OSSR: John Wick's Libertarian Fantasy Utopia

[ETortoise]

AC0 is obviously being disingenuous as fuck because he barely read people’s posts, so he’s unlikely to read any actual books.

But, a TGD leftist reading list could actually be pretty helpful and interesting.
I enjoyed World Systems Analysis by Wallenstein when I read it in grad school. (I should reread it now that I don’t have to finish it an read another monograph in the same week.) The Conquest of Bread by Kropotkin is an easy read when compared to other 19th century political texts, and is where I got the thrust of my no-accomplishments-are-individual argument from. Also, you should actually read Marx, even if you don’t consider yourself a leftist at all. He’s arguably the most influential historian and economist of the modern age.

[Chamomile]

I've heard it speculated that engineers are vulnerable to being fooled precisely because they're smarter than most people, which means they don't get fooled very often, which means they don't grow up with an understanding that people can fool them. This makes them vulnerable to specious ideas in fields outside their area of expertise, because the ideas sound compelling when your knowledge of the field is shallow and they have no experience with being bamboozled with someone who knows so much more about a subject than you that they can cherry pick evidence to make anything sound true.

[Dogbert]

I've heard it speculated that engineers are vulnerable to being fooled precisely because they're smarter than most people, which means they don't get fooled very often.

People with high IQ (which include engineers) are one of the demographics most vulnerable to cult indoctrination (real statistical data) probably because

1) Feeling yourself above others always comes followed by feelings of isolation and the engineer profile is prone to depression, which makes them vulnerable to cults' love-bombing and their offers of "a place to belong."

2) Rational people need their world to make sense, and cults offer exactly that: A dogmatic worldview where everything is crystal clear, something to lay down your burdens... the burden of rational thought and critical thinking in particular.

[ArmorClassZero]

I actually wasn't being disingenuous or trolling for the first 5-ish pages, but no one here will actually acknowledge what I'm saying or grasps what they themselves are saying. On top of this, I'm one individual arguing against a dozen. I tried to argue in good faith, but it was immediately assumed I was a Fascist, crypto-Nazi, corporate stooge, and/or teenager not-yet graduated from high-school. Why then should I continue to argue in good faith?

DSMatticus quoted a passage from Adam Smith meant to prove the evils of Capitalism, and in that passage was the line referencing how the masters of this or that trade appealed to the civil magistrate (the Govt) for laws and rules to keep their workers inline. But if one would just read a little bit further, Adam Smith explains the circumstances that increase workers wages and the nation's wealth.

Whatever got all indignant when I said that the USA had the most economic freedom of any country despite slavery of Africans and the genocide of native Americans indians, but... neither of those two tragedies invalidate that fact. The US was approximately 10% black peoples, and the native American indians weren't counted as citizens, nor did they operate in the economic sphere. The richest part of the country was the North, which had the most industry, notably little-to-no slavery, and the majority of the WASP population. Funnily enough, there were even economists and businessmen of the day arguing against slavery as being more expensive and less efficient than just paying workers and dismissing them when they aren't needed.

Thaluikhain mentioned another example, the factories of the Industrial Revolution. Popular belief says that this is evidence of the cruelty of capitalists blah blah blah. But what actually happened? The history book will tell you that during this era, people from the countryside flocked to the cities to work in these factories. Why was that so? Could it be that, despite the miserable working conditions, it was still preferable to working on a farm where every family member worked from dawn til dusk often for mere subsistence living? Could it be that the option of working in these factories was preferable to starving and more profitable for the workers?

Not only that, but you guys are dismissing the practical effects of that industrialism. The workers were not only being better compensated for comparable hours that they would have worked on the family farm, but the result of the factories and mills was that they could afford goods at a cheaper price than they had they been made by hand.

What about the London sewer system as a triumph of Socialism?

The Commission surveyed London's antiquated sewerage system and set about ridding the capital of an estimated 200,000 cesspits, insisting that all cesspits should be closed and that house drains should connect to sewers and empty into the Thames (ultimately, a major contributing factor to "The Great Stink" of 1858).

Individual houses had cesspools (though often these were just the cellars). The solid waste or ‘night-soil’ was collected from these by well-paid ‘nightmen’ (they were only allowed to work at night) who transported it to the market gardens surrounding the city.

