Therefore, in order to counter this fascism, we must find these evil libertarians and drag them out of their beds in the night and take them to concen...sorry, HAPPY camps, where they will be re-educated/incinerated in ovens.
Honestly, how can you think that a philosophy that is fundamentally pacifist can be in any way similar to an inherently violent ideology like fascism? That's like saying that white is black because it becomes black over time, therefore black is less black than white.
Yes, the economy is 100% controlled by the government, you just don't see it. Our money is imaginary, and is printed at will by central planners. It's more elegant than anything ever attempted by the politburo, but it is none-the-less planned economics, and it has failed.
We now give money to failed businesses to keep them open because our incompetent planners think they know better than the market. When we find ourselves in a third world country in five years or less, I wonder if any of you people will understand why?
This as opposed to the alternating conservative/liberal plutocratic-kletptocratic oligarchies of rich people burdening the poor while enriching themselves.
Read Atlas Shrugged, and by the end you will understand libertarianism.
I would imagine that some people would prefer to have surgery in a dirty room rather than dying in the street, or while waiting six months to be seen under Obamacare.
For example, I know a number of foreign doctors who have years of experience under their belt, but are forced to go back to school to get accreditation in the US. In addition, licensing requirements keep retired doctors from practicing part time. They can't afford to have a practice unless they work full time.
Understand that you are not smart enough to dictate what people can or can not do. Those who support government intervention in such matters think that they are super smart and can simply dictate that people can eat this or that to make them healthier, or that they must spend X amount of money to get Y and Z certifications so they can keep track of what you can and can not do. The problem is that this marginalizes anyone in the minority. And EVERYONE is in the minority on SOMETHING. That is, unless you want all human being to be little automatons who do what the government tells them to and nothing else.
That gets you a choice between John Kerry and George Bush.
If you don't fight to defend your principles, you get nothing but grinning morons and sociopaths in charge. That philosophy has plunged a knife though the heart of this country. Lets not keep falling for the same trick, yes?
I would start a new ISP that doesn't have arbitrary restrictions on content and take the customers from all the Commcasts out there until they are forced to meet the desires of their customers or go bankrupt, an make a killing in the process.
That is, if the regulations which held new companies out of the market didn't make costs so high for non-established companies that allowed monopolies to form.
How do monopolies erect barriers to competition? Simple, they get the government to institute regulations while claiming that they will help to prevent monopolies from forming, even while it is abundantly clear that all monopolies are created thanks to force applied by the government.
Actually, you have a false impression of history. Prior to those businesses "treating people like shit", they were starving to death in the countryside, or serving sadistic feudal lords. People went to work for those "evil capitalists" because it promised a better life. And the fact is that we all live better now because of it.
Places like the Congo and Rural China still have people being "exploited" because they don't yet produce enough material goods to give their workers a better quality of life, or their governments purposefully oppress their people by stealing their money and killing them, in the case of Congo, and artificially depressing the value of their currency, in the case of China (through printing of money, which is another form of theft).
For a more detailed explination, you might read this chapter of Human Action by Ludwig von Mises.
To call property rights legal fictions misses the source of rights. If you come and take all my property in an environment where there is no government, what do you think I am going to do to you? I will enforce my NATURAL right to property by hitting you repeatedly over the head with whatever happens to be handy. Similar things will happen no matter who you do them to. Basic law is an extension of natural law, and attempts to prevent bloodshed by recognizing natural laws, codifying them, and enforcing them with overwhelming force.
To call markets unnatural is the same as calling nature herself unnatural. Nature is an energy based economy, as are human economies (those things which we trade represent investments of energy, except that we have used the power of our minds to make it into something more useful. Markets existed long before the first amphibian poked it's head above water, and will continue to exist until the sun scorches the life out of the last surviving bacterium on the surface of the Earth.
