Those people weren't exactly living in the lap of luxury before the fake communism either.
I don't agree that this was "fake" communism. But the author of the previously linked story agrees that the supposed transition from capitalism to communism starts with something that isn't actually capitalism. This is the difference.
How do you think the would-be kings that called themselves communists were able to rally the public? (note, there were actual communists involved as well, but they got ousted)
In other words, it was a communist revolution that completely derailed once Lenin died. The thing is here that most such communist revolutions were by people who drank the kool aid and lived to a ripe age such as Mao Tse Tung, Ho Chi Minh, and Pol Pot. Marxism has wholesale murder and dishonesty baked into the philosophy (for example, a fair number of communist revolutionaries brag about how the capitalists would gullibly assist with their own executions). And because communism completely fails to take human nature into account, it has failure baked in as well.
Capitalism doesn't have these problems. There's no murder or failure baked into the system. There's no assuming that humanity will act differently than it always has. And capitalism has elevated over the past century more people from poverty and enslavement than communism put in.
You know, I'm just happy if we can agree to that extent. I think highly of individual rights, being an individual myself; I think they are an (extremely) important conceptual counterbalance to the overwhelming might of the collective. I just can't square primacy of individual rights against the practical problems with that philosophy: that rights are what can be enforced.
I don't have a similar problem. The issue here is that you need very ample individual rights or you just don't have a counterbalance to the overwhelming might of the collective. Even if we have pure rule by the collective, somehow eliminating the insidious conflicts of interest of rulers, we still have fundamental conflicts between us. They commonly manifest as discrimination against an outcast minority and short sighted decision making. For examples of the former in the US, we have Jim Crow laws, current attempts to classify Asian Americans as just Caucasians, blocking same sex marriage, and the propensity to ban stuff (hobby science and HFT come to mind).
For an example of the latter, we have "too big to fail", the current "jobs" metric (where politicians brags about spending an absurd amount of money per job created), the War on Crime/Drugs/Terrorism, and a huge emphasis on short term individual, business, and societal risk reduction even when that increases risks in the long run.
You know, I'm just happy if we can agree to that extent. I think highly of individual rights, being an individual myself; I think they are an (extremely) important conceptual counterbalance to the overwhelming might of the collective. I just can't square primacy of individual rights against the practical problems with that philosophy: that rights are what can be enforced.
I don't have a similar problem. The issue here is that you need very ample individual rights or you just don't have a counterbalance to the overwhelming might of the collective. A vast problem here is
Individuals acting on their own behalf don't always generate optimal outcomes.
Depends on what you're trying to optimize. But having said that, I'm quite aware that there are a variety of situations where individual action results in suboptimal outcomes. I just think that's a terrible excuse for generating an even worse outcome via government action.
The actual sane Republicans (yes, there are some of those left) will form the "We're Sane Again GOP" and will field actually viable candidates that don't see their primary demographic as ultra-religious, old white guys.
What platform would they run on? I think you've eliminated most of the legitimate Republican platform except perhaps some vague economic prosperity stuff. And you know, everyone is for economic prosperity.
Interestingly, prosecutors are prohibited from lying in court but defense attorneys are not.
Sure, they are. I think this story is an obvious counterexample for the prosecutor side. The burden of proof is too high. And since when have defense attorneys been able to lie in court? I see that they can be disbarred for doing so and there are other consequences.
No, that is incorrect. In some ideal world, maybe, but in this one rights only exist if they can be enforced. Your definition is not practical; it does not correspond to the world as it is observed. There is no effective constraint on collective force save for the collective itself, or perhaps that one guy with a nuke wired to a deadman switch.
Ok, I misunderstood. I thought you were referring to rights of the collective force not rights enforced by collective force.
Wonderful, but that won't be rampant individualists, because it's less effective than collective force -- which is why we have governments in the first place, and the difference between mob justice, or even just two thugs joining forces, and government as we know it, is only a matter of degree and formality.
Obviously, I don't necessarily think that is the case. For example, the US has made a colossal maze of bureaucracies with its health care system, with both public and private aspects. And I consider it more likely than not that the next generation of the system will be even more byzantine and ineffective.
But I don't think that system or any of the single payer systems in the world today would be better than a hands off, near completely private system with a small, rudimentary public fund for emergency and long term care for the poorest people. The governments of the world have stepped in and created these systems, but I don't think we're better off for it. If they hadn't had done so, then I think we would have gotten along just fine. The vacuum of health care doesn't exist merely because it's in private hands.
There are a large number of decisions that I think should never be made at the government level because it removes the incentive for individuals to act on their own behalf.
Completely dispersed military power is a different story. I just don't see it working in a society where a powerful external force could simply bribe some of the military force to their side, and divide and conquer. We have many examples where internal divisions became more important than the external threats. Even if the military is mostly private, I believe there has to be some central body to unify command and strategy.
