WHAT WE'RE UP AGAINST IN THE GENERAL: My Argument with a Flock of Communists... [Archive]

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gb13

01-27-2012, 02:36 PM

A warning: this is quite long, but important and very entertaining. ANYWAY, the point of all this is to show you what we (especially those of us in blue states) are up against come the general. So it is my recommendation to start this type of discourse with your own friends early and often, so that hopefully if/when Ron Paul wins the Republican Nomination, we can have a head start on the Statist attacks that are sure to be coming our way from those near and dear to us.

This conversation came about in a thread under a question one of my friends posted on facebook regarding Elizabeth Warren. This friend is a great girl; I vehemently disagree with her political philosophy, but she is a selfless, cool chick whom I really like and go all the way back to middle school with. I don't think SHE is a communist, per se, and she's definitely not a party-line Democratic evangelist (I don't even know if she's registered D), she doesn't support Obama, but she definitely leans toward communism/socialism rather than towards our persuasion.

Anyway, she asked if Warren was "for real" I responded, and suddenly found myself fending off attacks from one communist-sympathizer after another. There were too many people responding for me to try to indicate here which individual each response was coming from, so I'll just use "them" and "me" to distinguish the posts from one another. I'll put "Me" in bold to avoid confusion.

After some pretty benign banter (mostly friendly fluffy stuff about how they only like Kucinich and I pretty much only like Paul)...

Them:

Hah... well... I'm not sure I agree with either of the viewpoints there... I want to smash the state, persay, but I'm definitely not a libertarian.... and I'm not totally sold of Warren's rhetoric there either... but I'm wondering if my left-ish progressive-ish or even left-ish radical friends think she's like, a "real" progressive or if she's just another politician... and I know these are all completely loaded and problematic words, ha! (And dear friends, I really don't want this to turn into a convo about Obama, please nobody mention him)

Me:

The thing I don't understand about Progressives is this... They're usually anti-war, and anti-violence in general, but they fail to see that the State is nothing but a monopoly on force/violence. They give the State a pass for the very same violent acts that, if committed by an individual, would rightly be seen as reprehensible... I don't get the logical disconnect there. As soon as you bring a gun into the argument, you've lost. That's all the State has: Guns.

Them:

well, i certainly don't disagree with you about the state having a monopoly on violence. i don't really consider myself a progressive though, i want radical change. i think the system is inherently flawed and part of it is because of what you said, that the state = violence. i like kucinich probably for similar reasons to why you like paul, because he is totally fringe.

just because a person critiques the foundations of a state, doesn't mean they a libertarian. at least not in the ron paul sense. in any case there are a lot of different ways to go with disdain for/distrust of the state, it's a complicated position to hold. i'm not sure i'm up for getting into it....

Me:

One point I'd like to run by you: Decentralization; bottom-up. Leave most social/fiscal/civil matters to the individual states as the 10th amendment prescribes. Would there be injustice at the state level? Yes, of course. But, I think history shows that this is vastly superior to the enormous injustices of which an omnipresent Federal State is capable. Consider...

Them:

yuck. libertarianism is such a mind-leech. sigh. so many good potential communists and anarchists gone to waste on capitalist ideology about states v. markets when what you have, and always have, under capitalism, is a market-state, no matter how small or 'big' it gets, or how many states you break it up into. the advantage with one is that its clear where you have to aim your action to cripple the ruling classes. the more the state conspires to shift guarantees of universal freedom downward to arbitration by 50 fiefdoms or privatizes its functions, the more bureaucratic authorities you have ruling over you, the more private money controls your chances of anything remotely resembling a decent life, and the more the state looks like a senile feudal lord, presiding over chaos, in the name of market freedom.

anyhow, on warren, believing in her as something beyond the perimeters of the Democratic Party's ideology is a recipe for disappointment. she's a solid believer in reforming credit markets in such a way that provides more guarantees of middle-class security in the *flows* of credit but not the accumulative spread of the monopoly of lending: so her main concern is big bank behaviour and how to rationalise and tame it, not the structure of ownership and control over decisions in relation to credit. she basically believes with all her heart in 'the middle class', which is a way to avoid talking about class struggle, not embracing it. especially when, y'know, wages have been repressed for thirty years due to the destruction of union power and there's no upward mobility from the working class to the middle class anymore (if there ever was in quite that starry-eyed way rather than a working class that just got richer). so it's an anti-struggle message butcher-papered in a struggle message. she seems to have an unusually solid sense of ethics - she took her job far more seriously than was polite in ruling class circles - and most of the stuff she says is leftward of what's on offer, of course, so she's a likeable Democrat, which is increasingly rare. but she is a Democrat, true and blue. i wouldnt expect too much at this point.

Me:

Wow, dude. Talk about a mind-leech. Anarchy and Communism as somehow equatable... Communism as a fair system... OK. Maybe if we all agree to revoke our individuality in favor of the collective State then yeah, it's fair. But so long as you have individual human beings capable of dissenting points of view, you'll never have fair communism. But more than that, you don't even have your terms right, You're not even talking about "capitalism"; you're talking about corporatism: the corporate/state complex, which is all we've ever really had in this country, save for a few isolated instances in short periods of time taking place at random geographical locations, before being absorbed by the corporate/state complex. I'm a minarchist, more in favor of voluntarism over mainstream libertarianism, but I would take libertarianism over communism, or radical socialism any day of the week, because I'm against violence (other than self-defense), and I'm against force as a means to an end. A market, in its pure form, is nothing more than voluntary exchange, i.e. the fairest possible system. Are you against people acting voluntarily? Have you forgotten that the Corporation is a creation of the State? It seems so, since you rail against the corporation, while completely giving the State a pass. How can you deride the "market", when it doesn't even exist, and what your really arguing against is just a State perversion of voluntary exchange. No matter which way you try to refine your rhetoric, whatever pseudo-intellectual artifices you try to drape over it, when you take away choice, when you put guns in the hands of State agents to force absorption of the individual into the collective, you champion injustice and violence. Take off the cheap disguise.

Them:

Good luck trying to get capitalism to give up its "corporate/state complex": if you give up your head for the liberty of your torso and limbs, you've put yourself to the guillotine. Here's the thing with the "it's not capitalism, it's corporatism" line. I suppose you wouldn't accept it if I turned around said that the communist movements of the twentieth century were in no way responsible for the socialist states that resulted. If I said, oh, it wasn't that *they* got it wrong but that the "bureaucratic/state complex" took over. And as it happens, I agree. Communism in the 20thC did get it wrong, especially about the state. Yet capitalism - oh no, capitalism never went wrong. It somehow isn't responsible for the state that capitalism occurs in. Because capitalism has never really occurred, as you have to argue, because if you were to acknowledge that capitalism actually existed, rather than "the corporate/state complex", you'd have to acknowledge that capital needs the state precisely because it requires classes. See, the only way to arbitrate classes is via a strategic field formed by the intersection of the lines of class power. That's the framework of the state.

Do you know why libertarianism talks about individual liberty on and on *only*? So it never ever has to talk about class, which it doesn't think is real. Libertarianism sees class as an 'identity category' and says once we understand we're just individuals, liberty and justice will prevail. Yet...seeing as class already coerces what you can and cannot exchange freely, and determines the power of your volunteered labour to make a difference to your life chances, to talk about liberty and justice without talking about class is like trying to tell the time on a clock with no hands.

The corporation, you say, is a creation of the state. So there's no relation between the accumulation of capital and the forms in which it accumulates in, which are all the product of this violent, violent state-thing that coerces and coerces. No relation between the economies the ruling classes preside over and the capitalism they've long said they represent. Capitalism never has produced a ruling class, for the very convenient reason it has never really existed. Pretty sweet self-confirmation bias you have there. But, outside that cognitive loop, the point of the state is to ensure that 'a fair and voluntary exchange' can take place between those who have accumulated capital on behalf of their interests as a class. It's not there for those who lack capital: it's there to *govern those who lack capital* on behalf of those who do, and arbitrate disputes and relations between those who have capital but different influence, amounts and interests. And capitalism is predicated on a labour force that lacks capital. Straight fact. If you are serious about a world without class, you're a communist, whether you know it or not. And, may I add, if it's the case that fair communism is impossible so long as you have individual human beings capable of 'dissenting view points', then how will you ever stop people exercising those dissenting view points in favour of a state structure? What on earth will libertarianism do with all the progressives? I'm sure it won't involve force. Or not force that counts anyway since you've defined them as being on the side of 'injustice and violence' in advance.

As for the rest, I can only ask you to actually sit down and read, first hand, books on communism by communist thinkers and not trust the scary monster version filtered through to you through Reason Magazine or whatever. I've read Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, Konkin, Novick, etc. I'm willing to bet you've never read Marx, Lenin or Trotsky and wouldn't have a clue who, say, Hilferding or Poulantzas or McNally is. Mind you, you don't have to spend all your waking life reading to have a political opinion - in fact, you don't even have to read at all - but if you're going to think you have the full measure of certain political philosophies, it's really only fair to base your opinion on some familiarity with what they actually say, rather than what you've been told they said by a culture this full of bullshit. Especially when what you've been told is so easy to believe: that the world can be broken down into a cartoonish antinomy between 'the individual' and 'the collective', and 'the State' and 'the market', without any account of class and political economy and ideology and the state's mediation and amplification of capitalist market violence through legalizing capital's exploitation as the order of everyday life and repressing collective organization on the part of the lower orders on capital's behalf. Every day of life under capitalism is a cheap disguise.

Them AGAIN:

I'll say this: Capitalism and its friend corporatism are inherently exploitative pyramid schemes. It is literally impossible for their to be equality within capitalism/corporatism because they require classes. In the most basic sense, you cannot be rich-- you cannot have MORE-- if there is not somebody who has less. This is built into the system. Also built into the system is a profit motive. An owner makes profit because he doesn't pay the worker what the work is worth. An owner gives the worker a wage that is not equal to the product-- it can't be, otherwise there would be no left-over, no profit. So the owner, while not doing any work himself beyond an initial investment, managing money, and bossing people around, takes time and value from the worker. From there he is able to accumulate capital which makes him go farther and farther up while the worker has to work more and more within that ever-widening gap just to stay afloat. There's no way to argue that capitalism/corporatism can exist without classes. If one argues that, then it is clear that they do not understand the systems at hand. This isn't anarchist or communist conspiracy; this is literally how capitalism works.

Furthermore capitalism requires constant expansion into resources (due to the fact that it requires constant competition which necessitates constant growth-- again, capitalism literally cannot exist without these things, this isn't environmentalist hooey) which means that it is inherently destructive to the natural environment, but that is a whole other critique.

In short, capitalism/corporatism require the following: profit motive; classes; expansion; competition. These things DEFINE capitalism. If we're not talking about these things, we are talking about something else. In the most literal sense.

I don't mean disrespect but I do find that most people who defend capitalism and/or degrade alternative systems, have not actually read capitalist thought or critique thoroughly enough to talk about the issues. I don't know what to do with this issue, because it does require time and other personal resources to really sit down and go through the texts and understand them, which, interestingly, can make the scholarship elitist in itself... but then, I guess that's also capitalism's fault, because education would, in an egalitarian society, be free and fair.

Now this is not to say that there can be no fair "markets". Market does not equal capitalism/corporatism. Markets and trade can exist without capitalism/corporatism/class. Again, that is another conversation.

THEM AGGGAAAAAIIIN:

Funny how all but one of the candidates in the Republican primary sound like they WANT another civil war. Paul doesn't seem to, but his "free market" bullshit will certainly encourage one. For a while there I felt like I was drowning in my own tiny corner of poverty and couldn't muster the energy to argue against Ron Paul's utopian capitalist vision. I feel my positions, literally and politically, have been given adequate support [by others on the thread].

Me (Finally):

First of all, it's important to note that "Capitalism" is actually a term coined by Marx (in a derogatory fashion) to describe a state/corporate perversion of the marketplace which existed in his day. For this reason alone, Marx's and Engel's argument fails at point one because it doesn't even really know its enemy. I don't even like to use the word "capitalism", because I don't like peddling a lie. I prefer talk about voluntary exchange; that vital manifestation of innovation, choice and variety -the essence of human output- which Communism tries to obliterate, but for the sake of speaking your lingo, I'll let it slide for now.

The reason I say that "capitalism" (here again meaning voluntary exchange), as a widespread system, does not exist today is because it actually does not… Not because it's more convenient an argument; it simply ceases to be. All the capitalism we've had in the past 100 years has existed solely under the power-structure of central banking, which as you know, is a vital component of Marx's and Engels' argument. Voluntary exchange and central banking are antithetical to one another. The market fails under such a system, because it is perverted at step one. Corporatism, on the other hand, thrives in this environment, because with the issuing of capital and the powers of economic planning being so centralized, the elite business *class* and the political *class* work, via elite-centric regulatory conditions and manipulation of the supply of capital, toward a mutually beneficial end, and to the detriment of the rest of humanity. Again, the modern communist argument fails at point one, by failing to even properly define its enemy, but we can go further, considering you touched on so many different topics.

I think Bastiat said it best when he wrote that statist communism is based on three fictional components, "the utter inertness of mankind, the omnipotence of the law, and the infallibility of the legislator". As hinted at by my use of the word "fictional", the trouble is that none of these things actually exists in real life.

The entire concept of communism is predicated on the great lie that someone (or a group of people) entirely benevolent can exist at the top of its structure in order to ensure equitable distribution. This is not a classless society; it is merely a society with fewer classes: the overseers in one class, the rest of humanity in another, and little opportunity to change stations. This aspect is entirely similar to the corporatist system, except that under communism, rather than the corporation being a legal fiction created by the state, the corporation IS the state. (So, corporatism is actually closer to communism than it is to my system of voluntary exchange). Considering the undeniable truth that, in human beings, pure benevolence is nonexistent, how anyone could believe that such a structure as Communism -one that is even more oligarchical than the corporatist system- could somehow wind up being fair, is beyond me. It assumes an impossible, idealistic scenario where somehow the instinct to act in self-interest can be removed from the human psyche. Every single point of history shows us the complete opposite is true. What's that saying about absolute power, again? This central reason why Corporatism and Communism -and Statism, in general- fail is precisely why an unfettered system of voluntary exchange works; it accounts for selfishness, checks it with consumer/worker choice, and leaves protection of life, liberty, and *legitimately* acquired property as one of the state's strictly limited functions.

The reason communism never talks about liberty, is because under communism, liberty does not exist. It is a wholly authoritarian system -an absolute state- which completely ignores the value of the individual in favor of "equitable distribution" of imaginary capital to the collective; capital containing no intrinsic value which can be arbitrarily expanded and contracted by the state in order to fulfill whatever allegedly altruistic goals it may have. Sure, one could take the Bolshevik argument and say that money should not exist either. But, considering that actual "money" (i.e., not fiat) is nothing more than a convenient way to create equitable exchange while bypassing the unworkability of a barter system in a modern world, one need only to look at Russian life in the early 20th century under the Bolsheviks to see that transitional or hybrid systems lead to disasters that those of us living today in the west (even under our unjust system) could hardly imagine, let alone empathize with.

It's also important mention that under the Bolsheviks, while private trade in the urban areas was made illegal, it actually took place at a higher rate than perhaps at any other time in Russian history! If this were a fictional literary attempt to create a perfect depiction of irony, it would be lauded by critics as a wild success; tragically, though, it actual happened. The starving, impoverished people were desperately (and illegally, under penalty of death) using "capitalism" in order save themselves from the unspeakable inequities brought about by the unjust, failed policies of their Communist rulers.

Communists rail on about how workers are exploited by the owners of the means of production, because in order for a company to be profitable, it has to pay workers less than the market value of what they produce (an entirely true point, though redeemed by virtue of the relationship being entirely voluntary) but, the communist fails to apply the same standard to the State, which under communism, has de facto ownership of a person's output, because wages are garnished by the state in an compulsory, unchecked, arbitrary fashion... The state owns 100% of the fruits of your output, and permits you to keep whatever portion it deems fit. And so we come to the graduated income tax -another pillar of Marx's system- which also very curiously exists under what you like to call "capitalism", even though, here again, the two concepts are antithetical.

So now we have two concepts central to Marxist communism perverting the market, and yet you fail to recognize this fact, preferring instead to blame voluntary exchange for perversions committed by the state in the marketplace.

That's like blaming the rape victim for not being impervious to penises.

Sadly, these are but a few examples of the inherent dishonesty that must be committed when defending ANY Statist system (communism being no exception). Such systems trade voluntary interaction for forced labor; individual freedoms, for collective imprisonment; the ability to change your station in life, for the miserably static existence of a serf.

A just system is one which does not rely on force and violence to accomplish its end. A fair system is one which allows people to act freely so long as they don't infringe on the rights of others. Statism is the opposite of this. But, to answer you question, if you would like to live under a system of communism, no, I would never use violence against you to force you to choose otherwise. I would bitterly defend your right to live voluntarily in a commune as a part of a collective. As long as you're not going to force me to join up with you, I say more power to you. Have at it. The trouble is that I highly doubt, given the history of Statist ideologues, that you would afford me the same courtesy if I chose not to partake. That's the rub.

They have yet to respond.

Then I went on to post a couple "progressives for Ron Paul" on her wall, because of some of the Paul-hating. I really hope I changed some minds.

LibertyIn08

01-27-2012, 02:40 PM

You won't win this election by trying to educate the fringe-left or fringe-right. Concentrate on converting and mobilizing the easily convinced first.

archangel689

01-27-2012, 02:50 PM

Marxists are the worst. The single pillar their entire philosophy has been built upon has been disproven time and time again, it is a dogma that just won't die. http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/308/02/20101200_cockshott_nitzan_bichler_testing_the_ltv_ exchange_web.htm

The apparent disconnect is that OWS folks confuse wealth and plunder. And Even in a communist society there is profit, it is just unseen because there is no money, but economic calculation is a tool that can be used to tell us if something is worthwhile or not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxMem2rkBiM&t=29m48s
^^^
Socialist governments must strive to maximize profit.

everlasticity

01-27-2012, 02:56 PM

Whenever I meet a communist I ask them to help carry my groceries.

amabala

01-27-2012, 02:57 PM

You're good gb13. Impressive.

gb13

01-27-2012, 03:14 PM

You won't win this election by trying to educate the fringe-left or fringe-right. Concentrate on converting and mobilizing the easily convinced first.

Maybe not. But it's not necessarily important to convince them, per se. It's important to convince the onlookers who are on the fence, and are often influenced by whatever viewpoint prevails in a given argument. These civilian debates must be held in public at the grassroots level to convince the masses who are watching along.

Nate

01-27-2012, 03:26 PM

HOLLYWOOD

01-27-2012, 03:49 PM

Unfortunately, all these fringe freaks on the left and right cannot view it as such. They assume they are the natural center, yet the foundation of this nation was incredibly libertarian, with history, and the documentation backing it up. Every time I hear this out of those other ideologues, I think of those that followed, "The Sun and all the other planets orbited/circled planet Earth". They would look up in the sky and watch planet ascend across the skies, only to digress/regress against the same sky and time advanced. They just couldn't figure out why a planet when back and forth in the night skies. So they spent countless hours coming up with complex formulas and algorithms to match the movement of the solar system to what their eyesight measured in the skies. As soon as someone open their eyes to the planets revolve around the gravitational mass and pull of the sun, boom, everything fell into place with a simple equation and the movements judged by eyesight measured exact.

It's the radicals in both directions that create the fictional ideologies and corrupt state. More for themselves by whatever means, yet when we the people, truly, the individuals, are given the illusion of choice on the periodical, both extremes come back to the center to collect their support. The second they're back in power, the pendulum swings back to the extremes.

As many know, Lou has some pretty good info, I like this one below, though, he does mention Reason, lol.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/kinsella/kinsella15.html

DanConway

01-27-2012, 04:00 PM

In before they respond "how dare you compare anything to rape?!"

Most likely you won't convert communists (if you do, they're probably true believer types who will latch on to any ideology), but getting onlookers thinking counts for something, especially considering that their vote counts just as much as those of the extremists who have already made up their minds.

PeteinLA

01-27-2012, 04:05 PM

You have some great arguments there. I've eventually won over my lefty sister by bringing the "flat management structure" argument into the equation. She has been in a management position and could make the connection between the Libertarianish position of pushing decisions and choice down the food chain as much as possible. She now sees inefficiencies everywhere.

Good luck.

affa

01-27-2012, 04:09 PM

gb13. Please consider posting the following response to your friends. I am speaking from the heart, and I am speaking as one of them. To be quite honest, I agree with many of your opponents. If forced to label myself, I'm anarcho-syndicalist, and ultimately, anti-capitalist (and yes, I'm well aware of the difference between corporatism and capitalism). If you told me 10 years ago I'd be rooting for a libertarian, or even a 'president' at all, I'd have laughed.

I support Ron Paul not because of libertarianism, but because of liberty. But even more importantly, because we're at the cusp of some terrible times - truly horrific ones - in regards to endless war, the growing police state, the risk of hyper-inflation, and general economic crisis. And while I do not agree that capitalism or libertarianism is a cure-all (or even an end goal), I think, at this juncture, Ron Paul is the only possibility we have to end these wars and, perhaps, avert full economic meltdown.

Quite frankly, debating the actual impact of pure unadulterated capitalism is missing the damn point. It's doctors arguing over the proper treatment while the patient dies on the operating table. It's critical to remind oneself that Ron Paul won't be changing everything overnight. It's not like a vote for him is a vote for unrestrained capitalism.

And besides, the system we have in place isn't exactly defensible - it's been overrun by corruption at every level, infiltrated by the power hungry, the lobbyists, and big industry (big pharm, big-agri, oil interests, war profiteers, etc) for the past 100 years, at the very least. To defend the American System against a man who wants to begin stripping that corruption away is misguided at best. It's not time to rebuild, yet. We're far too off track for that. It's time to dismantle the Empire.

Ron Paul will end the wars. You can take that to the bank. And speaking of banks, he'll bring the Fed to its knees, if not end it outright. And anyone who doesn't recognize the Fed, and those behind it, as the enemy of us all, hasn't done their homework. No other politician even seriously broaches these subjects. More importantly, Ron Paul has a long, established history of integrity and consistent message. He can be trusted to end the wars. Period. Many of us warned that Obama would not follow through, and we were right. And we already see other candidates co-opting Ron Paul's others messages; Newt Gingrich, for example, is trying to steal the 'End the Fed' platform. This theft of platforms (from 'peace' to 'liberty' to 'end the fed') by those who can not be trusted will only accelerate.

So I implore you - get your head out of the philosophy for one second. Our situation is that dire. If Ron Paul was not libertarian, but rather, a variant from what is commonly referred to as the 'far left', we'd be begging the libertarians and an-caps to please, please, get past the philosophical differences for a half a second and recognize right now, we need to unite. We may not agree with his every position, but c'mon, do we really expect to find a knight in shining armor that looks and thinks exactly like us? I don't even agree with myself every day, let alone another person.

We can't wait for the perfect solution, especially when there is no one on the horizon and we're at such a critical moment. Ron Paul is our chance. Possibly our last chance. Certainly our last chance at having someone so obviously true to his word.

I don't advocate capitalism. I most definitely see the danger in it, the power structure inherent to the concept of 'capital' itself. But more importantly, I see the danger - the real, practical, pragmatic danger - of not getting Ron Paul into office. He is the path. And once we end these wars, and strip down the corruption in government, and throw the banksters out... then, we can concern ourselves with the deeper philosophical issues.

I am not trying to position Ron Paul as the 'lesser of two evils'. I reject that argument myself. Rather, I view Ron Paul as a man of integrity, that I disagree with on a couple important subjects, but also recognize will allow us as a nation to take the first steps towards a better future. We need to heal as a nation, and heal as a world, and we can't do that while we remain empire, while we drone bomb, while we split and enrage our own populace by defining social issues at the Federal level, while our economic policies destroy the middle class and enslave the poor.

LibertyIn08

01-27-2012, 04:32 PM

jmdrake

01-27-2012, 04:35 PM

thoughtomator

01-27-2012, 04:35 PM

certain isms are indistinguishable from religions, and if your point challenges a central point of faith don't expect them to be receptive

NYgs23

01-27-2012, 06:25 PM

In the eyes of the communist, the root of the problem isn't the violence of the state but the private ownership of capital or "the means of production." Thus, for them, any society that allows private ownership of capital is evil, whether or not it has a state. This is why they conflate free market "capitalism" with state-corporatism. For them, the distinction doesn't matter; the key is that they both allow Lockean property rights over capital. They consider the private ownership of capital akin to a feudal fiefdom.

Whereas Lockean propertarians think that if a person transforms a resource through his labor, he justly establishes complete sovereign dominion over it, self-described anarcho-communists and anarcho-syndicalists often follow a doctrine of ownership based on possession, whereby a person only has just dominion over a resource if he is in current possession of it. For example, under possession-based ownership, it would be unlawful for a person to build a factory and then employ people to work in the factory and then demand a portion of the produce for himself. This is because once those laborers started working in the factory, the factory would fall automatically under their ownership and the builder would have no right to it. For the same reason, the possession doctrine would forbid loans, investments, and rent. All of these forms of economic transaction involve a contract by which the owner of a good agrees to allow someone else to use the good in exchange for a return. Under the possession doctrine, such contract would plainly be void since the owner would lose all rights to the good the minute it passed from his hands to the other party, who would have no legal obligation to repay anything to original owner.

Needless to say, applying such a doctrine by law would hamstring an economy. Possessors of capital would refuse to give up their capital for even temporary use by others since that would be akin to giving it up entirely. If you had a person who owned an axe and another who was good at cutting wood, they could not broker a contract by which the latter could rent an axe from the former. The latter could only barter for it, which would be impossible if he had nothing himself. The communist solution is that everyone would live in a commune and pool all their resources, which, of course, creates the perverse incentives of a "tragedy of the commons" situation. The communist solution to that is assuming that human nature would change under such a system so that people would no longer be care so much about their personal material gain. Which is absurd, since any creature possessing a lack of concern for its own material self-improvement would be at a severe disadvantage and on the road to self-destruction.

Furthermore, they're not necessarily consistent with their possession doctrine, since if you press them and ask them if you'd lose ownership of your car by lending it to a friend for free, they admit that you would not; the prohibition against lending only applies if there is money involved. This belies the fact that it's really mutually beneficial commerce they despise, not broad ownership rights. They want a world in everyone works cooperatively purely out of fellowship and find it distasteful that people would prefer to "selfishly" make deals with each other instead.

I'm also not sure how they feel about independent contracting. The possession doctrine, if consistently applied, would mean that if you let a car mechanic work on your car, he would own the car. I'm not sure what their answer would be to that one.

Occam's Banana

01-27-2012, 06:40 PM

Maybe not. But it's not necessarily important to convince them, per se. It's important to convince the onlookers who are on the fence, and are often influenced by whatever viewpoint prevails in a given argument. These civilian debates must be held in public at the grassroots level to convince the masses who are watching along.
I was going to point out the utter futility of attempting to persuade dedicated "class warriors" of ... well, of anything sane ... but it looks like you're well aware of this.
In cases like this, making counter-arguments for the sake of spectators is the only sensible approach.
+rep for having the good sense to be aware of these facts - and for presenting well-crafted arguments.

As for the rest, I can only ask you to actually sit down and read, first hand, books on communism by communist thinkers and not trust the scary monster version filtered through to you through Reason Magazine or whatever. I've read Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, Konkin, Novick, etc. I'm willing to bet you've never read Marx, Lenin or Trotsky and wouldn't have a clue who, say, Hilferding or Poulantzas or McNally is.

Ahhhhh ... the old "I've read Euclid & Pythagoras, so it's only fair for me to demand that you read all the proofs for squaring the circle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squaring_the_circle) and trisecting the angle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_trisection) before you conclude that they are not valid" argument.

And mixed with a nice dollop of authoritatem name-dropping, too, Yummy!

(And I have, BTW, read some Lenin. Probably not the texts that "Them" have in mind, though. The man was a vile & despicable POS).

Demigod

01-27-2012, 07:03 PM

Just my view as an ex-communist.

Well at least for me the center of the whole communist ideology was about reeducation.My idea was that people are not born greedy,angry and hateful they are turned that way by a society that encourages it.So if you start prohibiting some stuff in time those kind of character attributes will start to disappear and in time will be exterminated.So capitalism was just a small part of the problem.

I got out of that kind of thinking by realizing a couple of things:

1.I am not that smart
2.Other people do not have the same desires as me or dreams,who says that the way I think they should spend their lives is the right way.
3.By centralizing government who can guarantee that a sociopath would not trick us all take the power and then just completely ruin us
4.That as I see that no one else is smart enough to tell me how I should live my life,from point 1 comes that i should not aspire to do the same to others.

