Designing For Jedi
theferrett.livejournal.com
theferrett.livejournal.com
Impugning your opponent's motivations is the lowest form of rhetoric.
However, I'd be really interested to hear your comments on some of the other points he makes, or the other threads of his argument (particularly, comparisons to history.)
(FWIW, I didn't submit the article because I whole-heartedly agree with it, I just thought it was quite well-written and interesting, and I thought it might generate some enlightening responses.)
Any Capitalist would make the rejoinder that society sucked so much in the Victorian era because society was so much poorer in aggregate. You could tax the rich at 90% and it wouldn't have stretched very far.
In the long run, the wages of labor are determined by labor productivity. Laws, unions, regulations, and other beloved institutions of the left can tinker with that ever so slightly at the margin but not by much. It is only through the accumulation of capital goods and the advancement of technology that a middle class arose. You can legislate all you want before that happens and you aren't going to do a ton of good. You can declare free unicorns for everyone but if you ain't got no unicorns then you'll leave people disappointed.
And after a capital stock is accumulated, labor becomes more productive, wages increase and life gets better of course ideologues of all stripes will claim credit for it.
Sorry that the crazies are ruining your rep.. but if you don't want it to happen, don't enable the crazies.
Politics makes people rude and irrational.
Maybe you're ok, but libertarians in general? Part and parcel of the tea party this year.
Unfortunately our system forces people to choose between the lesser of two evils and right now many people are blanching at the deficit.
And it's hard to get past that fundamental error to have some sort of "discussion". I am a libertarian right now, but the caricature in the post is so absurd I can't even take offense. Because I think an entity so utterly absurdly monstrous that its yearly budgetary overruns are measured in the trillions of dollars a year and it's unfunded liabilities measure in the hundreds of trillions should be cut down to size before it takes the entire world over a cliff, I want to see child labor laws repealed? It doesn't even make sense. There's not much to "counter".
In fact I actually consider myself a "Classical Liberal", which today makes you a "conservative" in terms of direction, but my destination isn't "anarchy". Just something much smaller, much more focused, much less resource intensive, and much less likely to crash the economy because there's every incentive to spend and no incentive to stop. (Which I actually consider the fundamental failure of liberalism, it in fact has become a direction and not a destination in practice. If you can identify some principle being used to decide when we have spent enough money on something, I'm all ears. And I mean a principle in use by the government, not some hypothetical principle that could be used by somebody, sometime.) If that's so unreasonable, well, I hope you enjoy the blasted remnants of the economy that results.
Part of the reason I want to see our government cut down to size is that when we crash the system, we will lose welfare and child labor laws and potentially civil order itself. I understand the impulse to circle the wagons and defend the government, but the simple fiscal reality is that if you really do like the results of a strong government capable of protecting its citizens, you really need to help me refocus it on those tasks or you'll be left with a government that can do nothing. Can you seriously imagine child labor laws being repealed in the US? I mean, seriously? This isn't even remotely a threat; economic collapse on the other hand at this point due to an overextended government is more like "can we avoid it or is it too late already?" Probability of a repeal of child labor laws is virtually zero; probability of a government without any ability to pay anyone to enforce them, rather greater than zero even if I am not yet panicking.
If you're not that extremist, great. But most libertarians, whether extreme or not, have an annoying tendency to approach every problem like they've studied it for decades and the answer is "less government". That's it! No need to know anything about the subject or even attempt to justify such a self-evident claim. In those cases it's hard to resist the Somalia retort.
At what point did I say to take away OSHA, welfare/SS/medicare, the 40-hour workweek (to the extent that it even exists), and etc. etc.? I'm somewhat less concerned about "burdensome regulations" and a lot more worried about crashing the economy right now. How much welfare will exist when the government is bankrupt?
(Er, well, actually that's a bad question. The government is bankrupt. So, how much welfare will exist when everybody realizes the US Federal government is bankrupt?)
The problem you face now when countering people like me and the reason this attitude is on the rise is that the entire premise that everything is fine and we shouldn't cut a dime from government spending and in fact we should spend as much more as possible (is it OK if I just guess at your ideas too?) is that it has become plainly obvious that that is completely fiscally unsustainable, and no amount of moralizing, philosophizing, theorizing, or any other sort of -izing actually adds to the wealth-generation side of the equation. A crashed government does nobody any good. Step one, keep the patient alive; worry about what he's doing and how well he's doing it after you've got that settled.
