74 replies to this topic

[bobdrake12]

Chris Matthews Tears Up Rand Paul On Hardball

Rand Paul defended by Walter Williams

[Alex Libman]

WEW's comparison between anti-discrimination laws and regulation of personal preferences in things like marriage is spot-on. All human relationships must be voluntary! Government's propaganda value aside, there is no difference between forcing you to do business with someone against your will and forcing you to date someone against your will, or between "minimum wage" and "minimum sex" laws!

[valkyrie_ice]

WEW's comparison between anti-discrimination laws and regulation of personal preferences in things like marriage is spot-on. All human relationships must be voluntary! Government's propaganda value aside, there is no difference between forcing you to do business with someone against your will and forcing you to date someone against your will, or between "minimum wage" and "minimum sex" laws!

I have to ask Alex:

Have you ever been homeless? Turned away from a shelter? Arrested for having less than 2 dollars in your pocket?
Have you ever been Hungry? So hungry that you hunted through a dumpster for food?
Have you ever had to sleep on a bench in a park, because it was the only place you find where the police wouldn't arrest you?
Have you ever spent a night shivering in the rain?
Have you EVER, in your entire life been a SLAVE to some overbearing boss who could work you 12 hour days 7 days a week and demand that you do anything, because the ONLY choice was to obey, or return to being homeless?

Every thing you say, every self righteous whine you utter about how cruel and oppressive the "government" is for daring to offer aid to the unfortunate, the poor, and the homeless, using the resources of the whole, every justification you give for why you should not have to share a tiny little bit of your labor to pay for all the benefits you enjoy tells me that the answer to all of those questions is NO.

You're a spoiled Brat, Alex. A spoiled brat whining about not being able to spend ALL his money on candy because, OMFG, daddy used a dollar of it to help someone in NEED.

And the more I read of your spoiled rich brat drivel, and the more I listen to all those who preach the Randian Gospel, the more I want to take every one of you and force you to live as a homeless person for the same two years I have, and see exactly how much of your self-righteous justification for avoiding accountability to your fellow man remains.


And to any and all moderators. Is there ANY way I can block all further posts from a particular sender so I never have to read Alex's drivel again?

[chris w]

And this is the basis behind Alex's beliefs, and behind all conspiracy theories. As a member of a social status lower than that of the top, he has developed the belief that he is only of his social status because he is being prevented from becoming his "natural" social status among the elites. Thus his belief that if the world, market, etc only changed to function as he believes it should, that he would no long be forced to be a member of a lower status class, and would naturally become an Alpha Elite. Thus all those who suffer do not count, because they are obviously of a lower social status then his, and thus have no meaning to him.

I agree that basically this is a psychological thing. The Libertarians strangely often happen to be of those groups of society that possess the skills that are currently deemed as the most economically worthy ( like dealing with computer programming ), so they think they will never need any kind of safety net, so - the existence of safety nets is unnecessary to them at all, but in order not to sound like they were soulless bastards - they have to believe that there will always be the private charity to take care of the unfortunates ( and if there isn't ? well, tough luck then ! ). They don't realise or refuse to, that in the scale of the planet, they are already living the dream, no matter what "atrocities" the mythical Government does to them, but despite that, still feel like their status is not the one they were really made for and want to work to get to the ultimate top and if everything else is blown away in the process, it doesn't really matter as long as they can keep each single one of their shiny coins in the end. If Coppola was to make a movie about this ideology, an appropriate name would be "Toys, Now !".

Even such ideologically biased heralds of this Randian Gospel as Alex see that there is a whole universe of distance between places like USSR and for example today's Denmark, but to keep the ideological image intact, they have to claim that Scandinavia is on the verge of collapse, while places like Uganda or Mongolia will be neat places in couple of years ( because of more free market and less state there ) and pretend it would always be better to live in the latters and not in a country with a system devised to help you when you're down on your luck and keep you from drowning as they feel they won't ever be in need of that. You would think that if even past years' most ardent and respected proponents of laissez faire like Joe Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs ( the author of Shock Therapy strategy of installing Capitalism that was applied in Poland among couple other countries, with grim collateral damage) are now critical of it, that will make the An Cap's revise their stance at least a little bit.