5.I saw a video on You tube :D describing how well intention ed people who think that by centralizing power think they are helping people,actually are hurting them.

Then I also found out about Ron Paul and this forum broke the rest of the socialist ideas that I had left in me.I was communist for a very long time, proud member of the party.And I really see now point 5 describing me back then.

So if you want to show them the errors.Ask them "What happens when you centralize all that power,and a sociopath/greedy man comes into power? You have just doomed an entire population to be lab rats fulfilling the dreams of a maniac "

Brian Coulter

01-27-2012, 07:09 PM

There are only two types of people in this world, Paul supporters and REDS.

Occam's Banana

01-27-2012, 07:13 PM

There are only two types of people in this world, Paul supporters and REDS.
Better Paul-led than Red!

MrTudo

01-27-2012, 07:15 PM

Marxists are the worst.

Actually the marxists are predicatable and for the most part if you're crafty, avoidable.

The ones that are perhaps the biggest traitors of them all are the ones who espouse "patriotism" while brainwashing the masses with regards to what patriotism even is. They send our young people overseas and while we're worried about them they bankrupt the country thereby CREATING MORE MARXISM HERE.

Godmode7

01-27-2012, 07:16 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=t77NOsLulvE

I hate living in Ann Arbor. Look at how stupid they all are! Happy because he said something good about the UofM and they all fall in love with him?!

Might not show many video comments but everyone on my FB are praising him-_-

Lishy

01-27-2012, 07:36 PM

I don't believe antagonizing a particular group of people is a good way to promote Ron Paul.

Rather, if you want to do Ron Paul's campaign justice, you should educate them about Paul so that they vote for him instead of Obama.

People become communist not because they have have an obsession with red, hate the rich, or fap to Karl Marx, but because they see it as a solution!

Speaking as a socialist myself, I support Ron Paul BECAUSE he has a plan combat corporate corruption, and end our growing class division, and rising costs.

You need to APPEAL to communists that, though his means of social justice is different, his ultimate objective is what they want!

awake

01-27-2012, 07:42 PM

The Read Curve:

Libertarians on one end and communists on the other. In between are the swayable masses being influenced by the exclusive minority of individuals on either end of the curve. It is a war for the minds of men; every individual is a jury of his peers; is it liberty that wins or slavery? One side has violence on its side the other has reason. This is the battle of all time. It is literally intellectual armageddon.

acptulsa

01-27-2012, 07:43 PM

'It just looks to me like communism is such a happy family affair that not a communist wants to stay where it is practiced. It's the only thing they want you to have but keep none for themselves.'--Will Rogers
//

'Communism is like prohibition; it's a good idea but it won't work.'--Will Rogers

Siberia is still working. It's just as cold on you to be sent there under the Soviets as it was under the czar.

Lishy

01-27-2012, 07:52 PM

Libertarians on one end and communists on the other.

I don't think turning this into a left-wing/right-wind issue is right either... Communists and libertarians both want the same thing.

awake

01-27-2012, 08:00 PM

I don't think turning this into a left-wing/right-wind issue is right either... Communists and libertarians both want the same thing.

I would disagree, Communists ultimately want power for power sake. To exercise total control over all men, to shape them like clay . Libertarians seek the dissolving of power to the individual level where power to control is best managed and people are limited to only voluntary power over others.

Revolution9

01-27-2012, 08:11 PM

I don't think turning this into a left-wing/right-wind issue is right either... Communists and libertarians both want the same thing.

Communists killed 700 million in the 20th century. You are deluded to believe that libertarianism wants this.

Rev9

HigherVision

01-27-2012, 08:15 PM

I find that most 'liberals' views don't differ too much from Communism. They just don't like to call themselves Communists because of how extreme it sounds, but their actual opinions aren't signficantly less extreme. The only difference is they want to want to be able keep their own property, it's just everyone else who shouldn't be allowed to own anything.

Schiff_FTW

01-27-2012, 08:17 PM

What was that Ron Paul said during the NH primary night speech? It had to do with bringing everyone to freedom on their own terms, showing how it benefits them.

acptulsa

01-27-2012, 08:19 PM

I would disagree, Communists ultimately want power for power sake. To exercise total control over all men, to shape them like clay . Libertarians seek the dissolving of power to the individual level where power to control is best managed and people are limited to only voluntary power over others.

Or, to put it another way, Communism is either at best arrogance or it's hunger for power and greed.

Libertarianism, on the other hand, is founded on the simple precept that we can best micromanage our own lives.

PierzStyx

01-27-2012, 08:20 PM

That's like blaming the rape victim for not being impervious to penises.

Man. What a heck of a way to put it. But you drove your point home. And the comparison is apt.

Lishy

01-27-2012, 08:20 PM

Communists killed 700 million in the 20th century. You are deluded to believe that libertarianism wants this.

So you're saying I want to kill people in the name of my "ideology"?

Look, I'm saying that we need to put this left-wing/right-wing issue aside.

We need to know WHY people believe the things they do, and WHY people vote. Communists believe in communism for the same reason libertarians believe in libertarianism. Since we're all humans in the end, shouldn't we work together, for Ron Paul's sake?

We must try to convince radical liberals why they should be voting Ron Paul, instead of this ideological nonsense.

PierzStyx

01-27-2012, 08:22 PM

So you're saying I want to kill people in the name of my "ideology"?

Look, I'm saying that we need to put this left-wing/right-wing issue aside.

We need to know WHY people believe the things they do, and WHY people vote.

Shouldn't we be trying to convince radical liberals why they should be voting Ron Paul, instead of this ideological nonsense?

But its not ideological nonsense. In fact it is very central to the entire point and to Ron Paul's message of constitutionalism and liberty.

Lishy

01-27-2012, 08:27 PM

But its not ideological nonsense. In fact it is very central to the entire point and to Ron Paul's message of constitutionalism and liberty.

Call it whatever, but normal people in their core still want the same principle - Justice. I'm trying to say that we SHOULD be convincing them to vote Ron Paul because his movement IS what they want, even if his means of doing so isn't what they are familiar with!

Doesn't just the mere fact I'm on a Ron Paul forum and donating to him mean something? There are people on the far left who understand what Ron Paul is trying to do, and that message needs to be spread to people who are skeptical of him!

Gimme Some Truth

01-27-2012, 08:34 PM

You've got some good arguments there and, of course, communism can only work within a small group where everyone knows everyone else (tho I think it'd be surprising just how small the population would have to be in order for it to work - even amongst friends), I do think it's somewhat of a fair argument to say that the very existence of the State makes corporatism pretty much inevitable. Once you institute a government, those with power and money will lobby the government to get involved in the economy, and the do-gooders, the Ralph Naders and Warrens of this world, will act as unwitting pawns for them before moving onto their next crusade.

I think that's their strongest argument (at least that's what I think they touched upon in the latter comments) but it obviously isn't an argument against freemarkets nor for communism.

acptulsa

01-27-2012, 08:50 PM

My argument when the 'do you believe government has no role at all?' meme comes up is this:

If Washington controls your local fire department, and there's a problem with it, you have to convince about twenty million people that your local fire department is more important than gay marriage, abortion, and their own local fire departments combined. Sound ridiculous to you? I'll just bet that since the PATRIOT Act passed, your local fire department has hired at least half a dozen federal grant proposal writers...

palm

01-27-2012, 08:50 PM

I deeply and surely wish I was a tenth as smart as you guys. Where do I start?

palm

01-27-2012, 08:52 PM

Because quite frankly if that communist girl got a hold of me, I just might be a communist - you know?

acptulsa

01-27-2012, 08:57 PM

Because quite frankly if that communist girl got a hold of me, I just might be a communist - you know?

Well, I suppose shacking up could be considered communism on a very small scale...

awake

01-27-2012, 09:21 PM

Occam's Banana

01-27-2012, 09:23 PM

You've got some good arguments there and, of course, communism can only work within a small group where everyone knows everyone else (tho I think it'd be surprising just how small the population would have to be in order for it to work - even amongst friends) [...]
Actually, I suspect it could "work" at all only within family groups - and only small families at that.

mosquitobite

01-27-2012, 09:31 PM

Kylie

01-27-2012, 09:31 PM

I deeply and surely wish I was a tenth as smart as you guys. Where do I start?

Read. Read everything you can get your hands on.

I would think a good portion of us are avid readers, and it has been shown that the more you read, the more nimble your mind will stay.

Being here is a good first step. That's how I started 5 years or so ago. Someone on another forum turned me on to RP, and I liked what he said, so I started searching. From there, I found the Judge, Ayn Rand, and Mises. And I'm still very ignorant when it comes to all the in's and out's of philosophy. But I do know what I want out of my life, and for the lives of my children: Freedom. True, unadulterated freedom. Not this bullshit fallacy of choice we have today.

I think in the end, everyone wants to be free. Most, after being schooled, have no idea what true freedom is though. It's not a nice comfy blanket you can wrap yourself in. It's exciting, and scary, and the most fulfilling feeling you could ever feel in your life...next to love. But those two go hand in hand :)

mosquitobite

01-27-2012, 10:05 PM

Pure Marxism is the idea that free exchange (capitalism) would collapse on itself out of its own greed and the people would become free from this "exploitation" of the bourgeois. No true communists need lift a finger, 'just wait and see' was the perscription.

But, reality proved them otherwise, and not willing to accept this failure of doctrine, some of the true believers set out fill the credibility void and to help make Capitalism die; to speed up the "inevitable" as they said. To help the final Communism come about, the violence of the state needed to be used. The rest is the bloody history of the Bolshivks, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, The North Korean Kims gang and many more true believers.

Communism needs absolute naked violence in every sphere of human life to maintain itself as a societal structure. Otherwise mans default nature takes over in which he freely chooses his own life interests over the collective interests of the would be slave masters.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to awake again.

As affa said on page 2.
To believe in communism means that someone has to distribute. And who better to willingly take on that role other than a sociopath?

I've also had friends who tried the "commune" type living. Inevitably, it always fails. Always.

Anyone who believes they are a communist/socialist needs to set up their own small scale version before trying to sell it to me as a better scheme nationally :rolleyes:

mosquitobite

01-27-2012, 10:08 PM

I deeply and surely wish I was a tenth as smart as you guys. Where do I start?

Yep, as others have said - read. :)

I was blessed with a wonderful economics professor in college.

He's also an author. He's a Christian libertarian. I loved his book "Lean Neither to the Left nor to the Right; A Thinking Christian's Guide to Politics"

If there's one thing I would suggest is: whenever you hear of some brilliant government idea - ALWAYS stop to consider the UNintended consequences...for there always ARE!

Hook

01-27-2012, 10:11 PM

Did you tell them to get the flock out of here?

PierzStyx

01-27-2012, 10:15 PM

Call it whatever, but normal people in their core still want the same principle - Justice. I'm trying to say that we SHOULD be convincing them to vote Ron Paul because his movement IS what they want, even if his means of doing so isn't what they are familiar with!

Doesn't just the mere fact I'm on a Ron Paul forum and donating to him mean something? There are people on the far left who understand what Ron Paul is trying to do, and that message needs to be spread to people who are skeptical of him!

I don't mean to "dog" you. And I apologize if it seems that way. Liberty is a message that appeals to everyone. In fact only in a free society could a fully voluntary commune develop that communism can only exist under. After all the ideology of communism is that everyone of their own free will practices communism. The moment government force gets involved then it isn't communism but only something LIKE communism.

This is why ideology is important in the long run though. While you're right in the short run, in the long run only a system that protects liberty against both individuals and the state be viable. If you want the liberty to practice communism you have to have a constitutional state along the lines of the US Constitution, one that protects liberty of association and property rights. As soon as a system that violates that comes into play it has to be stopped and liberty restored. I think the OP actually outlines that very well.

ericthethe

01-27-2012, 10:16 PM

Why are you posting this here? You want us all to congratulate you for your smug, try-hard, self-important and pretentious attempt at "educating" your friends?

AceNZ

01-27-2012, 10:38 PM

The exchange in the OP is interesting, in part because I think it's a good illustration of how the usual conservative / libertarian argument is not persuasive to progressives, communists and other leftists.

What's missing is the moral argument. The Left is arguing for egalitarianism on moral grounds, and the Right is actually granting them that moral high ground -- so they can't win. I believe the long-term key to success is to communicate how their moral premises are mistaken. Saying "capitalism is better, and here's how" just isn't enough. That should be the final conclusion of an argument, not a starting point.

affa

01-27-2012, 11:28 PM

Why are you posting this here? You want us all to congratulate you for your smug, try-hard, self-important and pretentious attempt at "educating" your friends?

Why are you posting this here? You want us all to congratulate you for your smug, try-hard, self-important and pretentious attempt at "educating" [people that didn't join here this month]?

ericthethe

01-28-2012, 12:55 AM

Why are you posting this here? You want us all to congratulate you for your smug, try-hard, self-important and pretentious attempt at "educating" [people that didn't join here this month]?

people who*

affa

01-28-2012, 01:18 AM

people who*

'that' is perfectly acceptable when talking about groups.
http://www.grammarbook.com/grammar/whoVwhVt.asp

also, 'that' is considered by many to be perfectly acceptable when talking about individual people:
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/who-versus-that.aspx

nothing worse than an incorrect grammar nazi.

ericthethe

01-28-2012, 01:26 AM

May be correct but it's an overused word and makes you appear poorly educated. Keep trying.

affa

01-28-2012, 01:35 AM

May be correct but it's an overused word and makes you appear poorly educated. Keep trying.

'that' is an overused word. crap. so is 'the'. and 'so'. and 'is'. crap. so is 'crap'. damn.

you're here to stir up trouble. i'm here to mock you.

hueylong

01-28-2012, 01:38 AM

C'mon Dude. The general is a long way off.

ericthethe

01-28-2012, 02:49 AM

'that' is an overused word. crap. so is 'the'. and 'so'. and 'is'. crap. so is 'crap'. damn.

you're here to stir up trouble. i'm here to mock you.

Not really. 'That' is used way more often than it should be. It's annoying and muddies up the flow of sentences. More times than not it can be omitted and a person still makes sense.

Look at this example:

There was this guy that I knew long ago that would talk about things that were interesting. He often said that he would do something that was important. It turns out that he ended up doing something that was boring.

Now without:

There was this guy I knew long ago who would talk about interesting things. He often said he would do something important. It turns out he ended up doing something boring.

Much better.

I'm not here to stir up trouble. You can continue to try to mock me, though. You're doing a great job. Good luck in your endeavors.

noneedtoaggress

01-28-2012, 03:11 AM

I deeply and surely wish I was a tenth as smart as you guys. Where do I start?

Mises.org (http://www.mises.org) Has a lot of great Austrian Economics and Libertarian philosophy books and essays available for free.

I'd highly recommend checking out something like this short essay, (http://mises.org/easaran/chap3.asp) or maybe some of the other ones in here (http://mises.org/resources/3147/Egalitarianism-as-a-Revolt-Against-Nature-and-Other-Essays).

Mini-Me

01-28-2012, 04:00 AM

ericthethe

01-28-2012, 04:09 AM

I deeply and surely wish I was a tenth as smart as you guys. Where do I start?

You can learn about macroeconomics from macroeconomics classes in college. If you can't go just get a pdf or check out a book on intro and intermediate macroeconomics, every book is the same. Also, read economics blogs (like the Paul Krugman new york times blog). You can also learn about why austrian economics are shit from the internet.

AlexAmore

01-28-2012, 04:47 AM

I've also had friends who tried the "commune" type living. Inevitably, it always fails. Always.

Anyone who believes they are a communist/socialist needs to set up their own small scale version before trying to sell it to me as a better scheme nationally :rolleyes:

I know a family friend who's son joined a communist commune. The father was talking about it and he said his son has to work a very long full time+ schedule every week and everyone shifts their duties on a regular basis so everyone does everything. You get your basics for free like food, clean clothes, a shelter. At the end of the month you get a whopping $45! To spend as you please, yeah baby! You can tell this society is gonna invent the next great innovation of the 21st century at that rate.

Mini-Me

01-28-2012, 04:48 AM

You can learn about macroeconomics from macroeconomics classes in college. If you can't go just get a pdf or check out a book on intro and intermediate macroeconomics, every book is the same. Also, read economics blogs (like the Paul Krugman new york times blog). You can also learn about why austrian economics are shit from the internet.

Paul Krugman was owned so badly by comments on his blog - complete with scholarly references to other mainstream economists even - that he had to disable comments and later reenable them, while restricting them to extremely short ones that couldn't contain any real substance. He's a smart guy, and he had the chance to become a good economist, but he's nothing more than an egotistical propagandist nowadays. If you want to learn from mainstream economists, you should probably pay more attention to the new classical school than the new Keynesian school, and pay more attention to practically ANYONE than Krugman.

Austrian economics are not "shit." People call them a "pseudoscience" because Austrians use logic instead of empiricism, but that's a hazard of the "scientistic prejudice" that has incentivized nearly every field to try to foolishly refashion itself as a science, simply to remain respectable (say hello to religion/philosophy masquerading as science in the form of intelligent design). Mathematics and computer science aren't empirical sciences either, but you thankfully don't hear people calling them "pseudoscience" as a pejorative, because those fields don't contradict academic dogma.

If you look back in history, you'll find that Mises and the Austrians were very well regarded in the early 30's or so, and Mises generated a lot of intellectual excitement...but he lost steam after Keynes created his General Theory and was pushed hard by moneyed interests. After all, FDR NEEDED Keynesianism to retroactively justify his actions, and academia was eager to accept theories which made economists into economic policy gods instead of mere theorists; statist economic theories indulge the urge to experiment and play God, and they appeal to the urge of economists to hold important bureaucratic and advisory positions outside of academia. As always, institutional inertia is a prevalent force in universities and academic publications: For starters, research grant money isn't exactly issued nondiscriminately, and libertarians who would refuse it on principle are inherently at a further disadvantage. Status quo professors determine who gets tenure, who gets published in academic journals, and who even receives a doctorate at all. Very few have the personal integrity to aid someone who might discredit their entire life's work, and ego demands the short-sighted marginalization of anyone who would dare try. That's why it takes a long time before prevailing views change in any field, even the sciences...or perhaps especially the sciences, because of the esteem that prestigious academics are held in, and because of their sheer intelligence defending their work, even if it rests on fundamentally erroneous assumptions.

The truth is, using empiricism with complex data is not well-suited to developing the backbone of an economic theory, because economists frequently draw fundamental relationships from correlated variables without properly isolating the variables they're dealing with. In short, they overfit to their sample data, without respect to the millions of underlying variables that may be more important, and which may take on incidentally correlated values among the data sets they're studying. The classic example is the Phillips curve, which posits a fundamental inverse relationship between the rate of inflation and the rate of unemployment. It was used as the bedrock of Keynesian policies for decades, until stagflation totally stumped practically EVERY economist (except the Austrians). The reason is, these economists foolishly study very specific phenomena in isolation from one another, when they aren't actually isolating their variables, and their different theories in various branches of economics aren't even necessarily self-consistent.

In contrast, the Austrians study the economy as a unified system, where each aspect of their theories is consistent with the rest, and particularly consistent with the theories of supply and demand and price theory. Those theories should be the basic foundation of nearly ALL economics, but even the most brilliant mainstream economists are too deeply indoctrinated by the "scientistic prejudice" (coined by F.A. Hayek) to give this approach a chance. Instead, these economists who have been CONSISTENTLY WRONG choose to ignore and dismiss Austrians wherever they disagree. Meanwhile, their pea-brained followers on the Internet rely on appeals to authority and arrogantly spew unsubstantiated vitriol at the Austrian economists, who have been consistently right about everything but timing. "Oh, a broken clock is right twice a day, blah blah." In reality, it's more like: When the policy is always the same, a wise oracle will always predict the same disastrous outcome.

Establishment economists were wrong about the Federal Reserve preventing further depressions. They were wrong about the inflation/unemployment relationship. They were wrong when they said gold would plummet after Bretton Woods failed. They were wrong about the housing bubble...oh, no, wait. There's one exception: Nouriel Roubini was able to predict the collapse of the housing bubble, because (if I recall correctly) he was able to cite the completely obvious overleveraging of the banking system in the mid 2000's...but considering that's a totally shallow - and totally OBVIOUS - symptom of the problem, I'm not going to give him too much credit. (EDIT: Actually, I take that back: I must be conflating his views with the post-meltdown silliness of his contemporaries. Roubini was able to recognize the bubble based on the supply/demand/price fundamentals of the housing market alone, so he does deserve credit for seeing that at least.)

Actually, it's all too common for mainstream economists to mistake the symptoms of a problem for the actual problem, because their basic methodology routinely demands shallow thinking...which doesn't help to understand a complex system. For instance, Keynes believed the Great Depression was caused by oversaving, when everyone spent like crazy in the 20's. After the economy started to slow, of COURSE people were saving en masse. Mainstream economists believe our problem in the Great Depression and the current depression was a lack of liquidity and aggregate demand...yet government spending to stimulate aggregate demand DIDN'T WORK. It shouldn't be surprising, because low aggregate demand is only a shallow symptom of the real problem! If you ask these guys to cite more fundamental factors that lead to depressions and the problems they cite (e.g. low aggregate demand), most of them will handwave about "animal spirits" or "irrational exuberance." I guess they just don't have the tools to dig beneath the surface, and they don't have the intuition to recognize the way government can uniquely distort market signals over an extended period of time (since it can uniquely use regulatory force and employ "unlimited" resources to manipulate the price of credit or practically anything else). If you had a stomach virus and diarrhea, and you went to Dr. Krugman for a cure, he'd put some duct tape over your butt to fix the diarrhea and tell you you're good to go! Once it failed, well...guess he didn't use enough duct tape!

In contrast, Mises predicted the Great Depression a couple years before it happened, and he spelled out exactly why. He predicted the ultimate failure of the Soviet system in his book "Socialism," and he spelled out why. The Austrians predicted the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement, and they predicted that gold prices and demand would increase rather than decrease. The Austrians predicted the current depression and financial meltdown, and they were able to cite factors much more fundamental than "animal spirits" or "overleveraging." They can tell you exactly WHY every major corporate bank was overextending themselves at once, without any of them recognizing each other's fragility and calling for shipments of physical cash reserves or following a different policy.

Now, I don't necessarily think Austrians are perfect either: They're awesome at qualitatively analyzing the circumstances of any economy, the incentives therein, and the ultimate consequences of given economic policies...but they make little to no attempt at determining timing, and I think they could learn something here from their more empirical counterparts. Empirical economic data is very tricky to analyze and base entire theories off of, without respect to logic or common sense - which is where I think mainstream economists fail - but using empirical data and econometrics and running a "sanity check" against the logical Austrian model might allow them to make tentative predictions about timing. I'm no expert though, so what do I know?

In addition, mainstream economists occasionally make rational criticisms of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory. I'm not yet knowledgeable enough to discern whether the Austrian response to these criticisms is sufficient to fully defend the theory or whether the theory needs some manner of adjustment, but they do in fact provide defenses. Unless and until I become knowledgeable enough to debate the specifics at the level of professional economists, I believe the Austrians have earned the benefit of the doubt. After all, I AM knowledgeable enough to realize the vast gulf between the predictive power of the various schools, as well as the complete irrationality of Keynesianism and the empirical failure of mainstream policy prescriptions. If nothing else, I think we should be taking the mainstream economists' superiority complex and their occupation of the most prestigious universities with a huge grain of salt, considering the way they have been consistently - and gravely - wrong. Instead, I think we should be paying much more attention to the guys who have been warning about those same mistakes all along. ;)

All that said: I DO agree with ericthethe that people should learn a bit about mainstream economic theories as well (e.g. neoclassical economics). The smarter economists actually ARE right about a lot of things, and they [IMO correctly] state that the Austrians overstate their differences with them. You can learn a lot from mainstream economics, but just remember to take their macroeconomic theories with a grain of salt. Resist internalizing them too deeply until you've had the chance to examine the opposing Austrian viewpoint...which, to deliberately misquote Milton Friedman and say the opposite of what he said, "The Hayek-Mises explanation of the business cycle is consistent with the evidence. It is, I believe, true." ;)

Feeding the Abscess

01-28-2012, 05:21 AM

I wouldn't worry about them. We've got to get past the primary first. If we win then Ron Paul simply has to play the antiwar / anti-police state card like there is no tomorrow and watch the left fracture.

I hope Ron basically reprises his 1988 run in the general, or otherwise shoots from the hip (like he did in the sit-down ABC interview regarding Elizabeth Warren's comments); I'm giggling just from the thought of the shitstorm that would kick up.

That RP video I referenced:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glvkLEUC_6Q

affa

01-28-2012, 05:25 AM

Your original post to the OP, which was rude, inflammatory, and unnecessary:

Why are you posting this here? You want us all to congratulate you for your smug, try-hard, self-important and pretentious attempt at "educating" your friends?

Followed by being a grammar nazi:

people who*

When corrected on your error in your own correction, followed by insulting me:

May be correct but it's an overused word and makes you appear poorly educated. Keep trying.

Followed by a rant on the overuse of 'that', ignoring the fact I only used it once.

Followed by:

SNIP You can also learn about why austrian economics are shit from the internet. without any actual reasoning or clarification on Ron Paul forums.

So excuse me if I don't believe you when you say:

I'm not here to stir up trouble.

LibertyEagle

01-28-2012, 05:36 AM

You lost me when you called Communism fair. How can it be "fair" when you cannot keep the fruits of your labor?

soulcyon

01-28-2012, 06:28 AM

Very nice points gb13. I've encountered the exact same Corporate/State complex argument with others, but could never wrap up my voluntary exchange idea neatly. I'm going to have to take that rapist analogy for jokes ;)

@AceNZ, could you elaborate how the moral argument would be framed? I'm assuming since we're abiding by social contract, we agree to similar moral grounds.

Narmical

01-28-2012, 07:18 AM

acptulsa

01-28-2012, 07:47 AM

Not really. 'That' is used way more often than it should be. It's annoying and muddies up the flow of sentences. More times than not it can be omitted and a person still makes sense.

Look at this example:

There was this guy that I knew long ago that would talk about things that were interesting. He often said that he would do something that was important. It turns out that he ended up doing something that was boring.

Now without:

There was this guy I knew long ago who would talk about interesting things. He often said he would do something important. It turns out he ended up doing something boring.

Much better.

I'm not here to stir up trouble. You can continue to try to mock me, though. You're doing a great job. Good luck in your endeavors.

So good to know that that will win us the election. Or, rather, that a lack of that will win us the election.

May we get back to discussing how to win over the misguided now? Thanks for that...

otherone

01-28-2012, 08:24 AM

You want to convert people to Paul?
Ask your friends (Marxist or Neocon):
Who do you believe should have ultimate control of your life?

Let them think about that. How many "marxists" do you know who would willingly lose civil liberties so the homeless can eat? Would willingly embrace the draft so income is equal? Communism is wholly, proudly, unabashedly Collectivism. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. It can not allow dissent, or free speech BY DEFINITION....your opinion, your voice is irrelevant, and silenced. If you are a danger to the state, you are removed.

Who should be the 'Boss' of your life?

The State?, A Deity? An employer? Or should we have sovereignty over ourselves?

Brett85

01-28-2012, 08:50 AM

Why are people talking about a "general election?" Has Ron hinted that he's going to make a 3rd party run?

Mini-Me

01-28-2012, 09:01 AM

Why are people talking about a "general election?" Has Ron hinted that he's going to make a 3rd party run?

No. The thread was probably posted under the tentative assumption that we'll win the nomination...and either way, it doesn't hurt to try converting some independents and liberals now, because we need all the primary votes we can get. :) The committed Marxists referenced in the OP aren't likely to come around anytime soon, but other observers just might.

acptulsa

01-28-2012, 09:02 AM

Why are people talking about a "general election?" Has Ron hinted that he's going to make a 3rd party run?

TC, we're going to get this man the nomination. We're going to flood the convention, vote for who we're supposed to vote for for as long as our state laws say we have to, listen patiently while they carry on about how this is the first brokered convention in however many years, and nominate the only guy who can beat Obama.

Sorry if you disapprove, but you might as well start getting used to it, because it's what we're going to do.

Marky

01-28-2012, 09:21 AM

Not really. 'That' is used way more often than it should be. It's annoying and muddies up the flow of sentences. More times than not it can be omitted and a person still makes sense.

