Understanding Political Philosophy - Progressives vs Conservatives vs Independents

[jrodefeld]

I am writing this in an attempt to ascertain an understanding of the philosophic underpinnings that form your political beliefs. I think this is critical to be able to define our terms because it seems almost none of the politicians actually believe in anything, rather they just cheer their "team" (political party) and reflexively block anything the other side proposes. So, what exactly do you believe in? Given the changing political dynamics over the last forty to fifty years, it has become increasingly difficult to understand exactly what it means to be a conservative, to be a liberal, or a progressive. For most people it seems to be a cultural thing. If you were born in a certain demographic, you just vote Republican. Another person born to a different demographic with different cultural influences, will vote Democrat because thats what their parents did. Few would dispute that both political parties are significantly different than they were fifty years ago, and arguably both much worse than they once were. If we can all agree that as a country we are in deep shit at the moment, the situation begs a reexamination of basic beliefs of the role of the government, the different foreign policy and fiscal reforms that we should pursue, as well as a critical analysis of how the system broke (we can admit the system is broken, right?) and how to fix it. We should transcend partisan rhetoric and examine different and unique solutions to the pressing issues of the day.

Me, personally, I despise both political parties equally. I consider myself an Independent Libertarian. I have thought deeply about why liberals think the way they do, and why conservatives think the way they do. I think they are both flawed and incomplete in the logic generally used by proponents of either ideology. I think the wisdom we should be pursuing should transcend these labels and exist as the deep, morally consistent and timeless philosophy of individual liberty which is so ingrained in the psyche of every human being. It seems to me that one aspect of the debate (or the way it is framed) is that one either trusts the government or the corporations to solve problems. I advocate that you trust neither. I also think it is misleading to assume an inverse relationship between the two. People think that if the government were to shrink, corporate power would necessarily expand as a result and vice versa. This is profoundly wrong as I will explain shortly.

I will post my analysis of the common debate and ask for your reactions. Liberals especially. I have no love for the Republican Party, but it is Obama and the Democrats which are pursuing policies that I feel will be very destructive to our country so forgive me if I criticize the democrats a little more on this thread. Liberal Progressives, in my experience, seem to show very little regard for certain important issues which I will raise. Please try not to think of this as left vs right. Rather, think about the underlying philosophy behind your own beliefs and the ones I will be presenting.

I will now list the fundamental beliefs I hold with regards to the proper role of government in society and the system we should adopt if we are to get back to prosperity and happiness. Liberals and Progressives, especially, please tell me why this is wrong and what would happen if we adopted these policies.

1. I believe in a small, limited Federal Government which can only pursue those functions expressly authorized in the Constitution. If we want our federal government to take on new responsibilities, the ONLY way to do this would be through the slow and deliberate process of Amending the Constitution. This would result in a decentralized, Federalist system of governance.

2. I strongly oppose ALL forms of corporate subsidies, no bid contracts, back room deals and other influence buying that tilts the tables in favor of Corporate America. The goal of the Federal Government should be to "regulate" (not as the term is used today) the Free Market, meaning insuring that there IS a Free Market and it remains free. That means preventing anyone from gaining favors from government or "gaming the system". That means any barriers to entry in a market by new competitors should be eliminated. The roll of our Federal Government is to enforce contracts and prosecute fraud and criminal activity to the fullest extent of the law. Maintain equal justice under the law. In addition, NOBODY should be too big to fail. Allow any and all bankruptcies to occur.

3. I strongly oppose a Central Bank setting interest rates, and printing money endlessly. I believe we should eliminate the Federal Reserve and place its functions back under the Treasury as the Constitution demands. Furthermore, we should again back our currency by a tangible asset such as Gold. This will prevent abuse of the People's money and protect ones savings from the debasement of inflation. Banks should go bankrupt just like any other private business. Also, we should allow competing currencies to circulate. If someone wants to exchange gold or silver certificates, for example, in a voluntary exchange for goods or services they should be allowed to. This is an additional safeguard which would prevent abusive and destructive monetary policy by our federal government.

4. We should cut back our military drastically. We should only go to war under an official Declaration of War by the Congress as a result of irrefutable proof of a threat to national security after intense and meaningful debate. We should remove our troops from around the world and shut down all military bases becoming neutral in the disputes of other nations, not picking a side. We should have a small (not too small), effective military that is able to provide adequate defense of this country rather than aggressive, imperialistic offense perpetrated on the rest of the world. This alone would boost our popularity immensely around the world. People would once again look up to us as a model of Freedom and Justice rather than an imperialistic threat to be feared.

5. All education should be private or a product of local community government. The Federal government should stay out of education completely and fully. Education is power. Different schools should be teaching different things. Not completely different subjects, but different curriculums, different approaches to education. If we have every public school in the country teaching basically the exact same things and the same curriculum, this doesn't breed excellence in education and diversity of skills, it breeds mindless drones who all think alike. I think an Independent, free education system is one of the only means to ensure the prevention of tyrannical government. I mean, think about it. Why wouldn't government schools push political propaganda on the students? Why would they teach kids how to effect meaningful lasting political change or how to effectively overthrow the political establishment? To protect liberty for the future it is imperative that the next generations are taught well.

6. ALL abuse of our liberties should end. No more warrantless wiretapping, restoration of habeas corpus, eliminate the Patriot Act, unnecessary screening at airports, and allow all voluntary consensual activity that harms nobody.

7. Eliminate all regulatory red tape restricting small business and harming entrepreneurship and eliminate so called "free trade" agreements like NAFTA. This would encourage a new manufacturing base to reemerge in America and allow it to take hold. It should not be more profitable to ship business overseas than to create more jobs in this country.

8. Phase out bankrupt Federal medical entitlements such as Medicare. Encourage local governments, charity hospitals and humanitarian organizations to pick up the slack. Ensure medical freedom. Freedom to choose your own doctor, freedom to ensure your medical records stay private and confidential, freedom to choose alternative medicine and treatments for illness. No regulation of supplements and herbal products, no mandatory vaccines, no authoritarian approach to delivering medical care. Encourage market forces to lower medical prices until nearly all could afford basic medical care out of pocket, no insurance necessary. And last but not least, no crippling debt for future generations to pay off due to an insolvent medical entitlement program.

9. The United States should leave the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF, the Council on Foreign Relations, and all similar unelected international bodies that don't serve the interests of the american people. We can engage in robust diplomacy with other nations on our own, rather than though an organization that has its own interests and agenda at heart. Make no mistake about it, our government should make it very clear that its loyalties lie with the American people, the Constitution and Bill of Rights and the Republic, which leads to...

10. Make it very clear that our system of government is NOT democracy. It is a Constitutional Republic. A democracy is Tyranny by the Majority. In a democracy 51% of the population can vote away the rights of 49%. A Republic is a government run by laws, in this case the Constitution. Its primary function is to ensure equal freedom for ALL Americans, not just the majority. It is the minorities rights that need protecting.


The reasons our country is so divided is that we have thought of liberty as two different aspects. Liberals are more likely to support Personal Liberty but favor restricting Economic Liberty. Conservatives are more likely the opposite. But mostly they both agree to restrict both personal and economic liberty. We should again see liberty as a whole worth defending in its entirety. Conservatives should see that a person should be allowed to smoke marijuana or a gay couple should be allowed to get married if they want. By the same token, Liberals should see that the Second Amendment deserves protection and abandon all notions of "Gun control" because it would infringe on this Constitutional Right. Furthermore, Liberals should see that it infringes upon the rights of Conservatives to forcefully take their money to fund a wealth transfer to some politically favored cause, frequently one that the Conservative may have a deep moral or philosophical objection to. This system of plundering and using the Government as a tool of force to take advantage of another group of Americans breeds anger and resentment. Before we provoke a new Civil War, why don't we come together to reestablish Freedom as an indivisible whole that deserves total protection in a just and equitable society?

So many liberals object to what I have written on grounds that we need a powerful government for "the common good". I believe this implies an immense trust in Government that is both irrational and naive. We all, I assume, hold the Founding Fathers in high esteem, right? Why is it then, that if someone today advocated much of what they themselves believed, you would consider that person a crackpot and call them names? Is that what our country has become? The other argument is that in the absence of a powerful Federal Government, the corporations would become too powerful and would abuse the public and become Tyrannical themselves. The truth is, as the Federal Government expanded in power over the last century, so too did the power of Corporations over all of us expand as well. For a corporation or business to have the power to do significant harm to the public and the country they require the cooperation of government. On their own Corporations have very little power. They can convince me to buy their product. If I don't and others don't as well, they fail. I can go my entire life without interacting with a corporate entity I don't like. Not so with the Government. Free Markets are based on persuasion and voluntary associations. Governments are based on Force and imply violence to achieve their ends. Government is a continuous burden felt upon the lives of most Americans, holding them back. Corporations today are also a significant burden (like the Health Insurance companies) but they are that way as a result of government, not as a result of a Free Market. In our earlier history, corporations and businesses were not wholly ethical (many polluted, some treated their workers unfairly or otherwise acted deceptively towards the public) yet these abuses were very self contained and the harm to larger society was very minimal. Now, a few financial firms have the ability to bring our entire economy to ruin and devastate the lives of millions of Americans. Even the most revisionist historian must admit that corporate abuse was not this rampant during the late 19th century. During that time we had the largest economic expansion in world history. Unprecedented wealth was created and the lives of average american were made drastically better due to the energy and creativity unleashed in the Free Market. Adhering to the principles I laid out, we built up the United States to be the greatest country the world had ever seen. Yes, there were instances of corporate abuse and lobbying of our government even back then. Yet we had essentially a Free Market at work and a money which maintained its value. Revisionist historians like to overplay the idea of horrific corporate abuse and chaos during this time to cover for the massive expansion of federal government power that came later, yet that is quite misleading. If you compare the misconduct of corporate america vs the atrocities and harm perpetrated on the American citizens in the last century by our federal government, it is not even close, Government is a greater threat to liberty. And, contrary to what you may have heard, shrinking the government is an attack on Wall Street and corporate America. These lobbyists and white collar criminals don't want to compete fairly in a Free Market. They want to be bailed out and protected from losses all at once. So we can restrain Government power and Corporate power in one fell swoop by simply strictly adhering to the Constitution.

Could all of you, especially liberals, tell me why I am wrong in my beliefs? Also, please tell me how you reconcile a belief in something that directly contradicts all the warnings and philosophy of the Founding Fathers and the limited Constitutional government they so valiantly fought for. So many people just say, "Well, we just don't do things that way anymore. We are never going back, so don't think about it." I fail to see the logic in why the wisdom of the Founders is not applicable today. Of course times change and our Constitution was meant to adapt slowly to changing needs. I'm talking about the basic beliefs in liberty and the spirit of the philosophy which our current political establishment has rejected. When is the last time you even hear a politician campaign on individual freedom and liberty? They all run by bribing the public with free "stuff". There is no integrity left in our government.

So, especially those who support Obama's policies (which are 100% opposite of pretty much everything I have said here), where do I go wrong? Why is the Constitution not worth upholding? Why is circumventing the Congress through Executive power grabs, signing statements, secret bailouts by the Fed, preemptive war and everything else that first Bush and now Obama are pushing through superior in any way to the timeless wisdom of a government ruled by laws as established by great men like Washington and Jefferson? I await your responses.

[Der Trihs]

1. I believe in a small, limited Federal Government which can only pursue those functions expressly authorized in the Constitution. If we want our federal government to take on new responsibilities, the ONLY way to do this would be through the slow and deliberate process of Amending the Constitution. This would result in a decentralized, Federalist system of governance. It would result in a crippled, irrelevant government incapable of adapting to change, and eventually collapsing. Or a government that simply started ignoring the law in order to do its job, in which case it would likely run out of control.

. In addition, NOBODY should be too big to fail. Allow any and all bankruptcies to occur. Which would result in general chaos and massive suffering on a regular basis. People are more important than economic ideological purity.

3. I strongly oppose a Central Bank setting interest rates, and printing money endlessly. I believe we should eliminate the Federal Reserve and place its functions back under the Treasury as the Constitution demands. Furthermore, we should again back our currency by a tangible asset such as Gold. This will prevent abuse of the People's money and protect ones savings from the debasement of inflation. Banks should go bankrupt just like any other private business. Also, we should allow competing currencies to circulate. If someone wants to exchange gold or silver certificates, for example, in a voluntary exchange for goods or services they should be allowed to. This is an additional safeguard which would prevent abusive and destructive monetary policy by our federal government. All of which would result in economic collapse. The gold standard went away because it wasn't working anymore. Banks going bankrupt will impoverish millions, even without the rest. And foreign investment and trade with the US would crater as every nation on Earth ran away screaming from a nation bent on economic suicide.

5. All education should be private or a product of local community government. The Federal government should stay out of education completely and fully. Education is power. Different schools should be teaching different things. Not completely different subjects, but different curriculums, different approaches to education. If we have every public school in the country teaching basically the exact same things and the same curriculum, this doesn't breed excellence in education and diversity of skills, it breeds mindless drones who all think alike. I think an Independent, free education system is one of the only means to ensure the prevention of tyrannical government. I mean, think about it. Why wouldn't government schools push political propaganda on the students? Why would they teach kids how to effect meaningful lasting political change or how to effectively overthrow the political establishment? To protect liberty for the future it is imperative that the next generations are taught well.In other words, you want to produce millions of people who will never be exposed to unapproved ideas. Millions who will be taught in school that
God wants them to kill the Jews, kill the blacks, enslave women, or wants them to buy Pepsi, depending on who funds the school in question. You are, unsurprisingly engaging in the standard libertarian fantasy of pretending that the government is the only threat to freedom.

7. Eliminate all regulatory red tape restricting small business and harming entrepreneurship and eliminate so called "free trade" agreements like NAFTA. This would encourage a new manufacturing base to reemerge in America and allow it to take hold. It should not be more profitable to ship business overseas than to create more jobs in this country. It would create major casualties as people sicked and died from unsafe products and services. And further hurt American trade as foreigners refused to buy anything American. I'd say that it would hurt the consumption side of the American economy as well because Americans would try to buy safer, better foreign products; but I'm not sure other countries would accept American money after your other "reforms".

8. Phase out bankrupt Federal medical entitlements such as Medicare. Encourage local governments, charity hospitals and humanitarian organizations to pick up the slack. Ensure medical freedom. Freedom to choose your own doctor, freedom to ensure your medical records stay private and confidential, freedom to choose alternative medicine and treatments for illness. No regulation of supplements and herbal products, no mandatory vaccines, no authoritarian approach to delivering medical care. Encourage market forces to lower medical prices until nearly all could afford basic medical care out of pocket, no insurance necessary. And last but not least, no crippling debt for future generations to pay off due to an insolvent medical entitlement program. In other words, mass death. Plagues, poisoned and ineffective "medicines", and the impoverished dying with no help at all. Just like the good old days, before the government programs and regulations you hate were put into place.

Furthermore, Liberals should see that it infringes upon the rights of Conservatives to forcefully take their money to fund a wealth transfer to some politically favored cause, frequently one that the Conservative may have a deep moral or philosophical objection to. This system of plundering and using the Government as a tool of force to take advantage of another group of Americans breeds anger and resentment. In other words, the wealthy and selfish should be allowed to play parasite. They should be allowed to take and take and never give anything in return, even if the result is the collapse of society.

And I find it significant that you ignore the fact that taxes pay for things that liberals don't like either.

l Before we provoke a new Civil War, why don't we come together to reestablish Freedom as an indivisible whole that deserves total protection in a just and equitable society?Because what you are advocating is an evil society, not a "just and equitable" one. Or at least, it would be evil right up until it collapsed into a failed state and anarchy.

So many liberals object to what I have written on grounds that we need a powerful government for "the common good". I believe this implies an immense trust in Government that is both irrational and naive. It represents the recognition that that's the only method that has ever worked. It recognizes that personal freedom exists primarily because the government ensures that it does. And it recognizes that the fact that such strategies to protect freedom by weakening the government are doomed to fail, both because they ignore non-governmental dangers to freedom, and because they ignore the fact that a government weak enough that it can't threaten freedom is too weak to do anything at all. In other words, anarchy and warlordism; a government that lacks the power to be a tyranny also lacks the power to prevent other groups from making themselves into tyrants.

We all, I assume, hold the Founding Fathers in high esteem, right? No. They were slaveowning genocidal vermin.

The other argument is that in the absence of a powerful Federal Government, the corporations would become too powerful and would abuse the public and become Tyrannical themselves. The truth is, as the Federal Government expanded in power over the last century, so too did the power of Corporations over all of us expand as well. For a corporation or business to have the power to do significant harm to the public and the country they require the cooperation of government. Garbage. They don't need the government to force people to work under horrible conditions, to defraud people, to form monopolies and other exploitative arraignments, or to have people they don't like murdered; they need the government to keep them from doing so.

Free Markets are based on persuasion and voluntary associations.Not to mention lies, coercion, manipulation, bribes, and outright force (including various forms of slavery). Unless that is you have a government willing and able to force civilized behavior.

Governments are based on Force and imply violence to achieve their ends. Government is a continuous burden felt upon the lives of most Americans, holding them back. Government is what holds society together, it defends freedom, produces stability. There's a reason why "failed state" is a synonym for "hellhole". Government uses force and the threat of force because that is the only way to maintain order, and to keep the levels of forced used in society to a minimum.

Corporations today are also a significant burden (like the Health Insurance companies) but they are that way as a result of government, not as a result of a Free Market. In our earlier history, corporations and businesses were not wholly ethical (many polluted, some treated their workers unfairly or otherwise acted deceptively towards the public) yet these abuses were very self contained and the harm to larger society was very minimal. Now, a few financial firms have the ability to bring our entire economy to ruin and devastate the lives of millions of Americans. Even the most revisionist historian must admit that corporate abuse was not this rampant during the late 19th century. During the Gilded Age?! Don't be ridiculous. It was far worse; they didn't have a government willing and able to do much to protect the populace, or maintain economic stability.

[jrodefeld]

It would result in a crippled, irrelevant government incapable of adapting to change, and eventually collapsing. Or a government that simply started ignoring the law in order to do its job, in which case it would likely run out of control.

You have nothing to back your baseless accusations. Exactly how would a Constitutional government collapse? As far as a government ignoring the law and running out of control, I think you described our current government, not the one I am talking about. It is the peoples job to ensure that the government follows the Constitution and the rule of law. If the people are not vigilant, they will get bad government. You still haven't responded to this point: Why couldn't local, state governments pick up the slack and do similar programs and initiatives to that of our Federal Government, except with more understanding of the needs of the people of that state? Do you reject the notion that local government is better and more responsive government?



Which would result in general chaos and massive suffering on a regular basis. People are more important than economic ideological purity.

Again, you really must be truly ignorant of basic economics if you believe that. Its called personal responsibility. The only way capitalism works is if bad businesses fail. I'm talking especially about the Wall Street firms and giant corporations. They are big and powerful because we always bailed them out, they continued making mistakes and got even bigger.

Why steal from the middle class to allow some scum Wall Street Fat Cat to keep his Yacht? Should I assume you supported the bailouts? How did that help the economy? Its also a matter of fairness. Do you honestly believe a governments role is to pick winners and losers in the market? This breeds corruption and corporate influence and control of our government. I want government and business to be separate entities entirely.


All of which would result in economic collapse. The gold standard went away because it wasn't working anymore. Banks going bankrupt will impoverish millions, even without the rest. And foreign investment and trade with the US would crater as every nation on Earth ran away screaming from a nation bent on economic suicide.

Nonsense. Our current Keynesian, Fiat money system has lead to economic collapse. The Gold Standard "went away" because greedy banks and ambitious politicians didn't want to have any limits to their power, not because it somehow hurt the economy. What do you have against honest money that maintains its value? Do you like having money that is continually debased year after year? One thing you should learn, if you ever get around to actually learning some economics is that fiat banking systems always end in the destruction of the currency. It is inevitable. If there is no restraint on the ability to print money to fund anything, they print too much causing hyperinflation and the complete destruction of their society. Many economists and trends forecasters see this coming within a few years. That is economic suicide.

In other words, you want to produce millions of people who will never be exposed to unapproved ideas. Millions who will be taught in school that
God wants them to kill the Jews, kill the blacks, enslave women, or wants them to buy Pepsi, depending on who funds the school in question. You are, unsurprisingly engaging in the standard libertarian fantasy of pretending that the government is the only threat to freedom.

The government is NOT the only threat to freedom. I never claimed it is. Why wont you admit it is A threat to freedom (one of many)? Do you think our public education system is working out well and producing a highly intelligent population capable of critical thinking? Neither do I. I went to a private school in high school and got a tremendous education. I want more people to be able to get that kind of education. You point out that some schools could teach things that would be bad. First of all, nobody is going to be allowed to teach that its okay to commit violence on anybody. That is against the law, that should be obvious. But in terms of the curriculum, vastly different approaches could be taken to education fitting the needs of the students. For example, in the private school I went to, we didn't have five periods every day of 50 minutes or so. We had a scattered schedule where Mondays and Wednesdays we had three periods of an hour and a half and on Tuesday and Thursday, we had three periods of different subjects. Then on Fridays we had all classes shortened to about 50 minutes. This allowed us to really delve into subjects more thoroughly and learn more.

Why not leave education to local governments? Why do we need the Department of Education? Shouldn't parents have a say in their kids education? Some may choose to have things like prayer in school, for example. I don't personally approve of this, but in a Free country in a religious part of the country, people should be allowed to do this. Education and literacy rates would shoot through the roof if we followed through on my reforms of the education system.

By the way, what is your opinion on School Vouchers? Say an unrestricted Voucher worth $7000 a year to send a kid to any private school a parent chooses. Would you approve of this or not?



It would create major casualties as people sicked and died from unsafe products and services. And further hurt American trade as foreigners refused to buy anything American. I'd say that it would hurt the consumption side of the American economy as well because Americans would try to buy safer, better foreign products; but I'm not sure other countries would accept American money after your other "reforms".

Okay, this is one of the major things advocates of big government claim, that we need the Federal government to inspect products to ensure they are safe. What if the government just gave "recommendations" of product safety but could not ban products and services outright? Obviously if someone was selling something that was blatantly unsafe and cause serious illness or death, people have recourse and the people responsible can be put in jail for their negligence. But the Federal Government can (and does) ban products that are perfectly safe because of pressure from a certain industry or lobby. For example, the FDA has banned many proven medical treatments used in other countries because they cut in on a drug companies profits. Don't assume that the government is simply working in our interests.

All Fraud and knowing contamination of a product should be illegal and there should be consequences to doing so. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the 160,000 pages of federal regulation that is killing small business and driving our manufacturing base overseas. If you know anyone who has tried to start a small business, ask them what kind of hoops they have to jump through just to get off the ground. We need an economic recovery, we need to start producing things again, and we need an increased productive capacity. We should start by removing so many of these harmful, ineffective regulations that restrict free enterprise.

And honestly, why would anybody looking to make a profit and be successful have any incentive to put out unsafe products and services? And what exactly are unsafe products and services? Apart from Food and Drug products, I fail to see how most small business would be a major threat if we didn't have federal regulators coming down hard with repressive regulations.





In other words, mass death. Plagues, poisoned and ineffective "medicines", and the impoverished dying with no help at all. Just like the good old days, before the government programs and regulations you hate were put into place.

Bullshit. If we DON'T reform and phase out Medicare and Medicaid they will end on their own due to fiscal reality setting in. We cannot possibly afford it looking into the future. So a complete collapse of the system is worse than an orderly transition towards private options, Right?

Why don't you point to any evidence to support Plagues and Mass Death occurring before Medicare was enacted? Why not look to local help, charity hospitals, any emergency room will take anybody who is sick and dying. Nobody is going to be thrown out on the streets. It just displays a tremendous lack of imagination to think that we couldn't have a working society any other way than supporting the current Welfare State.


In other words, the wealthy and selfish should be allowed to play parasite. They should be allowed to take and take and never give anything in return, even if the result is the collapse of society.

And I find it significant that you ignore the fact that taxes pay for things that liberals don't like either.

I do agree that taxes pay for things liberals don't like also. Like the Iraq War. I don't understand this statement, "The wealthy and selfish should be allowed to play parasite." What? If a person makes their money by gaming the system, or through fraud or other unethical means, then we should remove their ability to "play the game". If a person makes their money honestly through hard work and entrepreneurship then they should be able to keep the fruits of their labor. They shouldn't have their money stolen to give to some politically favored cause. This is called "Economic liberty". Why do you want to punish those who are successful? I agree with the corporatism and the banks and insiders, but what about the honest, successful businessman? If we had a Constitutional government, ALL business would only be able to make profits in an honest and ethical manner. It is the only fair and just system.



Because what you are advocating is an evil society, not a "just and equitable" one. Or at least, it would be evil right up until it collapsed into a failed state and anarchy.

A society based on the principles of individual liberty, peace, and persuasion and voluntary cooperation, rather than one base on coercion, violence, endless wars and wealth transfers, is an evil society? I think the latter is the "evil" society. As far as a collapsing and failing state, don't you see that that is what we have currently? Our current system of government is failing us. You may not like my ideas for reform, but we must change something. Why don't you tell me what your own ideas for reform are?

It represents the recognition that that's the only method that has ever worked. It recognizes that personal freedom exists primarily because the government ensures that it does. And it recognizes that the fact that such strategies to protect freedom by weakening the government are doomed to fail, both because they ignore non-governmental dangers to freedom, and because they ignore the fact that a government weak enough that it can't threaten freedom is too weak to do anything at all. In other words, anarchy and warlordism; a government that lacks the power to be a tyranny also lacks the power to prevent other groups from making themselves into tyrants.

Your second sentence is agree with. Governments primary obligation is to protect personal freedom. Again, I fail to see how other entities have even remotely the same ability to be a threat to liberty as does the government. If the government were small and limited to the Constitution, it would imply that its job would be to prevent attacks on liberty from all sources. Its job would be to enforce contracts, prosecute Fraud and corporate crime, maintain the peace, preventing any and all violence. What are the other threats to liberty and how would a limited Constitutional government facilitate their ability to become tyrannical?

No. They were slaveowning genocidal vermin.

Wow, okay. So, should we just get rid of the Constitution and Bill of Rights entirely? Do you reject all their ideas and philosophy on liberty? If American didn't become great due to the ideas of the Founders, what do you think made America great? It is a common insinuation that because some of the Founders owned slaves we should disregard everything that they wrote about and trash their names. This illustrates a profound ignorance of history. Most of the Founding Fathers were very much against slavery. But, it was an enduring social construct that so many of the colonists were not willing to give up. If the Founders tried to eliminate slavery at the time of the Revolution, we would not have a country. But their sympathies lied with eliminating slavery. Following the Revolution there were many peaceful efforts to repeal slavery and make it illegal. Here are some quotes from the Founders about slavery:

“I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it [slavery].”
-George Washington

"My opinion against it [slavery] has always been known... Never in my life did I own a slave."
-John Adams

"Why keep alive the question of slavery? It is admitted by all to be a great evil." -Charles Carroll


The vast majority of Founders opposed slavery based on deeply moral and religious reasons. Just because they were not able to abolish slavery at the time of the Revolution is no reason to trash their views and philosophic arguments for liberty.

Honestly, read some history and inform yourself a little better before you embarrass yourself in public.

Garbage. They don't need the government to force people to work under horrible conditions, to defraud people, to form monopolies and other exploitative arraignments, or to have people they don't like murdered; they need the government to keep them from doing so.

The government CAN prevent them from doing these things, but it frequently doesn't. Do you dispute that our Federal government has been taken over in many ways by lobbyists, bankers, military contractors, and corporate leaders? By the way, in what alternate reality are you living in that would lead you to believe that if my reforms were implemented, would it be okay for corporations to have people they don't like murdered? Natural monopolies are quite rare. Most monopolies are the product of lobbying for government to hurt a corporations competitors thus granting a monopoly. Fraud should be illegal. Nobody is forced to work under horrible conditions. A person is free to seek employment wherever they like.

As far as monopolies are concerned, read this "The myth of Natural Monopoly" by Thomas DiLorenzo,

http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae9_2_3.pdf

Not to mention lies, coercion, manipulation, bribes, and outright force (including various forms of slavery). Unless that is you have a government willing and able to force civilized behavior.

You know absolutely nothing about a Free Market and how its supposed to function. Coercion and outright force (including various forms of slavery) cannot occur in a Free Market. A Free Market works like this. A business tries to persuade me to buy a product of service, showing me how it will improve my life. I can either voluntarily choose to purchase that product or politely refuse and go about my day. That is the extent of it. A Free Market can also be described as Economic Liberty. That is people should be able to keep the money they earn and spend it any way they see fit, as long as they don't harm anybody else.

By the way, since you keep mentioning all the harm caused by freedom in a society, you should know about the libertarian concept of the non aggression principle. From Wikipedia,

"The principle of non-aggression exists in various forms in the faith traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as well as Eastern philosophies such as Taoism.[2] It holds that "aggression", which is defined as the initiation of physical force, the threat of such, or fraud upon persons or their property, is inherently illegitimate. In contrast to pacifism, the non-aggression principle does not preclude defense."

Therefore my society is based on the only fair and non violent system of government that there is. All actions are voluntary and nobody has the right to infringe on another persons liberties.

Government is what holds society together, it defends freedom, produces stability. There's a reason why "failed state" is a synonym for "hellhole". Government uses force and the threat of force because that is the only way to maintain order, and to keep the levels of forced used in society to a minimum.

On your first sentence, I agree. A constitutional system of government holds society together, defends freedom, and produces stability. Anything beyond that necessarily is an attack on liberty. Government can use force only to respond to the use of force in an attempt to bring justice. It cannot initiate force in a just and fair society that beliefs in freedom.

During the Gilded Age?! Don't be ridiculous. It was far worse; they didn't have a government willing and able to do much to protect the populace, or maintain economic stability.

How was it far worse? There were recessions in the 19th century, to be sure, but nothing even approaching what we are experiencing now. Corporate power has expanded drastically. Okay, think about the military contractors and the corruption of the Military Industrial Complex, the Drug Companies and Health Insurance companies who have taken over our health care system, the Banks and financial institutions that have become exceedingly wealthy due to trading derivatives and brought our economy to the brink, and the big Agriculture companies than own and produce nearly all food due to government favoritism (The Department of Agriculture is just corporate welfare for the well connected farmers). Not to mention the monetary system which necessitates a continual wealth transfer from the poor and middle class to the wealthy. Yes, I stand by that statement that corporate greed and abuse is worse now than in the 19th century. Even if I am wrong, your argument for a strong central government protecting the people from the Corporations is not exactly working out to well, wouldn't you agree? They haven't prevented corporate crime and abuse, nor have they done anything about the growing gap between the rich and poor in this nation. Why do you think Corporatism is so prevalent today, if it is not facilitated by a powerful Federal Government?

[septimus]

Hello, jrodefeld.

I'm thankful for your thread; I thought of starting a thread with the title "What do libertarians believe?", so you've answered my unspoken request!

I would need more specific answers to understand your views. Let me start with these questions:
What do you think of antitrust laws?
I guess you approve of import tariffs, right?
How about progressive income tax?
Do you really oppose all mandatory vaccinations? You do realize smallpox would not then be extinct, right?


Very often the devil is in the details. I see you oppose "unnecessary screening at airports." I think most of us would agree with you there; and we'd probably also agree that "necessary screening" is good. I also think non-libertarians and libertarians can agree that government would benefit from improved competence. (Sadly, one of the reasons for some sillinesses is deliberate GOP sabotage aimed at making Americans hate government.)

Approving of "Liberty" sure sounds good, but it sure leads to ambiguity. Your liberty to carry a gun impacts my liberty to feel safe on the streets. Your liberty to litter impacts my liberty to enjoy clean parks. Etc.

School vouchers might be a good example to pursue. In principle, I like solutions based on free market and free choice and agree that vouchers sound good on paper. Unfortunately, when you examine the real-world details, you find that vouchers will, on balance, hasten the deterioration of public schools' competence, and thus act opposite to a major goal of public education: helping the lower class rise through education.

Finally, some of your argumentation seems dogmatic. One might argue for or against gun control, but to base one's argument solely on the happenstance of the 2nd Amendment is to impute an almost-divine status to the Founding Fathers!

[The Hamster King]

Libertarians are the "useful idiots" of corporatism. The provide ideological cover for the cruelty and waste of unfettered capitalism, just as the Western "fellow travelers" of the 1930's provided ideological cover for the barbarism of the Soviet Union.

As Der Trihs pointed out, your fundamental mistake is believing that the only threat to freedom is governmental. In reality, rich individuals and corporations can and will screw you over at every opportunity unless government provides an effective counterweight to their power. They'd be fools not to. Screwing you over is, after all, very, very profitable.

The libertarian vision of society is an adolescent fantasy. Its simplicity and purity allows the participant to indulge in unjustified feelings of mastery. "I know how the world works! I'm a player. My destiny is mine to command!" The fantasy allows the libertarian to avoid confronting the ugly reality: That his health and prosperity are largely dependent upon the whims of rich and powerful entities that he will never understand or control. And that his only defense against getting screwed over and abused is to band together with others in the same boat and force the powerful to treat them with decency and respect.

It's hard to give up that fantasy life, particularly when the relative freedom and prosperity we do enjoy (if you're lucky enough to be in the middle class) make it easy to sustain. But Batman and Superman aren't real. There are no John Galts. You can choose to be a free adult, recognize your limited power for individual action, and band together with others to protect yourself from the forces of oppression and exploitation. Or you can choose to be a lackey, mouthing pretty words to cover the predations of your masters, while hoping they occasionally throw a scrap your way.

[Der Trihs]

You have nothing to back your baseless accusations. Exactly how would a Constitutional government collapse?Because it would take decades to adapt to changing circumstances, if it could at all.

Why couldn't local, state governments pick up the slack and do similar programs and initiatives to that of our Federal Government, except with more understanding of the needs of the people of that state?Because they wouldn't have the power or money to do so. And because they would be more dominated by narrow interests.

Do you reject the notion that local government is better and more responsive government? Yes. It's much easier for a single corporation or even a powerful individual to dominate a smaller government.

Again, you really must be truly ignorant of basic economics if you believe that. Its called personal responsibility. Which is an noble sounding way of saying "sociopathy".

Should I assume you supported the bailouts? How did that help the economy? It prevented a larger collapse.

Its also a matter of fairness. Do you honestly believe a governments role is to pick winners and losers in the market?If necessary. There's nothing particularly sacred about the free market.

Nonsense. Our current Keynesian, Fiat money system has lead to economic collapse. No; removing regulations - like you want - led to the present mess.

The Gold Standard "went away" because greedy banks and ambitious politicians didn't want to have any limits to their power, not because it somehow hurt the economy. What do you have against honest money that maintains its value? Do you like having money that is continually debased year after year? One thing you should learn, if you ever get around to actually learning some economics is that fiat banking systems always end in the destruction of the currency. It is inevitable.Pure garbage. Money based on the gold standard isn't more honest; it's just crippled, unable to increase in amount as the economy needs. Nor are fiat monetary systems any less "honest" than gold based ones, nor do they represent real wealth any worse; better if anything since they aren't tied to a largely useless chunk of metal. Nor do they inevitably lead to the destruction of anything.

If there is no restraint on the ability to print money to fund anything, they print too much causing hyperinflation and the complete destruction of their society. Many economists and trends forecasters see this coming within a few years. That is economic suicide.No, it's just imaginary.

The government is NOT the only threat to freedom. I never claimed it is. Why wont you admit it is A threat to freedom (one of many)? Because it is also the only real defense of freedom.

Do you think our public education system is working out well and producing a highly intelligent population capable of critical thinking? Better than some network of madrasas or the corporate equivalent would.

Why not leave education to local governments? Why do we need the Department of Education? Shouldn't parents have a say in their kids education? Some may choose to have things like prayer in school, for example. I don't personally approve of this, but in a Free country in a religious part of the country, people should be allowed to do this. Education and literacy rates would shoot through the roof if we followed through on my reforms of the education system.Nonsense. They would crash, as kids were carefully left as ignorant as possible to be better propaganda fodder. Local governments, as I said are more likely to be the pawn of local interests; a church, a hate group, a corporation, some rich guy. And no, parents should not be allowed to force their religion on people, or single out unbelievers for terrorization; and that's what prayer in school amounts to.

By the way, what is your opinion on School Vouchers? Say an unrestricted Voucher worth $7000 a year to send a kid to any private school a parent chooses. Would you approve of this or not? No, it's just a scam to undercut public schools at best. First, existing private schools would just raise their price by $7000. Then, a horde of scam schools would arise, taking the money while providing no meaningful education. Then, when and if the parents realized this, the public schools would be forced to take on all those mis-educated children again - with less money to do it, since they get money allocated on how many students they have.

Okay, this is one of the major things advocates of big government claim, that we need the Federal government to inspect products to ensure they are safe. What if the government just gave "recommendations" of product safety but could not ban products and services outright? Then you'd have lots of dead people.

And honestly, why would anybody looking to make a profit and be successful have any incentive to put out unsafe products and services? Because that's the fastest way to make a profit. Cut corners.

And what exactly are unsafe products and services? Apart from Food and Drug products, I fail to see how most small business would be a major threat if we didn't have federal regulators coming down hard with repressive regulations.Fires from poor insulation, poisonous products, poor fire and disaster preparation, and so on. You are ignoring that such regulations were created in the first place because of all the harm businesses were causing.

Bullshit. If we DON'T reform and phase out Medicare and Medicaid they will end on their own due to fiscal reality setting in. We cannot possibly afford it looking into the future. So a complete collapse of the system is worse than an orderly transition towards private options, Right? Garbage. The "private option" is a right wing fantasy; it doesn't work, which is why every other civilized country has gone the other way. "Fiscal reality" is that government does it better.

Why not look to local help, charity hospitals, any emergency room will take anybody who is sick and dying. Nobody is going to be thrown out on the streets. Of course they will. Charity hospitals don't have the capacity, and ERs are already overloaded thanks to our capitalist obsession with private medicine.

I do agree that taxes pay for things liberals don't like also. Like the Iraq War. I don't understand this statement, "The wealthy and selfish should be allowed to play parasite." What? If a person makes their money by gaming the system, or through fraud or other unethical means, then we should remove their ability to "play the game". If a person makes their money honestly through hard work and entrepreneurship then they should be able to keep the fruits of their labor. They shouldn't have their money stolen to give to some politically favored cause. This is called "Economic liberty". Why do you want to punish those who are successful? I agree with the corporatism and the banks and insiders, but what about the honest, successful businessman? If we had a Constitutional government, ALL business would only be able to make profits in an honest and ethical manner. It is the only fair and just system.Garbage; you want a weak government, which means you want a society of predators and victims.

The rich primarily got that way because of the people who work for them, because they inherited it, by being ruthless, by having connections, and luck. Hard work has little to do with it. Nor is it healthy for a society for nearly all wealth to end up in the hands to the very rich, with little left for the rest of the population. That's why they need to be taxed; to maintain social stability, and to make them pay their fair share in upkeeping the society that made their position possible at all.

A society based on the principles of individual liberty, peace, and persuasion and voluntary cooperation, rather than one base on coercion, violence, endless wars and wealth transfers, is an evil society?You simply want to create a society ruled by the fanatic and the rich, where the less fortunate are left to die. Yes, that's evil. You may not say that's what you want, you might even believe it; but then the Communists didn't say they wanted Stalin and Mao either.

As far as a collapsing and failing state, don't you see that that is what we have currently? Our current system of government is failing us. You may not like my ideas for reform, but we must change something. Why don't you tell me what your own ideas for reform are?We should go towards the left, not the right. Single payer UHC, stronger separation between church and state, greater regulation of corporations and stronger social safety net; that sort of thing.

Your second sentence is agree with. Governments primary obligation is to protect personal freedom. Again, I fail to see how other entities have even remotely the same ability to be a threat to liberty as does the government.Don't be silly. Three armed guys can take away your liberty easily, without a government to stop them.

What are the other threats to liberty and how would a limited Constitutional government facilitate their ability to become tyrannical?Corporations, religious groups, the rich; any group with more money or power than you have. And a "limited Constitutional government" would be too weak to do much of anything, including protect anyone's freedom. Not to mention too slow,since it would takes them years or decades to change the law by Amendments alone. Assuming they even can.

Wow, okay. So, should we just get rid of the Constitution and Bill of Rights entirely? Do you reject all their ideas and philosophy on liberty?I'm more concerned with ideals right now, not those of 200 year dead slime. I approve of racial and gender equality, to pick two obvious ideals they would have opposed.

If American didn't become great due to the ideas of the Founders, what do you think made America great?Genocide and being isolated from competition, mostly. Not that I consider America to be "great" in any sense of the word beyond "powerful". America is not particularly free or fair or noble or otherwise virtuous. It's just powerful and rich.

If the Founders tried to eliminate slavery at the time of the Revolution, we would not have a country. Then we shouldn't have had a country.

By the way, in what alternate reality are you living in that would lead you to believe that if my reforms were implemented, would it be okay for corporations to have people they don't like murdered?It's called "history". That's how corporations behave when the leash is let off.

Natural monopolies are quite rare. Monopolies are the norm, natural or not; the natural endpoint of capitalism unless a government steps it to stop it with antitrust laws and such.

Most monopolies are the product of lobbying for government to hurt a corporations competitors thus granting a monopoly.Now. Because otherwise the government would prevent it.

Nobody is forced to work under horrible conditions.To the extent that is true, it's because government prevents it.

A person is free to seek employment wherever they like.Because the government partially prevents monopolies, blacklisting and so on.

Coercion and outright force (including various forms of slavery) cannot occur in a Free Market. A Free Market works like this. A business tries to persuade me to buy a product of service, showing me how it will improve my life. I can either voluntarily choose to purchase that product or politely refuse and go about my day. That is the extent of it. A Free Market can also be described as Economic Liberty. That is people should be able to keep the money they earn and spend it any way they see fit, as long as they don't harm anybody else.No. This is a free market. You want to buy something; you are told a price you can barely pay and survive. When you try to buy somewhere else, you find that the prices are all fixed because of agreements among the sellers, or because there is only one. When you complain too much, you end up fired and no one will hire you because you are blacklisted. If you still make a scene some corporate thug caves your skull in. That's how it worked in the good old days you want to bring back.

Economic freedom requires a great deal of regulation and a strong safety net; not the law of the jungle.

Therefore my society is based on the only fair and non violent system of government that there is. All actions are voluntary and nobody has the right to infringe on another persons liberties.No, it's an attempt to create corporate feudalism, not freedom. Sure libertarians claim to oppose violence; because they also want to eliminate all the non violent methods ordinary people have of protecting themselves. They want to remove all recourse, all hope, all freedom from the common people.

Why do you think Corporatism is so prevalent today, if it is not facilitated by a powerful Federal Government?Because the government, influenced by people like you is refusing to do anything to stop it.

[Oldeb]

I'm going to quote you a bit out of order, because it makes it easier to explain why I disagree with you. Hopefully I don't butcher what I think you were trying to get across.

Now, a few financial firms have the ability to bring our entire economy to ruin and devastate the lives of millions of Americans. Even the most revisionist historian must admit that corporate abuse was not this rampant during the late 19th century.

You've apparently never heard of the Sherman AntiTrust Act enacted in 1890. The 19th century was all about concentrating economic and poltitical power in the hands of a very few wealthy indviduals.

And it didn't end in 1890. Teddy Roosevelt ran on a platform of Trust Busting when he was elected in 1904. And the granddaddy of them all, Standard Oil, didn't fall until 1911.


In our earlier history, corporations and businesses were not wholly ethical (many polluted, some treated their workers unfairly or otherwise acted deceptively towards the public) yet these abuses were very self contained and the harm to larger society was very minimal.

Er, no. Just no. There were no child labor laws in the 1800s and they were slow in coming. In 1810 children were working 50-70 hours a week for little pay and in terrible conditions. It wasn't until 1935 that the US as a whole had child labor laws. Death rates for children were extremely high in the 1800s.

There were no set hours for workers. You worked whatever your boss told you, no overtime. No minimum wage and business were indeed working together to keep wages low. Asking for a raise would get you fired.

Great Britain legalized labor unions in 1825, but holding meeting to seek better hours and wages was punishable as conspiracy until 1871. The Fair Labor Standards Act in the US (which set minimum wage and overtime pay) wasn't until 1938.

The first workers' compensation laws for people injured on the job in the US were passed in Maryland in 1902. Before then if you were injured on the job tough luck; no benefits, no income, and soon you'd be out on the street.

All in all, the 19th century was a downright shitty time to be employed.


Even if I am wrong, your argument for a strong central government protecting the people from the Corporations is not exactly working out to well, wouldn't you agree?

You're trying to argue for an all or nothing situation. It isn't. Regulation isn't perfect. It's just better than the alternative.


They haven't prevented corporate crime and abuse, nor have they done anything about the growing gap between the rich and poor in this nation.

They have. Do you work 40 hours and get overtime pay? Do you get a fair wage? Do your children attend elementary school instead of working 70 hours a week? Do you have all your limbs? If you answered yes to any of those be glad you aren't living in your dream era of the 19th century.

The problem with Libertarianism is the exact same problem that Communism has. People are bastards. Both look good on paper until you realize that it requires people to give some small thought about the needs of other people over their own. We have thousands of years of history to show that this is simply not possible on any sort of large scale.

Instead businesses will cut costs in order to reduce overhead any way they can. Whether it's by poor safety in the workplace or lead paint in toys, it's all about profit margin.

[elucidator]

Progressives, conservatives, and independents. The good, the bad, and the smugly irrelevant.