For all those apologists of "free entreprneur pushing the world further" and "taxation takes away the sweat of the brow" if any other arguments don't work for you, I strongly advice to watch some random episode of the Fabulous Life series on MTV or VH1, where you will see how many multicolour trans - oceanic ships one person can need or that you might have an urge for a separate room for shoes and another one for hats in your mantion, or My Sweet Little Sixteen and see what the extra money is spent for by members of higher middle classess, like chocolate 1:1 models of BMW for the spoiled little bitches that don't see any further than their own noses and cannot appreciate what miracle realm they had the fortune to be born into. The truth is that after basic nessesities of a human are fulfilled and after that - the social recognition, most people don't have anything else to do with their money, so they just feel like they can throw a big party to celebrate themselves and their own success and the whole world can as well starve and die, but God forbid anybody in need was actually helped with this money instead through taxation. Because that would be despicable.

Edited by chris w, 08 June 2010 - 06:52 PM.

[EmbraceUnity]

Very excellent points, valkyrie and chris.

Alex, your analogy doesn't hold. Minimum wage laws tell you what you cannot do, but your "minimum sex" scenario tells you what you have to do. Furthermore, a date simply effects two people (unless perhaps children are produced), but business effects everyone. You have tried to make false analogies between sex and other activities numerous times now, and this is just further evidence of your orwellian use of language.

I actually agree that minimum wage probably doesn't have that much of a positive effect on the working class in the short run, except perhaps in cases of price stickiness, inelastic demand, and so on. It is a price control, and like any other it can have negative effects on the market, though anyone who isn't retarded knows that the market fails to factor in all sorts of things.

My main concern is that our civilization reaches high levels of happiness and excellence. Drudgery must have no role in any respectable future. To fully convey the horror of certain forms of labor would require eloquence which I do not possess. I have had only brief stints in the food service industry, but enough to understand the suicidal tendencies which it can spark, and of course this is nothing compared to what some endure. The recent epidemic of suicides at the Foxconn plant in China, which was making iphone circuits, should be sobering to any who exalt our so-called "advanced" and "high tech" economy.

I do support minimum wage laws because in the long run they incentivize automation. However, these laws need to be done in concert with other nations for maximum effectiveness. If we do not have mechanisms to promote automation, capitalism will keep civilization stagnant because every time technological unemployment occurs, humans will become desperate and forced to underbid the machines. Thus, human labor will remain cheaper indefinitely, and we'd never see a time when sweatshops have become obsolete... unless of course there comes a time when they cannot underbid and just starve to death.

The minimum wage is far from sufficient to prevent either scenario, but it can work in tandem with other policies. The basic income, for instance. Or strong overtime laws.

It is depressing to me that until the technologies for providing basic necessities are completely abundant, it seems like each step towards abundance only allows human labor to become cheaper and thus allows laborers to undercut the price of machines further. If you make a machine that can make food cheaply and locally, but you still have to pay the rent, well now you are "free" to ask for an even lower wage and underbid automated labor. The market thus provides no consistent incentives to produce the technologies for automated production, and can even revert to manual labor even after the automated technologies are commonplace when the human labor becomes cheap enough.

Open source hobbyists and philanthropists might provide the technological innovation needed, but certainly not at the pace that could be achieved via the formal economy or the public sector, under the proper conditions (minimum wage, basic income, government prizes. etc). If a basic income were in place, then perhaps hobbyists alone could be depended upon, but even still it would be nice to have the multi-billion dollar funding that only the government can provide.

Edited by progressive, 08 June 2010 - 07:45 PM.

[valkyrie_ice]

Here's what David Brin has to say about Ayn Rand followers:

Why then, are most libertarians instead the most intransigent and obnoxious of fuming dogmatists, contemptuous of practicality or compromise, endlessly reciting nonsensical pseudo-religious catechisms from a dunce-prophetess and railing at the stupidity of their fellow citizens for having committed the unforgivable original sin known as Franklin Delano Roosevelt?

