And to jump back 8 pages to your last reply to one of my posts:
This just makes me want to bang my head on the desk. First you just handwave any possible negative effects of the free-market (it’s can drive salaries down as well as up) away just by saying ‘that wouldn’t happen’. Then you directly contradict yourself.
You are saying that people wouldn’t be forced to work for 2 dollars an hour and then say that without the minimum wage jobs would be created that pay less than the minimum wage. Since you would presumably also abolish welfare you would be leaving people with the choice of working for less than minimum wage or starving. That is exactly what I said. I’m glad you agree with me that Libertarian polices are bad for the poor. At least you’re honest.
Poor people often aren’t poor because there is a shortage of jobs for them to do. They are poor because the only work they are qualified for is valued so low that they remain poor. Why do you think this would be helped by removing the minimum wage?
They were so libertarian, they created a country which had legalized chattel slavery, which routinely subsidized private corporations, which routinely redistributed wealth and which routinely barred people from working in their chosen profession based on race, religion, ethnic origin and gender. I don’t see how anyone can claim the founders were remotely libertarian unless they didn’t understand libertarianism.
I was under the impression that a libertarian position was that the only role of government was to protect the citizens from coercion and fraud.
Homeopathy is fraud and, therefore, the government needs to provide protection.
(Unless, of course, there is a new variety of libertarianism that gets to declare someone else’s practices as fraud while declaring their own favorite woo as freedom.)
And, of course, no one in the government is actually preventing anyone from engaging in the fraud of homeopathy, either as a seller or buyer, except that certain fraudulent claims in advertising are proscribed. As long as one clearly indicates that one’s product is homeopathic, one is allowed to hustle it to the rubes.
There is no doubt, at all, they they were not libertarians in the sense that you use the word, today.
Go look at the histories of Shay’s Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion and see on which sides the Founders lined up, pretty much universally.
(Shay’s Rebellion also offers an interesting insight into the notion of tying all money to gold, although I am sure that you would spin the history differently.)
Cherry-picking a few quotes from the Founders on different aspects of freedom does not actually establish that they favored a “libertarian” form of government as you would picture it. It just means that you have found a book that has collected cherry-picked quotes that sound good to you outside of their original contexts.
Or they could just decide that they don’t like something like the FDA and just found their own pay-as-you-go DFA. Rand Paul is blazing the trail! FREEEEEEDOM!!
I got no comment on this yet. Just, you know, wait for it.
You’re still having comprehension problems related to your own cites.
The charge was not counterfeiting. Nowhere does it say that the charge was counterfeiting. As your own cite explained six months ago, the charge was creating too close an imitation of the US dollar. As your own cite in this very thread explained, the charge was creating too close an imitation of the US dollar. Counterfeiting means creating a cheap knock-off designed to look like the real thing. That’s not what these poor dumb bastards were doing. They were creating expensive coins that were tagged with "". It's irrelevant that no one would have mistaken the coins for counterfeit currency. That wasn't the charge. That's not the relevant law. The law in this case is that only the US government gets to make US dollars. Even the dollar sign itself, , comes from the initials of the country, the US. Uncle Sam owns that likeness.
They could have denominated the coins by ounce. They could have denominated the coins as Sparmafunq Tollagars. But they didn’t. They denominated the coins as dollars, and that’s why they got busted. Unjust? Maybe. But that’s not how you were arguing it. You tried, and failed, to make the case that this was related to currency competition.
Two times now that I’ve seen, you have falsely used the Liberty Dollar case to argue that there are no competing currencies allowed at all. In March you wrote: “Thus, it is ILLEGAL to circulate competing currencies.” That’s wrong. There are alternative circulating currencies. And in this thread? “Don’t ever tell me people are free to circulate private currencies in this country. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.” That’s not only wrong. It’s beautifully wrong. It’s a masterpiece of fail. Why? Because in addition to being completely incorrect, it shows an incredibly condescending tone and undeserved attitude of superiority.
You’re not just wrong about damn near everything under the sun. You’re wrong with style.
That’s why I like you so much.
