491–500 of 575 posts
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A billion ways. Here's just one: run at a loss until your competition is driven out of business. Then raise prices once you're a monopoly again. (This isn't a hypothetical either, but a standard practice.)
This doesn't work. You can cut prices and lose money until the upstart firms go out of business, but you cannot raise them afterwards or guess what will happen?
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Most libertarians (including myself) think it's a bad idea to have governments 'compete' with private companies for a variety of reasons, including: - It's unlikely that the government will regulate itself and its competitors fairly, and it's generally unlikely that the government will hold itself to account (as it often does for private entities). - The government is likely to set up barriers to entry, to prevent co…
But that's crude. There's an arbitrary taxonomy of "government" and "not government" and "not government" is under any condition whatsoever, looked at only as good faith actors while "government" regardless of any context, evidence, or institutional oversight is only seen as bad faith actors. This isn't reality, it's just some artificial classification system placed upon society. It's a hypothetical thought experimen…
Municipalities organized as corporations are not unique to California, but the "inc." at the end of the name doesn't change anything. A government is an organization granted a monopoly (or oligopoly) on the legitimate use of force in a designated geographic area. For a discussion on the philosophical problems with governments as such, I recommend reading "The Problem of Political Authority" by Michael Huemer.
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In deontological terms, taxation is not theft, because theft is the unlawful taking of property, and taxation is lawful. To argue otherwise requires a fundamental rejection of the legitimacy of the state, and most people are not going to accept that premise, which is why libertarian rhetoric in practice tends to rely on casuistic arguments about waste-fraud-and-abuse, red tape, and so on.
and taxation is lawful. And that notion is what many of us reject. To argue otherwise requires a fundamental rejection of the legitimacy of the state Not exactly, although plenty of Libertarians do reject the legitimacy of the State out of hand. I find the issue to be more nuanced than that. If you hold, as Bastiat did, that "the law" (aka "the State") can be something like - but no more than - the "collective extens…
Also, Lysander Spooner literally is against private property. He was part of the Socialist Internationale. The validity of his rejection of the state on basis of unjustified hierarchy also led to his rejection of capitalism on grounds of unjustified hierarchy. Instead, he was a mutualist. You know, the political economy for which one of it's foundational texts is What is property, which coined the slogan : "La propriété, c'est le vol", by Proudhon.
Bastiat attempted to use this essentially anarchist analysis of the state, but exempt private property from it by inventing some weird standard of government action that has no deeper justification and is pretty much axiomatic.
This is a huge simplification, but if you want more detail you can read "Why Anarcho-capitalism is not Anarchism" either on the Anarchist Library or, if you use Debian, via apt-get install anarchism.
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> I would disagree. Billionaires and mega companies are able to pioneer and validate ideas that smaller companies may not be able to due to financial or operational restraints. Sorry, you mean that billionaires and megacorps are able to profit off of ideas pioneered and validated by publically-funded research institutes? I don't see how their inability to do so would be a loss to society.
What would be your idea to ensure scaled, cost-effective production of the ideas that come from these institutions? And we can’t consider an idea validated until it is brought to market.
I see you've designed your test to guarantee the result you want.
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This is saying basically the same thing in a different language. > In this method, yes, the actuary calculates the value of all benefits to be paid out in the future, due to past and future service, and then subtracts out the value of the future accruals, to calculate the actuarial liability. I.e., the USPS has to raise the money to fund liabilities for 75 years, and it had to do so in 10 years, which essentially mea…
No, it's very different. Your cite says they had to put aside money for all their pension costs over the next 75 years. Including people they haven't even hired yet. My cite says that they had to calculate pension costs payable over the next 75 years that they already incurred. That's a much smaller number and matches the requirements for private companies.
You can find the explanation in several articles, for example:
"[the law] requires the self-supporting U.S. Postal Service, which receives not one dime in taxpayer subsidies, to fully fund its retirees’ health benefits for 75 years into the future. It also requires that money be set aside over a 10-year period, at a rate of more than $5 billion per year.
That means the postal service is now paying for the future health care of retirees it has not yet hired, and who in some cases have not yet been born. No other public or private company in the nation bears any kind of financial burden like that.
Even worse, none of that money is truly being set aside. Instead, it is going directly into the U.S. government’s general fund, and it’s being spent on current government operations. The set-aside is a theoretical accounting gimmick. Those future retirement liabilities are actually being added to the national debt."
https://roanoke.com/news/local/casey-the-most-insane-law-by-...
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But that's crude. There's an arbitrary taxonomy of "government" and "not government" and "not government" is under any condition whatsoever, looked at only as good faith actors while "government" regardless of any context, evidence, or institutional oversight is only seen as bad faith actors. This isn't reality, it's just some artificial classification system placed upon society. It's a hypothetical thought experimen…
I can give you a reading list to illustrate the libertarian views on public choice and government intervention (perhaps starting with non-libertarian James C Scott's "Seeing Like a State", and including Bryan Caplan's "The Myth of the Rational Voter"), but I have to say that we're unlikely to convince each other (for reasons described by Jonathan Haidt in "The Righteous Mind"). Municipalities organized as corporation…
explicit, implicit, loose, tight, chartered, unchartered, natural?
