I don't know why I or anyone else debates economics with WillFarnaby

The BBQ Pit
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I am also rather shocked that this is only the second thread explicitly calling him out, and the first where he is the primary target of ire.

WillFarnaby, you made a statement earlier today which I couldn’t really respond to outside of the pit - by design, it seems:

And while I responded to the rest of that deluded, misguided rant in that thread, allow me to respond to this part here, where I can do it justice.

You, sir, have no fucking integrity. You are a random internet commentator with a hardline libertarian streak that extends so far as to call the government’s investment in the internet (which I recommend you get off of) a disaster on par with smallpox, who is almost never right about anything. You can’t even answer a straight question without changing the subject and getting three things wrong in two sentences. And then you have the balls to take shots at Paul Krugman for “political hackery” and “abdication of integrity”?

Your libertarian ideology has utterly and completely blinded you to things like empathy, basic economics, and the ability to answer an honest fucking question. You deserve to be taken as seriously as someone like D’Anconia or OMGaBC - an ideologically blinkered tool with little regards to issues of fact if they don’t fit into your worldview, with a massively inflated ego, to the degree that you think a world-class economist speaking on his subject of expertise is worth far less than your word as an anonymous douchebag on a message board!

The sooner you stop spreading ignorance the easier a job the rest of us will have it.

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I don’t care about your rant, but I was struck by something else.

Followed in the next paragraph by

At least he does us the courtesy of acknowledging that he has no idea what he is arguing about.

Not that it wasn’t clear anyway, but still.

Regards,
Shodan

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When I saw thread title I figured I’d post something along the lines of
“I do want to debate Farnaby. His ideas are so bizarre they’re like some absurdist science fiction. In particular, his view on the relation between government and property rights implies tht he has never ever read a single book on history! Farnaby’s thinking has no real-world significance, but there may be a great film about some post-apocalyptic dystopia buried in his brain, or perhaps some existentialist black-comedy play.”
But thanks to OP’s link I see that I already gave my views of Farnaby three and a half years ago. :slight_smile:

Especially bizarre is his absurd idea that Paul Krugman knows nothing beyond the narrow area for which he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Imagine if Farnaby had a simple question about friction or heat transfer and Richard Feynman was in the room. I guess he’d think “Oh, I shan’t ask that guy — he only knows Quantum Electrodynamics!”

Even the simplest economics is confusing to Farnaby. He watches the Gold-nut YouTubes but lacks the brainpower to follow a freshman-level text to get the basics.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~

Farnaby is not, however, the most ignorant “economist” on the Board. :eek: And, to segue into the next segment, a few minutes ago in another Pit thread I compared Saint Cad to an average 3rd-grader trying to be funny. Now we turn our attention to someone with the intellect of a below-average 1st-grader, who doesn’t even try to amuse.

I’ve never claimed to be an economics scholar. I did, however get an A+ in lower-division Econ at one of the most prestigious Econ schools in the country, and had the Chairman of the Department take me out for a meal and beg me to change my major to economics. I say this so that the Dipshit we’re about to review can get a flavor of how puny his knowledge is compared with literate humans. (BTW, I turned down the chairman’s offer: econ involved a lot of tedious math so I stuck with my … math major. :smack: )

Dipshit likes to go crying to the Mods when someone answers him frankly outside the Pit so, in self-defense I set him to Ig___. For this thread I wasted the extra click to see what gibeerish he’d come up with.

I admire Paul Krugman. I’ve read lots of his columns and blog items, but not all — he’s mostly “preaching to the converted” with me. :cool: The snark Dipshit is responding to was directed at Farnaby’s refusal to provide a cite.

Farnaby actually understands a smidgen of economic theory, even though he always draws the wrong conclusions. Dipshit doesn’t even grasp the basic definitions. It’s a certain bet he’s never taken a class in economics. In fact, he’s never even clicked on the Wikipedia summary of Macroeconomics — In one post he completely reversed Savings and Investment. :smack: (That’s like confusing alkaline and acid in chemistry.)

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Winning the Nobel Prize outside of the hard sciences is meaningless. Barack Obama won a Peace Prize.

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There’s an actual debate there? :confused:

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Is he on my Ignore list? <checks? Of course he is.

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So your demand for a cite was for something you didn’t read. Gotcha.

I take it you weren’t a chemistry major either.

Cite.

Regards,
Shodan

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A real flopperoo you got here, bud.

Disappointing. Even Septimus can muster a good crack and a half-decent posting style. Of all things to get bent out of shape about, shitting on Paul Krugman.

I tested you by throwing out a standard line on welfare economics and voluntary exchanges. You failed. Stick to discussions of policy minutiae where hacks like you belong.