Hayek wrote his little booklet Denationalisation of Money in 1976. This was soon after the Nixon Shock and the fall of the Bretton-Woods international gold standard. Obviously, inflation was a huge concern of the time, and Hayek’s book is indeed filled with breathless rhetoric about the evil government and its inability to maintain a steady price level. If he’d written the book in the late 80s, he would’ve seen differently. But more important than that, Hayek’s currency reform is primarily concerned with bank deregulation. That was his method to get competitive currencies.
That is, yes, different from the system of competitive currencies today. Even so, you seem to miss the fact that alternative currencies like e-gold were illegal at the time he wrote his book. Hayek could not have commented upon the competitive currency system as it exists today, because it did not exist at the time. In the United States, for example, contracts could not specify weights of gold and be enforced by the courts. That was a legacy of the gold standard.
The gold market didn’t become truly free until after the standard was dropped and the fiat currency established. It was in 1977, a year after Hayek published his book, that the gold regulations in the US were relaxed, and contracts could once again specify payment in weights of gold instead of US dollars. That is the competitive currency condition that exists today, that Hayek didn’t see when he was writing his booklet.
Now, that change would’ve pleased him, but it’s not everything he was looking for. As I said, bank deregulation was the core of his competing currencies plan, and we don’t have that. But this still doesn’t help your case. The system that Hayek describes is traditional private market banking, like it existed back in the day, which is to say: a fractional reserve system. You say you read all these books, but you can’t even seem to differentiate different Austrian viewpoints. Hayek wasn’t a full-reserve, gold-buggering nutter like Rothbard. But what do I find on page four of this very thread? The following Rothbardian recommendation from you: “Fractional Reserve Banking is outlawed. Banks are required to keep 100% reserves.”
That is not Hayek’s deregulated system. You are blatantly contradicting yourself if you want to advocate the two systems together.
Hayek theorized that banks could issue their new currency in the form of new loans put out into the community. The new currency would be backed, initially, by a basket of other currencies, with its long-term value to be pegged as close as possible to a basket of commodities. Hayek specifically mentions that the free market would ensure that banks kept an adequate percentage of reserves on hand to deal with any potential withdrawals. That’s not “full reserve” banking. It’s an unregulated fractional reserve system. And that particular suggestion from Hayek has, of course, not come to pass. It is an interesting idea, but it’s still incomplete. It’s not fully formed. He dances completely around the idea of seignorage: You can’t think about the predominant currency without considering taxation.
None of this story comes through in your post. You just cut&paste what other people wrote, as long it’s Austrian. It doesn’t seem to matter to you that Hayek and Rothbard belonged to two different, sometimes contradictory, Austrian traditions.
Advocating both together is a demonstration that you understand neither.
“Health freedom” is one of those buzz-phrases that is popular among supplement dealers and the websites of alt med promoters who depend on advertising from sellers of alt med products and services. Translated, the phrase means “the freedom to sell whatever I want making any claims for it that I want, without having to worry about any regulations compelling me to show that those products/services are safe and effective.” It’s all about the money.
It’s not suprising that such attitudes are popular among libertarians, many of whom seem to have the basic philosophy “I got (or expect to get) mine, buddy, so get out of my way”. Their willingness to let health quackery flourish does not automatically invalidate their views on economics and other matters, but their lack of critical thinking skills and gullibility do make me very suspicious of their platform as a whole, and unwilling to vote Ron Paul or anyone like him into office.
My advice to Paul supporters is to clam up on the crazy (or enabling the crazy) and stick to Austrian economics. I can see where that would be difficult though - the crazy seems integral to libertarianism/Paul groupitude.
Not to mention that people get better on their own all the time without the placebo effect or medicine. Frauds like homeopathy or faith healing just try to take the credit when the body manages to restore itself without help. Which of course is why they never “cure” anything that the body can’t do on its own, like reattaching a severed body part.
You certainly don’t have to support Ron Paul and my motivations are not to worship and deify Paul, though you would be forgiven for thinking so. I am promoting the philosophy of human liberty articulated by the great philosophers and intellectuals through the ages. The documents authored by the founders (The Constitution and Bill of Rights, setting up a Republic) are watershed moments in human history. The Austrians have done the premier work on economics thus far and Ron Paul is simply the latest in a tradition of scholarly thinkers that reject authoritarianism and promote a society based on peace and non aggression.