You should understand that corporations couldn't exist without governments, which produce an artificial shield from liability for shareholders. If the shareholders themselves were vulnerable, people would be FAR more careful about who they invested with, as investing in a company that dumps toxic waste or that throws about frivolous lawsuits (think SCO) would soon find themselves served with papers requiring them to pay up for damages caused by the company they owned. In addition, even good natured companies wouldn't be able to grow to the giant proportions that they do now, as there would be no regulations imposing disproportionate burdens on new businesses entering the market. WIth no competition other than the already well established companies that formed prior to the institution of those regulations (why do you think there haven't been any major car companies founded in the last 50+ years?--safety regulations are expensive to comply with for a startup company).
In a non-fascist system, companies would mostly be ethical and small. Those few that grew large would do so because they have impeccable reputations, they pay their workers better than anyone else (thus retaining high quality workers), they sell their goods cheaper than anyone else (due to their higher efficiency), which are higher quality than most (due to having the most skilled workforce). This is how Ford worked when it was established. Why isn't it like that anymore? Regulations have strangled all new competition out of the marketplace, save for foreign companies that form in less highly regulated environments.
Sorry for the rant, but most people have a hard time with that. That is why most people are either democrats or republicans. Neither of those groups really understand the implications of government, or understand where the power of governments lay (the barrel of a gun).
The only thing evil about it is the force applied by the government in its enforcement. In a free market, there would be no such force, and thus no evil.
Also, you can't argue that capitalism leads fascism. Fascism is the polar opposite of capitalism. It's like saying by going north you are going south. It just doesn't make any sense. ANY form of government interference in the market, save for the prevention of force being applied unlawfully, is fascism.
DRM would NOT exist, because after a while, companies would realize that their stupid DRM is destroying their business, and would drop it. Even in our fascist economic system, DRM is slowly losing ground.
Most banks (are supposed to) frown upon paying a loan with another loan, in this case, a student loan. I had a lot of scholarships as well, but those are tenuous sources of income at best. With rental properties, it doesn't matter, because there is no long term commitment.
After I finished school, it was only by dumb luck that I found a job that paid a wage high enough for me to continue paying my mortgage, with enough room for advancement that I am now able to pay my student loans as well (I found a job listing on a company's website, and happened to know one of the principles of the company, having taken a class from him...when I went in to ask about the job, they hired me on the spot--a day later and it might have been someone else).
And in my case, there was no down payment, even though I wanted to pay one, they fast talked me into not getting one, which forced me to pay mortgage insurance even though I had enough cash at the time.
Anyways, that is besides the point. The point is that all that easy money that is freely available pushed prices up, both in terms of tuition, and in terms of housing prices. If It weren't for the freely available loans, I would have only been able to afford a house 1/3rd the cost of what I got, as it would have been for everyone, forcing prices down. It is the same with tuition. It has risen 3x as fast as inflation over the last 30 years because of the insatiable demand created by a culture that said that you HAVE to have a college degree to get even an entry level job anywhere, and a government that supported that assertion by mandating freely available loans to everyone.
If the loans weren't available, the culture would be different, as it was in the 70's, when people could easily work their way through school, and come out debt free on the other side. Instead, now we have a class of well educated, perpetually indebted wage slaves.
a) the lynch mobs exist, but they are in the legislature and in the police.
b) race riots have mostly been supplanted by riots against those who disagree. Take for example the brutal suppression of practically every major peaceful protest that has taken place in the last ten years. Jackbooted thugs run rampant through our streets, cornering protesters so they can beat and arrest them en masse, whoever they are. It doesn't matter what party is in charge, as we saw with the recent G20 summit.
c) Maybe you haven't heard all the stories about "extraordinary rendition", which became "ordinary rendition" under Bush, and is no longer covered in the press under Obama.
How on Earth can you argue with a straight face that the Iraq war has ANYTHING to do with defending America? There are plenty of brutal dictators in the world that are far more powerful than Hussein was at the start of that war, yet I haven't seen anyone blustering for war with those guys (Libya, North Korea, and Syria come to mind, but also places like Zimbabwe, and Venezuela). That war was started due to pursuit of a personal vendetta by Bush (Hussein tried to have his father assassinated during GWI), and possibly in pursuit of oil.