[jrodefeld]

Hello, jrodefeld.

I'm thankful for your thread; I thought of starting a thread with the title "What do libertarians believe?", so you've answered my unspoken request!

Hey, glad to help! I feel that libertarian belief has expanded exponentially in popularity in the last couple of years and I think it deserves fair consideration as a viable form of governance. Given that obviously what we have been doing for a while is not exactly working out too well, people are looking for alternatives. We certainly haven't had anything close to a libertarian society in most of our lifetimes. I think of America as a sports team that has had multiple losing seasons. As any good coach would do, I think the proper way to approach the problem would be to get back to basics, reform the system by once again acknowledging the ideals of liberty that made America great, getting back in shape by trimming the excess from our federal government and following the rulebook (the Constitution) in an effort to get back on the winning track.

After we are able to balance the budget and achieve fiscal sustainability for a few years, we can think about whether we want to again embark on the path of big government. My feeling is, we will be so prosperous and have such an increase in quality of life we wouldn't want to go down that path again.

I would need more specific answers to understand your views. Let me start with these questions:
What do you think of antitrust laws?

I am very sympathetic to the goals of Anti Trust laws, that is to preserve competition by regulating anti competitive conduct. I think in practice, many anti trust laws do not work the way they are intended. See the following link:

http://mises.org/daily/3856

So, I support Anti Trust policy that stops predatory oppressive practices that interfere with the Free Market.

I guess you approve of import tariffs, right?

Absolutely. In fact I could see our government funding its actions solely through excise taxes, import tariffs and other means which would allow us to get rid of the personal income tax. Obviously, if we had a smaller, Constitutional government, we would need far less funding. I like the idea of allowing all workers to keep all their income. Even if we had a National Sales Tax in substitution for the income tax it would be much better, though I feel we could have neither.

How about progressive income tax?

I am sympathetic to the idea, but I would prefer if we eliminated the need for an income tax entirely. I would not object too strongly if we had a progressive income tax, however.

Do you really oppose all mandatory vaccinations? You do realize smallpox would not then be extinct, right?

Every time I mention anything about Vaccines people bring up all the diseases that were supposedly wiped out because of them. I think Vaccines can have a place. But vaccines are not entirely safe, and there is emerging evidence that vaccines are actually causing more illness than they are curing.

I never get vaccinated and I never get sick. I eat well and exercise. I prefer to build up immunity by naturally strengthening my immune system through supplementation rather than by injecting live virus into my body. Vaccines have mercury, squaline, adjuvants and many toxic and harmful substances in them. There is much evidence that Vaccines are not as safe as we are told. So, I do oppose mandatory vaccinations. If you are okay with having the government mandate that entire populations be injected with toxic substances, then I think you have way too much trust in the government.

Very often the devil is in the details. I see you oppose "unnecessary screening at airports." I think most of us would agree with you there; and we'd probably also agree that "necessary screening" is good. I also think non-libertarians and libertarians can agree that government would benefit from improved competence. (Sadly, one of the reasons for some sillinesses is deliberate GOP sabotage aimed at making Americans hate government.)

Approving of "Liberty" sure sounds good, but it sure leads to ambiguity. Your liberty to carry a gun impacts my liberty to feel safe on the streets. Your liberty to litter impacts my liberty to enjoy clean parks. Etc.

I don't think it is the governments job to make airplanes safe. I think the individual airlines should be the ones tasked with protecting their passengers. They have every right to screen suspicious persons if there is legitimate reason to think they could be a threat. Most people should not be stopped at all. No full body scans for children and the elderly, stop stealing our toothpaste and harassing us. The airlines should single out those passengers most likely to be a threat and examine them more carefully. This should be sufficient to keep the airlines safe.

School vouchers might be a good example to pursue. In principle, I like solutions based on free market and free choice and agree that vouchers sound good on paper. Unfortunately, when you examine the real-world details, you find that vouchers will, on balance, hasten the deterioration of public schools' competence, and thus act opposite to a major goal of public education: helping the lower class rise through education.

I always thought the value of school vouchers would be to give lower class kids the ability to go to private schools and avoid the bad public schools in their district. The rich kids already go to private school. At least many of them do. Why not allow the poorer kids or those forced to live in a lousy school district to opt out and go to the same schools the rich kids get to go to? As far as hurting private schools, maybe it would encourage them to get their act together and improve. Giving parents a choice for the education of their kids no matter their income would be great.

Finally, some of your argumentation seems dogmatic. One might argue for or against gun control, but to base one's argument solely on the happenstance of the 2nd Amendment is to impute an almost-divine status to the Founding Fathers!

Well, I do think there is a very good reason the Founders considered the second amendment one of the most important rights we have. I don't own a gun, but I recognize my right to own a gun is one of the last protectors against a tyrannical government. I do recognize that some proponents of Gun Control feel that their views are consistent with the 2nd Amendment. I just don't think gun control is effective anyway, so I don't support those views.

[jrodefeld]

Progressives, conservatives, and independents. The good, the bad, and the smugly irrelevant.

Care to contribute something meaningful to the discussion?

[Oldeb]

I am very sympathetic to the goals of Anti Trust laws, that is to preserve competition by regulating anti competitive conduct. I think in practice, many anti trust laws do not work the way they are intended. See the following link:

http://mises.org/daily/3856

So, I support Anti Trust policy that stops predatory oppressive practices that interfere with the Free Market.

Your article fails to mention how you will keep a monopoly or deregulated company from price-gouging or cutting costs. It continues the belief that the people who own a corporation are more interested in social justice then turning a profit. Specifically:

It would really be a comfort to know that each business was doing its utmost to get as much of the market as it possibly could, that each firm was striving to put out the greatest possible production at the lowest possible cost, and that, in short, it was being directed in accordance with the public good.

He's right in that it would be comforting if businesses operated that way in the real world. Too bad they rarely do.

If you had a monopoly and could increase your profit while decreasing your overhead you'd take it. The easiest way would be via cutting expenses such as employee benefits, relaxed safety and health standards, and decreased product quality. As long people have no alternative to buying your product you can save a lot of money. China does this. How do you like their product standards? How do you protect workers at all without any safeguards in place?

And

But there is no social harm done as long as everyone else has an equal right to get into production. There can't be any social harm because the social interest lies in the most efficient production of goods. Monopoly in this sense means only that society has achieved that end. One person, one firm, in a free competitive market, has proved to be more efficient than any other. Anyone else is free to produce, if he thinks he can compete.

Doesn't this assume that all businesses have zero start up costs? Look at the oil industry. It has extreme start up costs, but once it's running it has enourmous profits. Say Exxon Mobile gains a monopoly. It'd be more efficient. Is the price of gas now whatever they say it is? Would you want to bet they wouldn't price gouge? Do you think that anyone could afford the start up cost as a competitor, especially with Exxon Mobile doing all it could to protect it's monopoly?



Every time I mention anything about Vaccines people bring up all the diseases that were supposedly wiped out because of them. I think Vaccines can have a place. But vaccines are not entirely safe, and there is emerging evidence that vaccines are actually causing more illness than they are curing.

I never get vaccinated and I never get sick. I eat well and exercise. I prefer to build up immunity by naturally strengthening my immune system through supplementation rather than by injecting live virus into my body. Vaccines have mercury, squaline, adjuvants and many toxic and harmful substances in them. There is much evidence that Vaccines are not as safe as we are told. So, I do oppose mandatory vaccinations. If you are okay with having the government mandate that entire populations be injected with toxic substances, then I think you have way too much trust in the government.

This is a complete topic shift, but the CDC, UK National Health Service, and Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences all disagree with you.

You will want to look up herd immunity, holistic medcine, and (most importantly for the premise of this thread) how much money is saved on health care through the use of vaccines. Also, the plural of anecdote (your personal experience) does not equal data.


I don't think it is the governments job to make airplanes safe. I think the individual airlines should be the ones tasked with protecting their passengers. They have every right to screen suspicious persons if there is legitimate reason to think they could be a threat. Most people should not be stopped at all. No full body scans for children and the elderly, stop stealing our toothpaste and harassing us. The airlines should single out those passengers most likely to be a threat and examine them more carefully. This should be sufficient to keep the airlines safe.

Why are children and the elderly exempt? They can carry items through as well. Old people have a lot less life to lose in a suicide attack and kids will carry what they're told without knowing what it is. Please provide an example of a non-rascist, non-bigoted way to determine high risk individuals.

[elucidator]

Care to contribute something meaningful to the discussion?

You first. Age before beauty, pearls before swine. Wait, swine before pearls! Aw,shit!

[Der Trihs]

Every time I mention anything about Vaccines people bring up all the diseases that were supposedly wiped out because of them. I think Vaccines can have a place. But vaccines are not entirely safe, and there is emerging evidence that vaccines are actually causing more illness than they are curing.

I never get vaccinated and I never get sick. I eat well and exercise. I prefer to build up immunity by naturally strengthening my immune system through supplementation rather than by injecting live virus into my body. Vaccines have mercury, squaline, adjuvants and many toxic and harmful substances in them. There is much evidence that Vaccines are not as safe as we are told. So, I do oppose mandatory vaccinations. If you are okay with having the government mandate that entire populations be injected with toxic substances, then I think you have way too much trust in the government.Ah, an antivaxer as well as a goldbug. What next? Denouncing evolution? Claiming the lizard people were behind 9-11? How about the moon landings being a hoax? That's a good one.

And as for why; because it works, because your nonsense about vaccines being toxic is, yes, nonsense; and because you endanger others by decreasing the immunity of the group. Typical libertarian amorality and selfishness.

I don't think it is the governments job to make airplanes safe. I think the individual airlines should be the ones tasked with protecting their passengers. And if they decide to save money by not trying, so what? Human life is nothing compared to corporate freedom, right?

I always thought the value of school vouchers would be to give lower class kids the ability to go to private schools and avoid the bad public schools in their district. The rich kids already go to private school. At least many of them do. Why not allow the poorer kids or those forced to live in a lousy school district to opt out and go to the same schools the rich kids get to go to? As far as hurting private schools, maybe it would encourage them to get their act together and improve. Giving parents a choice for the education of their kids no matter their income would be great. And what makes you think the private school won't just say "go away"? Such schemes always are based on the delusion that if you just give out vouchers, suddenly those exclusive private schools will accept the children of the poor. They won't; they'll just raise their tuition by the amount of the voucher and tell any lower class person who applies to shut up and stay away from their betters. At best, those poor kids will end up with some quickly thrown together "school" which is primarily there to extract that voucher money from them.

Well, I do think there is a very good reason the Founders considered the second amendment one of the most important rights we have. I don't own a gun, but I recognize my right to own a gun is one of the last protectors against a tyrannical government.It's no protection from tyranny whatsoever; plenty of tyrannies let their citizens arm themselves. Because they know it doesn't protect freedom; both because an army can easily squash a bunch of guys with rifles, and because the armed citizenry is at least as likely to fight for the tyrants, not against.

[septimus]

Thanks for your replies, jrodefeld. Just two more comments.

Approving of "Liberty" sure sounds good, but it sure leads to ambiguity. Your liberty to carry a gun impacts my liberty to feel safe on the streets. Your liberty to litter impacts my liberty to enjoy clean parks. Etc.

This is the one comment you didn't address, perhaps because mine is not a well-posed question. Yet it is the big reason I can't take "libertarianism" seriously. Your liberty to operate an unregulated butcher shop conflicts with my liberty to eat meat without worry. Your liberty to not vaccinate your kids conflicts with my liberty to let my too-young-to-vaccinate kid mingle without fear of contracting rubella. Etc. etc.

My other comment is this: As we explore the details your answers often take the form: "I approve of good government regulations, but disapprove of the stupid government regulations we have today." Most of us would agree with that; the difficulty is agreeing on which regulations are good, which stupid. The fact that you oppose mandatory vaccinations and oppose central banks setting interest rates suggests, frankly, that your views have been tainted by conspiracy-theory quackery.

[jrodefeld]

Libertarians are the "useful idiots" of corporatism. The provide ideological cover for the cruelty and waste of unfettered capitalism, just as the Western "fellow travelers" of the 1930's provided ideological cover for the barbarism of the Soviet Union.

This specific "useful idiot" has read more economics and US history in the past five years than you probably have in your lifetime. You should be careful about casting aspersions on those you know little about. There is a long line of distinguished Economists and Intellectuals who back my positions on these issues. It has long been established in Academia that Capitalism, for all its faults, is by far the best of many worse alternatives. Communism fails, socialism always fails eventually, and all other centrally planned economies fail under their own weight.

Are you saying capitalism is a bad system? Don't you see that if a company becomes successful creating a product that improves the lives of everyone, it lifts the standards of living of all americans? The internet revolution, computers, HDTVs, cell phones, cars, the music industry, and most appliances in our kitchens are all the product of Capitalism. Corporatism is a completely different system from free market capitalism. Corporatism is what we have now. The abuse you are talking about is due to Corporatism, that is corporate lobbyists taking over government to get the most loot from the American taxpayer. Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Blackwater, the Health Insurance Industry, and the Drug Companies are all the result of Corporatism. There is a MAJOR difference, one in which you fail to acknowledge.

I believe Free Enterprise is the engine of human progress. When you stifle the creative energies of the free market through excess regulation, you hurt everybody. The cruelty and waste that you describe is due to Corporatism, not Free Enterprise.

As Der Trihs pointed out, your fundamental mistake is believing that the only threat to freedom is governmental. In reality, rich individuals and corporations can and will screw you over at every opportunity unless government provides an effective counterweight to their power. They'd be fools not to. Screwing you over is, after all, very, very profitable.

Will you acknowledge that government IS a threat to liberty? I don't believe it is the only threat, but it is the most significant. Screwing over potential customers is very profitable? Are you crazy? Corporations can get away with that now because they are protected from bankruptcy. A system of privatized profits and socialized loses (Corporatism) takes away the fear of bankruptcy that keeps business honest. In a free market (which we DON'T have currently or in the recent past) consumers are king. Business is looking to make a profit, you are right about that. But they have to serve the public! If they continually screw people over, they lose business or go bankrupt. This is the mechanism by which corporations are kept honest.

Put yourself in the position of a small businessman. You have the option of providing a really good service or product, treating people with respect and build a loyal base of customers. Or you could, as you say, screw over your customers seeking to make more short term profits. Which would make the most sense? Obviously the former. Treating people well and providing good service will end up being more profitable in the long run. I know many people who own businesses, by the way, and they all strive to serve their customers well and act ethically.

I will grant you that there will still be exceptions and some corporations will treat people poorly. But over the long term this will prove to be a poor business strategy. And any sane person will have no difficulty in avoiding contact with corporations that have unsound and unethical business practices.

The libertarian vision of society is an adolescent fantasy. Its simplicity and purity allows the participant to indulge in unjustified feelings of mastery. "I know how the world works! I'm a player. My destiny is mine to command!" The fantasy allows the libertarian to avoid confronting the ugly reality: That his health and prosperity are largely dependent upon the whims of rich and powerful entities that he will never understand or control. And that his only defense against getting screwed over and abused is to band together with others in the same boat and force the powerful to treat them with decency and respect.

I don't actually disagree with what you wrote. I think there will always be people who band together to take advantage of other people. The goal is to keep this to a minimum. That is what a Libertarian society strives to do. But if those "powerful" people are unable to use force and coercion to achieve their ends, what threat could they possibly be? If corporations or any group of people, for that matter, colludes in secret to screw over other groups of people by former cartels, buying off politicians or otherwise tilting the tables in their favor, the society ceases to be a libertarian one or a free market, and becomes an authoritarian society. This is what I am objecting to. To ensure this doesn't happen it requires an ever vigilant public who is ready to resist any effort to abandon liberty. To avoid this happening, we have a constitution and bill of rights which protect our freedom.

If you disagree with me, why don't you come out and advocate for getting rid of the Constitution? Liberty is the ideal that we should strive for. Just because we rarely are able to achieve that ideal, makes it no less of a noble pursuit. As you said, powerful people are constantly threatening those liberties.

It's hard to give up that fantasy life, particularly when the relative freedom and prosperity we do enjoy (if you're lucky enough to be in the middle class) make it easy to sustain. But Batman and Superman aren't real. There are no John Galts. You can choose to be a free adult, recognize your limited power for individual action, and band together with others to protect yourself from the forces of oppression and exploitation. Or you can choose to be a lackey, mouthing pretty words to cover the predations of your masters, while hoping they occasionally throw a scrap your way.

Lets talk about the system of government we currently have, not my "fantasy life", as you put it. How is it working out for us? With a very powerful Federal Government with no restraint, are they doing a good job protecting us from Corporatism? If we assume that government's job is to provide an effective "counterweight" to the power of corporatism, can we agree they have failed miserably in their efforts?

You can criticize my ideas for reform, but you must admit that a libertarian society is one that hasn't been tried in a very long time. Why not at least be willing to give it a chance? A society based on individual liberty is very rare throughout history. Lets, for once, try the noble and moral thing, and attempt true reform.

[jrodefeld]

You first. Age before beauty, pearls before swine. Wait, swine before pearls! Aw,shit!

I've gone first, I created this thread and have made my opinions pretty clear. If you have any comments, I would be happy to respond. I'm 25, by the way.

[Hellestal]

I strongly oppose a Central Bank setting interest rates, and printing money endlessly. I believe we should eliminate the Federal Reserve and place its functions back under the Treasury as the Constitution demands. Furthermore, we should again back our currency by a tangible asset such as Gold. This will prevent abuse of the People's money and protect ones savings from the debasement of inflation. Banks should go bankrupt just like any other private business. Also, we should allow competing currencies to circulate. If someone wants to exchange gold or silver certificates, for example, in a voluntary exchange for goods or services they should be allowed to. This is an additional safeguard which would prevent abusive and destructive monetary policy by our federal government.Oh boy.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy.

This is one paragraph. I'm just going to deal with the one. And it is absolute codswallop, beginning to end, wrong-headed on so many levels, it's a real trial to sift through. I would personally have trouble fitting more factual inaccuracies and irrelevancies into the same amount of space, even if I were deliberately trying.

1) People can already trade gold and silver for goods and services, if they so wish. The government isn't stopping them. The government wants its taxes denominated in genuine green US dollars, but there are places to purchase and transfer electronic money "backed" by precious metals like gold, like the site "e-gold". All debts, public and private, are apparently payable with dollars, at least according to the old dead white guys on my nifty little pieces of green paper. Okay, then. Make sure nobody gets in your debt. Demand contractually in advance that the transaction will be in gold. Voila. Problem solved.

2) People can already put their savings in precious metals and other commodities. The primary purpose of a currency is not as a store of value. Currency is our meterstick of comparison, and our medium of exchange. Those are the important ones. There is no need for it to hold its value over truly long time periods. If you don't want your savings to get eaten away by inflation, then don't keep your savings in currency. Simple. Direct. So easy a child could understand. There is no point at all in empty whinging about the declining value of savings, when there is not, nor has there ever been, any requirement that you keep you savings in US dollars. There are real costs associated with an inflating currency, which people who actually have studied economics should know about. Shoeleather costs of money management is one of them, but that's only a serious problem in hyperinflationary situations. The essential act of savings is not bothered in the slightest by a little inflation, if you don't want it to be.

3) There is nothing in the constitution about the Treasury having the Fed's powers. Kinda self explanatory, that one. The constitution can't possibly demand that the Fed's powers, including printing money, be given to Treasury. The Treasury's only mentioned three times, from what I can tell, once for taxation, once for Congressional compensation, and once to say, hey, no taking any money from it without a record. It's actually Congress that has the power "To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin". And the Federal Reserve is the manifestation of that power. Congress created the Fed, and they could potentially unmake it as well. In which case, the power to coin money would not necessarily devolve to Treasury, but rather would devolve to whatever new institution Congress chose.

This is one of the points that goldbugs always have a hard time understanding, so I'm going to repeat that with special emphasis and explication: If we destroy the Fed without replacing it with another similar institution, we do not eliminate the government's power to create new money. Instead, we put that power even more directly in the hands of Congress. In other words, we put our printing presses directly in the hands of people, politicians, who must face re-election every two, or six, years. And this seems like a good idea for some reason?

4) We could not possibly back our currency with gold, or other any tangible commodity, without completely undermining our current price system in an excessively costly deflationary way. We can't back our currency with gold, because gold isn't valuable enough. The value of the all the US dollars out there exceeds the value of all the gold. In order to back our currency with gold (or anything else), the government would have to purchase reserves. In purchasing those reserves, the government would then be artificially bidding up the value of gold. The attempt to re-establish the gold standard would result in an unprecedented shift of wealth from US taxpayers to all holders of gold. And for what? To re-establish a standard that failed because of its instability? That leads me directly to my next point:

5) The gold standard is a stupid stupid stupid system. We dig a yellow metal out of a cave in the ground. We then build another, artificial cave in a place we call a "bank". We then move the little yellow pieces of metal from one cave to another. We then print pieces of paper, and promise that we will supply the yellow metal out of our new man-made cave for anyone who has our pieces of paper. But the system only works, see, if no one wants to take the metal. If everyone would rather have the yellow metal than the paper, then the standard collapses. So in order for it to work, we must have that metal in the artificial cave be in such a way that it stays, perpetually, in that artificial cave. Doing nothing. If it were taken out of that cave, after all, it wouldn't work. We'd just have gold currency, not a gold standard, which would quickly be abandoned because carrying around gold is a gigantic pain in the ass. So the yellow metal must sit in its new cave, gathering dust. Forever. That's a functioning gold standard. I don't want to discount the idea of a currency peg in all situations. It can work in some contexts. But reliance on the gold standard, for its own sake, is just dumb. It makes no bloody sense at all.

6) The Fed needs to "print money" in emergencies. Among professional economists, there are numerous topics of genuine disagreement. This is not one of those topics. If you take away the ability to expand the money supply at will, then you are dooming us to continually repeat the mistakes that caused the Great Depression. This is the view of everyone from hardcore libertarians like Milton Friedman to noted liberal economists like Paul Krugman. To deny this is to deny all of our modern economic theory and history.

It is reasonable to believe that the Fed should not act on their own discretion when printing money, but rather work within clearly established guidelines and rules, e.g. 5% annual nominal GDP growth. It is not reasonable to refuse to print money in the face of catastrophe. The Fed, remembering its mistakes so many years ago, kept us from reliving the Great Depression with its expansion of the US monetary base. They need to have that power, even if they do not necessary need complete discretionary freedom to print at whatever level they see fit.

And that was just one paragraph. Just about everything else in the OP was compete nonsense as well, but there are only so many hours in a day. But that makes this comment particularly special, in the olympic sense of that word:Again, you really must be truly ignorant of basic economics if you believe that.A real peach of a comment.

[jrodefeld]

This is the one comment you didn't address, perhaps because mine is not a well-posed question. Yet it is the big reason I can't take "libertarianism" seriously. Your liberty to operate an unregulated butcher shop conflicts with my liberty to eat meat without worry. Your liberty to not vaccinate your kids conflicts with my liberty to let my too-young-to-vaccinate kid mingle without fear of contracting rubella. Etc. etc.

I think your concerns are very reasonable. I see liberty as freedom from coercion. For example, if someone has a concealed weapon permit and carries a gun on the streets but doesn't threaten anyone or imply the threat of violence, he has not infringed upon your liberty. Your example of an unregulated butcher shop, I think is misplaced. Lets assume that I don't mind basic food safety regulations, do you feel more comfortable patronizing a business that is "approved" by the government? I don't, but maybe thats just me. What if the government didn't provide food safety regulations, but a trusted independent third party inspected the facility and approved it, would it matter to you? Wouldn't the reputation of the butcher and your personal experience with them count for more than a government seal of approval?

That being said, I am not particularly bothered by very basic government health and food safety standards, though I think without them we would find other ways of determining food safety and we would be just fine.

My other comment is this: As we explore the details your answers often take the form: "I approve of good government regulations, but disapprove of the stupid government regulations we have today." Most of us would agree with that; the difficulty is agreeing on which regulations are good, which stupid. The fact that you oppose mandatory vaccinations and oppose central banks setting interest rates suggests, frankly, that your views have been tainted by conspiracy-theory quackery.

Okay, lets say that the following types of regulations were kept in place: minimum wage laws, antitrust laws, basic food and drug safety regulations, and other regulations that you feel are sufficient to prevent the types of corporate abuse you think could occur. But then we did everything else I want, cutting all other extraneous regulations, limiting the Federal Government to its Constitutional functions and everything else that a Libertarian society entails. How would you feel about it then? I am sure you or I could determine very simple regulations that would prevent corporate crime, yet were a far cry from the 160,000 pages of regulation that currently exist, making sure that it didn't affect small business.

As far as mandatory vaccinations are concerned, it is a far cry from acknowledging that the concept of the Vaccine is scientifically sound and studied, to believing that every vaccine given is necessary and safe. Some vaccines are created that make drug companies a lot of money, yet are unnecessary. Why should somebody need to get a vaccine to prevent a disease they are very, very unlikely to ever get? What about the Flu shot? If you are healthy you probably won't get the Flu, but if you do you may feel tired and sick for three days then get better. There is no reason to vaccinate against the Flu. Legitimate questions are being raised about the necessity of giving children dozens of vaccines before they turn six years old. It is certainly not crazy to talk about this subject and take my position that vaccines are not needed for many people. Even Bill Maher, who I disagree with on many issues, agrees with me. From his show several months back:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPrLCIoxe8Y

So, it is not a crazy position to be against injecting children 36 times before they turn six years old. Look at the follow chart:

http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/cdc_comparison.pdf

And we really don't know the long term effects of giving kids (and people in general) this many vaccinations because we have only been doing it for a short period of time (at least this many vaccinations). We have to exercise some skepticism with regards to the need for these things, don't you think? We can't always just trust any man with a white jacket and a stethoscope.

As far as opposing central banks setting interest rates, what exactly is crazy about that position? Many esteemed economists, political scientists, and historians have endorsed my position. If a central bank (like the Federal Reserve) sets interest rates at artificial levels, then it sends the wrong signals to investors creating an artificial boom which must result in a corrective bust. When the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates to 1% or lower, it encourages borrowing, even if people are already broke. The market should set interest rates. When the Fed is continually manipulating the market it favors the well connected insiders who know the system. They make money on the way up AND on the way down. The little guy, meanwhile, suffers the most when, for example, the housing boom crashes and he loses his house.

Economists Ludwig von Mises, Nobel laureate F.A. Hayak and Henry Hazlitt all argued against artificial interest rates. Hayak won the Nobel prize for explaining the theory of the business cycle (how the Fed artificially set interest rates contributes to form a bubble which must ultimately crash later). So, I don't know why you would insinuate that these views are somehow conspiracy quackery.

[Der Trihs]

What if the government didn't provide food safety regulations, but a trusted independent third party inspected the facility and approved it, would it matter to you? Wouldn't the reputation of the butcher and your personal experience with them count for more than a government seal of approval?

That being said, I am not particularly bothered by very basic government health and food safety standards, though I think without them we would find other ways of determining food safety and we would be just fine.No, we wouldn't, as history demonstrates. As libertarians typically do, you are ignoring the fact that such government regulation exists because private industry simply will not regulate itself. Your "trusted third party" would be nothing but a rubber stamp for the sellers; because no such party that didn't always approve their product no matter how unsafe would be patronized by them. And that's making the unlikely assumption that they actually would be a separate entity, and not just another branch of the corporation in question.

I am sure you or I could determine very simple regulations that would prevent corporate crime, yet were a far cry from the 160,000 pages of regulation that currently exist, making sure that it didn't affect small business.You may be sure of that; I, on the other hand am sure you are fooling yourself if you think that. Your simple regulations, being simple, will also be simple to evade or subvert.

There is no reason to vaccinate against the Flu. You can be old, or otherwise vulnerable, or the strain going about could potentially be the next Spanish flu. So yes, there are reasons.

Legitimate questions are being raised about the necessity of giving children dozens of vaccines before they turn six years old. It is certainly not crazy to talk about this subject and take my position that vaccines are not needed for many peopleYes, it is ignorant, crazy or outright evil to deny reality, take that position and endanger the lives of other people. You DO realize that before those vaccines children died on a regular basis from those diseases? And now thanks to people like you, those diseases are making a comeback. But as a libertarian you of course don't care about the consequences of your actions to others.

And we really don't know the long term effects of giving kids (and people in general) this many vaccinations because we have only been doing it for a short period of time (at least this many vaccinations).We know that they are more likely to be alive long enough to HAVE long term consequences.

[jrodefeld]

Ah, an antivaxer as well as a goldbug. What next? Denouncing evolution? Claiming the lizard people were behind 9-11? How about the moon landings being a hoax? That's a good one.

And as for why; because it works, because your nonsense about vaccines being toxic is, yes, nonsense; and because you endanger others by decreasing the immunity of the group. Typical libertarian amorality and selfishness.

It is my choice not to get vaccinated. Why can you not accept my personal choice on this matter? Yeah being skeptical about vaccines is the same as denying evolution and "claiming the lizard people were behind 9-11". Honestly you are truly ignorant of the facts on this issue. See my response to Septimus for further views on vaccines. By the way, there are increasing numbers of scientists who dispute the wisdom of giving people (especially children) the number of vaccines that we do.

You know, the Pharmaceutical industry is making a ton of money prescribing drugs for every illness under the sun. Many are unnecessary. Why wouldn't they also be making money off of vaccines? Is it really so much of a stretch to think that they are pressuring us to get vaccines that we really don't need?

By the way, I have never gotten vaccinated and I am healthier than anyone I know. I never get sick. If vaccines are so important, why are people sicker than ever before with all these new mandatory vaccines? Don't you think this is an area of medicine the begs long term cost-benefit analysis?

And if they decide to save money by not trying, so what? Human life is nothing compared to corporate freedom, right?

Yeah, because it really saves money to allow their private plans to be hijacked and blown up. By the way, the risk of terrorism is ridiculously small. If a company chose not to screen ANYONE I wouldn't think twice to fly on that airline. I just don't want to be continually harassed by TSA people with a sixth grade education looking through all my things every time I fly.

By the way, I have to ask: Do you think all businessmen are inherently immoral and "evil"? You are almost borderline paranoid in your beliefs that any and all corporations and businesses exist solely to rape and plunder the american people and if left "unchecked" they will steal your women, burn down your house, and kill your dog. Obvious hyperbole aside, I believe there are many honest businessmen. I know a few of them personally. The ones I know really do want to serve people well and have a desire to give back to the community and are heavily involved in charity. There are certainly greedy and even "evil" businessmen, but they should be kept in check by a vigilant public and, yes, by a government who is willing to prosecute fraud and corporate crime.

If you see businessmen as inherently evil, why don't you see politicians and many governments the same way? Certainly governments can steal and abuse and harass people, right? Why not extend your skepticism to government as well? What if our government has no interest in serving the people, but rather serving the interests of bankers, the politicians and their political contributers?

And what makes you think the private school won't just say "go away"? Such schemes always are based on the delusion that if you just give out vouchers, suddenly those exclusive private schools will accept the children of the poor. They won't; they'll just raise their tuition by the amount of the voucher and tell any lower class person who applies to shut up and stay away from their betters. At best, those poor kids will end up with some quickly thrown together "school" which is primarily there to extract that voucher money from them.

Some schools may turn them away. I would depend on the merits of each individual case. I went to an exclusive, expensive private school, but my parents aren't rich at all. I was able to go there based on a scholarship and due to an interview I held with the headmaster. They don't reject people based on income or class. It is based on a persons own qualifications and their willingness to work hard and achieve their potential.

Even if what you say is true, it would still gives kids a choice they didn't have before. Why would you be against that?

It's no protection from tyranny whatsoever; plenty of tyrannies let their citizens arm themselves. Because they know it doesn't protect freedom; both because an army can easily squash a bunch of guys with rifles, and because the armed citizenry is at least as likely to fight for the tyrants, not against.

Yeah, but the idea is that if a violent revolution were ever necessary, the public would be able to fight their oppressors. Why are you arguing this point? Do you not believe in the second amendment?

[Der Trihs]

It is my choice not to get vaccinated. Why can you not accept my personal choice on this matter?Because you put other people in danger. And because it's really, really foolish of you.

Yeah being skeptical about vaccines is the same as denying evolution and "claiming the lizard people were behind 9-11". Pretty much, yes; the same class of lunacy, and often the same people.

If vaccines are so important, why are people sicker than ever before with all these new mandatory vaccines? Don't you think this is an area of medicine the begs long term cost-benefit analysis? And what evidence do you have that it isn't? And people are not remotely " sicker than ever before". The opposite is true.

By the way, I have to ask: Do you think all businessmen are inherently immoral and "evil"? Not inherently, but business by its nature rewards psychopathic behavior. Especially if there's no strong government regulation and oversight to keep the predators in check.

If you see businessmen as inherently evil, why don't you see politicians and many governments the same way? Because unlike business, it isn't their job to exploit people. And because democratic governments are more under the control of the people than any business.

Certainly governments can steal and abuse and harass people, right? Why not extend your skepticism to government as well? What if our government has no interest in serving the people, but rather serving the interests of bankers, the politicians and their political contributers?Then it would be a libertarian government.

Even if what you say is true, it would still gives kids a choice they didn't have before. Why would you be against that?Because it would give them a worse set of choices, and the most likely result is they would get scammed and a worse education.

Yeah, but the idea is that if a violent revolution were ever necessary, the public would be able to fight their oppressors. Why are you arguing this point? Do you not believe in the second amendment?I regard the Second Amendment as destructive to society, a danger to the freedom of the American public, and primarily used as a tool to manipulate people into surrendering liberty in the name of guns. And no, the public is no more safe from oppression with it than without it.

[jrodefeld]

Your article fails to mention how you will keep a monopoly or deregulated company from price-gouging or cutting costs. It continues the belief that the people who own a corporation are more interested in social justice then turning a profit. Specifically:

Price gouging will only occur from a Monopoly because other will undercut their prices. As I said before, natural monopolies are rare, and antitrust laws should prevent them from occurring, keeping competition alive in all markets. Of course people who own a corporation are interested in turning a profit. But you are insinuating that that desire is inherently contrary to social justice. I disagree. Businesses that innovate and lead to a revolution in how we live and improve our quality of life contribute to social justice. This type of innovation should be encouraged in a free market.

He's right in that it would be comforting if businesses operated that way in the real world. Too bad they rarely do.

If you had a monopoly and could increase your profit while decreasing your overhead you'd take it. The easiest way would be via cutting expenses such as employee benefits, relaxed safety and health standards, and decreased product quality. As long people have no alternative to buying your product you can save a lot of money. China does this. How do you like their product standards? How do you protect workers at all without any safeguards in place?

People WOULD have an alternative to buying any product. But I understand your concerns are frequently held by those on the Left in reaction to a libertarian ideology. What if we had basic safeguards you could agree with, antitrust laws, minimum wage laws, food and safety requirements, restrictions on pollution, etc. And THEN we shrunk the government down to its Constitutional size and scope and adopted the other reforms I have suggested. Would you support them then?

Doesn't this assume that all businesses have zero start up costs? Look at the oil industry. It has extreme start up costs, but once it's running it has enourmous profits. Say Exxon Mobile gains a monopoly. It'd be more efficient. Is the price of gas now whatever they say it is? Would you want to bet they wouldn't price gouge? Do you think that anyone could afford the start up cost as a competitor, especially with Exxon Mobile doing all it could to protect it's monopoly?

The problem is we have been living with Corporatism for so long now many companies are vastly more powerful than they would be in a Free Market Libertarian society. I think it would be fair, in a transition phase, for the government to break up these monopolies and encourage new business and free enterprise through tax incentives and other means. Once we have achieved the reforms I am advocating, we would see every market have a vibrant, competitive energy with dozens of competitors vying for the public to patronize them. The issue is how to get from here to there.

This is a complete topic shift, but the CDC, UK National Health Service, and Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences all disagree with you.

You will want to look up herd immunity, holistic medcine, and (most importantly for the premise of this thread) how much money is saved on health care through the use of vaccines. Also, the plural of anecdote (your personal experience) does not equal data.

Your right, I don't want to focus on my beliefs about Vaccines. This is a topic about libertarian ideology. But suffice to say, I believe in the very near future we will be changing our tune drastically as we see increasingly negative health effects in our population from all the vaccines we are giving people. Just wait.

Why are children and the elderly exempt? They can carry items through as well. Old people have a lot less life to lose in a suicide attack and kids will carry what they're told without knowing what it is. Please provide an example of a non-rascist, non-bigoted way to determine high risk individuals.

Because they are very low risk. Do you understand how low the risk for terrorism really is? You are more likely to be struck by lightning twice in one year than to be the victim of a terrorist attack. Yeah, I don't think every man, woman, child, young and old alike should be scanned and harassed at the airport.

This is just me, but I would gladly take the risk to be free of this nonsense every time I fly. Are you really afraid of terrorism? Would you not feel safe on an airplane without having full body scanners at every airport and knowing that peoples toothpaste has been taken from them? I certainly wouldn't feel any less safe without this bullshit. To each his own.

[septimus]

As far as mandatory vaccinations are concerned, it is a far cry from acknowledging that the concept of the Vaccine is scientifically sound and studied, to believing that every vaccine given is necessary and safe.

As far as opposing central banks setting interest rates, what exactly is crazy about that position? Many esteemed economists, political scientists, and historians have endorsed my position.

I agree with you that many vaccines are inappropriate. The present flu vaccine may be a good example. (I wasn't aware U.S. planned mandatory administration of that vaccine). But it's a far cry from "some vaccines are inappropriate" to "there should be no mandatory vaccines whatsoever" which is how you started. (I wonder if I could get you to retreat to a "centrist" position on many of your points by challenging you to think. BTW, I hope you realize that the anecdote "jrodefeld didn't vaccinate and jrodefeld is still healthy" has little probative value.)

On the subject of economists endorsing your position on interest rates, URL's would be good. But first, let's find out what your position is! It started as "central banks should not set interest rates" but seems to have migrated to "recently the Fed set inappropriate rates." And as for short-term interest rates being set by the "free market" it would be nice to see a URL that demonstrates that to be even plausible in today's financial world.

And of course, that government should sometimes adopt fiscal and monetary polices opposite to what a "free market" would adopt is well-known in Keynesian theory. (I see Keynesian theory being denounced by some right-wingers; AFAIK, however, this is just more right-wing nonsense.)

[jrodefeld]

Oh boy.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy.

This is one paragraph. I'm just going to deal with the one. And it is absolute codswallop, beginning to end, wrong-headed on so many levels, it's a real trial to sift through. I would personally have trouble fitting more factual inaccuracies and irrelevancies into the same amount of space, even if I were deliberately trying.

Can I first ask, What are your qualifications and formal education in matters of economics? Since you take such a smug posture, you must be some kind of expert. :rolleyes:

1) People can already trade gold and silver for goods and services, if they so wish. The government isn't stopping them. The government wants its taxes denominated in genuine green US dollars, but there are places to purchase and transfer electronic money "backed" by precious metals like gold, like the site "e-gold". All debts, public and private, are apparently payable with dollars, at least according to the old dead white guys on my nifty little pieces of green paper. Okay, then. Make sure nobody gets in your debt. Demand contractually in advance that the transaction will be in gold. Voila. Problem solved.

The government DOES NOT allow competing currencies PERIOD. To do this, we would have to repeal legal tender laws. Look at the following links:

http://www.dgcmagazine.com/blog/index.php/2009/08/01/liberty-dollar-suspends-operations-pending-counterfeiting-trial/

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul434.html

http://www.fame.org/HTM/Ron%20Paul%20Introduces%20HR2779%20The%20Honest%20Money%20Act%20-%20REPEAL%20OF%20LEGAL%20TENDER%20LAWS.htm

http://vinyasi-public-records.info/data/HJR-192_repealed.pdf

The creators of the Liberty Dollar were arrested and charged on the following reasons:

“conspiracy and other charges in connection with an alleged unlawful operation to publish, possess and sell for profit, coins in resemblance and similitude to U.S. coins. All four defendants are also charged in the alleged conspiracy with uttering and passing, and attempting to utter and pass, a coin of silver in resemblance of genuine coins of the United States in the denominations of five dollars and greater, and intended for use as current money.”

Thus, it is ILLEGAL to circulate competing currencies. What I am advocating is repealing legal tender laws.

2) People can already put their savings in precious metals and other commodities. The primary purpose of a currency is not as a store of value. Currency is our meterstick of comparison, and our medium of exchange. Those are the important ones. There is no need for it to hold its value over truly long time periods. If you don't want your savings to get eaten away by inflation, then don't keep your savings in currency. Simple. Direct. So easy a child could understand. There is no point at all in empty whinging about the declining value of savings, when there is not, nor has there ever been, any requirement that you keep you savings in US dollars. There are real costs associated with an inflating currency, which people who actually have studied economics should know about. Shoeleather costs of money management is one of them, but that's only a serious problem in hyperinflationary situations. The essential act of savings is not bothered in the slightest by a little inflation, if you don't want it to be.

You know, for many years it was illegal for americans to own gold. This existed from 1933 to 1974. You act like the effects of inflation are irrelevant because it occurs over a longer period of time. How many average poor or middle class families do you know who have the foresight and economic literacy to own gold to protect their savings? Very few do. For these people the standard of living has been steadily going down as their paychecks buy less and less each week. I understand the effects of inflation because I have studied economics. If you really want to understand inflation, try reading this link:

http://mises.org/daily/908

3) There is nothing in the constitution about the Treasury having the Fed's powers. Kinda self explanatory, that one. The constitution can't possibly demand that the Fed's powers, including printing money, be given to Treasury. The Treasury's only mentioned three times, from what I can tell, once for taxation, once for Congressional compensation, and once to say, hey, no taking any money from it without a record. It's actually Congress that has the power "To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin". And the Federal Reserve is the manifestation of that power. Congress created the Fed, and they could potentially unmake it as well. In which case, the power to coin money would not necessarily devolve to Treasury, but rather would devolve to whatever new institution Congress chose.

This is one of the points that goldbugs always have a hard time understanding, so I'm going to repeat that with special emphasis and explication: If we destroy the Fed without replacing it with another similar institution, we do not eliminate the government's power to create new money. Instead, we put that power even more directly in the hands of Congress. In other words, we put our printing presses directly in the hands of people, politicians, who must face re-election every two, or six, years. And this seems like a good idea for some reason?

No, that is why I advocate a Gold Standard. I don't advocate a Fiat currency controlled by Congress. By the way, when the Constitution says Congress has the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof, it means that it is Congress's responsibility! They are not allowed to defer their responsibility to a third party. The Federal Reserve is unconstitutional for that reason. Come on, man. Any true student of Constitutional law should understand that. As far as the Treasury is concerned, they hold the Gold reserves. And they print the money.

4) We could not possibly back our currency with gold, or other any tangible commodity, without completely undermining our current price system in an excessively costly deflationary way. We can't back our currency with gold, because gold isn't valuable enough. The value of the all the US dollars out there exceeds the value of all the gold. In order to back our currency with gold (or anything else), the government would have to purchase reserves. In purchasing those reserves, the government would then be artificially bidding up the value of gold. The attempt to re-establish the gold standard would result in an unprecedented shift of wealth from US taxpayers to all holders of gold. And for what? To re-establish a standard that failed because of its instability? That leads me directly to my next point:

This is completely false. Consider what Congressman Ron Paul wrote about a similar complaint that there isn't enough gold, which is another argument your side makes:

"I find it amazing that economists can make statements like this, for it is an elementary principal of economics that if one raises the price of a commodity, one will always have enough of that commodity. What we saw in the run up of gold prices is in fact the raising of the price of gold to match the depreciation of the dollar that has occurred, and still is occurring.

Simply put, there will always be enough gold so long as no one interferes with the free market mechanism.

At $700 an ounce the United States government has enough gold reserves to more than cover all the Federal Reserves notes outstanding. If we were to establish a gold standard by the procedure I have outlined in my bill H.R. 7874, then the world would be fully informed of the gold holdings of the United States Government and the price of gold could adjust accordingly, so that when redemption of our greenbacks - our Federal Reserve notes - began, the price would be the market-clearing price. Quite simply, the statement that there is not enough gold is false. It is a scare tactic used by opponents of the gold standard."

You clearly have no idea how relatively easy it would actually be to reinstate the Gold standard. There would be a transition, but after that, we would be prosperous once again.

5) The gold standard is a stupid stupid stupid system. We dig a yellow metal out of a cave in the ground. We then build another, artificial cave in a place we call a "bank". We then move the little yellow pieces of metal from one cave to another. We then print pieces of paper, and promise that we will supply the yellow metal out of our new man-made cave for anyone who has our pieces of paper. But the system only works, see, if no one wants to take the metal. If everyone would rather have the yellow metal than the paper, then the standard collapses. So in order for it to work, we must have that metal in the artificial cave be in such a way that it stays, perpetually, in that artificial cave. Doing nothing. If it were taken out of that cave, after all, it wouldn't work. We'd just have gold currency, not a gold standard, which would quickly be abandoned because carrying around gold is a gigantic pain in the ass. So the yellow metal must sit in its new cave, gathering dust. Forever. That's a functioning gold standard. I don't want to discount the idea of a currency peg in all situations. It can work in some contexts. But reliance on the gold standard, for its own sake, is just dumb. It makes no bloody sense at all.

It is completely false that if someone exchanges certificates for gold, the system collapses. You clearly know nothing about how a gold standard would operate in reality. The only reason why anyone would want to exchange their certificates for gold is if they had some reason not to trust the government. Even then, not everyone would withdraw the gold at once. Just the threat keeps the banks and our government honest. Why do you think the Founders advocated that only gold and silver be legal tender? Because they recognized that was the only way to ensure governments don't grow exponentially and abuse the rights of the people. It was to ensure freedom.

