I'm not sure which part of the article you are saying implies that Gardasil is safe merely by virtue of the fact that it is a vaccine, but...
I think it carries a lot of weight when a drug is not only approved by the FDA, but recommended for everyone. It's not like the FDA is infallible, but surely this should be more convincing than some lunatics that are clearly not using the tools of science correctly.
It could have been the case that the data did not support the safety and efficacy of Gardasil, but if that were true we would not be having this discussion because no one would know what Gardasil was.
So I don't think a vaccine that I made in my garage without any approval process would be so readily accepted merely because I call it a vaccine.
I don't know if you are aware, but sex is essential to the survival of the entire species. It's not like HPV is a disease you get from killing puppies. I find the shame religious people associate with sex to be rather unhealthy.
Vaccines are not 100% effective. There are some people who do not develop the proper immunity even after taking a vaccine. There are also people who are allergic to vaccines. These people benefit from the herd immunity. There are also children not in a position to make the decision for themselves.
So yeah in a black and white world where the only people effected by negative consequences were adults who made bad choices, then the system you talk about would be more viable.
And as far as I know nobody is forcing anyone (even kids) to be vaccinated. The only measures I've heard being proposed is removing the personal belief exemption for allowing unvaccinated kids from attending public schools (while keeping the medical exemption), and forcing healthcare workers who don't want to get flu shots to wear masks. I have never heard of a mentally competent adult literally being forced to get a medical procedure they didn't want.
And while it's true that modern medicine is not perfect, comparing the knowledge of modern medicine to the knowledge of the people in the anti-vax community is like comparing modern chemists to alchemists of the middle ages.
I think a healthy skepticism of "expert opinions" is a good thing, but this skepticism in the anti-vax community is gone well into unhealthy territory.
When I say I don;t see social well being as separate from individual well being, all I mean is that you could come up with a math formula for well being it be a formula with 7+ billion variables for the individual well beings of the individuals on earth. I'm not saying this formula would be a simple average, but I think all other variables like crime, poverty, etc can be dissolved into 7+ billion individual well beings.
Basically I think you could do this...
W = social well being
A, B, C, D.... = well being of individual people
a, b, c, d,.... = other factors like climate change, and crime.
I think any formula that looks like this... W = 2*a + 3*(d+c) + 7/e + 37 * f
Can be converted into something like this:
A = a + B + f...., B = 6 * f * e...., W = A + B + C + D.....
And a republic is a.... representative democracy. And all the problems that come with tyrannies of the majority are still present in a representative democracy.
Maybe your definition of "Libertarian" needs adjusting. I can go find the dumbest and loudest conservative or liberal, and then proclaim that the problem with liberals and conservatives is that they are just really stupid. What does that prove?
There is an intrinsic link between personal property and freedom so when too few hands control disproportionate amounts of property liberty ends. Whether that property was in the hands of landowners with vast holdings, kings, a priest class, or communist ruler it ends up with the vast majority of being minions to someone else will. It is precisely by trying to balance the power of the private and public sector that liberty begins to forms. Everyone gets a little cut of the action.
You do realize that the rise of democracy during the enlightenment was a result of "classical liberalism" which is today modern libertarianism? And the people in opposition to the classical liberals wanted to keep the monarchies. It was later with neo-liberalism that the idea that there needed to be equality of outcome and not just equality of opportunity.
I think the fallacy is that we actually have equality of opportunity (i.e. we live in a meritocracy). But it is definitely not a requirement of being a libertarian to be deluded in to believing that we live in a meritocracy (though some do).
It is possible to believe that social well-being is the sum of the well-being of all individuals in that society (pretty much my view), and to think that everyone selfishly maximizing their own well-being is going to lead to disaster.
Sure. That becomes an issue of fairness, and one of the roles of government is to ensure a "fair" society through laws and courts etc. Form a certain point of view that's ultimately the only thing an effective government is doing.
The tragedy of the commons is one way this works.
A situation that can be characterized by tragedy of the commons is a situation where government is more suitable solution than a free market.
There is something that you can call social well-being, involving things like low crime rates, freedom from persecution, that sort of thing.
Sure, but I don't see this as separate from individual well being. For example you can't have high social well being if individual well being is low. For every society that is experiencing bad things like violence and injustice, it is individuals actually experiencing those things. To put it another way, you can't increase social well being without increasing the well being of individuals. It is arguable that you might not increase social well being even if you increase the well being of individuals (e.g. if you do it unfairly), but I would argue this increase is at the expense of decreasing well being for others. So I would still count this as a net decrease of well being to individuals even if some small group is better off.
You're taking a more narrow view of the ACA than I do.
I don;t think I am
The idea, as I see it, is that we're all one big risk pool, those of us who will sail through life with minimal health-care costs and those who will cost lots and lots of money.