Further, what does national security have to do with the American way of life? No-one is going to invade the US. Ever. We've got too many nukes. Why do we have to give up the freedoms that our forefathers fought and died for in exchange for the slavery that our military is now fighting and dying to uphold? You're a "right wing nutjob", so why do you want to spend our tax money on crap like that?
And finally, I wouldn't be so quick to divide up people as friends and enemies. One day, you may find yourself labeled an enemy of those in power (surprise! It already happened!). When that happens, you may well find yourself black bagged and taken off to to some third world hellhole for some "enhanced interrogation". It is far better to absolutely defend the rights of all people. In that way, you make friends rather than enemies, and those few enemies that remain find their power slipping away, with their organization eventually evaporating into nothing.
As a final note, I am a Republican, although I can't say that I have been proud of our party since we first took power back in the 80's and promptly abandoned our small government principles. Pacifism is far from suicide by proxy. Rather, it is a sheathed sword of terrible destruction that can only be unleashed by the violent aggression of others. There was never a need for the US to seek war outside of North America, save for the period after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
So you don't think that colleges charge whatever the market will bear?
Have you been to a US college recently? The one near me is still on a building spree that it has been on at least since I started there, eight years ago (I graduated and found a job in town). They have spent AT LEAST a half a billion dollars since I started paying attention, with the largest chunk being the first 100 million dollar expansion of the stadium to build box seats for rich donors. All this for a school with 30,000 students.
Also, you don't think the housing boom was caused by freely available cheap credit? Hell, while I was still in school, I was able to get a mortgage while I didn't even have a job! The mortgage payment was cheaper than rent!
Understand that Somalia is not without government, it's just that it is full of nasty little competing governments with AK-47s, who, like most governments, only cares about enriching themselves through use of force and intimidation. Certainly, there isn't any oppression in the countryside coming from Mogadishu, but there is plenty coming from Abdullah ibn' Rasheed, the local warlord.
There isn't necessarily a dichotomy between rule by a central government and rule by mafia.
Foreign students leaving isn't what is putting our industries out of business. It's taxes (they're MUCH lower abroad), and increasingly onerous regulations. For every person you need to run an industry in China, you need three in America, one person to do the work, one person at the company to handle regulations compliance/tax accounting, etc, and one person in the government to make sure the regulations are being followed.
Basically, our productivity is a third of what it should be, given our technology and population level. This is why America is about to get a lot poorer.
Maybe you don't realize just how bad America has gotten in the last ten years. To be honest, I wonder if it was like this in Germany in the late 1920's.
You mean the decreasing number of subsistence farmers are dirt poor, while those who are leaving their rural lives to join the industrial revolution are entering the middle and upper classes?
That sounds about right to me. Subsistence farmers are supposed to be poor, because they don't provide anything for anyone else. If the government gave them a bunch of money to make them not poor, it would only impoverish the rest of the country, as we have seen in North Korea.
No, China isn't a "libertarian laboratory". The government blocks any and all lawsuits against any industry or commercial interest considered "important" (ie whoever pays kickbacks to government officials). It's this protection that allowed toxic and inferior products to make it off of their shores. There was only action when the US media started taking up the fight, and then they overreacted by EXECUTING the leaders of those companies.
Honestly, what kind of retard confuses fascism (the integration of corporate and government power), and libertarianism (the total divorce of corporate and government power)? It's really infuriating when zealous liberals redefine words like "libertarian" and "capitalism" to mean "fascism", decry what happens under that fascism, then demand fascist fixes (like removing whatever feeble barriers are left between health insurance companies and government).
I think you'll notice it over the next decade as the currency collapses and the United States is torn to shreds by Civil War. You think it can't happen? Two years ago, no-one thought there could be another Great Depression either, yet here we are.
Also, understand that no government spending is "necessary". Rather, all government spending is in pursuit of two goals, re-election, and a cushy job for when the public realizes that you have betrayed them.
Slashdot Mirror
Therefore, in order to counter this fascism, we must find these evil libertarians and drag them out of their beds in the night and take them to concen...sorry, HAPPY camps, where they will be re-educated/incinerated in ovens.
