which lead to some serious negative consequences. those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.
Socialists love to bring up poor factory conditions and the deplorable conditions of early insane asylums etc. And then they accuse capitalists of not knowing or understanding history, when in fact it is they who don't have a good historical grasp.
Before emancipation we had Feudalism where the Serfs would tend the land of the Lords in exchange for the means of subsistence. After the fall of Feudalism all the Serfs were free but they had nothing. They chose to work in those factories because for the first time they were allowed to keep what they earned. The result was a huge increase in the standards of living for the lowest classes and a massive population boom.
Many insane asylums were little more than prisons, because the so-called "doctors" were making profits keeping those people there. They were deplorable but they were fueled by Britain's "Poor Law" which forced the homeless into horrible community housing and the mentally ill into those disgusting asylums. However, as a result of emancipation the medical sciences received a huge boost. While before the mentally ill were considered possessed by evil spirits and put through torturous exorcism rituals, now medical researchers were treating their illnesses as pathological and began to open hospitals and find ways to treat these patients humanely. When the public caught wind of the deplorable conditions of the asylums they began removing their loved ones and gradually the asylums went out of business.
Unlike communism, capitalism is not a "Utopia". It is not perfect because humans are imperfect. No amount of "social engineering" or "central planning" will make a perfect society for that reason alone. Capitalism provides a gradual increase in the standards of living for everyone over time. But Utopians and central planners love to context-drop. They pick out specific temporary problems, and pretend that they're representative of the larger concept.
The charge of "oversimplification" is usually a disguised means of evading essentials. It often works because the person presenting the argument will experience doubt; thinking that the accuser possesses some knowledge that he lacks. Of course, if the accuser did have more knowledge of the problem he would make a refutation instead of charging the presenter with "oversimplifying".
When I hear the term "pop philosophy" I think of Immanuel Kant or William Hegel, or even Plato. These philosophers waged a full out assault on logic and reason. By speaking to confuse instead of persuade they preyed on the fact that the human brain develops concept formation at a very young age, and that the fully developed consciousness has the process automatized. Because most people think in terms of higher concepts and rarely bother to stop and think about what axiomatic concepts and percepts the higher concepts reduce back to, the attacker can convince the victim that concepts don't refer back to reality at all. By presenting arguments like "how do you define 'number' ?" the attacker convinces the subject that reality is entirely in one's mind. There are lots of consequences to this, but one of them is the "oversimplification" attack. When someone speaks in terms of irreducible primaries the accuser does not know how to recognize them or refute them.
Percepts are not "true" or "false" they just are. And all concepts reduce back to percepts. "Higher" concepts are integrations of more basic concepts, but eventually all concepts reduce back to some existent. Which is neither right or wrong it just is. A concept is invalid if it cannot be linked back to reality.
The "oversimplification" attack is not a refutation it is an attempt to evade having to check an argument's concepts and their correspondence to reality. "It might be true for you but it's not true for everyone." What is truth ? Truth is that which conforms to reality. Either an argument rests on demonstrable, axiomatic primaries or it does not.
When speaking of subjective decision making (which you were): how we make our decisions rests on our philosophy. Philosophy has three main branches: metaphysics (that which pertains to existence), epistemology (how we know things) and ethics (our actions). The three fundamental questions pertaining to these three branches of philosophy are "what do I know?", "how do I know it?" and "what should I do?" Most people take those for granted, and deal with them almost always on a subconscious level, and don't realize that their philosophy of choice will dictate how they go about answering those questions.
Because most people don't ever bother with philosophy (I'll admit that growing up I even thought of philosophy as sitting on a rock trying to decide if a tree has a soul) they get their philosophy from the world around them. Pop culture, their parents, government etc. It's no wonder then that their decisions and opinions are full of contradictions, and when someone speaks in terms of irreducible primaries they're accused of "oversimplifying".
Apparently you haven't heard the phrase "Justice is blind".
The Roman Goddess Lady Justice held a scale and wore a blind-fold, to indicate impartiality.
There must be absolutely no bias at all in the court of law. All this talk about life experiences etc. is total nonsense. In fact, and forgive me for saying this I'm honestly not trying to troll, the entire concept of the Supreme Court is contrary to "justice". The people solely charged with interpreting the constitution, the most supreme law which is designed to limit the powers of government, are hand-picked by none other than the government. Even Thomas Jefferson spoke against that danger to liberty.
"So why do we move back to a stupid argument between the absolutes of Capitalism vs Communism when the correct solution is somewhere to be found in the middle?"
Because that's simply false. The term of the "somewhere in the middle" is popularly "interventionism", also called "destructionism" by many capitalists. It's the attempt to force together two mutually exclusive ideologies. It cannot be sustained.
As time moves forward the trend moves more and more away from "absolute capitalism" towards "absolute socialism". Socialism is the antithesis of capitalism, and vice versa. You can not sustain a "middle of the road". It has to be one or the other, and the inertia will always tend to push gradually towards more socialism. Periodic shifts towards capitalism will always be the exception (the UK in the 70's / early 80's, for example. Or the abolition of the Second Bank of the United States by Andrew Jackson).
"We need to think about space access as an economic stimulus on the nature of the trans-continental railroads. We need to build an infrastructure to get to orbit reliably, then the moon reliably, then the asteroids and beyond."
Honest question: Why ?
How is the average American going to benefit from such a venture ?
What are the running costs going to be ?
What are the yields going to be (space vacations ? asteroid mining ?... ????) ?
I grew up with dreams of space exploration. I thought sending people to the moon and mars and beyond was a really cool goal for "humanity at large" (or, er, something). Now I realize that if people actually want to go to space, then there's a demand in the market that isn't being filled. Companies can profit by figuring out how to fill that demand. They'll try and fail a lot but they'll use their own money to do it. All of the tried and failed attempts will cost the average person absolutely nothing and will lead to some really cool ideas and efficient designs. Eventually the competition will drive prices down (so long as government stays out of it and doesn't give any special privileges to any private venture), and make it affordable for the people who really want to go to space.
Like the posts have been pointing out, NASA has no direction and is one big huge bureaucracy. Great way to waste resources. Even if NASA does set up a moon base or send a few astronauts to Mars the question still remains: how does that benefit Americans ? Phrased differently, what problems do Americans currently have that sending people to the moon or Mars will solve ?
It's a nice dream but the government is not a business. They can only divert resources from productive areas of the economy (i.e: areas that are producing things that make people's lives better here on earth) in order to pump them into projects that have questionable utility. Or in the case of NASA: absolutely no utility what-so-ever.
I wasn't trying to claim that what they did was legal. But after reading your response I can see how I might not have been clear.
I wasn't trying to answer "is what they did against the law?" I was trying to answer "is what they did wrong?"
In my opinion anti-trust laws end up doing more harm (to general consumer welfare) than good. I don't feel that Intel committed a crime in the moral sense. As the other guy pointed out, I was questioning the "validity" of anti-trust laws to begin with.
"The Commission finds that Intel did not compete fairly, frustrating innovation and reducing consumer welfare in the process," Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for Competition Policy, said at a Brussels news conference announcing the fine. "Given that Intel has harmed millions of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep competitors out of the market for over five years, the size of the fine should come as no surprise."
They harmed millions of European consumers ? By what measure ? To what extent ? How do you prove that a company actually kept competition out of their industry if they didn't resort to physical coercion or infringed on human rights in any way ? The wording of that paragraph gives me a really uneasy feeling. "Prove that the reason competition did not exist is because of Intel's actions" is asking to prove a negative. It's typical political speak.
"The violations took place between 2002 and 2007, when Intel controlled at least 70% of the world market for microprocessors, Kroes said."
They had a 70% market share so clearly they were doing something wrong ? It couldn't be because 70% of the consumers were satisfied by their products and wanted to buy more ?
"Intel awarded major computer manufacturers rebates on condition that they purchased all or almost all of their supplies, at least in certain defined segments, from Intel," the Commission concluded."
OK now we're getting somewhere. But why is this wrong ? It seems to me that if a significant portion of the market is demanding Intel products then retailers looked at that deal as being worth it. The retailers could make more money if they only sold Intel's products, which could potentially be at the retailer's loss if they had enough consumers wanting alternative products and going elsewhere to get them.
I just don't see how consumer's are being "harmed". Intel was prepared to sell their stuff cheaper in exchange for the retailer only selling their stuff. The only way the retailer can win in this situation is if they're only moving a significant share of Intel products to begin with.
If 50% of the retailer's clientele wanted AMD products then conceivably those 50% would go somewhere else if the store were only selling Intel products. The store would have to make up that 50% loss by an equivalent 50% increase in their profit margin on Intel products.
OR the store could lower it's prices in order to compete with other stores that move both Intel and AMD products (and thus don't get the rebate). The other stores would probably take the rebate to remain competitive. So what happens now ? Consumers are getting cheaper Intel products for one! Secondly AMD would not sit idly by and go out of business. They would start offering rebates of their own for stores that only sell AMD products (ie: they would have to lower their prices). The result would be cheaper processors for everyone! And they say consumers are being harmed!?
OR we could imagine that AMD can't lower their prices, because their chips really are that much more expensive to produce. Provided that there are consumers out there who are willing to pay more for an AMD chip because they think it's better, then AMD will continue to service that market. If no one is willing to pay more for AMD chips then that means that AMD is offering an inferior product at a higher price and they would deserve to go out of business. That's not "anti-competitive" that's "competitive".
So the result might be that some stores would only sell Intel and other stores would only sell AMD. But I don't see how this practice can be looked as "anti-competitive". It's actually very competitive. It's one way to get lower prices for products which helps the consumer.
"The Europeans began their investigation in July 2007, and their findings should help U.S. regulators, said David Balto, a senior f
"Indeed, one should bear in mind the unequal bargaining power of employer and employee."
That's not necessarily true. Generally speaking labour is a scarce resource. Even people who love their jobs find in it some disutility. So while it may be true that there are lots of people capable and willing to do a job who are currently unemployed and ready to take it, it could also be that a certain skill is hard to find or a certain position is hard to fill.
Labour is a commodity and like all commodities some kinds are scarce and some are abundant. When a person is contemplating quitting he/she has to consider how easy it will be to find a new buyer for his/her services. His/her bargaining position will depend on the ratio of scarcity of his skill to abundance of buyers. In other words, the law of supply vs. demand.
