Better yet, 100 miles west of San Francisco
Please don't comment like this here.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13897306 and marked it off-topic.
How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness
271–280 of 285 posts
Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it more accurate to say that the "Left and Right - A Journal of Libertarian Thought" was an attempt by libertarians to highlight the fact that the one dimensional left/right line is obviously a very incomplete model of political thought. As your link quotes from the opening editorial: "Our title, Left and Right, reflects our concerns in several ways. It reveals our editorial concern with the ideological; and it a…
You start out seeming trying to argue against me, but nothing of what you've written contradicts what I wrote. I'm not sure what you're trying to say. > Whatever "right wing" is supposed to mean, I doubt it means these positions. "Right wing" in this context is about economic positions, views on property etc. Right-wing libertarianism generally draw from the Austrian school, and people like von Mises and occasionally…
>...I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
I thought I was pretty clear: "Those who talk about "US-style right-wing libertarianism" should realize that this is a too simplistic label as Rothbard tried to say decades ago."
>..."Right wing" in this context is about economic positions, views on property etc.
Again, I doubt the vast majority of the groups you would call "right wing" would share the economic views of the average libertarian. (They also don't share the social views of the average libertarian.) That label isn't helpful if it doesn't explain their views - as Rothbard wrote so long ago: "...This means in no sense that we are middle-of-the-roaders, eclectically trying to combine, or step between, both poles; but rather that a consistent view of liberty includes concepts that have also become part of the rhetoric or program of right and of left. Hence a creative approach to liberty must transcend the confines of contemporary political shibboleths."
>...The entire point is that these two camps align with the traditional left and right on economic issues, but are aligned with each other on a lot of social issues and on anti-authoritarianism.
The point is that using a one dimensional model for political thought is too simplistic and it is simply misleading.
Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's plenty of cheap land and labor 100 miles east of San Francisco. Why don't we build homelessville there?
Because nobody wants to live there? That's why it's cheap. I fear a lot of SF homeless enjoy being in SF for similar reasons that a lot of the not-homeless do. Can the prospect of free housing in a random area lure them away? Maybe? It's hard to say.
Overheard a homeless guy in Mountain View, think he had a tent in one of the creek beds, saying why he likes it here: - ”it's safe, you don't get robbed". Less risk of violent crime in a prosperous, liberal city like MV, where the police management know they're expected to roll a car for reports of homeless-on-homeless violence, and can easily afford to do so.
Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
You start out seeming trying to argue against me, but nothing of what you've written contradicts what I wrote. I'm not sure what you're trying to say. > Whatever "right wing" is supposed to mean, I doubt it means these positions. "Right wing" in this context is about economic positions, views on property etc. Right-wing libertarianism generally draw from the Austrian school, and people like von Mises and occasionally…
>...I'm not sure what you're trying to say. I thought I was pretty clear: "Those who talk about "US-style right-wing libertarianism" should realize that this is a too simplistic label as Rothbard tried to say decades ago." >..."Right wing" in this context is about economic positions, views on property etc. Again, I doubt the vast majority of the groups you would call "right wing" would share the economic views of the…
> I thought I was pretty clear: "Those who talk about "US-style right-wing libertarianism" should realize that this is a too simplistic label as Rothbard tried to say decades ago."
It is a too simplistic label for libertarianism as a whole. It is a perfectly viable lable when you want to talk about "US-style right-wing libertarianism" - most people instantly understand roughly what that refers to, so the label serves its purpose.
> Again, I doubt the vast majority of the groups you would call "right wing" would share the economic views of the average libertarian.
Huh? The point is exactly that libertarian groups are found far out on both sides of the spectrum, so what in the world is an "average libertarian"?
> That label isn't helpful if it doesn't explain their views
But it does.
> as Rothbard wrote so long ago: "...This means in no sense that we are middle-of-the-roaders, eclectically trying to combine, or step between, both poles; but rather that a consistent view of liberty includes concepts that have also become part of the rhetoric or program of right and of left. Hence a creative approach to liberty must transcend the confines of contemporary political shibboleths."
And this was exactly the point I made by bringing up Rothbard in the first place: There was an attempt to unify these views of the left and right.
But that still does not mean there is not a firmly right-wing and firmly left-wing libertarianism both when considering primarily economic views and when considering where people self-identify.
> The point is that using a one dimensional model for political thought is too simplistic and it is simply misleading.