I agree.
If insurance companies can throw sick people out of the risk pool, or offer incomplete coverage, they get to lower their rates and make more money while people with assorted medical conditions are left to die in the street.
Right. I don't see any disagreements yet.
The ACA is far from perfect, but I consider it a great improvement over what we had.
Yep. That's what I keep saying.
Maybe I wasn't clear, but when I say that the ACA doesn't work like normal insurance, I mean that in a positive way. I think it is inhumane to treat healthcare under a standard insurance model. For cars, this model incentivizes people to make better decisions. For healthcare, this model would incentivize good decisions if the bad decisions one would normally learn from, weren't fatal.
My opposition to the ACA, is that it tries to retain aspects of the private insurance model that I don't think are worth preserving. They got rid of all the risk analysis part of traditional insurance market (regulations dictate what decisions insurance companies must make), but they are keeping the middleman aspect, which I think is pretty pointless.
There is definitely no hardware that can process the perl language without software. That would require very specialized hardware that would be a very stupid and expensive and useless to make.
I believe there is hardware that runs the java byte code (but not the java language). But for me that's close enough to be considered running java on hardware. But this is all possible because the java compiler (the thing that turns java source to java byte code) exists. I don't think a perl compiler exists.
Literally everything that can be done in software can also be done in hardware, it's just harder to change hardware when you find a bug or want to add a new feature. So it's customary to do as much in software as possible because it can be changed. Firmware gets into a gray area. It's technically software, but it is often easier to lump it in with hardware.
You can also do everything that can be done in hardware in software (e.g. a VM). The only catch is that software ultimately has to be running on hardware (e.g. you can have a VM in a VM in a VM in a VM..... on a real machine).
You bring up an interesting point about the VM. Maybe you could make an actual computer whose instructions are in perl (i.e. hardware that processes the perl language instead of a traditional machine language). It would probably be really complicated needing a hardware high level language parser etc.
I don't think you can under normal circumstances (i.e. using a perl interpreter). Because in order to run a perl OS you'd need a perl interpreter written in perl which would itself need a perl interpreter written in perl, etc.
I think the only way would be to write a perl compiler.
Let's consider smoking bans, then, since they illustrate a lot of the issues that come up in real situations. One of their main goals is to protect restaurant employees from second hand smoke. Sure, the owner can say, "I want to allow smoking on my property." But can they also say, "If you want to work here, you have to subject yourself to dangerous chemicals. If you don't like that, go work somewhere else?" And where do you draw the line? Can they refuse to put in sprinklers, thus putting their employees and customers at risk, because they don't want to spend the money on it? Is there a point where the government can say, "You must provide a safe environment for your employees?" If so, what is that point? Is it different for a restaurant than other types of businesses?
A line obviously needs to be drawn. Should the government be able to prohibit smoker from smoking in their own house if they are going to have guests like friends and family come over? Why is it important to protect employees and customers, but friends and family are free to decide to accept risks to their own health? Why is smoking itself legal (i.e. a person risking their own health)? Why is eating unhealthy food legal?
I agree it's a spectrum. It's not easy to find a good place to draw the line.
Then there's the question of protecting the customers. In a city you can reasonably say, "If you don't like smoke filled restaurants, go eat somewhere else." But suppose it's a small town and this is the only restaurant around. Ok, I suppose you could say, "Eating in a restaurant is a luxury." But what if the only grocery in town also wants to allow smoking? Buying food isn't a luxury.
I don't really buy into this small town argument. If it was so important that this restaurant be accessible because it;s the only restaurant in town, you could also rationalize prohibiting the owner from deciding to close the restaurant.
I suppose a libertarian would say, "The market will solve everything. If there are enough people who don't want to get cancer from eating out, someone will start a non-smoking restaurant." But that's getting into the realm of fantasy. There are all sorts of reasons that might not happen: too small a town to support another restaurant, no one in town who wants to start one, etc.
I would never say "The market will solve everything". The market is very good at solving certain things. I believe it is good at solving *this* thing.
And as I said. If it is wrong for the only restaurant in town to decide to allow smoking because it denies certain patrons access. Then it is also wrong to close the only restaurant in town because it denies all customers access. I also find this example to be very narrow as it only seems to apply to towns with exactly one restaurant and not towns with 0 or 2+ restaurants.
The economist in me would say that a town that can support exactly one restaurant is not a good example of an efficient free market, and one shouldn't expect free market principles to to be efficient in solving the problem. That said, I still think the free market is the best solution even if it is not a good solution. In that case, I don't think there is a good solution.
Take a more extreme example: can you sell yourself into slavery? You could say, "It's your choice and the government shouldn't prevent you from doing it." But in practice, people would almost never do it unless they weren't given any other realistic options. In theory it would be your choice, but in practice slave dealers would get very good at manipulating people into situations where they didn't have any real choice. (I know, this is actually a controversial question in libertarian circles. Many people say it's over the line. But you said you support prostitution, which in practice is often just slavery under a different name. It's something people do because they don't have any choice about doing it.)
