Sorry, IMHO, any blame here goes from the bottom up
I would agree with you here in the sense that blame goes to the cult of extreme selfishness and disdain for everything "common" or "public" which the neo-cons with the help of libertarians have been instilling in the American public for a few decades now. The result are cowering, frightened local government who consult with lawyers for days before declaring mandatory evacuation because they are afraid of "lawsuits by the casino and hotel owners". Then comes fright of lawsuits by citizens if they are forced to leave on buses. And then there is cost. FEMA is now under these people a "charity coordinator". Dont expect a "charity coordinator" to pre-emptively force an evacuation. And so on and so forth. Weak, and attuned to the rich exclusively, government is the source of all of this. Grover Norquist (one of the chief ideologues of neo-con moement) wants to "get the government to the size where we (neo-cons/libertarians) can drown it in a bathtub". He got his wish, except the bathtub he spoke of is the city of New Orleans.
A question though: I am living outside the US, so I don't know if any offers of foreign aid have come in. Not just money, but doctors, freshwater, etc. With the level of support sent by the US to disasters around the world (like the Boxing Day Tsunami), I wonder if the rest of the world is trying to help the US now?
Over 40 countries so far. Canada is sending its top notch DART team (experts in urban rescue, the team also comes with a portable water purification plant). Canadian Navy is sending ships with supplies, choppers and what not to assist. There have been massive fund raising operations here, the Governments both Federal and Provincial are chipping in, Air Canada is shuttling people between cities in the South using largest planes in its fleet, etc etc.
That is because you are not really American. Yes, you maybe do live in the US of A and have a house and a car or two and speak English and even have an American passport. Still, if your blood is not boiling at this you are not American. As in: you do not subscribe to the American values. That old, "quaint", Constitution of yours goes:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America".
But don't listen to me, a foreigner that I am, Ben Franklin said it better: "We must all hang together, or, assuredly, we shall all hang separately."
And if what is going on in the South is to your "content", separately you will hang, indeed.
Bah, it was late and I was tired (you should see that by the amount of typos). Anyhow, the idea of "matter state change" is a rather good analogy. What I was trying to say is that each of these stable end-points has a certain set of conditions attached to it, and I was specifically enumerating the ones for a Democratic Capitalist society. It is a stable configuration of course. While I posit that Marxism, Libertarianism and other similarly unbalanced systems lie outside these minima (maxima?) of the societal stability function.
Social policy is intimately connected with governance. If you don't believe it, compare the social policies of any fundamentalist dictatorship with those of any secular capitalist republic.
I didn't express it clearly enough. What I was aiming at is that the core nature of the system itself is not impacted. You could have a dictatorship based on a religious zealotry and strict sex-related code and you could have a secular dictatorship based on worship of personality and militarism. Both are essentially in the same "matter state" but differ in other areas which I do not see as relevant to the point I was discussing.
That's it, it's pointless--your non-stop pejorative comments coupled with a complete lack of scope/understanding on your part have shown me once a troll, always a troll.
Translation: I dare to actually question your proposals and demand sane, in-depth answers from you instead of being satisfied with vague proclamations and empty slogans. Which you find unnacceptable.
Fees would be voluntary, rather they tax you your whole life under threat of physical violence -- much more altusitic.
Read: fees would be nearly non-existant and certainly nowhere near sufficient to do any good. Might as well forget the whole pretense of helping others, instead of just making useless token feel-good gestures. Much more "altruistic", Libertarian style.
Warlords did not take charge of the high ground and critical infrastructure so far.
No?
I was behind the news apparently. I stand corrected, the practical results of Libertarian idals are blooming indeed.
Uh, Bush appointed a Libertarian to the head of FEMA?
How else can one interpret his statement of his intention to turn FEMA into a "charity coordinator" and to "shift the burden of their mission onto private enterprise" or something to that effect. Google yourself.
The core Libertarian view, which has been pointed out many times now but you keep ignoring it, is ultimate personal freedom with ultimate personal responsibility
Which only takes one renegade to use his "ultimate personal freedom" uncoupled from his "ultimate personal repsonsibility" to screw the whole society up beyond description. See Marxism -> Stalinism. But that is all academic as most libertarians are actually narcisstic objectivists in drag and are in search of ideology to justify their desire for moneygrubbing.
In a Libertarian world charities (e.g. welfare, social security, getting much needed supplies to vicitims of hurricnaes) would operate much more smoothly since they would be run by private CHARITABLE AND NON-PROFIT organizations funded by private individuals instead of clumsy government agencies.
Here we go again: the charities are not capable of dealing with large scale disasters. Period. They lack sufficient up-fron capital expenditures, coordination, have huge overhead (10000 charties all need administration) and lack authority to take charge of the situation.
Try to get your facts right before you post.
Now I remember why I should not reply to ACs. Confused trolls, nearly all of them.
Take Microeconomics and you'll understand. Until you have that understanding all of your comments along this line will continue to be what they've been so far...completely ignorant. You have an incredibly apt name.
Yes, yes, me ignorant you smart etc and so on. I could not help but to notice that you did not explain how that free-market balancing was supposed to work in the example I showed. I wonder why would that be.
First of all, that 2.2 billion is cumulative--there were many different tax cuts, and that was total. Each tax cut was different, and even if one of them only got 100 more people enough money to pay for gas/food/electric/whatever, that's a step in the right direction.
Bullshit. Noone with income less then 30k received more then a few hundred bucks at the expense of social programs which provided a back-stop for disasters in their lives. The vast majoity of the gains were for the top 10% bracket of incomes. They do not need breaks to pay for food. You are being hypocritical and you know it.
