Libertarianism

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Re: Libertarianism

Post by Gallstones » Mon Jan 27, 2014 8:24 am

But here’s the thing about rights. They’re not actually supposed to be voted on. That’s why they’re called rights. ~Rachel Maddow August 2010

The Second Amendment forms a fourth branch of government (an armed citizenry) in case the government goes mad. ~Larry Nutter

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Re: Libertarianism

Post by MrJonno » Mon Jan 27, 2014 7:04 pm


I suppose you can't put in a scientific paper 'they are all cunts' but its gets to the point quicker
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Re: Libertarianism

Post by FBM » Fri May 02, 2014 1:48 am

How Piketty’s Bombshell Book Blows Up Libertarian Fantasies
Libertarians have always been flummoxed by inequality, tending either to deny that it’s a problem or pretend that the invisible hand of the market will wave a magic wand to cure it. Then everybody gets properly rewarded for what he or she does with brains and effort, and things are peachy keen.

Except that they aren’t, as exhaustively demonstrated by French economist Thomas Piketty, whose 700-page treatise on the long-term trends in inequality, Capital In the Twenty-First Century, has blown up libertarian fantasies one by one.

To understand the libertarian view of inequality, let’s turn to Milton Friedman, one of America’s most famous and influential makers of free market mythology. Friedman decreed that economic policy should focus on freedom, and not equality.

If we could do that, he promised, we’d not only get freedom and efficiency, but more equality as a natural byproduct. Libertarians who took the lessons from his books, like Capitalism and Freedom (1962) and Free to Choose (1980), bought into the notion that capitalism naturally led to less inequality.

Basically, the lessons boiled down to this: Some degree of inequality is both unavoidable and desirable in a free market, and income inequality in the US isn’t very pronounced, anyway. Libertarians starting with these ideas tend to reject any government intervention meant to decrease inequality, claiming that such plans make people lazy and that they don’t work, anyway. Things like progressive income taxes, minimum wage laws and social safety nets make most libertarians very unhappy.

Uncle Milty put it like this:

A society that puts equality — in the sense of equality of outcome — ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.… On the other hand, a society that puts freedom first will, as a happy by-product, end up with both greater freedom and greater equality.

Well, that turns out to be spectacularly, jaw-droppingly, head-scratchingly wrong. The US is now a stunningly unequal society, with wealth piling up at the top so fast that an entire movement, Occupy Wall Street, sprung up to decry it with the catchphrase, “We are the 99 percent.”

How did libertarians get it all so backwards? Well,...
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Re: Libertarianism

Post by pErvinalia » Fri May 02, 2014 2:20 am

Yep.

I'm looking forward to eventually getting this bloke's book. Nice to know the perils of inequality are rating in the somewhat popular readership.
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Re: Libertarianism

Post by SteveB » Fri May 02, 2014 3:43 am

Imagine if we were more equal with regards to income and wealth. All the dumb shit we would buy. :nono:

Has there been a study about the impact on the environment of a more equitable society, because that's what I'm worried about.
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Re: Libertarianism

Post by pErvinalia » Fri May 02, 2014 3:47 am

Well Seth will bleat something about the environmental destruction during the Soviet Union era. Just ignore it.
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Re: Libertarianism

Post by FBM » Fri May 02, 2014 4:17 am

I'm not sure that a more equitable distribution of wealth would necessarily lead to more consumption. :ask:
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Re: Libertarianism

Post by JimC » Fri May 02, 2014 5:36 am

The extremes of attempted enforcing of equality of outcomes can have bad side effects, as shown by the history of fully centrally managed economies the world over. However, judicious attempts to restore a more equal playing field can work, particularly if accompanied by resources increased in the area of giving unemployed people access to serious educational and job training opportunities, as well as reducing the ability of corporations to manipulate public policy to their own advantage.

Free enterprise can still flourish, and a society be fairer...
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Re: Libertarianism

Post by FBM » Fri May 02, 2014 7:21 am

Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's a hybrid version somewhere that would work better than either extreme. Salary caps on CEOs, higher minimum wages, merit-based access to higher education at every economic stratum, etc. There is simply no reason why some people should be tooling around in gold-plated super-yachts while others are literally starving to death.
"A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it." ~ H. L. Mencken

"We ain't a sharp species. We kill each other over arguments about what happens when you die, then fail to see the fucking irony in that."

"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion."

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Re: Libertarianism

Post by Seth » Fri May 02, 2014 8:55 am

Strangely, income inequality is quite low in the US, because 99 percent of people are about the same income-wise. We have almost no totally destitute people, as compared to India or even Mexico, and even with 15 percent unemployment 85 percent of people are employed.

What all you pathetic, greedy, jealous progressive jackasses are complaining about is that a minuscule one percent of the population is very wealthy.

Face it, you're simply inferior to them, and anyone else who makes more than you, and you're not worth more than you're getting paid right now, and probably never will be. So suck it up and get used to working for minimum wage because that's all your lazy socialist asses are worth. :Erasb:
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Re: Libertarianism

Post by Seth » Fri May 02, 2014 8:58 am

FBM wrote:Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's a hybrid version somewhere that would work better than either extreme. Salary caps on CEOs, higher minimum wages, merit-based access to higher education at every economic stratum, etc. There is simply no reason why some people should be tooling around in gold-plated super-yachts while others are literally starving to death.
Yes there is, they know how to survive and prosper. Learn from them. And nobody in the US starves to death. As for elsewhere, starvation is almost always the fault of government, not liberty.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S

"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke

"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth

© 2013/2014/2015/2016 Seth, all rights reserved. No reuse, republication, duplication, or derivative work is authorized.

