"Freedom" thread or something

Equality 7-2521 wrote: Can you just tell me exactly what you mean? Your analogies are really confusing me.

There are people in this country who are in positions of political power who believe that government itself is immoral.  And certain people in this thread believe in the same idea.

It's one thing to hate OUR government.  It's one thing to say OUR government has screwed up, and then to do your best to figure out just how that happened and what we can do about it.  But to believe that governing, in and of itself, is immoral - that's incredibly problematic.  And you can imagine people like myself feeling like the gentleman in the car watching the fellow passenger (who believes internal combustion engines are immoral) tear pieces out of the engine as it hurtles down the highway.

The T wrote: Going back to what I think Gerinski mentioned about undeveloped countries, those that are in really terrible situations aren't really a good example for anything. On one hand, they lack strong structures and legislation and they are more or less lawless, and the powerful and wealthy abuse and keep the country in misery.

Doesn't this speak for itself?

Gerinski wrote: The T wrote: Going back to what I think Gerinski mentioned about undeveloped countries, those that are in really terrible situations aren't really a good example for anything. On one hand, they lack strong structures and legislation and they are more or less lawless, and the powerful and wealthy abuse and keep the country in misery.  Doesn't this speak for itself?

Not really.  "Libertarian" doesn't mean "lawless."  In a libertarian (not anarcho-capitalist) society, corporations would have great freedom but wouldn't be able to force their employees to do anything.  In a lawless society, corporations could beat and confine and steal from and even kill their employees and customers unless the victims could fight back.

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: All laws should, in my opinion, be based upon the principles of non-aggression (don't kill, steal, etc) and honesty (do what you have agreed to do).  Many conflicts would fall under the second principle and thus involve contracts instead of universal laws, yes.  The only law governing those contracts is that the people involved must abide by their word.

Say I'm the owner of a piece of land in a beautiful piece of seashore, where already several people have built their nice villas, you are a building and travel-industry investor. You and me agree to build a 20 story appartment building which, incidentally, will block the sunlight and beautiful sea view from the other 200 neighbours.

Edited by Gerinski - July 15 2013 at 13:27

dtguitarfan wrote: See, Dean gets it.  And he's correct that I cannot prove that without legislation we never would have had seat belts in every car.  Neither can the Libertarians prove that if we had a "free market", we would have eventually gotten seat belts in every car either.  All I can do is look at the way things are and the way things have been done in the past and make an assumption as to how to get things done.  And what I've been trying to say when I have said that the burden of proof is on the Libertarians is that I can look at situations like Nader and say "this was the situation, this was what was done, and it worked."  You can do no such thing because there has never been a Libertarian government.  So I am coming from a position that is more grounded in reality than yours, which is why I say the burden of proof is on you.

I do and I don't "get it" - I'd only put the burden of proof on the people making an actual claim, I can't paraphrase a claim then foist them with the burden of proof for a claim they didn't make (...) Seat belt legislation resulted in seat belts becoming standard - and that is the only conclusion you can draw from that. I could speculate that they would have become standard through the "free market" eventually, however, I suspect there would still be some car companies who would provide them as optional extras and some maverick's who wouldn't provide them at all ("Buy the new Dodge De'ath and we'll guarantee that in an accident the last thing to go through your mind will be your ass!"). The only 99.9% surefire guess you can make is that legislation made it happen sooner (and that is regarded by me as "a good thing"). A better example maybe air-bags, but even that is mixed with some countries making them mandatory and other's not, and even then the adoption of air-bags as standard was not achieved through direct market forces, but by non-regulatory safety assessments (eg Euro NCAP). If the "free market" could respond quicker than the lobbiests then we might be in a better position to make such comparisons, unfortunately even with the pedestrian speed of government, legislation can be proposed, debated and voted into law far quicker than any market force acting upon a free market to affect a change.

^ You see, to continue with the engine analogy: if someone were to show me a tank's engine, I might say it looks rather large, because I'm used to looking at the engine of my compact car.   But then he might tell me it's actually quite small... for a tank.
Saying you believe in "small government" is meaningless.   And it's dangerous to base policy decisions on such a belief.   Base policy decisions on the same sort of thought process an engineer would go through as he tries to improve an engine, and your decisions will be much more reasonable.

Edited by dtguitarfan - July 15 2013 at 13:27

dtguitarfan wrote: Equality 7-2521 wrote: Can you just tell me exactly what you mean? Your analogies are really confusing me. There are people in this country who are in positions of political power who believe that government itself is immoral.  And certain people in this thread believe in the same idea. It's one thing to hate OUR government.  It's one thing to say OUR government has screwed up, and then to do your best to figure out just how that happened and what we can do about it.  But to believe that governing, in and of itself, is immoral - that's incredibly problematic.  And you can imagine people like myself feeling like the gentleman in the car watching the fellow passenger (who believes internal combustion engines are immoral) tear pieces out of the engine as it hurtles down the highway.

And to me you seem like the person slamming his foot on the gas as the car is headed for a cliff.

I don't believe that governing is immoral. I believe that a State is immoral. It's completely different.

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: If someone has property in the Amazon, isn't it their right to cut trees down?

 

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: If someone applies for a dangerous construction job, and he is informed of the risks and decides to take the job anyway, and dies on the job, did the company kill him?  Is the person who commissioned the company responsible for his death?

If this person has looked around at all the construction jobs within 50 miles and they are all just as dangerous as that construction job, because the companies are too damn greedy to provide a safe working environment and the government hasn't forced them to, is it a free market?

Equality 7-2521 wrote: And to me you seem like the person slamming his foot on the gas as the car is headed for a cliff.

Your belief that we are headed for a cliff is based on an Excel spreadsheet error.

So stop tearing pieces out of the car's engine.


Edited by dtguitarfan - July 15 2013 at 14:28