"Freedom" thread or something

We still don't know what "works" means.

dtguitarfan wrote: If you don't think having an anarchistic society based 100% on volunteerism would work, then why bother even hypothetically arguing its merits?

No one has been arguing this. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being paid.

Dudemanguy wrote: JJLehto wrote: How do any of yall feel about this? Both the idea/impacts of a "job guarantee" and it being a reasonable role for gov? Picking up people left off by the private sector and putting em to work. Even IF we had the total and true free market Im not convinced it'd lead to full employment at all. I'm not sure how you would go about implementing such a thing. Where do these jobs come from? Granted, I'd much rather have people occasionally do something in an otherwise useless job than sit at home and get mailed a check. At least they have to do something. I'd happily accept any sensible replacement for our welfare system if it works better and lessens the burden on taxpayers. I'm not out to destroy welfare immediately. Full employment is overrated. It's never going to happen, and that shouldn't be a concern. A guy who homesteads and maybe works part-time is "unemployed." What matters is the standard of living which I am very confident that a free market would allow a good, first-world standard of living to be much much more obtainable. Take land, for example which is heavily tied up and large amounts of it (in America anyway) are still directly owned by the government. (28% actually. https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42346.pdf) Imagine how much prices would drop if you free that up assuming that you don't have massive corporate bodies to buy out all of the land. Edit: Okay, link problems fixed. That was weird.

Edited by JJLehto - August 22 2013 at 09:59

thellama73 wrote: dtguitarfan wrote: Sure, that may be.  But you're missing the point.  Even in a "free market" (which you admit doesn't exist ANYWHERE so how can we know what will or will not happen in such a thing?), you will have companies that sell products that are harmful but do not immediately appear to be so.  That is my point.  What do you do about the companies that sell products that cause great harm, but it takes a good deal of time before this becomes apparent?  These are the sort of things that government is for - complicated situations like this.  And YES, I agree 100% that our government is not doing its job.  I absolutely disagree when people try to use that as an argument for why we should HAVE a government. Well, the first thing is that companies don't want to sell products that cause great harm. Harming your customers is bad business when they are free to turn to your competitors. Of course, accidents happen, and in the rare case when a company does inadvertent harm, an anarchic system would handle it much the same as it is handled now. The wronged party files a claim (in many cases, a class action lawsuit), an arbiter examines the evidence, and if the company is found to be at fault they will be force to pay compensation for their misdeeds. I don't see why a government is necessary for that to happen, and indeed, a government is less likely to press charges on a strong political ally than a private arbiter whose ability to stay ahead of the competition depends on perceived fairness and impartiality.

The T wrote: thellama73 wrote: dtguitarfan wrote: Sure, that may be.  But you're missing the point.  Even in a "free market" (which you admit doesn't exist ANYWHERE so how can we know what will or will not happen in such a thing?), you will have companies that sell products that are harmful but do not immediately appear to be so.  That is my point.  What do you do about the companies that sell products that cause great harm, but it takes a good deal of time before this becomes apparent?  These are the sort of things that government is for - complicated situations like this.  And YES, I agree 100% that our government is not doing its job.  I absolutely disagree when people try to use that as an argument for why we should HAVE a government. Well, the first thing is that companies don't want to sell products that cause great harm. Harming your customers is bad business when they are free to turn to your competitors. Of course, accidents happen, and in the rare case when a company does inadvertent harm, an anarchic system would handle it much the same as it is handled now. The wronged party files a claim (in many cases, a class action lawsuit), an arbiter examines the evidence, and if the company is found to be at fault they will be force to pay compensation for their misdeeds. I don't see why a government is necessary for that to happen, and indeed, a government is less likely to press charges on a strong political ally than a private arbiter whose ability to stay ahead of the competition depends on perceived fairness and impartiality. Come on Logan, companies sell products that harm people all the time as long as this harm is not blatantly obvious and comes in the way of something addictive (tobacco) or necessary (awful hormone-charged food).  What can be said is that government sometimes is the reason some of this abuses can be made. For-profit education in the US, for example, is quite perfect to illustrate this. While there are many online or physical for-profit colleges and universities that give good education, there's A LOT that are just a little more than big scams to get people to pay thousands of dollars for education with little value. People normally wouldn't be able to afford the tuition in these places so no harm would be done except for rich dumb people who don't do their research. What happens? Financial Aid. Most of these institutions depend on more then 80% OF THEIR REVENUE on financial aid. There is a 90-10 law that states that schools must have at least 10% of their income from sources other than federal aid. So they have the free hand to get as many students as they want, since getting financial aid is not a  big deal, they fill their pockets, they cash in government's money, and it is the student that is left with horrible debt that can't be discarded in bankruptcy.  People LOVE to make money out of other people even if harm is done. But sometimes, as in this example, government doesn't help the "little man" but, while pretending to help him, is really helping the "big man".  That doesn't mean I would support a system where there are no checks on abuses. The tobacco industry has finally started to see their fortunes come down after it was somewhat regulated.

