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Ron Paul’s Farewell Address: The Internet Can Stop Big Government

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Re: Ron Paul’s Farewell Address: The Internet Can Stop Big Government

#211

Post by hazov »

praxeologist wrote: post #204
hazov wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said I have no interest of discussing anymore. I'm not here to build a thread pointing failures in first order logic in other comments, this was my opinion and it would be better if you just accept that I do not believe in the same things as you. If you wish there are plenty of refutations of why the criticism of Austrian school about modern economics is misdirected, I believe pretty much of them do a good job, Bry…

You're a steaming pile of fallacies and non-arguments. You have an opinion, congrats. Here's a couple refutations of Caplan: http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae6_3_4.pdf http://www.mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae2_4_1.pdf You're either incapable or unwilling to have a real discussion though, so that is just for anyone else who cares.

No need to name calling. I did not called you anything, lack of respect is not something that I encountered in many austrians but you're clearly one that does not respect people apparently, wish I am wrong.

As I said in the above post I am unwilling, I have more important things to do than entering in eternal ego wars on the net.

By the way: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

EDIT: I was rude in this comment and if you felt offended I ask you to forgive me.

Either way my problem with Autrian school is that it try to rely too much on logic and methodological individualism, probabilistic CFD using some Monte Carlo methods, I'm not against first-order logic since I'm a mathematician by training and I think the Austrian use of it brought some useful and good insights into economics, my main problem is with methodological individualism, I think it does nothing to advance economics as a science, you're right that Economics is not Physics, but them ever in Physics we have Fluid dynamics and Heat transfer models that use statistics[1] because they are complex and a complete model is unforeseeable in the near future, maybe there will be a complete model, maybe not.

A macroeconomic model is just trying to approach a complex system in the same fashion which have an additional problem, it deals with humans, mind you that generally every researcher in neoclassical economics[2] is well aware that their models have some assumptions that breaks at some point, Stieglitz and Kahneman have shown some example and general equilibrium is a favorite target. It's also good to point out that not every economist is trying to use their models to recommend banks or governments what to do, Krugman made an essay in the past actually recommending economists to advise policy, not every economist is interested in this however.

I believe this is enough, if you reply I will answer one time but bear in mind that I'm not an economist.

[1]: or numerical methods, my PhD thesis was in CFD [2]: They all generally know about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticisms_of_neoclassical_econ... Generally every

Re: Ron Paul’s Farewell Address: The Internet Can Stop Big Government

#212

Post by ac132 »

ThomPete wrote: post #196
ac132 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? You don't think it's possible for 3rd party accreditation firms to exist in the physical world? Have a look at: http://www.bbb.org/

The discussion is way way bigger than that.

Ah, sorry I was actually confusing 2 separate comment threads. :-/

I see your point.

Re: Ron Paul’s Farewell Address: The Internet Can Stop Big Government

#213

Post by ac132 »

mkr-hn wrote: post #190
ac132 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said that. Please read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man What's the point of commenting if you're just going to name call and divert attention from the original conversation using straw men? If you really care about people and what's best for society you'd act differently. Granted, 2 people chatting on HN don't matter much, but why even to comment if you don't give a damn about anything other than prote…

You accused me of strawmanning and strawmanned my comment in a single post. Congratulations.

You did strawman. I never said capitalism should be unconstrained. I said a lot of things but nothing to that extent. Instead of responding to what I said, you created a straw man.

Just to clarify:

"A straw man is a type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position"

You misrepresented my position. I chastised you for not responding to what I said, but that is not the same as misrepresenting your position.

Re: Ron Paul’s Farewell Address: The Internet Can Stop Big Government

#214

Post by ThomPete »

ac132 wrote: post #212
ThomPete wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discussion is way way bigger than that.

Ah, sorry I was actually confusing 2 separate comment threads. :-/ I see your point.

I don't believe you gave any examples of that, what you did what put forward a postulate with very little weight.

With respect to health inspection. The problem is that most people don't care about health inspection as long as they don't get sick.

I.e. Yelp is useful for detecting whether people get food poisoning perhaps. It is not useful for detecting when 25 year old meat is being used which it actually is some times.

Detecting that takes quite a lot more effort.

So again the internet is good for many things and is able to disrupt a great many areas and already have. But don't make the mistake of confusing technical disrupting with political disruption.

I don't understand what me working at Square has do do with anything.

I believe in as little a government as possible. That does not mean that I believe that there should be no government at all.

Re: Ron Paul’s Farewell Address: The Internet Can Stop Big Government

#215

Post by mkr-hn »

ac132 wrote: post #213
mkr-hn wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You accused me of strawmanning and strawmanned my comment in a single post. Congratulations.