Since you clearly need to learn more about the gold standard, read this article written by esteemed libertarian economist Murray N. Rothbard,

http://mises.org/rothbard/genuine.asp

6) The Fed needs to "print money" in emergencies. Among professional economists, there are numerous topics of genuine disagreement. This is not one of those topics. If you take away the ability to expand the money supply at will, then you are dooming us to continually repeat the mistakes that caused the Great Depression. This is the view of everyone from hardcore libertarians like Milton Friedman to noted liberal economists like Paul Krugman. To deny this is to deny all of our modern economic theory and history.

It is reasonable to believe that the Fed should not act on their own discretion when printing money, but rather work within clearly established guidelines and rules, e.g. 5% annual nominal GDP growth. It is not reasonable to refuse to print money in the face of catastrophe. The Fed, remembering its mistakes so many years ago, kept us from reliving the Great Depression with its expansion of the US monetary base. They need to have that power, even if they do not necessary need complete discretionary freedom to print at whatever level they see fit.

See, you are adhering to the faulty logic of modern Keynesian economics which insists that the Federal Reserve "stimulate" our way out of recessions and depressions. This is utter nonsense. I adhere to the Austrian School of economic thought, which has given us great intellectuals and Nobel laureates alike. By the way, the great Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises was one of the few to correctly predict the stock market crash and resulting depression of the thirties years before anybody else. The same is true today. Adherents of the Austrian School, such as Ron Paul and Peter Schiff, were able to correctly predict the current economic meltdown before anybody else because they believe in superior economic theories.

The Great Depression was caused by excessive expansion of credit during the 1920s by the Federal Reserve drove the country into a great depression. And everything that our government did (Both Hoover and Roosevelt) greatly exacerbated the problems and prevented a recovery. See the following link:

http://mises.org/daily/2845

If you care to, here is a much more involved "e book" about the Austrian explanation for the Great Depression:

http://mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf

We can hardly have a reasonable discussion of economics if you don't even understand the causes of the Great Depression. As to your notion that no economists dispute that we need a central bank to "print money in emergencies", nothing could be further from the truth. The following economists dispute that because they understand we should tackle the causes of the "emergencies" rather than just the effects:

Ludwig von Mises
F.A. Hayak, Nobel Laureate
Henry Hazlitt
Murray Rothbard
Carl Menger
Ron Paul
Peter Schiff

There is a reason these men were able to see these economic crises coming a mile away. It is because they understand the fundamental problems with our economy in ways the Keynesians can't even comprehend. You would do well to study some Austrian economics before making ridiculous statements like, "If you take away the ability to expand the money supply at will, then you are dooming us to continually repeat the mistakes that caused the Great Depression." What nonsense. Read up, man.

And that was just one paragraph. Just about everything else in the OP was compete nonsense as well, but there are only so many hours in a day. But that makes this comment particularly special, in the olympic sense of that word:

Quote:
Originally Posted by jrodefeld
Again, you really must be truly ignorant of basic economics if you believe that.

A real peach of a comment.

You probably thought you "got me", right? Well, sorry to disappoint you, but it seems you are the one who needs to bone up on your economic studies. Since you did so well here, why don't you take a shot at responding to the rest of my post?

[jrodefeld]

I agree with you that many vaccines are inappropriate. The present flu vaccine may be a good example. (I wasn't aware U.S. planned mandatory administration of that vaccine). But it's a far cry from "some vaccines are inappropriate" to "there should be no mandatory vaccines whatsoever" which is how you started. (I wonder if I could get you to retreat to a "centrist" position on many of your points by challenging you to think. BTW, I hope you realize that the anecdote "jrodefeld didn't vaccinate and jrodefeld is still healthy" has little probative value.)

I didn't change my position. I think vaccines should be offered on a voluntarily basis, rather than being mandatory. But this doesn't mean I think all vaccines are bad. Its just that I think people get way too many, and NONE of them should be forced on the population. What do you think would happen if we all stopped getting vaccinations tomorrow? There would be outbreaks of black plague and we would all die? I am personally opposed to most vaccines but I have no reason to deny them to anyone who wants to get one.

On the subject of economists endorsing your position on interest rates, URL's would be good. But first, let's find out what your position is! It started as "central banks should not set interest rates" but seems to have migrated to "recently the Fed set inappropriate rates." And as for short-term interest rates being set by the "free market" it would be nice to see a URL that demonstrates that to be even plausible in today's financial world.

You seem to be suggesting that I am somehow changing my position, when I don't think I am at all. I stand by this statement: The Fed should not set interest rates. At all. The market should set interest rates.

And of course, that government should sometimes adopt fiscal and monetary polices opposite to what a "free market" would adopt is well-known in Keynesian theory. (I see Keynesian theory being denounced by some right-wingers; AFAIK, however, this is just more right-wing nonsense.)

Well, you may be disappointed to learn that I reject Keynesian economics because its effectiveness is refuted by history and it simply doesn't work. I adhere to the Austrian School of Economics. You know the great Austrian economists correctly predicted the Great Depression before it occurred. Keynes didn't do that. And they correctly predicted the current crisis years before anybody else. The reason is they believe in superior economic theories and understand the fundamental cause of recessions and depressions. If you want to learn more about this school of thought I suggest you read some of the literature at this link:

http://mises.org/

I would be interested to hear your take on Austrian theory.

[Der Trihs]

I didn't change my position. I think vaccines should be offered on a voluntarily basis, rather than being mandatory. But this doesn't mean I think all vaccines are bad. Its just that I think people get way too many, and NONE of them should be forced on the population. What do you think would happen if we all stopped getting vaccinations tomorrow? There would be outbreaks of black plague and we would all die? A great many people would die, yes. Just as right now, thanks to the anti-vaxers people are dying of disease who wouldn't be otherwise. Herd immunity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity) requires that enough people be vaccinated to work.

[septimus]

I am personally opposed to most vaccines but I have no reason to deny them to anyone who wants to get one.

I would be interested to hear your take on Austrian theory.

I wonder if you understand that vaccination is altruistic. A parent is happy not to give his kid a rubella vaccine because the kid isn't going to get rubella! Why not? Because it's caught by exposure to a contagious human, but all the other kids have been vaccinated, so don't have rubella! But what if all parents refused the vaccine? I don't know if the "Golden Rule" plays a key role in your philosophy, but reread the previous sentences until you understand why government forces your kid to get certain vaccines.

I went to the website you mentioned; clicked on "The Federal Reserve as a Confidence Game: What They Were Saying in 2007" and found:
The general lesson was not to listen to Greenspan's deceptive testimony. Delete it from your mind like spam email messages.... The victim is known as the mark, the trickster is called a confidence man, con man, or con artist, and any accomplices are known as shills.

This start makes me doubtful that this "paper" is serious economic theory, but I will study it. Meanwhile, where's your cite for a serious thinker that believes "free market" setting of short-term interest rates is plausible today? This "paper" certainly isn't it.

[adhay]

Whew! This thread reminds me of a cat fight I once saw. All that was visible was a 5 ft cloud cloud of flying fur.

Where to begin?

As I've said before to the point of boring everyone, we live in a Corporate Kleptocracy.

1) The US Constitution legally "justifies" a wealthy oligarchy.

In order to get the original 13 on board, the Constitution had to "legally" fuedalise 90% of the population namely women and the slaves and poor. The basic idea was that those who had been most successful in profiting from killing the indigenous natives and trafficking in human misery for 100's of years were entitled to keep what they had extracted by force and had the "right" to protection from those from whom it had been extracted by a "popular" govt.
However, the Founding Fathers would be aghast at the Corporate Kleptocracy America has become. After all, their real argument was with the British East India Company and the power that large accumulations of capital have to corrupt. [Our so-called revolution was really a civil war over who was to play tax man and benefit from the exploitation of a virgin continent]That's why, until after our Civil War (another misnomer, it should be called The Northern Industrial Coup), corporations were very tightly regulated and they certainly were not considered persons with Bill of Rights protection.

The lesson? Greed, once enshrined as virtue, will out.

2) We live in a feudal Corporate Kleptocracy.

This was inevitable after The War of Northern Aggression (one thing the South got right :) ) when Northern banks and industrial capital declared war on Southern agricultural capital. In an "incompetently" prolonged and brutal war, the South was colonized and Northern capital took over our "popular" govt as evidenced in our Gilded Age.The coup was completed in 1889 when SCOTUS granted corporations personhood and with the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890, the first federal statute to identify corporations as people.

The idea that a corporation is just another voice of Humanity and deserves no more govt regulation than John Doe has resulted the silliness we look upon today, namely, intelligent people arguing that free markets are self-regulating and govt regulation of corporations is not good for business. I say what's the difference if the regulators have lots of friends in the industries they regulate?Wall Street, oil companies, defense contractors are all govt sanctioned criminal enterprises. They OWN the govt and hire their own "regulators".
Progressives, conservatives, and independents. The good, the bad, and the smugly irrelevant.Progressives, conservatives, and independents. All smugly irrelevant.

Sweet dreams.

[Hellestal]

Can I first ask, What are your qualifications and formal education in matters of economics? Since you take such a smug posture, you must be some kind of expert. :rolleyes:Yeah. I always use the rolleyes smilie, too, when I'm talking to a physicist who's trying to explain that dark matter is matter out there in the universe.

I'm not trained in physics, though I've probably read more about it in the last five years than you have in your entire life, but I always give the real physicists one of these, :rolleyes:, then explain that the real reason that there's an unknown gravitic force in the universe is the exceptional size of my penis.The government DOES NOT allow competing currencies PERIOD.It's always an interesting moment in a debate when someone shoots himself in the foot by being unable to read his own cite.“conspiracy and other charges in connection with an alleged unlawful operation to publish, possess and sell for profit, coins in resemblance and similitude to U.S. coins. All four defendants are also charged in the alleged conspiracy with uttering and passing, and attempting to utter and pass, a coin of silver in resemblance of genuine coins of the United States in the denominations of five dollars and greater, and intended for use as current money.”

Thus, it is ILLEGAL to circulate competing currencies. What I am advocating is repealing legal tender laws.No, it is not ILLEGAL.

They were arrested, as your own cite explicitly states if you had actually bothered to read it, for creating coins resembling the US dollar. They could have, if they so wished, created coins called Sparmafunq Tollagars. They could have traded their gold and silver Sparmafunq Tollagars for any goods and services that other people agreed to. This is because--and please pay attention this time--they are free to use gold and silver however much they like. It's for creating too close an imitation of the US dollar that they got busted for. The United States government is quite picky about that. A US dollar is what the gummint say it is, not what some poor dimwitted libertarian protester wants it to be.

But you don't even leave it there. In your blind haste, you've now demonstrated that you don't understand legal tender, either. Legal tender simply means, as I alluded to in my post but did not explicitly point out, that any debt can be discharged with offering US dollars. What you obviously don't realize is that debts can also be discharged, even now, by whatever other means both parties agree to. If I show up to pay my rent with Sparmafunq Tollagars, and my landlord is cool with it, I can pay my rent with Sparmafunq Tollagars. The legal tender law works in a different way: It means that if I'm in debt 500 bucks, the debt must be discharged if I offer him 500 bucks. He can't suddenly turnaround and demand Sparmafunq Tollagars (or x ounces of gold) out of the blue. But again, that does not mean that we can't find alternative methods of payment. I could pay in Euros, or RMBs, or in cow chips, as long as both of us agreed. It's simply that, if I'm in debt, the debt must be discharged with legal tender.

And by the way, Ron Paul is a nutter, not an economist. If we establish multiple currencies as legal tender, then people would pay their debts not with the strongest, but with the weakest currency available. It would lead to bad juju, an reintroduction of Gresham's Law as bad money would drive out the good. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law) Everyone would pay their debts with the most worthless of the legal currencies, while they hoarded the more valuable currencies. Inflation would rise to the adjust to the value of the most worthless of the currencies. This is another very straightforward economic fact that you would know if you'd studied it formally.

Look, an economics education takes a lot of math. Mathematics causes one to be familiar with the Greek alphabet. So I could, if I wanted, read through the ancient Greek philosophers in their original language and recognize all the letters. I could even do it for five years. But the result would be worthless, because I don't understand Greek. I wouldn't even know if I were reading the right books.You know, for many years it was illegal for americans to own gold. This existed from 1933 to 1974. You act like the effects of inflation are irrelevant because it occurs over a longer period of time. How many average poor or middle class families do you know who have the foresight and economic literacy to own gold to protect their savings? Very few do.Great.

So we should both be in favor of government regulation mandating that everyone save an appropriate percentage of their income, in the proper inflation fighting form. Right?If you really want to understand inflation, try reading this link:

http://mises.org/daily/908I've never had a blind man attempt to describe the sunset to me, but I guess there's a first time for everything.No, that is why I advocate a Gold Standard. I don't advocate a Fiat currency controlled by Congress.Someone has to enforce the standard. That's why it's a standard, and not just everyone carrying around ounces of gold everywhere. The gold standard is paper that represents gold. People use the paper because carrying the gold is a major pain in the ass. But someone has to ensure that, if Mr Foreign Speculator wants to trade in his paper for gold, he gets the gold. And who is that?

It's the government. And who decides whether to keep using the standard, to keep paying out gold or whether to stop? Why, it's still the government. And which institution could be specifically empowered to drop the standard whenever it fucking wishes? Why, it's still the government. A gold standard would not take away Congress's power over the money supply. They could take a vote, any time they liked, and say: "We're tired of this stupid standard. We're the government and we're keeping our gold in our cave, and all of you mofos can suck on it." And poof! That's the end of the gold standard. FDR dropped the gold peg to fight the Depression, and there was not damn thing that the idiot libertarians at the time could do about it.

Gold is not magic.By the way, when the Constitution says Congress has the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof, it means that it is Congress's responsibility! They are not allowed to defer their responsibility to a third party. The Federal Reserve is unconstitutional for that reason. Come on, man. Any true student of Constitutional law should understand that. As far as the Treasury is concerned, they hold the Gold reserves. And they print the money.I'm not a student of constitutional law, or any other kind of law, so I'm not going to argue the issue. I'll stick to the econ.

I will point out, however, that Congress delegates shit all the time. If it were impossible for them to do so, then the Supreme Court would've pointed that out about 5,000 years ago. (Or 100. Whatever.) You apparently have a different constitutional interpretation. Given your astounding ignorance of economics, I will henceforth assume that your knowledge of constitutional law is about as deep as the coffee table ring left by a cold beverage.This is completely false. Consider what Congressman Ron Paul wrote about a similar complaint that there isn't enough gold, which is another argument your side makes:

"I find it amazing that economists can make statements like this, for it is an elementary principal of economics that if one raises the price of a commodity, one will always have enough of that commodity. What we saw in the run up of gold prices is in fact the raising of the price of gold to match the depreciation of the dollar that has occurred, and still is occurring.

Simply put, there will always be enough gold so long as no one interferes with the free market mechanism.

At $700 an ounce the United States government has enough gold reserves to more than cover all the Federal Reserves notes outstanding. If we were to establish a gold standard by the procedure I have outlined in my bill H.R. 7874, then the world would be fully informed of the gold holdings of the United States Government and the price of gold could adjust accordingly, so that when redemption of our greenbacks - our Federal Reserve notes - began, the price would be the market-clearing price. Quite simply, the statement that there is not enough gold is false. It is a scare tactic used by opponents of the gold standard."

You clearly have no idea how relatively easy it would actually be to reinstate the Gold standard. There would be a transition, but after that, we would be prosperous once again.I specifically pointed out that the government could buy up more gold, and drive up the price. I made special note of it. Then I pointed out the problems with the plan. This you ignored, because you've never thought this issue through before in any depth.In order to back our currency with gold (or anything else), the government would have to purchase reserves. In purchasing those reserves, the government would then be artificially bidding up the value of gold. The attempt to re-establish the gold standard would result in an unprecedented shift of wealth from US taxpayers to all holders of gold.We could, indeed, bid up the price of gold. Yes. True. I already specifically pointed that out.

It would, however, be an entirely artificial method to bid up the price. It's the government entering the gold market. It's the government that has to enforce the standard. It's the government that has to tax its citizens to afford to be able to purchase gold reserves. And who benefits? All the wannabe Auric Goldfingers in the world who cackle in delight as the US government, by purchasing a lot of gold, suddenly makes their own private hoards much, much, much more valuable. If the US attempts to return to a gold standard, then it would be a transfer of wealth from US taxpayers to other people, like Russian government, which has some natural resource deposits.

And it would not be easy. It would be hideously expensive and deflationary and would plunge the entire nation into a massive recession. This is a previous thread on the topic (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=532602) in which I and others explain this process in excruciating detail.It is completely false that if someone exchanges certificates for gold, the system collapses.I did not mean to imply that, though on rereading my post, I can see how you might've gotten that impression.

No, the system can withstand a person here or there withdrawing gold. What it cannot withstand is for that process to continue indefinitely. There must always be gold in the cave. In order for there to always be gold in the cave, people can't keep taking gold out. There have to be enough incentives for people to want to keep the paper, and not take the gold. The gold reserves must be stable. You can lose some gold here and there, but most of that gold will stay exactly where it is, just as I said, gathering dust in the cave.You clearly know nothing about how a gold standard would operate in reality. The only reason why anyone would want to exchange their certificates for gold is if they had some reason not to trust the government. Even then, not everyone would withdraw the gold at once. Just the threat keeps the banks and our government honest.Except when it didn't. Which was all the time.

You already cited a bunch of stuff about how the government used to regulate and control possession of gold. Well, of course they did. Why? Because controlling a gold standard is tough, and it helps to have some heavy-handed laws in place, even with the standard, to make sure that the government's supply of gold is stable. The gold market didn't become truly free until after Nixon dropped the standard completely.Why do you think the Founders advocated that only gold and silver be legal tender? Because they recognized that was the only way to ensure governments don't grow exponentially and abuse the rights of the people. It was to ensure freedom.And now I can add the foundation of this country to the list of topics you claim to have knowledge about. Fantastic.

Personally, I typically limit myself to the fields in which I have experience, but I guess there's something to be said for naively believing whatever you'd like to believe, and then claiming that you're an expert, while ignoring people with real knowledge. That's certainly one way to go through life.Since you clearly need to learn more about the gold standard, read this article written by esteemed libertarian economist Murray N. Rothbard,

http://mises.org/rothbard/genuine.aspI keep telling the astrophysicists that my cock is responsible for all that unknown space stuff, but they never seem to believe me.

But if I just keep repeating it to myself late at night, whispering incessantly through the tears, I'm sure they'll eventually come around.See, you are adhering to the faulty logic of modern Keynesian economics which insists that the Federal Reserve "stimulate" our way out of recessions and depressions. This is utter nonsense. I adhere to the Austrian School of economic thought, which has given us great intellectuals and Nobel laureates alike. By the way, the great Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises was one of the few to correctly predict the stock market crash and resulting depression of the thirties years before anybody else. The same is true today. Adherents of the Austrian School, such as Ron Paul and Peter Schiff, were able to correctly predict the current economic meltdown before anybody else because they believe in superior economic theories.The Austrian school had many important contributions to economic theory. They expanded the range of economic knowledge, broadened our horizons, allowed us to see things we had not seen before. And for that, I salute them.

Newton gave us calculus. For that, I salute him. But Newton spent the rest of his life doing alchemy.

The good contributions of the Austrians have already been incorporated. They are already accepted. The rest was, unfortunately, alchemy. It was wrong. It has been discarded by modern economic thinkers. It has been discarded by modern libertarian economic thinkers. Let me repeat that, with emphasis: Professional economists from all over the economic spectrum reject it. Milton Friedman rejected it. Paul Krugman rejects it. If you want input from the current popular libertarian blogs, the ones written by real professions, I can point to many of them. All prominent modern economists reject the notion. You are not just arguing with me, you're not just arguing with the "Keynesians". You're arguing with all of them. Every last one of them.

Hayek did some important work. von Mises did some important work. Adam Smith did some important work, too. But it's outdated. The good ideas were incorporated, the bad ideas were discarded. You're wondering around with all the bad ideas in your ideas, ideas from long dead economists, and you're ignoring all of the economists, including the libertarians, who are telling you that you're full of shit. The Road to Serfdom is a great and important book. But that doesn't mean that we should listen to Hayek forever. We have to pay attention to new ideas.

Gold is not magic, and Hayek was not right about everything.The Great Depression was caused by excessive expansion of credit during the 1920s by the Federal Reserve drove the country into a great depression.The start of the recession is in dispute, even today. Citing the tired, sad scribblings of long dead economists, and their economically illiterate groupies who still try to carry the torch, does not erase the genuine research that have been done since that time. But the Federal Reserve was, indeed, the entity most responsible for driving the country from recession into depression. True. And the problem was that it did not maintain the money supply. It allowed deflation to happen. Scott Sumner is a small-government libertarian economist (http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=4220). He thinks we should scale down the size of our government to something approaching the Singapore model. He is no friend to fiscal stimulus policies. But the graph in that link is one of the most fantastic pieces of evidence I've ever seen.

He is posting parts of his book on the history of the depressing on his blog. Read them, if you're interested in a bit of modern thought. I don't necessarily agree with everything he says, but god damn if he doesn't make the first compelling case I've ever seen against fiscal stimulus. It's good economics, and I'm going to have to think long and hard about it, to see if I need to change my attitude toward government deficit spending in a time of economic crisis. I'll listen to Sumner, because he's knowledgeable, he's given the issue a helluva lot of thought, and he argues his case convincingly.

But even so, Sumner believes that the Fed didn't stimulate the economy enough during the Depression. He thinks they didn't do their job. He's knowledge enough to make his case. You can cite the tired dead economists, or modern "Austrians" like Peter Schiff all you want. Peter Schiff was wrong about most of the things he said. (http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/01/peter-schiff-was-wrong.html) He's not an economist, and he doesn't know what he's talking about.

And you are wrong as well. Repeatedly. About everything you write.You probably thought you "got me", right? Well, sorry to disappoint you, but it seems you are the one who needs to bone up on your economic studies. Since you did so well here, why don't you take a shot at responding to the rest of my post?No, I didn't "get you".

You did this to yourself. And now you're digging yourself deeper. All I did was give you a shovel.

[The Hamster King]

Communism fails, socialism always fails eventually, and all other centrally planned economies fail under their own weight.And unregulated capitalism also fails. In fact, Marx's particular form of Communism was an extreme reaction to the obvious failures of the unregulated free market.

Are you saying capitalism is a bad system?No ... I'm saying that unregulated capitalism is a bad system. You're trying to solve complicated real-world problems with a simplistic one-size-fits all ideology. Sometimes the free market does wonderful things. Sometimes it produces cruelty and oppression. The sensible thing to do is decide which is which on a case-by-case basis instead of coming up with a grand utopian scheme and applying it universally to all situations.

Will you acknowledge that government IS a threat to liberty? I don't believe it is the only threat, but it is the most significant.It is A potential threat to liberty, but its certainly not the more significant threat that we face in America right now.

Treating people well and providing good service will end up being more profitable in the long run.Which makes no difference if the more predatory companies already drove you out of business IN THE SHORT RUN. Exploitative business practices produce an obvious short-term gain so there is a constant pressure to engage in them to make just a little more profit. There's a ratchet effect: Companies that are slightly more exploitative do slightly better in the short run, putting pressure on others to match their practices to stay in business in the short run. The result is a race to the bottom. It's an example of the classic prisoner's dilemma. The companies, by making the most rational decisions to protect their own interests at each step, eventually bring about a situation that's worse for everyone.

Liberty is the ideal that we should strive for.Liberty is AN ideal we should strive for. But not the only one. I would rank justice and compassion just as highly. And if you mindlessly pursue pure liberty without also seeking justice and compassion, you will find only oppression.

With a very powerful Federal Government with no restraint ... .Except for the elections we have EVERY TWO YEARS. :rolleyes:

I'd be very happy if the federal government would work harder to prevent us more aggressively from corporatism. Unfortunately all the "free market solves everything" people keep stopping it.

You can criticize my ideas for reform, but you must admit that a libertarian society is one that hasn't been tried in a very long time. Why not at least be willing to give it a chance?Then start small and prove how well it works. First run a city on libertarian principles, or a state, and show how amazing your utopian ideas are in practice.

[Oldeb]

Of course people who own a corporation are interested in turning a profit. But you are insinuating that that desire is inherently contrary to social justice. I disagree.

I'm not insinuating. I'm directly stating: Continually increasing profits comes at the cost of reduced quality goods and the well being of employees.




My cite is the last 200 years of industrial history. Without government regulation we would still have:
No child labor laws
No standardized work week and overtime pay
No workplace safety standards
No minimum wage
No product safety standards
No recourse to collusion between companies and blacklisting of people in a given field.
All of these things get in the way of profit.


People WOULD have an alternative to buying any product. But I understand your concerns are frequently held by those on the Left in reaction to a libertarian ideology.

Many times in real life the alternative is to starve or otherwise be unable to function in society. Do you really think there is a viable alternative for purchasing gasoline for the majority of the US? Relying on public transport is not an option since it is very sub-par in many areas and moving next door to where I work is completely impractical.


What if we had basic safeguards you could agree with, antitrust laws, minimum wage laws, food and safety requirements, restrictions on pollution, etc. And THEN we shrunk the government down to its Constitutional size and scope and adopted the other reforms I have suggested. Would you support them then?

Such as dumping medicare and education spending? No. The problem with your statement of "Constitutional size and scope" is that is presumes that things such as medicare, membership in the UN, and education are somehow unconstitutional. I'm not even sure how you define "Constitutional size."

Besides, it's not some sacred document that's the Holy Word of God. It's just a piece of paper with some decent guidelines on it. I don't think it should be easy to change the Constitution, but it damn well should be mutable and ever changing. Time marches on and what was fine in 1787 is not what we need now.

I think one of the best parts is that the framers of the US Constitution were smart enough to realize that and included the means to alter it from the start. If it's truely bothering you that medicare is not specifically mentioned by name in the US Constitution that can be changed. Would you be okay with that?



The problem is we have been living with Corporatism for so long now many companies are vastly more powerful than they would be in a Free Market Libertarian society. I think it would be fair, in a transition phase, for the government to break up these monopolies and encourage new business and free enterprise through tax incentives and other means. Once we have achieved the reforms I am advocating, we would see every market have a vibrant, competitive energy with dozens of competitors vying for the public to patronize them. The issue is how to get from here to there.

You are still ignoring start up costs. All the tax breaks in the world aren't going to suddenly allow for the building of more oil refineries by John Doe off the street.

It's fine to say businesses would be better off with more competion, but you have no plan for how to get there and stay there. Breaking up large companies and preventing them from reforming would be the height of government regulation on business.

Breaking them up and then somehow not expecting them to promptly merge back into two or three megacorporations is ignoring the last 200 years of history.

I'm still unclear on how you can rail against current corporations and the problems they cause and come to the conclusion that the best way to deal with them would be to stop forcing them to follow minimum standards and just work it out themselves. It's like deciding that a 5 year old kid is going to figure out for himself that he needs to eat something besides candy if he want to stay healthy.



Because they are very low risk. Do you understand how low the risk for terrorism really is? You are more likely to be struck by lightning twice in one year than to be the victim of a terrorist attack. Yeah, I don't think every man, woman, child, young and old alike should be scanned and harassed at the airport.

This is just me, but I would gladly take the risk to be free of this nonsense every time I fly. Are you really afraid of terrorism? Would you not feel safe on an airplane without having full body scanners at every airport and knowing that peoples toothpaste has been taken from them? I certainly wouldn't feel any less safe without this bullshit. To each his own.

I know, you know, and many other people know just how low the risk is. But the majority of the US feels safer with it. This encourages them to fly more. I can promise you that if you stood up today and did away with all security screening you'd seen a massive drop in the number of passengers. TSA's number one job is not keeping us safe, no matter how much they like to think so. It's keeping people happy and spending money on air travel.

The cat is out of the bag and it's not going back in. Air travel has changed in the last 9 years and there is no returning to the way it was. You also did not provide an example of a non-racist, non-bigoted way to determine high risk travelers. Don't feel bad if you can't. Nobody else has yet either.


I'll repeat it again: Just like Communism, Libertarianism only works if you believe people will put the wellfare of others over a small gain for themselves. I know it's weird that two directly opposite models have the same flaw, but there it is. If you could get businesses to take the high road and bypass profit for greater social good it would work out just fine. History is full of examples of this not being the case.

[jrodefeld]

Whew! This thread reminds me of a cat fight I once saw. All that was visible was a 5 ft cloud cloud of flying fur.

Where to begin?

As I've said before to the point of boring everyone, we live in a Corporate Kleptocracy.




The coup was completed in 1889 when SCOTUS granted corporations personhood and with the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890, the first federal statute to identify corporations as people.

Wall Street, oil companies, defense contractors are all govt sanctioned criminal enterprises. They OWN the govt and hire their own "regulators".
Progressives, conservatives, and independents. All smugly irrelevant.

Sweet dreams.



I don't disagree with anything you have said. I do think our country has become a Corporate Kleptocracy. I also agree that it started with granting Corporate Personhood, thus giving corporations the same legal rights as people. It continued when we allowed the banks to form a cartel and take over our economy. This encouraged the corporations to look for a handout, rather than competing fairly in the market environment.

Some liberals take your position and use it to justify a larger more intrusive government and moving towards socialism. I think this is wrong. We should reform capitalism and go back to Free Markets. We perhaps could put in additional safeguards to prevent the corporations from taking over again.

[adhay]

I don't disagree with anything you have said. I do think our country has become a Corporate Kleptocracy. ... This encouraged the corporations to look for a handout, rather than competing fairly in the market environment.Its worse than that. They don't ask for handouts, they steal it in plain sight. The only "legal" way to rob a bank is from a board room.Some liberals take your position and use it to justify a larger more intrusive government and moving towards socialism. I think this is wrong. We should reform capitalism and go back to Free Markets. We perhaps could put in additional safeguards to prevent the corporations from taking over again.Progressives, conservative, independents all suffer from the belief that there is some way to take our govt back from corporations. Corporations ARE the govt and they are not likely to give up their power. They OWN all three branches of our govt and are fronted abroad by the US military. In other words, all left/right debates in this country are moot.

Reform Capitalism? :p

[jrodefeld]

Its worse than that. They don't ask for handouts, they steal it in plain sight. The only "legal" way to rob a bank is from a board room.Progressives, conservative, independents all suffer from the belief that there is some way to take our govt back from corporations. Corporations ARE the govt and they are not likely to give up their power. They OWN all three branches of our govt and are fronted abroad by the US military. In other words, all left/right debates in this country are moot.

Reform Capitalism? :p

Well, what should we do then? You seem to think that there is no hope. I agree it is a daunting taste, but we really don't have a choice. We can roll over and passively allow the corporations and bankers to continually abuse us and steal every last penny from the working class, or we can stand up to them in whatever capacity we are able. Obviously we need to have some sort of a revolution in this country beyond just electing Democrats and Republicans. We need to stop watching tv, read more, become informed on the issues and get involved in our local communities.

You know, as much as liberals like to make fun of the teabaggers, I have some sympathy for them. People are losing everything, their home, their job, and their standard of living, and they are lashing out. Many are misinformed on key issues, but they are right to be outraged. And for all their faults, the truth is they do for the most part direct their anger towards both Republicans and Democrats alike. So, for concerned liberals like yourself (I assume you are a liberal?), rather than making fun of these people you should be reaching out and uniting with them to take on this Corporatist system. We should not be fighting amongst ourselves, we should be fighting against the people who have screwed us over (Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Military contractors, Blackwater, Big Oil, and politicians of all stripes).

Do you have any better ideas of how to overcome this system we currently have?

[UTejas]

By the way, there are increasing numbers of scientists who dispute the wisdom of giving people (especially children) the number of vaccines that we do.

You know, the Pharmaceutical industry is making a ton of money prescribing drugs for every illness under the sun. Many are unnecessary. Why wouldn't they also be making money off of vaccines? Is it really so much of a stretch to think that they are pressuring us to get vaccines that we really don't need?

By the way, I have never gotten vaccinated and I am healthier than anyone I know. I never get sick. If vaccines are so important, why are people sicker than ever before with all these new mandatory vaccines? Don't you think this is an area of medicine the begs long term cost-benefit analysis?


This is not helping your cause, even slightly. In fact, it makes you sound perfectly irrational and hurts your credibility. I know it is hard for me to listen to someone who claims to be well-educated arguing for a perfectly free market when he is willing to listen to Jenny McCarthy and Bill Maher over the entire weight of scientific knowledge. Honestly, this just makes me think that a perfectly libertarian society would go to hell even faster than I previously assumed.

Have you listened to yourself?! I mean what in the hell does "If vaccines are so important, why are people sicker than ever before with all these new mandatory vaccines?" even mean? You are 25, the same age as me. Do you honestly think more people are sicker now than ever before? How many of your peers are in wheelchairs from polio? Scarred from smallpox? Sterile from the mumps? Do you know ANYONE who has ever had the measles, diptheria, rubella, or whooping cough? Vaccines not only work but are possibly the greatest technological triumph of the past century.

I applaud your belief in your body's immune system and whatever the hell "natural supplementation" means. You should be thanking literally all of society for getting vaccinated so that you can take advantage of herd immunity.

And why on earth is a libertarian arguing about the evils of a pharmaceutical company? You think without a CDC putting out reliable, scholarly, scientific data in a form consumable by the general public that things would be better? Yes, I am sure that not every medication in existence is necessary and that there is a tendency to overmedicate in general. Vaccination has nothing to do with this. Please, identify to me a vaccine that we "don't really need". If your answer involves something about preventing disease that people aren't likely to get, just stop. There is a reason we don't get those diseases anymore and it is called vaccination.

[septimus]

We need to stop watching tv, read more, become informed on the issues and get involved in our local communities.

In addition to avoiding the TV, I'd also recommend avoiding some of those crackpot websites! :D

Hi again, jrodefeld. You're obviously a young, intelligent person concerned about America's direction. Good! We need more like you! It would be nice to all band together and change America's direction (like Sarah Palin asks us to do :dubious: ); it's just too bad we've trouble agreeing on the direction!

If you've kept an open mind, you've learned a lot from this thread. You've learned why governments mandate vaccinations, something you didn't seem to understand before. You know that serious economists regard your monetary ideas as silly. (I'm still waiting for the paper explaining "free markets setting short-term interest rates" :cool: )

One of the hardest things to do, especially in political debate, is to admit one was wrong and then change one's views. But you now have the opportunity to reflect on what you've learned, review some more balanced books. Many people, including yourself, would be delighted to see you come back in a few weeks with a more nuanced understanding. There are many intelligent Dopers who've addressed your questions; wouldn't it be wonderful to see that their efforts weren't wasted?

Good luck.

[adhay]

Well, what should we do then? You seem to think that there is no hope.There is no hope for civilization as we know it. Rising population with increasing energy demands on finite resources coupled with our doomed-to-fail economic system which depends on increasing said demands along with global warming is setting up our global population for a big die off. The Big Transition is upon us.

Humanity has NEVER faced anything like this before. Govt could help ease the transition but the folks in power really don't give a shit ... simply, they're content to be the last to starve. And, by and large, the American people are complicit in their greed, myself included.

I'm 69 and was born into what I can see was the truly privileged generation in this country. I'm retired on minimum SS and not counting the extras such as subsidized HUD rent and a generous Medicaid, my income puts me in the top 13% of the world's population.

And, paradoxically, I'm much better off than my fellow retirees who managed to put something away for their golden years. Because, by virtue of their "wealth", they are not eligible for the numerous perks to which my "poverty" entitles me, they are struggling to pay for health insurance when I can walk into any clinic for a $2 co-pay.

I have no illusions about my complicity as a beneficiary of Coporate America's rape of the world and utter disregard for the welfare of this country and its people but, OTOH, I have have no guilt. Hey, everybody is born somewhere. I'm not a religious person but call it karma. I agree it is a daunting taste, but we really don't have a choice. We can roll over and passively allow the corporations and bankers to continually abuse us and steal every last penny from the working class, or we can stand up to them in whatever capacity we are able. Obviously we need to have some sort of a revolution in this country beyond just electing Democrats and RepublicansShort of herding the whole bunch into Gitmo, good luck. Blackwater will see to it that the question never arises. We need to stop watching tv, read more, become informed on the issues and get involved in our local communities.I agree.

But there is really only one issue, what is my community going to look like when the shit comes down? What happens when the grid collapses and delivery trucks stop rolling into Safeway? The problem is, whenever you bring up the subject, folks think you're being a bit melodramatic.You know, as much as liberals like to make fun of the teabaggers, I have some sympathy for them. People are losing everything, their home, their job, and their standard of living, ...If my scenario outlined above proves true, prepare to join the crowd. Many are misinformed on key issues ...Got it ?I assume you are a liberal?I'm a progressive anarchist. WTF, I'll admit it, I voted for Obama but after a year of Bush in Blackface, I've had it. ... you should be reaching out and uniting with them to take on this Corporatist system. We should not be fighting amongst ourselves, we should be fighting against the people who have screwed us over (Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Military contractors, Blackwater, Big Oil, and politicians of all stripes). Do you have any better ideas of how to overcome this system we currently have?Stop using their money.

[adhay]

Perhaps this will help. It's A talk given by Dr. Albert Barlett Professor Emeritus Department of Physics University of Colorado at Boulder "Arithmetic, Population and Energy" (http://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_population_energy_video1.html) in 8 9+ min segments.

Once this is digested, we can talk about our so-called financial system.

[Oldeb]

Do you have any better ideas of how to overcome this system we currently have?

Oh sure, now you get into the hard questions. ;) You're certainly correct that it's a lot easier to look at something and say it won't work than it is to decide what the next step should be.

To use the sports analogy you used way back in this thread, the US is the Detroit Lions. We use to be good enough to be gauranteed a spot on TV every Thanksgiving because everyone wanted to see us. Now we're still in the spotlight but our level of play is getting embarrassing.

First, we need to stop drafting wide receivers (calling for more deregulation) over and over again as if that's the magic cure for our problems. We've gotten a new coach (Obama) and he seems to have some ideas and is at least willing to listen to his assistants on what needs to be done. (Although it remains to be seen if it all works out or not, but at least he's trying)

We have problems with the front office though. Some of them are trying to make things better and build up the club. Some of them are more like the owner in Major League and are hoping that by running the team into the ground they can move to a new city where everything will be unicorns and rainbows.
(The current Republican strategy of "just say no" to anything and everything to get Obama to fail)

As you've noticed this still leaves us with a terrible team, just in a new city. Even if the plan succeeds, what next?

Well, in my opinion it's time to stop drafting wide receivers. We can just say we're in a building year or ten and hope to draft our way out of our problems. Or we can look around at the rest of the league and see if we can't make a trade or two.

Canada is right next door and has an incredibly stable banking system. For a long time our two banking systems were identical and both were faced with many of the same pressures. But in the 80's the US decided to deregulate banks, leading to them taking on ever increasing amounts of risk and handing out loans to people who really, really should never have gotten them. This has backfired on us.

Canada never allowed it's banks to take on that much risk and is now sitting in a pretty good spot. Why can't we move towards a system similar to theirs? It doesn't have to be identical, but we could certainly learn from it.

Or health care. Every other first world nation has national health care. Why do we continue to think that it's going to destroy civilization? It seems that it works everywhere else. Again, I'm not saying we need to slavishly copy another country, but we could create one for ourselves based on the available examples.

But this isn't easy. We have the Teabaggers who as you noted are upset and ignorant. Not a good combination. They're angry and they don't know why. The problem with the Teabaggers is that for the most part they don't want to know why. They like their issues to come in soundbites and cliched phrasing. It makes everything simple to understand. Rather than taking the time to learn what's going on they simply wait to be told why they are upset by others.

They're the ultimate in the "Microwave Generation" of politics. They don't have the attention span to focus on any issue for more than a few minutes so whoever can grab their attention in the flashiest manner wins. Content doesn't really matter. Ironically, almost all of the Teabaggers are far too old have grown up as part of the Microwave Generation. Go figure.

What should we do with them? Nothing really. They don't want to be educated and are not a significant demographic. The most optimistic polls of their numbers are 15% of the population with the true number probably much lower. The world is passing them by and it's time the US did them same. Like Secessionist after the Civil War or Segrationist after the Civil Rights Movement they will either join the rest of us or fade out of existence.

As for the companies you mention Goldman Sachs and Citigroup would be fine under increased regulation. Military Contractors do need more oversight. The oil comapnies? You've got me there. A Windfall Profits tax would make me feel good, but there are reasons why it may be a bad idea. Ultimately moving away from our dependence on oil would be the best solution, but I don't see that happening any time soon and am just as guilty of depending on it as anyone else.

Blackwater is an embarrasment to the US. And pretty much to humanity in general. Some steps have been taken, such as the decision not to renew their contract in Iraq. I'd like to see them just given the boot completely instead of waiting for a contract to expire, but at least it's a start. Never letting them take a Federal contract again would be great.

[adhay]

I don't know whether to thank you or curse you for starting this thread. I subscribed some time before I first posted because, as I've pointed out, partisan debates are irrelevant at this point. Only because I have too much time on my hands (courtesy of World Inc.)) do I look in on these little slug fests and laugh for crying. But you sucked me in.

I see in you, noted above by Septimus, an honest and inquiring open mind. Congrats! You're 9/10 of the way there. And just 27?. You wouldn't be on these boards w/o a vision and the testosterone/estrogen driven ambition to improve the world.

You are much more likely to live well into the 'interesting times' promised by the Corporate Juggernaut (Obama ridden/driven at the moment) than I. I figure my minimum SS will be the last shoe dropped to announce the end of the charade of govt's personal interest in anyone's welfare. You and your children (and mine) will live with what we've been able to put together in the next 20 years. That's the window.

So what you gonna do?

I suggest:

1) Move to a community somewhere in a bio-region (watershed) blessed with good sun, surface water and arable land, mild winters a plus.
2) Encourage your new mayor to work with neighboring colleagues to create the Greater Local Consolation Project. (Home Rule is sanctioned where I live)
a) Protect the headwaters.
b) While dollars are cheap, communally stock up on the technological spoils of Capitalism's alternatives to oil.
Howabout solar powered wifi for the local net, where can we drop your net book and solar panel?
Windmill farms?
Lots of plastic pipe for irrigation.
Tightly rationed local fuel dumps to ease the transition to mule and plow and buggy?
Community freezers?
EMTs live free?

Take it from there. Please.

If you have any doubts, I offer you this little gem. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=404227395387111085#

[Der Trihs]

So what you gonna do?

I suggest:

1) Move to a community somewhere in a bio-region (watershed) blessed with good sun, surface water and arable land, mild winters a plus.
2) Encourage your new mayor to work with neighboring colleagues to create the Greater Local Consolation Project. (Home Rule is sanctioned where I live)
a) Protect the headwaters.
b) While dollars are cheap, communally stock up on the technological spoils of Capitalism's alternatives to oil.
Howabout solar powered wifi for the local net, where can we drop your net book and solar panel?
Windmill farms?
Lots of plastic pipe for irrigation.
Tightly rationed local fuel dumps to ease the transition to mule and plow and buggy?
Community freezers?
EMTs live free?

Take it from there. Please.Um. "Ease the transition to mule and plow and buggy"? If things get that bad, then what you are suggesting is near suicide. Without modern transportation methods, most of the population is going to die of starvation, which means you don't want to be sitting on a food source. If things go the way you suggest (which I doubt), then you want to go the classic survivalist route of some isolated cabin with lots of stored food. And forget "easing the transition", or the idea that you will have electronics solar powered or otherwise. You'll have hand tools and die young.

[adhay]

21st century

Um. "Ease the transition to mule and plow and buggy"? If things get that bad, then what you are suggesting is near suicide.I merely disagree. I see it as basic survival strategy.

Without modern transportation methods, most of the population is going to die of starvation, which means you don't want to be sitting on a food source.Again, I disagree. I like eating and will gladly share what's available and don't mind riding or walking or riding a bicycle half a day to do it.

If things go the way you suggest (which I doubt[:smack:]), then you want to go the classic survivalist route of somAe isolated cabin with lots of stored food.Actually, I'm suggesting establishing community spirits in sustainable environments. [:smack:]added.

And forget "easing the transition", or the idea that you will have electronics solar powered or otherwise. You'll have hand tools and die young.Give me a bow saw and I will reclaim the wilderness. Invest in solar cum batteries now and I will show you all your favorite drugs and toys, good health and a comfortable place to sit among friends.

[Der Trihs]

Again, I disagree. I like eating and will gladly share what's available and don't mind riding or walking or riding a bicycle half a day to do it.When a hundred or a thousand starving people show up to take everything you have, sharing won't work.

Actually, I'm suggesting establishing community spirits in sustainable environments. [:smack:]added.There won't BE any communities in such a collapse of civilization. It would be the war of all against all; living with a hundred people means living with a hundred mortal enemies when society breaks down, and means being big enough to be a target. You would want to be isolated and invisible. Or safely, painlessly dead.

Give me a bow saw and I will reclaim the wilderness. Invest in solar cum batteries now and I will show you all your favorite drugs and toys, good health and a comfortable place to sit among friends.:rolleyes: Nonsense. High technology need a large infrastructure to build and maintain it. An 18th century infrastructure means 18th century technology. You won't have drugs or toys; you won't have much of anything.

"And the living shall envy the dead" is the phrase that comes to mind; assuming your scenario pans out, I have no desire to survive into the hell that the world will become. All that is good, all that makes life worth living will be destroyed and little but suffering, ignorance and slavery will survive. Just like the hell we climbed out of.