It's easy to look at the operating capital that the company has and assume that the company can afford to loose employees. In reality every employee is a factor in the production process. If any individual employee leaves, the company will be at a loss until they can find and train a replacement. Unless the employee was ripping the company off. In my experience those who vilify entrepreneurs and managers (in general), hate capitalism and complain about "greed" are the ones most likely to be doing just that.
I don't mean to be a grammar Nazi, but I think the word you're looking for is "omniscient". Omnipotent means "all powerful". Omniscient means "all knowing".
Comparing an individual to a corporation is like comparing an apple to a barrel of apples. Obviously they are not the same thing. But each apple in the barrel is an apple. Some are bigger. Some are smaller. Some are sweeter. Some have bruises. They are not all "equal" in every imaginable sense of the word but they all have one very important thing in common: they are all apples.
The corporation is just a group of individuals each working towards a common goal. Each individual is unique and you cannot compare the abstract concept of the group of individuals to a single individual. But they are equal in the only way that matters. They are all humans. As humans they have certain inalienable rights. Thus they are cooperating within the organization voluntarily and can cease doing so if they choose.
As an abstract concept, the "business" or "corporation" depends on that voluntary cooperation to produce a product or service that other individuals will find valuable. Without the individuals within it's organization producing, and without the individuals outside of the organization consuming (voluntarily as well I should add), the organization will cease functioning all together.
Thus any policy adopted by the organization that has the effect of driving away it's voluntary producers will ultimately impede the objectives sought.
I'm not saying that the particular policy complained about is having or will have that effect. I'm just pointing out the absurd redundancy of pointing at the "inequality" of a corporation and an individual.
"Actually everything that involves ships traveling through time isn't based on "Year of Hell". Even "Year of Hell" has preceeding episodes that used similar plot devices. Yesterday's Enterprise [wikipedia.org] anyone? Or City on the Edge of Forever [wikipedia.org]? Maybe we should just fly around the sun and save some whales? Gary 7?"
Time travel was not what made it like "Year of Hell".
It was the plot. Bad-guy's wife gets killed. Bad guy gets emotionally damaged and goes around destroying planets. There were a few minor differences, like the fact that in "Year of Hell" the bad guy was trying to get his wife back, not get revenge. But the basic idea was identical.
And the alternate time-line concept to me is a total cop-out. It's an excuse to do absolutely anything. They could have had Kirk and Spock fall in love and get married and it would have been ok because it was an "alternate time-line". Hell, they could have killed Kirk and it would have been ok because it was an 'alternate time-line'. They could have destroyed earth and thrown the Enterprise into a Battlestar Galactica like situation fighting the Romulans for survival and it would have been ok because it was an alternate time-line.
If you go into movies turning your brain off and just wanting to chill out for 2 hours then fine. Anything will entertain you. Call me pretentious. Tell me to take the stick out of my ass. I went in with absolutely no expectations and still thought it was a bad movies.
And you don't think that argument is a bit of a cop-out ?
TNG, DS9 and Voyager all dealt with "alternate time-lines" and (IMO) the results were always extremely bad scripts. The only time it ever approached "successful" was when they were trying to preserve the time-lines that everyone accepted. Like the two-part DS9 episode where they ended up in a past ghetto and an important historical figure gets killed, so Sisko pretends to be him to preserve their time-line.
Doing anything else is a lame excuse to write stories that otherwise wouldn't make any sense what-so-ever. "Hey this would be fun!" "yeah but it wouldn't make any sense" "OK I know, we'll just use time travel and call it an 'alternate time-line'" "YEAH!"
But then again, that's not the primary reason I didn't like the movie. Basically I thought it was an extremely unoriginal plot (like I said, it was almost exactly like the Voyager episode "Year of Hell"). What I find really odd is that after Nemesis all the fans were bitching that they made it just a cheesy action flick. IMO Star Trek was WAY more of a cheesy action flick with no real plot than Nemesis. I actually liked Nemesis more. The bad guys had more of a back-story (and while the cloning thing may have been lame, at least it wasn't a blatant rip-off from a past episode). B4 was annoying but Spotty's Jar-Jar Binks like side-kick was way more annoying... somehow even with far less screen time he managed to piss me off way more than B4 did.
So I'm just really confused by the high ratings from Trek fans. They hated Nemesis but they loved this one. It makes no sense to me.
I said that the character had no depth. The audience kept laughing every time he pronounced a v sound with a w (so while I said it failed what I should have said was that it failed on me). I'm usually the exact opposite of politically correct (I don't go into Star Trek looking for pretention, in fact that's the one thing that I never liked about Star Trek... and I can easily get into a "dumb comedy" flicks... I'm one of the few people who still likes Pauly Shore *sigh*). So it wasn't that I found the accent insulting or racist or anything... I just found it annoying and superfluous. That and the fact that it was the ONLY purpose his character served made it feel quite tasteless. Had he offered anything more to the film I would have overlooked the failed comic relief.
I haven't seen Wolverine so I can't compare the two.
I *might* be one of those "hard to please" Trekkies who just can't be happy... but I've never been to a convention, I can't speak Klingon, I've never dressed up in a Star Trek costume, I didn't care much for TOS (though I did like the 4th and 6th movies and didn't mind 2) or Enterprise. Voyager was "watchable". Mostly I was a really big fan of TNG and DS9.
I strongly disagree with those who say that this was the best Star Trek movie. I think First Contact or The Undiscovered Country were both far better. CmdrTaco said in his review that it was the least cheesy Star Trek flick but it had a freakin' sword fighting scene and they even approached George Lucas-like territory by adding a superfluous and annoying Jar Jar Binks like character... ugh!:(
Needless to say I absolutely hated the movie. If you're looking for pure eye candy with absolutely no substance what-so-ever then the movie might be "OK". But I didn't even like it as an action flick. I found the action scenes to be full of pretty CGI but boring to watch. Maybe I would have liked it if I were stoned.
However, my main beef with the movie was that the plot was extremely unoriginal. The plot was almost exactly the same as the Voyager episode "Year of Hell".
There were some funny moments. Maybe if I judged the movie on it's comedic merits it would watchable a 2nd time.
*** SPOILER ALERT ***
The romance between Spock and Uhura was completely cliche and unnecessary.
Kirk was made into a "rebel without a cause, who finds his cause" Hollywood cliche.
The Romulans now look different, and not for the better. They were extremely unlikable, provided nothing in the way of depth. Served only as a plot device for a very unoriginal plot.
Aside from Kirk and Spock there was absolutely nothing to any of the other characters. Checkov bordered on disgraceful. He was made into pure comic relief (which didn't even work on that level). There was nothing to his character except his funny accent which kept being used to make unfunny and tasteless jokes. Sulu offered nothing either and was basically "Harold" (from Harold and Kumar fame) on the bridge of the Enterprise... oh and he could fence. Was that an attempt to pay tribute to Picard or just an excuse to do a pointless and extremely cheesy sword fighting scene (I can't believe CmdrTaco thought this was the least cheesy Star Trek film!) ?
The end of the movie did not only destroy canon. It destroyed all future Star Treks. As a TNG and DS9 fan I felt betrayed by Star Trek paying absolutely no regard to future events that will unfold in the Star Trek universe. This is why I stopped watching Enterprise and didn't like The Phantom Menace. You go into a prequel wanting to see fictional history in action and instead you get something completely different that pays no regard to fiction that you loved. Everyone is saying "they realized that it's hard to do a good prequel and so this was a smart move"... no it wasn't! It was pure cowardice! They avoided the topic all together and took absolutely no risk. And in doing so wrote a script with absolutely no substance. No story telling. No regard for what made Star Trek. There's breaking canon to make a good movie, and there's completely rewriting the story from scratch. They chose the latter and didn't even write a good story. I'm really surprised that the "hardcore" Klingon-speaking fans aren't completely outraged like the Star Wars fans were after Phantom Menace.
Utopians dreamed of a future in which human behaviour would be altered. That's the difference between a Utopian and a Libertarian.
"There have been thousands of different methods of transportation that have been invented, so I'm sure that you can come up with a semi-realistic one that doesn't pollute the air at all.
Electric cars were around before fuel combustion. At first people prefered electric cars because the fuel combustion engines were extremely loud and released a massive amount of emissions that made driving uncomfortable. Fuel combustion engines were refined first and won out because they went faster and farther.
The economic benefits were obvious. I don't refute that. The point is that if the use of fuel combustion technology were impractical because of pollution to innocent 3rd party's property then productive efforts would have been spent trying to improve electric vehicles and alternative solutions instead.
From Murray Rothbard's "For a new Liberty" (published in 1978):
"Air wastes can even now be recaptured as they leave the chimney and be recycled to yield products useful to industry. Thus, sulfur dioxide, a major noxious air pollutant can be captured and recycled to produce economically valuable sulfuric acid. The highly polluting spark ignition engine will either have to be "cured" by new devices or replaced all together by such nonpolluting engines as diesel, gas turbine, or steam, or by an electric car. And, as libertarian systems engineer Robert Poole, Jr. points out, the costs of installing the non- or anti-polluting technology would then "ultimately be borne by the consumers of the firms' products, i.e:, by those who choose to associate with the firm, rather than being passed on to the innocent third parties in the form of pollution (or as taxes)."
As you pointed out, there are many transportation technologies, we've gone with what was cheapest to start with but we've paid the price in terms of health hazards and frightening collectivist legal precedents (for the 'common good'). Lots of non-polluting technologies have been developed but there's no economic incentive to mass produce them. There's other industries that produce waste but they don't pollute the air. Nuclear energy is one example. Libertarians have no problem with hazardous waste so long as individuals voluntarily store or dispose of them on their own property.
Today as oil prices are rising we're seeing a massive surge in research for electric and other non-emitting vehicles and a lot of improvements have been made. As people get into this "green" mentality we're seeing a lot more non-polluting products and technologies come about. They're more expensive but that's because they're less abundant than traditional products. It's not magical wishful thinking to claim that if property rights were enforced that companies would develop non-polluting industrial techniques and prices would come down. It's demonstrable through historical observation and economic theory.
