Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

axisofeasy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 345 posts

Re: Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

#291

Post by StuntPope »

crazygringo wrote: post #284
natechols wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the problem is these labels mean different things to different people, and can express anything from a vague philosophical preference to an absolutist ideology. Many of my peer group (myself included) have broadly libertarian sympathies but are also willing to pay for a more generous welfare state if that's the price of freedom. What label applies in that case? Left-libertarian? Small-government liber…

That's just liberal. Liberals want to take care of people (more generous welfare state -- universal health care etc.), but still believe in the market. I'm curious why you don't consider yourself a liberal, or what ideology you think is mixed up in it that you reject?

I would say classical liberalism of yore is closer to libertarianism today.

The big difference is positive versus negative rights. Libertarians and classical liberals believe in the latter (the right to be left alone, to live your life as you please, to marry who you want, to be gay, to be straight, etc)

Liberalism today, is all about positive rights, entitlements.

But the objection libertarians have against positive rights is that a) the state itself produces nothing, so b) everything the state gives to somebody has to be taken away from somebody else.

It gets more pernicious today in that "Conservative" and "Liberal" as delineated by the 2-party system in the US is perceived to be largely farcical bickering over very narrowly constrained policy tracks. Both parties are pro-war, anti-civil liberties, Big Government oligarchs.

Hope this helps.

Re: Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

#292

Post by ianai »

HideousKojima wrote: post #266
ianai wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not an option. Apparently hospitals get their stock from essentially the same places as the rest of us. Like not the target down the road but the warehouse target gets its stock of ppe.

Yes, and those warehouses halted shipments of PPE to retailers like Target at the start of the pandemic

And it still wasn’t going to be enough.

Re: Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

#293

Post by StuntPope »

crazygringo wrote: post #286
StuntPope wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that calling libertarianism an extremist ideology is a gross misunderstanding of it. My guess is everything you think you know about libertarianism, was what you were told by somebody who hates it. Full-on anarchism, or anarcho-capitalism, ok, that's a hard sell. Libertarianism? It's basically "never initiate aggression" and "live and let live". That's about it. I don't know what's extreme about that.

> It's basically... "live and let live". That's about it. I don't know what's extreme about that. You don't? Live and let live means, in practice, let die. Libertarianism says, if you had bad luck and are poor and you get a disease you can't pay to cure, you die. Libertarianism is the extreme of selfishness. "Live and let live" means "I've got no obligation to anybody else, screw 'em." In modern society, that's incre…

I think you cared to have an open mind about it, you would find that in practice, libertarians will step up and help those in need just as much any anybody else would. The extent to which people will do so is more dependent on their own moral compass and ability to help others than by their political ideology.

What libertarians are against is coercion and force. They don't want to be forced to do what somebody else thinks is morally proper, in most cases for yet another person. That way lies tyranny.

The concept of selfishness in the libertarian sense is "put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others".

Most libertarians are pretty generous givers in terms of both charity, emotional support, helping hands and community. They just dislike having a gun to their heads to be that way.

Re: Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

#294

Post by HideousKojima »

ianai wrote: post #292
HideousKojima wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and those warehouses halted shipments of PPE to retailers like Target at the start of the pandemic

And it still wasn’t going to be enough.

It's not like they pulled existing stock in consumer retail outlets off the shelf, so I don't see how lying to the public about mask efficacy had any significant effect on the supply for healthcare workers

Re: Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

#295

Post by phatfish »

kelnos wrote: post #275
tzs wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about improving education, building functional (and trusted) institutions, and having more independent (non-profit driven) media? They do not work, because the time and cost to create and widely disseminate falsehoods is much less than the time and cost to refute those falsehoods. See "Firehose of falsehood" [1], which is an apt name for what happens now thanks to the internet and social media greatly lowering…

> They do not work, because the time and cost to create and widely disseminate falsehoods is much less than the time and cost to refute those falsehoods. It's not about countering falsehoods, it's about giving people the tools to think critically and not be duped by falsehoods in the first place.

What about the people that don't care about critical thinking? Where an idea has come from (or the person advocating for it) often seems far more important than whether it's reasonable or true.