Yeah it's always easier to use tools you are familiar with. And it's easier to make decisions when there is only one choice.
When I choose to buy a Chevy Volt it's easy because I know exactly what to buy. But if I choose to buy a Toyota it's hard because I then need to choose which model to buy.
What's wrong with the above statement? Chevy makes lots of cars too, I know. What if they only made the volt? Does that statement make any more sense?
Functions are not fast or slow because of the java language. There are many different Java runtime environments, some more efficient than others, and they are constantly improving. A function that is slow on the windows JRE might be fast on the Google JRE. A function that was slow on a JRE in 1996 might be fast on a newer version of the JRE in 2016.
There is a similar analogy with compiled languages. C++ code might be fast or it may be slow depending on how well a particular compiler can perform optimizations.
A language (i.e. a description of grammatical correctness) is separate from the resulting executable logic.
Languages are good or bad based on how easy it is create good quality source code (semantically clear, maintainable, concise, etc). It's the job of the compiler and/or runtime environment to try to get that source code in a form that actually executes efficiently on a particular machine.
Much of the conflict comes from the fact that "freedom" and "liberty" mean different things to different people. From some people, it's being able to carry a gun. For some, it's not having to worry that a loony will buy a gun and shoot them. Unfortunately, these sometimes conflict!
Absolutely. In fact they always conflict.
We could say, "Libertarians want to maximize liberty," but it's an empty statement.
It is. It certainly needs to be explained a little better than that to have any meaning.
Almost everyone thinks liberty is a good thing, but there are many kinds of liberty, and different people prioritize them differently.
true
At least in the U.S., "libertarianism" is strongly associated with a specific set of priorities: gun ownership, recreational drug use, low (or no) taxes, and an explicit rejection of any role for the government in promoting liberty, just be aware that your definition is different from the most widely used definition, and that you're using the word to mean something different from what most other people mean by it.
Yeah it sort of has come to mean those things. And that's unfortunate because that's not what it used to mean. I am trying to resist these hostile takeover of this label because I don't like the idea that any label can be made toxic by a group of idiots self describing themselves with it.
Look at what the republicans did to the world liberal. Republicans proclaimed that liberals were bad, and democrats then decided that they were actually progressives. I would argue that the democrats should not have agreed to the premise that liberals were bad, except that maybe "liberal" was not actually a great term for democrats considering they support a lot of statist policies.
There are a lot of very politicized issues where being on a particular side comes with a lot of baggage.
The clearest examples I can think of that highlight libertarian vs. non-libertarian viewpoints are the following:
1. Supporting the right to your own body including what you put in it (i.e. anti-prohibition).
2. Supporting the right of consenting adults to do whatever they want together. (e.g. employment, premarital sex, prostitution, etc). The freedom of association.
A good specific example is anti-smoking laws. I would like to point out that it seems that anti-smoking laws were incredibly effective at lowering rates of smoking and probably saved lot's of lives. That said, as a libertarian, I support people's right to smoke, and people's right to allow smoking on their property. I think philosophically if a restaurant owner wants to have a restaurant where smoking is allowed, then he/she should have the right to do that. I don't think anti-smoking patrons should have the right to demand a restaurant ban smoking. I think they should have the freedom to go to any non-smoking restaurant they choose.
I think it's great that peoples' lives were saved, but I don't agree with the method used to do it.
I don't think you are in a position claim to know what I believe yet. One comment mocking another comment does not give you enough information to know what my beliefs are.
I agree that freedom is hard to define because different freedoms are mutually exclusive. It basically boils down to the fatc that we *should* have some freedoms and *shouldn't* have others. (e.g. we should have the freedom to live, and we shouldn't have the freedom to murder others).
For some sets of complimentary freedoms it is not so clear cut which side is better (or more free).
I would argue that the freedom "to put marijuana in your body" should trump the freedom "to prevent others from putting marijuana in their body". Marijuana use in itself is not directly harming or endangering anybody.
What about the freedom "to own a gun" vs the freedom "to prevent others from owning guns". It's an analogous situation, but I think a better argument can be made that gun ownership endangers people.
The point of my comment was that democracy is often antithetical to freedom. It is because of democracy that we have gun control laws and drug prohibition laws. And it's interesting that what these free state project people are doing is actually using democracy to limit the power democracy to increase individual freedom.
1. The private sector does everything better than the government does or might do
I think anyone that truly believes this should just be an anarchist, but even in that case I think it's problematic because any kind of group decision making process in an anarchist world becomes a sort of pseudo government.
