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The T 
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 Posted: August 04 2012 at 14:53 |
 Dean wrote:
The T wrote:
stonebeard wrote:
The T wrote:
Hey, if you own a business, you didn't build that. |
I'm sure I don't have to go find the video of the speech to remind you how out of context that was taken. |
I don't like the idea lying underneath that comment anyway. Even IN context. |
What is the underlying idea in that speech you don't like? |
The one I detect, all-scrutinizing Dean, is that people can't never achieve anything that is not owed to other people. Yes, reduce it to almost the absurd and you start by owing everything you do to your two parents who one night did what had to be done. The. To your teachers, and everyone in your life. Might be true, but success depends at least in a good percentage on personal skills and hard work. And the general idea behind the comment seems to go counter to that.
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Epignosis
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Posted: August 04 2012 at 14:53 |
The Doctor wrote:
Epignosis wrote:
The Doctor wrote:
My freedom has never been limited by the government. My freedom has been limited by other individuals or companies with more power and wealth than I have. Landlords, employers, banks, etc. I suppose I should say that my freedom has been limited by the government in the sense that it won't let me deal with those with more power and wealth than I have in a way that would suit my sense of right and justice. 
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What?
You mean you are less free because you cannot avail yourself of someone else's real estate? 
You mean you are less free because you cannot avail yourself of a job someone else is in charge of filling?
You mean you are less free because you cannot avail yourself of someone else's money?
So your sense of justice is to visit some kind of harm on those who are better off than you. Way to go, liberal values!
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I will just take the first question you posed. I do agree with people owning enough land for their own personal use. That is, I have no problem with someone owning their own residence and setting the rules within the boundaries of their own personal residence. I do not however agree with large corporate entities buying up huge tracts of land and turning them into huge apartment complexes. Because, when that is let out of control, as it is here in Austin, TX, where almost every apartment is owned by a huge corporate entity, and they all do things exactly the same way, people have two choices, follow the rules laid down by the private governmental oligarchy, or go homeless. Public government doesn't scare me nearly as much as these types of private governments. You have to see how that limits the freedom of everyone who lives here and has neither the money to move out of Austin or the money to buy their own home.
And I forgot to mention that when you look for a new place, the new landlord has the right to ask the old landlord if you were a good little tenant. Meaning, if you don't toe the line of the corporate housing party, you can and will be blacklisted from ever renting in the city. Wow, some freedom, huh?
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That's some dilemma! Oh dear!
I have been a renter my entire adult life. I have rented from a big corporations (Riverstone is one- I don't remember the name of the first one as that was ten years ago) and from two single house landlords.
You talk like people have no choice but to move into an apartment complex or be homeless. We lived in an apartment complex and mostly liked it. All of the rules and regulations they imposed were, as far as I can tell, sensible and easy to follow. However, when they raised rents, deceived us about some new cabinets (they were not new- they were painted over with this grainy, nasty feeling mess) and our AC kept going out (and one of the maintenance men lied to us about it), we wound up leaving. Our choice. Our initiative. Not theirs. We are not powerless, helpless individuals who have to pay tribute to big business.
There are literally dozens of single family homes in our neighborhood for rent right now. Just this neighborhood. There must be thousands more in our region. People have a choice where they live.
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Epignosis
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Posted: August 04 2012 at 14:54 |
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The T
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Posted: August 04 2012 at 15:14 |
Well, the longer it takes to do something, the better made it usually is. 
Edited by The T - August 04 2012 at 15:21
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Epignosis
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Joined: December 30 2007
Location: Raeford, NC
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Posted: August 04 2012 at 15:18 |
The T wrote:
Well, the more time it takes to do something, the better made it usually is. |
Well, I am overweight. 
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The Doctor
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Joined: June 23 2005
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Points: 8543
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Posted: August 04 2012 at 15:59 |
Epignosis wrote:
The Doctor wrote:
Epignosis wrote:
The Doctor wrote:
My freedom has never been limited by the government. My freedom has been limited by other individuals or companies with more power and wealth than I have. Landlords, employers, banks, etc. I suppose I should say that my freedom has been limited by the government in the sense that it won't let me deal with those with more power and wealth than I have in a way that would suit my sense of right and justice.
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What?
You mean you are less free because you cannot avail yourself of someone else's real estate?
