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Life as a Service

jacquesmattheij.com

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Re: Life as a Service

#111

Post by alex-g »

donall wrote: post #91
tmh88j wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend's girlfriend is a public defender and has dealt with many of them. If anyone here has not heard of them or knows very little, I would suggest doing some investigating. I don't have respect for them (mainly because the overwhelming majority don't have a clue of the legal system and obligations they have as a citizen yet argue obscure laws), but it will provide some entertainment and a very strange but intere…

This is certainly interesting stuff. Can you recommend an article that deconstructs their motivations and/or comments on whether or not what they're doing is actually legal?

This is a decent start: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Freeman

Re: Life as a Service

#112

Post by endersshadow »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #104
yummyfajitas wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rights should be based on the veil of ignorance principle - the weak should be protected and the strong should pay for they are one car crash away from welfare. Your moral values seems to hold that individuals have few rights, and that collectively we should operate from the principle of infinite risk aversion (i.e., the Rawlsian veil of ignorance). Great - we all agree that if these are your values, Libertarianism i…

Somalia is, or at least was, a land without a government. If libertarians or randians are correct, it should be a land flowing with milk and honey. Of course, this is not the case. At least, that is how the argument goes. I'm a former libertarian of the anarcho-capatilist-rand flavor, and I think there are much better arguments against that stance than somalia.

Libertarianism is not anarchism, nor does it ever purport to be. In fact, libertarianism holds that a government should be in place, and that its job is to protect the rights (defined by libertarianism--most often, the Bill of Rights is pointed to) of its citizens.

Re: Life as a Service

#113

Post by mibbitier »

king_jester wrote: post #110
mibbitier wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really the same IMHO. Giving people access to healthcare and fire protection doesn't create any bad incentives. You can't 'use' healthcare for monetary gain. Giving people food, money etc, gives people incentives to not bother working. Also I would say that a national health service ensures that the public is 'healthy'. Which affects us all, as diseases are transmitted etc. Just as the fire services ensures fires…

> Giving people food, money etc, gives people incentives to not bother working. I find this kind of attitude totally bizarre. People do not stop having output just because they have food security. The notion that giving away food is bad because of work is a very capitalistic idea that actually serves to perpetuate hunger and starvation.

Giving people food and welfare, makes them dependent on the state. Once you're dependent, you have no incentive to progress through your own hard work.

Giving handouts does far more harm than good. It keeps people down.

Re: Life as a Service

#114

Post by swombat »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #96
confluence wrote: post #84

I've made up my own law of selfish libertarianism - if you'll indulge me: > It's only a liability or an entitlement until you yourself need it - then it's a fucking right. For example being a young white male born into a middle class western family affords you the ability to state "all I need is contract law - everything else is just impinging on my rights and forcing me to take on obligations I don't appear to benef…

Rights should be based on the veil of ignorance principle - the weak should be protected and the strong should pay for they are one car crash away from welfare. Your moral values seems to hold that individuals have few rights, and that collectively we should operate from the principle of infinite risk aversion (i.e., the Rawlsian veil of ignorance). Great - we all agree that if these are your values, Libertarianism i…

Your moral values seems to hold that individuals have few rights, and that collectively we should operate from the principle of infinite risk aversion (i.e., the Rawlsian veil of ignorance). Great - we all agree that if these are your values, Libertarianism is not the political philosophy for you.

Individuals have no rights. Rights only exist within the context of a group. Without a group, you're not talking about rights, you're just talking about ability.

Re: Life as a Service

#115

Post by elemenohpee »

Grunnt wrote: post #29

Life is not a service. You did not sign a contract. Not everything is a business agreement. Individualism is not the ultimate value. I guess that is what bugs me the most about this article: the idea that seems to underlie it that humans are all rational beings that are somehow unconnected to society. Or at least the idea that it is morally desirable for this to be the case. I do not agree with this. It is individual…

s/anarchism/libertarianism/

While there are certainly strains of individualist anarchism, the dominant tradition has been that of socialism, which stresses the importance of community and social relations. You seem to be confusing the maxim of "no rulers" with "no rules".

Re: Life as a Service

#116

Post by jacquesm »

confluence wrote: post #84

I've made up my own law of selfish libertarianism - if you'll indulge me: > It's only a liability or an entitlement until you yourself need it - then it's a fucking right. For example being a young white male born into a middle class western family affords you the ability to state "all I need is contract law - everything else is just impinging on my rights and forcing me to take on obligations I don't appear to benef…

I do not subscribe to the libertarian point of view. I considered 'armoring' the post against this exact accusation but it was long enough as it was without that but I guess I should have seen it coming.