The split between public and private sectors is not always so clear. The private sector is full of little micro governments (e.g. board of directors at a company, voting shareholders, etc). One could argue that these governments are voluntary, but even national governments are voluntary in the sense that you are free to move (at least many people are).
2. Everyone can always have everything if they only try hard enough
This idea that we are all blank slates is a popular philosophical meme, that is certainly more embraced by "libertarians" than "social progressives", but I think any thoughtful examination will show that this idea is just false and should be abandoned. I think the related train of thought of "1. We as a society are better off if individuals are successful. 2. Individuals trying hard results in more success. 3. Incentives are a good way to foster trying hard." is less controversial.
3. Social well-being can only be maximized by increasing individual well-being
Honestly I am not sure exactly what this means. I am not sure what social well-being is if it not simply an aggregate of individuals' well-being. Maybe I'm just blinded by my libertarian mindset.
Being an atheist I guess I don't really see any causes more worthy than increasing the well being of individuals. As grand a cause as something might be, it doesn't really seem worthwhile to me unless I can see how it would ultimately lead to individuals being better off.
A potent example of #1 is the lunatic response to Obamacare.
There are some issues where I turn into a social progressive, and preventing people (and children) from dying in the streets is one such issue for me. Part of what makes the free market efficient is people learning from their mistakes and making better decisions. If you make the poor decision not to get health insurance, and you end up needing some kind of expensive cancer treatment to save you life, you can't learn from this mistake when you are dead.
So I actually support universal single payer healthcare. I think this is actually more important than government run schools.
And given all the restrictions we put on health insurance companies under the ACA in terms of who they must cover, what they must cover, and how much they can charge, I don't think that we are really getting the benefits of a true free market anyway. I think we are just getting a government healthcare system with more middlemen.
The mandate components of the law (health insurers have to take anyone who wants insurance ---> everyone has to buy insurance) that elicit all this yelling about "state force" and "FBI marshalls frog-marching me" are just system architectures to deal with real and fundamental problems.
It's clearly just a tax carefully worded to not seem like a tax. State force to compel someone to buy insurance is functionally no different than state force to compel someone to pay taxes.
And really I am not even sure what we have now with the ACA is health insurance. What kind of insurance allows pre-existing conditions to be covered? What kind of insurance has coverage that can't be denied? If I get in a car accident, I can't just show up to Mercury and demand they offer me coverage for my car that was totaled the day before.
I think the ACA creates a healthcare system that is basically universal healthcare, but one that has the facade of a private system. In reality you have the choice of deciding which private company you want to handle your billing. I see this as being about as useful as the freedom to choose which private company can process my DMV forms or something.
Neither libertarians nor social democrats are anarchists, so both should believe in a role for government. The disagreement is on what that role should be.
They're not anarchists, they want the rule of law and enforcement of contracts but that is pretty much it. All public services involve a loss of control, "they" take the money to fund it, "they" decide what, when and how to deliver and some have much bigger needs/wants than others. Even if the government can do better as a whole, there will always be those paying a lot for very little. And the libertarian mantra is that everyone should agree to things voluntarily through private agreements, not be forced into a public system whether they want to or not.
If this were strictly true, as a libertarian I could say that I never consented to being ruled by the government, and therefore I should not be bound to it's laws, and we are back to anarchy.
Clearly if you are not an anarchist, you believe that *some* things should be able to forced on people (i.e. like government itself).
I think your characterization of what a libertarian actually only applies to a narrow (albeit vocal) subset.
I would characterize libertarianism as the desire to have things managed by the private sector unless there is a very compelling reason to have it managed by the government. Many libertarians don't find the reasons for government managed roads and fire departments to be very compelling, but many (hopefully most) do.
This is opposed to the desire to do the opposite, which is to have things managed by the government unless there is a compelling reason not to.
No democracy is a process of achieving governmental change through voting (e.g. as opposed to violence).
Furthermore, libertarians are not necessarily conservative. Many conservative people call themselves libertarians, but many people who would not be considered conservative at all also consider themselves libertarians. The labels of "conservative" and "liberal" are only applicable in the traditional democrat vs. republican dichotomy.
I'm not sure why you think libertarians "refuse to acknowledge that they might not get what they want". They whole reason for the Free State project is that traditionally libertarians *never* get what they want. They have zero representatives in congress despite having approximately 5% of the voting population. Our current election system only grants representation to groups of people in close geographic proximity (e.g. red states and blue states). The Free State project is trying to make at least one district of one state yellow (not sure what color libertarians are), to get more than zero representatives.
In other countries with parliamentary systems, like minded people can still elect representatives even if they are spread out in different voting districts.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure which part of the article you are saying implies that Gardasil is safe merely by virtue of the fact that it is a vaccine, but...