King Henry VIII decreed in the late 1500s that homeowners were responsible for cleaning that portion of the "sewer" on which their property fronted. He also created a Commission of Sewers to enforce these rules.

A law was passed during the reign of Henry VIII (in the mid to late1500s) that afforded the legal basis for almost all sanitary sewerage works well into the nineteenth century. For the next 300 years, the metropolitan area outgrew the city limits of London. By 1850, London contained only 5% of the metro area's homes. Each community evolved its own drainage system -- with no thought (physically or cooperatively) to interconnecting with an adjacent community's drainage system.

some chaotic medieval construction work was regulated by Henry VIII’s Bill of Sewers, issued in 1531. The Bill established eight different groups of commissioners and charged them with keeping the tunnels in their district in good repair, though since each remained responsible for only one part of the city, the arrangement guaranteed that the proliferating sewer network would be built to no uniform standard and recorded on no single map.

[...] The toshers’ work was dangerous, however, and–after 1840, when it was made illegal to enter the sewer network without express permission, and a £5 reward was offered to anyone who informed on them–it was also secretive, done mostly at night by lantern light. “They won’t let us in to work the shores,” one sewer-hunter complained, “as there’s a little danger. They fears as how we’ll get suffocated, but they don’t care if we get starved!"

So a problem of the human condition was exacerbated by Govt legislature, only to later be 'solved' by Govt legislature, and at no point was the free market really allowed to operate. I, for one, am curious how individuals and groups would have tackled the problem if they had been given the chance to earn a living off of waste management. Also worth pointing out, it's estimated the Govt project to overhaul London's sewers took ~4.2 million to ~6.4 million £s, or approximately 453,600,000 to 691,200,000£s today. One might be forgiven for wonder whether it would've just been cheaper for private enterprise to work on fixing the issue...

Frank tries to argue that public healthcare is much cheaper than private healthcare, but the Austrians would say he's mistaken. Let's ask him for some details:

* Is Govt in America currently requiring health-insurance?
* Do these mandatory health-insurance policies solely cover catastrophic chance or are the required to cover a whole host of common potential problems?
* If a customer knows that their health-insurer is footing the bulk of the bill for an operation, does this change their incentives? Will they be careful consumers if it is someone else's money at play?
* If everyone is has some form of health-insurance, does this change the incentive for hospitals? Do hospitals have an incentive to charge more for any given procedure knowing that the bulk of the payment comes from an insurer?
* If the number of people with health-insurance explodes, and the number of doctors / medical professionals remains roughly unchanged, what does this ratio of demand/supply suggest about prices?
* Does the Govt heavily regulate the pharmaceutical industry? Does this increase the cost of prescription drugs? Does this benefit the consumer or the big pharma companies?
* What is the average wait-time in USA compared to UK? What about other nations?
* Do different nations suffer from different health-care problems?

The Austrians actually think the USA has a very Socialist system. It's still technically a 'mixed' system, but it's becoming more Socialist every few years. And saying, "Why do you think we can afford X, Y, Z, a Bureaucracy, and a layer of profit taking?" as though the Govt was not also taking profits is pretty silly. And no, your thoughts on public tap water isn't the mic drop.

[Foxwarrior]

On top of this, I'm one individual arguing against a dozen.

Maybe you should hire some libertarians to help you.

[Libertad]

I actually wasn't being disingenuous or trolling for the first 5-ish pages, but no one here will actually acknowledge what I'm saying or grasps what they themselves are saying. On top of this, I'm one individual arguing against a dozen. I tried to argue in good faith, but it was immediately assumed I was a Fascist, crypto-Nazi, corporate stooge, and/or teenager not-yet graduated from high-school. Why then should I continue to argue in good faith?

I'll acknowledge your commitment to liberty, ArmorClassZero, if you #abolishice. You hate Big Government, why not start with the worst one?

[jt]

But, a TGD leftist reading list could actually be pretty helpful and interesting.