[YogSosoth]

1. I believe in a small, limited Federal Government which can only pursue those functions expressly authorized in the Constitution. If we want our federal government to take on new responsibilities, the ONLY way to do this would be through the slow and deliberate process of Amending the Constitution. This would result in a decentralized, Federalist system of governance.


A small government gives too much power to regional warlords. The more people the government can control, the more the moderates and mitigate the psychos. I agree with enough of what is usually termed "American ideals" to turn it over to some Southern nutjob with a hard-on for Jesus. Amendment is too slow and difficult. You'd end up with a government that can do nothing


2. I strongly oppose ALL forms of corporate subsidies, no bid contracts, back room deals and other influence buying that tilts the tables in favor of Corporate America. The goal of the Federal Government should be to "regulate" (not as the term is used today) the Free Market, meaning insuring that there IS a Free Market and it remains free. ....... In addition, NOBODY should be too big to fail. Allow any and all bankruptcies to occur.

Ideally I'd agree with you, but it doesn't work in the real world. If the big banks failed, it would negatively impact a hell of a lot more people and in more severe ways than if we just bit down on our lips and gave them a bunch of free money and pay it off slowly over the next few decades. No, I don't agree with the inherent goodness of a free market. Some things need to be controlled for the good of the many


3. I strongly oppose a Central Bank setting interest rates, and printing money endlessly. I believe we should eliminate the Federal Reserve and place its functions back under the Treasury as the Constitution demands. Furthermore, we should again back our currency by a tangible asset such as Gold. This will prevent abuse of the People's money and protect ones savings from the debasement of inflation. Banks should go bankrupt just like any other private business. Also, we should allow competing currencies to circulate. If someone wants to exchange gold or silver certificates, for example, in a voluntary exchange for goods or services they should be allowed to. This is an additional safeguard which would prevent abusive and destructive monetary policy by our federal government.


I'd rather have stability than free market madness. One currency, no gold, and the ability to print money. It only becomes a problem if we print too much too fast. I can handle the rate of inflation, it doesn't bother me


4. We should cut back our military drastically. We should only go to war under an official Declaration of War by the Congress as a result of irrefutable proof of a threat to national security after intense and meaningful debate. We should remove our troops from around the world and shut down all military bases becoming neutral in the disputes of other nations, not picking a side. We should have a small (not too small), effective military that is able to provide adequate defense of this country rather than aggressive, imperialistic offense perpetrated on the rest of the world.


Agreed. Nobody's invading us, nobody. Even if we didn't have an army


5. All education should be private or a product of local community government. The Federal government should stay out of education completely and fully. Education is power. Different schools should be teaching different things. Not completely different subjects, but different curriculums, different approaches to education. If we have every public school in the country teaching basically the exact same things and the same curriculum, this doesn't breed excellence in education and diversity of skills, it breeds mindless drones who all think alike. I think an Independent, free education system is one of the only means to ensure the prevention of tyrannical government. I mean, think about it. Why wouldn't government schools push political propaganda on the students? Why would they teach kids how to effect meaningful lasting political change or how to effectively overthrow the political establishment? To protect liberty for the future it is imperative that the next generations are taught well.


Education is not a system of barter that we can exchange one belief for the other. There are objective facts, those need to be teached. Excellence does not come from competing curriculums because people generally cannot move simply to change schools. Excellence comes from teaching FACTS. You rely too much on the mystical hand of the market. Some things are not market driven, And your second part sounds like a conspiracy nut's wet dream


6. ALL abuse of our liberties should end. No more warrantless wiretapping, restoration of habeas corpus, eliminate the Patriot Act, unnecessary screening at airports, and allow all voluntary consensual activity that harms nobody.


Your defnition of abuses are not mine. I agree with your examples, but I suspect it extends to more than just these. There are other "abuses" of liberty that is necessary, like preventing states from making up their own lies and teaching it to kids


7. Eliminate all regulatory red tape restricting small business and harming entrepreneurship and eliminate so called "free trade" agreements like NAFTA. This would encourage a new manufacturing base to reemerge in America and allow it to take hold. It should not be more profitable to ship business overseas than to create more jobs in this country.


Regulations protects people. That's more important that ideals. Free trade is good because while we're in a recession right now, we're still better off than most of the world, especially most of the developing world. I'd rather we take a small hit in our standards of living and another, worse off country gain a large increase in theirs. We're rich enough, we don't have to be that rich


8. Phase out bankrupt Federal medical entitlements such as Medicare. Encourage local governments, charity hospitals and humanitarian organizations to pick up the slack. Ensure medical freedom.


Without protections for the oldest and the sickest, they die. Medicare stays. It would be near genocidal to get rid of it.


9. The United States should leave the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF, the Council on Foreign Relations, and all similar unelected international bodies that don't serve the interests of the american people. We can engage in robust diplomacy with other nations on our own, rather than though an organization that has its own interests and agenda at heart.


The interests of the American people should only be slightly more priority than the interests of the rest of the world's people. We're all human beings, act like it. International organizations such as those should be given more power to enforce it's regulations. The only thing bad about the UN is that it cannot forcefully make countries do what it wants. It should be able to. And without such international organization, we'll have WW3. Government is like parents for adults, and international governments are like leaders for a rabble. Until countries figure out that their needs coincide with the needs of other countries, the UN is necessary


10. Make it very clear that our system of government is NOT democracy. It is a Constitutional Republic. A democracy is Tyranny by the Majority. In a democracy 51% of the population can vote away the rights of 49%. A Republic is a government run by laws, in this case the Constitution. Its primary function is to ensure equal freedom for ALL Americans, not just the majority. It is the minorities rights that need protecting.


It's a representative democracy. Besides, what difference does it make what we call it? Such finely directed semantic bickering usually serves some ulterior motive


The reasons our country is so divided is that we have thought of liberty as two different aspects. Liberals are more likely to support Personal Liberty but favor restricting Economic Liberty. Conservatives are more likely the opposite. But mostly they both agree to restrict both personal and economic liberty. We should again see liberty as a whole worth defending in its entirety. Conservatives should see that a person should be allowed to smoke marijuana or a gay couple should be allowed to get married if they want. By the same token, Liberals should see that the Second Amendment deserves protection and abandon all notions of "Gun control" because it would infringe on this Constitutional Right. Furthermore, Liberals should see that it infringes upon the rights of Conservatives to forcefully take their money to fund a wealth transfer to some politically favored cause, frequently one that the Conservative may have a deep moral or philosophical objection to. This system of plundering and using the Government as a tool of force to take advantage of another group of Americans breeds anger and resentment. Before we provoke a new Civil War, why don't we come together to reestablish Freedom as an indivisible whole that deserves total protection in a just and equitable society?


The only way a civil war is going to happen is because the conservatives have decided to abandon all pretense to governance and have elected Hate, Spite, and Emotion as their Holy Trinity.

Liberals want people to be able to do what they want, within reason. It is not unreasonable to tell corporations to stop poisoning the waters. You want a system in which individuals cannot murder but companies can, offering only the alternative that if enough people die, then they'll go out of business. Meanwhile, fuck the widows and the orphans.

A lot of people think it would be a great world oh if only the big bad government would get out of our lives! Well guess what, the government does a lot of protecting because a lot of people, probably even you, cannot fend for themselves without it. We need a strong government to force people to treat others with respect, prevent companies from obtaining monopolies, and generally stop assholes from exploiting people. Take a look at history if you don't know what happened the last time your utopian principles were in charge

Could all of you, especially liberals, tell me why I am wrong in my beliefs? Also, please tell me how you reconcile a belief in something that directly contradicts all the warnings and philosophy of the Founding Fathers and the limited Constitutional government they so valiantly fought for. So many people just say, "Well, we just don't do things that way anymore. We are never going back, so don't think about it." I fail to see the logic in why the wisdom of the Founders is not applicable today. Of course times change and our Constitution was meant to adapt slowly to changing needs. I'm talking about the basic beliefs in liberty and the spirit of the philosophy which our current political establishment has rejected. When is the last time you even hear a politician campaign on individual freedom and liberty? They all run by bribing the public with free "stuff". There is no integrity left in our government.


So, especially those who support Obama's policies (which are 100% opposite of pretty much everything I have said here), where do I go wrong? Why is the Constitution not worth upholding? Why is circumventing the Congress through Executive power grabs, signing statements, secret bailouts by the Fed, preemptive war and everything else that first Bush and now Obama are pushing through superior in any way to the timeless wisdom of a government ruled by laws as established by great men like Washington and Jefferson? I await your responses.


Everything Obama has done has been legal. The only power abuses are the ones in your head

[jrodefeld]

This is not helping your cause, even slightly. In fact, it makes you sound perfectly irrational and hurts your credibility. I know it is hard for me to listen to someone who claims to be well-educated arguing for a perfectly free market when he is willing to listen to Jenny McCarthy and Bill Maher over the entire weight of scientific knowledge. Honestly, this just makes me think that a perfectly libertarian society would go to hell even faster than I previously assumed.

Have you listened to yourself?! I mean what in the hell does "If vaccines are so important, why are people sicker than ever before with all these new mandatory vaccines?" even mean? You are 25, the same age as me. Do you honestly think more people are sicker now than ever before? How many of your peers are in wheelchairs from polio? Scarred from smallpox? Sterile from the mumps? Do you know ANYONE who has ever had the measles, diptheria, rubella, or whooping cough? Vaccines not only work but are possibly the greatest technological triumph of the past century.

I applaud your belief in your body's immune system and whatever the hell "natural supplementation" means. You should be thanking literally all of society for getting vaccinated so that you can take advantage of herd immunity.

And why on earth is a libertarian arguing about the evils of a pharmaceutical company? You think without a CDC putting out reliable, scholarly, scientific data in a form consumable by the general public that things would be better? Yes, I am sure that not every medication in existence is necessary and that there is a tendency to overmedicate in general. Vaccination has nothing to do with this. Please, identify to me a vaccine that we "don't really need". If your answer involves something about preventing disease that people aren't likely to get, just stop. There is a reason we don't get those diseases anymore and it is called vaccination.


Okay, I'm not trying to make this thread a focus on vaccinations. It is really beside the point. I'm saying that people get way too many vaccines. You talk about polio, small pox and measles. Fine. I never said that all vaccines are bad. What about vaccines for the flu, or swine flu? The main reason I am taking the position I am is the recent hysteria over the swine flu, which turned out to not be any significant threat. Yet it was hyped day and night that there was a pandemic and everybody needed to protect themselves. And some states, such as Massachusetts, tried to make the vaccinations mandatory. That is why I am skeptical of the new health care "reform". I don't want more mandatory vaccines, I want freedom of choice in medical care.

I never disputed the validity of the science of vaccines. I am suggesting that in this day and age many vaccinations are unnecessary and are more about pharmaceutical companies making profits than really preventing disease. Why wouldn't this be a valid concern? Think of all the drugs most people are taking. Even though some people need drugs for certain conditions and for temporary health issues, few would doubt that pharmaceutical companies are pushing drugs on people to make a profit. I am suggesting the makers of vaccines are doing the same thing.

Reply if you want, but then lets drop the talk about vaccinations, it really is not the point of my thread. Lets keep the subject on the philosophy of libertarianism and how it compares and contrasts with modern liberal philosophy and modern conservative thought.

[Der Trihs]

Okay, I'm not trying to make this thread a focus on vaccinations. It is really beside the point. I'm saying that people get way too many vaccines. You talk about polio, small pox and measles. Fine. I never said that all vaccines are bad. What about vaccines for the flu, or swine flu? The main reason I am taking the position I am is the recent hysteria over the swine flu, which turned out to not be any significant threat. This time. You do realize that if everyone waited until it was certain that this was next Spanish Flu, it would be too late?

Reply if you want, but then lets drop the talk about vaccinations, it really is not the point of my thread. Lets keep the subject on the philosophy of libertarianism and how it compares and contrasts with modern liberal philosophy and modern conservative thought.They are closely related; both the antivaxers and the libertarians are basically faith based sociopaths; they deny all facts and logic that disagree with their fantasy. They know what they know, don't care about the actual facts, and don't care who their philosophy hurts. They both define "freedom" as "screw you"; they both have no concern for the general welfare.

[jrodefeld]

In addition to avoiding the TV, I'd also recommend avoiding some of those crackpot websites! :D

Hi again, jrodefeld. You're obviously a young, intelligent person concerned about America's direction. Good! We need more like you! It would be nice to all band together and change America's direction (like Sarah Palin asks us to do :dubious: ); it's just too bad we've trouble agreeing on the direction!

If you've kept an open mind, you've learned a lot from this thread. You've learned why governments mandate vaccinations, something you didn't seem to understand before. You know that serious economists regard your monetary ideas as silly. (I'm still waiting for the paper explaining "free markets setting short-term interest rates" :cool: )

One of the hardest things to do, especially in political debate, is to admit one was wrong and then change one's views. But you now have the opportunity to reflect on what you've learned, review some more balanced books. Many people, including yourself, would be delighted to see you come back in a few weeks with a more nuanced understanding. There are many intelligent Dopers who've addressed your questions; wouldn't it be wonderful to see that their efforts weren't wasted?

Good luck.


Well, I don't think anybodies time was wasted in debating these issues. At least, I hope not. But if you think anybody on this thread has really "schooled" me and showed how what I believe is wrong in a persuasive, intellectual manner, you obviously haven't been paying attention. Did you actually look at any of the links I posted about Austrian School economics? They are certainly not crackpot, conspiracy websites. In fact, I don't know exactly what "conspiracy" websites you are even talking about! I think it demonstrates close-mindedness to write off any websites or scholarly works as "crackpot" simply because they disagree with what you have read.

As far as vaccinations, I am opposed to "mandatory" vaccinations, but not necessarily vaccinations themselves. So, lets drop this topic. Its not even remotely a high priority for our nation in this time.

As far as your assertion that all "serious" economists disregard the Austrian school views on monetary policy, why were the Austrian economist right in predicting this current economic crisis? They have been vindicated by history? Have you considered the notion that perhaps several decades ago economic thought went in the wrong direction? Perhaps we have forgotten many important ideas of the classical economists? I mean, since the Great Depression, we have embraced Keynesian theories and they have delivered the economic crisis that we have, to say nothing of the debt, the militarism around the world, and constant attacks on liberty. Bad policies get institutionalized all the time. I doubt that if you really study Austrian economics, including the modern adherents such as Peter Schiff and Ron Paul, and compare them to modern Keynesians such as Krugman, you would find that the Austrian theories are superior.

Second, you act like I haven't read mainstream economists. I have. It was Keynes who claimed the deficits don't matter! He said "in the end we are all dead"! Actually, we are not all dead, HE is dead. We are all alive to pick up the pieces from the meltdown which was the consequence of his faulty economic ideas. You will soon see that the stimulus is not driving a recovery. It will lead to a greater and deeper crisis. I think when historians deal with this period of time it will be established that this crisis was characterized by the final debunking of Keynesian, great depression era theories in favor of superior ideas based on economic liberty.

By the way, I know that many on this thread probably don't care for Ron Paul, but I suggest you read his book "End The Fed", and see how Austrian theory relates to this current crisis. You would also see how right he was and how wrong Greenspan and Bernanke were/are.

I do appreciate the discussion, though, even if we don't see eye to eye on everything. I think if we have this debate regarding the economics or the foreign policy of today, rather than just accepting the "establishment" consensus we will end up with better government and more liberty at the end of the day.

[elucidator]

... Did you actually look at any of the links I posted about Austrian School economics? ....

Trust me on this. Dopers of any history here are very well aquainted with the Austrian School of Economics. It has been brought to our attention. Yes.

[jrodefeld]

There is no hope for civilization as we know it. Rising population with increasing energy demands on finite resources coupled with our doomed-to-fail economic system which depends on increasing said demands along with global warming is setting up our global population for a big die off. The Big Transition is upon us.

Humanity has NEVER faced anything like this before. Govt could help ease the transition but the folks in power really don't give a shit ... simply, they're content to be the last to starve. And, by and large, the American people are complicit in their greed, myself included.

I'm 69 and was born into what I can see was the truly privileged generation in this country. I'm retired on minimum SS and not counting the extras such as subsidized HUD rent and a generous Medicaid, my income puts me in the top 13% of the world's population.

And, paradoxically, I'm much better off than my fellow retirees who managed to put something away for their golden years. Because, by virtue of their "wealth", they are not eligible for the numerous perks to which my "poverty" entitles me, they are struggling to pay for health insurance when I can walk into any clinic for a $2 co-pay.

I have no illusions about my complicity as a beneficiary of Coporate America's rape of the world and utter disregard for the welfare of this country and its people but, OTOH, I have have no guilt. Hey, everybody is born somewhere. I'm not a religious person but call it karma.

Wow, pretty depressing diagnosis, huh? I am actually fairly sympathetic to your views. I am tending to think more along the lines of just preparing for things to be very bad for a while. I do think we are facing problems we never have before. I am a lot younger than you, so I guess I'm just naturally more optimistic and perhaps less cynical.

I agree.

But there is really only one issue, what is my community going to look like when the shit comes down? What happens when the grid collapses and delivery trucks stop rolling into Safeway? The problem is, whenever you bring up the subject, folks think you're being a bit melodramatic.

I don't think you are being melodramatic at all. Its important to be self sufficient and live among people you can trust. If we have a massive food shortage, we will need to rely on local farming, and increasingly grow food for yourself. What if our entire financial system collapses (I mean more than it has already) and our currency collapses? Then we will transition to barter and trade and local "currencies" will prevail. It will be chaotic, to be sure, but we can survive and make it through. Many won't those who take proactive measures will. The key is to not be reliant on "the grid". Try to be self sufficient.

If my scenario outlined above proves true, prepare to join the crowd.

Sure. The point I was making was that we shouldn't be attacking any groups that are being screwed by the system. This would be a distraction and deflect anger from the people that really deserve it.

I'm a progressive anarchist. WTF, I'll admit it, I voted for Obama but after a year of Bush in Blackface, I've had it.

Absolutely. You said it perfectly. I don't criticize anybody for voting for Obama after the disastrous Bush administration. I DO criticize those who STILL think Obama represents change. I challenge you to find one significant policy that Bush started that Obama repealed. The war in Iraq has continued. We have sent more troops to Afghanistan. Guantanamo is still open. Warantless wiretapping still occurs. Obama reauthorized the Patriot Act. The list goes on and on. Personally I voted for Ralph Nader. He is definitely not a libertarian, but I agree with much of what he says.

Stop using their money.

Right. I agree.

[jrodefeld]

To use the sports analogy you used way back in this thread, the US is the Detroit Lions. We use to be good enough to be gauranteed a spot on TV every Thanksgiving because everyone wanted to see us. Now we're still in the spotlight but our level of play is getting embarrassing.

First, we need to stop drafting wide receivers (calling for more deregulation) over and over again as if that's the magic cure for our problems. We've gotten a new coach (Obama) and he seems to have some ideas and is at least willing to listen to his assistants on what needs to be done. (Although it remains to be seen if it all works out or not, but at least he's trying)

We have problems with the front office though. Some of them are trying to make things better and build up the club. Some of them are more like the owner in Major League and are hoping that by running the team into the ground they can move to a new city where everything will be unicorns and rainbows.
(The current Republican strategy of "just say no" to anything and everything to get Obama to fail)

As you've noticed this still leaves us with a terrible team, just in a new city. Even if the plan succeeds, what next?

Well, in my opinion it's time to stop drafting wide receivers. We can just say we're in a building year or ten and hope to draft our way out of our problems. Or we can look around at the rest of the league and see if we can't make a trade or two.

I think that it is wrong to think that Obama is anything more than a standard issue Chicago politician. "At least he's trying" is not an acceptable excuse any longer. He's a Corporatist of the first order. We need to stop pretending. His health care reform is not "coming down hard on the Insurance companies", rather the opposite. If you were a businessman wouldn't you want a law to be passed requiring people to purchase your product? Of course you would. The reason the health insurance stock rose after the passage of health "reform" is that the health insurance companies wrote the bill. It's good for business. They will be making a lot more money now. He will not ever come down with real financial regulatory reform. His biggest campaign contributer was Goldman Sachs. He is not going to really take on these powerful banks. Not now, not ever. And he's not going to end the overseas wars either.

The danger is the idea that we should just let Obama do what he wants and see how it pans out later. We really don't have the time. We need to be doing the right things NOW. The consequences of pursuing the wrong policies now will be catastrophic. The sooner Obama's base wakes up and stops supporting him (or at least push him to pursue real reform) the better we will be. You don't have to side with the Republicans to be opposed to Obama.

Or health care. Every other first world nation has national health care. Why do we continue to think that it's going to destroy civilization? It seems that it works everywhere else. Again, I'm not saying we need to slavishly copy another country, but we could create one for ourselves based on the available examples.

But this isn't easy. We have the Teabaggers who as you noted are upset and ignorant. Not a good combination. They're angry and they don't know why. The problem with the Teabaggers is that for the most part they don't want to know why. They like their issues to come in soundbites and cliched phrasing. It makes everything simple to understand. Rather than taking the time to learn what's going on they simply wait to be told why they are upset by others.

This is where economics need to be understood in relation to health care. Why do you see national health care as the perfect system? All health care systems in the industrialized world have significant flaws and are a major drain on the budget. We absolutely cannot afford any type of universal health care. I also don't think people have a right to medical care. I believe in liberty, so I think nobody can have a right to "stuff". Because then you have to violate somebody else's rights by forceably taking it (money, services) to redistribute the wealth to somebody else. It is a flawed idea that this is the way to be "altruistic" and humanitarian. Its easy to be generous with other peoples money or resources, its harder to actually put it on the line, donate you own time and effort to help people who need it.

As far as the "Teabaggers" are concerned, I think you are painting with a very broad brush. There are many many people who are upset and have different concerns. Some are very ignorant and some are quite intelligent and know exactly whats going on. I have many conservative relatives and they are all highly intelligent and have valid concerns. Have you actually talked to any of these people? I know the media always shows the person holding the sign of Obama as Hitler or some other inflammatory rhetoric, and I think it obscures the more reasonable concerns out there.

As for the companies you mention Goldman Sachs and Citigroup would be fine under increased regulation. Military Contractors do need more oversight. The oil comapnies? You've got me there. A Windfall Profits tax would make me feel good, but there are reasons why it may be a bad idea. Ultimately moving away from our dependence on oil would be the best solution, but I don't see that happening any time soon and am just as guilty of depending on it as anyone else.

More regulation will not help. We need true reform of our entire banking system. We don't need the fox guarding the hen house, as has been the case for a few decades. I think the difference is you are talking about little tweaks to the current system and I am talking about sweeping reform. To deal with corporations and contractors, we need a full audit of the Federal Reserve leading to ending the Federal Reserve. We might even consider following the Constitution once again! What a crazy idea.

[Der Trihs]

This is where economics need to be understood in relation to health care. Why do you see national health care as the perfect system? All health care systems in the industrialized world have significant flaws and are a major drain on the budget. We absolutely cannot afford any type of universal health care. I also don't think people have a right to medical care. I believe in liberty, so I think nobody can have a right to "stuff". Because then you have to violate somebody else's rights by forceably taking it (money, services) to redistribute the wealth to somebody else. It is a flawed idea that this is the way to be "altruistic" and humanitarian. Its easy to be generous with other peoples money or resources, its harder to actually put it on the line, donate you own time and effort to help people who need it.In other words, property rights trump human rights; people are expendable, but money matters. The standard, sociopathic claim of the libertarian. Somehow, depriving people of money is horrible, but condemning them to suffering and death is just peachy.

You say it's easy to be generous with other peoples "stuff"? Well, I note that you are being quite cavalier with peoples lives.

[jrodefeld]

I don't know whether to thank you or curse you for starting this thread. I subscribed some time before I first posted because, as I've pointed out, partisan debates are irrelevant at this point. Only because I have too much time on my hands (courtesy of World Inc.)) do I look in on these little slug fests and laugh for crying. But you sucked me in.

I see in you, noted above by Septimus, an honest and inquiring open mind. Congrats! You're 9/10 of the way there. And just 27?. You wouldn't be on these boards w/o a vision and the testosterone/estrogen driven ambition to improve the world.

You are much more likely to live well into the 'interesting times' promised by the Corporate Juggernaut (Obama ridden/driven at the moment) than I. I figure my minimum SS will be the last shoe dropped to announce the end of the charade of govt's personal interest in anyone's welfare. You and your children (and mine) will live with what we've been able to put together in the next 20 years. That's the window.

I appreciate the compliment. I am glad that you did post, its great to see somebody here who isn't buying what Obama is selling at the moment. I'm 25, actually. I started paying close attention to politics sometime in late 2006, early 2007, at the height of Bush's second term failures. I learned a little more and realized just how much trouble we are in. I am definitely preparing for hard times ahead, but I haven't ruled out a political solution to some of our problems if people get pissed off enough and change the political landscape in a positive way.

So what you gonna do?

I suggest:

1) Move to a community somewhere in a bio-region (watershed) blessed with good sun, surface water and arable land, mild winters a plus.
2) Encourage your new mayor to work with neighboring colleagues to create the Greater Local Consolation Project. (Home Rule is sanctioned where I live)
a) Protect the headwaters.
b) While dollars are cheap, communally stock up on the technological spoils of Capitalism's alternatives to oil.
Howabout solar powered wifi for the local net, where can we drop your net book and solar panel?
Windmill farms?
Lots of plastic pipe for irrigation.
Tightly rationed local fuel dumps to ease the transition to mule and plow and buggy?
Community freezers?
EMTs live free?

Take it from there. Please.

If you have any doubts, I offer you this little gem. http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...7395387111085#

Great advice. I have been thinking along similar lines. I've been looking to be independent of the "grid", looking into solar power, and basically preparing for different possible scenarios that could take place.

You know, I don't think for a minute that my ideas for reform are going to be taken seriously and implemented before the collapse. But, if everything does collapse, including the currency, we will be forced to pick up the pieces and people will be very open to new ideas of governance. For example, if the government fails and bankruptcy sets in and every apocalyptic thing you or I think could happen does come to pass, then I think people will retreat into local communities and we will have a very Federalist type of system again. Then people will be FORCED to be self reliant for the first time in many years. Then people will be very open to the idea of liberty and personal rights and going back and reinstating the principles of the Constitution and Bill of Rights and having a government that again honors and respects these documents. Believe me, after a collapse of the currency and government failure and bankruptcy, nobody is going to be calling for universal healthcare run by the Federal Government. People will once again be relying on themselves and their local communities to take care of people. So, I am looking towards the future. The next sixty years of my life will be pretty interesting, no doubt!

[Der Trihs]

But, if everything does collapse, including the currency, we will be forced to pick up the pieces and people will be very open to new ideas of governance. For example, if the government fails and bankruptcy sets in and every apocalyptic thing you or I think could happen does come to pass, then I think people will retreat into local communities and we will have a very Federalist type of system again. Then people will be FORCED to be self reliant for the first time in many years. Then people will be very open to the idea of liberty and personal rights and going back and reinstating the principles of the Constitution and Bill of Rights and having a government that again honors and respects these documents. More likely, we'd be looking at warlordism and slavery. Then again, that's what libertarianism actually imposed on the real world looks like anyway. "Self reliance" is just a noble way of saying "an easy victim with no one to stand by him".

Believe me, after a collapse of the currency and government failure and bankruptcy, nobody is going to be calling for universal healthcare run by the Federal Government. People will once again be relying on themselves and their local communities to take care of people. More likely, the vast majority in such a circumstance would be dead or slaves. They wouldn't be looking for health care from the guy whipping or raping them, it's true.

[jrodefeld]

In other words, property rights trump human rights; people are expendable, but money matters. The standard, sociopathic claim of the libertarian. Somehow, depriving people of money is horrible, but condemning them to suffering and death is just peachy.

You say it's easy to be generous with other peoples "stuff"? Well, I note that you are being quite cavalier with peoples lives.

Property rights ARE human rights. Why is it that liberals see the government as the only way to pursue humanitarian goals? And why aren't you donating your time and effort to help people who need it? If we had a libertarian society with much lower taxes, a less intrusive federal government, and more medical freedom, there would be many fewer people suffering from lack of medical care. There would be dramatically more charity hospitals and health care costs would be so low that nearly everybody could afford medical care. Look, we've been doing it your way for forty to fifty years now, and look at the shape of medical care. Why not try it my way, for a change? The federal government simply isn't able to take care of everybody and solve all our problems. Look at the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, No Child Left Behind, the wars overseas to spread "democracy" around the world. Not one of them has been a success. The evidence is overwhelming that the policies you advocate are failing. Yet, you won't be willing to try a libertarian society based on peace and individual liberty?

[jrodefeld]

More likely, we'd be looking at warlordism and slavery. Then again, that's what libertarianism actually imposed on the real world looks like anyway. "Self reliance" is just a noble way of saying "an easy victim with no one to stand by him".

More likely, the vast majority in such a circumstance would be dead or slaves. They wouldn't be looking for health care from the guy whipping or raping them, it's true.


You know, I find it astounding that you think the way you do. You have so little faith in human beings. You really think the only reason people are not murderous bastards who will rape and enslave everybody they can is because the Federal Government won't let them? Again, the proper role of government is to protect everybodies equal rights and prevent anybody from committing aggression against anybody else. I have stated this multiple times already, yet it hasn't registered in your brain yet. Therefore, in a libertarian society, there would be no slavery, no corporate abuse, pollution, or other violations of civil rights.

Liberals like to say that people suck, so we need the government "to keep them in line" or to keep society together. In reality, government is merely people with massive amounts of power. And power corrupts. We didn't get rid of slavery or allowed women to vote because government passed a law (they DID pass a law). The underlying reason was because people evolved to the point where they would not tolerate treating any groups as second hand citizens any longer. So, any positive change in society comes as a bottom up phenomenon. Its not because we had wise overlords forcing civility on us "barbarians". So, no if the government disappeared tomorrow, I don't think we would see the return of slavery in the states. A very small number of isolated cases would show up, but they would be scorned and made a social pariah, as they should be. If the people suck, then there is no hope. The governments job, as I have said, is to keep the peace and keep everybody free. Anything beyond that necessitates an attack on liberty.

Regardless of what you think, the system you defend is coming apart at the seams. There is no way to maintain it. Why don't you think about the suffering caused by the Federal Government, inflicted on the American people? The Patriot Act, taking over 40% of a persons income each year, giving us piss poor education of our youngsters, locking up medical marijuana patients you are very sick, invading our privacy, treating us like animals at the airports, sending my generation off to fight in fraudulent wars overseas for bogus reasons, and then failing to adequately take care of those with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after they come home.

You are like an abused child who continually looks to the offending "parent" (the Federal government) to shelter and protect them, even though it only leads to more cycles of abuse and molestation. After all the Federal Government has done to us, the idea of looking to them for the solution to our problems displays the extremes of cognitive dissonance.

I mean really, liberty is not that scary of a concept. I encourage you to shake off the emotional scars left by the abusive "parent" and try liberty for a change.

[Der Trihs]

Property rights ARE human rights.Nonsense. Property isn't life, it isn't freedom, it isn't all sorts of things that fall under the umbrella of human rights.

If we had a libertarian society with much lower taxes, a less intrusive federal government, and more medical freedom, there would be many fewer people suffering from lack of medical care. There would be dramatically more charity hospitals and health care costs would be so low that nearly everybody could afford medical care. Garbage. Government stepped in because that doesn't happen. Your way was tried for literally thousands of years.

There would if anything be a reduction in charity, while the libertarians laughed and gloated at the dying. Libertarianism is about greed and selfishness, and a society based on greed and selfishness isn't going to be charitable.

Look, we've been doing it your way for forty to fifty years now, and look at the shape of medical care. Why not try it my way, for a change? Because we haven't been "trying it my way". And because your way would result in a lot of dead people.

The federal government simply isn't able to take care of everybody and solve all our problems. Look at the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, No Child Left Behind, the wars overseas to spread "democracy" around the world. Not one of them has been a success. The evidence is overwhelming that the policies you advocate are failing.I don't advocate most of those in the first place. And the "war on poverty" has been more of a success than a failure, except in recent time where the Right has hacked away at it. You want to bring back the good old days of famines.

And I never said that the federal government could solve all our problems; it's just that there are some problems that it is better at solving.

Yet, you won't be willing to try a libertarian society based on peace and individual liberty?Libertarianism is about greed and malice and arrogance; it is the new feudalism. It is NOT about freedom.

You know, I find it astounding that you think the way you do. You have so little faith in human beings. You really think the only reason people are not murderous bastards who will rape and enslave everybody they can is because the Federal Government won't let them? Government in general, and yes. History shows it.

Again, the proper role of government is to protect everybodies equal rights and prevent anybody from committing aggression against anybody else. I have stated this multiple times already, yet it hasn't registered in your brain yet. Therefore, in a libertarian society, there would be no slavery, no corporate abuse, pollution, or other violations of civil rights.The weak government you want wouldn't be able to do any of that.

. We didn't get rid of slavery or allowed women to vote because government passed a law (they DID pass a law). Yes, that IS why. A law, and an army to enforce it.

Why don't you think about the suffering caused by the Federal Government, inflicted on the American people? The Patriot Act, taking over 40% of a persons income each year, giving us piss poor education of our youngsters, locking up medical marijuana patients you are very sick, invading our privacy, treating us like animals at the airports, sending my generation off to fight in fraudulent wars overseas for bogus reasons, and then failing to adequately take care of those with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after they come home.
All right wing behavior. It's the right wing that is the problem, not government. And our taxes are quite low, by the way.

I mean really, liberty is not that scary of a concept.The end of all justice, all freedom, and civilization in general is scary; and that is what libertarianism would result in whether you admit or even believe it or not. It is one of the most evil, crazy belief systems in existence. It is very like Communism; a philosophy based on a delusional view of the world, pushed by people who aren't interested in the facts or in how much suffering trying to force the world to act the way they want will cause.

[adhay]

jrodefeld
I am definitely preparing for hard times ahead, but I haven't ruled out a political solution to some of our problems if people get pissed off enough and change the political landscape in a positive way.Again, imho, a waste of time. When any corporate sponsored asshole who professes Jesus and takes an anti-gay, anti-abortion stance is guaranteed 30% of the vote, the chances for change are slim.

As for a number of your present political views, I suggest you to take a look at my OP The USA After You've Been King For A Day? (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12270830#post12270830). Pure fancy, of course, but I think it to be a good exercise in learning compassion. The people who showed up for it were largely "liberals" expressing their ideas about what a good govt would look like. Conservative/libertarian voices were singularly absent. I don't doubt that, if cornered, they would say that they don't have time for such silliness. But it would interesting to see what kind of govt/social system they (and you) would put in place if there were a good chance that the shoe were going to be on the other foot.

[adhay]

When a hundred or a thousand starving people show up to take everything you have, sharing won't work.IIRC, this was George III's and Caesar's political position.There won't BE any communities in such a collapse of civilization.I'm suggesting that if a group relatively isolated (rural) communities realized that they had 20 yrs to get their shit together, put aside their their differences (property boundaries for a start) and worked together to establish a sustainable communal system of agriculture, communication and transportation, they would be in pretty good shape.

I do agree, however, that this is unlikely to happen on any widespread basis. In my own area, there are 1000's of sunny well watered acres now devoted to cattle. The ranchers gather in a little bakery (lots of sugar in all their wares) which serves dishwater coffee in small styrofoam cups for 75c along with powdered creamer packets. In the window is a sign reading, "Who is John Galt?". Enough said?:rolleyes: Nonsense. High technology need a large infrastructure to build and maintain it. An 18th century infrastructure means 18th century technology. You won't have drugs or toys; you won't have much of anything.My idea is, if the above said ranchers were to get on board and while we still have gasoline to do it, turn the present pasturage to organic agriculture and start raising domestic farm animals (including a small herd of beef ... I like the occasional prime rib) we'd be on our way to creating the local bread basket. I would encourage the local communities to establish large local greenhouses and backyard vegetable gardens and hen houses along with community blacksmith shops with large stores of iron/steel stock. If I were younger and more ambitious, I'd get into buggy whips.

Of course, no matter how many batteries you store, eventually they will pass into history. But, what if we were to take advantage of what's available now and will be over the next 20 years? Solar panels and water heating systems on every home? A local solar powered wifi net server? A local wireless network? A netbook and cellphone in every home? I would say that, by the time the last battery dies, a truly sustainable community-run biosystem will have emerged.

I'll get around to talking to those ranchers one of these days. :dubious:

[Der Trihs]

Of course, no matter how many batteries you store, eventually they will pass into history. But, what if we were to take advantage of what's available now and will be over the next 20 years? Solar panels and water heating systems on every home? A local solar powered wifi net server? A local wireless network? A netbook and cellphone in every home? I would say that, by the time the last battery dies, a truly sustainable community-run biosystem will have emerged.Ridiculous. First, all that gadgetry needs factories to make, not hand tools. And second, if most of the world population is dying of starvation you can expect to be looted and killed off, or enslaved. We know what a collapse looks like, and it isn't the rural utopia you are fantasizing about; it's Somalia or worse.

[adhay]

Ridiculous. First, all that gadgetry needs factories to make, not hand tools. And second, if most of the world population is dying of starvation you can expect to be looted and killed off, or enslaved. We know what a collapse looks like, and it isn't the rural utopia you are fantasizing about; it's Somalia or worse.WTF is it about "the next 20 years" you don't get? During that time, you communally buy the "gadgetry" and create a local hi-tech infrastructure. When the batteries finally go, a functioning 18th century community of interest will left in place. And they will know from experience that Capitalism is bullshit.

As far as your Mad Max scenario goes, I really have no idea. I agree that those unprepared for the transition, especially urban and suburbanites, are in for some nasty shit. How my "rural utopia" would insulate itself from the world collapse is an open question. On the day the grid goes down, dynamite all highways leading in? Keep on hand a well-armed and trained militia?

[Der Trihs]

WTF is it about "the next 20 years" you don't get? During that time, you communally buy the "gadgetry" and create a local hi-tech infrastructure. When the batteries finally go, a functioning 18th century community of interest will left in place. Again, that's silly. an 18th century community can't build or support hi tech equipment.

As far as your Mad Max scenario goes, I really have no idea. I agree that those unprepared for the transition, especially urban and suburbanites, are in for some nasty shit. How my "rural utopia" would insulate itself from the world collapse is an open question. On the day the grid goes down, dynamite all highways leading in? Oh, please. The disaster you claim will happen wouldn't be some instant thing; it would happen over many years. And if your little imaginary utopia were to totally isolate itself - assuming it could - what makes you think it could survive?

Keep on hand a well-armed and trained militia?Who would naturally became your tyrants. There'd be no one to stop them after all. Of course, that's assuming that your little cult doesn't get taken over or killed off, which is more likely.

[adhay]

Again, that's silly. an 18th century community can't build or support hi tech equipment.

Oh, please. The disaster you claim will happen wouldn't be some instant thing; it would happen over many years. And if your little imaginary utopia were to totally isolate itself - assuming it could - what makes you think it could survive?

Who would naturally became your tyrants. There'd be no one to stop them after all. Of course, that's assuming that your little cult doesn't get taken over or killed off, which is more likely.Fuck.Me.Running.

You argue at the same level of obtuseness as S... and C... ... . Did you actually read my posts?

[Marley23]

Fuck.Me.Running.

You argue at the same level of obtuseness as S... and C... ... . Did you actually read my posts?
Alright, that's enough. This tangent on the breakdown of society should continue in a separate thread, and this thread should continue without references to other posters being ignorant, paranoid, obtuse, stupid, and so on.

[adhay]

Alright, that's enough. This tangent on the breakdown of society should continue in a separate thread, and this thread should continue without references to other posters being ignorant, paranoid, obtuse, stupid, and so on.My apologies, both for the hi-jack and my snarkiness expressed in my exasperation with certain posters. I do think, however, and, I believe the OP agrees, that my contributions have been useful to him in understanding political philosophy and that he has, in fact, encouraged my digressions.

Start a new thread? Too old and too wise. The defense rests.

[Marley23]

I do think, however, and, I believe the OP agrees, that my contributions have been useful to him in understanding political philosophy and that he has, in fact, encouraged my digressions.
I agree, and that's why I hadn't said anything up until this point.

Start a new thread? Too old and too wise.
Neither is required for starting a thread around here. ;)

[adhay]

... Neither is required for starting a thread around here. ;)Right after I talk to those ranchers. :)

[The Hamster King]

WTF is it about "the next 20 years" you don't get? During that time, you communally buy the "gadgetry" and create a local hi-tech infrastructure.You'll be fabricating your own microchips out in the the south 40, will you?

There is absolutely no way for a small, isolated community to build a "hi-tech" infrastructure" no matter how long you work at it. Without long-distance transport of resources, access to university-level technical expertise, and 100s of millions of dollars in capital, an isolated survivalist enclave will be hard-pressed to maintain a 19th century level of technology, let alone a 21st.

There's a reason the Sears catalog was so popular with the early settlements in the American West. It was a reliable source of the hundreds of everyday items that the settlers could not make for themselves in their small towns and individual farms. Even something as basic as a kerosene lamp is the end result of a long mining and manufacturing chain that cannot be duplicated in a small isolated community.

If the civil order collapses, most people will quickly starve to death, and the survivors will eke out a brutal existence as subsistence farmers under the thumb of their local strongman.

[adhay]

With jrodefeld and Marley's approval let me continue.

Let's assume we can't get the ranchers behind communalizing their water rights and open range, recently and predictably festooned with McCain/Palin posters.

Let's assume that my little town has to make the best of it without the support of the County Cattle Kings.

Pop 2000, year round, 5000 during peak white water rafting, camping, hiking, rock climbing season. Cheap and not so cheap motels/restaurants, classy B&Bs, hot springs, spas. Within an hour of 3 decent ski areas. It's a destination for the tourist dollars of our destiny.

How to use them as we collect them AND spend them wisely over the next 20 yrs?

I will suggest one possibility and then I promise to say no more unless PMed or someone picks up the ball and takes it to GQ in something like How To Prepare For Our Inevitable Shit Storm?

Prisons are big business in our state in general and just a mile south of my little town is a medium security detention center. Who knows how many inmates it takes to employ 20% of the town's population?

These local slaves show up in town with unarmed drivers on occasion to shovel snow, rake leaves in the town park and pick up tourist trash wherever it happened to have been blown. Their barracks occupies the northern half of a (WAG) 1000 acres tract of perfect agricultural land.

I mentioned earlier, a community greenhouse and organic farming. I invite our local entrepreneurs (many outliers have second homes here) to invest in the Scum of Capitalism's Reclamation Project. Give the inmates a state of the art greenhouse and a start on a multi-acre organic farm, a microcosm of the possible macro. Let the inmates supply our local outlets with strawberries, etc, for a year and then get out of jail, free. Suddenly, they are valued survival consultants.

I'd rather deal with folks like that an army of escaped convicts roaming the countryside with captured handguns after the Last Prison Food Riot.

But, as I say, what do I know?

Just sayin'.

i'll be right with you, THK.

[This_Just_In...]

Liberals like to say that people suck, so we need the government "to keep them in line" or to keep society together. In reality, government is merely people with massive amounts of power. And power corrupts. We didn't get rid of slavery or allowed women to vote because government passed a law (they DID pass a law). The underlying reason was because people evolved to the point where they would not tolerate treating any groups as second hand citizens any longer. So, any positive change in society comes as a bottom up phenomenon. Its not because we had wise overlords forcing civility on us "barbarians". So, no if the government disappeared tomorrow, I don't think we would see the return of slavery in the states. A very small number of isolated cases would show up, but they would be scorned and made a social pariah, as they should be. If the people suck, then there is no hope. The governments job, as I have said, is to keep the peace and keep everybody free. Anything beyond that necessitates an attack on liberty.


Great thread. I never really gave libertarian beliefs a whole lot thought before but after reading the posts here and some of the links, I have become fascinated with how anyone rationalizes being a libertarian.

Basically, I agree with a lot of the posters here that people do suck, at least in a general sense, and that if everyone was left to our own devices we'll take what we can and screw the rest. I know I would - but in essence that seems to be the whole point of being a libertarian so in a sense I think all humans are instinctively libertarians. As humans we have traits like envy, lust, greed and so on that are simply a part of what we are and always have been. These traits are actually good things to have if you live in a tribal society and you wish to propagate your offspring. But, we don’t live that way anymore – chiefly because we got agriculture leading to increased population leading to governments. As technology improved the people slowly got more educated leading to better governments, until we come full circle and some advocate for abolition of government and eventual return to tribal society.

People do suck, but there is hope. Individually we want what is best for ourselves. However, the whole point of good government is to collectively point people in the direction of what is best for everyone.

Slavery is an example of this. If the USA had always been libertarian right from the beginning do you think we’d still have slaves today? I’m guessing there would be. People did not ‘evolve’ to not needing slaves. Rather, slaves became less useful as technology improved and having educated workers using machines became much more productive than having slaves. This happened in the factory producing northern states first (even before the revolution) – and after awhile they forcibly spread their ‘ideals’ to the south. Who spread it – government. Who enforces it – government. You are further fooling yourself to think in areas, in the USA even, where government does not have an active presence there is not still slavery. For example, the sex trade enslaves prostitutes by threatening them with violence or additional withdrawals if they do not continue working for merely life’s basics. Ever hear of sweat shops? These things do exist, and would be far more widespread without government to keep it in check.

You really need to study human psychology and history to see how humans are just not altruistic enough to be trusted with much on a individual level. Guidelines that make awesome sense – such as don’t loan mortgages to people who are horrible with money – fall apart at an individual level because each of several people along a chain of action are only concerned about their little part and their personal benefit from it.