I think it carries a lot of weight when a drug is not only approved by the FDA, but recommended for everyone. It's not like the FDA is infallible, but surely this should be more convincing than some lunatics that are clearly not using the tools of science correctly.
It could have been the case that the data did not support the safety and efficacy of Gardasil, but if that were true we would not be having this discussion because no one would know what Gardasil was.
So I don't think a vaccine that I made in my garage without any approval process would be so readily accepted merely because I call it a vaccine.
I don't know if you are aware, but sex is essential to the survival of the entire species. It's not like HPV is a disease you get from killing puppies. I find the shame religious people associate with sex to be rather unhealthy.
Vaccines are not 100% effective. There are some people who do not develop the proper immunity even after taking a vaccine. There are also people who are allergic to vaccines. These people benefit from the herd immunity. There are also children not in a position to make the decision for themselves.
So yeah in a black and white world where the only people effected by negative consequences were adults who made bad choices, then the system you talk about would be more viable.
And as far as I know nobody is forcing anyone (even kids) to be vaccinated. The only measures I've heard being proposed is removing the personal belief exemption for allowing unvaccinated kids from attending public schools (while keeping the medical exemption), and forcing healthcare workers who don't want to get flu shots to wear masks. I have never heard of a mentally competent adult literally being forced to get a medical procedure they didn't want.
And while it's true that modern medicine is not perfect, comparing the knowledge of modern medicine to the knowledge of the people in the anti-vax community is like comparing modern chemists to alchemists of the middle ages.
I think a healthy skepticism of "expert opinions" is a good thing, but this skepticism in the anti-vax community is gone well into unhealthy territory.
When I say I don;t see social well being as separate from individual well being, all I mean is that you could come up with a math formula for well being it be a formula with 7+ billion variables for the individual well beings of the individuals on earth. I'm not saying this formula would be a simple average, but I think all other variables like crime, poverty, etc can be dissolved into 7+ billion individual well beings.
Basically I think you could do this...
W = social well being
A, B, C, D .... = well being of individual people
a, b, c, d, .... = other factors like climate change, and crime.
I think any formula that looks like this... W = 2*a + 3*(d+c) + 7/e + 37 * f
Can be converted into something like this:
A = a + B + f...., B = 6 * f * e ...., W = A + B + C + D .....
Too late. What should be the punishment for failing to recognize sarcasm? Death penalty?
As a language C++ is lacking. What it has going for it is a large existing codebase and very mature compilers and other tools.
And a republic is a .... representative democracy. And all the problems that come with tyrannies of the majority are still present in a representative democracy.
Maybe your definition of "Libertarian" needs adjusting. I can go find the dumbest and loudest conservative or liberal, and then proclaim that the problem with liberals and conservatives is that they are just really stupid. What does that prove?
There is an intrinsic link between personal property and freedom so when too few hands control disproportionate amounts of property liberty ends. Whether that property was in the hands of landowners with vast holdings, kings, a priest class, or communist ruler it ends up with the vast majority of being minions to someone else will. It is precisely by trying to balance the power of the private and public sector that liberty begins to forms. Everyone gets a little cut of the action.
You do realize that the rise of democracy during the enlightenment was a result of "classical liberalism" which is today modern libertarianism? And the people in opposition to the classical liberals wanted to keep the monarchies. It was later with neo-liberalism that the idea that there needed to be equality of outcome and not just equality of opportunity.
I think the fallacy is that we actually have equality of opportunity (i.e. we live in a meritocracy). But it is definitely not a requirement of being a libertarian to be deluded in to believing that we live in a meritocracy (though some do).
I'm perfectly calm dude. Calmer than you are...
It is possible to believe that social well-being is the sum of the well-being of all individuals in that society (pretty much my view), and to think that everyone selfishly maximizing their own well-being is going to lead to disaster.
Sure. That becomes an issue of fairness, and one of the roles of government is to ensure a "fair" society through laws and courts etc. Form a certain point of view that's ultimately the only thing an effective government is doing.
The tragedy of the commons is one way this works.
A situation that can be characterized by tragedy of the commons is a situation where government is more suitable solution than a free market.
There is something that you can call social well-being, involving things like low crime rates, freedom from persecution, that sort of thing.
Sure, but I don't see this as separate from individual well being. For example you can't have high social well being if individual well being is low. For every society that is experiencing bad things like violence and injustice, it is individuals actually experiencing those things. To put it another way, you can't increase social well being without increasing the well being of individuals. It is arguable that you might not increase social well being even if you increase the well being of individuals (e.g. if you do it unfairly), but I would argue this increase is at the expense of decreasing well being for others. So I would still count this as a net decrease of well being to individuals even if some small group is better off.
You're taking a more narrow view of the ACA than I do.
I don;t think I am
The idea, as I see it, is that we're all one big risk pool, those of us who will sail through life with minimal health-care costs and those who will cost lots and lots of money.