Claiming that industry would disappear if they could not pollute their neighbour's property is akin to the cotton industry saying that it would disappear if slave labour were to be abolished 200-300 years ago.
"Dangerous because extremists tend to commit the worst crimes, since they cannot compromise."
It depends on what their principles are. A consistently evil person will obviously commit tremendous crimes. However, I think that people of "good intentions" tend to do the worst damage, precisely because they compromise. An unprincipled utilitarian philosophy could lead one to the following hypothetical:
"The majority of the population hates redheads, who comprise 0.5% of the population. Obviously it would be wrong to exterminate or deport that 0.5% of the population but the benefits to the rest of the population would be so enormous that the ends justify the means. It's a worthwhile compromise."
"The problem with that argument is that we would have almost none of our technology if we could simply sue people to get them to stop polluting: - Even electric cars cause air pollution (tire rubber and metal particles from the brakes). - All fossil-burning electro plants produce air pollution. - Pretty much all moving parts cause (trace amounts of) air pollution, so you'd better not mow the lawn, walk around, breathe or do any of the million other things that generate small amounts of air pollution. - Most industries cause at least some air pollution (including bakeries, although many people enjoy that smell). Even the best industrial filters will let trace amounts through."
That's a short-sighted view that's rooted in only focusing on what we can see and ignoring what business is good at: solving problems.
When people are given the authority to harm others the result is that many people will use that authority when it's convenient. Slave labour is a good example.
We have no way of knowing what our world would be like today if governments had done their jobs and protected people's rights. What we do know is that when there's profit to be had in solving problems there will be lots of people working on solving them. Maybe there are some technologies that we take for granted today that never would have been invented, and maybe there would be lots of new technologies that came about by researching ways to improve production efficiency without infringing on other people's rights. All inventions have come about by trying to solve some problem. Many of them occurred by accident (trying to solve unrelated problems). It's ridiculously naive to think that just because industry would not be allowed to pollute other people's air that all production would cease. Only the production techniques that we take for granted today would never have been employed to such an extent. Meaning resources would have been diverted into developing and refining alternative production techniques.
"Politicians are supposed to find compromises"
"A compromise is an adjustment of conflicting claims by mutual concessions. This means that both parties to a compromise have some valid claim and some value to offer each other. And this means that both parties agree upon some fundamental principle which serves as a base for their deal.
...
Today, however, when people speak of "compromise" what they mean is not a legitimate mutual conession or a trade, but precisely the betrayal of one's principles - the unilateral surrender to any groundless, irrational claim. The root of that doctrine is ethical subjectivism, which holds that a desire or whim is an irreducible moral primary, that every man is entitled to any desire he might feel like asserting, that all desires have equal moral validity, and that the only way men can get along together is by giving in to anything and "compromising" with anyone. It is not hard to see who would profit and who would lose by such a doctrine."
...
A "compromise" does not consist of doing something one dislikes, but of doing something one knows to be evil." - Ayn Rand - "Doesn't Life Require Compromise?" (1962)
"Ironically, your libertarian ideal is so extremist"
If by "extremist" you mean consistent then thank-you:)
"that it will destroy capitalism completely. You are a greater threat to capitalism than most communists."
Capitalism is a legal construct that refers to private ownership of property. Communism is rooted in collectivism where every person is given a legal claim to the life of others. In such a system there is no concept of "private ownership".
No one can have a "right" to the productive efforts of others. Just like no one can have a "right" to own or to destroy the property of another. I argue that your notion of "compromise" is a greater threat to capitalism than my "extremism", which only means consistency.
"Those kind of statements are where people start calling libertarians crazy. Obviously? Obviously to whom? Carping about our representatives or president is not in any way the same thing as believing our country has failed."
Obvious to anyone who cares about individual liberty and peace. When the government treats the constitution like a piece of paper it obviously doesn't regard the reason it was created in the first place as it's "raison d'etre" anymore.
Under the constitution congress needs to formally declare war in order to mobilize armed forces and maintain a presence on foreign soil. Congress hasn't declared war since World War II and the US has troops stationed in over 130 countries world wide.
There is no authority under the constitution for an income tax, or a central bank. The entire concept of a fiat (paper) currency is unconstitutional.
There's no authority under the constitution to run public schools or force kids to attend them.
When government loots from one group in order to give favours to another the spirit of "life, liberty and happiness" no longer exists.
So I stand by what I said. It's pretty obvious that if the founding fathers were alive today they wouldn't look at the current empire as being representative of their vision.
"Fire is insurance based. It would probably move over to that. The bill collecting aspects of an on demand payment fire department doesn't make the economics look very good. Sort of the same problem as on demand policing. "Just had your wallet stolen? I'll look for the guy who stole it - for a price." The accountants wouldn't like your business model."
I completely agree. I was in a rush to post last night and I regretted not bringing that up. People have insurance for fire and theft etc. today. So there's no reason that insurance companies wouldn't increase their premiums to cover payment to fire and police etc.
"Schools would eventually move back to where we are. Sending kids to private schools funded only by parents would be far too expensive (see our still heavily subsidized private colleges). Businesses wouldn't have an educated enough work force. So you probably see some sort of collective partnership pop up, or you'd see a system where rather than pay for school as you're in it, you contributed a smaller dollar amount each month for your entire life."
Murray Rothbard has written a lot about the history of public education in the USA and Europe. Do you know which groups were the strongest proponents of public compulsory education ? Labour unions. As time progressed the age requirements for compulsory attendance kept increasing. Unions have lobbied for this because they don't want a surge of young, healthy, ambitious and broke adolescents entering the labour market and competing for their jobs.
When government gets it's hands in education a few very scary things start to happen:
1) It creates monopolies. Those "expensive subsidized" universities that you speak of have an advantage over any new schools that want to enter the market and compete. Education is one of the most regulated industries in the US. It's very hard to open a new school. So while those universities are subsidized it has the opposite of it's intended effect (like almost all regulations). Rather than make education cheaper it makes it more expensive. To open a private school that teaches children is no small, or inexpensive feat. Teachers need government-approved credentials. The schools need special licenses etc. All of this gives the government control over who is allowed to teach and what they are allowed to teach. It also gives a competitive advantage to the existing schools and it drives up the price of private education.
2) Government money always comes with strings attached. Imagine a school that wanted to open up and teach Satan-worshiping. Do you think it would stand a chance to get government funding ? That le
"I get really sick of paying 1300 bills every month, so in steps some sort of group. Let's call them a government. In exchange for $x/month they'll handle all payments for a set number of providers, including some overhead."
That wouldn't be a government. That would be a bank.
Also, if you consider the amount of services that you actually get from the government, you wouldn't end up with anywhere near so many bills as you imagine. .
For example: you would only pay a fire department when they put out a fire for you. Utilities are paid monthly even with government. Court fees are paid on a per-case basis. School tuition for private schools are paid per-semester.
That only leaves police protection. I'll ignore national defense for the moment because I don't have time to go into that discussion right now.
"Ultimately it sounds like you'd prefer the system we have now with more than one government in competition."
That would start to be an anarcho-capitalist society. Some libertarians lean that way. Murray Rothbard was a very well-known libertarian economist, philosopher and historian who was an anarcho-capitalist.
I should point out that he didn't believe that the "competing governments" concept could work. He wanted complete independence and competition among courts, police departments etc. The whole shabang. The reason I'm not quite convinced, personally, that such a society could work is because the question "could the 'libertarian' code of law be preserved under such a society?" has not been satisfactorily answered for me.
However, after reading some of his work I'm less convinced that it couldn't work than I was before. Ancient Celtic Ireland, for example, apparently existed for 1,000 years under such a system. And was a very "libertarian-like" society.
The rest of the libertarians are of the "old school liberals". Who believe that a single government is necessary to preserve the rule of law. In such a society the only role of government is to protect the rights of individuals. This limits government to the judiciary, law enforcement and national defense. There would be no "public property" (there would have to be a small amount of government-owned property). There would be no taxes. Government would be funded through voluntary contributions. If the voluntary contributions do not produce enough to support the government then it must shrink in size or dissolve. That would be a good thing because if people are not voluntarily supporting their government financially then that's a pretty good indication that the public doesn't feel that all of the government's services are necessary.
There are some problems that need to be addressed in such a system. Obviously the USA Republic has failed miserably. The politicians are completely disregarding the constitution currently, and have been since as early as 1913, but arguably earlier as well. When the constitution becomes "just a piece of paper" the government ceases to be a protector of individual rights and becomes a criminal gang.
There are various solutions that could work to address these issues. Ultimately no one has all of the answers. I just know that philosophically as well as historically government needs to be heavily restricted in order to be a force for good. Assuming that it can be a force for good at all and never turn into a force for evil. Everything that makes life comfortable today, that we take for granted, from the clothes that we wear to the computers that we're using to have this discussion were created by enterprising individuals working to improve their own conditions by creating something that would be valuable in an exchange with others. Government must necessarily exist as a prohibitory force. It's simply an organization that we've granted a monopoly on the use of coercion. Anarchists believe that government must always degenerate into evil. Classic Liberals believe that government is a necessary evil and *can* be contained, they just have yet to figure out exactly what the best way to go about it is.
"If a small minority buy up the majority of land and water rights (as would surely happen)"
Why do you think that's likely to happen ? It doesn't happen now. There's no legal reason that someone with a lot of money couldn't buy an entire city if every land owner within the city were willing to sell.
It's precisely the selfishness that collectivists and altruists teach as evil that makes things work. You said;
"what do the people who own no property have in the way of rights? Or do they have no rights because they own no property?...
what would keep property owners from becoming slave owners. Or is that fine (I guess it is an efficient use of resources)?"
First of all, obviously slavery does not fit into a libertarian philosophy. Slavery is one individual's ownership of another. Philosophically that's impossible, morally it's repugnant and legally it's undesirable.
Secondly, rights are the ability to act as a human being. To appropriate resources and use them to produce goods and services that promote favourable living conditions. Legal rights imply the protection from coercion. The recognition that you own your own body and that you possess the legal right to acquire property.
A right can never include a right to the productive efforts of others. If people had such a right then there would be no such thing as freedom. Everyone would be slaves to everyone else. That's the road we're headed down right now. When socialists talk of "the right to a job" etc.