Look at this example:

There was this guy that I knew long ago that would talk about things that were interesting. He often said that he would do something that was important. It turns out that he ended up doing something that was boring.

Now without:

There was this guy I knew long ago who would talk about interesting things. He often said he would do something important. It turns out he ended up doing something boring.

Much better.

I'm not here to stir up trouble. You can continue to try to mock me, though. You're doing a great job. Good luck in your endeavors.

That is one of the lamest attempts at internet grammar police that I’ve ever seen.:toady:

Brett85

01-28-2012, 09:36 AM

TC, we're going to get this man the nomination. We're going to flood the convention, vote for who we're supposed to vote for for as long as our state laws say we have to, listen patiently while they carry on about how this is the first brokered convention in however many years, and nominate the only guy who can beat Obama.

Sorry if you disapprove, but you might as well start getting used to it, because it's what we're going to do.

Well, the title of the thread actually made it sound like Ron had somehow actually won the nomination, even though he hasn't won a single state. I'm not trying to make anyone mad here, but are we not allowed to be realistic and objective when we post here? It just seems like people here don't really accept reality. There's never been a Republican who's won the GOP nomination without winning one of the early states. Intrade has Romney at an 88% chance of winning the nomination with Ron at a 3% chance. I'm all in favor of Ron staying in the race so that he can try to spread his message and influence the Republican Party, but that's all that can possibly happen at this point.

cartemj06

01-28-2012, 09:49 AM

You won't win this election by trying to educate the fringe-left or fringe-right. Concentrate on converting and mobilizing the easily convinced first.

Quoted for TRUTH

gb13

01-28-2012, 11:27 AM

Your original post to the OP, which was rude, inflammatory, and unnecessary:

Thanks for that, dude. I initially wasn't even going to acknowledge his remark, but I have to tell you (and the many others on this thread who are helping) that appreciate you keeping shit straight.

I also wanted to let you know, that I did MOST DEFINITELY use the wonderful stuff you posted in page two of this thread, giving you the credit of course. So thank you for that. And +REP!. I didn't use it in that particular thread, because I'm trying to keep that one organized as specifically philosophical; I used it in the other "Ron Paul FTW!" thread I started on her wall. God, I'm friggin' relentless. :D

How amazing that myself (a minarchist) and you (an anrcho-syndicalist), two philosophies with not a whole hell of a lot in common, can work together towards the same goals. That is what liberty does. It brings people together. Much love.

LibertyEagle

01-28-2012, 11:36 AM

LibertyEagle

01-28-2012, 11:45 AM

LibertyEagle

01-28-2012, 11:51 AM

tbone717

01-28-2012, 11:58 AM

Well, the title of the thread actually made it sound like Ron had somehow actually won the nomination, even though he hasn't won a single state. I'm not trying to make anyone mad here, but are we not allowed to be realistic and objective when we post here? It just seems like people here don't really accept reality. There's never been a Republican who's won the GOP nomination without winning one of the early states. Intrade has Romney at an 88% chance of winning the nomination with Ron at a 3% chance. I'm all in favor of Ron staying in the race so that he can try to spread his message and influence the Republican Party, but that's all that can possibly happen at this point.

I am a huge fan of reality which I feel many on here lack a firm grasp on. You are correct in saying that no one has ever one the nomination without winning an early state. To be more specific, no one has one the nomination since 1976, without winning either IA or NH. So using that fact, we would have to say that either Mitt or Santorum will be the nominee. However, the rule changes that have set this to up to be an extended primary/caucus season have never been in place before, so it is conceivable that any of the remaining four could still win the nomination. I would say that Paul still has an outside chance of inserting himself in this race as a winner, but the time for that is running out quickly and it needs to be done in February, and it needs to be more than one state in order to change the narrative of the race.

As far as the brokered convention premise that acptulsa speaks of, I do not find that to be plausible. It would require two candidates other than Paul to remain in the race post Super Tuesday (which I don't believe will happen), or it will require Paul to go head to head with one remaining candidate and split up the remaining delegates with neither gaining a majority. Again, I see neither being plausible. The "stealth delegates" concept would require the assumption that Romney is not aware of this possibility and he himself has few people on ballots signed up to be delegates. His organization is as good or better than ours, so I don't believe this to be possible.

Realistically, I see one of two things happening. Either Romney dominates the month of February, and the remaining contests are merely the voters confirming the choice of him as the nominee, with Paul hanging around as long as he is financially able. Or, Paul finally breaks through and we go into the month of March with a new contest, i.e. Romney v Paul.

Brett85

01-28-2012, 12:24 PM

acptulsa

01-28-2012, 12:38 PM

I am a huge fan of reality which I feel many on here lack a firm grasp on. You are correct in saying that no one has ever one the nomination without winning an early state. To be more specific, no one has one the nomination since 1976, without winning either IA or NH. So using that fact, we would have to say that either Mitt or Santorum will be the nominee. However, the rule changes that have set this to up to be an extended primary/caucus season have never been in place before, so it is conceivable that any of the remaining four could still win the nomination. I would say that Paul still has an outside chance of inserting himself in this race as a winner, but the time for that is running out quickly and it needs to be done in February, and it needs to be more than one state in order to change the narrative of the race.

As far as the brokered convention premise that acptulsa speaks of, I do not find that to be plausible. It would require two candidates other than Paul to remain in the race post Super Tuesday (which I don't believe will happen), or it will require Paul to go head to head with one remaining candidate and split up the remaining delegates with neither gaining a majority. Again, I see neither being plausible. The "stealth delegates" concept would require the assumption that Romney is not aware of this possibility and he himself has few people on ballots signed up to be delegates. His organization is as good or better than ours, so I don't believe this to be possible.

Realistically, I see one of two things happening. Either Romney dominates the month of February, and the remaining contests are merely the voters confirming the choice of him as the nominee, with Paul hanging around as long as he is financially able. Or, Paul finally breaks through and we go into the month of March with a new contest, i.e. Romney v Paul.

Well, let's see.

Financially able. We kept Paul in it until the convention four years ago, financially speaking, and though the economy is not as good as then there are more of us now than there were then.

Romney's organization. Yes, he's organized, but what does it matter when he generates no enthusiasm? We produced a number of delegates to the national convention in St. Paul last time far out of proportion to our actual numbers, and again, this time our numbers are higher. Romney doesn't seem to be generating that level of enthusiasm.

Past Super Tuesday. I don't see why it would require Gingrich or Santorum to stay in the race past Super Tuesday to produce a brokered convention. I believe either or both of them staying in just that long would prevent anyone from getting enough bound delegates to win the thing on the first round of voting--and if someone can win it on the first round of voting, it'll be because delegates became 'unbound' when certain candidates dropped out. And if those unbound delegates are us, guess who stands the best chance of winning that first round vote? Simply put, Gingrich and Santorum are still in this because a certain portion of the G.O.P. electorate, for whatever reason, simply will not vote for Romney, and if they get out that hands it to Paul on a silver platter. Since they either want to try to get some people to participate in the process or try to raise a stink about what we do in the convention, they can't afford that.

Simply put, Republicans have won the nomination without winning one of the early states back before the primary process when no one 'won the early states' at all. Those were the days of brokered conventions, and it looks like we're heading for another brokered convention. And since there hasn't been a brokered convention since the primary process began, that means we're about to rewrite the rulebook.

And we're actually signing up to be delegates and participating. Unlike the candidates that people are lukewarm (at best) about.

So, throw your book of conventional wisdom away and watch our smoke. Because this time, it will be like never before. Bank on it.

That is at least a more realistic analysis. Thanks.

And what part of history are you basing your estimation of 'realism' on? That part of history that has seen no brokered conventions? If so, you're looking in the wrong place...

gb13

01-28-2012, 12:45 PM

Well, let's see.

Financially able. We kept Paul in it until the convention four years ago, financially speaking, and though the economy is not as good as then there are more of us now than there were then.

Romney's organization. Yes, he's organized, but what does it matter when he generates no enthusiasm? We produced a number of delegates to the national convention in St. Paul last time far out of proportion to our actual numbers, and again, this time our numbers are higher. Romney doesn't seem to be generating that level of enthusiasm.

Past Super Tuesday. I don't see why it would require Gingrich or Santorum to stay in the race past Super Tuesday to produce a brokered convention. I believe either or both of them staying in just that long would prevent anyone from getting enough bound delegates to win the thing on the first round of voting--and if someone can win it on the first round of voting, it'll be because delegates became 'unbound' when certain candidates dropped out. And if those unbound delegates are us, guess who stands the best chance of winning that first round vote?

Simply put, Republicans have won the nomination without winning one of the early states back before the primary process when no one 'won the early states' at all. Those were the days of brokered conventions, and it looks like we're heading for another brokered convention. And since there hasn't been a brokered convention since the primary process began, that means we're about to rewrite the rulebook.

And we're actually signing up to be delegates and participating. Unlike the candidates that people are lukewarm (at best) about.

So, throw your book of conventional wisdom away and watch our smoke. Because this time, it will be like never before. Bank on it.

And what part of history are you basing your estimation of 'realism' on? That part of history that has seen no brokered conventions? If so, you're looking in the wrong place...

I love this post so much. +rep.

tbone717

01-28-2012, 02:28 PM

Past Super Tuesday. I don't see why it would require Gingrich or Santorum to stay in the race past Super Tuesday to produce a brokered convention. I believe either or both of them staying in just that long would prevent anyone from getting enough bound delegates to win the thing on the first round of voting--and if someone can win it on the first round of voting, it'll be because delegates became 'unbound' when certain candidates dropped out.

There are 1178 bound delegates awarded after Super Tuesday. Romney could clinch it on the first ballot with his bound delegates won before Super Tuesday combined with those he will pick up post Super Tuesday.

The key to Paul being able to win this, or to be able to create a brokered convention is he needs to start winning in February. Otherwise he cannot pick up the soft support needed to stay in this and accumulate enough delegates post February.

affa

01-28-2012, 02:56 PM

I think I understand what you are saying. You aren't talking about the elite at the top. You are talking about the regular people who just want a decent life. We just differ with these people massively on how to best achieve that.

But see, I don't think there is a massive disagreement. I think we like to philosophize ourselves into a massive disagreement, but when you break it down, it's just a few different yes/no answers on a couple issues. Yes, they are important issues philosophically... but they aren't ones we need to address anytime soon short catastrophic social meltdown and forced rebuild.

Because right now, on a practical 'what are you going to do' level, the entire no-or-low-state 'radical spectrum' (an-cap, an-syn, libertarian, minarchists, voluntaryists, etc) can actually agree on most things. We're all effectively anti-police state, anti-war, anti-surveillance, anti-Drug War, anti-Fed, anti-fiat, and even anti-gun control. We all think the power hungry Statists [tag teaming from the left and right] are winning, and that it's extremely harmful to our world. Heck, we could spend decades getting ourselves out this mess, and rarely, if ever, even have a squabble amongst ourselves, there is so much to [un]do that we completely agree on. Meanwhile, the Statists make grand theater over their own petty squabbles on tv then laugh together in the back rooms.

I think it comes down to what we identify as, well, the 'original sin'. If I may humbly put words in the mouth of the libertarian, I'd say they believe the original sin was the second the State stepped on property rights. This effectively led to the hamstringing of capitalism, ended the free market, and over time the infection grew and capitalism was eventually corrupted into a form of corporatism. And honestly? I don't think anyone on the so-called far left [i despise the left/right paradigm] would disagree with that. That is essentially what happened.

However, we [from the far left] identify the original sin as being one step earlier - the creation of [modern] property rights in the first place.

Because while one side believes that if you don't respect property rights, you are encouraging if not requiring the use of force...
We on the other side believe that if you have property rights, you are encouraging if not requiring the use of force.

In my opinion, all other differences hinge on this key distinction. I hear many hear say [socialism/etc] requires the State to redistribute wealth. However, we can't ignore that the State existed, originally, in large part to defend property rights. But the State is a beast that feeds on power, and inevitably grows large enough to step on those very same property rights - via such methods as regulations, Imminent Domain, and taxation (which is granted and used initially to pay for the very defense it promises). It will take on corrupted forms of both sides of the argument to do so - alternately defending property rights or wealth redistribution wherever it makes sense to, without regard to intellectual purity... because it accomplishes its growth by pitting us all against each other. Both sides are against the ever encroaching State, but both sides mistakenly think the other side is FOR the state [either knowingly, or through ignorance]!

This difference of opinion borders on ridiculously abstract when dealing with the present State. The crux is, we both oppose the use of Force. We both oppose the State, some entirely, some mostly. When faced with something that is pure Force, and so absolutely corrupted as our current State, we should put aside our differences and come together.

But instead, because of this one difference of opinion, we make ourselves out to be massive enemies. Those damn [socialists]! Those damn [capitalists]! And we argue endlessly over philosophy, and act like we're miles apart... when we actually share the same enemy, the Statists. But the day our differences matter on a practical level, we'll both be cheering our victory, because we'll be infinitely closer to both of our ideals.

Because, really, what many tend to miss is that all of us are ultimately working for the same goal - a populace capable of interaction without Force, and without the State [either in its entirety, or to an degree that renders it unrecognizable to modern man]. By the point we reach that level of society... does it really matter which of us turn out to be right? Those future nutters can sort out the details, in my opinion, because the odds of either being a viable solution in our lifetimes approaches nil [sans catastrophic event].

acptulsa

01-28-2012, 03:51 PM

There are 1178 bound delegates awarded after Super Tuesday. Romney could clinch it on the first ballot with his bound delegates won before Super Tuesday combined with those he will pick up post Super Tuesday.

I sincerely doubt it. Remember, very, very few states are 'winner take all' this time, and that's a major shift. Don't think that after watching the way delegates pile up in years past that they will do the same this time. There would have to be some massive and obvious vote tampering for that to happen (not that the vote has been clean and lily white to date). Even in a two man race.

There will be a lot of delegates up for grabs after Super Tuesday, but we're going to get no small number of them--even if we don't win a state (and I think we will). And up to now, they've been getting split up pretty well. Haven't they?

I think we'll be seeing that historic brokered convention. The elites know they'll lose without it. I think they'll lose within it, too...

tbone717

01-28-2012, 04:13 PM

I sincerely doubt it. Remember, very, very few states are 'winner take all' this time, and that's a major shift. Don't think that after watching the way delegates pile up in years past that they will do the same this time. There would have to be some massive and obvious vote tampering for that to happen (not that the vote has been clean and lily white to date). Even in a two man race.

There will be a lot of delegates up for grabs after Super Tuesday, but we're going to get no small number of them--even if we don't win a state (and I think we will). And up to now, they've been getting split up pretty well. Haven't they?

I think we'll be seeing that historic brokered convention. The elites know they'll lose without it. I think they'll lose within it, too...

482 are winner take all from FL forward. Many of the states that are proportional become "winner take all" if a candidate meets a certain threshold (usually 50%).

Post Super Tuesday, Romney can easily secure the nomination unless Paul is able to defeat him in the majority of the remaining contests and win the nomination outright. As I mentioned before the best chance at a brokered convention is to have Newt, Romney and Paul stay in till the end with each of them dividing up delegates. However, a deal could be struck and Paul could very well be left out in the cold.

The focus should be on propelling Paul to victory by winning states now, and going into March as the front runner in a two man race. By hoping for something that has a slim mathematical chance of occurring (i.e. a brokered convention with Paul having stealth delegates) is setting one self up for disappointment. While I hope you are right in your evaluation, I just cannot see many situations that would allow this to occur.

The last one for the GOP was in 1948, before the primary process was in place. I highly doubt we will see one this year.

AceNZ

01-28-2012, 06:59 PM

@AceNZ, could you elaborate how the moral argument would be framed? I'm assuming since we're abiding by social contract, we agree to similar moral grounds.

First, I disagree that there is a social contract. In fact, that idea is strongly supportive of the Left's approach -- but that's a topic for another post/thread.

Regarding framing the moral argument, here are a few points:

Theft is immoral. If you steal from me, for whatever purpose, such as helping the poor or whatever, it's immoral.
I have property rights. If you deny them, you interfere with my ability to survive, which is immoral.
I have the right to pursue happiness. Interfering with that right is immoral.
Stealing from the rich is immoral. As long as they earned their money legally, they should be able to keep what they earned.
People are not equal; there will always be those who are unwilling or unable to produce. The only way to have a true egalitarian society is to destroy the productive, but attacking good people because they are good is immoral.
The initiation of force is immoral, not just from individuals, but from government as well.
The rich are not taking from workers; in general, they create much more wealth than they earn, through innovation and production. Being rich, provided you don't get there through corruption, fraud or other illegal means, is something that should admired as being highly moral; something that's positive for the world, not negative.
Trying to convince (or coerce) people that it's their duty to give their property to you or others is immoral. Why should they sacrifice themselves to someone they don't even know or care about? If applied consistently, it interferes with their ability to survive and pursue happiness.

There's more, of course, but that's the general idea. IMO, trying to argue the merits of Capitalism from an economic perspective is doomed -- largely because the anti-Capitalists are often focused on morality rather than wealth, and they can't conceive of a system that's both free and moral.

affa

01-28-2012, 07:47 PM

First, I disagree that there is a social contract. In fact, that idea is strongly supportive of the Left's approach -- but that's a topic for another post/thread.

Um. No. Social contract theory is bunk. It's not left or right, so much as a building block of Statism.

Theft is immoral. If you steal from me, for whatever purpose, such as helping the poor or whatever, it's immoral.
I have property rights. If you deny them, you interfere with my ability to survive, which is immoral.

This exact sentiment is where people divide. Some believe as soon as you claim property rights, you are 'stealing' from everyone else. It's where you draw that line that defines everything that comes after it. Both are moral stances, both are ethical stances, and both sides like to claim the other side is inherently immoral. It's refusing to understand the other side's position that causes us to war with each other rather than come to grips that the people we should be worried about, at least for now, are the Statists that actually use Force on a regular basis.

jolynna

01-28-2012, 07:55 PM

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer prize winning former New York Times reporter, a Princeton Professor and an avowed socialist. He wants power to go to the masses probably MORE than ANY other human being alive. I'm reading a book a book called The World as It Is by him now. Your communist friends should love ANYTHING Chris Hedges says.

And he puts down everybody EXCEPT Ron Paul in his book.

He points out in gory detail, EVERY human and civil rights violation by Obama. He goes so far as to say Obama's unconstitutional wars and the harm Obama, whom he considers a racist because of how he treated Muslims, makes Obama an international war criminal who deserves to be prosecuted. (And Hedges is 100% right about EVERY accusation he makes against Obama. There is no refuting that Obama is guilty of ALL Hedges accuses him of doing.)

Obamacare, according to Hedges, is an insurance & pharmaceutical lobbyist written (authored by GOP's Romney & Newt) rape of the masses which makes them poorer, gives the disadvantaged LESS access to healthcare and is a farce to make the rich health industry richer and the poor even WORSE off. (This is the most perfect rationale AGAINST mandated healthcare I have ever come across...I, unlike Hedges, never read the 2000 pages of the Obamacare bill and sure couldn't make the points Hedges makes. But, if the book is correct, the bill SUCKS for poor people...like everything coming from big government always does.)

Romneycare and Romney also get scathing reviews from Hedges because Romney is a lying sell-out and it is a disaster for Massachusetts.

Hedges thinks the ONLY HOPE TO SAVE THE U.S. is to NOT to vote for ANY mainstream GOP or DEM.

What better way to make points with a communist than to show them an intelligently written book, where one of their OWN outlines, point by point explains why Ron Paul's stances on every issue is the ONLY HOPE to save America . I LOVE IT when I can find something not written by somebody outsiders consider a Paulbot, rationally says everything ALL Paulbots say.

Sometimes asking people to do their own research and loaning them books written by someone who doesn't mention Ron Paul, but pushes his philosophy scores more points than giving Ron Paul lectures. My husband says ALWAYS agree with whomever you are talking to ABOUT SOMETHING. Even if it is on a SMALL POINT. (He has to remind me all the time to DO THIS. Not part of my natural personality.)

AceNZ

01-28-2012, 09:48 PM

Um. No. Social contract theory is bunk. It's not left or right, so much as a building block of Statism.

The idea of how we "owe" others due to the nature of the society we live in is a cornerstone of the welfare state. The Right has basically conceded this idea to the Left, and as a result has enhanced the progression to full-blown Statism.

This exact sentiment is where people divide. Some believe as soon as you claim property rights, you are 'stealing' from everyone else. It's where you draw that line that defines everything that comes after it. Both are moral stances, both are ethical stances, and both sides like to claim the other side is inherently immoral. It's refusing to understand the other side's position that causes us to war with each other rather than come to grips that the people we should be worried about, at least for now, are the Statists that actually use Force on a regular basis.

What I'm saying is that this is the area to focus debate if we want to win them over -- not economics or capitalism vs. statism vs. socialism. Morality. Politics follows ethics, not the other way around.

The idea that claiming property rights means you are stealing from others is most definitely not moral or ethical -- it is, in fact, evil and immoral. By saying otherwise, you are granting the Left legitimacy they do not deserve, which simply empowers their position and undermines ours.

If you're worried about the Statists who use force on a regular basis, you should also be worried about people who say that claiming property rights is a form of theft -- because the next thing out of their mouths is likely to be that government should therefore intervene to prevent that theft, which empowers Statism and the use of force -- ultimately justified by their flawed sense of morality.

Bonnieblue

01-28-2012, 10:18 PM

ericthethe

01-28-2012, 10:38 PM

SNIP

yawn, get over it already.

That is one of the lamest attempts at internet grammar police that I’ve ever seen.:toady:

I'm not trying to police or be a NAZI. Just offering friendly advice and trying to spread the message of the danger of overusing the word 'that'. People are free to continue to overuse it. Hell, I use it every once in a while.

So good to know that that will win us the election. Or, rather, that a lack of that will win us the election.

May we get back to discussing how to win over the misguided now? Thanks for that...

Verbal diarrhea.

Yes, if you want to learn more about Keynesian economics, those are good resources. However, Dr. Paul and most people here are advocates of Austrian economics.

That's unfortunate.

Keynesian economics played a large part in getting us into this economic mess we are now in.

Austrian economics are not a solution.

Mini-Me

01-28-2012, 10:41 PM

Austrian economics are not a solution.

Thank you for your compelling rebuttal of post 61 (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?356167-WHAT-WE-RE-UP-AGAINST-IN-THE-GENERAL-My-Argument-with-a-Flock-of-Communists...&p=4108107&viewfull=1#post4108107). There's nothing in the world more convincing than unsupported pronouncements from on high. :rolleyes:

Occam's Banana

01-28-2012, 10:48 PM

...
yawn, get over it already.

...

I'm not trying to police or be a NAZI. Just offering friendly advice and trying to spread the message of the danger of overusing the word 'that'. People are free to continue to overuse it. Hell, I use it every once in a while.

...

Verbal diarrhea.

...

That's unfortunate.

...

Austrian economics are not a solution.

Verbal rabbit droppings.

ericthethe

01-28-2012, 10:54 PM

Paul Krugman was owned so badly by comments on his blog - complete with scholarly references to other mainstream economists even - that he had to disable comments and later reenable them, while restricting them to extremely short ones that couldn't contain any real substance. He's a smart guy, and he had the chance to become a good economist, but he's nothing more than an egotistical propagandist nowadays. If you want to learn from mainstream economists, you should probably pay more attention to the new classical school than the new Keynesian school, and pay more attention to practically ANYONE than Krugman.

Paul Krugman knows his stuff. He probably disabled comments because he didn't want to be responsible for people reading and believing the garbage being posted. Quite honorable.

SNIP

All that said: I DO agree with ericthethe that people should learn a bit about mainstream economic theories as well (e.g. neoclassical economics). The smarter economists actually ARE right about a lot of things, and they [IMO correctly] state that the Austrians overstate their differences with them. You can learn a lot from mainstream economics, but just remember to take their macroeconomic theories with a grain of salt. Resist internalizing them too deeply until you've had the chance to examine the opposing Austrian viewpoint...which, to deliberately misquote Milton Friedman and say the opposite of what he said, "The Hayek-Mises explanation of the business cycle is consistent with the evidence. It is, I believe, true." ;)

First, thank you for being civil and polite. I'd just like to make a few points.

Krugman's line of thinking(mainstream economics) is non-ideological, it follows what the basic textbooks teach you about macroeconomics. It uses statistical regressions to measure to what extent macroeconomic policy can affect indicators like unemployment, inflation, GDP, etc. It uses data, you can prove it right or wrong with numbers. There is no debate in the field of economics over what they teach you in undergrad and over how fiscal or monetary policy basically works, there is only a political debate in government, and it is ideological. No one is using academic arguments.

The quasi-academic Austrian line of thinking doesn't predict anything because it has no models and it uses no statistics. It shoots darts in the dark when government does something that goes against the libertarian ideology. According to their predictions we should have been having runaway hyperinflation since late 2008. Many libertarians predicted a collapse in housing prices, but their explanation said it was because of government policy to lower interest rates to aid poor people in getting housing and favorable mortgages, when it was actually mostly flimsy restructured (already existing) mortgages that got packaged and repackaged to get overvalued by the rating agencies and then sold as AAA bonds. And what allowed these shitty mortgages from banks to get packaged as securities? Government deregulation, the repeal of Glass-Steagall. But you really can't argue with them, because they can't measure to what extent any sort of policy affects the economy, because they can't put a coefficient on any economic variable. Their incorrect predictions can't be criticized either because they can't be tested with models, they don't follow the scientific method. They follow the gut method. Austrian economics is pure ideology.

Second, inequality has just never in the history of humanity been solved through a capitalism that is unregulated and actually boosted by government fiscal policy such as what we have now. In a system that works to centralize investment in the bigger companies while taking as little care for the worker and the consumer as possible, all for the sake of a bit more additional long-term investment, the small gains that the lower classes get in terms of lower prices and new commodities are more than nullified by economic stagnation in the country that benefits and exploitation abroad, for people who aren't rich at any rate.

Laissez faire economics will never bring prosperity and economic freedom to the vast majority of us because it has no answer to vicious cycles of inequality. Inequality as a function of privatization has actually historically been conducive to less competition and gross inefficiency. A free markets system tempered by socialist policies just flat out works better than unbridled capitalism in the long run for everyone. I was an econ major, and I'm well versed in American economic history, so I'd let Bill O'Reilly use my mouth as a toilet before I let myself become deluded by Ron Paul's ideological libertarian theorizing.

Third, Ron Paul is a good guy and I think he really does believe in everything he says. Just like Milton Friedman. They say the free market is supposedly always in our favor and is the answer to everything. Education, foreign policy, the two-party system, the AIDS epidemic, etc, etc. The thing about Austrian economics is that it refuses to use econometrics or anything that can be graphed, because all of its principles are supposed to be self-evident, and so these people refuse to be convinced otherwise. I don't think he's a piece of shit at all, I'm only knocking him because he's wrong about the free market and he's wrong about 'sound money'. And I find it very problematic that his followers do not at all understand the "Evil and Inefficient Keynesian Economics" (:rolleyes:), as evidenced by their reciting Ron Paul's line about the housing bubble and ensuing financial crisis being a result of too much government interference (it fucking defies reason). And people are eating this shit up.

People are probably going to "bah" at this, but Ron Paul is dumb when it comes to economic policy. The practical effect of implementing libertarianism is to widen the income gap between poor and rich. That's it. The US is already in a sort of second gilded age. It'd be worse.

He makes a lot of a priori statements, "if the people spent money it would be good, if the government spends it's bad", "to spend money the government has to take it from productive individuals", etc. It's all "austrian economics", it's all bullshit backed up by no data. It's basically basing any analysis on libertarian articles of faith, not on any numbers. His answer is to "get out of the way" and hope for the best, because his ideology is that of hardcore laissez faire. He can't accept anything else. If you tell Ron Paul that inflation does not necessarily go up if the supply of money goes up and the velocity(rate of circulation) of money goes down, he can only tell you that you are crazy and wrong, and that his libertarian precepts are indisputable.

"Yeah, let's not care about going back to the gilded age. Let the economic path take us where it may. Everything will work out in the end if we only stop printing money. Families with a breadwinner father and a stay at home mother with a high school education will be the norm again, and personal responsibility will be the law of the land." What? I guess it sounds romantic, but I don't think people have ever thought of what the tradeoffs for having a gold standard are. All they're really doing is letting themselves be convinced that what Ron Paul says is right because they share his broader principles, and take comfort in the fact that his judgment(and theirs) seems to make sense. And so it must be applied always, like some metaphysical principle that doesn't care about time or historical circumstances.