I'm not a big theory person, so:
[*] No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane McAlevey. (Though her interview at CurrentAffairs gets there more succinctly.)
[*] Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox For Revolution by Andrew Boyd

[ArmorClassZero]

@Libertad:

#AbolishICE

Although I think it is in the legitimate sphere of Govt influence to defend private property (and that 'public property' is financed by (paid for by) the private citizens of the US, therefore making it collectively theirs - the private property (exclusive property) of the citizenry of the USA, and that trespassing on this ground is just as criminal as you trespassing on my individual land) it would not / does not surprise me that an agency of the Govt would abuse its powers and be exempt from the laws it is supposedly operating by and under. This is more often the case with Govt and its agencies that it is the exception.

However, ICE was factually NOT controlling the border for over 30 years. That they are now attempting under Trump's administration to solve a problem that was created by the Govt in the 1st place (in more ways than one...) should drive more people here and at large to rethink Govt as the grand problem solver of societal woes

It was also mentioned that, as a way of refuting my point, importing all of these Hispanics and turn them into potential tax-payers and voters is undermined by the present fact that ICE and Trump are cracking down on them. But have you noticed that the entire political establishment, media establishment, tech industry, business class, and educational clergy is OPPOSED to ICE and Trump and welcomes these immigrants? And that overwhelmingly, the people constituting these bodies are... Leftists, Democrats, Progressives?

Fun Documentary: https://archive.org/details/The-Line-in-the-Sand

BTW, I'm reading The Conquest of Bread by Kropotkin and am about 1/3 of the way through, and chuckling at this guy being a half-baked Libertarian.

[ETortoise]

No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane McAlevey.

Oh cool, she was the guest on last week’s Citations Needed (https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/epis ... ddle-class) and had some interesting things to say about organizing. I’ll check out the interview, thanks.

[Whatever]

However, ICE was factually NOT controlling the border for over 30 years.

This may be the first entirely factual statement from AC0.

That's by accident, of course. ICE was created in 2003, making the agency only 16 years old. And even for those 16 years it didn't "control the border" because that's the job of the US Border Patrol, and the US Customs and Border Protection agency more generally.

[DrPraetor]

AC0 is a self-caricature, but as a tweenager I volunteered for Bill Weld's (Republican) candidacy as governor of MA, so I do know some libertarians who don't blend into the alt-right or Trumpism, and they are an intellectually interesting bunch - unlike AC0 whose bigotry makes him easy to dismiss. I'm an anarcho-communist myself - I don't claim that a planned economy always delivers greater commodity productivity, so my world view isn't challenged when a market approach delivers cheaper microwave ovens. Slavery delivers cheaper cotton, but this is irrelevant, because the point is liberation and not efficiency at all.

You get liberterians who take an equivalent position, and they aren't bigots. If you have a principled position in favor of self-sufficient family compounds with their own firearms, then it doesn't matter in ths final state if their drinking water is more expensive. However, first, you get a fair number of "bernie bros" in this ideolgocial grouping, who are libertarian because they are progressive in terms of opposition to ICE and to the professionalism of the political class. Furthermore, they tend to support social democracy as a pragmatic compromise in order to build the foundation for the free society they view as a desirable steady state. I think they're full of hot air, but unlike AC0, they are in favor of abolishing ICE and of police accountability boards. In defense of their fundamental honesty and decency, these are "right wing" people who support the black panthers because they view the failure to enforce the 2nd amendment on behalf of black people as a critical moral failing of the United Sates for which no apology can be made but where policy can server as an intermediary bridge to a post-racial society.

I'm tempted to invite them to join the thread except they're still wrong and exhausting to debate, because they get the facts of the Spanish civil war and of Diocletian wrong.

[Username17]

Honestly, anyone bringing up Emperor Diocletian as an evidence point in an argument is a huge warning sign for me. The mistakes of Diocletian are extremely difficult to replicate in the modern world. Even in places like the Euro Zone where some of the flaws of commodity currency are replicated, you still don't normally have currency tied to multiple different commodities. Fixing prices in Euros would sometimes be a bad idea, but it literally can't be as bad an idea as fixing prices in gold and silver at the same time.

-Username17

[Thaluikhain]

Thaluikhain mentioned another example, the factories of the Industrial Revolution. Popular belief says that this is evidence of the cruelty of capitalists blah blah blah. But what actually happened? The history book will tell you that during this era, people from the countryside flocked to the cities to work in these factories. Why was that so? Could it be that, despite the miserable working conditions, it was still preferable to working on a farm where every family member worked from dawn til dusk often for mere subsistence living? Could it be that the option of working in these factories was preferable to starving and more profitable for the workers?