There can be no hypothetical individual with no property or no rights. First of all, you own yourself. It's only if you think that you are totally worthless as a human being that you could not acquire any further material property, and that would be by choice. Such people have my pity but they are deluded. Everyone is capable of doing something and thus has something to exchange with others for the furthering of personal interests. And anyone who is totally naked and without any property what-so-ever can always fall on the charity of others to help them figure out how to help themselves.
Forced labour has never been an efficient use of a resource. It is precisely voluntary labour coupled with open market competition that leads to efficiency, and the key here is selfishness.
Ultimately I cannot force you to work for me even if I have a gun pointed at your head. You may choose the work over death, but the choice is still yours. You could also choose to take a chance and fight me. Maybe you'll win, maybe I'll win. But since I cannot possess your conscious mind I am reduced to attempting to influence your decisions.
So instead I could propose cooperation. We'd both win. You work, I give you something in return and bingo! Just like that you own property. So the concept of someone without any property what-so-ever is pretty hard to fathom. Even homeless people own *some* property. In a system of voluntary cooperation it becomes impossible to "not be able to own anything".
To go back to your "evil monopoly" question. There would be no profit to be had in buying up a bunch of land and trying to force people to work for the right to live on it. They could easily refuse. They could revolt. Even if they were to submit the labour would be inefficient. And who would buy from me ? The costs of production (hiring people to control the slaves, slow inefficient labour, and a lack of competition) would tend to drive up the prices. It would be way more profitable for me to compete by hiring people who actually want to work for me in order to further their own selfish motivations.
At every point in history where slavery existed it was because of government institutions. In Feudal Europe only lords and vassals with special social status could own land. During the Roman Republic and Empire citizens could not be slaves, and slaves were non-citizens. They were recognized as slaves by the government who refused to recognize the
You: "You have not explained how you cannot have human rights without property rights. "
Me: "Take freedom of the press for example. You cannot have freedom of the press when the government owns every printing press and paper mill etc. You cannot have freedom of assembly when you need to get government's permission to assemble anywhere."
Also see my original post when I go over the underlying philosophy (conscious beings exist in time and space. Humans survive by manipulating their surroundings to produce favourable living conditions etc.).
And you still haven't explained how the property rights in a libertarian society are resolved with common property such as air and water.
I have explained everything. You've either just superficially scanned what I wrote, or you don't understand like you claim to.
Two people cannot occupy the same physical space at the same time. It is an impossibility. Two people cannot consume the same food or the same cup of water at the same time. Sure, we could split an apple in two but we wouldn't be consuming the same thing. We would each eat something completely different. Both things would simply share a common origin.
Thus there can be no such thing as "common property". It's a contradiction in terms. Ownership means the ability to dispose of an object as you see fit. How can a million people each have the ability to dispose of a common object as they see fit ?
When government owns property it doesn't change this law of nature. Government property doesn't belong to you or me it belongs to the government. Government even admits it when they say "property of the government" as opposed to "property of the people".
So with so-called "common property" everyone needs permission to use it at any given time. This necessitates the creation of an arbitrary individual or organization that receives requests for use of the "communal resource" and makes it's decisions accordingly. While we tend to look at parks and roads and such that are usually available to anyone and say "well that's not so bad", we see the presence of the arbitrary decision maker in the instances of park curfews and traffic laws etc. We also witness atrocities like industries being able to dump their waste in public property. The massive collection of garbage in the oceans being one huge example. That could not occur in a system where all property is privately owned.
This usually conjures up a nightmare scenario for people who haven't thought through the implications. "You mean we'd have to PAY for WATER!?!?!"... well, we pay for it now. And it comes with fluoride whether we want it or not. It's also important to note that water is so abundant that we really only pay for treatment and distribution. Not the resource itself. Water is an example of a resource that no one would sell as a commodity. They'd just charge for distribution or access. And there would be so many competitors, since it is so abundant that it'd be dirt cheap. That's another example of such a resource. Dirt. It's so abundant that we say "dirt cheap" to mean something that costs very little.
When you say air we have to speak of 'physical space' which also implies land and any resources being produced on that land (either by nature or through the owner's efforts). Air itself has such unique properties, it is absolutely everywhere. That unless we harness it with some medium it is really difficult to point at it and say "I own this air". But we can say something to the effect that "I own the air in my lungs at this particular moment". Or "I own the air that's in this balloon since I own the balloon" etc.
Point being that SOMEONE has to control a resource once it's been appropriated. Either the government or a private individual or organization. Libertarians argue two things. 1) Private ownership is the only way that human rights can exist. 2) Private individuals and organization
If you look at the history of the USA since 1913 it makes a perfect example of what I was talking about.
1913 (Woodrow Wilson D) - Introduction of the federal income tax
- Creation of the 3rd central bank: The Federal Reserve
1917 (Woodrow Wilson D) - Entry into World War I. President claims USA must "make the world safe for democracy" (whatever the hell that means).
1929 (Herbert Hoover R) - Stock market crashes. President undertakes the largest campaign of government expansion during peace time in country's history.
1932 (Franklin Roosevelt D) - Elected by criticizing previous government's "laissez-faire policies" (ha!). Ends up continuing Hoover's policies on an even greater scale scale.
1932 - 1944 - Massive decade-long depression caused by gross government interventions into the markets (attempts to freeze wages, subsidize agriculture, support cartellization of private industries, introduction of so-called "pro-labour" laws forcing employees to join unions and turning a blind eye to union violence etc.)
1944 - 1945 - Creation of the Military Industrial Complex during WWII. Later on in President Eisenhower's farewell address he would warn the American Public to be very cautious of these company's influence over government policies. JFK would also speak out about the MIC and was assassinated.
1971 - Richard Nixon takes the US dollar off of the gold standard.
1973 - 1974 - Massive recession coupled with the first appearance of "stagflation" in US history (lots of unemployment without any drop in prices).
1980's - President Reagan talks a big game about "deregulation" but actually increases the size of government (particularly military spending). The American Public gets extremely confused and starts thinking that "laissez-faire" capitalism means cutting a few very minor regulations. Later on when the US economy tanks ignorant Americans will assume that it was Reagan's fault and forever condemn capitalism.
Early 90's - Republican President George Bush Sr. sends military troops into Iraq. He also signs the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)... an extremely anti-laissez-faire bill. Could it be that Republicans in general don't actually tend towards laissez-faire after all ? hmmm....
1992 - 2000 - Democratic President Bill Clinton bombs Kosovo and Baghdad. Increases military spending. Could it be that Democrats in general don't tend toward peace after all ? hmmm...
2000 - 2008 - George W. Bush Jr. is elected by promising a "humble foreign policy" contrary to Bill Clinton's. He also promises to slash government spending and take a fiscally conservative policy. In the next 8 years he, along with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfield will destroy any remaining credibility that the Republican party had. Through the most extensive government expansion since Herbert Hoover they will wipe their asses with the constitution, piss all over individual liberty, increase government spending on an unheard-of scale and will throw the US political climate into disarray.
2008 - History repeats itself. A Democratic politician wins the US election by criticizing the policies of his Republican predecessor. He promises change but in the first month continues the predecessor's expansionist policies on a massive scale. Just like Hoover / Roosevelt.
Before 1913 the US had a "colorful" history with regards to government interference. There was the "First American Bank" and "Second American Bank" with lots of debates regarding whether or not central banking was desirable. There were the subsidies given to the railroad companies creating government monopolies. But for the most part the US was extremely "free" and adopted a foreign policy of peace and open trade with no entangling political alliances (this would change after the World Wars in
Environmental issues are a perfect example of government failing to do it's job.
We need to ask "what is the role of government?" Classic liberals felt that the only role of government is to protect the rights of individuals. All rights are property rights (I can elaborate on that if you'd like me to but I'll skip it for brevity).
During the industrial revolution many companies were sued by others who felt that air pollution was a violation of their property rights (not only their land and air but their lungs - ie: bodies - as well). Judges ruled basically that "well, we know these are clear violations but we're going to look the other way because we don't want to hinder economic development" (!!!)
Now, you can blame the industrialists all you want. But if government were doing it's one, single job then we wouldn't have air pollution. The only way a company can survive is to produce goods and services that benefit the lives of others. When people feel that their rights are being violated and the means they've chosen to enforce those rights is not functioning then you get a case of capitalism deteriorating and externalizing costs... by using the very institution designed for the opposite purpose.
"Depending on the mandate of this new organization, what is wrong with organizing and have a focused approach on a large global issue ?"
You just answered your own question by prefacing that with "depending on the organization's mandate".
When an individual or organization needs to employ it's own resources to undertake any kind of productive endeavor (whether it's research or producing a product) it's success is measured by the contributions that it makes to individuals. When an organization uses other people's resources there is no way to measure it's success and eventually it's purpose becomes finding ways to justify it's own existence.
The question that needs to be asked is "What is the role of government?" If we look to government to solve all of our problems then sooner or later we become a socialist state. A socialist state cannot lead to better conditions for individuals than a capitalist because in a socialist state there is no way to employ economic calculation. The productive efforts of individuals are confiscated in order to fund projects that do not benefit very many people. All socialist states eventually deteriorate into mass starvation and conflict.
I'm all for private research and education into global environmental issues. I'm also all for government doing it's job and enforcing property rights. If it did that there would be no air pollution or noise pollution. During the industrial revolution many companies were sued by individuals for violating their property rights and judges basically ruled to the effect of "well, we know that people's rights are being violated but we're going to look the other way in order to promote 'economic growth'" !!!! If that's not a clear indication of what happens when people buy into a "greater good" (ie: collectivist) mentality than I don't know what is.
In the open market it's the consumers that decide what they need. Not the companies. In the case of Haliburton their consumers are, ironically, governments who buy weapons to kill people. Enron was an electricity company. Most electricity companies get monopoly privileges from governments. I don't remember the specific details regarding Enron's operations though so I'll leave it at that (I just recall that they were a utility company in California that was caught in a corruption scandal).
Everybody is interested in their bottom line. Their bottom line being their very survival. When you produce a product or service to be consumed by others you cannot succeed by going around and telling others that they must consume your product. Yes, I know the altruists and collectivists who insist that humans are all evil and thus demand constant sacrifice will have you believe that any attempt to improve your personal conditions must always be at the expense of others. What's extremely funny and sad about such assertions is that the only organization capable of improving it's situation at the expense of others is one that has the sanction of the majority to employ coercion. That would be the government. If any other group attempted to do so the majority, whom would not recognize the organization's authority, would quickly over power them.