Honestly, how can you think that a philosophy that is fundamentally pacifist can be in any way similar to an inherently violent ideology like fascism? That's like saying that white is black because it becomes black over time, therefore black is less black than white.
The government controlled market?
Yes, the economy is 100% controlled by the government, you just don't see it. Our money is imaginary, and is printed at will by central planners. It's more elegant than anything ever attempted by the politburo, but it is none-the-less planned economics, and it has failed.
We now give money to failed businesses to keep them open because our incompetent planners think they know better than the market. When we find ourselves in a third world country in five years or less, I wonder if any of you people will understand why?
This as opposed to the alternating conservative/liberal plutocratic-kletptocratic oligarchies of rich people burdening the poor while enriching themselves.
Read Atlas Shrugged, and by the end you will understand libertarianism.
I would imagine that some people would prefer to have surgery in a dirty room rather than dying in the street, or while waiting six months to be seen under Obamacare.
For example, I know a number of foreign doctors who have years of experience under their belt, but are forced to go back to school to get accreditation in the US. In addition, licensing requirements keep retired doctors from practicing part time. They can't afford to have a practice unless they work full time.
Understand that you are not smart enough to dictate what people can or can not do. Those who support government intervention in such matters think that they are super smart and can simply dictate that people can eat this or that to make them healthier, or that they must spend X amount of money to get Y and Z certifications so they can keep track of what you can and can not do. The problem is that this marginalizes anyone in the minority. And EVERYONE is in the minority on SOMETHING. That is, unless you want all human being to be little automatons who do what the government tells them to and nothing else.
I dislike what you said, but I defend to the death your right to say it.
~A Libertarian
That gets you a choice between John Kerry and George Bush.
If you don't fight to defend your principles, you get nothing but grinning morons and sociopaths in charge. That philosophy has plunged a knife though the heart of this country. Lets not keep falling for the same trick, yes?
I would start a new ISP that doesn't have arbitrary restrictions on content and take the customers from all the Commcasts out there until they are forced to meet the desires of their customers or go bankrupt, an make a killing in the process.
That is, if the regulations which held new companies out of the market didn't make costs so high for non-established companies that allowed monopolies to form.
How do monopolies erect barriers to competition? Simple, they get the government to institute regulations while claiming that they will help to prevent monopolies from forming, even while it is abundantly clear that all monopolies are created thanks to force applied by the government.
Actually, you have a false impression of history. Prior to those businesses "treating people like shit", they were starving to death in the countryside, or serving sadistic feudal lords. People went to work for those "evil capitalists" because it promised a better life. And the fact is that we all live better now because of it.
Places like the Congo and Rural China still have people being "exploited" because they don't yet produce enough material goods to give their workers a better quality of life, or their governments purposefully oppress their people by stealing their money and killing them, in the case of Congo, and artificially depressing the value of their currency, in the case of China (through printing of money, which is another form of theft).
For a more detailed explination, you might read this chapter of Human Action by Ludwig von Mises.
To call property rights legal fictions misses the source of rights. If you come and take all my property in an environment where there is no government, what do you think I am going to do to you? I will enforce my NATURAL right to property by hitting you repeatedly over the head with whatever happens to be handy. Similar things will happen no matter who you do them to. Basic law is an extension of natural law, and attempts to prevent bloodshed by recognizing natural laws, codifying them, and enforcing them with overwhelming force.
To call markets unnatural is the same as calling nature herself unnatural. Nature is an energy based economy, as are human economies (those things which we trade represent investments of energy, except that we have used the power of our minds to make it into something more useful. Markets existed long before the first amphibian poked it's head above water, and will continue to exist until the sun scorches the life out of the last surviving bacterium on the surface of the Earth.
You should understand that corporations couldn't exist without governments, which produce an artificial shield from liability for shareholders. If the shareholders themselves were vulnerable, people would be FAR more careful about who they invested with, as investing in a company that dumps toxic waste or that throws about frivolous lawsuits (think SCO) would soon find themselves served with papers requiring them to pay up for damages caused by the company they owned. In addition, even good natured companies wouldn't be able to grow to the giant proportions that they do now, as there would be no regulations imposing disproportionate burdens on new businesses entering the market. WIth no competition other than the already well established companies that formed prior to the institution of those regulations (why do you think there haven't been any major car companies founded in the last 50+ years?--safety regulations are expensive to comply with for a startup company).