You're claiming that the conditions for workers during the Industrial Revolution is a success for capitalism because they didn't (all) starve to death? In more than one sense, I guess you could argue that, but that's a morally bankrupt position either way.

In any case, government regulation improved the conditions for those workers. The capitalists could have done that without being forced, but obviously they didn't want to, in the same way they don't today unless forced to.

Food adulteration was brought up a few times in this thread already, this was common during the Industrial Revolution until, again, government regulation clamped down on it.

[ArmorClassZero]

@Thaluikhain: Why is it a morally bankrupt position to recognize that people made a choice for themselves that was better than their alternatives? Those early factories gave people a chance to get out of extreme poverty. They took that chance. Their standard of living and wages improves. What is the problem?

The Austrians argue that Capitalism is what improved conditions for workers. Skilled/experienced workers are sought after. Capitalists competed for the best workers by offering better benefits: more pay, shorter working hours, etc. The Capitalists had an incentive to improve safety in their factories, because getting limbs cut-off is a great way to shut-down an entire line and halt production, and explosions and fires are a great of way of losing property and skilled labor and then needing to pay compensation to families. It was the free-market that introduced the 40-hour workweek with Henry Ford. And the minimum wage has historically lagged behind what employers are actually paying, because it is a token "feel good" gesture, like most of politics.

You must not have read the link I posted a while back. The people calling for regulations of the meat packing plants... were the biggest meat packing companies. They were asking for regulations 20 years before The Jungle was published, in order to stifle their smaller competition. It's also on record that those then-modern mass packing plants were such a wonder of technology and the then-present age, that they had guided tours showing off the marvels of the industry, with an estimated 500,000 tourists annually. And to think, 500,000 tourists a year for almost a decade, and no one complained until Upton Sinclair came along and wrote a propaganda piece: he joined Socialists groups, was paid by a Socialist magazine (Appeal To Reason) to do the story on the meat-packing industry, and is on record saying that his goal was to push Socialism as an ideology, but that his book, instead of hitting the hearts of Americans in his depiction of workers and their struggle, hit their stomachs instead.

Slavery delivers cheaper cotton,

Economists and abolitionists say you're wrong.

--------

But please, I am seriously looking forward to the Den's reading list.

[Iduno]

That's by accident, of course. ICE was created in 2003, making the agency only 16 years old.

That would explain why Libertarians have lost interest in it.

[DrPraetor]

Economists may very well argue that slavery is inherently low-productivity (for whatever explanations), because many economists, especially of the Austrian school, are pathetically ignorant of econometrics or economic history.
https://wolfweb.unr.edu/homepage/t_oles ... very2.html

4. Slave agriculture was not inefficient compared with free agriculture. Economies of large-scale operation, effective management, and intensive utilization of labor and capital made southern slave agriculture 35 percent more efficient than the northern system of family farming.

Fogel won a fucking nobel prize - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Fo ... c_Sciences

so he's hardly obscure!

Now, abolitionists, and even pre-cotton slave owners like Washington and Jefferson, generally believed that slavery was economically moribund, but this was motivated reasoning not supported by the economic realities.

[ArmorClassZero]

@DrPraetor: Thank you.

Despite the Den being a bunch of self-righteous asshats, they do occasionally leave bread-crumbs that can be followed down the rabbit hole.

Seriously guys, reading list when? Den Lit Club when?

[deaddmwalking]

Seriously guys, reading list when? Den Lit Club when?

Every defense of Libertarianism you have provided has been soundly refuted; they were thin to begin with. Your goal to spend the minimum amount of time writing posts while demanding people here spend the maximum amount of time responding has been duly noted. Why don't you read the first couple of suggestions and provide comprehensive responses to them before asking for more?

[Thaluikhain]

@Thaluikhain: Why is it a morally bankrupt position to recognize that people made a choice for themselves that was better than their alternatives? Those early factories gave people a chance to get out of extreme poverty. They took that chance. Their standard of living and wages improves. What is the problem?

It's morally bankrupt to claim that giving people a choice between hellish working conditions and starving to death is a worthy achievement. The bar should be set a lot higher than "well, most of you won't die".

And, as was shown when government regulations forced employers to improve things, it could have been set higher.