On a fundamental level we are all selfish. That's not a bad thing. If we weren't we could never survive. Individuals must concern themselves with their own survival first and that is inherently selfish by nature. The question is, does selfishness imply a disregard for others ? As rational beings obviously it cannot. The benefits to voluntary social cooperation are obvious to anyone. Mutually beneficial exchange and the voluntary division of labour produces far better conditions for all individuals. That is both rational and moral.
So I will take an inventor or an entrepreneur who is trying to make a buck by producing a good or service that improves the lives of his peers over an organization that tries to get people to buy into some "higher purpose" which demands sacrifice (which ultimately boils down to sacrifice of reason) any day. And in the mean time I will push for smaller government to get rid of the fascist government/corporate "partnerships", which are the only corporations that apply to your charge.
I love how you continue to harp on individualism without refuting a single charge I laid against collectivism. Oh, except for:
"Yes, I make lots of appeals to emotion. Because emotion drives human beings much more than logic."
Common sense would lead one to believe that if everyone were constantly resorting to emotion and working on pure whim then, and only then, would the world fall apart.
"I can't even believe you would say something so ridiculous."
There's argument from intimidation again.
What does this society look like that has no laws, except those that are required to make business work, enforced by something that isn't a government, with collective infrastructure built by private industry and interacting in an efficient way with volunteer standards bodies (that are not a government)?"
Listen to how you word yourself... "except those that are required to make business work". That's an emotional charge playing to the class division perpetuated by a collectivist belief structure. Libertarians do not want a government that will enforce "business rights". Those libertarians who feel that a government is necessary believe that it's role must be limited to protecting property rights. And as I explained, all human rights are property rights. You can not have "human rights" without property rights.
Take freedom of the press for example. You cannot have freedom of the press when the government owns every printing press and paper mill etc. You cannot have freedom of assembly when you need to get government's permission to assemble anywhere.
But then... you can't reason with someone who insists on abandoning reason. So I don't know why I'm bothering.
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The GP made a really good point against himself.
Socialists love to bring up poor factory conditions and the deplorable conditions of early insane asylums etc. And then they accuse capitalists of not knowing or understanding history, when in fact it is they who don't have a good historical grasp.
Before emancipation we had Feudalism where the Serfs would tend the land of the Lords in exchange for the means of subsistence. After the fall of Feudalism all the Serfs were free but they had nothing. They chose to work in those factories because for the first time they were allowed to keep what they earned. The result was a huge increase in the standards of living for the lowest classes and a massive population boom.
Many insane asylums were little more than prisons, because the so-called "doctors" were making profits keeping those people there. They were deplorable but they were fueled by Britain's "Poor Law" which forced the homeless into horrible community housing and the mentally ill into those disgusting asylums. However, as a result of emancipation the medical sciences received a huge boost. While before the mentally ill were considered possessed by evil spirits and put through torturous exorcism rituals, now medical researchers were treating their illnesses as pathological and began to open hospitals and find ways to treat these patients humanely. When the public caught wind of the deplorable conditions of the asylums they began removing their loved ones and gradually the asylums went out of business.
Unlike communism, capitalism is not a "Utopia". It is not perfect because humans are imperfect. No amount of "social engineering" or "central planning" will make a perfect society for that reason alone. Capitalism provides a gradual increase in the standards of living for everyone over time. But Utopians and central planners love to context-drop. They pick out specific temporary problems, and pretend that they're representative of the larger concept.
The charge of "oversimplification" is usually a disguised means of evading essentials. It often works because the person presenting the argument will experience doubt; thinking that the accuser possesses some knowledge that he lacks. Of course, if the accuser did have more knowledge of the problem he would make a refutation instead of charging the presenter with "oversimplifying".
When I hear the term "pop philosophy" I think of Immanuel Kant or William Hegel, or even Plato. These philosophers waged a full out assault on logic and reason. By speaking to confuse instead of persuade they preyed on the fact that the human brain develops concept formation at a very young age, and that the fully developed consciousness has the process automatized. Because most people think in terms of higher concepts and rarely bother to stop and think about what axiomatic concepts and percepts the higher concepts reduce back to, the attacker can convince the victim that concepts don't refer back to reality at all. By presenting arguments like "how do you define 'number' ?" the attacker convinces the subject that reality is entirely in one's mind. There are lots of consequences to this, but one of them is the "oversimplification" attack. When someone speaks in terms of irreducible primaries the accuser does not know how to recognize them or refute them.
Percepts are not "true" or "false" they just are. And all concepts reduce back to percepts. "Higher" concepts are integrations of more basic concepts, but eventually all concepts reduce back to some existent. Which is neither right or wrong it just is. A concept is invalid if it cannot be linked back to reality.
The "oversimplification" attack is not a refutation it is an attempt to evade having to check an argument's concepts and their correspondence to reality. "It might be true for you but it's not true for everyone." What is truth ? Truth is that which conforms to reality. Either an argument rests on demonstrable, axiomatic primaries or it does not.
When speaking of subjective decision making (which you were): how we make our decisions rests on our philosophy. Philosophy has three main branches: metaphysics (that which pertains to existence), epistemology (how we know things) and ethics (our actions). The three fundamental questions pertaining to these three branches of philosophy are "what do I know?", "how do I know it?" and "what should I do?" Most people take those for granted, and deal with them almost always on a subconscious level, and don't realize that their philosophy of choice will dictate how they go about answering those questions.
Because most people don't ever bother with philosophy (I'll admit that growing up I even thought of philosophy as sitting on a rock trying to decide if a tree has a soul) they get their philosophy from the world around them. Pop culture, their parents, government etc. It's no wonder then that their decisions and opinions are full of contradictions, and when someone speaks in terms of irreducible primaries they're accused of "oversimplifying".
Apparently you haven't heard the phrase "Justice is blind".
The Roman Goddess Lady Justice held a scale and wore a blind-fold, to indicate impartiality.
There must be absolutely no bias at all in the court of law. All this talk about life experiences etc. is total nonsense. In fact, and forgive me for saying this I'm honestly not trying to troll, the entire concept of the Supreme Court is contrary to "justice". The people solely charged with interpreting the constitution, the most supreme law which is designed to limit the powers of government, are hand-picked by none other than the government. Even Thomas Jefferson spoke against that danger to liberty.
"So why do we move back to a stupid argument between the absolutes of Capitalism vs Communism when the correct solution is somewhere to be found in the middle?"
Because that's simply false. The term of the "somewhere in the middle" is popularly "interventionism", also called "destructionism" by many capitalists. It's the attempt to force together two mutually exclusive ideologies. It cannot be sustained.
As time moves forward the trend moves more and more away from "absolute capitalism" towards "absolute socialism". Socialism is the antithesis of capitalism, and vice versa. You can not sustain a "middle of the road". It has to be one or the other, and the inertia will always tend to push gradually towards more socialism. Periodic shifts towards capitalism will always be the exception (the UK in the 70's / early 80's, for example. Or the abolition of the Second Bank of the United States by Andrew Jackson).
"We need to think about space access as an economic stimulus on the nature of the trans-continental railroads. We need to build an infrastructure to get to orbit reliably, then the moon reliably, then the asteroids and beyond."
Honest question: Why ?
How is the average American going to benefit from such a venture ?
What are the running costs going to be ?
What are the yields going to be (space vacations ? asteroid mining ? ... ????) ?
I grew up with dreams of space exploration. I thought sending people to the moon and mars and beyond was a really cool goal for "humanity at large" (or, er, something). Now I realize that if people actually want to go to space, then there's a demand in the market that isn't being filled. Companies can profit by figuring out how to fill that demand. They'll try and fail a lot but they'll use their own money to do it. All of the tried and failed attempts will cost the average person absolutely nothing and will lead to some really cool ideas and efficient designs. Eventually the competition will drive prices down (so long as government stays out of it and doesn't give any special privileges to any private venture), and make it affordable for the people who really want to go to space.
Like the posts have been pointing out, NASA has no direction and is one big huge bureaucracy. Great way to waste resources. Even if NASA does set up a moon base or send a few astronauts to Mars the question still remains: how does that benefit Americans ? Phrased differently, what problems do Americans currently have that sending people to the moon or Mars will solve ?
It's a nice dream but the government is not a business. They can only divert resources from productive areas of the economy (i.e: areas that are producing things that make people's lives better here on earth) in order to pump them into projects that have questionable utility. Or in the case of NASA: absolutely no utility what-so-ever.
I wasn't trying to claim that what they did was legal. But after reading your response I can see how I might not have been clear.
I wasn't trying to answer "is what they did against the law?" I was trying to answer "is what they did wrong?"
In my opinion anti-trust laws end up doing more harm (to general consumer welfare) than good. I don't feel that Intel committed a crime in the moral sense. As the other guy pointed out, I was questioning the "validity" of anti-trust laws to begin with.
I regret not making that clearer.
That's some really vague stuff.
They harmed millions of European consumers ? By what measure ? To what extent ? How do you prove that a company actually kept competition out of their industry if they didn't resort to physical coercion or infringed on human rights in any way ? The wording of that paragraph gives me a really uneasy feeling. "Prove that the reason competition did not exist is because of Intel's actions" is asking to prove a negative. It's typical political speak.
They had a 70% market share so clearly they were doing something wrong ? It couldn't be because 70% of the consumers were satisfied by their products and wanted to buy more ?
OK now we're getting somewhere. But why is this wrong ? It seems to me that if a significant portion of the market is demanding Intel products then retailers looked at that deal as being worth it. The retailers could make more money if they only sold Intel's products, which could potentially be at the retailer's loss if they had enough consumers wanting alternative products and going elsewhere to get them.
I just don't see how consumer's are being "harmed". Intel was prepared to sell their stuff cheaper in exchange for the retailer only selling their stuff. The only way the retailer can win in this situation is if they're only moving a significant share of Intel products to begin with.
If 50% of the retailer's clientele wanted AMD products then conceivably those 50% would go somewhere else if the store were only selling Intel products. The store would have to make up that 50% loss by an equivalent 50% increase in their profit margin on Intel products.