You mean you are less free because you cannot avail yourself of a job someone else is in charge of filling?
You mean you are less free because you cannot avail yourself of someone else's money?
So your sense of justice is to visit some kind of harm on those who are better off than you. Way to go, liberal values!
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I will just take the first question you posed. I do agree with people owning enough land for their own personal use. That is, I have no problem with someone owning their own residence and setting the rules within the boundaries of their own personal residence. I do not however agree with large corporate entities buying up huge tracts of land and turning them into huge apartment complexes. Because, when that is let out of control, as it is here in Austin, TX, where almost every apartment is owned by a huge corporate entity, and they all do things exactly the same way, people have two choices, follow the rules laid down by the private governmental oligarchy, or go homeless. Public government doesn't scare me nearly as much as these types of private governments. You have to see how that limits the freedom of everyone who lives here and has neither the money to move out of Austin or the money to buy their own home.
And I forgot to mention that when you look for a new place, the new landlord has the right to ask the old landlord if you were a good little tenant. Meaning, if you don't toe the line of the corporate housing party, you can and will be blacklisted from ever renting in the city. Wow, some freedom, huh?
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That's some dilemma! Oh dear!
I have been a renter my entire adult life. I have rented from a big corporations (Riverstone is one- I don't remember the name of the first one as that was ten years ago) and from two single house landlords.
You talk like people have no choice but to move into an apartment complex or be homeless. We lived in an apartment complex and mostly liked it. All of the rules and regulations they imposed were, as far as I can tell, sensible and easy to follow. However, when they raised rents, deceived us about some new cabinets (they were not new- they were painted over with this grainy, nasty feeling mess) and our AC kept going out (and one of the maintenance men lied to us about it), we wound up leaving. Our choice. Our initiative. Not theirs. We are not powerless, helpless individuals who have to pay tribute to big business.
There are literally dozens of single family homes in our neighborhood for rent right now. Just this neighborhood. There must be thousands more in our region. People have a choice where they live.
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In other cities, it was possible, at least 5 years ago when I lived in another city in the US, to find single owner leased properties. In fact, they were all over the place, and there were myriad choices as to where to live. There were also a few corporate owned complexes. As long as there were choices, and people did things differently (as far as the process of renting to tenants), I have no problems with that really. The problem is, as it is here in Austin now, there are really no single-owner leased properties. Almost all of the land has been bought up by corporate developers and all the corporate developers set the exact same rules and do things the same way, which involve extensive background checks and include contacting your former landlords (a violation of my privacy). There is even a standardized application for rental that everyone here uses. There are no real choices here. Corporate owned housing or under a bridge. My point here is really that economic libertarianism is not really possible when things become too concentrated in the hands of a few people. Private governments will pop up to restrict your freedoms when public governments fail to regulate industries. And lets face it, there is nothing more fundamental than having a place to live. How long before we will all be required to be 4 foot in height, so they can fit twice as many in the same building site?
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I can understand your anger at me, but what did the horse I rode in on ever do to you?
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timothy leary
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Posted: August 04 2012 at 16:05 |
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How is it an invasion of your privacy for a prospective landlord to check with a former landlord about what type of tenant you were?
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thellama73
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Posted: August 04 2012 at 16:09 |
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I just don't see the parallel between private corporations and government. Governments can throw you in prison, seize your property or even kill you. All a corporation can do is prevent you from buying its product.
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The Doctor
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Joined: June 23 2005
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Posted: August 04 2012 at 16:10 |
timothy leary wrote:
How is it an invasion of your privacy for a prospective landlord to check with a former landlord about what type of tenant you were? |
First, it allows for blacklisting. You don't bow down and kiss the behind of your current landlord, they can make it so you can never rent property in the city again. And I'm never one to kiss anyone's behind. My landlord may think they're all that and a bag of chips and should be able to rule over the property as if it is their own private little kingdom, but it is not a philosophy that I share. I believe in public government, not in private governments, or petty warlords (without the war of course). Second, what if I don't want my current landlord to know where I'm moving? What right do they have to know that? Absolutely zero.
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I can understand your anger at me, but what did the horse I rode in on ever do to you?
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The Doctor
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Posted: August 04 2012 at 16:13 |
thellama73 wrote:
I just don't see the parallel between private corporations and government. Governments can throw you in prison, seize your property or even kill you. All a corporation can do is prevent you from buying its product.
