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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

#201

Post by astrodust »

cpr wrote: post #177
astrodust wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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? Murder requires intention. Don't be silly.

So then it's manslaughter, right?

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

#202

Post by astrodust »

alexakarpov wrote: post #109
astrodust wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> By extension any woman who suffers a miscarriage is a murderer 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, rath…

Maybe you want to live in a society not unlike the Gilded Age where billionaire robber barons controlled everything, where those who weren't part of this small elite group could barely get by.

This is how un-checked wealth accumulates. Remember, it is very easy to make money if you have lots of money to start with and can weather almost any risk no matter how severe. When the smaller players bust out, the wreckage of their companies and lives is bought for pennies on the dollar.

Would you want to live in a world where the Paris Hiltons could coast into billions of wealth without having to do a single hard day's work in their life? Where they'd have enough money to fund a hundred generations of that?

Society advances when there's an incentive to working hard. Making money is one such incentive. When you can make money without working hard, it starts to break down. The inheritance tax is a way of keeping an element of hard work in the equation.

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

#203

Post by astrodust »

adrianbravo wrote: post #107
astrodust wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> It prevents most of the money in circulation from accumulating in the hands of a very small number of individuals. Like Bill Gates, the richest American? Oh wait, he didn't inherit that money. Ooops.

Bill Gates is new money, but his father has considerable wealth as well. If those two weren't as committed to philanthropy as your average billionaires are, then the children of Bill and Melinda Gates would inherit several enormous fortunes.

Have a look through the Forbes 400 (http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/) and see where their money came from.

The Koch Brothers inherited from their father, and the five Waltons on the list inherited from theirs. That means over half of the wealthiest individuals in America inherited a considerable fortune.

In forty years this list will no doubt the heirs of other fortunes.

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

#204

Post by praxeologist »

hazov wrote: post #194
praxeologist wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rothbard is clearly a libertarian economist and I never said that all "libertarian" economists must be Austrians. You might want to not talk about things being unscientific when you fail to back up your assertions. It has been fashionable since the success of the natural sciences in the 1800's to attempt to apply the methods of the natural sciences to the social sciences. Concepts like "equilibrium" are applied incor…

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.

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

#205

Post by mkr-hn »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #199
mkr-hn wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire PC compatible movement would have been crushed by IBM mercenaries going garage-to-garage in a free market fantasy land. Bill Gates, coming from a wealthy family, would be the only one who could afford his own mercenaries.

Nobody asked about what "would" have happened. That's what I meant by goalpost-moving.

It's like we're talking different languages.

You said: "Can you name a single instance of a harmful monopoly that didn't either form or persist because of government backing?"

One possible answer: Windows

You asked a question. You got a suitable answer. What more is there to say? What is this "goal post" you keep referring to?

I know you're eager to roll out the "copyright and patents are government-granted monopolies" line. But those don't work as monopolies in comparing governments to contracts in imaginary free market systems.

Remove government, and businesses would develop their own systems like copyright and patents, which they would privately enforce through contract, private prisons, and mercenaries. You still end up with a Windows monopoly because Bill Gates started life with a lawyer and banker for parents.

You replace one system with another that's almost identical, but small businesses lose any kind of recourse if a bigger business decides it owns a particular creation.

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

#206

Post by mkr-hn »

praxeologist wrote: post #188
mkr-hn wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows And who's moving goalposts? That seems like a random, out of nowhere comment.

Windows' monopoly relies upon state-granted monopoly powers (patent/copyright). http://archive.mises.org/17366/apple-vs-microsoft-which-bene...

I answered this down here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4799229

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

#207

Post by mkr-hn »

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…

A good way to get a free marketeer to stop talking is to ask them to come up with a free market system that doesn't end up hopelessly stratified. I don't know whether they shut down, like a killer AI given an unsolvable problem, or start reevaluating their views.

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

#208

Post by cpr »

tptacek wrote: post #179
cpr wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politifact http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2010/nov/24/vi... claims it's "half true". The Bureau of Labor Statistics, supposedly no partisan outfit, says the dollar has lost 95% of its purchasing power since 1913: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001519.html . So Paul's claim isn't far off.

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.

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

#209

Post by CamperBob2 »

mkr-hn wrote: post #205
CamperBob2 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody asked about what "would" have happened. That's what I meant by goalpost-moving.

It's like we're talking different languages. You said: "Can you name a single instance of a harmful monopoly that didn't either form or persist because of government backing?" One possible answer: Windows You asked a question. You got a suitable answer. What more is there to say? What is this "goal post" you keep referring to? I know you're eager to roll out the "copyright and patents are government-granted monopolie…

I actually agree with you, in that any sufficiently dominant corporation is indistinguishable from a government.

However, even if you set aside the question of its dependence on government-enforced IP rights, Windows is a bad example of a harmful monopoly, IMHO. Network effects make the calculation of net "harm" very difficult. Thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs (to say nothing of Microsoft employees) have become millionaires thanks to those network effects. Good things have happened in the world of personal computing that could never have happened in a fragmented world where dozens of vendors were pushing their own 6502 or Z80 boxes with proprietary BIOSes and OSes, or where Linux geeks worked day and night to make sure ordinary users would never be able to accomplishing anything on their own. Somebody had to step in and harness all of those creative forces in a productive direction. Frankly, I'm glad it was Bill Gates and not Steve Jobs.

Where I think you are wrong is with your supposition that "IBM mercenaries" would have roamed around like mafiosi, crushing the PC revolution. That's what I call moving the goalposts, or more properly, a strawman scenario. You won the argument in your own head by inventing a fictional world where you could claim to be right.

Remove government, and businesses would develop their own systems like copyright and patents, which they would privately enforce through contract, private prisons, and mercenaries.

I'd need to see an example to buy this. (Don't use Somalia or any other failed Islamic states dominated by other governments' proxy warriors.) We don't live on the set of Blade Runner, at least not yet.

I guess the closest example I can think of would be the medieval guild systems. Those aren't coming back, not as long as capital can flow freely between nations and individual actors are gaining rather than losing influence.

You replace one system with another that's almost identical, but small businesses lose any kind of recourse if a bigger business decides it owns a particular creation.

The patent system is doing a better job at that than your violin-case-toting IBM thugs ever could have.

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

#210

Post by mkr-hn »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #209
mkr-hn wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like we're talking different languages. You said: "Can you name a single instance of a harmful monopoly that didn't either form or persist because of government backing?" One possible answer: Windows You asked a question. You got a suitable answer. What more is there to say? What is this "goal post" you keep referring to? I know you're eager to roll out the "copyright and patents are government-granted monopolie…

I actually agree with you, in that any sufficiently dominant corporation is indistinguishable from a government. However, even if you set aside the question of its dependence on government-enforced IP rights, Windows is a bad example of a harmful monopoly, IMHO. Network effects make the calculation of net "harm" very difficult. Thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs (to say nothing of Microsoft employees) have beco…

> I'd need to see an example to buy this.

The system where that's real is as real as whatever free market system exists in your head. I don't think football metaphors (goal posts) will work until we agree on what the stadium looks like.

Until that happens, all we can do is talk past each other based on our own ideas about what "free market" means. A free market to me is one where the strongest invariably crushes anyone weaker. Anything more restrictive would require government or cultural norms. Moving to any more or less restrictive system requires changing at least one of those things. Any discussion that doesn't see that isn't going to produce anything practical.

And I'm not interested in discussing hypothetical markets, so I'm going to go do something else and ignore this subtree.

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