Why don't most Americans try to innovate and do something better instead of whining and doing nothing?
Because the only "innovation" available to vast majority is to eat less and work 3 jobs. Perheaps you've heard that the supposedly higly educated IT and biotech people are also being outsourced? Outsorcing has only one overriding factor: cost. The only "innovation" capable of stopping the trend would be to get the american technicians and labourers to live in dorms and work for $4 a week as the Chinese do.
As several other posters pointed out who're better informed about the whole Katrina thing than I am, police are taking over tourists' busses at gunpoint, not allowing anyone to leave, not allowing supplies in--that really sounds like a manifested Libertarian society to me.
That is the effect ot total failure of the social safety net. This is happening because FEMA fell flat on its face providing the transportation and relief. Once you get chaos, hunger, panic and lack of any visible help from the Feds, you get anarchy. You are looking at the effect and trying to pretend its the cause.
It is here I'd like to point out that the only thing necessary to join the LP in a few months will be signing a statement that says the signee will never initiate the use of force against anyone, and that signing that statement has been a staple of the LP for years.
Which of course is utter feel-good bullshit. "Use no force" except to enslave him economically if possible. Right. A greed monger's utopia where the victim is impotent to fight back physically when utterly but "non-forcefully" (whatever that means) cornered by other means.
Furthermore, aside from us all obviously being low brow, how are we complicit in the death of these people? Because they're being beaten and shot by looters? Because due to the lawless turn the city has taken, people are having a hard time getting others water?
Because you destroyed the only thing which would have prevented that, that is a rapid and massive reaction from the Feds. FEMA has done so repeatedly in the past. It can't now because Libertarians at the helm fucked it up. The rest are just effects of that action. Cause and effect. I hope you are familiar with these.
You're acting like Libertarians would disallow the Red Cross and other charities, and no one would be there helping.
When will you grasp that the Red Cross (being also a partially government supported charity, but thats besides the point), as any charity is incapable of handling anything nearly the size of Katrina disaster. They are a suplementary agency. No wild and haphazard combination of charities is capable of responding to something this big. Get it into your head. That is why FEMA is a Federal, large-scale, massive capital expenditures agency. Or at least it used to be before you turned it into "charity coordinator" as the Libertarian in charge declared. And now people in New Orleans reap what you saw.
You're being shortsighted, and are failing to grasp anything other than a single facet of Libertarianism one at a time--without regard for how they interact, or the entire picture. With less restrictions, more people could start charities, and anything people spent on helping those in New Orleans would be tax deductable, dollar for dollar.
I think the second of those options provides for the most efficient and robust means of distribution possible, though.
Right, in particular when vast resources and massive up-front capital expenditures are required to cope with the scales of disasters. That would get the 10032 charities, 80% of them based on some religious zealotry, cooperating with astonishing efficiency... how exactly?
Ayn Rand didn't like non-Randist libertarians, condemned the Libertarian Party of the U.S., and generally had no use whatsoever for the whole idea. Her followers are called Objectivists,
As I said earlier, it is rather hard to keep track of variations in wacko social theories. So some of the libertarians de jeur are not quite Ayn Randish. Except she is still prominently featured at the Cato institute site. Anyhow, I do not believe a word of it. I think you found that Ayn Rand's ideas were plainly unpallatable and unsellable to the 99% of the society and so you simply changed tracks, now merely worshipping her privately. That's my theory.
by reasonable libertarians
Some of us feel that to be an oxymoron.
Altruism isn't immoral. It just doesn't always
work.
Err, I fail to see how this has anything to do with anything, your logic escapes me. Could you elaborate?
Forgive me for being skeptical but the types of arguments puth forth by most Libertarians (just see the "at cost sales of water to victims" somewhere on this thread) while combined with the general ideals of Libertarianism are not exactly indicating otherwise.
Keep in mind, I'm a left-libertarian (I actually call it "progressive libertarian")
I find that fascinating. How is a social safety net supposed to function when combined with a severely restricted government function and "laissez faire" free-market everything? What about health care?
choosing to live in an extremely flood-prone area!
While I can see your point, I think the issue is far more complex then that. You assume that they had the knowledge of this disaster being near inevietable, as many experts had. This goes to the core of the failures of the modern "free-market" society: the restricted flow of information and brainwashing of consumers. I can guarantee you that 99% of those living there had only but a faint notion that something this drastic could occur when they settled there and on the oposite side a pile of smiling, happy-go-lucky real estate developers peddling the new homes built on reclaimed swampland to them. Add to this social pressure (a.k.a. herd mentality) of "this cant be as bad as those tin-foil hats are saying, the Johnses have a a beutiful house there!". Blaiming those (specially uneducated and poor) for the shenaningas of business crooks and idiotic believers in divinity of free-market is somewhat far reaching in my book.
You would have a more valid point with beach properties which are destroyed nearly yearly. Those should simply have insurance premiums increased until the point where the yearly payment is the cost of the house (and no government bailouts due to chosen risk).
This is a perfect example as to why some stricty enforced rules have to exist in the marketplace and why education of consumers combined with no tolerance for brainwashing masquarading as advertising should be an extremely high priority. If the government went door to door and requested extra tax on these properties due to danger, there would still be swampland there instead of developments or the levees would be resembling the Maginot line. Some would propose a no-bailout policy for the government but that is a mis-guided approach since it would allow the consumer fleecing to go on unhindered and merely compound the magnitude of any disaster.