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Re: Libertarianism

Post by FBM » Fri May 02, 2014 9:20 am

http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Lea ... _facts.htm
Causes of hunger and poverty

(Hunger is principally caused by poverty so this section will focus on causes of poverty.)

There are, we believe, three main causes of poverty in the United States: poverty in the world; the operation of the political and economic system in the United States which has tended to keep people from poor families poor, and actual physical mental and behavioral issues among some people who are poor.

Poverty in the world There are a lot of poor people in the world. An estimated 2 billion people are poor, and the same amount hungry (World Hunger Facts) They are much, much, poorer than people in the United States. As can be imagined, people do not want to be hungry and desperately poor. In the world economic system there are two main ways in which relatively poor people have their income increased: through trade, and through immigration. Trade, we believe, is the most important.

Trade. It is important to understand some basic economics. We in the United States live in a rich country, that has a large amount of capital--machinery, etc.--to produce things relative to the amount of labor--people that want to work. Poor countries have a lot of labor, but relatively little capital. There is a basic idea of economics--the factor price equalization theorem--that states that wages in rich countries will tend to go down and increase in poor countries through trade (Wikipedia 2010b). Thus China, with low wages, puts pressure on wages in the United States, as production is shifted to China from the United States. This movement of production from richer to poorer countries is initiated by corporations, not individuals, but it does shift jobs and income to poorer countries and people, and has been doing so for the last 30 years or so. Lower income people in the United States are particularly vulnerable to such shifts.
Immigration. A clear strategy for poor people is to go where there are higher paying jobs (often opposed to the alternative of no jobs at all). Thus immigration has been a major response to poverty by people in poor countries.
The operation of the US economic system The operation of the US economic and political system has led to certain people/groups being relatively disenfranchised.

The normal operation of the economic system will create a significant amount of poverty.

First, in a free enterprise economy, there is competition for jobs, with jobs going to the most qualified. On the other hand, there is almost always a significant amount of unemployment, so that not everyone will get a job, with the major unemployment falling on the least qualified. It might be tempting to identify them as 'unemployable' but what is in fact happening is that the private enterprise system is not generating enough jobs to employ everyone.
Secondly, the top echelon of business has the power to allocate the profits of the enterprise, and certainly they have allocated these profits to themselves in recent years.
The operation of the US political system, The US political system, which should address the major problems of its citizens, is to a great extent not focused on fundamental concerns of poor people, but on other concerns.

Military and security expenditure represent half of US federal government discretionary expenditures, much larger that expenditures to assist poor people, and this budgeting is assisted by a strong web of political and financial connections which has been termed the "military-industrial complex."
Corporations and the rich, through their ability to lobby Congress and the Administration effectively by such means as spending large amounts of money on lobbying efforts and on political campaigns of elected officials have succeeded in establishing their priorities, including tax breaks and subsidies..
The Democratic party, which used to be a party of the 'working class' has now set its sights on the 'middle class' as the target base of voters it must appeal to.
The culture of inequality

People are typically segregated by income and often race.
Jobs are low paid and scarce. This can lead to crime as a way of obtaining income, and also to unemployed men not willing to marry, which can play a significant role in developing a cultural model of single parent families.
The lack of income, as described in the poverty section above create problems, including poor housing, lack of food, health problems and inability to address needs of one's children.
As a result of their situation, people living in poverty can themselves have patterns of behavior, such as alcoholism or a 'life of crime' that are destructive to them.
"A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it." ~ H. L. Mencken

"We ain't a sharp species. We kill each other over arguments about what happens when you die, then fail to see the fucking irony in that."

"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion."

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Re: Libertarianism

Post by FBM » Fri May 02, 2014 9:29 am

Once inequality becomes an ingrained facet of culture, one's individual performance becomes increasingly irrelevant.

"A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it." ~ H. L. Mencken

"We ain't a sharp species. We kill each other over arguments about what happens when you die, then fail to see the fucking irony in that."

"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion."

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Re: Libertarianism

Post by pErvinalia » Fri May 02, 2014 10:32 am

Seth wrote:Strangely, income inequality is quite low in the US, because 99 percent of people are about the same income-wise. We have almost no totally destitute people, as compared to India or even Mexico, and even with 15 percent unemployment 85 percent of people are employed.
This shows a stunning lack of scope, and basic knowledge. You are happy to compare yourself to 3rd world nations? Well done. And 15% unemployment DOESN'T mean 85% employment. You're smarter than that.
What all you pathetic, greedy, jealous progressive jackasses are complaining about is that a minuscule one percent of the population is very wealthy.
While the people who do all the work in society struggle to get by, not to mention the people that society has left behind.
Face it, you're simply inferior to them, and anyone else who makes more than you, and you're not worth more than you're getting paid right now, and probably never will be. So suck it up and get used to working for minimum wage because that's all your lazy socialist asses are worth.
You're a clown. Not even you believes this.
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Re: Libertarianism

Post by MrJonno » Fri May 02, 2014 11:59 am

So suck it up and get used to working for minimum wage because that's all your lazy socialist asses are worth.
Then logically and due to self interest then your best bet is to get the minimum wage increased
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