Edited by JJLehto - August 22 2013 at 10:20

JJLehto wrote: That is the main issue I'd see, what exactly it'd detail. Their usual suggestion is the fixing of infrastructure, upkeep of places usual job program stuff. The policy analysis they wrote said while federally funded the program MUST be decentralized, leaving the "what to do?" to local communities.  And yes, I see the need but there are massive problems with our current welfare system. I've struggled to find an answer that's better. It's either been replacing all the programs with a lump sum payment (but still the same total amount) basically restructuring how welfare is paid, or this idea of putting them to work as well and doing something for society. It's both the right and left arguments!   Well by "full" I go by: anyone who wants a job can get one. Not 100% I understand even in the best economy there'd be unemployed due to moving, changing jobs, lag in hiring and etc  The idea is people who WANT to work and just cant get jobs will have one with the federal gov. So if ya wanna homestead go for it! Or if you just want to work part time, go for it. It can't change people who dont want/need to work, it'd be there for people who want to and can't.   They also generally speak out against QE, stimulus spending, bailouts etc as just not being effective. I recall one article saying the usual ideas of "pump priming" and trying to boost markets and etc can be inflationary if doen too much.   So I may misinterpret, but it seems to me the argument is leave the markets be, do NOT interfere with them to much, instead have a program to catch whoever is left out. Which I like, the markets do need to be left alone. Needless to say I agree with you about land and things like that.

Actually yes. Our roads are absolutely horrendous. They could use a fair amount of fixing. Make those welfare queens work!
Anyways, I can get behind this, it'd just be a tad tricky to do, but you'd have to really try hard to make this worse than our current welfare system. Some sort of combination of a JG and universal basic income might be a very cool and feasible safety net while replacing our current entitlement mess.

dtguitarfan wrote:     Try to see things from my side for a second.  You asked me at one point what the purpose of government, as I see it, is.  At its most basic level, I think it is to protect people and regulate corporations.  Now, dudemanguy made an observation at one point that I agree with wholeheartedly, and that is that our current government in the USA is fascist.  I agree.  Why is it fascist?  Because it is, to put it in the most basic terms, protecting corporations and regulating people.  And when you listen to the rhetoric of Republicans and see what they are voting for, you see that everything they are against is at its most basic level something designed to protect people or regulate corporations, and everything they are for is at its most basic level something designed to protect corporations or regulate people.  Now, anarchists think that the purpose of government is to: .  So the reason I get pissed with anarchists is that when you try to point out to them how Republicans are blocking everything that has been designed to try to regulate corporations or protect people, they reply with "good.  Because government shouldn't be doing anything.  Government shouldn't be."  The way I see it, if you are doing this, then you are supporting fascism.  The way I see it, in order to slowly get from where we are to a place where government does what it was meant to do - to protect people and regulate corporations - the government should be required to also undo some of the damage it has done while it was passing laws to protect corporations and regulate people.  But in the anarchist's viewpoint, since the government's purpose is to do " ", this should not be allowed.  And so they are becoming part of the stalemate that is keeping us in this fascist state.

Edited by JJLehto - August 22 2013 at 12:25

JJLehto wrote: As for protecting people and regulating corporations, 100% yes to the first part, it depends to the second. Im ok with regulation, but it depends where and what exactly we're talking about. There are certainly arguments to be made about regulating finance and all. Esp since we cant give up bailing them out now we kinda need to regulate them to make sure it doesnt happen again.

