Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad • Hacker News Board

Re: Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad

#221

Post by simoncion » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 6:00 AM UTC

jMyles wrote: post #220

simoncion wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Although we may have needed government to stifle private violence in the past, I don't think we do any longer. We moved from private jackbooted-thugs-for-hire to public police protection because thugs-for-hire are unaccountable . Sadly, over the past hundred years or so we've forgotten this lesson, lost our vigilance, and have permitted many of our public servants to make themselves largely unaccountable for their…

> In your future where government is no longer permitted to apply force, where is the accountability? I assert that, in a social dynamic characterized by omnipresent personal recording devices, the capacity to share the gathered evidence, and the capacity to deliberate and apply social pressure in response to criminal behavior, that accountability is the natural consequence.

> ...in a social dynamic characterized by omnipresent personal recording devices, the capacity to share the gathered evidence, and the capacity to deliberate and apply social pressure in response to criminal behavior, that accountability is the natural consequence.

Did you hear about the one where Social Justice Warriors bullied an artist into a suicide attempt because they felt her fan art "erased fat people" and that her use of the interjections "dude" and "man" when speaking to women made her "transmisogynistic"? [0][1]

This all happened on-the-record, on the Internet.

How does your social theory account for this incredibly harmful behavior?

What is an adequate response to this behavior under the system that you propose?

[0] http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/11/02/sjws-bullied-a-youn...

[1] http://www.dailydot.com/geek/steven-universe-fanartist-bulli...

Re: Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad

#222

Post by clock_tower » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

redblacktree wrote: post #204

clock_tower wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that "federalism" means what I think it means (federation of independent entities, delegating economy-of-scale responsibilities like war and diplomacy to the center while keeping everything else for themselves), my guess would be this: that it ensures that government operates on a local level, where the number of people represented by a given legislature is smaller -- so individual votes have more impact and…

It's odd that you say "federalism is a non-starter for the US at the present day," since that is exactly the system we have in the United States. Individual states are responsible for much (most?) of the government of their citizens, while the Federal Government takes care of higher-level tasks like war, as you mentioned. it's in the constitution, the 10th amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by…

Also in the constitution is the Interstate Commerce Clause, a loophole big enough to drive a country through. There's also the Fourteenth Amendment, which basically repeals federalism -- because federalism had proven itself unworkable.

("All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.")

The individual states are still allowed to administer themselves in uninteresting and uncontroversial areas, but they have no right to legalize dueling, or ban guns, or write their own marriage laws, or set up a state religion, or reorganize themselves as anti-clerical theocracies -- matters where a federal government would presumably let them do as they pleased. (See what I mean about parts of the federation coming to hate each other enough to go to war?)

Re: Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad

#223

Post by learc83 » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 6:37 PM UTC

ancap wrote: post #215

learc83 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police and military protecting trade routes from bandits, and pirates. Roads, and other infrastructure that facilitates trade and communication. Courts that enforce contracts. Water rights management to that facilitates the creation of cities (note I'm talking large scale here, not municipal water companies--think the federal government prevents people in State A from draining all the water from a river before it get…

There has been plenty written on how those things could be privatized (see the writings of Murray Rothbard and Walter Block). Regarding your earlier comment about "a debt to society", no one is in debt to society for those things, because no one contractually agreed to be in debt. Yes those services exist, and yes they provide real benefits, but the problem is they are not voluntary. Being in debt involuntarily is ak…

I considered myself first a libertarian and then an anarcho-capitalist from about 15 to 27, so I'm pretty familiar with the arguments (though I'll note that I'm no longer convinced by all of them).

The concept that involuntary debt is automatically bad is an axiom that most people who believed like I did start with. But it's not the self-evident axiom that I once thought.

There are many cultures that consider children to have certain filial obligations (and some states in the US still have such laws), you might consider that wrong, but it's not self-evident that it is.

There are also situations where the law considers continued enjoyment of some good or service to create an obligation to pay for that good or service regardless of whether the person enjoying it requested it in the first place. I don't think this is self-evidently wrong either.