It is too bad people are not as good as you’d make them out to be – if they were I’d get in the first libertarian line there was. Although, as said above – communism would be worth checking out at that point too because both philosophies have the same failing.

[adhay]

...There is absolutely no way for a small, isolated community to build a "hi-tech" infrastructure" no matter how long you work at it.Of course not, nor even maintain it. I'm merely suggesting that my "small, isolated community" make the best of the hi-tech offered now on the free market and hunker down for a pleasant drift into the last half of this century.If the civil order collapses, most people will quickly starve to death, and the survivors will eke out a brutal existence as subsistence farmers under the thumb of their local strongman.We got no strongmen here, just kids who are above average. Once again, I promise to say no more.

[Der Trihs]

We got no strongmen here, just kids who are above average.You don't, because the government would squash them if they decided to play feudal lord. Remove the government and you'll have strongmen. Again; we've seen what happens when governments collapse, and it doesn't remotely resemble what you claim.

[adhay]

You don't, because the government would squash them if they decided to play feudal lord. Remove the government and you'll have strongmen. Again; we've seen what happens when governments collapse, and it doesn't remotely resemble what you claim.You try my soul. Yes, we've all what happens when Capitalism loses control of govts it has parasitized for centuries. Cuba and Vietnam are good examples. PLEASE understand, I'm not being sarcastic.

[Oldeb]

I think that it is wrong to think that Obama is anything more than a standard issue Chicago politician. "At least he's trying" is not an acceptable excuse any longer. He's a Corporatist of the first order. We need to stop pretending. His health care reform is not "coming down hard on the Insurance companies", rather the opposite. If you were a businessman wouldn't you want a law to be passed requiring people to purchase your product? Of course you would. The reason the health insurance stock rose after the passage of health "reform" is that the health insurance companies wrote the bill. It's good for business. They will be making a lot more money now. He will not ever come down with real financial regulatory reform.

I don't know why you put "Coming down hard on Insurance compaines" in quotes because I've never used that phrase. I don't even care to be honest. They don't need to be punished for being what they are. They operated within the law and I feel that it's the law that needs to be changed. Just because I think that the law was wrong doesn't mean I feel there should be a retroactive punishment, especially since private health care is the default standing. I just don't feel it's good enough anymore.

His biggest campaign contributer was Goldman Sachs. He is not going to really take on these powerful banks. Not now, not ever. And he's not going to end the overseas wars either.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/17/politics/main5093719.shtml
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/03/30/obama-brown-sarkozy-seek-common-capital-rules/

The danger is the idea that we should just let Obama do what he wants and see how it pans out later. We really don't have the time. We need to be doing the right things NOW. The consequences of pursuing the wrong policies now will be catastrophic. The sooner Obama's base wakes up and stops supporting him (or at least push him to pursue real reform) the better we will be. You don't have to side with the Republicans to be opposed to Obama.

Okay so we need to get things done right now, but not involve the president in them. :dubious: Any ideas of how to accomplish that? Impeach him? Wait until his term ends and vote in a new candidate? I voted for him because I believed he would work towards goals that would benefit the US (and he wasn't connected to Palin). While I don't agree with him entirely I don't see where he's completely failed me so far.


This is where economics need to be understood in relation to health care. Why do you see national health care as the perfect system? All health care systems in the industrialized world have significant flaws and are a major drain on the budget. We absolutely cannot afford any type of universal health care. I also don't think people have a right to medical care.

Heh, "then they had better do it and decrease the surplus population," eh? Incidentally, the normal claim for private health care is that it does the job more efficiently not that the poor don't have a right to treatment. I appreciate your candor though. Just remember it's hard to really enjoy life when the poor are dying of consumption on your doorstep.


I believe in liberty, so I think nobody can have a right to "stuff". Because then you have to violate somebody else's rights by forceably taking it (money, services) to redistribute the wealth to somebody else. It is a flawed idea that this is the way to be "altruistic" and humanitarian. Its easy to be generous with other peoples money or resources, its harder to actually put it on the line, donate you own time and effort to help people who need it.

This is exactly why Libertarianism doesn't work. It expects people to pass up profit in the name of the public good. Something that has not happened. You have never commented on my posts about the 19th century and why it wasn't a glorious capital eden for all.


As far as the "Teabaggers" are concerned, I think you are painting with a very broad brush. There are many many people who are upset and have different concerns. Some are very ignorant and some are quite intelligent and know exactly whats going on. I have many conservative relatives and they are all highly intelligent and have valid concerns. Have you actually talked to any of these people? I know the media always shows the person holding the sign of Obama as Hitler or some other inflammatory rhetoric, and I think it obscures the more reasonable concerns out there.

Tea Party platform please?

As near as I can tell they have a lot of things they want, but absolutely no clue how to make this happen besides magic. Mostly they just like to shout at whomever they've been told is a bad person. We needn't go into the astroturfing and Fox News led rallies.


More regulation will not help. We need true reform of our entire banking system. We don't need the fox guarding the hen house, as has been the case for a few decades. I think the difference is you are talking about little tweaks to the current system and I am talking about sweeping reform. To deal with corporations and contractors, we need a full audit of the Federal Reserve leading to ending the Federal Reserve.

So let me get the timeline straight. In the 1980's under Reagan we deregulate banks. We get some econmic bubbles and the market stays afloat by hopping from one to the next. A lot of money is made by those who can see the next one coming. We run out of the next big thing and crash.

Canada meanwhile has had a very similar banking system except for the deregulation in the 80's and later crash. They now have one of the most stable banking systems on the planet.

The answer is not to work to restoring regulation but to further deregulate?


We might even consider following the Constitution once again! What a crazy idea.

You say this a lot, along with "Constitutionally mandated size and scope."

When you say we are no longer following the US Constitution do you mean things like the Patriot Act and Gitmo? Violations of the 10th Amendment? Electing a Kenyan? Things you just don't like? Is there a reason why no branch of government is doing anything about these Constitutional violations? Shouldn't the Supreme Court have noticed? Congress? Specifics would really be helpful here.

And what is the Constitutionally mandated size and scope? If there is one, is there a reason to be following it or would be better off simply amending the Constitution to reflect that it was written more than 200 years ago?

[Der Trihs]

You try my soul. Yes, we've all what happens when Capitalism loses control of govts it has parasitized for centuries. Cuba and Vietnam are good examples. PLEASE understand, I'm not being sarcastic.No, you are just being ridiculous. Those aren't collapsed governments. A collapsed government wouild be Somalia or some other failed state. Iraq soon after our conquest of it for example; Bush and his neocon friends tried to turn it into a libertarian paradise with such things as massive deregulation and deliberately withholding government efforts towards reconstruction. They thought that Iraq would be the beneficially of a huge boom as the free market fixed all its problems; instead of course the result was chaos, bloodshed and impoverishment. Which is the real result of attempting to put libertarian ideals into practice.

[jrodefeld]

Nonsense. Property isn't life, it isn't freedom, it isn't all sorts of things that fall under the umbrella of human rights.

How would you like the government to take over your property through eminent domain and throw you out on the streets? I am sure you would be supporting property rights then. I am going to link the idea of property rights to the desire to protect the environment. Which land is the most polluted? Public land. Government owned property is in much worse shape than privately owned land. The reason is simple. I person who owns property cares about the value of that property and will make every effort to take care of that land. Therefore, for most purposes, I believe that nearly all land in the United States should be privately owned. If we establish the strict enforcing of private property laws, then anybody who pollutes another persons land, air or water will be subject to significant criminal prosecution. And, obviously, very few people will pollute their own land. This would clean up the environment in ways Cap and Trade or other corporate scams masquerading as altruistic environmental "solutions" could never do. I am not talking about Corporations, I am talking about the rights of regular people to use their own land without interference as long as they don't hurt anybody else by their actions. This would obviously preclude pollution, making loud noises that disturb the peace, or other violations.

Here is a link illustrating why property rights are human rights:

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PropertyRights.html

Garbage. Government stepped in because that doesn't happen. Your way was tried for literally thousands of years.

There would if anything be a reduction in charity, while the libertarians laughed and gloated at the dying. Libertarianism is about greed and selfishness, and a society based on greed and selfishness isn't going to be charitable.

Heres a radical idea: maybe government stepped in because powerful people wanted more power for themselves and desired to control other people through force. Also, a major driving force in government expansion is corporate lobbying, what you claim to be opposed to.

The idea that "my way" of a libertarian society has been tried for "literally" thousands of years is beyond laughable. No serious historian would take you seriously. The history of the world is tyrannical governments abusing the rights of its citizens. The notion of equal rights for all citizens, property rights, a restrained federal government with a balance of powers, and a constitution and bill of rights ensuring those freedoms is a very new concept in world history. The best examples of this philosophy of freedom are "some" periods of US history and isolated examples in other countries. It seems that rather than "progressing" forward in terms of our society and system of government, we have reverted back to a previous time when abusive government was the norm, people had no rights, and there were just dictators, powerful men calling the shots with little to no restrictions on their authority. We have "gone back" to an undesirable society that has failed throughout history. Truly, Libertarianism is the only truly Progressive and foward looking philosophy there is.

You characterize libertarians like this: "There would if anything be a reduction in charity, while the libertarians laughed and gloated at the dying. Libertarianism is about greed and selfishness, and a society based on greed and selfishness isn't going to be charitable." I find this particularly offensive given that many libertarians, including myself, are very generous and freely donate our time to help others who need it. I volunteer at my local YMCA and donate to several charities a year (although I don't make much money yet). My family has always donated every Christmas to help give poorer kids gifts. I don't consider myself in any way "greedy" or "selfish".

But for arguments sake, lets forget libertarians and conservatives and independents. What if all the liberals and progressives such as yourself abandoned the use of government theft to accomplish humanitarian goals, and instead organized yourselves into grassroots activity designed to feed and clothe the poor, help those who suffer from drug addiction, and volunteered to mentor inner city children who lack positive role models? Think of what you could accomplish! The reason many liberals don't do this is because they desire the cheap thrill of feeling really self important by supporting certain politicians who "claim" to want to help the poor, while not having to do any actual work to help those who need it. Not saying you are like this, but its something to think about.

I don't advocate most of those in the first place. And the "war on poverty" has been more of a success than a failure, except in recent time where the Right has hacked away at it. You want to bring back the good old days of famines.

And I never said that the federal government could solve all our problems; it's just that there are some problems that it is better at solving.

Okay, but they are government actions, are they not? And they expanding the size and scope of government. Since your party won't always be in power, don't you think that there should be some absolute limits on what the Federal Government can take on? If you don't think the Constitution covers it, what would be your limits?

The weak government you want wouldn't be able to do any of that.

Totally false. What exactly do you consider a "weak" government? A small constitutional government would be able to all of these things. Who would stop them? They write the laws, they run the court system, and control the military and police force. Even in a comparatively small government, they would be able to accomplish the few expressly delegated powers that it has. You know, if I said we would just shrink government to the size it was in 1965 or 1970, at the tail end of the "Progressive Era", we would be cutting government by like 75%! If you believe that things got progressively worse since the Republicans have been in power (Reagan, Bush I, Republican Congress during Clinton Administration, Bush II), then rolling back government power to before they were elected shouldn't bother you, right? I mean we both acknowledge that American has been on the wrong track for a while. The government expanded even more under Republicans than under Democrats (though Obama is outspending them all). Maybe you don't want "too" small of a government, but how about smaller governement? Can we find some common ground in that we cannot afford the government we currently have?

All right wing behavior. It's the right wing that is the problem, not government. And our taxes are quite low, by the way.

Totally false. Nearly all problems we are facing are bipartisan in nature. Obama reauthorized the Patriot Act. All modern presidents have supported the Income tax. Both parties are responsible for our declining public education system. Literally everything I said is supported by both parties! You claim its all right wing behavior? Come on.

The end of all justice, all freedom, and civilization in general is scary; and that is what libertarianism would result in whether you admit or even believe it or not. It is one of the most evil, crazy belief systems in existence. It is very like Communism; a philosophy based on a delusional view of the world, pushed by people who aren't interested in the facts or in how much suffering trying to force the world to act the way they want will cause.

The end of justice, freedom and civilization in general? You are delusional if you believe that. Yeah libertarianism, which literal means one who believes in liberty, would mean the end of freedom. Do you even listen to yourself? And justice, meaning protecting the rights of one who has been the victim of fraud or force, is one of the primary functions of government in a libertarian society. I think you are not interested in the facts, rather continually spouting hyperbole and hysteria about how the apocalypse will happen if we had a libertarian society.

Do you support getting rid of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Why don't we just tear down all monuments and reminders of the Founding Fathers and what they stood for. If you trash libertarianism, that is upholding individual liberty and equal justice for all, as an evil, crazy belief system you must also be intellectually honest and trash the founders and all they stood for. You must be for getting rid of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

[jrodefeld]

jrodefeld
Again, imho, a waste of time. When any corporate sponsored asshole who professes Jesus and takes an anti-gay, anti-abortion stance is guaranteed 30% of the vote, the chances for change are slim.

As for a number of your present political views, I suggest you to take a look at my OP The USA After You've Been King For A Day? (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12270830#post12270830). Pure fancy, of course, but I think it to be a good exercise in learning compassion. The people who showed up for it were largely "liberals" expressing their ideas about what a good govt would look like. Conservative/libertarian voices were singularly absent. I don't doubt that, if cornered, they would say that they don't have time for such silliness. But it would interesting to see what kind of govt/social system they (and you) would put in place if there were a good chance that the shoe were going to be on the other foot.

Well, I'm not necessarily against anything you are saying. You may very well be right about there being no hope of peaceful political change. In fact, you probably are right. Me personally, I am idealistic. I think obviously the idea of being king for a day is antithetical to the libertarian ideology, but it is a good intellectual exercise regardless. I would probably use my power to reduce the power of other authoritarian organizations, such as corporations, politicians, and repeal all federal drug laws, restore private property rights, end the federal reserve, shrink the size and scope of the CIA drastically, cut the military budget dramatically, bring all our troops home from around the world and establish a neutral, peaceful and diplomatic stance towards the rest of the world. Then I would voluntarily give up my power, but not before ensuring foolproof safeguards that nobody could ever have the same amount of power again.

[jrodefeld]

Great thread. I never really gave libertarian beliefs a whole lot thought before but after reading the posts here and some of the links, I have become fascinated with how anyone rationalizes being a libertarian.

Basically, I agree with a lot of the posters here that people do suck, at least in a general sense, and that if everyone was left to our own devices we'll take what we can and screw the rest. I know I would - but in essence that seems to be the whole point of being a libertarian so in a sense I think all humans are instinctively libertarians. As humans we have traits like envy, lust, greed and so on that are simply a part of what we are and always have been. These traits are actually good things to have if you live in a tribal society and you wish to propagate your offspring. But, we don’t live that way anymore – chiefly because we got agriculture leading to increased population leading to governments. As technology improved the people slowly got more educated leading to better governments, until we come full circle and some advocate for abolition of government and eventual return to tribal society.

I think that people misinterpret libertarianism to mean no government. I think there are very important roles for government in society. If nobody is allowed to harm anybody else or infringe on their liberty, what would happen? So government is supposed to prevent crimes of all sorts, keep the peace, maintain an adequate military for national defense, a have a court system to settle disputes and enforce contract laws.

People who disagree with this philosophy keep saying that it would result in anarchy, murder, slavery, rape, and all other kinds of things that are so contrary to liberty. Nobody is allowed to hurt anybody else in a libertarian society. This is what people are not getting.

By the way, we can and should have an evolving government that takes on new functions over time to cope with changing society. That is why the Constitution can be amended. The Constitution is the rulebook for the government, just as they provide the rulebook for civilized behavior. The constitution is a contract between the people and the government. If we are not expected to violate the law, neither should they. If our government amended the Constitution instead of ignoring it, we would still likely have a society that respected freedom. We can also repeal amendments that don't work out well (like prohibition in the 20s).

Slavery is an example of this. If the USA had always been libertarian right from the beginning do you think we’d still have slaves today? I’m guessing there would be. People did not ‘evolve’ to not needing slaves. Rather, slaves became less useful as technology improved and having educated workers using machines became much more productive than having slaves. This happened in the factory producing northern states first (even before the revolution) – and after awhile they forcibly spread their ‘ideals’ to the south. Who spread it – government. Who enforces it – government. You are further fooling yourself to think in areas, in the USA even, where government does not have an active presence there is not still slavery. For example, the sex trade enslaves prostitutes by threatening them with violence or additional withdrawals if they do not continue working for merely life’s basics. Ever hear of sweat shops? These things do exist, and would be far more widespread without government to keep it in check.

No, slavery is absolutely opposed to all concepts of liberty. That should be obvious. You don't think people have grown less bigoted and more tolerant over the last two hundred years? Think of the civil rights movement. The government accommodated the will of the people by changing the law to outlaw segregation. The point being, we only get government as good as the people it serves. There has never been a case of wise, enlightened despots ruling over ignorant subjects and forcing them to be civilized. Government has a role, but it should be one that respects individual rights. The rulers of any society have usually been arrogant, egotistical bastards.

You really need to study human psychology and history to see how humans are just not altruistic enough to be trusted with much on a individual level. Guidelines that make awesome sense – such as don’t loan mortgages to people who are horrible with money – fall apart at an individual level because each of several people along a chain of action are only concerned about their little part and their personal benefit from it.

It is too bad people are not as good as you’d make them out to be – if they were I’d get in the first libertarian line there was. Although, as said above – communism would be worth checking out at that point too because both philosophies have the same failing.

I agree that there should be guidelines. That would be the Constitution. I don't have absolute faith in people. But I have even less faith in people with huge amounts of power. Who says people in government aren't just looking out for their own self interest? I think most are, doing and saying anything just to get reelected. I think there are more people with a conscience than you think. But the larger point is: if people aren't altruistic enough, why would people with enormous power and the ability to spend other people's money without consequence be any more altruistic?

[Der Trihs]

How would you like the government to take over your property through eminent domain and throw you out on the streets? I am sure you would be supporting property rights then.False dilemma; you are trying to pretend that property rights either don't exist, or that they override everything else including human life. There's a huge middle ground there. I believe in property rights; I just don't think they are some transcendent, all important good.

I am going to link the idea of property rights to the desire to protect the environment. Which land is the most polluted? Public land. Considering that the government tends to end up having to take custody of and detoxify or just isolate land contaminated badly enough by private industry, of course. That doesn't mean they are the ones who poisoned it.

Government owned property is in much worse shape than privately owned land. The reason is simple. I person who owns property cares about the value of that property and will make every effort to take care of that land.Or they just dump garbage on it or otherwise contaminate it until it's unlivable. History demonstrates you are wrong; before the government imposed regulations, private people and industry quite cheerfully despoiled the land, air and water much worse than now.

And, obviously, very few people will pollute their own land. No; quite obviously from history many people without government restraint will reduce their land to a poisoned wasteland.

Heres a radical idea: maybe government stepped in because powerful people wanted more power for themselves and desired to control other people through force. Nonsense, the powerful had more power over the poor not less when there was less government aid; and they had less than they do now when the government was more generous. When they can say "do what I say or starve to death", they have pretty much absolute power. The whole point of the libertarian desire to eliminate government aid for the poor is to reduce them to slaves.

Truly, Libertarianism is the only truly Progressive and foward looking philosophy there is.

You characterize libertarians like this: "There would if anything be a reduction in charity, while the libertarians laughed and gloated at the dying. Libertarianism is about greed and selfishness, and a society based on greed and selfishness isn't going to be charitable." Well too bad, that it what libertarianism is.

But for arguments sake, lets forget libertarians and conservatives and independents. What if all the liberals and progressives such as yourself abandoned the use of government theft to accomplish humanitarian goals, and instead organized yourselves into grassroots activity designed to feed and clothe the poor, help those who suffer from drug addiction, and volunteered to mentor inner city children who lack positive role models? Think of what you could accomplish! A lot of corpses. Charity wouldn't begin to be enough to do what needs to be done. And taxes aren't theft.

Totally false. What exactly do you consider a "weak" government? A small constitutional government would be able to all of these things. Who would stop them? They write the laws, they run the court system, and control the military and police force. Even in a comparatively small government, they would be able to accomplish the few expressly delegated powers that it has. But it would be so crippled that it wouldn't matter. It would always be decades behind in law. And with your definition of taxes as theft, it would be minuscule. I doubt it would be able to support a police force, much less an army.

You know, if I said we would just shrink government to the size it was in 1965 or 1970, at the tail end of the "Progressive Era", we would be cutting government by like 75%! If you believe that things got progressively worse since the Republicans have been in power (Reagan, Bush I, Republican Congress during Clinton Administration, Bush II), then rolling back government power to before they were elected shouldn't bother you, right? I mean we both acknowledge that American has been on the wrong track for a while. The government expanded even more under Republicans than under Democrats (though Obama is outspending them all). Maybe you don't want "too" small of a government, but how about smaller government? Can we find some common ground in that we cannot afford the government we currently have?No, we need to raise taxes 9 especiually on the rich), increase civil rights protections, slash the military, beef up our infrastructure, strengthen the safety net. We need a stronger, not a weaker government; it just needs to be directed towards more constructive areas.

Totally false. Nearly all problems we are facing are bipartisan in nature. Obama reauthorized the Patriot Act. I said "right wing", not "Republican". Obama is right wing, as are most of the Democrats.

All modern presidents have supported the Income tax. Which is a good thing. It should be increased, especially at the upper brackets.

The end of justice, freedom and civilization in general? You are delusional if you believe that. Yeah libertarianism, which literal means one who believes in liberty, would mean the end of freedom.And Communist governments called themselves People's Republics; that didn't make it true. Libertarianism is aimed at the elimination of freedom for most of the population. It is aimed at creating a form of neofeudalism, where the wealthy have absolute power and most of the population are serfs. Although if actually implemented, the more likely result is general collapse.

[adhay]

No, you are just being ridiculous. Those aren't collapsed governments. A collapsed government wouild be Somalia or some other failed state. ... .What I was trying to say about Cuba and Vietnam is that neither lapsed into chaos when our corporate proxies were finally driven out in '59 and '75 respectively. To the contrary, despite our shabby treatment of them, post engagement, they aren't doing too badly. Most Americans would be better off with a Cuban style health care system here.

[jrodefeld]

I don't know why you put "Coming down hard on Insurance compaines" in quotes because I've never used that phrase. I don't even care to be honest. They don't need to be punished for being what they are. They operated within the law and I feel that it's the law that needs to be changed. Just because I think that the law was wrong doesn't mean I feel there should be a retroactive punishment, especially since private health care is the default standing. I just don't feel it's good enough anymore.

I don't know why I put that phrase in quotation marks actually. But that is what many people are saying. Obama even keeps saying to Republicans who talk of repeal "We don't want to put the Insurance companies in the drivers seat again". Well, its too late for that. Don't you see that Obama's health "reform" isn't really reform at all? I want different types of reform. How about removing corporate subsidies, breaking down barriers to competition against the insurance companies? Or allowing private health care options to exist? Stop regulating alternative medicine and health suplements out of business. There are many things that can and should be done. But this is not going to help.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/...n5093719.shtml
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/0...capital-rules/

Give more power to the Federal Reserve? Are you kidding me? Before any TRUE reform can be enacted we need to have a full audit of the Federal Reserve and expose all these insider deals with Goldman Sachs, what they are doing meeting with foreign central banks and determine the true state of our banking and financial system. Then we need indictments. Lots of them. Crimes have been committed and the Federal Reserve has been complicit in enabling these crimes to occur. The Federal Reserve got us in this mess. This is just a typical attempt to pretend to be "reforming" the system, but it is no reform. We are just giving the crooks more power to do further damage to our economy.

Okay so we need to get things done right now, but not involve the president in them. Any ideas of how to accomplish that? Impeach him? Wait until his term ends and vote in a new candidate? I voted for him because I believed he would work towards goals that would benefit the US (and he wasn't connected to Palin). While I don't agree with him entirely I don't see where he's completely failed me so far.

You are misunderstanding me. We should be pushing this administration to be pursuing real reform rather than the destructive agenda he is now on. In terms of where he has failed, I'll lay it out for you. He reauthorized the Patriot Act, he is continuing destructive economic policies which will prolong the crisis and possibly destroy the dollar, he has increased troop levels in Afghanistan, he has sent unmanned drones to kill innocent people in Pakistan, we are now threatening Iran, and he has signed into law a health care bill that will give the insurance companies more power over our health care system, and he has stacked his economic recovery team with wall street insiders and cronies like Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, who will sell out the american people to protect their banker friends.

Just a few things like that.

Heh, "then they had better do it and decrease the surplus population," eh? Incidentally, the normal claim for private health care is that it does the job more efficiently not that the poor don't have a right to treatment. I appreciate your candor though. Just remember it's hard to really enjoy life when the poor are dying of consumption on your doorstep.

I am telling you flat out, more people will be suffering under the new health care bill than even now. Don't tell me there won't be rationing, or waiting lists. Its unavoidable. If something is free and people still can't get it it doesn't matter. And when the economic system collapses EVERYBODY will be screwed who thought that the government could provide them with health care and it wouldn't cost anything. Meanwhile they are destroying all competition with the government programs. Given the state of our budget and the efficiency of government how can you claim all these people will be taken care of and given adequate treatment?

As far as not thinking health care is a right, nobody has a right to stuff. Because then you have to violate somebody else's rights to steal money or resources. Why do you think healthcare cannot be delivered in a better way than through government?

This is exactly why Libertarianism doesn't work. It expects people to pass up profit in the name of the public good. Something that has not happened. You have never commented on my posts about the 19th century and why it wasn't a glorious capital eden for all.

Government doesn't work because there is no incentive to spend money frugally and effectively. Enough people will be altruistic and generous with their money and help people who need it. The politicians will pad their own pockets, give some money to their corporate buddies and maybe some of it will actually end up in the hands of those who need it. It doesn't work.

Tea Party platform please?

As near as I can tell they have a lot of things they want, but absolutely no clue how to make this happen besides magic. Mostly they just like to shout at whomever they've been told is a bad person. We needn't go into the astroturfing and Fox News led rallies.

There is no Tea Party platform, and that is the point. There is no organizing principle. That is why it is wrong to think of them as "far right" or racist or whatever way the media categorizes these people. I just think it is right for people to be upset. And some are very well informed. Others are very ignorant. So its a mixed bag.

So let me get the timeline straight. In the 1980's under Reagan we deregulate banks. We get some econmic bubbles and the market stays afloat by hopping from one to the next. A lot of money is made by those who can see the next one coming. We run out of the next big thing and crash.

Canada meanwhile has had a very similar banking system except for the deregulation in the 80's and later crash. They now have one of the most stable banking systems on the planet.

The answer is not to work to restoring regulation but to further deregulate?

The Federal Reserve caused the collapse. There is no other reason. The inherent unsustainability of the monetary system caused the collapse. Things like Glass Steagle are mere sideshows.

http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/richricher/124339;_ylt=AmJ4PtNZ_GJbA4mMVwJSLey7YWsA

http://mises.org/daily/3127

http://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/jim-rogers-federal-reserve-caused-the-economic-crisis-abolish-the-world-bank-imf/

Read a bit about the federal reserve and how it caused this crisis to see that regulations wouldn't have prevented it. Easy money due to artificially low interest rates caused malinvestment that eventually has to be liquidated. It can't be avoided.

You say this a lot, along with "Constitutionally mandated size and scope."

When you say we are no longer following the US Constitution do you mean things like the Patriot Act and Gitmo? Violations of the 10th Amendment? Electing a Kenyan? Things you just don't like? Is there a reason why no branch of government is doing anything about these Constitutional violations? Shouldn't the Supreme Court have noticed? Congress? Specifics would really be helpful here.

And what is the Constitutionally mandated size and scope? If there is one, is there a reason to be following it or would be better off simply amending the Constitution to reflect that it was written more than 200 years ago?

Our government, including the Supreme Court, has ignored the Constitution for many decades now. We have activist judges and lawyers who bend over backwards to pretend that everything the federal government does is constitutional. It isn't. I'm talking about a constitution that provides explicitly the functions of the Federal Government. The rest is left up to the states.

We should amend the constitution if we want. We should shrink government until it is constitutional and then, if we are unhappy with the system, slowly and deliberately change the constitution to authorize new functions by the federal government. The problem is, we stopped doing this about a hundred years ago and we just ignored the constitution. That is why our liberties have been under constant attack.

[Marley23]

I was trying to stay out of this because we're several pages in, but...

Stop regulating alternative medicine and health suplements out of business.
What the hell are you talking about? Alternative medicine and supplements are huge businesses. These businesses generally won't submit to scientific testing, so they don't have FDA authorization to make some kinds of claims in marketing their products, but that is not the same as being regulated out of business.

he is continuing destructive economic policies which will prolong the crisis and possibly destroy the dollar
Not enough has been done to stave off future problems (at least not yet), but last I checked, things are a lot better than they were a year or 18 months ago. So how is this being prolonged?

we are now threatening Iran
HUH??? No one is threatening Iran now. Over the previous six years, on the other hand...

As far as the OP goes:
I agree the federal government has expanded beyond what was envisioned or perhaps intended for it, but in most cases I don't have a problem with that.
I am mostly in agreement with you on corporate subsidies but it's pretty clear to me that without some form of intervention, the crisis of 2008-09 would have been much worse.
I don't have a problem with the central bank's existence.
I agree that military spending should be reduced by a great deal - if I had to make up a number I'd say cut it in half.
I think there are too many standardized and mandated tests and other requirements on schools, but I don't think the government should stay out of education entirely. Your comments about unthinking drones are kind of silly.
I mostly agree with you about point 6.
'Eliminate all red tape on small business?' What does that mean? Most of these points are vague but this one in particular comes close to meaning nothing.
There is absolutely no way charitable donations could replace Medicare. This is ludicrous.
I'm no fan of the IMF, but leaving the UN is pointless. The UN isn't a threat to your freedom.
I don't know how you plan to make this clear, but yes, people usually lose sight of it when they have a majority view.

[Oldeb]

Stop regulating alternative medicine and health suplements out of business. There are many things that can and should be done. But this is not going to help.

Ignoring that for the most part Holistic Medicine is colored sugar water, the alternative medicine industry made an estimated $34 billion last year. Not bad for people going out of business.


Give more power to the Federal Reserve? Are you kidding me? Before any TRUE reform can be enacted we need to have a full audit of the Federal Reserve and expose all these insider deals with Goldman Sachs, what they are doing meeting with foreign central banks and determine the true state of our banking and financial system. Then we need indictments. Lots of them. Crimes have been committed and the Federal Reserve has been complicit in enabling these crimes to occur. The Federal Reserve got us in this mess. This is just a typical attempt to pretend to be "reforming" the system, but it is no reform. We are just giving the crooks more power to do further damage to our economy.

The Federal Reserve did indeed push for deregulation under Greenspan. This was a mistake, one that Greenspan has openly admitted. You may have noticed that he is no longer the chairman.


You are misunderstanding me. We should be pushing this administration to be pursuing real reform rather than the destructive agenda he is now on. In terms of where he has failed, I'll lay it out for you. He reauthorized the Patriot Act, he is continuing destructive economic policies which will prolong the crisis and possibly destroy the dollar, he has increased troop levels in Afghanistan, he has sent unmanned drones to kill innocent people in Pakistan, we are now threatening Iran, and he has signed into law a health care bill that will give the insurance companies more power over our health care system, and he has stacked his economic recovery team with wall street insiders and cronies like Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, who will sell out the american people to protect their banker friends.

I agree with you on the Patriot Act. Not fond of that move either. Nobody is threatening Iran, and considering Obama campaigned on a platform that included increasing the focus on the war in Afghanistan it's no suprise that he increased troop levels there. You are neglecting to mention that the increased troops were part of an exit strategy he outlined on national television.


I am telling you flat out, more people will be suffering under the new health care bill than even now. Don't tell me there won't be rationing, or waiting lists. Its unavoidable. If something is free and people still can't get it it doesn't matter. And when the economic system collapses EVERYBODY will be screwed who thought that the government could provide them with health care and it wouldn't cost anything. Meanwhile they are destroying all competition with the government programs. Given the state of our budget and the efficiency of government how can you claim all these people will be taken care of and given adequate treatment?

I'm guessing the government can handle providing adequate medical treatment based on all the not dead people on Medicare.


As far as not thinking health care is a right, nobody has a right to stuff. Because then you have to violate somebody else's rights to steal money or resources.

So we're tossing out the life part now?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Why do you think healthcare cannot be delivered in a better way than through government?

Because it has failed to do so thus far. Over 45,000,000 Americans lack health insurance. That's one out of every six adults. The United States spends 16% of it's GDP on health care, and we have one of the worst health care systems in the Western World to show for it.

What would be wrong with basing a health care plan off of the Dutch system? It's far better than ours and they only spend 10% of their GDP on it. They even do it through a group of competing private health insurance companies.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/07/05/healthy_examples_plenty_of_countries_get_healthcare_right/?page=1


Government doesn't work because there is no incentive to spend money frugally and effectively.

Except for the fact that we can vote them out of office. They're beholden to their constituates in a way no corporation can ever be.

Enough people will be altruistic and generous with their money and help people who need it.

Give me one example of this happening on any sort of large scale. Something city-state or bigger preferably, anything non-tribal if you have to. One example, please.

The politicians will pad their own pockets, give some money to their corporate buddies and maybe some of it will actually end up in the hands of those who need it. It doesn't work.

Yet a corporation that exists soley to turn a profit for it's stockholders is somehow more likely to pass up making a dollar to help out. Nobody is saying that government regulation is perfect. Or even ideal. To mangle Churchill, "It's the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried."



There is no Tea Party platform, and that is the point. There is no organizing principle. That is why it is wrong to think of them as "far right" or racist or whatever way the media categorizes these people. I just think it is right for people to be upset. And some are very well informed. Others are very ignorant. So its a mixed bag.

Then why do all these intelligent informed people continue to self identify with a bunch of ignorant racists?



The Federal Reserve caused the collapse. There is no other reason. The inherent unsustainability of the monetary system caused the collapse. Things like Glass Steagle are mere sideshows.

http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/richricher/124339;_ylt=AmJ4PtNZ_GJbA4mMVwJSLey7YWsA

http://mises.org/daily/3127

http://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/jim-rogers-federal-reserve-caused-the-economic-crisis-abolish-the-world-bank-imf/

Read a bit about the federal reserve and how it caused this crisis to see that regulations wouldn't have prevented it. Easy money due to artificially low interest rates caused malinvestment that eventually has to be liquidated. It can't be avoided.

The first is about returning to the gold standard. That's not a solution to anything.

The second is from 1969, forgive me for not considering it up to date on the current economy.

The third has a lot of doom and gloom and no suggestions on what to do.


Our government, including the Supreme Court, has ignored the Constitution for many decades now. We have activist judges and lawyers who bend over backwards to pretend that everything the federal government does is constitutional. It isn't. I'm talking about a constitution that provides explicitly the functions of the Federal Government. The rest is left up to the states.

This contains exactly zero examples of where the US Constitution has been ignored. The debate on whether we are a loose collection of nations or one country divided into states was settled in 1865 and cost the lives of 1,030,000 people. Let's not try it again.


We should amend the constitution if we want. We should shrink government until it is constitutional and then, if we are unhappy with the system, slowly and deliberately change the constitution to authorize new functions by the federal government. The problem is, we stopped doing this about a hundred years ago and we just ignored the constitution. That is why our liberties have been under constant attack.

Yes, but what is the constitutional size in your opinion? Is it strictly involved with maintaining the armed forces and conducting international relations? Do you honestly think that the government should never have passed laws such as Fair Labor Standards Act? Or that the FBI is somehow forbidden under the Constitution?

It's fine to say that everything should be left to the states, but do you honestly not care at all what happens in the state next to you? Do you feel that they are as disconnected from each other as the countries of Europe? Have you ever lived in another state or gone to school there or do you have family in a different state? Would you have considered it as traveling to a new country?

[straight man]

I'm disappointed in this thread. jrodefeld, you started your OP with this:
I am writing this in an attempt to ascertain an understanding of the philosophic underpinnings that form your political beliefs. I think this is critical to be able to define our terms because it seems almost none of the politicians actually believe in anything, rather they just cheer their "team" (political party) and reflexively block anything the other side proposes. So, what exactly do you believe in?
...and yet I see no appeal to first principles, beyond a few appeals to "freedom", none of which specify what that means exactly and why some limits on freedom are necessary but others cannot possibly be justified. I suspect the problem comes from your philosophy being economic, rather than political. So. Care to talk power?

[jrodefeld]

What the hell are you talking about? Alternative medicine and supplements are huge businesses. These businesses generally won't submit to scientific testing, so they don't have FDA authorization to make some kinds of claims in marketing their products, but that is not the same as being regulated out of business.

You are right. I shouldn't have stated it this way. What I was really getting at is that a future goal of health "reform" from Washington is to control the sale of vitamins and alternative healthcare. But they haven't done it yet. I'm saying we should prevent the FDA from regulating vitamins. The reason is that the FDA by and large has become a very corrupt and dishonest organization that feels pressure from the pharmaceutical lobby to approve certain medication and reject others. Why would the FDA claim that marijuana has no medicinal value whatsoever, yet approve Marinol, which is synthetic THC that the drug companies can make money off of? Some links to consider:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/228140/fda_to_regulate_vitamins_and_nontraditional.html

http://www.usrecallnews.com/2007/04/fda-to-regulate-vitamins-like-pharmaceutical-drugs.html

There are many such proposals as this. In my opinion alternative medicine is one of the only areas where we have true medical freedom left.

This is why I wrote that, but I agree I should have been much more precise in how I worded that sentence.

Not enough has been done to stave off future problems (at least not yet), but last I checked, things are a lot better than they were a year or 18 months ago. So how is this being prolonged?

The crisis is not over, believe me. Things will get much worse before they get better. I mean, fundamentally what has changed? The government has propped up bad debt, saved incompetent banks that should have gone bankrupt, and spent trillions of dollars into the economy which hasn't really helped the average american.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122428279231046053.html

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/housing-could-take-double-dip-down-in-2010-2009-10-13

http://www.themarketguardian.com/2010/03/gerald-celente-predicts-crash-of-2010/

http://peterschiffchannel.blogspot.com/2010/02/peter-schiff-real-economic-crisis-is.html


Believe me, we are experiences a very short reprieve from a worse crisis that is still coming. What economic sense does it make to buy up all the bad assets and dump it on the taxpayer? How about rewarding failure and punishing success? By not allowing the toxic assets to be liquidated, we have prolonged the crisis. The point of a Recession is to allow the economy to re balance itself. The correction must come eventually. By preventing the correction, you extend the pain and make it worse in the long run. This is why the Great Depression lasted for more than fifteen years. Because Hoover and Roosevelt wouldn't let the economy re balance itself early on. We are repeating the same mistakes today, except the consequences could be much more severe this time around.

Consider that the Depression of 1920 was very similar to the effects of the stock market crash of 1929, yet we didn't do any "stimulus", allowed the recession to run its course, and we had a full recovery within a year and a half. Look at this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czcUmnsprQI

So, if you want any proof that my ideas are superior to the Keynesian fantasies that we accept today, that is your proof.

HUH??? No one is threatening Iran now. Over the previous six years, on the other hand...

Sanctions against a country are an act of war. Remember, during the 90s our sanctions killed over a million Iraqi women and children. So, we are most certainly threatening Iran:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62T5FE20100331?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100330/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_us_france

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8595966.stm

Iran is NO THREAT to us. They have never been shown to be in violation of any treaties or international laws. These sanctions should be condemned.

[Marley23]

I shouldn't have stated it this way. What I was really getting at is that a future goal of health "reform" from Washington is to control the sale of vitamins and alternative healthcare.
I think you're talking nonsense here. For all the failings of the health care reform effort I don't see how you can make the jump from new health insurance regulations to controlling the sale of vitamins and minerals and acupuncture. Maybe if there were new rules barring health insurers from paying for those things, you'd have a point.

I'm saying we should prevent the FDA from regulating vitamins.
What the hell for? Think you're not getting enough vitamin lead? ;)

The reason is that the FDA by and large has become a very corrupt and dishonest organization that feels pressure from the pharmaceutical lobby to approve certain medication and reject others.
Your comments are making it clear to me that you don't understand what the FDA does. It's very flawed, but my concern is that it doesn't demand enough proof a drug works before approving it, and it (and the rest of the government) can't do enough when a drug company hides test results or puts something dangerous on the market.

Why would the FDA claim that marijuana has no medicinal value whatsoever, yet approve Marinol, which is synthetic THC that the drug companies can make money off of?
Wrong. You're confusing the FDA and the Drug Enforcement Agency. The FDA does not claim that marijuana has no medicinal value. Clearly, by approving marinol and dronabinol, it is saying THC has some medical uses. It's the DEA that makes broader determinations (however ridiculous) about the medicinal value of drugs. (http://www.justice.gov/dea/pubs/abuse/1-csa.htm#Schedule%20I) The DEA says marijuana has no accepted medical use in treatment.

In my opinion alternative medicine is one of the only areas where we have true medical freedom left.

This is why I wrote that, but I agree I should have been much more precise in how I worded that sentence.
I think at this point you've revealed that you don't know what the FDA does. In terms of drugs, essentially, it handles some safety and manufacturing issues and requires companies to go through some scientific scrutiny before they can make claims about what their drugs will do if you use them. Pharmaceutical companies use that process because they want to be able say their drugs will help your skin rash or your baldness or impotence and so on when they advertise their drugs on TV. The FDA also inspects foods and drinks for safety reasons. About the harshest thing the FDA can do is prevent people or companies from making particular claims that do not stand up to scrutiny or have not been proved.

I mean, fundamentally what has changed?
Not enough.

Believe me, we are experiences a very short reprieve from a worse crisis that is still coming.
Based on your apocalyptic predictions so far, let's say I'm skeptical.

What economic sense does it make to buy up all the bad assets and dump it on the taxpayer?
To prevent the world's financial system from completely collapsing. As screwed up as that system is, a failure like that would have been even more devastating than what we've seen to this point. That's not to say they could not have done more for people who were stuck with unpayable mortgages and done more to require financial institutions to make credit available to consumers, and I think they should have done that. And in hindsight it's pretty clear they should have instituted large reforms back then hot instead of waiting for the system to stabilize, because now they're not going to be able to get anything done due to intense lobbying and political crap.

Consider that the Depression of 1920 was very similar to the effects of the stock market crash of 1929, yet we didn't do any "stimulus", allowed the recession to run its course, and we had a full recovery within a year and a half.
The economy fully recovered from the Great Depression in a year and a half? Where are you getting this stuff? What do you think happened during the rest of the 1930s?

Sanctions against a country are an act of war.
I trust I don't need to recap the history between the U.S. and Iran here. But the U.S. has had sanctions on Iran since the hostage crisis 30 years ago.

Remember, during the 90s our sanctions killed over a million Iraqi women and children.
This number has been totally debunked.

Iran is NO THREAT to us.
Probably true.

[Hellestal]

The economy fully recovered from the Great Depression in a year and a half? Where are you getting this stuff? What do you think happened during the rest of the 1930s?You misread that comment. He's saying that we recovered from the "Depression of 1920-21" without government intervention. Which is true enough.

Of course, true to form, absolutely everything else he says or implies about it is worthless ideological onanism. The recession that started in 1920 was a post-war event, very different from what happened later. The European powers dropped their gold convertibility for the war, while the US was still engaged in its neutrality policy, which caused the gold imports in the US to shoot up as people took their shiny metal across the sea from Europe, raising the stock of gold in America by about 10 percent. With the gold standard in place, not to mention wartime spending as America eventually joined in, that was a surefire recipe for a strong bout of inflation if the Fed didn't take proper action. Unfortunately, instead of raising interest rates mildly in early 1919 after the war, the Fed waited until later to jack up the discount rate to extremely high levels. This finally put a halt on the inflationary pressure, but also caused a severe downturn. It took about a year and a half for the broader money supply, and the economy in general, to level out.

Nowhere along the lines was there anything like the crisis in the financial system that characterized the Depression. There was no shortage of liquidity, no general fear of bank runs, no rush to cash out deposits. It was much more like what happened with Volcker in the 80s: a recession induced, or at least exacerbated, by extremely high interest rates to stop inflationary pressure after the adverse inflationary shock, and with the gold standard in place in the 1920s, the result was not just disinflation as in the 80s but rather severe deflation. It eventually bottomed out on its own, with a fairly swift recovery in line with a relaxation of interest rates--which is also broadly similar to the experience in the 80s. This is an inherently different situation from what happened in the 1930s, which most closely matches our latest crisis: An enormous shock to aggregate demand due to a financial system on the verge of collapse.

[jrodefeld]

You misread that comment. He's saying that we recovered from the "Depression of 1920-21" without government intervention. Which is true enough.

Of course, true to form, absolutely everything else he says or implies about it is worthless ideological onanism. The recession that started in 1920 was a post-war event, very different from what happened later. The European powers dropped their gold convertibility for the war, while the US was still engaged in its neutrality policy, which caused the gold imports in the US to shoot up as people took their shiny metal across the sea from Europe, raising the stock of gold in America by about 10 percent. With the gold standard in place, not to mention wartime spending as America eventually joined in, that was a surefire recipe for a strong bout of inflation if the Fed didn't take proper action. Unfortunately, instead of raising interest rates mildly in early 1919 after the war, the Fed waited until later to jack up the discount rate to extremely high levels. This finally put a halt on the inflationary pressure, but also caused a severe downturn. It took about a year and a half for the broader money supply, and the economy in general, to level out.