I lay the blame for what is happening squarely at the feet of "laissez fare" marketplace advocates and abusers, where it rightully belongs.
so how on earth could there be a rule against charity? Or have I missed something?
No rule, per se, but the Libertarians are very closely aligned with ideas of Ayn Rand, who considered altruism to be a vice. On practical level, a vast majority of Libertarians (contrary to what they try to appear at first, you have to drill them a bit) are in fact believers in Social Darwinism and extreme selfishness. You can draw your conclusions from there. Perheaps "no" aid is a bit strong, it would most likely be "token" aid. Not much of a difference. Note that one of them proposed that Libertarian "rescuers" would selflessly charge the victims "at cost" for the water they deliver (and the airlifts I presume). Ponder that.
Also from a point of view of logistics, since no governmental, tax-supported organisation would exist, you would end up with a total chaos in the case of such magnitude as... well anything more then a car accident actualy, as to render any aid meaningless.
But then political discussions on this site, no matter the subject, rapidly descend into idiotic, close-minded, immature, uninformed flamewars, so I don't think I'll get involved in this one.
That is the charm of Slashdot! Bring ye asbestos underware all who dare to enter here!
Just as one example, there are some libertarians who argue that corporations themselves represent an unwanted government interference in "the market" (since they are purely a legal fiction anyway). Those libertarians are hardly likely to "reduce or eliminate the last remaining restraints on multi-national corporations" - they're more likely to elimnate the laws that allow corporations to exist in the first place.
That is a semantic difference. If you eliminate all such constraints, you will end up with outright feudal-like empires with hereditary kings (a vast multi-national private-propiatorship) vs. roman-empire-like empires (a corporation with a Ceasar/CEO and a senate of nobles/Board). This is essentially splitting hair as in both cases the serfs (i.e. the rest of us) will not fare too well as some of these empires would have unchecked powers far in exceess of nations of today.
What country are you in? If the party in power in your country can automatically mandate everything it wants, I'm sorry...maybe you should considering moving? I'll sponsor you at your local US consulate for your visa application--no, really.
Like I said, any system that's only one party (or the party in power has absolute power, without checks and balances) is doomed from the get go. Even though you quote it in the parent, you missed it. I know I forgot an e in homogeneous, but is that any reason to not look the word
In other words, your entire argument hinges on Libertarianism being counter-balanced, constrained and continuously beaten back by pinko-commie liberals and old-school democratic capitalists or else a Hell-on-Earth scenario I described would break out, right? You will then cause only partial havoc and catastrophy, as oposed to a complete one. Brilliant. By the same token you should try a majority of a Nazi or Stalinist party in the Senate. They cant get too bad if the Democrats have 40% seats, right? They will only build 60% of gulags and the gas chambers will run at below 40% capacity, no?
I think you should step back and look at what you are proposing. A band of Libertarians in any significant power will (and the small group presently there already is) cause a catastrofic destablization of the capitalist system with dire and deadly consequences, just as a band of Nazis would do the same to democracy.
You're right--because if Libertarians had their way, no one would be accountable for anything. There'd be no due process, there'd be no environmental laws at all, and every player in business would conspire.
Pretty much so. Unless of course you are one of those "far left" Libertarians. You should read up on what majority of your "soul mates" are proposing around the net and see for yourself. Even in moderation, Libertarian ideas are causing untold havoc. Look at the increasing gap between the richest 10% and the rest of the globe for example as the old rules of controlling wealth distribution are deemed "quaint". One of the tenets of capitalist free-market, that is of distribution of wealth based on competition instead of inheretance is already nearly destroyed. You should ponder why the theorists of free-market are great believers in nearly 100% inheretance taxation in light of the mechanisms of free market and the impact which lack of such taxation will have.
That's why the media gives Libertarianism so much play, and why the LP gets so many "donations" from businesses who want so much power.
Please do not try to paint yourself as a tiny, voiceless, powerless minority. Many of your very closely aligned ideologically (on the "free market should do absolutely everything, government nearly nothing" front) neo-con operators are presently at the levers of US power. A closet Libertarian is running FEMA (with great effects as you can see). The Bremer's rules for the Iraqi economy could have been written at the Cato Institute etc. So do not try, Your kind is very well represented and financed by the interests of wealth and power.
The lesson we learn from this is that even if a workable social model is used if the culture is not ready for it, and if the wrong means are used
Capitalist Democracies or Democracies in general are only capable to function uner certain societal conditions, i.e. a well established national identity combined with general respect of the ideals of democracy and liberty. If the prevailing situation is that of tribalism and religious zealotry, authoritarianism of some sort (after a civil war) is the only possible outcome. Which was seen by anyone with any clue long before the idiotic crusade to fit a square peg into a round hole started. Similarly, Marxism can function in a scoiety composed exclusively of altruistic, mild mannered, atheists (or something like it). Libertarianism can only exist in a society of... I have no clue what conditions would make Libertarianism function, any way I look at it, due to extreme Social Darwinism and worship of individual greed such a system implies, any scenario I see will devolve into some sort of feudal-like structure. And that is precisely the problem. While the old Dictatorship, Democracy, Oligarchy, Feudalism are stable configurations, Marxism and Libertarianism are not. Any but a utopian scenario will devolve into one of these other stable end points.
My point is that any social model may be workable
in the right situations. Look at Sparta for
instance. At one time pederasty was as common as little league (more, actually) Yet by all accounts this was a very successful society. The founding fathers picked Athens as a model for our government not because it was objectively better, but because it was a better match for who we were as a people at the time.