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They can restrict your freedom, your pursuit of happiness, and possibly even your life, say if no one will hire you for a job, you could starve to death. While they do not have police power (yet - but that will eventually come), they do have complete economic control over other people's lives. Refusing to sell you a tv is not the same as refusing to sell you or rent you a place to live. How about if every grocery store in town refused to sell you food because you once shoplifted a candy bar when you were five years old?
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I can understand your anger at me, but what did the horse I rode in on ever do to you?
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thellama73
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Posted: August 04 2012 at 16:22 |
The Doctor wrote:
They can restrict your freedom, your pursuit of happiness, and possibly even your life, say if no one will hire you for a job, you could starve to death. While they do not have police power (yet - but that will eventually come), they do have complete economic control over other people's lives. Refusing to sell you a tv is not the same as refusing to sell you or rent you a place to live. How about if every grocery store in town refused to sell you food because you once shoplifted a candy bar when you were five years old?
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You don't have to work for someone else to make money. There's a guy who plays a violin in front of my office who probably makes more money than I do. It's free to set up a webstore and sell trashy things you've made, and astonishingly lots of people buy trashy things off the internet. If no grocery store in town will sell you food, you can leave town. Bus tickets are cheap. Alternatively, you could start your own grocery store and buy from the wholesalers, or farm your own food, or buy rabbits and raise them for food. Rabbits are cheap and easy to breed. Anyway, grocery stores would never do that, since excluding every potential customer who has ever done anything wrong would be bad for business.
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The Doctor
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Posted: August 04 2012 at 17:34 |
thellama73 wrote:
The Doctor wrote:
They can restrict your freedom, your pursuit of happiness, and possibly even your life, say if no one will hire you for a job, you could starve to death. While they do not have police power (yet - but that will eventually come), they do have complete economic control over other people's lives. Refusing to sell you a tv is not the same as refusing to sell you or rent you a place to live. How about if every grocery store in town refused to sell you food because you once shoplifted a candy bar when you were five years old?
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You don't have to work for someone else to make money. There's a guy who plays a violin in front of my office who probably makes more money than I do. It's free to set up a webstore and sell trashy things you've made, and astonishingly lots of people buy trashy things off the internet.
If no grocery store in town will sell you food, you can leave town. Bus tickets are cheap. Alternatively, you could start your own grocery store and buy from the wholesalers, or farm your own food, or buy rabbits and raise them for food. Rabbits are cheap and easy to breed.
Anyway, grocery stores would never do that, since excluding every potential customer who has ever done anything wrong would be bad for business.
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If no grocery store in town will sell you food, you can leave town. Bus
tickets are cheap. Assumes you can also afford to quit your job and find another place to live in a new town. Alternatively, you could start your own grocery store
and buy from the wholesalers (assumes you have the money to start your own grocery store and no other obligations, like another job), or farm your own food (assumes you own land), or buy rabbits and
raise them for food. Rabbits are cheap and easy to breed. (Also assumes you own land, or at least have a really freaking cool landlord that will allow you to breed rabbits).
All of your suggestions in this paragraph assume that the person is a man of means. Let's face it, libertarianism is about having as much freedom as you can afford to buy. It is not about real personal freedom from all those who would usurp your freedom. It is about freedom for the well-off to live their lives however they want and the power for the well-off to tell you how to live your life if you're not as well off. It is still a hierarchical system, but instead of one based on the good of society as a whole (at least in theory, I do not dispute that it doesn't often work out that way), it is one based on private greed and power.
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I can understand your anger at me, but what did the horse I rode in on ever do to you?
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Dean
Special Collaborator
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Joined: May 13 2007
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Points: 37575
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Posted: August 04 2012 at 17:38 |
The T wrote:
The one I detect, all-scrutinizing Dean, is that people can't never achieve anything that is not owed to other people. Yes, reduce it to almost the absurd and you start by owing everything you do to your two parents who one night did what had to be done. The. To your teachers, and everyone in your life. Might be true, but success depends at least in a good percentage on personal skills and hard work. And the general idea behind the comment seems to go counter to that.