You did strawman. I never said capitalism should be unconstrained. I said a lot of things but nothing to that extent. Instead of responding to what I said, you created a straw man. Just to clarify: "A straw man is a type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position" You misrepresented my position. I chastised you for not responding to what I said, but that is not the sam…

> You did strawman

Nah

Re: Ron Paul’s Farewell Address: The Internet Can Stop Big Government

#216

Post by rayiner »

praxeologist wrote: post #204
hazov wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said I have no interest of discussing anymore. I'm not here to build a thread pointing failures in first order logic in other comments, this was my opinion and it would be better if you just accept that I do not believe in the same things as you. If you wish there are plenty of refutations of why the criticism of Austrian school about modern economics is misdirected, I believe pretty much of them do a good job, Bry…

You're a steaming pile of fallacies and non-arguments. You have an opinion, congrats. Here's a couple refutations of Caplan: http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae6_3_4.pdf http://www.mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae2_4_1.pdf You're either incapable or unwilling to have a real discussion though, so that is just for anyone else who cares.

It's pretty pointless to talk to people who reject empiricism. They're nothing more than barbarians.

Re: Ron Paul’s Farewell Address: The Internet Can Stop Big Government

#217

Post by hazov »

rayiner wrote: post #216
praxeologist wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're a steaming pile of fallacies and non-arguments. You have an opinion, congrats. Here's a couple refutations of Caplan: http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae6_3_4.pdf http://www.mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae2_4_1.pdf You're either incapable or unwilling to have a real discussion though, so that is just for anyone else who cares.

It's pretty pointless to talk to people who reject empiricism. They're nothing more than barbarians.

I actually thinks it's also pointless but sometimes I give a try to see why they think empiricism is more a evil than a good way to try to infer about the world, I edited the post to see what happens.

Re: Ron Paul’s Farewell Address: The Internet Can Stop Big Government

#218

Post by tptacek »

cpr wrote: post #208
tptacek wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like you --- and Paul --- think the purpose of the economy is to imbue value into little green pieces of paper. You'd be an idiot to trade places with your time-traveling peer from 1913. It's not that Paul's claim is "off"; it's that it's nonsensical.

Hand-waving wildly, trying to avoid the loss of purchasing power that's the inevitable result of fiat money, and ad hominem to boot. Actually, I'd be happy to trade places with someone living in 1913.

"Deal!" says the time-traveler after you offer to impoverish yourself for the sake of a religious argument about how wealth is denominated. You can look up the purchasing power disparity between the average 1913er and yourself; the difference is stark before you consider that any American homeless person in 2012 has better medical care than did Woodrow Wilson.

Time travelers tip: avoid Europe for a couple years, and boil your water.

Re: Ron Paul’s Farewell Address: The Internet Can Stop Big Government

#219

Post by snitko »

joelhaus wrote: post #157
snitko wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you still haven't come up with a monopoly example. Can you prove that monopolies would exist in a completely free market?

Think infrastructure. Consider utilities, internet, interstate highways or any similar circumstance. On a practical level, I don't see how these exist without government. The risk would be astronomical for a private entity to undertake such a massive investment that relies on negotiations with thousands of individual private property owners. However, if a private entity could pull it off, they would have extraordinar…

Your argument comes down to "but who's gonna build roads?" which is somewhat of a statist meme among libertarians. In short, it's this: roads are built by private contractors hired by the government, those contractors are paid by taxpayers money. Government acts as a middle man, which, indeed, may be necessary to coordinate the project, however it holds an ultimate monopoly for the middle man. There's no reason why one middle man should exist to coordinate building all roads.

When you talk about risks in undertaking an investment, it means there might not be enough demand for something that the government does and so taxpayers in fact are investing in things not enough people actually need to justify the investment. Which simply means that the government is an irresponsible fund manager.

Re: Ron Paul’s Farewell Address: The Internet Can Stop Big Government

#220

Post by snitko »

tzs wrote: post #191
snitko wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I challenge you to give me one very specific example of how something is not going to work in a libertarian world and I'm going right here right now to prove you how it actually would work. (because, with all due respect, I think writing comments that basically say "it's not gonna work because it's puppies and rainbows" is not helping us find out the truth).

> I challenge you to give me one very specific example of how something is not going to work in a libertarian world and I'm going right here right now to prove you how it actually would work What do you mean by "libertarian world"? Libertarianism is a spectrum, so it's hard to give examples without knowing what specific kind of libertarian world we are discussing. For instance, there are some libertarians who say the…

Your example is the one that was cracked by David D. Friedman, I recommend you watch the part of his talk discussing the exact same case you mentioned: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXWFWIM8OCI#t=620s
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