It seems you have made up your mind and are stubbornly refusing to revise your line of thinking. This is not uncommon. You are perfectly fine to believe that Homeopathy is quackery (many believe this). There is a big difference between you having that opinion and forcing other people through the government to not be allowed to seek alternative medical treatment if they choose.
This is a paternalistic stance by government, one that invites abuse and is totally incompatible with a free society. People should be allowed to do things that are stupid if they don’t harm anybody else.
As far as I am concerned, I have had an experience with Homeopathy that worked for me. You can believe me or not, I don’t care. You cannot dispute my subjective experience and results.
The larger point is that Ron Paul is not endorsing homeopathy, rather he is endorsing medical freedom.
You can call Ron Paul a lot of names if you wish, but he is certainly not a charlatan. A charlatan is a person who knowingly deceives people for his own personal gain. This hardly describes the decades of selfless public service and multitudes of occasions where he was the sole lone vote on pieces of legislation he strongly believed to be ill conceived and unconstitutional. He shows true courage of his convictions.
And he is definitely not an opportunistic political hack. It seems to me you lack the ability to respond on the substance so you haphazardly grab a handful of insults and accusations to hurl Dr Paul’s way, regardless of how provably inaccurate they are. He returns a portion of his congressional pay each year to the Treasury! On principle he didn’t accept Medicare in his medical practice, rather treating patients for free if they couldn’t pay. Special interests and lobbyists don’t even bother talking to Ron Paul when they go to Washington. Everyone knows his vote cannot be bought.
He toiled endlessly for several decades without recognition until the wars and economic problems that he warned about became foremost in peoples minds and his popularity soared.
If he is an opportunistic “hack” he is not very successful. As a Statesman he is doing pretty well.
You know very well what you are asking is impossible. The protest that I attended was not sponsored by the GOP and, although I did see some local media at the event, searches on the internet do not show any coverage or pictures of the event I attended. I also attended a heavily liberal populated antiwar rally and there were plenty of minorities there (as you would imagine) and the ones I talked to were very open to libertarian ideas and many liked Ron Paul a lot. And none were happy with Obama.
Why don’t you actually go out and talk to people and engage with people rather than judging everyone in the country based on Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin?
I don’t see why you obsess on race. That is inherantly more racist than those of us who attend an event and judge it on the substance of the message, thinking nothing of the races in attendance.
I have never been a Republican in my life. You can believe me or not on whether there are angry African Americans, some of whom are even Tea Party members.
What, you think every black person is required to support Obama because of the color of his skin? Isn’t THAT offensive?
Okay, do you understand that many “Tea Party” rallies are not even Republican in nature? That one rally can be quite different from another? The people I associate with and organize with are all Independent or registered Democrat. And do you get this point:
**There are rallies and protests that are not even called tea parties that criticize a myriad of issues in policy (bailouts, wars overseas, corporate fraud and abuse, issues of debt and general anger at ALL politicians). **
Then there is the GOP co opted movement that seeks to perpetuate the image of white, southern Christian anger motivated by race. This is what you are talking about. The Ron Paul movement and feelings of anger and discontent in the TRUE grassroots dates back to 2006-2007. That is when I got involved and we were all angry at Bush at the time for the wars overseas and his out of control spending.
The media is playing a game of divide and conquer used to ensure that people like you don’t give a grassroots conservative the time of day. Instead we fight among ourselves while the economy burns to the ground.
I see through this yet you are still in the dark. Look at the libertarian energy on the college campuses across the country. Look at the crowds Ron Paul attracted in San Francisco, filled with young people, young, old, christian, atheist, all races.
If you even for a minute could see what me and my friends do and the type of diversity there is at the grassroots revolution that is brewing in this country, it would open your eyes to reality quite a bit.
Why do you insist upon thinking of the “tea party” as a monolithic movement with no differences among the attendants?
There are many other reporters and journalists who have remarked about the stark differences between some of the rallies and events and the “Glenn Beck rally” and the GOP image that is being portrayed on the television.