You can be as stubborn as you want for the sake of being principled, and you can ignore thinking through the consequences of Ron Paul's economic policy(or get mad at the Fed for printing money and making us feel dirty), but at length you'll have to deal with the consequences of not being pragmatic.

You can agree with his foreign policy, his views on civil liberties and even on states' rights, but don't let your love of those ideas cause you to blindly follow his monetary and economic policies. Read a book, watch youtube videos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P_Yq1AIDjM), talk to people who are educated about economics. The only reason why I'm not completely frightened at the prospect of a Paul presidency is he'd have absolutely zero chance at implementing his economic ideas. He'd have more control over foreign policy and our relationship with countries which isn't all that bad.

Thank you for your compelling rebuttal of post 61 (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?356167-WHAT-WE-RE-UP-AGAINST-IN-THE-GENERAL-My-Argument-with-a-Flock-of-Communists...&p=4108107&viewfull=1#post4108107). There's nothing in the world more convincing than unsupported pronouncements from on high. :rolleyes:

I got you bro ;). I typed all that up before the previous post and I was just proofreading.

Though it looks like I didn't address all of your points. I could do that if you wish.

milo10

01-28-2012, 11:12 PM

First, this is an amazing thread, and I have to say that I'm really glad that there are people here who support Ron coming in from all different perspectives: anarcho-syndicalist, socialist, etc.. I hope everyone here keeps an open mind and discussion as friendly as possible.

If you tell Ron Paul that inflation does not necessarily go up if the supply of money goes up and the velocity(rate of circulation) of money goes down, he can only tell you that you are crazy and wrong, and that his libertarian precepts are indisputable.

Unless you mean the fact that Austrians usually use the term inflation to refer to an increase in the money supply as opposed to the more populist meaning of price inflation, I don't know if any Austrian economists actually believe that monetary velocity is not a factor in price inflation.

Hopefully I am understanding you correctly. :)

Occam's Banana

01-28-2012, 11:19 PM

[snip]
Wow. I am impressed. That is a tour de force of question-begging.

PolicyReader

01-28-2012, 11:22 PM

Because quite frankly if that communist girl got a hold of me, I just might be a communist - you know?
Pick and idea or subject that motivates you and read. Really the more you read (and IMO the more you read for and against any given idea/subject) the farther your perspective expands.

DerailingDaTrain

01-28-2012, 11:29 PM

^ I read all of that and I have to say that you could have shortened it to "I agree with Ron Paul on nothing..."

You seriously believe that the free market would cause inequality in this country? I'm not even going to offer an argument because your response will most likely be something about muck raking and greedy cigar smoking businessmen.

vodalian

01-28-2012, 11:32 PM

<rant>

This entire rant boils down to. "I think I'm right, therefor you are wrong". You're clinging to a failed system that has never worked. Ron Paul's arguments are actually based on the data, not just emotions or what he heard from his favorite pundit or comedian on TV. Can you say the same? I understand that freedom is intimidating to those who rely on being taken care of, but it's a misplaced fear.

sunsense

01-29-2012, 12:12 AM

There are only two types of people in this world, Paul supporters and REDS.

Yes, but we took the Red pill. Don't you know.

jolynna

01-29-2012, 01:01 AM

Yes, but we took the Red pill. Don't you know.

Unless something drastic happens, our choice for a leader is going to be between one Wall Street bought & paid for war-mongering fascist or another--Obama or Romney. I call them fascists because I believe there is a reason for the NDAA and military maneuvers all over urban areas of the U.S. When the economy skids, and the masses get rowdy because it won't just be the rich that get taxed to bail out the greedy financial instititutions--again--we handed over, with barely a peep 200 year old laws that forbade the military from policing and detaining without cause. Whether red or blue, the elite with power are going to end up on top, and they will do whatever they have to do to make sure the rest of us quietly get to work and earn enough to hand over our "shared sacrifice".

America deserves the person they elect.

Red, blue...PFFFTTTT...ONLY ONE MAN RUNNING is gonna stand up for us in a way that counts. A man that stands for the civil & human rights of every person on this earth regardless of color or religion or even country. He doesn't stand for torture, or death penalty or killing without a declared war or intruding and hauling people off without cause.

Lies matter. I don't want to hear that every politician does it. That the lie wasn't so bad. Or have lies called flip flopping. Or hear evil unjust killing called collateral damage. Making excuses for and standing up for what has been going on is as bad as what our politicians have been doing. Enough!

Socialist, progressive, tea party people, patriots, conservatives, GOP, topprogs, Dems, I don't care who people think their team is. Who we SHOULD vote for in 2012 shouldn't even be a close call.

There is going to be some pain before all of this is over and the sooner we elect somebody willing to stand up and tell us what the nasty truths ARE the sooner we get on the road to making things better.

Truth doesn't fix everything. But, it is a big start.

affa

01-29-2012, 01:15 AM

The idea of how we "owe" others due to the nature of the society we live in is a cornerstone of the welfare state. The Right has basically conceded this idea to the Left, and as a result has enhanced the progression to full-blown Statism.

You are mis-stating Social Contract theory in trying prove your point. SCT is about being born into contract with your society. It is not about how we "owe others" unless you pre-suppose a society in which that is already the case. You are conflating the SCT and leftist ideology, but they are independent constructs. Now, I absolutely agree SCT is nonsense, but because I don't believe we are born into contract, not because it's inherently 'left' or 'right'.

What I'm saying is that this is the area to focus debate if we want to win them over -- not economics or capitalism vs. statism vs. socialism. Morality. Politics follows ethics, not the other way around.

The idea that claiming property rights means you are stealing from others is most definitely not moral or ethical -- it is, in fact, evil and immoral. By saying otherwise, you are granting the Left legitimacy they do not deserve, which simply empowers their position and undermines ours.

Dude, I am an an-syn. Telling me your line of argument is how to 'win me over' is patently absurd, because guess what? I think you're dead wrong. I acknowledge and define the difference between philosophical approaches between us, and you claim I'm "most definitely not moral or ethical" and further more that my views hold no "legitimacy".

I hate to break it to you, but that kind of dogma isn't going to win me over. You are guilty of exactly what I discussed in my previous posts in this very thread - refusing to even try to understand the position of the far left, and instead pushing us away when we can be [and should be] staunch allies.

If you're worried about the Statists who use force on a regular basis, you should also be worried about people who say that claiming property rights is a form of theft -- because the next thing out of their mouths is likely to be that government should therefore intervene to prevent that theft, which empowers Statism and the use of force -- ultimately justified by their flawed sense of morality.

Oh you've got to be kidding me. Again, I am an an-syn, and I will tell you straight up I believe property rights as you define them are the original theft. However, I would NEVER advocate the State, and for you to tell me that "the next thing out of [my] mouth" will be "government should therefore intervene to prevent that theft" and that I would "empower Statism and the use of force" which is "ultimately justified by [my] flawed sense of morality." is not only incorrect on it's face, but absurd and insulting.

I will be clear: you do not understand the far left's position. You think you do, and you seem to love to insult and demean it, but you do not. I respect the property rights position. I understand why many people adopt it. I do not agree with it. I don't accuse you of being immoral. I don't accuse you of being unethical. I don't accuse you of being illegitimate. And as long as you do those things to me, you push us away for no good reason.

The libertarian is often quick to accuse the far left of 'wanting' the State to enforce some sort of equality, but never realize that their idealogy, too, will often create the same State. The State is not created to redistribute wealth. Rather, the State is initially born to protect and defend property rights. That is your police force. That is your Judge. That is your imaginary line marking one territory from another. That is your taxation. And yes, as the State grows larger and larger, bloated and corrupt, many times it will try to redistribute wealth. But you can't have your cake and eat it too. If the property owners did not create the State to defend their property rights in the first place, you would not have them stealing out of your pockets the next day.

And this is why the various far left groups reject property rights [in their modern form] - because we reject the State... the same reason you reject the far left, because you think WE lead to the State redistributing wealth. And that is my point, and the point of my several long posts in this thread: we have a common enemy. We have a common goal. We simply define the 'original sin' differently, and while that's an interesting philosophical enigma, it's got fark all to do with the real, every day problems we face: endless war, fiat money and the fed, the war on drugs, economic meltdown, etc.

I don't need you to agree with me. I know you never will, because I fully understand we're on different sides of the coin. But I would appreciate you not trying to presuppose that what I would say next is we need the State to enforce equality, when in fact the next words out of my mouth would be, and are: No One But Paul.

jolynna

01-29-2012, 01:26 AM

it's got fark all to do with the real, every day problems we face: endless war, fiat money and the fed, the war on drugs, economic meltdown, etc.

This. And "No. One. But. Paul."

ericthethe

01-29-2012, 01:44 AM

Unless you mean the fact that Austrians usually use the term inflation to refer to an increase in the money supply as opposed to the more populist meaning of price inflation, I don't know if any Austrian economists actually believe that monetary velocity is not a factor in price inflation.

Hopefully I am understanding you correctly. :)

Okay except in the debates whenever he brings up inflation he always talks about prices going up. Austrians do believe inflation is an increase in prices, just not directly. They argue that prices go up as a result of the money supply increasing. My point there was that Keynesian economics would argue prices are not directly affected by the money supply, and Ron Paul would argue the opposite. This (http://mises.org/daily/918) Austrian economist doesn't give much importance to the velocity of money.

Wow. I am impressed. That is a tour de force of question-begging.

Huh? Do you even know what that means? Are you going to input anything useful to the conversation or just make pointless remarks?

^ I read all of that and I have to say that you could have shortened it to "I agree with Ron Paul on nothing..."

You seriously believe that the free market would cause inequality in this country? I'm not even going to offer an argument because your response will most likely be something about muck raking and greedy cigar smoking businessmen.

If you actually read it like you claim you would've seen I don't disagree with him on everything. Economically, yes. His views are asinine at best.

Yes, the laissez faire free market Ron Paul is proposing would definitely increase inequality. Some socialist policies and regulations are necessary. There needs to be a dramatic increase in spending borrowed money to invest in jobs to fix the economy.

You're not going to offer an argument because you have none. "Muck raking and greedy cigar smoking businessmen"? What the hell are you even talking about? Same question to you, are you going to contribute anything productive or just act like an idiot?

This entire rant boils down to. "I think I'm right, therefor you are wrong". You're clinging to a failed system that has never worked. Ron Paul's arguments are actually based on the data, not just emotions or what he heard from his favorite pundit or comedian on TV. Can you say the same? I understand that freedom is intimidating to those who rely on being taken care of, but it's a misplaced fear.

Ron Paul's economic arguments are absolutely not based on data. Do you understand anything about Austrian economics? Again, Ron Paul will take enormous issues and water them down to sound bites that sound great to folks like you.

Really, none of what you typed deserves much of a response. Same question to you as the previous two.

milo10

01-29-2012, 02:42 AM

Okay except in the debates whenever he brings up inflation he always talks about prices going up. Austrians do believe inflation is an increase in prices, just not directly. They argue that prices go up as a result of the money supply increasing. My point there was that Keynesian economics would argue prices are not directly affected by the money supply, and Ron Paul would argue the opposite. This (http://mises.org/daily/918) Austrian economist doesn't give much importance to the velocity of money.

Okay, interesting. I was unaware the extent to which the Austrians tend to disparage monetary velocity as a factor. Here's an article on the subject by Henry Hazlitt:

http://mises.org/daily/2916

soulcyon

01-29-2012, 03:00 AM

First, I disagree that there is a social contract. In fact, that idea is strongly supportive of the Left's approach -- but that's a topic for another post/thread.

Regarding framing the moral argument, here are a few points:

Theft is immoral. If you steal from me, for whatever purpose, such as helping the poor or whatever, it's immoral.
I have property rights. If you deny them, you interfere with my ability to survive, which is immoral.
I have the right to pursue happiness. Interfering with that right is immoral.
Stealing from the rich is immoral. As long as they earned their money legally, they should be able to keep what they earned.
People are not equal; there will always be those who are unwilling or unable to produce. The only way to have a true egalitarian society is to destroy the productive, but attacking good people because they are good is immoral.
The initiation of force is immoral, not just from individuals, but from government as well.
The rich are not taking from workers; in general, they create much more wealth than they earn, through innovation and production. Being rich, provided you don't get there through corruption, fraud or other illegal means, is something that should admired as being highly moral; something that's positive for the world, not negative.
Trying to convince (or coerce) people that it's their duty to give their property to you or others is immoral. Why should they sacrifice themselves to someone they don't even know or care about? If applied consistently, it interferes with their ability to survive and pursue happiness.

There's more, of course, but that's the general idea. IMO, trying to argue the merits of Capitalism from an economic perspective is doomed -- largely because the anti-Capitalists are often focused on morality rather than wealth, and they can't conceive of a system that's both free and moral.
Well the fact that you want morality to exist means social contract must exist. John Locke had a great piece on it before, it's not a leftist/rightist thought - it's just the way our statist-society works from a philosophical point of view. I believe many of the "unconstitutional" regulations came from a misinterpretation of the constitution, due to the vagueness of "pursuit of happiness". One could believe that imposing regulations or promoting public healthcare will secure our pursuit of happiness, but the counterarguments are always circumstantial (we can easily see why public healthcare is not a good idea, etc).

The government's only real right is to initiate force, to say that initiation of force is immoral means to promote anarchy - I'm trying to promote the freedom cause for our current situation using morality. I'm still sketchy on how you approach the morality perspective, because once you start questioning the prospects of why our Rights should be protected, then the Capitalism argument falls apart (just like you said). So is it moral for the government to be responsible for protecting our rights? Who is protecting our right of property from being violated? Is protection only possible through self-defense?

Occam's Banana

01-29-2012, 03:20 AM

[long snip]

Wow. I am impressed. That is a tour de force of question-begging.

Huh? Do you even know what that means?

Nope. Not a clue. I was just banging away on my keyboard, monkey-typewriter-Hamlet-style.

And look what popped out - a coherent sentence! Isn't that amazing? What could it mean? Hmmmm, let's see ...

tour de force (hey, neat - I think that's, like, German or Russian or something!): an outstanding display of skill.

Now, that sounds like a compliment! I wonder, though - what was I complimenting you for?

question-begging (or: begging the question): in logic, an informal fallacy in which that which is to be demonstrated as true - i.e., the conclusion - is assumed to be true in the course of making an argument intended to support the conclusion.

Oh, dear! That doesn't sound so complimentary at all! Sorry! :o

(Come to think of it, though, it's a *very* good description of what you posted earlier. Fancy that! What a coincidence! I'm gonna hafta try that monkey-typewriter-Hamlet thing more often.)

Are you going to input anything useful to the conversation or just make pointless remarks?

Useful input? Pointless remarks? Oh, I see! You must mean something like [[THIS]] (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?356167-WHAT-WE-RE-UP-AGAINST-IN-THE-GENERAL-My-Argument-with-a-Flock-of-Communists...&p=4111210&viewfull=1#post4111210).

No, I'm not gonna do any of that. (Just between you and me, that guy seems kinda like a jerk.)

Mini-Me

01-29-2012, 04:05 AM

OOPS, double-post...refer to the next one.

Mini-Me

01-29-2012, 04:05 AM

Paul Krugman knows his stuff. He probably disabled comments because he didn't want to be responsible for people reading and believing the garbage being posted. Quite honorable.
You're calling the comments garbage without having ever read them, and you're applauding Krugman based on this unsubstantiated faith that he couldn't possibly be proven wrong by mere mortals. Can you really consider yourself "fair and balanced" here?

It's been a long while since I've seen the blog and comments, but here's my take: Krugman was not being honorable. He was getting thoroughly owned within the very framework of mainstream economics, and he was mercilessly confronted on his intellectual dishonesty, so he shut the comments down, because he couldn't emotionally take the hits to his ego.

First, thank you for being civil and polite. I'd just like to make a few points.

Krugman's line of thinking(mainstream economics) is non-ideological, it follows what the basic textbooks teach you about macroeconomics. It uses statistical regressions to measure to what extent macroeconomic policy can affect indicators like unemployment, inflation, GDP, etc. It uses data, you can prove it right or wrong with numbers. There is no debate in the field of economics over what they teach you in undergrad and over how fiscal or monetary policy basically works, there is only a political debate in government, and it is ideological. No one is using academic arguments.
Actually, many of the comments Krugman disabled were pointing out elementary economic mistakes he made - relative to the very textbooks you're referring to - with scholarly references to other mainstream economists. The majority of these in-depth rebuttals had little if anything to do with the Austrians. Rather, they were firmly rooted in mainstream neoclassical literature. I'd say, "Read the comments and judge for yourself," but I'm not sure if they're even there anymore. BTW, I'm pretty sure the economic textbooks teach people to label their axes and identify their units, but I recall Krugman having a problem with that from time to time. ;)

Anyway, Krugman's book, "Conscience of a Liberal" is plainly ideological. You can say that his economic arguments are divorced from his ideology, but I honestly see very little evidence that his viewpoints come from anything other than vigorously and dishonestly defended identity politics. Ideology determines the fights Krugman picks (winning fights against plainly misguided noobs, or losing fights against people who just owned him?), the data he includes, the data he omits, and his analysis of the data. Krugman is nowhere near alone in mixing economics and ideology, because people in general are very ideologically biased about economics. You, myself, and the Austrians are no exceptions. This bias is probably the primary reason why extremely intelligent and well-educated people are found all over the political spectrum, and why they disagree so strongly about economics and politics. I don't fault Krugman for being biased per se; my problem with him is his arrogance and refusal to debate fairly even with people who accept his methodology.

I'm not here to unceremoniousy crap on mainstream economics. Even before the Phillips Curve was created, economists like Irving Fisher noted the basic relationship, and I do not believe economists of the day were idiots for perceiving a fundamental long-term relationship. They were very smart people, and the data they had on hand seemed to show exactly that...but they were still dreadfully wrong, and a lot of people suffered because of it. In the end, I just believe empiricism is far more limited and error-prone than commonly admitted among mainstream economists, given the costly errors they have made with overfitting to their data sets and failing to isolate their variables. My most personal general criticism is that I believe mainstream economists have an undeserved superiority complex given their track record, and I believe Austrians have not gotten their fair shake...but that doesn't mean neoclassical economists don't have a lot to contribute. They do. Krugman in particular, though...I have very little respect for him, based on his shameless and intellectually dishonest behavior.

The quasi-academic Austrian line of thinking doesn't predict anything because it has no models and it uses no statistics. It shoots darts in the dark when government does something that goes against the libertarian ideology. According to their predictions we should have been having runaway hyperinflation since late 2008.
Using their methods, do you believe mainstream economists could have clearly predicted the downfall of Soviet central planning with the same clarity Mises did in "Socialism?" Mathematical models and statistics are only necessary for predictions if you have already ruled out the validity of other approaches without giving them a fair hearing. Why is empiricism so inherently superior to rationalism for economics? The Austrians "shoot darts?" You mean shooting darts like, "Banks became overleveraged after Glass-Steagall was repealed, therefore Glass-Steagall being repealed was the underlying cause of the financial mess, irrespective of other factors or circumstances?" Obviously it was an exacerbating factor, but a deeper analysis is required to determine whether it's the root cause. Otherwise, you might as well say that lack of pirates causes global warming, or cancer causes cell phones (http://xkcd.com/925/). ;) Compared to the surface-deep "blame deregulation" analysis, the Austrians hardly "shoot darts." They predict and/or explain deeper causal chains of events leading from government actions to market distortions to the chain reactions that will occur in response. If you consider the Austrians without prejudice, their predictions of market responses to regulations and other government actions are startlingly accurate, EXCEPT for quantitative issues like timing and magnitude, which they already concede they cannot really predict. I think these are shortcomings the Austrians should correct, but that's a far cry from calling them "shit."

This is going off on a bit of a tangent with a geopolitical argument, but we really COULD have had hyperinflation starting in late 2008: For instance, if OPEC countries left the petrodollar system in response to our financial collapse and quantitative easing, that would have sparked hyperinflation. Ultimately, the fate of the dollar is closely tied to the petrodollar system and reserve currency status, which is tied to the actions of specific human beings in response to market conditions. Unless we have a marked change in policy, this collapse WILL happen. It's simply a matter of when the pains of inflation and resentment of subjugation outweigh the risk of economic instability and military retaliation. No statistical regression can predict when the OPEC countries will make this move, because they're run by human beings...who just so happen to have an inordinate amount of influence over world economies and geopolitics. If they're using some quantitative formula to determine how long to stick with the dollar, we certainly don't know what it is. What we do know is that they will make this move someday if we continue on our current course, and it could really come at any time. Iraq tried playing with fire in the early 2000's by accepting Euros for oil. Iran is now accepting practically any currency other than dollars for oil, in response to sanctions. They don't have the same power as the OPEC countries over the dollar's reserve currency status, but they are harbingers of things to come. In short, the matter of hyperinflation is related not only to economic but political factors.

Many libertarians predicted a collapse in housing prices, but their explanation said it was because of government policy to lower interest rates to aid poor people in getting housing and favorable mortgages, when it was actually mostly flimsy restructured (already existing) mortgages that got packaged and repackaged to get overvalued by the rating agencies and then sold as AAA bonds. And what allowed these shitty mortgages from banks to get packaged as securities? Government deregulation, the repeal of Glass-Steagall. But you really can't argue with them, because they can't measure to what extent any sort of policy affects the economy, because they can't put a coefficient on any economic variable. Their incorrect predictions can't be criticized either because they can't be tested with models, they don't follow the scientific method. They follow the gut method. Austrian economics is pure ideology.

You're referring to MBS's here, but exactly how did these packages become so large and unmanageable, if not from credit policies which were unrealistically loose relative to the actual free market value of money (as expressed through realistic interest rates and lending standards)? Exactly how and why did EVERY major bank participate in this risky business at once? Where does this cluster of errors ultimately come from, which causes such "irrational exuberance" without any respect to risk? ;) It's not just base greed alone, because many greedy people have a healthy respect for risk, and there should be plenty of greedy people ready to capitalize on the mistakes of others. How on EARTH can you ignore the obvious role of the Federal Reserve in feeding the system an unlimited amount of cheap credit? How can you honestly pretend it's not there, exclude it from your analysis, and blame things on superficial exacerbating factors like deregulation? An expansionary credit policy (or the counterfeiting of money) is the huge elephant in the room, and unlike "deregulation," credit expansion and/or money printing and/or fractional-reserve banking in some form or another are empirically the [only?] common links between seemingly every boom/bust cycle in history. The Austrians aren't perfect, but at least they can recognize the obvious! I can imagine the Austrians being mistaken on some smaller points, and I hardly believe current Austrian theory is the be-all, end-all of economics, but the evidence of this particular argument is just too overwhelming for me to overlook.

The government as a whole has a unique ability to consistently distort market signals. If you want to lower interest rates, you can do that, but unless you have an overwhelming or unlimited amount of reserves, you can't force the rest of the market downward on a consistent basis. The government is the exception. If you want to drive up the price of a stock, you can bid it up, but eventually, you're going to run out of money for buying it. The government doesn't, so it can consistently put upward or downward pressure on any asset or asset class that it wants. Price controls and regulations cause similar distortions. However, these problems may not always manifest themselves immediately or clearly in a way that empirical data can pick up, because the market does not react to each regulation in isolation, but to the entire complex policy ecosystem. Conversely, deregulation will have a different effect depending on the nature of deregulation and conditions of the market: For instance, we have local cable and telecom monopolies, and competition is literally barred by monopoly contracts with cities, municipalities, etc. If we "deregulated" under such forced monopolistic circumstances, you could easily cite empirical data showing the awful before/after contrast, but my point is that you can't assume the data will necessarily remain valid or usefully predictive under different conditions. In a totally different context, gun control proponents and opponents each cite mountains of empirical data supporting their position. Who is right? The quality of the analysis is paramount, because it's all too easy to draw conclusions before isolating your experimental variable...and with complex economic data, that may not always be possible.

It's true that the Austrians basically blame government for everything. It's also telling that they CAN blame government for everything: When has there ever been a market downturn, which they don't have a logical cause-and-effect explanation for, relating back to some interventionist government action or policy? Sure, they might not always have charts and graphs to prove it...but it should be obvious that government has a unique ability to distort the market, and we understand the result of small actions in isolation (e.g. price controls cause shortages). Overall, I think it's perfectly reasonable to view such actions with deep suspicion when things go awry, especially considering the Austrians' logical arguments are much deeper than mere handwaving.

I do agree that the Austrians have trouble with measuring the quantitative effect of policies and economic factors, and this inherently precludes them from understanding timing as well. I think their exaggerated rejection of empiricism is misguided, but I believe their approach has far more merit than you give them credit for: The scientific method is not always the best tool for studying all phenomena. Do you use the scientific method for mathematics? Do you use the scientific method for computer science? No. (Someone just corrected me in a PM and pointed out that he used the scientific method for his PhD. I use it too, for things like finding bugs! I'm referring more to the basic theoretical underpinnings of computer science though, like finite state machines.) You study them as coherent, formal systems, and you don't deride either as unscientific or pseudoscientific. When it comes to qualitatively understanding the myriad factors driving a market, I believe you MUST approach them rationally first, or you're bound to misread your data and head off in an entirely wrong direction when you try to establish causal relationships or even fundamental correlations. Only after you have a coherent and rational qualitative understanding of the market (i.e. common sense), will you really have a reference point for intelligently interpreting empirical data.

In other words, I think the Austrians could do a LOT more to use empirical data to support and critique/refine their theories, but I do believe they're on solid ground in general. This empirical work has not been entirely neglected though, either. For instance, check out the paper titled, "Empirical Evidence on the Austrian Business Cycle Theory" by James P. Keeler.

My view is that the Austrian school and new classical school should make better efforts to understand each other's perspective and work toward each other, because used correctly, I think their approaches should be complementary rather than diametrically opposed. There's just a lot of methodological obstinance on both sides, which creates obstacles to that.

Second, inequality has just never in the history of humanity been solved through a capitalism that is unregulated and actually boosted by government fiscal policy such as what we have now. In a system that works to centralize investment in the bigger companies while taking as little care for the worker and the consumer as possible, all for the sake of a bit more additional long-term investment, the small gains that the lower classes get in terms of lower prices and new commodities are more than nullified by economic stagnation in the country that benefits and exploitation abroad, for people who aren't rich at any rate.

Laissez faire economics will never bring prosperity and economic freedom to the vast majority of us because it has no answer to vicious cycles of inequality. Inequality as a function of privatization has actually historically been conducive to less competition and gross inefficiency. A free markets system tempered by socialist policies just flat out works better than unbridled capitalism in the long run for everyone. I was an econ major, and I'm well versed in American economic history, so I'd let Bill O'Reilly use my mouth as a toilet before I let myself become deluded by Ron Paul's ideological libertarian theorizing.

You're clearly making ideological arguments rather than economic arguments, so allow me to counter likewise. I was not born a libertarian ideologue, and I would never have gotten here if I wasn't essentially open-minded. I've just settled on libertarianism after painstakingly critiquing, refining, and rejecting all of my prior beliefs. I do believe strongly in libertarianism now for both consequentialist and ethical reasons, and I argue strongly in its favor, but don't mistake me for having a "closed loop" mind or blindly following someone like Ron Paul. I've changed deeply indoctrinated religious beliefs once, and I've changed deeply entrenched political beliefs twice. I was "born and raised neoconservative," and I later shifted gradually left and eventually became a social democrat for several years as a result of the economic inequality in society (in addition to growing concern about militarism and civil liberties). I FULLY believed in socialized healthcare, socialized higher education, etc., and not just in a shallow emotional sense either. I literally sat down and worked out systems on paper that I thought would be beneficial to society and promote equality, full employment, and healthier market competition, and I worked out problems with incentives, regulations to fix them, etc.

One thing that always bothered me was this: A lot of leftists argue that if we simply spread around the wealth of the rich, everyone would be better off...but if you do the math, that doesn't make everyone magically prosperous, even if you ignore issues of moral hazard and market incentives. The ridiculously rich are ridiculously rich, but there are simply not enough of them to spread all of their wealth around and make everyone comfortably middle class. When Bill Gates was worth $100 billion, he could have given everyone in the world $20 of MS stock or so, just once...and then he'd be done giving out money forever. The problem isn't just the distribution of the "pie." It's the size of the pie, and it's the rate of growth of the pie. Even before 2007, I saw unemployment as a problem here: The market is obviously at undercapacity, and I saw socialized higher education as a way of improving the utilization and quality of the labor force.