Their sexual activities and other cultural curiosa have zero impact on the governance. Sparta was essentialy a variant of feudalism (where the power was shared between royalty and a nobility council), one of the known stable configurations.
The odd thing is that there are so few rich Libertarians, of any type. You could count the millionaire Libertarians on two hands.
Which is precisely what I am trying to make you see. Libertarians are to billionaires as what suicide bomber "martyrs" are to the likes of Osama. A set of disposable tools to an end of gaining unlimited power. They encourage you, fund your "learned" discussions, grant you a platform to reach wide audience, while laughing their heads off behind your back.
During the 1920's and 1930's a whopping 2/3rd of Americans belonged to "mutual-aid" societies
Which is a smaller scale verison of FEMA and the like. Such societies are too small to deal effectively with any disaster on national scale.
...I point this out because true altruism was alive and well not 100 years ago.
Which has nothing to do with Ayn Rand and Libertianism. Next thing I will hear is that there was charity in ancient Rome... in addition to slavery and disemboweling beggars for enterntainmemnt in the Colliseum.
And on a technical note, altruism is a type of contract anyway. Charity is a way of assuaging guilty or freeing your conscious, in exchange for money.
I fail to see the applicability of this to the discussion.
We cut 2.2 billion dollars of taxes last year. There are now more lower-class working families that can put bread on the table.
I was trying to take you semi-seriously until this came up. Your tax cuts resulted in $25 per one of those families, which admittedly could amount to a cheap dinner in McDonnalds for 4. They also resulted in a whole flurry of investment and job creation activity by the wealthiest citizens... in China. On the other end you've gutted FEMA, the result of which on these same most vulnerable families is somewhat more pronounced, to put it mildly. The Libertarians are in fact partially complicit in these people's deaths and misery. That is a practical effect of Libertarianism, and you can theorize all you want, I will go by the facts on the ground, thank you.
You're right--one day, though (God help me), I'll be decent like you. I can't wait! I'll go buy some blinders. Wouldn't want anything spooking me as my jockey parades me!
See above. Your contrived attempt at an insult notwithstanding, I would rather be on the side of those with "blinders" then on the side of callous murderers in the name of greed, as you are.
While I can understand your gripe, it doesn't hold water--Libertarianism isn't headed by a despotic leader who wants to genocide all in disagreeance with his political views; it's just another party who wants to put more power back where they think it belongs: in the hands of the people.
Let me see, a party in power, which would significantly reduce or eliminate the last remaining restraints on multi-national corporations and allow rampant consolidation of ultra-wealthy companies. Then to remove all protective regulations, allow media to become completely consolidated and owned by the sellers, thus removing any independent information flow to consumers/citizens. Followed by removal of nearly all forms of government assistance to elderly and the sick etc etc. This kind of party would deliver a sledge-hammer blow to the entire society of the USA and although, luckilly, its power would be curbed at its borders, the citizens within would not be so lucky. Just look at what happened to FEMA. The same organization which handled the California erthquake or previous disasters like 9/11 is now paralysed shortly after a Libertarian was appointed its head. It wants people to donate to Pat Robertson's fatwa-issuing religious fund instead to directly assist the victims.
Any homogenous political system will fail--period. In its purest form, every party as we know them is utopian because they're all trying to build a world on a set of ideals. It's just the "ideals for whom" that sets tyranical dictators apart from democratic parties. Thusly, the usage of the word utopia here is relative.
Sure it is "relative". Some systems can fail within weeks (Marxism, Libertarianism) and some take centuries to falter (Socially-Responsible Democratic Capitalism of various stripes).
Seriously--your argument rests on the government being overthrown by a laissez faire group in one fell swoop, and disallowing the democratic principles that Libertarians champion. This is one of the most oft-repeated arguments, and one of the most pourus as well. If someone wants to argue real-world situations, an argument such as this is about the poorest way to do so.
No, my argument hinges on the true players, the already ultra-wealthy, laissez faire hyenas, who would immensly benefit from the naive goofuses calling themselves Libertarians, making way for them to take over in the short order via controlling the nations economy. That is what you seem to be missing in the whole scenario. Your silly utopia is in fact a battering ram with which these would-be robber barrons and feudal lords would smash the last remaining barriers holding them in place.
Might I add your flamboyant ignorance differentiates you little from that BitGeek fellow.
You are very long on bold proclamations and very short on actual logic.
Rand contends an altruistic state is unreachable--and it is
Err, no. Rand believed that selfishness was a virtue and altruism a vice to be avoided. Or at least that is the interpretation here.
Which puts your accusation of "ignorance" on other poster's part, in rather amusing light.
I'm finally learning, seem to be the real barrier that divides Libertarians from other people.
Actually, no. Please note that the most adamant defender of Libertarianism on this thread appears to be barely literate and only partially coherent. Add to this the fact that the other defenders are contradicting each other as to what do their own ideals mean, and are unable to answer simple questions. Sprinkle it all with an apparent confusion as to Rand's function in the Libertarian line of thought as well as even the basic meaning of her ideas -- which you just exhibited.
That is why people have hard times with Libertarians, because it seems that Libertarianism is merely an incoherent amalgamate of half-baked ideas with a central motive of extreme selfishness and greed. Which, I would agree, does divide them from most decent people.
Please, please--tell the class what's far out and whacko about Libertarianism.