Nowhere along the lines was there anything like the crisis in the financial system that characterized the Depression. There was no shortage of liquidity, no general fear of bank runs, no rush to cash out deposits. It was much more like what happened with Volcker in the 80s: a recession induced, or at least exacerbated, by extremely high interest rates to stop inflationary pressure after the adverse inflationary shock, and with the gold standard in place in the 1920s, the result was not just disinflation as in the 80s but rather severe deflation. It eventually bottomed out on its own, with a fairly swift recovery in line with a relaxation of interest rates--which is also broadly similar to the experience in the 80s. This is an inherently different situation from what happened in the 1930s, which most closely matches our latest crisis: An enormous shock to aggregate demand due to a financial system on the verge of collapse.

How exactly do you think Roosevelt's policies got us out of the Great Depression? There is no possible way the Great Depression should have lasted more than fifteen years, until after World War 2. If you really want to know what caused the Great Depression, I suggest you read three books. The first is called "Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle" by F.A. Hayek. It is rather hard to find in print form but you can easily find it online in its entirety. The second book you should read is called, "The Causes of the Economic Crisis" by Ludwig von Mises. It is a collection of articles about money, exchange rates and the business cycle that he wrote between 1919 and 1946.

Read about it here: http://mises.org/daily/2344

The third, and most important book you should read is titled simply, "The Great Depression", written by Lionel Robbins. Read this passage from his book,

"It has been the object … to show that if recovery is to be maintained and future progress assured, there must be a more or less complete reversal of contemporary tendencies of governmental regulation of enterprise. The aim of governmental policy in regard to industry must be to create a field in which the forces of enterprise and the disposal of resources are once more allowed to be governed by the market.

But what is this but the restoration of capitalism? And is not the restoration of capitalism the restoration of the causes of depression?

If the analysis of this essay is correct, the answer is unequivocal. The conditions of recovery which have been stated do indeed involve the restoration of what has been called capitalism. But the slump was not due to these conditions. On the contrary, it was due to their negation. It was due to monetary mismanagement and State intervention operating in a milieu in which the essential strength of capitalism had already been sapped by war and by policy. Ever since the outbreak of war in 1914, the whole tendency of policy has been away from that system, which in spite of the persistence of feudal obstacles and the unprecedented multiplication of the people, produced that enormous increase of wealth per head…. Whether that increase will be resumed, or whether, after perhaps some recovery, we shall be plunged anew into depression and the chaos of planning and restrictionism — that is the issue which depends on our willingness to reverse this tendency."

I will now post a few passages from a review written in 1959:

"Lionel Robbins's The Great Depression (Macmillan, 1934) is one of the great economic works of our time. Its greatness lies not so much in originality of economic thought, as in the application of the best economic thought to the explanation of the cataclysmic phenomena of the Great Depression. This is unquestionably the best work published on the Great Depression.

At the time that Robbins wrote this work, he was perhaps the second most eminent follower of Ludwig von Mises (Hayek being the first). To his work, Robbins brought a clarity and polish of style that I believe to be unequalled among any economists, past or present. Robbins is the premier economic stylist.

In this brief, clear, but extremely meaty book, Robbins sets forth first the Misesian theory of business cycles, and then applies it to the events of the 1920s and 1930s. We see how bank credit expansion in the United States, Great Britain, and other countries (in Britain generated because of the rigid wage structure caused by unions and the unemployment insurance system, as well as a return to the gold standard at too high a par; and in the United States generated by a desire to inflate in order to help Britain as well as an absurd devotion to the ideal of a stable price level) drove the civilized world into a great depression.

Then Robbins shows how the various nations took measures to counteract and cushion the depression that could only make it worse: propping up unsound, shaky business positions; inflating credit; expanding public works; keeping up wage rates (e.g., Hoover and his White House conferences) — all things that prolonged the necessary depression adjustments, and profoundly aggravated the catastrophe. Robbins is particularly bitter about the wave of tariffs, exchange controls, quotas, etc. that prolonged crises, set nation against nation, and fragmented the international division of labor.

And this is not all. Robbins also sets the European scene in the context of the disruptions of the largely free market brought about by World War I; the statization, unionization, and cartelization of the economy that the war brought about; the dislocation of industrial investment and agricultural overproduction brought about by war demand, etc. And above all, the gold standard of pre–World War I, that truly international money, was disrupted and never really brought back again. Robbins shows the tragedy of this, and defends the gold standard vigorously against charges that it "broke down" in 1929. He shows that the US inflation in 1927 and 1928 when it was losing gold, and Britain's cavalierly going off gold when its bank discount rate was as low 4.5%, was in flagrant violation of the "rules" of the gold standard (as was Britain's persistent inflationism in the 1920s).

Robbins also has excellent sections demonstrating the Misesian point that one intervention leads inexorably to another intervention or else repeal of the original policy. He also has a critique of the idea of central planning and a fine summation of the Misesian demonstration that socialist economies cannot calculate. Almost every important relevant point is touched upon and handled in unexceptionable fashion. Thus, Robbins, touching on the monopoly question, shows that the only really important monopolies are those created and fostered by governments. He has not the time for a rigorous demonstration of this, but his apercus are important, stimulating, and sound.

The Great Depression, in short, is a brilliant work that should be read by every economist. It is not at all outdated. It deserves the widest possible distribution, and would be indeed a fitting companion to Hazlitt's The Fallacies of the New Economics — that refutation of the other great explanation of the Depression — the Keynesian."

As much as you would like to deny it, objective evaluation of history shows that Austrian economic theory is vastly superior to the fallacies pushed by Keynes. The Austrians were right back then, and they are right now. If you agree that the current economic crisis is similar to that of The Great Depression, you should understand that it would be foolhardy to pursue the same policies that failed back then to address our current situation. Don't we learn anything from history?

I don't mind if liberals defend FDR's policies in relation to pushing The New Deal or other interventions that you may think are a benefit to society as a whole. But you CANNOT claim that his policies got us out of the depression. A more likely scenario was that an ambitious politician and political party used the crisis as an excuse to push "Progressive" legislation without regard for whether the depression deepened as a result. Or they may have really sincerely believed Keynes. Either way, he was still wrong. If you honestly dispute what I am saying, just answer this one simple question:

Why did the economy only recover after world war 2 was over when we cut spending two thirds and cut taxes one third? The New Deal failed, WW2 failed to get us out of the depression (though unemployment went down temporarily), only fiscal discipline and freeing up of the markets finally allowed us to have a robust recovery.

Look at this link: http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/what-ended-the-great-depression/

Please actually read some of this material before you write off what I am saying. Consider that basically all our economic theories and ideas that we hold today come from the misunderstanding of the cause of the Great Depression. Since the fifties, and especially since 1971 with the breakdown of the Bretton Woods agreement and the last link to gold was removed, we have been living on every expanding credit bubbles created and sustained by various shenanigans undertaken by the Federal Reserve. Economic law says that we must re balance our economy and allow the liquidation of the toxic assets and make a genuine attempt to pay down the debt and balance the budget. What we have been doing is building up massive speculative bubbles because no politician has been willing to take the blame and suffer the consequences of the short term harm felt by making the hard choices and pay the piper for decades of over consumption and debt generated by a fraudulent system of money.

Hellestal, you don't have to agree with me. But my opinions are based on very serious work by great economists and historians alike. The Austrian perspective should be presented to people as the other choice, the other direction we could take as a nation. Yet all we hear about is Keynes and more Keynes continuously. His theories have been refuted by history. I have no doubt that most people would be able to clearly see the superiority of the Austrian economic theories if they were presented side by side with the Keynesian ideas.

[septimus]

How exactly do you think Roosevelt's policies got us out of the Great Depression? There is no possible way the Great Depression should have lasted more than fifteen years, until after World War 2.

The suggestion that the Great Depression lasted until after World War II is singularly bizarre. The period 1942-1945 was a period of extremely high deficit spending, sharply rising employment and perhaps the fastest rising GDP in all of America's history, the way such things are measured. Now no one's advocating starting another world war as a path to prosperity, but WWII does serve as clear evidence in favor of Keynes' theories. One is curious what definition prompted you to lump it with the Great Depression.

I do realize your bizarre definition, whatever it might be, of Depression is not central to your point. But your lack of clear thinking is central to others' beliefs you would benefit from being more open-minded. I've already asked you to come up with a citation, even from one of your quack economists, that would suggest purely private monetary policy is remotely plausible in today's world. Still no answer?

You're right that mandatory vaccination is a minor issue. I picked it because it was an issue on which you were clearly wrong, and where if you were open-minded you'd be able to grasp that you were clearly wrong. (Some of your other points, e.g. opposing "unnecessary airport screening" or supporting government regulations only when they're "appropriate" leave little or no room for theoretic argument. :p )

[jrodefeld]

The suggestion that the Great Depression lasted until after World War II is singularly bizarre. The period 1942-1945 was a period of extremely high deficit spending, sharply rising employment and perhaps the fastest rising GDP in all of America's history, the way such things are measured. Now no one's advocating starting another world war as a path to prosperity, but WWII does serve as clear evidence in favor of Keynes' theories. One is curious what definition prompted you to lump it with the Great Depression.

I do realize your bizarre definition, whatever it might be, of Depression is not central to your point. But your lack of clear thinking is central to others' beliefs you would benefit from being more open-minded. I've already asked you to come up with a citation, even from one of your quack economists, that would suggest purely private monetary policy is remotely plausible in today's world. Still no answer?

You're right that mandatory vaccination is a minor issue. I picked it because it was an issue on which you were clearly wrong, and where if you were open-minded you'd be able to grasp that you were clearly wrong. (Some of your other points, e.g. opposing "unnecessary airport screening" or supporting government regulations only when they're "appropriate" leave little or no room for theoretic argument. :p )

You are saying that to be open minded I have to agree with you? I am open minded. But I have read a lot of economic literature and a lot of history. And I am convinced at the moment that Keynes was wrong. Look, did you actually read any of the links or books I suggested? I know a lot about Keynesian economics. But I bet you know next to nothing about Austrian economics. If you did, you wouldn't call some of the best economists of the last century "quacks". I will provide some more links shortly, but first lets examine your own economic beliefs to see if they make any sense:

1. Regardless of your calls for regulations or disputes over republican and democratic policies, the basic economic system and monetary policy has been firmly rooted in Keynesian economic policy and central economic planning by the Federal Reserve. This has been the way since establishing the Bretton Woods II system in 1971, after the collapse of the original Bretton Woods. Bretton Woods II is now over as well:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2008/10/bretton-woods-2-rip.html

How could one come to any conclusion other than the economic theories we have been working with for decades have failed us? Why do we have over a twelve trillion dollar national debt? What allowed us to accumulate an over one hundred trillion dollar unfunded liability for our entitlements and an overextended military empire? It is the funny money system at the Federal Reserve. Our banking system is designed so that we can never repay our debt. Its very existence relies on ever expanding deficits, debt, and subsequent interest on that debt that inevitably leads to total collapse of the system and complete bankruptcy. The only dilemma now is whether or not we will voluntarily choose to reform our banking system or wait until there is a total collapse. Please watch this video, called "The Money Masters" to truly understand the nature of our banking system:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936#

The predictions of the Austrian economists have come true over and over again. The predictions of the Keynesian economists have been wrong over and over again.

2. Do you really buy the notion that "deregulation" alone is responsible for this meltdown? Don't you think our economic troubles are at least somewhat attributable to a more serious fundamental problem with our economic system? You may not agree with the Austrians, but what do you think are the real underlying reasons we are in a crisis right now?

3. Look at this video, called "Peter Schiff was Right", which shows a modern day Austrian economist seeing our current crisis coming a mile away:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw

4. Tell me why Keynesian economic theories make sense in some detail. If and when we have recessions and depressions, what is the harm in allowing liquidation of debt and allowing the market to re balance itself? As I stated in a previous post, The Depression of 1920-21 was over within a year and half with no government intervention. The Great Depression lasted 15 years. If, for example, we had a gold standard preventing excessive stimulus, all recessions and depressions (though there would be fewer of them) would be over much quicker and their harm reduced greatly. You are actually trying to convince me that propping up failed businesses, dumping the toxic assets on the taxpayers, preventing bankruptcies to occur (which amounts to rejecting Capitalism in favor of Corporatism), and getting people to borrow money when they are broke, amounts to good economic policy? You can't honestly believe that.

As far as your ideas that World War II was good for the economy and got us out of the Great Depression, that is a commonly held misconception. Keynesianism teaches that a goal is to have "full employment" and its true that unemployment went way down during the war given how many people were drafted and how much industry was diverted into producing tanks and bombs to facilitate more killing. But it was bad for the economy on the whole. The government can employ people, but if they are not doing anything of value or producing anything that adds to peoples lives, then unemployment numbers are irrelevant. Its not just "jobs" that are important, its the value of what is produced by those jobs. For example the government could hire fifty people to dig a large hole in the ground, then it could hire fifty people to fill that hole up again. There, you just employed one hundred people and that little exercise in futility amounts to good economic policy in Keynesian circles. We need to encourage entrepreneurship and small business to thrive with low taxes, low regulation, and market allocation of scarce resources. It is the dynamic free market and basic principles of supply and demand with the rules and restrictions of bankruptcy (Economic Darwinism) that provide the most efficient allocation of scarce resources which result in the highest level of return on investment. The most wealth is created. A need is always met through the voluntary associations and mutual exchange of goods and services. With Keynesian central economic planning, the resources flow into the most worthless projects that nobody wants and there is no demand for. Here are some links dispelling the notion that World War 2 got us out of the depression:

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=138

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-great-depression-and-world-war-ii/

http://www.reboottherepublic.com/blog/orwell/one-more-time-world-war-ii-did-not-bring-us-out-of-the-depression/

You want me to provide links explaining how "private" monetary policy is possible in the real world? Sure. I didn't mean to not respond to your request earlier, but there were so many responses to cover I just didn't get to it.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/brimelow3.html

http://www.cato.org/moneyconf/14mc-3.html

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=8970

http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Article/064215-2010-01-25-legalize-competing-currencies-by-u-s-rep-ron-paul.htm

http://www.maxmore.com/hayek.htm

There are many more. Suffice to say, private money is not only feasible, it would result in a much better and more efficient economy, with the strongest currencies winning out to become the most commonly used and universally accepted means of exchange. The most superior currency would win out. In fact, completely private money would likely be superior to a Gold standard for Federal money. This would put the power of money back in the hands of the people rather than the whims of a secret banking cartel. You liberals talk about opposing monopolies by corporations to increase their own profits? Then you should support breaking up this monopoly and allowing competition in money and banking.

As far as Vaccinations go, I'll try and explain this one more time. I don't oppose vaccines themselves. I think most people get too many. I oppose the government making certain vaccinations mandatory. If vaccines are effective and necessary, we shouldn't have to force it on people. If you are right most people will voluntarily get vaccinated because they will see the value in it. I don't want to necessarily entertain conspiracy theories but just consider this: What if certain people in the establishment wanted to administer some other drug or toxic substance to certain segments of the population without their knowledge? I want to stress that I don't necessarily believe any of these conclusions, but it is important for us to consider all possibilities. Imagine if a certain segment of undesirables were to be targeted to be "elimintated" or subject to known additives such as infertility drugs or other drugs designed to elicit some desired health effect among certain people. Before you think that this is some paranoid fantasy, there is precedent in American history for this type of thing happening. For example, known and documented covert CIA research program code named Project MKULTRA practiced many experiments involving drugs like LSD and others, as well as "mind control" techniques on many americans without their knowledge and consent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKULTRA

I don't trust the government to give them the power to mandate that I receive an injection of an unknown substance into my body. I think this is very reasonable. We should leave these decisions up to doctors and patients on which treatment options and preventative measures should be undertaken. If your doctor suggests a vaccine, fine. Just leave the government out of the equation. What don't you get about this?

I think a major problem with much of the modern day Left, is this idea that certain establishment institutions and liberal sources hold the Gospel Truth in matters of science and economics. You may not agree with Austrian economics. But you should say, "Austrian economics is a very reputable and viable alternative and competing theory to Keynesian economics that deserves serious consideration and debate during these times. I just happen to disagree with it." That would be reasonable. What is NOT reasonable is to say, "All serious economists reject your silly ideas", which is basically what you and others are saying. I mean, Hayek spent much of his later years publishing extensive articles supporting the feasibility and value of having competing currencies, and he won the Nobel Prize! You wouldn't say he isn't a serious economist, right? The same with vaccines. Many here make the claim that ALL scientists are unanimous in their support for them. This isn't true at all. It just displays an arrogance and close mindedness that is really unappealing. It is as if many liberals have so tied their identity to backing the establishment "consensus" that they stop thinking and aren't open to accepting new ideas. Science and economics don't always travel in a straight line towards better and more accurate ideas and concepts. Sometimes they go the wrong way and accept faulty ideas and reject superior ideas that experts a few generation back took for granted. This is what has happened with economics. Keynesian economics has taken over and obscured the superior ideas of the earlier "classical" economists. Our history is rife with examples of failed policies being institutionalized due to failure or incomplete understanding of the circumstances used to justify their existence.

Lastly, as a bit of comedy relief, you may enjoy this video that has gone viral a few months ago that relates to economic theories. It is called the Fear the Boom and Bust, the Hayek vs Keynes rap:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk

This is how it should be. Keynesian economics vs Austrian economics. Both should get equal time and consideration in our media and public discourse. I don't doubt that if this were to happen, Keynesian theories would be rejected and relegated to the trash bin of history rather quickly.

[septimus]

Hello again, jrodefeld.

I don't want to engage you in interminable debate, but you're failing to acknowledge what others say.

You assert that WWII was bad and therefore part of the Great Depression. Hurricane Katrina was bad; was it therefore also part of the Great Depression? (I'm afraid this will sound sarcastic, but what's the point of using words without following their definitions?)

I did click one of your links claiming to show "WW II did not end the Depression." It made the same irrelevant point you did and then asked why the U.S. economy didn't collapse at the end of the war. Uh ... because fiscal pump-priming is just that -- priming -- and such stimulus isn't to be applied in perpetuity.

I spent two earlier messages explaining why governments force people to be vaccinated even though it doesn't serve their (individual) interest, yet your latest response ("I'll try and explain this one more time ... If you are right most people will voluntarily get vaccinated because they will see the value in it") makes it appear you spend a lot more time repeating your own arguments than trying to even understand others'. Was my point completely lost on you? It sure seems so. If you reject the Golden Rule just say so explicitly. Reject the argument for mandatory vaccinations if you wish, but do us the courtesy of grasping it first.

Please watch this video, called "The Money Masters" to truly understand the nature of our banking system:

... Look at this video, called "Peter Schiff was Right", which shows a modern day Austrian economist seeing our current crisis coming a mile away:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw

The Great Depression lasted 15 years.

For heavens' sakes! WW II was certainly very "bad," but what possible justification can there be for lumping it with the Depression? :confused:

And BTW, I doubt I'm the only one who finds links to videos as citations of economics theory to be ... unusual.


You want me to provide links explaining how "private" monetary policy is possible in the real world? Sure. I didn't mean to not respond to your request earlier, but there were so many responses to cover I just didn't get to it.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/brimelow3.html
http://www.cato.org/moneyconf/14mc-3.html
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=8970
http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Article/064215-2010-01-25-legalize-competing-currencies-by-u-s-rep-ron-paul.htm
http://www.maxmore.com/hayek.htm
There are many more....


Quantity isn't quality. The first link reads like a crankish screed. The second concludes with "National monetary authorities are already discovering that to attract and retain financial capital, they must provide a stable economic and financial environment", so may support my position.

[adhay]

jrodefeld

:golf clap:

Go get'em. I am not an economist ( have not visited any of your links) but I do sense that the Austrian school, whatever its virtues and faults, is in good hands here.

I don't do flu shots. :)

But I can see that there are two basic problems that economic theory in general cannot address, greed and corruption. Greed and corruption have been with us since we left hunting/gathering and developed agriculture. Once a population reaches some magic number, I like 1000, from a practical standpoint, some kind of central govt is necessary to manage it, to organize and direct labor and resources.

Historically, the organizers have been the ones to most benefit, the guys with the most spears, horses, ruthlessness and inculcated greed along with their religious counterparts, the priests. Labor was left to the poor and slaves. It was noted early that great power can be wielded by combining capital with religion, hence our recent spate of divine rulers.

I like the lesson English history affords us in regard to how capital works and, as you will see, why modern day economic theory is useless.

In 1066, the Normans installed primogeniture and The Church in Britain. Primogeniture insured that private family wealth would accumulate. It was just this private accumulation of wealth in a few hands that made possible the invasion itself, and one could argue, put the Saxon wealthy, who divided the fruits of their thievery among their heirs, at a disadvantage. Too many chiefs.

It had been recognized early on that some system of refereeing acquisitive squabbles between the lords of wealth and arms was generally beneficial for maintaining their estate borders, hence the Monarchy. Over time, OF COURSE, centralized capital became abusive and the last real regulation of capital was imposed by the Magna Carter, which formalized the plutocracy which was the foundation of the British Empire.

We are heirs to that tradition as well as that of Rome. Our Constitution simply makes legal a plutocracy with a few democratic embellishments to maintain in the public mind the illusion of a "popular" govt. Seen any evidence of a popular govt on these boards? Ever really had anything to say about our foreign and domestic policies? Please don't start talking about the '60s anti-war demonstrations and civil rights marches, they were special cases. Two large and overlapping groups of citizens with real grievances AND, here's the kicker, the carnage ran in full color in the mainstream media, body bags and violence against blacks and students in every living room, every night.

But not today. Media is centralized and produces a corporate govt approved sludge of homogenized bullshit in several flavors. Journalists are "embedded" in blinders in war zones and Physicians for a Single Payer health care system are not invited to any public discussion of health care. According to a recent Reuters poll, 50% percent of US physicians are for a single payer system, 30% opposed.

The thing that made the '60s anti-movement so successful was CONSCRIPTION and the fact that those affected were conveniently gathered in large groups on the nation's campuses. Lot's of concentrated self-interest there. The Pentagon Papers were also of some help bringing the rest of the country along. Even so, Nixon's and Kissinger's backdoor dealing with the S Viet "govt" prolonged the war for another 5-6 years. Plenty of time to bomb the shit out of much of SE Asia and destroy any hope the indigenous folk arriving at peaceful self-determination while we cornered the Golden Triangle drug trade.

Nothing like that today. War has been privatized. Blackwater, Haliburton, et.al, on unbid contracts do our dirty work and outright steal. Whatever did happen to that lost pallet with $10B in newly printed Franklins?

So what does this all have to do with economic theory? Well, doesn't much of it get down to how much or little to regulate? What does it matter if the fox is regulating the hen house?

We are a free market country in a free market world. Do you like it? Corporations are free to buy and sell human livelihood and misery as they like and we get to bitch at each other.

[adhay]

jrodefeld, I'd like to thank you for providing me the platform for 2 plausibly non-hijacking rants about Capitalism: what we got and how we got it and how we each might respond personally to the dark hole into which it is casting us. Below is a quote from a recent New Yorker article, Lithium Dreams, which examines Bolivia's Evo Morales' views on things in relation to Bolivia's huge lithium resources and how they might be developed. You remember lithium, good drugs and batteries. Evo finds solace with Fidel, Chavez and who is that crazy Islamic theocrat in Iran, again? What they all recognize is the the real war is the class war capital has waged on the uncapitalized thru the ages.As for President Barack Obama, Morales said, "He's trapped by the capitalist system and the structure of imperialism." The only difference between Obama and his predecessor, he said, is that "one is gringo, the other is black."
Need I repeat: Obama = Bush in Blackface.

Thanks, also, for my new signature, Can't see the trees for the forest. Most of you guys are arguing about which trees should be cut and which should be saved. Me, I'm just pissing on the forest fire.

[Oldeb]

So to recap your postition:


Complete deregulation will magically lead us into a capitalistic paradise (ignores 200 years of industialized history)
Charities and general goodwill will provide for the poor (ignores all of history)
Semi-contradictory view that health and medical treatment are not rights but something that must be earned
Calls for measures moving us to isolationism, such as leaving the UN
Calls to return to following the US Constitution (but unable to provide examples of actions that are in direct violation)
Calls to return the US government to it's "Constitional size and scope" (but unable or unwilling to define just what this means, besides repeating that the power is with the States)
Dislike and avoidance of vaccines, with the claim that they should be only administered if doctors feel they are important. (Which they do. The AMA has been calling for mandatory vaccination since 1899 in the fight against smallpox)
Concern for being victim of a MK-ULTRA type conspiracy
This is as close to a Tea Party platform as I'm going to get, isn't it? You dressed it up prettier, I guess, with the economic policy at the forefront, but I could've gotten the same crap from listening to Beck, Hannity, or Palin.

So call yourself an independant, or Libertarian, or whatever. I'm sure you even believe it. But the next time you vote it'll be along straight party lines.



Thanks, also, for my new signature, Can't see the trees for the forest. Most of you guys are arguing about which trees should be cut and which should be saved. Me, I'm just pissing on the forest fire.


That's called a firebreak. :rolleyes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebreak

[adhay]

... That's called a firebreak. :rolleyes:
...The last firebreak was Roosevelt's SEC. It had teeth which have since been removed. The only firebreak left these days is the end of the forest. ;)

[Hellestal]

How exactly do you think Roosevelt's policies got us out of the Great Depression?Here it is. All of your ridiculous beliefs summed up in one comprehensively false statement.

Keynesians don't argue that FDR's New Deal policies got us out of the Depression.

You're attacking something you don't understand. If you were capable of deciphering the words I've actually written, instead of deciding to drown your credibility in the countless delusional arguments you've picked up from your Austrian circle-jerk websites, you might have noticed that I've never claimed that the New Deal stopped the Depression. I am not defending that point, and never have, because it isn't true. Nor do more famous Keynesian economists say otherwise. (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/changes-in-money-wages-and-amity-shlaes/) FDR did many good things to help alleviate the Depression. He also made some significant fuck-ups that lengthened the Depression. On net, his policies were more beneficial than not, but that does not mean that FDR was a perfect president utilizing perfect policy tools. He wasn't. He was a human, and he made mistakes. And the same is true, incidentally, of Keynes himself. The General Theory is a work of genius. It is also outdated. I'm not going to quote extensively from a pre-war book because of the insights that been made since that time. This is because I'm not an idiot.

You make straw arguments about mainstream economics because you don't understand it. "Keynesianism" just a boogyman term with no meaning.If you really want to know what caused the Great Depression, I suggest you read three books.It's like Helen Keller trying to educate me on the second act of Don Giovanni. Bitch never had any ear for music.

I've linked this before, but apparently you have as much trouble with graphs as you do with English words. This is the Great Depression. (http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=4220) It's from the small-government libertarian Scott Sumner. I haven't yet double-checked the data that created it, but this is, as it stands, the single most important correlation in economic history, the relationship between real wages (inverted) and industrial production. This is the story of the Depression, all of the good decisions and all of the bad, summarized in one amazing picture.Hellestal, you don't have to agree with me. But my opinions are based on very serious work by great economists and historians alike. Your opinions are worthless.

Your facts are incorrect.

Your understanding of Keynesianism could not possibly be more distorted.

I've outlined in some detail more than a half dozen mistakes you've made. You went into denial. You are apparently incapable of acknowledging any of them, preferring to rely on the belief that if you link to the same group of idiots enough times, reality might eventually confirm to those delusions. Your links are an embarrassment to the positive influence those Austrians had back in the day, and they are an embarrassment to those few honest libertarians out there today who are capable of arguing their beliefs based on facts instead of fantasy. The nation would benefit if it had an honest libertarian party, but your attitude exemplifies the reason why this will never happen.

Until the libertarians (as a group) learn to grow the fuck up and accept reality as it is, rather than holding fast to what their idiot websites claim it to be, nothing will ever change for them.

[Really Not All That Bright]

I think the wisdom we should be pursuing should transcend these labels and exist as the deep, morally consistent and timeless philosophy of individual liberty which is so ingrained in the psyche of every human being.
Individual liberty is not "ingrained in the psyche of every human being". For most of human history, in fact, the default has been strictly limited individual liberty.

I personally prefer individual liberty to authoritarianism, but don't pretend it's some instinctive yearning. It's just something we were taught to value growing up.
1. I believe in a small, limited Federal Government which can only pursue those functions expressly authorized in the Constitution. If we want our federal government to take on new responsibilities, the ONLY way to do this would be through the slow and deliberate process of Amending the Constitution. This would result in a decentralized, Federalist system of governance.
This would result in the United States of America ceasing to exist as an independent nation, because we'd have been overrun by the Soviet Union in a matter of weeks.
2. I strongly oppose ALL forms of corporate subsidies, no bid contracts, back room deals and other influence buying that tilts the tables in favor of Corporate America. The goal of the Federal Government should be to "regulate" (not as the term is used today) the Free Market, meaning insuring that there IS a Free Market and it remains free. That means preventing anyone from gaining favors from government or "gaming the system". That means any barriers to entry in a market by new competitors should be eliminated. The roll of our Federal Government is to enforce contracts and prosecute fraud and criminal activity to the fullest extent of the law. Maintain equal justice under the law. In addition, NOBODY should be too big to fail. Allow any and all bankruptcies to occur.
A tiny, limited Federal government, such as you propose, would be even more of a corporate patsy. When Bank of America has a bigger army than the United States government, how is the government going to prosecute it?
3. I strongly oppose a Central Bank setting interest rates, and printing money endlessly. I believe we should eliminate the Federal Reserve and place its functions back under the Treasury as the Constitution demands. Furthermore, we should again back our currency by a tangible asset such as Gold. This will prevent abuse of the People's money and protect ones savings from the debasement of inflation. Banks should go bankrupt just like any other private business. Also, we should allow competing currencies to circulate. If someone wants to exchange gold or silver certificates, for example, in a voluntary exchange for goods or services they should be allowed to. This is an additional safeguard which would prevent abusive and destructive monetary policy by our federal government.
Central banking and nominal currency valuation are the cornerstones of commerce. If you get rid of one or both you drastically limit the money supply and destroy economic growth.
4. We should cut back our military drastically. We should only go to war under an official Declaration of War by the Congress as a result of irrefutable proof of a threat to national security after intense and meaningful debate. We should remove our troops from around the world and shut down all military bases becoming neutral in the disputes of other nations, not picking a side. We should have a small (not too small), effective military that is able to provide adequate defense of this country rather than aggressive, imperialistic offense perpetrated on the rest of the world. This alone would boost our popularity immensely around the world. People would once again look up to us as a model of Freedom and Justice rather than an imperialistic threat to be feared.
I agree with this, to a point. I would be perfectly okay with a military half the size of the one we've got now; we don't need 11 aircraft carriers when nobody else has more than four.
5. All education should be private or a product of local community government. The Federal government should stay out of education completely and fully.
History makes it pretty obvious that if the government doesn't educate children nobody else will.
6. ALL abuse of our liberties should end. No more warrantless wiretapping, restoration of habeas corpus, eliminate the Patriot Act, unnecessary screening at airports, and allow all voluntary consensual activity that harms nobody.
No argument here.
7. Eliminate all regulatory red tape restricting small business and harming entrepreneurship and eliminate so called "free trade" agreements like NAFTA. This would encourage a new manufacturing base to reemerge in America and allow it to take hold. It should not be more profitable to ship business overseas than to create more jobs in this country.
Cost effectiveness is cost effectiveness. If businesses don't ship jobs overseas, consumers will start buying foreign products. In the broadband age, there's no way around this phenomenon; the US is simply going to have to become more competitive.
8. Phase out bankrupt Federal medical entitlements such as Medicare. Encourage local governments, charity hospitals and humanitarian organizations to pick up the slack. Ensure medical freedom. Freedom to choose your own doctor, freedom to ensure your medical records stay private and confidential, freedom to choose alternative medicine and treatments for illness. No regulation of supplements and herbal products, no mandatory vaccines, no authoritarian approach to delivering medical care. Encourage market forces to lower medical prices until nearly all could afford basic medical care out of pocket, no insurance necessary. And last but not least, no crippling debt for future generations to pay off due to an insolvent medical entitlement program.
"Encouraging" things doesn't make them happen. I seriously question the sanity of anyone who thinks local governments and charity will "pick up the slack".
9. The United States should leave the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF, the Council on Foreign Relations, and all similar unelected international bodies that don't serve the interests of the american people. We can engage in robust diplomacy with other nations on our own, rather than though an organization that has its own interests and agenda at heart. Make no mistake about it, our government should make it very clear that its loyalties lie with the American people, the Constitution and Bill of Rights and the Republic, which leads to...
The US is not a "member" of the Council on Foreign Relations, and nor is any other state. It's basically a big think tank.

As for the rest, we can already engage in robust diplomacy directly. Membership in the UN, IMF and World Bank just makes it easier for us to fulfil our obligations as a civilized nation to those less fortunate, and offers a safety net in the event that our economy collapses one day.
10. Make it very clear that our system of government is NOT democracy. It is a Constitutional Republic. A democracy is Tyranny by the Majority. In a democracy 51% of the population can vote away the rights of 49%. A Republic is a government run by laws, in this case the Constitution. Its primary function is to ensure equal freedom for ALL Americans, not just the majority. It is the minorities rights that need protecting.
A constitutional republic is a democracy. I'm not sure who told you democracy is a bad word, but you should stop listening to that person.
We all, I assume, hold the Founding Fathers in high esteem, right? Why is it then, that if someone today advocated much of what they themselves believed, you would consider that person a crackpot and call them names?
The Founding Fathers lived in a world without electricity, the internal combustion engine, high-yield farming, telecommunications, the internet, powered flight, space travel, the pocket calculator, vaccination, antibiotics, automatic weapons, communism, mass transit, credit cards and a million other things we take for granted.

The Constitution, like fiat money, has value because we say it has value. There's nothing inherently great about it; it prescribes a system of government which has worked pretty well, so we've kept it around. Unfortunately, it wasn't written for today, but for the world of 250 years ago.

Reinterpreting the Constitution to reflect modern social, economic and political reality is not just useful, it's been necessary to the development of our society. Otherwise, we'd still own slaves.

[BrainGlutton]

For example, if the government fails and bankruptcy sets in and every apocalyptic thing you or I think could happen does come to pass, then I think people will retreat into local communities and we will have a very Federalist type of system again.

You know, that word means "Hamiltonian," not "Jeffersonian."

[BrainGlutton]

If we had a libertarian society with much lower taxes, a less intrusive federal government, and more medical freedom, there would be many fewer people suffering from lack of medical care. There would be dramatically more charity hospitals and health care costs would be so low that nearly everybody could afford medical care.

As with most of what you say, you have absolutely no way to know any of that and absolutely no good reason to believe it.

[Really Not All That Bright]

There is, in fact, a very good reason not to believe it - it didn't happen when we had a more libertarian society with a much more limited federal government.

Rand Rover has proposed a similar scenario - that charity (and therefore, presumably, charitable giving) would swell to meet the demand for aid if government would just stop taxing people so damn much, but there's no evidence that charitable giving is tied to taxation.

[jrodefeld]

So to recap your postition:
Complete deregulation will magically lead us into a capitalistic paradise (ignores 200 years of industialized history)

No, not "deregulation". I want to remove the benefits and "perks" that business now enjoys by making them play by the same rules the rest of us do. No more subsidies of any kind, establish equal justice under the law, and severely punish fraud and corporate crime. We should have fraud laws and the courts should protect people from abuse. And most importantly, we should allow all bankruptcies to occur. Just by eliminating "moral hazard" and establishing market rules and regulations (natural rules), we would see more ethical behavior and less abuse of the system. And I propose we break up the banking monopoly (The Federal Reserve) and give it some competition.

As far as regulation is concerned, how has that regulation served us in the past few decades? We had SEC regulators, FDIC regulators, and many more that failed to prevent the Crash of 2008 and corporate crime in general. I am suggesting we get to the root of the problem by addressing the Federal Reserve system artificially setting interest rates too low and blowing up these speculative bubbles and encouraging the type of reckless casino gambling activity that many have engaged in. This should be stopped. Business should sink or swim on its own merits. In a free market, a business cannot succeed unless it is meeting a need that consumers have. Thus the successful business will be adding something of value to the lives of Americans. In our current system, business is encouraged to trade derivatives and credit default swaps that do nothing of value for the rest of us. Do you think they would do that if they didn't know that the Federal Reserve would bail them out if they screwed up? I'm talking about removing the moral hazard, I'm talking about curtailing the Fed's power to dump easy money into the economy encouraging reckless speculation and risky behavior.

Don't you see that excessive regulations hurt entrepreneurs and small business much more than the big Wall Street firms? In my mind regulation is less about stopping fraud, crime, pollution, and abuse, and more about government disregarding property rights and demanding that decent honest business comply with burdensome mandates and restrictions on its actions. Do you concede that some regulations should be eliminated? We should not be demonizing business when people are losing their jobs.

I feel like my policies would be coming down much more forcefully on corporate crime and abuse than the position your side typically takes. Expose our banking system to vast increases in transparency through a thorough, independent Audit of the Federal Reserve system. Then we must prosecute all criminal activity that has taken place. Make no mistake about it, crimes have been committed.

I am getting to the heart of the matter, breaking up the "good ol boy network" of cronies and corporate shills that make up our banking and financial system. Do you really think just putting in a new regulatory agency is going to solve these problems? As far as me suggesting that "deregulation" will lead to a capitalistic paradise, I am saying no such thing. I am saying that our society would be much more prosperous with a higher standard of living for most people, and less corporate crime than we see today. You think I am ignoring 200 years of industrialized history? Where did you learn history? If the last century proves anything, it is that Central Economic Planning always fails. It leads to unsustainable deficits, a growing gap between rich and poor, erosion of civil liberties, high levels of inflation, and a gradual destruction of productive capacity due to over regulation.

Charities and general goodwill will provide for the poor (ignores all of history)

Do you think the government has done a great job taking care of the poor today? Did you know that welfare checks and social security checks don't keep up with the rate of inflation? Our government makes a great effort to obscure the true rate of inflation so that they don't have to pay out increasing benefits to welfare recipients. Therefore if the government stopped handing out welfare checks AND stopped the runaway spending and sharply limited inflation by instituting tighter monetary policy, the poor would be better off. In the type of system we currently have, the wealth gravitates upward into the hands of the well connected. You shouldn't harbor any illusions about the Federal Government being an altruistic institution that cares about the well being of the average person.

We don't have less poor today than we did forty years ago. The "war on poverty" has failed. What if we eliminated the Income Tax and sharply limited monetary expansion and cut spending across the board? We would have much less poverty. Then, for the most part, charities, churches or other religious institutions, and local governments would be able to provide for those who really cannot provide for themselves. By the way, stop saying that my arguments "ignore all of history". That is ridiculous. If you look at any natural disaster, whether it is Katrina or the earthquake in Haiti and compare the relative effectiveness of government aid vs private charity (Red Cross, missionary workers, volunteers) you would see it is no contest. Private charity is more effective at helping those who need it. Look at how much money was raised to help the victims in Haiti privately! How can you say that people won't be willing to help those who need it? Plus, the money is spent more efficiently and effectively than government aid. Therefore a lot more can be accomplished with less through private charity.

And what makes you think that if people were taxed less and there was more prosperity created, it wouldn't translate into more charitable donations? It would seem logical to me. If people are struggling to make ends meet, they are unable to help those who need it.

I want to stress that I am not one of those people who campaigns on the notion of cutting welfare benefits immediately and harps on about "welfare queens" and the like. I believe in cutting spending and balancing the budget, but I think Medicare and Social Security should be the last things we should cut. I think we should cut Corporate subsidies immediately, then cut the military budget by more than half, eliminate federal departments that are ineffective and unconstitutional, and reform our banking system. THEN we should look to have a transition away from Medicare and Social Security and other federal welfare programs over time. What makes you think we couldn't get by without Medicare? Are you so close minded as to think that there can't be alternatives that could serve people better while not bankrupting our country? In fact, a better question that I would like you to answer would be this:

Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are insolvent. There is no way to fund them long term. What do you propose to tackle these issues if not either allowing people to opt out or phasing out the programs entirely over several years? Obviously something has to be done. You can't just bury your head in the sand and pretend that our federal government can take care of all these people indefinitely.

Semi-contradictory view that health and medical treatment are not rights but something that must be earned

Where is the contradiction? I don't believe anybody has a right to things. A right is a protection of freedom to behave as you wish, associate with who you wish, exercise free speech and do what you want as long as you don't harm anybody else. The notion of having a right to someone else's money or labor necessitates a violation of the other persons rights. If we have a government that operates under this premise, everybody loses there rights over time. Now you may say that the goal of society should be to take care of those who need it and nobody should go bankrupt because they have a medical condition. I actually agree with that. But you cannot say it is a Right. The goal should be to reduce the price of medical care as much as possible. Ensure competition among doctors. De link health insurance from your employer and allow competition across state lines. And protect the doctor patient relationship. There are many sound measures for effective health care reform that could be pursued. I just oppose Obama's health care bill because it just reinforces everything that is wrong with our health care system currently. So, there is no contradiction to my views.

Calls for measures moving us to isolationism, such as leaving the UN

Its not isolationism. I support free trade, travel, robust diplomacy and friendship with all nations that offer it. I do oppose sanctions, dropping bombs, propping up foreign dictators and puppet governments. On the flipside, I also oppose sending foreign aid (private aid is fine) or establishing what the founders called "entangling alliances". I also oppose having troops stationed around the world in an imperialistic manner. What is wrong with this? The reason much of the world hates us is primarily due to our aggressive, arrogant stance and us continually dropping bombs on third world nations in violation of international law and the rules of morality.

As far as the United Nations is concerned, we should leave because they don't serve our interests (or those of other nations). The world would be better off without the United Nations. In fact, since we are the most powerful country we have in essence taken over the UN and used it as another tool to push our military might on the rest of the world. After the UN was established in the late forties the first thing they did was get us involved in the Korean War. We still have troops in Korea! Why? What purpose does it serve for us to maintain troops in all these countries?

And we are facing a serious fiscal crisis currently and we desperately need to cut back spending somewhere. I would contend that there is no better place to save money than to give up on our overseas empire. Do you dispute this?

Calls to return to following the US Constitution (but unable to provide examples of actions that are in direct violation)

Calls to return the US government to it's "Constitional size and scope" (but unable or unwilling to define just what this means, besides repeating that the power is with the States)

Most of what our federal government does is unconstitutional. I will provide examples below:

1. Only congress can declare war. This is explicit in the Constitution. Yet, every war or military conflict since world war 2 has been undeclared therefore unconstitutional. And World War 2 was the last war we actually won. This is not a coincidence.

2. Presidential Executive Orders and signing statements have been used and abused continually to sidestep the congress to write laws. This practice is unconstitutional.

3. The congress is supposed to be in charge of managing the peoples money, not delegating that power out to a third party (the federal reserve).

Article I, Section 8, Clause 5: The Congress shall have Power…To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.

Therefore the Federal Reserve system is unconstitutional.

4. The most important fact to understand about the Constitution is this:

The Constitution is NOT a list of what the federal government cannot do. It is NOT a list of prohibitions on the federal government.

The Constitution IS a list of what the federal government is authorized to do, with ALL ELSE being DENIED to it by default. The absense of specific constitutional authorization for anything means that the federal government is denied/prohibited by default.

5. The Tenth Amendment states: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Dislike and avoidance of vaccines, with the claim that they should be only administered if doctors feel they are important. (Which they do. The AMA has been calling for mandatory vaccination since 1899 in the fight against smallpox)

Concern for being victim of a MK-ULTRA type conspiracy

I think I have exhausted my views about vaccines. I don't believe the federal government should be involved with mandating vaccinations. You can feel differently. This is so secondary to my larger point about Austrian economics, the Constitution and the proper role of government and personal liberties. Lets just let this issue die.


This is as close to a Tea Party platform as I'm going to get, isn't it? You dressed it up prettier, I guess, with the economic policy at the forefront, but I could've gotten the same crap from listening to Beck, Hannity, or Palin.

So call yourself an independant, or Libertarian, or whatever. I'm sure you even believe it. But the next time you vote it'll be along straight party lines.

There is no Tea Party platform. I don't have any association with any Tea Parties. Most of my friends are liberals. What I have been seeing though is not conservative anger or liberal anger, but rather Independent anger. More people are dropping the Democrats and Republicans and registering Independent. Independent registration is at an all time high. I think that is a very good sign.

You know, instead of trying to tie my views to some right wing bogeymen that fit your narrative of left vs right, perhaps you could actually attempt to learn a little more about the Constitution, the history of banking and the Federal Reserve, and Austrian economics and debate me on the merits of these arguments.

By the way, I always vote third party. I am willing to vote Republican or Democrat if there is an independent voice among those groups who is honest and won't kowtow to the political establishment, but there very rarely is. Usually the party establishment will weed out the honest people early on in the primaries, like they did to Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich. Last election I voted for Ralph Nader. You may find this surprising given that I have spent much of this thread talking about issues that I somewhat disagree with Nader about, but on the whole I believe he was the best choice on the Ballet here in California. He would end the wars immediately, no bailouts, aggressively prosecute corporate crime, restore civil liberties, reform election laws to allow more competition in the form of viable third parties and a host of other issues I agreed with. So, you should definitely not associate my views with people like Hannity and Beck.

So, if you care to, why not debate the issues, rather than trying to pigeonhole my views to fit your own narrow world view.

[Der Trihs]

As far as regulation is concerned, how has that regulation served us in the past few decades? We had SEC regulators, FDIC regulators, and many more that failed to prevent the Crash of 2008 and corporate crime in general.Because they were gutted by the Republicans. Who talked just like you about how terribly restrictive and unneeded those regulations were. They were wrong, just as you are wrong.