So we largely agree then, but this doesn't change any of what I wrote earlier.
Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
>...I'm not sure what you're trying to say. I thought I was pretty clear: "Those who talk about "US-style right-wing libertarianism" should realize that this is a too simplistic label as Rothbard tried to say decades ago." >..."Right wing" in this context is about economic positions, views on property etc. Again, I doubt the vast majority of the groups you would call "right wing" would share the economic views of the…
> I thought I was pretty clear: "Those who talk about "US-style right-wing libertarianism" should realize that this is a too simplistic label as Rothbard tried to say decades ago." It is a too simplistic label for libertarianism as a whole . It is a perfectly viable lable when you want to talk about "US-style right-wing libertarianism" - most people instantly understand roughly what that refers to, so the label serve…
>...It is a perfectly viable lable when you want to talk about "US-style right-wing libertarianism" - most people instantly understand roughly what that refers to, so the label serves its purpose.
Obviously not. People have a rough understanding of "right wing" - with the election of Trump they think about Breitbart and various "economic nationalism" groups and various authoritarians who want to limit social freedoms like the right to terminate a pregnancy, put something in their body, etc etc. Those groups obviously have nothing to do with libertarianism. Politicians love to label opponents to poison the well: "tax and spend liberal", "reactionary", "far right", etc - such labeling of other people is not useful if you actually want to understand the other person's views.
>...Huh? The point is exactly that libertarian groups are found far out on both sides of the spectrum, so what in the world is an "average libertarian"?
Again, you are using a one dimensional view of political thought when you say "on both sides of the spectrum". Also some of the libertarian positions such as the removal of victimless crimes haven't been fully embraced by the voters but that doesn't mean they are "far out". We no longer have a draft, most people are now more leery of the war on drugs and gay marriage is allowed, so progress is slowly made.
>...And this was exactly the point I made by bringing up Rothbard in the first place: There was an attempt to unify these views of the left and right.
And again - if the people who label, reject that label as being misleading, it isn't a good label (unless your goal is simply to marginalize them.)
>> The point is that using a one dimensional model for political thought is too simplistic and it is simply misleading.
>So we largely agree then, but this doesn't change any of what I wrote earlier.
Well it is good we agree on something, but you continue to use this one dimensional model throughout.
Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
>High housing costs like those in most coastal cities contribute to higher inflows into homelessness and lower outflows out of homelessness Citation needed. Because another reason the homeless migrate to these places is that they spend massive sums on homeless outreach, which draws people in from other areas. I don't know what percentage of homelessness is due to either cause, but I don't see that you do either (not…
It was a logically deductive assertion, although I'm sure there are studies out there. Homelessness is defined as not having a home, and all else equal, a relatively higher cost of having a home will result in relatively more people not having a home. The extent that other city-specific factors contribute to the problem may change absolute numbers in either direction, but relative homelessness should always be higher…
In absolute terms one would have to agree with your logic. But from what I understand the vast majority of homeless are drug addicts and/or mentally ill. I think (no data to back me up at the moment) that this dwarfs the number of people who become homeless literally because they are priced out of the market.
Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
US obesity rate: 36% Swedish obesity rate: 18% US life expectancy: 79 years Sweden life expectancy: 81 years It is falsifiable. When I talk about culture I'm talking about things like smoking rates, obesity rates, etc. These things are totally unrelated to whether or not you pay a copay to go to a doctor. If you think our relative life expectancy has nothing to do with our obesity rates, then I'm sorry but you just d…
It's weird that you're so fixated on obesity as the only driver of poor healthcare outcomes.
and smoking, which I specifically mentioned, and teen birth rates. I mean of course the biggest one is obesity since heart disease is the leading cause of death.
Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> BUT my claim is that you have MORE monopolies in (certain) unregulated markets. I can very well be wrong...do you have any evidence to that point? Not to be too cheeky, but do you have any evidence to support your claim that we would have more monopolies without government intervention? If you look back through U.S. history, how many monopolies has the government actually broken up? Not many. And I don't think any…
> Not to be too cheeky, but do you have any evidence to support your claim that we would have more monopolies without government intervention? I just posted elsewhere in these comments on that, but basically: Hearst, US Steel, Microsoft, plus lots of potential abuse that is prevented. (You're implying that tariffs supported the US Steel monopoly - I won't argue. But it didn't create the monopoly, and it didn't create…
How could MSFT have gained its monopoly position if anyone were allowed to distribute Windows without paying MSFT a cent? How about if they couldn't enforce patents on the industry at all? There couldn't be a more clear case of government being required for a monopoly to form than any intellectual property company.