So to summarize, I think there's a number of things that are best decided at the individual level and don't necessarily create a power vacuum, such as how much health care should I pay for? Then there are decisions that I think shouldn't rest on the shoulders of the individual, such as what should we do about this invasion by a foe?
So what is your solution to correct a conservatively loaded court?
It's not conservatively loaded. I just want this court to do their job. And their job is not to slap band aids on every piece of shit idea that comes out of Congress.
Exactly! Yet libertarians don't accept the advice. They act like you're trolling them or something, when it's the same argument as the one you used telling people to leave if they don't it here.
The thing is, when I give that advice, you're better for it. When you give that advice, you're wasting my time. It's not hypocrisy, it's context. The original poster was speaking of an abusive and/or untenable situation where the obvious solutions is to move out. You're speaking of the typical response to libertarian-aligned criticism.
Given how some similar reasoners equate coercion with merely needing something, I really can't be bothered to care about their opinion other than to figure out how to mitigate the damage when that opinion becomes public policy.
Exactly. So why is it that we can't address climate change now?
Cost/benefit. Sure, we could do something now, but why?
Here ya go!
Sorry, that's not evidence. You'd have done something cute whether I was mostly right or wrong. So I can't distinguish between hypotheses using that link.
So why start solving a problem now when we can wait until the last minute!
That is stupid. Because we have more than one priority. After all, if climate change or whatever it gets called in a century were the only thing we cared about, then we could solve simply by killing 90% of humanity off. Nothing else is as effective, especially if you are in a hurry.
And why is it special to solve that particular problem now rather than the other millions of problems which we could also be solving right this minute?
You shouldn't sell yourself short - it's almost a certainty you're wrong!
You do realize, that if you can terraform Mars into Earth 2, then you have all the basic problems licked for figuring out and solving climate change on Earth.
The part of your argument that everyone else finds silly is that you think that the power to throw someone in jail or shoot them goes away if the government doesn't have it.
In practice, it does.
The power vacuum will be filled.
Only if there is a power vacuum. When there isn't, then nothing gets filled. The key piece missing here is that people can fill that vacuum themselves.
The fundamental conceit of libertarianism is treating individual rights as being more powerful and having greater primacy than the rights dictated by collective force.
That is not even wrong. Rights are precisely the constraints on collective force. There are no rights dictated by collective force by definition.
Except that if "State", only means individual states, then many of the constitutional amendments - including the second - fall apart on the federal level.
If the meaning of words don't matter any more, then sure, those pesky constitutional obstructions fall apart.
We should care when someone, yet again, plays language games merely to protect a government program. Because the scheme can not only be applied to things you favor, but also things you don't, like universal surveillance or the next war. And for some reason, it always seems to favor the powers that be, when that game is played.
There isn't a great deal of difference to me between a government or a multitude of corporations making themselves privy to an increasing share of our personal lives, especially given the extent to which they're all in bed together.
There are two obvious differences. A government has far more power and a captive revenue stream. A corporation doesn't get to just take a significant fraction of your paycheck whether you like it or not.
Second, there are a multitude of corporations which is a tremendous dilution of power. Sure, if all those huge corporations were to act in concert to screw you over, then you're pretty fairly screwed though still not as badly as if a government were doing it. But why would they do that, unless some powerful agency, like a government, is coordinating the assault?
Or, for that matter, the chilling effect of a subpoena vs. the chilling effect of payment processors shunning activity they disagree with.
The former can force you to engage in certain behavior by people with guns, like talk about your subpoena.
I find this sort of argument silly because it pretty much equates the power to throw you in jail or to shoot you and leave you in a mass grave, with the power to toss a few extra monthly fees on your phone service or go through a few years of your grocery bills. There is a huge qualitative difference which is ignored.
Communism, particularly as it has been practiced is a very tiny speck in the continuum of things which are not trickle-down economics or globalization.
We should also consider here that when the left had a huge opportunity to practice something in that "continuum of things" in the early 20th century they choose to implement something that eventually enslaved a billion people.
Slashdot Mirror
Those people weren't exactly living in the lap of luxury before the fake communism either.
I don't agree that this was "fake" communism. But the author of the previously linked story agrees that the supposed transition from capitalism to communism starts with something that isn't actually capitalism. This is the difference.
How do you think the would-be kings that called themselves communists were able to rally the public? (note, there were actual communists involved as well, but they got ousted)
In other words, it was a communist revolution that completely derailed once Lenin died. The thing is here that most such communist revolutions were by people who drank the kool aid and lived to a ripe age such as Mao Tse Tung, Ho Chi Minh, and Pol Pot. Marxism has wholesale murder and dishonesty baked into the philosophy (for example, a fair number of communist revolutionaries brag about how the capitalists would gullibly assist with their own executions). And because communism completely fails to take human nature into account, it has failure baked in as well.
