fall. "
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manofmystery
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 26 2008 Location: PA, USA Status: Offline Points: 4335 |
Posted: January 28 2011 at 10:59 |
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I meant that you are lost in that you are sticking to a route that won't get you where you'd like to go. Government can't answer the questions you think that it can.
Actually, Equality seems to have adressed why while responding to someone else:
Only the free market is capable of meeting needs on a person to person basis. It's all well and good to worry about those who can't take care of themselves but this is why charity exists. The reason charity exists now isn't only because people like to directly help other people but because the government is not capable of meeting these needs. When government tries to solve one persons, or group of peoples, problem(s) it creates inequility. This is actual inequality, the kind that comes from authorities granting an unlevel playing field, not the "inequality" that the left uses as a buzz word for furthering the class envy that gets them in office.
This leads me to a side point: Inequality isn't a result. It is something that is created. When government acts in the name of inequality it actual acts to create it. It isn't about who has more than who at the end of the day it's about whom has been granted an artificial advantage, no matter how seemingly insignificant.
I think I'm rambling at this point. Oh, to be more eloquent. Perhaps I can get a government loan, to take classes, so that I can be as eloquent as others. There's an eloquence gap, I tell you! Damn this free market inequality! |
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Time always wins. |
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The T
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: October 16 2006 Location: FL, USA Status: Offline Points: 17493 |
Posted: January 28 2011 at 11:24 |
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One can be an idealist and not be socialist. That's actually possible. What better ideal could there be but freedom for everyone to be what they want and to have none stop them from trying, as long as they don't infringe in others' rights? The ideal "we all have to be equal" is not an ideal, it's a desire to twist reality. It's a desire to shape things at one's (or a group's) will. Is there anything worse that groupthink? A government that governs well could be only one that CAN do it. Trying to shape and regulate every single thing millions of people do CAN'T be done. So, only an small, limited government can function well. A gigantic big one just can't, even physically it can't. And when it delegates to compensate with the actual physical impossibility, it creates arbitrary power, as Friedrich says, which is even worse, if you think about it for a second. Yes, the globalized world presents challenges. And there's two ways around it: or absolute control of decisions, or absolute freedom of decisions. Anything other than that only leads to a practical impossibility. EDIT: Oh BTW, when I was 19 I believed myself to be a communist. I actually read Marx, Engels, Mao, even Stalin for god's sake... But I was mostly fascinated with symbols and power and control... Communism, as fascism, is very prone to attract control freaks those who want to have every single little facet of their (and others') lives under control. Which, again, is physically impossible. But thinking it properly, it's crystal clear that socialism can only, slowly and gradually if you want, lead to communism, not the idyllic one described in the Communist Manifesto, but to the rel one, the one with the gulags, the 5-year plans, the political prisoners, etc. Which, just with a different color, is fascism. True fascism, not the one the idiots in FoxNews used to describe terrorists (?!) Edited by The T - January 28 2011 at 11:29 |
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Equality 7-2521
Forum Senior Member
Joined: August 11 2005 Location: Philly Status: Offline Points: 15784 |
Posted: January 28 2011 at 11:30 |
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I'm an anarchist. What's more idealistic than that?
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"One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn't fall. "
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The T
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: October 16 2006 Location: FL, USA Status: Offline Points: 17493 |
Posted: January 28 2011 at 11:46 |
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Just as socialists stole the word "liberal", they also stole the word "idealist". And attached the word "Selfish" to everything else.
(I've said it and I'm embarrassed of that too...
 ) |
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The T
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: October 16 2006 Location: FL, USA Status: Offline Points: 17493 |
Posted: January 28 2011 at 12:20 |
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So what do you think about these answer to welfare welfare myths?