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Owe is an emotive word that implies a unpaid debt - I do not see the underlying idea of that speech that successful people owe an unpaid debt to all those people who helped them along the way (brushing aside the politicking that the phrase in context was talking about the infrastructure that supports and enables business - and before that gets blown out of proportion - that infrastructure is paid for by governments but built by private contractors - contractors that grow rich and successful on the strength of those overpriced and over-schedule contracts - the government does not build roads, Balfour Beatty do).
It's odd, watching the Oscar ceremonies or any sporting event after-race interviews how those actors and athletes gush buckets of praise and thanks on all those who helped them achieve whatever it was they've just achieved - you never see that from businessmen and entrepreneurs - not once have I ever seen a Richard Branson type entrepreneur thank a Mike Oldfield type employee for helping make a Virgin type brand a household name.
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What?
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The T
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Posted: August 04 2012 at 18:29 |
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^I fail to see a point in that post Dean. You asked what I saw underneath the comment, I gave an opinion. I'm not sure what you are saying now. That my view is totally wrong for you? Not a mystery. We all owe our sucess partially to circumstances, partially to people, but primarily to ourselves. The way Obama spreads his message of "you didn't make it on your own" is not one of "other people helped you" but one of "other people, through government, helped you" and I don't like it.
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thellama73
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Posted: August 04 2012 at 18:52 |
The Doctor wrote:
All of your suggestions in this paragraph assume that the person is a man of means. Let's face it, libertarianism is about having as much freedom as you can afford to buy. It is not about real personal freedom from all those who would usurp your freedom. It is about freedom for the well-off to live their lives however they want and the power for the well-off to tell you how to live your life if you're not as well off. It is still a hierarchical system, but instead of one based on the good of society as a whole (at least in theory, I do not dispute that it doesn't often work out that way), it is one based on private greed and power.
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If your complaint is that the rich have more options then the poor, I guess guilty as charged. That's why people strive to become rich. It sounds like you are advocating a moneyless, completely egalitarian form of communism, because any other system is going to have some people who are more well off than others. This is not a bad thing, it provides an incentive to produce. I do not consider my own inability to provide a service someone wants to buy to be some sort of oppression. Just because I don't have enough money to buy fancy cars and houses doesn't make me less free, and those who refuse to give me the fruits of their labor for free are not violating my rights. You talk in generalities instead of looking at the individual picture. You say "I am less free because I can't find an apartment to rent" but think about each individual apartment owner, not in a faceless "corporations are evil" kind of way, but as people. Then put yourself in their shoes. If you had an apartment for rent and two people came to you asking to rent it, one with a reliable source of income and good references and the other without, would you be "usurping the freedom" of the less good customer by renting to the reliable one instead? If you do decide to rent to the poor one, are you usurping the freedom of the other? You keep saying that the wealthy can tell the less wealthy how to live, but it's just not true. There's nothing they can do to you other than offer to sell you something, or refuse to do so. Just because you don't like any of the choices available to you, doesn't mean those choices don't exist. You think the wealthy should be required by law to offer you things like housing and food, but that cuts both ways. If the law has the power to make them sell when they don't want to, it could just as easily force you to buy products you don't want (see Obamacare.)
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Dean
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Posted: August 04 2012 at 18:53 |
The T wrote:
^I fail to see a point in that post Dean. You asked what I saw underneath the comment, I gave an opinion. I'm not sure what you are saying now. That my view is totally wrong for you? Not a mystery. We all owe our sucess partially to circumstances, partially to people, but primarily to ourselves. The way Obama spreads his message of "you didn't make it on your own" is not one of "other people helped you" but one of "other people, through government, helped you" and I don't like it. |
Failing to see a point I've made is not a concern. You said "The one I detect ... is that people can't never achieve anything that is not owed to other people" and now qualify that as "through government", and that's okay because half the point of any discussion is clarification of what the other person is trying to say, which is why I asked the direct question in the first place.
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What?