However, something else bothered me: The overcredentialization of our workforce has served mainly as an obstacle to realistic employment standards. Everyone and their mom has to have a college degree in order to get a decent job, even if the degree itself is entirely unrelated to the job. Going through college and getting neck deep in debt is now seen more as a rite of passage and a way to "trim down the applicant list" than a necessary investment directly related to job and career requirements. The primary exceptions are degrees in math, engineering, and the sciences, but for the most part, the higher education system is a racket that unnecessarily increases the supply of overqualified labor relative to available jobs. Socializing the cost would help even the playing field for the poor, but it ultimately only pumps more money into the system, increases the overall burden to society, and further pumps up the credentials bubble. It didn't click with me at the time (nor had I ever heard of Ron Paul), but Ron Paul is totally right about this: The government's involvement in higher education and student loan programs has forced debt, high education costs, and overcredentialization on us.

If the lack of employment is not simply due to a lack of qualified workers or a mismatch of job requirements to qualifications, what's going on? The most plausible answer I could think of is that the capital investment is being hogged by megacorporations, but if that's the case, they're clearly not using it efficiently enough to create full employment. For the longest time, I assumed that the consolidation of major industries into huge conglomerates was a natural consequence of capitalism, and I used to make posts on other boards arguing that line: The strong win and eat the weak, and no one else can rise in challenge. There is a contradiction though: If economies of scale are such a huge issue that smaller companies cannot compete and necessarily get gobbled up by big ones, that would imply that the big ones are more efficient due to their size. However, the overutilization of capital resources relative to the underutilization of labor implies either inefficiency of a sort, or at the very least unsustainability (because a jobless consumer market will drive fewer sales), which must be corrected at some point.

For this reason, I started looking into what you refer to as the gross inefficiency of the corporate world, and I was appalled. It's not just about executive pay; they're paid outrageously, but spreading that pay out among other employees wouldn't actually make an enormous difference. Rather, their disproportionate pay is more of a symptom of the overall problem: Corporations can get away with being lazy and slothful, because competition isn't cutting into their market share and forcing them to do better. (This inefficiency inherently implies that consumer prices are higher than they should be.) Contrast Toyota's "kaizen" philosophy with the deep managerial heirarchies and micromanagement at US car companies (at least a few years ago - I haven't paid much attention lately) and US corporations in general, and you can see some pretty interesting differences.

In other words, a huge problem with our economy is that market competition can't take hold. Why is that? It's true that larger companies benefit from natural economies of scale, but that's a matter of efficiency. If we believe these economies of scale already make megacorporations operate more efficiently than smaller competition could manage, then we're inherently conceding that these megacorporations already provide more goods/services to consumers for less than anyone else could. However, you already stated that you believe megacorporations are grossly inefficient, and I agree. If we already accept that our dominant corporations are inefficient enough that consumers would be better off with smaller companies, that implies we believe these these smaller companies can cut down on overhead in other ways which will give them an edge.

So, smaller competition should be rising up and challenging these corporate behemoths, but we're not seeing much of that. Instead, we just see more acquisitions and less competition every year. Ask any entrepreneur or small business owner, and they'll tell you about some of the biggest problems: Entry barriers, and the cost of doing business without savings to weather out bad months! Consider the red tape and legal costs of complying with regulations: Huge companies can easily afford enormous teams of lawyers to handle all that without blinking an eye, but those costs can be crippling or completely prohibitive to smaller companies.

Consider the minimum wage: Mom and Pop shops can't always afford to pay people above market wage, and if they can't, those jobs - and those businesses - simply disappear before they can ever gain traction, cash reserves, or even the slightest economies of scale. If they survive long enough to gain some size and backing, their existence will increase demand for labor and thus increase real wages...but that rarely happens, because startups rarely get that far in the face of the obscene requirements forced on them. In contrast, a large company like Wal-Mart, with tons of cash reserves, can easily pay employees above market wage. In the short term, they can also simultaneously drop their prices well below what smaller companies can afford (predatory pricing), particularly while they're forced to hire labor at the same rates as Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is not going anywhere anytime soon, and they gain or regain market share after smaller competition dies out, which helps cover the extra labor costs, and they can bump their prices back up in the face of zero competition. Did you ever wonder why Wal-Mart has actively lobbied for increases in minimum wage in the past? This is why.

My "conversion" to libertarianism came pretty gradually for economic reasons like this. For a long time, I thoroughly resisted the idea that industry regulations were harmful to competition, employment, prices, and [in the long term] wages. When I first heard about Ron Paul in 2007, I was intrigued, but I was much more of a Dennis Kucinich/Mike Gravel kind of guy. I heard about his support for the "gold standard," and I thought he was nuts...but I thought, "You know, he seems like a pretty honest and humble guy. Maybe I could convince him he's wrong?" I spent at least a week brushing up on Keynesian economics and researching the history of the Great Depression (caused by the gold standard and excessive saving, oh me, oh my! ;)), and I even referred to mixed economic/ideological arguments like those at http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-gold.htm. The problem is, the more I studied and analyzed these resources, the more I started finding holes in them and finding contradictions in the arguments I built on top of them. Meanwhile, I started differentiating straw man arguments (return to a gold standard by pegging the value of paper dollars to gold) to actual arguments (drop legal tender laws and taxes on gold/silver, and let their value as a medium of exchange increase naturally). I started reformulating arguments against gold in light of this, attempting to strengthen them, until suddenly, I realized..."Holy crap, is Ron Paul right?" This was after thinking Ron Paul was crazy for six months.

The only economic textbooks, papers, and essays I had ever previously read were mainstream undergrad-level materials, but after this epiphany I spent a lot of time doing introspective "mental masturbation" and reinventing the wheel, so to speak. My own degree is in computer science, so the way my mind works makes me gravitate toward an intuitive, rational engineering approach, building a deeply layered and dynamic mental model of the economy in my head, which works as a coherent system. Before I knew it, I had inadvertantly internalized Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson" with "clean room reverse-engineering," without ever having previously read it. A "castle of air" like this can easily have no basis in reality, but the strong correlation between my own thoughts and the distilled lessons of the Austrian school was too uncanny for me to ignore. That's nowhere near "proof" that I'm on the right track, but the more I look through history, the more I find human history consistent with this mental model, and the more the Austrian arguments ring true to me. Austrian economic treatises are still more subtle than my own conception, and for that matter, so is the mainstream literature, by far. I'm just a noob when it comes down to it, and if you were really an economics major, I fully realize that you have far more sophisticated economic knowledge than I do...but I'm no dummy, either. ;) I can't help but wonder if all of your knowledge rests on a foundation of quicksand even more fragile than my own mental model. I find mainstream beliefs I used to agree with more incomplete and superficial every day, despite the rigorous empirically-derived mathematical models used to support them. I can't help seeing potentially hidden flaws lurking everywhere in the assumptions they rest upon, and every conclusion derived from those models collapses if the underlying assumptions are untrue. Considering the continual blunders mainstream economists have made, I'm extremely cautious about actually BELIEVING in the absolute validity of practically any of these mathematical models outside the very specific circumstances under which they were derived...which comes back again to my belief that empiricism should not be the be all, end all of economics. It has simply failed miserably far too many times, and the "pretense of knowledge" has led to so many failed policies that have been literally forced on people, only to further impoverish them.

Anyway, after deciding to hear Ron Paul out a little more, I started opening my mind to more libertarian, free market arguments about the role of regulations, and I started paying more attention to the grotesque corruption of government regulators. It's clear to me now why the media blacks out Ron Paul: They're scared to death of him, because their ownership is deeply tied to the corporate establishment and the military-industrial complex, who benefit outrageously from government spending, schmoozy contracts, inflation, arbitrary regulations written by their lobbyists, and regulatory bureacracies run by former and future company executives (in fact, the Department of Agriculture quite literally has people simultaneously on Monsanto's payroll!). I've come to the inescapable conclusion that these regulations exacerbate economies of scale, consolidate industries, and destroy small competititon at best, and it only gets worse from there. I think there's a reason why "regulate everyone!" Democrats are allowed to be a mainstream political party, and why they get mindshare in the media. I think there's a reason Republicans only deregulate very selectively. I think there's also a reason that genuine libertarians are totally marginalized and shut out by our corporatocracy...and it's not because libertarians are good for them.

All of this corruption is not incidental to our particular political system. It is intrinsic to centralized power, and history has shown there is literally no way to maintain centralized power without fostering this corruption. Moreoever, the natural effect of even well-intended regulations is to undermine small businesses. Why does Wal-Mart support the minimum wage? They support it because they can afford it, whereas smaller competitors cannot. It is the regulatory system itself which, in your words, "works to centralize investment in the bigger companies."

I totally agree with you that our international exploitation has hollowed out our markets, destroyed our manufacturing base, and led to spotty employment, although I think you probably place the blame in a different area. I didn't pay much mind to the petrodollar system until very recently (we get oil practically for free by expanding credit, and we use military intimidation to prop up this system while everyone else suffers), but I've long recognized that the US dollar's international reserve currency status has created every incentive for other countries to [almost] endlessly export cheap goods to the US. In the face of these conditions, how could any manufacturing base survive? When other countries are stumbling over themselves to provide us cheap goods, where is the profit incentive for us to invest, hire, and produce here? All that said, overtaxation and overregulation are absolutely contributing to this problem as well. International shipping does not come cheap, and some industries have already found that the cost of outsourcing is more than it's worth. Reduce taxes and regulations, and you've pushed things further still in that direction.

You said that inequality has just never in the history of mankind been solved through a capitalism that is unregulated, but please, tell me where in human history we have ever had a capitalism that is unregulated...ever? Even the Gilded Age didn't qualify for several reasons, but allow me to offer [the positive side of] my view of the Gilded Age as an example:

If you want to cite the Gilded Age, don't compare conditions back then to conditions now. Compare conditions back then to conditions beforehand: Child labor was rampant on farms, because we were still living in primitive conditions where everyone had to chip in to survive. Cities and mines were barely better in the midst of industrialization, but people chose them for a reason. Wages were low due to the huge influx of workers compared to the slow, steady increase in jobs, but the economy did grow slowly but steadily. The reason child labor became a political issue is that the market FINALLY grew to the point where it was no longer strictly necessary, so public outrage and concern meant it was already on its way out...but we used government as a first resort, and nowadays, kids who want to work a few hours a week for spending money aren't even allowed to. Wages and hours were the next issue, but they were already increasing for the same reasons. Regulations did not save us: Economic growth saved us, because industrialization created physical wealth more efficiently than ever before, and savings provided funding for capital investment in new companies and jobs, which gradually increased employment and demand for labor. On another regulatory note, consider the FDA: Upton Sinclair's book "The Jungle" was released in 1906, and people finally started worrying about food safety now that STARVATION was no longer the main concern...and instead of letting the market sort it out, the FDA's predecessor was created just a few months later. History is full of cases where old problems were solved, smaller problems came into focus, and government was used as a first resort instead of letting them be solved more naturally.

The initial economic circumstances of the Gilded Age were far below ideal, and the policies themselves were not pure laissez-faire, but I hardly think we should discount the rapid growth of industry and unprecedented increase in the standard of living that the era fostered. Now, let me turn your "never in the history of mankind" phrasing around: When in the history of mankind has any social welfare system ever been economically sustainable, particularly for a large society? Look at western Europe. A few years ago, Iceland and Greece were viewed by social democrats as models for the rest of the world to follow...until they collapsed. Real free market capitalism has never been earnestly tried, but social welfare states have, lots and lots of times. Out of all the numerous social welfare states currently in existence, or which ever existed, which ones managed to maintain socialized healthcare, or socialized education, etc. alongside a consistently balanced budget? Which ones saw employment, productivity, and the real cost of living continually improve, rather than deteriorate as their socialized systems became more and more burdensome? Which ones saw the state maintain its size or shrink, rather than continually expand by leveraging its "foot in the door?" As far as I know, no welfare state can meet these criteria of sustainability. I do not view them as a practical solution to our problems, and I certainly do not believe that the United States in particular should follow a model totally antithetical to its limited government heritage.

Moreoever, how exactly do these countries prevent drug and medical equipment companies from negotiating increasingly corrupt deals with bureaucrats, when the bureaucrats are negotiating with other people's money, which they come by all too easily? The answer is, they don't...and the longer these systems persist, the higher health care costs (for instance) will creep. (Our own system has a similar problem, but I believe Ron Paul is absolutely correct about the root cause: Government involvement.) Aside from debt and the gradual cannibalization of the productive private sector by the largely unproductive public sector, a lot of these countries are currently being propped up by the US paying their defense bills (courtesy of China, I guess). The very nature of the welfare state leads to the same stagnation you yourself place upon the doorstep of capitalism.

So, if I were you, I guess I'd be thinking...
"Cool story, bro." ;)

Third, Ron Paul is a good guy and I think he really does believe in everything he says. Just like Milton Friedman. They say the free market is supposedly always in our favor and is the answer to everything. Education, foreign policy, the two-party system, the AIDS epidemic, etc, etc. The thing about Austrian economics is that it refuses to use econometrics or anything that can be graphed, because all of its principles are supposed to be self-evident, and so these people refuse to be convinced otherwise. I don't think he's a piece of shit at all, I'm only knocking him because he's wrong about the free market and he's wrong about 'sound money'. And I find it very problematic that his followers do not at all understand the "Evil and Inefficient Keynesian Economics" (:rolleyes:), as evidenced by their reciting Ron Paul's line about the housing bubble and ensuing financial crisis being a result of too much government interference (it fucking defies reason). And people are eating this shit up.
What "defies reason" is willfully ignoring the blatantly obvious effect that fiat money, credit expansion, and fractional-reserve banking have on both the business cycle (least common denominator between all crashes ever?) and destruction of the middle class through inflation. Real inflation is WAY above what the CPI and PPI indicate, and even Ben Bernanke agrees that it's a fundamentally monetary phenomenon.

Theoretically, if you totally remove human beings from the equation, fiat money could work...but how many times in history have governments had the power to create money without abusing it? Moreover, let's pretend for a moment that John Maynard Keynes was correct about the cause of the Great Depression and the solution (obviously not, considering how long it dragged on under FDR's policies, but I digress): How often have you actually seen government officials adhering to the second half of his policy prescriptions, which is to curtail government spending during good times? Could you even possibly imagine a world where politicians were responsible enough to do so?

People are probably going to "bah" at this, but Ron Paul is dumb when it comes to economic policy. The practical effect of implementing libertarianism is to widen the income gap between poor and rich. That's it. The US is already in a sort of second gilded age. It'd be worse.

How on earth could you say the US is already in a sort of second Gilded Age? Do you seriously know anyone who has ever tried to start a business? There are more regulations than almost anyone can keep track of, because practically all Congress ever does is pass new ones! The ratio of new regulations to repealed regulations is very, very high. Each one has its cost, not least of which is small business owners trying to figure out how to operate legally. Outside of the fast-moving, lightly regulated technology industry (which serves consumers quite well on the balance with continually decreasing prices and increasing value), the only (AFAIK) relevant factors remotely similar between today and the Gilded Age are the corruption of the judicial system and the ubiquity of fractional-reserve banking. The regulatory environment is entirely different, taxes are far higher (back then political cartoons were drawn making fun of how overweight the government had gotten from tariffs, lol), the fiscal and monetary environment is far worse, the unproductive public sector is simply gigantic, and unlike the Gilded Age, we're not living in a time of unprecedented growth and improvements in the standard of living. Beyond the repeal of Glass-Steagall, there's just no realistic comparison.

Similarly, how do you reconcile your assumptions about the practical effect of libertarianism with the fact that our corporate-controlled media and political establishment are hellbent on shutting libertarians out of politics? You'd think they'd LOVE libertarian policies, but they don't, and I think there's a reason behind it.

He makes a lot of a priori statements, "if the people spent money it would be good, if the government spends it's bad", "to spend money the government has to take it from productive individuals", etc. It's all "austrian economics", it's all bullshit backed up by no data. It's basically basing any analysis on libertarian articles of faith, not on any numbers. His answer is to "get out of the way" and hope for the best, because his ideology is that of hardcore laissez faire. He can't accept anything else. If you tell Ron Paul that inflation does not necessarily go up if the supply of money goes up and the velocity(rate of circulation) of money goes down, he can only tell you that you are crazy and wrong, and that his libertarian precepts are indisputable.

First, Ron Paul does not make silly statements like, "if the people spent money it would be good, if the government spends it's bad." Have you ever REALLY listened to him? Have you ever REALLY read anything that Austrian economists have written with an open mind, or have you primarily read one-sided attacks and name-calling from their detractors? Please, be honest with yourself here. Detractors - even Krugman - have occasionally stepped down from their high horse long enough to make substantive critiques (e.g. "Why does spending decline in all sectors during a recession?"), and I do believe you've probably read these in addition to the usual mudslinging...but Austrians do have responses to these pointed questions. Are those responses watertight? I can't say. What I can say is that you seem to be letting one side of the argument entirely define your perception of the other, and if that's the case, you're doing a disservice to yourself and others.

Ron Paul does say things like, "to spend money the government has to take it away from productive individuals," but how is that bullshit? It's common sense. Taxation obviously takes wealth from productive individuals. Borrowing and credit expansion dilute the purchasing power of money, so it also amounts to the same. There's no getting around the general principle; even if the price increases are not obvious or not always proportional, the buying power of the money that is used has to come from somewhere other than magic fairy land. You could relate the expansion of credit and velocity of money to actual cost of living increases, but even that doesn't tell the whole story, because cost of living might have otherwise decreased rather than stayed flat. The opportunity cost is generally missing from such graphs! You can then incorporate growth factors to account for this, but the bottom line is that basic lessons from history and contemporary Zimbabwe don't fly out the window when the graphs fail to show a clear one-to-one relationship.

"Yeah, let's not care about going back to the gilded age. Let the economic path take us where it may. Everything will work out in the end if we only stop printing money. Families with a breadwinner father and a stay at home mother with a high school education will be the norm again, and personal responsibility will be the law of the land." What? I guess it sounds romantic, but I don't think people have ever thought of what the tradeoffs for having a gold standard are. All they're really doing is letting themselves be convinced that what Ron Paul says is right because they share his broader principles, and take comfort in the fact that his judgment(and theirs) seems to make sense. And so it must be applied always, like some metaphysical principle that doesn't care about time or historical circumstances.
How about this: Tell me what you think Ron Paul means by a gold standard, and tell me what you believe the tradeoffs are.

You can be as stubborn as you want for the sake of being principled, and you can ignore thinking through the consequences of Ron Paul's economic policy(or get mad at the Fed for printing money and making us feel dirty), but at length you'll have to deal with the consequences of not being pragmatic.

You can agree with his foreign policy, his views on civil liberties and even on states' rights, but don't let your love of those ideas cause you to blindly follow his monetary and economic policies. Read a book, watch youtube videos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P_Yq1AIDjM), talk to people who are educated about economics. The only reason why I'm not completely frightened at the prospect of a Paul presidency is he'd have absolutely zero chance at implementing any of his economic ideas. He'd have more control over foreign policy and our relationship with countries which isn't all that bad.

Interestingly, that Youtube video takes from Steve Kanga's Huppi site I referenced earlier. You may be surprised, but I already read all of that and believed it once, and that was one of my starting points for picking apart Ron Paul's ideas on sound money when I thought he was crazy...until I began to really critically examine those arguments, refine them, and ultimately abandon them after I realized Ron Paul was right. It was a little startling to me too. Funny little world, huh? ;) Contrary to the idea that I stubbornly accept Ron Paul's word as gospel because I like his principles, I actually didn't really fall in line with libertarian ethical principles until I had already come around on economic arguments...

I got you bro ;). I typed all that up before the previous post and I was just proofreading.
Fair enough, and thank you for the substantive reply. :)

I should be clear that I do not expect to change your mind with this post. We might never agree. All I really ask is that you reserve harsh judgment a bit more until you've genuinely read as much from the Austrians as you have from their detractors, while keeping your mind just as open as it was in your econ classes. When I was a social democrat, I never dreamed I'd advocate free market capitalism or disbelieve a lot of mainstream macroeconomic theory...but here I am. The Austrians are far from perfect, but I think they deserve far more respect and courtesy than you afford them.

EDIT: HOLY SHIT, THIS IS LONG.

ericthethe

01-29-2012, 04:22 AM

Wow that is a lot, haha. I'll try to find time tomorrow to read and maybe respond to some of it.

blah blah blah

Cool job posting some definitions and looking like a butthurt toolbag at the same time. Still doesn't answer anything. The only question begging I see is you begging me to ask why you're so angry. Really desperate for attention, huh? Poor guy :(

Useful input? Pointless remarks? Oh, I see! You must mean something like [[THIS]] (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?356167-WHAT-WE-RE-UP-AGAINST-IN-THE-GENERAL-My-Argument-with-a-Flock-of-Communists...&p=4111210&viewfull=1#post4111210).

No, I'm not gonna do any of that. (Just between you and me, that guy seems kinda like a jerk.)

Nope, maybe something similar to this (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?356167-WHAT-WE-RE-UP-AGAINST-IN-THE-GENERAL-My-Argument-with-a-Flock-of-Communists...&p=4111285&viewfull=1#post4111285) or this (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?356167-WHAT-WE-RE-UP-AGAINST-IN-THE-GENERAL-My-Argument-with-a-Flock-of-Communists...&p=4111888&viewfull=1#post4111888). I see you're incapable of that, though. Good luck in whatever it is you do around here.

AceNZ

01-29-2012, 06:31 AM

While I am a staunch supporter and apologist for Dr. Paul and while I understand the absolute importance of his success, I am not a libertarian; in fact, I reject what I understand to be the basic tenets of libertarianism; and I am not a disciple of Rand; in fact, I reject her basic tenets. I am anti-socialists or anti-colletivist with all of the baggage thereof; I am anti-corporatist with all of the baggage thereof; and I am certainly anti-statist will all of the baggage thereof.

I am not a Libertarian, either. I am anti-socialist, anti-collectivist, anti-corporatist. I'm anti-statist in the current sense of the state, but I also believe in the need for a limited government: police, courts and military.

I certainly do not wish for the differences between my own position and the positions of others on this particular thread to in any way undermine the efforts of Dr. Paul, but I would be interested in a discussion of what y'all mean by "property rights" and what y'all mean by "state" or "statist." Despite our differences, we may well agree on both; yet, I intuit that we likely disagree on these fundamental tenets or principles.

Property rights are the right to own, control and dispose of the fruits of your work (thinking or physical labor). A man who does not own what he produces is a slave.

When I say "statist" or "statism," I mean a belief that a strong, centralized government is a good thing.

I have read Hans Hermann-Hoppe's insightful book Democracy: the God that Failed, and I agree with most that he articulated in it. Of particular interest was his plea for a rapprochement between libertarians and paleo-conservatives, the formal breakup of which he experienced as the John Randolph Club split several years ago.

The Founding Fathers understood the dangers of democracy.

Again, however, where I support Dr. Paul is at a practical level: eliminate the FED; give us sound money; end the immoral, unconstitutional and unnecessary wars; draw down the warfare/welfare state; place the general government back into the chains of the Constitution, specifically within the confines of the delegated powers so enumerated; and aid in the return of authority to the states and to the people thereof.

I generally agree. However, I don't want to trade suppression by the Feds for suppression by the states or by my neighbors. All government needs to be in chains, not just the Feds. By "in chains," I mean prevented from initiating force, so it's a step above the Constitution.

Occam's Banana

01-29-2012, 06:50 AM

Cool job posting some definitions and looking like a butthurt toolbag at the same time.

Troll-mum must be so proud of her young'un! He tries so hard!

Still doesn't answer anything.

The definitions answered the question you asked, which was: "Do you even know what that means?"

"Knowing what something means" is what definitions are for. (But of course, you're a clever troll, so you probably knew that, didn't you? ;))

The only question begging I see is you begging me to ask why you're so angry. Really desperate for attention, huh? Poor guy :(

Eh. More like "bored" and "mildly amused." Just enough of both to break my policy by wasting time on some troll-feeding, anyway.

Nope, maybe something similar to this (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?356167-WHAT-WE-RE-UP-AGAINST-IN-THE-GENERAL-My-Argument-with-a-Flock-of-Communists...&p=4111285&viewfull=1#post4111285) or this (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?356167-WHAT-WE-RE-UP-AGAINST-IN-THE-GENERAL-My-Argument-with-a-Flock-of-Communists...&p=4111888&viewfull=1#post4111888).

To the first of which I say: this (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?356167-WHAT-WE-RE-UP-AGAINST-IN-THE-GENERAL-My-Argument-with-a-Flock-of-Communists...&p=4111388&viewfull=1#post4111388). Which, given the problems I note below (not to mention your obnoxious attitude), is more than your referenced post really merits.

To the second of which I say: many props to Mini-Me! He does all that you do not. He actually makes arguments (instead of mere assertions). He defines terms, etc. etc. He even "attends the beam" by acknowledging the inescapability of ideology (instead of spouting - as you do - denouncements of Austrianism & libertarianism as "ideological" while hypocritically ignoring the ideology underlying your own assertions).

Read what Mini-Me says closely & take notes - not just on content, but form & style as well. Then you'll be in a position to rightfully expect what you say to be greeted with something other than a flip, one-line dismissal from people who recognize fallacy-ridden presentations when they read them.

I see you're incapable of that, though.

Quite incapable. Oh, I could do it, I suppose ... (& LOL at your attempt to present your post and Mini-Me's post as if they were members of the same species).

After all, you did nothing but type out a lengthy & unedifying string of assertions erected on a dense scaffolding of undefined terms, begged questions, ad verecundiams, ad hominems, etc.

But I don't really see the point. I'm bored, but not *that* bored.

Good luck in whatever it is you do around here.

Although you mean this in a spirit of contempt & insincerity, I return the sentiment with neither.

As for whatever it is I do around here, I'll go back to doing it now.

And as that (almost) always involves not feeding trolls, play-time is over. I bid you goodbye.

AceNZ

01-29-2012, 07:23 AM

Dude, I am an an-syn. Telling me your line of argument is how to 'win me over' is patently absurd, because guess what? I think you're dead wrong. I acknowledge and define the difference between philosophical approaches between us, and you claim I'm "most definitely not moral or ethical" and further more that my views hold no "legitimacy".

I hate to break it to you, but that kind of dogma isn't going to win me over. You are guilty of exactly what I discussed in my previous posts in this very thread - refusing to even try to understand the position of the far left, and instead pushing us away when we can be [and should be] staunch allies.

Dude, you're trying to turn my general statements about the Left into a personal attack against you. But hey, if you want to go down that road...

Most on the Left aren't an-syn. I was addressing my earlier comments in regards to a typical Leftist. An-syn is a different beast.

If you don't support property rights, I am happy to debate with you, but you are most certainly not my ally.

Again, I am an an-syn, and I will tell you straight up I believe property rights as you define them are the original theft.

Here's how I define property rights: the right to use, control and dispose of property that you obtain through your own efforts (mental or physical). Please explain how that is "original theft," and how denying me those rights is moral in your world. The way I see it, those who are not able to own and consume what they produce are slaves.

However, I would NEVER advocate the State, and for you to tell me that "the next thing out of [my] mouth" will be "government should therefore intervene to prevent that theft" and that I would "empower Statism and the use of force" which is "ultimately justified by [my] flawed sense of morality." is not only incorrect on it's face, but absurd and insulting.

Typical Leftists are not an-syn, and do advocate for State action.

I will be clear: you do not understand the far left's position. You think you do, and you seem to love to insult and demean it, but you do not. I respect the property rights position. I understand why many people adopt it. I do not agree with it. I don't accuse you of being immoral. I don't accuse you of being unethical. I don't accuse you of being illegitimate. And as long as you do those things to me, you push us away for no good reason.

My understanding of an-syn is that you reject wage labor (ala Lockean Liberalism), and you reject property rights on the grounds that that's the reason the State exists, and the State is evil and therefore property rights are evil too. Is that correct so far?

Denying property rights means denying me the ability to support my life. Yes, that's an immoral and evil position.

The libertarian is often quick to accuse the far left of 'wanting' the State to enforce some sort of equality, but never realize that their idealogy, too, will often create the same State.

I only want the State to protect individual rights -- including property rights. That is not the same State that the Left wants. They want a State that is empowered to initiate force; I don't (and the ideology I support would prevent, not encourage, the creation of such a State).

Rather, the State is initially born to protect and defend property rights. That is your police force. That is your Judge. That is your imaginary line marking one territory from another. That is your taxation. And yes, as the State grows larger and larger, bloated and corrupt, many times it will try to redistribute wealth. But you can't have your cake and eat it too. If the property owners did not create the State to defend their property rights in the first place, you would not have them stealing out of your pockets the next day.