Cajoled by paid shills from the Cato, Heritage and American Enterprise “institutes,” most libertarians and libertarian-minded conservatives have been duped into calling government an inherently satanic foe of Manichean dimensions. Indeed, they see civil servants as the only force out there that’s inimical to liberty, something that Adam Smith (mindful of 4,000 years of history) would have found laughable. While worshipping at an altar of private property (coaxed coincidentally by propaganda paid for by billionaires), libertarians thus turn their gaze away from the two desiderata that ought to be the movement’s core focus:

Freedom and fair competition.

These are basic underpinnings of true markets, democracy, science and justice—and history shows that government can foster them as readily as hinder them. Just as private wealth can undermine them, and has done so, in nearly all human societies. Only through dynamic confrontation can the private and public realms prevent each others’ worst excesses. But that fact is too complex ever to be admitted by purists.

Freedom and fair competition. If these twin pillars again became the main goals of the brighter-right, there would be a shift of tectonic proportions. Libertarians and libertarian-minded conservatives would sever all links to both populist know-nothings and plutocrats. They would rescue what remains worth saving, from their hijacked and shattered movement, and thereupon rejoin us at the negotiating table, helping a coalition of civilized adults in search of new, agile, and creative ways to save civilization.

Sounds pretty dead on to me.

The whole post can be read here: http://ieet.org/inde...IEET/more/3999/

[valkyrie_ice]

I do support minimum wage laws because in the long run they incentivize automation. However, these laws need to be done in concert with other nations for maximum effectiveness. If we do not have mechanisms to promote automation, capitalism will keep civilization stagnant because every time technological unemployment occurs, humans will become desperate and forced to underbid the machines. Thus, human labor will remain cheaper indefinitely, and we'd never see a time when sweatshops have become obsolete... unless of course there comes a time when they cannot underbid and just starve to death.

The thing you are overlooking is that even cheap human labor has reached a point at which it simply CANNOT COMPETE with many machines in efficiency. Even if you can run thousands of employees, if five machines that cost the average of five employees each can do three times the work of those thousand employees, there is simply no comparison.

What happens in five years when VR is common? When SOFTWARE ALONE can replace thousands of storeclerks and cashiers? When buying one program can allow you to fill 10000 staff positions with virtual workers who never get sick, never screw up, and never take a break?

Humanity already cannot compete with machines. Capitalism has TRIED to keep civilization stagnate for almost a decade and technology just keeps right on advancing. We are already past the tipping point, and printing technology is going to accelerate it even more. That is why I so strongly support the Humanitarian rights of universal food shelter medical care security and education. Unless we take needs off the market, and ensure that people have some means to earn a guaranteed income, the market is simply going to collapse entirely. WORKERS ARE CONSUMERS. you cannot replace workers with machines without destroying the market. No workers means no consumers, means no market.

It's not going to mean Armageddon, but it does mean an awful lot of human suffering and misery before we reach the point of rebooting to an economy of abundance.

Essentially the Economy of Scarcity cannot continue in an age of abundance, and the harder we try to cling to that economic model, the worse we make things for ourselves.

[valkyrie_ice]

For example:

http://singularityhu...arehouse-video/

Starting in July, Quidsi, Inc will try to dominate drugstore retailers with Soap.com, an online megastore will sell 25,000 products – everything from toilet paper to makeup. According to Quidsi’s recent press release Soap.com will offer next day delivery for most of the country for free! How can they manage such fast order placement? Robots. As seen in the video below, KIVA robots allow Quidsi’s first megastore, Diapers.com, to turn their warehouse into a well oiled package processing machine. These same bots could help Soap.com conquer the world…of bathroom goods.


Quidsi struck gold in 2005 with the launch of Diapers.com by creating a super-reliable online retail outlet for baby products. The site sold more than $180 million last year, and is projected to hit $300 million for 2010. Soap.com could have a similar trajectory. The KIVA robotics system, as we’ve seen before, dramatically increases warehouse processing speed to keep up with the large orders that come through. Robots bring products to humans who stand in place, picking and sorting quickly. It’s a great example of how man and machine working together can maximize the efficiency of each.