I agree.
If insurance companies can throw sick people out of the risk pool, or offer incomplete coverage, they get to lower their rates and make more money while people with assorted medical conditions are left to die in the street.
Right. I don't see any disagreements yet.
The ACA is far from perfect, but I consider it a great improvement over what we had.
Yep. That's what I keep saying.
Maybe I wasn't clear, but when I say that the ACA doesn't work like normal insurance, I mean that in a positive way. I think it is inhumane to treat healthcare under a standard insurance model. For cars, this model incentivizes people to make better decisions. For healthcare, this model would incentivize good decisions if the bad decisions one would normally learn from, weren't fatal.
My opposition to the ACA, is that it tries to retain aspects of the private insurance model that I don't think are worth preserving. They got rid of all the risk analysis part of traditional insurance market (regulations dictate what decisions insurance companies must make), but they are keeping the middleman aspect, which I think is pretty pointless.
It's not just carriers. It's any vendor of any product or service offering unlimited anything.
There is definitely no hardware that can process the perl language without software. That would require very specialized hardware that would be a very stupid and expensive and useless to make.
I believe there is hardware that runs the java byte code (but not the java language). But for me that's close enough to be considered running java on hardware. But this is all possible because the java compiler (the thing that turns java source to java byte code) exists. I don't think a perl compiler exists.
Literally everything that can be done in software can also be done in hardware, it's just harder to change hardware when you find a bug or want to add a new feature. So it's customary to do as much in software as possible because it can be changed. Firmware gets into a gray area. It's technically software, but it is often easier to lump it in with hardware.
You can also do everything that can be done in hardware in software (e.g. a VM). The only catch is that software ultimately has to be running on hardware (e.g. you can have a VM in a VM in a VM in a VM ..... on a real machine).
You bring up an interesting point about the VM. Maybe you could make an actual computer whose instructions are in perl (i.e. hardware that processes the perl language instead of a traditional machine language). It would probably be really complicated needing a hardware high level language parser etc.
I don't think you can under normal circumstances (i.e. using a perl interpreter). Because in order to run a perl OS you'd need a perl interpreter written in perl which would itself need a perl interpreter written in perl, etc.
I think the only way would be to write a perl compiler.
Let's consider smoking bans, then, since they illustrate a lot of the issues that come up in real situations. One of their main goals is to protect restaurant employees from second hand smoke. Sure, the owner can say, "I want to allow smoking on my property." But can they also say, "If you want to work here, you have to subject yourself to dangerous chemicals. If you don't like that, go work somewhere else?" And where do you draw the line? Can they refuse to put in sprinklers, thus putting their employees and customers at risk, because they don't want to spend the money on it? Is there a point where the government can say, "You must provide a safe environment for your employees?" If so, what is that point? Is it different for a restaurant than other types of businesses?
A line obviously needs to be drawn. Should the government be able to prohibit smoker from smoking in their own house if they are going to have guests like friends and family come over? Why is it important to protect employees and customers, but friends and family are free to decide to accept risks to their own health? Why is smoking itself legal (i.e. a person risking their own health)? Why is eating unhealthy food legal?
I agree it's a spectrum. It's not easy to find a good place to draw the line.
Then there's the question of protecting the customers. In a city you can reasonably say, "If you don't like smoke filled restaurants, go eat somewhere else." But suppose it's a small town and this is the only restaurant around. Ok, I suppose you could say, "Eating in a restaurant is a luxury." But what if the only grocery in town also wants to allow smoking? Buying food isn't a luxury.
I don't really buy into this small town argument. If it was so important that this restaurant be accessible because it;s the only restaurant in town, you could also rationalize prohibiting the owner from deciding to close the restaurant.
I suppose a libertarian would say, "The market will solve everything. If there are enough people who don't want to get cancer from eating out, someone will start a non-smoking restaurant." But that's getting into the realm of fantasy. There are all sorts of reasons that might not happen: too small a town to support another restaurant, no one in town who wants to start one, etc.
I would never say "The market will solve everything". The market is very good at solving certain things. I believe it is good at solving *this* thing.
And as I said. If it is wrong for the only restaurant in town to decide to allow smoking because it denies certain patrons access. Then it is also wrong to close the only restaurant in town because it denies all customers access. I also find this example to be very narrow as it only seems to apply to towns with exactly one restaurant and not towns with 0 or 2+ restaurants.
The economist in me would say that a town that can support exactly one restaurant is not a good example of an efficient free market, and one shouldn't expect free market principles to to be efficient in solving the problem. That said, I still think the free market is the best solution even if it is not a good solution. In that case, I don't think there is a good solution.