We can't live without property rights -- which is why we need government to help protect and defend them. What's the alternative? Gang rule?

And this is why the various far left groups reject property rights [in their modern form] - because we reject the State... the same reason you reject the far left, because you think WE lead to the State redistributing wealth. And that is my point, and the point of my several long posts in this thread: we have a common enemy. We have a common goal.

I want limited government, not zero government. I want property rights. I want a moral system. Freedom of choice. A free market. Protection of individual rights. Do you want any of those things?

teacherone

01-29-2012, 07:30 AM

i see troll people...

AceNZ

01-29-2012, 07:49 AM

Well the fact that you want morality to exist means social contract must exist.

I disagree. Morality exists independently from any social contract. Actions that support my life in the long-term are moral; actions that don't are immoral. I reject Hobbes' (the father of social contract theory) subjectivist argument that "good and evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions."

The government's only real right is to initiate force, to say that initiation of force is immoral means to promote anarchy - I'm trying to promote the freedom cause for our current situation using morality.

My view is that a proper government does not have the right to initiate force. That does not promote anarchy. Government's ability to respond to the initiation of force by others would be used to protect individual rights -- which includes preventing anarchy.

I'm still sketchy on how you approach the morality perspective, because once you start questioning the prospects of why our Rights should be protected, then the Capitalism argument falls apart (just like you said). So is it moral for the government to be responsible for protecting our rights? Who is protecting our right of property from being violated? Is protection only possible through self-defense?

Yes, it's moral for government to protect individual rights (which are different from the modern notion of "rights") -- things like the rights to life, liberty and property.

Self-defense is proper and moral in immediate / urgent cases of rights violations. Otherwise, government should be empowered to "retaliate" on your behalf; to track down, apprehend, judge and possibly penalize or imprison those who violate individual rights.

soulcyon

01-29-2012, 07:56 AM

I disagree. Morality exists independently from any social contract. Actions that support my life in the long-term are moral; actions that don't are immoral. I reject Hobbes' (the father of social contract theory) subjectivist argument that "good and evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions."Morality is subjective - you can never objectify morality. Just like how you are disagreeing with me, it is but a subjective matter. Like you said: "actions that support my life in the long term", that IS the reason social contract theory exists. Please read up more on what social contract talks about, you'll realize that you are agreeing with me - but you are saying you disagree for no reason.

My view is that a proper government does not have the right to initiate force. That does not promote anarchy. Government's ability to respond to the initiation of force by others would be used to protect individual rights -- which includes preventing anarchy.
How else can government protect individual rights? Please do explain a government which does not use initiation of force. By definition, the minimum right to any government is the initiation of force.

Yes, it's moral for government to protect individual rights (which are different from the modern notion of "rights") -- things like the rights to life, liberty and property.

Self-defense is proper and moral in immediate / urgent cases of rights violations. Otherwise, government should be empowered to "retaliate" on your behalf; to track down, apprehend, judge and possibly penalize or imprison those who violate individual rights.
Track down/apprehend/judge/penalize - they all cannot happen without initiation of force. Thus you agree with me that the government is morally correct in initiating force.

Narmical

01-29-2012, 08:24 AM

I'd like to chime in on the empiricism of mainstream economics. The kinds of experiments carried out by mainstream economics, similarly to much of the science promoted in the mainstream media, does not follow the scientific method! For quick reference, the scientific method is as follows

1) Make observations of the world
2) Define a hypothesis to explain the observations
3) Conduct a controlled experiment to evaluate the validity of your hypothesis
4) Conclude that your hypothesis is valid or invalid
5) Modify your hypothesis and repeat

Epidemiological studies are what mainstream economics does. These studies are conducted by collecting masses of data about people or countries and mathematically manipulating it to see what correlations exist. You might also be fermiliar with these studies in the form of nutrition / health or cancer studies. A headline like "Eating more broccoli is linked to lower rates of breast cancer" is an epidemiological study.

The big problem with these studies is that for all the work involved, they only ever get you to the Hypothesis stage of the scientific method. True, the results get promoted as scientific conclusions, but they aren't, they are just explanations of the observations made from the statistical analyses. One reason that these results are called "conclusions" is that its impossible to preform a controlled study on "the population of the United State" or "the countries of the world"; its only possible in a lab. A controlled experiment means observing a phenomena in its natural state and comparing it to a similar setup that differs in one and only one respect.

This is impossible with a country. I can't change the China's demand for oil while keeping all other things the same, its just impossible.

In summary, just because fancy math is involved does not mean that science is being done. That doesn't mean the hypotheses are wrong, it just means that we cant say with confidence that they are.

Narmical

01-29-2012, 08:29 AM

Track down/apprehend/judge/penalize - they all cannot happen without initiation of force. Thus you agree with me that the government is morally correct in initiating force.

Let me ask you a moral question.

If someone steals my apple, is it moral to take the apple back from them?
Is it moral to take it back from them tomorrow? next week?
If i can't get my apple back, is it moral to take a like but different apple?

If its moral to recover your apple, is it moral to punch the aggressor in to make him capitulate? break his arm? kill him?

AceNZ

01-29-2012, 08:37 AM

Morality is subjective - you can never objectify morality. Just like how you are disagreeing with me, it is but a subjective matter.

I disagree. If morality was subjective, then you could say that murder was moral for you. It's not. A subjective morality would mean that whatever you wanted to be moral would be moral; it's really a form of whim worship. The purpose of a code morality should be to guide you to life and happiness, not suffering and death.

Like you said: "actions that support my life in the long term", that IS the reason social contract theory exists. Please read up more on what social contract talks about, you'll realize that you are agreeing with me - but you are saying you disagree for no reason.

Social contractarians say that, but they're mistaken. In fact, the opposite is true. Here's the original formulation by Hobbes:

"I authorize and give up my right of governing myself to this man (the absolute monarch), or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that you give up your right to him and authorize all his actions in like manner."

In other words, the central authority can do whatever it wants with you, including taking your life. That's not supporting your life even in the short term, much less the long term.

How else can government protect individual rights? Please do explain a government which does not use initiation of force. By definition, the minimum right to any government is the initiation of force.

Someone commits a crime. Government responds / retaliates. That's not an initiation of force.

Track down/apprehend/judge/penalize - they all cannot happen without initiation of force. Thus you agree with me that the government is morally correct in initiating force.

Those actions should be taken only in retaliation to someone initiating force; they shouldn't be the initiating actions.

soulcyon

01-29-2012, 08:38 AM

soulcyon

01-29-2012, 08:47 AM

I disagree. If morality was subjective, then you could say that murder was moral for you. It's not. A subjective morality would mean that whatever you wanted to be moral would be moral; it's really a form of whim worship. The purpose of a code morality should be to guide you to life and happiness, not suffering and death. Then how did slavery ever exist? Because at some point in time, society agreed that some humans were "lesser beings". But in today's standards, that is not morally correct. Moral correctness gives birth to a social contract - which also gives birth to a government. Governments live by an agreed-upon moral standard, which is unwritten. Look how our morals have changed over the past hundred years (women's rights, slavery .. etc). Simple historical evidence proves morality is subjective.

Social contractarians say that, but they're mistaken. In fact, the opposite is true. Here's the original formulation by Hobbes:

"I authorize and give up my right of governing myself to this man (the absolute monarch), or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that you give up your right to him and authorize all his actions in like manner."

In other words, the central authority can do whatever it wants with you, including taking your life. That's not supporting your life even in the short term, much less the long term.Hobbes advocates perfect monarchy, while I'm talking about David Gauthier's Morals By Agreement. There are many variations of social contract theory, don't go mixing them up just to argue.

Someone commits a crime. Government responds / retaliates. That's not an initiation of force.
You are assuming the crime is one that involves violence, which is not always true. The government will initiate force regardless of the type of crime committed.

Those actions should be taken only in retaliation to someone initiating force; they shouldn't be the initiating actions.?!?!?! You're the one that said the government's job is to track down/apprehend the suspects - thus they ARE initiating force. For example, you don't pay your taxes, police will be knocking down your door. Enough said.

AceNZ

01-29-2012, 08:59 AM

Let me ask you a moral question.

I'm not sure if you were asking anyone in particular, but here are my answers:

If someone steals my apple, is it moral to take the apple back from them?

in the moment, if it can be done without using force, then yes

Is it moral to take it back from them tomorrow? next week?

yes, but only through government as your proxy (vigilantism in a civilized society is immoral)

If i can't get my apple back, is it moral to take a like but different apple?

yes, but only through government as your proxy (restitution)

If its moral to recover your apple, is it moral to punch the aggressor in to make him capitulate? break his arm? kill him?

The level of retaliatory forced used should be commensurate with the crime. There is a potential feedback loop, though, since resisting arrest is also a crime. So, if someone refuses to cooperate, and throws a punch at an officer (or threatens to do so), then yes, it would be moral to punch them back.

Except in emergencies, when your life depends on some form of retaliation or forcible defense in the moment, the moral solution for the victim of a crime is to delegate retaliatory actions to the police.

Narmical

01-29-2012, 09:00 AM

We're talking about protection of rights - it's not about what YOU (as the owner) can do about your stolen apple, it's about how a government can protect your right to property (of the apple). I personally do not believe in the right to property, so I cannot answer your questions with any honesty. But I would assume with in current-day society, the morals would dictate that proportionality takes precedence in non-life threatening situations. So it is only morally correct for you to steal his apple if your apple was stolen, and not one bit more.

Way to weasel out of the question buddy. I am interested in what YOU think is moral re: your rejection of property rights. I fully understand "current-day society" so i ask again, to you, what is moral?

If someone steals my apple, is it moral to take the apple back from them?
Is it moral to take it back from them tomorrow? next week?
If i can't get my apple back, is it moral to take a like but different apple?

If its moral to recover your apple, is it moral to punch the aggressor in to make him capitulate? break his arm? kill him?

Here is an additional question; what does "my apple" really mean? is it moral to have a "my apple"?

Narmical

01-29-2012, 09:04 AM

I'm not sure if you were asking anyone in particular, but here are my answers:

in the moment, if it can be done without using force, then yes

yes, but only through government as your proxy (vigilantism in a civilized society is immoral)

yes, but only through government as your proxy (restitution)

The level of retaliatory forced used should be commensurate with the crime. There is a potential feedback loop, though, since resisting arrest is also a crime. So, if someone refuses to cooperate, and throws a punch at an officer (or threatens to do so), then yes, it would be moral to punch them back.

Except in emergencies, when your life depends on some form of retaliation or forcible defense in the moment, the moral solution for the victim of a crime is to delegate retaliatory actions to the police.

Cool! thanks for answering. I'm assuming when you say with out violence your excluding the physical act of taking. In the general case do you calcify theft as violence or force?

Mini-Me

01-29-2012, 09:08 AM

Way to weasel out of the question buddy. I am interested in what YOU think is moral re: your rejection of property rights. I fully understand "current-day society" so i ask again, to you, what is moral?

If someone steals my apple, is it moral to take the apple back from them?
Is it moral to take it back from them tomorrow? next week?
If i can't get my apple back, is it moral to take a like but different apple?

If its moral to recover your apple, is it moral to punch the aggressor in to make him capitulate? break his arm? kill him?

I'm actually very curious about soulcyon's answer. From my understanding, most leftist anarchists believe in rightful possession of personal effects at the very least, even if they don't believe in permanent property rights, particularly over the means of production. However, if you don't believe in any form of possession or property whatsoever, the very notion of "theft" becomes meaningless, and that's what soulcyon seemed to indicate in post 121. To me, that would imply it's okay for someone to take an apple out of your hand, and it's okay for you to take it back, and it's okay for them to take it again, in an endless loop, as long as no one [for example] punches the other guy or kicks him in the groin. Moreover, it's okay to take every piece of food out of someone's hand that they pick up, ensuring they never get to eat...ever. ;) If this is what soulcyon means by not believing in property, I think he might want to revisit what most leftists actually believe! :D

bobburn

01-29-2012, 09:19 AM

AceNZ

01-29-2012, 09:29 AM

Then how did slavery ever exist? Because at some point in time, society agreed that some humans were "lesser beings". But in today's standards, that is not morally correct.

Morality has to be discovered and chosen. Just because someone thinks something is moral doesn't mean it is.

People used to think that the Earth was the center of the universe, too -- that didn't make it so.

Moral correctness gives birth to a social contract - which also gives birth to a government. Governments live by an agreed-upon moral standard, which is unwritten. Look how our morals have changed over the past hundred years (women's rights, slavery .. etc). Simple historical evidence proves morality is subjective.

There is no social contract. What people consider to be moral changes as they learn and grow. That doesn't mean that morality is subjective; it means that people are at different stages in the learning process.

Hobbes advocates perfect monarchy, while I'm talking about David Gauthier's Morals By Agreement. There are many variations of social contract theory, don't go mixing them up just to argue.

Hobbes created SCT. Never heard of Gauthier.

You are assuming the crime is one that involves violence, which is not always true. The government will initiate force regardless of the type of crime committed.

You are assuming that "initiation of force" requires violence, which is not the case. Force takes many forms, including force against the mind: fraud, threats, and so on. The only actions that should be crimes are acts of force of one kind or another.

?!?!?! You're the one that said the government's job is to track down/apprehend the suspects - thus they ARE initiating force. For example, you don't pay your taxes, police will be knocking down your door. Enough said.

How is government initiating force when they track down/apprehend someone who has already committed a crime -- which was an act of force?

(FWIW, I don't support the idea of government taxation, much less using police to enforce non-payment.)

Narmical

01-29-2012, 09:30 AM

I'm actually very curious about soulcyon's answer.

... Moreover, it's okay to take every piece of food out of someone's hand that they pick up, ensuring they never get to eat...ever. ;) If this is what soulcyon means by not believing in property, I think he might want to revisit what most leftists actually believe! :D

Yeah if that's how he really views it, i guess he wouldn't mind if we used his credit card to buy some stuff? Maybe he should just post that on the forum. He doesn't really own his credit right?

Mini-Me

01-29-2012, 09:33 AM

If someone took my apple and I could not take it back very quickly myself, I would file a replevin action to have my apple returned, if it could not be returned I would demand restitution in the amount of my apple plus the costs of recovery of my apple. That is moral. Making myself whole through the ordered use of our judicial system is moral.

You people are no fun at all! If someone took my apple, I'd suppress a giggle, and they'd look at me funny...then I'd tell them I got it out of a dumpster once they finished eating. They'd never steal from me again! ;)

AceNZ

01-29-2012, 09:38 AM

Cool! thanks for answering. I'm assuming when you say with out violence your excluding the physical act of taking.

Yes.

In the general case do you calcify theft as violence or force?

Theft is always force, but may or may not include violence.

The theft would involve violence if there was some harmful physical contact (some forms of verbal abuse or non-contact assault are also forms of violence).

otherone

01-29-2012, 10:21 AM

The government will initiate force regardless of the type of crime committed.

THIS ^

The Rule of Law can ONLY exist with the threat of force...in our homes, on our streets, or in foreign relations. It is a primal fact of life, possibly even a law of nature. If you jump off a cliff...it's gonna hurt. If you piss off mom, she'll swat you with a wooden spoon. Thomas More's "Utopia" is a fantasy...'reason' only works with the reasonable.
By claiming the Right to property is 'moral', one implies that it is the responsibility of the State to protect that Right, through the application of force. This leads to further abuses, culminating in actions like all of us being complicit in funding and filling the ranks of an international police force stretching from the Banana Wars to Blood for Oil. The 'morality' of Exxonmobil's Right to property impels the State (all of us) to action.
The problem here, is of course, why MUST I have to give up MY Right to property (taxes) in order to protect ExxonMobil's?
In a 'free' society, it's not 'my' responsibility to protect 'your' stuff. That's YOUR responsibility. Jack McCoy (of Law and Order) eloquently states, "Man has only those Rights that he can defend." It is Exxonmobil's Right to protect it's property, it is MY right to defend MY property. It is the State's job to protect these Rights.

scar

01-29-2012, 10:32 AM

Whenever I meet a communist I ask them to help carry my groceries.

hahahaha

soulcyon

01-29-2012, 10:50 AM

Haha Mini-me, great point. I personally don't have preferences when it comes to leftist/rightist, I like to believe what's proven to work. Not just empirically, but on paper as well ;)

I'm still working on the theory, but it's a very utopian view on what "property" should be. E.g, abolishing "private property" (which would simultaneously abolish money/trade) and allowing resources to be distributed equally and per-request basis. Resource based economy, you could call it - I wonder if this has been thought of by real philosophers in the past.

---

K, i'm officially going to say AceNZ is trolling :\

What people consider to be moral changes as they learn and grow. That doesn't mean that morality is subjective... ok lol. define morality: of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior. If you agree with this definition (ala Webster), then you already agreed that morality is subjective. There is no measurable way to denote "right and wrong" behavior. It is just not possible.

You are assuming that "initiation of force" requires violence, which is not the case. Force takes many forms, including force against the mind: fraud, threats, and so on. The only actions that should be crimes are acts of force of one kind or another.So, what kind of force falls under "not paying taxes"?

jolynna

01-29-2012, 11:13 AM

You people are no fun at all! If someone took my apple, I'd suppress a giggle, and they'd look at me funny...then I'd tell them I got it out of a dumpster once they finished eating. They'd never steal from me again! ;)

Ask them how the maggots tasted too.

Narmical

01-29-2012, 12:32 PM

I'm still working on the theory, but it's a very utopian view on what "property" should be. E.g, abolishing "private property" (which would simultaneously abolish money/trade) and allowing resources to be distributed equally and per-request basis. Resource based economy, you could call it - I wonder if this has been thought of by real philosophers in the past.

I don't think you quite understand the concept of money & trade, or the tragedy of the commons.

teacherone

01-29-2012, 01:07 PM

sounds like we got some venus project-ers in the house.

The Bavarian

01-29-2012, 01:35 PM

when somebody says "per say" I just get a picture of a smug hipster in my head.

affa

01-29-2012, 02:19 PM

Let me ask you a moral question.

If someone steals my apple, is it moral to take the apple back from them?
Is it moral to take it back from them tomorrow? next week?
If i can't get my apple back, is it moral to take a like but different apple?

If its moral to recover your apple, is it moral to punch the aggressor in to make him capitulate? break his arm? kill him?

When did it become 'your apple'?

Did it become your apple because you found it on the ground after it had fallen from the tree?
Did it become your apple because you exerted effort and climbed the tree and picked it?
Did it become your apple because you exerted effort and climbed the tree and picked every last apple, even though you only needed five to feed your family, and then tried to sell them to people who needed apples but would have preferred to climb the tree themselves?
Did it become your apple because you [or your grandfather] built a fence around the tree and claimed all apples forevermore?
Did it become your apple because, once claiming all apples, you began paying those who needed to eat 'your' apples to climb and pick fifty apples in exchange for one?

Unless we determine how it becomes 'your' [or 'mine'] apple in the first place, we're missing the point of the discussion. It's very easy, but simplistic, to discuss force 'after' it becomes someone's apple. When we hear 'take your apple', we're supposed to immediately think 'oh man, going up to that person and taking their apple is wrong'... but for some reason we're never supposed to discuss what made it their apple in the first place, and if any 'theft' or 'force' was involved.

to answer your questions: no, no/no, from another or from a tree? (no/yes), no (mildly - force should be avoided), no, no.

to answer my questions: it's only moral to claim that apple for yourself if you found it, earned it, and did not take more than you needed. after that, we need to question original resource allocation/theft and the question of morality becomes extremely complex and not so cut and dry... and completely explains why different 'moral' people fall on different sides of this discussion.

if you, through force [of fence, guard, etc] claim resources that were once public, especially ones as important as a food source, I find it disingenuous at best to then claim 'theft' when the people rise up to take them back.

It's force when villagers pitchfork or tar and feather a man, too. But leaving out the fact that he was an abusive tyrant that mistreated and over taxed his people results in a very different answer as to whether it's moral or not.

soulcyon

01-29-2012, 03:59 PM

I don't think you quite understand the concept of money & trade, or the tragedy of the commons.O.o /me goes to Google

:o /me has been enlightened

Gaddafi Duck

01-29-2012, 04:06 PM

If they really Rothbard, Mises, and Hayek as they said, and are still communists, they are without a doubt a lost cause. You won't be able to "convert" them, you'll just win the argument by default because they'll just not respond. Never understood that..how people who act so intellectual think they have such a thorough understanding of things, only to maintain their position after they fail to be able to adequately address the counterarguments. If you're really that "intelligent", wouldn't you assume the most sensible logic presented? If you're a communist and you get your ass whooped by another ideology, doesn't that mean you should adopt a better perspective of the world?

Then again, I don't know any communist that has the mental capacity to digest Mises, so I doubt they read him as much as they just skimmed.

affa

01-29-2012, 05:10 PM

Dude, you're trying to turn my general statements about the Left into a personal attack against you. But hey, if you want to go down that road...

You quoted me, when I was talking about myself, as if I was talking about someone else, and, after twisting my views into your wrongheaded belief about them, told me 'what I would say next' [which was completely untrue], then called me immoral and unethical because of what you claimed I would say, but never would say. so yes, it was a personal attack on me.

Most on the Left aren't an-syn. I was addressing my earlier comments in regards to a typical Leftist. An-syn is a different beast.

Obviously. But my point, throughout, is that people view property differently. This split is what divides us, and why so many people talk 'at' each other, rather than 'with' each other. While I'm against the state , I recognize that someone who argues the State should protect property rights, while accusing the 'left' of theft through a desire for wealth redistribution, wants to have its cake and eat it too.

Both sides are sitting there calling the other side thieves and neither side will even listen to the other side's opinion, because they are too busy screaming 'thief!' at them.

If you don't support property rights, I am happy to debate with you, but you are most certainly not my ally.

Then you will forever miss the forest for the trees. It's a shame. At least I'll still be there, supporting Ron Paul, despite your attempts to push me away. At least I'll be converting those on the left and far left that you dismiss as enemies. It's a shame your dogma doesn't let you get past your own biases long enough to see we're all working towards the same goal, but simply think it needs to [eventually] be accomplished differently.

Here's how I define property rights: the right to use, control and dispose of property that you obtain through your own efforts (mental or physical). Please explain how that is "original theft," and how denying me those rights is moral in your world. The way I see it, those who are not able to own and consume what they produce are slaves.

So before I answer this, I want to be clear: you are claiming that if a person labors to produce widgets in a widget factory, the widgets they produce are theirs and theirs alone? Or else they are "slaves"? And the carpenters that built the factory are the owners of the factory itself, for it is the fruit of their labor? And so a person who uses their existent power [in the form of previously accumulated capital from other, unrelated, ventures] to have the factory built is then, in turn, stealing it from the carpenters and has [wage] slaves that produce widgets for him?

Interesting way of looking at things. I'm surprised your definition of property rights brings us down that path. [note: yes, I know that's not what you meant. funny, though, that it can be interpreted that way, isn't it?]

Typical Leftists are not an-syn, and do advocate for State action.

Most people in this day and age are Statists, right and left. It's just as true to say 'typical Rightists are not an-cap, and do advocate for State action'. Your bias against the so called 'left' may blind you to that, but it's the cold hard truth.

My understanding of an-syn is that you reject wage labor (ala Lockean Liberalism), and you reject property rights on the grounds that that's the reason the State exists, and the State is evil and therefore property rights are evil too. Is that correct so far?

You keep trying to define this as morality, when really, words like 'evil' really have no place in this discussion.

A better way to put it is that the State is born to protect the Property Rights of the few. As the State grows, it takes from all, both propertied and propertied through taxation and other means. Eventually, it recognizes that since the unpropertied outnumber the propertied by a considerable amount, it can appeal to the masses by promoting concepts such as wealth redistribution. It can play both sides, by making similar [but opposing] promises to the propertied. Ultimately, the State will hurt both in order to expand its own power and wealth.

As for your definition of an-syn, it's extremely lacking. Most of an-syn is about how to act and produce without the State; temporary associations, etc.

[I]Denying property rights means denying me the ability to support my life. Yes, that's an immoral and evil position.

Would you also say that denying others the use of your property if it denies them their ability to support their life is immoral and evil?

I only want the State to protect individual rights -- including property rights. That is not the same State that the Left wants. They want a State that is empowered to initiate force; I don't (and the ideology I support would prevent, not encourage, the creation of such a State).

How exactly does this State protect your property rights? Through an armed police force? Through throwing debtors in jail? Resolving worker disputes by smashing unions?
It sounds to me that you want a perfect State, that protects the propertied, but you forget that your pet will grow and eventually bite the hand that feeds it. How long before the State realizes that once it taxes you to provide the protection you ask for, it can then redistribute 'your' wealth to others in exchange for expanded power? And then we're back at square one - a State that uses Force against all, for differing reasons.
You keep accusing the 'Left' of wanting a State that uses force [to redistribute wealth] and refusing to acknowledge you gave them that ability to use Force in the first place.
It's all nice and easy to say "They [the Left] want a State that is empowered to initiate force" but you absolutely ignore that is exactly what many on the so called Right want too.

We can't live without property rights -- which is why we need government to help protect and defend them. What's the alternative? Gang rule?

We can't live without the government! Oh noes! Pass me the heroin! I'm sorry, I usually love to respond to these threads, but... c'mon, really?

I want limited government, not zero government. I want property rights. I want a moral system. Freedom of choice. A free market. Protection of individual rights. Do you want any of those things?

No. No. Yes [though I don't think your definition of 'moral' is correct. Yes. Yes, but defined differently from your definition, for we disagree on fundamentals. Not by the State. Not by your definitions, and certainly not with the involvement of the State.

AceNZ

01-29-2012, 07:28 PM

The Rule of Law can ONLY exist with the threat of force...in our homes, on our streets, or in foreign relations. It is a primal fact of life, possibly even a law of nature. If you jump off a cliff...it's gonna hurt. If you piss off mom, she'll swat you with a wooden spoon.

Force in retaliation.

By claiming the Right to property is 'moral', one implies that it is the responsibility of the State to protect that Right, through the application of force.

Force in retaliation.

This leads to further abuses, culminating in actions like all of us being complicit in funding and filling the ranks of an international police force stretching from the Banana Wars to Blood for Oil.

Only if we allow the initiation of force.

The problem here, is of course, why MUST I have to give up MY Right to property (taxes) in order to protect ExxonMobil's?

Why should you be taxed at all? I don't agree with taxation.

In a 'free' society, it's not 'my' responsibility to protect 'your' stuff. That's YOUR responsibility. Jack McCoy (of Law and Order) eloquently states, "Man has only those Rights that he can defend." It is Exxonmobil's Right to protect it's property, it is MY right to defend MY property. It is the State's job to protect these Rights.

If the protection of property is in private hands, then you end up with gang rule. You can defend your property against me, but not against my gang. Then what? You join a gang, too? We get our gangs to agree to not fight each other? Oops, all of a sudden, that's a government.

AceNZ

01-29-2012, 07:43 PM

define morality: of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior. If you agree with this definition (ala Webster), then you already agreed that morality is subjective. There is no measurable way to denote "right and wrong" behavior. It is just not possible.

Webster's definition is incomplete.

There is a measurable way to define right and wrong in the context of morality: what's right supports your life in the long-term; what's wrong does not.

So, what kind of force falls under "not paying taxes"?

None. Which is one reason why it shouldn't be a crime. Before you even get to "not paying," taxation is a form of theft (and therefore an initiation of force) -- which is why I'm against taxation, on moral grounds.

The initiation of force is immoral -- regardless of whether it's done by an individual on their own, or an individual acting in the name of the State, or a group of individuals acting in response to a democratically derived decision.

AceNZ

01-29-2012, 08:47 PM

So before I answer this, I want to be clear: you are claiming that if a person labors to produce widgets in a widget factory, the widgets they produce are theirs and theirs alone? Or else they are "slaves"?

If a person produces widgets in a factory, that implies capital equipment is involved, as well as labor to produce that equipment and labor to create the inputs to the manufacturing process. The production process involves many steps, people and processes. So first, a person working in a factory almost never produces anything on their own. And second, how they are reimbursed for their work should be determined by mutual agreement between the worker and employee. They might be paid in widgets, or perhaps with money.

And the carpenters that built the factory are the owners of the factory itself, for it is the fruit of their labor?

Perhaps, as long as they also provided the other equipment, materials, land, ideas and so on that go into creating a factory. If all they provide is labor, then the factory is not the fruit of that alone, so they wouldn't own it. The nature of their payment should be determined by mutual agreement with the others involved. Maybe they would agree to take a share of ownership in the factory; I suspect most would prefer money.

