101–110 of 231 posts
What makes me sad is that a lot of people, even here, discharge Ron Paul as some sort of crazy guy without even listening to what he says. In comments to this post "thesagan" wrote that some of his ideas are "batshit crazy" as if his ideology is composed of many different unrelated parts. Not true, Ron Paul ideas are ideas of libertarianism and if you study them diligent enough, you'll eventually be used to thinking…
The internet just gets switched off or blocked in some instances, we've all seen it before. China, Iran, Egypt.
You don't control the infrastructure or the pipe in, the government does.
Even here in South Africa, I wonder at which point they will switch it off. It's not ours.
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This has been what bugs me about gun rights people. The argument about personal safety is fine, but the people who want everyone to be armed in case the government decided to show its true colors or something? Um. You don't want a firearm . You want a tank .
I dunno, there's some folks in Afghanistan and Iraq who did pretty good for themselves against our high-tech arsenal with just some old automatic rifles and homemade explosives. Vietnam, too.
The Vietcong got weapons and supplies from China and Cambodia, the Afghani insurgents got weapons and supplies from the US to fight the Soviets (including explosives [1]), and the current Iraqi insurgents get money and supplies from extremists all over the place, mostly from the Emirates (afaik).
All of these fighters did not build their own weapons and skills out of nothing.
[1] "Other CIA specialists and military officers supplied secure communications gear and trained Pakistani instructors on how to use it. Experts on psychological warfare brought propaganda and books. Demolitions experts gave instructions on the explosives needed to destroy key targets such as bridges, tunnels and fuel depots. They also supplied chemical and electronic timing devices and remote control switches for delayed bombs and rockets that could be shot without a mujaheddin rebel present at the firing site. " http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol/wtc/oblnus091401.html
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I think you're assuming that violence is somehow more profitable than no violence. I disagree. In fact, I think it's the opposite: violence is much less profitable than a non-violent solution. Violence only becomes more profitable when you have a monopoly to it: it doesn't cost you anything to use it, because you know no one is even gonna try to challenge you. On the other hand, when you don't have a monopoly, even i…
I'd agree that without a monopoly you'd have lots of deals being struck. If you're just talking about violence-suppliers, the likely equilibrium is no violence at all. But you're always fighting over stuff and, moreover, people. In all the cases I can think of, violence-suppliers would look at all the people it can extract value from, look at each other, and then combine forces to extract the most value from people.…
On a side note, libertarians call violence suppliers "private protection agencies". Reflects their nature better, since we agreed that the equilibrium status quo would be no violence.
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I recognize very well that politics is not about logic. This is why I'm very pessimistic about prospects of libertarianism and especially anarcho-capitalism. Because especially the latter has nothing to do with politics at all. Generally, I think the idea that the majority of people can vote for something and restrict freedoms of other people who opposed the idea is something completely crazy and it's so sad that a l…
> why do you think it's a bad idea to argue with a libertarian? Every time I argue with a libertarian, it's an endless series of "No True Scotsman" arguments.
See how that works? "Your argument doesn't accurately represent my viewpoint" is what both No True Scotsman and straw men are about. So rather than opting out of an argument by calling "logical fallacy" on someone, why not clear up the definitions and be sure of what each other are talking about?
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You make all these points as if it's self-evident ("to all right-thinking peoples", "no one here but us...") that he's dead wrong about them. That's not very helpful. Of course human life begins at conception--what is the combined human egg & sperm, a fish? And what's so great about NATO? The US should bear the brunt of the cost of defending Europe against whom now, exactly? The Federal Reserve came into being the sa…
> Of course human life begins at conception--what is the combined human egg & sperm, a fish? By extension any woman who suffers a miscarriage is a murderer, or worse, has a fertilized egg that fails to implant. Are you sure you want to stick with that definition? > What's so great about estate taxes? It prevents most of the money in circulation from accumulating in the hands of a very small number of individuals. It…
Like Bill Gates, the richest American? Oh wait, he didn't inherit that money. Ooops.
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Ron Paul wants to define life as starting at conception ( http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.2597: ), build a fence along the US-Mexico border ( http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll446.xml ), prevent the Supreme Court from hearing cases on the Establishment Clause or the right to privacy, permitting the return of sodomy laws and the like (a bill which he has repeatedly re-introduced) ( http://thomas.loc.g…
You make all these points as if it's self-evident ("to all right-thinking peoples", "no one here but us...") that he's dead wrong about them. That's not very helpful. Of course human life begins at conception--what is the combined human egg & sperm, a fish? And what's so great about NATO? The US should bear the brunt of the cost of defending Europe against whom now, exactly? The Federal Reserve came into being the sa…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You make all these points as if it's self-evident ("to all right-thinking peoples", "no one here but us...") that he's dead wrong about them. That's not very helpful. Of course human life begins at conception--what is the combined human egg & sperm, a fish? And what's so great about NATO? The US should bear the brunt of the cost of defending Europe against whom now, exactly? The Federal Reserve came into being the sa…
> Of course human life begins at conception--what is the combined human egg & sperm, a fish? By extension any woman who suffers a miscarriage is a murderer, or worse, has a fertilized egg that fails to implant. Are you sure you want to stick with that definition? > What's so great about estate taxes? It prevents most of the money in circulation from accumulating in the hands of a very small number of individuals. It…
With all respect, this is not "extension", but rather "gross distortion".
> It prevents most of the money in circulation from accumulating in the hands of a very small number of individuals.
What if such accumulation was just? Would it still be wrong? If yes, then why? If no, then what's the problem? Shouldn't we worry about making game rules fair, rather than making sure outcomes are "equalized"?
What makes me sad is that a lot of people, even here, discharge Ron Paul as some sort of crazy guy without even listening to what he says. In comments to this post "thesagan" wrote that some of his ideas are "batshit crazy" as if his ideology is composed of many different unrelated parts. Not true, Ron Paul ideas are ideas of libertarianism and if you study them diligent enough, you'll eventually be used to thinking…
Libertarians deeply want to believe that we live in a world where you can leave people free to transact freely in a free market, and that will maximize total value. And economic theory tells us that isn't true.
Once that ideological purity is lost to brutal reality, libertarians are stuck fighting in the mud like the rest of us: arguing over which particular bits of government intervention maximize value without much in the way of theoretical projections or empirical proof.