Look, I am more than happy to create a separate thread later about vaccines and why alternative and eastern medicine is beneficial in addition to western doctors. I made a small comment about the vaccination issue and it launched into a debate I don’t want to have right now.
Believe me, I have stacks of information pertaining to harm caused by excessive vaccinations and plenty of Phd and MD doctors who dispute the pharmaceutical industry and their desire to push ever increasing numbers of drugs and immunizations on the populace.
I don’t shy away from the debate, I just want to focus on the subject of THIS thread, not go off on a tangent.
It seems to me that you would like to change the debate because YOU are getting your ass handed to you on the much more important topics of economics, US history and foreign policy.
That would be fine, but then you continue with crap like the next few paragraphs - not the indication of someone who wants to end this part of the conversation, but rather a person who wants desperately to get the last word in without comment.
No, you do not. You have the same crappy propaganda that every other anti-vax liar has tried to foist on the ignorant for the past couple of decades. You data fails even from your explanation - I can already see the lies before you even post them. Why? Is my mind so closed? No, I have merely seen this again and again.
And yet you keep saying stuff like the paragraph above. You keep trying to puff up your argument to make it look big.
Oh really?! Please name a post in this thread where you ‘handed me my ass’ on those topics. Go ahead. I’ll wait. But you won’t find one. I haven’t even bothered with those part of the thread - so I couldn’t exactly ‘have my ass handed to me’ on economics & history when I haven’t even bothered with those topics. Others are doing that quite well & better than I could. So how does that work, eh? Perhaps a bit of delusion or untruths in your words?
Actually, his commentr is quite pertinent. While going on at length about the rights of people to the fruits of their labors–libertarian style–you have repeatedly denied other authors the fruits of their labor by re-posting their words without attribution and in violation of Fair Use copyright laws.
It does shed a bit of light on your words that you are willing to violate your own principles for your own benefit.
I don’t “believe” in homeopathy. I was treated by a homeopath and got good results. And I believe people should have the liberty to choose homeopathy or alternative medicine if they want to. That is all. I don’t understand homeopathy entirely, nor do I care whether other people believe it.
And I am not Anti Vaccine. I only understand the politics of the FDA and the way our government and medical system work. The truth is people will be given vaccinations they don’t need and some which are not sufficiently tested. And there are growing reports of people getting the disease FROM the vaccine. During the original swine flu “epidemic” in the 70s more people died from the vaccine than from the swine flu itself. But I suppose you support vaccinated against a bullshit “epidemic” that is not truly pose a threat?
The scientific principle of immunization is sound. I am not disputing this. By introducing a small amount of a virus a persons body can be induced to build up an immunity. Fine, great. Our body does this naturally, as well.
There are cases where vaccinations are wise and necessary.
The problem I have is the adjuvents and other poisons found in vaccinations. Mercury, formaldehyde and many other known neurotoxins are found in provably harmful quantities in many vaccines. Therefore I am arguing that we exercise caution when pursuing this trend of vaccinating our children in increasingly large numbers when we don’t know the long term effects of huge doses of mercury and poisonous adjuvents on the developing body.
There are MANY doctors who share my concerns. I guess you will simply call me a quack for voicing my sensible concerns and put your head back in the sand.
Don’t you pay attention to the number of harmful prescription drugs that are recalled every year? And they were all approved by the FDA.
Why trust these people? If I oppose taking a lot of potentially harmful prescription drugs, it doesn’t mean I dispute the value of having drugs available for certain people.
There is abuse in every area of medicine and relying on this mode of medicine to the exclusion of prevention and healthy living is foolhardy.
Everything in moderation, as the Buddha said.
As to your insane view that Austrian economics is “completely discredited”, by who? Who discredited Austrian economics? For most of our history and a lot of world history the principles that the Austrians and classical economists believed were understood as true laws, like you can’t create wealth out of a printing press, or that balancing the budget and paying of debts is important to the long term health of an economy.
I haven’t heard these views “discredited” by anyone. Our government adopted Keynesian economics because it was convenient for the ruling class and bankers who wanted to have justification for complete control and intervention into the marketplace. That is all.