Capitalism doesn't have these problems. There's no murder or failure baked into the system. There's no assuming that humanity will act differently than it always has. And capitalism has elevated over the past century more people from poverty and enslavement than communism put in.
You know, I'm just happy if we can agree to that extent. I think highly of individual rights, being an individual myself; I think they are an (extremely) important conceptual counterbalance to the overwhelming might of the collective. I just can't square primacy of individual rights against the practical problems with that philosophy: that rights are what can be enforced.
I don't have a similar problem. The issue here is that you need very ample individual rights or you just don't have a counterbalance to the overwhelming might of the collective. Even if we have pure rule by the collective, somehow eliminating the insidious conflicts of interest of rulers, we still have fundamental conflicts between us. They commonly manifest as discrimination against an outcast minority and short sighted decision making. For examples of the former in the US, we have Jim Crow laws, current attempts to classify Asian Americans as just Caucasians, blocking same sex marriage, and the propensity to ban stuff (hobby science and HFT come to mind).
For an example of the latter, we have "too big to fail", the current "jobs" metric (where politicians brags about spending an absurd amount of money per job created), the War on Crime/Drugs/Terrorism, and a huge emphasis on short term individual, business, and societal risk reduction even when that increases risks in the long run.
You know, I'm just happy if we can agree to that extent. I think highly of individual rights, being an individual myself; I think they are an (extremely) important conceptual counterbalance to the overwhelming might of the collective. I just can't square primacy of individual rights against the practical problems with that philosophy: that rights are what can be enforced.
I don't have a similar problem. The issue here is that you need very ample individual rights or you just don't have a counterbalance to the overwhelming might of the collective. A vast problem here is
Individuals acting on their own behalf don't always generate optimal outcomes.
Depends on what you're trying to optimize. But having said that, I'm quite aware that there are a variety of situations where individual action results in suboptimal outcomes. I just think that's a terrible excuse for generating an even worse outcome via government action.
It has more authority that the Constitution.
No, it doesn't. It was only an official diplomatic correspondence of the day.
It can only be superseded by the same action that birthed it, revolution.
Or me rubbing my nose. I got to stop doing that.
The actual sane Republicans (yes, there are some of those left) will form the "We're Sane Again GOP" and will field actually viable candidates that don't see their primary demographic as ultra-religious, old white guys.
What platform would they run on? I think you've eliminated most of the legitimate Republican platform except perhaps some vague economic prosperity stuff. And you know, everyone is for economic prosperity.
Interestingly, prosecutors are prohibited from lying in court but defense attorneys are not.
Sure, they are. I think this story is an obvious counterexample for the prosecutor side. The burden of proof is too high. And since when have defense attorneys been able to lie in court? I see that they can be disbarred for doing so and there are other consequences.
Credit union.
No, that is incorrect. In some ideal world, maybe, but in this one rights only exist if they can be enforced. Your definition is not practical; it does not correspond to the world as it is observed. There is no effective constraint on collective force save for the collective itself, or perhaps that one guy with a nuke wired to a deadman switch.
Ok, I misunderstood. I thought you were referring to rights of the collective force not rights enforced by collective force.
Wonderful, but that won't be rampant individualists, because it's less effective than collective force -- which is why we have governments in the first place, and the difference between mob justice, or even just two thugs joining forces, and government as we know it, is only a matter of degree and formality.
Obviously, I don't necessarily think that is the case. For example, the US has made a colossal maze of bureaucracies with its health care system, with both public and private aspects. And I consider it more likely than not that the next generation of the system will be even more byzantine and ineffective.
But I don't think that system or any of the single payer systems in the world today would be better than a hands off, near completely private system with a small, rudimentary public fund for emergency and long term care for the poorest people. The governments of the world have stepped in and created these systems, but I don't think we're better off for it. If they hadn't had done so, then I think we would have gotten along just fine. The vacuum of health care doesn't exist merely because it's in private hands.
There are a large number of decisions that I think should never be made at the government level because it removes the incentive for individuals to act on their own behalf.
Completely dispersed military power is a different story. I just don't see it working in a society where a powerful external force could simply bribe some of the military force to their side, and divide and conquer. We have many examples where internal divisions became more important than the external threats. Even if the military is mostly private, I believe there has to be some central body to unify command and strategy.
So to summarize, I think there's a number of things that are best decided at the individual level and don't necessarily create a power vacuum, such as how much health care should I pay for? Then there are decisions that I think shouldn't rest on the shoulders of the individual, such as what should we do about this invasion by a foe?
