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Bringing back the Somali shilling

jpkoning.blogspot.com

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Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#131

Post by logicchains »

beefield wrote: post #53
BurningFrog wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libertarians typically want a small state that uses its monopoly on violence solely to protect citizens from aggression.

I have never quite understood why libertarians think that is the precise optimum for the amount of government activities and their "theft" of my money via taxation. Don't libertarians understand or accept that there are market failures that government is needed to solve? Or do they think that in every case government makes more bad than good when trying to solve market failures? Or is it just that freedom of individu…

>In which case I must wonder by what logic it is important for a government to stop me being killed by another person but not at all important to stop me being killed by a market failure?

Many forms of libertianism are deontological (based on principles, e.g. "natural rights"[1]) rather than utilitarian (based on ends). A libertarian might believe that if they obtain something either by finding/making it or accepting it from someone else, potentially in exchange for providing some good/service to that other person, then they have a natural right to that property. This means they'd view it immoral for anyone else to take it off them without their consent, and hence oppose taxation. Some Christians are also libertarian for this reason: they take "Thou Shalt Not Steal" as an absolute, not making exception for people acting on behalf of others.

Such Libertarians generally support only "negative rights", not "positive rights". A negative right means the right to have other people not interfere with you (e.g. hurt you or take your property), while a positive right is a right to have other people do something for you (e.g. feed you when you're hungry or pull you out of a river when you're drowning). Many concepts of "market failure" only make sense when assuming the existence of positive rights: that the other people/the market owes you something or should work towards some specific end. Libertarians would hence not necessarily consider these a failure: from that perspective, the immoral thing is someone killing you, not necessarily you dying per se, if no-one is actively trying to harm you. There are also some forms of market failure, however, "negative externalities", that many libertarians do believe in, and the proposed solution is to strengthen property rights (so e.g. class action lawsuits are allowed against any kind of polluters, and unlike the BP lawsuit the government cannot cap the payout).

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#132

Post by afsina »

lostcolony wrote: post #124
whatshisface wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making the strange assumption that the federal government will always be be more in line with your own political views than your state government. After all, at the end of the day a hard-right state is less bad for liberals than a hard-right country, because only in the first case can they try to find a job in California.

Yes, he's assuming the government will not be terrible to live under. But saying "at least with local government, terrible governments will be localized" is a copout. Can we have non-terrible governments? If so, it makes sense to try and ensure everyone has one.

To me this is like telling "Government will be right for everyone this time, if we tweak the parameters right". Applying rules of Empiricism to large scale governing will just make things worse as long as people have very different world views.

Besides, locality has inherent advantages such as familiarity, cultural similarity and accountability. So at least some local governments will be probably suitable for your liking.

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#133

Post by afsina »

driverdan wrote: post #127
afsina wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What libertarians would probably want first in Iraq is to let ethnic and religious groups to have the control of their own territory and abolish or weaken the central government as much as possible. Honestly this approach would at least alleviate the current turmoil there. Consider Syria, Iraq and Yemen for this.

Libertarians are anti-interventionist. They wouldn't have invaded Iraq and wouldn't have manipulated their government.

Yes, that is why I used the word "want" not "do".

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#134

Post by barrkel »

gumby wrote: post #118

> As I pointed out in my old post, there's an old and nagging question in monetary economics that has never been satisfactorily answered: why is fiat money valuable? I've always been surprised by questions like this. Why is (say) gold valuable? The gold supply fluctuates unpredictably depending on gold strikes and without any consideration for creation of underlying economic value (so is inherently inflationary, exce…

Money: medium of exchange, store of value, unit of account.

Intrinsic utility doesn't really enter into it; the value of money is inherently social, because it relates to other people. You're either going to exchange it for something now, exchange it for something in the future, or hypothesize an exchange to put a numeric value on something concrete, a number you can compare with other numbers.

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#135

Post by soundwave106 »

olalonde wrote: post #101
ghostDancer wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

North Korea is an absolut monarchy not a communist country, even if they say so, they also say they are a people's democratic republic and it's clear they're not.

Just like Somalia isn't a libertarian country, which was parent's point.

To me Somalia and the attempts at "communist" systems demonstrate what I find to be a flaw that actually is common to both philosophies. As both purist libertarian and purist communist philosophy share a skepticism of authority, leadership, and power / social structures (even if the end goal is different).

Yet humans naturally gravitate towards tribalism. Which means at some point, naturally, leadership and power structures will emerge from any group. Whether it be the warlord-oriented chaos of Somalia or the often awful authoritarianism Lenin-inspired states seem to drift towards.

Since power naturally corrupts, I'd rather see people focused more on systems and practices that mitigate corruption at the top, e.g. proper checks and balances, transparency, etc. Wishing power structures away is unfortunately going against human nature, in my opinion.