And if we're talking about budget balance and actual policy details? Great. That's what most libertarians never ever do, they just prattle on about how less government would be better in theory. Oh, and cut taxes.
So, again, not you specifically, but including you, I've almost never heard a practical policy suggestion from a libertarian. Something like "import drugs from canada, it saves money", or "repeal farm subsidies". All I hear is either the vague "less government" or occasionally the extremist Somalia routine that you very much are not proscribing.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/boehner-endorses-more-medicar...
90% of articles at Cato, Reason, and other libertarian publications between 2001 - 2009 were critical of Republicans when they were in power and running up a big debt, starting wars, and generally making a mess of the place.
If you listen to ACTUAL LIBERTARIANS, you will find plenty of unapologetic concrete plans for reducing government spending. These plans are ignored by 100% of Democrats and 90% of Republicans, but we hope in time to have a larger influence over society. People like you using the word "libertarian" even when you don't know what it means is a good sign that we are increasing our visibility at least.
They're still gonna line up behind the banner when it matters.
90% of everything Cato did during the Bush years was just the opposite, supporting the republican party and/or undermining the democratic party. Then they throw in a little 10% of criticism to make it look like they're principled, and people like you just fall right in line.
If you vote for republicans, you're a republican. Period. Here you are saying your plans are ignored by 100% of democrats, excuse me? Obama cut your taxes, and Republicans are the ones who time and time again ramp up government spending and deficits, then leave it to the democrats (Clinton, Obama) to clean up the mess.
And, yeah, you're increasing your visibility, but it's all tea party crazies. To these people, "i don't like government" is a synonym for "i don't like obama". There is no deeper principle there than that. Good luck with those guys.
Unfortunately, in American politics, you have to pick a side. I'm sympathetic to some bits of libertarian philosophy but I'll oppose anything that enables the Republican party with my wallet, my vote, my phone, and my shoe leather.
However, history tells us that even when the federal government is 1/8th the size it is today (as a percent of GDP) the US does not turn into Somalia, not even a little bit.
I tend to agree with you, then I thought Dr. Strangelove. This seems like a difficult line to draw.
As for laissez faire, I think every government has already concluded that it doesn't work very well.
One might think that with modern labour-saving technology (and the consequential age of leisure) that this might change. One theoretical counter-argument is that people seem to love to have "inferiors" - it makes them feel better about themselves - which probably comes from our innate sense of pecking order/dominance hierarchy etc. Being a part of human nature, changing that is a hard one. Evidence in support of this is how some US citizens treat illegal immigrant workers who don't enjoy the protection of labour laws etc - it is laissez faire in action, right now. Another example is how US corporations treat labour in developing countries (such as China), and detainees from other countries. Whoa, that's getting political.
OTOH, we must remember that trade - like language, law and religion - are created spontaneously by human communities. Our current society didn't just create it; it appears to be innate. However, the specific ideas of trade and civic structures that we have today are informed by centuries of experience and thought, and constitute a tremendous cultural refinement of the innate concept of trade. Unlike the foregoing, it seems that civilization is not quite innate in humans - we have to work at it.
While very well written and an enjoyable read, my problem with his opinion and the people who think Libertarians = Anarcho-capitalists is that they take it to the complete extreme. Democrats aren't Socialists, etc. My #1 desire with Libertarianism is for a smaller government, not a destroyed government.
Have you read "The Machinery of Freedom" by David Friedman or other pieces of anarcho-capitalist literature? If not, then what gives you the right to dismiss it so easily?
Being a moderate is nice because you get to be vague and stuff.
However, being a crazy radical actually does have a perk. It make me very open to technologies in a way that's just not possible with other political philosophy.
We might not agree with libertarians 100% of the time, but we're not lunatics, we're with you on social issues, not actually that far economically, and we approach problems with the intention of solving/ameliorating them, rather than using them as social dog whistles.
It beats hearing rhetoric about small gov't and then getting Medicare Part D (absolute budget disaster - and obamacare reduces the projected medicare deficit, for those keeping score at home)
What is it with religion/politics/"science" that makes person urn their brains off?
*during the fall of even numbered years, you're either a D or an R unless you actually vote third party
Edit: and its Spring now, anyway.