[Neorxnawang]

The brits have nationalized hospitals and insurance.

It's true they do. However you an also buy private insurance over there e.g. Axa and Bupa. Private hospitals exist as do private medical practices - you can pay out of pocket for these if you want. Large companies may also have on-site private medical facilities(the company I worked for over there did) and many hospitals are opening up for private business to help fund the NHS services they provide.

However there is no opt out of the National Health Service.

[nep808]

They don't realise or refuse to, that in the scale of the planet, they are already living the dream, no matter what "atrocities" the mythical Government does to them, but despite that, still feel like their status is not the one they were really made for and want to work to get to the ultimate top and if everything else is blown away in the process, it doesn't really matter as long as they can keep each single one of their shiny coins in the end. If Coppola was to make a movie about this ideology, an appropriate name would be "Toys, Now !".

wow, you really bought the hole package.

this is not living the dream, you CAN do it, but governments are just another tool for forcing you into being slave. this is the modern version of the roman empire, freedom is our very nature and today you can't grow some cannabis plants, you can't marry two woman, and many many things, in the USA and some other countries even the death penalty is enforced. Of course we where not made to be witnesses of such LEGAL aberration, not only that... we have to pay for it, lol

and pretend it would always be better to live in the latters and not in a country with a system devised to help you when you're down on your luck and keep you from drowning as they feel they won't ever be in need of that.

what you call "luck", is mostly the result of concentrated, centralized power. Or it could be also caused by personal idiocity.

For all those apologists of "free entreprneur pushing the world further" and "taxation takes away the sweat of the brow" if any other arguments don't work for you, I strongly advice to watch some random episode of the Fabulous Life series on MTV or VH1, where you will see how many multicolour trans - oceanic ships one person can need or that you might have an urge for a separate room for shoes and another one for hats in your mantion, or My Sweet Little Sixteen and see what the extra money is spent for by members of higher middle classess, like chocolate 1:1 models of BMW for the spoiled little bitches that don't see any further than their own noses and cannot appreciate what miracle realm they had the fortune to be born into. The truth is that after basic nessesities of a human are fulfilled and after that - the social recognition, most people don't have anything else to do with their money, so they just feel like they can throw a big party to celebrate themselves and their own success and the whole world can as well starve and die, but God forbid anybody in need was actually helped with this money instead through taxation. Because that would be despicable.

yeah, let the government take all that money so they can invade and destroy more countries, sounds like fun... We can show some fraternity and blow up hiroshima and nagasaki again, to end the pain of those people with cancer from radiation.
Or we can double the bet on war on drugs... who needs shoes??? lets use that money to bust every dealer, so and then the bmws could pay for the the prision costs!!! FUN!!!!! Lets give less work to shoemakers and more to cops!!!!

Or we can REALLY help by paying a bunch of gorilas so they can create a housing boom!!! And then tax the hell out of everyone so that the "too big too fail" now become even bigger!!!! Because that's they way to help, you just give money to the bussines that should go broke, with the money of the people that is doing the right things... Poor citibank, they are out of luck and they need the money, lets hand them a few billion from the hard working people... Or even worse, lets give 700 billion and not disclose who got the money, I'm sure people will understand that their hard earned money is doing the grater good.

[cathological]

I have to ask Alex:

Have you ever been homeless? Turned away from a shelter? Arrested for having less than 2 dollars in your pocket?
Have you ever been Hungry? So hungry that you hunted through a dumpster for food?
Have you ever had to sleep on a bench in a park, because it was the only place you find where the police wouldn't arrest you?
Have you ever spent a night shivering in the rain?
Have you EVER, in your entire life been a SLAVE to some overbearing boss who could work you 12 hour days 7 days a week and demand that you do anything, because the ONLY choice was to obey, or return to being homeless?

Every thing you say, every self righteous whine you utter about how cruel and oppressive the "government" is for daring to offer aid to the unfortunate, the poor, and the homeless, using the resources of the whole, every justification you give for why you should not have to share a tiny little bit of your labor to pay for all the benefits you enjoy tells me that the answer to all of those questions is NO.