So why don’t you make the effort to discredit Austrian theories? In detail, explain the following to us:
**What is the role of the Federal Reserve in the creation of financial bubbles?
Why is the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle faulty, even though it allowed astute economists to predict both the Great Depression and the current crisis and every recession in between?
What is the harm of inflation and why do you endorse the notion that the deliberate debasement of the peoples currency is good for the economy?
Why do you endorse the secrecy of the Federal Reserve system?
How can Keynesian economics deal with the deficit and permit the reduction of the national debt? Aren’t they contradictory?**
There is more issues to deal with, but if you claim to know how discredited these economic ideas are you should have no trouble debunking them yourself.
If you can’t they I can only assume you don’t really think for yourself and rather mindlessly accept what you have been taught without thinking.
No offense to you, Lobohan, but in my experience people who speak in generalities like this idea has been “discredited” and talk about what “the experts” think, as if economics and history is monolithic, really don’t understand these subjects in the slightest. They fall back on terms like “crank”, “nutjob”, or “conspiracy theory” to mask their inability to critically think about important issues and actually understand them.
Of course you could fall back and blindly believe “the experts” (whoever they are) that MSNBC parades in front of their cameras. Or you could think better of yourself and take it upon yourself to learn about these issues and respond critically with your own thoughts, displaying at least a modicum of intellectual integrity.
Let me start by asking: Do you think people should be vaccinated for every single possible disease? Very elderly people can die from the flu, but if I get the flu it is no big deal. So why should I be vaccinated against the flu? First of all if I am healthy and eat well, I am very unlikely to get sick in the first place. But even if I do, the downside is very low.
Is there ANY vaccination that you oppose or think there is no reason for a healthy person to get? Not all of the diseases they vaccinate against cause death, you know.
Here are a number of completely unnecessary vaccines that have been given:
There are more examples than I can post here. Yet, dispite all the evidence you want me to roll up my sleeve and play guinea pig for whatever Big Pharma wishes to inject into my arm?
As to what many vaccines contain, here is another list that you may be interested in looking at:
Do you understand that many people, like myself, would rather stay healthy and put good things into my body and risk disease than put tons of poisons into my body to theoretically prevent a disease that I am highly unlikely to ever get? What sense does that make?
If you stay healthy, there is no reason to fear the occasional illness that may crop up. A person, such as myself will have a healthy immune system and be able to fight infections through natural immunity.
If you cannot at least respect this perspective you must be completely blinded by propaganda.
Do you acknowledge that ANY of these vaccinations are ill conceived and unnecessary? At what point would you start thinking for yourself and not allow yourself to sit idly by allowing anyone in a white jacket to stick anything into your arm?
Some vaccines are necessary. But many are a scam, as I have proved.
Wow, really? It is a FACT that you know more about economics than I do? So far I have demonstrated a substantial grasp of economic theories and have written extensively on the subject here and in other threads. I haven’t seen ANYTHING by you that would lead me to believe that you know anything about any school of economic thought.
If you saw my bookshelf you would see dozens of examples of challenging economic literature that I have read and understood. I can defeat a Keynesian in argumentation without breaking a sweat. The arguments are so easy to defeat through logic and deductive reasoning.
But, go ahead and lay out your economic influences and your defenses and critiques of the Obama economic policies. Tell me about the Federal Reserve and Fractional Reserve Banking. Display some evidence that you understand these issues.
It seems most of you are content to yap on about my writings being “too long” (presumably to not have to actually read and comprehend my arguments) or harping on whether or not there is a sufficient number of black people at Tea Party rallies to take them seriously. Silly, unimportant stuff.
But if you are better than that I welcome your serious views on economics. Don’t be afraid to write in depth and explore complex economic theories and subjects.
You have repeatedly made this wholly false assertion, but that only demonstrates that you really have no idea what you are talking about.
The millions who died in 1918 and 1919 were hardly all elderly. Influenza is quite capable of killing younger people. Each strain is a bit different and the morbidity for each differs from year to year, (which is why the CDC does not encourage all people to get every flu shot each year and they are not mandatory, despite your implied claims), but a lot of young people die from it. Anecdotally, every person I have ever known to have died from influenza was between the ages of 20 and 40.
Your self-assessment of what you have “proved” is ludicrous.