Take a more extreme example: can you sell yourself into slavery? You could say, "It's your choice and the government shouldn't prevent you from doing it." But in practice, people would almost never do it unless they weren't given any other realistic options. In theory it would be your choice, but in practice slave dealers would get very good at manipulating people into situations where they didn't have any real choice. (I know, this is actually a controversial question in libertarian circles. Many people say it's over the line. But you said you support prostitution, which in practice is often just slavery under a different name. It's something people do because they don't have any choice about doing it.)
Yeah it's always easier to use tools you are familiar with. And it's easier to make decisions when there is only one choice.
When I choose to buy a Chevy Volt it's easy because I know exactly what to buy. But if I choose to buy a Toyota it's hard because I then need to choose which model to buy.
What's wrong with the above statement? Chevy makes lots of cars too, I know. What if they only made the volt? Does that statement make any more sense?
And all the other OS's written in other languages.... don't exist... But it's reasonable to assume that they would be free of bugs if they did?
Functions are not fast or slow because of the java language. There are many different Java runtime environments, some more efficient than others, and they are constantly improving. A function that is slow on the windows JRE might be fast on the Google JRE. A function that was slow on a JRE in 1996 might be fast on a newer version of the JRE in 2016.
There is a similar analogy with compiled languages. C++ code might be fast or it may be slow depending on how well a particular compiler can perform optimizations.
A language (i.e. a description of grammatical correctness) is separate from the resulting executable logic.
Languages are good or bad based on how easy it is create good quality source code (semantically clear, maintainable, concise, etc). It's the job of the compiler and/or runtime environment to try to get that source code in a form that actually executes efficiently on a particular machine.
Much of the conflict comes from the fact that "freedom" and "liberty" mean different things to different people. From some people, it's being able to carry a gun. For some, it's not having to worry that a loony will buy a gun and shoot them. Unfortunately, these sometimes conflict!
Absolutely. In fact they always conflict.
We could say, "Libertarians want to maximize liberty," but it's an empty statement.
It is. It certainly needs to be explained a little better than that to have any meaning.
Almost everyone thinks liberty is a good thing, but there are many kinds of liberty, and different people prioritize them differently.
true
At least in the U.S., "libertarianism" is strongly associated with a specific set of priorities: gun ownership, recreational drug use, low (or no) taxes, and an explicit rejection of any role for the government in promoting liberty, just be aware that your definition is different from the most widely used definition, and that you're using the word to mean something different from what most other people mean by it.
Yeah it sort of has come to mean those things. And that's unfortunate because that's not what it used to mean. I am trying to resist these hostile takeover of this label because I don't like the idea that any label can be made toxic by a group of idiots self describing themselves with it.
Look at what the republicans did to the world liberal. Republicans proclaimed that liberals were bad, and democrats then decided that they were actually progressives. I would argue that the democrats should not have agreed to the premise that liberals were bad, except that maybe "liberal" was not actually a great term for democrats considering they support a lot of statist policies.
There are a lot of very politicized issues where being on a particular side comes with a lot of baggage.
The clearest examples I can think of that highlight libertarian vs. non-libertarian viewpoints are the following:
1. Supporting the right to your own body including what you put in it (i.e. anti-prohibition).
2. Supporting the right of consenting adults to do whatever they want together. (e.g. employment, premarital sex, prostitution, etc). The freedom of association.
A good specific example is anti-smoking laws. I would like to point out that it seems that anti-smoking laws were incredibly effective at lowering rates of smoking and probably saved lot's of lives. That said, as a libertarian, I support people's right to smoke, and people's right to allow smoking on their property. I think philosophically if a restaurant owner wants to have a restaurant where smoking is allowed, then he/she should have the right to do that. I don't think anti-smoking patrons should have the right to demand a restaurant ban smoking. I think they should have the freedom to go to any non-smoking restaurant they choose.
I think it's great that peoples' lives were saved, but I don't agree with the method used to do it.
I don't think you are in a position claim to know what I believe yet. One comment mocking another comment does not give you enough information to know what my beliefs are.
I agree that freedom is hard to define because different freedoms are mutually exclusive. It basically boils down to the fatc that we *should* have some freedoms and *shouldn't* have others. (e.g. we should have the freedom to live, and we shouldn't have the freedom to murder others).
For some sets of complimentary freedoms it is not so clear cut which side is better (or more free).
I would argue that the freedom "to put marijuana in your body" should trump the freedom "to prevent others from putting marijuana in their body". Marijuana use in itself is not directly harming or endangering anybody.
What about the freedom "to own a gun" vs the freedom "to prevent others from owning guns". It's an analogous situation, but I think a better argument can be made that gun ownership endangers people.
The point of my comment was that democracy is often antithetical to freedom. It is because of democracy that we have gun control laws and drug prohibition laws. And it's interesting that what these free state project people are doing is actually using democracy to limit the power democracy to increase individual freedom.