[jrodefeld]

Because they were gutted by the Republicans. Who talked just like you about how terribly restrictive and unneeded those regulations were. They were wrong, just as you are wrong.

Here is the thing: The idea that the Republican Party "deregulated" the economy is complete bullshit. Its an urban legend. George W Bush massively expanded regulations nearly every year of his presidency. Now, obviously Bush was very cozy with corporate america, but so is Obama. And remember, Glass-Steagal was repealed under Clinton. Regulation or Deregulation had nothing to do with why we are in the midst of this crisis. There was obviously corporate misconduct, but my point is that regulation cannot compensate for bad economic and monetary policy.

Consider this excerpt from Jeff Jacoby, a columnist for The Boston Globe:

"WE'VE HEARD IT again and again: The financial crisis was caused by the Bush administration's reckless plunge into deregulation.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for example, blames the mess on "the Bush administration's eight long years of failed deregulation policies." Billionaire investor George Soros declares that "excessive deregulation is at the root of the current crisis." Nouriel Roubini, the widely-quoted New York University economist, pins it on "these Bush hypocrites, who spewed for years the glory of unfettered Wild West laissez-faire jungle capitalism." A New York Times editorial pronounces the American financial system "the victim of decades of Republican deregulatory and anti-tax policies."

President Jimmy Carter attributes it to the "atrocious economic policies of the Bush administration," particularly "deregulation and . . . a withdrawal of supervision of Wall Street."

That's also Barack Obama's view. "The biggest problem in this whole process was the deregulation of the financial system," Obama said last month. He called the present troubles "a final verdict on the failed economic policies of the last eight years . . . that essentially said that we should strip away regulations, consumer protections, let the market run wild, and prosperity would rain down on all of us."

Deregulators run amok undoubtedly make a flamboyant culprit. But do they exist? Should we really be taking seriously the claim that the past eight years have been characterized by letting "the market run wild"?

Granted, there has been significant recent legislation easing financial restrictions. Most often mentioned is the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which, as The New York Times described it on Monday, "removed barriers between commercial and investment banks that had been instituted to reduce the risk of economic catastrophes." Some argue that the law, which allowed traditional banks and investment firms to be affiliated under one holding company, helped bring on the credit meltdown. Even if true, how was that George W. Bush's fault? The law was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1999, after being passed by lopsided majorities in both houses of Congress.

Gramm-Leach-Bliley's lead sponsors were Republicans, but the 34 Democratic senators who voted for the bill surely weren't scheming to "let the market run wild." Ditto the 151 Democrats -- among them future Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- who voted for the measure in the House. Then-Treasury Secretary (and current Obama adviser) Larry Summers didn't denounce the bill as "laissez-faire jungle capitalism" -- he praised it for "promoting financial innovation, lower capital costs, and greater international competitiveness." Clinton himself defends the law to this day.
Now, this is not to say that Bush hasn't also been responsible for legislation having a decided impact on the country's regulatory climate. On July 31, 2002, declaring that free markets must not be "a financial free-for-all guided only by greed," he signed the Sarbanes-Oxley law, a sweeping overhaul of corporate fraud, securities, and accounting laws. Among its many tough provisions, the law created a new regulatory agency to oversee public accounting firms and auditors, and imposed an array of new requirements for financial reporting and corporate audits. Whatever else might be said about Sarbanes-Oxley, it was no invitation to an uninhibited capitalist bacchanal.

Like the alligators lurking in New York City sewers, Bush's massive regulatory rollback is mostly urban legend. Far from throwing out the rulebook, the administration has expanded it: Since Bush became president, the Federal Register -- the government's annual compendium of proposed and finalized regulations -- has run to more than 74,000 pages every year but one. During the Clinton years, by contrast, the Federal Register reached that length just once.

Similarly, the administration has broken every previous record for regulatory agency spending. According to researchers at Washington University and George Mason University, appropriations for federal regulatory functions have soared during the Bush years. Adjusting for inflation, the regulatory budget has grown from $25 billion in fiscal year 2000 to an estimated $43 billion in FY 2009 -- a 70 percent increase. "In constant dollars," writes James Freeman in the Wall Street Journal, "the Bush regulatory budget increases vastly exceed those of predecessors Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Nixon, and, yes, Lyndon Johnson." Staffing has skyrocketed, too. Regulatory agencies employed 175,000 people in 2000. They employ nearly 264,000 today. (Some of that reflects the Transportation Security Administration's takeover of airport security screening in 2003.)

Amid the stress and storm of the financial crisis, "deregulation" makes a convenient villain. But the facts tell a different story: The nation's regulatory burden has grown heavier, not lighter, since Bush entered the White House. Too little government wasn't what made the economy sick. Too much government isn't going to make it better."


A few more links dispelling the myth that Bush and the Republicans deregulated:

http://www.american.com/archive/2009/september/is-this-what-deregulation-looks-like

http://reason.com/archives/2008/12/10/bushs-regulatory-kiss-off

http://volokh.com/2010/01/28/obama-perpetuates-the-myth-of-bush-as-free-marketeer/

http://txpropertyrights.blogspot.com/2010/02/myth-of-deregulation.html


The issue at hand here is that Republicans (especially Reagan) spout rhetoric about how they defend the free market and favor small government and less regulation. There policies, without exception since Nixon, have been towards larger, more intrusive government, more regulation, and more militarism. These are the facts. The Democrats are attempting to link our problems to deregulation and "free" markets in order to make a case for the opposite: more government intervention, more regulation, more central economic planning. If Americans knew the truth, that these policies are exactly what lead to this crisis, they would never support more of the same. So this myth is very convenient for certain people. Its still complete bullshit, however.

So, Der Trihs, I just proved you wrong. Will you be a stand up guy and admit that you were mistaken? I don't hold anything against you for believing this common misconception, but its important for us as a nation to do something different to solve this crisis. I'm sure you've heard the quote that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Well, I'm afraid Washington D.C. has turned into a mental institution in recent years.

If you would actually take the time to read some of the Austrian economic literature I have linked to, as well as some of the great historians who have done pioneering work on these subjects, you would be able to see that "regulation" is completely beside the point. Our problems come from a fraudulent system of money and a secretive banking system that creates moral hazard and is in itself a complete rejection of free market principles and encourages corporatism and a culture of cronyism is Washington.

So, in case you weren't paying attention earlier, here are a few links to start you out:

First a documentary on our banking system in this country:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936#

www.mises.org (read through the literature section)

http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae13_1_3.pdf

http://mises.org/books/keynes_the_man_rothbard.pdf

If you can learn a little about what I am talking about then come back and we can continue this discussion.

[jrodefeld]

Individual liberty is not "ingrained in the psyche of every human being". For most of human history, in fact, the default has been strictly limited individual liberty.

I personally prefer individual liberty to authoritarianism, but don't pretend it's some instinctive yearning. It's just something we were taught to value growing up.

Well, its debatable. I tend to think that people do instinctively want to be free. Don't you think that slaves early in our history yearned to be free? All they ever knew was slavery yet I bet they thought about what it would be like to be a full citizen and be able to own property and make money and live the good life. I am sure they did. Just because there has been relatively little freedom afforded by governments throughout history doesn't make it any less of a desired condition among people of the world. What historically happens I think is that people always desire freedom for themselves but not necessarily for other people. Therefore through the selfish actions of individuals freedom is slowly eroded for everybody. I believe human beings can only achieve the heights of human potential in a society that grants freedom to all individuals.

This would result in the United States of America ceasing to exist as an independent nation, because we'd have been overrun by the Soviet Union in a matter of weeks.

That is ridiculous. We would have an army capable of defending us from any enemy. We just wouldn't have one larger than the next fifteen countries put together. One of the primary functions of the federal government is to protect our national security. Therefore it would always need to keep and maintain a military up to the task of standing up to any threat we could possibly face. And you are neglecting the fact that our government would grow and evolve over time due to the process of Amending the Constitution. It would evolve to meet the changing needs of citizens and emerging threats, but only in a way compatible with maximum liberty afforded to the citizens.

A tiny, limited Federal government, such as you propose, would be even more of a corporate patsy. When Bank of America has a bigger army than the United States government, how is the government going to prosecute it?

Your examples, again, are completely ridiculous. Nobody is allowed to have an army except the federal government. And even with a much more limited government than we have, it would still be much much bigger than any single corporation or banking institution. In fact a smaller more efficient and streamlined federal government would easily be able to fulfill its obligations to prosecute fraud and other corporate crime. Who would stop them?

Central banking and nominal currency valuation are the cornerstones of commerce. If you get rid of one or both you drastically limit the money supply and destroy economic growth.

Central banking is not a cornerstone of commerce. If we had a Gold standard or competing currencies business would be fine and our economy would be more than fine. Think about this: what is the economy? All it is is individuals participating in the voluntarily exchange of goods and services with mutually beneficial outcomes. There need not be any central planning taking place. People acting in their own interest to better their lives is not something the government has to "encourage". When we talk about central economic planning, the only reason that exists is to control the economy for the benefit of certain banks or special interests who don't want to compete and play by the rules.

I want a currency that maintains its value. I want a government that operates on a balanced budget without out of control deficits. I want an economic system that rewards savings and discourages debt. I want an economy based on lower consumption and increased production rather than the opposite. If any of these ideas make sense to you, you must be against the Federal Reserve system and Keynesian economics. Believe me the economy would be just fine without a central bank that lines the pockets of bankers and erodes the standard of living of the most vulnerable members of society. I know you jumped on this thread a little late, but did you read any of the Austrian economic literature I have linked to? If not, then you should read up a bit so at least you can see where I am coming from.

I agree with this, to a point. I would be perfectly okay with a military half the size of the one we've got now; we don't need 11 aircraft carriers when nobody else has more than four.

I'm glad we agree. Obviously we would maintain a military force necessary to defend us against any possible threats.

History makes it pretty obvious that if the government doesn't educate children nobody else will.

No offense, but this comment is astoundingly ignorant. History is replete with examples of people living under Authoritarian governments who have had to educate themselves illegally and have "black market" schools were people would associate to learn to read and write and learn history and many other subjects that were not made available to them under their oppressive government. In our own history people were educated, extremely well I might add, without government involvement at all. In the 19th century children would be packed into humble one room rural classrooms and learn better than kids do today at multi million dollar public schools. Without government parents would teach the kids, private schools would teach kids, and all manor of charity schools and universities would teach kids. It has been this way throughout most of history. Do you honestly think that if all government schools vanished tomorrow there would be no opportunity for education of children? Maybe then the parents would actually pay attention to their kids and spend a little more time with them.

To back up my point, look at this test to pass the Eighth Grade from 1895. How many Americans do you think could pass this test today? This is how far our standards of education have fallen.

http://www.jordanmaxwell.com/articles/8th-2520grade-2520test.pdf

If the federal government didn't educate kids, alternatives would spring up overnight (affordable private schools, home schooling, charitable free education, etc). First of all, I want to make it clear I am not advocating abolishing public schools. I am advocating eliminating the Department of Education. Even if the federal government pays for education, control should remain at the local level. And we should do everything possible to encourage alternatives. Maybe some day we can be confident that we can educate ourselves fine without the federal government, but that day is a long way off unfortunately.

No argument here.

Great, two things we agree on so far.

Cost effectiveness is cost effectiveness. If businesses don't ship jobs overseas, consumers will start buying foreign products. In the broadband age, there's no way around this phenomenon; the US is simply going to have to become more competitive.

You are partially right. But make no mistake about it, we need manufacturing in the United States. We should be able to do somethings better than any other country. It doesn't have to be about price alone, although with healthy competition we should have low prices as well. We should have a manufacturing revolution based on quality first. Think about it, German Engineering, Japanese electronics, Italian cooking, European sports cars, most other countries produce something that is the best of its kind in the world. People will purchase it even if it costs a bit more. What do we have? Walmart, McDonald's and Burger King. Cheap shit. We should establish quality over quantity. We can still be competitive with the price though. But our trade deficit is killing us.

"Encouraging" things doesn't make them happen. I seriously question the sanity of anyone who thinks local governments and charity will "pick up the slack".

First of all, if my reforms were to be enacted we would see dramatically increased wealth and increased standard of living for most Americans. Due to freeing up medical care to market forces, prices would drop like a rock. So, increased disposable income plus much lower medical cost equals many fewer people who need help. Those who did could be taken care of locally. You know, there used to be many more charity hospitals than exist now. The government drove them out of business. I asked this of a previous poster, but given that Medicare and Medicaid are insolvent, how would you fix them apart from allowing people to opt out or phasing out these programs over time? I think I am actually looking at this thing rationally, many of you guys are seeing what you want to see. There is all this fear mongering about getting rid of Medicare, but think outside the box okay? Why not experiment with a society without Medicare and see if the world ends?

The US is not a "member" of the Council on Foreign Relations, and nor is any other state. It's basically a big think tank.

As for the rest, we can already engage in robust diplomacy directly. Membership in the UN, IMF and World Bank just makes it easier for us to fulfil our obligations as a civilized nation to those less fortunate, and offers a safety net in the event that our economy collapses one day.

This is not the most crucial point. I feel that the United Nations is a very flawed organization that fails in its efforts to help poorer nations. I think it is important however to establish without a doubt that our elected leaders are under oath to uphold the Constitution and Bill of Rights, not profess allegiance to the United Nations. For example, we go to war against those that violate UN resolutions, circumventing the Congress. We should go to war only when the National Security of the United States is threatened and there is an official declaration of war. Membership to groups like the United Nations makes it unclear who exactly our government is serving. This is a more minor point however.

A constitutional republic is a democracy. I'm not sure who told you democracy is a bad word, but you should stop listening to that person.

No, you are wrong here. A republic and a democracy are very different. We have democratic elections, true, but our system of government was explicitly a Republic. Most people think we live in a democracy, but this is false. A Repulic, like I said, is a government ruled by laws. The laws are enumerated in the Constitution. In every proposed legislation that is suggested, we are shown polls that say, for example, that 55% of Americans support this legislation as a reason to push it through. In a Republic this would be irrelevant. The question would be, is there explicit authorization for this bill in the Constitution? If not then the bill must be defeated because it violates the law. It doesn't matter how many people favor the proposed legislation. The only way to change this is to amend the constitution. The founders actually hated democracy. Check out these links:

http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2005/tle332-20050814-05.html

http://www.citizensforaconstitutionalrepublic.com/eberhart4-3-04.html

Also, a video you can watch on the subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFXuGIpsdE0

The Founding Fathers lived in a world without electricity, the internal combustion engine, high-yield farming, telecommunications, the internet, powered flight, space travel, the pocket calculator, vaccination, antibiotics, automatic weapons, communism, mass transit, credit cards and a million other things we take for granted.

The Constitution, like fiat money, has value because we say it has value. There's nothing inherently great about it; it prescribes a system of government which has worked pretty well, so we've kept it around. Unfortunately, it wasn't written for today, but for the world of 250 years ago.

Reinterpreting the Constitution to reflect modern social, economic and political reality is not just useful, it's been necessary to the development of our society. Otherwise, we'd still own slaves.

Sure, this is why I have said over and over the process of Amending the Constitution is essential and the Founders envisioned the Constitution adapting slowly to changing circumstances. You cannot however, ignore the constitution entirely and expect us to maintain liberty. Obviously we amended the constitution to outlaw slavery, allow women to vote and many more. But somewhere along the line we decided not to amend the constitution and simply ignore it. That was when we lost our liberty to an illegal and illegitimate government. Would you support reforming government to its present constitutional size (as the Constitution, as written today, allows) and THEN amending it to allow functions you consider essential in this day and age? If we don't we might as well get rid of the constitution entirely and write off this experiment in liberty to the dustbin of history.

[Oerdin]

It sounds like the OP should just move to Somalia as that is already one place where his libertarian dream is being put into reality. Of course, life expectancy in about 35, there is no education except for religious indoctrination which produces a large scale terrorist/Islamic movement, and virtually everyone but a top elite live in soul crushing poverty. If that's what he wants then he should just move there and let the rest of us continue with a real government here in the US.

[jrodefeld]

Here it is. All of your ridiculous beliefs summed up in one comprehensively false statement.

Keynesians don't argue that FDR's New Deal policies got us out of the Depression.

You're attacking something you don't understand. If you were capable of deciphering the words I've actually written, instead of deciding to drown your credibility in the countless delusional arguments you've picked up from your Austrian circle-jerk websites, you might have noticed that I've never claimed that the New Deal stopped the Depression. I am not defending that point, and never have, because it isn't true. Nor do more famous Keynesian economists say otherwise. FDR did many good things to help alleviate the Depression. He also made some significant fuck-ups that lengthened the Depression. On net, his policies were more beneficial than not, but that does not mean that FDR was a perfect president utilizing perfect policy tools. He wasn't. He was a human, and he made mistakes. And the same is true, incidentally, of Keynes himself. The General Theory is a work of genius. It is also outdated. I'm not going to quote extensively from a pre-war book because of the insights that been made since that time. This is because I'm not an idiot.

You make straw arguments about mainstream economics because you don't understand it. "Keynesianism" just a boogyman term with no meaning.

Wow, ALL my "ridiculous" beliefs are summed up in one sentence, huh? I suppose we should retroactively rescind Hayek's Nobel Prize as well? How about having a book burning party were we make a bonfire out of Austrian literature, especially von Mises' opus Human Action, and pretend the great classical economists never lived? Seriously though, I am not pretending that Roosevelt's policies and Keynesian economics are one and the same, that is your assertion of what I was saying. I am saying that FDR's policies were disastrous and lengthened the depression significantly. No, his policies were not "more beneficial than not", they were a disaster all around.

My argument boils down to the fact the government intervention, propping up unsound business positions, inflating credit, keeping up wage rates, and expanding public works prolonged the necessary market correction and turned a relatively minor correction into a decade long catastrophe. And also, the Austrian economists have the only sensible theory as to what causes recessions and depressions in the first place. It is called the Theory of the Business Cycle. They show how massive bank credit expansion in the 20s caused an unsustainable boom that inevitably results in a bust. The following is a more clear explanation for the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle, first advanced in 1912, in Ludwig von Mises’s masterwork, The Theory of Money and Credit:

"The theory begins by observing the profound effect that interest rates have on investment decisions. Left to the market, interest rates are determined by the supply of credit (a mirror of the savings rate) and the willingness to takes risks in the market (a mirror of the return on capital). What throws this out of whack is manipulation by the central bank.

When the Fed feeds artificial credit into the economy by lowering interest rates, it spurs investments in projects that don’t eventually pan out. In this economic boom, the high-tech and dot com manias resulted from a decade of sustained money growth via lower interest rates. When the Fed stepped on the brakes to prevent prices from rising, it prompted a sell-off, and hence a downturn.

What’s tricky to understand is what can’t be seen. Just because prices aren’t going up doesn’t mean the money supply is in check. Just because people in some sectors are getting rich doesn’t mean that the prosperity is on solid ground. Just because the stock market is going up doesn’t mean that the architecture of investment (to use Jim Grant’s phrase) is in good working order.

This theory is strongly supported by the data. The dot come runup coincided with a money supply runup, beginning in 1995. The money supply (the Fed’s MZM) slightly flattened in 1996 and the begin zooming again in 1997, peaking at a 15% increase in January of 1999. The rate of increase began to fall precipitously thereafter, triggering a much needed sell-off. The money supply as measured by MZM began at $3.2 trillion in 1997 and sits at $4.7 trillion today. Clearly, the judgments of investors and entrepreneurs were being distorted by massive injections of money and credit."

This is why Austrian economists had no trouble predicting the Great Depression and had no trouble today in correctly predicting the current economic crisis. The Austrians have the only rational explanation for the cause of economic crises. If the cause is not understood, a reasonable solution can hardly be offered, right?

It's like Helen Keller trying to educate me on the second act of Don Giovanni. Bitch never had any ear for music.

I've linked this before, but apparently you have as much trouble with graphs as you do with English words. This is the Great Depression. It's from the small-government libertarian Scott Sumner. I haven't yet double-checked the data that created it, but this is, as it stands, the single most important correlation in economic history, the relationship between real wages (inverted) and industrial production. This is the story of the Depression, all of the good decisions and all of the bad, summarized in one amazing picture.

I've noticed your pretty good at making smart ass remarks, yet you fail miserably at reading comprehension. Why not tell me why the books and links I offered were wrong? You didn't actually even look through them, did you?

I actually DID look at your link and saw nothing to contradict the Austrian explanation of the Great Depression. I only see more example of FDR's failures. So, tell me what would have happened if we didn't intervene at all and allowed the correction to occur and then went back to work. What would have happened? Obviously FDR's polices weren't very successful (that so many consider him one of our greatest presidents boggles the mind).

I've mentioned this earlier, but the Depression of 1920-21 was over very quickly without any intervention. Why was this? If it was so successful, why did we not use it as an example to follow in the thirties? Watch this video about the Depression of 1920:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czcUmnsprQI

How about you respond to the substance of the links I provided? I know its a bit harder than talking out of your ass with snarky comments, but you may actually learn something if you do.

Your opinions are worthless.

Your facts are incorrect.

Your understanding of Keynesianism could not possibly be more distorted.

I've outlined in some detail more than a half dozen mistakes you've made. You went into denial. You are apparently incapable of acknowledging any of them, preferring to rely on the belief that if you link to the same group of idiots enough times, reality might eventually confirm to those delusions. Your links are an embarrassment to the positive influence those Austrians had back in the day, and they are an embarrassment to those few honest libertarians out there today who are capable of arguing their beliefs based on facts instead of fantasy. The nation would benefit if it had an honest libertarian party, but your attitude exemplifies the reason why this will never happen.

Until the libertarians (as a group) learn to grow the fuck up and accept reality as it is, rather than holding fast to what their idiot websites claim it to be, nothing will ever change for them.

I don't think you outline "in detail" any serious mistakes I have made on this thread. I may have made minor errors or accidentally misspoke. Its possible. You claim the Austrians had a positive influence back in the day and I am an "embarrassment" to them? I think I very accurately articulated the Austrian position as far as the Theory of the business cycle, criticizing the Federal Reserve and a host of other positions.

So, lets cut the bullshit. You claim to at least respect the Austrians for their contributions to economics, yet claim my links are an "embarrassment" to them? The most common link I have provided is to mises.org, the Ludwig von Mises Institute, an organization designed to collect and preserve the original teachings of Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, Hazlitt, and others and teach Austrian economics to new generations. So, just actually explain to me why the theories of Mises, and the others don't make sense or don't apply to modern economic problems?

And, to a more important point, why is it that Austrian economists were some of the only ones to correctly predict the economic crisis we are now facing? Why did the modern economic "thinkers" (who you defend) almost unanimously fail to see this crisis coming? I've posted this video before, but you didn't respond, so here it is again,

Peter Schiff, Austrian economist, was right:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0YTY5TWtmU

Ben Bernanke, moron Fed chairman, was wrong:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ79Pt2GNJo

It seems that we should be looking to those who saw the problems with the economy BEFORE the crisis to find our way out. By the way, Ludwig von Mises saw the Great Depression coming a mile away in the 20s. Maybe I'm crazy, but I prefer to look to those with a track record of being right, not those whose predictions routinely fail to happen.

So, I challenge you to actually explain in some detail, why the Austrian theories are wrong and why modern Austrians like Peter Schiff and Ron Paul (who predicted the crisis) are wrong today.

[jrodefeld]

It sounds like the OP should just move to Somalia as that is already one place where his libertarian dream is being put into reality. Of course, life expectancy in about 35, there is no education except for religious indoctrination which produces a large scale terrorist/Islamic movement, and virtually everyone but a top elite live in soul crushing poverty. If that's what he wants then he should just move there and let the rest of us continue with a real government here in the US.

Not even close. Somalia is so far away from a libertarian society. It is more like tribal warlordism. No country currently is a perfect example of libertarianism. Some countries are very good at protecting certain kinds of freedom and have very libertarian aspects to them. I'll give you examples of countries that have libertarian "experiments" in certain aspects of society and how they are working out:

1. The Netherlands: They have some of the most lenient laws about drugs and prostitution in the world. In fact, violence and addiction rates are lower than the average. This policy is working out very well, reducing the harms associated with illegal drugs and undercutting the criminality and gang violence from the black market that existed when drugs were illegal. It is a resounding success.

2. Switzerland:

Foreign Policy: They have a non interventionist foreign policy and are neutral in outward disputes. Switzerland avoids alliances that might entail military, political, or direct economic action and had been neutral since the end of its expansion in 1515. Its policy of neutrality has been internationally recognised at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Only in 2002 did Switzerland become a full member of the United Nations but it was the first state to join it by referendum. Switzerland maintains diplomatic relations with almost all countries and historically has served as an intermediary between other states. They are the model by which we should base our foreign policy on. They have never had a major war in over 400 years. They are friends of all nations and enemies with none.

Gun Policy: Switzerland has one of the highest militia gun ownership rates in the world. The Swiss army is very small and is dependent upon militia trained and structured to rapidly respond to foreign aggression. Gun crime rates are so low that statistics aren't even kept. Crime rates overall are MUCH lower than most other nations. Obviously their gun policy is working out very well.

3. Liechtenstein: Although small, it has the highest gross domestic product per person in the world. They have a very free market oriented economy with very low regulation. From wikipedia: Despite or perhaps because of its limited natural resources, Liechtenstein is one of the few countries in the world with more registered companies than citizens; it has developed a prosperous, highly industrialized free-enterprise economy and boasts a financial service sector as well as a living standard which compares favorably with those of the urban areas of Liechtenstein's large European neighbours. It has been a tremendous success.

4. Estonia: A very free market oriented country with respect for personal liberty and considerable wealth. From wikipedia: A balanced budget, almost non-existent public debt, flat-rate income tax, free trade regime, fully convertible currency backed by currency board and a strong peg to the euro, competitive commercial banking sector,innovative e-Services and even mobile-based services are all hallmarks of Estonia's free-market-based economy.

The central bank uses a currency board system and has independent reserves, which are big enough to buy back all the currency in circulation.

There are actually quite a few countries that are more libertarian than us (though non are perfect). A general rule that emerges when looking at these countries is that the more libertarian the society is, the healthier the economy, the higher the standard of living, and the greater the peace and happiness afforded its citizens. Other nations that are somewhat libertarian are: New Zealand, Ireland, and the Bahamas. Needless to say there is precedent for libertarian policy being a resounding success.

By the way, Oerdin, I know what you were trying to do with that comment. You think that any nation with no government in chaos and anarchy approximates a "libertarian" society? There is much more to libertarians than "no government". It is a very specific type of government and economic system. I honestly don't think you are that stupid as to really think Somalia represents a libertarian society, so I will just chalk it up to you trying to be clever and point to some shit third world nation in chaos to try to discredit my views. Well, its not going to work. Why not explain why libertarian ideology (however limited) works out so well for the countries I listed above. Some countries have superior respect for personal/civil liberties, some have a more economically free market system, and some have a more peaceful foreign policy. But in all areas, more liberty equals more success and more prosperity and greater happiness for their citizens.

So, before I let you get back to your oh so successful "real" government you love so much, why not actually make an effort to read the links I am posting and explain why my positions won't work out. See, thats how real debate is supposed to work. I state my position with links to back it up, then you respond with substance and links of your own and vice versa. You have to put forth some actual effort.

[Marley23]

jrodefeld, do my corrections of your mistakes change your views on health care or the FDA at all?

[Really Not All That Bright]

Well, its debatable. I tend to think that people do instinctively want to be free. Don't you think that slaves early in our history yearned to be free? All they ever knew was slavery yet I bet they thought about what it would be like to be a full citizen and be able to own property and make money and live the good life.
Slavery is a totally different scenario. Slaves saw other people on a daily basis - their owners and overseers - who were free.
Your examples, again, are completely ridiculous. Nobody is allowed to have an army except the federal government. And even with a much more limited government than we have, it would still be much much bigger than any single corporation or banking institution. In fact a smaller more efficient and streamlined federal government would easily be able to fulfill its obligations to prosecute fraud and other corporate crime. Who would stop them?
Who says nobody is allowed to have an army except the federal government? It's certainly not in the Constitution you hold so dear. In any case, that's the point - without a strong central government, there's nobody who can enforce the rules.

How much do you want to limit the government, exactly? Let's say it shrinks to 10% of its present size under your proposals, and a balanced budget amendment is passed. The total federal budget would go from $3.5 trillion to something closer to $100 billion, based on 2009 revenues.

That's about a third of Shell's 2009 revenues, or half of Wal*Mart's.
Central banking is not a cornerstone of commerce. If we had a Gold standard or competing currencies business would be fine and our economy would be more than fine. Think about this: what is the economy? All it is is individuals participating in the voluntarily exchange of goods and services with mutually beneficial outcomes. There need not be any central planning taking place. People acting in their own interest to better their lives is not something the government has to "encourage". When we talk about central economic planning, the only reason that exists is to control the economy for the benefit of certain banks or special interests who don't want to compete and play by the rules.

I want a currency that maintains its value. I want a government that operates on a balanced budget without out of control deficits. I want an economic system that rewards savings and discourages debt. I want an economy based on lower consumption and increased production rather than the opposite. If any of these ideas make sense to you, you must be against the Federal Reserve system and Keynesian economics. Believe me the economy would be just fine without a central bank that lines the pockets of bankers and erodes the standard of living of the most vulnerable members of society. I know you jumped on this thread a little late, but did you read any of the Austrian economic literature I have linked to? If not, then you should read up a bit so at least you can see where I am coming from.
Yes, I read it. I also read it in college. It made just as little sense then as it does now. The Austrian theorists wrote about economies which functioned in a vacuum. They ignored the external effects of unregulated economic activity - pollution, nonsustainability, and so on - and political reality. Pure, unregulated market economies are no more viable than communism.

Central banking and Keynesian economics soften the blow of economic shocks. It's all very well to say that recessions and depressions are necessary to the functioning of healthy economic systems, but without some government intervention people will starve to death long before the corrective cycle completes. In any case, your writers all ignore the fact that government spending was the only thing that got us out of the Great Depression - that is, the massive increase in spending necessitated by WWII.

Some degree of stability is necessary for an economy to function properly. That, of course, isn't even taking into account the noneconomic factors which make a safety net a desirable thing (like compassion).
No offense, but this comment is astoundingly ignorant. History is replete with examples of people living under Authoritarian governments who have had to educate themselves illegally and have "black market" schools were people would associate to learn to read and write and learn history and many other subjects that were not made available to them under their oppressive government. In our own history people were educated, extremely well I might add, without government involvement at all. In the 19th century children would be packed into humble one room rural classrooms and learn better than kids do today at multi million dollar public schools. Without government parents would teach the kids, private schools would teach kids, and all manor of charity schools and universities would teach kids. It has been this way throughout most of history. Do you honestly think that if all government schools vanished tomorrow there would be no opportunity for education of children? Maybe then the parents would actually pay attention to their kids and spend a little more time with them.
Perhaps you'd like to share some of these examples.
To back up my point, look at this test to pass the Eighth Grade from 1895. How many Americans do you think could pass this test today? This is how far our standards of education have fallen.
http://www.jordanmaxwell.com/articles/8th-2520grade-2520test.pdf
http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.asp
If the federal government didn't educate kids, alternatives would spring up overnight (affordable private schools, home schooling, charitable free education, etc). First of all, I want to make it clear I am not advocating abolishing public schools. I am advocating eliminating the Department of Education. Even if the federal government pays for education, control should remain at the local level. And we should do everything possible to encourage alternatives. Maybe some day we can be confident that we can educate ourselves fine without the federal government, but that day is a long way off unfortunately.
I'm not particularly opposed to abolishing the Department of Education. Most of the states do a pretty shitty job of educating their students already, so federal involvement doesn't seem to be helping.
You are partially right. But make no mistake about it, we need manufacturing in the United States. We should be able to do somethings better than any other country. It doesn't have to be about price alone, although with healthy competition we should have low prices as well. We should have a manufacturing revolution based on quality first. Think about it, German Engineering, Japanese electronics, Italian cooking, European sports cars, most other countries produce something that is the best of its kind in the world. People will purchase it even if it costs a bit more. What do we have? Walmart, McDonald's and Burger King. Cheap shit. We should establish quality over quantity. We can still be competitive with the price though. But our trade deficit is killing us.
We already produce lots of things which are the best in the world. Military hardware, specialized medical equipment, supercomputers, and so on. However, just wishing for something doesn't make it so.

A manufacturing revolution requires a revolutionary idea. Industrialization, automation, and so on. It would be nice if we had one, of course, but it doesn't look like there's one on the horizon (nanotechnology, perhaps?) and we won't know it's here until after the fact when one does arrive.
First of all, if my reforms were to be enacted we would see dramatically increased wealth and increased standard of living for most Americans. Due to freeing up medical care to market forces, prices would drop like a rock. So, increased disposable income plus much lower medical cost equals many fewer people who need help. Those who did could be taken care of locally. You know, there used to be many more charity hospitals than exist now. The government drove them out of business. I asked this of a previous poster, but given that Medicare and Medicaid are insolvent, how would you fix them apart from allowing people to opt out or phasing out these programs over time? I think I am actually looking at this thing rationally, many of you guys are seeing what you want to see. There is all this fear mongering about getting rid of Medicare, but think outside the box okay? Why not experiment with a society without Medicare and see if the world ends?
You sound like you're running for office. "If my reforms are enacted..."

You have absolutely no idea what would happen if your reforms are enacted, and medical care is already freed up to market forces. What specific mechanism is going to push down the cost of medical care?

Opening up more medical school places can do that, but we can do that without implementing any of your other reforms. What else?
This is not the most crucial point. I feel that the United Nations is a very flawed organization that fails in its efforts to help poorer nations. I think it is important however to establish without a doubt that our elected leaders are under oath to uphold the Constitution and Bill of Rights, not profess allegiance to the United Nations. For example, we go to war against those that violate UN resolutions, circumventing the Congress. We should go to war only when the National Security of the United States is threatened and there is an official declaration of war. Membership to groups like the United Nations makes it unclear who exactly our government is serving. This is a more minor point however.
Which of our elected leaders has ever "professed allegiance" to the United Nations? This is a non-issue. I am, however, not against restricting the power to authorize the use of force to Congress (as it ought to have been all along).
No, you are wrong here. A republic and a democracy are very different. We have democratic elections, true, but our system of government was explicitly a Republic. Most people think we live in a democracy, but this is false. A Repulic, like I said, is a government ruled by laws. The laws are enumerated in the Constitution. In every proposed legislation that is suggested, we are shown polls that say, for example, that 55% of Americans support this legislation as a reason to push it through. In a Republic this would be irrelevant. The question would be, is there explicit authorization for this bill in the Constitution? If not then the bill must be defeated because it violates the law. It doesn't matter how many people favor the proposed legislation. The only way to change this is to amend the constitution. The founders actually hated democracy. Check out these links:

http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2005/tle332-20050814-05.html

http://www.citizensforaconstitutionalrepublic.com/eberhart4-3-04.html

Also, a video you can watch on the subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFXuGIpsdE0
That is nonsense. The founders were talking about direct democracy - an archaic usage. Every modern democracy is at least theoretically a constitutional republic. Even Britain, which has no formal written constitution.
Sure, this is why I have said over and over the process of Amending the Constitution is essential and the Founders envisioned the Constitution adapting slowly to changing circumstances. You cannot however, ignore the constitution entirely and expect us to maintain liberty. Obviously we amended the constitution to outlaw slavery, allow women to vote and many more. But somewhere along the line we decided not to amend the constitution and simply ignore it. That was when we lost our liberty to an illegal and illegitimate government. Would you support reforming government to its present constitutional size (as the Constitution, as written today, allows) and THEN amending it to allow functions you consider essential in this day and age? If we don't we might as well get rid of the constitution entirely and write off this experiment in liberty to the dustbin of history.
Again, nonsense. We've never ignored the Constitution, nor have we given up on amending it. The 27th Amendment was passed in 1992.

What we have done is accepted - as the Founders did - that interpretation of the Constitution is the job of the judiciary. It's only seven articles- a good loose framework for a system of government, but necessarily rather vague.

Which specific parts of the Constitution do you feel are currently being ignored?

[Oldeb]

No, not "deregulation".

What? It's a cornerstone of Libertarian politics. It's also pretty big with the Austrian School. How can you not be pushing for deregulation but support them both?


As far as regulation is concerned, how has that regulation served us in the past few decades? We had SEC regulators, FDIC regulators, and many more that failed to prevent the Crash of 2008 and corporate crime in general.

You take Der Trihs to task for claiming that Republicans worked to undo much of the regulations in the US. You're right that it wasn't Republicans that started it since it began in 1980 with Carter and Depository Institutions and Monetary Control Act. They certainly didn't make it any better though. In fact they've been big supporters of deregulation and deregulation was a big part of Reagan's administration.

Reagan certainly made it worse in 1982 with the Garn-St. Germain Depositiry Institutions Act. This one gave us our first deregulation crisis in the savings and loan scandals.

Reagan also appointed Greenspan to head the Federal Reserve in 1987, in line with the administration's deregulation and free market policies.

Greenspan pushed hard for further deregulation and got his wish in 1999. Introduced by the Republican Party was a repeal of the Glass-Steagle Act. Advised by Greenspan, Clinton signed it into law. This is where everything became a mess. It allowed the banks to take on all sorts of risks and it played a large part in the 2008 Crash.

So yeah, you are correct in that W. didn't cause it. And oddly Bush Sr. wasn't too bad. Carter, Reagan, and Clinton/the Republican Congress are the ones to blame.

Still, you can't spend 28 years deregulating banking and lending only to turn around and blame the now powerless investigators for the crash.


Do you concede that some regulations should be eliminated?

Not really. You'll first need to explain how Canada, which kept stricter regulations over the last 30 years, would be better off if they hadn't. Keep in mind that they have one of the most, if not the most, stable banking systems in the world right now. They also have "too large to fail" banks who operate under tighter regulation without this becoming a problem.

We should be moving towards returning to tighter regulation. Fortunately, we are. Last December McCain (R) and Cantwell (D) jointly introduced a proposal to reinstate the the Glass-Steagle Act. Obama's "Volker Rule" calls for reimplementation of many parts of that Act. The EU is looking into legislation based on it.

Meanwhile Canada is trying not to be all smug, eh?


As far as me suggesting that "deregulation" will lead to a capitalistic paradise, I am saying no such thing. I am saying that our society would be much more prosperous with a higher standard of living for most people, and less corporate crime than we see today.

I exaggerated. But honestly the Libertarian ideal is not that much different from the glorious workers' paradise of Communism.


You think I am ignoring 200 years of industrialized history?

Yes. You've never commented on what I said about the 19th century. It was the most libertarian the western world has ever been and it was a terrible time to be a employed. All of the changes that have altered this have been forced on businesses by the government. It's why we don't have 10 year olds pulling 70 hour work weeks for a dollar like we did in 1810.


Do you think the government has done a great job taking care of the poor today?

No, I think it should do more. But I think it has done better than any private organization.


We don't have less poor today than we did forty years ago.

True. It's about even with fifty years ago. There's about 39.8 million Americans below the poverty line and in 1960 it was about 40 million. The low point was in the 70's, with the 60's and 80's both being higher.


Then, for the most part, charities, churches or other religious institutions, and local governments would be able to provide for those who really cannot provide for themselves. By the way, stop saying that my arguments "ignore all of history". That is ridiculous.

It is ridiculous the way you ignore history. This has never happened. Ever. Charities have never been able to provide for the poor and underprivleged as a whole. At best they can provide a sort of band-aid for the problem by helping limited numbers in a limited area.

70% of Americans donate to charities. So when you get rid of all government programs you're going to have 30% of the country not doing a single thing to help out. There is absolutely no reason to think that these people are suddenly going to be motivated to give money to a cause.

Of those 70% who do donate to charities the average donation from each one is 3% of their income over the year, before taxes. Interestingly this number does not change if a person's income changes. It's still 3% of their income before taxes regardless of the actual dollar amount made.

http://www.grabstats.com/statcategorymain.asp?StatCatID=28

If you look at any natural disaster, whether it is Katrina or the earthquake in Haiti and compare the relative effectiveness of government aid vs private charity (Red Cross, missionary workers, volunteers) you would see it is no contest. Private charity is more effective at helping those who need it. Look at how much money was raised to help the victims in Haiti privately! How can you say that people won't be willing to help those who need it?

It's those same 70% donating 3% of their income. All you are seeing is a shift in what they donate to. Ask your local food bank how it did when everyone was giving to Hati.

Plus, the money is spent more efficiently and effectively than government aid. Therefore a lot more can be accomplished with less through private charity.

True to some degree. But you might want to find out how people who donated to Wyclef Jean's charity feel about the missing $2 million. And some things simply cannot be accomplished without government aid. Take hospital ships. The largest private ones are not even half the size of the US Navy ships. Governments are capable of providing massive resources on a scale that simply cannot be matched in the private sector.


And what makes you think that if people were taxed less and there was more prosperity created, it wouldn't translate into more charitable donations? It would seem logical to me. If people are struggling to make ends meet, they are unable to help those who need it.

Because this doesn't happen. 70% of the population gives 3% of their income. Taxation is not a factor. It also assumes that people aren't going to use their new found wealth on themselves. So instead of increasing their budget to match the new income they keep it the same and donate the rest. Does that sound even remotely plausible to you?

It assumes that once people reach a certain standard of living they lose or greatly reduce the desire to see it improve. And we're not talking millionaires here. We're talking about John Doe and his middle class income happily remaning there and not trying to move up. This is where Communism fails too. People are selfish. They always have been. And until you manage to bring about a massive change in the fundamentals of human behavior they will remain that way.

Yeah it's nice to believe people are all generous and happy like that, but it simply isn't true.


I want to stress that I am not one of those people who campaigns on the notion of cutting welfare benefits immediately and harps on about "welfare queens" and the like.

In all honesty, I'd understand you better if you were. It's one thing to look at a system and see the corruption and want it changed. It's another thing to see only the corruption and come to the conclusion that it needs to be removed entirely regardless of any positives.


Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are insolvent. There is no way to fund them long term. What do you propose to tackle these issues if not either allowing people to opt out or phasing out the programs entirely over several years?

I already provided you a suggestion for this one. What about something like the Dutch system? You like the Netherlands. It has competing private insurance companies, consists largely of private hospitals, and you can choose your own doctor. Oh, and it costs 10% of their GDP compared to the 16% the we in the US are putting into ours. And it's rated much higher.


Where is the contradiction?

Property rights are greater than the lives of others.

People should sacrifice (donate to charities) their property to benefit the lives of others.


Its not isolationism. I support free trade, travel, robust diplomacy and friendship with all nations that offer it. I do oppose sanctions, dropping bombs, propping up foreign dictators and puppet governments. On the flipside, I also oppose sending foreign aid (private aid is fine) or establishing what the founders called "entangling alliances".

It's the definition of Isolationism.

the policy or doctrine of isolating one's country from the affairs of other nations by declining to enter into alliances, foreign economic commitments, international agreements, etc., seeking to devote the entire efforts of one's country to its own advancement and remain at peace by avoiding foreign entanglements and responsibilities.


As far as the United Nations is concerned, we should leave because they don't serve our interests (or those of other nations). The world would be better off without the United Nations. In fact, since we are the most powerful country we have in essence taken over the UN and used it as another tool to push our military might on the rest of the world.

Bolding mine. We're not very good at that sort of thing I guess.


And we are facing a serious fiscal crisis currently and we desperately need to cut back spending somewhere. I would contend that there is no better place to save money than to give up on our overseas empire. Do you dispute this?

Nope. We do like to wave a big sabre around and there's less and less need for it. I do think you're playing fast and loose with the definition of "overseas empire" if you're counting military bases in friendly countries though.

By the way you'll be happy to know that in 2004 we started handing over a number of military bases to the Republic of Korea and are expected to finish this by 2016. We also reduced troop sized 2008 with no plans to increase it. Wartime operational control is on schedule to be handed over to the RoK in 2012.


Most of what our federal government does is unconstitutional. I will provide examples below:

1. Only congress can declare war. This is explicit in the Constitution. Yet, every war or military conflict since world war 2 has been undeclared therefore unconstitutional. And World War 2 was the last war we actually won. This is not a coincidence.

Untrue about them being unconstitutional. While the last formal declaration of war was in WW2, Congress has authorized military action a number of times since then. And I'm curious to know how you see the Gulf War as a loss.


Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
Multinational Force in Lebanon: S.J.R 159
Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm): H.J.R. Res. 77
2001 War in Afgahnistan (Operation Enduring Freedom): S.J. Res 23
Iraq War (Operation Iraqi Freedom): H.J. Res 114

2. Presidential Executive Orders and signing statements have been used and abused continually to sidestep the congress to write laws. This practice is unconstitutional.

Hmm. A grey area. It's morally and ethically suspect, I'll grant you. And a bit cowardly politically speaking. But the practice is a lot older than you think.

The first proto-signing statement came from James Monroe in 1822. Note that the primary author of the US Constitution, James Madison, was very much alive and didn't comment on the practice.

Here's a good list of them, including a every statement since 1929 searchable by year.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/signingstatements.php


3. The congress is supposed to be in charge of managing the peoples money, not delegating that power out to a third party (the federal reserve).

Article I, Section 8, Clause 5: The Congress shall have Power…To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.

Therefore the Federal Reserve system is unconstitutional.