What is whacko about Libertarianism, beside very enterntaining, raving madmen like that BitGeek fellow, is that it is, like Marxism, a utopian social system. That is it would "work" only if a set of make-believe conditions were met, and if those conditions are not met, it degenerates into feudalism of one sort or another. Very much like Marxism degenerates into Stalinism when its make-believe utopian conditions do not materialize.
Now that you're talking to actual libertarians, they are shooting you down left and right.
Actually, after explaining their particular deviations from the dogma, they all disappeared after a few questions leaving them unanswered. I wonder why.
The differences between reality and the bullshit you';ve been posting here is pretty major-- so when you lecture us about what libertarians believe, you should expect to be called for the idiot you're making yourself out to be.
Perhaps if you paused your incessant stream of spittle and saliva bubbles, you would notice that none of these gentlemen were capable of answering some rather basic questions in regards to the whole core of your argument, that is that free market is magically self-regulating. And now you can return to your regularly scheduled ranting and raving.
No thank you, I will rather stick to old, boring, sane plain economics. I will leave the "Freaking" one to maniacs like you, where you can espouse virtues of price gouging. To be more effective, I propose that you do that at one of the gas stations in Lousiana. Your subsequent funeral will be fitting a true Libertarian: you will be dumped into a river since noone will see it profitable to dig a hole for you.
You probably do not realize this, being raving mad and all, but cutting and pasting the same post as a reply to all my other posts to other people, qualifies as your basic, cretinous, troll. Be gone back under your bridge where you can drool to all your heart's content.
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I would agree with you here in the sense that blame goes to the cult of extreme selfishness and disdain for everything "common" or "public" which the neo-cons with the help of libertarians have been instilling in the American public for a few decades now. The result are cowering, frightened local government who consult with lawyers for days before declaring mandatory evacuation because they are afraid of "lawsuits by the casino and hotel owners". Then comes fright of lawsuits by citizens if they are forced to leave on buses. And then there is cost. FEMA is now under these people a "charity coordinator". Dont expect a "charity coordinator" to pre-emptively force an evacuation. And so on and so forth. Weak, and attuned to the rich exclusively, government is the source of all of this. Grover Norquist (one of the chief ideologues of neo-con moement) wants to "get the government to the size where we (neo-cons/libertarians) can drown it in a bathtub". He got his wish, except the bathtub he spoke of is the city of New Orleans.
Over 40 countries so far. Canada is sending its top notch DART team (experts in urban rescue, the team also comes with a portable water purification plant). Canadian Navy is sending ships with supplies, choppers and what not to assist. There have been massive fund raising operations here, the Governments both Federal and Provincial are chipping in, Air Canada is shuttling people between cities in the South using largest planes in its fleet, etc etc.
br I'm quite content actually.
That is because you are not really American. Yes, you maybe do live in the US of A and have a house and a car or two and speak English and even have an American passport. Still, if your blood is not boiling at this you are not American. As in: you do not subscribe to the American values. That old, "quaint", Constitution of yours goes:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America".
But don't listen to me, a foreigner that I am, Ben Franklin said it better: "We must all hang together, or, assuredly, we shall all hang separately."
And if what is going on in the South is to your "content", separately you will hang, indeed.
Bah, it was late and I was tired (you should see that by the amount of typos). Anyhow, the idea of "matter state change" is a rather good analogy. What I was trying to say is that each of these stable end-points has a certain set of conditions attached to it, and I was specifically enumerating the ones for a Democratic Capitalist society. It is a stable configuration of course. While I posit that Marxism, Libertarianism and other similarly unbalanced systems lie outside these minima (maxima?) of the societal stability function.
Social policy is intimately connected with governance. If you don't believe it, compare the social policies of any fundamentalist dictatorship with those of any secular capitalist republic.
I didn't express it clearly enough. What I was aiming at is that the core nature of the system itself is not impacted. You could have a dictatorship based on a religious zealotry and strict sex-related code and you could have a secular dictatorship based on worship of personality and militarism. Both are essentially in the same "matter state" but differ in other areas which I do not see as relevant to the point I was discussing.
Translation: I dare to actually question your proposals and demand sane, in-depth answers from you instead of being satisfied with vague proclamations and empty slogans. Which you find unnacceptable.
Read: fees would be nearly non-existant and certainly nowhere near sufficient to do any good. Might as well forget the whole pretense of helping others, instead of just making useless token feel-good gestures. Much more "altruistic", Libertarian style.
Warlords did not take charge of the high ground and critical infrastructure so far. No?
I was behind the news apparently. I stand corrected, the practical results of Libertarian idals are blooming indeed.
How else can one interpret his statement of his intention to turn FEMA into a "charity coordinator" and to "shift the burden of their mission onto private enterprise" or something to that effect. Google yourself.
The core Libertarian view, which has been pointed out many times now but you keep ignoring it, is ultimate personal freedom with ultimate personal responsibility
Which only takes one renegade to use his "ultimate personal freedom" uncoupled from his "ultimate personal repsonsibility" to screw the whole society up beyond description. See Marxism -> Stalinism. But that is all academic as most libertarians are actually narcisstic objectivists in drag and are in search of ideology to justify their desire for moneygrubbing.
In a Libertarian world charities (e.g. welfare, social security, getting much needed supplies to vicitims of hurricnaes) would operate much more smoothly since they would be run by private CHARITABLE AND NON-PROFIT organizations funded by private individuals instead of clumsy government agencies.
Here we go again: the charities are not capable of dealing with large scale disasters. Period. They lack sufficient up-fron capital expenditures, coordination, have huge overhead (10000 charties all need administration) and lack authority to take charge of the situation.
Try to get your facts right before you post.