The Capitalists had an incentive to improve safety in their factories,

Sure they did, in the form of government regulations.

Less flippantly, the Austrians might think it's a good idea for the capitalists to improve safety, you might think it's a good idea for the capitalists to improve safety, but the capitalists running unsafe places of work did not until they were forced to do so.

Even assuming that worker safety was always the right move to increase profits (certainly it would be sometimes, but not always) you are still going to get employers that don't think so. Sure, it'll hurt their profits to an extent, but businesses make bad decisions all the time, you don't get replaced by someone better the first time you've not optimised right. Take away protections for workers, and they will suffer for it. There's no way around it.

The people calling for regulations of the meat packing plants... were the biggest meat packing companies.

Assuming, for sake of argument, that at that time there was no problem with food adulteration in the continental United States of America in the meat packing industry...so? Well done one industry at one place at one time. Doesn't mean anything for other industries in other places at other times. And it is a historical fact that food adulteration was a serious problem before food regulations were introduced.

[Username17]

It is of course possible to find scenarios where every participant makes individual decisions and you get a good outcome overall. AC0 hasn't bothered to actually find any, but I don't think it's contentious to suggest that such scenarios exist or could exist.

But there's a couple things. First, Libertarians claim that all scenarios are that, which is blatantly false. "Tragedies of the Commons" and "Prisoners Dilemmas" where every person makes an individually rational and maximizing decision and everyone ends up suffering are so numerous that they are named categories of problems in economics and philosophy. Libertarianism is an extremist position, so it is falsified by presenting even a single counter-example. That's been done, Libertarianism is falsified. It is not true. The end.

But more fundamentally, there's no particular reason to believe that it's desirable for things to work the way Libertarians want them to even when they plausibly could do so. Libertarians tell us that emergent policies are inherently superior to democratic policies. Why should we believe that to be the case? We can decide what society produces by having each and every one of us make individual production and consumption choices, but why should we believe that process is inherently more righteous than deciding as a group what should be produced and working backwards?

There are so many times that markets fail that we have a general term of "Market Failure" to describe it. But even when markets work, so what? The fact that society can meet some human needs and desires in an unplanned fashion doesn't inherently mean that it should.

There are things like water and home electrification that do not function as Libertarian "free markets." And there are things like clothing and lunches that do function with markets. But there's no particular reason to prefer the market oriented solutions. They aren't better unless the outcomes are better. Valuing the market process over the end results of people having their needs and desires met is deeply insane.

-Username17

[ArmorClassZero]

@DeadDM: Soundly refuted? Lets go over how this thread evolved:
1) Libertad makes thread.
2) Circle jerk of "Libertarianism stupid," ensues.
3) I appear to say, "you guys misunderstand Libertarianism," and lay out Libertarian principles and core philosophy.
4) You guys tell me I'm wrong; "Lolbertarianism so stupid," comments, cue name-calling, very few actual 'arguments' about the free-market and economics are brought up, lots of moral grandstanding.
5) I try to explain how these are fallacious.
6) See number 4.

You yourself suggested I look into the "Libertarian paradise they tried to create in Kansas, and the Kansas public school system" and I did, and what I found wasn't an example of Libertarianism. I refuted your claims. No one acknowledged it, much less cared. And I've put in considerable effort into replying, which is evident by the length and detail of my posts.

But just for you, DeadDM:

Actually, I, and every other voter, are on the board of directors for government at every level. Or maybe it would be more fair to equate it to having equal shares in stock for voting rights. Unlike Berkshire Hathaway (a company I respect, by the way), I have a clear way to influence government policy. I can even elect people who promise to reduce my taxes.

OK, fair enough. Let me explain the problems with this: 1) those are just promises. 2) Once elected, their salary (paid for by tax-payers) remains unchanged. 3) Because they are in office for a limited amount of time, the incentives to things change. Their limited time in office, coupled with the pressure to deliver on their promises, incentivizes said officials to engage in increasing protectionist and redistributist acts, and to pass legislation primarily aimed at securing his/her immediate security of office and/or the next election, rarely envisioning the impact that these policies will have 20+ years from now.

Here's what I will cede. We have a debt of $22 Trillion dollars. I'd like to see a higher tax rate so we can pay that down. As we decrease the debt, maybe we could evaluate our spending, but cutting taxes FIRST hasn't worked...