There is a societal change that needs to take place to fix that. Not caring about truth is a sign that a person has given up, it feels like a lot of people have given up.

Re: Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

#296

Post by natechols »

crazygringo wrote: post #284
natechols wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the problem is these labels mean different things to different people, and can express anything from a vague philosophical preference to an absolutist ideology. Many of my peer group (myself included) have broadly libertarian sympathies but are also willing to pay for a more generous welfare state if that's the price of freedom. What label applies in that case? Left-libertarian? Small-government liber…

That's just liberal. Liberals want to take care of people (more generous welfare state -- universal health care etc.), but still believe in the market. I'm curious why you don't consider yourself a liberal, or what ideology you think is mixed up in it that you reject?

Everyone has a different definition of "liberal". In the US in particular, it tends to be used interchangeably with "left" (often in ways that wildly contradict the original meaning). I don't mind being called a liberal, but the fact that I don't even agree with your definition is a good example of why I tend not to label myself that way.

Re: Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

#297

Post by crazygringo »

StuntPope wrote: post #291
crazygringo wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just liberal. Liberals want to take care of people (more generous welfare state -- universal health care etc.), but still believe in the market. I'm curious why you don't consider yourself a liberal, or what ideology you think is mixed up in it that you reject?

I would say classical liberalism of yore is closer to libertarianism today. The big difference is positive versus negative rights. Libertarians and classical liberals believe in the latter (the right to be left alone, to live your life as you please, to marry who you want, to be gay, to be straight, etc) Liberalism today, is all about positive rights, entitlements. But the objection libertarians have against positive…

> I would say classical liberalism of yore is closer to libertarianism today.

Of course it is. But that's not what "liberal" means anymore in everyday speech in America.

I'm well aware of Isaiah Berlin's delineation of negative and positive rights, of Robert Nozick's defense of property rights, and so on. I'm extremely well-versed in libertarianism.

That doesn't make it any less extreme. Governments have redistributed in one form or another since time immemorial through taxation. Nobody succeeds solely on their own -- we benefit from roads and schools and libraries and hospitals. So of course we take things from others (through taxes) to help everyone out, for the greater good. We're all in this together.

And here's the thing libertarians ignore: neither Locke nor Nozick ever produced any convincing justification for a natural right to property, because there isn't one. A general idea of property rights is a useful thing, but not an absolutist one. My labor is at least 1,000x more productive than it would otherwise be without society around me. Surely then I don't deserve to keep the full extra 999x just for myself? Surely I owe some of it back to the society that helps me? One way of framing this is social contract theory, from Plato to Hobbes to Rawls.

In addition, the way you characterize the modern conservative/liberal divide is inaccurate. It is abundantly clear that modern liberals are far less hawkish and far more in support of civil liberties (free speech, right to vote, equal treatment, etc.) than modern conservatives. To characterize the differences between the two as "farcical bickering" is a hugely irresponsible, counterfactual, and I would argue ultimately immoral position to take. You have to be blind to modern American to say otherwise.

Re: Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

#298

Post by jwallaceparker »

crazygringo wrote: post #286
StuntPope wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that calling libertarianism an extremist ideology is a gross misunderstanding of it. My guess is everything you think you know about libertarianism, was what you were told by somebody who hates it. Full-on anarchism, or anarcho-capitalism, ok, that's a hard sell. Libertarianism? It's basically "never initiate aggression" and "live and let live". That's about it. I don't know what's extreme about that.

> It's basically... "live and let live". That's about it. I don't know what's extreme about that. You don't? Live and let live means, in practice, let die. Libertarianism says, if you had bad luck and are poor and you get a disease you can't pay to cure, you die. Libertarianism is the extreme of selfishness. "Live and let live" means "I've got no obligation to anybody else, screw 'em." In modern society, that's incre…

> Live and let live means, in practice, let die.

I don't follow your logic.

The non-aggression principle is what's at the core of libertarianism. It's to never initiate violence against peaceful people.

Helping others voluntarily is certainly in keeping with the philosophy.

> Libertarianism says, if you had bad luck and are poor and you get a disease you can't pay to cure, you die.

No it doesn't. It says we're going to help that person who is poor or in need, but we're doing it voluntarily.

Post reply on HN