OR the store could lower it's prices in order to compete with other stores that move both Intel and AMD products (and thus don't get the rebate). The other stores would probably take the rebate to remain competitive. So what happens now ? Consumers are getting cheaper Intel products for one! Secondly AMD would not sit idly by and go out of business. They would start offering rebates of their own for stores that only sell AMD products (ie: they would have to lower their prices). The result would be cheaper processors for everyone! And they say consumers are being harmed!?
OR we could imagine that AMD can't lower their prices, because their chips really are that much more expensive to produce. Provided that there are consumers out there who are willing to pay more for an AMD chip because they think it's better, then AMD will continue to service that market. If no one is willing to pay more for AMD chips then that means that AMD is offering an inferior product at a higher price and they would deserve to go out of business. That's not "anti-competitive" that's "competitive".
So the result might be that some stores would only sell Intel and other stores would only sell AMD. But I don't see how this practice can be looked as "anti-competitive". It's actually very competitive. It's one way to get lower prices for products which helps the consumer.
"Indeed, one should bear in mind the unequal bargaining power of employer and employee."
That's not necessarily true. Generally speaking labour is a scarce resource. Even people who love their jobs find in it some disutility. So while it may be true that there are lots of people capable and willing to do a job who are currently unemployed and ready to take it, it could also be that a certain skill is hard to find or a certain position is hard to fill.
Labour is a commodity and like all commodities some kinds are scarce and some are abundant. When a person is contemplating quitting he/she has to consider how easy it will be to find a new buyer for his/her services. His/her bargaining position will depend on the ratio of scarcity of his skill to abundance of buyers. In other words, the law of supply vs. demand.
It's easy to look at the operating capital that the company has and assume that the company can afford to loose employees. In reality every employee is a factor in the production process. If any individual employee leaves, the company will be at a loss until they can find and train a replacement. Unless the employee was ripping the company off. In my experience those who vilify entrepreneurs and managers (in general), hate capitalism and complain about "greed" are the ones most likely to be doing just that.
I don't mean to be a grammar Nazi, but I think the word you're looking for is "omniscient". Omnipotent means "all powerful". Omniscient means "all knowing".
Comparing an individual to a corporation is like comparing an apple to a barrel of apples. Obviously they are not the same thing. But each apple in the barrel is an apple. Some are bigger. Some are smaller. Some are sweeter. Some have bruises. They are not all "equal" in every imaginable sense of the word but they all have one very important thing in common: they are all apples.
The corporation is just a group of individuals each working towards a common goal. Each individual is unique and you cannot compare the abstract concept of the group of individuals to a single individual. But they are equal in the only way that matters. They are all humans. As humans they have certain inalienable rights. Thus they are cooperating within the organization voluntarily and can cease doing so if they choose.
As an abstract concept, the "business" or "corporation" depends on that voluntary cooperation to produce a product or service that other individuals will find valuable. Without the individuals within it's organization producing, and without the individuals outside of the organization consuming (voluntarily as well I should add), the organization will cease functioning all together.
Thus any policy adopted by the organization that has the effect of driving away it's voluntary producers will ultimately impede the objectives sought.
I'm not saying that the particular policy complained about is having or will have that effect. I'm just pointing out the absurd redundancy of pointing at the "inequality" of a corporation and an individual.
Time travel was not what made it like "Year of Hell".
It was the plot. Bad-guy's wife gets killed. Bad guy gets emotionally damaged and goes around destroying planets. There were a few minor differences, like the fact that in "Year of Hell" the bad guy was trying to get his wife back, not get revenge. But the basic idea was identical.
And the alternate time-line concept to me is a total cop-out. It's an excuse to do absolutely anything. They could have had Kirk and Spock fall in love and get married and it would have been ok because it was an "alternate time-line". Hell, they could have killed Kirk and it would have been ok because it was an 'alternate time-line'. They could have destroyed earth and thrown the Enterprise into a Battlestar Galactica like situation fighting the Romulans for survival and it would have been ok because it was an alternate time-line.
If you go into movies turning your brain off and just wanting to chill out for 2 hours then fine. Anything will entertain you. Call me pretentious. Tell me to take the stick out of my ass. I went in with absolutely no expectations and still thought it was a bad movies.
And you don't think that argument is a bit of a cop-out ?
TNG, DS9 and Voyager all dealt with "alternate time-lines" and (IMO) the results were always extremely bad scripts. The only time it ever approached "successful" was when they were trying to preserve the time-lines that everyone accepted. Like the two-part DS9 episode where they ended up in a past ghetto and an important historical figure gets killed, so Sisko pretends to be him to preserve their time-line.
Doing anything else is a lame excuse to write stories that otherwise wouldn't make any sense what-so-ever. "Hey this would be fun!" "yeah but it wouldn't make any sense" "OK I know, we'll just use time travel and call it an 'alternate time-line'" "YEAH!"
But then again, that's not the primary reason I didn't like the movie. Basically I thought it was an extremely unoriginal plot (like I said, it was almost exactly like the Voyager episode "Year of Hell"). What I find really odd is that after Nemesis all the fans were bitching that they made it just a cheesy action flick. IMO Star Trek was WAY more of a cheesy action flick with no real plot than Nemesis. I actually liked Nemesis more. The bad guys had more of a back-story (and while the cloning thing may have been lame, at least it wasn't a blatant rip-off from a past episode). B4 was annoying but Spotty's Jar-Jar Binks like side-kick was way more annoying ... somehow even with far less screen time he managed to piss me off way more than B4 did.
So I'm just really confused by the high ratings from Trek fans. They hated Nemesis but they loved this one. It makes no sense to me.
I said that the character had no depth. The audience kept laughing every time he pronounced a v sound with a w (so while I said it failed what I should have said was that it failed on me). I'm usually the exact opposite of politically correct (I don't go into Star Trek looking for pretention, in fact that's the one thing that I never liked about Star Trek ... and I can easily get into a "dumb comedy" flicks... I'm one of the few people who still likes Pauly Shore *sigh*). So it wasn't that I found the accent insulting or racist or anything... I just found it annoying and superfluous. That and the fact that it was the ONLY purpose his character served made it feel quite tasteless. Had he offered anything more to the film I would have overlooked the failed comic relief.
I haven't seen Wolverine so I can't compare the two.
I *might* be one of those "hard to please" Trekkies who just can't be happy ... but I've never been to a convention, I can't speak Klingon, I've never dressed up in a Star Trek costume, I didn't care much for TOS (though I did like the 4th and 6th movies and didn't mind 2) or Enterprise. Voyager was "watchable". Mostly I was a really big fan of TNG and DS9.
I strongly disagree with those who say that this was the best Star Trek movie. I think First Contact or The Undiscovered Country were both far better. CmdrTaco said in his review that it was the least cheesy Star Trek flick but it had a freakin' sword fighting scene and they even approached George Lucas-like territory by adding a superfluous and annoying Jar Jar Binks like character... ugh! :(
Needless to say I absolutely hated the movie. If you're looking for pure eye candy with absolutely no substance what-so-ever then the movie might be "OK". But I didn't even like it as an action flick. I found the action scenes to be full of pretty CGI but boring to watch. Maybe I would have liked it if I were stoned.
However, my main beef with the movie was that the plot was extremely unoriginal. The plot was almost exactly the same as the Voyager episode "Year of Hell".
There were some funny moments. Maybe if I judged the movie on it's comedic merits it would watchable a 2nd time.
*** SPOILER ALERT ***
The romance between Spock and Uhura was completely cliche and unnecessary.
Kirk was made into a "rebel without a cause, who finds his cause" Hollywood cliche.
The Romulans now look different, and not for the better. They were extremely unlikable, provided nothing in the way of depth. Served only as a plot device for a very unoriginal plot.
Aside from Kirk and Spock there was absolutely nothing to any of the other characters. Checkov bordered on disgraceful. He was made into pure comic relief (which didn't even work on that level). There was nothing to his character except his funny accent which kept being used to make unfunny and tasteless jokes. Sulu offered nothing either and was basically "Harold" (from Harold and Kumar fame) on the bridge of the Enterprise... oh and he could fence. Was that an attempt to pay tribute to Picard or just an excuse to do a pointless and extremely cheesy sword fighting scene (I can't believe CmdrTaco thought this was the least cheesy Star Trek film!) ?
The end of the movie did not only destroy canon. It destroyed all future Star Treks. As a TNG and DS9 fan I felt betrayed by Star Trek paying absolutely no regard to future events that will unfold in the Star Trek universe. This is why I stopped watching Enterprise and didn't like The Phantom Menace. You go into a prequel wanting to see fictional history in action and instead you get something completely different that pays no regard to fiction that you loved. Everyone is saying "they realized that it's hard to do a good prequel and so this was a smart move"... no it wasn't! It was pure cowardice! They avoided the topic all together and took absolutely no risk. And in doing so wrote a script with absolutely no substance. No story telling. No regard for what made Star Trek. There's breaking canon to make a good movie, and there's completely rewriting the story from scratch. They chose the latter and didn't even write a good story. I'm really surprised that the "hardcore" Klingon-speaking fans aren't completely outraged like the Star Wars fans were after Phantom Menace.
Utopians dreamed of a future in which human behaviour would be altered. That's the difference between a Utopian and a Libertarian.
Electric cars were around before fuel combustion. At first people prefered electric cars because the fuel combustion engines were extremely loud and released a massive amount of emissions that made driving uncomfortable. Fuel combustion engines were refined first and won out because they went faster and farther.
The economic benefits were obvious. I don't refute that. The point is that if the use of fuel combustion technology were impractical because of pollution to innocent 3rd party's property then productive efforts would have been spent trying to improve electric vehicles and alternative solutions instead.
From Murray Rothbard's "For a new Liberty" (published in 1978):
As you pointed out, there are many transportation technologies, we've gone with what was cheapest to start with but we've paid the price in terms of health hazards and frightening collectivist legal precedents (for the 'common good'). Lots of non-polluting technologies have been developed but there's no economic incentive to mass produce them. There's other industries that produce waste but they don't pollute the air. Nuclear energy is one example. Libertarians have no problem with hazardous waste so long as individuals voluntarily store or dispose of them on their own property.