In a non-fascist system, companies would mostly be ethical and small. Those few that grew large would do so because they have impeccable reputations, they pay their workers better than anyone else (thus retaining high quality workers), they sell their goods cheaper than anyone else (due to their higher efficiency), which are higher quality than most (due to having the most skilled workforce). This is how Ford worked when it was established. Why isn't it like that anymore? Regulations have strangled all new competition out of the marketplace, save for foreign companies that form in less highly regulated environments.
Sorry for the rant, but most people have a hard time with that. That is why most people are either democrats or republicans. Neither of those groups really understand the implications of government, or understand where the power of governments lay (the barrel of a gun).
The only thing evil about it is the force applied by the government in its enforcement. In a free market, there would be no such force, and thus no evil.
Also, you can't argue that capitalism leads fascism. Fascism is the polar opposite of capitalism. It's like saying by going north you are going south. It just doesn't make any sense. ANY form of government interference in the market, save for the prevention of force being applied unlawfully, is fascism.
DRM would NOT exist, because after a while, companies would realize that their stupid DRM is destroying their business, and would drop it. Even in our fascist economic system, DRM is slowly losing ground.
Easy, just say these words:
Klaatu barata ni...*mumble*
Well, close enough, anyways.
Most banks (are supposed to) frown upon paying a loan with another loan, in this case, a student loan. I had a lot of scholarships as well, but those are tenuous sources of income at best. With rental properties, it doesn't matter, because there is no long term commitment.
After I finished school, it was only by dumb luck that I found a job that paid a wage high enough for me to continue paying my mortgage, with enough room for advancement that I am now able to pay my student loans as well (I found a job listing on a company's website, and happened to know one of the principles of the company, having taken a class from him...when I went in to ask about the job, they hired me on the spot--a day later and it might have been someone else).
And in my case, there was no down payment, even though I wanted to pay one, they fast talked me into not getting one, which forced me to pay mortgage insurance even though I had enough cash at the time.
Anyways, that is besides the point. The point is that all that easy money that is freely available pushed prices up, both in terms of tuition, and in terms of housing prices. If It weren't for the freely available loans, I would have only been able to afford a house 1/3rd the cost of what I got, as it would have been for everyone, forcing prices down. It is the same with tuition. It has risen 3x as fast as inflation over the last 30 years because of the insatiable demand created by a culture that said that you HAVE to have a college degree to get even an entry level job anywhere, and a government that supported that assertion by mandating freely available loans to everyone.
If the loans weren't available, the culture would be different, as it was in the 70's, when people could easily work their way through school, and come out debt free on the other side. Instead, now we have a class of well educated, perpetually indebted wage slaves.
FYI, Anonymous Coward wasn't me.
a) the lynch mobs exist, but they are in the legislature and in the police.
b) race riots have mostly been supplanted by riots against those who disagree. Take for example the brutal suppression of practically every major peaceful protest that has taken place in the last ten years. Jackbooted thugs run rampant through our streets, cornering protesters so they can beat and arrest them en masse, whoever they are. It doesn't matter what party is in charge, as we saw with the recent G20 summit.
c) Maybe you haven't heard all the stories about "extraordinary rendition", which became "ordinary rendition" under Bush, and is no longer covered in the press under Obama.
How on Earth can you argue with a straight face that the Iraq war has ANYTHING to do with defending America? There are plenty of brutal dictators in the world that are far more powerful than Hussein was at the start of that war, yet I haven't seen anyone blustering for war with those guys (Libya, North Korea, and Syria come to mind, but also places like Zimbabwe, and Venezuela). That war was started due to pursuit of a personal vendetta by Bush (Hussein tried to have his father assassinated during GWI), and possibly in pursuit of oil.
