But perhaps I can refine (or finesse) his argument a bit.
Perhaps he means to suggest not that we eliminate all acts of government that restrict freedom – but rather that we begin our negotiating posture from that position. By way of analogy, a wise shopper does not begin bargaining for his car from the MSRP and ngotiate downwards – although a wise car dealer certainly does just that. A wise shopper begins with the true dealer cost and reluctantly accepts increases.
So, too, might his argument go, should we as a society begin from a position that regards all government acts with skeptical concern, and allow ourselves only reluctantly to be convicned of the necessity of any of them. He’s not enunciating a bright-line rule, then, but merely a rebuttable presumption.
No, not “simply because they don’t sit well with me”. It’s a typical libertarian rhetorical ploy to pretend to believe that people who support regulation of any practice are doing so merely because they personally don’t like that practice, but that doesn’t make it a valid argument.
:rolleyes: More libertarian boilerplate: if the government didn’t regulate something adequately and a bad result ensued, it must be because regulation itself is just bad and unworkable. As I said, that line of talk isn’t fooling so many people these days as it used to.
Sure. On the other hand, you’d be saving the $50 interest every time an emergency occurs, plus you’d be earning interest on your emergency money in between emergencies. How long would it really take you to recoup that up-front investment of $400?
My argument is based on no such thing. I’ve gone into long, rambling polemics in other posts about the appropriate reach of government. I assumed you didn’t want that here, yet again.
Are you arguing my point now? What point are you arguing? It’s difficult to tell. As soon as I press you on an issue you roll your eyes (in an avatar sense) and hand-wave it away with an ad hominem attack.
I thought you were arguing that ‘voluntary transactions’ between other individuals in a free market have somehow caused you harm, and therefore they must be banned.
Can you try some that don’t speed us further down the Road to Serfdom?
Have you read Hayek? Do you know what the Road to Serfdom is? Because all of your arguments above have a ‘Wide Load’ sticker on the rear, and take up all the available lanes.
To summarize: Because the government is already involved, and takes my tax dollars to get involved, it must get even more involved.
That justifies it’s further intervention in just about anything. And, as Hayek (and HL Mencken) predicted. the people will actually clamor for more government involvement as a result. The politicians won’t even need to expend energy asking for more…it will be given to them. The people will willingly dispossess themselves of rights that they now hold, and give them to government officials.
Let’s see. If I have 2 or 3 emergencies/large unusual costs in a year and I’m not paying fees, it would be about two and a half to three years before I saved enough in fees to make back that first $400. And if you think the money wouldn’t go for a nonemergency before that, you’ve never lived paycheck to paycheck for any length of time. And in the meantime, that’s still an extra two months of unpleasant belt-tightening that I don’t need to go through.
At the end of the year, I would be no less broke than I am at the end of the year now. I might have a new winter jacket or my car might get an extra oil change, but I wouldn’t have that $50 in hand. And, as I have said several times now, putting in the time ain’t worth the cash.
On the contrary (not that I want the polemics :p) but your argument HERE is indeed boiled down to that concept.
Now, mayhap your intention is something more in line with what Bricker postulated. But so far, your argument here has boiled down to this: it restricts freely entered into contracts, so it is wrong.
If you intende a more subtle argument than that, you need to make it.
Well, that’s a better argument, surely. And one I won’t necessarily disagree with. AND one that allows for a lot of political discourse and disagreement.
But it does have one particular flaw: it advocates nothing, sets no boundaries for what government should be doing. It is easy to sit on the sidelines and say skeptically: oh, yeah? Why? It’s much more helpful to be in the middle of the dance saying, “This is what we should do; these things that you are doing are not in that list, so stop doing them.”
For example: Our champion of the free market system would likely be aghast if, when someone defaulted upon a contract, he didn’t have a remedy through the law. Yet, one could always argue that enforcing a private contract is something government has no business doing; let the contracting parties beware! After all, legal contract remedies do nothing but ensure that those who seek to enter into contracts will not do sufficient homework to avoid unacceptable risk of default (so the argument would go). So obviously, our champion is willing to have SOME governmental interference in the affairs of private individuals. It is, I think, incumbent upon him to articulate the outlines of such willingness, then state why the action discussed HERE is not within those boundaries (as opposed to just saying, “government shouldn’t interfere between private contracting parties!”).
True, but if their full time pay is not sufficient, then payday loans just make the problem worse. A payday loan for a one-time emergency is one thing. Using it for day-to-day expenses is just asking for trouble. If their pay is not enough to live on, they’re not going to be able to pay back all the interest either. Not having the loan places around will make it that much harder to get the loan on impulse. Unfortunately, that doesn’t help the person who has that one-time emergency and needs the loan.