The justification for this is the combination of the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. It's worth noting that James "Father of the Constitution" Madison favored an extremely broad interpretation of the Necessary and Proper Clause in the Federalist Papers. (#44 if you're looking for it)


4. The most important fact to understand about the Constitution is this:

The Constitution is NOT a list of what the federal government cannot do. It is NOT a list of prohibitions on the federal government.

The Constitution IS a list of what the federal government is authorized to do, with ALL ELSE being DENIED to it by default. The absense of specific constitutional authorization for anything means that the federal government is denied/prohibited by default.

5. The Tenth Amendment states: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

You don't comment on such things as tying the drinking age and speed limit to federal money, something explicitly found to be constitutional which had the de facto effect of setting national standards for those things. This should be massively unconstitutional for you, right?

And I asked before, but do you really feel the States are as seperate from each other as the countries of Europe? Do you really feel unconnected to events occuring in another state? Have you never lived in a different state or gone to school there? Do you only have family in one state?

Do you feel that things such as FEMA and the FBI are unconstitutional?


More people are dropping the Democrats and Republicans and registering Independent. Independent registration is at an all time high. I think that is a very good sign.

Half right. More people are dropping from the Republican Party. The Democratic Party is stable. The number of independents is growing.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/773/fewer-voters-identify-as-republicans

Notice that the percentage of people identifying as Democratic did not change by more than a single percentage point from 2000-2008. Meanwhile the jump in independents jumps at the same time Republican affiliation drops.


You know, instead of trying to tie my views to some right wing bogeymen that fit your narrative of left vs right, perhaps you could actually attempt to learn a little more about the Constitution, the history of banking and the Federal Reserve, and Austrian economics and debate me on the merits of these arguments.

So, you should definitely not associate my views with people like Hannity and Beck.

So, if you care to, why not debate the issues, rather than trying to pigeonhole my views to fit your own narrow world view.

My apologies for thinking you had Teabagger beliefs. But you should know that of your 10 points in the original post, 7 of them are identical to items on the Tea Party Patriots' Contract From America.

The three that are not are #3 with it's call to a gold standard, #4 and the reduced military, and #10 with it's definition of the government.

#3 with a call to return to the gold standard and the purchase of gold is a big talking point for Glenn Beck. Not the least because he because is a paid spokesman for Goldline International.

#10 is a Tea Party thing. They aren't the first or only ones to use it, but they do rally around it for some reason. It's wordplay without a practical distincition.

#4 is the only non-Tea Party item on your list.

Since you are 90% in agreement with them as well as your defense of the Tea Party and it's intelligent and informed members I simply assumed you were sympathetic to them at the very least.

[Oldeb]

Estonia: A very free market oriented country with respect for personal liberty and considerable wealth. From wikipedia: A balanced budget, almost non-existent public debt, flat-rate income tax, free trade regime, fully convertible currency backed by currency board and a strong peg to the euro, competitive commercial banking sector,innovative e-Services and even mobile-based services are all hallmarks of Estonia's free-market-based economy.

Heh. Before 2008 anyway. They were hit pretty hard economically. Now they have a climbing unemployment rate and it seems that due to a lack of protection for workers wages are dropping fast.

From here: http://www.estonianfreepress.com/2010/04/are-estonian-employers-using-the-financial-crisis/

...quite a few employers seem even to have expanded the “easy way” of cutting expenses by forcing their workers to accept the cuts and the bigger workload by threatening to fire them.

...every employee should know that outside there are tens of people who would be happy to take over...

[jrodefeld]

jrodefeld, do my corrections of your mistakes change your views on health care or the FDA at all?

I wouldn't go so far as to say that you corrected my "mistakes". I think you are taking about our differences in opinion on the worthiness of the FDA. You tend to think that the FDA is an indispensable institution that ensures our safety. What you fail to understand is there is an agenda behind the FDA process. Obviously, I want prescription drugs to be safe and I want food products to be free of harmful chemicals. Yet, by those two criteria, they are, and have been failing miserably. You think it would be crazy to have life without an FDA, yet I am thinking that that is the only solution. There are lifesaving treatments and drugs that won't get approved due to the politics at the FDA. And look at all the prescription drugs that ARE approved by the FDA that are later recalled due to massive health problems they cause. I am not reassured when seeking medical treatment that a certain drug or procedure has been "government approved". Literally lives are at stake here. People shouldn't need to wait on a lengthy FDA approval process to seek life saving treatments that have been proven to work and are available in other countries!

In an interview with Dr David Graham, who exposed the Vioxx scandal and is a former drug safety researcher at the FDA, he exposes the corruption and crimes that go on at the FDA and why the institution is not going to be able to protect Americans from harmful drugs in the future:

"DR. GRAHAM: Since November, when I appeared before the Senate Finance Committee and announced to the world that the FDA was incapable of protecting America from unsafe drugs or from another Vioxx, very little has changed on the surface and substantively nothing has changed. The structural problems that exist within the FDA, where the people who approve the drugs are also the ones who oversee the post marketing regulation of the drug, remain unchanged. The people who approve a drug when they see that there is a safety problem with it are very reluctant to do anything about it because it will reflect badly on them. They continue to let the damage occur. America is just as at risk now, as it was in November, as it was two years ago, and as it was five years ago.

......

As currently configured, the FDA is not able to adequately protect the American public. It's more interested in protecting the interests of industry. It views industry as its client, and the client is someone whose interest you represent. Unfortunately, that is the way the FDA is currently structured. Within the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research about 80 percent of the resources are geared towards the approval of new drugs and 20 percent is for everything else. Drug safety is about five percent. The “gorilla in the living room” is new drugs and approval. Congress has not only created that structure, they have also worsened that structure through the PDUFA, the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, by which drug companies pay money to the FDA so they will review and approve its drug. So you have that conflict as well."

http://www.naturalnews.com/011401.html

Here is a few more links about problems with the FDA:

http://www.michaud.house.gov/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=69

http://www.boston.com/news/health/blog/2008/03/drugs_that_were.html

http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2007/05/16/time-to-get-rid-of-the-fda/

And think carefully about the debate this following link describes:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/01/fda-tylenol-vicodin-perco_n_223730.html

Why on earth should a government agency be deciding for everyone whether pain medications should be legal or not, or what dose should be available and so forth? This should not be a debate the government should be having. Its a debate a person should have with their doctor. Many different drugs can be very dangerous, but people respond differently depending on age, health, and genetic factors. Some people develop liver problems after taking Vicoden and Percocet for long periods of time. Why should we ban (or think about banning) a drug because a small number of people develop problems from it?

Check out this John Stossel special on the FDA:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkPAY8sCfvo

Do you acknowledge any of this? Does any of this information cause you to rethink your defense of the FDA? Why can't we allow people to have freedom of choice in what people put in their bodies? Why can't we stop this silly notion of the nanny state, where we expect the government to protect us from everything?

My personal opinion on health care is that people take WAY too many prescription drugs and eat too much processed food with chemical additives. If I had to advise Americans on health care I would suggest people go Vegetarian and eat organic, lay off the drugs and take vitamins and herbal supplements. Thats what I do. But some people need drugs for certain conditions and I believe it sets a bad precedent to assume that the government should tell me what treatments I can seek if I get sick. In todays age of the internet and easy access to information people should be able to research any drug before they put it in their body. And they should be able to trust the advice of their family doctor. Your doctor shouldn't be pressured to prescribe certain drugs or intimidated away from suggesting other treatments by the Federal Government and pharmaceutical companies as they are today.

This is why I am so skeptical of government health care without first dealing with the Insurance companies and pharmaceutical lobby and the corruption at the FDA. I am convinced that in coming years we will see MORE deaths from treatable medical conditions, bad drugs and medical malpractice and incompetence. Not to mention deaths related to delayed care due to the inevitable waiting lists and rationing that WILL occur under the new system. This is not a small matter when peoples lives are on the line.

You don't have to agree with me entirely, but surely you can see where I am coming from. Does this make sense to you at all?

[jrodefeld]

Slavery is a totally different scenario. Slaves saw other people on a daily basis - their owners and overseers - who were free.

Whether or not liberty is something that humans instinctually desire is not really important. It is the most important ideal that everyone from Martin Luther King Jr. to Ghandi to Jefferson held as an ideal worth fighting for and a cornerstone of all just an moral societies.

Who says nobody is allowed to have an army except the federal government? It's certainly not in the Constitution you hold so dear. In any case, that's the point - without a strong central government, there's nobody who can enforce the rules.

How much do you want to limit the government, exactly? Let's say it shrinks to 10% of its present size under your proposals, and a balanced budget amendment is passed. The total federal budget would go from $3.5 trillion to something closer to $100 billion, based on 2009 revenues.

Look, we need a government strong enough to enforce the rules and protect every bodies rights but no stronger. Anybody (whether government or corporations or religious institutions) should not be allowed to initiate force on any sovereign individual and violate their rights. So the government is the protector of liberty. I have said this so many times on this thread but people still keep missing the point. We certainly don't need an insolvent government that operates on a 3.8 trillion dollar budget to protect liberty. For example, how can the government protect the people against fraud when they themselves participate in fraud? How can the government lecture wall street about greed and corruption when the government is corrupt? If government's job is to protect the people from assaults on their liberties we should focus on reforming Washington.

And no, nobody is allowed to have a private "army". An army is by definition aggressive and trained to participate in war. Now, they can have large private security forces. But the goal must be to provide security rather than to be aggressive. War is one area that should NEVER be for profit (which it has unfortunately become in recent years).

As far as how much I want to limit the government, I want there to be no income tax, I want a stable dollar tied to gold or other commodity, I want a rule in place that we must balance the budget, and we, as a general rule, should not borrow money from foreigners. This would necessitate a much smaller government. But it is a government we can afford. We cannot afford the government we have. We couldn't even afford a government half as big for many years into the future. I want no overseas military bases, no more war, close down the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Education, and end entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security (over time).

Yes, I read it. I also read it in college. It made just as little sense then as it does now. The Austrian theorists wrote about economies which functioned in a vacuum. They ignored the external effects of unregulated economic activity - pollution, nonsustainability, and so on - and political reality. Pure, unregulated market economies are no more viable than communism.

Central banking and Keynesian economics soften the blow of economic shocks. It's all very well to say that recessions and depressions are necessary to the functioning of healthy economic systems, but without some government intervention people will starve to death long before the corrective cycle completes. In any case, your writers all ignore the fact that government spending was the only thing that got us out of the Great Depression - that is, the massive increase in spending necessitated by WWII.

Some degree of stability is necessary for an economy to function properly. That, of course, isn't even taking into account the noneconomic factors which make a safety net a desirable thing (like compassion).

Government spending and World War II did not get us out of the Great Depression. That is a myth. I have already posted many links explaining how Keynesian stimulus prolonged the correction and caused great suffering. We didn't actually get out of the Depression and have a real recovery until after World War 2 was over. You have to give up on these fallacies. You talk about how Central banks and Keynesian economics "soften the blow of economic shocks"? This is completely false. They cause the conditions that inevitably lead to an economic "shock" in the first place. Then they don't allow the relatively short correction to take place in a year or so, but prolong the agony. If the government didn't intervene in the 30s and we followed the successful model that we pursued in response to the Depression of 1920-21, The Great Depression would have lasted no more than three years and it wouldn't have been "Great". Which of the following statements do you not agree with:

The reason for recessions and depressions is a chronically unbalanced and unsustainable economy that results in the market attempting to re balance itself and restore equilibrium.

We should allow the correction to take place as soon as possible, with liquidation of all debt and malinvestment and then go back to work and allow free enterprise to spark a vigorous recovery.

This is pretty much Economics 101 here. How can you dispute these two things? There are laws of economics the governments can't suspend. The law of gravity works everywhere and when an economy is unbalanced it will correct itself eventually. Just as when you throw a ball up in the air it will come down every time. Keynesian economics does everything to prevent the inevitable correction from occurring. But it WILL occur. The longer they prevent it the more harm is done, the more debt is accumulated and the greater the correction. So, Keynesian economics actually hurts the most vulnerable members of society.

You know, the concept of a safety net is not relevant to the economic system we have. You could have a safety net under an Austrian economic system. The only difference would be that the commitments made by the government would have to actually be funded. The government would have to come clean with people. If the people want Medicare and Social Welfare they better be willing to pay significantly higher taxes to receive them. The costs would be open and transparent not hidden behind the insidious and immoral tax of inflation.

Perhaps you'd like to share some of these examples.

Sure. Here you go:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10157

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_school

http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/1700s/charitysch.html

http://www.fredhyde.org/Building_schools.php

http://www.herald.ie/national-news/proud-parents-visit-barbaras-charity-school-1446900.html

http://www.bluecoatschoolliverpool.org.uk/

You said that "History makes it pretty obvious that if the government doesn't educate children nobody else will." Do you want to take back this comment? I can certainly provide tons of evidence past and present of charity schools, and low cost private schools that are educating students much better than any government schools.

http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.asp

This link does a very poor job of discrediting the validity of the point of showing this exam. I believe if you compare this exam with any modern middle school or high school exam you would see that this one is superior. People were actually taught the rules of grammer! You can't seriously dispute that standards of education have dropped significantly in the last century. There is a lot more evidence for this decline in education standards than this one exam. But don't you think that it shows a glimpse into an era when proper vocabulary and speaking ability as well as practical applications of arithmetic were valued more than they are today?

You'll have to do better than this link to discredit the larger point raised by this historical school exam.

I'm not particularly opposed to abolishing the Department of Education. Most of the states do a pretty shitty job of educating their students already, so federal involvement doesn't seem to be helping.

Okay, so we agree. States do a better job at education, but public school education is shit regardless. Private schools, charity schools, and home schooling students do quite well however.

We already produce lots of things which are the best in the world. Military hardware, specialized medical equipment, supercomputers, and so on. However, just wishing for something doesn't make it so.

A manufacturing revolution requires a revolutionary idea. Industrialization, automation, and so on. It would be nice if we had one, of course, but it doesn't look like there's one on the horizon (nanotechnology, perhaps?) and we won't know it's here until after the fact when one does arrive.

You are right. The government can create an atmosphere where creativity and entrepreneurship can flourish, however. We should lower regulation on small business, cut taxes, and eliminate NAFTA trade agreements.

You sound like you're running for office. "If my reforms are enacted..."

You have absolutely no idea what would happen if your reforms are enacted, and medical care is already freed up to market forces. What specific mechanism is going to push down the cost of medical care?

Opening up more medical school places can do that, but we can do that without implementing any of your other reforms. What else?

Medical care is not subject to a market pricing structure. The reason why the Free Market lowers prices is due to competition and consumers shopping around and comparing prices. In medicine there is always a third payer (government or insurance companies), therefore nobody cares what the price is. Everybody gets changed the maximum. That is why basic blood work costs more than a thousand dollars. Its ridiculous. More people should be paying out of pocket for medical expenses and we should get the government AND the insurance companies out of running medicine. When people are paying out of pocket doctors and medical clinics are competing for your business. This lowers prices. The free market lowers prices until everybody can afford things that used to be the domain of the super rich. Cell phones, powerful computers, plasma tvs, are all cheap enough that nearly everybody can afford them. The same concept would work in medical care. You would be hysterical that we would "hurt the poor" by getting rid of Medicare and removing government involvement but after a few years prices will be so low that even the poor can afford basic care out of pocket. The poor would be better served in the long run if we did this.

Which of our elected leaders has ever "professed allegiance" to the United Nations? This is a non-issue. I am, however, not against restricting the power to authorize the use of force to Congress (as it ought to have been all along).

We agree that this is a minor point. In the long run however, their are many globalists in our government who don't care that much about national sovereignty and would like to see a system of world government sometime in the future. That is why it is critical to establish our independence and sovereignty now. We really don't need to be in the United Nations.

That is nonsense. The founders were talking about direct democracy - an archaic usage. Every modern democracy is at least theoretically a constitutional republic. Even Britain, which has no formal written constitution.

Yeah, "theoretically". Not in practice. If we really are a constitutional republic we should thinking nothing of polling or the "will of the people" and instead talk about the constitutionality of certain proposed legislation. The only oath our elected leaders take is to defend the Constitution. We should make sure they uphold that oath.

Again, nonsense. We've never ignored the Constitution, nor have we given up on amending it. The 27th Amendment was passed in 1992.

What we have done is accepted - as the Founders did - that interpretation of the Constitution is the job of the judiciary. It's only seven articles- a good loose framework for a system of government, but necessarily rather vague.

Which specific parts of the Constitution do you feel are currently being ignored?

Nonsense? Do you think the federal government we have today in any way represents the vision of Jefferson and Madison and the rest of the founders? You can't honestly believe that. Obama's "Health Reform" bill is unconstitutional, most wars we have been involved in over the last eighty years have been unconstitutional, the Department of Education is unconstitutional, the Patriot Act is unconstitutional, executive orders and signing statements by the Executive branch are unconstitutional, and the Federal Reserve system is unconstitutional. Maybe a few classes of United States and Constitutional History would do you well.

[Really Not All That Bright]

And no, nobody is allowed to have a private "army". An army is by definition aggressive and trained to participate in war. Now, they can have large private security forces. But the goal must be to provide security rather than to be aggressive. War is one area that should NEVER be for profit (which it has unfortunately become in recent years).
At what point does a "large private security force" become an army?
As far as how much I want to limit the government, I want there to be no income tax, I want a stable dollar tied to gold or other commodity, I want a rule in place that we must balance the budget, and we, as a general rule, should not borrow money from foreigners. This would necessitate a much smaller government. But it is a government we can afford. We cannot afford the government we have. We couldn't even afford a government half as big for many years into the future. I want no overseas military bases, no more war, close down the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Education, and end entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security (over time).
How do you propose we fund even your limited conception of government without income taxes?
Government spending and World War II did not get us out of the Great Depression. That is a myth. I have already posted many links explaining how Keynesian stimulus prolonged the correction and caused great suffering. We didn't actually get out of the Depression and have a real recovery until after World War 2 was over. You have to give up on these fallacies. You talk about how Central banks and Keynesian economics "soften the blow of economic shocks"? This is completely false. They cause the conditions that inevitably lead to an economic "shock" in the first place. Then they don't allow the relatively short correction to take place in a year or so, but prolong the agony. If the government didn't intervene in the 30s and we followed the successful model that we pursued in response to the Depression of 1920-21, The Great Depression would have lasted no more than three years and it wouldn't have been "Great". Which of the following statements do you not agree with:

The reason for recessions and depressions is a chronically unbalanced and unsustainable economy that results in the market attempting to re balance itself and restore equilibrium.

We should allow the correction to take place as soon as possible, with liquidation of all debt and malinvestment and then go back to work and allow free enterprise to spark a vigorous recovery.
Your links are wrong, and your statements are a perfect example of the fallacy of the excluded middle.

The reason for recessions and depressions is a chronically imbalanced economy; I'll give you that much.
You know, the concept of a safety net is not relevant to the economic system we have. You could have a safety net under an Austrian economic system. The only difference would be that the commitments made by the government would have to actually be funded. The government would have to come clean with people. If the people want Medicare and Social Welfare they better be willing to pay significantly higher taxes to receive them. The costs would be open and transparent not hidden behind the insidious and immoral tax of inflation.
People are willing to pay significantly higher taxes for Medicare and social welfare. That's why we have them.
You said that "History makes it pretty obvious that if the government doesn't educate children nobody else will." Do you want to take back this comment? I can certainly provide tons of evidence past and present of charity schools, and low cost private schools that are educating students much better than any government schools./
Of course I don't. Evidence of charity schools is not evidence that all children received equal access to education. Indeed, the fact that individual schools are so well remembered suggests that for most children education was rudimentary.
This link does a very poor job of discrediting the validity of the point of showing this exam. I believe if you compare this exam with any modern middle school or high school exam you would see that this one is superior. People were actually taught the rules of grammer! You can't seriously dispute that standards of education have dropped significantly in the last century. There is a lot more evidence for this decline in education standards than this one exam. But don't you think that it shows a glimpse into an era when proper vocabulary and speaking ability as well as practical applications of arithmetic were valued more than they are today?
Considering the guy whose page you linked to is a white supremacist I'd say the bar was set pretty low. I leave it to you to determine whether your misspelling of grammar is evidence that modern schools have failed or not.
You are right. The government can create an atmosphere where creativity and entrepreneurship can flourish, however. We should lower regulation on small business, cut taxes, and eliminate NAFTA trade agreements.
You want to lower regulation, but effectively increase regulation by eliminating free trade agreements. This is an awfully contradictory position.
Medical care is not subject to a market pricing structure. The reason why the Free Market lowers prices is due to competition and consumers shopping around and comparing prices. In medicine there is always a third payer (government or insurance companies), therefore nobody cares what the price is. Everybody gets changed the maximum. That is why basic blood work costs more than a thousand dollars. Its ridiculous. More people should be paying out of pocket for medical expenses and we should get the government AND the insurance companies out of running medicine. When people are paying out of pocket doctors and medical clinics are competing for your business. This lowers prices. The free market lowers prices until everybody can afford things that used to be the domain of the super rich. Cell phones, powerful computers, plasma tvs, are all cheap enough that nearly everybody can afford them. The same concept would work in medical care. You would be hysterical that we would "hurt the poor" by getting rid of Medicare and removing government involvement but after a few years prices will be so low that even the poor can afford basic care out of pocket. The poor would be better served in the long run if we did this.
You don't have to capitalize "free market". It's not a proper noun.

That aside, exactly how low do you think the cost of medical care would go? $100 per hour? $50? $25? $10? Could you have a broken arm set for less than you could get your lawn mowed?

How many people do you think will pay $100,000 to put themselves through ten years of secondary education for $25 an hour?
We agree that this is a minor point. In the long run however, their are many globalists in our government who don't care that much about national sovereignty and would like to see a system of world government sometime in the future. That is why it is critical to establish our independence and sovereignty now. We really don't need to be in the United Nations.
Who are these globalists? What evidence do you have that they don't care about national sovereignty?
Yeah, "theoretically". Not in practice. If we really are a constitutional republic we should thinking nothing of polling or the "will of the people" and instead talk about the constitutionality of certain proposed legislation. The only oath our elected leaders take is to defend the Constitution. We should make sure they uphold that oath.
Our elected leaders swear to faithfully execute their offices- which our explicity laid out in the Constitution- and to defend the Constitution.

Regardless of the will of the people, unconstitutional legislation is repealed sooner or later by the judiciary. Polling and the will of the people are the engine which creates legislation.
Nonsense? Do you think the federal government we have today in any way represents the vision of Jefferson and Madison and the rest of the founders? You can't honestly believe that. Obama's "Health Reform" bill is unconstitutional, most wars we have been involved in over the last eighty years have been unconstitutional, the Department of Education is unconstitutional, the Patriot Act is unconstitutional, executive orders and signing statements by the Executive branch are unconstitutional, and the Federal Reserve system is unconstitutional. Maybe a few classes of United States and Constitutional History would do you well.
The federal government we have today reflects the Constitution they created, regardless of whether it represents their vision.

Contemplating the Founders' vision is an exercise in futility. We're not mind readers. In any case, the Constitution is the founding document which proved acceptable to the sum total of the voters of the Constitutional Convention.

The vision of any one (or ten) men is immaterial; the Constitution was approved by the entire convention, and hence any wording which doesn't appear in the final version is irrelevant. The Federalist Papers (or any other writings of the founders) were not ratified by any elected body.

On what grounds do you claim Obama's health care reform or the Department of Education are unconstitutional?

As far as executive orders, the Constitution specifically contemplates that the President is the head of the executive branch. If he's not allowed to issue directives to his subordinates, how exactly is he supposed to do anything?

[jrodefeld]

At what point does a "large private security force" become an army?

When it becomes aggressive. Why would any corporation desire a private army unless they plan to make money off of war? Corporations like Blackwater shouldn't be allowed. I would support an amendment to the Constitution stipulating that only the Federal government can maintain a military. Then it would be explicit. Would you be okay with this?

How do you propose we fund even your limited conception of government without income taxes?

We didn't have an income tax until 1913 and we funded government just fine. Excise taxes, sales taxes, import duties and the like would be sufficient. Even today the Income tax funds only 40% of the budget. Do you have any idea how much wealthier we would be as a nation if everybody was allowed to keep all the money they earn? People would spend more, the economy would be healthier and the government would get more tax revenues. There is a precedent for this working out just fine.

Your links are wrong, and your statements are a perfect example of the fallacy of the excluded middle.

The reason for recessions and depressions is a chronically imbalanced economy; I'll give you that much.

See, now you should elaborate on why my links are wrong. You agree that the reason we have recessions and depressions is an unbalanced economy and the market's effort to re balance itself. Then why would you be supporting Keynesian philosophy that tries to prevent the correction from occurring? Why not allow the correction as fast as possible and get it over with? That is the central question.


People are willing to pay significantly higher taxes for Medicare and social welfare. That's why we have them.

Yeah, but the taxes people are paying are not sufficient to cover the costs. Without the Federal Reserve system of monetizing the debt, and borrowing money from foreigners, taxes would have to be much higher than they are currently.

Of course I don't. Evidence of charity schools is not evidence that all children received equal access to education. Indeed, the fact that individual schools are so well remembered suggests that for most children education was rudimentary.

Yeah because we know that education is so outstanding now. Nobody can guarantee "equal access" to education. But it is universally understood, in this country and around the world, that private schools and charity schools educate children much more effectively than government run schools. Those are the facts. Contrary to what you said, history shows that people care about the education of young people and will volunteer and make every effort to provide decent education through scholarships, charity schools, and home schooling. Value in education is a cultural thing. Cultures that value education WILL provide it to young people even if the government doesn't.

Considering the guy whose page you linked to is a white supremacist I'd say the bar was set pretty low. I leave it to you to determine whether your misspelling of grammar is evidence that modern schools have failed or not.

First of all, what evidence do you have that Jordan Maxwell is a white supremacist? I have never heard that and I am sure it is not true. You really lose credibility when you throw around these labels without proof. As far as misspelling grammar, well I made a typo. I think given how much I have written on this thread, my typos or other grammatical errors have been quite low.

So, you need to provide evidence that Jordan Maxwell is a white supremacist or take back your accusation. What he IS is what you could call a conspiracy researcher or one who studies occult symbolism. I don't listen to him that much and I am not involved in conspiracy culture at all, but I did see some interesting links on his website, one of which was this test from 1895.

You want to lower regulation, but effectively increase regulation by eliminating free trade agreements. This is an awfully contradictory position.

NAFTA is not free trade it is managed trade for the benefit of favored corporations. We don't need these treaties to allow free trade, we simply need government to get out of the way. There is no contradiction.

How about this. Your side always favors regulation because you don't want the mega corporations to get away with murder, figuratively speaking. Fine. What if we only eliminated those regulations that hurt small business and kept only regulation on those businesses who are much larger, the banks, the oil companies, etc. Would you be in favor of this?

You don't have to capitalize "free market". It's not a proper noun.

That aside, exactly how low do you think the cost of medical care would go? $100 per hour? $50? $25? $10? Could you have a broken arm set for less than you could get your lawn mowed?

How many people do you think will pay $100,000 to put themselves through ten years of secondary education for $25 an hour?

I can't say how low medical care would go. It would certainly have to be low enough that a majority could afford it. You know, technological advancement is supposed to be able to lower costs. Competition leads to lower prices. Don't you think this would reign in medical costs over time? People would still need insurance, but only for medical emergencies and catastrophic, unforeseen things like a heart attack, stroke, or accident. In this market, we could allow much more competition among insurance companies and put the consumer back in control.

So, low cost catastrophic medical insurance, and free market, competition based standard care. What would be wrong with this system?

Who are these globalists? What evidence do you have that they don't care about national sovereignty?

Since about the fifties we have seen a globalist agenda at work. I don't want to get into conspiracy theories but the banks are global, the corporations are global, and the United Nations are global. We have obviously seen a concentration of power gravitate towards global, or at least non-nation oriented structures and organizations. And our politicians demonstrate time and time again that they don't care about the Constitution. Agencies of power include The Club of Rome, The IMF, The Council of Foreign Relations, The Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg Group.

National sovereignty is maintained only if we have protected borders, allegiance to our Constitution and Bill of Rights and patriotic leaders who represent our interests first, rather than those of off shore bankers and corporate interests. I don't think I need to go into this in too much detail, there is plenty of information out there.

Our elected leaders swear to faithfully execute their offices- which our explicity laid out in the Constitution- and to defend the Constitution.

Regardless of the will of the people, unconstitutional legislation is repealed sooner or later by the judiciary. Polling and the will of the people are the engine which creates legislation.

Thats not true. The last defenders of the Constitution are the people. The judiciary has been bought off and tainted by activist judges who will interpret the Constitution so broadly as to render it meaningless. You clearly have a lot to learn about constitutional law if you think polling and the will of the people are the criteria for sound legislation. If a proposed legislation is not expressly authorized in the Constitution, then it is illegal, period. This is what a Republic is all about.

The federal government we have today reflects the Constitution they created, regardless of whether it represents their vision.

Contemplating the Founders' vision is an exercise in futility. We're not mind readers. In any case, the Constitution is the founding document which proved acceptable to the sum total of the voters of the Constitutional Convention.

The vision of any one (or ten) men is immaterial; the Constitution was approved by the entire convention, and hence any wording which doesn't appear in the final version is irrelevant. The Federalist Papers (or any other writings of the founders) were not ratified by any elected body.

On what grounds do you claim Obama's health care reform or the Department of Education are unconstitutional?

As far as executive orders, the Constitution specifically contemplates that the President is the head of the executive branch. If he's not allowed to issue directives to his subordinates, how exactly is he supposed to do anything?

First, I'm talking about the abuse of executive orders and signing statements.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/us/politics/09signing.html?_r=2&hp

It is critical to understand what the Constitution meant to the founders and understand the intention of how our system of government was supposed to function. No, we don't have to be mind readers. There is plenty of evidence and writing to ascertain the intentions of the founders.

As far as the constitutionality of health care reform:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/19/AR2010031901470.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203917304574412793406386548.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-blankley/constitutional-law-101-he_b_502371.html

The Federal Government we have today reflects the fact that our politicians and political parties have abandoned the Constitution and rule of law in favor of political expediency and corporatism.

[Marley23]

I wouldn't go so far as to say that you corrected my "mistakes".
I will. You made at least a couple of mistakes: you confused the FDA and the DEA, which are different agencies, and you do seem to have only a partial understanding of what the FDA does. It does not do you any good if you refuse to admit a basic error. It invalidates a couple of your points but not all of them.

You tend to think that the FDA is an indispensable institution that ensures our safety. [...] You think it would be crazy to have life without an FDA
You're strawmanning here. I didn't say it would be "crazy." I haven't defended the FDA either. It's very flawed, which prevents it from fully doing its intended job. I explained part of what that job is because your understanding of it was incorrect. I do think it's necessary to have an agency do what the FDA is supposed to do, however.

What you fail to understand is there is an agenda behind the FDA process.
I think I understand that agenda better than you do, and I think I'm more aware of the agency's many flaws than you are.

Obviously, I want prescription drugs to be safe and I want food products to be free of harmful chemicals.
And I'm asking you how you think the free market is going to achieve that on its own, particularly without a lot of people dying. You've seen what's going on in China these days and I hope I don't need to tell you that the same kind of things went on here before the FDA was created. It's badly flawed, but even if you abolish the FDA itself, I do think you need an agency that does what the FDA is supposed to do.

Yet, by those two criteria, they are, and have been failing miserably.
So what is your solution? How does getting rid of a flawed safety agency increase safety unless it's replaced by a better one - which you seem to oppose based on libertarian principles?

There are lifesaving treatments and drugs that won't get approved due to the politics at the FDA.
Name some.

And look at all the prescription drugs that ARE approved by the FDA that are later recalled due to massive health problems they cause.
True. But the primary problem here is that the FDA is too influenced by the companies it's supposed to regulate. Do you think these companies would behave more responsibly if they didn't have to deal with regulation? History says the answer is no.

People shouldn't need to wait on a lengthy FDA approval process to seek life saving treatments that have been proven to work and are available in other countries!
Historically I think the FDA has usually been faster at approving drugs than similar agencies in other countries. I believe that's changed in the last few years, post-Vioxx and similar fiascoes. And the FDA approval process is not that long. The testing process is long. It takes a long time and a lot of money to develop a drug and test it properly. Usually a small fraction of that time is spent waiting for the FDA to make a decision on it. And people who are sick can still get the drug through trials, or through special exemptions if there are no approved options for their diseases.
Now, one reason the testing process is long is because companies are trying to make sure they meet the FDA's criteria. If the FDA wasn't there, I presume testing would be faster, but then again you'd also have more products that don't work.
In any case if you think the FDA is a failure because it has let too many worthless or dangerous drugs onto the market - which I won't dispute - then you can't also argue that makes companies do too much work before approving their drugs.

Why on earth should a government agency be deciding for everyone whether pain medications should be legal or not, or what dose should be available and so forth? This should not be a debate the government should be having. Its a debate a person should have with their doctor.
I'm going to assume you've worded this poorly, because it sounds like you think the patient and doctor should be the ones deciding whether or not the drug is legal, which would be ridiculous. The patient and the doctor should be the ones who decide whether or not the drug is appropriate for the patient's condition based on the doctor's experience and the patient's needs. The problem for you is that this pretty much describes the current state of affairs. The FDA does not prescribe or mandate drugs. To the degree the decision is not made by doctors and patients alone, the problem isn't the FDA- it's a lack of regulation on the drug industry, primarily on its advertising practices and on the enormous amounts of money it is able to spend monitoring the prescribing habits of doctors, and wining and dining and essentially bribing them to get them to prescribe their drugs.

Many different drugs can be very dangerous, but people respond differently depending on age, health, and genetic factors.
No kidding. That's why there's a testing process that is supposed to take this into account.

Why should we ban (or think about banning) a drug because a small number of people develop problems from it?
Well, to quote an Internet sage, "many different drugs can be very dangerous." The idea is that if a drug causes bad side effects in a relatively small number of people (a few dozen, a few hundred, a few thousand) in a study, it would probably cause more of them if millions or people were using it. That seems pretty important to me. Like someone once said, "Literally lives are at stake here."

Do you acknowledge any of this? Does any of this information cause you to rethink your defense of the FDA?
I don't think you understood my "defense" properly in the first place. I'm not defending the FDA in particular, I'm defending regulation in general, and I corrected some points where you appear to either have misunderstood what the FDA does or just confused it with other agencies. When it comes to drugs, the FDA handles marketing: it will approve or deny a company's request to market a drug for a particular illness. Doctors still prescribe the drug, and they can prescribe how they choose. If a drug is approved to treat cancer but the doctor thinks it will work against arthritis, they can prescribe it for arthritis.

Why can't we allow people to have freedom of choice in what people put in their bodies?
They have a great deal of freedom. If you want to treat your cancer with vitamin C tablets or ground up weeds, the FDA will not stop you. However, if you are a drug company and you want to advertise on TV and in magazines that you've made a drug you that can treat cancer, that's where the FDA gets involved. If your drug is rejected and you sell it anyway and it poisons people, you're not going to have to deal with the FDA- you'll deal with the FTC and the Justice Department, who will probably have a word with you about negligence and fraud.
People deserve freedom of choice. The problem is if you don't have good information, freedom of choice doesn't do you much good.

Why can't we stop this silly notion of the nanny state, where we expect the government to protect us from everything?
:rolleyes: Rather than throwing around buzzwords and crap about "the nanny state" and implying people are weaklings because they don't want to be poisoned, let's address the meat of the issue here.

My personal opinion on health care is that people take WAY too many prescription drugs and eat too much processed food with chemical additives.
I think most people agree about that. But it doesn't have much to do with the FDA issues you've been talking about.

But some people need drugs for certain conditions and I believe it sets a bad precedent to assume that the government should tell me what treatments I can seek if I get sick.
It doesn't tell you what treatments you can seek. And in any case what "bad precedent" does it set?

In todays age of the internet and easy access to information people should be able to research any drug before they put it in their body.
I agree, and that's a nice idea. The problem is not just finding information on Google, though- it's knowing the information is reliable and making sense of it. I don't think watching TV commercials and checking the Internet is enough to do in comparison with companies that run the studies of the drugs and sometimes hide the results when they are not favorable.

And they should be able to trust the advice of their family doctor. Your doctor shouldn't be pressured to prescribe certain drugs or intimidated away from suggesting other treatments by the Federal Government and pharmaceutical companies as they are today.
I don't see the government intimidating anyone here.

This is why I am so skeptical of government health care without first dealing with the Insurance companies and pharmaceutical lobby and the corruption at the FDA.
I can understand that. There's been some talk of reforming the FDA but I haven't seen any steps taken. But I'm not sure what you want to see happen, since you're so opposed to the "nanny state" tactic of requiring that drugs work before they're sold.

[Marley23]

Bumping this once to see if jrodefeld wants to deal with any of these issues. How is drug or food safety going to be ensured without a regulatory agency? Why does having such an agency set 'a bad precedent?' Which lifesaving drugs have not been approved because of FDA politics?

[Lobohan]

Quick drive by:

Progressives: The government is here to make the lives of the citizens better and more secure.

Conservatives: The government is here to punish those that do wrong or make bad decisions.

Independents: What's the electoral college?

[Really Not All That Bright]

Sorry. I never noticed that you responded again.
When it becomes aggressive. Why would any corporation desire a private army unless they plan to make money off of war? Corporations like Blackwater shouldn't be allowed. I would support an amendment to the Constitution stipulating that only the Federal government can maintain a military. Then it would be explicit. Would you be okay with this?
To a point, yes. The problem is that a weak central government would have no power to enforce said amendment.
We didn't have an income tax until 1913 and we funded government just fine. Excise taxes, sales taxes, import duties and the like would be sufficient. Even today the Income tax funds only 40% of the budget. Do you have any idea how much wealthier we would be as a nation if everybody was allowed to keep all the money they earn? People would spend more, the economy would be healthier and the government would get more tax revenues. There is a precedent for this working out just fine.
You have a fundamental misperception of how the economy works. It doesn't matter if the people spend more or if the government spends for them; economic growth doesn't care where its impetus comes from.

If anything, government spending is arguably preferable to private spending; government spending buys roads and social services (made in the US!), while private spending buys hamburgers and action figures (made in China).
See, now you should elaborate on why my links are wrong. You agree that the reason we have recessions and depressions is an unbalanced economy and the market's effort to re balance itself. Then why would you be supporting Keynesian philosophy that tries to prevent the correction from occurring? Why not allow the correction as fast as possible and get it over with? That is the central question.
Because you keep misrepresenting Keynesianism. The point is not to prevent correction; it's to moderate the rate of correction.
Yeah, but the taxes people are paying are not sufficient to cover the costs. Without the Federal Reserve system of monetizing the debt, and borrowing money from foreigners, taxes would have to be much higher than they are currently.
That's an inherent danger of democracy (or constitutional republicanism, as you insist it should be called). Voters think in the short term, and in the short term cutting taxes or increasing spending makes voters happy.

I do think an amendment requiring a balanced federal budget (or, more practicably, a budget balanced overall over the course of fixed 4 year periods, or somesuch) is probably a good idea, because our current borrowing is not sustainable over the long term.
Yeah because we know that education is so outstanding now. Nobody can guarantee "equal access" to education. But it is universally understood, in this country and around the world, that private schools and charity schools educate children much more effectively than government run schools. Those are the facts. Contrary to what you said, history shows that people care about the education of young people and will volunteer and make every effort to provide decent education through scholarships, charity schools, and home schooling. Value in education is a cultural thing. Cultures that value education WILL provide it to young people even if the government doesn't.
Of course private schools educate children more effectively; they're selective. Government schools have to educate the dumb and the disabled; require private schools to start accepting low-achieving students at comparable rates to state schools and see how effective they are then.
First of all, what evidence do you have that Jordan Maxwell is a white supremacist? I have never heard that and I am sure it is not true. You really lose credibility when you throw around these labels without proof. As far as misspelling grammar, well I made a typo. I think given how much I have written on this thread, my typos or other grammatical errors have been quite low.
Read the end of the test you linked to. "New World O[r]der" is code for the secret Jewish rulers of the world.
NAFTA is not free trade it is managed trade for the benefit of favored corporations. We don't need these treaties to allow free trade, we simply need government to get out of the way. There is no contradiction.

How about this. Your side always favors regulation because you don't want the mega corporations to get away with murder, figuratively speaking. Fine. What if we only eliminated those regulations that hurt small business and kept only regulation on those businesses who are much larger, the banks, the oil companies, etc. Would you be in favor of this?
Imposing punitive excise taxes is hardly "government getting out of the way".

It's not just mega corporations I don't want getting away with murder; it's any company. In general, though, small businesses are already subject to less regulation than large ones. See the recent healthcare bill, for example, which exempts businesses employing 10 people or less from its relevant provisions and offers a generous tax break to employers of less than 50 people.
I can't say how low medical care would go. It would certainly have to be low enough that a majority could afford it. You know, technological advancement is supposed to be able to lower costs. Competition leads to lower prices. Don't you think this would reign in medical costs over time? People would still need insurance, but only for medical emergencies and catastrophic, unforeseen things like a heart attack, stroke, or accident. In this market, we could allow much more competition among insurance companies and put the consumer back in control.
Technological advancement sometimes lowers costs. A Ford Model T cost $550 in 1915, or about $12,000 in present-day dollars. Guess what $12,000 will buy you today? A new car roughly on a par with the Model T (ie., at the lower end of the market).
So, low cost catastrophic medical insurance, and free market, competition based standard care. What would be wrong with this system?
You said it yourself: you have no idea how low medical care would go. Let's say we break up the existing system, have everyone pay for their own medical care out of pocket, and wait for costs to drop. They do - about 50%.

That still means the average emergency room visit costs $1000.
Since about the fifties we have seen a globalist agenda at work. I don't want to get into conspiracy theories but the banks are global, the corporations are global, and the United Nations are global. We have obviously seen a concentration of power gravitate towards global, or at least non-nation oriented structures and organizations. And our politicians demonstrate time and time again that they don't care about the Constitution. Agencies of power include The Club of Rome, The IMF, The Council of Foreign Relations, The Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg Group.
If you're painting those organizations as shadowy evil cabals, you're getting into conspiracy theories already.

Those groups all basically focus on promoting democracy and capitalism worldwide. I suppose you could call them "globalist", but you seem to be using it as a pejorative term.

The Constitution itself defines treaties as the supreme law of the land (along with the Constitution, of course).
National sovereignty is maintained only if we have protected borders, allegiance to our Constitution and Bill of Rights and patriotic leaders who represent our interests first, rather than those of off shore bankers and corporate interests. I don't think I need to go into this in too much detail, there is plenty of information out there.
You'd better go into more detail than that.
Thats not true. The last defenders of the Constitution are the people. The judiciary has been bought off and tainted by activist judges who will interpret the Constitution so broadly as to render it meaningless. You clearly have a lot to learn about constitutional law if you think polling and the will of the people are the criteria for sound legislation. If a proposed legislation is not expressly authorized in the Constitution, then it is illegal, period. This is what a Republic is all about.
Now I have to assume you're being deliberately obtuse.

Read the Constitution. It doesn't expressly authorize much of anything, and the founders themselves passed all sorts of laws which at face value expressly contradict the Constitution. Try the Alien and Sedition Acts, for example.

The point about polling and the will of the people is that without them there's no legislation at all. If Congressman X doesn't know what his constituents are unhappy about then he has no reason to introduce and legislation at all. The point is not that polling and the will of the people supersede the Constitution; it's that you can't legislate at all without it.

Let's suppose Congress wants to build an Air Force base in Manhattan. How is it, you think, that they're supposed to know whether to go ahead and do it? The Constitution expressly authorizes Congress to provide for the common defence, after all.
First, I'm talking about the abuse of executive orders and signing statements.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/us/politics/09signing.html?_r=2&hp
Obama has issued 5 signing statements according to that link, of which one is directly in line with his Constitutional mandate to conduct foreign relations, and three appear to relate to budgetary minutiae. The only one I see that could be interpreted as abuse of the power is the one emphasizing the administration's right to discipline whistleblowers.
It is critical to understand what the Constitution meant to the founders and understand the intention of how our system of government was supposed to function.
Why is it critical?
No, we don't have to be mind readers. There is plenty of evidence and writing to ascertain the intentions of the founders.
There is plenty of evidence and writing to ascertain the intentions of some of the founders. There's little or none in regard to most. It's not useful at all to know what two or three members of the Constitutional Congress intended, because every member present had a vote.
As far as the constitutionality of health care reform:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/19/AR2010031901470.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203917304574412793406386548.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-blankley/constitutional-law-101-he_b_502371.html
There are plenty of threads where you can discuss the constitutionality of health care reform. In any case, you'll have to do better than linking to other people's worthless opinions.
The Federal Government we have today reflects the fact that our politicians and political parties have abandoned the Constitution and rule of law in favor of political expediency and corporatism.
The Federal Government we have today reflects the Constitution itself. The party system isn't in there, of course, but that's a natural development in any adversarial system.

The founders didn't want political parties, but they went ahead and formed their own anyway.

[Smapti]

How would you like the government to take over your property through eminent domain and throw you out on the streets? I am sure you would be supporting property rights then.

Drive-by;

There's something ironic about a person who argues that the government should adhere rigidly to the precise wording of the Constitution, citing eminent domain as an abuse of power.

[Revenant Threshold]

True. But the primary problem here is that the FDA is too influenced by the companies it's supposed to regulate. Do you think these companies would behave more responsibly if they didn't have to deal with regulation? History says the answer is no. I heard a good analogy about this a while ago. It's like someone looking up at a dam holding back a huge resovoir of water, and saying "Well, hey, the dam's leaky. To stop the water getting through like this, we'd better get rid of it".