> granted
by whom, to whom, under what authority, given by what, enforced by what and applicable to what and whom
> a monopoly (or oligopoly)
determined and defined by whom? enforced by whom?
> on the legitimate
same question
> use of
arbitrary, restrained, indefinite, transparent, accountable, proportionate? what are we talking about here?
> force
define force. is it physical force? psychological? threats? persuasion? What about the physical force in the seizing of property?
> in a designated
defined by whom? universally acknowledged? how? by what mechanism? where?
> geographic
physical? virtual? what types of legal fictions?
> area
contiguous? porous? uniform in space and in time?
I can use that and make it apply to just about anything by answering those questions differently. That's why it's utterly arbitrary.
I've read your authors - they use superficial theoretical chalkboard constructed non-realities to scaffold up their taxonomies. It's not real.
That's why this style of libertarianism has exactly zero agreed upon historical examples. Because they aren't describing reality. Their supposedly "concrete" definitions conveniently move and morph based on the context.
The liberals look at europe and say "yeah, that's pretty much what we mean"
The socialists look at cuba, ussr, and china and say "well, ok, we want things to be less brutal, but ok, yes this matches our definition (shameface)"
The anarchist look at the paris commune of 1871, the Seattle general strike of 1919, occupy wall street, etc and say "yes, this is what we mean".
The (honest) conservatives look at the middle east and turkey and say "yes, this is what we want, only with a different religion and more equality of opportunity"
But the libertarians are just there with their chalkboard because there is no agreed reality that undergirds it. The largest consensus I've found is Friedman's "The Miracle of Chile", which took place under a literal dictatorship, but because their terms are arbitrarily defined, this isn't actually a problem. A military police state that seized people in their sleep and rolled tanks through the street somehow gets shoe-horned into the examples section ... that's how free-floating the categories are.
There's a different form of libertarianism that doesn't have such issues: "When a choice need be made, always tend towards individual freedom". This one, although not free from issues, can't fall victim to the deck-stacking category dance and purely arbitrary construction of the force/monopoly/government style.
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Its easy to point at a greedy billionaire who wants to ruin [insert public service here] so that he can squeeze out another dollar for himself. But have you considered that they _genuinely_ belive that minimal government and more privatization leads to overall better results? It might just be that they have good intensions, that they really wish for a better outcome for all. I don't share that view, but i do think th…
This is tough because I don't want to straw man them, but I'm not sure I've ever heard a hardcore libertarian really argue that their policies would be better for the whole of society. Generally it seems like they think that minimal government leads to better results in a social Darwinism or "get rid of the parasites" sense. I've also never really seen them seriously recon with the question of what you do with people…
It absolutely is intellectual negligence, and there's nothing wrong with pointing it out. The standard answer trotted out is "charity" which is disingenuous at best, and completely impractical at worst.
There's nothing wrong with pointing out the logical flaws of people who secretly wish they were feudal lords or a pater familias in Ancient Rome, and wildly overestimate what their position or level of success in a theoretical 'Libertarian Society' would be.
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umm, no. it's illegal. a competing post service was launched, with variable rates, and the gov shut it down. by law, your rate has to be flat.
What are you on about? UPS and FedEx will happily charge you more to deliver to high cost locations, whereas getting a 50lb parcel overnighted from one low cost location to another is usually around $30 if you have a volume rate. There is hefty price discrimination against high cost to serve customers baked into UPS and FedEx's model, and smaller couriers like DHL and Amazon Shipping happily blacklist large parts of…
you should educate yourself on the point before arguing such a strong strawman. this battle has been going on for over 150 years, and it has nothing to do with parcel service. start here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Letter_Mail_Company
that's what i and the whole country is 'on about.' welcome to the conversation.
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I can give you a reading list to illustrate the libertarian views on public choice and government intervention (perhaps starting with non-libertarian James C Scott's "Seeing Like a State", and including Bryan Caplan's "The Myth of the Rational Voter"), but I have to say that we're unlikely to convince each other (for reasons described by Jonathan Haidt in "The Righteous Mind"). Municipalities organized as corporation…
> A government is an organization explicit, implicit, loose, tight, chartered, unchartered, natural? > granted by whom, to whom, under what authority, given by what, enforced by what and applicable to what and whom > a monopoly (or oligopoly) determined and defined by whom? enforced by whom? > on the legitimate same question > use of arbitrary, restrained, indefinite, transparent, accountable, proportionate? what are…
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when the cost of his letter is 10x more than he was charged, and the of mine is 10x less than i was charged, i don't pay more? seriously you don't understand? wow. we go to dinner. you get a side salad, and i get a steak and some wine. we split the bill down the middle. cool? i'm not trying to diss you. i want to be friends with you.
It’s more beneficial to have a flat postage rate that doesn’t price people out of living in certain areas simply due to postage rates. First class mail is an essential service.
soo how that works?
locations have different expenses. farms have cheap land. they have expensive delivery cost. taking money from people paying high rent to subsidize farmers is not 'benefitial' to people living in cities. it's benefitial to farmers. how about everyone pay their own expenses, and we don't shuffle around other people's costs. it's not benefitial to me to pay for a farmer getting fifty junk mail catalogs a week.