And so a person who uses their existent power [in the form of previously accumulated capital from other, unrelated, ventures] to have the factory built is then, in turn, stealing it from the carpenters and has [wage] slaves that produce widgets for him?

Slavery requires an unwilling participant; someone who has no choice and no control over their actions and decisions; someone who is compelled by physical force. Wages (or other forms of payment) should be determined by mutual agreement, by free choice, in a free market where employers compete for employees.

Equating capital use to slavery is immoral. If I work hard to design and build a new widget, why should I not be able to sell it or rent it if others agree it has value?

Interesting way of looking at things. I'm surprised your definition of property rights brings us down that path. [note: yes, I know that's not what you meant. funny, though, that it can be interpreted that way, isn't it?]

Thanks for biting. Hook, line and sinker, as they say.

Lockean Liberalism (which is what you're describing) is highly flawed -- the flaws are pretty easy to see from a moral perspective.

You keep trying to define this as morality, when really, words like 'evil' really have no place in this discussion.

For the same reasons that you keep trying to move this discussion out of the realm of morality, I refuse to do so. It IS a moral issue. The approach you're advocating IS immoral and evil. If you can't see it, perhaps others reading this thread can.

A better way to put it is that the State is born to protect the Property Rights of the few.

The State should protect everyone's property rights (as well as other individual rights). Everyone needs property to survive.

As the State grows, it takes from all, both propertied and propertied through taxation and other means. Eventually, it recognizes that since the unpropertied outnumber the propertied by a considerable amount, it can appeal to the masses by promoting concepts such as wealth redistribution.

That's nonsense. Everyone owns property. The clothes on your back; the money in your pocket; the food for your next meal. The concept of property extends far beyond land.

Ultimately, the State will hurt both in order to expand its own power and wealth.

That may be the way the State is today, but there are alternatives other than eliminating the State and property rights.

Would you also say that denying others the use of your property if it denies them their ability to support their life is immoral and evil?

In other words, is it moral to prevent people from stealing from me who were unable to enough produce property of their own to support their life? Yes, absolutely.

How exactly does this State protect your property rights? Through an armed police force? Through throwing debtors in jail? Resolving worker disputes by smashing unions?

Yes, police should be armed. Everyone else could be armed, too, if they so choose.

Debtors should not go to jail if they fail to pay their debts. The nature of debt is a contractual agreement between the lender and the borrower. As long as no fraud is involved, bankruptcy laws can be used to resolve failure to pay issues.

Workers should be free to form unions, but not as a result of coercion or other forms of government force. Similarly, people should be free to join unions or leave them as they wish. Government should not smash unions unless they violate individual rights.

It sounds to me that you want a perfect State, that protects the propertied, but you forget that your pet will grow and eventually bite the hand that feeds it. How long before the State realizes that once it taxes you to provide the protection you ask for, it can then redistribute 'your' wealth to others in exchange for expanded power? And then we're back at square one - a State that uses Force against all, for differing reasons.

Yes, protect the "propertied" -- that's everyone.

I don't support taxation. The government should be funded through voluntary means. If it starts to overreach (or underperform), then stop supporting it.

You keep accusing the 'Left' of wanting a State that uses force [to redistribute wealth] and refusing to acknowledge you gave them that ability to use Force in the first place.

I gave them nothing of the kind.

It's all nice and easy to say "They [the Left] want a State that is empowered to initiate force" but you absolutely ignore that is exactly what many on the so called Right want too.

True. However, I think the Right is in a better position philosophically to fight the issue. I haven't heard anyone from the Left arguing for a smaller State, other than anarchists. On the Right, at least we have RP, the Tea Party and Libertarians.

We can't live without the government! Oh noes! Pass me the heroin! I'm sorry, I usually love to respond to these threads, but... c'mon, really?

Ridicule? C'mon. Weak. Yes, really. Well, unless you'd prefer to revert to an age of savagery or gang warfare or all-against-all.

otherone

01-29-2012, 09:06 PM

if the protection of property is in private hands, then you end up with gang rule. You can defend your property against me, but not against my gang. Then what? You join a gang, too? We get our gangs to agree to not fight each other? Oops, all of a sudden, that's a government.

Reductio ad absurdum.
Cops can't protect you or your stuff. In a best case scenario, they can hopefully prevent the perpetrators from repeating their behavior.

affa

01-29-2012, 11:11 PM

Equating capital use to slavery is immoral.

Lol. I'd rather spend my time debating with someone who tries to address the questions raised, and doesn't simply call the other person evil as their primary defense mechanism. It's laughable you initially entered this thread stating the 'moral argument' is the way to win the so-called Left over, when it's so clear you refuse to even try to understand the position of the Left, and rather hurl insults. Heck, I'd rather debate the merits of dry food versus canned food with my cat.

Your State is cursed to ever grow. It will always bite the hand that feeds. You ultimately create the Left by your very actions, and you don't even realize it.

AceNZ

01-29-2012, 11:45 PM

Lol. I'd rather spend my time debating with someone who tries to address the questions raised, and doesn't simply call the other person evil as their primary defense mechanism.

Now you're trying to deny that I was addressing the questions you raised? It sounds like you're just frustrated that I wouldn't debate them on your terms.

It's laughable you initially entered this thread stating the 'moral argument' is the way to win the so-called Left over, when it's so clear you refuse to even try to understand the position of the Left, and rather hurl insults.

Sorry you don't think I understand the Left. I understand better than you seem to think. I just refuse to debate on the Left's terms, or to go down the rat-holes they offer, and I don't shy away from calling things immoral or evil when they are. Not PC, I know.

If someone is standing over me threatening my life (which is how I see anti-property rights movements), then I'm not going to debate with them why they think that's a good idea. I'm going to call them on it, and call the action what it is: immoral.

BTW, the fundamental here is the importance of ideas -- which are a problem for both the Left and the Right. I still think morality is a good place to start these discussions, but ideas should really be the endpoint.

Heck, I'd rather debate the merits of dry food versus canned food with my cat.

Good luck with that.

Your State is cursed to ever grow. It will always bite the hand that feeds. You ultimately create the Left by your very actions, and you don't even realize it.

My morals and actions have had no influence on the State or the Left, since they are very different from the popular view today. "My" State doesn't exist yet. You keep saying it will grow, but refuse to hear why that doesn't have to be so.

AceNZ

01-30-2012, 12:57 AM

Cops can't protect you or your stuff. In a best case scenario, they can hopefully prevent the perpetrators from repeating their behavior.

Funny, I've called the cops twice in my life in the face of threatening situations (and have been around when others have done the same), and they did a pretty good job both times at protecting both me and my "stuff". (I'm not talking about the modern militarized version of the police, who seem to violate more rights than they protect). Police can't be there every moment of your life, of course, so self-defense is moral, reasonable and warranted in those cases -- but they can definitely do more than just prevent repeat offenses.

FWIW, protection of property rights (and other individual rights) involves more than just the police, it requires courts, too.

affa

01-30-2012, 03:01 AM

Now you're trying to deny that I was addressing the questions you raised? It sounds like you're just frustrated that I wouldn't debate them on your terms.

not frustrated at all. i don't care what you believe, to be quite honest, because as i've said repeatedly, the only thing that matters is we get Ron Paul elected. philosophy is great and all, but immaterial to the situation on our doorstep.

you seek to push what you call the 'left' away, and i see an army of allies. My way will get more people behind Ron Paul. Yours won't.

as for 'addressing the issues', my point is quite simple: saying something is immoral is not an argument. stating your presuppositions as fact does not make them so. to use your terms of good and evil: you call me 'evil' because I don't agree with how you define property rights. I choose not to call you 'evil', even though I think you committed the original 'sin' by claiming property in the first place. You built a fence around what was once everyone's land, and then call us all criminals for walking on 'your' grass. You created the State to protect 'your' property, then blame other people when the State eventually grows strong enough to tax you, give your money to others, and then finally claims your land under Imminent Domain.

Don't you see the big neverending cycle? As soon as we step on that ride, it starts over again.

If someone is standing over me threatening my life (which is how I see anti-property rights movements)

I know that's how you see it. And it's also why I know you can't see the other side of the coin. I 'get' your side of the argument. I really do. Within a system of property rights, it makes sense. If resources were infinite, I'd probably be fine with it. But as it is, I simply don't agree with it. I don't feel the urge nor the inclination nor the need to call you 'evil' over some philosophical difference. If you've internalized it to such a point that you see people that disagree with you as evil, well, I mean, that's exactly the problem we face in America today - far too many people unwilling to try to understand the 'other', and dismissing them as 'evil'.

then I'm not going to debate with them why they think that's a good idea. I'm going to call them on it, and call the action what it is: immoral.

And that's why you will forever talk to brick walls. Because you know what? The 'Left' you so despise thinks you're the 'immoral' one. They think you're the 'evil' one. Because you're both looking at the same issues, and seeing the negative space of the other's position. You call them evil for wanting to redistribute wealth, and they think you're evil for celebrating income disparity. You claim their system won't work. They say yours won't. You say they're thieves. They say you're thieves. And on, and on, and on.

BTW, the fundamental here is the importance of ideas -- which are a problem for both the Left and the Right. I still think morality is a good place to start these discussions, but ideas should really be the endpoint.

Ideas are for discussion and debate. As soon as you assign black and white morality to them, there is no discussion. Who wants to 'start a discussion' with someone who thinks their ideas are 'evil'? I mean, heck, I'm not going to try to convert a Christian to atheism, and I'd prefer they didn't try to convert me. We're diametrically opposed from the start [but i'm more than happy to discuss politics, Ron Paul, philosophy, and even religion with them... as long as it remains unjudgemental]. And by placing morality into your economic and political views in the way you do, you will only succeed in shutting out people. Just like if someone went up to you and said 'rich people are evil'.

My morals and actions have had no influence on the State or the Left, since they are very different from the popular view today. "My" State doesn't exist yet. You keep saying it will grow, but refuse to hear why that doesn't have to be so.

I don't refuse to hear. I simply do not agree with you. Get it? I think the fundamental building blocks of the society you envision are inherently flawed. You can not create a system without force when force is built into the fundamentals you use to build it.

AceNZ

01-30-2012, 05:42 AM

you seek to push what you call the 'left' away, and i see an army of allies. My way will get more people behind Ron Paul. Yours won't.

Endorsing an-syn and bashing property rights might get more anarchists behind RP, but it will, at the same time, drive people like me on the more traditional and conservative side, away. Getting the general public to endorse something close to Libertarianism is hard enough; throw a little anarchism in there, and it's a recipe for disaster.

You built a fence around what was once everyone's land, and then call us all criminals for walking on 'your' grass.

This statement alone shows that you have no understanding of what property rights are or where they originate, much less why they're necessary to support man's life.

I know that's how you see it. And it's also why I know you can't see the other side of the coin. I 'get' your side of the argument. I really do.

Perhaps, but the statements you've made in this thread suggest otherwise.

And that's why you will forever talk to brick walls.

I've actually had some good success with conventional Leftists. Some are brick walls, but not all -- not by a long shot.

Because you know what? The 'Left' you so despise thinks you're the 'immoral' one. They think you're the 'evil' one.

The most common thing I hear from the Left is that I'm "stupid." I don't recall being called evil or immoral (until now).

Because you're both looking at the same issues, and seeing the negative space of the other's position. You call them evil for wanting to redistribute wealth, and they think you're evil for celebrating income disparity. You claim their system won't work. They say yours won't. You say they're thieves. They say you're thieves. And on, and on, and on.

I don't think the solution is to cave in to the Left's view. I prefer to discuss and debate the issues, but from a different perspective than those on the Right have traditionally taken. Reality, reason and morality support my view; they don't support the Left's. A rational person can often wake up and see that when approached in the right way. (oh, and being against egalitarianism is not the same thing as "celebrating income disparity.")

As soon as you assign black and white morality to them, there is no discussion. Who wants to 'start a discussion' with someone who thinks their ideas are 'evil'?

A common response to my saying something is immoral is for people to ask "why?" It doesn't usually prevent or discourage discussion.

BTW, in case it wasn't obvious, I was never trying to convince you of anything. My arguments are directed at the others who may be listening, and who may still be on the fence.

I don't refuse to hear.

Perhaps, but you've said nothing in this thread that indicates to me that you understand what I'm saying. For example, you argue against my position using strawmen like taxation, which I don't even support.

I don't really have anything more to add here; I can see this isn't going anywhere.

WilliamC

01-30-2012, 06:12 AM

when somebody says "per say" I just get a picture of a smug hipster in my head.

Especially when the correct form is per se

Form the Latin don't 'cha know, but it's all Greek to me ;)

WilliamC

01-30-2012, 06:45 AM

as for 'addressing the issues', my point is quite simple: saying something is immoral is not an argument. stating your presuppositions as fact does not make them so. to use your terms of good and evil: you call me 'evil' because I don't agree with how you define property rights. I choose not to call you 'evil', even though I think you committed the original 'sin' by claiming property in the first place. You built a fence around what was once everyone's land, and then call us all criminals for walking on 'your' grass.

I pull this out to make a specific point.

I build a house around land I have legally acquired in my county and a fence around the land I own. You come into my house without my permission and under certain circumstances and I willl kill you flat out, no discussion about property rights or morality or good and evil or what your intent was. I don't care, my children live in my house, and if I think they are threatened by an intruder then I'll kill the intruder. Simple as that.

If you are on my land and refuse to leave when I ask you I might not flat out kill you (depends on other behavior you may or may not be displaying) but I will use force (both my own and that of the city government where my residence is) to remove you, and if I perceive you have intent to harm me or my family I'll kill you.

This comes from a very ancient territorial instinct that predates humanity and which is present throughout the animal kingdom.

Ideas of property rights derive from this territorial instinct.

Property and property rights are obvious to anyone who studies ethology, as most all animals have evolved a system of territoriality which helps prevent intra-species violence.

See here (http://catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading/ar01s14.html)for elaboration.

Anyone who refuses to believe in private property is either stupid or evil or both. It's like not believing that most humans prefer to engage in monogamy and to insist that everyone practice free love.

Might sound nice, but nature doesn't work that way.

Edit: I am not threatening any specific individual, simply stating a fact about what happens every day to those who violate the private property rights of others by breaking into homes or criminally trespassing with the intent to cause harm to people or property.

Occam's Banana

01-30-2012, 07:14 AM

[...]

... my point, throughout, is that people view property differently. This split is what divides us, and why so many people talk 'at' each other, rather than 'with' each other. While I'm against the state [including state redistribution of wealth], I recognize that someone who argues the State should protect property rights, while accusing the 'left' of theft through a desire for wealth redistribution, wants to have its cake and eat it too.

Both sides are sitting there calling the other side thieves and neither side will even listen to the other side's opinion, because they are too busy screaming 'thief!' at them.

[...]

Most people in this day and age are Statists, right and left. It's just as true to say 'typical Rightists are not an-cap, and do advocate for State action'. Your bias against the so called 'left' may blind you to that, but it's the cold hard truth.

[...]

A better way to put it is that the State is born to protect the Property Rights of the few. As the State grows, it takes from all, both propertied and [un]propertied through taxation and other means. Eventually, it recognizes that since the unpropertied outnumber the propertied by a considerable amount, it can appeal to the masses by promoting concepts such as wealth redistribution. It can play both sides, by making similar [but opposing] promises to the propertied. Ultimately, the State will hurt both in order to expand its own power and wealth.

[...]

It sounds to me that you want a perfect State, that protects the propertied, but you forget that your pet will grow and eventually bite the hand that feeds it. How long before the State realizes that once it taxes you to provide the protection you ask for, it can then redistribute 'your' wealth to others in exchange for expanded power? And then we're back at square one - a State that uses Force against all, for differing reasons.
You keep accusing the 'Left' of wanting a State that uses force [to redistribute wealth] and refusing to acknowledge you gave them that ability to use Force in the first place.
It's all nice and easy to say "They [the Left] want a State that is empowered to initiate force" but you absolutely ignore that is exactly what many on the so called Right want too.

[...]

I suspect you and I differ over the nature & necessity of "property." (I don't have sufficient info to be sure of the degree or significance of any such differences, though.)

Nevertheless, your points regarding the metastatic nature of the State - and the source of the metastasis - are very good.

+rep from an an-cap to an an-syn. (Ron Paul is right - as usual. "Freedom brings people together!")

affa

01-30-2012, 07:15 AM

I build a house around land I have legally acquired in my county and a fence around the land I own. You come into my house without my permission and under certain circumstances and I willl kill you flat out, no discussion about property rights or morality or good and evil or what your intent was. I don't care, my children live in my house, and if I think they are threatened by an intruder then I'll kill the intruder. Simple as that.

If someone came into my home and threatened my family, I'd do everything under the sun to stop them as well. It seems you hear I reject property rights, and think that means there's no sense of possession, no sense of law, no sense of order. That's simply untrue.
It's like people who haven't a clue about anarchism thinking 'oh, that means anyone can murder people whenever they want'. It requires misrepresenting the position to an extreme degree.

affa

01-30-2012, 07:56 AM

I suspect you and I differ over the nature & necessity of "property." (I don't have sufficient info to be sure of the degree or significance of any such differences, though.)

Exactly! Absolutely. There are a number of variant systems besides strict property rights, but just because I don't use the common definition in use today [or in pure libertarianism as I understand it] doesn't mean there aren't use/ownership rules in play. There is still a society of some sort. We're all talking hypotheticals here.

Nevertheless, your points regarding the metastatic nature of the State - and the source of the metastasis - are very good.

Thanks. I think it's really important to remember that when discussing any of these abstract theories, we do so because we're striving for a better society. We're all trying to figure out a way to improve. That's why I find terms like 'evil' so... silly, for lack of a better way.

----------

Endorsing an-syn and bashing property rights might get more anarchists behind RP, but it will, at the same time, drive people like me on the more traditional and conservative side, away. Getting the general public to endorse something close to Libertarianism is hard enough; throw a little anarchism in there, and it's a recipe for disaster.

discussing property rights in a thread on RPF isn't going to push anyone away. especially not in a thread that is about the radical left to begin with. and there is a huge contingent of various sects of anarchists already in the tank for Ron Paul, in case you weren't aware. Scary atheists too. And Deists. And Christians. And Muslims.

This statement alone shows that you have no understanding of what property rights are or where they originate, much less why they're necessary to support man's life.

No, it means I disagree with you. Since I know we both dismiss Social Contract Theory, it would be like someone telling us 'oh, if we didn't have SCT then people would be killing each other in the streets!'. And we go 'no, you don't need SCT, there is another way'... and then we are told that we're evil and that SCT is "necessary to support man's life."

It simply doesn't follow. It's not as if I am suggesting lawlessness and chaos replace the modern definition of property rights; there are many, many alternate theoretical systems [and to be clear, even libertarianism and an-cap are purely theoretical at this stage of the game].

The most common thing I hear from the Left is that I'm "stupid." I don't recall being called evil or immoral (until now).

that's a really lame attempt to infer i called you evil, when it's absolutely clear from everything I've said that I've said no such thing.

Reality, reason and morality support my view; they don't support the Left's.

lol. your dogma is barking.

Perhaps, but you've said nothing in this thread that indicates to me that you understand what I'm saying. For example, you argue against my position using strawmen like taxation, which I don't even support.

I know you don't support taxation. If I implied so, I'm sorry. To be clear, I'm saying, the State you do want to create will eventually tax you to pay for the protections you want - if not today, then tomorrow, and then it will eventually realize it can redistribute those taxes to curry favor. This does not mean you favor taxes, or want taxes. It is a criticism of the State, not of you.

Look at what the State is capable of even with documents like the Constitution in play. The State is a damn weed. Planting that seed is dangerous.

I don't really have anything more to add here; I can see this isn't going anywhere.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned that several posts ago.

soulcyon

01-30-2012, 10:54 AM

Webster's definition is incomplete.

There is a measurable way to define right and wrong in the context of morality: what's right supports your life in the long-term; what's wrong does not.That's because even Webster agrees that morality is completely subjective and immeasurable. Because there are countless examples of "what is right" that can instantly become "wrong" from a different perspective. As per your definition, "supports life in the long term" is not a measurable act - a simple example is: risking your own life to save another (where the other person is blamed for killing you, he is considered immoral). There is no such thing as Universally preferable behavior, so your argument holds no water.

Are you saying that Slavery is moral? Because slavery doesn't necessarily kill other people, it mostly restricts their freedoms in what they can do.

Are you saying that stealing money is moral? Because that money can help for your own knee surgery (supporting life in the long-term). Morality is subjective, stop arguing such a blatantly obvious conclusion.

None. Which is one reason why it shouldn't be a crime. Before you even get to "not paying," taxation is a form of theft (and therefore an initiation of force) -- which is why I'm against taxation, on moral grounds.The premise of theft is the ILLEGAL taking of property - so if the State takes your money in the name of law, then it is not ILLEGAL thus not THIEVERY. So your argument holds no water again.

The initiation of force is immoral -- regardless of whether it's done by an individual on their own, or an individual acting in the name of the State, or a group of individuals acting in response to a democratically derived decision.So why does the government have a military and stat have police departments?

I agree with otherone, you say that you can achieve the goal with an argument for morality. However, now you claim that morality is objective!? If this were possible, then we could have solved the problem with society centuries ago.

Mini-Me

01-30-2012, 11:01 AM

I agree with otherone, you say that you can achieve the goal with an argument for morality. However, now you claim that morality is objective!? If this were possible, then we could have solved the problem with society centuries ago.

I don't intend to get into a long, drawn-out argument over universal morality vs. moral relativism, but I think you misunderstand AceNZ's position here. Just because people disagree on a matter does not inherently make it subjective. Years ago, people swore the Earth was flat and killed other people to uphold this dogma. That doesn't mean the Earth used to be flat, or that its shape is subjective; the Earth was round the whole time. We just weren't always in a position to know it. That is essentially the perspective that moral universalists hold regarding morality. You can believe this or disbelieve it, but your disbelief or disagreement alone does not make it a nonsensical position.

Narmical

01-30-2012, 11:32 AM

It seems you hear I reject property rights, and think that means there's no sense of possession, no sense of law, no sense of order. That's simply untrue.

You hit it on the heard. I hear "i reject property rights" and then i think you mean no one really owns everything. Could you explain what you mean by property rights, and what it means to reject hem, and what scene of possession you are talking about?

soulcyon

01-30-2012, 11:39 AM

I don't intend to get into a long, drawn-out argument over universal morality vs. moral relativism, but I think you misunderstand AceNZ's position here. Just because people disagree on a matter does not inherently make it subjective. Years ago, people swore the Earth was flat and killed other people to uphold this dogma. That doesn't mean the Earth used to be flat, or that its shape is subjective; the Earth was round the whole time. We just weren't always in a position to know it. That is essentially the perspective that moral universalists hold regarding morality. You can believe this or disbelieve it, but your disbelief or disagreement alone does not make it a nonsensical position.The Earth seemed flat to everyone living on it, so from their PERSPECTIVE, they believed it was flat. The truth is that the Earth is round, proven by a variety of scientific instruments and mathematics. Perception is related to this argument, HOWEVER (big however), even if we perceive the truth, we can still disagree on moral values. E.g, I can believe that killing anybody is immoral - however you can bring up self-defense as an argument. The fact that we have a disagreement proves Morality is subjective.

If you ever find a Mathematical proof against/for any moral value, that will be noteworthy achievement (maybe a nobel prize?). AceNZ disagreed that Morality is subjective, so I proved him wrong multiple times now.

We can also have a discussion about what is Math - but one thing I would like to say, if you go in this direction, Math has truly been universal tool across all societies and cultures of humanity. Sure, the way we represent Math can vary, such as language and characters, however the Logical nature of Math cannot be denounced.

Mini-Me

01-30-2012, 12:07 PM

The Earth seemed flat to everyone living on it, so from their PERSPECTIVE, they believed it was flat. The truth is that the Earth is round, proven by a variety of scientific instruments and mathematics. Perception is related to this argument, HOWEVER (big however), even if we perceive the truth, we can still disagree on moral values. E.g, I can believe that killing anybody is immoral - however you can bring up self-defense as an argument. The fact that we have a disagreement proves Morality is subjective.

If you ever find a Mathematical proof against/for any moral value, that will be noteworthy achievement (maybe a nobel prize?). AceNZ disagreed that Morality is subjective, so I proved him wrong multiple times now.

We can also have a discussion about what is Math - but one thing I would like to say, if you go in this direction, Math has truly been universal tool across all societies and cultures of humanity. Sure, the way we represent Math can vary, such as language and characters, however the Logical nature of Math cannot be denounced.

Morality is indeed harder to prove objectively, maybe impossible, and I do not blame you for believing it unprovable. However, even something that is unprovable and unknowable is not necessarily subjective: You put your faith in math, and I agree this is wise, but are you aware that math rests upon unprovable axioms that we take for granted as self-evident? Are you aware that the exact formulation of these axioms has changed throughout history? Are you further aware of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems, which essentially state that any self-consistent set of axioms will be inherently unable to prove certain true statements, and only inconsistent sets of axioms would be able to prove them? (They're among the most revolutionary discoveries of the 20th century.) There are plenty of things in this universe that are true but unprovable...maybe even true but unknowable. I do not blame you for believing morality is subjective on the basis of people being unable to strictly prove any moral standard, but I also think you should take a step back from assuming it must necessarily be subjective.

Are you also aware that science is unable to constructively prove anything, only offer evidence that is consistent with - or which rejects - certain viewpoints? Nothing is strictly provable, which is the entire basis of the philosophy of skepticism. Check out René Descartes for starters, and check out the Münchhausen Trilemma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrippa%27s_trilemma). I tend to side with Popperian "fallibilism" as a tentative solution, but we can still never REALLY know for sure. We can only prove anything if we first take a few unprovable axioms for granted, and we still cannot prove everything that is true (Gödel again). Proving any particular moral standard almost certainly requires us to take a few more unprovable things for granted than we need for other subjects or day-to-day life...but the point is that the difference between provable and unprovable subjects lies more on a spectrum of certainty rather than a black and white contrast between binary categories.

Now, you say that we can only argue against moral arguments with other moral arguments (as I think you did before one of your edits), but this is also not strictly true. You may not be able to constructively prove any one moral standard, but you can still narrow things down by process of elimination, if you can manage to reject others as absurd. I don't find Hoppe's "argumentation ethics" to be conclusive at all, but he makes some pretty interesting logical points, and some of them I do find compelling. There are also plenty of moral arguments which fall woefully astray of Occam's Razor, for instance. Occam's Razor is no proof of anything, but it's a heuristic that indicates that, all other things being equal, the simpler answer is more likely to be true. The relative simplicity of universal laws tends to support this principle, among other things. There is no guarantee that ANY standard of morality is necessarily "true" or "correct," but assuming one may be, it is most likely to be simple and elegant.

With Occam's Razor in mind, consider the ideas of self-ownership vs. arbitrary statism: Self-ownership and negative rights consistently argue that each and every person owns himself (or herself) to the exclusion of others, whereas arbitrary statism and positive rights essentially assert one of infinite different configurations of some people owning parts of themselves and parts of others, where some people may own not only themselves but others as well. The sheer arbitrariness is astounding and limitless, so you can be certain that IF any moral standard is objectively correct, it's almost certainly not going to be one of those configurations, and it's much more likely to be self-ownership. The parsimony of self-ownership makes it a much more natural default position, whereas asserting that Mr. Dictator owns both himself and your family requires a whole lot more justification...which just isn't there. There are still other issues that lie on a spectrum and probably require subjective value judgments or utilitarian arguments to navigate, like the exact formulation of property, homesteading, and abandonment, but for all we know, there might be a "right answer" for all of those too.

I'm not trying to forcefully argue that morality is necessarily objective here. I'm arguing that it MIGHT be, and we just don't know. I think it's unfair to demand that everyone should agree with you on its subjectivity, or that any arbitrary standard is just as valid as a well-formulated one. (For instance, I believe that the Nazis were more than just "different;" they were inconsistent and arbitrary, and the evil of their "morality" followed from that.) Your worldview is typical of postmodern thought, which brought along with it the popularization of moral relativism and situational ethics. Iconoclasm is great, but I find it painfully ironic that casual adherents of this generally skeptical (cynical?) and relativistic worldview aren't also critical of this very skepticism and relativism: It's now unpopular to believe a certain perspective is inherently better than another, except for the perspective that no perspective is better than another. That particular perspective is the new dogma, to be defended to the death. ;) I'm tempted to troll a little and pull a double negative on you: Maybe the question of whether morality is objective or subjective is itself subjective? That's not actually my position, but if we're going to go all skeptical and all, maybe there is no such thing as absolute truth, and that statement isn't absolutely true either... :p

soulcyon

01-30-2012, 02:45 PM

WilliamC

01-30-2012, 04:11 PM

If someone came into my home and threatened my family, I'd do everything under the sun to stop them as well. It seems you hear I reject property rights, and think that means there's no sense of possession, no sense of law, no sense of order. That's simply untrue.
It's like people who haven't a clue about anarchism thinking 'oh, that means anyone can murder people whenever they want'. It requires misrepresenting the position to an extreme degree.

