Derp Pirate Roberts
krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
It seems he's happy to have found a criminal proceeding involving "libertarian derp". Besides this implied negativity (not familiar with Krugman, but his language reveals his standings) and a poignant "amazing stuff" reaction at the bottom, Krugman actually offers no analysis, opinion, reaction, or addition to anything at all on the DPR proceedings. His quoting of this[0] story was entirely framed as an example of why being in the FBI "these days is a lot more fun" than in the setting portrayed in American Hustle.
Judging by the title, I was really hoping for a disection of bad opsec decisions. Guess I'll conflate 'krugman' with 'rhetoric' from here on out.
[0] - http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/business/eagle-scout-ideal...
tl;dr - Krugman watched American Hustle, then drew a half-hearted parallel between the movie and the criminal activity in the DPR and Silk Road case. He did this without saying much of anything about either subject while insulting libertarian belief systems with the use of the word 'derp'.
Old
> What you also get from the report is just how connected all this stuff is with libertarian derp
Much of prominent libertarian philosophy is derived from principles of nonviolence. Of course, it is infer thaf this statement to apply to all libertarians, but simply dismissing them as 'libertarian derp' based on one violent individual is deliberately misleading.
Also, talking about Amy Adams and her cleavage? This is the New York Times, not Maxim.
I expect better from Krugman.
lol
Turned out to be a contract-killing, drug-dealing, law breaking psychopath.
Seems to me there's a couple of avenues to turn onto here. One is to defend Libertarianism against its critics by badmouthing those who point out that Ulbricht really wasn't a particularly nice guy or a close adherent to the nonviolent principles screed on his LinkedIn page.
The other would be to disavow Ulbricht and make clear that his views have no place within the Libertarian camp, and that he's a false representative of the goals of the philosophy. Not that I'm any defender of Libertarianism (it's an infantile philosophy based on fabricated principles coopted by psychopathic timocrats, but that's a longer rant).
Which, in a slightly different context, is pretty much exactly the same sort of point that's been made with regards to extremest violence carried out in the name of Christian or Muslim traditions. Or corporate violence against individuals or groups. Or nationalist violence carried out by the any of a number of countries: Argentina, Syria, Egypt, the US, UK, Belgium, Japan, Germany, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, the USSR, South Africa, .... I'm not singling anyone out here, there's plenty of outrage to go around.
Yours, however, is misplaced.
Nelson Mandela has been embraced by people and organizations that I would otherwise classify as peace-loving. And they knew the entire time that he was a "terrorist"!
Ideologies are complex. One may agree with parts of a person's work, but not other parts of their means (or vice versa, or any other possible combination).
It's unfair to say that DPR's shady behind-the-scenes actions are somehow characteristic of an entire ideology that happened to agree with some other consequences of his work, and therefore grounds to dismiss them entirely.
The people NM was violently active against were also, as it turns out, acting violently against him, in the name of an absolutely abusive system.
And when he emerged from a 27 year captivity, he forgave them. Instituted and oversaw a peace and reconciliation process. And worked to heal rifts. Which is why he is absolutely revered around the world.
The same cannot be said of Ulbricht's actions and motivations.
Libertarians like myself generally don't have a problem with the drug-dealing and law-breaking part. The contract-killing is unfortunate, I agree.
Criminalizing drug usage is the wrong way to go. Making sure the market is very, very, very highly regulated, including producer and retailer liabilities for consequences, is required if you're going to address the tremendous negative externalities of drug use. And yes, I hold tobacco, alcohol, and (lawful) pharmaceutical industries to the same standard, noting that they largely fail to meet it.
Ulbricht's utter hypocrisy regards nonviolence is particularly telling.
If you legalize drug usage and still criminalize distribution, there will be black markets and the associated externalities of militarized gangs.
But fundamentally, I think we have different assumptions about free will and personal responsibility.
Your tu quoque fallacy doesn't make the negative consequences of addictive and life-threatening drug abuse any less severe. I was actually hoping to head off such a response with my observation that I'd include other harmful but legal substances among my list of those for which producers and merchants would be considered liable for consequences.
Naturally, I'd include other harmful substances, and there's ample evidence that sugar is one (diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and other consequences) among them. The jury's largely out on caffeine, but should it come in I'd add it. Though I'm not a gamer, I've actually got a bit of respect for the extent to which both gaming and CGI have advanced the state of information technology.
I've written before on the general problem of the dopamine-industrial complex:
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/8doc5ZPu...
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/TfoQaboP...
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/L6rNWuFo...
criminalize distribution
You are intentionally misrepresenting my explicit statement: "Criminalizing drug usage is the wrong way to go. Making sure the market is very, very, very highly regulated, including producer and retailer liabilities for consequences, is required". I appreciate honest representation of views, though sadly, it seems to be a persistently lacking trait in conversations I've had with Libertarians, as a simple observation of fact.