Now I remember why I should not reply to ACs. Confused trolls, nearly all of them.
Yes, yes, me ignorant you smart etc and so on. I could not help but to notice that you did not explain how that free-market balancing was supposed to work in the example I showed. I wonder why would that be.
Bullshit. Noone with income less then 30k received more then a few hundred bucks at the expense of social programs which provided a back-stop for disasters in their lives. The vast majoity of the gains were for the top 10% bracket of incomes. They do not need breaks to pay for food. You are being hypocritical and you know it.
Why don't most Americans try to innovate and do something better instead of whining and doing nothing?
Because the only "innovation" available to vast majority is to eat less and work 3 jobs. Perheaps you've heard that the supposedly higly educated IT and biotech people are also being outsourced? Outsorcing has only one overriding factor: cost. The only "innovation" capable of stopping the trend would be to get the american technicians and labourers to live in dorms and work for $4 a week as the Chinese do.
As several other posters pointed out who're better informed about the whole Katrina thing than I am, police are taking over tourists' busses at gunpoint, not allowing anyone to leave, not allowing supplies in--that really sounds like a manifested Libertarian society to me.
That is the effect ot total failure of the social safety net. This is happening because FEMA fell flat on its face providing the transportation and relief. Once you get chaos, hunger, panic and lack of any visible help from the Feds, you get anarchy. You are looking at the effect and trying to pretend its the cause.
It is here I'd like to point out that the only thing necessary to join the LP in a few months will be signing a statement that says the signee will never initiate the use of force against anyone, and that signing that statement has been a staple of the LP for years.
Which of course is utter feel-good bullshit. "Use no force" except to enslave him economically if possible. Right. A greed monger's utopia where the victim is impotent to fight back physically when utterly but "non-forcefully" (whatever that means) cornered by other means.
Furthermore, aside from us all obviously being low brow, how are we complicit in the death of these people? Because they're being beaten and shot by looters? Because due to the lawless turn the city has taken, people are having a hard time getting others water?
Because you destroyed the only thing which would have prevented that, that is a rapid and massive reaction from the Feds. FEMA has done so repeatedly in the past. It can't now because Libertarians at the helm fucked it up. The rest are just effects of that action. Cause and effect. I hope you are familiar with these.
You're acting like Libertarians would disallow the Red Cross and other charities, and no one would be there helping.
When will you grasp that the Red Cross (being also a partially government supported charity, but thats besides the point), as any charity is incapable of handling anything nearly the size of Katrina disaster. They are a suplementary agency. No wild and haphazard combination of charities is capable of responding to something this big. Get it into your head. That is why FEMA is a Federal, large-scale, massive capital expenditures agency. Or at least it used to be before you turned it into "charity coordinator" as the Libertarian in charge declared. And now people in New Orleans reap what you saw.
You're being shortsighted, and are failing to grasp anything other than a single facet of Libertarianism one at a time--without regard for how they interact, or the entire picture. With less restrictions, more people could start charities, and anything people spent on helping those in New Orleans would be tax deductable, dollar for dollar.
Complete bullshit. Some 102341
Right, in particular when vast resources and massive up-front capital expenditures are required to cope with the scales of disasters. That would get the 10032 charities, 80% of them based on some religious zealotry, cooperating with astonishing efficiency ... how exactly?
As I said earlier, it is rather hard to keep track of variations in wacko social theories. So some of the libertarians de jeur are not quite Ayn Randish. Except she is still prominently featured at the Cato institute site. Anyhow, I do not believe a word of it. I think you found that Ayn Rand's ideas were plainly unpallatable and unsellable to the 99% of the society and so you simply changed tracks, now merely worshipping her privately. That's my theory.
by reasonable libertarians
Some of us feel that to be an oxymoron.
Altruism isn't immoral. It just doesn't always work.
Err, I fail to see how this has anything to do with anything, your logic escapes me. Could you elaborate?
Forgive me for being skeptical but the types of arguments puth forth by most Libertarians (just see the "at cost sales of water to victims" somewhere on this thread) while combined with the general ideals of Libertarianism are not exactly indicating otherwise.
Keep in mind, I'm a left-libertarian (I actually call it "progressive libertarian")
I find that fascinating. How is a social safety net supposed to function when combined with a severely restricted government function and "laissez faire" free-market everything? What about health care?
While I can see your point, I think the issue is far more complex then that. You assume that they had the knowledge of this disaster being near inevietable, as many experts had. This goes to the core of the failures of the modern "free-market" society: the restricted flow of information and brainwashing of consumers. I can guarantee you that 99% of those living there had only but a faint notion that something this drastic could occur when they settled there and on the oposite side a pile of smiling, happy-go-lucky real estate developers peddling the new homes built on reclaimed swampland to them. Add to this social pressure (a.k.a. herd mentality) of "this cant be as bad as those tin-foil hats are saying, the Johnses have a a beutiful house there!". Blaiming those (specially uneducated and poor) for the shenaningas of business crooks and idiotic believers in divinity of free-market is somewhat far reaching in my book.
You would have a more valid point with beach properties which are destroyed nearly yearly. Those should simply have insurance premiums increased until the point where the yearly payment is the cost of the house (and no government bailouts due to chosen risk).
This is a perfect example as to why some stricty enforced rules have to exist in the marketplace and why education of consumers combined with no tolerance for brainwashing masquarading as advertising should be an extremely high priority. If the government went door to door and requested extra tax on these properties due to danger, there would still be swampland there instead of developments or the levees would be resembling the Maginot line. Some would propose a no-bailout policy for the government but that is a mis-guided approach since it would allow the consumer fleecing to go on unhindered and merely compound the magnitude of any disaster.
