So you say that caring about whether a statement is supported by facts is “unreasonable and borders upon being fallacious and a variant of the Ad Hominem fallacy”. I’ll file that away under ‘interesting things that liberals have posted on the internet’.
Let me give you a hint. Everything that you’ve posted about libertarians in this thread is untrue and everyone in this thread knows that. Asking for cites when someone says something idiotic is not unreasonable, but is practically the definition of reason. The real reason why you haven’t provided cites is that no libertarian has ever said the things that you claim we say. If any libertarian had said what you claim they said, you would be able to provide a cite. Nobody is stupid enough to believe the things you’re saying.
Grammar nitpick: “Synonym” does not mean, “identical denotation.” It means overlapping denotations.
In any case, the kind of charities (def1) Robert refers to, and the ones relevant to an argument about the lot of the poor in a libertarian régime, are a subset of the kind of charities (def2) that the IRS recognizes. That means they are not the same set.
And if you think being able to see a stained-glass window at the local Catholic church makes up for not having the wherewithal to stop your own roof falling in, you have lost this argument as fully as one can lose it.
I used to be a Malthusian conservative and feel it morally laudable to kill, not just some poor people, but much of the lumpenproletariat en masse. I voted like a Reagan Republican, but developed misgivings about their anti-environmentalism. In the end, Ra’s al Ghul and Ronald Reagan are too different.
Now, I don’t think “libertarians” typically agreed with me. Those guys seemed to think they should be able to do whatever they wanted, damn the consequences. And that’s obviously an invitation to great destruction.
But again, those guys were drinking the same water I was, growing up in Reagan’s America, and we had a lot in common. And in that period, I sometimes called myself an anarcho-capitalist, or someone with libertarian influences, because I did have those influences. I don’t find it surprising that **protoboard **has met self-described libertarians who think that way, because I’ve met lots of them, and I’ve probably called myself one and said those things.
In the end, I chose order over chaos, but I’ve had anarchist relapses.
Another thing: If even Ra’s al Ghul, who’s already given up on humanity and become a supervillain, thinks you’re a dangerously lawless prat, might you actually be a dangerously lawless prat?
Presumably they want to borrow money from billionaires to fund all that stuff, until the state goes bankrupt and has to sell off assets to those same billionaires (or different billionaires, it’s all good). This will get assets out of the hands of the Interior Dept and the EPA and into the hands of private citizens, who can control and monetize them more fully.
At least, that’s how “Starve the Beast” is *supposed *to work.
North Dakota and Maryland did not start from identical initial conditions. You don’t have a probative natural experiment.
So, you repudiate the corruption of the GOP, and support both equality of opportunity and a Basic Income Guarantee? You’re very, very different from the Ron Paul minarchists and anti-tax Reaganites who commonly call themselves libertarians.
Sounds like you’re a Friedmanesque libertarian/Social Liberal. That’s not the same thing as a childish belief that authority is bad, or that prisons are only for other people, or what have you.
I can’t tell if this is a failed attempt at sarcasm or a grossly uninformed but earnest belief.
I mean, what’s the point of this? I don’t really know why someone would post such pointless and incorrect drivel, but then I can’t imagine that an established poster could actually be so grossly wrong on a well-known topic.
Like many others, I think the government’s financial assistance to college students simply leads to colleges and universities raising their prices. As more and more financial aid has been offered, costs have gone through the roof, and they show no sign of slowing down. As long as the government provides huge grants and loans, the universities have no motivation to contain costs.
Government housing? Government funded housing projects are notorious for being crime- and drug-infested &@#$holes. They ruined the lives of millions of poor people. Recently the government has shifted to providing vouchers that let the poor rent homes built by businesses. This looks like a de facto admission that private enterprise does better than government. I support the vouchers for those truly in need. Still, when I read things like this:
According to court documents, Hart has pleaded guilty to lying to officials from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, living in Project Reconnect housing intended for program participants, hindering a federal investigation and even trading housing for sex, among other things.
It seems like we could cut some money from the HUD budget without throwing any needy people out on the street.
I was in the conservative movement and Republican Party for a long time. What I describe is their actual policy and has been for twenty years or more. Your “incredulous” denials mean nothing.
Already happened. Farming is big business. I dabble in it. The few small farms that are left are mostly run by boomers. Their kids are off doing other stuff.
ITR Champion, do you support a Basic Income Guarantee?