Here's the deal with that. The 'debt' is primarily 'unfulfilled obligations' i.e. all of those Govt pensions, social security, medicare, medicaid, just to name a few. These are things the Govt has promised to people, that it WON'T be able to pay, because the cost of people trying to get payment outnumbers the actual revenue from the Govt is getting from the taxes. It is almost, quite literally, a Ponze scheme: they are paying people alive today with prospective future taxes. My grandmother, and millions of others like her, think that forms of social security like Medicare and Medicaid was something they "paid into" as though the Govt was saving the cash, storing it away in a vault somewhere (this is how they talk about it) when in reality (you guys love talking about reality) it is being paid for by today's tax-payers.

There are a lot of situations where 'choice of provider' doesn't make much sense. Municipal water supplies and every other utility fall into that category. If there are two distinct water companies, the cost of laying the infrastructure so my neighbor and I have a choice to use different providers necessarily means doubling the cost of the investment.

You assume infrastructure would be built with pipes beneath the ground and such to deliver water. How do we know that's the most cost-efficient, cost-effective thing? We don't know, because consumers were not given a choice and free-markets were not allowed to work to provide an answer: the Govt assumed this responsibility with an effectively infinite budget, and the result is monopolies (those things you guys are suppose to hate the Capitalists for...) I mean, I could make the argument that, because 99% of private homeowners are also automobile owners, that we should should have gasoline lines laid into the ground carrying gasoline into our homes. Would that be convenient? Maybe. Would it be cost-efficient and cost-effective? Probably not.

Here's where every Libertarian argument always goes - if I take something that has been 'common ownership' forever and monetize it, NOBODY SHOULD STOP ME. Usually, monetizing it involves damage to every other party through pollution or other indirect costs.

Dude, this is true for THE GOVT as well. At least if something was extremely costly, people would have the benefit of opting out or finding another product or service. If something fails to make a profit, it would likely go out of business (unless its getting Govt subsidies, of course.) As it stands, the present utility companies are being monetized for the officials who run them / oversee things, without care to the actual costs of the operation, because the Govt has an effectively limitless budget.

-------------

Here's the deal, you and a lot of your comrades seem to desire humans to cooperate to the fullest possible extent to achieve the most benefit to society. This is all well and noble. But I assert that if the best way to achieve your goals of human cooperation and a benevolent society is through Capitalism: free-markets, free-enterprise, free-people.

Now I know that a lot of you hiss at the word Capitalism, which conjures up images of fat-cats in suits smoking cigars while reclining on chairs composed of emaciated workers, but I implore you guys to just think about it. Or at the very least, give me some real reading material, so that I may think about it.

[deaddmwalking]

It was clear from the beginning that your level of comprehension is so sophmoric that nobody expects YOU to admit that your claims were soundly refuted. Anyone else that reads the thread, however, will see that very clearly.

It would be fun if you applied your 'market' philosophy to economic ideas. If people, in their heart of hearts, wanted what Libertarianism offers, why isn't it more popular? When you're talking about organizing society, you generally do have to address what people want.

[ArmorClassZero]

Jesus, Frank. For someone so knowledgeable, it is a shame to see you stumble into the most basic economic fallacies.

It is of course possible to find scenarios where every participant makes individual decisions and you get a good outcome overall. AC0 hasn't bothered to actually find any, but I don't think it's contentious to suggest that such scenarios exist or could exist.

Are you talking about scenarios pertaining to free-markets or what? I'm not sure who you're even responding to, but lets get pedantic. A "good outcome overall" as compared to what? That's a very important question. I, for one, think that voluntary exchange among individuals and between groups produces a better outcome overall that forced servitude under the pretense of utopic ideals. I think mutual agreement wherein both consenting parties benefit from their contract results in a better outcome overall than forced extraction of resources and property for the alleged sake of noble causes.

But there's a couple things. First, Libertarians claim that all scenarios are that, which is blatantly false. "Tragedies of the Commons" and "Prisoners Dilemmas" where every person makes an individually rational and maximizing decision and everyone ends up suffering are so numerous that they are named categories of problems in economics and philosophy. Libertarianism is an extremist position, so it is falsified by presenting even a single counter-example. That's been done, Libertarianism is falsified. It is not true. The end.