I lay the blame for what is happening squarely at the feet of "laissez fare" marketplace advocates and abusers, where it rightully belongs.
No rule, per se, but the Libertarians are very closely aligned with ideas of Ayn Rand, who considered altruism to be a vice. On practical level, a vast majority of Libertarians (contrary to what they try to appear at first, you have to drill them a bit) are in fact believers in Social Darwinism and extreme selfishness. You can draw your conclusions from there. Perheaps "no" aid is a bit strong, it would most likely be "token" aid. Not much of a difference. Note that one of them proposed that Libertarian "rescuers" would selflessly charge the victims "at cost" for the water they deliver (and the airlifts I presume). Ponder that.
Also from a point of view of logistics, since no governmental, tax-supported organisation would exist, you would end up with a total chaos in the case of such magnitude as ... well anything more then a car accident actualy, as to render any aid meaningless.
But then political discussions on this site, no matter the subject, rapidly descend into idiotic, close-minded, immature, uninformed flamewars, so I don't think I'll get involved in this one.
That is the charm of Slashdot! Bring ye asbestos underware all who dare to enter here!
That is a semantic difference. If you eliminate all such constraints, you will end up with outright feudal-like empires with hereditary kings (a vast multi-national private-propiatorship) vs. roman-empire-like empires (a corporation with a Ceasar/CEO and a senate of nobles/Board). This is essentially splitting hair as in both cases the serfs (i.e. the rest of us) will not fare too well as some of these empires would have unchecked powers far in exceess of nations of today.
In other words, your entire argument hinges on Libertarianism being counter-balanced, constrained and continuously beaten back by pinko-commie liberals and old-school democratic capitalists or else a Hell-on-Earth scenario I described would break out, right? You will then cause only partial havoc and catastrophy, as oposed to a complete one. Brilliant. By the same token you should try a majority of a Nazi or Stalinist party in the Senate. They cant get too bad if the Democrats have 40% seats, right? They will only build 60% of gulags and the gas chambers will run at below 40% capacity, no?
I think you should step back and look at what you are proposing. A band of Libertarians in any significant power will (and the small group presently there already is) cause a catastrofic destablization of the capitalist system with dire and deadly consequences, just as a band of Nazis would do the same to democracy.
You're right--because if Libertarians had their way, no one would be accountable for anything. There'd be no due process, there'd be no environmental laws at all, and every player in business would conspire.
Pretty much so. Unless of course you are one of those "far left" Libertarians. You should read up on what majority of your "soul mates" are proposing around the net and see for yourself. Even in moderation, Libertarian ideas are causing untold havoc. Look at the increasing gap between the richest 10% and the rest of the globe for example as the old rules of controlling wealth distribution are deemed "quaint". One of the tenets of capitalist free-market, that is of distribution of wealth based on competition instead of inheretance is already nearly destroyed. You should ponder why the theorists of free-market are great believers in nearly 100% inheretance taxation in light of the mechanisms of free market and the impact which lack of such taxation will have.
That's why the media gives Libertarianism so much play, and why the LP gets so many "donations" from businesses who want so much power.
Please do not try to paint yourself as a tiny, voiceless, powerless minority. Many of your very closely aligned ideologically (on the "free market should do absolutely everything, government nearly nothing" front) neo-con operators are presently at the levers of US power. A closet Libertarian is running FEMA (with great effects as you can see). The Bremer's rules for the Iraqi economy could have been written at the Cato Institute etc. So do not try, Your kind is very well represented and financed by the interests of wealth and power.
Capitalist Democracies or Democracies in general are only capable to function uner certain societal conditions, i.e. a well established national identity combined with general respect of the ideals of democracy and liberty. If the prevailing situation is that of tribalism and religious zealotry, authoritarianism of some sort (after a civil war) is the only possible outcome. Which was seen by anyone with any clue long before the idiotic crusade to fit a square peg into a round hole started. Similarly, Marxism can function in a scoiety composed exclusively of altruistic, mild mannered, atheists (or something like it). Libertarianism can only exist in a society of ... I have no clue what conditions would make Libertarianism function, any way I look at it, due to extreme Social Darwinism and worship of individual greed such a system implies, any scenario I see will devolve into some sort of feudal-like structure. And that is precisely the problem. While the old Dictatorship, Democracy, Oligarchy, Feudalism are stable configurations, Marxism and Libertarianism are not. Any but a utopian scenario will devolve into one of these other stable end points.
My point is that any social model may be workable in the right situations. Look at Sparta for instance. At one time pederasty was as common as little league (more, actually) Yet by all accounts this was a very successful society. The founding fathers picked Athens as a model for our government not because it was objectively better, but because it was a better match for who we were as a people at the time.
Their sexual activities and other cultural curiosa have zero impact on the governance. Sparta was essentialy a variant of feudalism (where the power was shared between royalty and a nobility council), one of the known stable configurations.
Which is precisely what I am trying to make you see. Libertarians are to billionaires as what suicide bomber "martyrs" are to the likes of Osama. A set of disposable tools to an end of gaining unlimited power. They encourage you, fund your "learned" discussions, grant you a platform to reach wide audience, while laughing their heads off behind your back.
Which is a smaller scale verison of FEMA and the like. Such societies are too small to deal effectively with any disaster on national scale.