My own views of free will and responsibility are informed by considerable research and investigation on the matter. It's a complex phenomenon not particularly amenable to a priori assumptions "not subject to verification or falsification on the ground of experience and facts"
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Austrian_school#Even_they_admit...
I don't think I am -- in a very (very, very) regulated environment, the cost of substances which have perceived high externalities and are available on the regulated market will be much higher than the cost of the same substances on the black market. Or people will shift to alternatives and start sniffing glue.
Another difficulty is measuring the harm of drugs against the benefits -- how much do you factor in the subjective pleasure of the individual? What about the art, music and literature that was created by people under the influence of drugs?
> My own views of free will and responsibility are informed by considerable research and investigation on the matter.
I infer that you reject the notion of free will in certain circumstances, for example when the individual is under the influence of mind-altering substances. Does this also shape your opinion on free speech? (This is purely out of curiosity and completely tangential to other issues)
Decriminalization of pot has decreased marijuana prices. One of the reasons it's been opposed. To the extent of causing concerns among producers, if I recall stories correctly.
Re: glue sniffing.
Who's producing that glue? Yes, under dire and bleak circumstances people will resort to all sorts of destructive distractions. Wood alcohol and Krokodil are other examples. For cases in which there isn't a commercial provider, clearly, the manufacturer / merchant responsibility approach wouldn't apply. You'd still treat the addiction element as a health issue, not a criminal one. Parents drugging their kids might be another matter.
Re: creatives and drugs
I'm specifically talking about negative effects. If it turns out someone's not incurring a negative consequence, then fine. But the alcoholic author who rots their liver while gilding their prose should have a significant portion of health costs covered by the alcohol industry. You can spin your angels on pinheads and generate hypotheticals all you want, but at root what I'm talking about is a clearly articulable net social cost and a responsibility for that cost. You soil your social nest, you pay to clean it up. You know: accepting persona responsibility.
I infer that you ask vaguely leading questions without taking a clear stand on your own position. State yours.
Pot prices are low because they aren't taxed according to your suggested system. Once you start factoring in all the perceived negative effects the drug has on it's users (ignoring the positive effects, as you said), the price shoots up. Silk Roads will continue to exist.
Re: glue sniffing
So under your system, substances that can be abused as drugs while not marketed as drugs (also "bath salts") will be much cheaper than the regulated, taxed alternatives.
Let my clarify my position: regulation and heavy taxation of drugs is ineffective, unjustified and will have bad outcomes. Society fares better if individuals are made responsible for their choices.
Alcohol is regulated and taxed. Tobacco is regulated and taxed. Decongestants, cough syrup, and spray paint (not a drug, but a problematic retail good) are regulated, if not uniformly taxed.
There are limits to effective regulation, yes, but that's no reason to throw your hands in the air and abandon all of it, which is what you seem to advise. You're continuing to misrepresent my statement (I'm not "ignoring" positive effects, I am capturing negative externalities). And you've dodged and avoided the matter of personal responsibility as I've iterated it several times in accruing those negative externalities to those on whom the responsibility for them lies.
Why in your scheme of things should the cost of social ills be allocated to all while the benefits accrue only to a select few? That's precisely the same situation as exists in much of the present global financial markets where financial gains are privatized while losses are socialized. This generates marked adverse incentive and moral hazard problems. In some circumstances (but not all) the mechanism of that has been government action, but the point is that regulation and action can have the effect of capturing or socializing externalities.
My argument is that the capitalist market system works best when both profits and costs can be appropriately allocated to those on whom they are attributable. There are many cases where this requires significant intervention in market mechanisms, usually where boundaries of property (e.g., public health, pollution, broadcast of authored works) cannot be otherwise readily determined or enforced.
There's a reason Libertarianism remains a largely prepubescent pipe dream. It's a fantasy world.
You're kidding right?
People who take a position and refuse to alter that position no matter how
strongly the evidence refutes it, who continue to insist that they have
The Truth despite being wrong again and again.
* Predictions that the Federal Reserve's bond-buying program would result in double-digit inflation (or worse, Weimar-style hyperinflation), but then failing to change their views as the inflation rate hit historic lows.
* Claims that the rising price of gold indicates "true" inflation, but then continuing to rail about inflation as the gold price declines 36% from its highs.
Similar themes of sound money, the gold standard and Austrian economics are featured prominently in DPR's writings [1].
Krugman considers these to be "Zombie ideas" [2] that have been refuted by real-world experience, yet they continue to shamble forward. Hence, "derp".
[0] http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/regions-of-derpi...
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/04/29/collect...
[2] http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/02/bodyguard-of-zom...
The article abuses the word "derp" to sound hip, makes weak shots at people and ideas left and right (without ever arriving at an argument), and generally rambles on for a whole page.
What a waste, how did this make HN top 20?