Would you support higher taxes on households making over $100,000/year to fund it?
Would you support it even knowing that food prices and the prices of services previously unavailable to the grindingly poor would rise due to increased demand, and households in the 90th income percentile, making close to the mean income, would get the short end of the stick?
Because, me, I do believe in it, even though it would sting the “middle class” at the 90th percentile pretty hard.
Or are you just going to wave your hands and pretend their are “other ways” that you won’t explain? Are you looking for “other ways” that don’t require either you or the likes of Sheldon Adelson to give up a damn thing?
Given that your comment shows an utter lack of understanding of both the methods the government uses to create debt and how sovereign bankruptcy works, I’m inclined to disbelieve your absurd claim.
Here’s some help: almost all government debt is sold directly to banks, not private individuals, and when a sovereign state defaults creditors are told to pound sand, instead of receiving federal assets.
Your point is fair. I tried to present a contrast to your viewpoint. In a forum like this, one resorts to terse exaggerations rather than essays with more nuance. I hope you would agree that your insistence that Obama’s out-of-context quote shows a “socialist conception” is also misleading.
It was the public that won World Wars, flew to the Moon, built superhighways, etc. It was public financing – land grants – that built the American railroads. And it was the public, as risk-taker of last resort, that saved Wall Street from the biggest self-inflicted disaster of our lifetimes.
The libertarian insistence that “the goverment didn’t do that – it was Joe Schmoe the day trader” is not merely wrong-headed, but offensive.
I don’t deny the contributions of great entrepreneurs like James Watt, John D. Rockefeller, even Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. History is rife with periods of great technological or socioeconomic change in which entrepreneurs get very rich and gradually the benefits trickle down to the masses. Rockefeller and Carnegie made America a more prosperous country, just as the shipbuilders did for Holland centuries earlier.
But at their core, today’s misguided Libertarians rely on the syllogism:
[ul][li] Rockefeller got rich and benefited the U.S.A.[/li][li] Ivan Boesky and Dick Fuld got rich[/li][li] Therefore Boesky and Fuld benefitted the U.S.A.[/li][/ul]
(Yes, this is an oversimplification of libertarian views, but with your insistence on “socialist conception” above, it’s more than you deserve.)
Meanwhile, others in the thread seem to think the hundreds of billions needed for America’s underclass would appear out of nowhere if we just abolished assistance to farms, or encouraged more tithing. Some viewpoints are too laughable to debate.
This is at best extremely misleading but, if it implies antipathy for the banks, allows a segue:
There is one topic where the centrist rational thinkers and the hyperlibertarians seem to have common ground: Wall Street has too much influence over government policy. Obviously neither the rationalists nor the hyperlibertarians are running the country.
… But unfortunately, when the libertarian casts a ballot for Ayn Rand, author of fairytales, the ballot is actually going straight into the hands of Charles and David Koch.
And you expect elected Congressmen and Senators to know anything about, “both the methods the government uses to create debt and how sovereign bankruptcy works”?
I’m just telling you what the party is trying to do. It’s not really a surprise that it won’t work quite as planned under any law yet written. But hey, they know how to beg for money from billionaires, and buy ads from television, and they can probably find someone who does know about law to write a new law they can vote into existence that’ll let them sell off all the federal lands, when they think they’ve gotten to that point.
I think most of the country is going to say there are “other ways” than fringe ideas like basic income. Why are ITR’s views on it particularly interesting to you?
I’m putting words in their mouths, but I suspect libs would say we shouldn’t fight non-defensive wars. And that the private sector could have handled the moon, superhighways, and railroads more efficiently. That wall street should have been left to die.
The moon/roads/rails thing is likely true. Markets and private capital get things done cheaper. But you and I both know that there are sometimes reasons why we sacrifice that efficiency.
Maybe I’m not the only one putting words in their mouths.
Who said that in this thread? Do you even know where most farm assistance goes? To people like me. Need investment opportunities? Care to join me in sucking the government teat? I can teach you the ways of Big Ag. Not that I’ve gotten rich off it; I’m still learning.
“America’s underclass” are food consumers, not farmers. But we’ve reduced their price of food to its lowest ever. Although less so where big money has bought big government interference.
The superhighways, at least, could never conceivably have been built entirely under a system that respects private property absolutely.
Just one farmer has to refuse to sell his land, and the freeway is halted. Without the government’s ability to seize land, very large-scale construction projects would be absolutely impossible.