1. The private sector does everything better than the government does or might do
I think anyone that truly believes this should just be an anarchist, but even in that case I think it's problematic because any kind of group decision making process in an anarchist world becomes a sort of pseudo government.
The split between public and private sectors is not always so clear. The private sector is full of little micro governments (e.g. board of directors at a company, voting shareholders, etc). One could argue that these governments are voluntary, but even national governments are voluntary in the sense that you are free to move (at least many people are).
2. Everyone can always have everything if they only try hard enough
This idea that we are all blank slates is a popular philosophical meme, that is certainly more embraced by "libertarians" than "social progressives", but I think any thoughtful examination will show that this idea is just false and should be abandoned. I think the related train of thought of "1. We as a society are better off if individuals are successful. 2. Individuals trying hard results in more success. 3. Incentives are a good way to foster trying hard." is less controversial.
3. Social well-being can only be maximized by increasing individual well-being
Honestly I am not sure exactly what this means. I am not sure what social well-being is if it not simply an aggregate of individuals' well-being. Maybe I'm just blinded by my libertarian mindset.
Being an atheist I guess I don't really see any causes more worthy than increasing the well being of individuals. As grand a cause as something might be, it doesn't really seem worthwhile to me unless I can see how it would ultimately lead to individuals being better off.
A potent example of #1 is the lunatic response to Obamacare.
There are some issues where I turn into a social progressive, and preventing people (and children) from dying in the streets is one such issue for me. Part of what makes the free market efficient is people learning from their mistakes and making better decisions. If you make the poor decision not to get health insurance, and you end up needing some kind of expensive cancer treatment to save you life, you can't learn from this mistake when you are dead.
So I actually support universal single payer healthcare. I think this is actually more important than government run schools.
And given all the restrictions we put on health insurance companies under the ACA in terms of who they must cover, what they must cover, and how much they can charge, I don't think that we are really getting the benefits of a true free market anyway. I think we are just getting a government healthcare system with more middlemen.
The mandate components of the law (health insurers have to take anyone who wants insurance ---> everyone has to buy insurance) that elicit all this yelling about "state force" and "FBI marshalls frog-marching me" are just system architectures to deal with real and fundamental problems.
It's clearly just a tax carefully worded to not seem like a tax. State force to compel someone to buy insurance is functionally no different than state force to compel someone to pay taxes.
And really I am not even sure what we have now with the ACA is health insurance. What kind of insurance allows pre-existing conditions to be covered? What kind of insurance has coverage that can't be denied? If I get in a car accident, I can't just show up to Mercury and demand they offer me coverage for my car that was totaled the day before.
I think the ACA creates a healthcare system that is basically universal healthcare, but one that has the facade of a private system. In reality you have the choice of deciding which private company you want to handle your billing. I see this as being about as useful as the freedom to choose which private company can process my DMV forms or something.
Neither libertarians nor social democrats are anarchists, so both should believe in a role for government. The disagreement is on what that role should be.
They're not anarchists, they want the rule of law and enforcement of contracts but that is pretty much it. All public services involve a loss of control, "they" take the money to fund it, "they" decide what, when and how to deliver and some have much bigger needs/wants than others. Even if the government can do better as a whole, there will always be those paying a lot for very little. And the libertarian mantra is that everyone should agree to things voluntarily through private agreements, not be forced into a public system whether they want to or not.
If this were strictly true, as a libertarian I could say that I never consented to being ruled by the government, and therefore I should not be bound to it's laws, and we are back to anarchy.
Clearly if you are not an anarchist, you believe that *some* things should be able to forced on people (i.e. like government itself).
I think your characterization of what a libertarian actually only applies to a narrow (albeit vocal) subset.
I would characterize libertarianism as the desire to have things managed by the private sector unless there is a very compelling reason to have it managed by the government. Many libertarians don't find the reasons for government managed roads and fire departments to be very compelling, but many (hopefully most) do.
This is opposed to the desire to do the opposite, which is to have things managed by the government unless there is a compelling reason not to.
No democracy is a process of achieving governmental change through voting (e.g. as opposed to violence).
Furthermore, libertarians are not necessarily conservative. Many conservative people call themselves libertarians, but many people who would not be considered conservative at all also consider themselves libertarians. The labels of "conservative" and "liberal" are only applicable in the traditional democrat vs. republican dichotomy.
I'm not sure why you think libertarians "refuse to acknowledge that they might not get what they want". They whole reason for the Free State project is that traditionally libertarians *never* get what they want. They have zero representatives in congress despite having approximately 5% of the voting population. Our current election system only grants representation to groups of people in close geographic proximity (e.g. red states and blue states). The Free State project is trying to make at least one district of one state yellow (not sure what color libertarians are), to get more than zero representatives.
In other countries with parliamentary systems, like minded people can still elect representatives even if they are spread out in different voting districts.