Fair enough, I've come across folks arguing against property rights before and some of them reject the argument I posed.

I'm glad you accept that property rights stem from our evolved territorial instincts and are thus innately natural in their origins.

I too like the meaning behind John Lennon's 'Imagine' and it would be nice if people someday evolve to a high enough level where we can live in such a utopian world.

Mini-Me

01-30-2012, 06:04 PM

Haha, yeah I editted out that "challenge against moral" argument - I thought about that for a few minutes and realized it was not true.

I do agree about the skepticism and lack of "absolute-ness" in our society - I mean honestly, every letter we type and thought transferred is simply neurons flying off in our brain, mostly deciding what muscle to move next. Also, your point about the axioms just confirms many things about math: There are mathematical theorems that cannot be proven because the axioms are so rigid. However, if you ever disprove the axioms of Math (logic and constistency), you will turn this world inside-out in a matter of seconds. This is why I rely on the Math contention, because it only takes 1 simple disproof (albeit near impossible) to refute that contention.

edit: also @ skepticism, which is why science is so successful! Because we can repeatedly run through a process to achieve desired result, which is the basis of the scientific process. So regardless of being a strictly provable, we can be assured desired results will occur when following a set of "laws" (Newton, for starters). And then we can have a discussion about Chaos theory -.- alright, i'm going to stop with this brain-leeching. Almost time for class.

@The Occam's Razor, what about Parenthood? Parent's can believe they own their child, since they go through the hardships of giving birth and raising the child. So you can imagine that some child abuse is based on a moral understanding that the child does not own his/her own body. Meh, maybe that's a bit off topic.

I'm not demanding any following or agreement, sorry if I sounded aggressive. But I would like to see people think through their own side of the argument before posting. And I definitely would love to see more of your thoughtful discussion Mini-me :D

Thanks, and sorry if I sounded too scolding. :)

You raise a very interesting counterargument when it comes to children and self-ownership: When can a child be considered mature enough to make his or her own decisions and face the consequences? When is a child old enough to be allowed to cross the street alone? There is no doubt that parents have to make subjective value judgments here. Children complicate the concept of self-ownership, much like mentally impaired people and animals as well, for different reasons. (Pregnancy and Siamese twins are also unusually complex issues, since they involve shared bodies.) It's important to note that this additional layer of complication does not invalidate Occam's Razor though. As Einstein once said, "It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience." Paraphrased (or perhaps he also said it like this): Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. :)

First, I should note that I think children still own themselves when it comes down to it: On some level, the vast majority just cede fine-grained control of their lives to a parent or guardian in exchange for security. There's a genuine mutual understanding, much like a contractual arrangement. If they truly wish to be free or under someone else's guardianship on a consistent basis (i.e. not some snap decision, like a drunk who tells his friends he can drive tonight), there might be something to say for that...it's just that few if any children would ever REALLY want the responsibility that comes with that freedom.

Still, let's ignore that and address complications head-on. Anyway, the common thread with all of those corner cases (children, mentally impaired, animals, etc.) is that sentience is a spectrum, and self-ownership (at least relative to others) is closely linked with the assumption of equivalent sentience. This is a fair default assumption for competent adults - one that requires some serious justification to override - but there's definitely room for subjectivity in in terms of making that classification. I believe some moral systems are totally absurd to the extent that they impart arbitrarily differing levels of dignity and free will to competent adults, whereas others are more logical than others, but at the same time, I doubt there's some hidden universal constant threshold for determining the sentience/competence level at which self-ownership applies.

Where does that leave me? In reality, I fall somewhere between objective and subjective morality: I believe there probably is objectively "correct" morality to some degree, although I obviously can't prove it. I don't think I have all the answers, but I do believe some things are so obviously incorrect/absurd/imbalanced that they should not be legitimately up for debate. In other words, I'm not certain that my morality is correct, but I'm pretty certain that Josef Mengele's was flat-out wrong. ;) At the same time, I would concede that there are plenty of subjective areas where disagreement is perfectly valid. You hit on an extremely important one. The exact parameters of homesteading, property boundaries in 3D (how high? how low?), and property abandonment are also highly subjective. We can probably rule out the more incoherent conceptions, but if there are any objectively correct answers to any of those issues at all, I'm more inclined to believe that there are several potentially right answers, or entire spectrums of potentially right answers, rather than just one answer which is objectively correct.

Okay...gotta go! :D

AceNZ

01-30-2012, 08:42 PM

Perception is related to this argument, HOWEVER (big however), even if we perceive the truth, we can still disagree on moral values. E.g, I can believe that killing anybody is immoral - however you can bring up self-defense as an argument. The fact that we have a disagreement proves Morality is subjective.

Disagreement does not make something subjective.

Regarding your example, the missing piece is that morality is contextual. It's immoral to kill, except in the context that your life is being threatened -- again, a proper code of moral values leads you to life and happiness.

@Mini-Me, thanks for your input -- although I disagree with the philosophy of skepticism and with the Popper-like idea that you can't really know anything (if true, how do you know even that?). Knowledge is hierarchical; new knowledge doesn't invalidate old knowledge, it adds to it, by applying context. For example, Newton's Laws of motion weren't invalidated by Relativity. Rather, they were modified to apply only in the context where the speed of motion is well below the speed of light.

We must be able to know things for sure in order to survive. I know for sure that if I jump off of a cliff, I will be injured or die. I know for sure that if I eat poison I will be injured or die. I know for sure that I need to eat and breathe in order to live. To attempt to deny man's ability to know is to attempt to deny man's mind and the nature of consciousness.

Popper basically argued that all statements are subjective, because statements use concepts, and concepts can't be logically derived from perception. He denied inductive certainty, which means he denied all knowledge above the perceptual level. He held that axioms require justification, but hypotheses do not; that arbitrary assertions are welcome, and that the arbitrary is good until and unless it's falsified. He also argued that one counterexample to a generalization refutes it, instead of recognizing the idea that it just adds context ("except in cases where..."), and therefore modifies the generalization instead of refuting it.

Although he was against induction, he argued for deduction, but without understanding that deduction requires induction (deduction is the application of general knowledge to a specific case; induction is required to develop that general knowledge in the first place).

soulcyon

01-31-2012, 12:10 AM

Disagreement does not make something subjective.You keep saying this but cannot prove it.

Objectivity: "A proposition is generally considered to be objectively true when its truth conditions are met and are "mind-independent"—that is, not met by the judgment of a conscious entity or subject."
Subjectivity: "Subjectivity refers to the subject and his or her perspective, feelings, beliefs, and desires"

There is no way morality can become "mind-independent" because moral/immoral actions can only be judged upon and affected by conscious entity (humans).

Although he was against induction, he argued for deduction, but without understanding that deduction requires induction (deduction is the application of general knowledge to a specific case; induction is required to develop that general knowledge in the first place).Induction involves a conclusion that is larger than the premise, while Deduction forces the generality of the conclusion to be the same as the premise. In deduction, you deduce parts of the premise (usually hierarchial), to derive at an alternate perception (the conclusion). Simple example: induction - "I always hang pictures on nails" => use induction => "All pictures hang from nails". Just from the nature of induction, it is very hard to call induction a logical reasoning technique.

DanConway

01-31-2012, 12:36 AM

Just like free will, it seems all theory is against induction and all practice is for it.

Morality is objective, because it derives from the nature of human beings, which is also objective, though hard to pin down. (I ask those who repeat "you can't derive an ought from an is" (because someone hundreds of years ago said it wasn't obvious how to do so) whether they expect to derive an ought from an is-not.)

Mini-Me

01-31-2012, 12:49 AM

Disagreement does not make something subjective.

Regarding your example, the missing piece is that morality is contextual. It's immoral to kill, except in the context that your life is being threatened -- again, a proper code of moral values leads you to life and happiness.

@Mini-Me, thanks for your input -- although I disagree with the philosophy of skepticism and with the Popper-like idea that you can't really know anything (if true, how do you know even that?). Knowledge is hierarchical; new knowledge doesn't invalidate old knowledge, it adds to it, by applying context. For example, Newton's Laws of motion weren't invalidated by Relativity. Rather, they were modified to apply only in the context where the speed of motion is well below the speed of light.

We must be able to know things for sure in order to survive. I know for sure that if I jump off of a cliff, I will be injured or die. I know for sure that if I eat poison I will be injured or die. I know for sure that I need to eat and breathe in order to live. To attempt to deny man's ability to know is to attempt to deny man's mind and the nature of consciousness.

Popper basically argued that all statements are subjective, because statements use concepts, and concepts can't be logically derived from perception. He denied inductive certainty, which means he denied all knowledge above the perceptual level. He held that axioms require justification, but hypotheses do not; that arbitrary assertions are welcome, and that the arbitrary is good until and unless it's falsified. He also argued that one counterexample to a generalization refutes it, instead of recognizing the idea that it just adds context ("except in cases where..."), and therefore modifies the generalization instead of refuting it.

Although he was against induction, he argued for deduction, but without understanding that deduction requires induction (deduction is the application of general knowledge to a specific case; induction is required to develop that general knowledge in the first place).

You definitely know a lot more about Popper than I do! I don't personally adhere to most of the ideas you indicated, although I wonder if the difference between contradictory falsifying a generality and adding context may just be a matter of perspective and emphasis. Either way, the takeaway should be, "the theory as currently formulated is imprecise and needs some adjustment, but then it'll be consistent with the evidence again."

Anyway, the reason I like fallibilism is not because I agree with skepticism, but because it annoys me! Skepticism not only claims that we really know nothing for certain, but that we should abandon our knowledge altogether. The viewpoint that "everything you know is wrong" isn't disprovable (you could technically be a brain in a vat or computer simulation, and jumping of a cliff could hypothetically make you bounce), but I find it an unreasonably pessimistic take on knowledge, and I consider its "correctness" as such a remote possibility that I'd like to put it aside or behind me. I view fallibilism mostly as a disclaimer to actual skeptics, like, "Okay, I'm aware of skepticism, and I'm aware of the Münchhausen Trilemma, and I realize I could be wrong about all the axioms my beliefs are based upon, and consensus reality could be nothing more than a mirage...I get it, okay? Now, can I please put those hypothetical possibilities in the 'unlikely' category and go forward assuming the self-evident is true and I'm not just a brain in a vat? If we take for granted this basic foundation, we can build useful knowledge on top of it. Now I can say, [assuming these basic ideas that are implicitly necessary to navigate everyday life,] jumping off a cliff onto rocks will definitely kill me, barring a miracle." :p In short, I view fallibilism as a way of saying that we can be conditionally certain of much of our knowledge, and the condition is that we take a few basic assumptions for granted. If our most basic assumptions fly out the window, we don't know anything, but that case is usually too unlikely to warrant much consideration...at least unless we're in some particular situation where we should legitimately be casting doubt on our senses (tired, drunk, tripping balls, etc.).

Aside from annoyance toward skepticism, my viewpoint also includes pretty textbook moral fallibilism (as my above posts indicate): I hold that objective morality may exist that transcends mere subjective opinion (and I even believe some standards can be demonstrated as...highly unlikely ;)), but I'm also open to the idea that there could be more than one right answer, and mine might not even be one of them...although I'd like to think it is.

royalecraig

01-31-2012, 01:22 AM

this site might be useful on the idrological battles to come http://changingminds.org

AceNZ

01-31-2012, 01:51 AM

You keep saying this but cannot prove it.

I probably can't prove it to a devout subjectivist, since our foundational views of consciousness and reality are completely different.

For those who may not be familiar with it, here's a summary of the subjectivist view (this is from writers and thinkers in the field, not from me):

Consciousness exists and is responsible for creating the world each of us sees
To arrive at truth, you only need to direct your focus inward
Feelings are the creators of fact
What's true for you is true for you, what's true for me is true for me
All we can ever know is what goes through our consciousness, so we're cut off from true reality
The universe is ruled by chance
Certainty is impossible, so much is still unknown
The physical world is what's important; consciousness doesn't matter (reality is more important than ideas)
Standards, moral principles and concepts aren't important
There are no absolute truths
Anything I want is good, anything I don't want is bad
There are no answers to moral questions
Concepts are arbitrary, social, without any basis in reality
Everything is uncertain and relative (constant push toward skepticism)

Sound familiar to any of the arguments being made in this thread?

Here's a summary of the Objectivist view (my view):

The world around us exists separately from our consciousness
The only way to know the world around us is to study it
Our senses are important; the only starting point for knowledge is perceptual
The physical world and consciousness are both important
Ideas are the means of knowing reality
My moral principles are important, but their application can depend on the circumstances (context)
Emotions are important, but they should be balanced with conscious thought
We have free will
The world is knowable by man
There are absolute truths

Just for fun, here's a summary of the rationalist view:

The world around us exists, but the mind is purely receptive
If you just leave yourself open, reality will sweep you to the truth (we know reality through revelation)
When I ask myself how I know key pieces of knowledge are true, the answer is often "I just know."
The senses can't be trusted
Ideas are different from reality and superior to it
Deduction is the only method of knowledge
Things must follow from each other: against choice
My moral principles are based on rules that I must obey no matter what (context doesn't matter)
I know my principles are right based on intuition, my conscience and my sense of duty
People who always obey my principles are virtuous, and those who don't are wicked
Man's desires, hopes, wishes and preferences are what prevents him from always being virtuous
Emotions are basically useless. They are corrupting and an element of evil
If there was no God, then anything would be permitted

And nihilism:

Neither the world around us nor consciousness exists
Nothing really matters
There are no absolute truths
There is no such thing as morals or ethics

Skeptics would say: maybe there's a reality, but we can't know for sure.

Induction involves a conclusion that is larger than the premise, while Deduction forces the generality of the conclusion to be the same as the premise. In deduction, you deduce parts of the premise (usually hierarchial), to derive at an alternate perception (the conclusion). Simple example: induction - "I always hang pictures on nails" => use induction => "All pictures hang from nails". Just from the nature of induction, it is very hard to call induction a logical reasoning technique.

That's not a valid application of induction, since you have failed to integrate your knowledge and observations, such as: people other than you hang pictures; you know of other ways to hang pictures, etc. A valid application of induction would be: all men are mortal. You have only seen a few men, but that statement integrates with and doesn't contradict other essentials you know: the aging process, the age of people you know, etc.

AceNZ

01-31-2012, 02:18 AM

Either way, the takeaway should be, "the theory as currently formulated is imprecise and needs some adjustment, but then it'll be consistent with the evidence again."

I basically agree (I would phrase it slightly differently). Unfortunately, that's not what Popper and other adherents to skepticism say.

The viewpoint that "everything you know is wrong" isn't disprovable (you could technically be a brain in a vat or computer simulation, and jumping of a cliff could hypothetically make you bounce), but I find it an unreasonably pessimistic take on knowledge, and I consider its "correctness" as such a remote possibility that I'd like to put it aside or behind me.

I know you said you'd like to set it aside, but since you brought it up: saying that you could be a brain in a vat ("The Matrix") or a computer simulation assumes the existence of a vat, a computer, a programmer, scientists, surgeons, electrodes, someone to put you in the vat, etc, etc. It's an attempt to use knowledge to destroy its own roots. Advanced knowledge presupposes more basic knowledge. You cannot rationally assert the certainty of advanced knowledge if the more basic knowledge is put in doubt.

In addition, for something to be possible, there must be at least some evidence for it. There is no evidence here, so such a claim is totally arbitrary (which also means it's not possible).

In short, I view fallibilism as a way of saying that we can be conditionally certain of much of our knowledge, and the condition is that we take a few basic assumptions for granted.

You're giving the skeptics too much credit, IMO. We can be more than just conditionally certain. Do you really have any doubt at all that jumping off a cliff will hurt you?

I hold that objective morality may exist that transcends mere subjective opinion (and I even believe some standards can be demonstrated as...highly unlikely ;)), but I'm also open to the idea that there could be more than one right answer, and mine might not even be one of them...although I'd like to think it is.

If you're interested, there are some great books on objective morality that might help sway you (one way or the other). Tara Smith's work is very good, as well as The Virtue of Selfishness.

Mini-Me

01-31-2012, 03:50 AM

I basically agree (I would phrase it slightly differently). Unfortunately, that's not what Popper and other adherents to skepticism say.
I'm not sure why you insist on saying Popper adheres to skepticism. Fallibilism is a pretty distinct position, after all, and I'd consider it more like "foundationalism with an asterisk" than "might as well be skepticism." ;) It accepts the idea of objective truth; it simply concedes that it's only provable conditionally (i.e. unprovable axioms are true, and/or our sensory experience is true) if at all (here I'm just referring to Gödel, who is pretty agnostic about epistemology here). This is in fact why I brought up skepticism and fallibilism in the first place: soulcyon stated that morality is not strictly provable and therefore subjective, and I indicated the technical impossibility of absolute, unconditional proof of anything as a way of pointing out, "unprovable does not by itself imply subjective."

Either way, are you sure you didn't misunderstand Popper on falsifiability? It's a more scientific concept that's only tangentially related to fallibilism (let alone skepticism). It would be absolutely ridiculous to say, "This piece of evidence contradicts theory XYZ, therefore theory XYZ must be scrapped entirely and can never be permitted to be fixed to reflect the new evidence. Let no man ever speak of heretical theory XYZ again. Any new theories from here forward must bear absolutely no resemblance to theory XYZ, or Karl Popper will find out about your grave offense and throw you in a wood chipper and eat you." I get the feeling Popper didn't mean quite that. ;)

I know you said you'd like to set it aside, but since you brought it up: saying that you could be a brain in a vat ("The Matrix") or a computer simulation assumes the existence of a vat, a computer, a programmer, scientists, surgeons, electrodes, someone to put you in the vat, etc, etc. It's an attempt to use knowledge to destroy its own roots. Advanced knowledge presupposes more basic knowledge. You cannot rationally assert the certainty of advanced knowledge if the more basic knowledge is put in doubt.
"Brain in a vat" is just an analogy used for illustration, and the abstract concept arose long before computers (Descartes's evil demon)! We base our knowledge of the universe on our experience within it, but if that very experience is a grand illusion, matter may not necessarily exist at all. Instead, a singular consciousness existing in a vacuum, comprising the whole universe (one with very different laws than the one we experience), might as well be dreaming all of this up. Whether or not this is actually possible depends greatly on the nature of the universe itself, which even according to our worldly understanding is a pretty deep mystery. (First cause is a paradoxical violation of causality, and so is a linear causal chain extending infinitely backwards. I suppose a circular timeline may be non-paradoxical...depending...) For that matter, we technically may not even know if a universe with our particular universe's laws is even the only kind that could support a literal computer simulation.

That's not to say that an illusory universe with a singular consciousness is a reasonable assumption...just a remote possibility. Whereas skepticism loses itself in a black hole of not knowing, fallibilism builds knowledge on a branching foundation. It's the if/else/then or switch/case statement of knowledge: If an illusory world is true, what do we know? "I think, therefore I exist," and little else. If our perception of our world and our formulation of axioms are accurate, what do we know? Lots! If we add a few other assumptions, what more do we know? Lots more! :D

In addition, for something to be possible, there must be at least some evidence for it. There is no evidence here, so such a claim is totally arbitrary (which also means it's not possible).
I'm not following you here, because you seem to have an unusually strict definition of what is possible. Where does it come from? I might argue that for something to be seriously considered true, there must be at least some evidence for it, or at the very least, it must be one of finite possible alternatives, each of which has an equivalent lack of evidence. However, the realm of mere possibility is vast.

You're giving the skeptics too much credit, IMO. We can be more than just conditionally certain. Do you really have any doubt at all that jumping off a cliff will hurt you?
If you abuse quantum physics a little (a LOT), practically anything can happen when you jump off the cliff. :p The probability of anything other than death upon impact (or severe mutilation?) is astronomically/negligibly small, but my hazy understanding is that the probability of you teleporting to China is technically not zero...and that's just working within known physical laws, ruling out actual skepticism.

If you're interested, there are some great books on objective morality that might help sway you (one way or the other). Tara Smith's work is very good, as well as The Virtue of Selfishness.

Hrm, maybe. The notion of objective truth appeals to me, and I DO believe in it. I just think you're being overconfident about the unconditional provability of many truths, because I see no honest way to move forward from the Münchhausen Trilemma without first conceding fallibilism. Self-certain foundationalism seems more to me like misunderstanding the nature of the trilemma entirely.

We're WAYYY off topic now though.

soulcyon

01-31-2012, 04:06 AM

I probably can't prove it to a devout subjectivist, since our foundational views of consciousness and reality are completely different.Devout subjectivist? lmao, I'm only talking about Morality, yet you think my whole line of thinking is of a subjectivist. Even with the "objectivist view" you described, you CHOOSE when to apply your morals in situations. The fact that your SUBJECTIVE opinion upon situations proves that even in your objective world, morality is purely subjective! Please stop beating around the bush.

That's not a valid application of induction, since you have failed to integrate your knowledge and observations, such as: people other than you hang pictures; you know of other ways to hang pictures, etc. A valid application of induction would be: all men are mortal. You have only seen a few men, but that statement integrates with and doesn't contradict other essentials you know: the aging process, the age of people you know, etc.The example I gave is Weak induction, you give the example of strong induction. But my statement still stands because strong induction only needs to work if everything you perceived is truthy. "All men are mortal" is a conclusion statement, so what is your base statement? I can't imagine a base statement that induces to "All men are mortal" :\

soulcyon

01-31-2012, 04:15 AM

Double post: I see where AceNZ is coming from, will start another thread debunking this article.

http://www.strongatheism.net/library/philosophy/case_for_objective_morality/

Occam's Banana

01-31-2012, 08:15 AM

We're WAYYY off topic now though.
But fascinatingly so. (I <3 epistemology. :))

AceNZ

01-31-2012, 08:22 AM

I'm not sure why you insist on saying Popper adheres to skepticism. Fallibilism is a pretty distinct position, after all, and I'd consider it more like "foundationalism with an asterisk" than "might as well be skepticism." ;)

Popper has fooled you. He's one of the most notorious skeptics and positivists in 20th century philosophy.

Mini-Me

01-31-2012, 01:07 PM

Popper has fooled you. He's one of the most notorious skeptics and positivists in 20th century philosophy.

I'll post more later.

Perhaps I misunderstand how much he leans toward skepticism? It ultimately doesn't matter though, since it's not like I worship at his temple or anything. :p Fallibilism itself still stands alone as something I can get behind, and I'm not especially concerned about the kind of guy who first discovered it. I certainly don't have to view it from the same perspective as him. As for positivism, I'm quite far from that position. You're no positivist either (given what I believe to be your views on logic and intuition), but even you seem to lean more toward that position than I do regarding empiricism, based on your statement about what things are possible.

AceNZ

02-01-2012, 08:39 PM

Perhaps I misunderstand how much he leans toward skepticism? It ultimately doesn't matter though, since it's not like I worship at his temple or anything. :p Fallibilism itself still stands alone as something I can get behind, and I'm not especially concerned about the kind of guy who first discovered it. I certainly don't have to view it from the same perspective as him.

So you agree with the guy who "discovered" fallibilism, but you just don't agree with what he discovered or what he said about it?

As for positivism, I'm quite far from that position.

OK, but fallibilism is basically anchored in Positivism: they both claim that the senses and logic applied to them are the only source of knowledge; that concepts and the like are meaningless.

You're no positivist either (given what I believe to be your views on logic and intuition), but even you seem to lean more toward that position than I do regarding empiricism, based on your statement about what things are possible.

If anything, I'm an anti-Positivist. I strongly believe in concepts as being a source of knowledge. Knowledge is ultimately anchored in sensory experience, but that doesn't mean we can't create new knowledge based on those experiences (such as through induction).

My view is that what's possible must have some anchor in reality. Arbitrary statements don't have an anchor in reality, which means they should have no cognitive status. Where fallibilism says the arbitrary should be considered unless something can be presented to show that it's false, I would say the arbitrary should just be dismissed, with no consideration or discussion at all.

I could claim that I have an invisible pink elephant under my house. Are you honestly willing to consider such a thing as possible?

AceNZ

02-01-2012, 09:12 PM

Either way, are you sure you didn't misunderstand Popper on falsifiability? It's a more scientific concept that's only tangentially related to fallibilism (let alone skepticism). It would be absolutely ridiculous to say, "This piece of evidence contradicts theory XYZ, therefore theory XYZ must be scrapped entirely and can never be permitted to be fixed to reflect the new evidence. Let no man ever speak of heretical theory XYZ again. Any new theories from here forward must bear absolutely no resemblance to theory XYZ, or Karl Popper will find out about your grave offense and throw you in a wood chipper and eat you." I get the feeling Popper didn't mean quite that. ;)

Here's a quote from Popper:

natural law might be compared to 'proscriptions' or 'prohibition'. They do not assert that something exists or is the case; they deny it. They insist on the non-existence of certain things or states of affairs, proscribing or prohibiting, as it were, these states of affairs: they rule them out. If we accept as true one singular statement which, as it were, infringes the prohibition by asserting the existence of a thing (or the occurrence of an event) ruled out by the law, then the law is refuted.

In the terms of logic, he's saying that all S is P demands no S be non-P, so if non-P is found, S is refuted, not modified.

This also ties back to an earlier comment of mine, that Popper says axioms require justification, but scientific hypotheses do not. He wants scientific hypotheses to be tested, but he holds that:

1. His desire for testing is only a subjective preference
2. No test will ever prove any hypothesis nor even make it more probable
3. There are no requirements for launching a scientific hypothesis—arbitrary assertions are warmly welcomed—and the arbitrary is good until and unless falsified

"Brain in a vat" is just an analogy used for illustration, and the abstract concept arose long before computers (Descartes's evil demon)! We base our knowledge of the universe on our experience within it, but if that very experience is a grand illusion, matter may not necessarily exist at all. Instead, a singular consciousness existing in a vacuum, comprising the whole universe (one with very different laws than the one we experience), might as well be dreaming all of this up.

Experience can't be an illusion, for one simple reason: we're conscious. Matter does exist: just look and you can experience it yourself. There is no singular consciousness in a vacuum; such a claim is arbitrary, with no basis in reality.

To be conscious means to be conscious of something.

Whereas skepticism loses itself in a black hole of not knowing, fallibilism builds knowledge on a branching foundation. It's the if/else/then or switch/case statement of knowledge: If an illusory world is true, what do we know? "I think, therefore I exist," and little else. If our perception of our world and our formulation of axioms are accurate, what do we know? Lots! If we add a few other assumptions, what more do we know? Lots more! :D

Descartes got it backwards. "I think, therefore I exist" is wrong. The correct formulation is: "I exist, therefore I think". Existence is primary.

I'm probably sounding like a broken record, but we can be sure that axioms are correct; there's no need for uncertainty (skepticism).

If you abuse quantum physics a little (a LOT), practically anything can happen when you jump off the cliff. :p The probability of anything other than death upon impact (or severe mutilation?) is astronomically/negligibly small, but my hazy understanding is that the probability of you teleporting to China is technically not zero...and that's just working within known physical laws, ruling out actual skepticism.

The odd nature of things appearing and disappearing as shown in quantum physics only appears at the sub-molecular level. There is no evidence, or even a theoretical foundation, that any macro-sized object can suddenly teleport to another location. Again, that's an arbitrary assertion.

Hrm, maybe. The notion of objective truth appeals to me, and I DO believe in it. I just think you're being overconfident about the unconditional provability of many truths, because I see no honest way to move forward from the Münchhausen Trilemma without first conceding fallibilism. Self-certain foundationalism seems more to me like misunderstanding the nature of the trilemma entirely.

A detailed refutation of the trilemma would take some time. Just quickly, I can say that circular logic is not always the terrible thing it's made out to be. It is bad when you assert an arbitrary claim and use it to establish itself. However, in induction, the initial statement is not arbitrary, it's based on observation. The second step in induction is an actual integration: connecting what you observed to everything else you know, not to itself. It's really the mutual relationship of parts to the whole. After that, the right definitions become the peg for future definitions.