It is remarkable how you start with a claim about what Libertarians supposedly claim, don't provide any citation or reference, and then try to discredit Libertarianism (and by association, Austrian Economics) by bringing up the Tragedy of the Commons and Prisoner's Dilemma. The former is precisely an example of what happens when there are no property rights - when you get people trying to make use of 'common goods' and implement 'non-ownership' to the detriment of all involved. The latter is a great example of two individuals NOT mutually agreeing or consenting or forming a contract - quite blatantly the opposite of free-exchange and free-people (for fuck's sake, its even in the name - PRISONERS'), and it is hardly relevant anyways. And if Libertarians are 'extremists' then they are extremists for liberty and property, and, again, I'm sorry, but pointing to an existing example of things being "OK" while in a state of marginal un-freedom does not falsify the idea that things would be better if we were more free.

But more fundamentally, there's no particular reason to believe that it's desirable for things to work the way Libertarians want them to even when they plausibly could do so. Libertarians tell us that emergent policies are inherently superior to democratic policies. Why should we believe that to be the case? We can decide what society produces by having each and every one of us make individual production and consumption choices, but why should we believe that process is inherently more righteous than deciding as a group what should be produced and working backwards?

Frank, Libertarians don't think think things are inherently inferior or superior, but logically one or the other. Whether the logic is good or bad is open for analysis, so analyze it: A democracy, by its very nature, serves only to produce an outcome for which those with the preponderance of votes prefer, nevermind the legitimacy (just-ness) or truthfulness of the thing being voted on. A democracy, by its very nature, serves to promote those who have the majority tyrannizing those in the minority. Democracy serves as a vehicle by which people can, and do, vote themselves privileges at the expense of others, and the result is, as Bastiat put it, "fighting at the door of the legislative palace" so that the people "can protect themselves from legalized plunder" or worse "engage in it." And it goes beyond that. Presumably, if I had a severe medical condition I would consult a medical professional such as yourself. I would not ask 100 or even 1000 lay-persons to take a vote on what condition they think it is or what they think should be done about it - which is democracy in action. Democracy it supposes that everyone, no matter how ignorant, should have voice on policies that concern not just themselves but everyone else, and that that voice is inherently valuable - and even though I believe people should have the liberty to express their opinions, I am not putting my health, home, or anything else, up to popular vote.

The process of having individuals decide for themselves what they will produce and consume logically produces the greatest possible freedom for all - a person derives his or her livelihood by offering goods and services to his fellow man, who in turn do the same. It is a completely voluntary system of cooperation and the opposite of compulsion, which is what you get if you "work backwards" from "deciding as a group what should be produced", because logically groups have no mind of their own with which to decide things, only a collection of individual minds that can impose their democratic(!) choice onto an individual, irrespective of his or her wishes.

There are so many times that markets fail that we have a general term of "Market Failure" to describe it. But even when markets work, so what? The fact that society can meet some human needs and desires in an unplanned fashion doesn't inherently mean that it should.

Most instances of "Market Failure" are as a result of Govt meddling. The 2008 Financial Crisis is a great example. The 2001 Dot Com bubble was another. The Great Depression is another. We are effectively still in a Govt created bubble, so expect an economic downturn in the next 5-10 years if not sooner. But again, Frank, when we are judging the value of something, we are comparing it to other things. Getting societal wants and needs met in an unplanned fashion is preferable to the alternative of central planning, which can only be accomplished with force, coercion, and violence.

There are things like water and home electrification that do not function as Libertarian "free markets." And there are things like clothing and lunches that do function with markets. But there's no particular reason to prefer the market oriented solutions. They aren't better unless the outcomes are better. Valuing the market process over the end results of people having their needs and desires met is deeply insane.

The process itself produces better outcomes than the alternative. What is the alternative to free, voluntary, mutually consenting agreement and contract, Frank? There is only one alternative. I'm sure you and your commissar friends find that alternative to be desirable because you imagine yourselves on the committees organizing society, and never those being sent to the gulag for 'reeducation'.

[ArmorClassZero]

It would be fun if you applied your 'market' philosophy to economic ideas. If people, in their heart of hearts, wanted what Libertarianism offers, why isn't it more popular? When you're talking about organizing society, you generally do have to address what people want.