Hardly. I’ll be happy to send $100 to a Paypal account of your choice if you can find a post of mine anywhere that advocates abolition of laws that enforce contracts.
If you’re that interested in what I specifically advocate in terms of government’s role, I suggest you search for long, rambling post about 2 months ago where I tried to lay it out. I can’t say it’s the most articulate post in the world, but you seem to be extremely interested…so I say, give it a read. I tried to use the Forum search engine but it keeps crashing on me as soon as I hit the submit button, and then it says I have to wait 300 seconds before another search.
Honestly, the ridiculous strawmen posted on this Board against libertarian arguments never ceases to amaze me. You seem more intelligent and articulate than most. Usually they boil down to the Der Trihs/Voyager variety of
Libertarians want to sell their children into slavery
Libertarians want to roast their grandmothers alive
Libertarians advocate enforceable contracts of slavery, indentured servitude, <fill in social ill here>
Libertarians will run out at the first opportunity and start companies that make defective products, to kill their customers
I’m not a Libertarian, and I’m not engaging in any rhetorical ploy. Perhaps I should have instead said “simply because you feel comfortable making sweeping decisions about what is and is not good for others.”
No, I’m not going to play this silly game with you. There’s always some degree of arbitrariness in every law. The arbitrariness of laws against usury doesn’t make those laws bad ones. The laws against drunk driving, child molestation and murder are all arbitrary, but I suspect you won’t find this sufficient grounds for doing away with them.
It is immoral and unwise to allow unscrupulous moneylenders to ruin lives. Why do you have a problem with that?
The difference between some of your examples and the unscrupulous moneylenders ruining lives is that in the latter, both parties are acting voluntarily and with full disclosure and consent. No one consents to being the victim of drunk driving, child molestation, or murder.
I have come across several libertarians who advocated allowing slavery, so long as it is a “contract freely entered into.”
I’ve heard at least one libertarian advocate consensual cannibalism on a radio talk show about that that sicko in Germany.
See above.
There are plenty of companies which, in the absence of effective regulation, have made defective products that injured and killed people. Had any peanut butter crackers lately? Got any securities backed by subprime mortgages in your portfolio?
Except for that third one, I don’t think I’ve ever heard any one actually make these accusations. Careful with those strawmen, Idaho. They could be a fire hazard.
Nonsense. When you use the public roads, you voluntarily accept whatever risk may be involved in using them. Most incidents of drunk driving don’t end in accidents, so it’s obviously unfair to restrict my freedom to fly down the interstate at 100 mph with a head full of mescaline. If you want to offer an 8-year-old a bag of candy in return for some sex play, that’s a contract into which the child has entered freely, and who are you tell someone they can’t enter into a contract just because society arbitrarily decides they’re too young? Likewise, if a couple of drunks get into a fight in a bar, they must understand that they’ve decided on a course of action which is likely to end in serious injury or death; they knew what they were getting into. Therefore, no one should interfere, and no one should be punished if someone gets killed.
Like the rhetoric of rights and equality, the rhetoric of personal liberty can be used to justify anything.
Well, this is rapidly deteriorating into a set of absurd extensions and stretched assumptions. We could continue to play “What If?” forever, but suffice it to say, all of your hyperbolic examples involve either situations where the consequences of ones actions cannot be absolutely determined, or one party involved is impaired in some way and unable to see such consequences.
If we want to write laws around worst case scenarios, we could certainly say “you have an x% chance of being killed by a drunk driver; it’s your fault if you are, because you could stay home instead.” Payday loans are much more cut and dry. The consequences for both parties are laid out, hammered in stone, from step 1. At least one poster in this thread has acknowledged that he has used them to his benefit on more than one occasion, with complete foreknowledge of the consequences of doing so.
How much further do you want to go to protect people from themselves? Outlaw alcohol, tobacco, anything deemed potentially dangerous if abused? A lot of folks are injured in NASCAR racing – maybe they just don’t have the presence of mind to understand that driving a car at such speed in such proximity to other cars can end up very bad for them. We should save them from themselves and a potentially bad choice and outlaw it altogether, eh?
So everything you (or our elected officials) see as immoral and unwise should be against the law?
I guess laws against homosexuality are OK, then, since many think it is immoral and it’s clearly unwise to engage in risky sex that exposes you to HIV, right?
There needs to be a better basis for laws than what politicians think is immoral and unwise.
Of course, even if we accept your terms, you’d need to prove that these moneylenders are unscrupulous and that they ruin the lives of their borrowers. Having studied the payday lending issue in some depth, the evidence of either of those things is pretty much nonexistent.