Today as oil prices are rising we're seeing a massive surge in research for electric and other non-emitting vehicles and a lot of improvements have been made. As people get into this "green" mentality we're seeing a lot more non-polluting products and technologies come about. They're more expensive but that's because they're less abundant than traditional products. It's not magical wishful thinking to claim that if property rights were enforced that companies would develop non-polluting industrial techniques and prices would come down. It's demonstrable through historical observation and economic theory.
Claiming that industry would disappear if they could not pollute their neighbour's property is akin to the cotton industry saying that it would disappear if slave labour were to be abolished 200-300 years ago.
It depends on what their principles are. A consistently evil person will obviously commit tremendous crimes. However, I think that people of "good intentions" tend to do the worst damage, precisely because they compromise. An unprincipled utilitarian philosophy could lead one to the following hypothetical:
"The majority of the population hates redheads, who comprise 0.5% of the population. Obviously it would be wrong to exterminate or deport that 0.5% of the population but the benefits to the rest of the population would be so enormous that the ends justify the means. It's a worthwhile compromise."
That's a short-sighted view that's rooted in only focusing on what we can see and ignoring what business is good at: solving problems.
When people are given the authority to harm others the result is that many people will use that authority when it's convenient. Slave labour is a good example.
We have no way of knowing what our world would be like today if governments had done their jobs and protected people's rights. What we do know is that when there's profit to be had in solving problems there will be lots of people working on solving them. Maybe there are some technologies that we take for granted today that never would have been invented, and maybe there would be lots of new technologies that came about by researching ways to improve production efficiency without infringing on other people's rights. All inventions have come about by trying to solve some problem. Many of them occurred by accident (trying to solve unrelated problems). It's ridiculously naive to think that just because industry would not be allowed to pollute other people's air that all production would cease. Only the production techniques that we take for granted today would never have been employed to such an extent. Meaning resources would have been diverted into developing and refining alternative production techniques.
"A compromise is an adjustment of conflicting claims by mutual concessions. This means that both parties to a compromise have some valid claim and some value to offer each other. And this means that both parties agree upon some fundamental principle which serves as a base for their deal.
Today, however, when people speak of "compromise" what they mean is not a legitimate mutual conession or a trade, but precisely the betrayal of one's principles - the unilateral surrender to any groundless, irrational claim. The root of that doctrine is ethical subjectivism, which holds that a desire or whim is an irreducible moral primary, that every man is entitled to any desire he might feel like asserting, that all desires have equal moral validity, and that the only way men can get along together is by giving in to anything and "compromising" with anyone. It is not hard to see who would profit and who would lose by such a doctrine."
A "compromise" does not consist of doing something one dislikes, but of doing something one knows to be evil." - Ayn Rand - "Doesn't Life Require Compromise?" (1962)
If by "extremist" you mean consistent then thank-you :)
Capitalism is a legal construct that refers to private ownership of property. Communism is rooted in collectivism where every person is given a legal claim to the life of others. In such a system there is no concept of "private ownership".
No one can have a "right" to the productive efforts of others. Just like no one can have a "right" to own or to destroy the property of another. I argue that your notion of "compromise" is a greater threat to capitalism than my "extremism", which only means consistency.
Obvious to anyone who cares about individual liberty and peace. When the government treats the constitution like a piece of paper it obviously doesn't regard the reason it was created in the first place as it's "raison d'etre" anymore.
Under the constitution congress needs to formally declare war in order to mobilize armed forces and maintain a presence on foreign soil. Congress hasn't declared war since World War II and the US has troops stationed in over 130 countries world wide.
There is no authority under the constitution for an income tax, or a central bank. The entire concept of a fiat (paper) currency is unconstitutional.
There's no authority under the constitution to run public schools or force kids to attend them.
When government loots from one group in order to give favours to another the spirit of "life, liberty and happiness" no longer exists.
So I stand by what I said. It's pretty obvious that if the founding fathers were alive today they wouldn't look at the current empire as being representative of their vision.
I completely agree. I was in a rush to post last night and I regretted not bringing that up. People have insurance for fire and theft etc. today. So there's no reason that insurance companies wouldn't increase their premiums to cover payment to fire and police etc.
Murray Rothbard has written a lot about the history of public education in the USA and Europe. Do you know which groups were the strongest proponents of public compulsory education ? Labour unions. As time progressed the age requirements for compulsory attendance kept increasing. Unions have lobbied for this because they don't want a surge of young, healthy, ambitious and broke adolescents entering the labour market and competing for their jobs.
When government gets it's hands in education a few very scary things start to happen:
1) It creates monopolies. Those "expensive subsidized" universities that you speak of have an advantage over any new schools that want to enter the market and compete. Education is one of the most regulated industries in the US. It's very hard to open a new school. So while those universities are subsidized it has the opposite of it's intended effect (like almost all regulations). Rather than make education cheaper it makes it more expensive. To open a private school that teaches children is no small, or inexpensive feat. Teachers need government-approved credentials. The schools need special licenses etc. All of this gives the government control over who is allowed to teach and what they are allowed to teach. It also gives a competitive advantage to the existing schools and it drives up the price of private education.
2) Government money always comes with strings attached. Imagine a school that wanted to open up and teach Satan-worshiping. Do you think it would stand a chance to get government funding ? That le
That wouldn't be a government. That would be a bank.
Also, if you consider the amount of services that you actually get from the government, you wouldn't end up with anywhere near so many bills as you imagine. .
For example: you would only pay a fire department when they put out a fire for you. Utilities are paid monthly even with government. Court fees are paid on a per-case basis. School tuition for private schools are paid per-semester.
That only leaves police protection. I'll ignore national defense for the moment because I don't have time to go into that discussion right now.
That would start to be an anarcho-capitalist society. Some libertarians lean that way. Murray Rothbard was a very well-known libertarian economist, philosopher and historian who was an anarcho-capitalist.
I should point out that he didn't believe that the "competing governments" concept could work. He wanted complete independence and competition among courts, police departments etc. The whole shabang. The reason I'm not quite convinced, personally, that such a society could work is because the question "could the 'libertarian' code of law be preserved under such a society?" has not been satisfactorily answered for me.
However, after reading some of his work I'm less convinced that it couldn't work than I was before. Ancient Celtic Ireland, for example, apparently existed for 1,000 years under such a system. And was a very "libertarian-like" society.
The rest of the libertarians are of the "old school liberals". Who believe that a single government is necessary to preserve the rule of law. In such a society the only role of government is to protect the rights of individuals. This limits government to the judiciary, law enforcement and national defense. There would be no "public property" (there would have to be a small amount of government-owned property). There would be no taxes. Government would be funded through voluntary contributions. If the voluntary contributions do not produce enough to support the government then it must shrink in size or dissolve. That would be a good thing because if people are not voluntarily supporting their government financially then that's a pretty good indication that the public doesn't feel that all of the government's services are necessary.
There are some problems that need to be addressed in such a system. Obviously the USA Republic has failed miserably. The politicians are completely disregarding the constitution currently, and have been since as early as 1913, but arguably earlier as well. When the constitution becomes "just a piece of paper" the government ceases to be a protector of individual rights and becomes a criminal gang.
There are various solutions that could work to address these issues. Ultimately no one has all of the answers. I just know that philosophically as well as historically government needs to be heavily restricted in order to be a force for good. Assuming that it can be a force for good at all and never turn into a force for evil. Everything that makes life comfortable today, that we take for granted, from the clothes that we wear to the computers that we're using to have this discussion were created by enterprising individuals working to improve their own conditions by creating something that would be valuable in an exchange with others. Government must necessarily exist as a prohibitory force. It's simply an organization that we've granted a monopoly on the use of coercion. Anarchists believe that government must always degenerate into evil. Classic Liberals believe that government is a necessary evil and *can* be contained, they just have yet to figure out exactly what the best way to go about it is.
Why do you think that's likely to happen ? It doesn't happen now. There's no legal reason that someone with a lot of money couldn't buy an entire city if every land owner within the city were willing to sell.
It's precisely the selfishness that collectivists and altruists teach as evil that makes things work. You said;
First of all, obviously slavery does not fit into a libertarian philosophy. Slavery is one individual's ownership of another. Philosophically that's impossible, morally it's repugnant and legally it's undesirable.
Secondly, rights are the ability to act as a human being. To appropriate resources and use them to produce goods and services that promote favourable living conditions. Legal rights imply the protection from coercion. The recognition that you own your own body and that you possess the legal right to acquire property.
A right can never include a right to the productive efforts of others. If people had such a right then there would be no such thing as freedom. Everyone would be slaves to everyone else. That's the road we're headed down right now. When socialists talk of "the right to a job" etc.
There can be no hypothetical individual with no property or no rights. First of all, you own yourself. It's only if you think that you are totally worthless as a human being that you could not acquire any further material property, and that would be by choice. Such people have my pity but they are deluded. Everyone is capable of doing something and thus has something to exchange with others for the furthering of personal interests. And anyone who is totally naked and without any property what-so-ever can always fall on the charity of others to help them figure out how to help themselves.
Forced labour has never been an efficient use of a resource. It is precisely voluntary labour coupled with open market competition that leads to efficiency, and the key here is selfishness.
Ultimately I cannot force you to work for me even if I have a gun pointed at your head. You may choose the work over death, but the choice is still yours. You could also choose to take a chance and fight me. Maybe you'll win, maybe I'll win. But since I cannot possess your conscious mind I am reduced to attempting to influence your decisions.
So instead I could propose cooperation. We'd both win. You work, I give you something in return and bingo! Just like that you own property. So the concept of someone without any property what-so-ever is pretty hard to fathom. Even homeless people own *some* property. In a system of voluntary cooperation it becomes impossible to "not be able to own anything".
To go back to your "evil monopoly" question. There would be no profit to be had in buying up a bunch of land and trying to force people to work for the right to live on it. They could easily refuse. They could revolt. Even if they were to submit the labour would be inefficient. And who would buy from me ? The costs of production (hiring people to control the slaves, slow inefficient labour, and a lack of competition) would tend to drive up the prices. It would be way more profitable for me to compete by hiring people who actually want to work for me in order to further their own selfish motivations.