I'm not quite as familiar with US Steel, but I do know that one of the primary reasons they became so big was because they were fully integrated through the entire production process. A substantial part of that was controlling the mode of transportation for heavy goods, railroad. That history of rail in our country is wrought with examples of government granted monopolies right from the beginning of the trans-continental railroad.
I know virtually nothing about Hearst, but it was a news/media company right? So that should definitely fall under the same category of intellectual property.
Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I thought I was pretty clear: "Those who talk about "US-style right-wing libertarianism" should realize that this is a too simplistic label as Rothbard tried to say decades ago." It is a too simplistic label for libertarianism as a whole . It is a perfectly viable lable when you want to talk about "US-style right-wing libertarianism" - most people instantly understand roughly what that refers to, so the label serve…
>...It is a perfectly viable lable when you want to talk about "US-style right-wing libertarianism" - most people instantly understand roughly what that refers to, so the label serves its purpose. Obviously not. People have a rough understanding of "right wing" - with the election of Trump they think about Breitbart and various "economic nationalism" groups and various authoritarians who want to limit social freedoms…
> Obviously not.
Really? I don't you've made that case at all. My experience is far from that. Maybe that's the case in the US, but in Europe at least the right still encompass a wide range of ideologies that are mostly far more nuanced than that.
> Again, you are using a one dimensional view of political thought when you say "on both sides of the spectrum".
Read again. There is a one-dimensional spectrum that people like assign political movements to, and the main point I've been making in this thread has been exactly that the formation of US style right-wing libertarianism explicitly was an exercise in recognising that this was insufficient, and that while right-libertarians to a large extent are aligned with the "traditional right" in terms of economic views, they rarely are when it comes to social views, and there there is potential for alliances with libertarians on the left.
> And again - if the people who label, reject that label as being misleading, it isn't a good label (unless your goal is simply to marginalize them.)
I don't know what you are trying to say here. I am a left-libertarian. I do use that label, and I don't reject it. I've spoken to many right-libertarians, and they all self-identified as right-wing and libertarians, and don't reject it. I've spoken to many left-libertarians, and they've all self-identified as left wing and seen themselves as clearly separate from the right. I've never met someone who called themselves libertarian who didn't have a very clear idea of whether or not they considered themselves left- or right.
There is a very clear distinction, generally: Those who favour strong private property rights tends to clearly define themselves as right-wing and favour the Austrian school when in comes to economy. Many of them are extremely hostile to socialism, while most left libertarians considers themselves socialist, Marxist and/or anarchist.
As such the left and right labels here are not hypothetical.
Also because of who people consider viable alliance partners or alternatives to vote for. I would opt for (non-libertarian) social democrats over right-libertarians, for example, and would opt for (non-libertarian) classical liberals over right-libertarians too, because while I agree more with right-libertarians on social issues, I see their economic views as disastrous and immoral and in starker opposition to liberty than social-democratic policies even though the latter involve more government regulation, because of which areas they want to regulate and how.
As such the left/right axis is still deeply relevant, though it's important for libertarians to realise that in specific areas, the most likely ally might be on the other side of the spectrum.
> Well it is good we agree on something, but you continue to use this one dimensional model throughout.
Because it is still relevant, given that it is what people are familiar with and define themselves by, no matter how flawed it is.
In 25 years of discussing this with people, you're the first person to get hung up in this use of left vs. right.
Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, I'm done debating this with you. You seem to have an unfalisfiable belief that our mediocre health outcomes are due to problems in our general culture. In other words, all of the good outcomes are due to us having the highest quality healthcare, and all of the bad outcomes are due to culture. I disagree. I believe that a) our healthcare system is part of our general culture and b) deficiencies in our healthcare s…
US obesity rate: 36% Swedish obesity rate: 18% US life expectancy: 79 years Sweden life expectancy: 81 years It is falsifiable. When I talk about culture I'm talking about things like smoking rates, obesity rates, etc. These things are totally unrelated to whether or not you pay a copay to go to a doctor. If you think our relative life expectancy has nothing to do with our obesity rates, then I'm sorry but you just d…
You may be right. But our government still pays into healthcare as much as Sweden, but then we pay out of pocket on top of it. How much marginal value is gained from the huge expense?