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#136

Post by ue_ »

lucozade wrote: post #123
ue_ wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about revolutionary Catalonia? Besides that, I think it's disingenuous to claim that it is a problem with the Communist idea; Marxism is a method of analysis, and that analysis can be applied to itself to find out what the problems were, and what is necessary to move past them. It's also worth noting that almost all the states you are referring to as monarchies or oligarchies are founded on the principle of Marx…

Let's say I had a software vendor who coded everything in Brainfuck and, historically, had only produced applications that had failed catastrophically. Now, let's say they try to sell me an application that they haven't written yet. But it'll be fine, they say, because they've decided not to use Brainfuck though they won't divulge what they will use. Exactly how unwise would I be to dismiss them? I mean they might pr…

I don't think that's a valid analogy; firstly, you yourself can involve yourself or be privy to the academic discussions about the future of Communist ideology, Slavoj Zizek for example writes about it, as do a few modern day Marxian economists right up to Cockshott et al. and even incorporating neo-Ricardians. Secondly, the software product hasn't been made yet, and you can decide what changes will be made. And finally, there's not just one software product (ideology), there's many of them, each with either small differences or completely different in architecture.

Don't assume, get out there and take a look if you're interested. But if you're not interested, there's no need to draw up strange analogies as if they discredit a whole massive field of literature and research going back to the fall of the USSR and even before that from internal resistance (such as from Orwell, Einstein, the leftcoms and anarchists) within the USSR. Even Lenin recognised the differences in ideology, famously allowing a funeral procession for anarcho-Communist Peter Kropotkin to continue, despite his supporters being vocal opponents of the Bolsheviks. And what of the Mensheviks, too?

There is too much to dismiss, at least in my opinion. Though I admit that if we want to continue with Marxism-Leninism, a specific variant of Marxism which is a specific variant of German Socialism which is a specific variant of Communism, then we should investigate that. If not, then we shouldn't dismiss the rest of Marxism, the rest of Socialism and the rest of Communism, anarchism, egoist anarchism and even post-left (Stirnerite) anarchism, or even Georgism or social democracy. If you're going to start dismissing Communism, where do you stop with it?

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#137

Post by runeks »

lmm wrote: post #104
runeks wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to incentivize and enable people in order to get them to change. It's also possible the incentive will come by itself: if advocates of commodity money (money with an inflexible supply/stock) are right, inflation will occur in traditional currencies sooner or later. No better incentive to store your value in bitcoins than seeing the value you have in traditional currency slowly erode. Time will tell whether…

I figure cryptocurrencies work like collectibles, which also naturally deflate. Compare artworks or antiques or old wine. What I've never quite understood is how those things align with investment. If I have $1000, can I predictably make more money by buying $1000 worth of art than $1000 worth of stock? If so, why? Buffet's "you can fondle the cube, but it will not respond" would seem to stand, but at the same time a…

If stuff gets cheaper to produce, and there's a fixed stock of money, I see no other outcome than deflation. In this case prices simply reflect that goods can be produced more efficiently.

So, if USD inflation is, say, 5% and bond yields also 5%, then you would indeed make no money by holding USD-denominated bonds. But I would argue the problem is with USD inflation in this hypothetical, since bonds also yielded 5% during the international gold standard and yet we had 2% deflation.

I would also argue that money is a sort of collectible; the only difference is that it's highly liquid. A painting might very well increase in value, but if you need to sell it quickly (as opposed to waiting six months for the right buyer) you can easily end up losing money -- if you can even find a buyer on short notice.

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#138

Post by brewdad »

lowpro wrote: post #23
redblacktree wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Somalia is way worse than high-functioning governments like the United States Yet my libertarian friends on Facebook all seem to want to tear the enitre government down.

There is a difference between Anarchy and libertarianism. Most libertarians want less government, not no government.

But less government tends to lead to no government, or right back to where we are today depending on how strongly held one's beliefs are. Good luck finding two people to agree on what exactly should be cut on the road to "less".

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#140

Post by hashkb »

gumby wrote: post #118

> As I pointed out in my old post, there's an old and nagging question in monetary economics that has never been satisfactorily answered: why is fiat money valuable? I've always been surprised by questions like this. Why is (say) gold valuable? The gold supply fluctuates unpredictably depending on gold strikes and without any consideration for creation of underlying economic value (so is inherently inflationary, exce…

> let's not forget that you "create" money when you use your credit card and "destroy" it when you pay your bill

Can you elaborate on that? My understanding is: when you swipe your credit card, Visa loans you money and pays it to the merchant. When you pay your bill, Visa gets money from your bank. How is that creation or destruction of money? Seems like value is conserved to me.

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