You're a spoiled Brat, Alex. A spoiled brat whining about not being able to spend ALL his money on candy because, OMFG, daddy used a dollar of it to help someone in NEED.

And the more I read of your spoiled rich brat drivel, and the more I listen to all those who preach the Randian Gospel, the more I want to take every one of you and force you to live as a homeless person for the same two years I have, and see exactly how much of your self-righteous justification for avoiding accountability to your fellow man remains.


And to any and all moderators. Is there ANY way I can block all further posts from a particular sender so I never have to read Alex's drivel again?

Why don't you have some welfare babies?

[chris w]

They don't realise or refuse to, that in the scale of the planet, they are already living the dream, no matter what "atrocities" the mythical Government does to them, but despite that, still feel like their status is not the one they were really made for and want to work to get to the ultimate top and if everything else is blown away in the process, it doesn't really matter as long as they can keep each single one of their shiny coins in the end. If Coppola was to make a movie about this ideology, an appropriate name would be "Toys, Now !".

wow, you really bought the hole package.

this is not living the dream, you CAN do it,but governments are just another tool for forcing you into being slave. this is the modern version of the roman empire, freedom is our very nature and today you can't grow some cannabis plants, you can't marry two woman, and many many things, in the USA and some other countries even the death penalty is enforced. Of course we where not made to be witnesses of such LEGAL aberration, not only that... we have to pay for it, lol

My post you've replied to was rant-ish, I wouldn't make too much of it, but I see your response is according ( how you jumped from it to bombing Hiroshima to alieviate the pain of radiated people is beyond me, and I can strongly assure you that I don't advocate doubling funds for war on drugs 'cause I'm not that very keen on doubling my own chances of getting locked up ).

You're from Argentina right Nep808 ? I have a fresh, clear cut, no - ideological - bullcrap - inside example just from north of your border, so that you see what is my bottom line in financial freedom vs coercion issues - the case of Brasilian slave plantation workers liberated couple of months ago, 4 634 liberated last year and estimated at least 25 000 still to go, if they're found wherever they are by the officials.
If this case breakes down in this way that a special government agency with sufficient fire power has to exist that is funded from taxes to help those people because nothing and noone else will, then you can call me a supporter of the new Roman empire or whatever else you wish, it's really of secondary weight to me. I sure don't believe it's rightfull if things of such moral magnitude were ever left to deal with by some competing, private, mercenary-bussiness entities acting on a strictly voluntary, cost/profit calculated grounds ( if that is what you propose, since I take it from you post that you lean libertarian ) whose shareholders in a particular case might just decide "naaah, it doesn't add up for us". I think it's not for enslaved people to count on that their release is profitable enough for somebody to take up the mission, it has to happen no matter what and irrelevantly if it does or doesn't calculate , and if this means that a fat cat's wallet will have to get thinned in the process, well, I'm willing to hang out in Purgatory after I die for compromising on holiness of the right to property.

As much as I like discussing politics, I have yet to see one person ever change their view in such debates. If people don't agree on such elementary ethical situations, there's no point in them, everyone can just lay their cards in front of each other. Nighty night.

Edited by chris w, 19 September 2010 - 03:11 AM.

[ChromodynamicGirl]

Rand Paul isn't a libertarian, and neither is Ron Paul, and anyone who thinks so doesn't know what the word means.

[niner]

Rand Paul isn't a libertarian, and neither is Ron Paul, and anyone who thinks so doesn't know what the word means.

Of course not. Rand Paul is a crackpot/dilettante. Pops is principled, but still leans crackpot. My favorite Paul is Ru.

And George W Bush isn't a conservative...

But Obama is a Marxist... What a hall of mirrors we inhabit, eh?

[ChromodynamicGirl]

Of course not. Rand Paul is a crackpot/dilettante. Pops is principled, but still leans crackpot. My favorite Paul is Ru.

And George W Bush isn't a conservative...

But Obama is a Marxist... What a hall of mirrors we inhabit, eh?

Well, all of those things have one thing in common. The official story is the opposite.