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Everything else I could and did shove back up your ass in that thread. But you want to make a statement where denying it would be actively flaming you, well, I guess I gotta extend it to the pit to say that you’re just totally wrong, and an arrogant ass to boot.

I’m no expert on economics, but your shit stinks to high heavens, and the stench is that of a hardline libertarian who interprets everything through his bizarrely twisted worldview. I don’t know where I “failed” according to you, but it’s no big surprise that you would think that.

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Had the OP posted something about “feces smells bad!” or “most pizza tastes really good!” then he probably would have gotten about the same number of responses. Because basically everyone would think, “No duh! Tell me something I DON’T know!”

Arguing economics with you is like arguing with a fortune teller: the fortune teller is of course full of nonsense and believes things that are totally ridiculous, but the fortune teller can also overwhelm the conversation with all sorts of irrelevant details (maybe throwing out how some PhD at such-and-such university did a detailed study of some palm wrinkle blah blah blah), but that doesn’t mean that you have any points worth paying attention to.

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A summary of the thread:

You swooped in and said that Krugman was a Nobel Prize winner.

Then my claim to Septimus based on a standard welfare economics analysis completely went over your head and had you bizarrely contorting definitions and warbling hosannas for democracy in order to argue that government exchanges are voluntary.

Looks at your location

Yep that’s about right. Your livelihood depends on government extortion, I’d expect you to rationalize your life when encountering anti-government arguments.

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Oh, and be careful not to remind everyone of Will’s past opinions. (It might be safe here–but I’m not going to risk it again.)

He bitched to a Moderator & I got Warned for dredging up his past…

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This is the kind of crap I’ve come to expect. Nobody is claiming that government exchanges are voluntary on an individual level. On a societal level, they absolutely are - if there weren’t a great many people in the USA who wanted, say, health care reform, we wouldn’t have health care reform. But the kinds of morons who want to paint this as slavery, or taxation as theft, fail to understand the concept of “society” altogether.

I stand corrected: this is the kind of crap we’ve all come to expect from you. My god, man, get those paranoid delusions checked out.

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He’s an anarchist pretending to be a libertarian. His only solution to any problem is “Destroy the government, and the problem goes away.” He doesn’t even have an economic model, just a fantasy that, without government, everything would be peaches and rose petals.

What’s really fucking weird is he can propose this kind of “state of nature” and also imagine it would have computers, automobiles, corporations, cities, and other institutions, all without any enforced rule of law.

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Because you’re tarded? Probably because you’re tarded. No worries scrote. There are plenty of tards out there living really kick-ass lives. My first wife was tarded. She’s a pilot now.

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I’m surprised we’ve gotten a couple posts from him without him chiming in how great Russia is, how the Confederacy was right, or how Lincoln was the worst. American. ever.

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No! Quit hijacking! :slight_smile: I thought this thread might be a chance to finally get to the root of Farnaby’s delusions.

@ Will - Don’t prattle about money or economics — we already know how laughably ignorant you are there. I just want to understand your claim that government usurps property rights when everyone knows just the opposite is true: Government is necessary for property rights.

I assume you’ve never ever read a single book on history or anthropology, no? (Third-grade Intro to World History doesn’t count.)

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Maoists questioned why anyone would need any book other than a little red one. Cultists questioned why anyone would need any book other than the one by the Leader.

WF surely questions why anyone would read anything other than the Ludwig von Mises website. All the answers are there, dude!

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Surely you mean “Notes on What’s What, and What It Might be Reasonable to do about What’s What” by the Old Raja.

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Hey. If he wants to defend an institution that he has considerable personal interest in protecting, he should be prepared to be called out on that basis.

Oh, and societies do not act. Individuals act. There is your lesson for today.

I haven’t changed my position on secession. I also haven’t changed my opinion of the Confederacy being an evil institution.

I do believe law should be enforced, but not through a monopoly. I do take a libertarian anarchist position, yes. Mr. Libertarian, Murray Rothbard, David Friedman, Andrew Napolitano, and many others are libertarian anarchists. I don’t believe all problems will go away without the government. Indeed other problems could arise, but problems caused by government would go away.

The Russian government is evil, as I’ve said many times.

The Confederacy was right about secession and trade, in rhetoric. That’s about it.

Lincoln was a mass murderer and dictator. I won’t go into superlatives.

You are correct that I haven’t substantiated that claim adequately. I hope to do so in the future.

You guys are really keen observers. Until now the fact that I take a certain ideological point of view was my own little secret. I have always pretended to be a dispassionate voice of pragmatism.