And this? Edited by The T - January 28 2011 at 12:21 |
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Equality 7-2521
Forum Senior Member
Joined: August 11 2005 Location: Philly Status: Offline Points: 15784 |
Posted: January 28 2011 at 12:52 |
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For the first link I suppose I agree with one, two , and five. I don't know the exact numbers, but I would never claim that any of those things were true. Clearly though, the middle class is 'subsidized' (terrible choice of words) less than the poor. Number three is too vague for me to say anything. I haven't seen the study, how it was conducted, etc. I don't think people are fed up with helping the poor, but I do think people are fed up with the means of the help. Welfare breeds animosity towards the poor. Private charity doesn't. Again with number 4 I don't know the exact numbers, but I certainly would say it hasn't worked. For the second link. Again myth one, I would say anti-poverty measures haven't worked. He makes the moronic argument. The pertinent thing to address would be how much poverty would have been destroyed if the programs didn't exist. I would argue that more would have. I don't really feel like going point by point on the second one. A lot of them are just stupid. Poor people are only poor because they're lazy? Honestly who would argue that? The arguments for every point are pretty shallow and really not convincing even when I agree that the myth is a myth. |
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"One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn't fall. "
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Padraic
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: February 16 2006 Location: Pennsylvania Status: Offline Points: 31169 |
Posted: January 28 2011 at 13:12 |
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To me, the arguments presented about the federal poverty programs sound like the following analogy:
I have a cure for cancer. I know it cures cancer because I started administering it to a subset of the population and over some period of time the incidence of cancer declined (and no, I have no control group). Over another later period of time, the cancer rate increased, but that's due to other factors and cannot be a failure of the cure.
Edited by Padraic - January 28 2011 at 13:12 |
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Equality 7-2521
Forum Senior Member
Joined: August 11 2005 Location: Philly Status: Offline Points: 15784 |
Posted: January 28 2011 at 13:15 |
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Lol.
Have to love when people use stats without the faintest idea of what they mean. |
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"One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn't fall. "
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The T
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: October 16 2006 Location: FL, USA Status: Offline Points: 17493 |
Posted: January 28 2011 at 13:40 |
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What's bad is that these kind of things are quite easy to sell. I bought them myself just until a while ago. Painting libertarians is quite easy using this kind of speech (found in another website):
Modern American libertarianism is stupid because it is short sighted. It doesn’t comprehend what an uber-libertarian world would look like in the long run. The rich would simply get richer, and we would all be at the cold mercy of corporate behemoths whose only virtue and aim is in making a profit, the environment and general wellbeing of society be damned. Ultimately it is the enemy of Democracy as we know it in that the alternative it offers is a government of the fabulously wealthy and greedy, for the fabulously wealthy and greedy. Everywhere would be either Wall Street or Squalor Row. The infantile selfishness of American libertarianism should be obvious to anyone with a brain. It is so much about the welfare of the individual that the collective is the baby thrown out with the bath water. Like all philosophies doomed to failure, American libertarianism doesn’t recognize the whole of which it is a part. Life is a balancing act and calls for checks and balances to keep it healthy. Some times call for a focus on the individual to effectuate the greatest good. Other times call for a bolstering of the health of the collective to keep things humming in the general direction toward progress. Make one the ultimate master of the other and disaster will follow. American libertarianism is just plain mean. It is a philosophy of heartlessness at its core, and ruthlessly promotes division between the haves and have-nots. The only welfare offered by the quintessential American libertarian is that in times of need, pray harder and good luck. Economically it is survival of the fittest, and ignores the fact that humanity is endowed with more than a lizard’s brain. Love and compassion for humanity and our planet don’t fit into the libertarian rubric from what I can tell. Yes, it provides no arguments for what he's asseverating but it's quite catchy to the normal political person who has some kind of equality ideals. Or look at this condescendingly benevolent text asking questions about libertarians: At the same time, when viewed through a different set of eyes (that is to say, mine), libertarians raise questions about certain other qualities. Please note that I am not intending to traffic in stereotypes, but rather simply ask questions based on my experience with libertarians:
Then you paint each one as selfish, eliminating income tax as impossible, eliminating insurance-company monopolies in healthcare as murderous, and you get an unsurmountable wall. Few people can climb over this. Even I, in the process of climbing it as I am, still tend to look to the side I'm leaving... You have painted the people as selfish and crazy, you can easily paint their ideas as selfish and crazy. Edited by The T - January 28 2011 at 13:43 |
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Libertarian Thread #2: We Shall Never Die!
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JJLehto wrote: