nope. May I suggest that you may “see the world differently” in 10 to 20 years. “In youth we learn; in age we understand.” Marie Ebner von Eschenbach
Once again you have posted a complete web page, (this time without even attribution!), in violation of Copyright Fair Use and violation of SDMB rules.
This is another Warning that continuing this behavior will get youre posting privileges revoked.
[ /Moderating ]
I haven’t had a whole lot to say in this thread. I’ve seen the same things argued before, by more skillful “arguers” for both sides of the matter. But, as far as expecting us to do the research and “educating ourselves” before we will be “smart enough” to discuss any of this with you, and as far as wading through endless cites and videos, I think I speak for well over 2 or maybe more people when I say No I won’t.
If you can not put forth a reasoned argument in your own words, in a clear and SHORT CONCISE manner, why should we bother?
I know my history and there are others here who kow it far better. There are also those who know legal matters, political science and financial matters. It is incredibly presumptuous to demand that we all are the ones who need a learnin’ isn’t it.
Quite frankly, too much of your writing falls into the TLDR category.
Unasked for homework assignment by unassigned teacher deleted.
Is there a name for the fallacy where someone claims that the only reason there is disagreement is because the other person is ignorant of all the facts? Something sorter than the “If you read what I read, you’d agree with me, so the only thing I can assume is that you’re ignorant” Fallacy?
How was deregulation of the S&Ls not free market? Would no regulation at all somehow stop the people running them from making crappy investments? Or would it mean depositors not clever enough to look over the portfolio would lose their money and be smarter the next time?
As far as spending goes, it just shows that the claim that you can balance the budget after a big tax cut is just a fantasy. It does not produce immediate additional revenue (in fact none at all besides that from normal growth) and Congress, caring more about the next election than the deficit, keeps spending. Let’s require these spending cuts to be in place for a year before the matching tax cuts come into effect, and let’s require that the cuts actually cut spending. If the cuts aren’t as big as forecast, the tax cut gets cut back. The worst that can happen is that the deficit decreases by the amount of savings for that year.
But you seem to reject any kind of practicality and political reality. In a free market everyone would treat each other fairly. Yeah, right. You seem to say that the crashes of the 19th century came partially because the market was not 100% free. Sorry, any policy which is not stable, in that it fails big time without an exact implementation is totally worthless. If moving towards a free market causes big problems, there is no reason to think that moving even further wouldn’t cause even bigger problems. Not recognizing that is irresponsible.
Holy crap, you are naive aren’t you? Check out the statistics on the people who don’t sign up for 401Ks (and free money) when it is an opt-in situation.
And the government doesn’t. But the government is perfectly within its rights to not allow unvaccinated children into classrooms and by doing so put other children at risk. Plus, your level of medical knowledge leaves something to be desired.
But none of those reasons make any sense.
Let’s take them in turn:
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“increases in the money supply lead to inflation, after a while”. Well, no, not so. Money means nothing, intrinsically. The only value in money is what it can buy me. So, if prices do not rise, then why do I care about the money supply? If I can buy a bottle of 14 year old Oban scotch for $75.00 today, and $75.00 2 years from now, then so what if there’s more money floating about in the economy?
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Your second point about the “access to money when it has real value” also makes no sense. It just smacks of conspiracy theories. There is no Trilateral Commission, and there is no Council of the Elect. There’s just people. Prices are prices are prices. Now, if you were talking about the slow growth or negative growth of lower-wage wages, that might be something, but that’s got other causes.
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Malinvestment is an incomplete information problem, not related to the money supply.
Here’s the thing: The way you, and honestly many libertarians/supporters of Ron Paul write is off putting. You start off with a screed, and then what you do is make assertions of things you believe to be “obvious”. Trust me, the members of this board are smart people, by and large. They do not like to be insulted, or patronized. You will NEVER be able to convince anyone of anything by hectoring them. You say that you get heated and mean nothing by the insults and outrage? Think on this- if there is a failure to communicate, it is on you, not on the listener. You’re the one wanting to teach/convince. You failed, not the listener.
Also, to address your points about vaccines: sometimes, the experts do actually know what they’re talking about. Doctors know more than you about medical care. Are they still human? Yup. Medical companies actually break even at best on vaccines- think about it. Everyone gets it once, (oversimplification, but bear with me). One dose. That’s it. Now, think about something like Lipitor, which many people take to manage high cholesterol. Multiple doses, for years. Where’s the money at? The “arguments” against vaccines are simply bad science, or woo-woo crap.