Which has nothing to do with Ayn Rand and Libertianism. Next thing I will hear is that there was charity in ancient Rome ... in addition to slavery and disemboweling beggars for enterntainmemnt in the Colliseum.
And on a technical note, altruism is a type of contract anyway. Charity is a way of assuaging guilty or freeing your conscious, in exchange for money.
I fail to see the applicability of this to the discussion.
I was trying to take you semi-seriously until this came up. Your tax cuts resulted in $25 per one of those families, which admittedly could amount to a cheap dinner in McDonnalds for 4. They also resulted in a whole flurry of investment and job creation activity by the wealthiest citizens ... in China. On the other end you've gutted FEMA, the result of which on these same most vulnerable families is somewhat more pronounced, to put it mildly. The Libertarians are in fact partially complicit in these people's deaths and misery. That is a practical effect of Libertarianism, and you can theorize all you want, I will go by the facts on the ground, thank you.
You're right--one day, though (God help me), I'll be decent like you. I can't wait! I'll go buy some blinders. Wouldn't want anything spooking me as my jockey parades me!
See above. Your contrived attempt at an insult notwithstanding, I would rather be on the side of those with "blinders" then on the side of callous murderers in the name of greed, as you are.
Let me see, a party in power, which would significantly reduce or eliminate the last remaining restraints on multi-national corporations and allow rampant consolidation of ultra-wealthy companies. Then to remove all protective regulations, allow media to become completely consolidated and owned by the sellers, thus removing any independent information flow to consumers/citizens. Followed by removal of nearly all forms of government assistance to elderly and the sick etc etc. This kind of party would deliver a sledge-hammer blow to the entire society of the USA and although, luckilly, its power would be curbed at its borders, the citizens within would not be so lucky. Just look at what happened to FEMA. The same organization which handled the California erthquake or previous disasters like 9/11 is now paralysed shortly after a Libertarian was appointed its head. It wants people to donate to Pat Robertson's fatwa-issuing religious fund instead to directly assist the victims.
Any homogenous political system will fail--period. In its purest form, every party as we know them is utopian because they're all trying to build a world on a set of ideals. It's just the "ideals for whom" that sets tyranical dictators apart from democratic parties. Thusly, the usage of the word utopia here is relative.
Sure it is "relative". Some systems can fail within weeks (Marxism, Libertarianism) and some take centuries to falter (Socially-Responsible Democratic Capitalism of various stripes).
Seriously--your argument rests on the government being overthrown by a laissez faire group in one fell swoop, and disallowing the democratic principles that Libertarians champion. This is one of the most oft-repeated arguments, and one of the most pourus as well. If someone wants to argue real-world situations, an argument such as this is about the poorest way to do so.
No, my argument hinges on the true players, the already ultra-wealthy, laissez faire hyenas, who would immensly benefit from the naive goofuses calling themselves Libertarians, making way for them to take over in the short order via controlling the nations economy. That is what you seem to be missing in the whole scenario. Your silly utopia is in fact a battering ram with which these would-be robber barrons and feudal lords would smash the last remaining barriers holding them in place.
Might I add your flamboyant ignorance differentiates you little from that BitGeek fellow.
You are very long on bold proclamations and very short on actual logic.
Err, no. Rand believed that selfishness was a virtue and altruism a vice to be avoided. Or at least that is the interpretation here.
Which puts your accusation of "ignorance" on other poster's part, in rather amusing light.
I'm finally learning, seem to be the real barrier that divides Libertarians from other people.
Actually, no. Please note that the most adamant defender of Libertarianism on this thread appears to be barely literate and only partially coherent. Add to this the fact that the other defenders are contradicting each other as to what do their own ideals mean, and are unable to answer simple questions. Sprinkle it all with an apparent confusion as to Rand's function in the Libertarian line of thought as well as even the basic meaning of her ideas -- which you just exhibited.
That is why people have hard times with Libertarians, because it seems that Libertarianism is merely an incoherent amalgamate of half-baked ideas with a central motive of extreme selfishness and greed. Which, I would agree, does divide them from most decent people.
What is whacko about Libertarianism, beside very enterntaining, raving madmen like that BitGeek fellow, is that it is, like Marxism, a utopian social system. That is it would "work" only if a set of make-believe conditions were met, and if those conditions are not met, it degenerates into feudalism of one sort or another. Very much like Marxism degenerates into Stalinism when its make-believe utopian conditions do not materialize.
Actually, after explaining their particular deviations from the dogma, they all disappeared after a few questions leaving them unanswered. I wonder why.
The differences between reality and the bullshit you';ve been posting here is pretty major-- so when you lecture us about what libertarians believe, you should expect to be called for the idiot you're making yourself out to be.
Perhaps if you paused your incessant stream of spittle and saliva bubbles, you would notice that none of these gentlemen were capable of answering some rather basic questions in regards to the whole core of your argument, that is that free market is magically self-regulating. And now you can return to your regularly scheduled ranting and raving.
Go learn some freaking economics... you can start with: "price gouging saves lives" http://www.mises.org/story/1593
No thank you, I will rather stick to old, boring, sane plain economics. I will leave the "Freaking" one to maniacs like you, where you can espouse virtues of price gouging. To be more effective, I propose that you do that at one of the gas stations in Lousiana. Your subsequent funeral will be fitting a true Libertarian: you will be dumped into a river since noone will see it profitable to dig a hole for you.
You probably do not realize this, being raving mad and all, but cutting and pasting the same post as a reply to all my other posts to other people, qualifies as your basic, cretinous, troll. Be gone back under your bridge where you can drool to all your heart's content.