You make a mistake in that you think that I disagree with the actual laws, I do with some of them (specifically: the obligation to buy certain products or services without the right to negotiate) but on the whole I agree with the 'package' and it is write there for you to read.

Selfishness doesn't enter my book, I gave away plenty of goods and money in my life to people that needed my things more than I did (or made the case that they did). In fact, I probably gave away more than I'm left with, I wonder if you can make the same statement.

Yes, the weak should be protected from the strong and I'm weak in plenty of ways. But I have this curiosity about why things are the way they are and if we can do better than this.

Re: Life as a Service

#117

Post by gwern »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #96
confluence wrote: post #84

I've made up my own law of selfish libertarianism - if you'll indulge me: > It's only a liability or an entitlement until you yourself need it - then it's a fucking right. For example being a young white male born into a middle class western family affords you the ability to state "all I need is contract law - everything else is just impinging on my rights and forcing me to take on obligations I don't appear to benef…

Rights should be based on the veil of ignorance principle - the weak should be protected and the strong should pay for they are one car crash away from welfare. Your moral values seems to hold that individuals have few rights, and that collectively we should operate from the principle of infinite risk aversion (i.e., the Rawlsian veil of ignorance). Great - we all agree that if these are your values, Libertarianism i…

Libertarians have defended Somalia after people tried to use it as a reductio; quite explicitly, too, consider Leeson's "Better Off Stateless: Somalia Before and After" (http://peterleeson.com/better_off_stateless.pdf) which is pretty much what it sounds like. Hence, bringing up Somalia is perfectly fair.

Re: Life as a Service

#118

Post by swombat »

enraged_camel wrote: post #109
Jare wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US spends more on its military than the next ten countries combined, so there's a good chance it's possible to have effective national defense for an order of magnitude less than we currently pay But national defense (or really, defense of any kind) is about more than just the ability to successfully repeal an attack; at certain scale, it's about ensuring that nobody even tries to lift a finger against you. And…

>>But national defense (or really, defense of any kind) is about more than just the ability to successfully repeal an attack; at certain scale, it's about ensuring that nobody even tries to lift a finger against you. And then there's the 'implied offensive' angle where others fear what you might do. We don't need a huge military to have that effect. We already have nukes.

No one believes that the US is going to use its nukes in all but the most dire circumstances.

Does Iran fear that the US will nuke it? No. But it does fear a traditional war.

Re: Life as a Service

#119

Post by confluence »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #96
confluence wrote: post #84

I've made up my own law of selfish libertarianism - if you'll indulge me: > It's only a liability or an entitlement until you yourself need it - then it's a fucking right. For example being a young white male born into a middle class western family affords you the ability to state "all I need is contract law - everything else is just impinging on my rights and forcing me to take on obligations I don't appear to benef…

Rights should be based on the veil of ignorance principle - the weak should be protected and the strong should pay for they are one car crash away from welfare. Your moral values seems to hold that individuals have few rights, and that collectively we should operate from the principle of infinite risk aversion (i.e., the Rawlsian veil of ignorance). Great - we all agree that if these are your values, Libertarianism i…

Rights don't exist for individuals period. Groups define rights not individuals. Groups do so in their own self interest which we must temper to protect the weak from the strong - to do otherwise merely leads to revolution or collapse. If you want those - have it at - somewhere else.

Re: Life as a Service

#120

Post by pi18n »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #96
confluence wrote: post #84

I've made up my own law of selfish libertarianism - if you'll indulge me: > It's only a liability or an entitlement until you yourself need it - then it's a fucking right. For example being a young white male born into a middle class western family affords you the ability to state "all I need is contract law - everything else is just impinging on my rights and forcing me to take on obligations I don't appear to benef…

Rights should be based on the veil of ignorance principle - the weak should be protected and the strong should pay for they are one car crash away from welfare. Your moral values seems to hold that individuals have few rights, and that collectively we should operate from the principle of infinite risk aversion (i.e., the Rawlsian veil of ignorance). Great - we all agree that if these are your values, Libertarianism i…

I was also told Somalia might be a good choice for me when I was arguing against widespread government surveillance.

It's a strawman used by the intellectually lazy to posit that anyone who disagrees with sprawling government that has its fingers in everything must necessarily prefer anarchy, a form of government of which they have a quantum of anecdotal evidence showing it is not ideal.

I didn't see the original essay as Randian, did you? I thought the argument was that these things aren't ideal and there's no way to opt out; in fact for some people there's no way to opt out of even their native country.

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