Since you quoted me directly I’ll take that last as an apology, and accept it at face value.
As for the rest-- no, this isn’t a debate. As others have pointed out, it is impossible to debate a magnum opus like your OP. There are simply too many different issues being discussed at once, none of which receive the proper concentrated attention.
A link or a citation isn’t the same as reproducing page after page of someone else’s text. You’ve been “corrected” on this issue repeatedly. And what nonsense is that about space? You’ve got all the space in the world to articulate whatever you wish, in your own words. If you can’t explain the points yourself, either you don’t actually understand them, or they are logically inconsistent and/or fallacious and fail on their own lack of merit.
The fact that we are unmoved by your hero worship and refuse to bow down at the altar of Austrian economic brilliance does not necessarily mean anything in particular. But your understanding of the world around you is warped by such nonsense as conspiracy theories (you’ve offered quite a few, including the Pearl Harbor crap, base motivations of the Federal Reserve, and more) and anti-vaccination lunacy. Often in life, when you find that the sides are basically you versus nearly everybody else, it may be beneficial to re-examine your basic axioms.
I doubt many of us are going to accept the homework assignment. Nor are we likely to be searching the syllabus of Great Debates, waiting with bated breath for your next dissertation. We are childish fools, “stubbornly clinging to the statist propaganda” and absolutely unwilling to “even wise up a little”. Unlike you.
Really, are you able to buy a hat big enough to fit on your head these days?
Merely answering every single reply does not a debate make. Nor is it even a discussion when you continually insult other posters while sticking your fingers in your ears and ignoring the substance of their replies. If all you intended was to “g[et your] positions out there”, you have still failed, because most posters (I’m guessing here, I didn’t do a poll, but I doubt I’ll be contradicted) most posters saw your lengthy quotations as TLDR. And those with actual expertise in those matters who read them and offered point by point refutations were treated to your less than admirable response of calling them stupid deluded fools and repeating your same now debunked assertions all over again.
If you want a personal blog where you can laud your heroes without contradiction, please go and get one elsewhere. If you want an actual debate, make it concise, restrict it to a single point, present it in a few paragraphs of your own words, support it with citations but not page-on-page-on-page of quotes, and post it here in GD. Then we can have a debate.
I we lived in a Libertarian Utopia you never would have had to post that.
I’m sure someone can offer you a pamphlet. 
-Joe
“Many, many reputable websites”? I’ve searched and I only see it quoted by the freepers, Glenn Beck, and the like. One of the fundamental problems you have is that what you call “reputable” actually is a bunch of crazy, racist garbage. In any case, the question of whether that Jefferson quote is genuine has been answered. It is a fake. The Jefferson Cyclopedia containing all the man’s writings does not contain that quote. End of story. Here’s the link again:
Continuing to insist that your statements are true even after they have been proved false will not do much to bolster you claims of intellectual superiority.
jrodefeld my buddy, I really hate to tell you this, but the Articles of Confederation are no longer in effect. They were tried, they failed, and their creators acknowledged that failure and junked them in favor of a stronger, more centralized government. If you want to lecture everyone else about history, you probably should be aware of facts like this.
More largely, concerning the views of the founding fathers, the Federalist Papers and so forth are irrelevant. What they believed in the late 1700’s tells us nothing about what they would believe today, given the vastly increased amount of information. If they had observed the human misery caused by the unfettered free markets in the 19th century, if they had witnessed the damage caused by the robber barons, if they had seen the enormous prosperity that emerged only after we abandoned the gold standard and created the Federal Reserve, they most likely would have changed their minds. Guiding our economy according to the literal words of a bunch of wig-wearing slave owners who lived over 200 years ago would be the height of folly.
After this you posted a long article by Hans Hoppe that does not appear to have anything to do with either of my questions.
jrodefeld, please.
That is the same graph that you posted earlier. You intended it to show that the price of gold stays stable relative to oil over time. Unfortunately for you, I looked at the graph and noted two things. First, it does not show the price of gold as stable relative to oil, but instead shows the price going up and down by more than 50%. Second, that graph only covers the years 2002-2007. It is clipped to mislead the viewer by removing those periods in time when the value of gold went wildly down.