Save this one for more bigoted audiences.
Reading the rest of yourv hate-filled post, I have to say, you're the target audience.
Unless you're a prosecutor. Sovereign immunity protects a lot of bad faith.
So what is your solution to correct a conservatively loaded court?
It's not conservatively loaded. I just want this court to do their job. And their job is not to slap band aids on every piece of shit idea that comes out of Congress.
Exactly! Yet libertarians don't accept the advice. They act like you're trolling them or something, when it's the same argument as the one you used telling people to leave if they don't it here.
The thing is, when I give that advice, you're better for it. When you give that advice, you're wasting my time. It's not hypocrisy, it's context. The original poster was speaking of an abusive and/or untenable situation where the obvious solutions is to move out. You're speaking of the typical response to libertarian-aligned criticism.
Given how some similar reasoners equate coercion with merely needing something, I really can't be bothered to care about their opinion other than to figure out how to mitigate the damage when that opinion becomes public policy.
You're still paying a 'tax' to the exchange house.
I only pay for use. I get to pay for government no matter what obscene thing they do.
Exactly. So why is it that we can't address climate change now?
Cost/benefit. Sure, we could do something now, but why?
Here ya go!
Sorry, that's not evidence. You'd have done something cute whether I was mostly right or wrong. So I can't distinguish between hypotheses using that link.
The lesson is it's all politics, not at all some balls-and-strikes impartially-reasoned judicial decision.
A lesson you would do well to ignore. Those in power can afford to be hypocrites when it comes to the law.
So why start solving a problem now when we can wait until the last minute!
That is stupid. Because we have more than one priority. After all, if climate change or whatever it gets called in a century were the only thing we cared about, then we could solve simply by killing 90% of humanity off. Nothing else is as effective, especially if you are in a hurry.
And why is it special to solve that particular problem now rather than the other millions of problems which we could also be solving right this minute?
You shouldn't sell yourself short - it's almost a certainty you're wrong!
If only you had evidence to back your opinion.
You can always choose not to use a bank and get ripped off by the cash exchanges too.
I do and it works.
I guess all those transaction fees don't count.
You can always choose not to get that service.
Wait...aren't you the guy who maintains that climate change on earth isn't a problem that needs to be solved?
Not over the course of a century. But it might be at some point after that. And there's always a chance I'm wrong.
You do realize, that if you can terraform Mars into Earth 2, then you have all the basic problems licked for figuring out and solving climate change on Earth.
The part of your argument that everyone else finds silly is that you think that the power to throw someone in jail or shoot them goes away if the government doesn't have it.
In practice, it does.
The power vacuum will be filled.
Only if there is a power vacuum. When there isn't, then nothing gets filled. The key piece missing here is that people can fill that vacuum themselves.
The fundamental conceit of libertarianism is treating individual rights as being more powerful and having greater primacy than the rights dictated by collective force.
That is not even wrong. Rights are precisely the constraints on collective force. There are no rights dictated by collective force by definition.
Except that if "State", only means individual states, then many of the constitutional amendments - including the second - fall apart on the federal level.
If the meaning of words don't matter any more, then sure, those pesky constitutional obstructions fall apart.
We should care when someone, yet again, plays language games merely to protect a government program. Because the scheme can not only be applied to things you favor, but also things you don't, like universal surveillance or the next war. And for some reason, it always seems to favor the powers that be, when that game is played.
There isn't a great deal of difference to me between a government or a multitude of corporations making themselves privy to an increasing share of our personal lives, especially given the extent to which they're all in bed together.
There are two obvious differences. A government has far more power and a captive revenue stream. A corporation doesn't get to just take a significant fraction of your paycheck whether you like it or not.
Second, there are a multitude of corporations which is a tremendous dilution of power. Sure, if all those huge corporations were to act in concert to screw you over, then you're pretty fairly screwed though still not as badly as if a government were doing it. But why would they do that, unless some powerful agency, like a government, is coordinating the assault?
Or, for that matter, the chilling effect of a subpoena vs. the chilling effect of payment processors shunning activity they disagree with.
The former can force you to engage in certain behavior by people with guns, like talk about your subpoena.
I find this sort of argument silly because it pretty much equates the power to throw you in jail or to shoot you and leave you in a mass grave, with the power to toss a few extra monthly fees on your phone service or go through a few years of your grocery bills. There is a huge qualitative difference which is ignored.
than anything the left has ever come up with
I guess you shouldn't have written that then.
Communism, particularly as it has been practiced is a very tiny speck in the continuum of things which are not trickle-down economics or globalization.
We should also consider here that when the left had a huge opportunity to practice something in that "continuum of things" in the early 20th century they choose to implement something that eventually enslaved a billion people.