Are you serious. Please, think about what you just said for more than 2 seconds.

You mean to tell me that: Working to improve one's material standard of living and condition in life (by engaging in offering products or services to one's fellow man) is a LESS POPULAR proposal than "What if the Govt gave you increased material standards of living and improved your condition for you?"

Color me surprised. Imagine my shock. Who would have thunk it.

Imagine that in your own country the right to vote were expanded to seven year olds. While the government would not likely be staffed of children, its policies would most definitely reflect the "legitimate concerns" of children to have "adequate" and "equal" access to "free" french fries, lemonade, and videos games.

The implications being:

Confronted with popular elections and free entry into government, however, the advocacy and adoption of redistributive policies is predestined to become the very prerequisite for anyone wanting to attain or retain a government caretaker position. Accordingly, [...] with public government ownership, complementing and reinforcing the overall tendency toward rising taxes (and/ or inflation), government employment and debt, the state will become increasingly transformed into a "welfare state." And contrary to its typical portrayal as a "progressive" development, with this transformation the virus of rising degrees of time preference will be planted in the midst of civil society, and a self-accelerating process of decivilization will be set in motion.

[Mord]

the USA had the most economic freedom of any country despite slavery of Africans and the genocide of native Americans indians, but... neither of those two tragedies invalidate that fact. The US was approximately 10% black peoples, and the native American indians weren't counted as citizens, nor did they operate in the economic sphere

This right here is the reason most posters here have dismissed you as a racist assclown. You cannot arbitrarily divide the genocide and slavery from the economic freedom and use the part you like as evidence that the policies you endorse result in the best social outcomes, much less that they are racially equitable or neutral.

You have argued that in a world run by libertarian rules racism would never come to be, but you have never described the process by which libertarian rules, implemented today in the world that exists, would mitigate the racism that factually exists in reality.

This is why I said libertarians are ignorant of the fact that 10,000 years of history have already happened, and why I think that observation is important. This is not because history dictates individuals' destinies; Bill Gates was not heir to the Habsburg fortune, and the Habsburgs have not been a going concern since 1918. Rather, the existence of history is important because any policies you propose have to be evaluated in the context of the world we live in, not a hypothetical blank slate society.

Black people can and do get rich today, Oprah exists, and yet any reasonable person would acknowledge that irrational racial prejudice also exists today, which hurts black people as a class (e.g. the persistence of illegal mortgage redlining). To fairly evaluate a social policy proposal, the question has to be asked, "how will this policy affect people who have been historically disadvantaged? Will this policy deepen or lessen the existing division between such persons and privileged groups?" This is not the only criterion by which a social policy must be evaluated, but it is instructive of its practical effect on socity as a whole.

Appeal to the abstract "rightness" of a policy according to axiomatic principles is not effective when proposing social policies. No one cares if your deep plowing policy is "correct" according to doctrine if it factually kills your rice seedlings. Likewise, constructing a hypothetical that shows your proposed policy "should" have a good outcome in an abstract case, while failing to respect the material conditions of reality, will not impress any reasonable person.

The fact of the matter is, you consistently ignore historical facts that are inconvenient to your rigidly ideological view of the world. The conversation about food purity standards makes this entirely clear. You fixate on how "big businesses sought and benefited from food quality regulation because enforcement harmed their smaller competitors" and see this as evidence that regulation is only and exclusively a weapon with which more powerful economic actors harm less powerful ones. You have consistently ignored the part where "the general public sought and benefited from food quality regulation because fewer members of the public sickened or died from causes related to food contamination."

This selectivity on your part reveals conclusively that you are not a dispassionate seeker of truth whose libertarian preferences are the ongoing result of a continued process of rational evaluation and deliberation. Rather, you have placed and continue to place your pre-determined ideological conclusions first and admit only those pieces of evidence that can be interpreted in a way that justifies your fixed conclusions.

You are ideologically incapable of accepting the possibility that there exists any circumstance under which social outcomes can be better with regulation than without, therefore it is impossible for you to engage in an argument in good faith. Furthermore, your particular ideological fixation causes you to endorse policies that would exacerbate real social problems and are so devoid of human empathy as to defy parody.

In short: fuck you.