Honest, j, did you think you were going to get away with that? I remember what I post. I know that I’ve already debunked that graph. Linking to the graph a second time won’t make the fact go away.
Now, as you can see above, I’ve already asked you to provide a graph of gold prices vs. oil covering the past 20 years. As usual, you ignored the request, just as you’ve ignored the vast majority of criticisms of your arguments in this and other threads. Well, no matter, I’ll fill in where you failed. Here is a graph that compares gold prices to oil prices over 20 years.
As you can see, gold has lost about 80% of its value compared to oil in less than 10 years. Since you have a tendency to ignore any data that doesn’t fit your worldview, I will now write the same thing in gigantic letters.
Gold has lost about 80% of its value compared to oil in less than 10 years.
Now you have claimed, not just once, but over and over, that “gold holds its value over time”. I have now proved, ad nauseum, that this is not true, and I have shown that your claims in this direction are based on misdirection and dishonesty. So with that said, I will now ask you one question, the same question that I have asked you four times already in this thread and equally often in several other threads. I suggest that you actually answer the question this time.
Why do you keep saying that gold holds its value over time when, in reality, the value of gold often declines severely?
It’s a pretty simple question and I don’t see why I should have to ask it ten times just to get an answer.
Because they define “gold” and “value” differently, silly person. Much like “reality” is also defined differently.
I agree with this. Also with CannyDan’s similar points in Post #549. As a thought exercise yesterday, I contemplated trying to wrestle this beast to the ground and bring together in one post the various elements of the OP’s platform. Then I logged in to discover the thread had sprouted another three pages. Sorry, JRod, but this is getting to be too much like work. I’m moving on.
We’re rooting for it! Your growth won’t come from reading more at mises.org, but from challenging your own thinking. Many here were once where you are. You’ve made mistakes in this thread; your credibility would improve if you acknowledge them.
An example of annoying “thought”: you define money as gold, and then state that gold has never changed its monetary value! Well I suppose that’s true, by definition if gold is defined as value. An ounce of gold was worth exactly one ounce of gold 100 years ago … and is still worth exactly one ounce of gold today!! (Surely it’s not possible that jrodefeld fails to see this as vacuous?)
In a previous screed, he announced that he opposed unnecessary government regulations but supported necessary ones. I agreed this was a stance we could all get behind!
I chose vaccination as a topic to test if he was capable of exercizing his mind:
Retraction. Judging by his recent comments, jrodefeld still doesn’t grasp this simple fact, which has been rephrased by several others just in this thread. jrodefeld, would you run over a cripple in the street if you thought no “lefty” police were looking? Why don’t you care if my kids catch rubella from yours?
I also tried this:
I’m asking this question again (despite that you already responded to it … with a 7-paragraph screed!). I hope it’s not too rude to say I don’t care if your answer is “Yes” or “No.”
I’m just curious if you’re capable of giving a Yes/No answer! 
No, it does not make sense. In fact, I fail to see any connection between what Guido Hulsmann said and my question. The question, which you don’t seem to understand, was this:
When I walk past a bank, I can see ads saying that long-term bonds (both government and corporate) are going at interest rates of 2-3%. Moreover, bond prices are actually lower now than they were six months ago. If prices are actually going to shoot up in “the next couple years”, why is this not reflected in the price of long-term bonds?
It’s a fairly simple question. I’ve already asked it three times and gotten no response. Why can’t you give me an answer?
The Professor has gone home for the day. When class resumes he will expect you to have done your homework assignments. He will then give a lecture and, if there is time, he will accept questions from the class.
Has the drop/add period run yet?
Wow!!! Can you provide a cite because I have about a dozen doctors in the family and every last one of them is telling me to get my newborn son vaccinated (and as far as costs go, its free because I have insurance but my brother and sister assure me that they would be relatively cheap even if i didn’t have insurance).
I did find this cite but he seems a little out of teh mainstream:
http://www.tetrahedron.org/articles/vaccine_awareness/vaccine_induced_autoimmunity.html
This fails to address why allergies, autism, asthma and ADHD is so much higher in America and England than in other countries that immunize all their children (in some Asian countries, immunization is not a choice left up to the parent). The four A’s have seen a dramatic rise over the last 15 years and cannot be linked to any increase in vaccination activity. If you look at it on a global scale, there seems to be something else going on.
Something tells me you were probably convinced before that.