At the very heart of things, I think my end goal is the same as everyone's here - and that would be that all men be equal (this word might seem horrendous to some - don't assume you know exactly what I mean by it, either).  What we disagree on is how to get there.  I believe that we need government to protect people and regulate corporations.  The reason I believe this is because people are not currently equal, and there is a thing called "group think".  When you have a group of people who are set up "over" other people, and they are treating those other people in a way that is oppressive, there may be people that are part of the "over" group who do not agree with this but do nothing because of group think.  They don't want to upset the status quo, they don't want to lose their job, they're comfortable where they are, etc.  So the trick is: how do you solve this situation?  How to we get to the point where we can eliminate the oppressive situations and end up with all men as equal?  In our current state of unbalance, we need some entity to come in and protect the weak from the strong.  Tied up in all this, to complicate this, is the idea that we're stronger when we work together.  We have amazing things in this day and age ONLY because we've worked together.  Take computer technology, for instance.  I am a computer programmer.  I'm pretty good at it, I think.  But let's say, just for the sake of argument, that one day all the people who knew how to assemble computer chips and other parts like that went extinct.  You think I could keep computer technology going forever?  No.  Eventually, the machinery that creates computer chips and other parts would stop working because I don't know enough about its maintenance.  And then, once all the computers that are currently out there stopped working, there would be no more computers for me to do my computer programming on and I'd be out of a job, because I have no idea how to build a computer from scratch.  So no more computers.  That is, if I wasn't teaming up with people who knew how to put together computers from scratch.  Likewise, if one day all the computer programmers went extinct, I'd imagine the people who build computers might have some problems on their hands that they wouldn't be able to solve.  So the answer, I think, is not rugged individualism, either.  Rugged individualism will bring us back to caveman days eventually.  Sure, we'll have our roads and technology for a while.  But after a while, if we don't work together, roads will cease to be and without people coming together to build technology we'll forget how to do that as well.  So the question is, how can we maintain a society where computer programmers and technicians (we'll use that word for "the people who do physical stuff with computers" as a very broad terminology) can work together as equals without one group asserting itself as being oppressively "over" the other, so that we can enjoy the wonders of technology and still have equality?  That's what the entire debate of political policy is about, at its very most basic level, I think.  The complication is that you don't just have ONE group who is oppressively over another.  You have many groups that are oppressively over many other groups, and in some cases oppressive groups have made agreements with other oppressive groups.  So the question is how to upset the balance in the favor of those who are "under" in order to bring us back to the possibility of equality?

dtguitarfan wrote: thellama73 wrote: Well, the first thing is that companies don't want to sell products that cause great harm. That's very naive.  Companies don't care if they do harm as long as you keep buying their product.  Think of cocaine - does the cocaine dealer care if his product harms you?  No, he just wants you to become dependent on his product for a while so you give him a steady stream of revenue until you die.  There will be others who buy his product after you die, so as long as he can make sure his product isn't TOO harmful (in other words, he doesn't want you to die too fast), he doesn't really care if you're harmed in the consuming of his product.

See, now this thread is starting to sound like people who make sense and are reasonable.

I got into a discussion with a co-worker today during lunch about affirmative action, which seemed to be odious to him.  I told him: you have to take yourself back to the point at which this law was created and think of the situation in which it was created.  You had this scenario where a civil rights movement was started because barriers were created based on the color of a man's skin - certain bathrooms were "whites only", and certain drinking fountains were "whites only", and you definitely wouldn't have been offered certain jobs if your skin wasn't white.  So the law stepped in and said "this is not right - it isn't right that a man shouldn't be offered a job merely because of the color of his skin."  So they create a law to try to equalize things.  Now we have people saying this law is not needed any more.  It's possible that it is not, but maybe it is - who can say?  It's a tough decision to make - are we actually at the point where people have stopped seeing color and a man will not be ignored based on the color of his skin?  Or are we just better at hiding our racism?  Who can say?  A case could be made that the law, as it stands, does not equalize things.  But that doesn't mean that no law is needed in order to protect people from being disqualified due to their skin color.  There's where the debate lies.  And this is one of the issues where I take HUGE issue with Rand Paul and his father.  Because they take their Libertarianism to an extreme in cases like these and basically disagree with the fact that any law was ever made to protect those who were being treated as inequal.  When one group is oppressing another, I think it is necessary for some power to step in and say "nope, enough of that", or else the situation of oppression will simply continue in perpetuity.  Now is there a point at which the "law" that once stopped another group from oppressing another can be removed?  Possibly.  But you have to be very careful about doing this, I think.