At every point in history where slavery existed it was because of government institutions. In Feudal Europe only lords and vassals with special social status could own land. During the Roman Republic and Empire citizens could not be slaves, and slaves were non-citizens. They were recognized as slaves by the government who refused to recognize the
Also see my original post when I go over the underlying philosophy (conscious beings exist in time and space. Humans survive by manipulating their surroundings to produce favourable living conditions etc.).
I have explained everything. You've either just superficially scanned what I wrote, or you don't understand like you claim to.
Two people cannot occupy the same physical space at the same time. It is an impossibility. Two people cannot consume the same food or the same cup of water at the same time. Sure, we could split an apple in two but we wouldn't be consuming the same thing. We would each eat something completely different. Both things would simply share a common origin.
Thus there can be no such thing as "common property". It's a contradiction in terms. Ownership means the ability to dispose of an object as you see fit. How can a million people each have the ability to dispose of a common object as they see fit ?
When government owns property it doesn't change this law of nature. Government property doesn't belong to you or me it belongs to the government. Government even admits it when they say "property of the government" as opposed to "property of the people".
So with so-called "common property" everyone needs permission to use it at any given time. This necessitates the creation of an arbitrary individual or organization that receives requests for use of the "communal resource" and makes it's decisions accordingly. While we tend to look at parks and roads and such that are usually available to anyone and say "well that's not so bad", we see the presence of the arbitrary decision maker in the instances of park curfews and traffic laws etc. We also witness atrocities like industries being able to dump their waste in public property. The massive collection of garbage in the oceans being one huge example. That could not occur in a system where all property is privately owned.
This usually conjures up a nightmare scenario for people who haven't thought through the implications. "You mean we'd have to PAY for WATER!?!?!" ... well, we pay for it now. And it comes with fluoride whether we want it or not. It's also important to note that water is so abundant that we really only pay for treatment and distribution. Not the resource itself. Water is an example of a resource that no one would sell as a commodity. They'd just charge for distribution or access. And there would be so many competitors, since it is so abundant that it'd be dirt cheap. That's another example of such a resource. Dirt. It's so abundant that we say "dirt cheap" to mean something that costs very little.
When you say air we have to speak of 'physical space' which also implies land and any resources being produced on that land (either by nature or through the owner's efforts). Air itself has such unique properties, it is absolutely everywhere. That unless we harness it with some medium it is really difficult to point at it and say "I own this air". But we can say something to the effect that "I own the air in my lungs at this particular moment". Or "I own the air that's in this balloon since I own the balloon" etc.
Point being that SOMEONE has to control a resource once it's been appropriated. Either the government or a private individual or organization. Libertarians argue two things. 1) Private ownership is the only way that human rights can exist. 2) Private individuals and organization
If you look at the history of the USA since 1913 it makes a perfect example of what I was talking about.
1913 (Woodrow Wilson D) - Introduction of the federal income tax
- Creation of the 3rd central bank: The Federal Reserve
1917 (Woodrow Wilson D) - Entry into World War I. President claims USA must "make the world safe for democracy" (whatever the hell that means).
1929 (Herbert Hoover R) - Stock market crashes. President undertakes the largest campaign of government expansion during peace time in country's history.
1932 (Franklin Roosevelt D) - Elected by criticizing previous government's "laissez-faire policies" (ha!). Ends up continuing Hoover's policies on an even greater scale scale.
1932 - 1944 - Massive decade-long depression caused by gross government interventions into the markets (attempts to freeze wages, subsidize agriculture, support cartellization of private industries, introduction of so-called "pro-labour" laws forcing employees to join unions and turning a blind eye to union violence etc.)
1944 - 1945 - Creation of the Military Industrial Complex during WWII. Later on in President Eisenhower's farewell address he would warn the American Public to be very cautious of these company's influence over government policies. JFK would also speak out about the MIC and was assassinated.
1971 - Richard Nixon takes the US dollar off of the gold standard.
1973 - 1974 - Massive recession coupled with the first appearance of "stagflation" in US history (lots of unemployment without any drop in prices).
1980's - President Reagan talks a big game about "deregulation" but actually increases the size of government (particularly military spending). The American Public gets extremely confused and starts thinking that "laissez-faire" capitalism means cutting a few very minor regulations. Later on when the US economy tanks ignorant Americans will assume that it was Reagan's fault and forever condemn capitalism.
Early 90's - Republican President George Bush Sr. sends military troops into Iraq. He also signs the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ... an extremely anti-laissez-faire bill. Could it be that Republicans in general don't actually tend towards laissez-faire after all ? hmmm ....
1992 - 2000 - Democratic President Bill Clinton bombs Kosovo and Baghdad. Increases military spending. Could it be that Democrats in general don't tend toward peace after all ? hmmm ...
2000 - 2008 - George W. Bush Jr. is elected by promising a "humble foreign policy" contrary to Bill Clinton's. He also promises to slash government spending and take a fiscally conservative policy. In the next 8 years he, along with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfield will destroy any remaining credibility that the Republican party had. Through the most extensive government expansion since Herbert Hoover they will wipe their asses with the constitution, piss all over individual liberty, increase government spending on an unheard-of scale and will throw the US political climate into disarray.
2008 - History repeats itself. A Democratic politician wins the US election by criticizing the policies of his Republican predecessor. He promises change but in the first month continues the predecessor's expansionist policies on a massive scale. Just like Hoover / Roosevelt.
Before 1913 the US had a "colorful" history with regards to government interference. There was the "First American Bank" and "Second American Bank" with lots of debates regarding whether or not central banking was desirable. There were the subsidies given to the railroad companies creating government monopolies. But for the most part the US was extremely "free" and adopted a foreign policy of peace and open trade with no entangling political alliances (this would change after the World Wars in
Environmental issues are a perfect example of government failing to do it's job.
We need to ask "what is the role of government?" Classic liberals felt that the only role of government is to protect the rights of individuals. All rights are property rights (I can elaborate on that if you'd like me to but I'll skip it for brevity).
During the industrial revolution many companies were sued by others who felt that air pollution was a violation of their property rights (not only their land and air but their lungs - ie: bodies - as well). Judges ruled basically that "well, we know these are clear violations but we're going to look the other way because we don't want to hinder economic development" (!!!)
Now, you can blame the industrialists all you want. But if government were doing it's one, single job then we wouldn't have air pollution. The only way a company can survive is to produce goods and services that benefit the lives of others. When people feel that their rights are being violated and the means they've chosen to enforce those rights is not functioning then you get a case of capitalism deteriorating and externalizing costs ... by using the very institution designed for the opposite purpose.
"Depending on the mandate of this new organization, what is wrong with organizing and have a focused approach on a large global issue ?"
You just answered your own question by prefacing that with "depending on the organization's mandate".
When an individual or organization needs to employ it's own resources to undertake any kind of productive endeavor (whether it's research or producing a product) it's success is measured by the contributions that it makes to individuals. When an organization uses other people's resources there is no way to measure it's success and eventually it's purpose becomes finding ways to justify it's own existence.
The question that needs to be asked is "What is the role of government?" If we look to government to solve all of our problems then sooner or later we become a socialist state. A socialist state cannot lead to better conditions for individuals than a capitalist because in a socialist state there is no way to employ economic calculation. The productive efforts of individuals are confiscated in order to fund projects that do not benefit very many people. All socialist states eventually deteriorate into mass starvation and conflict.
I'm all for private research and education into global environmental issues. I'm also all for government doing it's job and enforcing property rights. If it did that there would be no air pollution or noise pollution. During the industrial revolution many companies were sued by individuals for violating their property rights and judges basically ruled to the effect of "well, we know that people's rights are being violated but we're going to look the other way in order to promote 'economic growth'" !!!! If that's not a clear indication of what happens when people buy into a "greater good" (ie: collectivist) mentality than I don't know what is.
*sigh*
In the open market it's the consumers that decide what they need. Not the companies. In the case of Haliburton their consumers are, ironically, governments who buy weapons to kill people. Enron was an electricity company. Most electricity companies get monopoly privileges from governments. I don't remember the specific details regarding Enron's operations though so I'll leave it at that (I just recall that they were a utility company in California that was caught in a corruption scandal).
Everybody is interested in their bottom line. Their bottom line being their very survival. When you produce a product or service to be consumed by others you cannot succeed by going around and telling others that they must consume your product. Yes, I know the altruists and collectivists who insist that humans are all evil and thus demand constant sacrifice will have you believe that any attempt to improve your personal conditions must always be at the expense of others. What's extremely funny and sad about such assertions is that the only organization capable of improving it's situation at the expense of others is one that has the sanction of the majority to employ coercion. That would be the government. If any other group attempted to do so the majority, whom would not recognize the organization's authority, would quickly over power them.
On a fundamental level we are all selfish. That's not a bad thing. If we weren't we could never survive. Individuals must concern themselves with their own survival first and that is inherently selfish by nature. The question is, does selfishness imply a disregard for others ? As rational beings obviously it cannot. The benefits to voluntary social cooperation are obvious to anyone. Mutually beneficial exchange and the voluntary division of labour produces far better conditions for all individuals. That is both rational and moral.
So I will take an inventor or an entrepreneur who is trying to make a buck by producing a good or service that improves the lives of his peers over an organization that tries to get people to buy into some "higher purpose" which demands sacrifice (which ultimately boils down to sacrifice of reason) any day. And in the mean time I will push for smaller government to get rid of the fascist government/corporate "partnerships", which are the only corporations that apply to your charge.
I love how you continue to harp on individualism without refuting a single charge I laid against collectivism. Oh, except for:
Common sense would lead one to believe that if everyone were constantly resorting to emotion and working on pure whim then, and only then, would the world fall apart.
There's argument from intimidation again.
Listen to how you word yourself ... "except those that are required to make business work". That's an emotional charge playing to the class division perpetuated by a collectivist belief structure. Libertarians do not want a government that will enforce "business rights". Those libertarians who feel that a government is necessary believe that it's role must be limited to protecting property rights. And as I explained, all human rights are property rights. You can not have "human rights" without property rights.
Take freedom of the press for example. You cannot have freedom of the press when the government owns every printing press and paper mill etc. You cannot have freedom of assembly when you need to get government's permission to assemble anywhere.
But then ... you can't reason with someone who insists on abandoning reason. So I don't know why I'm bothering.