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The Doctor
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Posted: August 04 2012 at 19:32 |
Let's put this in a purely economic setting. Let's say you have 10 sellers in an area of bread. Each of those sellers have different prices, offer different types of bread and everyone in town, through one store or another (although not all options may be available to them) can buy bread. Now lets say one of two things happen. Either one of the sellers of bread buys out all the others, or the 10 sellers get together to collude on price, product and who they will sell to. They will exclude certain people from being able to buy bread at all, they will from now on only sell white wonder bread, and they will charge $15 a loaf on that bread. Suddenly, people no longer have any choices as to what kind of bread they will buy, how much they will pay for it, and some will even lose the right to buy bread at all. This is called a monopoly or oligopoly, I'm sure you know the term. How does this not reduce the freedom of everyone in that town, with the exception of the bread sellers? I'm afraid to some degree freedom is a zero sum game. The more freedom you give to one group (in this case the bread sellers), the less another group (the bread buyers) has. There is a balance there somewhere. And that balance is not to give all the freedom to the sellers of bread for then you are limiting the freedom of everyone else. The above should read: 10 sellers of bread in an area. No the area is not made of bread.
Edited by The Doctor - August 04 2012 at 19:36
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I can understand your anger at me, but what did the horse I rode in on ever do to you?
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Epignosis
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Joined: December 30 2007
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Posted: August 04 2012 at 20:09 |
The Doctor wrote:
Let's put this in a purely economic setting. Let's say you have 10 sellers in an area of bread. Each of those sellers have different prices, offer different types of bread and everyone in town, through one store or another (although not all options may be available to them) can buy bread. Now lets say one of two things happen. Either one of the sellers of bread buys out all the others, or the 10 sellers get together to collude on price, product and who they will sell to. They will exclude certain people from being able to buy bread at all, they will from now on only sell white wonder bread, and they will charge $15 a loaf on that bread. Suddenly, people no longer have any choices as to what kind of bread they will buy, how much they will pay for it, and some will even lose the right to buy bread at all. This is called a monopoly or oligopoly, I'm sure you know the term. How does this not reduce the freedom of everyone in that town, with the exception of the bread sellers? I'm afraid to some degree freedom is a zero sum game. The more freedom you give to one group (in this case the bread sellers), the less another group (the bread buyers) has. There is a balance there somewhere. And that balance is not to give all the freedom to the sellers of bread for then you are limiting the freedom of everyone else.
The above should read: 10 sellers of bread in an area. No the area is not made of bread.
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But in your scenario, I just won't eat bread. What is so f**king hard about that?
Your problem, Chester, is that all your models assume there is one product and one buyer. That is never the case. We have multiple buyers and multiple products. Try again.
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ExittheLemming
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Posted: August 04 2012 at 20:35 |
^ we will let you eat cake Rob
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thellama73
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Posted: August 04 2012 at 20:45 |
The Doctor wrote:
Let's put this in a purely economic setting. Let's say you have 10 sellers in an area of bread. Each of those sellers have different prices, offer different types of bread and everyone in town, through one store or another (although not all options may be available to them) can buy bread. Now lets say one of two things happen. Either one of the sellers of bread buys out all the others, or the 10 sellers get together to collude on price, product and who they will sell to. They will exclude certain people from being able to buy bread at all, they will from now on only sell white wonder bread, and they will charge $15 a loaf on that bread. Suddenly, people no longer have any choices as to what kind of bread they will buy, how much they will pay for it, and some will even lose the right to buy bread at all. This is called a monopoly or oligopoly, I'm sure you know the term. How does this not reduce the freedom of everyone in that town, with the exception of the bread sellers? I'm afraid to some degree freedom is a zero sum game. The more freedom you give to one group (in this case the bread sellers), the less another group (the bread buyers) has. There is a balance there somewhere. And that balance is not to give all the freedom to the sellers of bread for then you are limiting the freedom of everyone else.
The above should read: 10 sellers of bread in an area. No the area is not made of bread.
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I have a masters' degree in economics, so I am familiar with monopolies and oligopolies.  First, we already have laws against price fixing (although I disagree with them, but put that aside for now.) Second, how is it advantageous for the bread sellers to price their product at a level that will cause no one to buy it? Third, What's to stop a smart entrepreneur from stepping in and selling better bread at $14/loaf, stealing all the customers from the oligopoly? Fourth, why wouldn't people simply import bread from another town? Lot's of profit opportunities there. I understand that there is an economic efficiency argument to be made as to why monopolies should be prevented (although, again, I disagree) but the scenario you propose is extremely unrealistic and would never happen in real life. Most monopoly pricing arises because the government erects barriers to entry that keeps competition out. Never forget that companies exist to make money i.e. to get people to buy their products.This means they want happy customers. Their goal is not to inflict pain and hardship on others just for the evil of it.
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"Freedom" thread or something