To explain why I'm not longer an anarcho-capitalist: As I got older, I started to realize that almost everything I'd accomplished was primarily a result of the situation I was born into. Intelligence and success are primarily a product of upbringing and genetics, not something I accomplished on my own that I should feel proud of.

I haven't moved over to pure socialism, but I no longer feel that allocating wealth based purely on the circumstances of birth (because let's face it, an individual's ability to make money is based almost entirely on the circumstances of their birth.) is the best system.

There are times when capitalism is the best, most efficient system for everyone involved (even if it's not the most egalitarian). But I've increasingly realized there are also time when capitalism reaches a local optimum. And I don't think we should let ideology blind us to that.

Re: Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad

#224

Post by ancap » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 8:16 PM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #223

ancap wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has been plenty written on how those things could be privatized (see the writings of Murray Rothbard and Walter Block). Regarding your earlier comment about "a debt to society", no one is in debt to society for those things, because no one contractually agreed to be in debt. Yes those services exist, and yes they provide real benefits, but the problem is they are not voluntary. Being in debt involuntarily is ak…

I considered myself first a libertarian and then an anarcho-capitalist from about 15 to 27, so I'm pretty familiar with the arguments (though I'll note that I'm no longer convinced by all of them). The concept that involuntary debt is automatically bad is an axiom that most people who believed like I did start with. But it's not the self-evident axiom that I once thought. There are many cultures that consider childre…

>There are many cultures that consider children to have certain filial obligations (and some states in the US still have such laws), you might consider that wrong, but it's not self-evident that it is.

>There are also situations where the law considers continued enjoyment of some good or service to create an obligation to pay for that good or service regardless of whether the person enjoying it requested it in the first place. I don't think this is self-evidently wrong either.

As I said previously, at least for me, believing that the non-aggression principle should be the governing principle of society is a utopian view. That is, to say, it is a hope of what society could be, not a pragmatic solution that could be implemented today or tomorrow. Similarly, anyone who holds any concept of a utopian society likely recognizes they will never see it come to fruition but they hope to move things in that direction.

>but I no longer feel that allocating wealth based purely on the circumstances of birth (because let's face it, an individual's ability to make money is based almost entirely on the circumstances of their birth.) is the best system.

But this is a mis-characterization of what capitalism is. Some of the most poor people of the world today face the exact lifestyle that nearly everyone faced a few hundred years ago. It was only through capitalism, existing sometimes in a very limited fashion, which fueled the industrial revolution and enabled those of us who are so rich to enjoy our lifestyles today (and let's face it even the poorest of any first world country, are vastly rich compared to living conditions a few hundred years ago).

>But I've increasingly realized there are also time when capitalism reaches a local optimum. And I don't think we should let ideology blind us to that.

I would be curious to hear what situation you would describe as capitalism reaching a "local optimum". In my experience, every situation categorized as a "market failure", when investigated, is anything but. That goes for the idea of "natural monopolies", recent market crashes, skyrocketing tuition, skyrocketing medical costs, pollution, etc. I would be happy to point you to material to research any one of these issues.

Re: Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad

#225

Post by marknutter » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 7:03 PM UTC

henrikschroder wrote: post #219

marknutter wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From where does the business get the college-educated workforce so that it can be viable in the first place? That's insanity. Businesses pay more for college educated employees exactly because they are worth more, and in doing so they are "paying their fair share". It's not like these college educated employees are donating the extra money they should be making to the companies they work for. They demand higher sal…

> Again, everybody is square in the deal. Only if you take the surrounding system as given. The original question was this: > Put another way, if you founded a company, created thousands of jobs for families and individuals, and made a fortune, why should the state be the one who decides what happens with your money? And the answer is that the state gets to decide what happens with the money, because if not for peopl…

Then the state gets to decide what happens with your money, too. Maybe you'd be ok with the stat seizing all your assets beyond what you already pay in taxes, but I certainly wouldn't. Idealogical differences, I suppose.