Further, what does national security have to do with the American way of life? No-one is going to invade the US. Ever. We've got too many nukes. Why do we have to give up the freedoms that our forefathers fought and died for in exchange for the slavery that our military is now fighting and dying to uphold? You're a "right wing nutjob", so why do you want to spend our tax money on crap like that?
And finally, I wouldn't be so quick to divide up people as friends and enemies. One day, you may find yourself labeled an enemy of those in power (surprise! It already happened!). When that happens, you may well find yourself black bagged and taken off to to some third world hellhole for some "enhanced interrogation". It is far better to absolutely defend the rights of all people. In that way, you make friends rather than enemies, and those few enemies that remain find their power slipping away, with their organization eventually evaporating into nothing.
As a final note, I am a Republican, although I can't say that I have been proud of our party since we first took power back in the 80's and promptly abandoned our small government principles. Pacifism is far from suicide by proxy. Rather, it is a sheathed sword of terrible destruction that can only be unleashed by the violent aggression of others. There was never a need for the US to seek war outside of North America, save for the period after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
So you don't think that colleges charge whatever the market will bear?
Have you been to a US college recently? The one near me is still on a building spree that it has been on at least since I started there, eight years ago (I graduated and found a job in town). They have spent AT LEAST a half a billion dollars since I started paying attention, with the largest chunk being the first 100 million dollar expansion of the stadium to build box seats for rich donors. All this for a school with 30,000 students.
Also, you don't think the housing boom was caused by freely available cheap credit? Hell, while I was still in school, I was able to get a mortgage while I didn't even have a job! The mortgage payment was cheaper than rent!
Whoops, I was reading the one above him.
Damn Slashdot, hiding comments by dumb guys.
Hey, where'd my comment go!?
Starting?
Also, never use two words where one will do: fascism.
Understand that Somalia is not without government, it's just that it is full of nasty little competing governments with AK-47s, who, like most governments, only cares about enriching themselves through use of force and intimidation. Certainly, there isn't any oppression in the countryside coming from Mogadishu, but there is plenty coming from Abdullah ibn' Rasheed, the local warlord.
There isn't necessarily a dichotomy between rule by a central government and rule by mafia.
Foreign students leaving isn't what is putting our industries out of business. It's taxes (they're MUCH lower abroad), and increasingly onerous regulations. For every person you need to run an industry in China, you need three in America, one person to do the work, one person at the company to handle regulations compliance/tax accounting, etc, and one person in the government to make sure the regulations are being followed.
Basically, our productivity is a third of what it should be, given our technology and population level. This is why America is about to get a lot poorer.
Maybe you don't realize just how bad America has gotten in the last ten years. To be honest, I wonder if it was like this in Germany in the late 1920's.
He didn't say they were isolationist. He said it was US policy to attempt to isolate the Soviet Union (ie stop them from conquering other countries).
You mean the decreasing number of subsistence farmers are dirt poor, while those who are leaving their rural lives to join the industrial revolution are entering the middle and upper classes?
That sounds about right to me. Subsistence farmers are supposed to be poor, because they don't provide anything for anyone else. If the government gave them a bunch of money to make them not poor, it would only impoverish the rest of the country, as we have seen in North Korea.
No, China isn't a "libertarian laboratory". The government blocks any and all lawsuits against any industry or commercial interest considered "important" (ie whoever pays kickbacks to government officials). It's this protection that allowed toxic and inferior products to make it off of their shores. There was only action when the US media started taking up the fight, and then they overreacted by EXECUTING the leaders of those companies.
Honestly, what kind of retard confuses fascism (the integration of corporate and government power), and libertarianism (the total divorce of corporate and government power)? It's really infuriating when zealous liberals redefine words like "libertarian" and "capitalism" to mean "fascism", decry what happens under that fascism, then demand fascist fixes (like removing whatever feeble barriers are left between health insurance companies and government).
I think you'll notice it over the next decade as the currency collapses and the United States is torn to shreds by Civil War. You think it can't happen? Two years ago, no-one thought there could be another Great Depression either, yet here we are.
Also, understand that no government spending is "necessary". Rather, all government spending is in pursuit of two goals, re-election, and a cushy job for when the public realizes that you have betrayed them.